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Оглавление1Introduction: Values and Binaries in Language Evaluation
Jacob D. Rawlins and Don Chapman
1 Introduction
A quick survey of language blogs, letters to the editor, comment sections or YouTube videos will confirm how important evaluating language variants is for people from all walks of life. But the importance of prescriptivism isn’t limited to internet cranks, complainers or so-called ‘Grammar Nazis’. Most people have some opinion as to how language should be used. As Deborah Cameron pointed out so well, language is so completely tied to our identity and experience that we cannot but evaluate it and assign moral judgement to its use (Cameron, 1995: 9–17).
The constant evaluation of language use opens a large and fascinating question: How do individuals frame language evaluation into their self-perception, conduct and identity? This question can be examined from a number of different angles, but it should receive special attention from linguists. As Cameron put it, if evaluation of language is a part of using language, it is certainly a question that linguists should be interested in (Cameron, 1995: x–xiv). Indeed, we are seeing an increasing attention from linguists on language prescriptivism as a useful object of study. Calvet (2006) addresses language prescription briefly in his discussion of language security/insecurity but deliberately avoids focusing on language evaluation ‘so as not to set the judgements or the classifications of speakers against those of the linguist’ (Calvet, 2006: 152). Still, Calvet recognizes prescriptivism as an important player in sociolinguistic attitudes and language change. In the past decade, several edited collections have been published that recognize the connections between language judgements and larger social issues, particularly social issues that shed light on the practice of prescriptivism. Percy and Davidson (2012), for example, focused on the connections between standardization and nationalism, while Tieken-Boon van Ostade and Percy (2016) addressed standardization and tradition, and Pillière et al. (2018) examined norms and traditions of language prescription. Tieken-Boon van Ostade has addressed questions of prescriptivism and the history of usage guides in volumes published in 2018 and 2020, as well as in her ongoing Bridging the Unbridgeable project, which has produced PhD theses and special journal issues. While each of these collections approaches the study of prescriptivism from different angles, each of the volumes has revealed additional facets of the operation of standardizing and prescriptive forces. The attention from linguists has complexified the view of language evaluation with multiple perspectives and foci so the simplified slogan ‘prescriptivism vs descriptivism’ is rendered largely meaningless in serious discussion.
This volume continues to examine social connections to language evaluation as a follow-up to the examinations of nationalism, traditions and norms. In particular, this volume focuses on values. The importance of values in the operation of prescriptivism is implicit in the fundamental activity of evaluating variation. At their core, prescriptive pronouncements are expressions of individual or communal values, and they are often phrased in binary terms: good/bad, correct/incorrect, careful/sloppy, formal/informal. As we would expect, however, language evaluations are made, diffused or disputed by a wide range of people who hold a wide range of values. Even fairly simple questions about values reveal the inadequacies of any binary formulation: Who values prescriptive pronouncements and why? How do prescriptive pronouncements derive from or challenge other values? What values are uncovered from studying the operation of prescriptivism? The binary labels applied to prescriptive pronouncements are really covering a multitude of values that come to play in making evaluations of language variation – a complex view that offers insights about language, but also about society, culture, individual and community identities, education, social status and social performance.
In this volume, the contributors address values in linguistic prescriptivism from a variety of approaches and methods. As linguists, the authors share core professional values about language study that are often cast as opposing traditional prescriptivism. Yet the authors explore the value of linguistics for studying prescriptivism and the value of prescriptivism for illuminating language use. A recurring motif in this volume is self-reflection, as authors examine how their professional values relate to prescriptivism. Along the way, the authors identify several other ideologies and value configurations that inform responses to prescriptivism: natural/unnatural, religion, nationalism, education, and social interaction with wider groups.
One insight that is shared among nearly all the authors in this volume is that the binaries that characterize prescriptive discourse – prescriptivism/descriptivism, correct/incorrect, standard/nonstandard – are inadequate for investigating the complexity of the phenomenon. The binaries undoubtedly serve their purposes for capturing broad trends, but they prove an impediment to a better understanding of prescriptivism and the values associated with it. Language variation is closely connected with the identities and values of speakers and groups of speakers (Coupland, 2007; Eckert, 2000; Edwards, 2009; Joseph, 2004), and those identities and values vary widely from individual to individual and community to community. While some members of a community may value the identifying features of ‘correct’ language and the accompanying boundary markers that denote members of different groups, other members of the same community may value linguistic variation and multilingual approaches that blur or change boundaries. The values are multiplex even within one individual. As Edwards states, ‘the multiplicity of identities, or facets of identity, is matched by a range of speech styles and behaviour. It is not only bilinguals who have more than one variety at their disposal: if we are not all bi- or multilingual, many are at least bi- or multi-dialectal – and all of us are bi- or multi-stylistic’ (Edwards, 2009: 3). Because language encapsulates values in a multitude of different ways and people use language for a multitude of purposes, and people speaking the same language have a multitude of different values, the number of distinct values of a large group of individuals is too great to be encapsulated by two ends of a spectrum. Rather, we need to acknowledge the entire spectrum. Some of the chapters in this volume address the inadequacies of the binaries head on, while others acknowledge the inadequacies less directly. But the sum effect is to explode the binaries so we can view the more complex phenomena associated with prescriptivism and the values of those who practice it.
