I haven’t had the experience of people actually disdaining correct grammar—and I’m the person who, when a colleague recently told me that a mutual acquaintance had just become engaged, responded “Terrific! Whom’s he engaged to?” But I have indeed noticed a sharp rise in ignorance of grammatical rules (particularly among my students, I’m sorry to say). And I’m not talking about the usual nitpicks like splitting infinitives or ending with prepositions, both of which, as has frequently been pointed out, are nineteenth-century artifices. (Though I think it should be noted that well-written nineteenth- and twentieth-century English “Latinate” prose is absolutely beautiful to read, and we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn its rules.) No, I’m talking about subjects that don’t agree with their predicates, about the incorrect use of “whom” for “who” (not vice versa, which is so widely accepted that I don’t think it even counts as a mistake anymore), about dangling prepositional phrases and mismatched clauses. Interestingly, the decline in grammar hasn’t been part of a general decline in writing skills, as far as I can see: plenty of people can write coherently and even artistically while remaining apparently totally oblivious of the basic grammatical rules. (I’d think this would be an extra burden for non-native readers, who rely more on grammatical structure for comprehension than those of us do who know the language better.)
I don’t know all the reasons for this trend, but I can think of two possibilities:
The shift to spoken rather than written language in mass communication. Speech has always been less grammatically formal than writing, and as television has gained in importance relative to books, newspapers and magazines, I think it’s changed the norm of language use.
The lack of formal study of English grammar in primary and secondary education. Possibly contrary to expectation, this isn’t meant as a dig at lousy modern English classes—I think that many English classes seem to be terrific at teaching students lots of exciting things about literature and writing. But they aren’t teaching the parts of speech or a lot of other basic grammatical concepts, and as for diagramming sentences, forget it: I’m 36 and I had to learn to diagram sentences in seventh and eighth grades, but I have met very few people younger than, say, 30 who have even heard of the practice. I’ve heard a lot of them say that they never learned a thing about grammar until they took a foreign language class. As I say, many of them can nonetheless write a dynamic and informative sentence: they just have no idea how it operates structurally.
With all due respect, the attitude behind the ideas described in the first quote about society’s literacy downslide, might elicit the disdain described in the the second quote.
I worked in a factory with many people who did not have the opportunity to further their education. Many of these people, who knew that I had a college degree, would ask my advice about word definitions, proofing problems and other things they thought I might know. These people were by no means unintelligent, and when I had a question in their fields of expertise (car repair, child rearing, home maintenance, etc.) I would ask them. Although I by no means always used perfect grammar or diction, I spoke a little differently than most of the other workers and never was put down for this.
And as for the deterioration of the public school system, I think that is a myth perpetuated by industries that want to privatize schools for profit (Sylvan Learning Centers, for an example). But that could get into a whole 'nuther Great Debate, as could some of the other things mentioned.
Well, perhaps it’s not as systemic a problem as I’d assumed it was; maybe I’m projecting my recent experiences with MBAs–kings and queens of industry!–who were aggressively, proudly disdainful of the value of grammatical consistency.
But then you read things like a recent trend in young African American kids in urban schools who accuse classmates who are good students of “trying to be white.” Which just appalls me! Ignorance as a badge of political pride! And aren’t there similar non-politically oriented pressures among all school-age kids? Isn’t there much more social pressure to make good on the football field than in the classroom?
(Of course there’s the distinct possibility that I’m trying to find some way to blame society for my own nerdy self-image.)
I heard a comedian the other day talking about a book he was reading. It was a collection of letters home from Civil War soldiers. It amazed him that these 16- and 17-year-old boys could write beautiful, classical prose home to their families. Then he contrasted it with what most of the letters home from the Gulf War must have sounded like: “It shur is hot in this dessert I cant wate to come home how are you I am fine.” Now, was he just stereotyping wildly? Well, okay, of course he was, But was his characterization entirely without validity?
And is this a good thing? If we are experiencing a transition (MBA-speak: transitioning) to a post-literate society, will there be any unforeseen strengths to emerge from this paradigm shift?
lissener: *I heard a comedian the other day talking about a book he was reading. It was a collection of letters home from Civil War soldiers. It amazed him that these 16- and 17-year-old boys could write beautiful, classical prose home to their families. Then he contrasted it with what most of the letters home from the Gulf War must have sounded like: “It shur is hot in this dessert I cant wate to come home how are you I am fine.” Now, was he just stereotyping wildly? Well, okay, of course he was, But was his characterization entirely without validity? *
Probably. Recall that most of the actual letters home written by Civil War soldiers probably sounded more like that imaginary Gulf War letter than like fine compositions. The book’s editor has sifted through a whole bunch of archival material in order to pick out the letters with the “beautiful, classical prose” and other admirable features from a literary standpoint. (Recall also that the sifting process of time plays a role here: the best written and otherwise most interesting letters have a better chance of being preserved.) When some editor goes through the archives a hundred years from now to produce a book of letters home from Gulf War soldiers, his readers will be impressed too.
I think this whole business of comparing literary treasures-of-the-past with trash-of-the-present tends to be skewed in this way. I read a Willard Espy piece once that lamented the deterioration of our literary tradition—as evidenced by comparing Shakespearean sonnets to modern rock lyrics. Oh yeah, that’s a fair comparison. :rolleyes:
lissener: There is a great tendency nowadays in the media to make pot shots American education system, particularly with grammar. We are inundated with columns that recite mistakes in grammar made by teachers, students, corporate heads, basketball stars, you name it. We see that more frequently than the prose of those such as George Will, William F. Buckley, or E.R. Shipp.
