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Less Than Words Can Say
Twenty-odd years ago, Richard Mitchell, a professor at New Jersey's Glassboro State College, set out on a quixotic pursuit: the rescue of the English language and the minds of those attached to the world by it. Donning cape and mask as The Underground Grammarian, Mitchell sallied forth upon his newsletter against the nonsense being spoken, written, and, indeed, encouraged by the educational establishment. (One thing led to another, as he tells it, a front page piece in The Wall Street Journal, a profile in Time, and other such. Before it was over, The Underground Grammarian came to be, in the world of desktop printing, the first publication to have subscribers on every continent except Antarctica.) What began as a vivid catalog of ignorance and inanity in the written work of professional educators and their hapless students soon became an enterprise of most noble moment: an investigation, via mordant wit and fierce intelligence, of what we might usefully decide to mean by `education.' The results of Mitchell's inquiries are as stimulating today as they were when first articulated. His project remains a telling explication of how, through writing, we discover thought and make knowledge. It is certainly the most drolly entertaining.
224 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
About the author
Richard Mitchell
47 books16 followers Richard Mitchell was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Scarsdale, New York. He received his higher education, for a brief time, at the University of Chicago, where he met his wife, Francis; then at the University of the South, Sewanee, Tenn., where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa; and Syracuse University, where he earned his PhD. in American Literature.
Dr. Mitchell came to Glassboro State College in 1963 and retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time until Fall 2001.
In addition to his reputation as a masterful lecturer, and extraordinary teacher, Dr. Mitchell was a prolific and well known author. He first gained prominence as the writer, publisher, and printer of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that offered lively, witty, satiric, and often derisive essays on the misuse of the English language, particularly the misuse of written English on college campuses. Many of the essays have been collected and are still in print. Dr. Mitchell went on to publish four books: Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, The Leaning Tower of Babel, and The Gift of Fire.
One member of the Glassboro College (now Rowan University) Physics Dept. said, "He has done more to advance the reputation of Glassboro State College than anything since the Lyndon Johnson/Aleksei Kosygin Summit Conference of June 1967."
Dr. Mitchell came to Glassboro State College in 1963 and retired in 1991, but continued to teach part-time until Fall 2001.
In addition to his reputation as a masterful lecturer, and extraordinary teacher, Dr. Mitchell was a prolific and well known author. He first gained prominence as the writer, publisher, and printer of The Underground Grammarian, a newsletter that offered lively, witty, satiric, and often derisive essays on the misuse of the English language, particularly the misuse of written English on college campuses. Many of the essays have been collected and are still in print. Dr. Mitchell went on to publish four books: Less Than Words Can Say, The Graves of Academe, The Leaning Tower of Babel, and The Gift of Fire.
One member of the Glassboro College (now Rowan University) Physics Dept. said, "He has done more to advance the reputation of Glassboro State College than anything since the Lyndon Johnson/Aleksei Kosygin Summit Conference of June 1967."
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January 14, 2009
This book is more organized and focused than "Graves Of Academe," the other Richard Mitchell book that I've read. Mr. Mitchell's argument is centered around the idea that clear use of language engenders clear thinking. Furthermore, without the ability to manipulate language well, it is impossible to really think.
During my four years in college, my roommate and I often engaged in debate about whether it was possible to think without words. It was my position, back then, that thought precedes language, but Mr. Mitchell has pretty much changed my mind. Yes, it can be admitted that images, feelings, and sensory perceptions, for example, can exist in the mind without words; but the actual act of thinking, I am now convinced, relies on the mind's ability to manipulate thoughts through the technical relationships that language provides.
Having made this argument, Mr. Mitchell goes on to demonstrate just how terrible a fix our modern age is in. Using actual quotes from teachers and administrators, Mr. Mitchell puts forth the notion that our educational system is a shambles, and that it is, alas, unfixable. Not only that, but it is on a steady and seemingly unstoppable decline.