Of course, the term values is uncomfortably broad. In this introduction and in this volume, we use the term to encompass a number of senses. Perhaps the most salient sense, however, is sense 6.D. from the OED: ‘The principles or moral standards held by a person or social group; the generally accepted or personally held judgement of what is valuable and important in life’ (Oxford English Dictionary, s.v. ‘value’). In this regard, values are closely connected to a person’s connections to social groups or decisions on how to conduct life. The ‘principles or moral standards’ are highly dependent on individual interpretation and are constantly shifting, transforming and being reinterpreted. This deep personal dimension to values includes personal beliefs and social identifications that won’t be adequately represented by broad, binary labels. Yet the same deep personal dimension of values may at the same time reinforce the binaries as individuals make assumptions that there are only two options: an object is valuable or worthless; a political idea has value or no merit; a moral standard is accepted as valuable in a community or it is discarded. Paradoxically, the notion of values may well be responsible for both the tendency towards binaries and the inadequacy of them.
As undergirding for the prescriptive impulse itself – certain linguistic variants are to be valued or deemed ‘correct’ or ‘good’ more than others – values can be seen to lead to the most conspicuous binaries. Whatever the reason for valorizing a particular linguistic variant (it is more elegant, clearer, more traditional, easier to analyze), the commitment to those values is what leads proponents to the proposition that only one form can be acceptable, while the others must not be. Similarly, the commitment to values is likely a major factor for the two-party system we find in discussions of prescriptivism, where one is characterized as being either a prescriptivist or a descriptivist. More than anything, the discussion around these two terms characterizes individuals as having more or less of a commitment to the value of the prescriptive regulation of language. In this binary, prescriptivism and descriptivism fundamentally (and often irreconcilably) differ as to whether, how and why some linguistic forms should be privileged over others, and how those privileges should be extended across borders and through different communities.
In recent years, academics have become more willing to engage directly with the binaries of prescriptivism/descriptivism in ‘a more balanced approach’ (Pillière et al., 2018: 8). This approach more fully recognizes the values of the many parties interested in linguistic prescriptivism: linguists, practitioners, governments, the media and the public. The chapters in this volume address the values and binaries in language prescription. The chapters converge on the ways in which values both enable and undermine the binaries we find in prescriptivism. The chapters treat this topic from various angles. Some chapters treat this topic explicitly, questioning the utility of reducing all choices to two or whether descriptivism and prescriptivism can even really be separated from each other. Other chapters treat the topic more obliquely, as they investigate more specific questions, such as the role of national or religious identities in forming attitudes toward usage or the values encapsulated in mechanisms of regulation like handbooks or editing practices. While many of the chapters address these topics in the English tradition, some also examine the binaries in American German, Dutch, Hobongan and Lithuanian.
What emerge from the combined chapters are many stimulating points of view that ultimately question the value of binaries by examining those binaries in connection with identities and values. The connections render traditional theoretical binaries inadequate and show that those binaries not only oversimplify the issues, but also prove detrimental to academic inquiry into language. This volume’s recurring central theme is exploring ways to examine and break down the binaries associated with prescriptivism to open new avenues for research into the complexities of language.
2 The Chapters
The chapters in this volume are organized into four broad sections, each of which confronts a different binary. In the first section, the chapters address the two-party system of prescriptivism vs descriptivism that has come to define the field of language prescription. In the second section, the focus shifts to the broader binary of prescriptivism and linguistics, particularly in the context of how advanced research methods lead to a breakdown of traditional binaries. The third section connects societal attitudes toward language prescription to the personal values of the people within those societies. The fourth and final section addresses the values and actual practices of practitioners – editors and style guide authors. Together these four sections provide a deeper, more complex view of the questions surrounding language prescription and work to break down the barriers between the different linguistic camps.
