The Right Word
Can't stand to watch the English language's losing encounter with the culture of who-cares-anyway? A new book says, get over it, fella. "Too often," argues Jack Lynch, professor of English at Rutgers University, "the mavens and pundits are talking through their hats. They're guilty of turning superstition into rules, and often their proclamations are nothing more than prejudice representing itself as principle." Ouch! Goes one of the pundits on whose hand the professor's ruler descends.
A New York Times review of Lynch's The Lexicographer's Dilemma: The Evolution of "Proper" English, From Shakespeare to South Park goes along generally with the professor's low view of mere rules "that editors and other grammatical zealots wave about like cudgels." Lynch would have us know it's always been so: One set of "standards" eliding over time into another set and grumpy old pedants shedding tears. English, like a turbulent stream, is dynamic: always refreshing itself with new modes and models and images.
So what about all this, then? Has Lynch got us dogmatic dinosaurs dead to rights? Not quite, I think. English is dynamic. Still, we can't let the matter drop just there. The notion of language as a bulletin board for faddists needs no new friends. I fear it has too many already.
The relationship between reader and writer is a delicate one, demanding trade-offs. Very well. If we are to talk via the printed page or glassy screen, let's be sure some rules obtain: some sense of where a sentence, once started, should end, and how much of the reader's patience it should tax. Not that here we have the entirety of the thing. What about the writer—his artistry when it comes to narration, his gift for painting with words, for evoking images? Can't he—may it please the court—have a little fun when he talks? How much fun, though? And with what profit, or danger, to his argument?
I'm contending here, not for indifference to those changes that enrich the language like tides transporting riverbed silt. I'm arguing for due attention, on the part of readers and writers alike, to old paths and patterns seen as both right and refreshing. The "pedant" doesn't ransack copy for awkward metaphors and misplaced modifiers, like a grand inquisitor searching out heresies. The "pedant" wants an English paragraph to run smoothly and well, to the joint satisfaction of maker and consumer: partners as they are in the quest for understanding.
The language will change, and that's OK. Once upon a time, "nice" meant silly; now it means agreeable and pleasant. No writer today would throw a casual 17th-century "alack" into the conversation save with ironic intent. "Impact" isn't a verb? I know it's not, but plenty of people unfortunately think it is, to judge by the way they use it. What's a "pedant" to do but shrug and cling a little more closely to other threatened usages?
Various things remain true. Words of a single syllable, carefully aimed, can travel like bullets. A lovely metaphor will linger long in the mind, sometimes humming, sometimes cooing. A writer incapable of coming to the point will look up to see an empty chair where his reader had been sitting. Careless, haphazard syntax can give readers the same impression as garlic breath at a soiree.
There are things the writer can try and get by with, in other words: indeed, more than get by with. There are other things he'd do well to watch with infinite caution, if not repulsion.
Rules? Frameworks? Best practices? You bet we need 'em, not least so we can safely ignore them at precisely the right moment. Next time, dig a hole with a hammer. The point might come clear at last.
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Well said, Mr. Murchison. I am the worst offender on this blog, a hypocrite perhaps, but not a living contradiction. Chaucer spelled differently than we do; Lee wrote better poetry in the prose of his personal letters than most contemporary poets and Nathan Bedford Forrest was the South's best rider and worst speller, but all would have understood the following poem which is not much understood today.
Nuns Fret Not at Their Convent's Narrow Room
Nuns fret not at their convent's narrow room;
And hermits are contented with their cells;
And students with their pensive citadels;
Maids at the wheel, the weaver at his loom,
Sit blithe and happy; bees that soar for bloom,
High as the highest Peak of Furness-fells,
Will murmur by the hour in foxglove bells:
In truth the prison, unto which we doom
Ourselves, no prison is: and hence for me,
In sundry moods, 'twas pastime to be bound
Within the Sonnet's scanty plot of ground;
Pleased if some Souls (for such there needs must be)
Who have felt the weight of too much liberty,
Should find brief solace there, as I have found.
William Wordsworth
'A writer incapable of coming to the point will look up to see an empty chair where his reader had been sitting'.
I love it! This sentence should be framed and hung up on walls!
..."that editors and other grammatical zealots wave about like cudgels."
