Verbal Hygiene 407

Verbal Hygiene

D Cameron, Institute of Education, London, UK

� 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

This article is reproduced from the Concise Encyclopedia of

Sociolinguistics, pp. 688–690, � 2001, Elsevier Ltd.

It is a truism that linguistics is ‘descriptive not pre-scriptive’ – concerned to describe the structure anduse of natural languages, and not to make value-judgements on them. Verbal hygiene was the title ofa book that prompted debate among sociolinguists,by challenging the view that value judgements are ofno relevance for linguistics (Cameron, 1995). It ar-gued that competent language users routinely makevalue judgements on language; ideas about what is‘good’ and ‘bad’ in language are central to their un-derstanding of it, and ought therefore to be of interestto linguists who study language use as a form of socialbehavior.

What is Verbal Hygiene?

The importance language users accord to value judge-ments is seen with particular clarity in practices of‘verbal hygiene,’ i.e., active attempts to improve or‘clean up’ language. These practices are many andvaried. Examples include not only efforts to imposea standard dialect, pronunciation, or spelling, butalso cases like plain-language movements or feministcampaigns to eliminate sexist language, languageplanning, and ‘fringe’ movements advocating whole-sale spelling reform, the abolition of copular verbs, orthe adoption of artificial languages. What theseinstances have in common is not any single view ofwhat is desirable in language use – the traditionalgrammarian and the feminist, for instance, will dis-agree on many points of detail. But they do share themore fundamental assumption that one way of usinglanguage may reasonably be preferred to another.

Verbal Hygiene and Prescriptivism

That assumption also underlies what linguists havetraditionally called ‘prescriptivism’: how does ‘verbalhygiene’ differ? Cameron (1995: 3–11) saw the twoconcepts as overlapping but not coextensive. Hermain reasons for wanting an alternative to ‘prescrip-tivism’ have to do with the meanings that term hasacquired in linguists’ usage. First, ‘prescriptivism’ ismost closely identified with a particular subset ofnormative metalinguistic practices, those that focuson the value of correctness and equate ‘correct’ usagewith adherence to the codified norms of a standard

language variety. The term ‘verbal hygiene’ seeks toforeground the existence of normative metalinguisticpractices, which intervene in language use in differentways and for different reasons, though they are equal-ly animated by value judgements. Secondly, ‘prescrip-tivism’ in linguistics has acquired strong negativeconnotations: it is associated with ignorance, intoler-ance, and prejudice, and is usually represented assomething extraneous to normal language use. Verbalhygiene, by contrast, is presented as part of a moregeneral metalinguistic function, which is integral tothe workings of verbal communication:

Because language-using is paradigmatically a social,public act, [it] must be carried on with reference tonorms, which may themselves become the subject ofovert comment and debate. In our everyday interactionswe take this for granted . . . without recourse to suchordinary metalinguistic practices as correcting slips ofthe tongue, asking what someone meant by something ordisputing their usage of particular words, the enterpriseof communication would be even more fraught withdifficulty than it already is (Cameron, 1995: 2).

From this point of view, it makes no sense to con-demn linguistic normativity as such. Further, whenone considers the full range of normative practiceslanguage users are engaged in, it becomes difficult toargue that they all exemplify ignorance (cf. languageplanning, a ‘scientific’ enterprise) and/or prejudice(cf. campaigns against sexist and racist language,which embody resistance to certain forms of preju-dice). While verbal hygiene practices are never value-free, ‘correctness’ is not the only value that informsthem. Others include esthetics (as in discussions ofwhy one local accent is preferable to another); utility(as in arguments for official documents to be writtenin plain language rather than obfuscatory jargon);and morality (as in debates on sexism and racism inlanguage).

The Social/Symbolic Functions ofVerbal Hygiene

Although verbal hygiene arises from a metalinguisticcapacity that is indispensable for communication, inpractice that capacity is used in ways that go wellbeyond immediate communicative needs – clearlywe do not ‘need’ new spelling systems or argumentsabout how best to translate the Bible into Klingon(the invented language of a fictional alien species).Many verbal hygiene practices are better understoodin terms of the social and symbolic purposes theyserve for those engaged in them.

