Some Thoughts On Language
Nov. 16th, 2010 06:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsittingstillSo. The old argument about descriptivism vs prescriptivism* has cropped up and I had some thoughts that seemed new to me. If they're old hat to you, skip them; I won't mind.
Words aren't digital. Words are analog.
Words are like the spot light cast by a spotlight. They have the meaning and usage that most people assign to them--that's the bright spot in the center. They have less common meaning and usage that isn't quite what most people mean--that's the dimmer light around the center. And sometimes people use them completely out of the common consensus--that's the really dim light at the edges, but it can go all the way to the edge of the floor--you just don't notice it (and needn't start.) The meanings change over time--"fond" used to mean "foolish" rather than "loving" for example. That's the light moving across the floor (or whatever) over time. Dictionaries specify where the bright spot was, as best the writer could tell, at the time the dictionary was written. The spotlight doesn't move very fast, so mostly this works pretty well.
(Note that I'm only dealing with denotations here--words also have connotations--ideas associated with them. And different people associate different ideas with them--so that's a whole 'nother dimension for the spotlight to spread out in...)
In fact, because the spotlight doesn't move very fast, descriptivists and prescriptivists work about the same in practice, and don't clash all that often, which I guess is a good thing.
Telling people how to talk is not going to work.
As I understand it, prescriptivists want to tell people how to use the language they learned at their mother's knee (so to speak) and for which their culture already has a consensus. Now, I recently heard from a prescriptivist who thinks descriptivists are (or ought to be? He thinks it's the logical conclusion of our beliefs) like the Caterpillar, believing that words mean what their speaker pays them to mean and nothing more or less, which is not really an accurate description, in my opinion. As I understand it, descriptivists see nothing wrong with informing people how a word is normally used (or even how the word is used by different classes, which will become an issue later)--we don't promote utter anarchy or anything. We are just less inclined to tell people you can't use a preposition to end a sentence with, and you must be sure to not split an infinitive. So since I'm not a prescriptivist, perhaps I'm wrong about them wanting to tell other people how to talk, and that part should be taken with a grain of salt.
So let's figure the rest of my piece applies to "telling people how to talk."
At any rate, I can tell you, telling people how to talk is not going to work.
For example, my husband and I grew up in different cultures. In mine, the meal eaten at noon is "lunch" and the meal eaten in the evening is "dinner." In his, the meal eaten at noon is "dinner" and the meal eaten in the evening is "supper." ("Lunch" is apparently not used at all.)
We cannot get this straight. I know intellectually what words to use to Kip--he knows intellectually what words to use to me--but when "dinner" pops out of either mouth we always have to stop and sort out what meal we mean. It's freaking irritating--it feels like stepping on a stair that turns out not to be there, every time. But with the best will in the world, and nine years of practice, we have not been able to come to consistent usage, and by now I'm not expecting it to happen.
So why the heck would I think I can train someone out of saying "ain't"? Language you learn early is language you keep using. It's the language that feels right. And, frankly, it's the language the rest of your culture is using--I wouldn't take kindly to Kip saying I'm using "dinner" wrong. Kip is more patient than I, but surely I should quit abusing that patience by telling him he's using "dinner" wrong.
Class Issues
And--this gets thorny--language is a class marker, just like having straight, well kept teeth.
I believe that lots of people who want to make people talk right mean well. Personally I would like for everyone to be treated equally regardless of class, but the world isn't that way, and I totally agree that given that class markers affect how the rest of the world sees you, you want them working for you and not against you. So certainly if you take a child off the mean streets and teach her to slip easily and naturally into upper class pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, you have given her a tool that may help make her life easier.
But there are two issues here.
One is that this is by no means easy to do (see above re "dinner.") It might be possible, but I suspect it would take immersion, not simple nagging, to achieve it at all, and it probably can't be done with an adult, since adults do not learn new languages very well. And the major problem with this is that if you only go halfway, you create a fakery. Brass is good, honest metal, from which many useful and even beautiful things can be made. Brass has nothing to be ashamed of. Until it tries to pass itself off as gold, at which point it becomes a cheap, tawdry fake. Similarly, while there are social costs to sounding lower class, there are also serious social costs to sounding almost upper class but not quite carrying it off. You want to say something fancier than "write your initials on the paper" but can't remember that the verb would be "initial the paper" so you say "initialize the paper" and everyone who knows what initialize really means flinches, when "write your initials" would have been fine. The common expression for assuming manners or vocabulary you can't quite carry off is "aping" and it's not a complimentary one.
