2/Nine Ideas About

Language
HARVEY A. DANIELS
In the following chapter adapted from his book Famous Last Words:

The American Language Crisis Reconsidered, Harvey A. Daniels, a director of the Illinois Writing Project and a professor at the
National College of Education, presents nine fundamental ideas about
language that are widely accepted by contemporary linguists. In doing
so, he dispels a number of myths about language that are all too prevalent among Americans. The ideas introduced here provide a foundation for readings in later parts of this book, where they are discussed
in more detail.

Assuming we agree that the English language has in fact survived all
of the predictions of doom which have been prevalent since at least
the early eighteenth century, we also have reason to believe that current reports of the death of our language are similarly exaggerated.
The managers of the present crisis of course disagree, and their efforts
may even result in the reinstatement of the linguistic loyalty oath of
the 1920s or of some updated equivalent ("I promise to use good American unsplit infinitives") in our schools. But it won't make much difference. The English language, if history is any guide at all, will remain
useful and vibrant as long as it is spoken, whether we eagerly try to
tend and nurture and prune its growth or if we just leave it alone.
Contemporary language critics recognize that language is changing, that people use a lot of jargon, that few people consistently speak
the standard dialect, that much writing done in our society is ineffective, and so forthbut they have no other way of viewing these phenomena except with alarm. But most of the uses of and apparent
changes in language which worry the critics can be explained and
understood in unalarming ways. Such explanations have been provided by linguists during the past seventy-five years.
I have said that in order to understand the errors and misrepresentations of the language critics, we need to examine not only history
but also "the facts." Of course, facts about language are a somewhat
elusive commodity, and we may never be able to answer all of our
questions about this wonderfully complex activity. But linguists have
made a good start during this century toward describing some of the
18

DANIELS:

Nine Ideas About Language / 19

basic features, structures, and operations of human speech. This section presents a series of nine fundamental ideas about language that
form, if not exactly a list of facts, at least a fair summary of the consensus of most linguistic scholars.
1. Children learn their native language swiftly, efficiently, and
largely without instruction. Language is a species-specific trait of
human beings. All children, unless they are severely retarded or completely deprived of exposure to speech, will acquire their oral language
as naturally as they learn to walk. Many linguists even assert that the
human brain is prewired for language, and some have also postulated
that the underlying linguistic features which are common to all languages are present in the brain at birth. This latter theory comes from
the discovery that all languages have certain procedures in common:
ways of making statements, questions, and commands; ways of referring to past time; the ability to negate, and so on. 1 In spite of the
underlying similarities of all languages, though, it is important to remember that children will acquire the language which they hear around
themwhether that is Ukrainian; Swahili, Cantonese, or Appalachian
American English.
In spite of the commonsense notions of parents, they do not
"teach" their children to talk. Children learn to talk, using the language
of their parents, siblings, friends, and others as sources and examplesand by using other speakers as testing devices for their own
emerging ideas about language. When we acknowledge the complexity
of adult speech, with its ability to generate an unlimited number of
new, meaningful utterances, it is clear that this skill cannot be the end
result of simple instruction. Parents do not explain to their children,
for example, that adjectives generally precede the noun in English, nor
do they lecture them on the rules governing formation of the past
participle. While parents do correct some kinds of mistakes on a piecemeal basis, discovering the underlying rules which make up the language is the child's job.
From what we know, children appear to learn language partly by
imitation but even more by hypothesis-testing. Consider a child who
is just beginning to form past tenses. In the earliest efforts, the child
is likely to produce such incorrect and unheard forms as / goed to the
store or / seed a dog, along with other conventional uses of the past
tense: / walked to Grandma's. This process reveals that the child has
learned the basic, general rule about the formation of the past tense
you add -ed to the verbbut has not yet mastered the other rules, the
exceptions and irregularities. The production of forms that the child
1

Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman, An Introduction to Language (New York:

Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), pp. 329-342.

20 / Language and Its Study

has never heard suggests that imitation is not central in language learning and that the child's main strategy is hypothesizingdeducing from
the language she hears an idea about the underlying rule, and then
trying it out.
My own son, who is now two-and-a-half, has just been working
on the -ed problem. Until recently, he used present tense verb forms

for all situations: Daddy go work? (for: Did Daddy go to work?) and We
take a bath today? (for: Will we take a bath today?). Once he discovered

