LINGUISTIC
SECTION 1. WRITTEN LANGUAGE VS SPOKEN LANGUAGE
One of our central aims in this chapter is to explain what it means to think like a linguist, and to explore
how this perspective often differs significantly from that of the general public. While many assume that
linguists are authorities on “correct” language usage and are thus the best people to consult for writing
or speaking advice, most linguists reject the role of language arbiters. Rather than prescribing how
language should be used, linguists focus on describing how language is actually used by real speakers.
In doing so, they challenge everyday assumptions and reveal that many linguistic value judgments are
arbitrary, inconsistent, or culturally biased.
For example, the belief that certain varieties of English (e.g., Received Pronunciation) are inherently
superior to others, or that “primitive” languages exist, falls apart when examined from a linguistic
perspective. These judgments reflect social attitudes, not linguistic facts.
More important written language
Until about fifty years ago, written language was often considered more prestigious than spoken
language. This hierarchy was rooted in several assumptions:
1. Planning and Reflection: Written language was seen as the product of deliberate reflection and
structure. Traditional writing practices (e.g., journalism, literary production, letter writing)
involved planning and coherence, making the written word appear more reliable and
sophisticated.
2. Permanence: Writing endures. Historical texts, such as those by Dante or Shakespeare, seem
timeless and incorruptible, whereas spoken language was ephemeral and usually not recorded.
3. Tidiness and Structure: Written texts are linear, divided into pages, paragraphs, and punctuation.
In contrast, spoken language often appears chaotic, filled with false starts, interruptions, or
repetitions.
4. Wider Reach: With the advent of printing, written texts could be distributed widely, expanding
their influence far beyond that of spoken discourse.
These beliefs contributed to a broader cultural tendency to treat written language as more formal,
authoritative, and valuable than speech.
More important spoken language
Contemporary linguistics, however, has reversed this hierarchy. Since the mid-20th century, linguists
have emphasized the primacy of spoken language, and for good reason:
1. Universality of Speech: Every known natural language has (or had) a spoken form. Only a minority
have written forms.
2. Early Acquisition: All humans learn to speak their mother tongue at a very young age, without
formal instruction. Literacy, by contrast, is acquired later—if at all—and often requires education.
3. Writing Derives from Speech: Writing is based on spoken language, not the other way around. Yet
writing rarely offers a faithful representation of speech.
4. Technological Advances: With the development of recording technologies and electronic corpora
(e.g., the Open American National Corpus, the British Academic Spoken English Corpus), spoken
language has become easier to collect, transcribe, and analyze than ever before.
From this perspective, studying only written language would be akin to studying only a fragment of
human linguistic behavior.
Distinction spoken language and written
Linguistics is a descriptive science, not a prescriptive one. This means linguists study language
objectively, documenting how it is used rather than imposing rules on how it should be used. Achieving
,true objectivity is not always straightforward, however, as even native speakers may disagree on the
acceptability of certain expressions. For example:
• “I didn’t do it though but” is rejected in standard English but accepted in some dialects.
• The tag question “innit?” is standard in some varieties of British English but stigmatized in others.
Even basic questions like “Do you speak language X?” may yield ambiguous answers, influenced by a
speaker’s proficiency, frequency of use, or social attitudes toward the language in question.
Releasing Your Inner Child
Learning to think like a linguist involves discarding everyday assumptions—what some call “language
myths.” In doing so, we return to a more open, inquisitive mindset, similar to how children approach
language when they first acquire it. This means:
• Understanding that what counts as a “word” in speech is not always the same as in writing.
• Recognizing that writing conventions (e.g., punctuation, word boundaries) are not natural
features of language but social constructs.
The study of language must begin with speech, as that’s how language first emerges and functions.
Imagine a world where writing is completely unfamiliar—just meaningless marks on a page. That was
once your reality as a child. Yet even then, you could speak fluently, forming grammatically correct
sentences with ease. This demonstrates that speech is primary: it develops naturally, without books or
instruction, while writing must be taught.
Despite the dominance of writing in our adult lives—through novels, newspapers, academic essays,
texts, and social media—speech remains foundational. Linguists prioritize spoken data for three main
reasons:
1. Many Languages Lack Writing: The majority of the world’s languages (both living and extinct) have
no written form. For instance, languages like Ewe, Dyirbal, or Hopi are primarily oral. Even familiar
dialects like Cockney, Brummie, or Glaswegian rely on standard English for writing.
