Following is a hypothetical dialogue between the Linguistic Anarchist (LA) and the Grammar Curmudgeon (GC).

LA:  Mudge – you don't mind if I call you Mudge, do you? – you seem awfully uptight about proper English and grammar. I hope you aren't really as uptight as you appear to be about speaking "proper" English.

GC:  Oh, but I am.  I think it's important.

LA:  Well, I think it's silly.  All these grammar rules.  Like, who cares about rules that some dead cavemen in the mountains of Europe made up a long time ago?

GC (sighs):   I hate to start off on the wrong foot, but when you say that the rules of grammar were made up by cavemen in Europe, you are already showing that you are ignorant of the history of language.  I would like to keep this a friendly conversation, but I must ask you not to display such ignorance right at the outset.

LA:  Well, then, who did invent the rules of grammar?

GC:  They weren't "invented"; they have evolved.  I don't want to give you a seminar in the history of Indo-European languages (of which English is but one branch rather far down the evolutionary ladder), but most likely the cavemen of which you speak communicated by a series of variously inflected grunts – or by body language, such as beating each other over the head with clubs.  But this proved unsatisfactory, so a more sophisticated means of communication – language as we know it – evolved.

LA:  So language evolved.  What's that got to do with grammar?  Language is, like, the words we use, y'know.  Grammar is a buncha rules – y'know what I mean?

GC:  Yes, unfortunately, I know what you mean.  It is possible to make yourself understood, even if you are quite ungraceful about it.  Let's take it from the top.  Language consists of words, right?

LA:  Right.

GC:  And we can't put words together in any order, can we?

LA:  Well, I guess, maybe not.  But, like, grammar is more complicated than that.  It has all this stuff about subjects and verbs and, like, the things they teach in English class.

GC:  Yes, it is more complicated, but I said we were going to take it from the top.  So let's start with arrangement of words.  Suppose I say to you, "Mother cat the kittens has five."  What do you suppose that means?

LA (after some thought):  Like, it probably means that the mother cat has five kittens.

GC:  Good guess.  But it took a while to get it, didn't it?  You know why?  Because the word order is unconventional – it is different from the word order of conventional grammar.  And how do you know that the cat has kittens and not that she had them and maybe they all died.  You know because the tense of the verb has is present tense, and tense is a grammatical concept.  And finally, you assumed that I was using "mother" to describe the cat.  I could have been talking to my mother.

LA:  You lost me there.

GC:  I'll explain.  If I said, "The mother cat has five kittens," I would be making a statement about the mother cat to anyone, using the word mother to describe the cat.  But if I said, "Mother, the cat has five kittens," I would be talking to my mother, using the word mother as a noun of direct address.  The grammar of the sentence – the word order and punctuation – makes the difference.

LA:  Far out.  But I still understood most of it, even if it wasn't proper English.  And, who cares, anyway?  What Americans speak isn't "proper" English.

GC:  I'll reluctantly grant you that last point.  But even the most ungrammatical Americans observe certain conventions of word order and word forms to make themselves understood.  And these conventions. like it or not, consitute grammar.  Not many Americans go around saying, "Mary and me is friends with each another."

LA:  Whoa!  Maybe we, like, don't say that – I mean, like, "each another" – but me and my friends might say, "Mary and me be friends," and everybody knows what we mean, y'know.  Then, like, in school they say it's not proper English.  I mean, like, who are they to say?  That's their conventions – or whatever – not ours.  Y'know what I mean?

GC:  I'll try to answer that, but do me a favor if you can:  try to stop saying like, y'know, and y'know what I mean.  It drives me nuts.  Now – it appears that we're back where we started, with the European cavemen who invented grammar to annoy their descendents for thousands of years to come – only now you're passing the blame to schoolteachers and those few other adults who sadistically wish to inflict their standards of proper English upon you.  Is that right?

LA:  Okay.  So maybe they don't make up these stupid rules.  Who are they to decide what's right?

