Thursday, July 2, 2009

Academics Slaughter the English Language

In a previous post, I discussed how politicians kill the English language by ignoring its most basic rules. Well, what can you expect from them if the academics do the same? The president of an Ivy League school writes in a message to his faculty members: "we will require colleges to carefully review and consider..."

No wonder my students don't believe me when I tell them it's wrong to split their infinitives.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

How do you know it's a real message from an actual Ivy League president?

Crys T said...

Hate to break it to you, Clarissa, but it ISN'T wrong to split infinitives in English. The idea that is came from the elites who set the "rules" of grammar in centuries past and considered Latin to be the blueprint for grammatical perfection.

They reasoned that because in Latin an infinitive is one word, it must be one word in English as well, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And as it was one word, splitting it must therefore be wrong.

Nowadays, the idea that English rules of grammar should be based on Latin has been debunked, and so a lot of "rules", including those regarding split infinitives and dangling participals, have been consigned to the dustbin.

Anonymous said...

"including those regarding split infinitives and dangling participals, have been consigned to the dustbin."

-Says who? An educated person who wants to develop a good writing style doesn't do this. It's not that hard, actually.

Clarissa said...

"the idea that English rules of grammar should be based on Latin has been debunked, and so a lot of "rules", including those regarding split infinitives and dangling participals, have been consigned to the dustbin."

I also don't recommend using so many passive constructions. They make for weak sentences.

Anonymous said...

There is something of reason in the post by Crys T... See "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker

Crys T said...

"Says who? An educated person who wants to develop a good writing style doesn't do this. It's not that hard, actually."

Sorry punkin, but this is not even something that is debated amongst linguists. It's accepted. Split infinitives, dangling participles and prepositions at the end of sentences ARE and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN correct in English. It's only the ingorance of a small group several centuries ago who didn't understand the nature of language or the true relationship between English, Latin and the other Indo-European languages that made these absurd "rules."

Don't trust me. Ask a linguist. Look it up. Check out the book Language Myths by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill.

"I also don't recommend using so many passive constructions. They make for weak sentences."

Like I said, look it up. But I guess that involves more actual effort than passive-aggressive snarkiness.

Linguists have accepted that these grammar "rules" are not archaic, not pendantic, but just plain WRONG for so long now that I'm always shocked when I see people who supposedly know about grammar still touting them.

Read up on the subject. I'd be greatly surprised if you could find any reputable linguist* with an expertise in English gave you a different opinion.

*And I do mean linguist in the sense of having studied and worked in linguistics, not just some self-appointed guardian of the language or someone from another field of academia. An actual linguist who is generally accepted as a linguist by linguists.

Crys T said...

Oh yes, and also: a linguist writing within the past 15-20 years or so. Don't pull out something from the 1950s as if it's evidence of contemporary opinion.

Also: double negatives NOT illogical. And CORRECT in some varieties of English.

Clarissa said...

You can use double negatives, passive constructions, split infinitives, phrases like "if you could find any reputable linguist* with an expertise in English gave you a different opinion" and "double negatives NOT illogical". That's your right. I will, however, reserve my right to consider your style sloppy, difficult to read, confusing, and weak.

Achieving a tolerable writing style isn't easy. I can understand people who don't want to waste time and energy on it. I don't, however, understand those who mask their laziness with some kind of a far-fetched theory.

Clarissa said...

As a teacher, I discovered that my students don't know the difference between "their" and "there" or "its" and "it's". Some of them have no idea whether to write "presidents" or "president's". I had to struggle with endless rambling sentences full of passive constructions and confusing dependent clauses. Sometimes, they would even use expressions like "where we are at." A couple of times I saw double negatives in academic essays.

And this was a very respectable, extremely expensive university. This is why it's so upsetting to see people defend the kind of laziness that produces such monstrosities of style.

If teachers don't work to correct these erroros, we will soon see essays written in the style of "Bildungsroman good. Ideology bad." Even today, it's often next to impossible to read a NY Times article because the author tries to express some half-baked ideas in an incredibly poor writing style.

Anonymous said...

Language Myths by Laurie Bauer and Peter Trudgill is a very silly book. The first essay in the collection argues that it's OK to use language any way you want as long as you are understood. The only people who admire this theory are those who are too lazy to learn the correct rules of language use.

Clarissa said...

Agreed. So is "The Language Instinct" by Steven Pinker. Every time somebody trots out the idea that something is "innate" (especially things like the knowledge of grammar), I stop taking them seriously.

Anonymous said...

It's crazy that people would believe this pseudo-science as if it were gospel truth. They read Pinker and suddenly feel like they are a huge authority on linguistics. It's SO annoying.

Clarissa said...

I have to confess that the only comments that really annoyed me were the responses to this post. I wasn't even upset when somebody called me "a stupid bint." But this got me really frustrated. I've been studying linguiistics literally from infancy. I knew the difference between direct and indirect objects and parts of speech before the age of four. I published more on applied linguistics than many people have read. And then somebody who skimmed through one populist book by some individual who just wants to make a quick buck comes here and starts lecturing me in a very condescending manner.