Gwynne again
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John McIntyre, "What to say to peevers", Baltimore Sun 9/3/2014:
A recent article in the Boston Globe by Britt Peterson, "Why we love the language police," along with comments it has prompted on Facebook and other venues, shows that some people have become dangerously overstimulated by the publication of N.M. Gwynne's Gwynne's Grammar.
I think I can speak for the rest of my LLOG colleagues in suggesting that we already devoted too much attention to Mr. Gwynne back in May of 2013: "Candidate for the first annual Politically Biased Peeving award", 5/5/2013; "Hopefully no need to comment", 5/26/2013.
But I corresponded a few weeks ago with Britt Peterson during the preparation of the Globe article, answering some questions about an idea that wound up on the cutting-room floor. Some of you might find the exchange amusing, so here it is:
BP: So — to start with, I'm a big fan of Language Log and have been reading it for a long time. And it looks, from your entry on Gwynne and the Bad Grammar Award, that you haven't read the book — but I expect you may have some opinions on his approach? I'm basically interested in trying to figure out what the appeal is of these feverish, pedantic, polemical books on grammar, particularly coming from the UK. I liked your connection to William Cobbett (where did you see Gwynne referencing that?) and wondered if there were other historical examples (i.e. long before Lynne Truss) of English grammarians taking advantage of, perhaps, a more trusting American public to set themselves up as experts here. If so, why exactly are Americans so willing to be lectured by the British? And in any case, why are people in general (since Gwynne clearly has an adoring British fan base as well) so willing? At the same time, why perhaps should people be skeptical?
ML: Gwynne didn't reference Cobbett, at least not that I know of — Gwynne's quirky politicization of grammar simply reminded me of Cobbett's feud with Noah Webster, which I wrote about back in 2005.
But Gwynne is not, if you'll pardon the expression, a pimple on Cobbett's butt.
William Cobbett was a self-educated working-class soldier who led a complex and influential life — he founded what is now the Hansard parliamentary reports, after all, and played an important role as a pamphleteer in both British and American politics, on topics ranging from the Napoleonic wars to the corn laws, Catholic emancipation, and parliamentary reform.
Nevile Gwynne seems to have erased his "about me" page, but this 2013 weblog post summarizes it as follows:
[A]ccording to his personal website, he’s an Old Etonian, Oxford-educated accountant who now teaches Latin to children and adults.
And Gwynne's political agitation seems to be limited to fulminations about the decline of civilization and the teaching of "grammar".
It's true that Cobbett's grammar is prescriptive, in the sense that he sets out what he thinks the "rules" should be, irrespective of elite usage. But he is absolutely forthright about this — he asserts, with examples and arguments, that the usage of great writers and of other grammar writers is simply wrong, when it diverges from what he believes to be the natural logic of the situation. This may be arrogant and foolish, but it is honest, in contrast to the practice of most prescriptivists, who claim implicitly to have elite culture as well as logic on their side.
[Long series of examples from Cobbett's A Grammar of the English Language elided.]
BP: This was great … and another question, after a long delay. Noah Webster was (and forgive the total anachronism, I'm a journalist!) kind of an early descriptivist, yes? Is there a way in which his feud with Cobbett presaged some of the prescriptivist/descriptivist debates we see now?
ML: As far as I can tell, the conflict between Cobbett and Webster was purely political. In 1797, Webster criticized Cobbett for displaying a British-flag card, suggesting that Cobbett did not really support American independence, and Cobbett responded with 26 pages of fluent vituperation. He went a long way towards making good on his closing promise:
but he doesn't say anything evocative of a descriptive/prescriptive split.
There's a complex historical association of political and linguistic ideologies, discussed e.g. here:
"Authoritarian rationalism is not conservatism", 12/11/2007
"James Kilpatrick, Linguistic Socialist", 3/28/2008
"Querkopf von Klubstick returns", 6/10/2008
"Peever politics", 11/20/2011
"The politics of 'prescriptivism'", 11/20/2011
But I don't think there was any of that sort of thing in the Webster/Cobbett kerfuffle.
Ø said,
September 6, 2014 @ 12:44 pm
"some people have become dangerously overstimulated by …" is a perfect example of John McIntyre's perfectly honed style of invective.
Oskar said,
September 6, 2014 @ 3:41 pm
You mentioned that the "About Me" page on his website had been taken down, and I was curious about whether it was archived on archive.org. Indeed it has, and it's remarkable thing to read. I am not qualified in any way to comment on the minutiae of English grammar rules, but I am a fluent speaker and can recognize bad writing when I see it. Assuming that Gwynne is the author of the page, he's a remarkable poor writer for someone who lectures other people on English. Take this sentence:
Wait, he was the founder? He isn't anymore? At what point did he stop being the founder of this company? Did he invent a time machine and go back in time to stop himself from founding it? Forgive this non-native speaker's ignorance, but shouldn't that sentence read "He is the founder and former Chairman and Chief Executive of…" or at the very least "He founded and served as Chairman and Chief Executive of…"?
Also, this paragraph is just golden:
The person who wrote this has no business lecturing anyone else on how to use English. No wonder he took the page down.