2. Not Everyone Learns to Write: Even in literate societies, full literacy is far from universal. Yet
virtually everyone acquires spoken language early in life.
3. Writing Misrepresents Speech: Writing systems often poorly reflect pronunciation. In English, for
example:
o Hope has a pronounced ‘h’, but honest and hour do not.
o Night includes a silent ‘gh’.
o The word ghoti has been facetiously suggested to spell fish, using:
▪ ‘gh’ as in rough,
▪ ‘o’ as in women,
▪ ‘ti’ as in nation.
Even in other languages, spelling conventions often lag behind spoken changes, preserving historical
pronunciations that no longer match current speech.
Blurring the Line Between Speech and Writing
The distinction between spoken and written language is not always clear-cut. Some written texts are
designed to be spoken (e.g., scripts, speeches), while some speech is produced with writing in mind
(e.g., voice typing).
In the digital age, this boundary has become even more blurred. The rise of texting, tweeting, and social
media has brought a new form of written language that mimics the spontaneity and informality of
speech. Consider:
-LyK oMg iF tHiS gUy In frnt oF mE on the train dsn’t stop JERKING HIS KNEE UP AND DOWN I’ll gO
proper cRaZy!!!!
, -Ha ha hope springs eternal slash Met Sarah’s brother last night 😉 Cool guy IMHO
Fifty years ago, such writing would not have been considered worthy of linguistic analysis. It:
• Uses colloquial abbreviations
• Is highly informal
• Is written by non-authoritative authors
• Mixes upper/lower case within words
• Contains emoticons and unconventional spelling
Yet today, linguists take such forms seriously because they reflect real linguistic behavior and illustrate
how the boundaries between speech and writing are collapsing. Informality, once reserved for speech, is
now fully present in writing.
Frase Registro a cui appartiene
I ain’t done much healing Popular music
Rishi Sunak to face COVID-19 inquiry grilling Newspaper headlines
I’m sorry for what I done to you innit, yeah? Informal spoken language of British youngsters
Doubt dissertation Wednesday E-mail headings
Dialect vs. Language
A persistent question in linguistics is: What is the difference between a dialect and a language? One
proposed criterion is mutual intelligibility—speakers of different dialects understand one another, while
speakers of different languages do not. But this rule quickly breaks down:
• Varieties of Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien) are often mutually unintelligible but are
considered dialects.
• Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) are quite intelligible yet considered
separate languages.
In reality, the distinction is often political, not linguistic. As the saying goes: “A language is a dialect with
an army and a navy.” To avoid this problem, linguists prefer the term language variety, which
encompasses both languages and dialects without invoking problematic hierarchies.
Toward Scientific Linguistics
The term linguistics is commonly defined as the scientific study of language. While this might seem
odd—language doesn’t easily lend itself to lab experiments—linguists strive for objectivity through
systematic observation and analysis.
To study language scientifically, linguists rely on:
• Real speech data, not assumptions
• Tools like the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to accurately transcribe sounds
• Analysis of language varieties across cultures and contexts
Ultimately, the goal of linguistics is not to judge, but to understand: how language works, how it varies,
how it changes, and how it shapes—and is shaped by—human experience.
SECTION 2. LINGUISTICS IS DESCRIPTIVE, NOT PRESCRIPTIVE
(Hornsby pp.10-17)
, One of the foundational principles of modern linguistics is that it is descriptive, not prescriptive. This
idea is repeated in nearly every introductory textbook and holds a near-sacred status among linguists.
But why is this so important?
To understand the difference, imagine picking up a book titled Astronomy: A Complete Introduction, only
to find it ranting about how the moon should orbit the Earth every 24 hours, or that a 300-day year would
be “neater” than 365 days. You would instantly dismiss it as unscientific nonsense. The universe simply
is the way it is; personal opinions about how it should be are irrelevant.
And yet, when it comes to language, we often tolerate this kind of prescriptive thinking. Phrases like
“standards of English are declining” or judgments about “slovenly speech” are rarely questioned, even
though they are based on subjective preferences rather than objective analysis.
