What is grammar but the accepted means of publicizing one's thoughts in an understandable and organized fashion? One may reason clearly in private, but what is the vehicle by which one reasons clearly in public? It is generally through speech, whether written or oral.
Meaning follows from the arrangement of thoughts, and meaning is shared through the presentation of these arranged thoughts to others. When the presentation of these arranged thoughts is compromised through poor execution, communication suffers. Relationships are strained. Learning is impeded. Persuasion is undermined. The path to phronēsis is deferred.
I have heard it said, for instance, that commas do not matter. Tell that to grandma if she is on the receiving end of this omission: "Let's eat grandma!" (Presumably the speaker means to address her grandmother, not to devour her; a comma after eat would have saved grandma.) What is frequently claimed by students and employees to be important is content, not grammar. But can the two really be distinguished, or separated, in the complete fashion implied?
If grammar is the vehicle by which we share verbal content, what happens when the feed, as it were, between the two is constantly, or even periodically, interrupted? Consider what would happen in a different medium. The same answer may be drawn. What would happen if we wished to view a YouTube video that was reported to be of extremely high quality, thoughtful, and significant, but the internet connection constantly, or even periodically, went in and out, suffered delays through buffering, and the presentation of the online video was disjointed because of poor execution by the vehicle of transmission?
We most likely would not have the same experience of the video's content as our friend who recommended it to us. We therefore might not find the video's content to be of high quality (because its presentation was not flawless), thoughtful (because it was hard to follow the thoughts), or significant (because its overall meaning and importance were hard to discern from our access point to it). The same happens with poorly executed speech, written or oral, when grammar is sloppy and therefore the presentation of one's reasoning is impeded. The classical education advocates might be on to something with the oft-repeated tripartite curriculum structure of grammar, logic, rhetoric.
Does it always matter whether one uses the so-called Oxford comma after the penultimate item in a series? Sometimes, but not always. Grammar is a form of convention. Today's apathy, if not entirely antipathy, to grammar is likely a function of a prevailing disregard for conventions more generally. True; conventions may not be fixed from one culture to another. And true; conventions are not absolute. Still, they were adopted at some point and maintained through other points because of prudential considerations. In the case of grammar conventions, they were not adopted only for pure expediency. They were developed because they practically facilitated greater social communication, the promotion of other communal values, and even aesthetic desiderata such as style, grace, and wit -- all because of a common foundation for delivering thought and sharing thinking.
What befuddles and even frustrates me about the grammar disparagers is what I perceive to be the underlying devaluation of clear communication and sharp reasoning.
There may always persist a tension between the descriptivists (grammar just describes what occurs in a language) and the prescriptivists (grammar instructs about the proper way people should use a language). This squabble has existed apparently since the English language began to be formalized, as described in a new book by Henry Hitchings, The Language Wars, which was reviewed on November 23, 2011, by Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal (login may be required). Swaim concludes of Hitchings:
Mr. Hitchings writes with exceptional efficiency and clarity, and he appears to realize that the conventions of English -- we used to call them rules -- are precisely what allow the versatility, subtlety and grace of the best writing. Yet he defers obediently to the verities of modern linguistics ... Indeed, Mr. Hitchings is of two minds about proper English. He complains about the "imperious" attitudes of Fowler and Strunk and White, but concedes that modern descriptivist grammars don't supply "decisive, straightforward answers" to problems that "feel uncomfortably real."
Providing "'decisive, straightforward answers' to problems that 'feel uncomfortably real,'" is this not one way to understand the value of grammar, one way to appreciate the practical wisdom of adhering to it so as to expand and enhance communication and shared understanding? Is this not one way to know practically, at bottom, how best to say what we want to say to others, to share our thoughts in daily life? Maybe Aristotle, who said a thing or two about phronēsis, grasped the importance of grammar when he included it in his trivium as one of three arts of discourse.
