The Nature of Our Language

The Nature of Our Language

Introductory

The man who said that language was given to us to conceal our thoughts was a diplomat and a cynic. Admittedly, diplomatists, politicians and propagandists find it expedient to put what they have to say in language which can be interpreted in different ways; and there are occasions when most of us ordinary folk are glad to take advantage of the opportunity language gives us to disguise our true feelings or intentions. But if this were the sole objective of language, or if we were to use it with this objective habitually, the confusion of Babel would be worse confounded, and ordinary human relations would soon be reduced to complete chaos, until a more reliable form of oral and written communication was devised.

The Instrument of Language

No, the cynical diplomat I referred to just now was not really in earnest; in fact, he was only drawing attention to an accidental or incidental defect in an instrument which has been devised and forged by the labour of generations to enable people to understand one another. Language indeed is the best instrument for intelligible communication we possess. It is not perfect by any means; it has it's defects and its drawbacks. It's drawbacks are naturally inherent in the spoken and written word; we may not be able to remove them, but we can do our best to neutralize them. But it's defects and shortcomings we can all help to remove. We can each of us in our own humble way help improve and perfect language, with the objective of making it fuller, clearer and more rational means of reaching mutual understanding.

All this is obvious enough, but I want to draw your attention to it because of it's implications. Language is the ordinary, common medium for the interchange of thoughts between one person and another. It presupposes the existence of two persons- the speaker and his hearer, or the writer and his reader; and the speaker's or writer's objective is not fully attained until his hearer or reader has heard or read what he has to say and has understood it in the sense which he meant to convey.

Now let us look for a moment at another common medium of interchange, money. Money is the medium of interchange of goods between buyer and seller. Unless both buyer and seller have agreed to accept the current coin of the realm at it's face value, there can be no satisfactory business between them. Money is of no particular value in itself, but only represents value; it is a sign or symbol which people have agreed to accept as universally representative of a certain value for the time being.

It is much the same with language. Language consists of words, and words are coins, counters, tokens, signs, symbols- what you will- which people have agreed to accept as representing i.e., meaning, certain things. Words themselves are of no particular value- utilitarian, aesthetic, or emotional- apart from their meaning or significance to the people who use them and people to whom they are used. It would be interesting to speculate how words and the sounds we make when we utter them came to be associated with the things they are used to represent. Many theories have been put forward, but none of them, as far as I am aware, gives a wholly satisfactory explanation. However the associations of certain words with certain things arose, no one would dispute the fact that the retention of words and the forging of new ones are a matter for the people who make use of them. I mean that if people generally refuse to make use of certain word to represent a certain thing, then that word will drop out of use or be used for something else; and if the need to refer to that thing is still felt, then another word will soon be associated with it and gain general acceptance. In fact we may say that the association of words with things is a matter of convention, custom, or fashion.

How Our Language Has Changed

Fashion, customs and conventions much like the weather are subject to constant change. Some words have an emphemeral existence only; some, long used, drop out of favour; some old words are revived; others remain, but their significance is changed, and new words are constantly being adopted for the many new things in a world which becomes more complicated, every day. Much the same occurs in the pronunciation, spelling and formation of words. Three or four hundred years ago, for instance, spelling was the proverbial “boggy man” it is today. And people spelt more or less as their fancy took them. To go back further still, there was a time when English was a highly inflected language, with numerous conjugations and declensions such as the student of Latin has to master. Fortunately, the English language- or, rather, the English people- has discarded most of these cramping inflexions, with the result that it has gained immeasurably in flexibility and elasticity, and is far better adapted to give expression to complicated notions and fine shades of meaning. Similar changes have taken place in the structure of language, in the way words are put together; the sense of a passage depends no less, it depends perhaps more, on the way it's words are put together than on the meaning or implication of the words themselves; so ugly, awkward and cumbrous expressions drop out of use- no matter how “correct” grammatically they may be. For Hundreds of years now, we have, on the whole to our great gain, refrained from attempting to establish “radical purity” in our language. We have not hesitated to borrow from dead or living foreign languages words which we felt could be put to profitable use in our everyday tongue.

Who Are Arbiters?

All these processes have been and are, still going on, and their fate is determined in the last resort by popular favour. Lexicographers, philologists, grammarians, and schoolmasters may try to interduce elements of stability in vocabulary or construction, to fix meaning, to set up standards of purity and correctness, to discourage hybrids or alien borrowings or slang, to ventilate their pet theories or fads, but in the long run it is popular acceptance that decides.

Popular acceptance decides, and rightly so, because the people who use the language ought to have the final say, and popular judgement is not as capricious as some people would like us to believe.

In this country popular opinion in linguistic, as in other matters, has been characteristically “radical – conservatism”; it has conserved the old as long as it has served a purpose- whether that purpose has been a convenience or merely romantic or sentimental- and it has adopted and rejected or modified the new on similar principles.

Only in this way can vitality be preserved, combined with steady growth and continual adoption to the needs of the present. Fixation and stability spell stagnation and decay.

The arbiters of usage and taste in language today are a larger and more comprehensive body than they were two or even one hundred years ago. Then they were the comparative few who possessed the advantages of literary education based on the study of the classics, and who almost alone had the ability and leisure to read and appreciate the writings of those who had contributed to making our language a beautiful and efficient instrument. Today the advantages of education are much more widely enjoyed; leisure to read and listen is no longer the monopoly of privileged few and is rapidly becoming the rightful prerogative of the many, and both the written and spoken word are exchanged with far greater frequency. The responsibility, therefore, for the preservation of all evolution on sound lines has now shifted on to the shoulders of the everyday man in the street.

It is to him this book is address, in the hope that he will realize this responsibility. He has excellent traditions, which, if he is wise, he will allow to guide, but not to bind him. He has, I believe, a natural language “sense” or genius which intuitively leads him to the right direction; and he has sturdy common sense, which will help him to steer a middle course between fantastic innovation and die-hard conservatism.

Genius and intuition are not substitutes for, but only aids to, knowledge; and if they are to be effective, they must be informed. Information is what this book tries to give- information and, the writer trusts, enlightenment on the constitution and structure of our written and spoken language as it exists today. It is written in the hope that with increased knowledge will come the determination to do nothing that will impair, and everything that will enhance, the usefulness and beauty of a language of which we are privileged heirs; that this and future generations will set their face resolutely against obscurity and ugliness and the blurring of fine shades of meaning in the written, and faulty articulation and any form of slovenliness in the spoken language.