Reply to Deborah Cameron on Verbal Hygiene

Abstract

est in these matters, however, recent events ^ the national curriculum debate in particular^must surely prompt us to re£ection on how we can make more eiective interventions. My own feeling is that we need to start talking more concretely about what we are for as well as what we are against (e.g. grammar drills and standard English in the playground). Researching Verbal hygiene convinced me that the main obstacle to our making our views `heard' beyond the boundaries of our discipline is the lay perception of us as unreconstructed relativists with no values or standards at all ^ we are seen as a strange and mealy-mouthed group of experts for whom ways of using language can only be more or less `acceptable' or `appropriate', never `good' or `bad'. (Milroy ¢nds my discussion of linguists' language confused, and perhaps it is: but part of my point is simply that we have sometimes given a misleading impression of ourselves by not using plain words.) Linguists do not lack the hygienic impulse, as our own writings show. We acknowledge not only the beauty and intricacy of human languages but also degrees of skill and artistry in the use of them (qualities which are not however con¢ned to `polite' letters). We criticise departures from certain standards of clarity and correctness in one another's use of language^ witness Milroy's remarks on my spelling. Why should we suppress our value-judgements, or dress them up in language that is likely to be misunderstood? Better, surely, to show how evaluation can be made more accountable to knowledge and to reason.Verbal hygiene is, among other things, an expression of my hope that in future, through the eiorts of linguists and nonlinguists alike, we will have a form of public discourse on language which is informed and rational, as well as passionate.