In Defense of Grammar
Roger Kimball writes of a breakthrough in teaching English: Educators have discovered that students learn English better when they are actually taught grammar.
I too am flabbergasted. But there it is. Under the splendid headline “English as a proficient language,” The Oregonian reports that some 9,000 students passed the state English examination last year, up from 4,000 the year before. Why the dramatic improvement? Because, say “educators” (don’t you love that word?), “a new way of teaching that has swept
Elsewhere, at The Weekly Standard, David Gelernter asks “Can the damage to our mother tongue be undone?”
Our ability to write and read good, clear English connects us to one another and to our common past. The prime rule of writing is to keep it simple, concrete, concise. Shakespeare’s most perfect phrases are miraculously simple and terse. (”Thou art the thing itself.” “A plague o’ both your houses.” “Can one desire too much of a good thing?”)
Invoking the memory of E.B. White, Gelernter argues that feminism imported useless syllables into words and useless words into sentences, placing politics over clarity.
He-or-she’ing added so much ugly dead weight to the language that even the Establishment couldn’t help noticing. So feminist authorities went back to the drawing board. Unsatisfied with having rammed their 80-ton 16-wheeler into the nimble sports-car of English style, they proceeded to shoot the legs out from under grammar–which collapsed in a heap after agreement between subject and pronoun was declared to be optional.
National Grammar Day was March 4, in case you missed it. Make that “National (Omigod) Grammar Day” for the folks at Language Log, who announced their intention not to participate and who brand Gelernter’s article “a mad rant.” Language Log can’t figure out what’s so great about a language with agreed rules. It offers three reasons:
The first is the assumption that non-standard variants are unclear and therefore impede communication. This proposition is mostly just taken for granted, without any kind of defense — in what way is “between you and I” less clear than “between you and me”? in what way is “all shook up” less clear than “all shaken up”? they’re non-standard, certainly, but LESS CLEAR? — and the occasional explanations of how particular non-standard usages are unclear don’t survive scrutiny. Instead, it’s just an article of faith that non-standard variants (and conversational, informal, and innovative variants, and variants restricted to certain geographic regions or social groups) are unclear, vague, sloppy, or lazy; the written, formal, established, generally used standard variants are taken to be intrinsically superior, and everything that deviates from them to be intrinsically debased to some degree. I have yet to see actual arguments in favor of this idea, and it has always struck me as deeply mean-spirited. After all, you can point out that some variant is standard (generally used by the educated middle class) and an alternative non-standard without demonizing the non-standard variant.
The second is the very odd view of “communication”, in which respecting and honoring “the rules of English” is what permits people to convey meaning to others. This is a travesty of what happens when people use language. Instead, writers and speakers work to adjust what they say for their audience, and (most important in this context) readers and listeners work to gauge the intentions of their interlocutors. It’s a complex collaboration, in which all the participants have to deal constantly with linguistic and cultural differences, with a good bit of indeterminacy and a certain number of inevitable misfires, with differences in knowledge, assumptions, and goals, and so on.
“Just between you and I,” I never knew shared rules were “a travesty of what happens when people use language.” At the risk of sounding mean-spirited, a situation in which the speaker and listener assign the same meaning to words seems like a good thing, if your goals are to convey information clearly and to promote understanding. Without shared rules of language, communication certainly becomes a complex collaboration. When I speak with my German friends, we adjust what we say and we struggle with linguistic and cultural differences. I would hope to avoid that problem with people who claim English as their native tongue.
Language Log’s third point:
Paul Kiparsky has noted on several occasions that while in some European countries the prescribing of language forms for certain public purposes is the job of official bodies, which normally include language scholars (as well as literary figures), this sort of regulation has been PRIVATIZED in English-speaking countries: it’s managed by commercial publishers, newspaper and magazine editors, and a whole industry of free-lance advisers, only a few of whom know much about either the nature of language or the structure and history of English. Such an arrangement resonates with American free-enterprise ideals and also with the widespread American disdain for “experts” and “intellectuals”. . . .
Kiparsky’s point is one that at first sight seems paradoxical: an official regulatory body, properly constituted, can damp down the ugliness of privatized (and decentralized) prescription, by providing an authority everyone can appeal to, and by making clear the contexts in which its prescriptions are supposed to apply.
So the problem according to Language Log is that only a few publishers and editors know much about the nature of language or the structure of English – unlike a governmental body that would presumably contain some language scholars. Omigod, as it were. They want government as the arbiters of English, the same government universally renowned for clarity of prose and elegance of style.
No, thanks. Remind me to promote National Grammar Day next year. In the meantime, I suggest you join the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar (SPOGG). And feel free to correct my grammar when necessary. No one will take offense. We would rather spend our time promoting good grammar than trying to excuse our errors.
