What is real language?

[Iversen]

Who says there is one and only one kind of 'real' language? If I learn French from novels I do learn something real, namely the French literary language - which also happens to be used in official speeches. Informal spoken French is mostly quite different, and whatever it is it is definitely also real - but not the variant you would use in a formal setting.

If by fake language we mean sentences put together only to be used for teaching foreigners then the result may be close to formal or to informal variants of the original language, but the lack of meaningful connections between the sentences will give it away. Besides you have to start with something very simple - and that will of course sound fake to a native speaker, even though it may be grammatically and idiomatically correct. Later on you are entitled to expect something closer to a discourse that even a native speaker would accept as genuine (or a good imitation thereof). And comics may be a good source for written renderings of spoken French, but that doesn't make their language more real than the inauguration speech of their new president or an article in Le Monde.

[SophiaMerlin_II]

I think we can all generally agree that sentences used to illustrate vocabulary, grammar, or other similar topics are usually written specifically to demonstrate that feature in specific, rather than accidentally containing that term or formation.

If you're calling that "fake language" then by that standard most if not all graded readers for L1 English speakers would be fake language. As would a lot of English children's literature.
Additionally sentences like:

I want to know why you were crossing the treacherous river.

Would also be fake as the above sentence was written solely to illustrate grammar - more specifically for my syntax class to practice writing sentence trees.

Yeah, I would call that "fake" English, for sure.

[reineke]

Real...

Antonyms: dishonest, fake, false, feigned, imaginary, invalid, untrue, bogus, counterfeit, false, mock, phony, pseudo, sham, unauthentic, unreal...

Near Antonyms artificial, imitation, man-made, simulated, unnatural; concocted, fabricated; deceptive, misleading..

" Englishmen of course used many Norman words, but the real language of everyday life was very .."

Early England
By John Francon Williams

"This is important, not only because authentic speech is the real, natural language which we ultimately want our students to understand, but also because it differs significantly from the contrived speech of pedagogical materials.. "

The Modern Language Journal, Volume 62
National Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations, 1916

Do we teach the real language?
An analysis of patterns in textbooks of Russian as a foreign language

https://benjamins.com/catalog/dujal.2.2.07mat

"Arab scholars held Syriac to be the oldest, or the real (natural) language.... "

"The principal object, then, proposed in these Poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect... "

" Having thus explained a few of my reasons for writing in verse, and why I have chosen subjects from common life, and endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men... "

Preface to Lyrical Ballads
William Wordsworth (1800)

[Speakeasy]

I find myself in disagreement with those who maintain that text or speech composed for educational purposes is not “real” or “authentic” and therefore somehow "fake" language.

Does anyone truly believe that the poetry, novels, plays, speeches, film dialogue, research papers, newspaper/magazine articles and virtually any other conceivable form of written text, to be delivered either in a written or a spoken form, composed by native-speakers is somehow “contrived, unreal, or fake” merely because it was subject to an editing process? In every such case, authors compose such works with specific goals in mind and they “craft” their works. The fact their specific goals are not meant to illustrate various aspects of the spoken language for educational purposes does not mean that their works are “more authentic” than those that do. The same distinction can be applied to any aspect of human endeavour...

Are scientific discoveries that are based on goal-oriented research, including the rigorous testing of hypotheses, somehow “less authentic” than discoveries that have been made by mere happenstance? Are only “fortuitous” discoveries “real” discoveries because they lack artifice and planning?

Are the works of painters, sculptors, and musicians “less authentic” solely because their creators began their projects with a specific artistic goal in mind and, following multiple sketches, corrections, reworkings and modifications, finally published their works? Are only “spontaneous” works of art “real” art? Even sand castles take some planning and an awful lot of reworking!

[reineke]

How do we know real art when we see it?

"The world of art, I have suggested, is full of fakes. Fake originality, fake emotion and the fake expertise of the critics - these are all around us and in such abundance that we hardly know where to look for the real thing. Or perhaps there is no real thing?"

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30495258

[SophiaMerlin_II]

I find myself in disagreement with those who maintain that text or speech composed for educational purposes is not “real” or “authentic” and therefore somehow "fake" language.

Does anyone truly believe that the poetry, novels, plays, speeches, film dialogue, research papers, newspaper/magazine articles and virtually any other conceivable form of written text, to be delivered either in a written or a spoken form, composed by native-speakers is somehow “contrived, unreal, or fake” merely because it was subject to an editing process? In every such case, authors compose such works with specific goals in mind and they “craft” their works. The fact their specific goals are not meant to illustrate various aspects of the spoken language for educational purposes does not mean that their works are “more authentic” than those that do. The same distinction can be applied to any aspect of human endeavour...

Are scientific discoveries that are based on goal-oriented research, including the rigorous testing of hypotheses, somehow “less authentic” than discoveries that have been made by mere happenstance? Are only “fortuitous” discoveries “real” discoveries because they lack artifice and planning?

Are the works of painters, sculptors, and musicians “less authentic” solely because their creators began their projects with a specific artistic goal in mind and, following multiple sketches, corrections, reworkings and modifications, finally published their works? Are only “spontaneous” works of art “real” art? Even sand castles take some planning and an awful lot of reworking!

I stand by my original thought that "real" language is intended to communicate by its contents rather than its form. The form of a speech (how many sentences are in each paragraph, the use of the present progressive, etc) is not the important part, but rather its contents, what it motivates people to do, what it informs them of.

Research papers, again, have an expected form, sure, but if a research paper had a great form but miserable contents, it would not stand.