In a clear and precise way, Mr. Mitchell lays out the reasons for all this. The very reasons that create this problem also seem to make it unstoppable. It reminds me of the old picture of a snake eating its tail. Each problem part is endemic to bureaucracy, and each of the problem parts depends on some other problem part, which depends on another, until it all comes around in a big, eternal circle.
Mr. Mitchell illustrates this point in what is perhaps the saddest chapter of the book. Earlier, Mr. Mitchell had quoted a "letter to the editor" written by a third grade teacher to a newspaper. In the letter, the teacher makes a number of grammatical and spelling mistakes, including misspelling "article" as "aticle" three times.
Mr. Mitchell, I think rightly, assumes that if a teacher is going to have this many spelling errors in a letter to the editor, she probably can't spell very well. He goes on to wonder how, if she can't spell, she can correct her student's spelling. The obvious answer is that she cannot. Therefore, all these kids will leave her class, at the end of the year, without having accomplished the goal of learning to spell.
All this comes before. In the chapter to which I referred earlier, Mr. Mitchell performs a kind of thought experiment. He asks: "If we decided to make it the case that every third grader WILL learn to spell reasonably well, how would we do it? Who would we talk to?" The result is a striking example of the "serpent eating its tail" phenomenon that I described earlier.
So, I'm giving this book four stars because it is well written, thoughtful, engaging, and at times very funny. I am not giving it five stars simply because, engaging as it is, its underlying theme is just so damn depressing. I don't know what I would have Mr. Mitchell do about this, had I been whispering over his shoulder as he wrote. But I do believe, perhaps foolishly, that any work of fiction or nonfiction must contain an element of hope if it is to represent the world truly.
During my four years in college, my roommate and I often engaged in debate about whether it was possible to think without words. It was my position, back then, that thought precedes language, but Mr. Mitchell has pretty much changed my mind. Yes, it can be admitted that images, feelings, and sensory perceptions, for example, can exist in the mind without words; but the actual act of thinking, I am now convinced, relies on the mind's ability to manipulate thoughts through the technical relationships that language provides.
Having made this argument, Mr. Mitchell goes on to demonstrate just how terrible a fix our modern age is in. Using actual quotes from teachers and administrators, Mr. Mitchell puts forth the notion that our educational system is a shambles, and that it is, alas, unfixable. Not only that, but it is on a steady and seemingly unstoppable decline.
In a clear and precise way, Mr. Mitchell lays out the reasons for all this. The very reasons that create this problem also seem to make it unstoppable. It reminds me of the old picture of a snake eating its tail. Each problem part is endemic to bureaucracy, and each of the problem parts depends on some other problem part, which depends on another, until it all comes around in a big, eternal circle.
Mr. Mitchell illustrates this point in what is perhaps the saddest chapter of the book. Earlier, Mr. Mitchell had quoted a "letter to the editor" written by a third grade teacher to a newspaper. In the letter, the teacher makes a number of grammatical and spelling mistakes, including misspelling "article" as "aticle" three times.
Mr. Mitchell, I think rightly, assumes that if a teacher is going to have this many spelling errors in a letter to the editor, she probably can't spell very well. He goes on to wonder how, if she can't spell, she can correct her student's spelling. The obvious answer is that she cannot. Therefore, all these kids will leave her class, at the end of the year, without having accomplished the goal of learning to spell.
All this comes before. In the chapter to which I referred earlier, Mr. Mitchell performs a kind of thought experiment. He asks: "If we decided to make it the case that every third grader WILL learn to spell reasonably well, how would we do it? Who would we talk to?" The result is a striking example of the "serpent eating its tail" phenomenon that I described earlier.
So, I'm giving this book four stars because it is well written, thoughtful, engaging, and at times very funny. I am not giving it five stars simply because, engaging as it is, its underlying theme is just so damn depressing. I don't know what I would have Mr. Mitchell do about this, had I been whispering over his shoulder as he wrote. But I do believe, perhaps foolishly, that any work of fiction or nonfiction must contain an element of hope if it is to represent the world truly.
