I have successfully graduated from the University of Hawaii with a double major in Linguistcs and Japanese Studies with a minor in English. Hooray!
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| There's not actually a diploma in it yet. Start out in life with a little disappointment. |
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| Who are you? |
In the meantime I have a few words to say about Grammar.
Not grammar, Grammar. Especially Grammar nazis, although that's really a terrible term and I'm surprised people who are so PC in other ways still use it. Grammar correction is perfectly fine with me. Grammar overcorrection is a little silly. If someone can get there point across with out proper punctuation, and posibly spelling... well, so what?
I have the double (dis)advantage of being a linguistics student rather than an English student and also being an ESL teacher. Linguists don't usually tell people what to say or how to say it, we'd rather observe and surreptitiously take notes. (At least the nerdy linguistics I hang around with.) I especially find text-speak fascinating, as even the most eloquent of people can change their entire discourse between actual writing (emails, letters, documents, essays...) and texting, because it's closer to speech, which doesn't pay much attention to grammar and punctuation.
Or does it?
Being around ESL speakers for a while, it's become apparent that it's bad to correct every speck of improper grammar all at once. And my helpful tutor training informed me that correction itself isn't going to fix the problem, explaining it is. Besides, "you are my adoration" in a birthday card is really awesome. I'll take it.
(I may be slightly defensive because I am too impatient to correct myself while texting, and idk is just so much more convenient to type.)
I will now get off my tiny soapbox and finish cleaning my room. Carry on.
"If someone can get there point across with out proper punctuation, and posibly spelling... well, so what?"
ReplyDeleteI'm half wondering if you deliberately misspelled "their" in that sentence to make your point. =)
Though to be serious, I'm taking that as your thesis for this post, and it raises a good and interesting question. If someone *can* get their point across, well, then they have fulfilled the purpose of language: communication. However, it's not a Boolean on-off true-or-false deal: there is a range of effectiveness in communication. Communication can happen at different speeds and efficiencies, and in my opinion that is the value of standards.
Take barter as an analogy. If you and I are trying figure out how much gold I'm going to pay your for your goat in a situation without standards, we could sit down with a scale and weigh differing amounts of gold against your arbitrarily-weighted rocks until we come to an agreement, while you have to figure roughly how much other people will take that amount of gold to be worth. Or, in a society where a gold standard and gold coinage exists, you can name a price, I can haggle over it, and we can come to an agreement without ever having to resort to a scale. Do both ways work? Sure. But the second can be much faster (in the limit, you can name a price and I can agree immediately, taking virtually no time at all).
Language (spelling and punctuation in particular) function similarly to standard weights and measures in commerce, facilitating communication. Having to slog through non-standard spelling to pick out the writer's meaning slows me down and requires me to expend more time – an ever more precious commodity in today's world.
There are certainly situations where it is fine to relax the standards and be less formal, just as we don't speak formally around friends and family; I do it myself from time to time while instant-messaging. It just bothers me when people extend it to inappropriate contexts.
Though ultimately, as a dabbler in linguistics myself, I realize there's nothing I can do about it except be curmudgeonly on occasion, so most of the time I just watch and try to live by example. =)
There are exactly four intentional mistakes in that sentence, one of which is arguable and an enormous pet peeve. I have been known to use the wrong homonym at times when I'm reeeeally tired... but I have a backspace button. (Oddly enough, I make more 'typos' when I write by hand. My head's already on the next paragraph by the time I cross my t's.)
ReplyDeleteI am extremely glad that there is a standard in language! But it gets a little blurry when you hold that standard up to other things, like intelligence. In the history of English, which is a horrible muddled language and has been since the get-go, perfectly bright and well-educated people could spell things in entirely different ways. It didn't make them stupid; they just didn't know. Language changes all the time, and it doesn't belong to any one person. Unless, you know, it's dying.
I do notice grammar mistakes, and I'm not a fan of them. Some of them make me angry. I just don't feel the need to condemn anyone or make snarky comments - most of the 'corrections' I was thinking of were not at all helpful. Wanting to nudge someone along to better communication is great! It's kind of my job! Being obnoxious, patronizing, etc. is not so much. But what exactly is the proper setting to bring up mild comma abuse in a loving, supportive fashion?
Part of it comes from being so involved with Pidgin as a separate language... without a standardized system. People go off the deep end when it comes to Pidgin. I can pretty much justify any bad language decision I make, though. That's the beauty of a degree!
Well, now that you mention it...I see two more misspellings, and if the last one is comma-related I can't tell. I know I mangle all kinds of comma-related rules in my writing. =)
DeleteAnd I know what you mean about making typos while writing! I have a massive mental catalog in my head of how you can convert any character into any other character by judicious application of more and more strokes until my writing looks like some kind of cipher with random letters violently bolded and emphasized.
And I agree with you that providing unasked-for criticism is generally counter-productive. Though if you ever spot something on my blog, feel free to point it out. I'm committed to fixing and improving any errors I make, so fire away!