Subjects and Verbs as Evil Plot

[Harold Schiffman]

Here's another article about the perception that grammar is
a plot by the government to control our minds.

Hal S.


January 13, 2011

Subjects and Verbs as Evil Plot

By CLYDE HABERMAN

Even before the Tucson shootings, Jared L. Loughner acted weirdly and
darkly in so many ways that singling out any one aspect may defy
sense. Nonetheless, for bizarreness, his rants about grammar stand
out.As Mr. Loughner has tried to explain it in Web postings, English
grammar is not merely usage that enjoys common acceptance. Rather, it
is nothing less than a government conspiracy to control people’s
minds. Perhaps more bizarre, even potentially troubling, is that he is
not the only one out there clinging to this belief. Some grammarians
say they hear it more often than you may think.

“It is completely off the wall,” said Patricia T. O’Conner, the author
of several books on grammar, including “Woe Is I.” “But I’m not
actually that surprised,” said Ms. O’Conner, who also writes a blog,
grammarphobia.com, with her husband, Stewart Kellerman. “I get mail
once in a while from people who believe that it’s wrong to try to
reinforce good English because it’s some kind of mind-control plot,
and English teachers are at the bottom of this. For anyone to say that
subject and verb should agree, for example, is an infringement of your
freedoms, and you have a God-given right to speak and use whichever
words you want, which of course you do.

“But they see it as some sort of plot to standardize people’s minds
and make everyone robotically the same.” One person identified with
this notion is a Milwaukee man named David Wynn Miller, who prefers to
render his name as :David-Wynn: Miller and who says that people must
free themselves of a government he deems tyrannical. But Mr. Miller
has distanced himself from Mr. Loughner and rejected suggestions that
his own online writings over the years may have inspired the rampage
in Tucson.

Of course, idiosyncratic grammar and punctuation, of themselves, are
hardly automatic signs of derangement. Nor are they confined to one
point or another along the political spectrum. Rappers have long gone
their own way when it comes to spelling names and putting thoughts
into words. And the idea that language can be used, and abused, to
exert control is familiar. Orwell, anyone? (In fact, on his YouTube
page, Mr. Loughner listed Orwell’s “Animal Farm” as one of his
favorite books.)

But the Loughners and Millers take many steps closer to the dark side
by describing grammatical structure as proof of government wickedness.

Ben Zimmer, the “On Language” columnist for The New York Times
Magazine, said he, too, had received letters talking of a “grand
conspiracy.” He got them, in particular, when he was editor for
American dictionaries at Oxford University Press.

“When people are confronted with linguistic authority of various
kinds, whether it’s dictionaries or grammar books, the more
conspiratorially minded may use that as evidence of some grand scheme,
or something where people are pulling the strings behind the scenes
and using language to do that,” Mr. Zimmer said.

Ms. O’Conner said there is a flip side to the rejection of all
grammatical structure. It is slavish adherence to old rules and
intolerance for any perceived transgression.

She gets an earful, she said, when she writes that there is nothing
horrific about, say, splitting an infinitive or ending a sentence with
a preposition. For some people, those are heresies to always object
to.

But it’s the more anarchic types whom Ms. O’Conner finds worrisome,
those who “think we’re all in cahoots — government, business,
education, the church — and it’s all one big conspiracy, and grammar
is part of it.” E-mails that she gets boil down to, “You’re part of
this elitist attempt to keep the masses down through language.”
Somewhat saddened by all this is Margaret Edson, who teaches social
studies at a middle school in Atlanta. In 1999, Ms. Edson won the
Pulitzer Prize for Drama for her play “Wit.” Punctuation, notably the
centrality of the comma and the semicolon, is practically a character
all its own.

“If we weren’t teaching grammar as a way to bring the voices of our
students forward, for a redemptive purpose, then why teach, why live?”
she said. “We’re trying to bring their voices forward, not suppress
them.” “If you don’t have grammar, you don’t have sense,” Ms. Edson
said. “You don’t have one another. You can’t say ‘I love you’ without
grammar.” As the Tucson nightmare shows, however, you can express hate
without it.

E-Mail: haberman at nytimes.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/14/nyregion/14nyc.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=grammarians?&st=cse

--
=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+

 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

-------------------------------------------------



-