April 17, 2015
Richard Mitchell has some really good ideas, though his major thesis that language controls thought is incorrect. If language controlled thought, then we could not create language. I also disagree that "the only way we can judge the work of a mind is through its words". I grew up with a lot of people who were bright, disciplined thinkers, but were people who worked with their hands. As such, if you judged their ability to think by their writing, you would have misjudged them. I also know (and have read) people who are brilliant with words, and useless when it comes to the actions that words represent. How should their minds be judged?
However, I definitely agree that the way we use language socially reinforces certain patterns of thought. The best part of this book is Richard Mitchell's sarcasm.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"All languages are complicated beyond hope of complete description. When it seems to us that German is less difficult to learn than Arabic, what we have noticed is not that German is less complicated than Arabic but that German is the more like English. Speaking his language is the most complicated thing a human being does, and should he undertake to go even further and learn to read and write it, he multiplies one infinitude of complications by another. It is an awesome marvel that anyone can do any of these things, never mind do them well."
American public education is a remarkable enterprise; it succeeds best where it fails. Imagine an industry that consistently fails to do what it sets out to do, a factory where this year's product is invariably sleazier than last year's but, nevertheless, better than next year's. Imagine a corporation whose executives are always spending vast sums of money on studies designed to discover just what it is they are supposed to do and then vaster sums for further studies on just how to do it. Imagine a plant devoted to the manufacture of factory seconds to be sold at a loss. Imagine a producer of vacuum cleaners that rarely work hiring whole platoons of engineers who will, in time, report that it is, in fact, true that the vacuum cleaners rarely work, and who will, for a larger fee, be glad to find out why, if that's possible. If you discover some such outfit, don't invest in it. Unfortunately, we are all required to invest in public education. Public education is also an enterprise that regularly blames its clients for its failures. Education cannot, after all, be expected to deal with barbarous and sometimes even homicidal students who hate schools and everything in them, except, perhaps, for smaller kids with loose lunch money. If the students are dull and hostile, we mustn't blame the schools. We must blame the parents for their neglect and their bad examples. If the parents are ignorant and depraved, then we must blame “society.” And so forth — but not too far. Those who lament thus seem not inclined to ask how “society” got to be that way, if it is that way, and whether or not public education may have made it so. The theme of the educators' exculpation, in its most common terms, goes something like this: We educators are being blamed for the corporate failures of a whole society. Our world is in disarray, convulsed by crime, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and institutionalized materialism and greed. The public expects us to cure all these ills, but that's just impossible. We are being given a bum rap. Besides, we're not getting enough money to do the job.
However, I definitely agree that the way we use language socially reinforces certain patterns of thought. The best part of this book is Richard Mitchell's sarcasm.
Here are some of my favorite quotes:
"All languages are complicated beyond hope of complete description. When it seems to us that German is less difficult to learn than Arabic, what we have noticed is not that German is less complicated than Arabic but that German is the more like English. Speaking his language is the most complicated thing a human being does, and should he undertake to go even further and learn to read and write it, he multiplies one infinitude of complications by another. It is an awesome marvel that anyone can do any of these things, never mind do them well."
