Hang ‘em high
September 11, 2007 
On Sunday, I read an eclectic group of newspapers online. Well, to be honest, I read the papers online everyday but the Sunday papers have juicier content and more in depth coverage. Jan Freeman writes a column for The Boston Globe that discusses words, their meaning and usage. As a soon to be English teacher, I am a bit of a contradiction in that I am not incensed by errors in grammar. Sometimes I don’t even notice glaring mistakes in usage. Hey, I even make them myself, all the time. So I was taken aback by the umbrage and punitive attitude expressed by grammarian inquisitors in her recent column. She quoted writers to The Guardian, a British newspaper, on local disgust with American idiom and our destruction of the mother tongue. “Writers who cannot distinguish transitive from intransitive verbs deserve beheading,” said one excitable bloke. Beheading? Really that seems a bit extreme. Perhaps a boot camp that requires intensive sentence diagramming would be more appropriate. Like the Tibetan sand paintings, the sentences would be diagrammed in a loose sandy soil using pointed sticks and erased as soon as completed. The sentence and ’sentences’ could be endless.
This anger at language misuse is something I hear often in classes at Kennesaw. Not from the teachers who read our work and judge it, but from fellow students. As part of the course work for English Education, we study the teaching of language, particularly in the following courses:
English 2270, Language and Usage ~ the study grammar
English 3035 Introduction to Language and Linguistics ~ language acquisition
English 3310 Principles of Writing Instruction ~ teaching students to write
In each of these classes the course work challenges the misconceptions potential teachers have acquired during their own educational experiences. We learn about innate grammar, techniques that lead to better writing and reading skills and develop strategies to reach the most challenging pupils. After all the study and discussion there are still those who demand corrective and punitive response to grammar misusage. We should educate instead.
Interesting observations. In some ways this is the old struggle between the prescriptivists (who prescribe rules for correct grammar use) and descriptivists (who detail how grammar is used in different contexts).
Context is everything. That’s the message I’d be communicating to students: know your context, know your audience, and understand the grammatical conventions appropriate for each. Using absolutely correct grammar on a night out with the boys might not get me invited back; as has been noted elsewhere, answering the phone by saying “It is I” when someone asks for you will probably lead to fewer phone calls…but at the same time, if I’m in a professional situation, I’d better be able to call on a knowledge of formal grammar expectations…
dc
I love this post! I’m taking Engl 3035 – Intro to Language and Linguistics – and I’m really excited by the fluidity of human language as a whole. I have to admit, when I first started the class, I did think in terms of “correct,” and “incorrect” language. Now, I’m leaning towards “standard” and “non-standard,” without necessarily ascribing judgment of any sort. I love that the same word can be said a myriad of ways within the same nation, still be understood by a general population, but yet reserve the right to nuance between those who pronounce it the same way. I think it makes us more interesting, not less “cultured,” whatever that means! In fact, the notion of a “mother tongue” – as you quoted above – to even the casually educated on the topic – is almost absurd.