One small thought I've worried for a long time now ... our
current norms, especially for writing, in English have become
as some call it _hyperstandardized_ ... that is, there is
profit in obeying a million trivial rules of form and usage
that are really quite unnecessary for most communicative
purposes. Those of us conditioned to these norms, and for whom
obeying them is almost second-nature, tend to be quite
uncritically horrified at the smallest deviations by those
who use other dialects of English, much less by those whose
English is in-progress or to some degree nativized by
hybridization with their first language.
We could all relax and communicate more comfortably if we
would critique our linguistic prejudices, relax the rules
a bit, and let everyone feel free to contribute in their
own variation of English without feeling or being judged
as intellectually inferior because of spelling or verb
agreement. I think we have begun to learn to do this in the
email medium. I would be willing to extend it to the academic
print medium, but I don't think that will ever happen. I also
recognize that I'm still viewing the issue from a privileged
position, and issuing my call for tolerance from a position
of not needing very much of it myself.
Sharing five or six major world languages among enough
people to have a multilingual discussion in a large listgroup
seems completely unfeasible ... but at least saying that
English as a language is richer for the variety of forms
that non-native speakers produce offers a positive climate
for less language-inhibited communication.
JAY.
If U kan rEd this, U ar dooing sum guud lingwistiks!
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU