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SOME NOTES ON THE PROBLEM OF THE ENGLISH LITERARY LANGUAGE (STANDARD ENGLISH)

In order to get an objective description of the nature, peculiarities and functional characteristics of the styles and stylistic devices of language, it is necessary to make clear what is meant by the literary language.

Literary language is a historical category. It exists as a variety of the national language.

"It must be remembered," said A. M. Gorki, "that language is the creation of the people. The division of the language into literary and vernacular only means that there are, as it were, a rough unpolished tongue and one wrought by men-of-letters."

The literary language is that variety of the national language which imposes definite morphological, phonetic, syntactical, lexical, phraseological and stylistic norms.[3] It allows modifications but within the frame work of the system of established norms. It casts out some of the forms of language which are considered to be beyond the established norm. The norm of usage is established by the language community at every given period in the development of the language. It is ever changing and therefore not infrequently evasive. At every period the norm is in a state of fluctuation and it requires a very sensitive and efficient eye and ear to detect and specify these fluctuations. Sometimes we may even say that two norms co-exist. But in this case we may be positive that one of the co-existing forms of the language will give way to its rival and either vanish from the language entirely or else remain on its outskirts.

In this connection it will not come amiss to note that there are two conflicting tendencies in the process of establishing the norm:

1. preservation of the already existing norm, sometimes with attempts to re-establish old forms of the language;

2. introduction of new norms not yet firmly established.

In this connection it will be interesting to quote the following lines from H. C. Wyld's "History of Modern Colloquial English."

"If it were necessary to attempt to formulate the general tendencies which have been discernible in Received Standard English during the last three centuries and a half, and which have been increasingly potent during the last hundred and fifty years, we should name two, which are to some extent opposed, but both of which are attributable to social causes. The first is the gradual decay of ceremoniousness and formality which has overtaken the speech and modes of address, no less than the manners, of good society. The second of the effort — sometimes conscious and deliberate, sometimes unconscious — after 'correctness' or correctitude, which, on the one hand, has almost eliminated the use of oaths and has softened away many coarsenesses and crudities of expression — as we should now feel them to be, however little squeamish we may be — while on the other it has, by a rigid appeal to the spelling — the very worst and most unreliable court for the purpose — definitely ruled out, as 'incorrect' or 'slipshod' or 'vulgar', many pronunciations and grammatical constructions which had arisen in the natural course of the development of English, and were formerly universal among the best speakers. Both of these tendencies are due primarily to the social, political and economic events in our history....

These social changes have inevitably brought with them corresponding changes in manners and in speech... but the speech and habits of a lifetime are not changed in a moment, as a vesture. Much of the old remains, and slowly andimperceptibly the new-comers react upon their environment, almost as much as they are influenced by it. Thus, for instance, it is suggested that the Middle Class Puritan ideals have gradually brought about a greater reticence of expression and a more temperate use of expletives, and also a greater simplicity of manners, from which many of the airs and graces of the older were eliminated. Again, a highly cultivated and intellectual section of the Middle Class have played a prominent part in Church and State since the time of Elizabeth. We see under that monarch a generation of courtiers, statesmen, and prelates, who were also scholars, and even some who... were educational reformers and writers upon language, as well as statesmen. The influence of these learned courtiers would be in the direction of correctness and elegance of utterance, in opposition to the more careless and unstudied speech of the mere men of fashion."

It is interesting to note that much of what was considered a violation of the norm in one period of the development of a language becomes acknowledged and is regarded as perfectly normal in another period. Many words and constructions which were once considered illiterate have become literary. And no effort was spared to ban innovations, particularly in the sphere of vocabulary, by the purists of any given period. But most of their efforts were in vain. The people, who are the only lawgivers of the language, gradually accepted changes in all language levels and in vocabulary.