408 Verbal Hygiene

In some cases, these purposes are broadly political:verbal hygiene is used to affirm a particular view ofthe ideal social order. This motivation is evidentin conservative defences of standard languages, infeminist arguments for nonsexist language and thecounterarguments of their opponents, in purist move-ments to purge languages of ‘foreign’ elements, and inattempts to preserve or revive minority languages assymbols of ethnic or national identity. Professionaland commercial interests (e.g., the interest of publish-ers in maintaining certain norms of written style) mayalso motivate verbal hygiene. And it can also be aform of ‘language play’ (Cook, 2000) – this functionis probably its main one for Klingon enthusiasts, forinstance.

Debates on Verbal Hygiene

Some linguists (e.g., Kalogjera, 2000) have criti-cized verbal hygiene as a ‘revisionist’ concept thatrehabilitates reactionary forms of prescriptivism,undermines the objectivity of scholarship, andencourages sociolinguists to politicize discussions oflanguage attitudes and linguistic change. In Verbalhygiene (Cameron, 1995: xi) it is noted that linguists

VerbsA Viberg, University of Uppsala, Uppsala, Sweden

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Verbs vs. Nouns

Verbs and nouns are the two major word classes inmost, possibly all, languages (see Word Classes/Partsof Speech: Overview). With respect to meaning, basicconcrete nouns tend to follow perceptually salientnatural partitions in human environment accordingto the natural partitioning hypothesis (Gentner andBoroditsky, 2001), whereas verbs to a greater extentare language-specific and show greater variation withrespect to meaning across languages. This featureexplains why children universally tend to acquireearly nouns before early verbs.

The verb is the core of the clause and has a rela-tional meaning, relating to one or more participants(or arguments) to an event. In general, verbs are morecomplex than nouns and tend to represent a greatercognitive load on processing than nouns. Anotherbasic characteristic of prototypical verbs is thatthey crucially involve change through time, whereasconcrete nouns tend to be stable across time.

can study normative practices without necessarilyendorsing them. However, the book does challengeclaims that linguistics itself is value free (the axiom‘all varieties are linguistically equal,’ for instance,is not just a statement of what linguists believe to betrue, but implicitly also a value judgement). If weaccept that evaluation and verbal hygiene are integralparts of language-using, sociolinguists must engagein critical debates about the grounds for particularevaluations rather than denying the legitimacy ofevaluation itself.

See also: Description and Prescription; Language Atti-

tudes; Language Ideology; Standardization.

Bibliography

Cameron D (1995). Verbal hygiene. London: Routledge.Cook G (2000). Language play. Oxford: Oxford University

Press.Kalogjera D (2000). ‘A sketch for a chronicle of (anti-)

prescriptivism.’ In Tomic O M & Radovanovic M (eds.)History and perspectives of language study. Philadelphia:Benjamins.

Lexicalization Patterns

Verbs are primarily used to talk about events, but theway events are encoded may vary dramatically. InKalam, a language spoken in the highlands of PapuaNew Guinea, many events that are encoded as simpleverbs in English are described as a sequence of events,each encoded by a simple verb (Pawley, 1987):

(1) Kab anan ap yap pk-e-k pag-p ok.stone glass come fall it-having-

hit-DSit-has-broken

that

A stone broke the glass.

Kalam is a good example of a verb serializing lan-guage (see Serial Verb Constructions). Serial verbsexist marginally in English, in sequences such as Goget the book. Serial verbs are, however, characteristicof Southeast Asian, West African, Papuan, and Oce-anic languages (Crowley, 2002). Verb serialization isdefined as a combination within the same simpleclause of lexical verbs that can function independent-ly as verbs and that must be interpreted as having thesame values for tense-aspect-mood even if thosevalues are not necessarily overtly marked on all ofthe verbs in the series. Auxiliaries (or helping verbs)