American public education is a remarkable enterprise; it succeeds best where it fails. Imagine an industry that consistently fails to do what it sets out to do, a factory where this year's product is invariably sleazier than last year's but, nevertheless, better than next year's. Imagine a corporation whose executives are always spending vast sums of money on studies designed to discover just what it is they are supposed to do and then vaster sums for further studies on just how to do it. Imagine a plant devoted to the manufacture of factory seconds to be sold at a loss. Imagine a producer of vacuum cleaners that rarely work hiring whole platoons of engineers who will, in time, report that it is, in fact, true that the vacuum cleaners rarely work, and who will, for a larger fee, be glad to find out why, if that's possible. If you discover some such outfit, don't invest in it. Unfortunately, we are all required to invest in public education. Public education is also an enterprise that regularly blames its clients for its failures. Education cannot, after all, be expected to deal with barbarous and sometimes even homicidal students who hate schools and everything in them, except, perhaps, for smaller kids with loose lunch money. If the students are dull and hostile, we mustn't blame the schools. We must blame the parents for their neglect and their bad examples. If the parents are ignorant and depraved, then we must blame “society.” And so forth — but not too far. Those who lament thus seem not inclined to ask how “society” got to be that way, if it is that way, and whether or not public education may have made it so. The theme of the educators' exculpation, in its most common terms, goes something like this: We educators are being blamed for the corporate failures of a whole society. Our world is in disarray, convulsed by crime, poverty, ignorance, hatred, and institutionalized materialism and greed. The public expects us to cure all these ills, but that's just impossible. We are being given a bum rap. Besides, we're not getting enough money to do the job.
April 1, 2023
AmblesideOnline year 11 book. Satire, some of it was funny, some of it was dated, some of it was really good, and some of it was just condescending rants. There is definitely some parts that are worth reading but I’m not sure that those parts are enough to make my kids read the whole book. I probably won’t require any of the rest of them to read it.
April 6, 2012
Just a few quotes will show how witty and caustic Mitchell can be: "His jargon conceals, from him, but not from us, the deep, empty hole in his mind.""The next thing you know they'll start listening to very carefully to the words and sentences of the politicians, and they'll decide that there isn't one of them worth voting for anywhere on the ballot. There's no knowing where this will end. The day will come when a President is elected only because those few feeble-minded citizens who still vote just happened to bump up against his lever . . . . A President, of course, doesn't care how he gets elected, but he might lose clout among world leaders when they remind him that he owes his high office to the random twitchings of thirty-seven imbeciles."
April 18, 2015
I don't read a whole lot of nonfiction, and when I do, I browse or skim.
Not so with this book. I read every word. I took notes. That's unheard of in my reading experience.
This book is about language and learning. It explains how use of language reflects thinking and lack thereof, and it explores how language is in fact integral to shaping thought.
It's also, unexpectedly, a lot of fun. I snickered through whole sections, even when I was sometimes also cringing at the implications. Richard Mitchell is insightful, witty, and masterful with discursive prose. I cannot recommend Less Than Words Can Say highly enough.
Not so with this book. I read every word. I took notes. That's unheard of in my reading experience.
This book is about language and learning. It explains how use of language reflects thinking and lack thereof, and it explores how language is in fact integral to shaping thought.
It's also, unexpectedly, a lot of fun. I snickered through whole sections, even when I was sometimes also cringing at the implications. Richard Mitchell is insightful, witty, and masterful with discursive prose. I cannot recommend Less Than Words Can Say highly enough.
June 6, 2019
Mitchell’s book, like Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary, is satire. Likewise, Mitchell’s book is both entertaining and cleverly written as well as one that hammers home the thesis that that inferior thinking begets inferior writing. Unfortunately, Richard Mitchell (1929-2002) also resembles Bierce in his unrelieved crankiness, a trait in authors that ought to be taken in small doses unless one positively enjoys the drawing of dark clouds over the sky.
Read
March 18, 2016Good book about the importance of learning to write clearly and precisely.
June 30, 2013
This turned out to be a surprisingly powerful book. Published back in 1979, Mr. Mitchell here explains how the manner in which we use language reveals our philosophy and assumptions about words and reality.
In a sense, this book is perhaps even a refutation of "nominalism," based upon the epistemology that one must presuppose in order to properly use English grammar.
Here are a few excerpts illustrating the sort of thing that Mitchell does to garbled modern writing (see pages 197-201) -
__________________________________________
"Here is a most appropriate example of naming disguised as telling. These are the unconsciously ironic words of some people who imagine that they are going to do something about the writing skills of schoolchildren:
'It is necessary that schools and school districts emphasize the importance of imparting to students the skills and attitudes which are the underpinnings of a comfortable, successful producer of all forms of written matter, including prose, poetry, and practical narrative and descriptive and interrogatory writing (e.g., letters, applications, requests for information, reports, etc.).'
