Performance, postmodernity and errors

Abstract

Mainstream attitudes to language have shifted from a basically normative and prescriptive orientation to one that celebrates actual performance and variation. This article discusses where this leaves the issue of linguistic deviations (including shortcomings). The basic theoretical framework is evolutionary theory, extended to include cultural evolution. This makes it possible to consider (in a theoretically well-founded manner) a key factor that tends to be underestimated in relation to language: the role of selection pressures as a feature of the sociocultural environment. Based on examples from a reality show (Amalies verden), the article considers in what different ways utterances may be classed as deviant from the perspective of function-based structure and discusses to what extent the recognition of a community langue as a source of adaptive pressure may throw light on different types of deviation, including language handicaps and learner errors.

Keywords::

• linguistic norms
• deficit hypothesis
• selection pressure
• deviation
• variation

Notes

¹ A thoroughgoing social constructionist approach might throw doubt upon this distinction: attributing the error to mental infrastructure might be viewed as unwarranted essentialism, cf. the stance expressed in discursive psychology (Potter and Wetherell 1987). From that point of view, the only site of rules as well as errors is the ongoing social process. However, Potter and Wetherell take care to point out that their errand is not to rule out mental infrastructure, only to bracket it off. I suggest that no one would seriously deny the existence of this difference, even if it is not always as clear as one might wish, cf. the insistence in the manual of Elliott and Gresham (1991) that a prerequisite for helping individuals with social problems is to be quite clear about whether a given outcome is due to purely performance error or due to problems with acquisition.

² One might speculate that there is a “slip” element because Amalie appears to hover between talking about mental and physical build(-up) – cf. her description of herself as being mentally very good at swimming.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter Harder

Peter Harder is Professor of English Linguistics in the Department of English, Germanic and Romance Studiesm, at the University of Copenhagen. His research interests include the semantics of grammar, language in society (cf. his recent monograph Meaning in Mind and Society, de Gruyter 2010), and grammaticalization (cf. Boye and Harder, A usage based theory of grammatical status and grammaticalization, Language 2012). He is currently engaged in two collaborative research projects, a historical one that includes the role of the semantics of Britishness for the future of Britain, with Stuart Ward as the PI, and a cross-disciplinary project on the cognitive, including neurocognitive, correlates of grammaticalization (with Kasper Boye as the PI).