The Grammar Nazi

The number one comment I get when I tell people that I’m getting my PhD in English is “Why in the world would you want to do that?” The number two comment is “I better watch my grammar then.” For this reason, I think our readings on grammar and error are incredibly apropos. Laura R. Micciche’s article “Making a Case for Rhetorical Grammar” is an excellent argument in support of the power and importance of grammar not only in communicating ideas but also in understanding how one idea connects to another. As Micciche states, “The chief reason for teaching rhetorical grammar in writing classes is that doing so is central to teaching thinking. The ability to develop sentences and form paragraphs that serve a particular purpose requires a conceptual ability to envision relationships between ideas” (719). By emphasizing the rhetorical aspect of grammar, Micciche redeems what is often considered a “decontextualized, not progressive but remedial” emphasis on “proper English” (718).  Instead, Micciche encourages composition teachers to teach grammar in context (“never divorced from ideological functions” [721]), which allows for grammar to be understood as a “tool for articulating and expressing relationships among ideas” (720). Her recommendation that students keep commonplace books seems simple but also effective. Having students “record” passages from other texts and then analyze the language and grammar of the passage is the type of careful reading that I would be thrilled if my students learned how to perform. Such assignments could be incorporated into a typical weekly journal assignment as part of the informal writing for a composition course. Overall, I think Micciche’s approach is both theoretically sound and practically productive since the goal is for students to be more cognizant of their grammatical and stylistic choices so that they can strategically situate the texts they produce. However, I do worry that making time for the type of depth required to examine texts at the level of the sentence consistently over the semester means that something else will have to go.

The concern of what to focus on and when to focus on it is somewhat the topic of Joseph M. Williams’ entertaining article “The Phenomenology of Error.” Williams effectively breaks down errors into four categories (which is a useful way of thinking about it): errors are committed and we respond to those errors, errors are committed but we don’t respond to them, an error is not committed and we positively respond to this fact, and an error is not committed but we do notice that it is not committed. Wlliams’ overall point is that there are some “errors” that are arbitrary and that most readers, possibly even individuals who are considered “experts” in grammar and style, do not even notice. So, our task as teachers is to very thoughtfully consider value when thinking about how or why we are noting errors in students’ writing. Williams states, “We have to determine in some unobtrusive way which rules of grammar the significant majority of careful readers notice and which they do not” (164). Micciche is attempting, twenty-three years later, to encourage students to be the ones to decide what is noticeable and what is not in order to appreciate the power of ordered language.  In some ways, this transition is a wonderful way to equip students to continue to teach themselves as they grow as writers rather than memorizing rules in a handbook. In other ways, it presents a challenge, as I expressed earlier, for teachers to carve enough time and make a persuasive enough case for the importance of studying sentence construction. Overall, I can imagine students enjoying grammar discussion in context, since it’s often something they are concerned about to begin with but feel is inherently boring to talk about. By demonstrating the immediate applicability of grammar, I think we could in fact make rhetorical grammar a lot sexier.