So, since it's hard to do well, and doing it badly is socially quite costly, the people you're trying to train to talk right may quite reasonably not want to take the gamble.
The other issue is that the effect of telling people how to talk right is that you're necessarily telling them they talk wrong now. On the one hand, people can't learn without feedback, sure, and I'm not one of those "self-esteem uber alles!" types--(never met one, actually; not sure they exist at all but anyway) who might theoretically say that we shouldn't correct math papers either. On the other hand, when the upper class is imposing their standards on the lower class and defining the lower class as wrong for the simple fact of being different from the upper class, it starts to look like another way to stomp on the lower class, make them ashamed of being lower class, and make them think, since they can't talk right, they don't deserve to be taken seriously or treated with respect.
Now it's perfectly legitimate for a prescriptivist to say he only meant to help. Like I said--class markers exist, and matter; he just wants to give his students the tools to get class markers working for them and not against them. But actions take on meanings, just like words do, based on a consensus centered around what they have meant in the past. And "you should be ashamed of talking wrong" is part of that consensus, like it or not.
So this is why I think there is so much push back against prescriptivism.
------------------------------------------------------------
*Descriptivism--the idea that dictionaries and other resources about language should merely describe what general usage is now (to the extent possible given that this is inherently a moving target), and what it has been in the past.
Prescriptivism--the idea that resources about language determine what is correct and people should conform their usage to these authorities.
Words aren't digital. Words are analog.
Words are like the spot light cast by a spotlight. They have the meaning and usage that most people assign to them--that's the bright spot in the center. They have less common meaning and usage that isn't quite what most people mean--that's the dimmer light around the center. And sometimes people use them completely out of the common consensus--that's the really dim light at the edges, but it can go all the way to the edge of the floor--you just don't notice it (and needn't start.) The meanings change over time--"fond" used to mean "foolish" rather than "loving" for example. That's the light moving across the floor (or whatever) over time. Dictionaries specify where the bright spot was, as best the writer could tell, at the time the dictionary was written. The spotlight doesn't move very fast, so mostly this works pretty well.
(Note that I'm only dealing with denotations here--words also have connotations--ideas associated with them. And different people associate different ideas with them--so that's a whole 'nother dimension for the spotlight to spread out in...)
In fact, because the spotlight doesn't move very fast, descriptivists and prescriptivists work about the same in practice, and don't clash all that often, which I guess is a good thing.
Telling people how to talk is not going to work.
As I understand it, prescriptivists want to tell people how to use the language they learned at their mother's knee (so to speak) and for which their culture already has a consensus. Now, I recently heard from a prescriptivist who thinks descriptivists are (or ought to be? He thinks it's the logical conclusion of our beliefs) like the Caterpillar, believing that words mean what their speaker pays them to mean and nothing more or less, which is not really an accurate description, in my opinion. As I understand it, descriptivists see nothing wrong with informing people how a word is normally used (or even how the word is used by different classes, which will become an issue later)--we don't promote utter anarchy or anything. We are just less inclined to tell people you can't use a preposition to end a sentence with, and you must be sure to not split an infinitive. So since I'm not a prescriptivist, perhaps I'm wrong about them wanting to tell other people how to talk, and that part should be taken with a grain of salt.
So let's figure the rest of my piece applies to "telling people how to talk."
At any rate, I can tell you, telling people how to talk is not going to work.
For example, my husband and I grew up in different cultures. In mine, the meal eaten at noon is "lunch" and the meal eaten in the evening is "dinner." In his, the meal eaten at noon is "dinner" and the meal eaten in the evening is "supper." ("Lunch" is apparently not used at all.)
