Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

114 Forbidden Words
The making of the standard
That the weather clerk really makes the weather probably none but infants believe, but
that language is made by compilers of dictionaries and grammars is a conception not
confined to the young or ignorant. (Hans von Jagemann 1899; cited in Wardhaugh
1999: 9)
In general, standard languages represent a kind of linguistic ‘best practice’ – a
set of behaviours that claims to excel all others. Correctness, precision, purity
and elegance are the qualities of the perceived standard. It is the measure of
excellence – the benchmark against which all other varieties of the language
are gauged.
best practice noun the set of operations achieving world-class results in quality and
customer service, flexibility, timeliness, innovations, cost, and competitiveness, especially
from the cooperation of management and employees in all key processes of the
business.
benchmark noun 1. Surveying a point of known elevation, usually a mark cut into
some durable material, as stone or a concrete post with a bronze plate, to serve as a
reference point in running a line of levels for the determination of elevations. 2.
A point of reference from which quality or excellence is measured. (Macquarie
Dictionary 2003)
In the case of English, the standard language has been artificially created over
many years, not by any English Language Academy, but by a patchwork of
different groups, including writers of style guides and usage manuals, dictionary
makers, editors, teachers, newspaper columnists and the like. Their
activities have amassed an arsenal of prescriptive texts that promote and seek
to legitimize a single fixed and approved variety: dictionaries, grammars and
handbooks that record, regulate, tidy up and iron out the language. 12 Their
neat lists, elegant definitions and fine-spun paradigms necessarily ignore the
richness, diversity and variability that is found in any language system. So do
histories of the language: with occasional lip service to regional differences,
historical accounts of English have focused overwhelmingly on the making of
the present-day standard; the story of one variety has become the story of our
language. 13
Standard English is the written variety that is promoted in schools and used
in law courts and government institutions: students are expected to use it in
essays, and ESL instructors teach it to foreign learners of English. Writers are
supposed to acquire the standard rules, and those who do not are in danger of
being regarded as recalcitrant, lazy and incompetent; they are said to have
poor grammar – or, worse, no grammar at all. It should properly be referred to
as the standard dialect; but since dialects are held to be substandard varieties