The Decline of Grammar Article Analysis Sample

📌Category: Articles
📌Words: 544
📌Pages: 2
📌Published: 13 March 2022

Geoffrey Nunberg, in the essay “The Decline of Grammar” (1938) implies that grammar is declining, but as long as grammar is around, the worry of how it is being spoken should not matter. Nunberg supports his claim by listing examples of past time readings, writings, plays, novels, poets, other authors, and how they use different types of grammar. The author's purpose is to persuade the reader that English grammar itself is declining but, in a way, it is exactly where it should be. The author writes in an informal tone for anyone who wants to learn about where grammar started, where it evolved and where it is going by applying ethos, logos, pathos, hyperboles and personification.

In the beginning, the English language started off as a Germanic language and gradually evolved into modern English. Throughout the course of numerous centuries English is still around and being used in countless unrelated ways, “From this Olympian point of view, not even the Norman invasion had much of an effect on the structure of language, and all the tirades of all the grammarians since the Renaissance sound like the prattlings of landscape gardeners who hope by frantic efforts to keep Alaska from bumping into Asia” (Nunberg 44). The author logistically uses personification to show how English has been around since the beginning of time. Very little has changed since because no matter how English is used grammatically and how English is used differently in various parts of the earth, English will still always be near.

Besides, English as one knows it is a language but to others it is not just how a person speaks and the thoughts of a person it is an art and a historical figure itself. Nunberg emotionally(pathos) states how it should matter how English is being spoken because it is being passed through generations. Being that it is passing through generations linguist would want it to be passed the correct way, “But I can’t overcome the feeling that it is wrong for me to use them in that way and that people of my generation who say “We decided to gift them with a desk set” are in some sense guilty of moral lapse, whether because they are ignorant or because they are weak”(Nunberg 44). In this quote the author exaggerates his idea of how English should be passed through generations and be grammatically correct because if not, one would end up saying something in the wrong form or tone.

Moreover, applying English in the correct form or tone shows that former English speakers have done right by teaching and talking. “English will be judged by their example. Our picture of the English of previous centuries, after all, has been formed on the basis of a careful selection of the best that was said and thought back then; their hacks and bureaucrats are mercifully silent now” (Nunberg 44). Using characteristics of the early linguist, the author is trying to provide the audience with evidence of the English grammar being formed off past times.

Although past time English is not the same as it is now, it is still being utilized in everyday life. From coming from linguist, traveling the world, and evolving into modern time, the English language has truly been through a lot. Using Rhetorical devices and appeals to display these ideas the author really has done a great job writing in an informal tone to inform readers where grammar started, where it evolved and where it is going by applying ethos, logos, pathos, hyperboles and personification.

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