Descriptive and prescriptive analyses
A descriptive approach to language observes how people actually speak and write. In contrast, a
prescriptive approach dictates how people should use language, often based on outdated rules or
aesthetic judgments with little regard for real usage.
Prescriptivists frequently object to things like:
• The use of “me” instead of “I” in subject position.
• Using “who” instead of “whom”, even though “who are you meeting?” is far more common than
the overly formal “whom are you meeting?”.
• Saying “less students” instead of “fewer students”, although both are widely used by native
speakers.
They also criticize common constructions such as:
• Ending a sentence with a preposition (e.g., What are you talking about?)
• Using “hopefully” as a sentence adverb (e.g., Hopefully, they’ll get here soon.)
• Splitting infinitives (e.g., to better understand), which is frequent even in formal contexts.
Many of these “rules” stem from Latin grammar, which doesn’t align with the structure of English. For
example, in Latin, you can’t split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions—but imposing such rules
on English is unjustified.
Modern linguists therefore reject prescriptivism. Today, it is largely upheld only by non-experts—
teachers, media figures, and language enthusiasts—not by professional linguists.
Social Roots of Language Judgments
Prescriptive judgments often reveal more about social attitudes than linguistic principles. In the UK, for
example, accents are frequently judged on the basis of class. During WWII, broadcaster Wilfred Pickles
was briefly asked to read the news in his Yorkshire accent to confuse German listeners. The experiment
failed—listeners complained and distrusted the information simply because it wasn’t in Received
Pronunciation (RP).
Similarly, Sally Gunnell was criticized for speaking in “Estuary English”, and left the BBC in 2006. In both
cases, the issue was not linguistic quality, but perceived social status. RP is associated with power and
education—not because it is linguistically superior, but because it is spoken by the social elite,
particularly in and around London. If Britain’s capital had been somewhere else, a different accent
would likely be seen as the standard.
Experimental Evidence: Matched Guise Studies
Matched guise experiments further demonstrate that judgments about accents are socially driven. When
native British listeners hear the same sentence spoken in different accents, they often rate urban
SECTION 1. WRITTEN LANGUAGE VS SPOKEN LANGUAGE
One of our central aims in this chapter is to explain what it means to think like a linguist, and to explore
how this perspective often differs significantly from that of the general public. While many assume that
linguists are authorities on “correct” language usage and are thus the best people to consult for writing
or speaking advice, most linguists reject the role of language arbiters. Rather than prescribing how
language should be used, linguists focus on describing how language is actually used by real speakers.
In doing so, they challenge everyday assumptions and reveal that many linguistic value judgments are
arbitrary, inconsistent, or culturally biased.
For example, the belief that certain varieties of English (e.g., Received Pronunciation) are inherently
superior to others, or that “primitive” languages exist, falls apart when examined from a linguistic
perspective. These judgments reflect social attitudes, not linguistic facts.
More important written language
Until about fifty years ago, written language was often considered more prestigious than spoken
language. This hierarchy was rooted in several assumptions:
1. Planning and Reflection: Written language was seen as the product of deliberate reflection and
structure. Traditional writing practices (e.g., journalism, literary production, letter writing)
involved planning and coherence, making the written word appear more reliable and
sophisticated.
2. Permanence: Writing endures. Historical texts, such as those by Dante or Shakespeare, seem
timeless and incorruptible, whereas spoken language was ephemeral and usually not recorded.
3. Tidiness and Structure: Written texts are linear, divided into pages, paragraphs, and punctuation.
In contrast, spoken language often appears chaotic, filled with false starts, interruptions, or
repetitions.
4. Wider Reach: With the advent of printing, written texts could be distributed widely, expanding
their influence far beyond that of spoken discourse.
These beliefs contributed to a broader cultural tendency to treat written language as more formal,
authoritative, and valuable than speech.
More important spoken language
Contemporary linguistics, however, has reversed this hierarchy. Since the mid-20th century, linguists
have emphasized the primacy of spoken language, and for good reason:
1. Universality of Speech: Every known natural language has (or had) a spoken form. Only a minority
have written forms.
2. Early Acquisition: All humans learn to speak their mother tongue at a very young age, without
formal instruction. Literacy, by contrast, is acquired later—if at all—and often requires education.
