Peter,

 

Thanks for drawing attention to that.  Calling it "slippage" obviously
implies a judgment on choices speakers make, and you're right that what
we're seeing IS simply normal language change.

 

The interesting question you raise, though, is "why the role of English
teachers seems to always be to slow down this process and defend the
traditional conventions."  I'm in a university English department that,
in addition to the usual literature, composition, and creative writing
areas, also has a significant group of linguists, eight of us.  We have
succeeded in adding as a requirement for all English undergraduates a
course on language and society in which we deal with issues of language
change, language policy, dialect, standard, social judgments about
language use, etc.  We argued successfully for this course in part
because it is precisely university English departments that tend to
perpetuate the most conservative judgments about what's "good" English.
I've described the course occasionally as a form of intellectual
vaccination against widely held nonsense, and I work with my students to
see how much of what most people believe about language isn't so.

 

Of course, if English teachers were all in agreement as to what the
standards of Standard English were, we might have a stationary target,
but there have been a number of published studies showing that what a
composition teacher considers good or bad grammar varies widely.

 

Herb

 

 

 


In a message dated 8/16/06 2:40:06 PM, [log in to unmask] writes:





I wonder if this "slippage" might be a part of a broader populism that
we are seeing in politics, education, the arts, etc. 



But Herb, how do you know that what you're seeing as "slippage" isn't
just the natural evolution of the language?  

In fact, I am wondering why the role of English teachers seems to always
be to slow down this process and defend the traditional conventions.  

Take, for instance, the ubiquitous singular "they" as in "everyone
should bring their books."  Why do we automatically insist that "they"
is plural and therefore the correct sentence should be "everyone should
bring his or her books."  Wouldn't it be surprising, for once, if
English teachers decided that the evolution of "their" from simply
plural to both singular and plural (as occured with "you") is a positive
development and encouraged it.

But the larger question for me is how anyone decides when a rule has
changed.  If we can't trust the NY Times or Tom Clancy, whom can we
trust.  

The American Heritage Dictionary employs a "usage panel" and actually
reports the percentage that found a certain usage objectionable.  But
that is only for usage issues.  Does anyone do this for grammar and
punctuation?  Would ATEG be interested in taking on this task?  Right
after our Scope and Sequence is adopted nationally, of course.

Peter Adams



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