Blogbook -- Be Changing Our Standards
Entry 34 My examples of Faulkner, Walker, and MF DOOM ( post 33 ) show change in language over time as well as variation -- that is, language contesting -- even if such changes are unacknowledged. And, it should be pointed out that Strunk and White agree on this point (see post 25 ). They explain, “language is perpetually in flux: it is a living stream, shifting, changing, receiving new strength from a thousand tributaries, losing old forms in the backwaters of time” ( note 236 ). What do you think those “thousand tributaries” are? They are various English languagings that are not at that time considered by those in power to be standardized. They are Black Englishes, and multilingual Englishes, Southern Englishes, and Midwestern Englishes, not to mention other languages, Spanishes, Frenches, etc. (picture from USGS Twitter account ) Language ain’t never been static nor still. The Russian linguist Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov explains this dynamic of language as the “ceaseless ge...