This, after many months of deliberation, was one of the most important conclusions of an advisory committee of experts on reading and writing. They have, in effect, decided that the schools should teach the students how to write. The elevator man, of course, could have told you that. If you don't have an elevator, you could have gotten the same information from the taxi driver or the man who reads the meter. This is by no means to denigrate the achievement of the committee; what has always been perfectly obvious to all the rest of us actually is a tremendous breakthrough for educators, and they are much to be congratulated for having so largely transcended their training. However, they have still a little more transcending to do. The passage shows all of the symptoms of profound and probably irreversible brain damage ...
Give yourself a little test. Don't reread the passage. It is, although it probably didn't seem so when you read it, all one sentence. Try hard to remember the subject of the sentence. The subject of a sentence is not just a grammatical reality; it is a reality of thought. It's what the sentence is about, or, in more appropriate terms right now, it is the 'naming' at the heart of the 'telling.' If you have been able to remember the subject, you should have no trouble remembering the verb, and when you do you will have recalled the very core of this sentence, the hard, inner skeleton of meaning so characteristic of sentences in English and many other languages. In this case, however, the skeleton is a little squishy: it is 'It is.'
... Such prose is a form of immorality, similar to the Divine Passive and the dangling modifiers of the chair of the EEOC. People who write like that are in flight from the responsibility implied by the basic structure of the English in which doers do deeds.
Prose that clouds responsibility also diminishes humanity. When Churchill said, 'We shall fight them on the beaches,' his grammar said for him, and to all of us who share that grammar: 'I, a man, speak these words out of the thoughts of my mind, and I mean them.' Suppose that he had said instead: 'It may become necessary that we fight on the beaches.' Then his grammar would have said for him and to us: 'There may be in the universe some condition of which we ought to be mindful. You will understand, of course, that this is what should be said, but as to whether or not the whole thing is my idea or not is neither here nor there.' Englishmen might well have packed up by the millions and moved to Nova Scotia. The writer of our passage would probably have said: 'It may become necessary that we emphasize the importance of imparting to ourselves the skills and attitudes which are the necessary underpinnings of successful engagers in all forms of combat on the beaches.' Englishmen are plucky, but not that plucky. After such words, they would simply have surrendered.
Naming without telling is equally evasion of responsibility. We can talk about components, elements, factors, sets, subsets, translations and transformations only because we do not expect to be called to account for our words. The more of these words we use, the better we can bewilder the reader or even bamboozle him into the conviction that we must know what we are talking about, thus putting off, perhaps forever, the day of reckoning. Notice how that happens in the passage just cited. What should the schools - and the school districts - actually do? They should emphasize. That's what it says - that's the verb that goes with the schools and the school districts. And what should they emphasize? They should emphasize importance. Importance? What importance should they emphasize? They should emphasize the importance of imparting! Can we ask 'imparting what?'? No, not yet. First we must ask 'imparting to whom?' So we ask it. We are answered that they should emphasize the importance of imparting to students. Ah! All of a sudden some human beings appear. Unfortunately, however, they will turn out to be superfluous, because there just isn't anyone around in the schools and school districts except students to whom to do that imparting whose importance is to be emphasized. So we go on. Now we can ask 'imparting what?' Imparting skills and attitudes, of course. What skills and attitudes? Skills and attitudes which are underpinnings, naturally. Underpinnings of a producer. What else did you expect? What kind of a producer? A comfortable, confident, successful producer. And so on. The thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth words of this sentence are 'written matter.'
Someone here has taken great pains not to say something ...When the connections between naming and telling are broken, our language becomes subhuman. The crows and the antelope exist by a system of reflexive naming, a sort of sublanguage perfectly suited to serve the needs of herds and flocks. That sublanguage, not surprisingly therefore, flourishes most where we have formed our own herds and flocks, in bureaucracies and corporate structures. Some individual human being wrote that stuff about emphasizing the importance of imparting. Lost somewhere in that producer's underpinnings, there is a human mind with the power of rational thought. What has become of it? ..."