Fine old word, cudgel; and long may they be waved.
There Ridpath, Roper, cudgell'd might ye view;
The very worsted still look'd black and blue:
Ridpath, Roper] Authors of the Flying-Post and Post-Boy, two scandalous papers on different sides, for which they equally and alternately were cudgell'd, and deserv'd it. - A. Pope
The other point of my post above being to marvel at how far the written word has fallen in importance from a time when people took it thus seriously.
Younger Americans are so caught up in trying to appear 'cool' (or whatever they call it these days) by using slang, that the importance of language is lost to them entirely.
Thank you for this post. While it is true that language has suffered as great a slide as civility in our oh-so-modern age, I remain optimistic. Videos and blogs still need strong, attractive writing to make them work.
A language's vitality is based on both its ability to adapt and its adherence to its internal rules. This interplay is explored in a wonderful book entitled Grammatical Man. I refer to it often.
I endeavor to teach, among other subjects, expository writing. Modern pupils and students do not bring to the classroom a knowledge and understanding of customs, traditions and habits necessary for them to understand allusions and metaphors. There is not even an objective correlative to the superficial stuff that dominated our "culture" a mere twenty years old. Pupils and students not only lack comprehension of allusions to THE GARDEN, but they lack comprehension to ANY garden. To this generation, Elvis is a dead as Eve. If it ain't NOW, it simply ain't!
Mr. R. M. Peters,
You are the kind of teacher most parents can only dream about for their children.
It is true that the English language is fluid and ever changing, but we must have some guidelines or rules that we all agree on or we won't understand each other at all. I read many blogs on the Internet which are not pop-culture related and find that many people simply cannot express themselves at all. Whatever they were trying to say is lost on me and others as well.
In the past before mass communication, it was understandable that even if somebody was highly intelligent, they could be bad spellers, but still write well or express their ideas eloquently. They were geographically isolated and the few books that they had access to might have had spelling and grammatical errors in them. In the present day, with our ability to access the libraries of the world in seconds and with software that checks spelling and grammar, there is no excuse for intelligent people to spell badly. Letting bad spelling get into print is just a show of being intellectually lazy and many prospective employers will reject a resume just on seeing a couple of spelling errors. They are judging the type of person you are by this one little thing!
You are right about how people can barely express themselves in clear language. It is a joy, especially, to read Thomas Fleming's work because of the precision he applies to using the most accurate language possible. The absence of this care and knowledge makes the literature of the past 50 years rather an unpleasant experience. And the bittersweetness is palpable when you discover that the more you hone your language skills, the greater the potential for irritation at the carelessness of others.
It is only an opinion, but I sometimes wonder if the field of "creative writing" is not partly to blame. Teaching people to be "creative" when they write could be misguided, if they can barely complete a successful sentence to begin with. Better to simply copy the tried and true, is it not? I'd rather read something that is stylistically unoriginal, but pleasing, sound, and well expressed, than something that is unique but trashy and offensive.
A look at old books on google and the Internet Archive will show how much written English has suffered in the last half century.
To many people today, the written English of the nineteenth century often appears overly complicated in expression, with sentences that are often too long-winded. However, though in some cases the charge may be valid, the fault usually lies with the moderns and their less than complete grasp of intelligent English, not with 'old books'.
Is not part of the problem our culture's long-standing infatuation with individuality? A person who is not "unique" is a virtual non-person. Therefore the old arts of grammar, spelling, composition, rhetoric and logic are essentially non-arts by virtue of being old and non-unique.
Hence ugliness and beauty are inconsequential; the only important thing is uniqueness. In the fashion realm "punk," "grunge," and "goth" are already becoming passe as "newer" unique (i.e. real) fashions take their place.
In writing (and the other arts, for that matter) the same rule applies: order, style, meaning, clarity and the like are old and therefore a form of non-literature. The primary artistic requirement is to be different, new, unique, individual and therefore valid.
One may as well count "gherq phytrse pl6ts" to be a phrase of fine art because it is so unique.
That's a good point, Mr Wihowski. Likewise, I wonder how much advertising played a part in starting this obsession with being 'unique', starting even before TV and radio, with catchy phrases on roadsigns and in print ads, designed to catch the eye.