Prescriptive Grammar does more harm than good

"Haha. You should tell that to my aunt (born in the USA with a white father), who absolutely refuses to watch British movies without subtitles." I said alien grammar, not alien accents. The fact that she can "read" british perfectly well means that the grammar hasn't diverged at all. "On a more serious note, though, might I suggest that the reason grammar doesn't fluctuate much is that we have supreme sources to look up to?" You may suggest it, but you would be wrong. We also have a "supreme source" to go to for definitions of words, but that in no way stops them from acquiring new meanings and connotations and losing older ones. < > Aspects of literary criticism, such as an understanding of symbolism, do not arise spontaneously in all readers as part of their normal development. On the other hand, all speakers exposed to some language construct a grammar of their own based on what they hear, even if the input to which they are exposed is incomplete or contradictory. "Yes, people want to be understood. That doesn't mean people always achieve their goals." Prescriptive grammar doesn't automatically make people comprehensible to others. You assume that the current documentation of "correct" grammar is less ambiguous than other potential forms, but I challenge that assumption. After all, languages like Latin had case markers, whereby word order was completely irrelevant to distinguishing between sentences such as "dog bites man" and "man bites dog". That would be MUCH less ambiguous than the way it is "officially" done in English. Grammatical prescriptions are not inherently more coherent than spontaneously arising conventions. And since less than ideal distinguishing features can still serve to disambiguate sentences, the fact that a given prescriptive rule may do it better in a specific case is irrelevant. There are other areas where the prescriptive rule is in fact far inferior to the ideally clear construction. All that matters is that the speakers agree upon what a given construction means, and since grammar is absorbed by children from the adults around them, all the speakers in a community will have a more or less uniform set of rules. Dialects are self-perpetuating. ""Whats [sic] the 'objective component' to the demonization [sic] of the double negative? Its [sic] used in most romance languages."" See how ridiculous prescriptive grammar is? You obviously had no problems interpreting or understanding that sentence, yet picked it apart for being "wrong". Because you rely on a baseless supreme source. Furthermore, I was unaware that demonization was not a word just because your browser doesn't recognize it. [1][2][3] :P "Eventually, when there is enough consensus, grammarians can write something objective down in the rule books. Bring the stone tablets from down the mountain. You know? And then the silly debate can be resolved, and better communication can arise. Well...I guess the debate will just be resolved *UNTIL* it's brought up again. But like I said, that's part of the fun." The problem is that there is no objective truth to be found. People can agree that one construction is "better" than another, but thats only because thats the way they are used to using it, the way that is familiar to them. Furthermore, grammatical prescription does NOT proceed like science, "discovering truths". Grammarians declare certain things to be right or wrong based off their own ideas of what language "should" be like- IOW, what it was like when they were kids. Have you noticed that every generation thinks that the one coming after is "destroying" the language, or letting it decay into stupidity? Its because of prejudice, not because language was objectively better in the past. "David Levithan, in his newest book co-written by John Green, doesn't capitalize, either. So, you might have a case. This literary author agrees with you." As a side note- this is an appeal to authority. Even writers are not experts on how a language *should* be. They simply absorb all the details of how a language *is* and learn how to use it to their advantage. "Ummm... my Cantonese parents immigrated to America in their late twenties. My mother speaks the accent of a Hollywood stereotype, and my dad, although much better, slips often. I turned out okay." Because you were raised in a linguistic community that spoke more standard english even though your parents did not. Black communities as a whole tend to speak BEV, and thus children in these communities aren't exposed to standard english at all until later in life, when their different grammar and manner of speaking is already a handicap to them. Unless you grew up in a community where you were only exposed to broken english spoken by cantonese immigrants, the parallel doesn't hold. You also have to consider the quality of teachers and teaching in many poor urban neighborhoods. I assume you wouldn't accept the argument "Barak Obama is President so racism isn't a problem in the US". And yet you claim "since I speak good English even though my parents don't, the imposition of prestige dialects isn't discriminatory against minority groups". "My opponent has conceded that to be a great writer, one must study prescriptive grammar." No. In order to be a great writer one must study linguistic conventions. Right now, linguistic conventions are basically defined by the system outlined by prescriptive grammar. However, if grammarians stopped telling people how they should use language tomorrow, there would still be linguistic conventions to be noted and played with or challenged by great writers. My opponent has twisted my words to suit his own purposes. Overall, I believe I have made my case. Prescriptive grammar simply isn't necessary. PoeJoe has attempted to offer many counter-examples where it is, but none of them are relevant, and some are downright disingenuous. He refuses to admit that prescriptions are in fact conventions that are imposed on everyone, and that such conventions would arise naturally without such imposition. He also seems to take a certain kind of pleasure in citing a "supreme authority" in grammar when he admits that the authority is arbitrary in many cases, and that there is no basis for any person or group to have such power. The majority of his case is composed of his frustration with so called "bad" grammar and his experiences involving miscommunication. He has not addressed the nature of language at all. He has not adequately addressed the harms arising from the imposition of prescriptive grammars on diverse groups of speakers. He has not made a coherent case at all. Vote Pro! 1. http://www.thefreedictionary.com... 2. http://www.merriam-webster.com... 3. http://en.wikipedia.org...