IIRC, I alluded to this theory of mine about 7 years ago shortly after I joined these boards. But to my recollection, I never put my theory in a thread all by itself. And I put it in GD, because as you will see, my theory asks a very important question too.
The question part of idea is simply, Is there really such a thing as “Proper” and “Improper” English? Yes, I know they call it “Standard” and “Nonstandard” English now. But the implication is still the same, i.e., there is a right and a wrong way to speak English. In some scholarly writing, for example, you would never find slang or colloquialisms. My question is, Why not? My theory: the only purpose of language is to be understood by your audience. As I write this now, if I used the Southern/African-American plural form of you “y’all”, some of you might take slight offense. But you would still understand me, wouldn’t you? Of course, I would never use “y’all” because it is not the language culture that I speak with. But the term is still widely enough known to be understood by most English speakers, isn’t it?
Additionally, languages like English don’t have a copyright on them like artificial languages like Loglan. So they belong to the people, no? Indeed many languages, like the Romance languages, came about by misuse over hundreds of years (in this case, Latin).
Finally, as I said originally IIRC, “Proper” v. “Improper”, “Standard” v. “Nonstandard”, etc. language rules smack of classicism, I at least think. Am I wrong? These are atleast my humble opinions (and language theory too, as I’ve said).
If you heard my roommate describe something as “thug”, you probably would not have the faintest clue what the hell he meant. I know I didn’t, the first time he said it when I was around. So yes, there is such a thing as standard English.
ISTM that your question and your theory, although both of them are reasonable, are kind of at odds with each other.
If it is true that the only purpose of language is to be understood by your audience, then IMO that would strengthen the prescriptivist notion of a sharp division between “Proper” and “Improper” English, not weaken it. After all, the best way to ensure that everybody understands the language in the same way, and consequently to fulfill your stated purpose of eliminating misunderstandings, is to require very strict controls on how the language can be properly used.
The reason that language is fluid and changeable is precisely because being understood isn’t its only purpose: either by accident or otherwise, people frequently modify conventional ways of using language to produce idiosyncratic usages that are less easy for other people to understand (like Captain Carrot’s example of being confused by the use of “thug” as an adjective).
ISTM that it would be more accurate to say that the main purpose of language is to use it in a way that seems right to you while still being adequately understood by your audience.
There is such a thing as English which conforms to style guides that are accepted by educated people as useful guides for producing clear communication and slowing down the evolution of language by standardizing it.
There is a great benefit in slowing down language evolution: clearer communication for the reason that Kimstu mentions.
There is no such thing as “correct” English in absolute terms.* Language is a living thing, and (unfortunately) it’s ultimately in the hands of the polloi to shape it–all efforts by standardizing guardians to the contrary.
I used to be a stickler for grammar, but in the last year I listened to the lectures from the Teaching Company, a series on the history and development of English, and I’ve been a convert. The “rules” and “standards” aren’t how people write. “It is I” is artificial, awkward, inconsistent with the other romance languages (“C’est je”?? No way), and not the way people talk. Similarly, the use of “whom”… a fossil. Why do we bother?
So, language evolves and it often evolves quickly, and that’s probably a good think, methinks.
The OP had it: the purpose of language is to be understood. The purpose of the illiterate West Indian - London creole affected by a lot of teenage boys is not to be understood. These modern affectations are not genuine dialects of long standing parallel to standard English, like the London use of ‘Them’ for ‘Those’ and it is not true derivation from a recognised English like most Australian and white African; it is pure affectation like Argot in French.
They do want to be understood, but not by an old white geezer like you. In-group slang is to be understood within the group, and to maintain group solidarity – and often they prefer not to be understood by outsiders. Similarly, professionals like doctors and lawyers when talking among themselves use terms that are not understood by outsiders – and often they’d prefer that outsiders not understand them.
So I’d say that the purpose of language is to be understood by its intended audience, and it works if it achieves that.
“Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground.” ~ Noah Webster ~
I don’t think there is. Languages are fluid over time and regions. If a usage exists and is understood by a group of people, it is proper enough for me.
Also, self-professed ‘grammar Nazis’ get on my nerves.
I agree 100% that there is a huge element of classism (which my browser dictionary does not recognize, LOL), if not direct racism, usually present in discussions of this.
Few people understand what grammar actually is. 99% of ‘improper’ phrases, etc are actually grammatically correct.
I recommend Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, it taught me all I know (and much more readable than Noam Chomsky!).
I think you are also falling prey to a popular misconception. Language is determined by usage, not decree. If new usage becomes common it goes into the grammar guides and the dictionary.
English is rife with myths and misunderstandings. This book is a good little summary of a lot of them. For example: there is no rule against split infinitives, ain’t is a word, and niche has traditionally rhymed with itch, not leash. Many of the nitpicky rules that seem so unnatural are corruptions introduced by Latin scholars in centuries ago to turn Germanic English into a Romance language.