__________________________________________
Mitchell looks at many similar problems in English prose. His take-downs of popular phrases like "image-oriented media" and "visual literacy" are devastating and masterly. He asserts that should "we lose prepositional phrases, the loss of a certain arrangement of words would be only the visible sign of a stupendous unseen disorder. We would in fact have lost prepositionalism." (pg. 12) He argues that "things like passives and prepositional phrases" ... "constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow." (pg. 14) And, Mitchell explains how to "put the name of the thing modified as close as possible to the modifier is not a 'rule' of English; it is a sign of something the mind does in English. When the English doesn't do that thing, it's because the mind hasn't done it." (pg. 17)
It's almost as if Mitchell has a rather sacramental view of the power of language. This is not a unique idea if you've ever read the discourses of ancient Greek philosophers or early Christian fathers upon the subject of the "Logos." It is, however, currently an unpopular idea - one for which Mitchell is, nonetheless, an admirable and stalwart advocate.
In a sense, this book is perhaps even a refutation of "nominalism," based upon the epistemology that one must presuppose in order to properly use English grammar.
Here are a few excerpts illustrating the sort of thing that Mitchell does to garbled modern writing (see pages 197-201) -
__________________________________________
"Here is a most appropriate example of naming disguised as telling. These are the unconsciously ironic words of some people who imagine that they are going to do something about the writing skills of schoolchildren:
'It is necessary that schools and school districts emphasize the importance of imparting to students the skills and attitudes which are the underpinnings of a comfortable, successful producer of all forms of written matter, including prose, poetry, and practical narrative and descriptive and interrogatory writing (e.g., letters, applications, requests for information, reports, etc.).'
This, after many months of deliberation, was one of the most important conclusions of an advisory committee of experts on reading and writing. They have, in effect, decided that the schools should teach the students how to write. The elevator man, of course, could have told you that. If you don't have an elevator, you could have gotten the same information from the taxi driver or the man who reads the meter. This is by no means to denigrate the achievement of the committee; what has always been perfectly obvious to all the rest of us actually is a tremendous breakthrough for educators, and they are much to be congratulated for having so largely transcended their training. However, they have still a little more transcending to do. The passage shows all of the symptoms of profound and probably irreversible brain damage ...
Give yourself a little test. Don't reread the passage. It is, although it probably didn't seem so when you read it, all one sentence. Try hard to remember the subject of the sentence. The subject of a sentence is not just a grammatical reality; it is a reality of thought. It's what the sentence is about, or, in more appropriate terms right now, it is the 'naming' at the heart of the 'telling.' If you have been able to remember the subject, you should have no trouble remembering the verb, and when you do you will have recalled the very core of this sentence, the hard, inner skeleton of meaning so characteristic of sentences in English and many other languages. In this case, however, the skeleton is a little squishy: it is 'It is.'
... Such prose is a form of immorality, similar to the Divine Passive and the dangling modifiers of the chair of the EEOC. People who write like that are in flight from the responsibility implied by the basic structure of the English in which doers do deeds.
Prose that clouds responsibility also diminishes humanity. When Churchill said, 'We shall fight them on the beaches,' his grammar said for him, and to all of us who share that grammar: 'I, a man, speak these words out of the thoughts of my mind, and I mean them.' Suppose that he had said instead: 'It may become necessary that we fight on the beaches.' Then his grammar would have said for him and to us: 'There may be in the universe some condition of which we ought to be mindful. You will understand, of course, that this is what should be said, but as to whether or not the whole thing is my idea or not is neither here nor there.' Englishmen might well have packed up by the millions and moved to Nova Scotia. The writer of our passage would probably have said: 'It may become necessary that we emphasize the importance of imparting to ourselves the skills and attitudes which are the necessary underpinnings of successful engagers in all forms of combat on the beaches.' Englishmen are plucky, but not that plucky. After such words, they would simply have surrendered.