that wonderful past tag, he attached it with gusto to any verb he could
think up and produced, predictably enough, goed, eated, flied, and many
other overgeneralizations of his initial hypothetical rule for the formation of past tenses. He was so exicted about his new discovery, in
fact, that he would often give extra emphasis to the marker: Dad, I
swallow-ed the cookie. Nicky will soon learn to deemphasize the sound
of -ed (as well as to master all those irregular past forms) by listening
to more language and by revising and expanding his own internal set
of language rules.
Linguists and educators sometimes debate about what percentage
of adult forms is learned by a given age. A common estimate is that
90 percent of adult structures are acquired by the time a child is seven.
Obviously, it is quite difficult to attach proportions to such a complex
process, but the central point is clear: schoolchildren of primary age
have already learned the great majority of the rules governing their
native language, and can produce virtually all the kinds of sentences
that it permits. With the passing years, all children will add some
additional capabilities, but the main growth from this point forward
will not so much be in acquiring new rules as in using new combinations of them to express increasingly sophisticated ideas, and in
learning how to use language effectively in a widening variety of social
settings.
It is important to reiterate that we are talking here about the child's
acquisition of her native language. It may be that the child has been
born into a community of standard English or French or Urdu speakers,
or into a community of nonstandard English, French, or Urdu speakers. But the language of the child's home and community is the native
language, and it would be impossible for her to somehow grow up
speaking a language to which she was never, or rarely, exposed.
2. Language operates by rules. As the -ed saga suggests, when a
child begins learning his native language, what he is doing is acquiring
a vast system of mostly subconscious rules which allow him to make
meaningful and increasingly complex utterances. These rules concern
sounds, words, the arrangement of strings of words, and aspects of
the social act of speaking. Obviously, children who grow up speaking
different languages will acquire generally different sets of rules. This

DANIELS :

Nine Ideas About Language / 21

fact reminds us that human language is, in an important sense, arbitrary.

Except for a few onomatopoetic words (bang, hiss, grunt), the assignment of meanings to certain combinations of sounds is arbitrary.
We English speakers might just as well call a chair a glotz or a blurg,
as long as we all agreed that these combinations of sounds meant chair.
In fact, not just the words but the individual sounds used in English
have been arbitrarily selected from a much larger inventory of sounds
which the human vocal organs are capable of producing. The existence
of African languages employing musical tones or clicks reminds us that
the forty phonemes used in English represent an arbitrary selection
from hundreds of available sounds. Grammar, too, is arbitrary. We
have a rule in English which requires most adjectives to appear before
the noun which they modify (the blue chair). In French, the syntax is
reversed (la chaise bleue), and in some languages, like Latin, either order
is allowed.
Given that any language requires a complex set of arbitrary choices
regarding sounds, words, and syntax, it is clear that the foundation
of a language lies not in any "natural" meaning or appropriateness of
its features, but in its system of rulesthe implicit agreement among
speakers that they will use certain sounds consistently, that certain
combinations of sounds will mean the same thing over and over, and
that they will observe certain grammatical patterns in order to convey
messages. It takes thousands of such rules to make up a language.
Many linguists believe that when each of us learned these countless
rules, as very young children, we accomplished the most complex cognitive task of our lives.
Our agreement about the rules of language, of course, is only a
general one. Every speaker of a language is unique; no one sounds
exactly like anyone else. The language differs from region to region,
between social, occupational and ethnic groups, and even from one
speech situation to the next. These variations are not mistakes or deviations from some basic tongue, but are simply the rule-governed
alternatives which make up any language. Still, in America our assorted variations of English are mostly mutually intelligible, reflecting
the fact that most of our language rules do overlap, whatever group
we belong to, or whatever situation we are in.
3. All languages have three major components: a sound system,
a vocabulary, and a system of grammar. This statement underscores

what has already been suggested: that any human speaker makes
meaning by manipulating sounds, words, and their order according
to an internalized system of rules which other speakers of that language
largely share.

22 / Language and Its Study

The sound system of a languageits phonologyis the inventory
of vocal noises, and combinations of noises, that it employs. Children
learn the selected sounds of their own language in the same way they
learn the other elements: by listening, hypothesizing, testing, and listening again. They do not, though it may seem logical, learn the sounds
first (after all, English has only forty) and then go on to words and
then to grammar. My son, for example, can say nearly anything he
needs to say, in sentences of eight or ten or fourteen words, but he
couldn't utter the sound of th to save his life.
The vocabulary, or lexicon, of a language is the individual's store
house of words. Obviously, one of the young child's most conspicuous
efforts is aimed at expanding his lexical inventory. Two- and threeyear-olds are notorious for asking "What's that?" a good deal more
often than even the most doting parents can tolerate. And not only do
children constantly and spontaneously try to enlarge their vocabular
ies, but they are always working to build categories, to establish classes
of words, to add connotative meanings, to hone and refine their sense
of the semantic propertiesthe meaningsof the words they are
learning. My awareness of these latter processes was heightened a few
months ago as we were driving home from a trip in the country during
which Nicky had delighted in learning the names of various features
of the rural landscape. As we drove past the Chicago skyline, Nicky
looked up at the tall buildings and announced "Look at those silos,
Dad!" I asked him what he thought they kept in the Sears Tower, and
he replied confidently, "Animal food." His parents' laughter presum
ably helped him to begin reevaluating his lexical hypothesis that any
tall narrow structure was a silo.
"
Linguists, who look at language descriptively rather than prescriptively, use two different definitions of grammar. The first, which I am
using, says that grammar is the system of rules we use to arrange words
into meaningful English sentences. For example, my lexicon and my
phonology may provide me with the appropriate strings of sounds to
say the words: eat four yesterday cat crocodile the. It is my knowledge of

grammar which allows me to arrange these elements into a sentence:

