Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/195

IV.] matters of learning and literature, have been able thus far to restrain our respective lines of linguistic growth from notable divergence. Though we are sundered by an ocean, there have been invisible ties enough between us to bind us together into one community. Yet our concordance of speech is not perfect: British purism finds fault with even our higher styles of discourse, oral and written, as disfigured by Americanisms, and in both the tone and the material of colloquial talk the differences are, of. course, much more marked. We have preserved some older words, phrases, and meanings which their modern use discards; we have failed as yet to adopt certain others which have sprung up among them since the separation; we have originated yet others which they have not accepted and ratified. Upon all these points we are, in the abstract, precisely as much in the right as they; but the practical question is, which of the two is the higher authority, whose approved usage shall be the norm of correct English speaking. We have been content hitherto to accept the inferior position, but it is not likely that we shall always continue so. Our increasing numbers and our growing independence of character and culture will give us in our own estimation an equal right, at the least, and we shall feel more and more unwilling to yield implicitly to British precedent; so that the time may perhaps come when the English language in America and the English language in Britain will exhibit a noteworthy difference of material, form, and usage. What we have to rely upon to counteract this separating tendency and annul its effect is the predominating influence of the class of highest cultivation, as exerted especially through the medium of literature. Literature is the most dignified, the most legitimate, and the most powerful of the forces which effect the conservation of language, and the one which acts most purely according to its true merit, free from the adventitious aids and drawbacks of place and time. It is through her literature that America has begun, and must go on, to win her right to share in the elaboration of the English speech. Love and admiration of the same master-works in poetry, oratory, philosophy, and science has hitherto made one community