Shop Talk: Fry's Context Conundrum

Alexandra Pasian is a freelance writer and professor living with her family in Montreal.

In a podcast entitled “Language”, the writer/actor Stephen Fry expounds on his idea that the English language isn’t evolving as it should. Unfortunately, according to Fry, the evolution of the language is being inhibited by an insistence on outmoded rules of diction, syntax, and punctuation. Grammar, says Fry, is keeping us from expressing ourselves freely and imaginatively.I don’t necessarily agree with Fry that language is not evolving. As a professor in a Department of English, I get to watch its evolution every day. My students use words very differently than I do. They use nouns as verbs, negatives as positives, cultural references as common knowledge. I won’t show how un-cool I am by trying to provide examples. Just know that, with some effort, we manage to communicate very well and that I learn from them all the time.And, to be fair, Fry does know his grammar. Early on, he acknowledges that there is a difference between “less” and “fewer”, “disinterested” and “uninterested”, and “infer” and “imply.” But, he also states that “none of these are of importance to [him],” and then he acknowledges his own grammatical error of using “are” when it should be “is.” Clearly, Fry is in such command of his English that he uses improper constructions on purpose to prove a point.His point is that, instead of insisting on archaic rules, we should pay closer attention to context. After all, we know what “five items or less” means or what a speaker, given his or her age and education, really means when he or she says “disinterested.” We can get it. So the grammar police should stop complaining.But aren’t we already considering language in relation to context all the time? We take body language into consideration during a conversation at a party just as we think about the friendship when we read a single sentence e-mail reply. I often remind myself that, given the context of the relationship in which it occurs, the abrupt letter/e-mail/wall post might not be as aggressive as it sounds.I think that adding another layer of contextual interpretation to replace adhering to the rules of grammar will make communication even harder. I worry that, eventually, we’ll be left to infer so much meaning that we won’t actually communicate at all.You can watch Matthew Rogers’ animation of Fry’s podcast at: http://vimeo.com/15412319.