Cato's Grammar Grumble

[Karl Henning]

The O.E.D. hath the sharke y-jumpen.

[Karl Henning]

If not for regional dialects and colloquialisms, I would find American English so much poorer.  Growing up in the South, I am very familiar with this kind of talk, and appreciate an author or filmmaker's good job with dialog that utilizes it.  However, more often than not, they exaggerate it, creating a parody of the style.

Hence Twain's note on the various dialects faithfully reproduced in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

[Cato]

Hence Twain's note on the various dialects faithfully reproduced in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

And a reason to read the work aloud!

Today's (August 16th)  Wall Street Journal has a grumble about the over-use and misuse of "existential."

Some excerpts from An Existential Threat to Plain Speaking:

When I was in graduate school, I always felt on the verge of understanding the word "existential" without quite grasping it. The term "existentialism" supposedly encompassed writers as different from each other as Soren Kierkegaard and Jean Paul Sartre, the governing concept having something to do with "existence" preceding "essence." Or, lived human experience being more important than abstract reasoning as a guide to truth.

Or something...

Robin Wright, in an Aug. 8 post for ForeignPolicy.com, thinks "Iran's baby boomers reflect the regime's almost existential conundrum—and the nexus between economic and nuclear policies." That Ms. Wright qualifies the word with "almost" suggests she knows exactly what it means. I don't.

A few queries on Lexis-Nexis bear out my suspicion that the adjective "existential" has exploded in popularity over the past two or three decades.... In 1992, the (New York Times) featured the word 75 times; in 2000, 152 times; in 2005, 181 times; in 2010, 250 times...

What gave rise to this existentializing of everything? Not, I think, a rediscovery of Sartre or fellow existentialist Albert Camus. My guess is that it began with descriptions of the danger posed to Israel by its Arab neighbors as an "existential threat." That phrase began life in the early 1990s, and at least it's defensible: "a threat to Israel's existence" is wordier and less memorable, and Israel's neighbors would literally make the country nonexistent if they could...

In a 1997 article about the German economy, a New York Times reporter told readers that "there is an existential debate centering on the so-called American model of deregulation and market forces." To modify a word with existential by then merely meant that it was important or that it pertained to fundamental principles...

...a highly regarded point guard for the Brooklyn Nets, Deron Williams, wasn't playing as well as his team needed him to play. "If this sounds like an existential crisis," a newspaper sportswriter explained, "it is."  .

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579008471228709190.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion&cb=logged0.051091959806464304

[Cato]

Probably most of you have never heard of James Gould Cozzens or read even one of his clumsy sentences.

My memory went back to him recently via some meandering thoughts on how bad a good deal of modern writing is.  Still, the past was certainly not immune from it!

Case in point, James Gould Cozzens, a major writer in the 1930's-1950's, who garnered both a Pulitzer Prize and his picture on the cover of Time (which was a much bigger deal 60 years ago than it is today, because people actually bought and read the magazine).

Not everyone agreed that his books were wonderful: from a review in Commentary by Dwight Macdonald of a Cozzens book (By Love Possessed) lionized by many others. 

(A sentence from the novel)

"Thinking last night of Ralph's 'Joanie,' those Moores, all unsuspecting;
whose 'shame' or 'disgrace' of the same kind (if more decent in
degree) stood accomplished, waiting merely to be discovered to them, Arthur Winner had
felt able to pre-figure, following the first horrified anger, the distraught recriminations,
the general fury of family woe, a bitter necessary acceptance."

I find such prose almost impossible to read, partly because of an inexpressive, clumsy use of words,
partly because the thought is both abstract and unclear, but chiefly because the rhythms are all wrong.
Instead of carrying one forward, they drop one flat, and one must begin anew with each phrase.

An artist creates a world, bit added to bit; each addition of Cozzens' destroys what has gone before.

Macdonald was on target. 

Of course, there are many other writers from that era whose works had better style, but have not persisted (Thomas Costain, Howard Fast, Lloyd Douglas, Edna Ferber).  Their works were made into movies and so on, but...

Anyway, I thought the unmusical prose would be of interest here at GMG.

[Karl Henning]

Seen on Amazon:

For several decades, the Talich Quartet has been recognized internationally as one of Europes finest chamber ensembles . . . .

Apostrophes be damned!

[Sergeant Rock]

Probably most of you have never heard of James Gould Cozzens By Love Possessed

The title is very familiar. It's a book I knew in my youth; I may have even owned it, but I don't believe I read it all. That excerpt may offer an explanation: I doubt I would have had the desire or patience to slog my way through that muddy prose. God-awful.

Sarge

[Cato]

Probably most of you have never heard of James Gould Cozzens or read even one of his clumsy sentences.

