Brain Training - Enhance & Optimize Brain

On Grammar

We hear two extreme views about grammar. One view is that grammar is not important as long as communication is established. The other view is elitist and condescending perspective, probably from people who repel us and thus keep students away from grammar.

This is similar to the question - is education important? There are so many individuals who have succeeded despite a lack of education! There are questions to be asked here. One - would these people do better if they received a good education? Two- would education be useful if it triggered sensemaking instead of information transfer?

Let us specifically address the grammar question. Grammar helps in seeing patterns in language and thus processes information better, faster and easier. For instance, one may analyze adjectives and interpret the kind of thinking the speaker engages in.

Contrary to the popular notion of language education through reading and vocabulary, there is a lot more to it. Meaning emerges from words - it is a nonlinear sum total of the words. So the connectors- interjunctions, conjunctions, prepositions become important. "pen with ink", "pen on ink", " pen for ink"- the same words are connected differently.

What sets humans apart from other sentient beings? Cognition? Ability to communicate experiences? Language? Linguistic faculties are extremely essential. Can you imagine your dog or a vulture seeing electromagnetism or machine learning algorithms to solve problems?

People who go through language in the normal, natural, organic approach, miss out on a few critical and analytical aspects of a text. For instance, if I say "ontogeny replicates phylogeny" - what creative (Literature) and critical (Philosophical) perspectives can I draw from this?

Why would the author create a character out of ontogeny? Why is this like a person X copying a person Y? Are abstracting a lot of experiences into a concept called ontogeny? Into phylogeny? Are we then personifying both the notions?

We tend to use a lot of metaphorical extensions in language. We extend the usual use cases of words into new scenarios by using metaphors. For instance, we say "don't leave me in the dark" or "he is with you". Why would we extend the meaning to new scenarios?

Can we say that we are reusing words? Why would we do that? We could also call it " abuse of notation" as we do, in Mathematics. Wouldn't this confuse readers, when they have to deal with ambiguity - more than one meaning per word? But does this offer convenience of remembering fewer words? Does this make language compact?

These arguments trespass across Literature and Philosophy, Grammar and Interpretation, Linguistics and Aesthetics, but these critical and creative perspectives help us get more out of language.

As George Bernard Shaw states "the saddest thing about communication is the illusion that it happened". So can we let students experience the bliss associated with this illusion? Can we change the current authoritarian paradigm of grammar education and language education?

(Copied)

Register for Free Seminar on Brain Training....