Growing English

While using Facebook, Twitter, or any other social network, it is not unusual to be corrected by someone or to see someone “teaching” the “right” way to talk or write. Sometimes, this argument may be accompanied by other prejudices: speak right if you want me to listen to you and to consider what you’re saying; illiterate; go to school; if you want to talk about this, learn how to write first. All of the sentences above can be easily said on the internet, but its root is not there. 

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Many people claim that there is a correct English to be spoken: The Standard – Standard American English, United Kingdom Standard English, and the Received Pronunciation. They are the so-called language purists, prescriptive grammarians, people who consider the English taught in school to be the appropriate and unique, criticizing and humiliating others dialects as if they were superior, they claim to use the “good” language.

 Language is a tool of power: to build – by its changes and transformations naturally caused by the socials involved; or to destroy and conquest – by colonizing, downgrading the users of a dialect and banning languages as a mean of political control, as it happened with Cajun English and French in southern Louisiana, American Indian languages, or even during the occupation of Korea (1910-1945) when the Japanese prohibited the Koreans to speak their language by 1943, trying to Japanize it. If you are interested in learning about Korea under Japanese Occupation, I recommend the Korean drama “Chicago Typewriter”. 

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This also happened in France, 1977, when the French Government passed a law banning the use of English in official contexts (political, juridic, etc.) aiming to preserve French expressions, but it didn't work out (CRYSTAL, 2002, p. 273). However, from a linguistic point of view, one dialect is neither better nor worse than another, nor purer nor more corrupt, nor more or less logical, nor more or less expressive. It is simply different (FROMKIN et al., 2002). For example, despite American English is the most influential dialect worldwide and British English the “purer” and “elegant” English, it is wrong to assume that they rule the social language use, once we have different dialects, idiolects, regional dialects, cultural groups, word choices that are made according to the context (how formal is the situation, the relationship between the speakers, etc.). 

English, as we can see when we study its development, emerged from the contact and transformation of different languages and cultures – as well as other languages. Today, considering the limitless internet, the viability of information, and the use of it as commercial, technical or cultural language (ALGEO, 2009, p. 183) it is baseless and clueless to assume that it has a purity or a pattern that must be followed. It is contradictory to downgrade a dialect or even a pronunciation when it comes to language – being a native or not – once it is made and transformed by its users, that are affected by at the same time that is affecting it.

 Language change is not corruption it is richness. 

ALGEO, John. Late Modern English (1800-Present). In: THE ORIGINS and Development of the English Language. 6. ed. Boston: Wadsworth CENGAGE Learning, 2009. cap. 10, p. 181-202. ISBN 978-1-4282-3145-0.

CRYSTAL, David. English Today. In: CRYSTAL, David. The English Language. 2. ed. England: Penguin Books, 2002. cap. 14, p. 270-291.

FROMKIN, Victoria et al. Language in Society. In: FROMKIN, Victoria et al. An Introduction to Language. 7. ed. [S. l.]: Thomson Wadsworth, 2002. cap. 10, p. 445-491.