I wrote this blog post a while ago, and since then have been sitting on it for a while. I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to publish it because it's very ranty, and not exactly in the normal style of this blog. So be warned - it deals with controversial stuff, and I am clearly quite upset about some things. The boat may be rocked.
Let's make a deal. Just in case you read this and disagree, and just in case any comments get heated. I promise not to deal any differently with you than I normally would. I respect the people who read this blog, I respect that we have differences of opinion, and I will continue to read YOUR blogs with pleasure. I would love if you could continue to read mine without judging my normal blog posts by what you may disagree with in this one.
--
I am going through a phase of feeling completely cynical about politics. (I know it's not exactly abnormal.)
I've always seen myself as a left-winger. I generally like left-wing people who argue about things better than right-wing people who argue about things. I love the idea of a society that recognises the contribution of the working class to wealth. I really, really love that I live in a country with a public health system that tends to work and is available to everyone. I like that if I am ever in deep financial trouble I probably won't have to go and live on the street. I like unions.
I'm not a fan of the Right. It is so fixated on the economic rights of the individual that it tends to ignore the masses and their need to, you know, eat. Its theory is that, by allowing individuals to accrue unlimited wealth, society will be more generally wealthy as an inevitable result. It seems to assume that people with lots of money will automatically be charitably-minded, responsible people who are brimming over with integrity. Ha!
I still feel this way about these things.
However, I'm growing less and less convinced that either Left or Right or anyone in between or on the extremes has a clue how to cope with difficult problems. The centrist/right-wing party in charge at the moment hasn't exactly fixed anything in the last few years they've been in power (to be fair, they aren't responsible for the financial problems of the global economy). On the other hand, the Left is almost cartoonish, bleating the same old song - "Tax the rich!" And what? All our problems will be solved? Recently, the Labour Party leader claimed that he would raise the minimum wage and this in itself would create more jobs... really?! I'm not a right-winger but, even so, this does not exactly compute.
It also bugs me how the Left has a penchant for saying that if you're one of us you need to feel the same way about every single issue. A few left-wing blogs I've been following lately have told me that because I believe that abortion is a violation of human rights I am therefore a man, socially conservative, a supporter of the war in Iraq, and a member of the right wing. If it helps you to ignore my objections by persuading yourself of that... well, please enjoy your bubble.
I'm beginning to think that the Left, over the last century or so, has a major problem. We TALK in terms of the masses. Social justice for all. Human rights. But actually we're all about picking sides, demanding justice for our half and delivering oppression on the other.
Lenin and Stalin and the international Communist movement were very open about this. It was the working class versus the capitalist oppressors, and it was a class war. And so only the rights of the workers have any weight whatsoever, and everyone else can rot in the gulag or be liquidated in purges. Stalinist or Maoist or Leninist crimes have been well known for a long time now, and the non-Communist Left rightly dissociates itself from them. Heck, even the Communists do so.
All the same, the non-Communist Left falls into the same trap when it starts arguing that, because it feels intense sympathy for one particular group of individuals, it's okay to ignore the rights of other individuals.
To fall pregnant, when you don't want to be pregnant... I feel sad thinking about this. It would be horrible. I'm not sure how to emphasise this without coming across a little trite, but please believe that women in this position have my full sympathy.
However, this in itself is not a wildcard to ignore the humanity of an unborn child. Demanding an end to this sad situation through abortion is another symptom of this mentality of picking-sides. As long as justice is done on ONE side, then it's okay that a human life is taken on the other.
Would anyone seriously question the humanity of a foetus if it were not for the fact that they want to have the freedom to abort it if it appears at an inconvenient time? Or if it were not for the fact that the state would prefer not to spend money on a child with a birth defect, who needs extra care, education, and support?
To call that child a parasite is just as unjust as calling the children of the Russian Tsar parasites who deserved to be murdered. It's just as unfair as exiling to forced labour and probable death the children of a peasant who happened to own a cow and was therefore a "rich" kulak.
And to tell ME that it's none of my business if an individual or a society decides to take someone else's life from them is a statement that has been made by a string of evil tyrants. It should never be received unquestioningly.
It's easier to get away with arguing that a foetus is not a human, because you can't see this unborn child. You can argue that, because it's not "normal" or it looks different to us, it doesn't have human rights in the same way we do. It's also easy to persuade yourself that it's okay because none of the people taking part in the debate will ever be threatened with this kind of "termination" (a word that bears a frightening resemblance to "liquidation", in my opinion). We have all made it out of the uterus, and therefore we are safe from this particular threat.
What happens, though, when WE become inconvenient? When we are in a car crash and lose control of our bodies? When we become elderly, frail, senile? By explaining away the rights of the individual in one case, will we have weakened our support of human rights in all cases?
