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This article was downloaded by: [Stony Brook University]On: 30 October 2014, At: 20:32Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH,UK
Symposium: A QuarterlyJournal in Modern LiteraturesPublication details, including instructions forauthors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/vsym20
«Leave your language alone!»Mario A. Peiaa Columbia UniversityPublished online: 09 Sep 2013.
To cite this article: Mario A. Pei (1950) «Leave your language alone!»,Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 4:2, 446-449, DOI:10.1080/00397709.1950.10732340
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00397709.1950.10732340
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terms: can one, without nationalism or chauvinism, reasonably expect scholars living and working in any given country to take workdone in that country into consideration, especially insofar as it affects the foundation on which their scientific. activity and that oftheir students is based? The implications of this problem are bothintellectual and economic, and range too far afield to be discussedin detail or resolved here; but it seems, at least to this reviewer,that there is grave danger of scientific myopia and consequent damage to ultimate achievement when such a one-sided approach as thatrepresented by this thesis is at all frequent or prevelant. Intellectual free trade, not restriction or "protectionism," is a summumdesideratum, in linguistics as elsewhere; the cause of science canonly be harmed by doctrinaire extremism on the part of any groupof scholars (American or European), or by putting intellectualblinders on the work done under one's direction.
Cornell University ROBERT A. HALL Jr.
Robert A. Hall Jr.: «Leave your language alone be- Ithaca, N. Y.,Linguistica, 1950. ix + 254 pp.
This work is divided into four parts: 1. Things we worry about;n. How language is built; III. Language in the world around us: IV.What we can do about language.
Parts I and IV seem to belong together, since their main purposeis propagandistic. Parts n and ill, on the other hand, are informative. In Part n, the chapter entitled 'Language has sound' is of particular merit; it seeks to explain in detail, for the layman's benefit,the production and reception of speech-sounds and the elusive difference between sounds and phonemes. In spots, the going is a trifleheavy for the layman and schools of linguistics other than ProfessorHall's will probably criticize its underlying mechanistic philosophy.By and large, however, the author does an excellent job. Issue maybe taken (p. 73) with "Arabic k" as an example of a velar sound(Arabic q would have been more-appropriate); with the transcription(p. 81) of "pot" as [pelt], which should have been described as specifically American rather than "English"; or "say" as [se], and"boat" as [bot], without indication of the diphthong value of the vowel-symbols; with the omission of indication (p. 83) that in a phonetictranscription the superior vertical tick indicating stress is to beplaced before the stressed syllable.
. The morphological section (Chapter 7 - 'Language Has Form?likewise has its merits; but it is somewhat vitiated by the author'sinsistence on viewing French as a language structurally more akin
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to Eskimo than to the other Western tongues (p. 93: "In some languages like Eskimo or French, it is hard to tell whether such athing as a word, in our sense of the term, exists at all"; p. 95: "ifwe try to speak each French 'word' separately, treating it as if itwere like our words in English, our listeners simply won't understand us"). Is it really true (p. 106) that the French orthography of"'je n'y at pas eu beaucoupde travail afaire' disguises thefact thatthe forms are indissolubly liked in speech"? It seems to us that theauthor's statement is belied by his own phonemic transcription:/Za-n-i-e-paz-y-boku-d-travaj-a-fEr/. At all events, is such astatement not also true of English "watchagonnado" for "what areyou going to do," or even in Italian /vo-,(a.n-dar-tJo.-dt-s:o / for"vogUo andarci adesso"? We wonder whether the liaison feature,overstressed perhaps in traditional French grammars by traditionalFrench phoneticians, has not hypnotized some of our llnguisticiansinto forgetting that in varying degrees the same feature exists, inrapid speech, in other western tongues.
Generally satisfactory also are the chapters in Part III (8 'Language has meaning'; 9 - 'Language covers Territory'; 10 'Language doesn't stay the same'). Certain phrases used by theauthor may be used against the theories he expresses elsewhere inhis work; for instance, (p. 118): "the fact that we can use displacedspeech is what gives language its tremendous effectiveness as ameans of achieving most intricate social coordination; we can relaymessages from one person to another, almost indefinitely, until inthe end we attain some desired goal, such as receiving a shipmentof rails from a country half-way around the globe - and almostwholly by the use of displaced speech." And, we would add, almostinvariably, in a situation of this kind, the displaced speech assumesthe written form, much belittled elsewhere (pp. 30-35).
There seems to be basic contradiction between the following twostatements: (p. 58): "The linguistician considers it better to studylanguage first from the point of view of its form (sounds and combinations of sounds) and tries to avoid, as much as possible, basinghis analysis on the shifting sands of meaning" and (p. 59): "theonly use we make of a word's meaning is to determine whether thisword belongs together in our analysis with other signals that havethe same meaning (as when we class went as the past of ~)." Thefunction of meaning in linguistic analysis (see also Hall's definition of phoneme, p. 85) appears to be quite fundamental, and theauthor very reluctantly recognized its tremendous importance whenhe states (p. 129): "meaning is what makes language effective inhuman society."
