Language Big Bang?

Language, a language, languages or the language—it is a fun conundrum as I play with words. I am a Japanese language teacher who came from Linguistics. Some may say “Perfect!” but people just like me are likely to say “Worst language teacher!” As a linguist, I often find myself stretching the concept of acceptable sentences. The trouble with me is that I can come up with so many contexts in which we speak very differently or even weirdly. Maybe, just maybe, a good language teacher knows and reinforces the idea of “correct speech” and “correct grammar”—there is always just one acceptable sentence for each context. For me, accent and pronunciation are other iffy topics—I was trained not to be judgmental based on one’s foreign accent or pronunciation. After all, I am not a native speaker of English and I know I speak “funny” So why should I police the Japanese language?

Did I get upset or offended when my English language teachers corrected my pronunciation or taught me how I was supposed to say what I wanted to say? No. Of course not! So I naturally assume that’s also part of my job as a language teacher. I correct my students’ intonation, pronunciation, grammar and word use, but here’s another conundrum, or more like a predicament:  How much is sufficient?  How much is too much? 

So here comes my favorite TV sitcom, “The Big Bang Theory,” where I clearly see all the four variations—language, a language, languages and the language. Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj all speak physics as their “language.” Sheldon may subscribe to prescriptivism and be a bit of a language policeman, so he probably believes he speaks “the language.” Raj speaks with an accent but no one has trouble understanding him. His English is one of many English languages, legitimate and just as good as Sheldon’s English. His friends joke about his accent, but no one ever forces him to speak like “Americans.” After all, Raj is a respectable astrophysicist, and what he speaks does matter, however he sounds.

I am not the language police, but I would like to be a good language teacher. When I think about a healthy balance, I think about Sheldon and Raj (and start laughing hysterically at their jokes). Two idiolects, two Englishes, but they exist in the same world, side by side. After all, who can say that we have only one Japanese language?