Birthday Greetings! and Shibboleth

[David <dfrankiswork@netscape.net>]

Mary Ann exhorted:

> So, just for today, we're all going to speak nicely 
> about Ron and join C.R.A.B.  

Or should that have been "So, just for today, we're all going to 
speak nicely about Ron and join C.R.A.B..", since the dot signifying 
that the "B" is an abbreviation is not a full stop?

Meanwhile, Barb insisted:

> There ARE rules of grammar and punctuation, even though some of 
them may not make sense to some folks.

Yes, but my question is, where do the rules come from?  I think the 
only sensible answer is that they come from us, the speakers and 
writers of English.  If they serve us well, then well and good.  If 
not, they have no mystical intrinsic force of their own to command 
our respect.

I think that an underlying issue in this thread is that language - 
whether spoken or written - serves two purposes, and we need to 
think what we are trying to achieve in formulating and applying 
rules.

The first purpose is communication, where most of the time we desire 
to be clear and not to arouse unnecessary antagonism in our 
audience.  A pedantic dislike of poor spelling or grammar is 
perfectly valid, though IMO we all save ourselves a deal of medical 
attention to our blood pressure if we can manage not to be too upset 
by it.  So to avoid arousing that dislike in others is a laudable, 
though perhaps not very inspiring, goal.  Likewise it's a harmless 
pleasure to enjoy getting complicated grammatical constructions 
right, if we don't insist that anyone who doesn't share that 
pleasure is educationally defective.

It's the second purpose whose abuse worries me.  This is when 
language is used as a tool of social recognition and exclusion.  The 
online gamers who confused Joywitch may not have *intended* their 
patois to discourage outsiders from joining in, but it had that 
effect in her case.  It's not only deviant writers who can do this: 
insisting on 'correct' usage, backed by all the force of social 
convention and economic power, can be both very oppressive and 
almost invisible.

If we write with poor grammar and spelling it causes our readers to 
have to make a greater effort to understand what we are 
communicating, so it's good to encourage people to do better in 
their own interest (think of Jenny's students).  That's rather 
different from judging people's character by their spelling and 
grammar, which I think there is a constant temptation to do.

None of this, of course, affects what the rules are or should be (if 
there is any 'should' in the matter), but it does profoundly affect 
the way we look at people and writings which don't comply with the 
rules.

David