GC:  They didn't.  They are simply passing on what educated people have agreed to do with respect to language.

LA:  So these educated people . . . they, like – sorry – they sit around and make up rules?

GC:  No.  They use language this way, following these rules, because it works.  We can all communicate better if we follow the same rules about how to do it.  You use grammar all the time – you just don't know you do.  Since you speak English, you generally put the subject before the verb, except when you're asking a question, because that's the conventional way of doing it.  You don't stop to think, "Hey, I'll start this sentence with the grammatical subject and then have a verb and then finish the idea" – you just do it.

LA:  But me and my friends – we break some of these rules, and we still understand each other.

GC:  Sure, you do.  And your friends can understand you perfectly if you say, "Me and Mary be friends."  But you better not go for a job interview and say, "Me be here to see Mr. Jones."

LA:  Why not?

GC:  Because you won't get the job – unless it's pitching burgers, and they don't give a damn whether or not you can speak correct English.  And because that's not the conventional way of using the language.

LA:  There you go with "conventional" again.  So my friends and me, we're unconventional.  We're creative.

GC:  Good for you.  But creativity and unconventionality do not mean breaking every rule in the book.  Creativity means operating inventively and originally within the framework of the language and its rules of grammar.  The more you understand about something and how it works, the more flexibility you have to be creative with it.  Language is no exception.  If you understand how it works – that is, its structure and grammar – you can use it better.

LA:  Well, that's what we're doing.  Like, we're breaking the rules to make the language better.

GC:  Even you know better than that.  As sure as you're standing here, you know that putting like into almost every sentence doesn't improve it.  It just shows a bad habit of making redundant noises.  And when you say, "Me and Mary be friends," you are not bending the rules.  You're showing that you don't know them in the first place.  That is, by definition, ignorance.  And what you're doing is not better because it works only with people who are equally ignorant.  All it does with educated people is to show them that you don't know – or care about – the rules.

LA:  Well, maybe I don't.  And maybe I don't care either.

GC:  (sighs) Let's try another approach.  Do you play any games?  I don't mean computer games or videogames.  Do you play any sports?

LA:  Sure.

GC:  And the games have rules.  Right?

LA:  Yes.

GC:  Did you make up the rules yourself?

LA:  No.

GC:  Then why do you follow them?

LA:  Because the game wouldn't make any sense without rules.

GC:  It wouldn't make any sense if everyone made up his or her own rules?  You couldn't possibly play it if the rules kept changing?  You'd be really ticked off if some new kid came along and said that the rules you play by – and the rules that generations of kids before you played by – were silly and that you should play by the new kid's rules?  Is that what you're saying?

LA:  Well, yes.  But grammar isn't a game.

GC:  I didn't say it was.  But it's like a game . . .

LA (interrupting):  You said like!

GC:  Yes, but I used it correctly.  Don't interrupt.  Grammar is like a game because we set up agreed-upon rules to tell us how to play.  There are boundaries, ways to do things, some things that we are not allowed to do, even (as you have learned in school) penalties for making errors.  The object of the game is to score points.

LA:  What do you mean – "score points"?

GC:  To express ideas.  That's scoring points – to do so with so much grace and ease that you make something hard look easy.  Did you ever notice, in a game, that the spectators are always cheering the athletes who make spectacular plays look easy?  Every time you speak with such skill that your listeners are inspired, every time you write a letter with such grace that the recipient is moved, every time you write a report that impresses someone with its insights, every time you write a poem or a novel that fires the readers' imaginations – every time you do any of these things, you score.

LA:  And I suppose you think you're the referee?

GC:  No, I'm the coach.  You can argue with the referee if you want, but, if you want to win the game, you don't argue with the coach.

[Note:  Some of the lines attributed to the Linguistic Anarchist are not invented; they are paraphrases of actual comments that the author of this article has received.]

Rich Turner