Naming without telling is equally evasion of responsibility. We can talk about components, elements, factors, sets, subsets, translations and transformations only because we do not expect to be called to account for our words. The more of these words we use, the better we can bewilder the reader or even bamboozle him into the conviction that we must know what we are talking about, thus putting off, perhaps forever, the day of reckoning. Notice how that happens in the passage just cited. What should the schools - and the school districts - actually do? They should emphasize. That's what it says - that's the verb that goes with the schools and the school districts. And what should they emphasize? They should emphasize importance. Importance? What importance should they emphasize? They should emphasize the importance of imparting! Can we ask 'imparting what?'? No, not yet. First we must ask 'imparting to whom?' So we ask it. We are answered that they should emphasize the importance of imparting to students. Ah! All of a sudden some human beings appear. Unfortunately, however, they will turn out to be superfluous, because there just isn't anyone around in the schools and school districts except students to whom to do that imparting whose importance is to be emphasized. So we go on. Now we can ask 'imparting what?' Imparting skills and attitudes, of course. What skills and attitudes? Skills and attitudes which are underpinnings, naturally. Underpinnings of a producer. What else did you expect? What kind of a producer? A comfortable, confident, successful producer. And so on. The thirty-fourth and thirty-fifth words of this sentence are 'written matter.'
Someone here has taken great pains not to say something ...When the connections between naming and telling are broken, our language becomes subhuman. The crows and the antelope exist by a system of reflexive naming, a sort of sublanguage perfectly suited to serve the needs of herds and flocks. That sublanguage, not surprisingly therefore, flourishes most where we have formed our own herds and flocks, in bureaucracies and corporate structures. Some individual human being wrote that stuff about emphasizing the importance of imparting. Lost somewhere in that producer's underpinnings, there is a human mind with the power of rational thought. What has become of it? ..."
__________________________________________
Mitchell looks at many similar problems in English prose. His take-downs of popular phrases like "image-oriented media" and "visual literacy" are devastating and masterly. He asserts that should "we lose prepositional phrases, the loss of a certain arrangement of words would be only the visible sign of a stupendous unseen disorder. We would in fact have lost prepositionalism." (pg. 12) He argues that "things like passives and prepositional phrases" ... "constitute, among other things, an implicit system of moral philosophy, a view of the world and its presumed meanings, and their misuse therefore often betrays an attitude or value that the user might like to disavow." (pg. 14) And, Mitchell explains how to "put the name of the thing modified as close as possible to the modifier is not a 'rule' of English; it is a sign of something the mind does in English. When the English doesn't do that thing, it's because the mind hasn't done it." (pg. 17)
It's almost as if Mitchell has a rather sacramental view of the power of language. This is not a unique idea if you've ever read the discourses of ancient Greek philosophers or early Christian fathers upon the subject of the "Logos." It is, however, currently an unpopular idea - one for which Mitchell is, nonetheless, an admirable and stalwart advocate.
August 19, 2019
In this humorous journey into the abyss where English currently languishes, Mitchell urges us to consider the importance of the foundational skills of every education: reading, writing, and arithmetic. His artful grasp on satire entertains but shouldn't deter you from taking him seriously. Academic-sounding gobbledygook and the progressive relaxation of previously high educational standards have delivered batch after batch of soft-headed automatons who can't put together two coherent sentences, let alone question how poorly their fancy-sounding degrees have served them.
September 13, 2021
Horrifically outdated, and an overall very negative view of educators as a whole. Additionally, the author betrays racist attitudes in equating African American Vernacular English (AAVE) with illiteracy, and his utter dismissal of students who may have trouble reading and writing smacks of ableism. I was able to extract only a few helpful points about writing in the active voice-- everything else made me cringe.
February 26, 2019
The gist: sloppy writing begets sloppy thinking and jargon often hides holes in the brain. Education in languages and math helps produce disciple and the attention to detail that is required for clear and nuanced thinking.
