Re: Death of the English Language

[Harry Binswanger hb@xxxxxxxx]

All,
"Americans are trained (through the look-say approach to reading and all
allied, Dewey-based ideas of education) to be emotional approximators. The
nonobjective, ungrammatical way in which people express themselves today
[1969] is truly frightening. What has been systematically undercut is their
capacity for objective communication. Americans tend to express themselves
guided by feelings, not by thoughts. According to modern theory, there are
no such things as thoughts; and even if there were, they could not guide us.
"I am not a grammarian by profession. I do not know the grammatical rules
of English by name, only by practice. But whenever I struggle with a
sentence and finally get it straight, I bless whoever invented these rules
and I know there is a reason behind them. If they were irrational, they
would not survive. Sometimes grammarians do attempt irrational, arbitrary
rules; but people do not abide by rules that complicate communication
rather than clarify it.
"One of the most important applications of the [proper] attitude toward
reason is grammar. The ability to think precisely, and thus to write
precisely, cannot be achieved without observing grammatical rules.
"Grammar has the same purpose as concepts. The rules of grammar are rules
for using concepts precisely. Since sentences consist of concepts, the
whole secret of grammar is clarity and the avoidance of equivocation. The
grammar of all language tells us how to organize our concepts so as to make
them communicate a specific, unequivocal meaning. If you compare the number
of concepts we have with the vastly greater number of phenomena we deal
with and have to describe by means of those concepts, you will grasp the
importance of grammatical sentence structure.
"If it were not for grammar, we could have words but could not speak
sentences. We could merely say, for example, 'Me Tarzan, you Jane.' That is
the nature of primitive languages. Civilized languages, by contrast, have a
grammar precisely because we deal with more than first-level, perceptually
based concepts. If you have to deal with the abstract?-with abstraction
from abstractions?-you must know in what order and by what rules to
organize them in order to communicate a specific thought.
"We were all bored by grammar in school. Memorizing rules is very dull. But
by the time you reach college, you should realize how important those rules
are. Therefore, if you know why we should fight for reason, and for the
right view of concepts, then let us?-on the same grounds?-have a crusade
for grammar."

--Ayn Rand, The Art of Nonfiction, [extemporaneous lectures] Ch. 7, "Editing"