![]() We think PURISTS is the possible answer on this clue.Ĭrossword clues for Grammar police, e.g. This answers first letter of which starts with P and can be found at the end of S. The crossword clue possible answer is available in 7 letters. ![]() was discovered last seen in the Jat the LA Times Crossword. Sigh.This crossword clue Grammar police, e.g. Then, since deviations in spelling and mechanical matters are especially easy to find and fix, these become the focus of instruction and remediation in “grammar”. So instead of exposing the fascinating intricacies of English grammar - as in, say, Huddleston and Pullum’s A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar (Cambridge, 2005) - school instruction in grammar tends to be a matter of rooting out (the Grammar Police) and then “fixing” (the Corrections Officer) non-standard or regional usages.įrom there, it’s a short step to seeing any sort of deviation from conventions of language use - including spelling errors and deviations in mechanical matters like capitalization and punctuation - as in the same bag as non-standard and regional usages, so as “mistakes in grammar”. In certain contexts and for certain purposes, non-standard (e.g., I didn’t see nobody) and regional (e.g., My car needs washed) usages are devalued socially and even viewed as mere errors (like slips of the tongue or pen), with the result that the teaching of “grammar” in the schools becomes largely a matter of identifying such usages explicitly, so that they can be rooted out and “corrected” to roughly equivalent standard, cross-regional usages ( I saw no one, I didn’t see anybody My car needs washing, My car needs to be washed). This complex and largely tacit system becomes a matter of explicit discussion when it collides with competing, different, equally complex and largely tacit systems, in particular various non-standard and regional varieties. ![]() Not ony complex - consider the huge Cambridge Grammar of the English Language (which aims to give an account of the grammar of “general-purpose, present-day, international Standard English” and is focused primarily on syntax) - but almost entirely below the level of consciousness. The core of what linguists think of as the grammar of a language is the very complex system of sentence structure in the language, its syntax. So it is, alas, with the Whamond cartoon. But if you look at some of the enormous number of sites using the expression, you’ll see that most of them aren’t about what linguists think of as grammar, but about what I’ve called garmmra (largely spelling and punctuation). Grammar Police is an instance of the X police snowclonelet (which I haven’t posted on before), and a very popular one at that. ![]() An alert on Facebook by John Gintell on 2/15, to this Reality Check cartoon by Dave Whamond from 10/14/16:īut wait! Just what is being policed and corrected here?įrom my 6/9/12 posting “The Grammar Police”: ![]()
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