Funny I read the whole thing thinking that this is like The Language Instinct by Pinker and then at the end saw it was by him. That explains why nothing but one point in it was new to me.
The point that did spark my interest was that it's not rules that are important but expressing yourself as a writer (or speaker), which most people are poor at.
Pinker is good, Christopher Hitchens was good, George Orwell was excellent at condensing ideas down into clear, lucid pros. Our own Dijkstra is probably admired mostly for his ability to write so clearly regardless of the topic. Hacker News's Paul Graham's success as an author of articles seems to me to be 80% his writing abilities and 20% actual valuable ideas.
That comes down to the really important point for me. It doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you can't communicate them, they'll just sit in the shed propping up cobwebs. You may get lucky and someone else does it for you. If there's a "one thing" that language teaching efforts should be focused on, it's getting your point across effectively.
In an essay in Harper's titled "Tense Present"[0] David Foster Wallace, in addition to surveying the prescriptivist/descriptivist landscape, has an aside where he describes a conversation he has with black students of his who write in "standard black english" (vs "standard written english"). It manages to touch on language, class, clarity of communication and political correctness in a way that still seems timely today. Plus it's funny.
It begins at the bottom of pg. 16 in the PDF (or pg. 53 in the magazine).
My wife and I discus this all the time. She's in the "descriptive rules" camp, and I straddle the line.
The advantage to prescriptive rules for language is that you don't lose the context of a language over time or distance. My hope was that the popularity of the web would make it easier to communicate and understand each other, and also that languages would mature to the point where we could read historical documents without a language barrier.
Instead, it seems like language in popular use seems to have evolved more quickly, we're not as good at communication as before, and we collectively choose our words less carefully out of a smaller pool.
> The advantage to prescriptive rules for language is that you don't lose the context of a language over time or distance
That's assuming that even works. I'm not sure it's clear prescribing language rules has ever worked at stopping the natural evolution of language. Most grammar nazi's (if there's a less politically laden term, let me know) focus on a small amount of "common mistakes" but don't seem to care or even notice the avalanche of tiny changes to language occurring at the same time. And do they win with regard to the changes they do focus on? Even in 1874, the "correct" way to say people are building a house in the passive voice was "the house is building", which even in the most formal communications has been completely replaced with the nonsensical and uncouth "the house is being built".[0]
> Most grammar nazi's (if there's a less politically laden term, let me know)
Well, from the article, grammar maven. That said, grammar nazi nicely codifies quite a few thoughts very succinctly. Given the content and theme of the article, I'm now fairly certain since you brought it up the whole point of calling the person a grammar maven is a subtle in-joke about grammar nazis, and how that's as good a name as any, and better than most. Why else focus on someone that self-described as a grammar maven, and call out the Yiddish origin? It's likely in my mind the original person described themselves that way with grammar nazi firmly in mind, which makes the in-joke all the better when used in this article.
I'm actually fairly pleased with that interpretation (whether it's true or not), as it opens up a whole layer to the article I wasn't thinking of and quite enjoy. I wouldn't have thought of that at all if you hadn't brought up the term in a way that made me examine it, so thanks. :)
To counter the negative connotations evoked by the term “grammar pedant” and to celebrate their pleasure in language, they invent playful monikers such as “grammartiste”, “grammagician”, “grammardian angel”, “grammar groover”, “grammartuoso” and “grammasseur”.
> The advantage to prescriptive rules for language is that you don't lose the context of a language over time or distance.
Only partially, though, right?
E.g. someone from a hundred years ago wouldn't know the first thing about the meaning of terms like "internet," "smart phone," "google it," etc, even if the grammar was exactly the same.
This reminds me a lot of music theory. I used to think of the elements of western music as being prescriptive, like major and minor keys and functions. But I came to understand that the most groundbreaking treatises on music theory were originally descriptive, before becoming understood as prescriptive. Great artists found ways to innovate new practices, and eventually theory began to fragment as it became seemingly impossible to create a coherent set of rules to cover all popular music, even though so many idioms are shared between genres.
And what's particularly fascinating to me is the fact that music can't really even be said to communicate ideas. So it's a bit of a mystery why it should have idioms to begin with. And yet...
>What is behind this contradiction? If language is as instinctive to humans as dam-building is to beavers, if the design of syntax is coded in our DNA, why does the average American sound like a gibbering fool every time he opens his mouth or puts pen to paper?
Because just having language faculties doesn't necessarily make you smart or informed or well-read, nor it makes you someone that pays attention to what they say and how they say it.
Sex is an instinct too -- but how many do it badly?
That's my point too. Nature has a different definition of good language too. A human ape barely being able to communicate is enough, eloquence is not necessary.
>Hmmm, I suppose it depends on whether 'eloquence' contributes to intent / being understood.
It might, but it probably goes beyond the mere "understood", so it's more cultural than necessary for evolution beyond a point.
(Same with sex though: as parent commenter noted, being good at it is not any great evolutionary advantage. Just being able to do it to reproduce is enough).
> So just because "Al Gore and I" is an object
> that requires object case, it does not mean
> that "I" is an object that requires object case.
> By the logic of grammar, the pronoun is free to
> have any case it wants.
This is the only part of the article that seems controversial to me and I cannot explain why it seems wrong!
The closest I can get is to suggest that a paraphrase of "Give Al Gore and I a chance" is "Give Al Gore a chance, and me too" and that this intended meaning is what constrains the pronoun to be "me".
I also urged my dear friends to take it easy with their agressive attitudes towards those living at the edge of language correctness; language is a living organism, it changes in time. And as long as we convey the meaning of what we are trying to express on the other side it is ok. And for sure not to be responded with active/passive aggression as I see it so many times.
Though I would say those are also not quite sentences.
It doesn't matter.
I in my book it is more productive to teach people something like "All sentences must have a verb. But that doesn't mean you always have to speak in sentences." than to teach something like "Any reasonable utterance is a sentence, but we can give you no clear guidance on what that means".
I asked Google for a definition and it gave me this:
> a set of words that is complete in itself, typically containing a subject and predicate, conveying a statement, question, exclamation, or command, and consisting of a main clause and sometimes one or more subordinate clauses.
The point that did spark my interest was that it's not rules that are important but expressing yourself as a writer (or speaker), which most people are poor at.
Pinker is good, Christopher Hitchens was good, George Orwell was excellent at condensing ideas down into clear, lucid pros. Our own Dijkstra is probably admired mostly for his ability to write so clearly regardless of the topic. Hacker News's Paul Graham's success as an author of articles seems to me to be 80% his writing abilities and 20% actual valuable ideas.
That comes down to the really important point for me. It doesn't matter how good your ideas are if you can't communicate them, they'll just sit in the shed propping up cobwebs. You may get lucky and someone else does it for you. If there's a "one thing" that language teaching efforts should be focused on, it's getting your point across effectively.