Why does the fact that literacy is taught for a specific dialect imply that this dialect is not anyone’s birth language? You yourself immediately contradict that…
You seem to be trying to frame this as though there were some noble movement to establish a lingua franca, and then it turned out for some lucky people that by sheer coincidence their birth language is similar to it.
The reality, of course, is that “standard” English is the dialect of those who have held power in society, and that it’s a de facto lingua franca not through any noble motivation, but because anyone who wants to have any chance of success in society must learn to speak that way.
I’m not suggesting that we all need to be more woke and go to our English classes in sackcloth and ashes, in guilty shame at the class origins of the dialect that we study. A lingua franca is a good idea, and it would perverse to try to impose a different one. But the ignorant prescriptivists do need to educate themselves and gain a little more humility about the fact that the dialect that is our de facto lingua franca is not inherently linguistically superior to any other. Viz:
[ @Andy_L perhaps I should have clarified that in quoting myself above I was certainly not intending to redirect any of that criticism of ugly manifestations of prescriptivism toward you personally. I know that’s not your way of thinking. ]
Good point. Maybe there are some people who never used a double negative or split an infinitive because they were raised by very unusual people. But most people I know had to learn those rules in a school setting - because those rules are artificial (not what a child would pick up by listening).
I agree completely - to a few elite people it may feel like everyone else is speaking in a deficient way, but that’s only because those people are elite and have the privilege of being able to judge everyone else on how close they are to that transient standard (and the standard is transient - the elite dialect changes, too).
But I wasn’t claiming that anyone has innate literacy. Just that the literacy that is taught in schools is based on a certain dialect. And the first thing that comes to mind for me in gaining literacy is not split infinitives! For people who naturally speak the lingua franca dialect that is taught in schools, literacy classes do not involve learning a new dialect. Literacy is learning to read and write, learning how to understand and construct more formal and precise language than you’d use in casual speech, later learning literary appreciation, etc.
I’ve got a little time today to try to explain myself further - the big picture is that prescriptivism is a relatively new phenomenon, occurring due to widespread schooling and the printing press. Languages got along just fine without prescriptivism, just as they got along without printing or reading.
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Literacy is taught in schools, but other things are taught as well - ways of pronouncing words, ways of constructing sentences (not splitting infinitives, not using “me” as a subject, not saying “ain’t”, not using double negatives), etc.
I’m trying to distinguish between learning a language - which virtually every child does, without explicit instruction (since for the vast majority of human existence and the vast majority of languages, there was no such thing as explicit teaching of language for children).
My premise is that if a teacher stands in front of a class and says “It’s wrong to say ‘Tommy and me went to the store’” she’s teaching a foreign dialect to the students - otherwise she wouldn’t have to say it (she doesn’t say “It’s wrong to say ‘To the school I went and Tommy’” - because no one says that; every child (barring some severe mental issue) already picked up on the based word-order that is common across all English dialects). The teacher isn’t correcting children’s lazy misuse of the language - she’s teaching them a specific preferred dialect. (in fact, it’s probably the opposite - non-standard dialects sometimes have more complex grammars than the local Standard, just as smaller, non-written languages very commonly have more complex grammars than wide-spread languages)
In one sense the dialect that’s taught is not arbitrary - of course, the dialect she teaches is going to be the one that the elite use (or aspire to use). In another sense, the common dialect that’s taught is arbitrary - because which group is elite at any given time is independent of the features of that elite’s preferred dialect. From time to time in history, a new elite has come to town, and soon enough, that elite’s dialect becomes the preferred one, not because it’s elegant or efficient or pretty, but because it’s the one that the guys who have the money and weapons use (or think they should use).
So English is a bundle of dialects, a half-dozen or so of which are called “Standard” for their particular nations (and those “Standard” dialects are different from each other, too). The preferred ones are the ones that are close to the dialects that were used by the first English printers, because they were the ones who mass-produced printed works. Before printing, spelling was a matter of personal preference, with people who were literate often spelling words differently from sentence to sentence. With printing, you start to see prescriptivism develop, with pedants imposing misconceptions about word-origins onto the spelling of defenseless English words (like debt, which used to be spelled “det”) and imposing Latin grammatical concepts (like avoiding split infinitives) on English.
