Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language

While most grammar books start and stop with an explanation of parts of speech and sentence structure, Navigating English Grammar goes a step further to provide an overview of the field, with a discussion of historical and current debates about grammar, and how we define, discuss, and approach it.

The authors use grammar as a springboard to discuss semantics and morphology; how usage and sentence structure affects style in writing; abbreviated style in the digital age; and the syntax of poetry, fiction, and other genres. Along the way they give examples and analysis of texts. Among other controversies, the authors delve into the sociopolitical aspects of grammar rules, the subjectivity of pet peeves and grammar police, the changing ways grammar has been taught, and how assessment and a changing educational climate has influenced this. They also lay out the fascinating history of the linguistic tradition, from the Sanskrit grammar of Panini (c. 520-460 BCE), sometimes considered a founder of linguistics, to the ancient Greeks, the development of the Western tradition, and through the rise of ’correct’ English grammar in the 17th century to the present day.

Navigating English Grammar is an engaging and fresh take on the rules and the politics of English grammar, written in lively, inviting prose.