The Notion of Correctness

Whether a piece of language is "right" or "wrong" is frequently a misleading idea.

In practice, language may better be described as "appropriate" or "acceptable"
to a given register or context.

What is acceptable when spoken by a teenager may not be acceptable when

written in a report by an adult. Context is all.

The so-called "rules" of English are usually in fact pieces of advice laid down by
grammarians who refer back to classical models, even though the structure of
Latin and Greek are very different from English. They are sometimes referred to
as "nineteenth century neo-classical grammarians."

Some of these "rules" may be good advice for a speaker looking for a model of
clarity, and reassuring, but others are now widely seen as artificial constraints on
a living language.

Old rules such as "don't finish a sentence with a preposition", "don't start a
sentence with 'and'" and "don't split an infinitive" are examples of rules which
are still held to by some language users but deliberately flouted by others.

Note that grammatical rules are generally more advisory than the rules
governing the meaning of words. Although words do change their meaning, have
ambiguity and frequently have several meanings at once, a dictionary definition
is, by and large, an agreed meaning of a word. Lists of commonly confused words
can be helpful in distinguishing between "whet" and "wet" or "complement" and
"compliment" for example. Visit one such list here at Awesome Grammar.

There are two main principles at work creating grammatical rules:

Prescriptive describes the attitude that there are rules and you should obey
them.
Descriptive describes the attitude of many modern linguists which is that what is
said by natural speakers of the language is normal and that this "real" language
should be described by students of linguistics to create a model of language.
In other words prescriptive grammarians impose their views based on prescribed
or laid down rules while descriptive grammarians describe the language first
then offer this as a framework within which users can work.

Underpinning all this are basic rules which are generally agreed, fundamental
rules which make a language unique, yet these are so embedded that the rules
are rarely raised as issues by speakers. See the theory of universal grammar as
proposed by Noam Chomsky.

In a recent radio phone-in about the notion of correctness almost every speaker
made value judgments about modern English being "sloppy" or "bad" and one
asked where he should "draw the line" between good and bad language.

In my view there is no line to be drawn: what is acceptable here and now with
this speaker and this audience may be unacceptable with different times,
speakers, audience, medium, situation, style and message. These differences
usually follow the process of change and are therefore flexible hard to define though this doesn't stop users from trying to define them precisely. Maybe this is
why spelling and apostrophes are a particular focus for language pedants because both are far more easily defined than grammar or style and easier to
get to grips with than the differences between speech and writing.

However let's remember that even though most of our English spelling rules
were laid down in Dr Johnston's famous dictionary in 1755 and were accepted as
the guidelines for educated English society, there have been many changes
since then. Some have been accepted in Webster's American dictionary as
progress towards simplification (color, flavor etc) and some rationalisation has
also crept into English dictionaries, with variants recognised and occasional
change made (judgment gradually replacing judgement, the "ae" as in mediaeval
being replaced to form medieval, archeology and encyclopedia following the
same pattern.
The suffix -ise and -ize still battle it out and while both remain acceptable,
different newspaper style guides and word processor dictionaries may enforce
one or the other. There are surprisingly few absolutes in the English language.

Does Your English Let You Down?