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iTunesThe Pleasure of Language — Essential Listening for Hyper-corrective Grammarians
January 2nd, 2009 | Posted in creativity 11 Comments »
Stephen Fry on the pleasure of language
This podcast from Stephen Fry on language is one of the most entertaining, thought-provoking, well-read essays on language I’ve ever heard. In the podcast, Fry says he often encounters people who consider themselves high-minded grammarians, who assume he is on their side when they express their disgust of common grammar errors, such as “12 Items or Less” signs in grocery stories (rather than “fewer”), or misuses of “disinterested,” or conversions of nouns into unconventional verbs (such as “actioned”).
Rather than become cramped by rules and purist ideas of correctness, Fry argues that language should be a source of pleasure. Language is an innate right (even a biological inheritance) that everyone is entitled to. People should be free to to bend and modify it as they please. It is a flexible and elastic source of pleasure, not merely a vehicle for communication. Like wine and cheese, which are more than just means of sustenance but rather sources of delight, Fry says language can also be used for delight.
A few months ago I attended a creative/professional writing conference in Idaho in which the keynote speaker spent thirty minutes explaining that, when you become a writer, you begin to notice grammar mistakes everywhere. She had an extensive number of clippings from newspapers detailing myriad usage errors. Although her talk was funny and light-hearted, it revealed a tragic mindset. Writing (at least the more creative kind) isn’t about learning correct grammar. It’s about learning to find pleasure in language, especially when you steer it outside convention.
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Tags: grammar, idaho, podcast, rules, stephen fry
“I attended a writers conference in Idaho… Writing isn’t about learning correct grammar. It’s about learning to find pleasure in language, especially when you steer it outside convention.”
Ah, Tom. Know your audience and all that. You are a technical communicator, and therefore, I assume that the conference was for technical writers. In a technical writing context, language is not about fun. It is about clear communication. Although non-conformance with convention can be fun, non-conformance has no place in a technical communicator’s repertoire.
Mike,
Thanks for commenting. Actually, it was a conference on both creative and professional writing. The keynote speaker was a novelist. My comment at the end was more geared toward literary writing than technical communication, which we all know has very little style. Sorry for not making that more clear. I added some more links and text in my last paragraph to clarify.
In this blog, sometimes I use the term “writer” to refer to literary writing rather than technical communication. I’ll be more careful of that in future posts.
Tom,
Thank you for the clarification.
I agree with the gist of Mr. Fry’s post–I embrace a descriptive stance toward linguistics as opposed to a prescriptive one–but language (if described in use and not in theory, in description and not prescription) is not an innate right, it is a culturally inherited one.
Language is etiquette as much as anything. Variations from the TV norm expose your character, background, attitude, education, which may or may not be appropriate in particular context.
I have to admit that I’m more on the grammarian side of things. There is beauty in language properly and professionally used. A painting done by an amateur is mostly likely not as good as a painting done by a professional artist–because the artist knows his medium and how to use his paintbrush. Similarly, for me, language is more enjoyable, beautiful, and satisfying when people use it with skill (and I’m not talking just grammatical skill).
Besides, it’s when you master the rules that you can professionally break them. Those who are cramped by the rules are those who don’t know why the rules are there and how to appropriately break them.
Ben, you have to listen to Fry’s essay to get the full rhetorical effect of his argument. I probably haven’t summarized him very well here. He isn’t arguing to accept illiteracy — for example, he’s not welcoming fused sentences, misspellings, and dangling modifiers. He’s arguing against prescriptivism and is encouraging people to embrace more free play and delight in the way they use language. He cites Shakespeare as someone who often created verbs from nouns — a practice that some purist grammarians seem to abhor.
I agree that language play is tremendously pleasurable. One of those pleasures — for me — is spotting the really bad grammar that’s out there. LOL
I don’t mind people making up new nouns — I ebay and I ipod and I blog all the time — but a lot of the language movement we see hasn’t got anything to do with pleasure. There’s nothing pleasureable about using “less” instead of “fewer.” People just think “less” means “not as many” when in fact it means “not as much.” Not that many (much?!)people know the difference between “many” and “much.”
Anyhow, I agree with Fry to a point — language play is pleasurable — but still, misused apostrophes and quotation marks (we are having a “sale”!) bug the crap out of me.
Just keeping it reelz, yo!
Punctuation errors annoy me more than grammar mistakes, particularly “its” versus “it’s.” Come on! That one’s not that hard to master you know?
But bottom line, writing and speaking are about communicating. So if the audience is understanding you, what’s the big deal? Sure, as writers we should be grammatically correct because we’re professionals. But to take pleasure in chastising someone for an easy mistake is just rude and elitist.
I recommend the following book for a fun read:
Grammar Snobs Are Great Big Meanies: A Guide to Language for Fun and Spite (http://www.amazon.com/Grammar-Snobs-Are-Great-Meanies/dp/0143036831)
Nice blog. You have a new subscriber:) All the best, Braydon
You have a great blog here and it is Nice to read some well written posts that have some relevancy…keep up the good work