Yesterday the crocodile ate four cats. Not only does my grammar arrange

these elements in a meaningful order, it also provides me with the

necessary markers of plurality, tense, and agreement. Explaining the
series of rules by which I subconsciously constructed this sentence
describes some of my "grammar" in this sense.
The second definition of grammar often used by linguists refers to
the whole system of rules which makes up a languagenot just the
rules for the arrangement and appropriate marking of elements in a
sentence, but all of the lexical, phonological, and syntactic patterns
which a language uses. In this sense, everything I know about my language, all the conscious and unconscious operations I can perform

DANIELS :

Nine Ideas About Language / 23

when speaking or listening, constitutes my grammar. It is this second

definition of grammar to which linguists sometimes refer when they
speak of describing a language in terms of its grammar.
4. Everyone speaks a dialect. Among linguists the term dialect
simply designates a variety of a particular language which has a certain
set of lexical, phonological, and grammatical rules that distinguish it
from other dialects. The most familiar definition of dialects in America
is geographical: we recognize, for example, that some features of New
England languagethe dropping fs {pahk the cah in Hahvahd yahd) and
the use of bubbler for drinking fountaindistinguish the speech of this
region. The native speaker of Bostonian English is not making mistakes, of course; he or she simply observes systematic rules which
happen to differ from those observed in other regions.
Where do these different varieties of a language come from and
how are they maintained? The underlying factors are isolation and
language change. Imagine a group of people which lives, works, and
talks together constantly. Among them, there is a good deal of natural
pressure to keep the language relatively uniform. But if one part of the
group moves away to a remote location, and has no further contact
with the other, the language of the two groups will gradually diverge.
This will happen not just because of the differing needs of the two
different environments, but also because of the inexorable and sometimes arbitrary process of language change itself. In other words, there
is no likelihood that the language of these two groups, though identical
at the beginning, will now change in the same ways. Ultimately, if the
isplation is lengthy and complete, the two hypothetical groups will
probably develop separate, mutually unintelligible languages. If the
isolation is only partial, if interchange occurs between the two groups,
and if they have some need to continue communicating (as with the
American and British peoples) less divergence will occur.
This same principle of isolation also applies, in a less dramatic
way, to contemporary American dialects. New England speakers are
partially isolated from southern speakers, and so some of the differences between these two dialects are maintained. Other factors, such
as travel and the mass media, bring them into contact with each other
and tend to prevent drastic divergences. But the isolation that produces
or maintains language differences may not be only geographical. In
many American cities we find people living within miles, or even blocks
of each other who speak markedly different and quite enduring dialects. Black English and mid western English are examples of such pairs.
Here, the isolation is partially spatial, but more importantly it is social,
economic, occupational, educational, and political. And as long as this
effective separation of speech communities persists, so will the differences in their dialects.

24 / Language and Its Study

Many of the world's languages have a "standard" dialect. In some

countries, the term standard refers more to a lingua franca than to an
indigenous dialect. In Nigeria, for example, where there are more than
150 mostly mutually unintelligible languages and dialects, English was
selected as the official standard. In America, we enjoy this kind of
national standardization because the vast majority of us speak some
mutually intelligible dialect of English. But we also have ideas about
a standard English which is not just a lingua franca but a prestige or
preferred dialect. Similarly, the British have Received Pronunciation,
the Germans have High German, and the French, backed by the authority of the Academie Francaise, have "Le Vrai Francais." These languages are typically defined as the speech of the upper, or at least
educated, classes of the society, are the predominant dialect of written
communication, and are commonly taught to schoolchildren. In the
past, these prestige dialects have sometimes been markers which conveniently set the ruling classes apart from the rabbleas once was the
case with Mandarin Chinese or in medieval times when the English
aristocracy adopted Norman French. But in most modern societies the
standard dialect is a mutually intelligible version of the country's common tongue which is accorded a special status.
A standard dialect is not inherently superior to'&ny other dialect of
the same language. It may, however, confer considerable social, political, and economic power on its users, because of prevailing attitudes
about the dialect's worthiness.
Recently, American linguists have been working to describe some
of the nonstandard dialects of English, and we now seem to have a
better description of some of these dialects than of our shadowy standard. Black English is a case in point. The most important finding of
all this research has been that Black English is just as "logical" and
"ordered" as any other English dialect, in spite of the fact that it is
commonly viewed by white speakers as being somehow inferior, deformed, or limited.
5. Speakers of all languages employ a range of styles and a set of
subdialects or jargons. Just as soon as we accept the notion that we all
speak a dialect, it is necessary to complicate things further. We may
realize that we do belong to a speech community, although we may
not like to call it a dialect, but we often forget that our speech patterns
vary greatly during the course of our everyday routine. In the morning,
at home, communication with our spouses may consist of grumbled
fragments of a private code:
Uhhh.
Yeah.