And are we really comfortable, in the modern world, with saying that the worth placed on an individual by society defines their right to live or die? Are we comfortable with saying that an individual who has Down's Syndrome should not have made it out of the womb? And why - because they're not normal? They don't fit in with the majority of people? They don't "contribute" to society? It's offensive, isn't it. And yet it's the constant implication.
Our system has made us believe that we have to choose one or the other. The rights of the woman or the rights of the baby. By picking one or the other, we are buying into a system that degrades both. We need to change the system. Make it value pregnant women, support them, provide them with financial and emotional help. Make it value the vulnerable of all ages. Zero tolerance for discrimination in the workplace or society at large for women who are pregnant. Et cetera.
The inevitable response to my objections is usually that, if I really cared about the foetus, I would care about the foetus post-birth. That OBVIOUSLY the majority of abortions in New Zealand and elsewhere are undergone for selfless reasons - because the pregnant woman knows she wouldn't be able to provide the right kind of life for her child.
Firstly, here we have again the assumption that I am a rabid right-winger and don't want to vote for governments that will provide support for single mothers or families who live in difficult situations. I am not that person. Actually, I will almost always vote Labour or even lefter.
Secondly, the obvious retort is that we would not use the same logic about other humans in society. We don't kill criminals who have not been reformed because they will probably cause suffering when they leave prison and have an unhappy life. We are horrified and angry when the lives of infants and small children are taken away from them, no matter what sort of economic circumstances or family situation they were affected by.
We believe these things because we've seen these people, we've talked to them, they've had a chance to talk to us. We want to live in a society that gives everyone a chance to make what they can of what they've been given.
We believe that life is a Good Thing, an opportunity, and no one should be able to take it away on behalf of someone else because they think someone else will be better off that way - what narrow-minded arrogance!
We just seem to forget this, when it happens to be an unborn human. Maybe it's because it would be too inconvenient. Maybe it's because we can't see them, and they look different to us. Whatever the reason, I've had enough of this convenient blindness.
Showing posts with label rantings/ravings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rantings/ravings. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Monday, July 11, 2011
alasdair and john
New Zealand was the first country in the world to give women the vote. Hurrah! For some reason I've ASSUMED for some time now that that must mean our men are slightly ahead of the rest of the world when it comes to enlightenment.
Over the past few weeks we've been given a chance to see that that is spectacularly not the case. A few males in powerful positions have made some outlandish statements that have shocked the country - and so in some ways, of course, the reaction to these statements is evidence that many men feel very differently to them. But in other ways, too, it has become very obvious that a large number of men feel very sympathetic.
Back in the days of the women's suffrage campaign, this was the kind of criticism women were up against:
A frightening, domineering archwife lowering the dignity of Parliament. Emotional and uncontrolled, she is clearly unsuitable to guide the country with rationality and restraint.
The picture has changed rather a lot now. But, for two relatively high-profile men, these ideas linger.
(1) Alasdair Thompson, who has had to resign from his position as CEO of the Employers' and Manufacturers' Association (EMA), recently defended the gender pay gap, claiming that women take much more leave than men - an obvious example being maternity leave, a slightly less unnecessary example being "monthly sick problems". Eugh.
As inappropriate and thoughtless as this statement appeared to be, Thompson proceeded to dig himself a deep, deep hole. He appeared in a couple of TV interviews in which he behaved in a completely bizarre way, promised "satistics" and then produced anecdotes, and pretty much acted like someone who has no idea how to conduct himself in public. You can read about it, or watch the full interview, here.
Had a great time on twitter reading other people's comments on the issue, some of which have been recorded here.
One of my favourites was from someone calling themselves "Alasdair_at_EMA": 'I am being completely misquoted. I have not mentioned anything regarding menstruation. Period.'
Another @RyanSproull: "Women are actually paid less because they spend hours crying and gossiping and asking for directions."
Another @teh_aimee: "Dear Alasdair Thompson. People _all over the world_ are currently having to rehinge their jaws."
I have to admit to feeling a little sorry for Mr Thompson after he lost his job and became the butt of the country's jokes. He's obviously completely clueless rather than intentionally malicious, and he's probably a nice old man who dandles his grandchildren on his knee - definitely no domestic tyrant. But the things he said and the way he said them, as if they were perfectly obvious (again, see the TV interview) ... well, it became very clear that feminism still has some pertinent things to say to NZ culture.
So I thought that was it for a while - until...
(2) The marketing director for our very own slightly far Right political party, Act, came out with some comments so damaging that even the Act party had to get rid of him. Taken from this article.
John Ansell began with racism, criticising "white cowards" for not taking action against the "Maorification" of New Zealand. (The Maori being the indigenous people of this country.) He thinks that Maori get special treatment, and has compared the situation to apartheid.
Yuck.
This is the main focus of people's criticism of Ansell, and rightly so, I think. Couldn't help noticing one of Ansell's comments, though:
Act is "a men's party. I can't get them to agree to that but it's a party for men and women who think like men."
