István Lanstyák: “Tommy-rot” in language cultivation literature (II. part)

The author deals with various examples of language myths and other unschol-arly statements concerning linguistic matters as well as with the stigmatiza-tion of non-standard linguistic features and their users. Most of his examples come from the articles on language cultivation published in the periodical called Édes Anyanyelvünk (Our Sweet Mother Tongue). Most of the authors of these articles are laymen engaged in language cultivation activities, but somé of them are professional linguists who work at the Linguistic Institute of the Hungárián Academy of Sciences or teach at renowned universities, neverthe-less consider themselves alsó language cultivators. The author of the present paper comments the “tommy-rot” in language cultivation literature mostly from sociolinguistic point of view. He concludes that “language cultivation” should limit itself to popularizing linguistic knowledge and giving counsels in matters of language use and these linguistic services should be provided solely by well-trained professional linguists.