TLDR - Prescriptivism attempts to assert a claim that the current preferred dialect is the best - but the current preferred dialect is just the one that currently preferred for reasons that have little or nothing to do with its innate features, and everything to do with social status.
P.S. I like the cooking analogy that has been discussed above. Another analogy that might be helpful is comparing language to clothing. There are a few features of clothing that are practical (comfort, ability to protect from the environment), but there’s nothing inherent in the clothing that makes one possible set of clothing appropriate for a formal occasion and a different set for an informal occasion. Nixon looked ridiculous wearing a suit on the beach, and I’d look ridiculous wearing a bathing suit in a board room - but I’d look ridiculous wearing a suit at the trial of Socrates, too, because what my society calls appropriate formal wear today is just societal convention. There’s no such thing as a set of clothing that’s always appropriate for a formal occasion across multiple societies and the course of history, just as there’s no such thing as a word-usage that always the best across history.
Is that really true? Or has there often been prescriptivism … always contained to within a dominant culture educated class, and those who were wishing to, if not become part of it, then at work closely for, that educated class? The difference being that widespread schooling and the printing press expanded the number who were contained in those groups.
I suspect there were correct and incorrect ways to form ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and proper and improper ways to order them, different than common speech. If one worked closely for the Pharaoh then I strongly suspect a very specific dialect was expected as well.
Language still gets along fine without writing and reading or the ability to speak in the accepted dialect of the elite educated class. And facility in that dialect remains part of being in that class, acceptance into the class, and working for that class. Prescriptivism is now and always has been an arbitrary and evolving norm that is all about social status and group membership.
Of note I think there is informal prescriptivism in social groups other than the educated elite, including within teen slang, biz speak, and others. Corrections get made clear.
I think you’re mixing up prescriptivism with formality with correctness.
Obviously, when one is writing for the king to last as a pronouncement throughout all eternity the standards are profoundly different from passing notes to one another after class. Archaeologists have found “typos” and a variety of other errors in all ancient writings and has found practice sheets from schools with kids learning the language and making mistakes. But even so the “mistakes” must be put into context because all ancient languages changed from time to time and place to place exactly as English has changed every year for the last thousand.
Literacy is itself a new thing. It was not expected for the vast majority of the population for almost all of history. If only a tiny percentage of scribes needed to know written language, then maintaining control over standards was relatively easy. Spoken language worked differently, with thousands of dialects breaking off from each base language to form trees - really bushes - of life just like animals. Not until the printing press did written languages need to solidify so that widely dispersed audiences could all read them. That was still a slow process, lasting over 200 years.
By 1800 in England half the population, maybe, were literate. By 1900, 97% were. No talk about prescriptivism can be meaningful until virtually the entire population was schooled, schoolbooks were standardized, and popular media carried the written word to the masses. That was and is a separate process from literary standards, formal standards, and the expectations of an elite to know several languages including ancient ones that guided their writing to a set of class-based standards.
It’s probably always been true that non-formal language has had as tight boundaries as formal languages, although they record very poorly, but it’s also true that their rate of change has been much greater and the ability to standardize them outside small communities, as small as neighborhoods, was equally more formidable. Neither prescriptivism nor formal standards can be applied to spoken languages nor to written approximations of spoken languages. No linguist would do so.
All of this is Modern Linguistics 101, and @Andy_L is of course right. Talking about the ability of some people to write pleasing prose is a subset of a subset of a class period and should have nothing to do with the larger subject of language. Take a Creative Writing 101 course in a different department if you want to do that.
If you want an analogy, try one to a thread about high-speed trains when someone comes in and insists that traveling faster than light is possible and gets all of the physics wrong.
Your take is that prescriptivism is something that requires broad literacy. I don’t get that.
My understanding is that prescriptivism is simply a group of the dominant culture stating that a particular version of the language is “the” correct and superior one, the one of proper society. It generally comes along with an interpretation of other versions as uneducated and lower class, and with a resistance to its changing, as if the version’s correctness is revealed truth rather a transient consensus among speakers in the educated class, which for most of history was fairly identical to all who were literate.