Great, here we go again. Then someone on twitter directed my attention to this comment thread which Ansell has been active on.
And yes, here we are again. Facing up against a really delusional man who cannot stop talking when he really should do so. Facing claims that any women who are womanlike in character are irrational and unsuited to take part in government or even to vote, if Ansell is to be believed.
It's amazing how much has changed since 1893. And yet it's amazing how much things have stayed the same.
(An interesting blog post on the political implications of people like Ansell - if you're interested.)
Over the past few weeks we've been given a chance to see that that is spectacularly not the case. A few males in powerful positions have made some outlandish statements that have shocked the country - and so in some ways, of course, the reaction to these statements is evidence that many men feel very differently to them. But in other ways, too, it has become very obvious that a large number of men feel very sympathetic.
Back in the days of the women's suffrage campaign, this was the kind of criticism women were up against:
A frightening, domineering archwife lowering the dignity of Parliament. Emotional and uncontrolled, she is clearly unsuitable to guide the country with rationality and restraint.The picture has changed rather a lot now. But, for two relatively high-profile men, these ideas linger.
(1) Alasdair Thompson, who has had to resign from his position as CEO of the Employers' and Manufacturers' Association (EMA), recently defended the gender pay gap, claiming that women take much more leave than men - an obvious example being maternity leave, a slightly less unnecessary example being "monthly sick problems". Eugh.
As inappropriate and thoughtless as this statement appeared to be, Thompson proceeded to dig himself a deep, deep hole. He appeared in a couple of TV interviews in which he behaved in a completely bizarre way, promised "satistics" and then produced anecdotes, and pretty much acted like someone who has no idea how to conduct himself in public. You can read about it, or watch the full interview, here.
Had a great time on twitter reading other people's comments on the issue, some of which have been recorded here.
One of my favourites was from someone calling themselves "Alasdair_at_EMA": 'I am being completely misquoted. I have not mentioned anything regarding menstruation. Period.'
Another @RyanSproull: "Women are actually paid less because they spend hours crying and gossiping and asking for directions."
Another @teh_aimee: "Dear Alasdair Thompson. People _all over the world_ are currently having to rehinge their jaws."
I have to admit to feeling a little sorry for Mr Thompson after he lost his job and became the butt of the country's jokes. He's obviously completely clueless rather than intentionally malicious, and he's probably a nice old man who dandles his grandchildren on his knee - definitely no domestic tyrant. But the things he said and the way he said them, as if they were perfectly obvious (again, see the TV interview) ... well, it became very clear that feminism still has some pertinent things to say to NZ culture.
So I thought that was it for a while - until...
(2) The marketing director for our very own slightly far Right political party, Act, came out with some comments so damaging that even the Act party had to get rid of him. Taken from this article.
John Ansell began with racism, criticising "white cowards" for not taking action against the "Maorification" of New Zealand. (The Maori being the indigenous people of this country.) He thinks that Maori get special treatment, and has compared the situation to apartheid.
Yuck.
This is the main focus of people's criticism of Ansell, and rightly so, I think. Couldn't help noticing one of Ansell's comments, though:
Act is "a men's party. I can't get them to agree to that but it's a party for men and women who think like men."
Great, here we go again. Then someone on twitter directed my attention to this comment thread which Ansell has been active on.
Man, I love it when people claim "the evidence of history" or "I'm just pointing out the simple truth", without specific reference to evidence of any kind.DPF: “I’d be fascinated to hear why ACT is not a party for women who think like women.”
The evidence of history, David.
The women who support ACT are not squeamish about speaking bluntly about rational issues (including racial issues). I respect them very much.
In short, they’ve got guts.
More typical women are less rational and more emotional. They’d rather preserve relationships than rock the boat. Is that not true? ... women, by a reasonable margin, preferred to cuddle the various minority groups and spend more of other people’s money on welfare that to take the hard economic decisions. These ‘soft mothers’ voted for short-term gain and long-term pain.
The ‘strong fathers’, also by a reasonable margin, voted for short-term pain and long-term gain. The rational ... approach.
Now of course I’ll be branded misogynist as well as racist. But again, I’m just pointing out the simple truth.
The soft mother model doesn’t seem to be universal. In Britain, women ‘got’ Margaret Thatcher’s bold approach (a woman who thought like a man if ever there was one).
But in New Zealand, when it comes to strong policies that actually allow the country to move forward, the girls let the side down. ...
And yes, here we are again. Facing up against a really delusional man who cannot stop talking when he really should do so. Facing claims that any women who are womanlike in character are irrational and unsuited to take part in government or even to vote, if Ansell is to be believed.
It's amazing how much has changed since 1893. And yet it's amazing how much things have stayed the same.
(An interesting blog post on the political implications of people like Ansell - if you're interested.)
