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In British International Phonetic Alphabet, this heading reads Brighton Conference.
At the annual IATEFL conference we
attended a presentation by John Hird, of Oxford University, entitled Non
-Standard Grammar – Or Just Plain Wrong.
I am continually dismayed by the standard
of written English in evidence on Facebook posts and this in an age where
spellcheck facilities are readily accessible. As a retired English teacher, I
permanently suffer from a red-pen tic where errors simply beg to be corrected! ☹
John defined his term of non-standard grammar by appealing to our great grammar guru, David Crystal, who explains this as grammar features, forms and patterns and usages that are considered traditionally, technically and prescriptively incorrect but are so commonplace that perhaps we should consider them acceptable.
Traditionally the spoken word, being
spontaneous and less formal, was the rich source of such forms, but the written
mode in the social media is fast catching up!! American usage can frequently
affect what is being expressed on a wider geographic scale, through advertising
or what is considered ‘hip’. The McDonald’s ‘I’m Lovin’ It’ jingle is a
case in point. Grammar books would generally not condone verbs expressing
thoughts, opinions or emotions being used in the continuous verb form.
One form I rather like is ‘Be like’ as in the example below which has its origins in African American Vernacular English and is used to perform or mimic speech attitudes or behaviours – here the glottal stop which drops the ‘t’ in “British’.
Gretchen McCullock outlines the new language rules in her book entitled, ‘Because Internet’. I must confess that in messaging, I may use the time-saving, non-ambiguous ‘Later I ‘ll go spa.’
I’ve often heard Gordon Ramsay
tell his Masterchef contestants ‘Your 60 minutes starts now’, presumably
focusing on the singular time period rather the minutes’ plurality.
John quoted ,’If I didn’t come
along, there would be no NATO right now.’ But then no one expects Trump to be a paragon
rule-observer, and he disrespectfully rides roughshod over the accepted
chronological staging of verb tenses! I guess he could excuse himself and his
linguistic knowledge by using the ubiquitous double-negative, ‘I don’t know
nothing.’
The next phase of the talk I
found fascinating when John had audience members access the mentimeter facility
on their devices. He projected deviant language forms on the electric whiteboard
and we had to plot them, as seen below, on a cline of least -> most
offensive!
The overall ‘winner’ was the least contentious, the use of the adjectival rather than the adverbial form eg, ‘He did fantastic’ – sports-talk making its linguistic contribution.
Examples such as ‘I was sat on
my own’ were deemed not too bad since they were ‘excused’ as genuine
regional usage! Verb forms and tenses were
expected to be respected - examples as, ’I’ve drank it’ could not be
forgiven!
Conditional clauses, especially
those expressing the hypothetical, were given short shrift where faulty. Even
Elton John’s lyrics from ‘Candle In The Wind’
..’And I would’ve liked to know
you …’ would not have passed muster!
I must mention my pet peeves
a)
‘Could of’ instead of ‘Could’ve’
b)
the use
of ’less’ for countable nouns instead of ‘fewer’.
Our speaker admitted to disliking
the extraneous ‘of’ in ‘He got off of the bus’ and drew the talk to
a close by playing The Rolling Stones’, ‘Hey, you, get off of my cloud ‘!
