It’s National Grammar Day again:
Do you adore clean, correct sentences? Do ungrammatical advertisements make you cringe? We understand completely, and this is why the Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar and MSN Encarta have designated March 4 as National Grammar Day.
Last year Geoff Pullum and I mocked the project on Language Log; this year Gabe Doyle has already gotten a posting out on his blog Motivated Grammar (a blog subtitled Prescriptivism Must Die!).
The SPOGG blog is a curious blend of what’s clearly intended to be light-hearted and somewhat self-mocking jokiness with what sounds like dead-serious advocacy of what Martha Brockenbrough takes to be the standard rules of English (which makes the just-kidding defense of the enterprise ring hollow to me). Here’s part of her reply, from last year, on the SPOGG site, to Geoff and me (and Nathan Bierma):
Linguists would have much less to do if everyone wrote and spoke according to the standard rules of English. We can understand their zeal for protecting their tenure. We understand less the desire to call people names, especially without taking the time to understand what they’re saying, and just as important, how they’re saying it.
In any case, it’s true that language is flexible and changing. It’s also true that educated people have certain expectations about how language will read and sound, and that a good grasp on it will open doors. Perhaps people cooled by the eucalyptus-scented breezes at Stanford have forgotten what it’s like to be on the other side of those doors.
(I manage to remember the date of NGD because it’s my granddaughter’s birthday.)