How are culture and language linked? Some might say that language is one thing in people’s lives that is always constant, but that is not true. Culture changes over time, for example, people in the 50s didn’t use many of the slang words we do today and they didn’t have words for most of the technology we have today either. It’s important to understand that this does not mean that the words we use today aren’t valid, because they do mean something to us. Often linguists try to define standard English but the people who speak English are so diverse that it is almost impossible. People should recognize all words that are used within a culture because it not only broadens our perspective of the English language but words can also act as a fingerprint, showing the unique history of language.
In the article Do You Speak American? by Cran & MacNeil (2005), the authors bring to light two arguments of standard English, those of a prescriptivist and descriptivist. Jessie Sheidlower is an editor of the Oxford English Dictionary and his viewpoint is that of a descriptivist, any words that do exist should be recognized. It doesn’t matter if the word is slang or of an inappropriate nature, there should be some sort of record of it. According to Cran & McNeil (2005); “He is the author of a
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Prescriptivist’s want to English to be used like it was many decades ago, but people’s lives change through the years and so does their language. In the 1950s words like ‘cell phone’, ‘internet’ and ‘hashtag’ weren’t used but that’s because culture and technology has progressed. I think that the descriptivist view of language is also the most inclusive. They recognize the languages of other races and ethnicities that blend with English, whereas prescriptivists more or less only use English by the ‘white American’
In “Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars over Usage,” David Foster Wallace argues that it would be ridiculous to assume “that American ceases to be elitist or unfair because Americans stop using certain vocabulary that is historically associated with elitism.” Just because society uses words that are less offensive does not mean that society has adopted attitudes that are less offensive. To clarify why such a fallacy is often heard, Wallace defines two functions for politically correct language “On the one hand they can be a reflection of political change, and on the other they can be an instrument of political change.” Usage conventions can be the result of change, or they can result in change. However, when one function occurs, the other does not, and vice versa. Care must be taken when determining the efficacy of politically correct terminology; it could either signal great strides being made in social justice, or it could be a superficial impersonation of human
David Wallace’s purpose for writing his essay, “Authority and American Usage”, was to give a book review on Bryan Garner’s, “A Dictionary of Modern American Usage”. Wallace does this tremendously; in doing so, he provides references to other dictionaries showing the good and bad aspects of them. He then goes on to explain how Garner’s dictionary does a very good job at staying neutral in the so-called “Usage Wars”. Wallace explains how there are two main viewpoints that derive from today’s standard written English (SWE): descriptivism and prescriptivism (which Wallace often refers to as being a SNOOT). With the viewpoint of descriptivism comes the ideology that SWE should not have a strict set of rules or guidelines. On the other hand, as Wallace says, prescriptivists believe that a definite set of rules is what brings meaning to SWE. The term, “Usage Wars”, is what Wallace uses to depict the clashing ideology of descriptivists and SNOOT’s.
African American Slang has had many other names: Ebonics, Jive, Black English, and more. The Oxford English Dictionary defines slang (in reference to language) in three different ways: 1) the special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low or disreputable character; language of a low and vulgar type 2) the special vocabulary or phraseology of a particular calling or profession; the cant or jargon of a certain class or period 3) language of a highly colloquial type, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense. Whatever one’s perspective on slang, it is a natural and inevitable part of language. In this paper I will discuss examples of current slang being used that some people may not understand.
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?
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.
According to Shirley & Levy (2013), “The term ethnicity is a cultural heritage shared by people with a common ancestral origin, language, traditions and often religion” (p.3). In other words, the person that I am today has been shaped by my past; I have become an heir of a culture, language, religion and tradition that makes up who I am and from what ethnic group I belong. As a result, my shared cultural background determines the type of foods, family relations, patterns of communication, values and beliefs that I hold. Furthermore, I was told that my descendants shared their rich heritage from the African and Indian descent. At first, this information made me believe that I had to be in Africa or India to be a partaker of their culture. However, growing up in Grenada gave me the opportunity of
According to Webster’s Dictionary, culture is defined as tradition or a way of life. It is also a defining principle in how we live our life and the type of people we become. The Salish Indians of the Montana and Celie, the main character of the book The Color Purple, are two examples of cultures that made them who they are. Celie is a poor, black, woman growing up in Memphis, Tennessee in the mid-twentieth century. The men have constantly put her down, through beatings and rape, for being a woman with no talent at all. Her husband’s lover comes to town and gives Celie a chance to see a culture where a woman can stand up for herself and teaches her that love is possible. The Salish on the other hand have a culture that has gone on through the ages and still is a part of each person today despite the obstacles they have had to face. Culture does shape us because from birth it is what tells us our ideals, laws, and morals that we live by each day.
