Quote:
Originally Posted by Baraka_Guru
I take pride in language "purity" as an editor, but that's usually within the context of books. Even then, I often let authors get away with much because I work on books published for the general reader, often in the self-help genre.
But another side of me views language as an uncontrollable and evolving phenomenon. In the past, intellectuals attempted to cement the English language in terms of spelling and grammar rules, but this failed. You can take some of the best writing today and compare it to traditional rules and find many "errors." We are much more lax now than they were in the past. Rules change.
The problem we face today is the nature of language and communication in the information age: e-mail, forums, text messages, chat rooms, etc. The mode of communication is what changes language. We no longer hand-write long letters to relatives. The literate is no longer an exclusive and wealthy class. We expect everyone to be "literate" to some degree.
When the aim of literacy is to be all-inclusive, you get variations on what we view as "literate." We gauge literacy by degrees, rather than "literate" or "illiterate." We say things like, "He reads and writes at a grade ten reading level."
We communicate beyond words more than ever as well. Internet, television, movies, video games, etc. We are moving from a world where text was king. Now we communicate to a great degree using images, speech, and maybe some well-written text if we're lucky.
Communication changes, sure, but the biggest concern I have is with clarity. Confusion arises between speaker and listener, writer and reader, when there is uncertainty. Inaccurate language can be dangerous. In the least, it can be disorienting. This is a factor in both writing and speech.
If anything, we shouldn't be concerned with how we communicate so much as how we communicate meaning. Does our message make sense as it was intended?
I pose this question: Do you think there is a problem with the communication of meaning in light of this lack of high standards of traditional literacy?
Maybe.
Personally, I think the problem is that there are few people who like to read books anymore. (I mean the good kind.) But I won't get into that yet.
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I loved your entire post, Baraka.
Perhaps what we are lacking is not so much a knowledge of particular rules so much as we are lacking a general knowledge of style. Knowledge of style would certainly help with some of the clarity issues you referred to.
The other point you made that I've been making for years (especially when people correct me when I make a mistake speaking--this is very common as it seems that people think that because I have an English degree I must be a perfect speaker and dislike slang, when in fact the opposite is true) is that English is a living language, and therefore it must grow and change to suit the needs of the people who use it. The same is likely true for Portuguese--of any language that people speak on a daily basis. It's better that a language grow and change than die off for lack of people using it.
There are certainly places where displaying your literacy at its best is called for, particularly exams and papers (that article was a hoot on the one hand, but I wish I could say that I hadn't seen such mistakes at my own university, in my own department, but I did), but it isn't always called for, and that is perhaps what is lacking more than anything: situational awareness of what usage is appropriate.