Re: describing the minority as literate is a circular argument?

[David Neeley <dbneeley -at- oddpost -dot- com>]

 Frankly, I believe that this argument about "good" vs. "proper" grammar misses quite a bit. 
  
To embrace the sort of looseness that is so often seen by the "average" writing on the Internet or in the daily writing of the "average" citizen, we throw away an incredible amount of meaning. 
  
In my view, the principal utility of the notion of "proper" grammar is to moderate the more foolish linguistic fads that obscure clarity and to provide a somewhat steadying influence to changes in usage. 
  
At the moment, for instance, few Americans seem to understand the use of the apostrophe...and most seem to spew them willy-nilly into their sentences as seemingly optional parts of all contractions, possessives, and plurals. For this trend to continue and not be resisted, then we lose any usefulness that this particular element may give. 
  
Since English is not a highly inflected language, it seems to me that we need various of the "signposts" that give meaningful distinctions...and these are generally taken from an agreed understanding of what is "proper" grammar. 
  
By contrast, there are many elements that are clear to the reader or hearer (or, at the least, the *native* reader) but that may not be considered "proper." Quite a bit of marketing and advertising is created with these more informal constructions drawn from everyday practice...and they can be very "good" grammatically (if we measure that by clearly and successfully commumunicating) even if they are not considered "proper" *yet*. 
  
Finally, I think that this sort of "good" and effective grammar that is readily understood is that which with time becomes ever more widely accepted until it moves into the "proper" grammar category. Meanwhile, thousands of other, less clear and less useful popular uses are cast aside. 
  
To condemn either notion of "proper" or of "good but not *quite* proper" grammar seems to me to be a useless exercise. Just as with most other areas of our lives, we can learn to appreciate both--and use both--without doing either notion harm. For example, many communities within the U.S. and elsewhere grow up as "bilingual" people when considered from the linguistic sense in English alone. The most evident example lies with many of the educated parts of the Black community, who learn a form of slang as well as "standard" English and can usually switch between the two with no conscious effort. (There are, of course, many other examples but this is one I believe most list members will readily recognize, even if it pertains to different minorities within their own society). 
  
It was a widespread joke when some school boards tried to maintain that there was a Black language that should be considered equal to standard English in the schools...remember the "Ebonics" episodes? However, within that community, I think it would often be a mistake to hold that the particular set of linguistic uses current there are "bad" or "good" in any objective sense, even if we can agree that they are not "proper". 
  
David 

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