[PRL] The Land of the Free and "The Elements of Style": How False Claims about English Grammar Do Actual Harm

Mitchell Wand wand at ccs.neu.edu
Tue Apr 20 10:20:56 EDT 2010


From: CSAIL Event Calendar <eventcalendar at csail.mit.edu>
To: seminars at csail.mit.edu
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:50:21 -0400
Subject: TALK:Tuesday 4-20-10 The Land of the Free and "The Elements of
Style": How False Claims about English Grammar Do Actual Harm

The Land of the Free  and  "The Elements of Style": How False Claims about
English Grammar Do Actual Harm
Speaker: Geoffrey K. Pullum
Speaker Affiliation: University of Edinburgh
Host: Regina Barzilay
Host Affiliation: CSAIL

Date: 4-20-2010
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Location: 32 G449

 Language Log (www.languagelog.org) has fought a long battle against
regarding "The Elements of Style" as a respectable work on using the
English language.  But if some of what Language Log has published is
perhaps somewhat bit hyperbolic (its authors were described in one post
as "a shameless, pontificating, ignorant, hypocritical, incompetent,
authoritarian pair of old weasels"), there are nonetheless some serious
issues involved.  American writing instructors recommend "Elements" to
their students despite its being astonishingly outdated; ludicrously
idiosyncratic; unfollowable on some points (because of self-contradiction);
grossly and demonstrably inaccurate on points of syntactic fact; and
actually mendacious in some of the ways it tries to make plausible its
toxic brew of opinions and proscriptions.  Linguists should take seriously
the notion that such indefensible bossy advice about grammar does actual
harm, both by wasting resources and by promoting "nervous cluelessness".
Education is not promoted through encouraging educated Americans to
believe, falsely, that their command of their own native language is
flawed and inadequate.

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