Thursday, April 28, 2011
the royal wedding
A friend on facebook - only 20 minutes ago, approximately - told me that he was going to "judge" me because I look forward to watching the royal wedding with a bunch of friends as we drink tea and eat scones and cucumber sandwiches.
Apparently, women have an "innate cultural interest" in watching weddings and in fairytale prince and princess stories.
BAD innate cultural interest! NAUGHTY innate cultural interest!
Bah! It makes me want to throw things. Who is he to tell me what I should or should not be interested in? Who is he to interpret my reasons for wanting to watch the royal wedding?
And here they are:
(1) It's a chance to see a spectacle that I absolutely agree is outdated. It's none of my business what the UK decides to do about the monarchy. If I were in the UK I may feel a little more personally aggrieved that my tax pounds were going to this family. But since I'm not, and since I rather enjoy relics of the past, I am looking forward to seeing something grand and interesting and over-the-top.
(2) It also happens to be a rather cheerful event. No doubt my friend would prefer me to be holding parties discussing events in Libya or Afghanistan like a serious person, or moping around feeling depressed about the state of the world, but I for one have had enough gloom and am going to take this opportunity to celebrate love/marriage and run wild with it. I've had a crappy few months and I want to do something frivolous and ridiculous, dammit!
(3) The royal wedding is a historical event which is going to be watched by a huge number of people all over the world. Firstly, as an historian-in-training, I feel I should be interested in things that people will look back on in the future. The debate stirred up by this may lead to much more debate, with huge effects on the political structure of the UK and the Commonwealth. I want to be able to say that I saw the event that started it. Secondly, I've always felt a slight jealousy of people who can say that they took part in events of huge popular consciousness. My father saw the first landing on the moon. My sister saw Charles and Diana's wedding. Both events they witnessed with millions of people all over the globe. They can say they were a part of it.
(4) I like William. He came and spoke at the memorial service for the earthquake victims on March 18 and he seemed genuinely moved by what has happened here. In his speech, he only said things that were empathetic, encouraging and kind. It meant a lot to many people that he would come so far, so close to his wedding. It created a huge amount of goodwill that no video message from the British Prime Minister could have hoped to equal. As an ambassador for Britain, William was very successful. I think it's great that the links between countries can be deepened by these kinds of exchanges. So yeah - I like him. He seems nice, unaffected, and in love with a nice-looking woman. I think he earns his keep. I wish him well.
So there.
(Sorry about the rantyness. I'm tired of being told how I should feel about things.)
Apparently, women have an "innate cultural interest" in watching weddings and in fairytale prince and princess stories.
BAD innate cultural interest! NAUGHTY innate cultural interest!
Bah! It makes me want to throw things. Who is he to tell me what I should or should not be interested in? Who is he to interpret my reasons for wanting to watch the royal wedding?
And here they are:
(1) It's a chance to see a spectacle that I absolutely agree is outdated. It's none of my business what the UK decides to do about the monarchy. If I were in the UK I may feel a little more personally aggrieved that my tax pounds were going to this family. But since I'm not, and since I rather enjoy relics of the past, I am looking forward to seeing something grand and interesting and over-the-top.
(2) It also happens to be a rather cheerful event. No doubt my friend would prefer me to be holding parties discussing events in Libya or Afghanistan like a serious person, or moping around feeling depressed about the state of the world, but I for one have had enough gloom and am going to take this opportunity to celebrate love/marriage and run wild with it. I've had a crappy few months and I want to do something frivolous and ridiculous, dammit!
(3) The royal wedding is a historical event which is going to be watched by a huge number of people all over the world. Firstly, as an historian-in-training, I feel I should be interested in things that people will look back on in the future. The debate stirred up by this may lead to much more debate, with huge effects on the political structure of the UK and the Commonwealth. I want to be able to say that I saw the event that started it. Secondly, I've always felt a slight jealousy of people who can say that they took part in events of huge popular consciousness. My father saw the first landing on the moon. My sister saw Charles and Diana's wedding. Both events they witnessed with millions of people all over the globe. They can say they were a part of it.
(4) I like William. He came and spoke at the memorial service for the earthquake victims on March 18 and he seemed genuinely moved by what has happened here. In his speech, he only said things that were empathetic, encouraging and kind. It meant a lot to many people that he would come so far, so close to his wedding. It created a huge amount of goodwill that no video message from the British Prime Minister could have hoped to equal. As an ambassador for Britain, William was very successful. I think it's great that the links between countries can be deepened by these kinds of exchanges. So yeah - I like him. He seems nice, unaffected, and in love with a nice-looking woman. I think he earns his keep. I wish him well.
So there.
(Sorry about the rantyness. I'm tired of being told how I should feel about things.)
Saturday, April 2, 2011
why the rules against split infinitives and final prepositions are silly
I have a bone to pick, so to speak. A grammatical bone. I have endured in silence - well, not exactly silence - but I have endured in blogging silence for some time, and cannot hold back my blog-rant any more. [Sorry about the probable boringness of what will follow.]
