Monday, October 25, 2010

Reconsidering Perspective on Grammar

I read the piece "Reconsidering Some Perspective Rules of Grammar and Composition," by Bradford R. Connaster, and I found it very interesting. He set out to try to explain that there were two different types of grammar in the language that we use to communicate, and they are organic grammar and perspective grammar. He explains organic grammar as the grammar that has been hard-wired into our brains and that we understand from the way we heard it and first developed it. The perspective grammar is the grammar that was taught to us in school and the way that grammar "attempts" to explain the way of a language. He says attempt because he says that there are exceptions and that not everything can be understood through guidelines and explanations. I agree with this and I think he is on to something. He goes on to point out how a reader who has an issue with either their perspective or organic grammar can be thrown off by the usage of the writer in the same area. They may have an inner conflict with these relationships and it will interrupt and affect their reading of the piece as a whole. I believe that at times there is a want to write things a certain way because of the way they make sense in sounding them out or following rules, but we can't do it because it breaks either our organic grammar or our perspective grammar. I also strongly agree at the end when he says perhaps becoming an expert means that a different code of writing is applied for the audience one is writing for and there are different codes for all different audiences. He says that we should write in different ways and that discriminating in this way is a good thing, because it can make what one is writing have a much stronger effect. I agree but it also makes me nervous because I feel I haven't completely understood my own yet. Anyone else have thought?

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