David Foster Wallace has coined the term SNOOT, which correlates directly with what prescriptivism at its most strict is: “SNOOT (n) (highly colloq) is this reviewer’s nuclear family’s nickname a clef for a really extreme usage fanatic, the sort of person whose ideas of Sunday fun is to hunt for mistakes in the very prose of Safire’s column” (Wallace 2005, 69). Garner, on the other hand, makes a very simple definition for prescriptivism: “Prescribers seek to guide users of a language…on how to handle words as effectively as possible” (Garner, Making Peace in the Language Wars 2008, 266). Descriptivists are not the ‘opposite’ of prescriptivists, but they are at loggerheads with the ideals of prescriptivism since descriptivists simply seek to describe language as it is used. Garner, again, is succinct in his definition of descriptivists: “Describers seek to discover the facts of how native speakers actually use their language” (Garner, Making Peace in the Language Wars 2008...
In Johnson’s preface to A Dictionary of the English Language, Johnson argues the importance of preserving language. Other dialects had a produced their own dictionaries, such as the French and Italians. Various writers of the eighteenth century were alarmed at the fact that there was no standard for the English language, since there was no standard it could easily become extinct. Johnson explored many points, such as how and why languages change as well as how many words are formed.
Garner’s A Dictionary of Modern American Usage for its “Democratic Spirit.” Garner was able to compose a work that is both authoritative and clear in determinations of correct and incorrect English usage while undercutting his tone as a SNOOT. The problem Wallace has with English is that there are two kinds of English. They are separated into prescriptivism and descriptivism. Prescriptivism is the belief that there should be an authoritative set of guidelines as to what is correct and incorrect in the English language. Prescriptivists are viewed as elitist, classist, and even racist. Descriptivism on the other is different in that people reject the idea of an authoritative set of guidelines as to what is correct and incorrect in the English language. Descriptivists believe that as long as everyone understands each other, it’s less important to worry about the grammatical aspect of the English sentence. Now, going back to Wallace’s review on A Dictionary of Modern American Usage, a descriptivist would say that the purpose of the lexicographer is to observe and record language from a scientific perspective and objectively. Descriptivists believe in adapting to the group of listeners and being accepted. The idea of adapting and being accepted is true for most of us today, as well and it would seem to make most sense. False. Wallace’s key argument in his essay is that prescriptivism is
You could argue that language is the single most important aspect of human interaction. Many languages that survived for many generations are starting to fade right before our eyes. Along with the PBS documentary Language Matters, Jared Diamonds book The World Until Yesterday rise many ideas surrounding multilingualism, vanishing languages, preservation of language, and the risk of speaking a minority language. What are the links between all of these topics in todays world and yesterdays? Multilingualism is found in almost every traditional society, this is not necessarily by choice.
The Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition defines Culture as the “shared patterns of behaviors and interactions, cognitive constructs, and affective understanding that are learned through a process of socialization. These shared patterns identify the members of a culture group while also distinguishing those of another group.” (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition)
The distinction between Black Vernacular English and Standard English, occurs at three levels of linguistics, however “AAVE is just like any other dialect of English; has its own innovations but remains strongly influenced by the standard” (Butters 60), this means that Black Vernacular has its own rules in the English language.
Sociolinguists such as Eckert (2000) and Milroy (2004) have made provocative efforts to incorporate linguistic-anthropological concepts into sociolinguistic explanation (Woolard, 2008) and foundational studies by Creese (2008) include major works describing the paradigm. Rampton (2007), described the methodological tenants behind LE. LE research is yet a developing discipline that serves as a way of enriching a fundamentally linguistic project. In fact, the formulation of LE covers a large and older body of scholarship on language and culture (Rampton, Maybin, & Roberts, 2014), while simultaneously necessitating and interdisciplinary collaboration of theories and skills, thus blurring the boundaries between branches of variationist, sociological and ethnographic sociolinguistics (Tusting & Maybin, 2007). LE research on language change (Ekert, 2000) and a cultural model of cognition (Levinson, 1996) are worthwhile examples. However, the examples in the following sections serve more as a focus on contributions of LE to the field of
Contrary to what the early detractors of the American English language used to say, American English is not an offensive offshoot of real English, but has over the centuries made its own mark in the world of language and communication, and is also poised at this juncture in human history to actually slowly become the main dialect of English the world over due to the America-centric communication and technological advances made over the past few decades. It is hoped that this essay has given but a glimpse of not only what American English has become, but what it can yet become should America remain a social, cultural, and technological leader in years to come.