The aim of linguistics as a scientific discipline is to describe what people do, not what they should do.
Now, ultimately, it would be nice if that led to us describing how to do it better, the way that knowledge of biology leads to better medicine, and that's part of my aim with this blog: figuring out how knowledge of linguistics can aid us in communicating.
But most people encounter not the scientific discipline of descriptive linguistics, but the you're-failing-to-meet-standards society of prescriptive linguistics.
And though we draw the line in different places, we pretty much all have words, grammar or pronunciation which set our teeth on edge and make us cry: "You are doing it wrong!"
Why?
Background: what is a language?
Linguists talk about ideolects: the individual language that a single person speaks. No two ideolects are the same.
Your ideolect consists of your lexicon (the list of all the sounds which you associate with meanings), your phonology (the set of rules and constraints on how you can pronounce words), your syntax (the set of rules and constrains on how you can put words together), and so on.
Your ideolect is shaped by the input you get. Mine consisted mostly of certain types of British English. As a result, my ideolect has pretty similar rules to everyone else who received that same input.
The group of ideolects which are pretty similar is called a dialect.
The group of dialects which are pretty similar is called a language.
What do we think a language is?
Although the idea of ideolects is not a common one outside of linguistics, we do intuitively grasp this.
We know that individuals and families have their quirks in language as in anything else, using certain words differently or relying on certain set phrases and idioms. Their ideolects are a bit different: a few words, a little intonation.
We know that a group of people called "Australians" (or Northerners, or Southerners, or the next town over) tend to use certain words and pronunciation features differently, and we don't expect them to all speak exactly like us. A few more words are different, certain vowels are pronounced differently, they don't always form the past tense the same way.
We know that a group of people called "the Dutch" speak something that sounds quite similar to our own language, but a lot more words are different, the pronunciation is very odd, their word order is bizarre in a few places.
We know that a group of people called "the Chinese" speak something that is completely unintelligible. Virtually none of the words are the same, they use things like tone in their pronunciation, they don't even seem to have a past tense, let alone use it like us.
The ideal language
I think we are happy with the continuous spectrum from "only I speak exactly like me" to "we share some but not all linguistic features" to "we only share the universal features of human language: the existence of vowels, of words, of word order, ...".
However, lots of people also have the concept of an ideal, standard form of the language, which everyone should aspire to speak.
I don't think that people who believe in this ideal have thought about how it fits in to the continuous spectrum which we all observe. Most vocal supporters of 'correct' English are happy with the idea that the Dutch speak Dutch instead. It's not that English is inherently better.1
Where does this concept come from? That's the question I will aim to answer in Part 2. Unfortunately, whilst I have many suspicions, I don't have any data yet, so Part 2 may take a while...
However, lots of people also have the concept of an ideal, standard form of the language, which everyone should aspire to speak.
I don't think that people who believe in this ideal have thought about how it fits in to the continuous spectrum which we all observe. Most vocal supporters of 'correct' English are happy with the idea that the Dutch speak Dutch instead. It's not that English is inherently better.1
Where does this concept come from? That's the question I will aim to answer in Part 2. Unfortunately, whilst I have many suspicions, I don't have any data yet, so Part 2 may take a while...
Further reading
For a lot of discussion on the issue of prescriptive vs descriptive linguistics, see Language Log, a series of blogs on language in the popular media and similar, written by linguists. In particular, see the category "Prescriptivist Poppycock", which may hint at their position on the issue...
1 The idea that there is a single perfect language which we should all speak has been advanced for:
a) Biblical Hebrew (misguided, but understandable)
b) French
1 The idea that there is a single perfect language which we should all speak has been advanced for:
a) Biblical Hebrew (misguided, but understandable)
b) French