How do we describe "good" and "bad" English?

Question

Many questions have these words tossed around:

good / bad
valid / invalid
right / wrong
grammatical / ungrammatical
correct / mistake
standard / non-standard
accepted / not accepted
acceptable / not acceptable
common / uncommon
rules / guidelines

These words seem to have different meanings in various circles. There are nuances there that can cause conflict and confusion. Without context, one could ask "acceptable where?" and so on.

I've seen this manifest in several questions, most recently one about direct object "it". One of the first comments is by tchrist: "What do you mean by grammatical?" What do we mean?

A grammatical discussion on the NY Times site gave me pause for similar reflection. Is there a consensus, at least on ELU, about these terms? Is there a way we can use these terms effectively and accurately (in a linguistic sense) to answer questions? On the one hand, we don't want to confuse non-native speakers (or even laypersons like me). But we don't want to create a misleading or oversimplified picture, either, that leaves professional linguists shaking their heads about what makes "good English".

Answer 1

I think there are two basic meanings, and questioners should be asked to clarify which they're using.

• There's formal written English, as used in textbooks, most novels, newspapers, and technical articles. This has well-defined rules of grammar and orthography. We can talk about the rules of comma placement, or how a semi-colon works, or verb agreement.
• There's the English people speak, whether formal or informal. Formal spoken English tends to approach the rules of written grammar, but it's not quite the same. In this case, the question is, Would a native speaker actually say this, or does it just sound wrong?

Answer 2

The question "What do you mean by grammatical?" is not at all a real question. It's either disingenuous -- and given the source, someone who has no problem declaring whether some of the sentences in ELU questions are or aren't grammatical, I'd say that this question is disingenuous -- or rhetorical or an elided isoform of "When you say that a sentence or expression is grammatical or ungrammatical, whose grammar book are you using to make this judgment, what dialect of English are you referring to, and what age of English do you have in mind, Beowulfian, Chaucerian, Shakesperian, Victorian, or Rupert Murdochian"? Specifically, "He's in hospital" in not grammatical in American English but is grammatical in British English. The question is trivial in such a case. "John the biting was bear a" is incontestably not grammatical in any brand of English. The question is trivial in such a case.

There are always reasonable judgments that can be made about specific utterances, but those judgments all depend on context, audience, register, intention, etc. They are mostly about whether something said or written is acceptable, idiomatic, natural, normal, commonplace, understandable, or stylistically good. Changing contexts often mean [NB: The verb can just as easily be singular (means) in this sentence] changing judgments.

I don't think that the terms valid/invalid are appropriate for usage questions. They are from the world of logic and syllogisms and have to do with the conclusions deduced and induced from the premises of an argument.

I don't think that professional linguists are scholars whose expertise prepares them for judging what is "good English" and what is "bad English". Those judgments are usually made by literary critics. A linguist can tell you whether it's grammatical, whether people use that particular expression, where and when native speakers are more or less likely to use it, and other kinds of technical information about language, but linguistic expertise does not necessarily imply aesthetic competence. Some professional linguists are great writers and literary critics, and others are no better (and even often worse) than those wonderful software generators of postmodernist gobbledygook.

"Rules/Guidelines" are usually well-intentioned, artificial, often arbitrary, and personal preferences. Except, of course, for the basic rules of English grammar that we all acquire as native speakers. Anything beyond that, as John Lawler says, falls into the category of the technological: Wanna Learn How to Write and Speak Well? Then RThisFM!

Your question What do we mean? is a good one. But it has to be rewritten to make sense because we don't agree on what we mean. "What do you mean?" can be answered.

Answer 3

My philosophy runs similar to what's quoted in that article you cited:

You give not just “right” or “wrong” rulings on usage, but often a 1-5 score, in which a given usage may be a 1 (definitely a mistake), 3 (common, but …) or 5 (perfectly acceptable). This notion of correctness as a scale, not a binary state, makes you different from many prescriptivists.

While we don't tend to use such a formal rating scale here, I've seen the answers generally parallel the wording of those ratings, from "That's totally wrong" to "Welll.... it's not wrong, but..."

When someone says "ungrammatical" - it's not always clear if they mean "It's less than a 5, therefore it's dubious" or "It's a 1, it's completely wrong." While some clarity might be helpful, I highly doubt we're going to achieve consensus on definitions, or be able to enforce them readily if we did.