Language poses several important questions to me. I mean several moral and rational questions since for me it is sort of a representation through which other deeper issues of life manifest themselves. And I guess that is quite alright since with every thing that is created by man, language in the process of creation has also been bestowed with his dreams and joys and insecurities and dilemmas. Therefore, the ghetto rap of South Central LA is not just a polluted form of English. It is so much more than that. It's the lives of the people who speak it. It's as much a symbol of their glorious notoriety as Victorian English was a symbol of its proponents' sophistication and to our eyes, their pomposity. Language hardens into an unforgiving brute in the hands of a military establishment and the same language turns into a conniving, calculating fox in the company of the legal. It drips like honey from the mouth of a well educated, well mannered scholar whereas it becomes completely incomprehensible when the speaker is one from the traditionally nether regions of the society. It's like us human beings. Both brutal and generous, both harsh and mellow, both noble and ghastly.
The reason I have said all this is to drive home the point that to say that there is one correct form of language is a gross mistake. We might as well say that a person is objectively right or wrong, an idea that has been used far too often by society and its machineries to control and make us do things that no man in his right mind should ever do. If there is no 'right' language, what should we make of grammar ? Believe me the issue is not as trivial as it sounds. Below the banal surface lies the age old friction between rules and freedom. As soon as we understand that grammar is nothing but a set of rules that tries to contain the unrestrained proliferation and mutation of language (which is freedom, metaphorically speaking) the analogy starts becoming clear.
Some people argue too easily against the necessity of grammar. They find it too stuffy and limiting. I would have tried to sympathize with their point of view had it not been the case that most of such people say this not because they have an informed opinion but only because they have been too lazy to put in the effort required to understand language. And I am not demeaning them. Their opinions are just like my opinions on American football. Half baked and arm-chaired. But then I do not expect my opinions on American football to be of any value whatsoever. The fact is grammar is as necessary in language as the theory of consonance and dissonance is necessary in music. You cannot expect a child with no musical training to produce tolerable music when given a piano. He at least needs to be told as to which notes go well with which ones and only then will he be able to play anything remotely resembling music. It's only when we know the rules are we qualified to break them and the final result is so much more agreeable then.
Human spirit, it seems to me, finds its true liberation when it is made to work under some confines. Given an infinite wasteland it is almost impossible to make a garden out of it but a small patch of land can be very tastefully converted into one. Grammar is such a confine. So are metrical rules in poetry or compositional guidelines in photography or the Wisden in cricket (:)). If we take the analogy slightly further it is not hard to see that human freedom and the rules that limit it are not so antagonistic after all. Beyond the obvious observation that one has no identity in the absence of the other, it might not be far fetched to say that beneath the surface hostility, each one only serves to strengthen the other. History has proved time and again that the greatest geniuses that humanity could offer were produced during periods of censure and formality. There is nothing to revolt against when everything has already been revolted against or in other words when there is complete freedom. What then is the territory of the modern avant-garde ?
Well. Too much thinking for a Sunday night :).
The reason I have said all this is to drive home the point that to say that there is one correct form of language is a gross mistake. We might as well say that a person is objectively right or wrong, an idea that has been used far too often by society and its machineries to control and make us do things that no man in his right mind should ever do. If there is no 'right' language, what should we make of grammar ? Believe me the issue is not as trivial as it sounds. Below the banal surface lies the age old friction between rules and freedom. As soon as we understand that grammar is nothing but a set of rules that tries to contain the unrestrained proliferation and mutation of language (which is freedom, metaphorically speaking) the analogy starts becoming clear.
Some people argue too easily against the necessity of grammar. They find it too stuffy and limiting. I would have tried to sympathize with their point of view had it not been the case that most of such people say this not because they have an informed opinion but only because they have been too lazy to put in the effort required to understand language. And I am not demeaning them. Their opinions are just like my opinions on American football. Half baked and arm-chaired. But then I do not expect my opinions on American football to be of any value whatsoever. The fact is grammar is as necessary in language as the theory of consonance and dissonance is necessary in music. You cannot expect a child with no musical training to produce tolerable music when given a piano. He at least needs to be told as to which notes go well with which ones and only then will he be able to play anything remotely resembling music. It's only when we know the rules are we qualified to break them and the final result is so much more agreeable then.
Human spirit, it seems to me, finds its true liberation when it is made to work under some confines. Given an infinite wasteland it is almost impossible to make a garden out of it but a small patch of land can be very tastefully converted into one. Grammar is such a confine. So are metrical rules in poetry or compositional guidelines in photography or the Wisden in cricket (:)). If we take the analogy slightly further it is not hard to see that human freedom and the rules that limit it are not so antagonistic after all. Beyond the obvious observation that one has no identity in the absence of the other, it might not be far fetched to say that beneath the surface hostility, each one only serves to strengthen the other. History has proved time and again that the greatest geniuses that humanity could offer were produced during periods of censure and formality. There is nothing to revolt against when everything has already been revolted against or in other words when there is complete freedom. What then is the territory of the modern avant-garde ?
Well. Too much thinking for a Sunday night :).
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