In the first lecture we had some very interesting discussion about descriptive vs. prescriptive grammar, which is wonderful, because sooner or later, when you tell a friend that you are taking (or have taken) a linguistics course, chances are you'll be bombarded with a bunch of issues concerning split infinitives, or propositions at end. Those topics are positively prescriptive, yet unfortunately they remain to be what most people think about when they think about linguistics.
How do we convince our friends that prescriptive grammar irrelevant to linguists? Well, usually you just tell them, “I don’t care, whatever.” And you’ll appear cool. But we ourselves should understand the rationale behind the issue. Linguistics is a science, and scientists strive to describe and explain phenomena in the world as accurately as possible. If an advocate of Aristotelian mechanics points his middle finger at two stones of different masses and shouts, “how dare you guys not obey the physical law!” everyone else will regard him as just insane.
But linguistics is never as simple as physics. Unlike stones, human beings are notoriously susceptible to outside influence. Two quick examples: 1) The Economist’s Style Guide offers the following comment on split infinitives, “the ban is pointless. Unfortunately, to see it broken is so annoying to so many people that you should observe it,” thus rendering itself pointless as well; 2) even those who stubbornly insist that “data” should always be plural would find the collocation “few data” somewhat unidiomatic (or, to put it better, doge-y), which is probably why even the New York Times came up with this sentence with self-contradictory grammar, “very little data have been gathered about the behavior of scientists themselves.”
There’s also the issue of hypercorrection. When children are incessantly told to say “it is I” rather than “it’s me,” or “he’s taller than I” instead of “he’s taller than me,” they tend to regard “I” as a more “correct” form than “me,” hence the widespread usage of “between you and I.” The same holds true for “whom,” which is eerily perceived to be associated with speakers of higher education no matter whether it is used “correctly.” A survey even indicates statistically that, for males, just randomly spraying “whom” in your speech can be a great way to attract ladies. Wow! No, I meant, whoooom!
Another thought-provoking perspective comes from academia. People in one common discipline may communicate using technical terms, and these terms need generally approved definitions. So a generative linguist’s sense of “grammar” may be equivalent to our instinctive language faculty rather than some thick book full of perspective rules that lies quietly, gathering dust. But these terms can also be part of the common lexical repertoire of English speakers, and this double identity can sometimes cause problems. A few months ago, several scientists published an article in Nature titled A comprehensive overview of chemical-free consumer products, and there wasn’t a single word in the main text. For chemists, “chemical” is almost synonymous to substance (with the exception of some sub-atomic particles), but for the rest of us, the term most certainly connotes, if not denotes, something artificial or even poisonous. Is this also prescriptivism? Apparently it’s a line too fine to draw.
Finally, several years ago, I used the phrase “encouraging news” in an essay for my English class (taught in China). My teacher said the usage was “wrong” because the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary says “encouraging” is “not usually [used] before noun,” and teachers of English in China usually interpret “usually” as “always”. Why is the dictionary saying that? (For non-native speakers, go check Merriam-Webster.) During a lecture in Manchester, UK, I asked an editor of Oxford Dictionaries. It turned out that they had myriad illustrative examples in their corpus (i.e. database), so “even if it’s only 1%, it’s still a lot.” The moral of the story? Even the most descriptive approach can occasionally lead to prescriptive results!
As we know, even from our brief linguistics study, languages are constantly evolving. . If you crack open a text of with Elizabethan English from the mid 16th century (think Shakespeare) the language is understandable, but undeniably different from modern English. Now these early modern English texts share much of the same grammar as modern English, but if you go further back even that changes. So what made this grammar change? Tom brought up the point that prescriptive grammar is irrelevant to linguists and I started to wonder if modern prescriptive grammar is historical descriptive grammar. Will there come a time when what we consider now to be descriptive grammar will become prescriptive?
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ReplyDeleteI agree with Griffin. Linguistics as a field of study dates back to Panini who lived around 500 B.C. For over 2,000 years, linguists have been compartmentalizing grammar into descriptive and prescriptive parts. But as Griffin alludes, as language evolves, that which is prescribed at some point becomes a constituent of one's mental grammar. It may take generations before it feeds back into the knowledge loop, but I believe it does happen eventually. And from the mental grammar rule book blossoms descriptive grammar. It's as if prescriptive grammar is a part of the environment that over time alters a culture's linguistic DNA. The feedback loop, like any form of evolution, takes place over an extended period of time making it imperceptible to linguists. Prescriptive grammar does matter at some point. We just won't be around when it ultimately does.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think our descriptive grammar will definitely become a future prescriptive grammar. In fact, this notion is a testament to the difficulty in enforcing prescriptive grammar rules. Not only does descriptive grammar contrast with prescriptive grammar in some cases, but it also does so to an extent that the prescriptive grammar itself must be modified.
ReplyDeleteThis is also true of our lexicon. Most new words added to the official lexicon of a language (such as in the Oxford American Dictionary) begin not as prescribed new words. For example, there is not some room of people coming up with possible new combinations of sounds and what meaning will be attached to that new sound combination. Rather, new words begin in spoken language, whether they are shortened versions of existing words, borrowings from other languages, etc.
I think the whole notion of prescriptive versus descriptive is simply fascinating. The example that comes to mind and that hasn't ceased to amaze me is the word "literally". Building up from what Anne mentioned above, I believe that "literally" is the best example of descriptive grammar becoming prescriptive grammar. A very interesting read titled, "How the wrong definition of literally sneaked into the dictionary" by The Week, narrates the story of how Merriam-Webster, Oxford, and Cambridge added a secondary meaning to the word - "virtually".