2.1 Part 1: Prescriptivism vs Descriptivism: An Untenable Binary
In the first section of this volume, the authors reflect on the inadequacies of allowing the contest between prescriptivism and descriptivism to frame discussions of language variation. John Joseph sets the tone in Chapter 2 with his examination of the difficulties of separating descriptivism from prescriptivism. Descriptivism is about describing language as it is, but that description very easily slips into defining what language ought to be. Any attempt to accurately describe natural language involves value judgements, in what linguists consider normal, in the methods used to collect language data and in the discussion and use of the findings. Joseph lays out several points that show the inadequacy of a conception of language study as being either prescriptivist or descriptivist. He is not claiming that self-conscious regulation is superior to the goals of description in linguistics, but he does argue that anti-prescriptivism is based on a false binary. Pure descriptivism is likely impossible to achieve, and the contest between prescriptivism and descriptivism is inadequate and can get in the way of language documentation and revitalization.
These themes are picked up in Chapter 3, where Marla Perkins discusses the way ‘pure descriptivism’ is supposed to work in her documentation of Hobongan, an Indonesian language, and then shows how it actually works as an often messy combination of descriptive documentation and prescriptive decisions. Perkins notes the value of providing a description of the language to help the speakers gain group recognition from the Indonesian government. She argues, however, that any description of a language will necessarily exclude some variants. The language description cannot be value neutral because the values of the speakers will drive them in their decisions. Therefore, she illustrates Joseph’s argument that prescriptivism lies in use, not intent. In the attempt to describe the natural state of an endangered language, linguists can reify that language and privilege the points they reify.
In Chapter 4, Don Chapman addresses the prescriptivism/descriptivism binary directly through an examination of the basic meanings of the two words, the values associated with them and the underlying assumptions in discussions of this binary. Most importantly, Chapman shows that there are a fuller range of values that are hidden by a slogan-level use of the prescriptivism/descriptivism binary. While there is some value in having contrastive terms, the terms themselves oversimplify the complex values that are packed into the language. Chapman unpacks the term descriptivism to go beyond its simple uses as anti-prescriptivism or non-prescriptivism to allow for a more nuanced view of the complexities of language variation.
The primary theme of this first section is to set the stage for the rest of the volume by examining and deconstructing the overarching binary in discussions of language prescription. Recognizing the complex values and nuanced meanings that are used to construct the binary allows for a deeper inquiry into additional binaries and their effects on linguistics research, language use, government policy and practical application.
2.2 Part 2: Prescriptivism vs Linguistics: An Unnecessary Binary
The second section of this volume examines the broader binary of linguistics vs prescriptivism. While there is a notion that the study (and practice) of prescriptivism is antithetical to the study of linguistics, these authors show that binary to be unnecessary and unsustainable when the issues are examined using advanced research methods. In Chapter 5, Lieselotte Anderwald examines the influence of prescriptive rules on language change. Using quantitative methods, Anderwald shows that the binary of good/bad, standard/nonstandard language is not adequate, in part because several prescriptions simply distinguish vernacular from written English. She treats historical enregisterment to show that prescribing a standard form also reifies the nonstandard form – that by stigmatizing certain constructions of nonstandard language, prescriptive approaches are describing and defining those features. Through her study, Anderwald shows that not all grammarians are prescriptive all the time. Quite often they show a fairly keen sensitivity to language change and end up describing the language as much as they prescribe forms.
Viktorija Kostadinova uses similar quantitative methods to evaluate the effects of prescriptivism on language use. Her conclusions confirm the trends we are seeing in other studies: there is hardly any long-term influence, although there can be a little short-term influence from prescriptive rules. While Kostadinova focuses on the split infinitive as a case study, her larger contribution comes from providing methods that could be used for any usage item. She combines prescriptive advice as one factor among many that could account for variation in the split infinitive and uses multifactorial analysis to measure its influence. Another method she adds is examining the co-occurrence of the split infinitive with other proscribed variants: the question is not just whether split infinitives increase or decrease in writing over time, but whether they mainly co-occur with other proscribed forms, particularly those characteristic of vernacular language.
Anderwald’s and Kostadinova’s similar approaches and methods have led them to a similar follow-up research question: How do prescriptive rules relate to vernacular language? This theme was not primary to their papers, but it is central to this volume. One of the values that the rules seem to encapsulate is a prejudice against the vernacular. As noted, the realization that the rules vary on the kind of English they are promoting disrupts the binary of correct vs incorrect and even standard vs nonstandard.
