"Although spoken English doesn't obey the rules of written language, a person who doesn't know the rules thoroughly is at a great disadvantage"
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There is a polite trap hidden in vos Savant's seemingly commonsense sentence: it starts by granting the anti-grammar crowd their favorite premise (spoken language is loose, improvisational, gloriously unruly) and then pivots to a harder truth about power. Speech may not "obey" writing, but people do. The "rules" she means aren't just commas and subject-verb agreement; they're the gatekeeping protocols of school, hiring, publishing, law, and bureaucracy. You can talk your way through a party without diagramming a sentence, but try negotiating a lease, drafting a complaint, or pitching an idea in an email thread when your audience is scanning for competence.
The subtext is pragmatic, not purist. Vos Savant isn't worshipping written English as morally superior; she's pointing at asymmetry. When you don't know the rules, you can't choose when to break them. Your errors read as accidents, not style. Your voice gets treated as evidence about your education, your class, your credibility. Meanwhile, the fluent rule-knowers get to code-switch: they can write formally to access institutions, then loosen up in speech without penalty.
Context matters, too. As a public intellectual famous for answers and arguments, vos Savant spent a career in arenas where language is a currency. Her sentence reflects that world: speech is flexible, but the systems that sort people are not. The disadvantage isn't linguistic; it's social, and it's enforced by readers who pretend their judgments are just about "clarity."
The subtext is pragmatic, not purist. Vos Savant isn't worshipping written English as morally superior; she's pointing at asymmetry. When you don't know the rules, you can't choose when to break them. Your errors read as accidents, not style. Your voice gets treated as evidence about your education, your class, your credibility. Meanwhile, the fluent rule-knowers get to code-switch: they can write formally to access institutions, then loosen up in speech without penalty.
Context matters, too. As a public intellectual famous for answers and arguments, vos Savant spent a career in arenas where language is a currency. Her sentence reflects that world: speech is flexible, but the systems that sort people are not. The disadvantage isn't linguistic; it's social, and it's enforced by readers who pretend their judgments are just about "clarity."
Quote Details
| Topic | Learning |
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