I sat with my cousin on the floor in the corner of the
bookstore, poring over Elvish grammar and the rich world of Tolkien’s
languages. A seed was planted. Over the next few years, I tended to my
little metaphorical garden, writing in Tolkien’s alphabets and languages,
learning Spanish, practicing my broken Portuguese, and adding broken German to
the mix.
Unfortunately, some of the plants in my garden grew thorns. My love of words and grammar turned me into
the grammar police, trying to “correct” everyone’s sentences, even in my own
family. “Don’t end sentences in
prepositions,” I would say, or, “Mark all your adjectives with an LY.” I wanted everyone to speak Academic English,
and I was frustrated by deviations from the rules of Strunk and White.
Then I encountered Steven Pinker. My friend Sofija lent me The Language Instinct. Pinker's work exposed my metaphorical garden for what it really was: full of toxic weeds.
Pinker wrote: “This book is about human language. Unlike most books with ‘language’ in the
title, it will not chide you about proper usage….In the pages that follow, I
will try to convince you that every one of these common opinions is wrong! And they are all wrong for a single
reason. Language is not a cultural
artifact that we learn the way we learn to tell time… Instead, it is a distinct piece of the
biological makeup of our brains.” (pages
17-18). Pinker went on to describe the
origins of my precious language “rules”.
And I recognized the thorns in my garden for what they were: harmful and divisive. Most of the “rules” of English were invented
in the 1700s by academes who wished for English to work more like
Latin. And the consequence of such
snobbery (including my own) was to create a divide between people raised in
different language contexts. My passion
for prescriptivist rules of grammar had turned out to be a poison.
My metaphorical garden, I realized, was being choked by brambles.
Not only are the prescriptive "rules" of academic English divisive, but they are also really illogical. In fact, Pinker wrote:
“Most of the prescriptive rules of the language mavens make no sense on
any level.” (page 373). And he is correct! According to the natural patterns of the
English language, “Me and my mom went to the store” is natural, whereas “My
mother and I went to the store” is unnatural and breaks the patterns of English! It’s all about the way English assigns case
(I vs. me)*.
Pinker proved that dialects of English have their own
patterns, their own rules. So-called
“African American English” or “Urban English” (we’ve GOT to come up with a
better name for this group of dialects) actually makes fine grammatical
distinctions that Standard American English (the dialect I am using right now)
does not. Dialects of English are not
lazy. They are logical.
I discovered that Academic English was an artificial
construct. I learned that every
generation changes language (more on that in another post). I learned that every dialect—and every person
who speaks each dialect—has dignity.
Although I am very opinionated, I make an effort to admit
when I’ve been wrong. So I pruned the
garden of its wicked divisive thorny prejudices, trying to nurture instead my love
of exploring languages. And by stripping
away the prescriptivist attitudes of my past, I was better able to love
languages (and the people who speak them) for what (who) they really are—not for my
idea of what they “should be”. In fact, I
went from grammar police to “grammar hippie.”
I defended those who spoke natural dialects (anyone who ignored the
grammar books of school).
This had immense impact on my understanding of language
disorders. There’s a big difference
between a child speaking a dialect (a difference in language acquired) vs. a
child who cannot speak the dialect they are exposed to (a disorder in language
learning). As a bilingual speech
therapist, this is the bedrock of my understanding of diagnosis and treatment.
The Language Instinct was the beginning of my journey to
value everyone, regardless of their exposure to academic culture. There have been many others who have helped me along the way, among them Professors Lorimor and Lavine of Bucknell University, and a whole lot of really excellent linguists whose works have inspired me to value how everyone speaks.
Because dignity isn’t related to which
dialect someone grew up speaking.
Everyone has dignity. Every. One.
*I will fight you on this.
Here’s why “Me and my mom” is more natural than “My mom and I”:
I can give you some strong evidence that “My mom and I” is
unnatural and breaks the patterns of English:
1. The same people who say “My mom and I went to
the store” are likely to misuse that construction in joined noun phrases that
are NOT the subject of the sentence, such as “He gave the tickets to my mom and
I.” That isn’t correct in Academic
English, and it wouldn’t be correct in Latin!
BUT since these people are “changing” their case-assignment-pattern,
they are more inclined to automatically avoid using “me”, “her”, “him”, or “us”
in joined noun phrases. For more discussion
on this topic, please see this Language Log post from 2011
2. (And this is the more compelling
evidence) People say things like “Me and
my mom went to the store” all the time.
The #1 way to know if a
“rule” is natural to the language or just made up by academes is this: if it’s natural, you don’t have to learn it
in school. Anything you have to learn in
school is for an artificial system that doesn’t follow its own rules.
It’s absolutely fine to know and use Academic English. It is useful in professional settings, and it
lends a uniformity to academic prose that has its advantages. But please, if you choose to use Academic
English in any setting, understand that you are making a choice, and please
don’t look down on anyone who uses a more natural (and logical) dialect of
English. That’s the lesson I had to
learn.
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