There is no hard and fast division between the literary and non-literary language. They are interdependent. The literary language constantly enriches its vocabulary and forms from the inexhaustible resources of the vernacular. It also adopts some of its syntactical peculiarities and by so doing, gives them the status of norms of the literary language. Thus selection is the most typical feature of the literary language. It is interesting to note that the process of selecting and admitting lexical or morphological forms into the literary language is not a conscious effort on the part of scholars. It is rather a reluctant concession than a free and deliberate selection. When a linguistic item circulating in the non-literary language gains admission into the sacred precincts of the literary language, it is mostly due to the conscious choice of the man-of-letters, who finds either an aesthetic value in the given unit, or some other merit that will justify its recognition as a lawful member of the literary language.

This, however, is not the case with structural units. As the national language is the creation of the people as a whole, morphological and syntactical changes which gradually and imperceptibly take place in their speech from one generation to another, cannot fail in the long run to enter the literary language. Men-of-letters not only write the language, they also speak it and in most cases just like any one of their countrymen.

Newly-coined words, or neologisms, as they are called, which are created according to the productive models of word-building in the given language do not go beyond the boundaries of the literary norms. If a newly-coined word is understood by the community, it may become a fact of the literary language. But the literary language casts off any form that is unrecognizable. The development of the literary language is governed by its own laws. It is highly resistant to innovations of speech.

The English literary language was particularly regulated and formalized during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The influence of the men-of-letters on this process can hardly be over-estimated. Some of them, none the less, hindered the natural, organic process of development. Baugh points out that Swift, for example, "in matters of language... was a conservative." Byron on the other hand was very liberal and introduced into the literary language many new words and phrases. Not all of them gained recognition and stayed in the literary language; but nevertheless they were facts of the literary language by their very nature. Take for example the word "weatherology" coined by Byron.

The literary language greatly influences the non-literary language. Many words, constructions and particularly phonetic improvements have been introduced through it into the English colloquial language.

This influence had its greatest effect in the 19th century with the spread of general education, and in the present century with the introduction of radio and television into the daily lives of the people. Many words of a highly literary character have passed into the non-literary language, often undergoing peculiar morphological and phonetic distortions in the process.

The non-literary language manifests itself in all aspects of the language: phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactical.

Such formerly dialectal peculiarities as in ' instead of ing; [ a:] instead of [æ]; the dropping of (h) and the insertion of (h) at the beginning of some words; [ai] instead of [ei], [rain] — [rein], are typical phonetic peculiarities of non-literary English.

The difficulty that one faces when attempting to specify the characteristic features of the non-literary variety lies mainly in the fact that it does not present any system. The best way to check this or that form of non-literary English is to contrast it to the existing.

Literary English is almost synonymous with the term standard English. Standard English is best described in an interesting book written by Randolph Quirk, Professor of English language in the University of London, the title of which is "The Use of English." He states:

"We have seen that standard English is basically an ideal, a mode of expression that we seek when we wish to communicate beyond our immediate community with members of the wider community of the nation as a whole. As an ideal, it cannot be perfectly realised, and we must expect that members of different 'wider communities' (Britain, America, Nigeria, for example) may produce different realisations. In fact, however, the remarkable thing is the very high degree of unanimity, the small amount of divergence. Any of us can read a newspaper printed in Leeds or San Francisco or Delhi without difficulty and often even without realising that there are differences at all."¹

Cockney, regarded as the remnants of the London dialect, seems to be growing into a generic term for any form of non-standard English in Britain, although non-standard varieties of English exist in territorial variants. Literary English is indifferent to territorial usage.

Standard English is an abstraction, an ideal. To use present-day terminology, standard English is a kind of invariant which stands above all kinds of variants of English both within and without Great Britain. This ideal helps to establish more or less strict norms for all aspects of the language.

The publication of dictionaries does much to establish the literary language norms. As a matter of fact it is impossible to establish any norm once and for all. At the very moment it is established, it begins to fluctuate. Such fluctuations not infrequently result in considerable changes. And the compilers of English dictionaries are forced willynilly to acknowledge a variant and present it as co-existing alongside the one previously recognized as solely acceptable. This is particularly the case with reference to pronunciation. The scholar fixing the language norm is made to bow to his majesty the people.

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