A War (That/Which) Might Never End

"...nonstandard, but rule-bound, dialect (Greene)".

War, as defined by Wikipedia is an organized, armed, and, often, a prolonged conflict that is carried on between states, nations, or other parties typified by extreme aggression, social disruption, and usually high mortality

The topic of grammar use is very recurrent in our society, and even if we don’t normally relate grammar to politics, we are in the 21st century, and today everything is possible. What an interesting debate that Garner and Greene present about this topic.

As I read them they got pretty intense. I could relate to Colombia's never-ending fight of Conservative and Liberal political parties. It has been 80 years in which Colombia has been fighting because of this issue. And today, “prescriptivists” and “descriptivist’s” continue fighting over the Language Wars. “The fighting must stop.” (Garner)

Garner as a prescriptivist focuses on how language is used and Greene as a descriptivist tries to describe language as it is used.

As soon as I learned that Greene “glories” slangs and different dialects, I picked a side. The descriptivist one. I am totally into descriptivists, I think in some ways they can be more lenient. And rules for prescriptivists are harder to follow. Not that I don't like hard, I like challenge, who doesn't? But I prefer to write with more freedom. Slang is a part of culture, and it is a sense of identity we all should have a right to. Prescriptivists are the ones that “impose bogus nonrules on too many school children” (Greene). In school we are taught over and over the many diferrent rules about grammar. Much of which are essential for us, but a lot of them aren’t. And they shouldn’t be imposed.

“However, even White doesn’t agree with White.” States Greene as he states that even the people who make the rules make mistakes. He makes a mistake in his own essay “Death of a Pig” in which he mistakes “which” and “that”. Greene later says that there is no reason to comfort him, since he still remains a “fine American writer” from his point of view.  Later, what convinced me the most is the part were he indicates that we are “free” to choose if we want which, or that. Ahhh, freedom. Another recurrent topic that comes from way back and is fought over during the colonization. Anyway, lets continue.

They really get into it when Garner replies and says that there shouldn’t be “labels” between “prescriptivist” and “descriptivist”

He makes his points when he says that today, it is accepted that native speakers can’t make mistakes and he supports this with various examples.

Even if I am more descriptivist I hope that some tradition is conserved in language, since language is everything and we never stop and question where it comes from or even what makes it the way that it is.