The Media are Ruining English

Jean Aitchison

People complain about the corruption of the English language. The source of this problem is: the media. These complaints range over all aspects of the language. David Crystal listed twenty complaints regarding broadcasted language, from grammatical errors to pronunciation and vocabulary. ‘You and I’ is such a mistake. This mistake was used in a play written by Shakespeare in “The Merchant of Venice”, about 400 years ago. Even the Oxford-educated “the Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher abused this error. These influential people made this mistake grammatical mistake become universally acceptable.

Why do so many people complain about ‘modern decadence’ and ‘journalistic incompetence’?

Firstly: the ‘dirty fingernails’ fallacy. This is a notion about journalist being sloppy language users. ‘Dirty fingernails’ is a metaphor that refers to: never bother to scrub their linguistic fingernails. However, this is untrue. This false idea is due to the ignorance about how language changes, as the language changes slowly overtime. This includes words such as gay, wimp and nice. Because of these significant changes, the media should be regarded as linguistic mirrors; as they reflect current language usage and extend it.

Journalists are observant reporters who pick up early new forms and spread them. Despite their early knowledge, these reporters normally do not invent these forms, nor do they corrupt the language. Even though they copy the changes in pronunciation or so, the people tend to complain about it. There are two theories regarding this topic; the young cuckoo model and the tadpole to frog view of change.

Secondly ‘ a garbage heap’ fallacy, a false believe that journalism is “junk writing”. However, this writing style is created in order to attract attention and to sustain it. This requires training and practice. George Orwell pointed out the importance of making one’s meaning clear. This is met by six guidelines. This made the written language lucid and polished, but never without deriving from its instruction and amusement. In essence, should both Orwell and Johnson look at a newspaper today, he would learn both about the modern language and how to use it clearly.

Thus, the essence of this essay is: English maintains its own patterns and keeps itself organized: a language, like a thermostat, regulates itself constantly.