I do not believe that the rules against splitting infinitives or putting prepositions at the end of a clause have any kind of justification whatsoever.
Take that, eighteenth and nineteenth century grammaticians who had nothing better to do than make up rules that were completely inappropriate to the English language.
This breaking-point comes as I have received more comments from my supervisors on the chapters of my thesis. I am willing to admit that in some cases moving the adjectives or prepositions around may make for more elegant writing. However, the majority of the 'corrections' they have made sound unnatural, and much worse than the original sentences, even if they are correct according to the rules against splitting infinitives or placing prepositions at the end of a clause. And so, I bring to you an angry rant against two very stupid grammatical rules:
- These rules are utterly inappropriate to English. English is not like French; it does not have 'infinitives' in the same way. English is not like Latin, which does proscribe prepositions at the end of clauses.
The rules were made up by busybody grammarians in the 18th or 19th centuries who decided that English should be more like what they saw as the ideal (though dead) language, Latin. As Tina Blue says,
"Some of the 'rules' of English grammar that you learned in school were devised by pedants who believed that English was inferior to Latin and should be improved by forcing it onto the Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. But English is descended from an ancestral German dialect, not from Latin, and certain of the rules based on Latin grammar simply do not fit the structure of English."
[NB: English does have a relationship to Latin, especially in borrowed words - but Blue is correct in saying that the grammar of our language is descended more directly from German.]
According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the rule about prepositions seems to have been created in 1672 by John Dryden, and "repeated uncritically thereafter". The same goes for the split infinitive, although that was only debated for the first time in the 19th century.
- Every great author or writer has broken both rules (and many others) on numerous occasions. That is, unless they too subscribe to the ridiculous myth. For example, we can see the following authors splitting their infinitives:
"But I would come back to where it please me to live: to really live." - Ernest Hemingway
"Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride..." - Robert Burns
"Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows / Thy pity may deserve to pitied be..." - Shakespeare
"And so we proceeded to minutely examine them." - Bram Stoker
And then, of course, there's Star Trek's famous "to boldly go where no man has gone before". Thank goodness the writers of Star Trek were sensible. It sounds so much cooler than the alternative.
And, of course, most of us have heard versions of Winston Churchill's response to an over-zealous editor who wanted him to remove a preposition from the end of a sentence: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!"
As A Dictionary of Modern English Usage says,
"Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards." [quoted here]
- Most people who are actually qualified, intelligent grammarians refuse to accept the need for these rules. For instance, the Oxford University Press decided in 1995 that there is nothing wrong with the split infinitive.
Another expert, Edward D. Johnson, said in 1982 that the idea that a sentence cannot end with a preposition is a "superstition".
Meanwhile, the acknowledged expert in the field, H. W. Fowler, points out the fact that people who say the final preposition is wrong, when used as a phrasal verb, are actually just showing their own ignorance, because the final "preposition" in this context is actually an "adverbial particle"!
[NB: a phrasal verb is a verb that absolutely must have a preposition after it, in order to understand the meaning. For example, the verb "to put" completely changes its meaning when it is becomes "to put up" or "to put up with".]
- Of course there are times when using these principles makes a piece of writing better. But there are other times when the use of these rules simply obscures meaning or unnecessarily complicates a perfectly good sentence. Here is an example:
"The government expected unemployment to more than double in the next three years."
As Karl Craig points out, where else could you put "more than"?
- Because people push rules like this which don't matter, and which have no reflection in the language, it undermines the importance of other rules that do actually have some foundation, that actually affect the meaning of sentences.
- I can understand following these rules in formal settings, such as writing a cover letter for a job - just in case the person reading it is deluded into thinking your final preposition is bad usage and doesn't give you the job. However, I am starting to hate these rules SO MUCH that I feel we should all start making an effort to banish them forever. If the person who marks my thesis has a problem with my prose for these reasons, I'd rather contest his judgment afterward, explaining my reasons, than change something that is perfectly good beforehand.
- I just find it quite sad that children in schools are being taught silly rules, wasting their time, or writers who produce perfectly adequate work are being scorned for their use of these constructions. One of the coolest things about the real English language is its capacity for creative fiddling. I find it very, very sad that creativity is inhibited for no good reason.
Make the world a better place! Eschew these pointless rules! Long live the split infinitive! Long live the final preposition!
Here is something I did because I felt so mad!!!!!
Feel free to make it into a t-shirt or something :)
Sources I looked at:
General articles on grammar myths:
'Grammar Myths', by Karl Craig
Grammar Girl's 'Top Ten Grammar Myths'
Wikipedia on 'hypercorrection'
On prepositions:
The debate over Churchill's famous sarcastic usage of "up with which I will not put".
