Verbal Hygiene (The Politics of Language) 1st Edition

by Deborah Cameron (Author)

4 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0415103558

ISBN-10: 041510355X

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In this book, Cameron explores popular attitudes towards language and examines the practices by which people attempt to regulate its use. She also argues that popular discourse about language values serves a function for those engaged in it.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Cameron's new book should be on every ET reader's reading list. The book is written in a personal way, with anecdotes and a sense of the human writer behind the printed page, and many of the stories and examples are amusing. It's a good read.' - English Today

'Cameron provides us with some excellent teaching materials and some remarkable examples of public statements about language in use. Most important, she leaves us in no doubt about the normative and ideological nature of language in social affairs and the failure of some language experts who have become involved in educational matters to take full account of the practical importance of these things.' - James Milroy, Journal of Sociolinguistics

About the Author

Deborah Cameron teaches in the Programme in Literary Linguistics at Strathclyde University. She is editor of The Feminist Critique of Language and co-authored Researching Language, both available from Routledge.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (May 25, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 284 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 041510355X
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0415103558
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.14 x 0.64 x 9.21 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #5,348,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #9,463 in Linguistics (Books)
- #11,908 in Foreign Language Instruction (Books)
- #18,251 in Linguistics Reference

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Sarina Daniels

A different take on Pre-/Descriptivism

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2018

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Cameron presents a view of how language changes and how it is monitored both by official bodies and individuals in everyday speech. Recommended for anyone interested in sociolinguistics and subtle modern language change.

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Lynda Scheer

Say what?

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2002

Linguists, most of them scholars and academics, tend to accept that language is in a continuing state of evolution and change. They consider this the natural state of language, and that any attempt to stop change with a set of rigid grammatical rules and notions of standards is either counterproductive or simply wrong-headed.
Lined up against them is a more traditionalist army of grammarians, plain language enthusiasts, and keepers of "correct" usage, who feel that change is undesirable and that the laissez-faire attitude of linguists is an invitation to cultural chaos. These two groups have been at loggerheads for decades, each deeply suspicious of the other.
Along comes Deborah Cameron, a linguist at Strythclyde University (UK) who decides to take a more open-minded look at the attitudes of the traditionalists and offers her colleagues a number of insights meant to scale down the level of hostility between the two camps. Her central notion is there in the title: verbal hygiene.
She proposes that not only does language evolve; it generates its own "caregivers." These people look after its welfare, wrong-headed or not, and practice a kind of "hygiene" that counteracts the messiness of uncontrolled growth. The evolution of language, she says, is actually a dynamic between opposing forces of conservation and innovation. While there is no "right" or "wrong" way to use language, Cameron suggests that language is enlivened by the push and pull between these opposing ideas.
To challenge the idea that standard English exists apart from the people who use it, she provides an account for how it comes into being, at least as she sees it among UK writers. And she challenges the confident trust we might have in the use of dictionaries as a measure of "correctness." Reading her analysis, you realize that dictionaries are part of a circular process that both reflects and determines usage.
Cameron extends her discussion of language with insightful and entertaining analyses of "political correctness," communication between genders, and the types of politically-inspired public hysteria that spring up around the schools' perceived failure to teach correct grammar. She even takes to task our confident acceptance of George Orwell's dictums in his often cited essay, "Politics and the English Language."
This is a book for anyone fascinated by not only the language of politics but the politics of language. Its ideas are argued thoughtfully and with considerable insight. As companions to this book I'd also recommend the books of American linguist Deborah Tannen ("You Just Don't Understand") and Simon Winchester's account of the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary, "The Professor and the Madman."

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