The title (By Love Possessed) is very familiar. It's a book I knew in my youth; I may have even owned it, but I don't believe I read it all. That excerpt may offer an explanation: I doubt I would have had the desire or patience to slog my way through that muddy prose. God-awful.

Sarge

Apparently William Buckley wrote an equally negative review, but I have not had the time to track it down.

In my more advanced Latin classes I have shown the students examples of bad Latin style, e.g. the longest Latin epic poem is the Punica written by Silius Italicus, a Roman aristocrat and government official.  He worked on the poem during his retirement, and hoped to become a second Vergil.

He failed.  One contemporary said that the Punica, which deals with Hannibal and the Second Punic War, showed "a modest amount of talent."  Most of the time it shows incompetence and a tin ear.   0:)

[Sef]

Although I shouldn't grumble about a favourite blog of mine, I find the "without further Adieu" impossible not to comment on.

http://allanpettersson100.blogspot.com/2013/08/guest-blog-entry-alun-francis.html

The proper form is "without further ado"; an ado is a hubbub, bustle, flurry, or fuss, as in "much ado about nothing."

[Karl Henning]

Without further adieu is an amusing error.

[Sef]

Without further adieu is an amusing error.

Yes, I wondered at first whether it was purposefully done, but a quick google assured me that it is quite a common mistake. Personally I had neither heard nor seen it before now.

[kishnevi]

Sounds to me like it's much adieu about nothing.

[Opus106]

Via Richard Wiseman

[mc ukrneal]

Via Richard Wiseman

Just awesome!

[Cato]

Via Richard Wiseman

Ah!  So punctuation is important after all!

The Wall Street Journal had an essay yesterday (September 3, 2013) by a professor making the case that the de-emphasis on grammar, punctuation, etc.,has wrought our present situation: nearly two generations whose grasp of the language is mediocre to below.

An excerpt on the political agenda behind de-emphasizing good writing:

You're going to come away (from college) with many opinions—and a desire to write down those opinions and to have them taken seriously. But they'll never be taken seriously if your reader keeps getting sidetracked by your faulty pronoun antecedents. That's why it's absurd to claim that teaching students standard grammatical rules and expecting students to abide by them is a form of oppression. There are "other" grammars, or so the argument goes: grammars of the victimized, the ostracized, the marginalized.

Please. Nothing prolongs the socioeconomic struggles of historically victimized people more than an inability to communicate effectively with the broader culture. They have a desperate incentive to make themselves heard—not in ways that grammatically underscore generations of hardship but on the precise linguistic terms of that broader culture.

Frederick Douglass understood this point; his writings are a testament to it. So did Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King Jr.

See:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324591204579039544005041908.html?KEYWORDS=ungrammatical+students

[The Six]

For some reason, repeating "is" has become very common. It's usually in the form of "the thing about that is, is." Those darn double copulas.

[Cato]

For some reason, repeating "is" has become very common. It's usually in the form of "the thing about that is, is." Those darn double copulas.

I have been noticing the same thing: in print it looks very curious indeed!

Yesterday I heard an ad on the radio from a "financial advising" firm, which asked a series of questions.

One of the questions was:  "Did you suffer from an uncivilized divorce?" 

Wow!  I suspect some people have suffered from divorces that were not not particularly civil, when love became full of tumors transforming it into hate. 

But unless they married a Pict princess or an unvarnished Vandal, I would say that the very act of divorcing in a court is a hallmark of civilized behavior.    

The Gesualdo Method of Divorce would indeed be uncivilized, but if you had suffered from that type of divorce, you would not be listening to a radio ad!

[Karl Henning]

;^)

[The Six]

Hey, you shouldn't correct people's grammar. It makes you a bully!

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/09/language_bullies_pedants_and_grammar_nerds_who_correct_people_all_the_time.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Didn't you know that when you correct someone, no matter what the error or the context of it, you're just trying to show off and assert your superiority over that person? It must be true because those psychologists said so!

[Ten thumbs]

Those psychologists are bullies.

[Sef]

Hey, you shouldn't correct people's grammar. It makes you a bully!

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_good_word/2013/09/language_bullies_pedants_and_grammar_nerds_who_correct_people_all_the_time.single.html#pagebreak_anchor_2

Didn't you know that when you correct someone, no matter what the error or the context of it, you're just trying to show off and assert your superiority over that person? It must be true because those psychologists said so!

So for years you get bullied for being smaller than them, sometimes physically but mostly mentally, suffer from poor self-esteem, even grow an inferiority complex, then when everyone grows out of that, in order to heal yourself of that complex you build a superiority complex by telling those stupid b'stards just how f'ing stupid they are! Sounds fair to me. Psychologists - chew on that!