Comments on: Wicked, man! Dr. Curzan’s take on slang

By: jeremy battaglia

jeremy battaglia — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 02:07:15 +0000

Interesting, I too attended Dr. Curzan’s lecture. I too thought it was interesting. Who is anyone to say what is proper or correct. I am currently taking Modern English, it is basically a linguistics class. We have one text book, written by, guess who, Dr. Curzan. I feel I have a love/hate relationship with her. You bring up a point that I just wrote an essay about. You said, “We are taught from a young age to question things like science and books that we read, but why do we never think to question the dictionary?”. This is a wonderful question. I have discovered there are basically two schools of thought about language, prescriptive and descriptive.
The prescriptivist clings to rules of grammar. They are the ones that hold up the dictionary as sacred truth. A descriptivist essentially describes language and how it is used. The classic example differentiating the two involves the definition of the word peruse. If you ask most people, and I actually took a survey, they would give a definition of peruse something as follows: To glance over, look at quickly. However the original dictionary definition, in fact my dictionary says: to examine or consider with attention and in detail. (Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary. G & C Merriam Company. Springfield, Massachusetts. 1980.) So, over time, the definition has changed. A prescriptivist would argue that the definition is correct. A descriptivist would say that if the majority of people using the word, agree upon a different meaning, they are correct. So as Dr. Curzan pointed out, the notion of correctness is a problem in linguistics. It is a very interesting idea.

By: My Comments | Brad's Pedablog

My Comments | Brad's Pedablog — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 03:25:03 +0000

[...] Wicked, man! Dr. Curzan’s take on slang - on 12 Apr 2008 at 5:59 pm [...]

By: mypedablogy

mypedablogy — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 01:59:30 +0000

Dude, what a jamin’ article yo. I’m super stoked about slang! Well, that’s probably taking things a bit far, but I see what you’re saying here. In a way I’m kind of torn. I know I’m 26 years old, in college, about to be an English teacher, and should probably be 100% in the descriptivist camp. But I’m really struggling with it. I want to be new school. Truly, I do. But there’s some part of my inner voice I just can’t turn off; it’s the part that says, “Did you hear that? That imbecile just ended his sentence with a preposition. He must be so embarrassed.” I don’t know what that makes me. Does that make me an archaic fossilized dinosaur of an English teacher? Or perhaps just a stuffy, arrogant prig? I mean, I’m not saying that everyone should be speaking the Queen’s English, but where do you draw the line. I know that Standard American English exists as a prestige dialect, and probably performs a kind of social gate-keeping function. Still, some part of me thinks that slang has time and a place. I’m just not ready to say that all language change is good, or even neutral. What do you think?