Stratford Caldecott’s “Remembering: Grammar-Mythos-Imagining the Real” is from his book Beauty in the Word, published in 2012. In this chapter, he argues that naming, as the beginning of grammar, is an integral part of our humanity. He goes on to connect grammar to the arts of remembering, tradition, and storytelling, as well as commenting on the danger of becoming too reliant on technology. Caldecott believes that grammar, and thereby Remembering, brings us into a greater community of human thought which transcends time; as a result, ‘Grammar’ is “the remembrance of Being” (Caldecott 59). This, he argues, is why it is so important to teach grammar; losing the art of grammar would mean losing our very humanity. Caldecott holds grammar to be a fundamental part of who we are. He argues that the very first task given to man by God was that of naming; this is significant because names are the very cornerstone of grammar. Naming, through grammar, allows us to define and understand the world around us. This is why we can name neither God nor ourselves - we can only name that which we …show more content…
To evidence this, he uses Adam – the first name-giver. Adam’s role has been passed on to all of humanity; we are called to connect our world to the Divine, to connect “the Ideas in God and the things in the world” (Caldecott 41). Caldecott uses this comparison between our mission and Adam’s mission to great effect, underscoring his argument that naming (and thereby grammar) is core to who we are. Names, he argues, are so precious, so important, that we cannot even name ourselves. As counter-intuitive as this may see at first, one soon realizes that naming is equivalent to knowing; we can never truly know ourselves. One can then infer that grammar is simply an expansion of this knowledge; grammar allows us to connect names in such a way that we can better understand and know
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Education”, he uses various diction to create tones to establish that the education is flawed and it revisions need to be made to fix it.
implacability of the natural world, the impartial perfection ofscience, the heartbreak of history. The narrative is permeated with insights about language itself, its power to distort and destroy meaning, and to restore it again to those with stalwart hearts.
In the poem, Harjo portrays the importance of recalling the past to help shape one’s identity. She uses the repetition of the word “Remember” to remind that while the past may be history, it still is a defining factor in people’s lives (l. 1). This literary technique
The speaker in this poem claims that praying follows a “simple form,” because it “keeps things in order” (1.7-8). This can also be said about writing; at least the kind of writing that follows a prescribed formula, such as, the sonnet or the five-paragraph essay. Writers often use these structures, because the methods are established an...
In its entirety, this poem describes how a language can evolve or die, and how things said in this language can change or die with it. Boundaries between languages may not be clear. Like rivers they can travel close together, or merge completely. All languages, however, act as rivers. They start at a source and travel. They then travel, merge, or fade away. Upon closer examination, the poem also says why languages are difficult to label. The reason is that they change with time. The English language of today is not the same English language spoken hundreds of years ago. As all languages evolve similarly, this applies to all languages. Subtle changes in gestures, writing, or spoken language eventually add up. After a long enough period of time it is as though an entirely new language has formed, but kept the same name as the previous language.
Also, by completing this project, I have learned you cannot label words out of context to determine its meaning and part of speech. Likewise, when I chose the novel The Awakening, I just picked a sentence that met the 50-word requirement for this assignment. When reading the sentence out of the context of the novel, the meaning of the words in the sentence meant something totally different. Again, this project really has taught me to examine words and sentences in the larger context in order to define the meaning and function. Although I have started to grow gray hair from doing this project, I enjoyed the lesson of wrestling with words in real sentences from a living books. Like Edna, my soul awakens to a new outlook on doing grammar. Kate Chopin’s writing style helped me understand how grammar makes meaning in a sentence, the relationship between words and meaning, and the connection between the structure and meaning of a
Three paragraphs have been rewritten presenting the first-person point of view. I did not remember Professor Josephs telling the class how Athenian prisoners in Sicily had been released if they could recite Aeschylus, and then quoting Aeschylus myself, right there, in Greek. Anders does not remember how his eyes burned at those sounds. I did not remember the surprise of seeing a college classmate’s name on the jacket of a novel not long after we graduated or the respect I had felt after reading the book. I did not remember the pleasure of giving
The term ‘memory’ evokes the image of a thing, a container for information, or the content of that container. Thus, from our literate viewpoint, the Iliad preserves the knowledge of the Trojan War. But in jumping to this conclusion, we lose sight of the Iliad as an oral phenomenon, as the singing of a song. It is not so much a thing as an act, a gestalt uniting bard and audience in a shared consciousness. This phenomenon has little in common with that desiccated thing we literates call “memory.” In the world before writing, memory is the social act of remembering. It is commemoration. (15)
Children were taught to speak in a proper manner and because they were taught to speak correctly they wrote in a proper way as well. As technology evolved and texting came more profound grammar was becoming a lost art. In Dana Goldstein’s article ,‘Why Kids Can’t Write’, she talks about what teachers are doing about grammar. The teachers are not doing much about the grammar issue in schools.
Bunyan, John, and L. Edward. Hazelbaker. The Pilgrim's Progress in Modern English. Alachua, Florida: Bridge-Logos, 1998. Print.
“There may even exist some hidden historical explanation: something, perhaps, in the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, or other origins of a word or construction that you and I may very easily know. We can, however, memorize; and memorization can be a wonderfully useful thing—surely the Greeks were right to consider Mnemosyne (memory) the mother of the Muses, for without her there would be no art and no science. And what better place to practice one’s mnemonic skills than in the study of one’s language?” (Simon, 335). Simon suspects that the proper use of the English language may have been lost in time. For example, present day English speakers cannot use the language in a correct way. Simon suggest that we can use memorization to strengthen the brain in order to improve our faults. The quote as a whole shows how accurate English could have been to this day, if it had been passed down as it was
The word definitions in which Cawdrey used were uncomplicated and simple. What set apart Cawdrey was that, unlike future dictionary creators, he did not refer to the great writers of the day or origins of words. Alternatively, the simplicity provided assistance for those who either wanted to have a better understanding of religious sermons and books, or learn how to spell correctly.
In the prefaces of many modern translations the virtues of a simple vocabulary and syntax are touted, yet we must ask ourselves, to what level of communication did God stoop when
Thus, story and memory remove humans from the horrible brevity of mortal life by bringing existence into a realm outside of time. Humans die, but through story their fellow humans can make them immortal. Even amidst life’s tragedies, stories allow us to transform what seems an unbearable reality into something deeply beautiful. And yet their power is not merely retrospective since stories impose moral responsibility on our every action. Forgetting, therefore, is among the worst evils; not only because of the “moral perversity” it permits, but also because of the meaning it denies.
Chomsky, N. (2000). Knowledge of language: Its mature, origin and use. In R. J. Stainton (Ed.), Perspectives in the philosophy of language: A concise anthology (pp. 3-44). Peterborough: Broadview Press.