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Emily comments on Zwicky's Trifecta of Illusions - Less Wrong
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Comments (26)
Many people seem to think virtually any kind of language trend is undesirable. They perceive practically all change as degeneration. Needless to say, this attitude is considered completely baseless by actual linguists.
If true, this is sad. Personally I applaud language changes that increase complexity (e.g. neologisms) and disparage ones that reduce it (words or grammatical constructions falling out of use; two words that mean different things being used to mean the same thing).
Not all language changes that increase complexity are useful. In many cases, the use of particular words, or ways of speaking, can best be understood as wasteful signaling.
True. But the purpose of language is not merely to be useful, but also beautiful and fun.
There are different kinds of linguists, and in my experience your generalization is incorrect. France, for instance, has an entire government agency of linguists devoted to resisting change in the French language.
The distinction drawn here is linguistic descriptivism vs. prescriptivism. If we take "actual linguist" in this context to mean scientific-minded academic researchers, the field largely requires itself by nature to be descriptive--they're attempting to document and describe actual human behavior "in the wild". It is, typically, not the business of scientists to be dictating terms to reality (they leave that to the engineers). As Emily points out, L'Académie française doesn't seem to contain a single academic linguist.
I suspect this is mostly a disagreement on the definition of "linguist".
Some academic linguists further take an active stand against prescriptivism, even outside the context of their field. Language Log has of course discussed the issue, such as some recent posts here and here, which you've probably already read, given that you linked to Language Log in the main post.
Indeed. If someone were to say, "There are no prescriptivist linguists" I'd take that to be a false statement. I've known at least one academic who argued in favor of prescriptivism, and more are out there (thus, the need for academic linguists to argue against prescriptivism).
It is a rule of thumb that at least one academic somewhere will sincerely hold any possible position you can think of. Nevertheless, a prescriptivist approach is a fringe position in the field of linguistics, if only because it is usually incompatible with a scientific approach to the subject.
The French Academy is looked down on as being conservative almost to the point of absurdity by just about every linguist I've read on the topic.
ETA: I just skimmed through the Wikipedia article on the topic, which gives this:
Not a linguist mentioned.
Currently there are a number of philosophers and one philologist, but it's primarily composed of writers. 'Linguist' isn't necessarily a designation every student of language would take.
But to what extent is the value judgment of linguists about language change more important than that of other language users?
It's not. Academic linguistics attempts to avoid value judgments entirely and rely on observations of how typical users of a language actually communicate.
Value judgements on language use are typically the province of high-status individuals who use language professionally (e.g., writers) or who teach language to others.
Which may of course include studying the value judgments made by language users (sociolinguistics) .