Friday, 6 May 2016

Correcting other people’s grammar

On April 20, Monica Chalabi, The Guardian’s data editor opined that correcting people’s bad grammar is racist. Before you ask, I don’t know what a data editor is. I wondered idly if there was anything one can do nowadays which is acceptable or permitted by law. Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me that making disobliging remarks about someone’s lack of mastery of language was in any way commonplace. Just shows you how wrong you can be. But, surely this is just someone goading us, engaging in the present-day sport of dumbing-down? The OED defines this as: to simplify or reduce the intellectual content of, especially, published or broadcast material in order to make it appealing or intelligible to a larger number of people.

Paul Joseph Watson of InfoWars and Chris Menahan, of Information Liberation, take her to task.

Apparently, according to Monica Chalabi, grammar rules were invented by wealthy white people and therefore non-whites should be free to ignore them without being criticized.

“The people pointing out the mistakes are more likely to be older, wealthier, whiter, or just plain academic than the people they’re treating with condescension,” states Chalabi. “All too often, it’s a way to silence people and that’s particularly offensive when it’s someone who might already be struggling to speak up,” she adds.

Chalabi argues that rather than correcting bad grammar, people should just shut up and listen.

“We should spend more time listening to what others have to say and less focusing on the grammar what they say it with,” she asserts.

Chalabi claims that wanting a “set of rules we can all understand” is an attitude shared only by “grammar snobs” who “overlook the fact the rules they’re talking about aren’t commonly held at all, they’re just their rules.”

The message is clear says Menahan: ” Don’t strive to improve yourself, accept mediocrity.”

I understand what Menahan is saying, but I’m not sure what Chalabi is trying to say. She believes that grammatical rules are used by wealthy, educated white people to suppress the rights of less well educated non-white people to express themselves and be heard, especially if they are non-native speakers who have an imperfect knowledge of the language, is that it?

Maybe I don’t get around enough, it’s a distinct possibility, but are there people who stop others from speaking by saying things like: “hey, you, your English is rubbish, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Why don’t you move along and come back when you can speak properly”. Somehow, I think not, unless we’re talking about rallies where public order is likely to break down, or a heated argument in a pub. Correcting other speakers’ grammar is usually a mental process, it’s a reaction, a judgement which is not expressed. Unless among friends and family, to express this openly would be socially unacceptable; normal people just don’t behave like that, I hope.

Chalabi doesn’t like sets of rules that we can all understand. Yet, without rules of some kind, we wouldn’t be able to speak to each other at all or, at least, not efficiently. Without these sets of rules, people wouldn’t be able to learn a foreign language, even. I think I’d better just accept that Chalabi is trying to make a point and, whatever her point, she seems to come into contact with an awful lot of rude people.


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