Prescriptivists versus Descriptivists in Language
In today's society there are two philosophical views that have become enemies and are constantly battling it out. These two views are from the prescriptivists and the descriptivists. The prescriptivists believe that there is a certain way that language should be written, and that language follows a certain set of rules believed to be prestigious. The descriptivists believe that language is described with the use of certain use of words and syntax. Since, today's society has had many technological advances many tend to lean more towards the descriptivists way of thinking.
Many people believe that if a person has a higher educational level that they would most likely have a higher prestige in the way that they talked or presented themselves. In a survey that was recently taken on dialect 100% of the people said that the sentence "The land was given to Susan and me." Is correct. The prescriptivist's way of thinking prevailed in this form of dialect. One sentence that made most people think was " This is the play in which he preformed in." The prescriptivist's point of view was put into play in this situation. Only 40% of the people picked up on the fact that this sentence ended with a preposition and 60% said that there was nothing wrong and that is how they would say it. The other speech form that was most diverse was the plural of you. The prescriptivists say that the correct answer is you all. Only 30% of the people got this question right. The most common was the answer "ya'll" by 40% of the people. 20% of the people said "you guys" and 10% said "your." Again with educational level the descriptivists way seems to prevail.
Since the times have changed so much with all the technological advances language has changed in time too. As people started to age the answers started to be very different. On the question that asked "what is the name of the object that a baby is brought home in from the hospital if it had wheels and could be taken for a walk.
includes conservatives, who believe that there is a correct way and a wrong way. The second group, the linguist says that there is no such thing as correctness of language usage.
In order to make it in life, one must have experience and has to be well educated. It is difficult to get through life not knowing how to present oneself appropriately, or even have a fluent conversation. One’s beliefs, values, morals, and behavior can influence how he or she will make it to the top of the ladder. However, in many cases, it is not only the individuals fault for not being as educated or experience he or she should be. Many outside factors such as the community, resources availability, and one’s class can affect someone from being able to reach their high potential. Patrick J. Finn, author of Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self-Interest, speaks on how language, the education system, and
Throughout the span of the past few weeks I have traversed the globe, visiting several countries and regions, only to realize that although new methods develop, language as a way of expressing ones self has remained the most effective. Despite this fact, language still has its pitfalls. Neil Postman, in his essay “Defending Against the Indefensible,'; outlines seven concepts that can be used to aid a student in better understanding the language as a means of communication. He describes how modern teaching methods leave a student vulnerable to the “prejudices of their elders';, further stating that a good teacher must always be skeptical. He urges teachers of all subjects to break free from traditional teachings as well as “linguistical tyranny';
today’s world. People have pointed out that their ability to spell out words has become difficult
“Your Ability to Can Even: A Defense of Internet Linguistics” by Tia Baheri, is a great read. The article focuses on the new language that has been created among Internet users and how some critics think it is a negative impact on the English language and how others, such as Baheri herself, think that there is nothing wrong with the change what so ever. After reading the article, I agree with Tia Baheri, I also think that language is as she states, “Supposed to flex and shape itself to convey what we mean to say as directly and efficiently as possible”. Yes, some who do not spend a lot of time on the Internet may not understand some of the newly used phrases but for others it is the best way to express themselves.
The constant changing of technology and social norms makes difficult for different generations to understand one another and fully relate to each other. Diction and slang change as years pass and what is socially acceptable may have been prohibited in the previous generations.
that is part of the paradigm of language, but rather the fatal flaw, and therefore the paradigm, of class. The
some word(s) could be different compared to how the words are used in the 21st century. In
Language is how we express ourselves. There are many different languages in our world. Within those languages there are different dialects. Those dialects are affected by the communities that use them. People add slang or shorten words to make the language their own. This has an immense impact on how authors write. Some authors will attempt to use proper English, but often times will use words common to their community.
Birk and Birk explore the many processes that automatically and often unintentionally, take place during the gathering of knowledge and expression through words. In their book Birk and Birk break the usage of words into sections: Selection, Slanting by the use of emphasis, slanting by selection of facts, and slanting by the use of charged words. When words are used this way they reveal naturally occurring bias of the writer. Upon reviewing the selection from Birk and Birk’s book Understanding and Using Language it is clear that the essay written by Jake Jameson has examples of every principal Birk and Birk discuss. The Birk and Birk selection provides us with a set of tools that enable us to detect bias in the many forms that it takes. These tools reveal what Jamieson favors and make plain the bias present in his essay The English-Only movement: Can America Proscribe Language With a Clean Conscience?
how the English language has changed in the many years from then until now. The
Modern day linguistics has seen the arrival of many different viewpoints of language. Beginning with Noam Chomsky, unquestionably one of the most influential figures in recent linguistics, new theories and ideas have been introduced at a rapid rate. In part due to his status as a revitalizer in the field, but also due to his often controversial theories, Chomsky maintains a place at the center of this discussion. His search for a universal grammar and criticism of pure descriptivism have informed generations of research. Much of this has been reactionary against him, but his influence can not be discounted. His theories of a universal grammar have inspired writers on both sides of the debate. Paul Hopper argues against this view, positing his own emergent grammar in contrast. Dell Hymes later writes, arguing to attempt to transcend the traditional concept of grammars altogether. Because of the influence Chomsky has had, it can be enlightening to trace the development of modern linguistics through its criticism of him.
Bourdieu (1974) argues that the education system is biased towards those from middle and upper-class backgrounds. The culture of the ‘dominant classes’; the upper-classes, is imposed on young people in education, pupils from the upper-classes have an advantage as they have been socialised into the dominant culture and acquired skills and knowledge relevant to learning before entering the education system. These young people possess ‘cultural capital’; cultural capital includes mannerisms, a knowledge of creative and artistic parts of culture, the closer a young person presents themselves and their work to the style of the dominant classes the more likely they are to succeed as teachers are influenced by cultural capital. Also the grammar used by teachers disadvantages working class pupils as they cannot understand it. Bernstein (1961) argues teachers use elaborated speech codes; which is detailed and explanatory, working-class pupils are limited to using restricted codes; clear-cut and easy to understand speech, whereas middle an...
Reiteration, as the first category of lexical cohesion, is a phenomenon in which the lexical item refers back to another item that has a connection with a general reference. It is a lexical cohesion which forms a constituent that has been mentioned. Reiteration consists of repetition, hyponymy, synonyms, and antonymy. The purpose of using these aspects of reiteration is to obtain the effect of the intensity of the meaning of language, information events, and beauty of other languages. Haliday and Hasan (1976) says that:
The interaction/relationship proved to be fruitful for linguistics study as a discourse and its communicative purposes. Hyme while acknowledging the contributions of great anthropological linguistics, like Boas, Goodenough, Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Firth, Greenberg, Sapir, etc., also established the basis for sociolinguistics. Their precursors like Gumperz, Brown, Bernstein, and Bright adopted a new methodology where not only linguistic discourse, like stylistics, verbal/written art but equivalent importance is given to the social, political, cultural, and historical significance, and how these things can be employed within language systematically to study the effects of language. Further, Pike’s tagmemics approach to language and human behaviour provide background for new developments in discourse analysis (Pike, 1967), which provide insights of discourse analysis of narratives in indigenous languages (Grimes, 1975; Longacre, 1977). In Europe 1964 text linguistics or text grammar, by Hartmann, and Harris (1952) develop linguistic discourse analysis into a new, generative-transformational approach to the grammar of