Grammar!

June 7, 2011

I’ve noticed a trend in how I start these posts—I tend to start with some kind of a confession.  Well, here’s another: I love grammar.  I like to obsess about individual sentences.  I like to introduce students to the options they have (as opposed to the rules they should follow).  I’m surprised by all of this, though, because I have lived most of my life in fear of grammar.  I didn’t receive any solid grammar instruction until graduate school, and I was well aware of the weakness I had.  And while I do love grammar now, I have never let myself forget the fear, a fear that many of my students still have (and rightfully so).  I came across today’s article, and I chose it because I thought it was funny, and I was in need of a laugh.  Well, it wasn’t funny, but here it is anyway:

Article 12:

Lynch-Biniek, Amy.  “Bemoans, Belittles, and Leaves.” TETYC 33.1 (2005): 29-37. Print.

Lynch-Biniek’s article is a critique of Lynn Truss’s Eats, Shoots & Leaves.  But I suppose it’s also a little bit more than that as well; it’s a critique of the way we view grammar (and the larger “we,” not just the grammar-nerd “we”).  This article reminds me of all of the implications that is packed in language—power, authority, control.  Lynch-Biniek explains that the proper use of grammar is a “mark of education, a mark of money” (33).  The main problem she notes is how folks who are in the grammar-know make fun of the folks who aren’t (i.e.: pointing out misused apostrophes and the like).  When we make fun of the folks who don’t know formal grammar, we are inadvertently commenting on their social status—and that makes us assholes (my words, not hers).  I think that can be the case, even if it’s not intentional.  If we use our knowledge of grammar to hold ourselves in higher esteem than others, that would make us assholes (which, by the way, reminds me of the article about the Unabomber, and I don’t want to be an asshole like him—and not just for his bomb fetish, either).  Ultimately, I think we need to be cognizant of how personal of an issue grammar can be.

Better get back to my online class…

mk