Whom gives a damn?

‘Irregardless may be the most hated word in the English language,’ writes a pedant called Mignon Fogarty, who styles herself as Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl’s claim is bunk. Surveys have repeatedly shown that moist is the most reviled word in the English language. So flesh-crawling do people find the word that American psychologists were provoked to research why (it’s the association with bodily fluids). Irregardless, meanwhile, is waaaay down the list and seems mostly to be loathed by fussy word-watchers. But boy do they make a fuss. According to Australian linguist Pam Peters, there are fewer natural examples of irregardless being spoken or written than there are instances where it’s cited as bad English.

Extraordinarily, enthusiasm for linguistic conformity can even top enthusiasm for actual literature. Fogarty’s irregardless quotation comes from a book entitled Grammar Girl's 101 Misused Words You'll Never Confuse Again, in which she takes words like loath and loathe, and tells you how their meanings differ. It’s a handy reference book, the sort of thing you turn to once in a while when you get stuck, like the manual for your power drill. It’s not a work of enduring genius. And yet it’s rated 4.1 on Goodreads, a higher rating than Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Homer’s Odyssey, Mantel’s Wolf Hall. I know that those ratings aren’t entirely comparable, but they’re still revealing.

Some of this enthusiasm is healthy. It’s good to better ourselves. And it’s fun to learn new things, especially about subjects we thought we understood. We’ve been steeped in language since birth, so discovering more about our words is fascinating.

But just as language is intrinsically interesting, it also seems intrinsically associated with education and good breeding, with snobbishness and insecurity. This association regularly crops up in reviews of Fogarty’s books:

This is a really good book on grammar. ... It even taught me a few things ... [But] I didn't know that people had such a hard time with such no-brainers as "guerrilla" vs "gorilla" and *gasp* "peak" vs "peek" vs "pique"! I'm embarrassed for anyone who learned something new whilst reading those chapters.

These neuroses appear in Fogarty’s own writing too — like in her book’s introduction where she explains how she sees language:

Once some people start using a word incorrectly, that use can spread to a point where there’s an all-out battle between the people who support what the word is supposed to mean and the masses who think it should mean something else.

Sadly, the masses are often unaware that they are even the target of a stickler war. Yet, target they are, and sticklers who will judge you for using the wrong word are lurking everywhere — in your school, your workplace, your family, and your favourite Internet hangout.

A dirty little secret you can invoke to keep you sane is that there are so many confusing words that everyone is part of the “confused masses” for at least a few of them. [...] So don't be ashamed if you get confused. The only reason to be ashamed is if you are too lazy to find out what is right once you suspect you might be wrong. [The emboldening is all mine.]

An all-out battle against ‘the masses’; grammar police and judgement; laziness, shame and insanity. It’s bourgeois balderdash.

But there is some unfortunate truth to it. Mastery of Standard English has always been a sign of education and class—and means of exclusion. The delight of Fogarty’s reviewers at learning something new about language seems amplified by their relief that they will now seem less ignorant. They’ve taken a step away from the unthinking masses and towards the discerning elite. So Fogarty’s not wrong that structures of discrimination do exist around language, but she certainly wrong was to write as if such discrimination is reasonable.

The fact is that, like most skills, writing in Standard English is something that only a few people need to master. A builder needs to know how to plaster a wall, an inuit how to build an igloo, and a journalist how to write Standard English (or, truth be told, maybe just their subeditor). Like mastery of igloo-building, perfected Standard English won’t help most of us do our jobs, improve our relationships or pursue what we care about. We’re as good at writing correctly as we need to be.

Besides, writing correctly is not the same thing as writing well (though, in formal contexts, the latter will involve the former). Learning about minor linguistic distinctions neither makes you write much more eloquently and nor does it give you something worth saying. Some of Fogarty’s correctly written sentences are inelegant; others, like the ones above, are so unhelpful she shouldn’t have written them at all.

Often, incorrect English isn’t that bad anyway. Few of the mistakes Fogarty picks on would truly make something more difficult to read. And though as one reviewer laments, ‘it is disappointing to learn that “snuck” will eventually be acceptable by all’, are they equally saddened that gat is no longer the past-tense of get or that thee has been swallowed by you? Language is always churning. There is sometimes loss of usefulness, as words with a particular nuance have their specificity shaved away. And it is useful to have a consistent standard of communication for formal contexts. But that’s all there is to it: usefulness. It’s not about the Gandalf of Good Grammar fending off the mindless orcish masses.

So here’s the deal. If you want to learn to write more correctly, feel free. It is enjoyable, and there are worse ways to spend your time. But if you don’t want to, well, whom gives a damn?

[This article was inspired by Robert Lane Greene’s fascinating book, You are what you speak. He writes a weekly column on language for The Economist. Thanks, RLG.]