Dick, I totally agree with your response to Charrow. I am amazed that as a linguist, she has such a simplistic view of this. In addition to your points, I am thinking of how much more writing and speaking we are exposed to in the media. Even if there were fewer "grammatical mistakes" (non-standard forms) in past published writing and public speaking (which I question), think of how small the pool of contributors was then compared to now. Also, the contributors were often wealthier and with more formal education etc. -- Christine Reintjes Martin [log in to unmask] >From: "Veit, Richard" <[log in to unmask]> >Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar ><[log in to unmask]> >To: [log in to unmask] >Subject: Re: From the Washington Times >Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:45:34 -0500 > >I would like to know when that wonderful time was when people didn't make >grammatical errors, when Americans were routinely literate, when students >could write fluently, when no one had problems with the who/whom >distinction or used "criteria" as a singular noun. Folk wisdom says it was >about a generation ago. Of course, that's what folk wisdom has always said. > >A generation ago (as folk wisdom would have it) the English language was >just fine and people used it well. Today, however, the language is >deteriorating, and people no longer speak or write it properly. That's a >common complaint in 2004, and it's easy to find other similar complaints >today--just as it was easy to find them in 1975, and in 1950, and in 1925, >and in 1800 and 1600 and 1400. People seem always to have believed the >language was on the decline and to have expressed that belief in almost >identical terms ever since there has been an English language. Harvey >Daniels did a nice job of presenting these complaints through the ages in >his 1983 book Famous Last Words: The American Language Crisis Reconsidered. >The evident conclusion is that such fulminations have their origin in the >human psyche far more than in objective reality. > >If our language were on a thousand year downward slope, we'd all be >muttering gibberish by now. But just because past Jeremiahs were wrong, >that doesn't prove that now isn't the one time in our history when our >language really is falling apart. The odds are against this hypothesis, >however, and before accepting it, we need to see objective evidence and not >the glib anecdotes that Charrow presents. > >Dick Veit >UNCW English Department > >To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface >at: > http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html >and select "Join or leave the list" > >Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/ To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or leave the list" Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/