Conference thebay::joyoflex

227.0. "Usage and Acceptability in Language" by BEING::POSTPISCHIL (Always mount a scratch monkey.) Wed Aug 06 1986 12:26

    American Heritage has a couple of essays about "Usage and Acceptability
    in Language" which discuss a resolution:  The prevailing usage of its
    speakers should be the chief determinant of acceptability in language.
    The following text is part of Dwight Bolingers statement for the
    affirmative.  (The other essay is by William F. Buckley, Jr., and it is,
    of course, wrong, as I will be happy to demonstrate if anybody asks.) 
                                                                      
         To avoid the suggestion that prevailing usage in speech
         should determine acceptability in writing, let us assume that
         "speakers" includes "writers" and that "language" is both
         spoken and written. 

         Usage in the broad sense is always the determinant of
         correctness.  The only way to falsify that assertion is to
         imagine that language somehow preceded its users in the form
         of a code that has been preserved through the ages with no
         intervening fall from grace and no need to reconstruct the
         rules from the ruins of surviving performance.  From this
         standpoint the resolution is a truism. 

         From another standpoint it is a tautology.  Usage should be
         the chief determinant because, chiefly, it as to be.  A
         language is a universe of contentions that every child begins
         to learn at the moment of birth -- some of them, such as
         rhythm, perhaps even in utero.  The prevailing usage of the
         speakers within sight, touch, and hearing of the child
         determines how the sounds are formed, how words are
         crystallized out of an amorphous flow, how accents are
         imposed, how sequences are arranged, and all the other
         delicate and magical adjustments that compose the mechanism
         of every language on earth.  By the age of ten and before any
         serious attention can be given to what "should be," the child
         has already learned ninety per cent of the structure required
         to commuincate and is well along in the task of building a
         respectable vocabulary with meanings picked up in the same
         informal way.  The rarity with which we need to consult a
         dictionary for our day-to-day words proves what "prevailing"
         means in this context. 

         . . . . 

         In this small corner of the language a minority of the
         highbrow and the well-born may succeed in conferring
         authority on a small number of usages.  Meanwhile a hundred
         times as many others are fluctuating undetected, with their
         success or failure guaranteed by majority usage in their
         constituencies.  And common to all constituencies is the
         great semi-inert mass of usage where no conflict arises
         because everyone already obeys the conventions
         unquestioningly and the rule is simply what people do --
         plurals in _-s_, "and" for conjunction, countless words with
         agreed-upon senses.  The _Harper Dictionary of Contemporary
         Usage_ contains a little over 2,700 entries.  Make an outside
         guess and say that a given individual may be bothered by a
         third of those.  Compare that figure with a working
         vocabulary and grammar of 30,000 words, collocations, idioms,
         cliches, and constructions about which there is no dispute,
         and the "chief" of "chief determinant" can be stamped in
         gold. 

         Does this self-contained universe of usage ultimately decide
         what is acceptable?  When Margaret Fuller proclaimed in 1846,
         "I accept the universe," Thomas Carlyle delivered his
         now-famous retort, "She'd better." 


				-- edp     

    The point of "prevailing usage" is simply to communicate the same
    thing to the most people while minimizing ambiguity and confusion.
    This is a middle ground for communications standards.  Scientific
    naming conventions use Latin words for naming because, being a "dead
    language" the meanings of the latin words are not subject to change
    from nor due to common usage.  Thus precise definitions may be attached
    to or associated with the names for "all" time (or at least until
    the things are better understood).
    
    On the other hand, people often do NOT want to communicate with all
    parts of a society: teenagers create slang faster than anyothergroup
    quite possibly because they want to sound different than their parents.
    Some nations want to preserve the purity of their language because
    their sense of identity is tied up in the language's linguistic
    and cultural traditions.  
    
    And of course there are "buzzwords" and acroynms and other shorthand
    that are created within certain enterprizes like high-tech and the
    military that are sometimes at odds with the meanings understood
    by other parts of society.
    
    Rick Merrill