The Columbia Guide to Standard American English [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Standard American Usage Standard American English usage is linguistic good manners, sensitively and accurately matched to context—to listeners or readers, to situation, and to purpose. But because our language is constantly changing, mastering its appropriate usage is not a one-time task like learning the multiplication tables. Instead, we are constantly obliged to adjust, adapt, and revise what we have learned. Our language can always serve us effectively if we use its resources wisely; to keep itself ready to serve us it continually changes and varies to meet our needs. If we are a practical and hard-headed people, it will come to reflect that fact; if we become technologically and scientifically venturesome, our language will change to meet that need; if we become poets, it will change to accommodate the demands of our poetry; and if we are filled with prejudice or hatred, our language will reflect that too. Failing to keep our usage—our words, meanings, pronunciations, spellings, grammatical structures, and idiomatic expressions—abreast of changing and varying standards may earn us moderate disapproval if a usage is doubtful, vigorous disapproval or outright rejection if it is wholly inappropriate, substandard, or taboo. Nor is there just one immutable standard, one unvarying code of manners. Influential people fully in command of the standard language speak and write it at different levels to meet the demands of different contexts. A great many of us use American English, and we differ a good deal in what we wish to communicate to one another. Furthermore, we use this language in a wide range of situations and for many different purposes. Pillow talk between couples differs from the ways each talks to children, neighbors, colleagues, friends, acquaintances, complete strangers, or to groups of all kinds and sizes. Our vocabulary, our syntax, and every other aspect of our usage vary with the person or persons we are addressing, with the purpose of our utterance, with the situation, and indeed with the entire context: an address from the podium of a convention hall filled with political partisans demands language very different from that required for a relaxed discussion among a few close friends. Our p • 'I' f-r f^v'! Jim iri;'!' Ip i' 11 ' I i J J. . I i i . ¦ f ^r:';', --Am •J.,« f > I ll«