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A very short thread on English grammars (plural) inspired by interviewers' questions to the inimitable and ever-patient @BCDreyer: 1) A grammar is a framework for intelligibility. 2) Spoken and written language have separate grammars...
since speech and writing have different demands; we speak in utterances, not sentences; speech is generally transient, writing less so. 3) Social media/instant messaging is, relatively speaking, an extremely new sphere of language usage...
with an emergent grammar that borrows from both spoken and written grammars, since as a form of communication it shares and divides the demands of both...
4) Casting its features (contractions, abbreviations, non-standard spellings, neologisms, pictograms) as moral decay misunderstands this - and ignores the fact that language is alive.
5) This is not a good look and is especially not when used as a cover for insulting younger language users; 'our' language is not being 'dumbed down', just used.
6) It also misunderstands register and our ability to shift, often seamlessly, between different language codes; if you saw someone in the park in flip-flops and shorts, you wouldn't assume they'd dress that way for a job interview.
7) Generally speaking, it's those who position themselves as custodians of a language, which usually means custodians of morality, who misunderstand all this most flagrantly.
And I can't help feel it's related to a wider attitude towards young people (see Leadsom on Friday's climate strike) that dismisses their creativity and attempts to be heard - and casts our ignorance of them as a failing on their part, not ours.
Also, if you're reading this @BCDreyer, the packing peanuts metaphor was sublime.
