Two guys with nothing better to do came to my neighborhood to correct spelling and punctuation errors at local businesses. Clearly they feel their time is better spent here than, say, Colorado. Now that's a state with no typos.
They call themselves the "Typo Eradication Advancement League" (TEAL) and the fancy title is enough to impress the Chicago Tribune. But these guys need a lesson in both basic linguistics and etiquette.
Good spelling and punctuation are nice. Certainly makes you look smarter (although incomplete sentences seem to be tolerated in blogs for the sake of drama. Or maybe TEAL just hasn't found us yet). What bothers me, however, is they don't seem to be aware of the fact that this section of Milwaukee Avenue is a multiethnic neighborhood (including Mexicans and other Latinos, Polish, Russians, and Ukranians) where many don't speak English as a first language -- a fact that probably influences the number of typos they find. Those furniture stores TEAL goes after, for example, don't have any typos on their signs in Spanish -- but TEAL's photos conveniently leave anything in that language cropped out.
Now, maybe I've misjudged -- I didn't go to those stores and ask who the owners are, and whether they were born in the U.S., what languages they speak, and who made the signs. I think doing so on the heels of TEAL would be tacky. But the U.S. Census data from 2000 shows that in our zip code 22% are foreign-born and over 50% speak a language other than English at home.
Frankly, this more-grammatical-than-thou posturing in a largely immigrant area smacks of anti-immigrantism. At best.
On a more theoretical level, aren't the grammatical superheroes at TEAL aware that language is always in motion? That the written form is also constantly changing? That the normative grammars of their elementary school experiences are part of a hegemonic discourse? That a focus on grammatical errors is not only irritating, but shows their fundamental misunderstandings about who language belongs to (namely, its speakers, not their 7th grade English teacher)?!
Guys, please. You want to fight this fight? Great. Go teach elementary school kids. Go teach ESL. Become a copy-editor. Heck, if you are that desperate for something to do, I'll even let you proofread my dissertation.
Because I'm nice that way.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Invasion of the Grammar Police
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2 comments:
Yuck. Self-important folks have nothing better to do than bother working people... (growl)
A person I work with is very pretentious, and loves to use words above her vocabulary. The problem for me is never when she spells them; it's when she says them wrong -- "disconcerning" is a particularly sore nerve because I hear it so often, and so is "that's the jest of it." And yet I leave her alone: all I could give her is embarrassment. The people that I work with who are unpretentious but simply have poor spelling do not even trip my radar.
I tutored ESL students in a writing center for several years and found it not only rewarding but eye opening. Everything is different: not just spelling, grammar, and lexicon are different, but citation and rhetorical styles, feelings about quotation without reference, and so forth. What can be learned in the slippage between two writing traditions is amazing.
Bingo, Ducks! I think part of the nails-on-a-chalkboard reaction I have to TEAL is that I went to an Ivy League college myself, and I know many see us as arrogant know-it-alls, and can't stand it when others want to play into that stereotype. It's one thing to be smart (although most smart people don't - surprise - go to the Ivies!), it's another thing to be obnoxious. True intelligence is knowing the difference, IMHO.
Good for you for teaching ESL! And being smart enough to learn something from that experience! :-)
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