I don’t follow your reasoning behind the statement which I bolded. I tend to think that English is widespread because of the advantagous position England and later the US held/hold in the world. Do you think that these postitions were brought about by the flexibility of English? Do you disagree with my assertion?
I would be interested in your thoughts.
Sorry lissener, I have never experienced this either.
This isn’t necessarily a recent trend. There is an ingrained history among oppressed people to reject the values of the dominant culture in order to maintain their own cultural values. Sometimes this is positive, but sometimes it’s negative. Perhaps if we as a culture and society tried to avoid using the worst examples of African American culture to stereotype “what’s wrong in schools today”, their children wouldn’t feel the need reject our values.
Yes, it is without validity. Aside from the fact that the author was selecting the very best examples from a general archive, the population of the time he was looking at was overwhelmingly illiterate. Those who could write had usually received years of education that fine tuned their prose. Today we have an incredibly literate society. We spend the resources that previously produced a tiny number of very articulate writers on creating an enormous number of functionally literate young adults. I would guess that the proportion of people capable of beautiful, classical prose within the general population has remained about the same from then to now.
The whole point of good English is similar to that of good manners. We use good manners to make people feel more at ease. By consistantly using them we limit our own habits which may be annoying to others. Annoying without us realizing it.
But there are some who use good English, like good manners, just to embarrass others. Thus the tool to make everyone feel better now becomes a weapon.
Another angle is ethniticity(sp?).
A lot of people speak slang and I have had people interview me for jobs and they say “You know, I was chillin’ with me homie, when my old ladys said get the #$@ out of the crib and…”
Now if you didn’t hire that person based on that (or at least said you would) they would take it as a slur against their race or lifestyle.
What are you gonna do times are a changing. Which brings up a third point. With today’s mass media changes occur faster. That is why we notice it more.
I just assumed that he was screwing with the wording to place a preposition at the end of the sentence, but to do so he avoided putting a preposition at the end of a sentance.
Now I get it.
Alright… no more posting at 2:00 AM.
Damnit, now it is 1:12!
Better go back to sleep, make sure that this thing is free of errors.
While I think correcting someone’s grammar is rather rude, I do think it is a bit much to be frowned at for speaking in a vaguely articulate way.
Now, as everyone here can tell, I am not using the most perfect English. Far from it - misspellings, bad use of grammar, you name it. I think I am about “average” in my language skills, if that. Or at least I think I am.
But yet I encounter more and more people who do not understand what I say. They don’t understand my vocabulary - it’s too complicated. And I’m NOT trying to be pretentous, it’s just how I speak. I use words like “wrath”, “cryptic”, and “cathartic”. These are FAR from being obscure words. They’re pretty damned basic, if you ask me. But yet multiple times people have not understood what these words mean. Usually they just ask, and I tell them, with no tone of snottiness about me. But occasionally I get this attitude as if something is wrong with ME because I use such words. And my feeling is, “Sorry, just speaking English.” I mean, come on! What should I do? I am NOT going to “dumb down” my vocabulary. It isn’t as if it’s all that extensive to begin with!
Folks do like to use proper ethics. What many do NOT like is self-appointed ethics mayvens that: make up laws from whole cloth, try to keep the government from evolving, or nit-pick about minor, pointless infractions. That is to say, as Libertarians so delicately put it, they are “tyrants”.
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Libby: sigh. Sometimes a cigar IS just a cigar.
lissener: Try reading Mark Twain. He was an expert on period dialect. The way his characters talk was actually how they talked (and very often, wrote). Those letters from the Civil are just the cream of the crop. Many soldiers could barely read, let alone “pen prose”. If anything, there has been an overall increase in literacy and proper grammar usage.
threemae, specifically, Winston Churchill is reported to have been chastised for ending a sentence with a preposition and is famously reputed to have replied
(In some version, “English” is replaced by “nonsense.”)
Any discussion of final prepositions will generally elicit one allusion to that quotation.
As for all of this, I know that for those of us with darker skins there is a definite difference between how we talk to black people who are our peers and those (black and white) who are in authority. I think that’s probably cross-ethnical (my new word), but I would be more likely to talk in Ebonics to a black teacher than a white one. I also know that my written vocabulary is much greater than my spoken one; for example, had I said this aloud, it would have come out as ‘I write better then I talk’ at best.
And by the way, I never heard of the rules of not putting the preposition at the end of the sentence and not splitting infinitives until I heard others railing against them and saying they were unfair. Perhaps grammar is degenerating :).
And proununciation has a lot more to do with where you come from than your grasp of grammer.
But I have indeed noticed a sharp rise in ignorance of grammatical rules (particularly among my students, I’m sorry to say). And I’m not talking about the usual nitpicks like splitting infinitives or ending with prepositions, both of which, as has frequently been pointed out, are nineteenth-century artifices. (Though I think it should be noted that well-written nineteenth- and twentieth-century English “Latinate” prose is absolutely beautiful to read, and we shouldn’t be so quick to condemn its rules.) No, I’m talking about subjects that don’t agree with their predicates, about the incorrect use of “whom” for “who” (not vice versa, which is so widely accepted that I don’t think it even counts as a mistake anymore), about dangling prepositional phrases and mismatched clauses. Interestingly, the decline in grammar hasn’t been part of a general decline in writing skills, as far as I can see: plenty of people can write coherently and even artistically while remaining apparently totally oblivious of the basic grammatical rules. (I’d think this would be an extra burden for non-native readers, who rely more on grammatical structure for comprehension than those of us do who know the language better.)