IP is over the quota
IP is over the quota
As an English speaker, whether native or non-native, do you find yourself correcting other people when they speak English? Do you tut when you see your friends misspell their Facebook statuses or when you see poor punctuation or grammar on signs and notices? Do you perhaps even take pleasure in correcting and improving other people's written efforts? If so, then this book is for you.
Combining broad historical account with entertaining and insightful anecdotes, The Language Wars illuminates the reader as to the main philosophical and linguistic arguments that had an impact on both the language itself and the way that it was perceived and used by English speakers.
The content of the book is both surprising and thought-provoking in many ways: it questions what we think of as 'proper English' and why such a distinction should matter. Hitchings believes that by using 'proper English' and correcting that of others we are all the 'self-appointed guardians' of that form of English, which otherwise would be open to transformation and diversification. But what we are not aware of perhaps is that many of the rules that the more pedantic among us strive to enforce are not only arbitrary but often verge on illogical. The opening chapter of the book, for example, deals with the split infinitive (as used in the Star Trek opening titles in the form 'to boldly go'), a form much derided by some academics. Hitchings explains that the split infinitive is seen as undesirable, the reason for this harks back to Latin, in which infinitives are always made up of a single word and cannot, therefore, be split. Forcing our language to resemble Latin is, of course, an impossible task, given its history and linguistic development. Moreover, allowing split infinitives to exist actually encourages more choice for adverbial placement and thus allows us greater freedom and subtlety of expression.
Hitchings' book is full of insights that have the power to profoundly alter the way we see the English language and the rules that we follow in order to preserve its 'proper' form.
The only weakness of Hitching's account is perhaps his unwillingness to take a more comparative approach and compare English with other languages. Hitchings writes, for example: 'English -speakers are touchy about questions of usage. This sort of touchiness is not uncommon among speakers of other languages, but English is the most contested major language.' No further explanation is given at this point, and Hitchings does not always provide us with the reasons that led him to draw certain conclusions, he sometimes comes across as not being sufficiently democratic in his approach, and too certain of his own judgment. I think that valuable insights could have been obtained from further comparative work, for example, examining the orthographic agreements recently implemented in Germany and the Portuguese speaking world, which have changed and simplified many spellings. And thus, perhaps, revealing a different attitude to language and its development than we have in the English speaking world.
Overall though, this is an impressive and enjoyable work and a must-read for all those 'self- appointed guardians of the English language' who wish to know the background and raison-d'?tre of the 'proper English' they are using and promoting.
Juliet Gryspeerdt is a junior project manager for Rosetta Translation, a leading translation company in London. Rosetta specialises in English translation and in Braille translation services.