DANIELS: Nine Ideas About Language

/ 25

Um-htnm.
You gonna . . .?
Yeah, if. . .
'Kay-Yet half an hour later, we may be standing in a meeting and

talking quite differently: "The cost-effectiveness curve of the Peoria

facility has declined to the point at which management is compelled
to consider terminating production." These two samples of speech
suggest that we constantly range between formal and informal styles
of speech and this is an adjustment which speakers of all
languages constantly make, Learning the sociolinguistic rules which
tell us what sort of speech is appropriate in differing social situations
is as much a part of language acquisition as learning how to produce
the sound of fbl or lil. We talk differently to our acquaintances than to
strangers, differently to our bosses than to our subordinates,
differently to children than to adults. We speak in one way on the
racquetball court and in another way in the courtroom; we perhaps
talk differently to stewardesses than to stewards.
The ability to adjust our language forms to the social context is
something which we acquire as children, along with sounds, words,
and syntax. We learn, in other words, not just to say things, but also
how and when and to whom. Children discover, for example, that
while the purpose of most language is to communicate meaning (if it
weren't they could never learn it in the first place) we sometimes use
words as mere acknowledgments. (Hi. How are you doing? Fine. Bye.)
Youngsters also learn that to get what you want, you have to address
people as your social relation with them dictates (Miss Jones, may I
please feed the hamster today?). And, of course, children learn that
in some situations one doesn't use certain words at allthough such
learning may sometimes seem cruelly delayed to parents whose offspring loudly announce in restaurants: 'I hafta go toilet!"
Interestingly, these sociolinguistic rules are learned quite late in
the game. While a child of seven or eight does command a remarkably
sophisticated array of sentence types, for example, he has a great deal
left to learn about the social regulations governing language use. This
seems logical, given that children do learn language mostly by listening
and experimenting. Only as a child grows old enough to encounter a
widening range of social relationships and roles will he have the experience necessary to help him discover the sociolinguistic dimensions
of them.
While there are many ways of describing the different styles, or
registers, of language which all speakers learn, it is helpful to consider
them in terms of levels of formality. One well-known example of such
a scheme was developed by Martin Joos, who posited five basic styles,

26 / Language and Its Study

which he called intimate, casual, consultative, formal, and frozen.2 While

Joos's model is only one of many attempts to find a scale for the range
of human speech styles, and is certainly not the final word on the
subject, it does illuminate some of the ways in which day-to-day language varies. At the bottom of Joos's model is the intimate style, a kind
of language which "fuses two separate personalities" and can only
occur between individuals with a close personal relationship. A husband and wife, for example, may sometimes speak to each other in
what sounds like a very fragmentary and clipped code that they alone
understand. Such utterances are characterized by their "extraction"
the use of extracts of potentially complete sentences, made possible by
an intricate, personal, shared system of private symbols. The intimate
style, in sum, is personal, fragmentary, and implicit.
The casual style also depends on social groupings. When people
share understandings and meanings which are not complete enough
to be called intimate, they tend to employ the casual style. The earmarks
of this pattern are ellipsis and slang. Ellipsis is the shorthand of shared
meaning; slang often expresses these meanings in a way that defines
the group and excludes others. The casual style is reserved for friends
and insiders, or those whom we choose to make friends and insiders.
The consultative style "produces cooperation without the integration,
profiting from the lack of it."3 In this style, the speaker provides more
explicit background information because the listener may not understand without it. This is the style used by strangers or near-strangers
in routine transactions: co-workers dealing with a problem, a buyer
making a purchase from a clerk, and so forth. An important feature
of this style is the participation of the listener, who uses frequent interjections such as Yeah, Uh-huh or / see to signal understanding.
This element of listener participation disappears in the formal style.
Speech in this mode is defined by the listener's lack of participation,
as well as by the speaker's opportunity to plan his utterances ahead
of time and in detail. The formal style is most often found in speeches,
lectures, sermons, television newscasts, and the like. The frozen style
is reserved for print, and particularly for literature. This style can be
densely packed and repacked with meanings by its "speaker," and it
can be read and reread by its "listener." The immediacy of interaction
between the participants is sacrificed in the interests of permanance,
elegance, and precision.
Whether or not we accept Joos's scheme to classify the different
gradations of formality, we can probably sense the truth of the basic
proposition: we do make such adjustments in our speech constantly,
mostly unconsciously, and in response to the social situation in which
2
3

Martin Joos, The Five Clocks (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1962).
Ibid., p. 40.

