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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