'Prepositions at the end of sentences: further explanation of why the "rule" is wrong,' by Tina Blue
'It's usually not wrong to end a sentence with a preposition', by Tina Blue
Grammar Girl on final prepositions
On split infinitives:
The Independent, on the OUP's decision to allow split infinitives, and the Queen's English Society's response
Wikipedia on split infinitives
"The so-called split infinitive"
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, on split infinitives
I do not believe that the rules against splitting infinitives or putting prepositions at the end of a clause have any kind of justification whatsoever.
Take that, eighteenth and nineteenth century grammaticians who had nothing better to do than make up rules that were completely inappropriate to the English language.
This breaking-point comes as I have received more comments from my supervisors on the chapters of my thesis. I am willing to admit that in some cases moving the adjectives or prepositions around may make for more elegant writing. However, the majority of the 'corrections' they have made sound unnatural, and much worse than the original sentences, even if they are correct according to the rules against splitting infinitives or placing prepositions at the end of a clause. And so, I bring to you an angry rant against two very stupid grammatical rules:
- These rules are utterly inappropriate to English. English is not like French; it does not have 'infinitives' in the same way. English is not like Latin, which does proscribe prepositions at the end of clauses.
The rules were made up by busybody grammarians in the 18th or 19th centuries who decided that English should be more like what they saw as the ideal (though dead) language, Latin. As Tina Blue says,
"Some of the 'rules' of English grammar that you learned in school were devised by pedants who believed that English was inferior to Latin and should be improved by forcing it onto the Procrustean bed of Latin grammar. But English is descended from an ancestral German dialect, not from Latin, and certain of the rules based on Latin grammar simply do not fit the structure of English."
[NB: English does have a relationship to Latin, especially in borrowed words - but Blue is correct in saying that the grammar of our language is descended more directly from German.]
According to the Cambridge Grammar of the English Language, the rule about prepositions seems to have been created in 1672 by John Dryden, and "repeated uncritically thereafter". The same goes for the split infinitive, although that was only debated for the first time in the 19th century.
- Every great author or writer has broken both rules (and many others) on numerous occasions. That is, unless they too subscribe to the ridiculous myth. For example, we can see the following authors splitting their infinitives:
"But I would come back to where it please me to live: to really live." - Ernest Hemingway
"Who dared to nobly stem tyrannic pride..." - Robert Burns
"Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows / Thy pity may deserve to pitied be..." - Shakespeare
"And so we proceeded to minutely examine them." - Bram Stoker
And then, of course, there's Star Trek's famous "to boldly go where no man has gone before". Thank goodness the writers of Star Trek were sensible. It sounds so much cooler than the alternative.
And, of course, most of us have heard versions of Winston Churchill's response to an over-zealous editor who wanted him to remove a preposition from the end of a sentence: "This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put!"
As A Dictionary of Modern English Usage says,
"Those who lay down the universal principle that final prepositions are 'inelegant' are unconsciously trying to deprive the English language of a valuable idiomatic resource, which has been used freely by all our greatest writers except those whose instinct for English idiom has been overpowered by notions of correctness derived from Latin standards." [quoted here]
- Most people who are actually qualified, intelligent grammarians refuse to accept the need for these rules. For instance, the Oxford University Press decided in 1995 that there is nothing wrong with the split infinitive.
Another expert, Edward D. Johnson, said in 1982 that the idea that a sentence cannot end with a preposition is a "superstition".
Meanwhile, the acknowledged expert in the field, H. W. Fowler, points out the fact that people who say the final preposition is wrong, when used as a phrasal verb, are actually just showing their own ignorance, because the final "preposition" in this context is actually an "adverbial particle"!
[NB: a phrasal verb is a verb that absolutely must have a preposition after it, in order to understand the meaning. For example, the verb "to put" completely changes its meaning when it is becomes "to put up" or "to put up with".]
- Of course there are times when using these principles makes a piece of writing better. But there are other times when the use of these rules simply obscures meaning or unnecessarily complicates a perfectly good sentence. Here is an example:
"The government expected unemployment to more than double in the next three years."
As Karl Craig points out, where else could you put "more than"?
- Because people push rules like this which don't matter, and which have no reflection in the language, it undermines the importance of other rules that do actually have some foundation, that actually affect the meaning of sentences.
- I can understand following these rules in formal settings, such as writing a cover letter for a job - just in case the person reading it is deluded into thinking your final preposition is bad usage and doesn't give you the job. However, I am starting to hate these rules SO MUCH that I feel we should all start making an effort to banish them forever. If the person who marks my thesis has a problem with my prose for these reasons, I'd rather contest his judgment afterward, explaining my reasons, than change something that is perfectly good beforehand.
- I just find it quite sad that children in schools are being taught silly rules, wasting their time, or writers who produce perfectly adequate work are being scorned for their use of these constructions. One of the coolest things about the real English language is its capacity for creative fiddling. I find it very, very sad that creativity is inhibited for no good reason.
