
Grammar Puss: The fallacies of the language mavens (1994) - Tomte
https://newrepublic.com/article/77732/grammar-puss-steven-pinker-language-william-safire
======
chrisdone
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.

~~~
maroonblazer
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).

[0][https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...](https://harpers.org/wp-
content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-04-0070913.pdf)

~~~
mercer
Thank you for that! I'm a huge fan of DFW and somehow I hadn't read this yet.

------
drblast
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also that languages would mature to the point where we could read historical
documents without a language barrier.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.

Or maybe I'm just getting old and cranky.

~~~
kmm
> 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]

0: [http://volokh.com/2011/01/15/the-best-writers-say-the-
house-...](http://volokh.com/2011/01/15/the-best-writers-say-the-house-is-
building-not-the-house-is-being-built/)

~~~
kbenson
> 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. :)

~~~
petecox
From the article below:

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”.

[https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-grammar-
pedantry-7...](https://theconversation.com/in-defence-of-grammar-
pedantry-78670)

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acjohnson55
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...

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bitwize
I'm all for verbing nouns, but the person who decided "decisioning" should be
a word needs to be disciplined severely.

~~~
combatentropy
I see what you did there.

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coldtea
> _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?

~~~
Chris2048
> Sex is an instinct too -- but how many do it badly?

Nature has a different definition of 'good' sex. Something like 'productive',
as opposed to 'enjoyable'.

~~~
coldtea
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.

~~~
Chris2048
Hmmm, I suppose it depends on whether 'eloquence' contributes to intent /
being understood.

I'd also argue that a second form of evolution now exists - "memetic"
evolution, of which language is the medium.

~~~
coldtea
> _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).

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abandonliberty
Meta: It's interesting to note how different the writing is 20 years later. It
seems like it's much more complex than most writing today.

Has our writing improved in clarity or has it gotten simpler? (or was this
similarly far from the mean in its time?)

~~~
midgetjones
I'm pretty sure it's a product of our withering attention spans.

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frabbit

      > 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".

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pmoriarty
I was hoping this article was about analytic philosophers.

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unusximmortalis
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.

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hprotagonist
"Authority and American Usage" is generally better. [0]:
[http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsag...](http://wilson.med.harvard.edu/nb204/AuthorityAndAmericanUsage.pdf)

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paulddraper
> treating "bummer" as a sentence

I've never heard a complaint about that.

It seems as much a sentance as "Sorry" or "Okay"

~~~
adrianratnapala
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".

~~~
acjohnson55
But at that point, a sentence just becomes a purely theoretical concept,
rather than a complete class.

Human expression is maddeningly difficult to cleanly categorize, eh?

~~~
paulddraper
True.

