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| Has Michael Gove dreamed up these grammar rules just for our entertainment? | Has Michael Gove dreamed up these grammar rules just for our entertainment? |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| If you look at the latest grammar rules issued by Michael Gove to civil servants – this time in the Ministry of Justice – you may be subject to conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of sympathy for a lord chancellor who is trying to instruct his staff – if we can stretch a point and call them that – to use the English language correctly. It’s galling to see it misused, if you care about this kind of thing, and especially if it’s being misused by the kind of people who ought to know better. | If you look at the latest grammar rules issued by Michael Gove to civil servants – this time in the Ministry of Justice – you may be subject to conflicting emotions. On the one hand, there is a certain amount of sympathy for a lord chancellor who is trying to instruct his staff – if we can stretch a point and call them that – to use the English language correctly. It’s galling to see it misused, if you care about this kind of thing, and especially if it’s being misused by the kind of people who ought to know better. |
| Related: Michael Gove issues civil servants with grammar guidelines | |
| The problem is that Gove has, as so often in his career, opened himself up to scrutiny and ridicule to the point where you begin to suspect that he is actually doing this for the public’s amusement rather from any genuinely held set of convictions. When commenting on a memo that advises its recipients not to begin a sentence with the word “however”, it is hard not to begin a sentence, in reply, with the word “however”; or to search for examples of Gove’s own published works (for he used to be a journalist) in which he begins sentences with the word “however”. (And there are quite a few of these examples.) | The problem is that Gove has, as so often in his career, opened himself up to scrutiny and ridicule to the point where you begin to suspect that he is actually doing this for the public’s amusement rather from any genuinely held set of convictions. When commenting on a memo that advises its recipients not to begin a sentence with the word “however”, it is hard not to begin a sentence, in reply, with the word “however”; or to search for examples of Gove’s own published works (for he used to be a journalist) in which he begins sentences with the word “however”. (And there are quite a few of these examples.) |
| And when he goes so far as to tell civil servants they should opt for “does not” instead of “doesn’t” in official communications, or avoid “anything too pompous”, or write “I am sorry to read that …” instead of “I am sorry to hear that …” – an over-literalism that precludes the possibility that the writer may indeed have heard rather than read some news – then once again the familiar Gove is before us. Here is the anxious, insecure man beleaguered by the pace of change in a world becoming alien to him, who sees correct usage as a kind of security blanket, prides himself on his command of the language, and likes to let everyone know it – even when his strictures are contradictory (there will, after all, be times when saying “does not” instead of “doesn’t” verges on pomposity) or simply ridiculous. | And when he goes so far as to tell civil servants they should opt for “does not” instead of “doesn’t” in official communications, or avoid “anything too pompous”, or write “I am sorry to read that …” instead of “I am sorry to hear that …” – an over-literalism that precludes the possibility that the writer may indeed have heard rather than read some news – then once again the familiar Gove is before us. Here is the anxious, insecure man beleaguered by the pace of change in a world becoming alien to him, who sees correct usage as a kind of security blanket, prides himself on his command of the language, and likes to let everyone know it – even when his strictures are contradictory (there will, after all, be times when saying “does not” instead of “doesn’t” verges on pomposity) or simply ridiculous. |
| Add to this mix the strong whiff of someone with too much time on his hands and an inclination to didacticism, and we have, in the higher reaches of government, a version of the know-all Harry Enfield character who keeps saying “You don’t want to do it like that”. Characters like that have been, as I am sure Gove will know, figures of fun since Chaucer; and the glorious thing about such people – even those who have read Chaucer, as I am sure Gove has – is that they are utterly unaware of their own condition. | |
| He is, one suspects, the kind of person who will not just sigh inwardly at seeing a sign saying “tomato’s”; he’s the kind of person whom it is not hard to imagine going up to the individual responsible and complaining about it. And if he has not done it yet, it is only a matter of time. There are plenty of public servants – say, the entire teaching profession – who can attest to his tendency to stick his nose in and make contributions that are not wanted. | He is, one suspects, the kind of person who will not just sigh inwardly at seeing a sign saying “tomato’s”; he’s the kind of person whom it is not hard to imagine going up to the individual responsible and complaining about it. And if he has not done it yet, it is only a matter of time. There are plenty of public servants – say, the entire teaching profession – who can attest to his tendency to stick his nose in and make contributions that are not wanted. |
| However, all this is to miss the point, or to make light of it for the sake of comedy. There are two clues as to what is really going on. The one in plain sight is his job: however sidelined he may be from the actual levers of power, or from David Cameron’s cosy clique, Gove is, in his own eyes at least, and relative to us, an Important Person. The clue that is tucked away in his instructions is his insistence that when his civil servants refer to rising court fees, a fact due entirely to his party’s policies, they must mention “the need to tackle the economic situation that the government has inherited”. | However, all this is to miss the point, or to make light of it for the sake of comedy. There are two clues as to what is really going on. The one in plain sight is his job: however sidelined he may be from the actual levers of power, or from David Cameron’s cosy clique, Gove is, in his own eyes at least, and relative to us, an Important Person. The clue that is tucked away in his instructions is his insistence that when his civil servants refer to rising court fees, a fact due entirely to his party’s policies, they must mention “the need to tackle the economic situation that the government has inherited”. |
| So, while it is all very well for him to generously recommend (I split the infinitive gleefully) that they read George Orwell and Christopher Hitchens, such advice would sound a bit better – or read a bit better, if he prefers – if he wasn’t recommending that, every time a certain subject comes up, propaganda should be used; or, as Orwell or Hitchens would have put it: a lie. | |
| Nicholas Lezard is a literary critic for the Guardian |