The descriptivists take a more cautious approach to new structures, saying that language came first; grammar came second, and the role of grammar is to describe language as it occurs. If a new construction does the job, grammar will eventually figure out how to describe it, moving the new construction through a hierarchy of use, from "slang," to "colloquial," to "informal," and finally to "accepted." Descriptivists are more like those folks with cameras capturing the secret lives of wildlife ("We now have the opportunity to see the wolf pups at play"), except instead of filming wildlife they hunt down and accept language as an evolving form.
My stance on all writing rules, from the nuts and bolts of grammar to the other much discussed rules of fiction writing (like staying attached to only one point of view, or "show, don't tell, which I discussed earlier in Every "Rule" Has Exceptions), is that the only rule that matters to the writer is "Does it work?"
That "Does it Work?" rule has a warning, though. It's not "Does it Work?" for the writer. It's "Does it Work?" for the reader (or editor, who functions as kind of a proxy uber-reader). And the only way for a new writer to know if something works is to try it out on readers. If the usage slips by the readers and makes the story more effective, then the writer and readers win. The rule steps back, superseded by an effective but non-prescribed use. If the usage breaks the sentence or distracts the reader, the story and the writer lose. The rule triumphs.
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Of course, I'm sure there are a bunch of prescriptivists out there saying "yeah, well I get thrown out of the story every time I see a comma splice." That's something to be taken into account as well, though I think that more people will accept agrammatical sentences that flow than will be caught up by them.
I'm on their side, though, for much of their distress. Most errors in convention are exactly that, errors, not the fine tuning of language's nuances. In other words, the writer who put in the comma splice wasn't doing it for effect; it was just a simple mistake, and sentence clarity would be improved by repunctuating.
I was in a workshop with a writer whose knowledge of writing conventions was spotty at best. His stance was that story trumped everything, and that if the story was good, his inability to effectively insert commas, capitalize proper nouns, or to make his subjects and verbs agree wouldn't matter.
The truth was that his stories weren't that good, and the proofreader side of me flinched at the numerous mistakes.
Edited at 2007-12-21 01:39 pm (UTC)
On the creative side of things, I'm certainly sympathetic to the descriptive mindset, but I'm also very cynical--probably from years of being exposed to many small-press/fanzine writers who resist constructive criticism of formal elements and stomp about claiming "story trumps everything." Most of those people aren't very good, as in your example, and while I may be "anally attuned" to mechanics, I think there are quite a lot of people who get bumped from stories by tin-eared constructions and confused punctuation--they just don't all know exactly why.
I'm firmly of the belief that you can't break the rules until you know them first, and most neophyte writers aren't leaving out punctuation for effect--they're leaving it out because they don't know any better. I get very annoyed by those who get defensive about formal/mechanical criticism (claiming the mistakes are their "style" because I see that as a form of willful ignorance.
For me, though, I always emphasize to the students that although it looks like all the teacher cares about are grammatical concerns (that's where the vast majority of marks on a student's paper comes from), real writing still starts with observation, making connections, finding out what to say.
A few of my most left brained and rational students, who have learned to create grammatically perfect, flawlessly proofread papers, are often disappointed that they don't receive an "A," for their vacuous essays, as if all that went into a paper was the proofreading.
They are confused between writing as a tool (picture mistake free writing as a leak-free bucket), and the meaning they shape with the tool (the contents of the bucket).
I find it more pleasant to work with the grammatically horrible but thoughtful student who makes interesting connections than I do the letter-perfect but idea-free student. I can help a writer to learn proofreading and composition skills. It's harder to create insight where there is none.
Fortunately, almost no students are totally idea-free.
Interestingly enough, quite often it's my special ed students (learning disabled, btw) who have the more creative writing and ideas than some of the TAG kids in the school.
A genre signature is some simple set of principles that underpin a particular genre of writing. Like grammar, genre signatures are a cultural construct, formed descriptively and after the fact. But they're formed by influential works carving new terrain, and they're principles that you can apply in different ways, rather than outright rules.
As with grammar rules, you can use them to recognise or construct expression in a genre. And as I believe is true of grammar, the important question isn't whether you adhere to the rules or don't but rather that you have a solid understanding and appreciation of them before you begin, know why you're varying the status quo, and are doing it for the audience and not simply for oneself. :D
ruvdraba@blogspot.com
I like this rule. Does it work for the Reader? I think I'll file that away as the only one I'm going to pay a great deal of attention to from now on.
The other rules, depending, I'll continue to argue about as I feel the need.
Respects,
S. F. Murphy