The Messy Origin of English Grammar

I'm about 1/8 of the way through Jack Lynch's The Lexicographer's Dilemma, and am already finding it highly enlightening. Lynch chronicles the codification of English grammar, which didn't happen until the 17th century. Before then, English was a messy, unruly language. There were no standards of spelling, syntax, or usage. Even Shakespeare was guilty of grammatical errors like using double negatives, dangling participles, and split infinitives.

What's so fascinating about the book is that the rules of proper English emerged as a bottom-up Hayekian process, not from an imposition of a few educated sticklers. As Lynch tells the story, grammar emerged side-by-side with rules of etiquette. During the 17th century, commerce created a new class of arrivistes in England, neither peasant nor landed gentry. As the newly rich found themselves in social situations they were unfamiliar with, they needed to learn the mores of the elite to better assimilate without social anxiety. Thus, etiquette guides were born. These etiquette guides also began to codify the manner of speaking the members of the upper class were using, for the sake of those who needed to ape their mannerisms.

In an earlier blog post I argued that, nowadays, correct pronunciation is a shibboleth for being educated. But in the 17th century, proper usage was a shibboleth for class. Grammar guides weren't demanded by the upper class. In fact, they despised anything that would allow the nouveau riche to enter their ranks unnoticed. It was economic prosperity that drove the need to sound like those who were already rich (due to government mandate), and thus led to the rules of grammar we use today.

A Shibboleth for the Educated

Keith Staskiewicz wonders why people feel so embarrassed when they mispronounce a word they've only seen in print:

Haven’t we all had a name or a word that we’ve seen many times in print, but never heard in conversation? We know what it means, how to use it, how it’s spelled; everything but how to pronounce it.

For the majority of my life, I was convinced that awry was pronounced similarly to the word orrery. To this day “uh-RYE” still rings false in my ear. I also admit to pronouncing posthumous as if it meant “following a savory Middle Eastern spread.” And I, like many others, have Googled the phrase “Goethe, how to pronounce.” (Don’t get me started on South African-born Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee.) I just wonder why there’s such a stigma attached to those of us (like poor Margaret Tate) who seem to know certain words only in writing. Surely, there is quite a large vocabulary that doesn’t appear that often in everyday conversation, so why should one feel ashamed to get it wrong now and again? In the end, it’s more important to know what it means than how it sounds. I say go forth and mispronounce because how will you ever get it right if you’re never corrected?

I agree. I think those who fancy themselves cultured and highly educated use pronunciation as a shibboleth, as if knowing a word's meaning is fine for laymen, but serious people know how to properly pronounce dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. It's a silly distinction to make, and one that reeks of elitism and a little bit of the "gotcha!" mentality. ("What did you just say? Oh, it's actually pronounced dis-pyuh-TAY-shus. God, everyone knows that.")

Paglia Defends, um, you know, Palin's English

I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, but that doesn't mean I haven't been put off by the Left's frequent lambasting of her syntax and grammar. Outside of an English classroom, Grammar Nazism is usually just a petty way for a snob to assert intellectual superiority over another; it has little to do with the integrity of the language. Camille Paglia agrees:

English has evolved, and the world has moved on. There is no necessary connection between bourgeois syntax and practical achievement. I have never had the slightest problem with understanding Sarah Palin's meaning at any time. Since when do free Americans subscribe to a stuffy British code of veddy, veddy proper English? We don't live in a stultified class system. In the U.K., in fact, many literary leftists make a big, obnoxious point about retaining their working-class accents. Too many American liberals claim to be defenders of the working class and then run like squealing mice from working-class manners and mores (including moose hunting and wolf control). What smirky, sheltered hypocrites. Get the broom!