Friday, June 30, 2006
‘On Language’ 6/21 - Some advice about advice
Hopefully, the grammar police will keep advice to themselves
‘On Language‘
Chicago Tribune
June 21, 2006
By Nathan Bierma
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“In an effort to make the world a better place, I cleave to Conan the Grammarian’s Three Rules of Correcting Others,” writes best-selling language maven Richard Lederer, a.k.a. “Conan the Grammarian,” in a cover article in Verbatim, a Chicago-based language magazine.
His first: “Are you right?”
Second: “Will it make a difference?”
If the answer to both questions is “yes,” Lederer concludes, then you may proceed to the third rule: “Do the correcting in private.”
Lederer’s three rules are fairly simple and straightforward, but to me, they illustrate the flaws of the entire enterprise of giving grammatical advice. “Says who?” is always an appropriate response to Lederer’s first question, because what he means by “Are you right?” amounts to this: Do manuals on English usage and style recommend the correction you’re about to make?
But usage manuals are seldom written by linguists, who actually study how language works. The manuals tend to make subjective, selective and shaky suggestions. The authors pass off their own personal preferences or folk customs as gospel truth.
Arnold Zwicky, a linguist at Stanford University, writes at his Web site that linguists’ “foundational assumptions diverge strikingly from those of the advice literature at almost every turn.”
He cautions, “The advice literature on language is [merely] advice, comparable to advice on diet, exercise, gardening, child rearing, relationships, and the like.” ...