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¶ … Standardization, Expectation, and Judgment in Language Use
We are often advised as college students to write our papers in "standard academic English." If we are putting together a resume or drafting a formal letter, we are expected to use "standard English" as well. In our daily speech patterns in formal situations, our parents or mentors have at some point encouraged us to use "proper" English in order to reflect well on ourselves and our education and background (and on them, of course). But what, exactly, is "standard" English? Who gets to decide? Must it be grammatically perfect? Are long, multi-syllabic words more effective than short, simple ones?
Is there a standardized language we are supposed to use for certain formal situations, and if so, what is it, and how do we learn it? For example, some English texts and teachers advise students to avoid ending a sentence in a preposition; doing so might indicate that you do not know how to write and speak in grammatically sound, acceptable, "standard" English. However, asking "With whom should I ride to the game?" sounds both stodgy and forced. Using a phrase like this would be likely to cause laughter, to make us stand out as "odd" or pedantic. To rephrase this as "Who am I riding with?" sounds much more acceptable, if slightly less formal. But is it wrong?
The scholar John G. Fought describes...
Who are these gatekeepers? They do not have official titles, and there do not seem to be any requirements, although they may have academic or professional credentials to give them a kind of authority. Fought goes on to discuss a specific kind of gatekeeper: the language gatekeeper, whose job, it seems, is to issue rules about what is "right" and what is "wrong" in our language. The more technical term for these rule-makers is "prescriptivist," according to Fought and others, such as David Crystal. Prescriptivists seem to be best at deciding what we shouldn't do, and for pointing out the terms and words we might use that they consider unacceptable or substandard. This is in contrast to descriptivists, who are at the other end of the spectrum. Fought discusses descriptivists as individuals who study and try to understand language in all its variety, to determine how and why we communicate and what the words we use say about us and about society in general.
This still leaves a good deal of confusion about the "rules" of language. We may know that there are occasions on which to avoid slang and profanity and try to use what we think of as proper, grammatically sound English. However, there are also times when this might be awkward. We are expected to dress differently for different occasions; it makes sense, then, that we might "dress up" our language, or conversely, "dress down." When we are in stiff, formal clothing, we might automatically…
References
Cutler, C. Crossing over. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
Retrieved May 1, 2012 from http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/gatekeeping/
Fought, J.G. Gatekeeping. MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.
Retrieved May 1, 2012 from http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/correct/gatekeeping/
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