It’s watercolours fading into each other, not 16-color DOS settings. Today I heard a NATO commander in Afghanistan use some bad English "You just drove down a road … ". It’s probably perfectly good American but in English ‘just’ always goes with the perfect "You have just driven … ". Why? Because. Maybe in 500 years or something there will be enough drift that American will have no perfect and English no preterite. Even as recently as Jane Austen 200 years ago comes with a glossary of words that have changed meaning or emphasis (one I remember is ‘country’ means ‘county’) .
We get these across languages under the name of false friends. Very often they did originally cover the same range and have either specialised opposite extremes or extended their meaning. ‘Nice’ is one with a history of changed meanings that seems to be returning to its ‘original’ sense of ‘precise’ via ‘over-fastidious’, ‘nasty’ (a mocking inversion of), ‘pleasant’, ‘appropriate’, ‘precise’. Technology changes meaning: go back fifty years and ‘computer’ is a person, what we mean has to be specified ‘electronic computer’. Likewise 100 years, ‘motor car’ - because a normal ‘car’ has either a horse or a locomotive pulling it.
Even old science-fiction can sound dated: when did anyone last hear the word ‘atomic’ in place of ‘nuclear’? Fifty years ago their primary meanings were the reverse of what they are now -‘nuclear physics’ to the average person would probably imply some sort of core curriculum that could not be broken down further.
So I reckon there is ‘bad’ language (and that doesn’t mean censorable!) and there is dialect and there is usage. ‘Bad’ language is ‘ignorant’ language that does not arise from dialect or from usage among a particular group, but among users who think they are using standard language but are not. Ain’t and bain’t are not ‘bad’, I do be reading a book is not ‘bad’ unless nobody else in the area uses that form (it has some kind of Celtic influence because it is common in Ireland and Cornwall).
Decimate meaning Devastate is possibly ‘bad’ because the word ‘devastate’ is perfectly adequate - on the other hand, except in Roman military history, why would anybody use ‘decimate’ in its literal sense anyway?
It’s for Its is probably ‘bad’ because it can be ambiguous - then again, the historical genitive of ‘it’ was ‘his’ (as the Bible and Shakespeare use) so maybe there is an excuse. The dread Grocer’s Apostrophe is definitely bad because it introduces an unnecessary complication: I’d have more sympathy with leaving the genitive apstrophe out except that something like The cats play would be unable to show whether the cats are playing or it relates to passtime activity of the cat or of the cats. On the other hand, Oriental languages manage without plurals and context usually makes clear. In any case, the ‘floating genitive’ except for names is obsolescent, however much I prefer it to the longer ‘of’ construction. The ‘floating genitive’ is the one that attaches to a phrase so that The Tsar’s beard becomes The Tsar of Russia’s beard and then the Tsar of all Russia, King of Kazan and Poland, Lord of Ukraine and Great Khan of the Tatars’ beard and gives rise to comic ambiguities of the Man with a big dog’s nose variety.
No, not at all; or at least not intentionally. The change to the use of the term “standard” was done to indicate that they were NOT saying that one usage was right and the other wrong (proper/improper) but simply that one usage pattern might be more commonly understood than another. “Nonstandard” is meant to mean “different” or “less common,” not “wrong.”
FWIW, there have been dozens of threads on this topic; you may enjoy looking some up.
It’s not because the words have quite different meanings in modern English.
“The team was devastated by the loss of three team members in the accident”
has a completely different meaning to
“The team was decimated by the loss of three team members in the accident”.
To most readers the former means that the team members were severely traumatised by the loss and operating at reduced efficiency as a result. It tells us about the emotional effect of the accident but nothing at all about the size of the team or the physical ability of the team to perform. The latter means that the team lost a significant portion of its manpower to the accident. It tells us nothing at all about the emotional impact but a lot about the teams ability to perform physically and also tells us that the team is small, probably less than 10 players.
US citizens were devastated by the Tet Offensive. Iraqi civilians were devasted by shock-and-awe tactics. They weren’t decimated by them. In contrast the Allied forces were decimated by the German Blitzkrieg offensives.
As has been said often in this thread, words change meaning. In current usage decimate means that there has been a significant loss of physical ability, whether manpower, funds or whatever. Devastated means that there has been a loss of operational ability that may or not not be concomitant with the physical loss.
That reminds me of something else from the book I linked above. Many of of the “Americanisms” in language that bug some British were present in the language when the American colonies were founded and later changed in British English but remained in American. The u was added to words such as color later, and the construction “She went to hospital” would have sounded strange on both sides of the ocean at one point. Not that how we speak is exactly the same as it was 400 years ago, but different things changed across the ocean divide.
Ah, the old descriptivism v. prescriptivism debate. My take is this. On the one hand, I received very little school training in prescriptivist grammar. This isn’t something I have to do because it’s how I was taught. OTOH, merely from reading, I developed a rather good ear for “good” grammar v. “bad.” Where I come out it that it’s not hard to conform to “good” usage. You just have to decide how much you care. I care because (i) I want to be understood and (ii) many people will judge you based on usage whether they’re objectively right or not. IOW, I almost never correct other people’s grammar - I don’t think it’s objectively important - but I try very hard to use “good” grammar myself. YMMV.
ps - By my count, I break at least three formal grammar rules in that post. I’m okay with that too. After all, this is just a message board.