From: LINGUIST Network[SMTP:linguist@linguistlist.org]
Sent: Monday, January 05, 1998 8:00 AM
To: Pagliere, Alan
Subject: Re: Prescription against prescriptivism
Thank you, thank you, to both Tom Sawallis and Pat Barrett for their discussions of prescriptivism. Prescriptivism is often a matter of right and wrong based on a lack of knowledge of how language works and/or a tool for dividing people.
IMHO, the only use for anything resembling prescriptivism is to teach conventions we use to communicate. We agree on red and green lights when driving. We make up rules to play games, games that also involve other rules we don't have a say in changing. Baseball requires an interesting mix of the laws of physics and the other rules we make up that, in turn, might have something to do with the laws of physics. Catching a ball means something within the context of a game, having it come down in order to catch it is something we have little say in, but use. We just don't think about the connection.
We can teach what we will in schools as a convention. I have always thought, however, that what we need to teach, along with agreed upon conventions, is _linguistics_ proper. Imagine if kids in school learned even the most basic concepts of what language is and how it works. They would know that conventions are conventions and that language will necessarily change over time, and place, and culture, and .... It is amazing to me that the average person, when asked, does in fact have some basic (usually no more than basic, but at least some) idea about the laws of physics and the basic units of chemistry and how numbers behave, and yet when it comes to language, not a clue. No one, save a few, knows the atoms and molecules of language, the hierarchy and behavior of units of language. Atoms, phonemes, morphemes, chemistry, grammar, physics, multiplication, diachronic change, ecology, discourse. The only way to keep at bay the equivalent of pseudo-science in linguistics is to educate people.
Ah, my utopian vision: If people had any idea about how Language _really works_, discussions about "right" and "wrong" might be replaced by an understanding of "convention" and "natural processes", and an acceptance of multi-dialectical people might be the order of the day. Arguments about split infinitives in English, academies banning the use of English words in French, arguments about Black English like those I remember as a grad student in linguistics in the 70s (and its recent boiling up to the surface again as a mostly irrational argument about Ebonics) might pretty much just go away. And so, I hope, would all the Linguistic Luddites, the Self-Appointed Linguistic Police (you know who I mean) and all those who believe the sky is falling and are allowed, often for a profit, to convince of the same those who are ignorant of all but the pseudo-science of full-blown prescriptivism.
Phew.