1.2 How to Avoid becoming a Purist in English: And Not Being one on your Own.

Let’s focus on English! Purist in English here = Prescriptivist, Opposition to Change

In the middle of a dream, your English teacher held up his bible reading towards you. And then turned the page again, towards to end it repeated itself. He then gave you a pile of assignments to ask you to fill in the blanks without giving you any choices. Some questions seemed structural in open form where you were lost in the direction of grammar and the questions headed. Waiting for bell troll, you stayed low until the end of the assignment. Time passed at the speed of light. He then revealed to you about the forgotten truth and said, “well these assignments will be graded and counted as part of the upcoming exam”. All a sudden in the dreamy background, a metallic chime rocked in the back of your brain, lingering without breeze, to jolt you awake. “Six-thirty in the morning. Oh god!” In your sweaty pyjamas, you ran towards your morning preparation without a moment of pause. “You should be able to answers those English questions related to grammar and vocabulary while you are asleep.” Said your English teacher in his tender voice.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Yes, teachers do have a job teaching students in accordance with the given academic guidelines and associated assessment rubrics and raise the overall quality of education to a certain level. They are combative to put everything given and written in the textbook into your head even if you were sleeping unfold at your pupil’s desk covered up by your surroundings. It presents the teaching within one’s authority, full enforcement, and hierarchy structure where there is limited space for discretion and negotiation. Shouldn’t you argue with your teacher that your textbook is wrong? (I am sure some western society like US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the Nordics would but not in most other places.) Over the years of editing and teaching experience, I did a lot of hands-on research on textbooks ranging from primary school to all the way to college writing manuals, even more so on higher level. I discovered that there are foundational gaps of understanding between the general usage of English and grammar transition at the lower end- primary school and (secondary) high school when the author is NOT a native English speaker or pretending to be one. But sadly, they hold up too much authority about the English as a wisdom of liberal art.

I am happy to see English being the most speaking language in the world. As a civilian in this online community, I am grateful to be part of the community. Thanks to the colonization history of the United Kingdom and provided a solid cultural foundation in the history of commonwealth. English has become an official language in some key region in Asia, for example India, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, and the Philippines (from US influence). Imagine you want to learn English in free time. When you take a bookshop visit glancing at the academic section’s bookshelf, you are most likely to see two main categories: English dictionary and English Grammar Series guide. Then your teacher may teach you to “enhance” the purity of your English, some likely to adopt to “harder” or “higher tied” vocabulary taken out of some postgraduate dictionary, royal-fashion language, polished wording (Singapore English in particular), and having a strict rule in the use of English grammar. Learnt to become an English purist or in some refer to as “English grammar police” in some sense.

Let’s look at one example. In one news report about the situation of the Middle East War caused disruptions to the oil supply and thereafter chaos in one country’s future. One report quoted from a government official that "It means messiness. It means unpredictability.” In the statement, it seems grammatically correct with good sentence structure: subject-verb-object and a good period to each statement. BUT here’s the problem: What do you mean by “messiness” and “unpredictability” the two nouns that describe the result of the war? Are “messy” and “unpredictable” the correct words? No, I do not think so and there are a lot of precise substitutions in the thesaurus for sure. How about the verb “means”? The war has been breaking out for almost a month or so (at least by the time of this writing), what has the war “meant to you”? “Mean” is not a good verb/ word here either. If I were him, I would suggest a clear and precise statement like “The war is chaotic and causing uncertainty to our future.” Let the “verb-to-be” takes over.

The problem of Purist is indeed chaotic; they restricted us to some boundaries that seem to be logical, but it reduced our cognitive thinking and expression in the field of communication. Let’s look at another made-up classy example, “City XYZ had been visited by 100 million tourists in 2024.” What’s the problem? Do you think using passive voice in this statement is a good option. Probably not! Who is the subject and who is the object or the result of the action. In fact, “had been visited” is a bit intransitive; it mentioned about the result of the visit but then what else have been done after all. People also tend to overuse passive voice in the command statement like “it is prohibited to xxx on the train” vs “Do not xxx on the train”. When you have the right tool to do a better job having good expression, use it right away and make your statement clear and loud. Let everyone know what you are doing. The above examples are everywhere in your daily life. English Purist should have their weapon down to the earth and think about the purpose of communication.

I hate seeing an English purist trying to correct me as I go along in the freedom of expression. It is fortunate enough that Applied Linguistics foresaw this problem coming. They found out teachers often taught grammar first and then built up the vocabulary by making sure teachers could control the bad habit when using ill-formation of grammar composition, and they saw it as a problem that applied linguistics must fix - grammar shall be dynamic and innovative in some way. Sadly, there weren’t too many people who understood the basics of how grammar should be. My final is to put down the fortress of grammar learnt from school. And opens your up the world of books, novels, and plays. I am sure you will have a different opinion about English after being washed up in the literature world.

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