Do You Speak American . What Speech Do We Like Best? . Correct American . Gatekeeping (2023)

Barring The Gates Of Language
“You say po-tay-toe, and I say po-tah-toe…” Our appearance, manner andthe way we speak broadcast a social message. Language gatekeepers –often self-appointed – judge how we speak. John Fought explains howlinguiststry to help us be language-neutral. ReadSummary

As we go about our lives, we move in and out of many social groups,each associated with specific places and characteristic activities —school, work, family, shopping, worship, soccer and more. For each ofus, this dense network of associations formsour society. Every detailof our selves and our lives — our appearance, speech, activities andassociations — is perceived by others as an emblem of who we were, whatwe have become and where we fit in. The social profile of each personis recognizable and unique, like a fingerprint.

The ways we speak also reflect this combination of social similarityand diversity in fine detail. Our speech reflects national, regional,occupational and educational differences (among others) via complexdifferences in accent, vocabulary and grammar. Our language is both atool for communication and a part of our personal image, like ourphysical appearance, behavior and belongings.

Language helps signify who we are in society

Language has always helped to signify who we are in society, sometimesserving as a basis for exclusion. A Bible story tells how a password, shibboleth,was chosen because the enemy didn’t use the sh sound.“Shibboleth” has since come to signify an emblem of belief ormembership, an identifiable sign of those who must stay outside thegate.

Societies use shibboleths in many ways. Indeed, speech is aconvenient stand-in for other kinds of stigma that we recognize but donot openly acknowledge. For example, in our society, discriminationbased on appearance, race, sex, religion or national origin is TABOOand often illegal, whereas discrimination based on particular detailsof language use by men or women, people of different religions, peoplefrom other countries and so on is often allowed. Thus, multiplenegatives such as He ain’t got none are stigmatized as“illogical” when used in African-American Vernacular English (but notin standard French, Il n'en a pas, or Spanish, No tienenada.). Double modals such as He might could are thought asan amusing "Redneck" trait, but similar formations such as I shoulddo are upper crust British English. We can reject a person for theuse of stigmatized language without feeling that we’re prejudicedagainst the person or their group. It’s just their languagethat’s unacceptable…right? We wouldn't want someone at our school/placeof worship/workplace to sound like that, would we? It might leave a badimpression.

You Say Po-tay-to, I Say Po-tah-to

Differences in patterns of language use are normal, not evidence ofsocial decline. Diversity is everywhere —in the most educatedspeech communities and in languages that have never been written down.In fact, we learn long before formal instruction that different speechsituations call for different styles. For example, we have specialfamily words and phrases that we don’t use with outsiders (Could youget that, poopsie?). Our jobs also call for certain ways ofspeaking; colleagues call me John or Dr. Fought, not dude or sweetie.Each form of address calls attention to the relationship betweenspeaker and addressee. Mix them up and people will notice.

Your perception of each situation helps you decide whatto say and how to say it

If you use a stigmatized way of speaking at work, that too will benoticed. However, what is stigmatized is different from person toperson, from job to job, and from place to place. Using doublemodals “might could” make you an official "Redneck," but in theMountain South, that’s a plus, not a problem. Saying runninginstead of runnin’ may not raise an eyebrow in some schools,but in others it makes you "Teacher’s Pet." It may even make you soundWhite. Your perception of each situation helps you decide what to sayand how to say it.

A significant part of learning a job is learning its technicallanguage. Ask any specialist. Often the biggest part of walking thewalk is talking the talk. One person’s five-sixteenths offset wrench isanother person’s twisty thing. What’s more, the mechanic asking forthat wrench might not be a man. To me, your plum-colored raw silkmandarin-collared poet blouse with French cuffs is just a purple shirt— but to sell clothes, I’d better learn the distinctions.

Don’t Use No Bad Language

All social activities involving speech call for expert knowledge ofwhen and how to talk. We know much more about this than we realize —much more than has been studied or described. Language gatekeepers havesingled out some aspects of the many patterns of variation as groundsfor action. Their choices — and the reasons given for them —often don't stand up to inspection. For example, multiplenegatives are said (wrongly) to violate logic.

However, in some groups and situations, they are expected — andeveryone understands them perfectly. Natural languages never have beengoverned by logic. When Mick Jagger sings that he can’t get nosatisfaction, he clearly doesn’t mean that he can get some.

A complex pattern of influences keeps the linguistic pot bubbling.Variation is everywhere. Change never stops. Language gatekeeperscannot control an ever-changing world of diversity. It’s hard on them,because in the gatekeepers' world, variation means error and changemeans decline.

What’s more, the very notion of a single standard of correctness inlanguage is quite recent. “Correctness” is based solely on a purist’sown notion of what is socially or culturally correct: if it's not in,it must be out. A language purist works from a list of exceptionsto the rule, ordinary speakers follow a hierarchy of patternsthat reveal analogical similarities.

Just as no two people live the same life, so each of usspeaks differently

Just as no two people live the same life, so each of us speaksdifferently. It starts with vocabulary and pronunciation. Somedifferences are regional, such as skillet vs. frying pan.Or Mary, merry, marry. Do they sound the same or different?What about cot and caught? Grammatical patterns arealso diverse and constantly changing. Compare your irregular verbs withthose of someone else, and you’ll find specific differences withingeneral patterns. (Linguists who have traced the history of verbs inEnglish and closely related Germanic languages have found evidence ofsuch diversity and innovation dating back to the earliest survivingdocuments.) Modern speakers in England and in North America use so manycompeting patterns that the same verb stem shows different forms ofpast and perfect tense in different regions. Differences even show upwithin the same region. Given all this, it’s impossible to justify apurist’s list of ‘correct’ irregularities on linguistic grounds.