Make the world a better place! Eschew these pointless rules! Long live the split infinitive! Long live the final preposition!
Here is something I did because I felt so mad!!!!!Feel free to make it into a t-shirt or something :)
Sources I looked at:
General articles on grammar myths:
'Grammar Myths', by Karl Craig
Grammar Girl's 'Top Ten Grammar Myths'
Wikipedia on 'hypercorrection'
On prepositions:
The debate over Churchill's famous sarcastic usage of "up with which I will not put".
'Prepositions at the end of sentences: further explanation of why the "rule" is wrong,' by Tina Blue
'It's usually not wrong to end a sentence with a preposition', by Tina Blue
Grammar Girl on final prepositions
On split infinitives:
The Independent, on the OUP's decision to allow split infinitives, and the Queen's English Society's response
Wikipedia on split infinitives
"The so-called split infinitive"
Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage, on split infinitives
Thursday, November 11, 2010
an open letter
To the able supervisors of the world, and specifically mine,
Greetings. I appreciate you. I would be lost without you. You are amazing, and helpful, and wonderful in almost every way. I would have had a nervous breakdown long ago if it were not for you.
One small note, though. You spent basically a whole year in 2008 criticising my tendency to perfectionism. I admit that it took me some time to feel okay about submitting something to you that wasn't absolutely perfect. It took quite some trust of you on my part to start giving you unfinished drafts. So I am thankful that you made me realise that you wouldn't throw me out of university if I handed in something that was not very polished.
However, now that I have overcome this hurdle, I am beginning to feel tempted to revert into my perfectionism. Every time I send you a piece of writing, I make it very clear that I have not edited this for prose. All I want is to get down the basic ideas, however clumsy they may appear.
But it seems that you cannot resist the urge to point out all the failings of my draft chapters. The comments you return are heavily sprinkled with "Horrible prose!" "Awkward sentence" "Clumsy prose" in red pen, as if I were not aware of this already.
This makes it incredibly depressing to read through the comments. For one thing, it makes me feel like a very bad writer, as if every historian who ever existed managed to write in flawless, flowing prose at first attempt, as if ideas just flow beautifully out of historians without any painful hard work. I don't measure up to these paragons of my imagination.
For another, it makes me go a little bit insane, because I feel slightly offended that you think I didn't recognise these failings already. Of course there is bad writing in this draft! I realised that already! I feel overwhelming urges to run upstairs to your offices, comments in hand, and go through them painstakingly, assuring you both that I already knew that these chapters were not the pinnacle of literary achievement. This means I can hardly pay attention to your more helpful comments because I am so wound up about the unhelpful ones.
Also, it was actually very wise of me to choose not to revise my prose before I handed it to you. You have since told me that I need to rewrite/restructure everything. I am okay with that. I can see the need for it. It will make my thesis better. However, if I had spent hours making clumsy prose elegant, it would have been even more painful to completely scrap some sections and rewrite others.
Well, that's all I have to say. Let me assure you again that I think it is quite likely that I have the best supervisors in the world. I really do love being your thesis student. I am just having a little trouble with this one particular issue and I needed to vent. I will still bake you an amazing cake each when I finish my MA, and write you a card full of hyperbole when it comes to your mad supervisory skills.
Yours sincerely,
Allie
Greetings. I appreciate you. I would be lost without you. You are amazing, and helpful, and wonderful in almost every way. I would have had a nervous breakdown long ago if it were not for you.
One small note, though. You spent basically a whole year in 2008 criticising my tendency to perfectionism. I admit that it took me some time to feel okay about submitting something to you that wasn't absolutely perfect. It took quite some trust of you on my part to start giving you unfinished drafts. So I am thankful that you made me realise that you wouldn't throw me out of university if I handed in something that was not very polished.
However, now that I have overcome this hurdle, I am beginning to feel tempted to revert into my perfectionism. Every time I send you a piece of writing, I make it very clear that I have not edited this for prose. All I want is to get down the basic ideas, however clumsy they may appear.
But it seems that you cannot resist the urge to point out all the failings of my draft chapters. The comments you return are heavily sprinkled with "Horrible prose!" "Awkward sentence" "Clumsy prose" in red pen, as if I were not aware of this already.
This makes it incredibly depressing to read through the comments. For one thing, it makes me feel like a very bad writer, as if every historian who ever existed managed to write in flawless, flowing prose at first attempt, as if ideas just flow beautifully out of historians without any painful hard work. I don't measure up to these paragons of my imagination.
For another, it makes me go a little bit insane, because I feel slightly offended that you think I didn't recognise these failings already. Of course there is bad writing in this draft! I realised that already! I feel overwhelming urges to run upstairs to your offices, comments in hand, and go through them painstakingly, assuring you both that I already knew that these chapters were not the pinnacle of literary achievement. This means I can hardly pay attention to your more helpful comments because I am so wound up about the unhelpful ones.