In Parts I and IV the author abandons the informative for thepolemic approach foreshadowed in his title. It is Professor Hall'scontention (p. 6) that there is no such thing as good or bad, corrector incorrect, right or wrong language; that there is no such thing as
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"written language"; that a dictionary or grammar is not as good anauthority for your speech as the way you yourself speak; that wordshave no meaning, save as it is conferred upon them by the community of speakers; that all languages and dialects are of equal merit;that languages do not "decay" or become "corrupted," but simplychange.
Professor Hall does not believe in linguistic academies (p. 10)or in the sanctity of grammatical rules. He would accept suchforms as "you done it," "he don't," "that's hisn" in much the samefashion in which people accept holding the fork with the right handinstead of the left. Linguistic correctness, he avers, is a traditional, antidemocratic relic, and the "four-letter words" are fully justified in the speech of a ditch-digger (p. 27).
Whatever the merits of this stand may be, it is a little diHicultto reconcile 'some of the author's statements; e. g. (p. 24): "some ofus are inclined to think that because a habit, a custom or a thingis old, it must necessarily be better than something new" and (p~
34): "writing is definitely subordinate in historical origin to speaking." We also view with some suspicion his claim (P, 34) that gesture languages are simply more remote derivatives of speech; mostlinguists and anthropologists hold the opposite view. On the otherhand, we cannot but heartily concur in his denunciation of modernEnglish spelling (p. 40) and the time-waste it involves (p. 46).
In view of the author's widely blurbed revolutionary linguisticphilosophy, we should expect him to come to equally revolutionaryconclusions in his later chapter on 'Learning your own language.'Instead, we are regaled merelywith a different motivation in teaching children "correct" forms. Don't tell them some forms are"right" and others "wrong," says Professor Hall, in effect (p. 189):"We can easily make it clear to a child of ten or twelve that hisadvancement, his getting along, his getting whatever he wants outof life (whether that be personal advancement in any field, or money,or prestige, or intellectual or artistic pleasures) is going to dependto a considerable extent on his use of socially favored instead ofdisfavored forms. "
The ideal language teacher's attitude is described as follows(p. 191): "There's nothing wrong with 'it's me,' and it's in constantuse by people whose usage is unquestioned; you are, however, likely to run into difficulties with some people who think that 'it's me'is incorrect, and when you're talking with people who are quitepuristically inclined, you'd better avoid 'it's me' and use 'it is I,'even if it does seem somewhat unnatural."
All this smacks a bit of Milquetoastian hypocrisy and opportunism, but it does not diHer radically from what has avowedly orcovertly been done, in linguistic and many other matters, sincetime immemorial.
The claims of dictionaries, grammar-books and "guides to good
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usage" are described (p. 238) as "a pure fake and an imposture."Actually, by the author's definition, they are fully justified if wemerely substitute for "what is right and what is wrong" the phrase·what is good for you and what isn't." Also, it is hardly true thatin present-day America the use of "socially incorrect" forms necessarily leads to social condemnation and personal disadvantage (p.234). We need only refer to Ade, Ruark, Dizzy Dean, the sportswriters, the composers of popular songs to show that "incorrectness" very often pays, and pays well. The stuffy, school-marmishattitude toward language that the author describes is pretty definitelya thing of the past, not only among linguists, but among thepopulation at large, and this leaves Professor Hall, in a sense, tilting with Windmills. It was his avowed intention to use the psychi.atric shock-treatment on his readers (p. 7); but in the end he pullshis punches, and finally leaves us with the admonition to use "correct" forms, not because they are ·correct," but for our own crassly material good.
But since as a by-product of his crusade he has offered us agenerally satisfactory discussion of the sounds, forms, meanings,territorial extent and mode of change of language, he has not altogether wasted either his time or ours.
Columbia University MARIO A. PEl
Mario A. Pei: «"The story of Ianguaga.>« Philadelphia and NewYork, Lippincott, 1949. 493 pp.
«The story of language- by Professor Mario A. Pei is a welcome addition to the field of popular linguistics. It is the first book,to this reviewer's knowledge, that seems to have been carefullyplanned for the man-in-the-street, a book that can be read withpleasure and profit without need for preVious training in linguistics.
It is divided into six parts, and each part into a number of shortchapters bearing non-technical descriptive titles. One of its mostunusual features is the fact that the chapters are not interdependentand can be read in 10 to 25 minutes.
In the first four parts (1. The ~story of language; II. The constituent elements of Language; In. The social function of language;and IV. The modern spoken tongues, pp. 9-391), Professor Peiguides the reader on an interesting and instructive observation tourof some of the most colorful and fascinating aspects of historicaldescriptive, geographical, and comparative linguistics. He does itwithout being technical and without sacrificing readability by telling us the story of language mainly in terms of its functional, orsemantic, aspects.
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