🚀 go-pugleaf

My original message and a reply
>>I've taught college Journalism courses off and on for ten years.  It
>>seems to me there are two ways to teach grammar.
>>
>>1.  As a set of arbitrary rules designed to "catch" you.
>>
>>2.  As a set of time-tested tools that are usually the best way to
>>express yourself clearly.


>I agree with your rejection of #1; however, I think #2 is mostly myth.
>If I can correct an error, it seems apparent that I knew clearly what
>was intended.  Nongrammatical is not a matter of clarity so much as it
>is a matter of convention, middle to upper class convention at that.

>Claire Pedretti
>vva@mace.cc.purdue.edu

I disagree.  When I correct a grammatical error, I'm guessing at meaning.
Sometimes the error is minor and the guess is likely to be accurate.  But it is
a guess.  The bigger the violation of the receiver's grammatical expectations,
the more he/she has to guess.  The more a person has to guess, the more likely
the guess is to be inaccurate.

All communication is based, in part, on socially agreed upon syntactic
expectations.  Any language group has such agreements.  So-called Black English
has a regular grammar.  Speech or writing is much easier to understand if, in
general, it follows those expectations.  Grammar is simply a reflection of
those expectations.  To talk about communicating without grammar is nonsense.

Grammatical expectations are so strong, that we can understand nonsense if it
is properly structured.  Jabberwocky is an example.  You know which words are
nouns, verbs etc.

Moreover, certain structures are time-tested to do certain things.  The active
voice has certain characteristics.  The passive voice has other
characteristics.  The distinction between a restrictive and an non-restrictive
clause can be the difference between life and death.

     All professors, who are thieves, will be executed.

     All professors who are thieves will be executed.

A comma splice, for example, is a problem because it indicates that there may
be something the student doesn't understand about the dynamics of subordination
and coordination in designing precise, understandable sentences.

Journalism students must communicate clearly, precisely and quickly with a
broad spectrum of the public.  Newspapers readers, television listeners etc.
are not going to try to figure out what a statement means.  If you violate the
audiences syntactic expectations, you lose.  If you use a non-standard grammar
you lose.
I am not saying that grammar is never used as a tool of cultural oppression.
And, as I acknowledged earlier, grammar is often used by rulemeisters to assert
their supposed superiority.  But grammar, properly taught, is also a tool of
communication.  To ignore that is to ignore much of what we know about language
and communication.  Grammar properly taught should empower students by helping
them to express themselves better.



Another reply:
>Mike:
>If grammar is a set of time tested tools, isn't it about time we threw
>out the split infinitive dragon?
>Irv Peckham

I agree completely.  Was it Yogi Berra who said "I don't just split
infinitives, I destroy them."


Mike Shapiro
Dept. of Communication
Cornell Univ.
MIK@cornella