Proper English

My post on "Pet Linguistic Peeves" continues to draw responses long after it was published and this inspires me to take on the Defenders of the English Language, namely those who are offended by those who don't like nobody who uses double negatives or ain't happy with people who use "ain't" or busy theirselves with criticizing those who do not use reflexive pronouns properly.

One thing that amuses me is how this "offensive" language is characterized. Some refer to it as "bad English," others say is is "incorrect English," and still others would call it "improper English." I especially like "bad English," as apparently does the rock group "Bad English." The title song of their first albumn was called "Bad English." Oddly, while the lyrics of the song "Bad English" are bad poetry, I wouldn't say they employ "bad English." Perhaps I missed something.

One thing we should be absolutely clear on is that nonstandard dialects, i. e., dialects that employ "bad English," are not linguistically inferior to standard English. In fact, in some respects they are superior. Consider, for instance, that nasty word "ain't." In Standard English, our paradigm for contracted negative forms of the verb "be" in the present tense is

I **** going. We aren't going.
You aren't going. You aren't going.
She isn't going. They aren't going.

where "****" signifies the lack of a form. One nonstandard paradigm is

I ain't going. We ain't going.
You ain't going. You ain't going.
She ain't going. They ain't going.

What is wrong with this latter dialect? One might say that the contracted forms don't distinguish among the persons. The problem with that is that Standard English doesn't do so in the plural half of the paradigm. We use exactly the same form. In any event, the subject pronoun makes perfectly clear whether the speaker is employing the first person, second person, or third person. One might argue that the nonstandard dialect doesn't distinguish the singular from the plural forms. Sadly, for that argument, neither does Standard English in the second person. Moreover, except for the second person, the subject in the nonstandar paradigm clearly indicates whether a single person or more than one person is going. So, the arguments against the nonstandard paradigm fall flat on their faces.

There is one quite compelling reason to say that the Standard English paradigm is inferior to the nonstandard one. This reason is the absence of a form in the first person singular. It can't be a good thing for a dialect to fail to give its speakers a form to use when they wish to say "I negative-be-form going" to an intimate or in a causal gathering of people where informal English is the norm. Speakers can employ "am not," of course but that is a construction more appropriate to a formal occasions.

Let the slings and arrows of outraged linguistic sensibilities loose.

Another example demonstrating my claim that nonstandard varieties of English can be superior to Standard English is provided by reflexive pronouns. In Standard English we have

I like myself. We like ourselves.
You like yourself. You like yourselves.
He likes himself They like themselves.
She likes herself.

Typical nonstandard varieties have

I like myself. We like ourselves.
You like yourself. You like yourselves.
He likes hiself. They like theirselves.
She likes herself.

In Standard English, we use posessive pronouns ("my," "your,","our," in the first and second person but accusative prounouns ("him" and "they") in the third person as the base pronoun. The pronoun "her" goes both ways. Why in the world would a dialect want to do a thing like that? It makes no sense whatever. The nonstandard dialect given above is perfectly regular, using the possessive pronoun in all persons. I would think that having a rule with no exceptions is better than one with exceptions.

A more complex, and perhaps problematic, example that arguably favors the nonstandard variety concerns negative sentences. In Standard English, we use the morpheme "any" to mark when a word is in the scope of negation (an occurence of "not" whether contracted or not), as in

He isn't going anywhere with anyone tonight.

The nonstandard variety has

He isn't going nowhere with no one tonight.

In this dialect, speakers mark elements that are in the scope of negation with a semantically redundant negative marker. This irritates the hell out of English teachers and other Guardians of Linguistic Faith. Arguably, the nonstandard dialect wins again for it is more iconic to mark when a word is in the scope of the negative (is part of what is being negated) with a negative morpheme than with some other morpheme with no inherent relationship to negation. Interestingly, the nonstandard dialect is not unusual for it is common to handle negation in this way in langauges.

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Tags: standard English, nonstandard English, social prejudice