Reflections.

Swift famously remarked: "Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own." On Thursday morning the Today programme held up a mirror in which, I confess with shame, I saw my pedantic self reflected.

    Sarah Montague was interviewing Tom Hodgkinson, editor of The Idler magazine, about The Bad Grammar Awards hosted by the The Idler Academy, a ceremony aiming, as its name suggests, to highlight examples of bad grammar. If you wish, you can listen to the interview though I wouldn't advise it: Hodgkinson has one of those whiney voices the Monty Python team was so fond of mimicking. As the following sentence taken from the transcript indicates, his own use of language left something to be desired: "It's a very good idea to train people into understanding their own language." "Train people into" - from which semi-literate Yankee-loving management consultant did he pick up that expression? Not having his notes with him, he had difficulty identifying the error in one of the examples of bad grammar he had brought with him - a London Underground announcement which made perfect sense, but which he castigated for 'mixing up a gerund and an infinitive.'

   As the interview progressed he found it increasingly difficult to string a coherent sentence together, thereby demonstrating his fundamental misunderstanding of what grammar is about - communication. Someone's grammar is only bad when it obscures his meaning. In my experience this rarely occurs in spoken English, non-verbal clues usually help to convey our message. Written English is a different kettle of fish, though even here any difficulty we find in understanding a writer's meaning is hardly ever the result of incorrect spelling or using an adjective where standard English requires an adverb. It comes from muddled syntax, and the muddled syntax is produced by muddled thought. When we're clear about what we want to say, we have no difficulty in writing it down. It's when the idea we want to express is complex, and we're not altogether sure that we've fully understood it, that we run into problems.

    All the same, the fact that Today interviewed a self-evident twerp to attack poor grammar is a pity. As readers of this blog will know, I think there is a case to be made for sharpening people's awareness of their use of language. The media's fondness for using idiots to defend or advocate unpopular causes would almost lead one to suppose that the unhinged Melanie Phillips had a point when she claimed on yesterday's Today programme that a successful left-wing conspiracy had marginalised any voices which ran counter to the 'prevailing liberal orthodoxy'. Only joking: just read the book she was promoting on the programme - the woman's clearly bonkers.

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