LL-L: "Language maintenance" LOWLANDS-L, 03.MAR.2001 (02) [E]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 03.MAR.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Criostoir O Ciardha [paada_please at yahoo.co.uk]
Subject: LL-L: "Language maintenance" LOWLANDS-L, 03.MAR.2001 (01) [E]

A chairde,

Thank you to Sandy and to Colin for their considered
and constructive responses. Much appreciated.

> However, this doesn't preclude the usefulness of a
> _written_ standard. After all, nobody speaks exactly
> how they write - the capabilites of unilinear text
> are simply not up to representing all the subtleties
> of spoken language.

To a certain extent I agree with Sandy; I oscillate
between approval of a written standard as conventional
necessity (if we forego abject theorising for a
moment) and denigrating it as an instrument of the
very statism I derided in my previous post.

In the context of my contexts for "bidialectalism" and
"multidialectalism" expounded in my last post, I would
argue that there need not be a preclusion of multiple
written forms of a tongue, appropriate to the way that
tongue is spoken, faithful and accurate. Whilst
clearly over-burdening unilinear text with cumbersome
diacritics to represent *every* nuance of a speech
might be ridiculous, it is not the case that multiple
written forms, unstandardised in any way, are
untenable. Consider the situation of "English" today:
not only will a person comptent in their "English
dialect" (I use the term for want of a better)
understand written "standard English" but will also be
able to comprehend, say, Lancashire or Yorkshire
"dialect" poetry without much difficulty.

This is of course what I discussed last time:
installed feelings of inability. Most people do not
have enough faith in themselves after their
socialisation at school and do not believe they are
able to "decipher" anything other than "standard
English". I would argue that this imbedded statism is
used to maintain a status quo of powerlessness
vis-a-vis centre-peripherary. If we look at the
success of Irvine Welsh's 1995 book Trainspotting we
see how the "incomprehensible" can be understood by
millions of purchasers apparently only competent in a
rigid "standard English". The success of Trainspotting
with its pidginised Scots shows that the public is
entirely capable of understanding entirely new forms
of written speech that have no tradition - the
language used in Trainspotting is neither Scots nor
English but a mixture of both depending on the
narrator.

Therefore I would conclude that the only difficulty in
using multiple written forms is the ingrained feelings
of incapability that, in any case, are rendered null
and void as soon as the incapable comes into contact
with the local form and realises it isn't at all
incomprehensible. Perhaps this is linguistic
anarchism?

> Note that _all_ written communication is an
> artifice,
> it doesn't mean it's a bad thing.

Indeed. But human beings are not artifices and yet
they are forced to become that when they use a speech
that is not their own and yet is presented as such.

> I think it's a lot more to do with the sheer
> usefulness of having a widespread standard.
> Widespread standard languages have since Caxton's
> time been the key to better careers and more
> accessible education, and the idea that this is
> "oppression" is a bit odd when it's what most of the
> population want - if English were abolished in Welsh
> or Scottish schools there would be an outcry even
> amongst Welsh and Scots speaking parents.

Useful to whom, precisely? To the economy? It is also
a fact that tongues are beaten out of existence for
"economic" reasons - this is also a facet of the
extension of the state cultural monopoly and presence
into all things. Most "dialect areas" have their own
economies which the state seeks to extirpate to
increase its own central economy. The situation with
Scots and Welsh is hardly different: one might argue
that the cession of Scotland and Wales (and Cornwall)
from an English economic area is only detrimental
insofar as the Scots and Welsh allow it to be (I am
reminded of states such as Liechtenstein and Iceland
that appear to have very little "economic chance" but
defy all critics to have the highest GDP per capita in
the world). But this is a question of nationalism and
not pertinent to this list.

It is often the case that economic criteria are used
to justify the voracity of killer languages such as
"standard English" (or, rather, "American English"
these days). This is not something, I feel, that
language enthusiasts - most of whose tongues are
themselves under threat from linguistic dispossession
- should promote nor even entertain. As has been said
before, if economics rules the world then we may as
well all give up our "irrelevant" struggles and
discard the "scurf" of "non-international" speech and
all speak "American English" and that alone. That
ultimately means Scots, Low Saxon, Limburgs, Zeeuws et
al should be herded onto linguistic reservations and
isolated until they die out swiftly. Clearly this is
not what we want.

> Standard Finnish is unlikely to become anyone's
> native tongue, because there is no
> stigma whatsoever attached to "arkikieli" (everyday
> language) and, indeed, the use of "kirjakieli" (book
> language) in everyday discourse is actually
> stigmatised, and regarded as pretentious or
> eccentric even among the educated classes.

