I came across an interesting TED talk today about how words become real. Are they only real when they start appearing in dictionaries, or are they real if they are widely used, even if they don’t feature in dictionaries? The speaker, Professor Anne Curzan, looks at who makes dictionaries and how they decide which words to include.
She says that words are chosen for inclusion in dictionaries because we use it, and the more we use a word, the more likely it will make it into dictionaries. So words are real because we use them.
This has been a long-standing debate: prescriptive vs. descriptive linguistics (or grammar). Should grammar reflect the language as it is used by native speakers or should it be a set of rules on how to use the language correctly. What is incorrect then? Is anything uttered by a native speaker grammatical just by virtue of him being a native speaker? Noam Chomsky used a phase “highly competent native speaker” but what makes that person highly competent? If an “incorrect” form is used a lot, does it automatically become acceptable?
@Knitter: historically speaking, yes. “apron” used to be “napron” but so many people thought it was “an apron” isntead of “a napron” that now we all say apron and apron is the only acceptable form. people peeve on it for a while but a few centuries later everyone is saying it some new way and nobody would even think of saying it the old way.
When Shakespeare was writing his plays, they could be understood by average everyday people, not because people were smarter back then, but because it was written in common everyday language. the language changed, most of the words mean different things now, many words are no longer used at all, and that’s why it’s so hard for us to understand it now.
what is incorrect is what is currently considered incorrect. new forms are incorrect. but it takes more than one person to do it. if i say that apple means a fuzzy creature that says meow, well good luck with that to me because everyone else is going to keep understanding apple to mean a fruit. none of us are strong enough to change a language all by ourselves. if we try, we are incorrect. but if a whole generation of people decide that dork means nerd instead of a body part, the meaning of the word is going to change and the new meaning will become correct.
@ Anon: You are absolutely right that an individual cannot change the language permanently. However, if we consider that anything said on TV, for example, reaches instantly thousands of people (if not more), we can anticipate more rapid changes in the language than in previous centuries. Last year I watched the phrase “polar vortex” used absolutely incorrectly, taking on the meaning of “cold front”. It seemed like one meteorologist used it and then all weather forecasts had to include it. After that, news picked it up in the articles regarding weather and all of the sudden, we did not have cold weather, or simply winter, it was “polar vortex” (enough to make anybody dizzy).