Your understanding goes beyond that and apparently includes that the dominant class attempts to impose that version upon the masses by way of broad literacy. That it means the attempted imposition of the educated class version beyond the educated class? That by definition it only can happen when literacy does not only happen within those relatively natively fluent in dominant educated version?
People were presumably always required to behave in formal, ritualized ways around the king or other authority figures. Kings developed courts with people who tended them every day and so knew exactly how to respond in all situations. Those who came in temporarily needed instruction. These instructions were eventually put down into writing and created books of etiquette across Europe, and the English followed.
Modern etiquette books are built on the same logic. The English upper-class were steeped in etiquette from the time they were children. Outsiders were immediately identifiable by their gauche behavior. But the industrial revolution lead to a new class of the rich who wanted to mingle freely with the nobility. Americans also had a weirdly class mingling society in which manners were not automatically ingrained. This culminated - in the Victorian Age inevitably - with a middle class who wanted to imitate the classes they aspired to. That’s when books of etiquette became numerous and wildly popular. The words were once more or less interchangeable but we now tend to distinguish manners from etiquette. I define manners at the art of making others feel comfortable while etiquette is the science of making others feel out of their place.
Prescriptivism is etiquette and therefore a class-based imposition on those perceived to be lessers. It is derived from the formality and correctness demanded by the small elite who knew how to write, but is extended to the population at large even if they are dealing with one another rather than the upper-class. Kings did not demand that you walk backwards out of the presence of your co-workers; prescriptivists do exactly that.
Here is where my non-academic understanding diverges.
I do not see or experience any prescriptivists trying to enforce norms of language use that the “uneducated” use amongst themselves. There is no movement to eliminate the use of “y’all” in speech or casual writing to each other across regions of the South. Nor to eliminate Spanglish or AAVE. The demand is that the current revealed truth consensus is used within contexts that they, as self identified members of the educated class, may participate in. As has been stated previously in this thread: context matters.
FWIW I do not believe that prescriptivism is exclusively a top down institutional process. It is often bottom up enforced by grass roots free lance pedants.
Yes, it is a means of creating and enforcing an in group vs an out group. A similar process occurs with groups other than groups of educated elites, likely for all social groupings and fictive tribes. Use the group’s slang incorrectly or not at all and you will be identified as outsider, and will be treated as such, unable to fully enjoy the benefits of membership. There is exclusionary etiquette in every group, often specific to that group.
The difference is merely the scale, pervasiveness, and consequences of the power imbalance between those in and out of that group. What gets labeled prescriptivism is the norms for membership in the group that dominates the bulk of the levers of power within the society.
Whether you want to use the word “prescriptivism” to encompass all linguistic manifestations of ingroup-outgroup tribalism probably ends up being largely an argument over semantics analogous to the “can a Black person be racist” argument.
Maybe. But this quote from William Caxton, the first English printer is striking:
And also my lord Abbot of Westminster did do show to me late* certain evidences* written in old English for to reduce it to our English now used. And certainly it was written in such wise that it was more like to Dutch* than English, I could not reduce nay bring it to be understunden.* And certainly our language now used veried ferre* from that, which was used and spoken when I was born. For we English men been born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, wexing one season and waned and discreased* another season. And that common English that is spoken in one shire varied from a-nother. In-so-much that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in Thames for to have sailed over the sea into Zeland, and for lack of wind they tarried atte* foreland, and went to land for to refresh them.* And on of them named Sheffield, a mercer, came in-to an house and asked* for meat, and especially he asked after eggs. And the good wife answered, that she could speak no French. And the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no French, but would have eggs, and she undestood** him not. And then at last a-nother said that he would have eyren? Then the good wife said that she undestood** him well. Loo what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren,* certainly it is hard to please every man, by cause* of diversity and change of language. For in these days every man that is in ony* reputation in his country, will utter his communication and matters in such manners and terms, that few men shall understand them. And some honest and great clerks have been with me and desired me to write the most curious terms that I could find. And thus between plain rude and curious I stand abashed, but in my judgment, the common terms that be daily used been lighter* to be understood* than the old and ancient English. And for as much as this present book is not for a rude Uplandish man to labour therein, nay read it, but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman that feeled* and understondeth* in fights of arms in love and in noble chivalry. Therefore in a mean between both I have reduced and translated this said book in-to our English not over rude* nay curious but in such terms as shall be understood* by God’s grace according to my copy.
