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At breakfast: Ed's talking about last night's game (Eagles v. Giants). Ed says the refs -- the regular refs, who are back on the job -- were making calls the replacement refs didn't, and the game was a thriller as a result.
What's been interesting about the replacement ref situation, to me, is the fact that the whole game of football -- almost the whole enterprise of professional football -- seemed to pretty much fell apart the instant the real refs left the field and the rules of football were being unpredictably observed and enforced. This episode has been an object lesson in the foundational importance rules: without the rules, you don't have a game.
Of course we all know that at some level, but ... we don't know the way we should. At least, I don't, or didn't. I was pretty gobsmacked by the misery of the fans over the past month.
Ed's reading to me now: 'when the officials walked onto the field they received a rousing standing ovation.'
Ed says: the rules have to be enforced, and they have to be enforced strongly.
It's the same thing with writing.
You need the "rules" -- and you need "strong' rules: rules teachers and students take seriously.
Writing without "rules" isn't writing.
And writing with only the faintest notion of what the rules are is bad writing.
and see:
American has survived the NFL's replacement refs
NFL officials receive loud cheers in first night back
David Foster Wallace on the seamy underbelly
speaking of grammar to enhance and enrich writing
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You know, it's amazing that you should use this particular metaphor today. At the end of my workout this morning, I suddenly thought, "Can you imagine people's reaction if suddenly high school football coaches decided that rules were too stressful and constraining for players, and that students should simply be encouraged to make their own games in order to develop their creativity?"
No. That just wouldn't happen. Not in any American high school. The rules are the rules are the rules, and that's that. They're sacred. But in English class...? Who needs rules for something like writing? I think that sums up a good part of what's wrong with American education right there.
I don't know about that. I consider myself a good writer, and I don't know the grammatical rules. I learned to write by voluminous reading.
A linguist friend of mine says that many of the great writers, notably Jane Austen, break grammatical rules all the time. I'll see if I can find examples ...
However, I myself am a curmudgeon on certain topics. It gets on my nerves when I hear something like this:
"We invited she and her husband to dinner."
or this:
"I gifted her a book for her birthday."
But what can I do about it? Language changes. "Gift" has become a verb in American English, and there's a new rule coming along that you use the nominative form of prepositions when they're in a conjunction, or something.
The analogy between writing and professional football is poor. A football game is a contest in which the rules need to be enforced for the game to be legitimate. Writing is a way to communicate, and if the writer and reader understand each other, it matters little if the writing follows certain certain rules. People who are texting each other are writing, even if they are not following the rules of standard written English.
"The analogy between writing and professional football is poor."
This relates to the distinction drawn by the philosopher John Searle between regulative and constitutive rules. Regulative rules regulative existing phenomena; constitutive rules create make the phenomena possible in the first place. Football wouldn't exist without the rules of football, and so its rules are constitutive.
As for language, one could argue that both sets of rules apply, and that they more or less correspond to the prescriptivist vs. descriptivist distinction. The constitutive rules are the rules that native speakers of a given dialect (including the "her and I" dialect) follow automatically, while the regulative ones are the (debatable) rules required by the conventions, say, of formal speech or written language, and that people violate all the time.
Searle's distinction between constitutive and regulative rules is, in my opinion, one of the most insightful philosophical distinctions of the last century. I see it as a way to partially resolve the question of fate vs. free will: even if all my behavior is determined, a significant part of what determines my behavior are the constitutive rules that constitute who I am.
I don't know about that. I consider myself a good writer, and I don't know the grammatical rules.
Hi Fed-Up.
Me, too.
I was taught only the basic parts-of-speech grammar of K-6 (or maybe K-3).
I wrote a post about that the other day....
This is a major area of interest for me now. Having taught freshman composition to basic writers for two years now, I believe that teachers need intensive training in linguistics-slash-traditional grammar.
I also believe that I would have benefited enormously from such training as a writer.
That's another post waiting to be written....which has to do with the day I (tried to) re-invented grammar for my own use without knowing that's what I was doing.
All of this said, I agree that you can learn the rules of written expression through voluminous reading.
HOWEVER, I haven't seen any students who've done it, including advanced students at elite schools. (Advanced freshmen students, that is.)
Learning the rules of written expression entirely through reading is a loooonng way to do it.
A linguist friend of mine says that many of the great writers, notably Jane Austen, break grammatical rules all the time.
I don't know enough about fiction writing to say (and I certainly don't know enough about the conventions of written expression when Jane Austen was writing to say).
Expository writing is completely different, in my view.
