Between the Prescriptive and Descriptive: The Challenge for Dictionary Makers

A review of An English Language Primer Focused on Sri Lanka (Especially for Tamil Readers) by Prof. S.R.H. Hoole.
Foreword by: Prof. Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan, Germany
Publisher: Baldaeus Theological College, Konesapuri, Trincomalee.
Printers: JR Industries, Uduvil.
Year of Publication: 2022. 340 pp. Rs. 1200 in Sri Lanka, 9786246077020.
(Available at Vijitha Yapa and Sarisavi)

By Suresh Canagarajah

Edwin Erle Sparks Professor,
Departments of Applied Linguistics and English,
Pennsylvania State University, USA.

It is said that the first lexicographer Samuel Johnson ushered a new orientation to language studies when he articulated his intention to document how English language is actually used in his Dictionary of the English language in 1755. Previously, it was the grammarians who held sway on any matters of usage or teaching of a language. The grammarians were prescriptivist in orientation. They articulated the norms of the language for handbooks, textbooks, and curriculum, which spelled out what was correct, according to their technical expertise. Lexicographers, on the other hand, claim their expertise as descriptive—i.e., documenting how grammar is diverse and changing in society, even when it deviates from what grammarians might find objectionable. This way of classifying their differences would also make us treat grammarians as conservative and lexicographers as progressive.

However, things are not so neat. Soon, dictionaries also started to be treated as prescribing norms. When our friends object to our speech and say “But that’s not in the dictionary!” they are treating the lexicographer as the final arbiter of grammatical judgements. Furthermore, it turned out that the judgements of grammarians were misguided because they treated Latin grammatical properties as the norm for English and other languages, based on Latin’s status as an educated lingua franca at that time. To further complicate the descriptive/prescriptive divide, there are different kinds of dictionaries. While dictionaries that feature semantics, etymology, and phonology are the standard ones and are relatively more descriptive, there are other dictionaries of usage (such as Merriam Webster’s Concise Dictionary of Usage or The Oxford Dictionary of American Usage and Style). These usage dictionaries distinguish between meanings to articulate how the usage might be changing, differ according to context (i.e., region or informality) and relate to style (written versus conversation). In these frankly subjective usage dictionaries, the authors have a strong presence and voice, articulating their own preferences. Their examples and descriptions can be conversational and anecdotal, deviating from the brevity and rigor of generic dictionaries.

There’s a new challenge for dictionary makers when English has now become a global lingua franca and nativized in many countries. English has a history of more than 200 years in many postcolonial communities, as in Sri Lanka. In these communities, English has developed local grammatical and lexical norms that are used by millions of speakers within the countries. Not surprisingly, there are now dictionaries of local English for Australia, Canada, Singapore, Nigeria, and the Bahamas. We are now beyond that point when we can debate whether anything other than British or American English should be accepted as legitimate. The famous Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe once said that if English is a global language, it should be allowed to spread and diversify. If someone says a global language should be spoken like the British, they probably don’t appreciate the meaning of “global.”

That nativized Englishes are rule-governed, meaningful, and shared by millions of people leaves prescriptivists with a losing battle. Languages diversifying in new social, cultural, and environmental contexts is a fact of life. “Not deficient but different” has become the slogan among sociolinguists on how to assess postcolonial Englishes that deviate from British or American norms. Note that at one point even American English was perceived as a deficient slang by British people. It took Daniel Webster’s dictionary-making efforts to fight back against this bias and demonstrate that Americans had their local norms that were systematic.

This brief history brings us to the challenges of dictionary makers and language teachers in Sri Lanka. There are a lot of studies on Sri Lankan English now by leading scholars to demonstrate that many local lexical, grammatical, and phonological features are rule-governed. There is even a Dictionary of Sri Lankan English (published by Michael Meyler in 2007). However, when does a mistake become a norm? When does a deviation become regularized to be called Sri Lankan English? That takes a complex social, historical, and political process: i.e., social—many people start using this “deviation” as a norm and it becomes widespread; historical—over a long period of time such usage becomes patterned, regularized, and systematized; political—there is a policy or public opinion that develops an acceptance and even pride in the local norms. Once these processes occur, trying to stop such language change is like the story of King Canute trying to stop the waves with his mere presence (as once argued by the renowned languist Bernard Spolsky). In fact, Samuel Johnson himself wrote in his introduction to the first dictionary: “They that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they endeavour to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts. This will not always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with the current speech.” He conceded that norms would change through the diversity of social interactions. However, since not all changes gain acceptance and normativity, there is value in conversations about which of them are acceptable or worth preservation. Textbooks, handbooks, dictionaries, and language teachers play no small role in the development of new norms.

Professor Hoole’s dictionary has the subtitle: “Raising Alarm Bells on Sri Lankan English” in the cover page. As we can see, a strong motivation for him to publish his usage dictionary is what he perceives as deviations from the British English. Though the title doesn’t announce itself as a dictionary, the main section in his book (Part 2) is titled “The Dictionary Section.” Part 1 introduces some grammatical terms which readers might find useful to understand the meanings elucidated in the dictionary section. The author’s preface is 14 pages long and gives useful information on his motivations for writing this book. He says that this book evolves from his experience teaching English to Tamil students in the Baldaeus Theological College. He has also focused on English corrections on his students’ writing while working as an Engineering lecturer at Peradeniya and the Jaffna University College. In this sense, this dictionary emerges from his practical experiences of observing the typical mistakes of Tamil students. He is also wise to target the dictionary to Tamil speakers as he is able to use Tamil in the book to illustrate the points or identify interference from the first language in the use of English. The dictionary features alphabetically organized words to explain differences between similar sounding terms, mistaken usage, fresh local coinages, and specialized registers. The book also features exercises to help readers distinguish words or identify the mistakes in local usage.

