elegant speakers], which is carefully to be avoided by all those, who are desirous to speak well. (81) Ward apparently believed that both proper English and nonstandard dialects have their place within their own contexts, stating that “the vulgar have their peculiar words and phrases, suited to their circumstances, and taken from such things, as usually occur in their way of life” (81). However, such “peculiar words and phrases” are not necessarily appropriate outside of their context. Those who speak English with “accuracy and politeness” should not only avoid the use of “vulgar” colloquial words and phrases, but should also avoid difficult or complex language that is not universally understood. “Polite and elegant speakers” are those who show respect for the language and those with whom they are speaking. As the English language migrated to the United States, so did attitudes concerning the preservation of the purity of the language. In 1892, for instance, A. R. Spofford encouraged the Modern Language Association to create “a barrier against the tide of vulgar slang, which is coming in like a flood, and threatens to submerge our noble English tongue” (qtd. in Stewart 130). In 1946, in “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell first states the general assumption that the degradation of English is inevitable and impossible to counteract; Orwell then refutes this assumption: Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language—so the argument runs—must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of
Languages such as Portuguese, Czech, Swedish, Polish, and Greek, all arriving in the United States in the form of a pastiche of vernacular and usually rural dialects, pass under the radar of metalinguistic commentary [. . .]. (2) Lipski further states the following regarding the effect of English on Spanish: Outside of the United States, the situation of the Spanish language in the U.S. is often entangled with anti-imperialistic political postures that assume as axiomatic that any language and culture arriving in the United States will be overwhelmed by Anglo-American values, and will be denatured, weakened, contaminated, and ultimately assimilated by the mainstream juggernaut. (19) English is perceived as such a threat to the integrity of other languages with which it interacts that governments of nations feels compelled to defend their languages from corruption—so does English suffer similar corruption from contact with other languages? Lipski states that the interaction of English and Spanish in the United States has “generally been viewed as detrimental to both Spanish and English” (1). That may be true, but since the alleged contamination of other languages by English is a direct result of the domination of English in the world, I do not think that the process is always reciprocal. The biggest threat to English, however, comes not from other languages but from its own native speakers. There is no organization such as the Académie française or the Real Academia Española to protect English from corruption and to make decisions regarding the adaptation of the language to fit the needs of the modern world. If such a
which I stated earlier in this chapter, is the “changing of conventions of the as subject-verb agreement, irregular verb conjugations, irregular plural nouns, and possessives.” In Black English, alternate subject-verb agreements are common: “Does you know where Martin is?” Verb conjugations, which are irregular in Standard English, become regular: “I seed him this morning.” Likewise, irregular plural nouns become regular: “He was on the corner with the other mans.” Also, possessives are simplified; the ’s is often omitted entirely: “He walked down the street past my Grandma house.” Because of this inner consistency, African American Vernacular English satisfies Bills’ criteria for being considered a distinct dialect. However, just as not all English spoken by Mexicans living in the United States is a viable alternate dialect such as Chicano English, not all English spoken by all Black Americans should be considered an alternate dialect; sometimes it simply has to be bad English. John Baugh, a socio-linguist from Stanford University, makes the following statement in defense of Black English: Many native speakers of Standard English assume that nonstandard speakers are ignorant, lazy, and less capable intellectually. The common stereotype is that nonstandard speakers, including many blacks, could speak “properly” if only they put forth sufficient effort. This view, while perhaps understandable, is woefully uninformed and simplistic. It fails to recognize the unique status of African American Vernacular English or the linguistic consequences of slavery. [. . .] Historically, it was illegal to teach slaves to read and write, effectively denying them access to literate Standard English; this unfortunate fact has also deepened the linguistic
in number with their subjects. The single rule determines subject-verb agreement” (615). However, Faigley does not consider person into his explanation of subject-verb agreement. Even if the subject is singular, first person—I, and third person—he/she/it is conjugated differently for virtually all English verbs. Subjects and verbs, then, must agree in person and number. When I studied Spanish, as an undergraduate, I found verb conjugation to be quite challenging, because each combination of person and number of regular verbs has a different suffix. Consider, for example, the present-tense conjugation of the verb caminar: Singular Plural First Person: yo camino nosostros/ -as caminamos Second Person: tú caminas vosostros/ -as camináis Third Person: él/ella/usted camina ellos/ellas/ustedes caminan (“Spanish Verb Conjugator”) In English, the equivalent present tense conjugation of the verb to walk is remarkably simpler: Singular: Plural: First Person: I walk we walk Second Person: you walk you walk Third Person: he/she/it walks they walk Verb conjugation is actually one of the only things about English that is less complicated than most other languages. Even as simple as this is, some people still manage to get it
