George P. Marsh
Lectures on the English Language
(London: John Murray,
1863) pp. 459-60.
Paradox Application
LANGUAGE
George P. Marsh's English Lecture XXIX
CORRUPTIONS OF LANGUAGE.
Examination of Dr. Latham's paradox of the corruption of
language.
§ 2. Latham appears to me to confound the progress of natural
linguistic change, which is inevitable, and the deterioration
arising from accidental or local causes, which may be resisted, and
he denies that there can be any such thing as the corruption of a
language. All languages, he thinks, are equally intelligible, and
consequently, equally what they ought to be, namely, mediums of
intercourse between man and man, and hence, continues he, "in
language whatever IS is right." In the concluding
paragraph of the Preface to the second edition of his 'Treatise on
the English Language,' he observes,--"I am not desirous of
sacrificing truth to an antithesis; but so certain is language to
change from logical accuracy to logical licence, and, at the same
time, so certain is language, when so changed, to be as
intelligible as before, that I venture on asserting that not only
whatever is is right, but also that in many cases
whatever was was wrong." There is in this passage a singular
confusion of thought and of expression. First, it maintains the
paradox that, when languages were spoken with logical
accuracy, they were wrong, but now, when they have degenerated into
logical licence, they are right; and, secondly, the final
conclusion contradicts the premises from which it is deduced. The
argument is, that language always adapts itself to the uses of
those who employ it, that it changes only as they change, and that
it is at all times equally well suited to the great purposes for
which that faculty was given to man. If this is so, then that which
was must have been right for the time when it
was, upon the same principle that that which is is
right for the present time. To affirm, then, as a result from the
general doctrine of the constant adaptation of language to man's
nature and wants, that all that at any time is in language
is right, but that something which at a past time
was was wrong, is not an "antithesis," but a
palpable inconsistency, a contradiction in terms. Either, then, our
author means that whatever is is right, and, upon
the same principle, whatever was was right, but,
by virtue of necessary changes in speech, much that was right
is at present wrong, or he means nothing at all; and
his entire proposition is at war with itself, and, as lawyers say,
repugnant. But, in spite of the authority of Latham, I see no
reason why, independently of the evidence of comparison between
different stages of a given tongue, we may not as well speak of the
corruption of a language as of the deterioration of a race. No man
doubts that certain species or families of animals, man himself
included, become, by change of climate, or of other natural
conditions, physically inferior to what they have been in former
and different circumstances, and there is unhappily equally
irresistible evidence of the moral and intellectual deterioration
of nations. When, then, a people, once great in mind, great in
virtue, powerful in material energy, becomes enfeebled in
intellect, depraved in heart, and effeminate in action, and their
language drops the words belonging especially to the higher
faculties and perceptions, or perverts them to sensuous, base,
earthly uses, and is no longer capable of the expression of lofty
conceptions, generous emotions, or virtuous resolves, are we not to
say that their language is corrupted? So far, as respects the needs
and conveniences of material life, it may perhaps be true that one
form of it is as expressive and appropriate as another, but the
theory which I am combating forgets that language is not a tool, or
even a machine, but is of itself an informing vital agency, and
that, so truly as language is what man has made it, just
so truly man is what language has made him. The
depravation of a language is not merely a token or an effect of the
corruption of a people, but corruption is accelerated, if not
caused, by the perversion and degradation of its sacred vocabulary;
for every human speech has its hallowed dialect, its nomenclature
appropriated to the service of sacred things, the conscience, the
generous affections, the elevated aspirations, without which
humanity is not a community of speaking men, but a herd of roaring
brutes. When, therefore, popular writers in vulgar irony apply to
vicious and depraved objects names or epithets set apart by the
common consent of society to designate the qualities or the acts
which constitute man's only claim to reverence and affection, they
both corrupt the speech, and administer to the nation a poison more
subtle and more dangerous, because less obvious, than the bitterest
venom and with which the destructive philosophy has ever assailed
the moral or the spiritual interests of humanity.
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