Brett said,
September 6, 2014 @ 5:16 pm
@Oskar: "He was founder…" sounds better to me than any of your alternatives.
Alfonso said,
September 6, 2014 @ 5:19 pm
@Oskar: As a native speaker of English, I don't think of the simple past in "He was founder" as creating any sort of aspectual or temporal snafu; it seems to me to be perfectly in keeping with an everyday register. Is that register appropriate for the image he was trying to convey? No, and you've got the better formulation spot on; in fact I can think of all sorts of conversations I've had with other native speakers who, using that everyday register, say things like "he was X" for an X that still exists, and then they comment on that with "well, he still is", like a self-conscious register hypercorrection.
AntC said,
September 6, 2014 @ 7:43 pm
@Oskar can recognise bad writing when I see it. I agree there is something bizarre about the style, even if it's only expressed in inappropriate registers.
I pulled up short at the first paragraph "… Oxford University, the oldest university in the world and one of the most famous." Just what kind of reader needs to be told that? Would even Dan Brown need to lay it on that thick?
Gene Callahan said,
September 6, 2014 @ 7:59 pm
But Oxford it's not even the oldest university in the world: Bologna, for instance, is far older.
David Marjanović said,
September 7, 2014 @ 2:47 am
"Renowned Oxford University, one of the oldest and most famous…" ;-)
Chris C. said,
September 7, 2014 @ 3:25 pm
@AntC
Yes. It's not just merely bad. It's unspeakably bad.
Stuart Brown said,
September 7, 2014 @ 6:21 pm
@Oskar
I think you are applying logic to language inappropriately. What's wrong, for example, with "Gautama was the founder of Buddhism"? He is still, and always will be, the founder, but the past tense seems to me a lot more natural than the present here. I don't think it's any different to sentences like "He was the first man to walk on the Moon".
Stuart Brown said,
September 7, 2014 @ 7:50 pm
I can't speak about what appeal Gwynne and co might have to Americans, but I don't think it's too hard to see why he has had some success in the UK.
For a start, the vast majority of people know nothing at all about linguistics. They therefore don't have the basic knowledge to evaluate the assertions of supposed "experts" like Gwynne.
The vast majority of people use the language perfectly adequately, of course, but may make errors in formal written English. Also, not having an overt knowledge of the rules which govern English (i.e. they can apply the rules, but not expound them), they feel a sense of insecurity, and thus allow themselves to be scolded by the grammar nannies (if I can coin a new term). There are, perversely, a minority who react and defiantly claim that grammar is just a shibboleth invented by the Ruling Class.
Finally, Gwynne's approach resonates with a conservative or indeed reactionary element who believe that everything is going to the dogs and that the collapse of civilization as we know it was initiated by the purportedly "liberal-anything goes" ideology of all English teachers from the 1960s onwards. This explains why he has been taken up by the Telegraph and our former Minister of Education, Michael Gove.
Chas Belov said,
September 8, 2014 @ 1:20 am
I'm a native American-English speaker and I'd readily accept "he was founder" and grudgingly accept "he is founder" — it would sound pedantic to me — but would strongly prefer "he founded" to either of them.
Pedantic Pismire said,
September 8, 2014 @ 6:31 am
Gwynne lives: "… is …"
Gwynne is dead: "… was …"
CFC
Rodger C said,
September 8, 2014 @ 6:52 am
What PP said. Gautama has left the samsara.
J.W. Brewer said,
September 8, 2014 @ 7:45 am
Noah Webster (who had many interests and strong opinions, political as well as linguistic) was inter alia a spelling reformer, which as a general matter seems at least as strong a signal of crackpottery and/or questionable morality as prescriptivism. Since (contrary to the general experience of spelling reformers) a number of his proposed orthographic innovations actually succeeded and became standard in AmEng (and now serve as useful shibboleths to distinguish AmEng, helping us distinguish shifty foreigners by the way they spell things funny), we perhaps lose sight of the underlying crackpottery involved, as an application of the general rule "If it prosper, none dare call it treason."
Stuart Brown said,
September 8, 2014 @ 5:04 pm
@Rodger C
Possibly, but I'd still prefer:
"Richard Branson was the founder of the Virgin business empire, of which he is chairman".
to: "Richard Branson is…".
mollymooly said,
September 11, 2014 @ 3:41 pm
To me, "Mr X was the founder of Organisation Y" implies that either X or Y is defunct. Gwynne does not tell us the name of the successful company he founded, but I assumed it was no more.
Ray Dillinger said,
September 12, 2014 @ 3:55 pm
@mollymooly:
To me it implies something a bit more subtle; to use the past tense in a sentence such as "He was founder …" means that there is no further association between the company and the man who founded it. This can be because either the man or the company is no more, as you point out; but it can also be because he simply no longer has any role in that company.
Someone who "is the founder" is working there daily; someone who "was the founder" is now presumably doing something else. And someone who "founded the company" could be in either category.
Although, as usual for those who analyze word choices after the fact, this is drawing a distinction finer than the original writer is likely to have intentionally made. As to what the writer meant, any of these interpretations is only a guess.