DANIELS:

Nine Ideas About Language / 27

we are speaking. What we sometimes forget is that no one style can

accurately be called better or worse than another, apart from the context
in which it is used. Though we have much reverence for the formal
and frozen styles, they can be utterly dysfunctional in certain circumstances. If I said to my wife: "Let us consider the possibility of driving
our automobile into the central business district of Chicago in order to
comtemplate the possible purchase of denim trousers," she would certainly find my way of speaking strange, if not positively disturbing.
All of Us need to shift between the intimate, casual, and consultative
styles in everyday life, not because one or another of these is a better
way of talking, but because each is required in certain contexts. Many
of us also need to master the formal style for the talking and writing
demanded by our jobs. But as Joos has pointed out, few of us actually
need to control the frozen style, which is reserved primarily for literature.4
Besides having a range of speech styles, each speaker also uses a
number of jargons based upon his or her affiliation with certain groups.
The most familiar of these jargons are occupational: doctors, lawyers,
accountants, farmers, electricians, plumbers, truckers, and social workers each have a job-related jargon into which they can shift when the
situation demands it. Sometimes these special languages are a source
of amusement or consternation to outsiders, but usually the outsiders
also speak jargons of their own, though they may not recognize them.
Jargons may also be based on other kinds of affiliations. Teenagers, it
is often remarked by bemused parents, have a language of their own.
So they do, and so do other age groups. Some of the games and chants
of youngsters reflect a kind of childhood dialect, and much older persons may have a jargon of their own as well, reflecting concerns with
aging, illness, and finances. Sports fans obviously use and understand
various abstruse athletic terms, while people interested in needlecrafts
use words that are equally impenetrable to the uninitiated. For every
human enterprise we can think of, there will probably be a jargon
attached to it.
But simply noting that all speakers control a range of styles and
a set of jargons does not tell the whole story. For every time we speak,
we do so not just in a social context, but for certain purposes of our
own. When talking with a dialectologist, for example, I may use linguistic jargon simply to facilitate our sharing of information, or instead
to convince him that I know enough technical linguistics to be taken
seriouslyor both. In other words, my purposesthe functions of my
languageaffect the way I talk. The British linguist M. A. K. Halliday
has studied children in art attempt to determine how people's varying
4

Ibid., pp. 39-67.

28 / Language and Its Study

purposes affect their speech.5 Halliday had to consider children, in fact,

because the purposes of any given adult utterance are usually so complex and overlapping that it is extremely difficult to isolate the individual purposes. By examining the relatively simpler language of children, he was able to discover seven main uses, functions, or purposes
for talking: instrumental, regulatory, interactional, personal, heuristic, imaginative, and representational.

The instrumental function, Halliday explains, is for getting things

done; it is the 7 want function. Close to it is the regulatory function,
which seeks to control the actions of others around the speaker. The
interactional function is used to define groups and relationships, to get
along with others. The personal function allows people to express what
they are and how they feel; Halliday calls this the here I come function.
The heuristic function is in operation when the speaker is using language to learn, by asking questions and testing hypotheses. In the
imaginative function, a speaker may use language to create a world just
as he or she wants it, or may simply use it as a toy, making amusing
combinations of sounds and words. In the representational function, the
speaker uses language to express propositions, give information, or
communicate subject matter.
Absent from Halliday's list of functions, interestingly, is one of
the most common and enduring purposes of human language: lying.
Perhaps lying could be included in the representational or interactional
functions, in the sense that a person may deceive in order to be a more
congenial companion. Or perhaps each of Halliday's seven functions
could be assigned a reverse, false version. In any case, common sense,
human history, and our own experience all tell "us that lyingor misleading or covering up or shading the truthis one of the main ends
to which language is put.
As we look back over these three forms of language variation
styles, jargons, and functionswe may well marvel at the astounding
complexity of language. For not only do all speakers master the intricate
sound, lexical, and grammatical patterns of their native tongue, but
they also learn countless, systematic alternative ways of applying their
linguistic knowledge to varying situations and needs. We are reminded, in short, that language is as beautifully varied and fascinating
as the creatures who use it.
6. Language change is normal. This fact, while often acknowledged by critics of contemporary English, has rarely been fully understood or accepted by them. It is easy enough to welcome into the
language such innocent neologisms as astronaut, transistor, or jet lag.
5

M. A. K. Halliday, Explorations in the Functions of Language (London: Edward Ar-

nold, 1973).

DANIELS :

Nine Ideas About Language / 29

These terms serve obvious needs, responding to certain changes in

society which virtually require them. But language also changes in
many ways that don't seem so logical or necessary. The dreaded dangling hopefully, which now attaches itself to the beginning of sentences
with the meaning / hope, appears to be driving out the connotation full
of hope. As Jean Stafford has angrily pointed out, the word relevant has
broadened to denote almost any kind of "with-it-ness." But these kinds
of lexical changes are not new, and simply demonstrate an age-old
process at work in the present. The word dog (actually, dogge), for
example, used to refer to one specific breed, but now serves as a general
term for a quite varied family of animals. Perhaps similarly, dialogue
has now broadened to include exchanges of views between (or among)
any number of speakers. But word meanings can also narrow over
time, as the word deer shrank from indicating any game animal to just
one specific type.
The sounds of language also change, though usually in slower and
less noticeable ways than vocabulary. Perhaps fifty years ago, the majority of American speakers produced distinctly different consonant
sounds in the middle of latter and ladder. Today, most younger people
and many adults pronounce the two words is if they were the same.
Another sound change in progress is the weakening distinction between the vowel sounds in dawn and Don, or hawk and hock. Taking
the longer view, of course, we realize that modern pronunciation is
the product of centuries of gradual sound changes.
Shifts in grammar are more comparable to the slow process of
sound change than the sometimes sudden one of lexical change. Today
we find that the shall/will distinction, which is still maintained among
some upper class Britishers, has effectively disappeared from spoken
American English. A similar fate seems to await the who/whom contrast,
which is upheld by fewer and fewer speakers. Our pronouns, as a
matter of fact, seem to be a quite volatile corner of our grammar. In
spite of the efforts of teachers, textbooks, style manuals, and the SAT
tests, most American speakers now find nothing Wrong with Everyone
should bring their books to class or even John and me went to the Cubs game.