It is clear from the preface that Hoole was schooled in British English, both in Christian schools in Sri Lanka and during his graduate studies in the UK. He has had opportunities to be exposed to the norms of British English through social networks, education, and publications. He also describes the books he read as a child and dictionaries that accompanied him into graduate education, such as H. W. Fowler’s A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (Oxford, 1927). These background details indicate the preferences of the author in the spirit of full disclosure. Referring to errors in the local news media, he states that “reading Sri Lankan English is dangerous to our knowledge of English as bad grammar may be instilled in us in that process of reading bad English” (p. xxiv). He also narrates anecdotes of students from an elite school in Colombo using that ubiquitous Sri Lankanism “bugger” to refer to one’s father as “Pater Bugger”, and criticizes such usage.

It is revealing that Hoole spent much of his life with usage dictionaries such as Fowler’s. His publication is also a usage and style based dictionary, and not descriptive in orientation. The entries are chosen from words featuring frequent errors or confusions to Sri Lankans. In many of the entries, the author offers helpful clarifications. In cases of certain variants, he is reasonable in allowing Sri Lankanisms in less formal contexts, although his preference is for the more formal variant. See, for example, the entries in page 122:

Except, Except for

Both expressions, “Except” and “Except for,” mean excluding the noun that follows:

All of us ate to our full except my mother who felt a little tired.

All of us ate to our full except for my mother who felt a little tired.

Both expressions are said to be correct. But are they? By the Loquacity Rule, “except for” involves an unnecessary word “for,” a pleonasm, and is therefore not the preferred form.

Eyes, I saw with my own eyes

It is needless to say “with my own eyes” in the expression

I saw with my own eyes.

We have a pleonasm in the words “with my own eyes,” because we always see with our own eyes and not other people’s eyes. This is clearly from the Tamil expression, [Tamil example given here].

It is an expression that will, however, stay with us arguing that it is used for emphasis or to say that what the speaker saw refers to a first hand report. Be that as it may, “I saw” is usually good enough.

We can see the Engineering/Math professor in Hoole preferring more economical expressions. In the second example, however, he pragmatically recognizes that the use of “with my own eyes” has become part of local usage and concedes that it can be used for emphasis. It is laudable that the author recognizes the style and context variations in questionable words to allow for diversity.

But in some cases, he is a bit too strict. In page 142, he has the following entry:

How about “I come there”?

This phrase in the heading of this section, and illiterate phrases like it, take the place of the correct

How about my coming there?

How about has to be followed by a noun: How about this? Or How about that?

It is possible that Prof. Hoole might be overlooking the simple distinction between conversational/informal and written/formal usage here. Conversational English grammar doesn’t follow written syntax in even native speaker communities.

Hoole also becomes a bit too prescriptive in page 237 where he chides the common practice of referring to the newspaper as “paper.” He mentions that “paper” refers to the material in which the news is printed, and therefore cannot be used to stand for the newspaper. However, the electronic version of the New York Times announces on its web “Today’s Paper” as an option for readers to click. Similarly, in his treatment of phrases like Thank you very much and Thank you so much, Hoole explains:

However, to me, “so much” implies a comparison like pointing to some rice on a plate and saying I eat only “so much:” Therefore,

“Thank you so much” seems to thank a person a certain amount without saying what that amount is.

I therefore strongly recommend “Thank you very much.”

However, even the usage dictionaries of the British and Americans are more tolerant on this one. They generally state that “Thank you very much” is slightly more formal than “thank you so much”.

Others feel that “very” is a superlative word used to add more emphasis to the appreciation. Therefore, it is not preferred by more reserved speakers who reduce the emphasis with the use of “so.”

These points are meant to demonstrate how complex usage is, especially at the global level for a lingua franca, and not meant to slight Hoole’s painstaking effort in publishing this book.

One has to appreciate his generosity in going outside his field, motivated by a sincere interest in helping local students master English. That the book derives from his teaching, and is still used by him in the theology school, demonstrates that it is not a mere academic exercise. Unlike many books that end unread in bookshelves, this book will be used by teachers and students in Sri Lanka. When there is a dearth of publications from international publishers, compounded now by the unfair currency exchange and inflation, and the lack of an English language publisher in Jaffna, this locally produced book is one that many learners will be able to own—and even treat it as their daily toilet reading (the way Hoole himself read dictionaries when he was growing up, as he describes in his preface). Students can treat the disparity between British English and Sri Lankan English as not mutually exclusive but choices for different contexts. While Sri Lankan English will be used in in-group conversational contexts, those who interact with foreign tourists, business partners, or educational collaborators will appreciate a familiarity with British English. Globalization increasingly calls for “code switching” into different varieties, as speakers shuttle between different communities and contexts where diverse Englishes are used. Therefore, teachers who use this book can remind students of the contexts where the British and formal norms will be useful, and compare the pronouncements in the dictionary with variations in other communities and contexts. Thus Hoole’s dictionary can generate constructive discussions and lessons about language norms.

The author’s website: https://sites.psu.edu/canagarajah/