Sunday, August 11, 2013

"New school" indolence is no reason to change over 200 years of grammatically correct "old school" English



One of my favorite films (and there are a “lot” of those) is It Happened One Night, starring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. In an early scene, Gable’s cynical, unemployed reporter is being offered money to keep quiet about a rich heiress’ surreptitious escape from her father, hoping to elope with a “front page aviator.” Gable’s character makes the following observation:

You know, I had you pegged right from the jump—just a spoiled brat of a rich father. The only way you get anything is to buy it, isn't it? You're in a jam and all you can think of is your money. It never fails, does it? Ever hear of the word humility? No, you wouldn't. I guess it would never occur to you to just say, 'Please mister, I'm in trouble, will you help me?' No, that would bring you down off your high horse for a minute. Well, let me tell you something, maybe it will take a load off your mind. You don't have to worry about me. I'm not interested in your money or your problem. You, King Westley, your father--you're all a lot of hooey to me.

When I first saw this film in the early 1980s, I was amazed that the dialogue in a 1934 black-and-white picture could be so “modern.” I suppose I imagined that people back then used unfamiliar words and phrasings. Grammar in those days was surely what some people would call “old school.” Right?

OK, it’s not a fair comparison. We can go back to the early days of this country and find some really “old school” talk. When I was in college, I took a course in American Literature from the Colonial Period to the Civil War. In the Norton Anthology that was used as a textbook, there were a few passages from the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin; the following induced a chuckle from me, which describes an episode between Franklin and his friend, Collins: 

His drinking continu’d, about which we sometimes quarrell’d;, for, when a little intoxicated, he was very fractious. Once, in a boat on the Delaware with some other young men, he refused to row in his turn. “I will be row’d home,” says he. “We will not row you,” says I. “You must, or stay all night on the water,” says he, “just as you please.” The others said, “Let us row; what signifies it?” But, my mind being soured with his other conduct, I continu’d to refuse. So he swore he would make me row, or throw me overboard; and coming along, stepping on the thwarts, toward me, when he came up and struck at me, I clapped my hand under his crutch, and, rising, pitched him head-foremost into the river.

Except for the exclusion of the “e” in the past tense verbs and perhaps a few minor spelling changes, there is nothing here that is not understandable to modern readers, or shouldn’t be. The techniques of grammar are still recognizably “modern.” Of course, we use “headfirst” instead of “head-foremost,” but to my ears the latter term has a more appropriately amusing ring to it. Would this passage be improved if it were written in “new school” grammar that modern youth can understand? Frankly, I think it is contemptible to lower ourselves to the intellectual indolence of the willfully undereducated. 

Now, there is an “acclaimed” professor out there named  Sugata Mitra (and I mean real “out there”) who was quoted in a  British education magazine called  TES concerning his belief that children no longer need to be taught grammar and spelling, at least not by human beings. Mitra claims that kids can “learn” grammar and spelling from mobile phone “autocorrect” software during every day use. Of course, not everyone uses “autocorrect” when they are texting, and when one reads what is written on Twitter pages, it is clear that people don’t really care if their grammar or spelling is correct. In fact, people who do use proper grammar and spelling without doubt learned it by being taught it by a teacher, and practicing it on quizzes and tests. 

Mitra told a couple of DJs on a local radio station that grammar “changes” from generation to generation, and the “teaching” of grammar and spelling should reflect this, as well as incorporating new “teaching” technology. So why don’t we revisit a conversation that CNN’s Piers Morgan—he of the fatuous British accent that Americans think reflects “intelligence”—had with that expert on “new school” grammar, Rachel Jeantel. Here are some of the more intelligible excerpts:

When somebody bashes like blood people, trust me, the area I live, that's not bashing. That's just called whoop ass. You do that (shit). That's what it is.

Definitely after I say may be a rapist, for every boy, for every man, every -- who's not that kind of way, seeing a grown man following them, would they be creep out? So you have to take it -- as a parent, when you tell your child, when you see a grown person following you, run away, and all that (not to get off track, but didn’t Jeantel—whose warped version of reality may have been the real orchestrator of events when she told Trayvon Martin to “run, run, run”—tell us that a “cracka” was “new school” for cop or security guard—and not a “rapist” that a 6-1, well-muscled “gangsta” would be afraid of?). 

It might have said, what is her education, or why she kept it so honest? But people -- too honest -- you can't be too honest. You can't say cracka, nigga, all this, and the jury's so shocked what I said. And they're acting like the generation we've got now don't say that.

Well, the jury, they see their fact.  None offense to the jury, they old.  That's old school people.  We in the new school, our generation, my generation. (not my generation, thank god).

Look at the picture. There is blonde females. Imagine. Where we live, where everybody live, blondes are dumb. They say dumb things. So that's some dumb blondes.