Also, it was actually very wise of me to choose not to revise my prose before I handed it to you. You have since told me that I need to rewrite/restructure everything. I am okay with that. I can see the need for it. It will make my thesis better. However, if I had spent hours making clumsy prose elegant, it would have been even more painful to completely scrap some sections and rewrite others.
Well, that's all I have to say. Let me assure you again that I think it is quite likely that I have the best supervisors in the world. I really do love being your thesis student. I am just having a little trouble with this one particular issue and I needed to vent. I will still bake you an amazing cake each when I finish my MA, and write you a card full of hyperbole when it comes to your mad supervisory skills.
Yours sincerely,
Allie
Monday, November 8, 2010
horrid books
I've been reading some horrid books lately, books written leading up to the second world war, books supporting Hitler and justifying his policies against the Jews. At this stage there was no Holocaust but there was so much ugliness, and these are ugly books, written by horrid people. I don't really enjoy reading them.
When I was doing my research at the British Library last year, I asked to look at a few British Fascist journals, and was surprised to be told that I could, as long as I moved over close to the librarians' desk so they could keep an eye on me. I was surprised, but after I looked at the newspapers I understood. It could have been very tempting to many people to rip those papers up, they were filled with such foul thoughts. In the interests of preserving history I had no such temptation, but I could understand the urge.
It's not pleasant, but it is yet another way in which history has been brought alive for me, and in which my own motivations for doing history have been made clear. It really matters that someone reads these books, and reminds others about what we can become if we are not careful.
As an afterthought: This is just another reason why I'm concerned that the British Government has recently decided to cut 40% of its funding of its universities, specifically targeting the arts and humanities. [See Naomi Wolf's take on the matter here.] Because, apparently, science and technology are the only things that matter. Lip service will be paid to the crucial part the arts and the humanities play in our civilisation. Politicians will pretend that an insightful and honest interpretation of the past matters to them, and that history is not merely a tool for their own personal axe-grinding. And, meanwhile, people will not understand what happened, because there will be no money to read old things at the British Library.
When I was doing my research at the British Library last year, I asked to look at a few British Fascist journals, and was surprised to be told that I could, as long as I moved over close to the librarians' desk so they could keep an eye on me. I was surprised, but after I looked at the newspapers I understood. It could have been very tempting to many people to rip those papers up, they were filled with such foul thoughts. In the interests of preserving history I had no such temptation, but I could understand the urge.
It's not pleasant, but it is yet another way in which history has been brought alive for me, and in which my own motivations for doing history have been made clear. It really matters that someone reads these books, and reminds others about what we can become if we are not careful.
As an afterthought: This is just another reason why I'm concerned that the British Government has recently decided to cut 40% of its funding of its universities, specifically targeting the arts and humanities. [See Naomi Wolf's take on the matter here.] Because, apparently, science and technology are the only things that matter. Lip service will be paid to the crucial part the arts and the humanities play in our civilisation. Politicians will pretend that an insightful and honest interpretation of the past matters to them, and that history is not merely a tool for their own personal axe-grinding. And, meanwhile, people will not understand what happened, because there will be no money to read old things at the British Library.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
heart a librarian today
I've done something new for me - started a facebook protest group. It's called "Heart UC Library" and is really quite a polite protest, but nevertheless a protest. Unfortunately, when we set up the group, we couldn't find "People's Rebellion" under the group types available.
I am embarrassed to say that our university, the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, has proposed to "disestablish" the jobs held by 35 of our most qualified librarians, including interloans staff (without whom it would be impossible to do research), only replacing them with unqualified staff, and to "move away" from printed books into e-books alone. At least, that's what it sounds like. It's hard to tell because the university bureaucracy is trying to keep this very quiet, and hasn't released the details publicly.
It really is frightening that a university is attacking its own library in this way, the very heart of any university.
And if you are a student at my university, at any other NZ university, or from anywhere but just indignant at these proposals, please join our group. There is going to be a meeting on Monday with the Vice Chancellor to discuss how much more to make public, and he needs to know that we care about our library and will not let it just disappear from under our nose without batting an eyelid.
I am embarrassed to say that our university, the University of Canterbury, in Christchurch, New Zealand, has proposed to "disestablish" the jobs held by 35 of our most qualified librarians, including interloans staff (without whom it would be impossible to do research), only replacing them with unqualified staff, and to "move away" from printed books into e-books alone. At least, that's what it sounds like. It's hard to tell because the university bureaucracy is trying to keep this very quiet, and hasn't released the details publicly.
It really is frightening that a university is attacking its own library in this way, the very heart of any university.
And if you are a student at my university, at any other NZ university, or from anywhere but just indignant at these proposals, please join our group. There is going to be a meeting on Monday with the Vice Chancellor to discuss how much more to make public, and he needs to know that we care about our library and will not let it just disappear from under our nose without batting an eyelid.
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