I’ve often thought that you could tell quite a bit about a man’s politics by his position on the serial comma, a thought I was just reminded of by a column in the Los Angeles Times by Dennis Baron, a linguistics professor, putting down the recent spate of self-help grammar books.
Baron’s argument, which is typical fare among linguistics professors, is that “Americans” are wrong to believe, as most of us do, that “there’s a right and a wrong way to say something.”
American English remains vibrant and effective precisely because we’re skeptical of authorities. When corrected, we plead the 1st Amendment: “It’s a free country, and no one tells me what to say!”
Baron’s “we” calls to mind Tonto’s famous comment to the Lone Ranger when the latter observed that they were surrounded, for most Americans (as Baron at first recognized) in fact do believe, linguists notwithstanding, that there are rules and standards in grammar, as elsewhere in life, that can provide useful guidance. Thus when they turn to a dictionary they are likely to be more concerned with how a word should be used than how it has been used (not that these concepts are unrelated).
In an oversimplified (but I think still useful) view of ancient history, when reading and writing were skills limited to a few priests and other privileged people, their authority was both recognized and admired. The spread of literacy undermined that privileged authority, and for many post-modernists the very idea of authority itself. The result is a curious inversion in many intellectual arenas, with ordinary people continuing to believe in an authority that priestly professionals have discarded.
Thus professional linguists and their popularizers disdain “correct” usage (scroll down to review of Jim Quinn book) while many ordinary people as well as careful writers care where the commas go.
Turning from language to law, one can see a similar split between popular and high-brow professional opinion. Despite the best efforts of legions of law professors and judges for several generations now, for example, opinion surveys confirm that most Americans obstinately continue to believe that the second amendment recognizes that they, and not simply their local national guard, have some sort of right to own guns.
Indeed, if a survey asked whether the Constitution means what it says, I’m confident that by an overwhelming majority most people would reply that it does. Law professors and judges and editorial writers, by contrast, would squirm, wondering what “means” and “says” means.
Self-help for the grammar set
John Rosenberg of Discriminations writes about politics and grammer in this post. Here’s an excerpt: “Indeed, if a survey asked whether the Constitution means what it says, I’m confident that by an overwhelming majority most people would reply that it…