In Chapter 7, Marten van der Meulen examines values encoded in the Dutch national identity by looking at the epithets that codifiers use to disapprove of proscribed variants. Van der Meulen discusses the changing values in prescriptivism in the Netherlands during the 20th century, showing that justifications for prescriptive rules reflect underlying values. The rules that prescriptivists focus on and the justifications they use manifest the values of the prescriptivists. In this analysis, it appears that the Dutch tradition is similar in many ways to the English tradition, suggesting that the same forces that motivate correctness in the English tradition are present in other language traditions. However, Dutch approaches to prescriptivism and linguistic purity are also highly influenced by their connection to the trends toward and pushback against nationalism in Western Europe after World War II. By examining the epithets used in the Dutch practice of prescriptivism, van der Meulen makes explicit the assumptions about language made by critics, which assumptions reveal the values of the critics.
In the final chapter in this section, Loreta Vaicekauskienë examines the societal values filtered through educational policy in Lithuania. Vaicekauskienë shows how the Lithuanian government sees language purism as an important value, not least because Lithuania has been subjugated to imperial language policy in the past. Through education and propaganda, the Lithuanian language is used to foster a national identity. This chapter offers another disruption of the binary, but from the other direction – trained linguists, who are traditionally descriptivists, have been co-opted as prescriptivists. This chapter subverts the binary between prescriptivist and descriptivist because Vaicekauskienë shows that many linguists are willing to use their skills completely in service to a prescriptivist enterprise that underscores national (or at least governmental) values. In another twist, prescriptivist regulation is not primarily designed to exclude the less powerful, but to defend against empire; one of its chief motivations is to recover the national identity after decades of Russian oppression, both politically and linguistically.
The second section of this volume adds complexity in both research methods and linguistic traditions that serves to re-examine the binary between linguistics and prescriptivism.
2.3 Part 3: Responding to Correctness: Personal Values and Identity
The third section of the volume shifts from exploring binaries on a disciplinary or societal level to exploring how linguistic prescriptivism shapes (and is shaped by) the personal values and identities of specific communities.
In Chapter 9, Carmen Ebner addresses the theoretical issues of values, identities and binaries directly, noting that besides regulating language, prescriptions serve the important function of demarcating identities, which often create binaries: ‘us’ vs ‘them’ or ‘good guys’ vs ‘bad guys’. Ebner looks at British and American attitudes toward two prescriptive rules. Among the most important identities that these examples reinforce are vernacular vs written and British vs American. These examples reinforce some binaries (vernacular/written and British/American) while disrupting others, especially correct/incorrect. Prescriptivism isn’t monolithic and must acknowledge that the ‘right forms’ in one community can be contrasted with entirely different ‘right forms’ in other communities. But the ‘right forms’ serve as an important piece of identity maintenance within communities.
Alyssa Severin and Kate Burridge continue this theme of linguistic identity maintenance by looking at complaints about linguistic issues in the Australian tradition. Severin and Burridge argue that Australians have built a strong national identity based on the distrust of authority, yet there is plenty of evidence that they crave authoritative injunctions, particularly in language regulations. They examine Australian approaches to prescriptive language in contrast to the national values of independence and distrust of authority. In so doing, they also uncover many other identities that are reinforced by attitudes toward correctness, such as ‘old school’ vs ‘newer ways’ or ‘educated’ vs ‘permissive’. Through their empirical methods of examining complaints, Severin and Burridge are able to identify clearly the linguistic issues that the Australian public values.
The next two chapters take a novel approach to identity, examining the role of prescriptive attitudes in reflecting a religious identity (cf. Edwards, 2009: 100). Chapter 11 by Nola Stephens-Hecker links attitudes toward right and wrong language with Christian believers’ larger views of language diversity as being either a problem (curse) or a benefit (blessing). She further links the Christian injunction toward charity with attitudes toward linguistic diversity. In this formulation of how to treat language diversity, Stephens-Hecker confronts the richer notion of language that Joseph articulates in the first section of the volume. She finds that the links between attitudes toward diversity of languages and attitudes toward proscribed forms are present, but not very strong, thus disrupting the moral/reprehensible binary. People who see value in striving for obedience to God’s commandments are not necessarily inclined to see the same duty to observe prescriptive rules. However, for those who value authority (such as Christians who see the Bible as the ultimate authority on living), knowing and obeying rules can be a driving force of personal identity.
