People who correct others’ grammar in conversation are really annoying. Thankfully most people stopped doing this in elementary school. However, there are those who still are annoyed by such mistakes, and wax nostalgic about the good old days when everybody spoke proper English and all students applied the rules of grammar flawlessly. For example, this guy:
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/00/standards.html
Before taking a turn for the moralizing, this article claims that the current state of spoken English reflects “widespread corruption of the English language,” due to “foul language, loose talk, … and ignorance of grammatical principles, even among the educated.” The author then cites a few examples of common grammar mistakes before continuing.
I’ll deal with these one at a time. First, the real impact of proliferation of foul language is a lot less than many people think. Foul language is foul only because a culture considers it so, and what is considered vulgar varies widely across time and location. The word “shit” is in the King James Bible. The word “ass” lacks the vulgar connotation in England that it does in America, but the words “arse” or “shag” are never used in British polite company. So, the natural question is, if a word’s use is becoming more widespread and tolerated in the media, is it really that vulgar?
Part of what determines that is frequency. Think of a person who swears all the time. From them, a four-letter word doesn’t carry that much impact, and you don’t think much of it. But if you think of someone who almost never swears, even a relatively mild cuss word carries a lot of weight. So, extend that to society. As “foul language” becomes more and more widespread, its “foul-ness” will diminish likewise. We’ve seen this happen before: to say that something “sucks” is not nearly as vulgar as it used to be. While you wouldn’t use it in a job interview, in most instances it’s lost the original sexual connotation and is simply an informal way to say you don’t like something. If foul language becomes accepted, new words will take the old ones’ place. That’s it. That’s all that happens. Children don’t start worshipping the devil, society doesn’t disintegrate into a degenerate mass of decadence and barbarism, and people don’t become illiterate philistine boors. Language changes, and the acceptability of so-called “foul language” changes along with it.
And don’t try to tell me that people who swear have a limited vocabulary. That argument is stupid. By definition, people who refuse to swear are limiting their own vocabularies; and all people, regardless of whether or not they swear, tend to fall back on crutch phrases to the detriment of a rich, varied, precise mode of speaking. But enough on this.
I’ll deal with the remaining two claims (loose talk and ignorance of grammatic principles) together, since the latter problem is often just a symptom of the first. My point is this. Loose talk is just that: loose. In casual conversation, the only important thing is communication. You aren’t trying to impress people with your education, you aren’t trying to create good first impressions, you’re speaking with people whom you already know and who already know you. Does saying “He is taller than me” communicate that idea any less clearly than “He is taller than I”? If anything, the latter obscures communication more than the former, because it may sound pretentious or overly precise, and draws attention to the grammatic structure of the sentence rather than its actual meaning! To take another of the author’s examples, does the fact that “loan” is not a verb make the sentence “Big banks don’t loan money to poor people” any less clear than if the word “lend” was used?
Absolutely not. Language is a fluid thing: new words are constantly being created, old words take on new meanings, and grammar “rules” change. Our English is not Shakespeare’s; and neither was his the same as Chaucer’s. In fact, spoken language was alive and well millennia before so-called grammar rules were invented to describe it, and I doubt that communication among early man was significantly impaired by the occasional dangling participle or failure to place the subject of a gerund in the possessive case. The point is that grammar rules arose from pre-existing language, not the other way around. In fact, attempts to create languages using logical, simple rules (such as Esperanto) have never become widespread.
Grammar rules are imposed by a variety of different organizations, depending on the language in question. Who gives them such authority? Why does Webster’s Dictionary have the power to decide what is and is not a word? Why do style guides have the power to dictate whether it is or is not appropriate to use “they” to refer to a single person of unknown gender? For official, professional, or published writing, we consent to allow standard rules to govern our use of language, because there is value in having a uniform standard for such writing. Certainly it is important to know how to write or speak according to the official rules in situations where it is important to establish prestige or education. But when you’re talking with a friend, or chatting via instant messenger, or writing on a personal website, it’s totally different. Your fourth-grade teacher Mrs. Kleinfelder has no dominion over your use of gerunds and participles in such cases, where grammar is important only in so far as it allows all parties involved to understand each other.
Of course, if communication is in fact impaired by poor word choice or grammar, then it is necessary to fix that. I correct people who tell me to adjust the balance on my car speakers, when they really want an adjustment to the fader, because using the wrong word does in fact create ambiguity. Using “loan” instead of “lend” creates no such ambiguity, and trying to correct that in casual speech is annoying.
You may not think that people still will stop your conversation to correct these types of mistakes, but you would be surprised. I was once at Jason’s Deli at Hancock Center, where the man taking my order rather rudely made me repeat an answer to one of his questions because he didn’t like me responding “No, that’s OK” to his question about a combo meal. I’ve never eaten there since, and I don’t plan to ever again, because besides being extremely rude, it’s unnecessary. Language is dynamic. Deal with it.