Dragged a bit in the middle. Picked up again at the end.
Dragged a bit in the middle. Picked up again at the end.
July 4, 2021
Humorous analysis and attack on bureaucratic gobbledygook. Scary how long this shii has been going on. I'm very jealous of the Underground Grammarian's knowledge of language. This knowledge allows him to identify and eviscerate high sounding wafflers.
June 14, 2020
A superb and funny, witty and erudite disquisition on the state of English and education. Glad I read it.
December 15, 2020
Wonderful book. I read this for a class and it changed the way I view education. An absolute must read, take notes and have a highlighter ready to-go. Beautifully written and quite funny too. :)
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April 9, 2022Free edition: https://sourcetext.com/grammarian-les...
April 1, 2016
A very fun and important read. He starts on poor use of language, then Mitchell gets onto "identification" (my term); then you see him almost discover that he should have been writing about in the first place, how our educational system is destroying the ability to think. (See The Graves of Academe for that.)
You have to read him carefully; he expects that you are intelligent and in focus. That makes it a pleasure to read. He doesn't say, "remember the story I told in the last chapter?", but instead refers back to it only by using a recognizable phrase or hint.
This is a book my wife and I give as a high school graduation gift to family and friends. Everyone starting college should read it.
You have to read him carefully; he expects that you are intelligent and in focus. That makes it a pleasure to read. He doesn't say, "remember the story I told in the last chapter?", but instead refers back to it only by using a recognizable phrase or hint.
This is a book my wife and I give as a high school graduation gift to family and friends. Everyone starting college should read it.
May 11, 2014
Through college and in the business world we are taught a thousand ways to write. Most of our lessons deal with the style of the reader/professor/boss. Unfortunately, these people have adapted to the same writing fallacies that plague the rest of the nation. This book addresses these common problems. The author explains the problem, gives us real life examples, and shows you how to avoid the problem in your writing. The finished product is an entertaining book that actually teaches the reader something that they can use.
August 24, 2008
I have *just* started this book, and may I say that the first essay, "The Worm in the Brain" is priceless? If you have every dealt with ineffective administrators, you *must* read this essay, and it is available at this website
http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/...
http://www.sourcetext.com/grammarian/...
October 12, 2014
Read intermittently on crowded MTR trains. It might not be as cohesive as The Gift of Fire, but it’s still a worthwhile entreaty against administrators and other tyrants who can’t write well. Recommended reading for arming yourself against the utterly useless institution-speak you are just as likely to encounter today as you were when this book was published 35 years ago.
May 8, 2015
Those who cannot write well cannot think well. It's a simple premise, but it has changed the way I look at things quite a bit. Mitchell tears in pretty hard to our public education system but, frankly, rightly so. Above all, he's a good writer.
May 13, 2011
This book may be 30 years old, but people's use of written language hasn't gotten any better than the examples given in it. Mitchell's commentary is often amusing, but he really doesn't offer any ideas for improving people's skills.
June 30, 2011
An interesting book that links the ability to reason and think clearly to writing well. I enjoyed the book even though Mr. Mitchell is very hard on public education. I must admit much of his complaints were justified.
December 13, 2015
This is an Ambleside Online 12th grade English recommendation in which Mitchell rants about the public education system while explaining that fluent English results in being logical and that true education wipes out stupidity and ignorance.
May 16, 2008
Interesting rant about the failing of our education system
September 12, 2010
Absolutely essential reading...especially for an English major.
September 5, 2012
Re-read this one. An absolutely hilarious insider take on the American educational system, albeit a little out-dated.
July 6, 2013
The author was my family's next-door neighbor while I was in the Navy. My sisters baby-sat his kids. I still have the feather and the marble Amanda gave me.
January 30, 2014
3.5/5.
May 26, 2021
The most important book I've ever read.
March 26, 2017
One of the wittier books out there. An at-times LOL read!
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