This is precisely this equilibrium I would like to see
replace the current statism and rolling
imperialisation of everyday speech, everywhere. To
regress to the issue of literacy and a written
standard (discussed above) we must understand *why* we
wish to create a written standard: ostensibly, to
write. However, is it not the case that very few
people these days spend as much time writing as the
small literati who make it the defining feature of
their existence (ourselves perhaps included in the
latter)? It is not necessary for people to be
literate: they can communicate via speech. Speech is
largely obligatory.

I am not decrying literacy - that would be absurd -
but I am rather making the point that literacy
features very little in everyday lives. In this era of
compressed literacy, heralded by mobiles phones and a
type of ideogramising of phonetic speech (i.e., "u"
for "you" and "r" for "are"; "ne1" for "anyone" and so
forth) is *absolute literacy* really that relevant or
is it an academic issue? Presently the mass of
"standard English" literates in the world do not
observe linguistic regularities and proprieties such
as "its" versus "it's" and other possessive forms. It
hardly impedes their ability to communicate their
everyday speech in a written form, despite how
thornily pedantic academics may get about the subject.

People in the street make and break a tongue. What
they speak and write remain the true arbiters of
linguistics; anything that they find irrelevant is
ignored and made obselete - and rightly so. Otherwise
we might all be linguistic automatons speaking
unerring staid "standards" devoid of all diversity and
verve. We would all do well to bear this in mind as we
go about our business defining what is "right" and
what is "wrong."

> I think the power of these [taboo] words to
> shock and offend is best kept for situations where
> that is the desired effect: if they are used
> casually, they lose their power, and then what is
> left?

Without wishing to offend Colin, I would regard this
as linguistic protectionism and sociolinguistically
moribund. There is also a double standard that I will
return to.

In replying to this I require clarification as to
whether Colin is referring to everyday speech or a
written form of a language. I would argue that
swearwords are a valuable facet of a tongue and their
ubiquity need not compromise their power: one must
recognise situational variance and context. I would
argue that it is absurd to try to generalise with
swearwords and imply that their raison d'etre is
merely to shock and offend: that is the statist
interpretation and as such I would oppose it for the
political reasons I raised in my last post. To
delegitimise swearwords as vehicles everyday speech
and description in the same way as non-taboo
superlatives clearly disadvantages and disenfranchises
the self-esteem of groups such as the working class
(or "dialect speakers") who use them as an integral of
their tongues. It is akin to suddenly making illegal a
whole swathe of lexicon simply as one group within a
state dislike it. Is that not linguistic oppression?
It is also ludicrous that one group is expected to
inhibit its native tongue because the ruling class
deems it uncouth. This is the mentality that outlaws
languages and, in extremis, the very people who speak
them. We see in the "expletivising" of certain tongues
in insitution of linguistic apartheid designed, I
would argue, to complement the socio-economic
oppression evidenced in the marginalisation and the
peripheralisation of local areas.

Further, as terms such as (if I may be forgiven)
"cock", "arse" et al have non-partisan and
non-offensive "scientific" counterparts - in the cases
cited, "penis" and "anus/sphincter" - what is one
trying to achieve? If swearwords *were* extirpated, it
seems to me that these "safe" terms might simply
become "new swearwords" - and so on, in circles.

The double standard evinced is that one group's native
speech is stigmatised whilst another's is promoted.
The fact remains that what one group finds offensive
another group cannot do without reasonably. Offence is
a learnt reaction in most cases; I very rarely find a
speaker who uses swearwords in everyday speech
(without meaning to cause offence) ever doing the same
to the speech of another group. It might help us all
if we learnt a little linguistic tolerance instead of
merely prohibiting modes of speech which we ourselves
do not use as our mother tongue.

Imagine two scenarios: 1) swearwords are used in the
presence of a person who does not employ swearwords as
an integral of their own speech. The non-swearing
speaker demands that the swearing stop. 2) a "foreign
language" is used in the presence of a person who does
not use the speech in question. The outsider demands
that the speakers switch to a language s/he
understands. Which of these two situations is
linguistic chauvinism? Answer: they both are. To me
there is no difference. If offence is learnt it can be
unlearnt.

I doubt anyone on this list would disagree that all
forms of speech, whether offensive or not, are valid
as methods of communication. "Bad language" remains
that - someone's language. And who are we to deny
someone the right to use their native tongue, in any
circumstance?

Go raibh maith agaibh,

Críostóir.

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