In Chapter 12, Kate Burridge examines the linguistic values of a different Christian community, namely the Anabaptists (Mennonites) of southern Ontario. While this traditional faith community might be expected to mirror the approaches of the Christians in Stephens-Hecker’s study, the binary didn’t work for this community because they simply saw no need to regulate diversity. A principal value for the Anabaptists is humility, so privileging one language or dialect or even linguistic variant over another would be contrary to that value. This chapter stands out in contrast to Joseph’s arguments – and assumptions that are common in many prescriptivism studies – that prescriptivism is inevitable. Rather, Burridge shows that it is possible for a community to be aware of language variation without being evaluative or critical of that variation. The Anabaptist’s attitudes and statements about language connect with the values of the individuals within the community – just as we see in the English, Americans, Australians and Christians in the other chapters in this section.
The connection of values to individual and societal identities and linguistic prescriptivism provides another complication to an investigation of the binaries: the binaries are present, not because they are oversimplifications of complicated ideas, but because they provide valuable tools for communities to create and maintain identities. These identities may be on a national level and carefully controlled, such as in the Dutch and Lithuanian traditions, or they may be more informal and connected to the values of a specific group (often a minority), such as the Hobongan, Biblical Christians or Anabaptists. But in each case, language and the rules surrounding it are valued as essential pieces of what makes that community unique and separate from other similar communities.
2.4 Part 4: Judging Correctness: Practitioner Values and Variation
In the final section of this volume, the authors turn to prescriptive practitioners: those who create usage guides and employ prescriptive rules to copy edit published text. This section focuses on the complex values of the people who could be called ‘pure prescriptivists’, but whose motivations, values and practices show a much more nuanced approach to language. In each of the three chapters, the authors explicitly connect the values of practitioners to their actual practice.
In Chapter 13, Giuliana Russo examines the values and assumptions of H.W. Fowler, the author of the most influential usage guide, Dictionary of Modern English Usage. While Fowler has often been characterized as a prescriber extraordinaire, the entries in his guide show that his values deeply influenced his judgements. In particular, Russo shows that Fowler’s position in society (and his desired position as part of a privileged social class) comes out in his attitudes toward language. Fowler privileges the distinguishing linguistic characteristics of the well-connected upper middle class.
Chapter 14 tackles modern prescriptive values. Linda Pillière examines the importance of editors as enforcers of a linguistic standard. She compares the roles, attitudes and values of British editors and American editors in order to make larger arguments about national identities and notions of correctness. More importantly, however, she shows that editors are not a monolithic community determined to enforce grammatical rules. Rather, there are important distinctions between American editors and British editors and between older editors and younger editors. As with other communities, editorial actions toward language show the values of the editors, which (for the most part) tend toward improving prose rather than enforcing rules. And unlike the caricatures of editors, they are conscious of the complexities of language and are interested in improving clarity and concision rather than universally applying usage standards.
The final chapter in the volume continues the examination of copy editors. Jonathon Owen uses detailed empirical data to show the practices of professional and student copy editors. Similar to Pillière’s findings, Owen shows that editors are not monolithic in their approaches to language prescription, but they do have a set of shared values of consistency, clarity and conciseness. His chapter also shows one of the weaknesses of corpus research – many of the texts in the corpora have been edited, thereby giving the attitudes and practices of copy editors an outsized influence in the published language.
This final section continues the theme of breaking down the binaries associated with prescriptivism. On every level, from linguistic theorists to professional practitioners, the values, attitudes and practices of using and regulating language are complex and intertwined with the identities of language users.
3 Concluding Remarks
Taken together, the four sections of this volume examine a few of the many values involved in evaluating language. Whether through addressing nationalistic tendencies, complex social values and structures, language evaluation within specific communities, the practices of language professionals or the self-reflection of linguists on the role of prescriptivism in the study of language, these chapters offer a wealth of insights into the spectrum between the extremes of binary classifications. This fuller view of the issues in the study of language evaluation provides rich benefits to linguists interested in moving beyond binary studies to a more nuanced understanding of individuals and communities, as well as the driving forces behind linguistic prescription.
More importantly, however, these chapters continue the trend of conducting serious academic conversations about prescriptivism. While this volume offers a range of in-depth examples and studies, it barely scratches the surface of possible studies. With the multiplicity of values that govern linguistic choices on individual, community and national levels, there is a rich area for future research into prescriptivism. Recognizing the inadequacies of binary language opens a rich landscape to examine how and why people throughout the world evaluate and attempt to control language variants. The chapters in this volume provide an important foundation for continued exploration into the complex and fascinating world of linguistic prescriptivism.
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