The usage of a

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of met ...

is the ways in which its

written Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols. Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...

and spoken variations are routinely employed by its speakers; that is, it refers to "the collective habits of a language's native speakers", as opposed to idealized models of how a language works or (should work) in the abstract. For instance, Fowler characterized usage as "the way in which a word or phrase is normally and correctly used" and as the "points of

grammar In linguistics, the grammar of a natural language is its set of structure, structural constraints on speakers' or writers' composition of clause (linguistics), clauses, phrases, and words. The term can also refer to the study of such constraint ...

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

style Style is a manner of doing or presenting things and may refer to: * Architectural style, the features that make a building or structure historically identifiable * Design, the process of creating something * Fashion, a prevailing mode of clothing ...

, and the choice of words." In the

descriptive In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013). All acad ...

tradition of language analysis, by way of contrast, "correct" tends to mean functionally adequate for the purposes of the speaker or writer using it, and adequately

idiomatic Idiom, also called idiomaticness or idiomaticity, is the syntactical, grammatical, or structural form peculiar to a language. Idiom is the realized structure of a language, as opposed to possible but unrealized structures that could have develope ...

to be accepted by the listener or reader; usage is also, however, a concern for the

prescriptive Linguistic prescription, or prescriptive grammar, is the establishment of rules defining preferred usage of language. These rules may address such linguistic aspects as spelling, pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics. Sometimes infor ...

tradition, for which "correctness" is a matter of arbitrating style. Common usage may be used as one of the criteria of laying out prescriptive norms for codified

standard language A standard language (also standard variety, standard dialect, and standard) is a language variety that has undergone substantial codification of grammar and usage, although occasionally the term refers to the entirety of a language that includes ...

usage. Modern

dictionaries A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, p ...

are not generally prescriptive, but they often include "usage notes" which may describe words as "formal", "informal", "slang", and so on. "Despite occasional usage notes, lexicographers generally disclaim any intent to guide writers and editors on the thorny points of English usage."

History

According to Jeremy Butterfield, "The first person we know of who made ''usage'' refer to language was

Daniel Defoe Daniel Defoe (; born Daniel Foe; – 24 April 1731) was an English writer, trader, journalist, pamphleteer and spy. He is most famous for his novel ''Robinson Crusoe'', published in 1719, which is claimed to be second only to the Bible in its ...

, at the end of the seventeenth century". Defoe proposed the creation of a language society of 36 individuals who would set

language rules for the approximately six million English speakers. The Latin equivalent ''usus'' was a crucial term in the research of Danish linguists

Otto Jespersen Jens Otto Harry Jespersen (; 16 July 1860 – 30 April 1943) was a Danish linguist who specialized in the grammar of the English language. Steven Mithen described him as "one of the greatest language scholars of the nineteenth and twentieth ce ...

and

Louis Hjelmslev Louis Trolle Hjelmslev (; 3 October 189930 May 1965) was a Danish linguist whose ideas formed the basis of the Copenhagen School of linguistics. Born into an academic family (his father was the mathematician Johannes Hjelmslev), Hjelmslev studied ...

. They used the term to designate usage that has widespread or significant acceptance among speakers of a language, regardless of its conformity to the sanctioned standard language norms.

References

* * {{Authority control Sociolinguistics Applied linguistics Grammar Language varieties and styles

History

See also

References