We cannot get this straight. I know intellectually what words to use to Kip--he knows intellectually what words to use to me--but when "dinner" pops out of either mouth we always have to stop and sort out what meal we mean. It's freaking irritating--it feels like stepping on a stair that turns out not to be there, every time. But with the best will in the world, and nine years of practice, we have not been able to come to consistent usage, and by now I'm not expecting it to happen.
So why the heck would I think I can train someone out of saying "ain't"? Language you learn early is language you keep using. It's the language that feels right. And, frankly, it's the language the rest of your culture is using--I wouldn't take kindly to Kip saying I'm using "dinner" wrong. Kip is more patient than I, but surely I should quit abusing that patience by telling him he's using "dinner" wrong.
Class Issues
And--this gets thorny--language is a class marker, just like having straight, well kept teeth.
I believe that lots of people who want to make people talk right mean well. Personally I would like for everyone to be treated equally regardless of class, but the world isn't that way, and I totally agree that given that class markers affect how the rest of the world sees you, you want them working for you and not against you. So certainly if you take a child off the mean streets and teach her to slip easily and naturally into upper class pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar, you have given her a tool that may help make her life easier.
But there are two issues here.
One is that this is by no means easy to do (see above re "dinner.") It might be possible, but I suspect it would take immersion, not simple nagging, to achieve it at all, and it probably can't be done with an adult, since adults do not learn new languages very well. And the major problem with this is that if you only go halfway, you create a fakery. Brass is good, honest metal, from which many useful and even beautiful things can be made. Brass has nothing to be ashamed of. Until it tries to pass itself off as gold, at which point it becomes a cheap, tawdry fake. Similarly, while there are social costs to sounding lower class, there are also serious social costs to sounding almost upper class but not quite carrying it off. You want to say something fancier than "write your initials on the paper" but can't remember that the verb would be "initial the paper" so you say "initialize the paper" and everyone who knows what initialize really means flinches, when "write your initials" would have been fine. The common expression for assuming manners or vocabulary you can't quite carry off is "aping" and it's not a complimentary one.
So, since it's hard to do well, and doing it badly is socially quite costly, the people you're trying to train to talk right may quite reasonably not want to take the gamble.
The other issue is that the effect of telling people how to talk right is that you're necessarily telling them they talk wrong now. On the one hand, people can't learn without feedback, sure, and I'm not one of those "self-esteem uber alles!" types--(never met one, actually; not sure they exist at all but anyway) who might theoretically say that we shouldn't correct math papers either. On the other hand, when the upper class is imposing their standards on the lower class and defining the lower class as wrong for the simple fact of being different from the upper class, it starts to look like another way to stomp on the lower class, make them ashamed of being lower class, and make them think, since they can't talk right, they don't deserve to be taken seriously or treated with respect.
Now it's perfectly legitimate for a prescriptivist to say he only meant to help. Like I said--class markers exist, and matter; he just wants to give his students the tools to get class markers working for them and not against them. But actions take on meanings, just like words do, based on a consensus centered around what they have meant in the past. And "you should be ashamed of talking wrong" is part of that consensus, like it or not.
So this is why I think there is so much push back against prescriptivism.
------------------------------------------------------------
*Descriptivism--the idea that dictionaries and other resources about language should merely describe what general usage is now (to the extent possible given that this is inherently a moving target), and what it has been in the past.
Prescriptivism--the idea that resources about language determine what is correct and people should conform their usage to these authorities.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 10:50 pm (UTC)In England they might be "prescriptive" about "received pronunciation." In the US they might be "prescriptive" about... I'm tempted to say "standard west coast dialect" but I may be wrong about that.
I agree with you about different registers--the language you use in the business world is about what I was thinking of when I think of which dialect tends to be "prescribed" in the US.
However I'm not sure I would describe jargon as "most formal"--most removed from common speech sure, but when I was talking molecular biology with other graduate students we would use curse words we would never have used in front of a judge or even in a department store.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 12:37 am (UTC)Technical terms have specific meanings [cf your example of "initialize" back up there] and the same word in different technologies can mean somewhat different things.
Not that I can think of any examples right off the top of my head...