Basilan State College

Graduate Studies
Master of Arts in Teaching
English

EDE 207
Introductory of English Language
 Chapter 7
Why do we
care?
RICKY C. SEDILLO JR., LPT
Discussant
‘“You seemed to find one or two of the reports very
interesting, sir.” “Did I?”
Morse sounded surprised.
“You spent about ten minutes on that one from the secretarial
college, and it’s only half a page.”
“You’re very observant, Lewis, but I’m sorry to disappoint
you. It was the most ill-written report I’ve seen in years, with
twelve—no less—grammatical monstrosities in ten lines!
What’s the force coming to?”’
(Colin Dexter, Last Bus to Woodstock, 1975, p. 33).
Why would a busy Chief Inspector spend his
time scrutinizing, counting, and correcting the
grammatical mistakes in the reports submitted to
him, rather than focusing on their contents?
Why should the sloppy grammar of a missive
from the secretarial college provoke Morse into
despair for the future of the police force?
Why do we care about grammar and spelling to
the extent that minor errors trigger paroxysms of
despondency and gloom concerning the future of
our society and its language?
Rights and Wrongs
Since most people recognize the inevitability of
linguistic change, or are at least aware that
Shakespeare’s language differs from our own, we might
wonder why they are unwilling to allow the language to
continue to change today.
As we have all had to acquire the English language,
negotiating its grammatical niceties, its fiendishly tricky
spellings, and its unusual pronunciations, it is
impossible for us to adopt a neutral position from which
to observe debates concerning correct usage.
Different social and educational circumstances create
alternative perspectives from which to judge what is
correct, or ‘ordinary’, usage.
Conventions of correct usage are drummed into us
early in our lives, by parents and schoolteachers, and it
is very difficult to shake these off in adulthood.
Much of the success of style guides may be credited to
society’s tacit acceptance that there are rights and
wrongs in all aspects of usage, and a desire to be saved
from embarrassment.
Rather than question the grounds for the prescription,
we turn to usage pundits as we once turned to our
schoolteachers, in search of guidance and certitude.
In a fast-changing and uncertain world, there is
something reassuring about knowing that the values of
our schooldays continue to be upheld, and that the
correct placement of an apostrophe still matters.
Good Grammar in the Marketplace
Another reason for our concern with such pedantry is
bound up with the social cachet that surrounds the
concept of ‘good grammar’.

The commercial potential of ‘good grammar’ can be

observed in the way that companies deliberately invoke
notions of correctness to appeal to an educated and
wealthy demographic.
Good Grammar in the Classroom
For many, good grammar is a cipher for other social
values, such as politeness, respect, and the preservation of
traditional social mores.

For them, the dropping of formal grammar teaching in

schools is directly responsible for the breakdown in social
hierarchies, youth unemployment, crime, and many other
social ills.

In the 1980s, a move away from formal grammar teaching

in English secondary schools was cited by some social
commentators as the trigger for a widespread disregard for
honesty and responsibility among young people.
A key factor in the rejection of grammatical study in English
schools in the 20th century was the rise of English literature as a
discipline.
As a subject concerned with cultivating critical awareness,
artistic taste, and literary sensibilities, the scientific study of the
language (initially known as philology) was felt to be irrelevant
to English Studies.
The reintroduction of formal grammatical teaching in the 1980s
was accompanied by a shift from a prescriptivist to a descriptivist
methodology.
Where previous approaches to grammar teaching had drilled
children to avoid ‘errors’ such as I was stood, the new curriculum
encouraged an appreciation of dialectal and non-standard
varieties alongside the acquisition of Standard English.
For many traditionalists, this permissive approach
represents a watering-down of the subject and a
lowering of educational standards, accompanied by a
loss of valued teaching methods, such as grammatical
parsing, memorization, and rote learning.

The benefits of such approaches over what he

disparagingly refers to as a ‘Modern “child-centred”
education theory’ is stressed by N. M. Gwynne, who
urges his readers to learn his grammatical definitions
‘exactly by heart, including even their word order’.
Good Grammar and Latin Grammar
The dropping of grammar from the English
curriculum in the 1960s coincided with a decline in the
teaching of Classics in English schools.
Throughout its history, the codification of the rules of
correct grammar has been closely linked with the
teaching of classical languages.
The Latin use of the nominative case following the
verb to be prompts Fowler to condemn English
constructions such as it is me; according to Fowler,
this ‘false grammar’ should properly be it is I.
Since Latin had not been a living language (one with
native speakers) for centuries, it existed in a fixed
form; by contrast, English was unstable and in decline.
English and Nationalism
Nationalistic sentiments have been invoked as part of
efforts to make English the official language of the USA by
the English-only movement, which claims that such a move
would further integration and unity.
If the global status of English seems assured, so does the
future of the age-old antagonism between descriptivists and
prescriptivists.
News stories that seek to stir up outrage towards the latest
edition of a dictionary tend to paint a similarly black and
white picture.
The dismissive manner in which professional linguists
have typically ignored prescriptivist approaches has also
contributed to the lack of dialogue and continued
misinformation.
THANK YOU
FOR
LISTENING!!!