And even the hoary old double negative (which is an obligatory feature
of degraded tongues like French) seems to be making steady, if slow
progress. We may be only a generation or two from the day when we
will again say, with Shakespeare, "I will not budge for no man's pleasure."
While we may recognize that language does inexorably change,
we cannot always explain the causes or the sequences of each individual change. Sometimes changes move toward simplification, as with
the shedding of vowel distinctions. Other changes tend to regularize
the language, as when we de-Latinize words like medium/media (The
newspapers are one media of communication), or when we abandon

30 / Language and Its Study

dreamt and burnt in favor of the regular forms dreamed and burned. And
some coinages will always reflect the need to represent new inventions,
ideas, or events: quark, simulcast, pulsar, stagflation. Yet there is plenty of
language change which seems to happen spontaneously, sporadically, and without apparent purpose. Why should irregardless substitute for regardless, meaning the same thing? Why should handy distinctions like that between imply and infer be lost? But even if we can
never explain the reasons for such mysterious changesor perhaps
because we can'twe must accept the fact that language does change.
Today, we would certainly be thought odd to call cattle kine, to pronounce saw as saux, or to ask about "thy health," however ordinary such
language might have been centuries ago. Of course, the more recent
changes, and especially the changes in progress, make us most uncomfortable.
But then our sense of the pace of language change is often exaggerated. When we cringe (as do so many of the language critics) at
the sudden reassignment of the word gay to a new referent, we tend
to forget that we can still read Shakespeare. In other words, even if
many conspicuous (and almost invariably lexical) changes are in progress, this doesn't necessarily mean that the language as a whole is
undergoing a rapid or wholesale transformation.
However, once we start looking for language change, it seems to
be everywhere, and we are sorely tempted to overestimate its importance. Sometimes we even discover changes which aren't changes at
all. Various language critics have propounded the notion that we are
being inundated by a host of very new and particularly insidious coinages. Here are some of the most notorious ones, along with the date
of their earliest citation in the Oxford English Dictionary for the meaning
presently viewed as modern and dangerous: you know (1350); anxious
for eager (1742); between you and I (1640); super for good (1850); decimate

for diminish by other than one-tenth (1663); inoperative for nonmechanical phenomena (1631); near-perfect for nearly perfect (1635); host as in to
host a gathering (1485); gifted, as in He gifted his associates (1660); aggravate

for annoy (1611).6

If we find ourselves being aggravated (or annoyed) by any of these
crotchety old neologisms, we can always look to the Mobil Oil Corporation for a comforting discussion of the problem. In one of its selfserving public service magazine ads, Mobil intoned: "Change upsets
people. Always has. Disrupts routine and habit patterns. Demands
constant adaptation. But change is inevitable. And essential. Inability
to change can be fatal." 7 And Mobil inadvertently gives us one last
6

With many thanks to Jim Quinn and his American Tongue and Cheek (New York:
Pantheon, 1981).
7
"Business Is Bound to Change," Mobil Oil advertisement, Chicago Tribune, January
5, 1977.

DANIELS :

Nine Ideas About Language / 31

example of a language change currently in progress: the increasing use

of sentence fragments in formal written English.

32 / Language and Its Study

others three, and so on. Are we, then, hopelessly caught in the grasp
of the language which we happen to grow up speaking? Are all our
ideas about the world controlled by our language, so that our reality
is what we say rather than what objectively, verifiably exists?
The best judgment of linguists on this subject comes down to this:
we are conditioned to some degree by the language we speak, and our
language does teach us habitual ways of looking at the world. But on
the other hand, human adaptability enables us to transcend the limitations of a languageto learn to see the world in new ways and voice
new conceptswhen we must. While it is probably true that some
ideas are easier to communicate in one language than another, both
languages and speakers can change to meet new needs. The grip which
language has on us is firm, but it does not strangle; we make language
more than language makes us.
It is also important to realize that a language is not just an asset
of a culture or group, but of individual human beings. Our native
language is the speech of our parents, siblings, friends, and community. It is the code we use to communicate in the most powerful and
intimate experiences of our lives. It is a central part of our personality,
an expression and a mirror of what we are and wish to be. Our language
is as personal and as integral to each of us as our bodies and our brains,
and in our own unique ways, we all treasure it. And all of us, when
we are honest, have to admit that criticism of the way we talk is hard
not to take personally. This reaction is nothing to be ashamed of: it is
simply a reflection of the natural and profound importance of language
to every individual human being.
To summarize: all human languages and the concept systems
which they embody are efficient in their native speech communities.
The languages of the world also vary in some important ways, so that
people sometimes falsely assume that certain tongues are inherently
superior to others. Yet it is marvelous that these differences exist. It
is good that the Eskimo language facilitates talk about snow, that the
Hopi language supports that culture's view of time, and, I suppose,
that Chicago speech has ample resources for discussing drizzle, wind,
and inept baseball teams.
8. Value judgments about different languages or dialects are mat-