ReplyDeleteThe process through which words take on meaning has been crucial to the development of civilization as we know it, and it is sometimes easy to dismiss prescriptive attempts to "regulate" language as futile. However, we must also consider that the institutions in charge of providing descriptive grammar definitions regard themselves as the guardians of human understanding, and it is in that spirit that they are invested in preserving crisp and clear definitions of language usage.
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ReplyDeleteYes; I agree that some aspects of our current descriptive grammar will be incorporated into the prescriptive grammar of the future. However, one example of descriptive grammar that I personally hope does not become future prescriptive grammar is the use of the word “mine’s” as a possessive adjective. In elementary school and even in high school, I commonly heard peers say, “This book is mine’s, not yours.” I personally cringe at the use of this grammatically incorrect double possessive because of the prescriptive rule that my fifth grade teacher drilled into my class by using a shameful consequence. Whenever a student said the word “mine’s” instead of “mine” as a possessive adjective, she made the student wear an unwieldy miner’s hat for the remainder of the day as a consequence of his grammatical transgression. I admit to having to wear the hat twice during the school year, but more importantly I learned to follow the prescriptive grammar rules at that time. Nowadays, I frequently hear youth using “mine’s” as a possessive adjective and wonder if it will ever become a part of the prescriptive language of the future due to the constant repetition of the word in everyday speech.
ReplyDeleteIn Korea, we have a government-run organization named The National Institute of The Korean Language, which officially announces a set of prescriptive grammar that an educated speaker of our language is expected to respect. It also publishes the Standard Dictionary of Korean Language, the official dictionary of our language. Both the rules and the lexicon are frequently modified—but what would be the criteria that the scholars in this institute are relying on? Their changes in prescriptive rules suggest that it is descriptive approach: they begin to “allow” or “incorporate” prevalent types of usage in language that were previously regarded as erroneous applications.
ReplyDeletePrescriptive grammar certainly affects descriptive grammar, as Tom illustrated through some great examples. It is also true that such rules originate from widespread, everyday usage of the language. This cycle of feedback might resemble the classical dilemma of “Chicken or the egg?”, but the arbitrary and constant alterations in everyday spoken language suggests that it precedes the written rules, or at least that it is more interesting as a subject of investigation; hence the focus of linguists on descriptive grammar over prescriptive grammar.
I think that the clash between prescriptive and descriptive grammar is demonstrated quite nicely by written vs. spoken language. Our textbook puts forth the notion that spoken language is the more “pure” or perfect form of language, which I tend to agree with. This reinforces my opinion which is that descriptive grammar is ultimately the more “perfect” grammar. To me, language is ultimately about usage, and the most commonly used form of language is through speech. It’s a shame that traditional school systems teach language primarily through writing, and even worse, through 5-paragraph essays and other “correct” ways of writing. Because of this opinion, I think it’s great that well-known dictionaries are beginning to add words like “selfie” to the English language, so those that tend to find prescriptive grammar more powerful are challenged to expand their notion of correct language.
ReplyDeleteI think this issues brings up the larger social issue that we encounter and deal with in linguistics which is the power of language over society and the power of society over language. For instance the idea jokingly brought up by Tom that men should use "whom" because women might find it attractive is a striking example of how language controls our social interactions. We use certain language in certain situations because society has said it is the arbitrarily prescribed way of speaking for that situation. The idea that I should now use "whom" on dates has been prescribed to me by Tom and if its gonna work, then you bet I will be using it! Conversely we can see that society can also just as arbitrarily decide that certain words should not be prescribed and ignored, for instance some of the grammar "rules" discussed above that I dont think need to be rehashed any further.
ReplyDeleteWe can also see that what language is available can determine how people are allowed to communicate. I am sure we have all heard that example that eskimo cultures have some insanely large amount of words for "cold" but dont have words for "sadness" or whatever and this seems to alter some of their biological processes and thought patterns. And while this example is obviously up to some scientific debate on its validity, it raises the excellent counterpoint to my previous argument; how much power does language have over society?
I think these ideas are just a larger scale, further abstracted way of placing the descriptive vs prescriptive question that has been discussed here.
To agree with Greg, I think language revolves much more around usage rather than rules. While there is a "correct" way to speak and to write, the "correctness" of this manner evolves (albeit slowly) due to the constant pressure of modern usage of language. This is more visible in the modifications of our prescribed lexicon (adding words like muggle and google to the dictionary), but also in the sounds and sound combinations that we adopt into our language via other languages. As we try to express novel things we need novel combinations of words and sounds and even new sounds to try to bring these novel concepts into our speech.
ReplyDeleteI find the difference between prescriptive and descriptive linguistics fascinating. I read a really interesting book over the summer (Bad English: A History of Linguistic Aggravation by Ammon Shea) that went through the history of prescriptive linguistics and showed how arbitrary a lot of the 'rules' have been, often contradicting both the descriptive facts of the language and other prescriptive rules! For instance, the rules against splitting infinitives and ending sentences with prepositions both originated because those structures are grammatically impossible in Latin, considered a nobler language. However, in the same time period, others were prescribing against using words with Latin roots because they were supposedly corrupting the English language, which is Germanic in origin. They suggested words like "saywhat" for definition and "endsay" for conclusion.
ReplyDeleteI think the irony that 17th century prescriptive 'linguists' were trying to make English sentences conform to Latin grammar while others tried to protect English vocabulary from an incursion of Latin is an excellent demonstration of how arbitrary prescriptive rules tend to be. Unfortunately, this endsay may be one up with which grammar nazis will not put.