Why Linguists Should Deal with "Good Language" and "Bad Language." [microform] / Florian Coulmas.
Linguists generally refuse to make judgments about language or define standards of excellence for it. This perpetuates a fundamental paradox of descriptive linguistics: the inability to describe a language without providing a standard or setting a norm. The discipline's desire to escape from et...
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| Format: | Microfilm Book |
| Language: | English |
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1985.
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| Summary: | Linguists generally refuse to make judgments about language or define standards of excellence for it. This perpetuates a fundamental paradox of descriptive linguistics: the inability to describe a language without providing a standard or setting a norm. The discipline's desire to escape from ethnocentrism has caused it to avoid a legitimate and desirable function: evaluating languages according to their suitability for different forms of communication. The speech community expects linguistic judgments from linguists. Just as Latin was consciously shaped into a learned language, other languages can and should be cultivated to serve new communicative needs. Written language has a crucial role in this process, but the precise role is a major challenge for linguists. However, the process of cultivation should not be confused with purification, which is ideological and does not consider the complexity or sophistication of language. In a world where technological innovation is rapid and quickly trickles down to the nonspecialist public, deliberate language cultivation is more necessary than ever. (MSE) |
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| Item Description: | ERIC Note: Paper presented at a Conference on Vernacular Languages for Modern Societies (Bad Homburg, West Germany, June 11-15, 1985). ERIC Document Number: ED276286. |
| Physical Description: | 32 p. |
| Reproduction Note: | Microfiche. |
| Action Note: | committed to retain 20240101 2049101 Alliance Shared Trust https://www.coalliance.org/shared-print-archiving-policies |