‘Correct’ or ‘proper’ English is something that is highly regarded, not only today, but has been throughout history. However, the notion of there being a ‘correct’ way of performing English, whether spoken or written, is a myth. This article will explore the reasons why language can never be ‘right’ and how the belief in this idea continues to affect English.
The prescriptivist attitude itself – a view that suggests grammar should be a strict set of rules (Yule, 2017) – is rooted more in 18th century panic than sense. The rules that prescriptivists set out and use as examples of ‘perfect’ English stem from a fear of decay in the language, popularised during the late 1700s by figures such as Robert Lowth and Jonathan Swift who spread specific ideas and rules of how to use language throughout the country; many remaining to this day. Examples include: the discontinuation of ‘double negation’ (“I didn’t do nothing”), disallowing of sentences that end with prepositions (“Who are you waiting for?”), and the differentiation of ‘Whom’ and ‘who’. However, while prescriptivists consider these grammatical forms as examples of ‘correct’ English, the rules themselves are contradictory. As Fromkin et al (2013) suggests; ‘linguistically, prestige and standard dialects do not have superior grammar’. Double negation for example, works in many other languages to reinforce the negative, rather than to make a sentence ungrammatical as it does in English. ‘Who’ and ‘whom’ also, have become nearly indistinguishable in everyday use, as to many they are no longer semantically separate and the ‘whom’ is largely redundant. Semantically, most sentences that go against these rules make sense and were often present in English long before the emergence of the proposed guidelines. This means that the prescriptivist instructions for the ‘correct’ way to use English are arbitrary and unneeded. If meaning is communicated, its formation should not matter. So why does it?
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The myth is kept, largely in the prestige associated with the grammatical, phonological and vocabularic ‘norms’ of ‘standard’ English. The rules themselves were created from a mix of different language structures at the time which were considered ‘powerful’ (e.g. Latin/French) and Standard English’s status has been maintained because of its association with the more educated, wealthy and powerful of society. This can still be seen today.
Received Pronunciation (RP), is often looked up to as the ‘correct’ and ‘proper’ way to talk - Culpeper et al. (2009) claims it is the ‘phonetic counterpart to Standard English’ - and regional slang is largely frowned upon. This is because of the unconscious bias that has developed historically against those who have a strong accent and use regionalisms. Judgements like these can be seen in several recent studies where accents are rated by intelligence, trustworthiness and attractiveness (Coupland et al., 2007; Baratta, A., 2018). Studies like these however, continue to reinforce ‘standard English’ as ‘correct English’ when it is not the case. Trudgill (1999) denotes Standard English as a ‘purely social dialect’ one which by his estimation is only spoken by 12-15% of the population. This definition shows that the ‘standard’ is only one of many varieties of English and therefore it should not be considered any more ‘correct’ than others.
Linguists largely agree that ‘correct’ language is ideological, aiming to study language and the way it evolves, instead of to judge; this is ‘descriptivism’. Whereas prescriptivists cite new slang words/grammatical norms as ‘ruining’ the language, descriptivist’s note how and why the language is changing. Jean Aitchison (1996) describes the myth of ‘correct’ language as being an idealised view of what the English language should look like by using the ‘crumbling castle’ metaphor in which prescriptivists see English as a castle, now in a state of decay but once imagined to be beautiful. Her analysis of this interpretation perfectly highlights the rigid nature of prescriptivism, as the belief implies that English was once faultless, but never specifies when this was. Further back than the 18th century there were worries about how to correctly perform English, which means that even at that point it was imperfect to prescriptivists. This advocates that there can never be a ‘correct’ form of English as the worry about its change is always constant and the belief in the ‘standard’ stems from the notion that the language needs to be ‘fixed’ in the first place.
In conclusion, contrary to prescriptivist thought, linguistically all forms of English are valid. Correct or standard English is merely one dialect of English that has adopted a strict set of rules and has been popularized because of its historical value. The myth that it is the ‘correct’ form has evidently been perpetuated by years of scholarly works and societal attitudes that preach linguistic profiling (Fromkin et al., 2013) and have allowed the restriction of the English language to continue.
Reference List
- Baratta, A (2018) Accent and Teacher Identity in Britain: Linguistic Favouritism and Imposed Identities. London: Bloomsbury Academic.
- Coupland, N. and Bishop, H. (2007) Ideologised Values For British Accents. Journal of Sociolinguistics [online]. 11 (1), pp. 74-93. [Accessed 30 November 2019].
- Culpeper, J., Kerswill, P., Wodak, R., Katamba, F., McEnery, T., Watson, K., Leech, G., Chilton, P., Siewierska, A., Schauer, G., Archer, D., Hoffman, S., Hollmann, W.B., Khan, A., Sebba, M., Wilson, A., Semino, E., Myers, G., Short, M., Barton, D., Papen, U., Fairclough, N., Sunderland, J., Baker, P., Koller, V., Hardie, A., Ivanic, R., Bygate, M. and Alderson, J.C. (2009) English Language Description, Variation and Context. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
- Fromkin, V., Rodman, R. and Hyams, N. (2013) An Introduction to Language. 10th ed. (No Place): Wadsworth Publishing.
- Jean Aitchison: The Language Web: The Reith Lectures (1996), Series 46, Lecture 1, A Web of Worries [radio transcript]. BBC Radio 4, 6th February. Available from: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rmhttp/radio4/transcripts/1996_reith1.pdf [Accessed 28 November 2019]
- Trudgill, P. (1999) Standard English: what it isn’t. In: Bex, T., Watts, R.J. (1999) Standard English: the widening debate. London: Routledge, 117-128.
- Yule, G. (2017) The Study of Language. 6th ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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