Expository writing is all about deft and supple deployment of the rules, not 'breaking' the rules.
A football game is a contest in which the rules need to be enforced for the game to be legitimate. Writing is a way to communicate, and if the writer and reader understand each other, it matters little if the writing follows certain certain rules.
I agree with the distinction, but disagree that 'if writer and reader understand each other' all is well.
That is simply not the case when we're talking about standards: about good writing v. OK writing v. bad writing.
Bad writing often gets the point across but it's still bad writing.
If bad writing didn't get the point across, we'd all be in big trouble.
People who are texting each other are writing, even if they are not following the rules of standard written English.
Texting is a different register.
If you followed the rules of expository writing in text messaging, you'd be breaking the rules of text messaging.
Katharine - THANK YOU!
Yes! Yes! Yes!
That's the way I'm using the terms, and I didn't have the words to express it.
I am using the word 'rule' to mean 'constitutive rules': the rules that tell you "Computers now much are cheaper" is wrong.
Actually, I'm using the word to mean "constitutive" and "regulative" --- I'm switching back and forth between the two, creating a lot of unnecessary confusion.
Problem is: "rules" in common usage means both things, of course. I've been using the word in its dual meaning.
The other problem is that I ***think*** the boundary between the two can get a little blurry at times .... can't it? (I'm asking!)
I'm wondering whether language change in particular blurs the boundaries.
For instance, there are certain grammatical "errors," like dangling participles, say, that jump out at me: that sound **very** wrong ---- wrong to the point that they "feel" more like violations of a constitutive rule, not a regulative rule...and yet the 'rules' governing dangling participles are regulative rules. (I actually saw a Language Log post recently arguing that avoiding dangling participles is a matter of consideration toward your reader, or politeness, **not** a matter of following a grammatical rule along the lines of the 'much are' rule.)
Without knowing much about it, it seems to me that the constitutive rules change over time....becoming regulative in some cases ---- ?
(Is that right? Or not----?)
In any case, if constitutive rules can become regulative over time, that would account for (some of) the grammar wars and for grammar curmudgeonry.
FedUp Mom -- I know exactly what you mean?
I completely grasp the fact that language changes over time; in fact, having read a bit of Douglas Biber's work, I probably welcome the fact that language changes over time; I may be contributing to the change of (written) language myself in a minute, speck-of-dust way (again, based on my understanding of Biber)....and yet I just don't like hearing certain constructions that sound wrong to me.
True Confession: I am apparently never going to get over the fact that the people who write for the New York Times no longer perceive a distinction between lie and lay.
Actually, the better example, in my own case, is the fact that I can just barely bring myself to write a sentence like "Does everyone have their textbook?"
I agree, absolutely, that simply swapping in "their" for "his" is a perfect solution to the gendering of all manhumankind in sentences that require the third person singular pronoun, but I can barely bring myself to do it!
Even though I actively approve of the change!
I actually find myself writing s/he in place of they, which seems ridiculous, even to me, as I write it!
Old habits die hard.
Back to football, the ref lock-out, I think, brought home to me ***emotionally*** the fact that the rules in football are constitutive.
Of course I knew that 'intellectually,' but this episode brought my taken-for-granted knowledge fresh and alive.
Although I'm playing fast and loose with logic, as Bostonian has pointed out, I'm going to reassert (and reformulate) my claim that there are constitutive rules of style as well as grammar. Not just regulative, constitutive.
There are rules of style that, when violated, make a piece of reading no fun to read ***at all*** even though the meaning is still clear.
When the NFL locked out the good refs, the players were still identifiably playing football; the 'meaning' of the game was still clear.
But the game was no fun to watch, and the fans hated it.
Of course, expository writing is different from football in that the constitutive rules of football are crystal clear, and written down.
The constitutive rules of good style are .... often in dispute, I think.
(Not sure about that last ---- I suspect there are some constitutive rules of expository writing that would attract nearly universal agreement.)
Another thing -- I bet Katharine can explain this to us! -- what I'm calling the "constitutive" rules of expository writing style are not infrequently 'percentages' or 'ratios.'
For instance, one constitutive rule of expository writing is: Write in complete sentences.
However, real writers -- good writers -- typically do not use complete sentences across the board. I certainly don't. In fact, for many forms of expository writing it would almost be wrong **to** use complete sentences exclusively.
Does Searle talk about "constitutive ratios."
Edgar Schuster on the number of sentence fragments professional writers use"?
FedUp - here are the two posts about learning 'the rules' via reading:
can you 'pick up' the grammar of writing through reading?
writing by ear
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