ABSTRACT
Two hundred and twenty-five years after Swift’s memorandum, let me try to show what some current ideas about the regulation of the language are. If the specimens I bring out are boring, I can only say I am not choosing the dullest. But I have to illustrate the important truth that with a matter which might easily be made a vivifying and constantly enlightening interest, present-day teaching in England – the most expensive I believe in the world – has not succeeded even in hinting at the chief issues every sentence raises for everyone, or in stimulating any thoughts about language which would not be more to the point in a discussion of the proper cut of trousers. 226
4.3.* His theory is that Grammar does not consist in the drawing up of a series of laws as to how a language shall be spoken or written, but, in the methodizing of those rules which are established through use. He says in other words that grammarians are at the mercy of any popular but unworthy element which may come into the language. Surely, although a Grammarian cannot establish the laws, he can at least control over-exuberance of expression.