3. Writing Derives from Speech: Writing is based on spoken language, not the other way around. Yet
writing rarely offers a faithful representation of speech.
4. Technological Advances: With the development of recording technologies and electronic corpora
(e.g., the Open American National Corpus, the British Academic Spoken English Corpus), spoken
language has become easier to collect, transcribe, and analyze than ever before.
From this perspective, studying only written language would be akin to studying only a fragment of
human linguistic behavior.
Distinction spoken language and written
Linguistics is a descriptive science, not a prescriptive one. This means linguists study language
objectively, documenting how it is used rather than imposing rules on how it should be used. Achieving
,true objectivity is not always straightforward, however, as even native speakers may disagree on the
acceptability of certain expressions. For example:
• “I didn’t do it though but” is rejected in standard English but accepted in some dialects.
• The tag question “innit?” is standard in some varieties of British English but stigmatized in others.
Even basic questions like “Do you speak language X?” may yield ambiguous answers, influenced by a
speaker’s proficiency, frequency of use, or social attitudes toward the language in question.
Releasing Your Inner Child
Learning to think like a linguist involves discarding everyday assumptions—what some call “language
myths.” In doing so, we return to a more open, inquisitive mindset, similar to how children approach
language when they first acquire it. This means:
• Understanding that what counts as a “word” in speech is not always the same as in writing.
• Recognizing that writing conventions (e.g., punctuation, word boundaries) are not natural
features of language but social constructs.
The study of language must begin with speech, as that’s how language first emerges and functions.
Imagine a world where writing is completely unfamiliar—just meaningless marks on a page. That was
once your reality as a child. Yet even then, you could speak fluently, forming grammatically correct
sentences with ease. This demonstrates that speech is primary: it develops naturally, without books or
instruction, while writing must be taught.
Despite the dominance of writing in our adult lives—through novels, newspapers, academic essays,
texts, and social media—speech remains foundational. Linguists prioritize spoken data for three main
reasons:
1. Many Languages Lack Writing: The majority of the world’s languages (both living and extinct) have
no written form. For instance, languages like Ewe, Dyirbal, or Hopi are primarily oral. Even familiar
dialects like Cockney, Brummie, or Glaswegian rely on standard English for writing.
2. Not Everyone Learns to Write: Even in literate societies, full literacy is far from universal. Yet
virtually everyone acquires spoken language early in life.
3. Writing Misrepresents Speech: Writing systems often poorly reflect pronunciation. In English, for
example:
o Hope has a pronounced ‘h’, but honest and hour do not.
o Night includes a silent ‘gh’.
o The word ghoti has been facetiously suggested to spell fish, using:
▪ ‘gh’ as in rough,
▪ ‘o’ as in women,
▪ ‘ti’ as in nation.
Even in other languages, spelling conventions often lag behind spoken changes, preserving historical
pronunciations that no longer match current speech.
Blurring the Line Between Speech and Writing
The distinction between spoken and written language is not always clear-cut. Some written texts are
designed to be spoken (e.g., scripts, speeches), while some speech is produced with writing in mind
(e.g., voice typing).
In the digital age, this boundary has become even more blurred. The rise of texting, tweeting, and social
media has brought a new form of written language that mimics the spontaneity and informality of
speech. Consider:
-LyK oMg iF tHiS gUy In frnt oF mE on the train dsn’t stop JERKING HIS KNEE UP AND DOWN I’ll gO
proper cRaZy!!!!
, -Ha ha hope springs eternal slash Met Sarah’s brother last night 😉 Cool guy IMHO
Fifty years ago, such writing would not have been considered worthy of linguistic analysis. It:
• Uses colloquial abbreviations
• Is highly informal
• Is written by non-authoritative authors
• Mixes upper/lower case within words
• Contains emoticons and unconventional spelling
Yet today, linguists take such forms seriously because they reflect real linguistic behavior and illustrate
how the boundaries between speech and writing are collapsing. Informality, once reserved for speech, is
now fully present in writing.
