Re: In Defense of Bourgeois Pedants

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

Rick Kirkham wrote:

> Another value that justifies prescriptive grammars: We want to communicate
> not just with contemporaries, but we desire also to read the works of the
> long dead, and send messages to future centuries. Prescriptive rules slow
> the inevitable evolution of language and thereby stretch out the span of
> time in which we can communicate. We can read the original documents
> surrounding the Salem witch trials (easily) and Shakespeare (not so
> easily!), both written circa 1600. But an English speaker living then could
> make no sense of any English written 400 years before: it was a foreign
> language. It is the advent of prescriptive grammar that gives us the power
> to read, and be read, across so many centuries.

I suspect that you make too great a claim for the value of
prescriptive grammars. While it is true that a modern speaker could
manage to communicate with an English speaker of five hundred years
ago, it is also true that a speaker from the early Thirteenth
century could communicate fairly easily with a speaker from the
Eighth Century. Also, Shakespeare or Marlowe could communicate more
easily with us than either could with Chaucer or the Gawain poet,
because the period between 1400 and about 1600 marked the last great
influences on English: the mingling of English with the French of
the aristocracy, and the renewed interest in Latin and Greek that
came with the Renaissance (as an aside, the reason that Shakespeare
managed to coin or at least was the first to use so many words was
that he lived at the end of these great changes, and was therefore
in a unique position to influence the language). I suspect that the
realative stability of the last 500 years has more to do with a lack
of major influences on the language since that time.

 
> You are going to be a lot of fun to have on this list, Chris. But I won't
> get much work done with you around! :-) Now as for your use of "bourgeoisie"
> as a put-down, I have some bad news: the beatniks are not the latest thing,
> jazz isn't selling well (Daddio!), and as for the revolution of the
> proletariat . . . um, how shall I put this . . . well, have you been to
> Berlin lately?

Joking aside, "bourgeoisie" is a term that is in fairly common use
among social historians of all political convictions; I have read a
"History of the Bourgeoisie" in four or five volumes that is full of
discussions of the emergence of the weekend, tourism, universal
education, and all sorts of things that have nothing to do with
Marxism. The refers to the culture that arose with the Industrial
Revolution in which a substantial middle class began to emerge. 

In other words, it's descriptive, not perscriptive :-)

-- 
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7189 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com

"The squire has a piece of paper that says he owns the land,
The bishop has a bible that says our souls are damned,
Mackenzie had a printing press, it's soaking in the bay,
And if Mackenzie comes again, there will be hell to pay."
-Dennis Lee, "Mackenzie"

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