Library's review
And yet, I sit before you today a (slightly) reformed critic, thanks to The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of 'Proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park by Jack Lynch. Lynch has written an eminently readable review of the ever-changing English language. Maybe it's my bachelor's degree in history, but I found his core thesis compelling: English usage and spelling has been shifting constantly since the dawn of the language. The English we now think of as "correct" has gotten that way through popular usage, and not because of any inherent rightness or royal proclamation.
Which is not to say that myriad people have not tried to dictate to the masses about how they should speak and write — heavens, how they have tried! Lexicographer's Dilemma is organized nicely, with chapters examining successive eras in the war against 'improper' English. The cumulative effect of reading about all of the smoke-shoveling (as Oliver Wendell Holmes might have termed it) was a metaphorical throwing up of my hands. Maybe Lynch is right, and the only thing that matters is whether we understand the meaning of what someone says or writes, and not whether the speaker/writer used the proper verb conjugation or commonly accepted spelling.
In fact, Lynch has a lot to say about the futility of prescriptivists (such being the term for linguists who think matters of language and grammar are a black-and-white affair). It's clear he is much more at home in the gray area occupied by descriptivists (who are more interested simply in documenting how people are actually using language, regardless of 'right' or 'wrong'). After a few chapters, I found myself agreeing with him, which frankly came as a relief. Single-handedly upholding the standards of good and proper English is exhausting, you know.
And as long as I stay away from Internet message boards (LibraryThing's Talk excepted) and protesters' signs at political rallies, my blood pressure should be just fine.
Collection
Description
In its long history, the English language has had many lawmakers--those who have tried to regulate or otherwise organize the way we speak. The Lexicographer's Dilemma offers the first narrative history of these endeavors and shows clearly that what we now regard as the only "correct" way to speak emerged out of specific historical and social conditions over the course of centuries. As historian Jack Lynch has discovered, every rule has a human history and the characters peopling his narrativeare as interesting for their obsession as for their erudition: the sharp-tongued satirist Jonathan Swift, who called for a government-sponsored academy to issue rulings on the language; the polymath Samuel Johnson, who put dictionaries on a new footing; the eccentric Hebraist Robert Lowth, the first modern to understand the workings of biblical poetry; the crackpot linguist John Horne Tooke, whose bizarre theories continue to baffle scholars; the chemist and theologian Joseph Priestly, whose political radicalism prompted violent riots; the ever-crotchety Noah Webster, who worked to Americanize the English language; the long-bearded lexicographer James A. H. Murray, who devoted his life to a survey of the entire language in the Oxford English Dictionary; and the playwright George Bernard Shaw, who worked without success to make English spelling rational. Grammatical "rules" or "laws" are not like the law of gravity, or even laws against murder and theft--they're more like rules of etiquette, made by fallible people and subject to change. Witty, smart, full of passion for the world's language, The Lexicograher's Dilemma will entertain and educate in equal measure.… (more)