Correctness, Incorrectness, and Correction

Abstract

Correction refers to the elimination of variation and labeling of perceived errors in grammatical forms, linguistic styles, and communicative acts. Cast in moralistic and polarizing terms such as “proper” or “improper,” “pure” or “corrupted,” “intelligible” or “unintelligible,” “face‐saving” or “face‐threatening,” “standard” or “non‐standard,” and “appropriate” or “inappropriate,” each token of these unmarked–marked pairs iconically indexes the presumed essence of a language user and community. The linguistic and semiotic ideologies that animate these signs through moral narratives also broadly articulate with nationalist, multicultural, or revitalization movements and pervade the institutional domains of science, religion, education, commerce, and law. As a human universal and sociocultural construct, thus, claims and acts of correctness/incorrectness/correction are as ubiquitous as they are contingent and contestable. Anthropologists and other language scholars who analyze the forms, practices, and ideologies of correction advance discussions of language and power by drawing on theories and methods in conversation analysis, language socialization, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and applied linguistics. This entry explores studies of language standardization, conversational repair, and didactic feedback to underline the need for historical inquiry and comparative analysis to discern the interplay between corrective strategy and ideology in the social valuation of erroneous forms.