W1A-015 Language purism-0.txt
'language was made for man, not man for language'

There exists a prevalent misconception amongst the middle-aged that the world is going to the dogs. A priomordial fallacy: a misbelief maintained from ancient Nestor reflecting forlornly on the glorious heroics of the past to John Major remembering the illusory Britain of old where patriotism and harmony still presided; there seems to be a patent injustice in the obsession of comparing the present with what has gone before.

This is because the worry, however, is not only confined to the state of the world but also to the supposed decline of the English language; the demise of which has been bemoaned in the past by literators such as Swift and Dr Johnson. Johnson claimed that English was 'resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion, and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation'; a pedagogic avowal which has worryingly found contemporary resonance in the words of Michael Dummett, a Professor of Philosophy at Oxford University. In his latest polemic he hysterically remonstrates that the language is on the brink of anarchic degeneration and expounds a "conspiracy theory" of Kennedyesque proportions which lays the blame for this alleged malaise at the door of the whole educational establishment, accusing it of propagating a "descriptivist" doctrine from the highest echelons of academia right down to the teaching of primary school children.

Now, it would be easy to dismiss these hypotheses as simply the rantings of a reactionary obsessive. This is, after all, a man who by his own admission records all the grammatical he reads or hears. But this is supposedly an eminent member of the linguistic intelligentsia, one of the literati; how can he fail to comprehend the inherent folly of letting nostalgia or social snobbery turn us into priggish purists? Dummett discusses language construction as if the "rules" were engraved on one of the tablets that Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. He has obviously yet to embrace the elementary concept that language needs to evolve and be open to change if it is to remain vibrant. Language is not a monolithic entity which is sacrosanct and immune to innovation; language change is a universal characteristic of human behaviour. As linguists Andersson and Trudgill cogently postulate, the English we speak today will probably not be recognisable to any English-speakers a thousand years from now. Language change is simply part of the human condition.

Unable to establish a sensible symposium, therefore, our dear professor simply resorts to cheap sensationalism in a desperate attempt to stir up a moral panic. His rhetoric becomes sated with alarmist phrases such as 'linguistic pollution' and 'linguistic immune systems' as if "bad" language is impregnating the system like some sort of inexorable plague. What does this man propose? "Linguistic cleansing?" Who are he and his ilk to pronounce themselves judge and jury over what constitutes "good" language and what constitutes "bad" language? As Andersson and Trudgill assert: 'Nothing is good or bad in itself. It is bad only in the eyes of those who evaluate and look at the language.' Everybody should have the right to enrich their language and this is better achieved by presenting alternatives and possibilities than by giving restrictions and prohibitions. Pronouncing judgement upon the merits or inadequacies of other uses of language can only be retrogressive at a time when all the signs indicate that the English language is flourishing.

Such is the present climate that many native speakers of the English language are actually scared stiff about "making mistakes". This is the generation where mercenary companies scurrilously exploit these anxieties with magnanimous promises of linguistic salvation. 'Have you ever been let down by your English?' they ask. 'Have you ever been ashamed of the way you speak?' If you have, you can sleep easy in the knowledge that you can send away for their do-it-yourself guides to correct English.

Is this really the path which Dummett and his cohorts want us to go down? A Utopian Yellow Brick Road with the rhapsodic whimsy of linguistic transcendence at the end? If so, it's a fool's paradise. Contrary to Dummett's protestations, native speakers for the most part do speak their native language perfectly. True, we all make occasional errors from time to time, but this hardly necessitates the sort of cultural backlash that has been whipped up. And if these faux pas become accepted as linguistic norms, so what? Language use can never be frozen in a particular form. As long as a language is used, as long as it lives, it will keep on changing. So if 'creditable' does in time come to replace 'credible', why should we even attempt to resist the transition? Linguistic changes are an inevitable and natural part of all human languages. Those Canutes who attempt to stem the tide of change will inevitably find themselves brushed effortlessly aside.

This is the axiomatic crux which lies at the heart of my contempt for Mr Dummett. Here is a man who in his unswerving arrogance believes he can actually halt the irresistible linguistic tide. When he harangues about the need for native speakers to resist these external forces on the language, his diatribe even has the alarming resonance of the invidious rhetoric espoused by jingoisic nationalists. What this man fails to comprehend is that the language "purifies" itself in the same sort of way that nature does. As a dead body or other decaying matter does not last long in the wild, so redundant constructions do not last long in the language. If, as Dummett grumbles, there is a lot of jargon around, it is there for a reason.

My argument is simply that Dummett's report of the death of the English language, like the report of Mark Twain's death, is an exaggeration. There may be profound changes afoot, but they are healthy, manageable, and on the whole beneficial.
