Standard Language: the Debate

Standard Language: The Debate

(1) Prescriptivism and descriptivism are contrasting approaches to grammar and usage, particularly to how they are taught. Both are concerned with the state of a language — descriptivism with how it’s used, prescriptivism with how it should be used. 

• Descriptivists describe, systematically recording and analyzing the endlessly changing ways people speak and write. 
•  Prescriptivists prescribe and sometimes proscribe, emphasizing rules and guidelines based on the conservation of customs (and sometimes a mythical ideal of correctness), and on judging what is or isn’t acceptable — which poses, among other questions: acceptable to whom, when, and why?

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[by David Malki]

• Frank Palmer ‘What is correct and what is not correct is ultimately only a matter of what is accepted by society, for language is a matter of conventions within society.’ 
• John Lyons echoed this in Language and Linguistics: ‘There are no absolute standards of correctness in language.’ 

IDIOLECT

• If you’re from New York or New Jersey, a particularly persuasive outsider may have tricked you into believing that you’re misguided—illogical no less!—for saying "on line" when you really mean "in line."
•  "micro language"—an intuitive sense of what sounds like fluent use of language and what doesn't. We each have our own internal micro language. There are the obvious group differences that we deem "dialects," dictated largely by geography or demographics, including age, race, gender, and education. And there are many more subtle factors, like living in multiple locations at different ages, the more-or-less unique family terms you heard growing up, the topic-specific jargon of the schools and workplaces you've passed through, where you've traveled, any other languages you speak, and even what sorts of interests you have. 
• Recognizing that each person has an idiosyncratic personal dialect, linguists long ago coined the term idiolect. And it's not just vocabulary; it's everything from how we pronounce certain words to how we put them together to what we imagine they mean. 
• you idiolect must have enough similarities to other's speech that you can "understand" each other. "macro language"
• Where does English at a macro level come from? Your sense of English as a whole is really an abstract combination of all of the idiolects that you've experienced over the course of your life, especially at a young and formative age. The conversations you've had, the books you've read, the television you've watched: all of these give you a sense of what exists out there as possible variants on the English language. The elements that you hear more commonly, the one's used by your peers (or those that you admire) or the features that you prefer for whatever reason, are the ones you latch onto as prototypical.
• What social variables create CODES in your idiolect?

Value of The STANDARD:

• Does it make reading easier and faster if people roughly agree on some writing conventions, rather than everyone picking their own spelling and punctuation haphazardly? Sure. 
• Can we still value concise and well-organized speech or writing? Yup. 
• However, from a formal perspective, anything that a speaker says intentionally is part of a complex, rule-governed mental system.
• So once we’re at a point where we’re all understanding each other, especially in spoken language, how do we form the opinion that isn't is better than ain't, or that ask is better than aks, or that  literally is so much worse than really or truly? 
• Why does Henry Higgins teach Eliza Doolittle to speak like a posh lady, instead of her teaching him to speak like a Cockney flowerseller-POWER?
• The answer is simple if your goal is to keep power and economic opportunity in the hands of those who have always had it. 
•  "Standard English" is a loose assortment of idiolects like any other dialect, and valuing one over the other is a social construct that has nothing to do with linguistic merit. 
• What we think of as "good" English is the English historically spoken by people with the most power. 

• What is a standard form and how does it function?
• form with power
• common-ease of communication
• unites people
• form for education (gives standard speakers a higher status from others)
• Case of ACADEMIE FRANCAISE (institutional mechanism)
• eliminates or reduces diversity
• asserts of Independence:
• Finns (from Swedes & Russians)
• Turks
• Hindi
• Hebrew
• Swahili (Tanzania)

LANGUAGES ARE ALL EQUAL STRUCTURALLY, BUT NOT SOCIALLY

DIALECTS

• Regional Dialects (language always varies along a regional continuum)
• social dialects: based on socio-economic status
• styles and registers (developed by people participating in recurrent activities)
• formal
• informal
• social group
• discrete occupation

David Crystal on Sandard Language & Dialects

CODE SWITCHING

ACCENTS! Funny, but, NOTICE  WHAT IS ILLUSTRATED HERE BESIDES ACCENT (pronunciation). :)

In British!