The argument from supposed "linguistic regularity" is one of the key arguments language perscriptivists, mavens and
their ilk use when trying to impress upon others the correctness of their
view about language usage. An example
would be the word "innit" which comes in for much bashing and
hand-wringing. As with other terms which are derided or frowned upon, it is not surprising to find the term generally
used by a groups which are also derided or frowned upon -namely young people,
specifically inner-city young people. It
is important to remember that this is even true of favourable and less
favourable accents in English. Despite
the language being perfectly understandable and used widely, it is considered
somehow inferior, either funny or just unclear and weird. Brummies and Scousers will understand this kind of
attitude well.
So back to the example.
"innit" or so the argument goes, is not good English because
it doesn't make sense! Innit is a tag
question and as such should repeat the verb that precedes it, (or
"do" in many cases):
You are, aren't you?
he is, isn't he
He went, didn't he?
he is, isn't he
He went, didn't he?
You haven't been saying "innit" have you?
You like him, do you?
He went, did he?
You like him, you do!
He went, did he?
You like him, you do!
So this regularity is presented as evidence that
"innit" as an abbreviation of "isn't it" is
unacceptable. We say "you want to
go, don't you?" not "you want to go, isn't it?" That doesn't
make any sense. And so here we have an
example of the argument from linguistic regularity. However, as with most of these arguments, it
is usually pretty easy to point out that "correct" language isn't all
that reliable or regular either. In the
case of tag questions we have this one.
I am, aren't I?
Why not use the same form of the "be" verb
here? Why not say "I am, amn't
I"? Obviously it sounds weird,
because we don't say it, but it much better fits the supposed "rule". The
second problem is that we (or more precisely Americans) have no problem
applying one tag to all questions. The
word "right" can be uniformly applied to every sentence, right? It doesn't seem odd, right? It is something we're used to, right? It's also pretty easy and not something
English learners would have much trouble with.
French uses "n'est pas" in the same way and Japanese
"ne" and according to the BBC these are called invariant tags. Perhaps, therefore, if innit annoys you it is best to think
of it as one word, like right, right?
The problem , I would argue, is that rules grew out of usage,
not the other way round. Like noticing
people opening their umbrellas when it rains and assuming that the umbrella
opening causes rain, we have perhaps got the relationship between rules and
language the wrong way round. Certainly
we view written language as being more important, serious and accurate than
spoken language despite the fact that written language has existed for a
fraction of the time that spoken language has.
English is not a regular language.Its plurals are odd and
irregular (sheep, mice, children, wives,roofs, potatoes, cellos, babies, boxes, fungi), Pronouns are odd (I-me but you-you, I-we but you-you) spelling is weird (comb, bomb, tomb, finger singer), some verbs conjugate many times whereas others hardly
change at all (eat-ate-eaten, look-looked-looked, put-put-put) some bjects look singular and yet are plural (glasses, jeans) and others look plural and yet are singular (the news, maths, physics), someone will write to you (if you're british), but they won't email to you. And all of this is accepted with complete indifference. But should someone utter "innit" then call The Daily Mail because the world is possibly coming to an end.
All living languages
are like this so, why not just relax and enjoy the variety? Status Quo bias means we ignore the massive amounts of weirdness in our native language and only notice those new things we don't like. Before you get upset about the way someone
else is using language have a look at the roll call of history' mavens and see
how valid their complaints seem these days.
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