The Variation In Theories

It's weird to see how much the English language has changed, seeing how it used to be amuses me. It is also amusing to see how English has revolutionized the world, for example how Isaac Newton started writing he's books in English instead of Latin. Weird huh? I used to hear that Latin was that one language that intellectuals speaked in, but apparently English brought on the competition. In episode 6 of The Adventure of English, we hear different theories of the language from different writers/thinkers.

First of all we have John Locke, he was an English philosopher and was acknowledge by his ideas of liberalism, but we are focused in his theory of the language. In hi essay concerning human understanding, he says that words should be better defined, so "peace would naturally follow" (2:30). I believe that was Locke said made sense. Imagine a world were words weren't misinterpreted because of the meaning. This can be in a issue between countries which can lead to war, or a discussion in class like Eugenia and Mr. Tangen confusion of LOL and lull. As said in the video Locke has a view influences by Idealism. For those who don't know what idealism is, here you have the definition:  "skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing" (wikipedia). All though it would be great if everyone was able to know everything, we all know not everyone can have an education and such can't apply to the world we live in. Words actually are perfectly defined, for example in Spanish with things such as, La Real Academia Española, but that doesn't mean people use it properly and accurately, or that it's going to bring peace.

We also have the ideas of the writer, Jonathan Swift. According to this video, Swift hated the "vulgar liberties...taking with the English language"(7:27). He didn't agreed with things such as abbreviations, sorry Swift but you wouldn't make it in the 21st century, we don't abbreviate words anymore, we abbreviate phrases. He was a big believer of people talking with big fancy words, he is one of those people who instead of saying vocabulary, would say lexicon. He liked fancy English, or as we learned in the previous videos, Queen's English. Maybe in his time this was what one should think of the language, but as the clock ticks one can't stay behind. By seeing Swift's ideals of how English should not change, like Greek and Latin, I can infer that he is clearly prescriptivist and that he would have a heated argument with Thomas Jefferson if he could. 

BTW: abbreviating is fun.

In the video we