Sometimes people are self-conscious about their speech and worry that the way they talk or write is “incorrect,” but as you engage with the material in this course, it’s crucial to appreciate that diversity is a value to celebrate. There are many different types of English, all of which are dynamic and complex. Not only can it be highly effective rhetorically to mesh varieties, it can also feel authentic and empowering, and you do have the right to use your own language. 

You are already a competent user of many codes of English because you have been using them for years (or for approximately a week if you’re talking in memes…). You may or may not yet feel as comfortable with the particular subset of English we use for the fairly formal act of writing at college. Most college writing encourages you to adhere to the conventions of edited, standardized, written American English (“standardized English”), a phrase that often appears on the syllabus of a writing seminar section and of many other writing-intensive courses at SUNY Geneseo. This particular type of English exists to facilitate communication within the academic culture to which you now belong, so college students learn its standardized conventions. Of course, standardized English is not somehow a default code that is “beyond” culture: it is the marker of the culture of academically educated people, and the historical choice to dub this variety “standard” is a product of privilege and power. Many college instructors are keenly aware of this political aspect of standardized English.

Meshing codes of English can be powerful, but the idea that there is a “correct” English has a lot of staying power. Regrettable – or outrageous – as it is politically, when you speak or write unconventionally in an academic setting, others might make judgements about who you are as a person: “lazy,” “careless,” and “incompetent” are some common judgements; on the other hand, if you have some mastery of the conventions, you might be judged to be “diligent,” “careful,” and “scholarly.” We need to acknowledge the biases of standardized English while recognizing also that it facilitates the clear and accurate communication of complex, well founded ideas to other people within the context of higher education, and within many professions. When you acquire the language, you increase your ability to craft your message to communicate more accurately what you want to convey in a way that large numbers of your peers will comprehend, which is also a powerful political privilege and responsibility.

This shared ability to communicate is where grammar comes in. Grammar is a set of conventions (and sometimes rules) that dictate how standardized English works. You might be accustomed to groaning at the mere mention of grammar, and thinking that those who care about it must be in dire need of a social life, especially if your only explicit encounters with English grammar were rules (“articles must precede nouns”) and jargon (“dangling participles,” anyone?) at some point in middle school. You’ll find at college that many professors view good grammar as a method of allowing you to join scholarly conversations and to have a voice that can be heard clearly. Professors are not generally trying to control or crush you with grammar, but rather to demonstrate – and give to you – the tools to be your own best advocate and an active participant in the educational environment. Professors want to know what you’re thinking; grammar helps you to tell them.

Whether in a post or a term paper, representing our thoughts and opinions in writing is not always easy. Although we’re pretty competent most of the time in our native language, and readers usually work with us to make sense of what they are pretty sure we must have meant, you’re in a lucky minority if you have never written an email or DM (let alone an academic essay) that has confused its recipient or frustrated you by being hard to put into words. Not unlike pouring liquids from one graduated cylinder to another, we all encounter some degree of error or loss when translating what we’re thinking to symbols on a page. And when we manage to put something in writing, we make further errors assuming how an audience will receive and analyze the intended meaning of those words. What we mean to communicate has a habit of getting lost in translation, if only because our mental lives are too complex (or, sometimes, too murky) for the act of writing to ever be foolproof. There are key ways to push back against these difficulties, however, and chief among them is our willingness to recognize and apply the conventions of grammar to our writing so that how we write does not distract from, but rather emphasizes, what we intend. By coming to terms with grammar as an adaptable system of communication, we foster stronger, more confident voices tailored to the dialogues we value most. Steven Pinker, a noted psycholinguist, comments on the importance of grammar in accurately relaying information to our peers: ^[1]

[Grammar] should be thought of… as one of the extraordinary adaptations in the living world: our species’ solution to the problem of getting complicated thoughts from one head into another. Thinking of grammar as the original sharing app makes it much more interesting. By understanding how the various features of grammar are designed to make sharing possible, we can put them to use in writing more clearly, correctly, and gracefully.

As a result of our familiarity with grammar, in other words, we grow closer to spanning the gap between our mind and the minds of those around us, but it is a process that advances one convention at a time.

As you go through this module, bear in mind that these are the principles and conventions for just one type of English, but you should also remember that they are tools your professors want you to wield well as you construct your scholarly self. This will not be an exhaustive survey of grammar, nor will it begin with the most basic concepts. It focuses on the problems that occur most frequently in Geneseo undergraduate writing as students look to join scholarly conversations. Some students will already be familiar with some of these ideas, and we hope that our introduction enables them to recognize that familiarity as their good fortune. Part of the democratic impulse that informs grammar is offering all students the chance to encounter and practice these conventions in an environment that will expect you to employ them: exercises in INTD 106 and more complex written assignments in courses like INTD 105 give you the grounding to write in your other courses. Once you know what you’re looking for, there’s no substitute for practice, and we invite you furthermore to mentally frame this practice in INTD 106 and INTD 105 not as an isolated exercise to “get through” but as part of a larger picture of yourself as a college student with a valuable voice.