I think that there is definitely prejudice in language that goes beyond name-calling. Prescriptivists judge people who use slang or speak in dialects which make them sound uneducated, thinking that everyone should talk the way they do. However, descriptivist also judge others based on language. They judge the prescriptivists, thinking they are snobbish and too unwilling to change.
I raised my hand in class as being somewhat perscriptivist, but now that I think about it, I think I fall somewhere in the middle. There are definitely certain words, like "ain't", that make me cringe, and when it comes to written language I am a prescriptivist. But I use slang all the time, and I think it adds a fun variation to spoken language. I think that if everyone talked like we write essays, language would be pretty boring.
There will never be one form of English that everyone speaks the same way as everyone else. I think that we just need to be tolerant of each other, and stop thinking that we know better than someone else who we think speak the wrong way.
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5 comments:
I totally agree with you. From the beginning of English you can tell it couldn't be preserved. With English you can take a world and make a new world with total different meaning.
I like the way "spoken" english was specified in this post. I agree spoken language is always going to change and evolve among society.
I think your points are very eye opening and thought provoking. I like what you said about slang and how it adds variation to the language.
I also liked your idea of being tolerant of one another.
I agree with this totally. No one speaks the same. We all have our own way of speaking and there's not really a right or a wrong way. Either way everyone has their own opinion i think mine just falls in the middle.
I agree that there will never be one dialect of English that is spoken by everyone and that we should be tolerant of the differences that we hear when others speak. The differences that each person uses in their speech gives it variety, and it is less boring.
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