István Lanstyák: Shortly on language misconceptions

The study deals with misconceptions about language, and language usage; the author calls them „language misconceptions“. One part of language misconceptions is generally used in the given community; they have recently been called „language myths“. One of the characteristic groups of language myths consists of widely-used language misconceptions about human language as such, the general features of language, the functioning of language, the relationship between language and its speakers, and similar questions. Another group of language myths is made of misconceptions about particular language phenomena, their „incorrectness“; these are called „superstitions about language correctness“, or „myths of language usage“ by the author.

Nevertheless, there are also language misconceptions that are much less-known; they can be called „superstitions of language cultivators“. Superstitions of language cultivators do not differ from the superstitions about language correctness in their character, but in their frequency of occurrence. The superstitions about language correctness are widely-used, a considerable part of the members of a given community knows them and they influence their language usage – this is why they belong to myths. On the other hand superstitions of language cultivators are much less known; they are created mainly by the language cultivators themselves (though many times even the language cultivator fail to follow their own instructions about “correct” language use); since they are hardly known in the wider community, they cannot be called myths.
Both the superstitions about language correctness and superstitions of language cultivators are based on or rooted in more general language myths and various language ideologies. Since the misconceptions belonging to these two groups differ from each other solely in their frequency of occurrence (which, in fact, has never been tested empirically), a common term is needed: the term “language superstition” seems to be the most suitable.
Since language myths are very deeply rooted in the speakers’ consciousness and subconsciousness, we can probably never get rid of them, but it is possible for the speakers to get acquainted with a more scholarly way of looking at the language, which may weaken the influence of language misconceptions on their thinking and indirectly also on their language use.