ters of taste. One of the things we seem to acquire right along with
our native tongue is a set of attitudes about the value of other people's
language. If we think for a moment about any of the world's major
languages, we will find that we usually have some ideausually a
prejudice or stereotypeabout it. French is the sweet music of love.
German is harsh, martial, overbearing. The language of Spain is exotic/
romantic. The Spanish of Latin Americans is alien, uneducated. Scandinavian tongues have a kind of silly rhythm, as the Muppet Show's

DANIELS:

Nine Ideas About Language / 33

Swedish chef demonstrates weekly. British English is refined and intelligent. New York dialect (especially on Toity-Toid Street) is crude
and loud. Almost all southern American speakers (especially rural
sheriffs) are either cruelly crafty or just plain dumb. Oriental languages
have a funny, high-pitched, singsong sound. And Black English, well,
it just goes to show. None of these notions about different languages
and dialects says anything about the way these tongues function in
their native speech communities. By definitionby the biological and
social order of thingsthey function efficiently. Each is a fully formed,
logical, rule-governed variant of human speech.
It is easy enough to assert that all languages are equal and efficient
in their own sphere of use. But most of us do not really believe in this
idea, and certainly do not act as if we did. We constantly make judgments about other people and other nations on the basis of the language they use. Expecially when we consider the question of mutually
intelligible American dialects, we are able to see that most ideas about
language differences are purely matters of taste. It isn't that we cannot
understand each other-Southerners, Northerners, Californians, New
Yorkers, blacks, whites, Appalachian folkwith only the slightest effort we can communicate just fine. But because of our history of experiences with each other, or perhaps just out of perversity, we have
developed prejudices toward other people's language which sometimes affect our behavior. Such prejudices, however irrational, generate much pressure for speakers of disfavored dialects to abandon
their native speech for some approved pattern. But as the linguist Einar
Haugen has warned:
And yet, who are we to call for linguistic genocide in the name of efficiency? Let us recall that although a language is a tool and an instrument
of communication, that is not all it is. A language is also a part of one's
personality, a form of behavior that has its roots in our earliest experience.
Whether it is a so-called rural or ghetto dialect, or a peasant language, or
a "primitive" idiom, it fulfills exactly the same needs and performs the
same services in the daily lives of its speakers as does the most advanced
language of culture. Every language, dialect, patois, or lingo is a structurally complete framework into which can be poured any subtlety of
emotion or thought that its users are capable of experiencing. Whatever
it lacks at any given time or place in the way of vocabulary and syntax
can be supplied in very short order by borrowing and imitation from other
languages. Any scorn for the language of others is scorn for those who use it,
and as such is a form of social discrimination. [Emphasis mine.]9

It is not Haugen's purposenor is it mineto deny that social

acceptability and economic success in America may be linked in certain
ways to the mastery of approved patterns of speech. Yet all of us must
9
Einar Haugen, "The Curse of Babel," in Einar Haugen and Morton Bloomfield,
Language as a Human Problem (New York: W. W. Norton, 1974), p. 41.

34 / Language and Its Study

realize that the need for such mastery arises only out of the prejudices
of the dominant speech community and not from any intrinsic shortcomings of nonstandard American dialects.
9. Writing is derivative of speech. Writing systems are always
based upon systems of oral language which of necessity develop first.
People have been talking for at least a half million years, but the earliest
known writing system appeared fewer than 5,000 years ago. Of all the
world's languages, only about 5 percent have developed indigenous
writing systems. In other words, wherever there are human beings,
we will always find language, but not necessarily writing. If language
is indeed a biologically programmed trait of the species, writing does
not seem to be part of the standard equipment.
Although the English writing system is essentially phonemican
attempt to represent the sounds of language in graphic formit is
notoriously irregular and confusing. Some other languages, like Czech,
Finnish, and Spanish, come close to having perfect sound-symbol correspondence: each letter in the writing system stands for one, and only
one, sound. English, unfortunately, uses some 2,000 letters and combinations of letters to represent its forty or so separate sounds. This
causes problems. For example, in the sentence: Did he believe that Caesar
could see the people seize the seas? there are seven different spellings for
the vowel sound I'll. The sentence: The silly amoeba stole the key to the
machine yields four more spellings of the same vowel sound. George
Bernard Shaw once noted that a reasonable spelling of the word fish
might be ghoti: gh as in enough, o as in women, and ti as in nation. In
spite of all its irregularities, however, the English spelling system is
nevertheless phonemic at heart, as our ability to easily read and pronounce nonsense words like mimsy or proat demonstrates.
Writing, like speech, may be put to a whole range of often overlapping uses. And shifts in the level of formality occur in writing just
as they do in talk. An author, like a speaker, must adjust the style of
her message to the audience and the occasion. A woman composing
a scholarly article/for example, makes some systematically different
linguistic choices than those she makes when leaving a note for her
husband on the refrigerator. Both writers and speakers (even good
ones) employ various jargons or specialized vocabularies that seem
comfortable and convenient to the people they are addressing. Rules
change with time in both writing and speech. Most obviously, changes
in speech habits are reflected in writing: today we readily pen words
which weren't even invented ten or a hundred years ago. And even
some of the rules which are enforced in writing after they have been
abandoned in speech do eventually break down. Today, for example,
split infinitives and sentence fragments are increasingly accepted in
writing. Our personal tastes and social prejudices, which often guide

