Ed,

There are two ways to read the intentions of someone making a claim
like, "language change is inevitable" -- one relatively value-neutral,
one not. In my own practice, "language change is inevitable" does not
entail that the way change is valued (or not) by society is something
that can be ignored. My students will be judged partly on their use of
English, and whether I think this is a good thing or not is entirely
irrelevant to the issue. 

In the neutral sense, "language change is inevitable" is not a statement
about educational policy, but simply about language. We have evidence
for quite a number of language groups, and for some of those groups, the
evidence goes back at least four thousand years. In *every single* case,
those languages changed over time, until they became other languages
entirely, or all their speakers died out. This pattern holds true for
groups after the development of a notion of a standard language, and the
use of writing -- although both of those may slow down change in the
written language, they never stop it. So, looking at all the available
evidence, linguists are justified in saying, "It doesn't matter what you
do, it's going to happen eventually."

However, that same wording can be applied to the observation that groups
of speakers will attach value judgments to linguistic variation -- "It
doesn't matter what you do, it's going to happen eventually." Linguists
can't ignore that either. And while I strongly suspect some linguists do
have the kind of crypto-romantic outlook you think, it can't be claimed,
I think, as a general failing of linguists as a group. 

As a linguist, I know that there is overwhelming evidence that languages
always change, and I also know that despite people's reactions to new
changes, their descendents always think the changed version is normal
(and then get annoyed when their kids sound funny). "The house is
building" sounds odd to us, and "The house is being built" would have
sounded atrocious to some of our forbears. "I graduated high school"
sounds awful to me, and I'm a linguist, and know that there's nothing
objectively bad about it (except its heinous awfulness). I can't ignore
the massive amounts of evidence about language change, and I can't
ignore the massive amounts of evidence about people's use of language as
a social indicator. All I can really do in my classes is try to
encourage students to remain mindful of both...and to stop wearing their
baseball caps backwards, of course. 

--- Bill Spruiell

Dept. of English
Central Michigan University

To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"

Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/