Response to "Good English and Bad"

            In his article “Good English and Bad”, Bill Bryson attempts to show how some grammatical rules are irrelevant, and how those irrelevant rules came to be. Bryson argues that these rules were formed for no logical reason, but solely because people wanted these rules to exist. These added rules, Bryson argues, makes language much more confusing in general.

            “Good English and Bad” relates to Stuart Greene’s article “Argument as Conversation” in that both articles present ideas that are not usually thought about. Greene does this by attempting to shake the construct of arguing as pointless and negative, and Bryson is showing readers that some of the rules we follow in writing (grammar) are confusing and just plain worthless. Bryson’s article also relates to Peter Elbow’s article “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”. Elbow is explaining how voice in writing can be used to get a point across, in “Good English and Bad” Bryson explains how a man named Robert Lowth changed grammar solely because he wanted it changed. Robert Lowth used his voice in order to convince people that grammar should be changed the way he wanted.

            I personally was a little bit bored of this article. To me it seemed quite mundane; learning about the origin of strange grammatical rules is not something I am excited about. Although with this aside, I never would have thought about these things. It never occurred to me that ending a sentence with a preposition is a rule that is obviously in it’s name, but I had not looked at it like that before.

Before You Read

3.)

            Technology has changed the way we speak to each other in that we no longer want to/need to write things out and use proper grammar. Spell check is now a necessity for some and abbreviations are becoming commonplace. I think technology is taking a lot of emotion out of what people are writing, not only due to how people write, but also the medium. Texting doesn’t have the emotion that writing a letter does. I think some ‘new’ words would be words like “bro”, “dude” and the ever-hated-by-me, “swag”. There are also abbreviations such as lol (laugh out loud), brb (be right back), and omw (on my way).

Questions for Discussion and Journaling

1.)

            The Construct that Bryson is challenging is that all the rules of grammar always need to be followed. Bryson argues that this isn’t necessarily true. The phrase “you were” is not logically correct. “You was” makes more sense logically but no one uses that phrase anymore. You can still get your message across without having to follow all of grammar’s rules.

Applying and Exploring Ideas

1.)

            Bryson says language changes over time. Some of the ways this happens are when self-appointed authorities say something wrong and it sticks, or they just want to change it and say X is now Y because I want it to be. An example of this in modern English would be the change from “you was” to “you were” as I explained earlier. I think Bryson would condone this change.

Meta Moment

            I don’t normally consciously think of parts of speech as I write. Normally writing is a subconscious/muscle memory kind of thing. Everything about the English language that I know I have learned in school throughout the years. I do think that knowing the parts of speech helps me write better, but not because I am consciously thinking about it, but because I know what needs to go where subconsciously. If I had never learned them I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to write nearly as well as I can currently.