atw: Re: "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"

Tee hee, that's funny about Truss, I'll have to go in search of some US
reviews.  I confess that after excessive exposure to fawning reviews across
the land, I haven't and won't be buying her book.  Besides, I felt
disinclined to be dictated to by yet another prideful pendant.  Sheesh,
enough already.

I happen to take some notice of US English, if for no other reason than the
arguments that tend to revolve around the local appropriation of US spelling
and expressions.  For example, when blogging, I go with US spelling.  Why
fight it?

On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 8:19 PM, Geoffrey Marnell
<geoffrey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

>  You're quite right, Caz, as long as by "rules" you mean the current
> conventions in place in the language group with which I want to
> communicate. I don't need to "have a respectable level of knowledge and
> understanding of the rules" pertaining to American English if I don't wish
> to, or need to, communicate with an American audience. Rules of language are
> mere conventions, and they differ from English variant to English variant,
> as they have in any particular variant throughout history.
>
> Further, someone might be a descriptivist in matters linguistic, but that
> doesn't mean that they are necessarily a linguistic anarchist. A
> descriptivist who wants to communicate, and communicate as effortlessly as
> possible, will consult the contemporary language guides (with their
> so-called "rules) of the audience they wish to communicate with. For without
> any shared understanding of the meaning of words, punctuation marks,
> syntactic structures and the like, there can be no communication. But that
> is quite a different matter to arguing that there are absolute rules of
> language usage.
>
> As for teachers, they were overly prescriptive prior to the 1970s. Then
> there was no language teaching at all (which let everyone down). Now
> language teaching has returned to the classroom ... and thank heavens it is
> now delivered with a descriptivist bent. This is how we do it; this is how
> the Americans do it; this is how the Indians do it; and none is any better
> than another. (Crikey, who owns the English language, anyway?)
>
> As for Truss, she didn't even have the sense to consider localising her
> book on punctuation before it was published in America. No wonder she didn't
> get a single positive review in America, only complaints that she was
> telling the Americans that their punctuation practices of many many years
> were wrong. How dare she. Here here.
>
> Cheers
>
>
> Geoffrey Marnell
> Principal Consultant
> Abelard Consulting Pty Ltd
> T: +61 3 9596 3456
> F: +61 3 9596 3625
> W: www.abelard.com.au
>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:
> austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Caz.H
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 16, 2009 7:51 PM
> *To:* austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* atw: Re: "50 Years of Stupid Grammar Advice"
>
> Isn't it always a good rule to have a respectable level of knowledge and
> understanding of the rules before one willy-nilly breaks them?  Otherwise
> one ends up sounding like an uneducated, tin-eared flibbertigibbet, and it
> would be true.
>
> The positions here strike me as being very much akin to the arguments
> within eduction.  That is, there are those (mostly teachers) who don't
> believe a solid foundation of basic skills are required before students
> should be let loose to attempt the political, social, cultural, ethnic,
> gender based analytic equivalent of a somersault with a triple twist and a
> half pike to finish, versus those, with ever diminishing influence, who
> believe that being able to spell, for example, is essential to, and helps
> engender, both thought and expression.
>
> Surely anyone with more than a few synapses firing is capable of adhering
> to or discarding rules according to their own judgment and taste.  That's
> only possible if they have exposure to the rules in the first place,
> including conflicting tomes.
>
> Carolyn
>
>
>
>
>
>
>


-- 
Carolyn Hart

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