Why I Am Not the Grammar Police

I spent the summer working at an administrative office at UNLV, doing all sorts of interesting and largely non-English things. I did write and design a handbook, but in some strange way that often felt more like programming than writing. Of the dozen or so people working on the same project as me, I was the only English student. My fellow graduate students were studying in the Department of Higher Education, Neurobiology, Psychology, and surely at least one other department which I've missed. I apologize, unnamed and forgotten department. While working in this office, I became a de facto editor, revising and copy editing almost all the writing associated with this one large-scale crazy project.

I suppose I should tell you about this project. Then I won't have to keep using vague nouns like "administrative office" and "project." Otherwise, this essay will devolve into meaningless, tenuously connected statements. ("Freedom is good. Support the troops.") They might be powerful and evocative in my head, but right now I'm concerned with your heads, not mine.

And, really, the need to substitute specific nouns for vague ones stabs right at the heart of the titular claim: that I will tell you why I am not the grammar police.

I worked for the Academic Success Center (ASC) at UNLV as a graduate assistant. My duties centered on a new academic coaching program which is currently being implemented for undergraduates. Along with two other folks, I designed and made happen the training program for 15 coaches who are now helping undergrads with study skills, time management, and all those other aptitudes of which we college teachers lament our students' lack.

Whew, what a sentence that was. "...of which we lament the lack..." Wowzers, that one popped my eyebrow up a scoch. I'm pretty sure it's grammatically correct. Anyone who knows better, feel free to comment; not being the grammar police does not mean I don't appreciate those who are.

While at the ASC, co-workers frequently looked to me when unsure about the propriety of their use of English in casual conversation. These looks tended to be wary, and mildly self-deprecating. There was often a bit of the dare in their own raised eyebrows. The expression read, "I think I'm wrong, catch me if you can, I know you want to." At first, as a people-pleaser, I fulfilled the implicit conversational expectation and jumped into the breach with a quick lecture on dangling whatchamadoozits or the etymology of "virulence." I did not jump happily, however, and that got me thinking.

Never was I unclear about my conversational partner's meaning. Never did the grammatical mini-lecture contribute to greater understanding of the topic at hand. I was no Santa, doling out the gift of grammatical expertise. I was a Krampus, delivering metaphorical knocks to misbehaved users of poor syntax. At points, these knocks derailed a conversation, destroying rather than enabling meaning and communication.

I care about grammar. I think it's important to understand proper usage. Proper usage is, however, not a goal in itself. Proper usage is the means to the end, which is meaning itself. If you make your meaning clear, no matter any mistakes, you've gotten where you need to go. In fact, mistakes can contribute to meaning, in a way that the grammar police (GP) often elide. In On Sublimity, Longinus writes that hyperbaton, a linguistic tactic sure to make the GP squirm,

"consists in an order of words or thoughts thrown out of the natural sequence, which conveys a very real impression of impassioned earnestness. For when actually angry or terrified or vehemently excited either by rivalry or by any other of the innumerable, indescribable host of human passions, under such circumstances men quit their path, when they have begun with one thing frequently spring off to another, interpose parentheses without any connection, then wheel back again to the original subject, are torn suddenly this way and that by their excitement acting like a fitful wind, and, in short, invert in a hundred different ways the words, the thoughts, the order, out of the natural sequence." (85)

What a beautiful example of meaning expressed by demonstration, of the capacity of language to stretch beyond all the rules we try to impose, forgetting that language is an unsquishable force, utterly and subtly resistant to our attempts to reify ourselves as its creators, outside and above, rather than admit that we all grope our way through it, at times successfully, and, at times, with little forward progress.

Success is not good grammar, though. Good grammar often enables success. Just as often, however, talking about good grammar distracts us from the actual conversation at hand and blinds us to all the wonderful things bad grammar can do. No matter how perfect the opening two paragraphs of this mind-dump, their vague nouns and lack of connection to reality don't create meaning any more than do dangling whatchamadoozits and unnecessary etymologies. So please don't ask me if your grammar is correct. That's not my job. Ask me instead if our conversation makes meaning and I'll happily explain what meaning means to me and what wonderful meaning you make.