wrong. In colloquial usage, we often hear statements such as “I walks to my girlfriend house,” or “he walk like a monkey.” Although most verb conjugations in English are relatively simple, some conjugations do not follow the expected pattern—these are known as irregular verbs. Consider the following present tense conjugation of the verb to be: Singular: Plural: First Person: I am we are Second Person: you are you are Third Person: he/she/it is they are Irregular verbs often cause confusion—especially when using the past tense. Most verbs are conjugated in the past tense by simply adding -ed to the present-tense form of the verb—walk becomes walked. There are, however, notable exceptions to this conversion; for example, sing, speak, and see become sang, spoke, and saw—not singed, speaked, and seed. In some irregular verbs, the past-tense version is the same as the present tense; a good example is the verb to hurt. It would be inappropriate to say something like “I hurted my leg when I fell yesterday.” Diction According to the OED, the term diction least two general meanings: “choice or selection of words and phrases” and “the style or manner of enunciation in speaking or singing.” The reference to “enunciation in speaking or singing” in the latter definition suggests a purely phonological phenomenon which would only exist in human language which is spoken or sung. The former definition, “choice or selection of words and phrases,” however, is applicable to both spoken and written language. The OED renders
Homographs, Homonyms, and Homophones One of the weaknesses of electronic spellcheckers, such as is found in word processing programs, is that if you misspell a word and the result is another legitimate word, the spellchecker will not identify it as a misspelled word. In English, there are many ambiguous words are quite confusing because of their similarity. Webster’s Universal Spelling, Grammar and Usage describes three types of words that are often confused because of their similarity. A homograph is a “word that is spelled the same as another word but has a different meaning and pronunciation” (313). Webster’s gives several examples, such as bow, which if pronounced to rhyme with low, is a noun meaning a looped knot such as in a ribbon—or, if pronounced to rhyme with how, is a verb meaning “to bend the head or body as a sign of respect or in greeting” (313). Another similar homograph is sow; when pronounced to rhyme with low, it is a verb meaning “to scatter seeds in the earth,” but when pronounced to rhyme with how, it is “a female pig” (313). A homograph that I have encountered, not listed in Webster’s, is bass; when pronounced to rhyme with case, it is a musical instrument or human voice that plays or sings the low notes; when pronounced to rhyme with mass, it is a fish. A homonym is “a word that has the same spelling and the same pronunciation as another word but has a different meaning” (Webster’s 313). A good example of a homonym is fair, which has several meanings: “light in color,” “equitable or free from prejudice,” “average or moderate,” or “a market held regularly in the same place.” Another example is row, which could be a verb meaning “to propel the boat by means of
oars,” or a noun meaning “a number of people or things arranged in a line” (314). Likewise, mass could be a property of physics or a liturgical religious ceremony. The meaning of homographs and homonyms must be discerned by careful examination of the context in which they appear, and are phenomena associated with reading, since the spelling of the words is the same. Homophones, however, often create confusion associated with writing. A homophone is “a word that is pronounced in the same way as another but is spelled in a different way and has a different meaning” (Webster’s 314). A set of three homophones commonly confused by writers and that I discussed earlier in this chapter, are there, their, and they’re. If someone were to write the following: “They have lived in there house on Elm Street for many years”—the sentence would sound correct if read aloud. However, in its written form, it is incorrect—because there is the wrong word—the correct word is the possessive pronoun their. A Bible study I recently read asked the question: “Why did Saul fain repentance?”—the correct word, in this case, is feign—“to pretend, fake, or deceive” (“Feign”). Fain is an obsolete word meaning “gladness or joy” (“Fain”). In a literature paper I wrote a few years ago, I made a comment that a line in a poem I was analyzing “peaked my curiosity.” My professor circled the word peaked and wrote the comment “wrong word.” Since the word I should have used is piqued, I made a wrong word error. It is important to note that such an error is not a spelling error—it is the wrong word—just as wrong as using went when gone is the appropriate word. Some common homophones include to/too/two, sight/site/cite, right/rite/write, cereal/serial, bore/boar, feat/feet, eye/I, would/wood, role/roll, patients/patience, and none/nun. Sometimes words are not pronounced exactly the same, but are similar and therefore frequently confused. This confusion is compounded by the
documentation, because by the end of the day on December 20, 2011, the blog was removed, apparently by the website administrator, and all that can be found now at this website address is a “page not found” notice. In general, user-generated content websites are notoriously unreliable with regards to any information they convey, including the quality of the English language they use. Because there is so much potential to exchange ideas on user-generated content sites, users feel compelled to speed up the process by shifting the written language into abbreviated code that uses fewer characters. The conventions of Standard English, as properly written, are time-consuming and difficult to produce quickly by typing, especially when two or more people are engaging in active conversation in chat rooms, instant messaging, and more recently—cell phone text messaging. While using user-generated content Internet sites and cell phone text messaging, apparently, the first thing to go is the shift key; messages are often typed only in small case, including the personal pronoun I. Words such as be, see, oh, are, you, and why have been replaced with phonetically equivalent single letters b, c, o, r, u, and y. Likewise, the words to, for, and ate become 2, 4, and 8. These single syllables are combined to create abbreviations for multi-syllable words or phrases—before becomes b4 and oh, I see becomes oic. Even when words are spelled out, they are frequently intentionally, sometimes not. Punctuation plus grammar and usage conventions are virtually ignored. There is a long list of abbreviations of short phrases like roflmao (rolling on floor laughing my ass off) and plos (parent looking over shoulder) (“Urban”). This “abbreviated” form of written language was not deliberately
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