From the first time we step into an English class, we’re told that the rules matter, that they must be followed, that we must know when it’s appropriate to use a comma and what it means to employ the subjunctive mood. But do these things really matter? Outside of the classroom, what difference does it make if we write “who” instead of “whom” or say “good” instead of “well”?
It does make a difference, at least sometimes. In order to determine when those times are, the question must be asked: For whom are you writing? Take that last sentence, for example. As Joan Acocella wrote recently in The New Yorker, “Every statement is subjective, partial, full of biases and secret messages.” The above sentence is no exception. Its ostentatious structure and secret message says, “I am one of you.” It also says even sneakier things like “I’m educated, an authority,” and “You can trust me about language usage.” The average New Yorker reader recognizes the effort the sentence exerts to maintain grammatical correctness, and in recognizing this, the reader bonds with the writer. “I” becomes “we.” We share a secret now. We’re a team.
But how different would things be if I walked into the sports bar down the street on a Sunday afternoon and asked, “For whom are we rooting today?” The wording would not be likely to win me many pals at the pub. The most likely response from the collective would be banishment to a far corner, a shake of the head, and an astonished, “What’d ya mean, who’re we rootin’ for?”
Why did it go so wrong? In short, different audience, different dialect. The key to linguistic acceptance is recognition and adaptation. Know thy audience, know thy friends. It’s not a matter of which sentence is “correct”—“for whom are we rooting” versus “who are we rooting for”—so much as which sentence is correct for the given situation.
All of the complex linguistic theories of language acquisition and whether grammar is universally hardwired or learned through practice don’t matter one bit in practical everyday living. If “correct” is only a matter of situation, then what we should really be asking is why we need to be able to use both versions of the sentence. Why should we bother to learn prescriptive English—the grade-school rules—if it isn’t our natural dialect?
Repugnant as it may be, the simple answer is that we need to learn prescriptive English because that’s the way the people in power communicate. As far as daily survival is concerned, it doesn’t matter whether the origins of this linguistic power structure are racist, classist, or élitist, or whether they’re based on the whims of dead white males. This is how the system works right now, today, and in order to best get the attention of those in power, to begin to effect change, we must be able to use their dialect. We must know their rules.
People who say otherwise, who say that in all situations we should speak and write however we’d like, are ignoring the current reality. This group, known as descriptivists, may be fighting for noble ideas, for things like the levelling of élitism and the smoothing of social class, but they are neglecting the real-world costs of those ideas, neglecting the flesh-and-blood humans who are denied a job or education because, as wrong as it is, they are being harshly judged for how they speak and write today.
Furthermore, as David Foster Wallace points out in his essay “Authority and American Usage,” it’s not at all clear that “society’s mode of expression is productive of its attitudes rather than a product of those attitudes.” In other words, Wallace continues, it’s bizarre to believe that “America ceases to be elitist or unfair simply because Americans stop using certain vocabulary that is historically associated with elitism and unfairness.”
This is not even to mention the descriptivists’ dirty little secret. When it comes time for them to write their books and articles and give their speeches about the evil, élitist, racist, wrongheadedness of forcing the “rules” on the masses, they always do so in flawless, prescriptive English. Ensconced behind a mask of noble ends, something obscenely disingenuous is happening here. How easy it is for a person who is already part of the linguistic élite to tell others who are not that they don’t need to be. Or, as Joan Acocella puts it, the descriptivists will “take the Rolls. You can walk, though.”
These do-as-you-please linguists imagine themselves to be fighting for the common man, but they don’t practice what they preach. Playing the game and being able to deploy the rules has afforded them the luxury of a good education, a steady job, and decent income. It has allowed them to have their noble voices heard in the fight for linguistic equality. But they fight from a good, safe distance. They’re not on the front lines, naked and exposed.
For the individual looking for a higher education or trying to secure a decent job, what seems more humane: Admitting that, ugly, élitist, and unfair as it is, prescriptivism is currently the dialect of power and being able to manipulate that dialect can help you get ahead, or pretending that utopia is at hand, that everyone is a revolutionary, that linguistic anarchy will set you free? The choice to use our natural dialects whenever and wherever we please, to live in a world free of language-based racism and classism, may indeed be a worthy end for which to strive, but it’s also worth remembering that individuals don’t live in the end. They live now.
Photograph by Carl Iwasaki//Time Life Pictures/Getty Images.