The great American linguist Leonard Bloomfield observed many yearsago that the child who learns to say I seen it has learned justas much as the one who says I saw it. Both of these forms areirregular. The least common American past-tense form of see isthe regularized form I seed it. These so-called mistakes shedmore light on language than “standard” forms, because what’s going onis clearly not ignorance, laziness or poor schooling. The pattern ofpresent, past and perfect of see, seen and seen inplace of see, saw and seen reveals that speakers don’tput irregular verbs together just by combining a stem and a suffix, theway they form many thousands of English regular verbs. Among theroughly 180 ‘approved’ irregular verbs now listed in grammars ofAmerican English, there is no verb with an -en suffix in thepast as well as the perfect form.

Where does I seen it come from?

So where does I seen it come from? It follows a more generalpattern implicit in all the regular verbs and in many irregularones as well. All of the regular verbs, such as need, needed,,and about 75 of the irregular ones, such as lead, led, led,have the same form in the past and present perfect, but a differentform in the present. The see, seen, seen formation fits thismore inclusive pattern, which can be stated as present differs frompast and perfect; the past is like the perfect minus 'have.' [See Englishirregular verbs for more discussion and some experiments.]

To understand why gatekeepers feel they must judge these and othervariants, think of overlapping social groups of all sizes as surroundedby boundaries, with members inside and everyone else outside. Many ofthese invisible boundaries subdivide large societies, and each boundaryhas two sides. Schoolchildren establish and maintain social boundariesby teasing and rejecting outsiders and favoring and accepting insiders.As we grow older, the groupings become more complex. Enforcement growsmore subtle. Are these the right clothes? Is this a bad haircut? DidI say the wrong thing? You could get a STIGMA if you’re wrong…andevery stigma has a cost.

Prescription Privileges

Gatekeepers want to keep insiders in and (perhaps even moreimportant) outsiders out by opening and closing a real or imaginarygate. Many organizations have people or departments whose function isto let you (or lock you) in or out — ticket takers, prison guards,admissions officers, personnel managers and so on. Society also has freelancegatekeepers,who have decided —based on their own strong feelings —that some people or behaviors or beliefs or words are wrong and shouldbe kept out. Gatekeeping is an exercise of authority, even if theauthority is only imagined.

Gatekeepers want to keep insiders in and outsiders out

Linguistic gatekeeping is primarily exclusionary in purpose. Itinvolves mostly a list of don't's. Language gatekeeperstypically do not engage in any systematic study of language structure.Instead, they issue judgments on specific items of usage that arestructurally and functionally unrelated. Gatekeepers cite particularwords or expressions as “wrong,” “incorrect,” “illogical,”“uneducated,” “awkward,” “substandard” or “ungrammatical” (out), andsometimes to alternative items as “right,” “correct,” “logical,”“educated,” “standard” or “grammatical” (in). These are terms of prescriptiverather than descriptive grammar.

Prescriptivists may also stigmatize a usage because they believe itis “lazy” or “foreign.” They frown on language associated with peopleor values they disapprove of (such as a person ending a sentence with apreposition). What's more, descriptivists, they often claim, advocatean “anything goes” policy. But that’s not so: descriptive linguists aredevoted to finding out what actually does go on; that is, theydiscover how people actually use English or another target language.Their conclusions, however tentative, are based on the study of actualusage.

Linguists, through this painstaking work, see the many interlockingpatterns of language form and social language use in a neutral way.They have the tools to take language apart into identifiable elementsand to map their recurring relationships. They try to capture theseintricate patterns in ways that help us understand how a particularlanguage serves its communicative functions, as well as how usagedifferences match or interact with society’s other structuraldifferences. Although many other social scientists look at the messagespeople send and receive, linguists also pay special attention to the formsthat carry the messages.

Terms

African-American Vernacular English(AAVE): One of many terms for English spoken byAfrican-Americans socially outside the middle or professional class, orwho may temporarily wish to appear so for social reasons. Other termsinclude Black English, Non-Standard Negro English, and Ebonics.

double negatives: The use ofmore than one negative particle in an expression, such as “I ain’t gotnone” or “I can’t get no satisfaction” (compare Spanish No tengoninguno. Against all experience, prescriptivists claim to believethese will be interpreted as if part of a formula of classical logic.Instead, they are interpreted by everyone as meant: they are negatives.If they weren’t understood as negatives, both the prescriptivists andMr. Jagger would be satisfied. Anyhow, classical logic was modeledafter the Greek language, not the other way around, and there are othertypes of logic, including many in which true or false is not the wholestory, so that’s no help.

double modals: Used in someSouthern speech varieties: “I might could” for “I might be able to,” or“I shouldn’t oughta,” etc. Stigmatized, but used anyway, even byCollege English speakers from the region. A similar formation is inlimited use by the uppermost classes in Britain: “Are you going tovisit your uncle?” “I should do.”

gatekeeping: controllingaccess to goods, services or information, usually applied byindividuals or groups in hierarchical organizations.

stigma: A wound or scar;here, any social blemish, such as poverty, unfashionable clothes, badgrammar, or the wrong parents.

taboo: An action or wordunder strong social prohibition.

Sponsoredby:

NationalEndowment fortheHumanities	William and Flora Hewlett Foundation	Ford Foundation	RosalindP. Walter	ArthurVining DavisFoundations	Carnegie Corporation of New York