"Plowing the Fields of Grammar" William Safire (1929-2009)
Over the weekend, political speech-writer and language maven William Safire passed away. It’s best to let the experts assess Mr. Safire’s ideological legacy, but on the topic of our living English language, he was a valuable commentator. In his book, Coming to Terms (New York: Doubleday, 1991) Safire exulted in the power of words, and talked about language in a witty, entertaining way.
He found delight in the lexicography and word histories, which, in a way, was a history of the people who first coined them. For instance, the word “Yankees” (which for some reason is on the minds of many East Coasters today) did not originate with the song, “Yankee Doodle.” One of his New York Times Magazine columns reprinted in the book features a letter from a London reader: “Yankee came from the Dutch, who referred to the English in New Haven (Connecticut) as Jan Kees, their version of John Cheese. . .” an earlier version of “John Bull,” a personification of Britain, similar to America’s Uncle Sam.
Safire was a great defender of using words in the right way, though he occasionally seemed to be a descriptive rather than prescriptive grammarian. Columbia University professor Diane Ravitch once lamented how the teaching of grammar had become “outré.” “It is now dogma among teachers of writing that student papers should never, never be corrected for minor details like grammar, spelling, punctuation, and syntax;” she writes, “to do so, goes the predominant wisdom, is to inhibit the student’s ego and interest in self-expression.”
In his reply, Safire foresees how modern technology with its spell-checkers and grammar-fixers would undermine the need for students actually to learn how our language is constructed. He says that the “strawman-educators” might think it is not important, “and when it is, let the machine do it for you.” He goes on to divide knowledge into three types: for survival, for achievement, and for pleasure. Safire argues that the third kind “offers us intellectual and physical kicks.” Additionally, he asks a “philosophical question: “Do we learn only what we have a need to know?” and answers it: “Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.”
That’s why Safire was not worried about knowledge for achievement becoming “available for easy purchase rather than by hard learning.” “We'll break our heads over abstract art, and try to learn about the intricacies of music, and plow the fields of grammar not to show the damn machines we're smarter than they are, but to satisfy our human yearning for the pleasure of understanding.”
America has always needed thinkers like William Safire. He will be missed.
