Fuzzy Grammar

Fuzzy grammar. I think I may have coined the term. It means that the rules by which we speak and write are not all hard and fast, cut and dried, black and white. And they certainly aren’t static. Fuzzy grammar is not a term of derision, but rather, of acknowledgement. Our culture needs to recognize and embrace the inherent fuzziness of grammar. In doing so we will have removed an unnecessary source of stress from our lives: The stress of having to speak and write “correctly”, whatever that is.

It just ain’t right, the way language gets judged by self-appointed lingo police. Language is dynamic, fluid, ever-changing. It doesn’t get better or worse, it just gets different, according to how people choose to communicate. Language’s only reason for being, after all, is to facilitate communication, not to provide us with a book of rules to obey, or to wield like a bludgeon. If we can communicate best by bending or breaking rules, it is the rules that should go, not better communication.

Now settle down, class, I’m not advocating the total abandonment of prescriptive grammar, just a little lightening up. I’m sick of being scolded by dogmatic purists, whether they be clients, bosses or proofreaders. I’m one of those people who feels that language should be comfortable, and there’s no reason to continue speaking in ways which have become stilted, awkward or stiff. Forcing the convoluted restructuring of a sentence to avoid ending it with preposition, for example, seems pointless to me.

Why am I writing about such a thing in Screen? Well, for one thing, we’re in the communications business, for Pete’s sake. A little chat about language shouldn’t be objectionable. This topic is relevent to everyone, even art directors. To those who would argue that loosening our grip on grammatical rules invites, sloppy, imprecise, muddled and impoverished communication and expression, I say hippo crap. The argument is circular.

When language evolves so as to leave a grammatical rule behind, we need to gracefully accept that change. (I split that last infinitive on puropose because it more closely expressed the thought I wanted to convey. By sticking the word “gracefully” in between “to” and “accept”, I was underlining “gracefully.” You got a problem with that?)

To rail against the evolutionary process of language is to cling in vain to the past. It just doesn’t work, and it makes you an unbudging curmudgeon.

I would allow that understanding the rules of grammar can help us communicate more clearly or precisely. Grammar can be useful and instructive in that role. But it ain’t carved in stone. Grammar is largely habit, tradition, custom. And these customs, like all customs, change over time. Customs which continue to be useful stay. Those that don’t, go. Culture is fluid. Language must therefore also be fluid, because language is there to serve the culture, not vice versa.

Here’s one for you. There’s a rule that says you must have agreement of number between a pronoun and its antecedent. In other words, if the pronoun is singular, like “he”, “she”, “each” or “it”, then, later in the sentence, you can’t shift to a plural like “their”. You’ve got to stick with a “his”, “hers” or “its”. However, in today’s world, there’s a political problem when you say “Every person should visit Muncie once before he dies.” It seems that this sentence is sexist, excluding women from the set of “every person”. That didn’t used to be true because decades ago people didn’t hear “his” as meaning men only, in that context. Now many people do hear it that way. Thus, the above grammatical rule is giving way to the shifting political sensibilities of the culture we live in (as opposed to “the culture in which we live” which is sounding so stilted I suspect its days are numbered as well.) More and more, people are resorting to “Every person should visit Muncie once before they die,” to avoid the sexist issue. In the process, the grammatical rule is being revised accordingly. And that’s okay.

If our language is becoming impoverished or debased somehow by processes like the one above, it ‘s because our culture is leading the way, impoverishment and debasement-wise. If you must make a stink, make a stink about the culture. But I don’t think the language or the culture is (are?) becoming impoverished. Steven Pinker, the big-brained neuroscience guru reassurres us that, “since the human mind does not change over time, the richness of language is always being replenished.”

Here’s one last reason why I suggest we embrace the notion of fuzzy grammar. Language arises from life. Life isn’t so neat and clean and pat. Life itself is fuzzy, isn’t it? So of course language be fuzzy too. Irregardless of the protestations of syntax collectors, grammar grammas and other linguistick-in-the-muds.