On the other hand, language learning materials can get away with strange sentences like, "the purple elephant was walking to the store" (I'm looking at you duolinguo) just to show off a grammar point. The elephant and the store (shocking as they may be) don't matter at all, but rather the relationships between the parts of speech are the important elements.

Poetry would maybe be a counter-example. Both form and content are important for poetry.

As far as artistic endeavors. Do musicians want people to realize that they were using quarter notes, or do they want to compose a good piece? Do painters want people to know they were using titanium white and not eggshell? Do sculptors want people to know they used such-and-such glaze, or such-and-such type chizel? Do they care more about the tools they used, or the effects those tools had?

Science again, is not focused on the form (scientists are not rewarded for constantly having great methodology, even when they fail to produce any meaningful work) but instead on the content (what can we prove or disprove, and how?). Certianly form is important (one needs to have a solid methodology) but without content, good form is meaningless.

[Speakeasy]

... I stand by my original thought that "real" language is intended to communicate by its contents rather than its form ...

I believe that you are missing the point that just about everything written, recited, performed or displayed is "contrived" (deliberately created rather than arising naturally or spontaneously). All of it is so very cleverly arranged and presented that it passes for being "natural" and "realistic" whereas it is all quite "fake, forced, studied, artificial" ... it does not arise spontaneously, it is all very highly studied, modified, reworked, and edited ... there is absolutely nothing "natural" about it at all! So what justifies your singling out of a particular type of creation as being "fake"?

[aokoye]

I find myself in disagreement with those who maintain that text or speech composed for educational purposes is not “real” or “authentic” and therefore somehow "fake" language.

Does anyone truly believe that the poetry, novels, plays, speeches, film dialogue, research papers, newspaper/magazine articles and virtually any other conceivable form of written text, to be delivered either in a written or a spoken form, composed by native-speakers is somehow “contrived, unreal, or fake” merely because it was subject to an editing process? In every such case, authors compose such works with specific goals in mind and they “craft” their works. The fact their specific goals are not meant to illustrate various aspects of the spoken language for educational purposes does not mean that their works are “more authentic” than those that do. The same distinction can be applied to any aspect of human endeavour...

I am in full agreement but couldn't figure out a good way of saying this. Given the attitude above, how would one class a book aimed at L2 speakers that is composed of excerpts of newspaper articles that haven't been edited for content or glosses after their original publication? I also think the idea that some language can somehow be fake is just a sign of how much of a social construct language is. I mean I don't necessarily think this example is my favorite example of this, but it is an example of it.

[aokoye]

On the other hand, language learning materials can get away with strange sentences like, "the purple elephant was walking to the store" (I'm looking at you duolinguo) just to show off a grammar point. The elephant and the store (shocking as they may be) don't matter at all, but rather the relationships between the parts of speech are the important elements.

And while the sentence about the elephant might be absurd from a concrete real world perspective, so is just about everything in the Lorax. While I don't agree with your premise of what makes something real vs fake in relation to language, if one considers what you're saying, one also can't help but run up against the fact that one can both do write something in order to communicate the content of a message while also conforming to a narrow set of grammatical rules.

Do musicians want people to realize that they were using quarter notes, or do they want to compose a good piece?

Does this mean that etudes aren't real music? Does it mean that a piece composed as an assignment isn't real music? Does it mean that any of the tens of flute pieces commissioned by Taffanel (among other I think) for the Paris Conservatory Flute Concours aren't real music?

[SophiaMerlin_II]

On the other hand, language learning materials can get away with strange sentences like, "the purple elephant was walking to the store" (I'm looking at you duolinguo) just to show off a grammar point. The elephant and the store (shocking as they may be) don't matter at all, but rather the relationships between the parts of speech are the important elements.

And while the sentence about the elephant might be absurd from a concrete real world perspective, so is just about everything in the Lorax. While I don't agree with your premise of what makes something real vs fake in relation to language, if one considers what you're saying, one also can't help but run up against the fact that one can both do write something in order to communicate the content of a message while also conforming to a narrow set of grammatical rules.

What I'm saying is that the Lorax has a message. The Lorax is not written to show grammar. The Lorax has a very obvious socio-political thrust about environmentalism, not about grammar... So there, the content is the focal point, again, not the grammar. Just because something follows an expectation of form (grammar, punctuation) doesn't mean that it is a slave to it. Form should AID communication, not be the end goal.

Do musicians want people to realize that they were using quarter notes, or do they want to compose a good piece?

Does this mean that etudes aren't real music? Does it mean that a piece composed as an assignment isn't real music? Does it mean that any of the tens of flute pieces commissioned by Taffanel (among other I think) for the Paris Conservatory Flute Concours aren't real music?

An étude (/ ˈeɪtjuːd/; French pronunciation: [eˈtyd], a French word meaning study) is an instrumental musical composition, usually short, of considerable difficulty, and designed to provide practice material for perfecting a particular musical skill. The tradition of writing études emerged in the early 19th century with the rapidly growing popularity of the piano. Of the vast number of études from that era some are still used as teaching material (particularly pieces by Carl Czerny and Muzio Clementi), and a few, by major composers such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt and Claude Debussy, achieved a place in today's concert repertory. Études written in the 20th century include those related to traditional ones (György Ligeti) and those that require wholly unorthodox technique (John Cage).

No, I wouldn't consider them "real" music. That doesn't mean that it's not useful. Then again, when it comes to classical type music I am a complete dunce, and would sooner rip my ears off of my head than listen to something with a high-pitched instrument, such as a violin or flute, etc. So I could be wrong here. I don't know much (anything really) about this kind of music outside of a few little things. Other people seem to think they are real music enough to perform them professionally.

As far as "is something completed as an assignment 'real' music"? I think it probably depends, but like I said, I don't really know how music works.