Grammar

Hirsch contends that "All sophisticated linguists know that their job is to formulate explicit rules for what is implicitly known by every native speaker. The native speaker is the court of last resort; he can never be wrong; only the grammarian can be" (47). With this as a basic premise, he decides that "every attempt to make [a single definition of literature], without exception, has ended up being a stipulative definition...which stipulates how the world literature ought to be used, but entirely fails to define how it actually is used by great numbers of educated native speakers" (49).

I love grammar and think it's invaluable to conveying a message through language, but I also understand that part of the beauty of language is the way native speakers bend the rules and evolve the language. I think, however, that Hirsch places too much emphasis on how much sway educated native speakers ought to have on a language (Side note -- Why are they educated native speakers? It seems to me that undereducated native speakers may have even more ability to change a language). Hirsch leaves unanswered what percentage of educated native speakers have to use grammar in a certain way. Since a native speaker "can never be wrong," it seems that a problem would arise when two native speakers disagreed about language usage. Do we need/ought we to have separate sets of language/grammar? Do we already have these multiple sets?