In "Johnson: Talking past each other," the author argues that the modern lack of awareness of the language of English grammar is a result of the focus that English study places on understanding and creating texts, whilst the study of grammar has been largely moved to linguistics (2014). The essay argues that this failure to formally understand basic grammar elements has had negative effects on much writing, and suggests that English and writing majors also be required to take classes in the grammar of English offered by linguistics departments.
Of course, no one studies the grammar of their own language when they are first learning that language: we all learn to handle our native languages pretty well by the time we start school. What we don't learn before pre-school is how to write essays and other extended works, and this is what high school English classes aim to teach, along with the ability to critically read and appreciate English texts, from newspapers through Shakespeare.
I still remember my first introduction to Shakespeare. It was Macbeth, where the regicidal protagonist after whom the play is named begins by killing his king at the behest of his bloody minded wife intent on being queen. This play has everything to appeal to 13 year old boys: bloody battles, witches with weird cauldrons, strong language full of sex and violence, ghosts, and plot full of twists and exciting turns that is driven by lusts for power, belief in the supernatural , lust for vengeance and the like - I'm sure that any modern video game maker would think he had a great success on hand if he could fit all of these elements into a game. In fact, although I've never seen it, it brings to mind the computer game called Grand Theft Auto (GTA), which I have read about because of the legal and other battles that have been fought over whether or not such violent, sex filled games should be censored or not. Remembering that I haven't seen GTA in any version, I would be surprised if it had as much sex or violence as Shakespeare contains, but I might be wrong. Unfortunately, all the tasty bits in Macbeth were a bit hard for us to enjoy because Shakespeare's version of English, being 400 years old, is significantly different to the modern versions of English. I remember that my copy of Macbeth had notes on every page explaining Shakespeare's language. It was hard work reading it, but we knew that there was good stuff here, so persevered. In second year we read Antony and Cleopatra, and already we were becoming more familiar with Shakespeare's version of English. I loved this play even more than Macbeth: high romance determining the fate of empires, with raging battles, political scheming and betrayal, and a wonderfully melodramatic suicide by the queen in her tomb. By the time I'd finished high school, I was reading Shakespeare for fun, and for the language.
Getting back to my original topic, there was almost no instruction in grammar in any of our English studies. We did have an English grammar, but almost never used it. And I don't think this was a big problem. For native English speakers, the purpose of studying English is to learn to read critically and organize ideas into essays or even to produce our own bits of poetry and the like. Meanwhile, the Latin classes were drilling us in the importance of having a verb in every clause, and a properly declined noun to indicate the subject, with another for the object and so on.
I think that there are important similarities with tests like TOEFL, which has no grammar section, but which tests the ability to actually use English, not the ability to talk about using English. However, as I've discovered for myself, some knowledge of grammar is very useful. Even for fluent native speakers, knowing the grammar can suggest other ways of achieving an effect, of putting an idea into a sentence on paper or in the air for others to read or to hear. (By on paper, I mean "in writing," which is usually on a screen of some sort today.)
And grammar is fun. For example, it allows you to spot and comment on the mistakes of other writers. The excellent New York Times, has a regular column, After Deadline, where its editors discuss the grammar mistakes that alert readers have spotted in its published pages. One of my favourite mistakes is in Shakespeare's Hamlet, where the murdered king (another one, not the king killed by Macbeth) is telling his son Prince Hamlet of his murder by Hamlet's uncle:
'Tis given out that, sleeping in my orchard,Strictly speaking, this sentence means that while the snake was sleeping in the orchard, it bit the king, which sounds a bit silly: perhaps the snake was having a nightmare and didn't know what it was doing. I don't think we should "correct" Shakespeare's grammar, but if you had a dangling particle like this in your academic writing, I would probably mark it in green.
A serpent stung me. (act I, sc. 5).
__________
Reference
I wanted to give as an example the latest post in The New York Times' (NYT) blog After Deadline, "Close but Not Quite", but I think it now requires a subscription to access.
ReplyDeleteThe SAC in AUA's library used to subscribe, and can perhaps give you their log in information to use in the SAC.
You probably don't want to pay for an NYT subscription just for the pleasure of reading their editor's comments on style and usage and seeing how many mistakes with word choice, prepositions, commas the the like even such esteemed professionals make in their writing.
I'll quote a couple of examples:
1.
In careful writing, it’s not enough to know the general meaning of a word. Precise usage requires knowing exactly how a word should fit into a sentence. Is it typically used with a preposition, and if so, which one? Is a verb transitive — used with a direct object — or intransitive?
If we slip on these things, the meaning may still be clear enough. But such errors are distracting and can make our prose seem slipshod, like a faulty translation from another language.
In most cases, a good ear and careful editing should steer us right. A dictionary may help, too. Some recent missteps:
•••
But the poll finds that Francis has raised expectations of significant change, even though he has alluded (oops) that he may not alter the church’s positions on thorny doctrinal issues.
“Allude” does not function like “say” or “suggest” or “hint.” It is intransitive and so does not take a noun or a noun clause — like the “that” clause here — as a direct object. Like “refer,” it is used with the preposition “to.” In this sentence, if we really wanted to use “allude,” we should have said something like “alluded to the possibility that.” Better still, choose “suggested” or “hinted” or some other verb that can be used transitively.
2.
Some large Internet sites have gone further. Craigslist, the informal community website for all sorts of transactions, prohibits the sale of weapons as does the auction site eBay.
We needed a comma after “weapons.”
3.
But outside the parliament building, continuous protests have been demanding the immediate disillusion of the chamber, even without a ready replacement.
Ouch. This was later fixed to read “dissolution.”
So although we prefer to get it right, we shouldn't feel too bad when we make the same sorts of mistakes.
In the quotations above, the published text is in italics, with the error location in bold.
DeleteThe following comments on language are those of the NYT editor. I've added nothing.