to accomplish. I can say with complete honesty that I have no illusions
about saving the world or initiating an era of universal linguistic goodwill.
Walt Wolfram’s version of this same question requires more thought. He
asks:
What approaches to the dissemination of sociolinguistic information
must be adopted with communities and with the general public when
language diversity is interpreted in terms of a prescriptive,
correctionist model?
(Wolfram et al. 2008)This issue has been debated and will continue to be debated as long as
there is life and movement in the discipline. That is good and right,
because it is an important question. In the published work on this matter
there are three principles that make sense to me:
1. Principle of error correction: “A scientist who becomes
aware of a widespread idea or social practice with important
consequences that is invalidated by his own data is obligated
to bring this error to the attention of the widest possible
audience” (Labov 1982: 172).
2. Principle of debt incurred: “An investigator who has obtained
linguistic data from members of a speech community has an
obligation to use the knowledge based on that data for the
benefit of the community, when [the community] has need of
it” (ibid.: 173).
3. Principle of linguistic gratuity: the obligation to “pursue
positive ways in which [linguists] can return linguistic favors
to the [fieldwork] community” (Wolfram 1993: 227; see also
Wolfram et al. 2008).In so far as teaching is concerned, Wolfram concludes that:
[W]hile it is relatively easy to capitalize on people’s inherent interest
in language, it is sometimes difficult to convince the general public
to accept the need for language study, a prerequisite to changing
uninformed opinions and assumptions about language variation.
(Wolfram et al. 2008: 1113)