Grammatically Correct

Some of my prized possessions in my youth were a dictionary, a thesaurus and a pronouncing dictionary.  The grammar book belonged to boyhood days.  The pronouncing dictionary of Daniel Jones which still finds a place –though a relegated one – in my book shelf is a 1979 edition.  I bought it in 1980 or so when the phone number in my hometown was a three-digit figure.  It was used as frequently in those days as my dictionary and the thesaurus (the latter of which I bought when I was 16).  I was quite fastidious about lexical and grammatical precision and even style.

My obsession with words sometimes landed me in ridiculous situations because I teetered on the edge of malapropism often enough to attract derision from certain people who found me clownish enough to be amusing.  It took me a while to understand that it’s not words that make one’s writing attractive; it’s convictions and their depth.

Time of 3-digit phone number 

Today the dictionary, the thesaurus and the pronouncing dictionary remain untouched on the book shelf.  One reason is that I have a dictionary on my phone which is much handier.  A more valid reason is that I don’t need them much now.  I have discovered the gracefulness of simplicity. 

Another discovery I made along the way is that punditry in grammar does not necessarily make one a good writer.  In fact, we don’t have to know 90 percent of the jargon employed by grammarians to write correctly and elegantly.  I keep myself up-to-date with English grammar merely because I’m an English teacher.  But I’m a teacher who tells his students: “Don’t be afraid of grammatical mistakes.  Let them be.  What’s more important is that you express what you want to express.”

I ignore certain minor grammar mistakes in the writing of my students.  For example, it doesn’t matter a bit to me if a student “kisses his friend’s cheek” or “kisses on her cheek.”  I leave the subtleties of prepositions and vocatives to Quirk and Greenbaum.  In the meanwhile, I relish the emotions that render the kiss poetic.

I noticed that the writing style of students improved considerably when I changed the focus from grammar to content and style.  Interestingly, grammar improved too without much effort.  Language is within us. It just has to be discovered rather than be imposed from outside by grammarians.  I’m yet to find a student who loves to study grammar.  But I have numerous students who learnt grammar effortlessly through writing exercises with the supplementary nutrition from reading, speaking and listening.

A page from the Dictionary

Noam Chomsky called it the “creativity of language.”  The speaker possesses “the ability to produce new sentences,” said Chomsky, “sentences that are immediately UNDERSTOOD by other speakers although they bear no physical resemblance to sentences which are familiar.”  In other words, language lies far beyond grammar. 

This is not to denigrate grammar.  I stick to grammatical correctness as far as possible within my limited knowledge of grammar.  That’s needed for effective communication.  I correct many grammatical mistakes of my students.  That’s needed for them to learn the language better.  But the point is that language towers above grammar.  Otherwise Shakespeare couldn’t have got away with his “most unkindest cut of all.”