The Language Wars: A History of Proper English by Henry Hitchings John Murray HK$234
Why do we get so agitated about matters of grammar and spelling and punctuation?
This book takes you on a trip through several centuries of complaints, delivered in moods that vary from rage to tragic resignation, about the way other people use the English language.
It will leave you convinced of several things. First, that there is a fine old tradition of complaining about English usage, going back at least to the time of Chaucer. Second, that things like dangling participles and split infinitives seem to some people to be matters of life and death. And third, that when we complain about points of English usage, we are very likely to be complaining about something else.
Language is an emotional issue for everyone, because it is so intimately linked to identity. For some people, an insistence on proper syntax may be a way of expressing a belief in moral rectitude. A dislike of neologism can indicate a respect for tradition, and even a fear of change. Hostility to the importation of words from other languages may go along with an anxiety that the borders of a community or nation are vulnerable to alien incursion. Complaints about language, as Deborah Cameron has argued, are often expressions of concern about the larger social and moral order.
In Hong Kong, it is common to hear complaints that the standard of English is in decline. But Henry Hitchings shows that baleful warnings about declining English standards have been heard without fail in every generation since the 15th century and wherever English is used. If you give them time, people who complain about English in Hong Kong will soon be heard to complain about other things - the decline of civility, or respect, or the political culture, or clean air.