DANIELS :

Nine Ideas About Language / 35

our reactions to other people's speech, can also dictate our response
to other people's writing.
Our beliefs about writing are also bound up with our literary tradition. We have, come to revere certain works of literature and exposition which have "stood,the test of time," which speak across the
centuries to successive generations of readers. These masterpieces, like
most enduring published writing, tend to employ what Joos would
call formal and frozen styles of language. They were written in such
language, of course, because their authors had to accommodate the
subject, audience, and purpose at handand the making of sonnets
and declarations of independence generally calls for considerable linguistic formality. Given our affection for these classics, we quite naturally admire not only their content but their form. We find ourselves
feeling that only in the nineteenth or sixteenth century could writers
"really use the language" correctly and beautifully. Frequently, we
teach this notion in our schools, encouraging students to see the language of written literature as the only true and correct style of English.
We require students not only to mimic the formal literary style in their
writing, but even to transplant certain of its features into their speech
in both cases without reference to the students' subject, audience, or
purpose. All of this is not meant to demean literature or the cultivation
of its appreciation among teenagers. It simply reminds us of how the
mere existence of a system of writing and a literature can be a conservative influence on the language. The study, occasionally the official
worship, of language forms that are both old and formal may retard
linguistic changes currently in progress, as well as reinforce our mistaken belief that one style of language is always and truly the best.
The preceding nine ideas about language are not entirely new.
Marty of them have been proclaimed by loud, if lonely, voices in centuries long past. It has only been in the last seventy or eighty years,
however, that these ideas have begun to form a coherent picture of
how language works, thanks to the work of the descriptive and historical linguists. It is their research which has been, I hope, accurately
if broadly summarized here.
A look at the history of past crises offered a general kind of reassurance about the present language panic. It suggested that such
spasms of insecurity and intolerance are a regular, cyclical feature of
the human chronicle, and result more from social and political tensions
than from actual changes in the language. The review of research presented in this section broadens that perspective and deflates the urgency of the 1983-model literary crisis in some other ways. It shows
us that our language cannot "die" as long as people speak it; that
language change is a healthy and inevitable process; that all human
languages are rule governed, ordered, and logical; that variations be-

36 / Language and Its Study

tween different groups of speakers are normal and predictable; that

all speakers employ a variety of speech forms and styles in response
to changing social settings; and that most of our attitudes about language are based upon social rather than linguistic judgments.
And so, if we are to believe the evidence of historical and linguistic
research, our current language crisis seems rather curious. This is a
crisis which is not critical, which does not actually pose the dangers
widely attributed to it. If anything, the crisis is merely a description
of linguistic business as usual, drawn by the critics in rather bizarre
and hysterical strokes. It seems fair to ask at this point: What's the
problem?*

FOR DISCUSSION AND REVIEW

1. In presenting his "nine ideas about language," Daniels attempts to
dispel some commonly held but inaccurate beliefs about language. List
as many of these myths as you can. How successful is Daniels in dis
pelling them?
2. As Daniels notes, children learn relatively late the "rules" about the
kinds of speech that are appropriate in various circumstances. From your
own experience, give some examples of children's use of language that,
given the social context, was inappropriate.
3. You probably would describe a particular eventfor example, a
party, a camping trip, an evening with a frienddifferently to different
people. Jot down the way you would tell a good friend about some event.
Then write down the way you would describe the same occurrence to
your parents. When you compare the two accounts, what differences do
you find? Are they the differences that Daniels leads you to expect?
4. Daniels believes that most people have "some ideausually a prej
udice or stereotype"about different languages and dialects. Define the
terms prejudice and stereotype. Then test Daniels's theory by asking five
people what they think of (a) the languages and dialects, or (b) the speak
ers of the languages and dialects, that Daniels mentions on pp. 32-33.
Study the responses and describe any prejudices or stereotypes that you
find.

* Editors' note: Each of the nine ideas presented by Daniels is treated more extensively elsewhere in this book. For idea 1, see Part 2. For idea 2, see Parts 4, 5, and 6.
For idea 3, see Parts 2, 4, 5, and 6. For idea 4, see Part 7. For idea 5, see Part 7. For idea
6, see Part 8. For idea 7, see Part 7. For idea 8, see Part 7. For idea 9, see Part 9.