I translate this into modern colloquial English as “My friend the archbishop showed me an old book in English that read more like German, enough so that I couldn’t easily translate it. English has changed a lot over time, even during my lifetime, and varies from place to place greatly. A fellow I know stopped in at a woman’s house in south-east England and asked for some eggs, but she didn’t understand him at all, and told him to quit speaking French, which made him mad, since he doesn’t speak French. Finally someone else told him to ask for “eyren” instead, and then she understood. Now that I’m printing books, which word should I use “eggs” or “eyren”? I’m going to use the word that folks in the city use, even though they’re not the words used in past English, since I figure city-folks are more interested in this book than country folks are.”
This is quite different than a prescriptive view - even though it’s written by the person creating a prescription for all future English (by his choice of what dialect to print).
A brief comment on this, and then I’ll show myself out.
I believe this is manifestly false. The virtue of standard English doesn’t derive from some specious claim of intrinsic superiority. The virtue lies in the fact that, despite variations among countries and even between major regions, the core of standard English is extremely well documented in a vast number of dictionaries and grammar guides. An American proficient in it would have no difficulty comprehending someone speaking British standard English. Whereas someone proficient in, say, AAVE, would have a devil of a time understanding the Cockney dialect, and vice versa.
The concept of “standard” has the same meaning here as it does in science and technology. Ethernet became a LAN standard because it was more widely adopted than token ring (and, in this case, rightly perceived as superior). But TCP/IP prevailed over ISO/OSI as the basis of the internet despite the fact that OSI was demonstrably very much superior, due to similar reasons of wide adoption and thus, the most viable de facto common standard. And because of those standardizations, the world can communicate better than it ever has before in history, to the benefit of us all.
And that’s why I think demeaning support for literacy in standard English as some sort of evil elitist classism (I believe the word “ugly” was even one of the pejoratives) is sadly misguided.
I agree with this. The local Standard English is a useful 2nd language for people to know, and it should be taught in schools. That doesn’t require teaching students that the English that they currently speak is wrong, illogical, or bad, just that it isn’t standard.
Is there supposed to be anything unclear about whether or not a Black person can be racist, or anti-Semitic, or transphobic, or …?
The analogy may be quite valid in that the discussion boils down the special case of when the tribal membership issue has a huge power disparity overlay, and the impacts thereof.
I appreciate the effort you have gone to to bring that quote and its translation to us. Still while he recognized that the language was a living changing thing, he made it clear: he chose the dialect
No one here demeans support for literacy in standard English.
This is the way you have talked about dialects and usage other than “standard” English, just in this thread:
So it certainly takes some gall for you to now sagely inform us that:
And as for this:
I’m not sure who you expect to convince by just repeating ad nauseam that your explicitly supremacist prescriptivism is nothing more than “support for literacy”. You made this claim within the first few posts, but the vast difference between these two things (including the views of someone actually teaching literacy skills to kids, and a lot of interesting historical context) has been discussed extensively in the thread. So this is a disingenuous straw man. The aspect of your views that has been called ugly is clearly not “support for literacy”.
Now wait. I absolutely appreciate @wolfpup backing away from his previous odious views, although I wish he’d explicitly acknowledge that he’s doing so. He’s absolutely right that bourgeonics isn’t intrinsically superior. It isn’t the most versatile, it doesn’t subsume the others. Other dialects aren’t kicking language around in the gutter. The arbitrary conventions of bourgeonics aren’t known by anyone with a lick of background knowledge as “The English Language.”
@wolfpup, I dearly hope you’ve learned something from this thread and adjusted your views; your last post certainly sounds that way.
No question - I appreciated Caxton’s statement, though, because he admits that he translated the book into the English that he expected would make him money, but didn’t disparage anyone else’s English as deficient or ugly, just different.