1.1 Language purity and prescriptivism
Recall from the text of §1.1 that prescriptivism is alive and well in Western societies, and in some countries (e.g. France) there are institutions that lay down the law as to what is “correct”. Even in a country with no such bodies, you should have no trouble finding complaints in the media (TV, radio, newspapers) about “bad language” ‒ what is the young generation doing to it? According to these notions we should keep our language pure (perhaps changeless?).
Linguistics is not prescriptive, but descriptive. And in fact, the prescriptive notions of speakers is one of the things that is interesting to linguists.
It is sometimes suggested that prescriptivism, and the notions of language purity are a peculiarity of the West, not shared by other peoples. Personally, I strongly doubt this claim. True, it may be that there are some communities of speakers who do not express these ideas. But they are definitely found outside of the West.
Here are two examples of prescriptivism, one from a Western source, the other (reportedly) from an Arrernte man. Some of the sentiments expressed are remarkably similar.
The first example comes from an anonymous piece ‘Sparket’ published online in 2006 on the Jyllands Posten website (https://jyllands-posten.dk/debat/article5020297.ece).
… [I] decembernummeret beskæftiger man sig med de såkaldte pendulord altså ord, som på grund af dumhed eller ond vilje kommer til at betyde det stik modsatte af det oprindelige. […] Pendulordene opstår, fordi unge mennesker er dumme og ikke ved, hvad de rigtigt betyder eller de opstår som følge af destruktiv tankevirksomhed fra samvittighedsløse folk, som vil skabe bevidst signalforvirring. [The December issue deals with the so-called pendulum words, i.e. words which, due to stupidity or ill will, come to mean the exact opposite of their original meaning. [...] The pendulum words arise because young people are stupid and do not know what they really mean or they arise as a result of destructive thought activity by unscrupulous people who want to create deliberate signal confusion.]
The second comes from a book describing a trip that T. G. H. Strehlow (Theo in the quote) had done in the early 1920s from Hermansburg Mission to Horseshoe Bend. (The story is written up from diaries the author kept.)
Eventually he passed a remark to Njitiaka concerning the brightness of the moon, referring to it by its Western Aranda name of “taia”. Njitiaka, in true or wilful ignorance, failed to understand Theo at first, and when the latter finally pointed at the moon, he exclaimed gruffly, “Why don’t you give the thing its proper name? You don’t want to talk to me like one of those stupid Western Aranda men who don’t know their own language.” Then he explained to Theo proudly, “We Southerners alone have kept the Aranda tongue in all its purity as it has been handed down to us: the Western men have corrupted the speech of their forefathers. “Talpa” is the only correct word for what white men call the moon; as for “taia”, I do not know what that means: I have not heard my fathers using such a word.”
Strehlow, T. G. H. (1969), Journey to Horseshoe Bend. Sydney: Angus and Robertson.
1.2 Links
A full list of Charles Hockett’s sixteen design features (the thirteen he proposed in 1960 plus four additional ones) of human language can be found here.
1.3 Test your knowledge of this chapter
1.4 Additional Materials
