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hail mr. mephisto:
nice to see you.
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i outlined my argument in the post--it's not so simple as you make it out to be.
the core of my position is that what matter is content.
grammar/spelling are technical concerns--they have their place and are in their ways basic--but attention to technical questions is nothing more than that.
i'd rather folk be able and willing to think and thereby have something to say than they be able to say nothing in a formally correct manner.
i got to this position through teaching...so i guess i'd say that i don't particularly care about the general commitments folk have to grammar as such or spelling as such.
these are aesthetic questions.
some people like skippy, some people like jiff.
some people like hip hop, some like metal.
who cares?
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there's another level at which this game of spelling/grammar/propriety could be addressed, which has to do with one's relation to them as a function of one's more general willingness to experiment with basic forms.
generally, i find a correlation between commitment to "the proper" as if it was in itself valuable and other types of aesthetic conservatism.
of course, the devil is in the intermediate steps...if the debate heads this way, maybe i'll fill em in.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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