Apostles of a new order: structural linguistics

The apostles of Structural Linguistics might still have confined their interests to the teaching of foreign languages had it not been for the extremely influential work of Professor Charles Carpenter Fries of the University of Michigan, a prolific writer who in 1940 published “a scientifically oriented description of actual usage.” Entitled American English Grammar, it was based on an examination of three thousand letters written to the U.S. War Department in 1918 dealing with the subject of pension money and classified according to the social status of the writers.

---Marilyn Monroe reads (again and again).---click image for source...

—Marilyn Monroe reads (again and again).—click image for source…

In 1945 Fries brought forth another book, called Teaching and Learning English As a Foreign Language. Applying the principles of Structural Linguistics to English, Fries also embraced Leonard Bloomfield’s antagonisms  toward criteria of speech. He quoted Bloomfield in his preface:

“Our schools are conducted by persons who, from professors of education down to teachers in the classroom, know nothing of the results of linguistic science, not even of the relation of writing to speech or of standard language to dialect. In short, they do not know what language is, and yet must teach it, and in consequence waste years of every child’s life and reach a poor result.”

---Rene Magritte The Subjugated Reader 1928---click image for source...

—Rene Magritte The Subjugated Reader 1928—click image for source…

The principles of Bloomfield, Fries and their disciples swept the educational field. Borne on the turbulent and chaotic currents of modern pedagogic theory, the teaching of English grammar followed the teaching of Latin into the Dead Sea of abandoned subjects. As it sank beneath the surface, the linguisticians continued their warfare against all standards of usage anywhere. From Harvard Professor John B. Carroll:

“I agree with Hall ( Dr. Robert A. Hall) in rejecting the undemocratic and socially immature attitudes whereby variant and substandard language patterns are condemned; I would even go further and say that pupils should be taught under what circumstances such language patterns can be used appropriately and effectively. Over insistence on rigid standards of usage may be detrimental to the development of personal styles of oral and written communication.”

---Girl With a Book, by Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707 - 1762)---click image for source...

—Girl With a Book, by Pietro Antonio Rotari (1707 – 1762)—click image for source…

This new tendency was an ushering in of anti-intellectualism of the intellectual,” a form of cultural vandalism  that is at center destructive, even nihilistic  and the paradoxical aspect of this assault on the English language is the claim to be motivated only by the purest democratic principles. ( to be continued)…

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