Frase Registro a cui appartiene
I ain’t done much healing Popular music
Rishi Sunak to face COVID-19 inquiry grilling Newspaper headlines
I’m sorry for what I done to you innit, yeah? Informal spoken language of British youngsters
Doubt dissertation Wednesday E-mail headings
Dialect vs. Language
A persistent question in linguistics is: What is the difference between a dialect and a language? One
proposed criterion is mutual intelligibility—speakers of different dialects understand one another, while
speakers of different languages do not. But this rule quickly breaks down:
• Varieties of Chinese (Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien) are often mutually unintelligible but are
considered dialects.
• Scandinavian languages (Swedish, Danish, Norwegian) are quite intelligible yet considered
separate languages.
In reality, the distinction is often political, not linguistic. As the saying goes: “A language is a dialect with
an army and a navy.” To avoid this problem, linguists prefer the term language variety, which
encompasses both languages and dialects without invoking problematic hierarchies.
Toward Scientific Linguistics
The term linguistics is commonly defined as the scientific study of language. While this might seem
odd—language doesn’t easily lend itself to lab experiments—linguists strive for objectivity through
systematic observation and analysis.
To study language scientifically, linguists rely on:
• Real speech data, not assumptions
• Tools like the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to accurately transcribe sounds
• Analysis of language varieties across cultures and contexts
Ultimately, the goal of linguistics is not to judge, but to understand: how language works, how it varies,
how it changes, and how it shapes—and is shaped by—human experience.
SECTION 2. LINGUISTICS IS DESCRIPTIVE, NOT PRESCRIPTIVE
(Hornsby pp.10-17)
, One of the foundational principles of modern linguistics is that it is descriptive, not prescriptive. This
idea is repeated in nearly every introductory textbook and holds a near-sacred status among linguists.
But why is this so important?
To understand the difference, imagine picking up a book titled Astronomy: A Complete Introduction, only
to find it ranting about how the moon should orbit the Earth every 24 hours, or that a 300-day year would
be “neater” than 365 days. You would instantly dismiss it as unscientific nonsense. The universe simply
is the way it is; personal opinions about how it should be are irrelevant.
And yet, when it comes to language, we often tolerate this kind of prescriptive thinking. Phrases like
“standards of English are declining” or judgments about “slovenly speech” are rarely questioned, even
though they are based on subjective preferences rather than objective analysis.
Descriptive and prescriptive analyses
A descriptive approach to language observes how people actually speak and write. In contrast, a
prescriptive approach dictates how people should use language, often based on outdated rules or
aesthetic judgments with little regard for real usage.
Prescriptivists frequently object to things like:
• The use of “me” instead of “I” in subject position.
• Using “who” instead of “whom”, even though “who are you meeting?” is far more common than
the overly formal “whom are you meeting?”.
• Saying “less students” instead of “fewer students”, although both are widely used by native
speakers.
They also criticize common constructions such as:
• Ending a sentence with a preposition (e.g., What are you talking about?)
• Using “hopefully” as a sentence adverb (e.g., Hopefully, they’ll get here soon.)
• Splitting infinitives (e.g., to better understand), which is frequent even in formal contexts.
Many of these “rules” stem from Latin grammar, which doesn’t align with the structure of English. For
example, in Latin, you can’t split infinitives or end sentences with prepositions—but imposing such rules
on English is unjustified.
Modern linguists therefore reject prescriptivism. Today, it is largely upheld only by non-experts—
teachers, media figures, and language enthusiasts—not by professional linguists.
Social Roots of Language Judgments
Prescriptive judgments often reveal more about social attitudes than linguistic principles. In the UK, for
example, accents are frequently judged on the basis of class. During WWII, broadcaster Wilfred Pickles
was briefly asked to read the news in his Yorkshire accent to confuse German listeners. The experiment
failed—listeners complained and distrusted the information simply because it wasn’t in Received
Pronunciation (RP).
Similarly, Sally Gunnell was criticized for speaking in “Estuary English”, and left the BBC in 2006. In both
cases, the issue was not linguistic quality, but perceived social status. RP is associated with power and
education—not because it is linguistically superior, but because it is spoken by the social elite,
particularly in and around London. If Britain’s capital had been somewhere else, a different accent
would likely be seen as the standard.
Experimental Evidence: Matched Guise Studies
Matched guise experiments further demonstrate that judgments about accents are socially driven. When
native British listeners hear the same sentence spoken in different accents, they often rate urban