I’ll grant Jeantel that last point, but given the extremely sympathetic audience on hand, this is likely as close to proper grammar that Jeantel has ever spoken, given that she was obviously coached in many of her answers. Despite the impression made on the media, much of what was said would clearly qualify as perjured testimony, only relevant as after-the-fact, self-serving “reflection.” But back to the point of this post: Does Jeantel’s “new school” grammar represent an “improvement” over the “old school” grammar of  a 1934 screenwriter, or one of the “founding fathers” of this country? Obviously not, nor should it be considered as such by anyone. But that hasn’t stopped some academics from “intellectualizing” the unintelligible. Take for instance this passage from a “study” written by someone named Walt Wolfram, entitled “The Grammar of Urban African American Vernacular English”:

To begin with, the use of ‘habitual’ be or be needs to be distinguished from several other uses of be, including those derived through phonological processes that affect contracted forms of will and would. In constructions such as She be there in a minute, the be comes from the loss of /l/ before a labial (she’ll be - she be) (see Edwards, other volume), whereas in a construction like If they get a DVD player they be happy, the form is derived from the loss of /d/ (they’d be - they be), since /d/ before a labial may geminate to the /b/ and then be lost in a general phonological process of degemination (e.g. good bye, goob bye - goo’bye). The difference between the phonologically derived forms, represented in (1) and (2) and the use of be in (3) is readily apparent in tag forms (1a, 2a, 3a) and negatives (2a, 2b, 3b).

(1) She be here in a minute.
a. She be here in a minute, won’t she?
b. She won’t be here in a minute.

(2) If they get a DVD player, they be happy.
a. If they get a DVD player, they be happy, wouldn’t they?
b. If they get a DVD player, they wouldn’t be happy.

(3) Sometimes they be playing tag.
a. Sometimes they be playing tag, don’t they?
b. Sometimes they don’t be playing tag.

The grammar of urban African American Vernacular English Sentence (3) illustrates the fundamental syntactic and morphological properties that distinguish be from its counterpart in other varieties of English; it does not alter its form in finite uses and takes do support in a way that is comparable to main verbs. Over the last half century, the habitual reference of be, particularly with Ving, has grammaticalized in a change that has been spreading from urban centers outward. Practically all studies of AAVE show that younger vernacular speakers use be V-ing more than older speakers (Wolfram 1969; Cukor-Avila 2001; Bailey and Maynor 1987, 1989), and that urban speakers are more likely to use it than non-urban speakers (Cukor-Avila 2001; Wolfram and Thomas 2002). It is also possible that the use of habitual be may be age-graded, and that younger speakers who use it frequently will reduce its use as they get older, since it now has a strong association with black youth culture.

I’ve read this over a few times, and I think what Wolfram is attempting to say between the intellectual contortions is that in “new school” verbiage, the “habitual” use of the word “be” is an example of how auxiliary verbs, such as “will” and “would,” are deemed intrusive in casual speech. Why is this? It is not exactly explained, but it might have something to do with the failure to learn or retain the fundamentals of “old school” grammar so that it comes easily off the tongue—not just in school, but in the home. Wolfram suggests that this is just a “temporary” thing, and that as “kids” grow older they “revert” to proper English. My personal observation is that people who speak reasonably grammatically correct English also did so as children, and those who didn’t learn to speak “correctly” as children continue so as adults, or if they do it is not without torturous effort. 

Learning proper grammar (and spelling) was considered to be the mark of an educated person in Franklin’s day, and it had its uses in certain situations:

While I was intent on improving my language, I met with an English grammar (I think it was Greenwood’s), at the end of which there were two little sketches of the arts of rhetoric and logic, the latter finishing with a specimen of a dispute in the Socratic method; and soon after I procur’d Xenophon’s Memorable Things of Socrates, wherein there are many instances of the same method. I was charm’d with it, adopted it, dropt my abrupt contradiction and positive argumentation, and put on the humble inquirer and doubter. And being then, from reading Shaftesbury and Collins, become a real doubter in many points of our religious doctrine, I found this method safest for myself and very embarrassing to those against whom I used it; therefore I took a delight in it, practis’d it continually, and grew very artful and expert in drawing people, even of superior knowledge, into concessions, the consequences of which they did not foresee, entangling them in difficulties out of which they could not extricate themselves, and so obtaining victories that neither myself nor my cause always deserved.

Of course, in some “new school” urban youth culture settings, the art of verbal disputation is more likely to be responded to with physical threat, if not always a fist, gun or knife. This no doubt has been true throughout history. In fact, let’s be completely candid here: In almost every era of human existence, there has always been an “element” of society—usually one from a “deprived” or “outside the mainstream” environment—that employed less than proper grammar. A bigger problem today may be that “gangsta” culture and “lingo” has gone “mainstream.” But the reality is unlikely to change: That the grammatically “correct” version of the language has changed little in over 200 years, and there is no good reason to change it just for the sake of educational indolence.  It is just fine the way it was—and is.

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