"Grammaticality: Judgments...?)

So this week we looked at grammaticality judgements. I tend to get into a lot of arguments over grammar. This often occurs on Internet forums where users may become lazy and not mind their spelling or grammar. In these cases, misinterpretation occurs and people get into heated fights. The idea of grammaticality judgements is quite subjective and often requires the context or knowledge of the context to be known in order for it to be understood. Our example on the workshop was the Joseph Anthony bespoke advertisement.

There were arguments over whether Joseph Anthony was a person or a company. Furthermore, some people did not know whether Bespoke was a name or simply a word for tailored suits. So more confusion came from that… At the end of the lesson, we agreed that the line used in the advertisement “London Court bespoke tailor Joseph Anthony, is proud to announce their arrival in Claremont.” Was acceptable simply because it still made sense. So language use is still acceptable if it makes sense. Now as teachers, we need to curb our grammaticality judgements, Rather than telling students that their writing or speaking wrong or right by a set of rules, we need to model appropriate language use within the appropriate contexts. So in situations where academic writing is required, a model of academic writing for students to dissect and copy stylistically is appropriate. Much in the same way, in conversation, we should not attack a student if they slip up grammatically in their speech.

So does this mean all language is acceptable even if it does not conform to the standard grammatical conventions? No… not quite. I believe students need to know the importance of being grammatically correct to avoid misinterpretation and misunderstanding. Finally, students need to acknowledge the fact that the English language does not always conform to a strict set of rules. The Language itself is complex and thus, there are just some instances where “bad grammar” is still accepted (like in this blog post), but at least we should give them a way to recognise the “bad grammar”.

If you get frustrated at spelling errors and bad grammar. Then this site will drive you crazy.

www.engrish.com