Solecism

A solecism is a syntactic error, an incorrect grammatical construction of a phrase or sentence that violates the norms of agreement, government or the connection of words, yet does not destroy the general understanding of the utterance. The name derives from the Greek city of Soli, whose inhabitants, according to tradition, spoke a corrupted Greek. In the culture of language a solecism is considered a flaw requiring correction. However, in literature a deliberately used solecism may fulfil a stylistic function: to reproduce the illiterate or vernacular speech of a personage, to convey agitation, to imitate the living colloquial element or the speech of a child or a foreigner. A solecism must be distinguished from motivated poetic licences and inversions. This concept is important for stylistics, the culture of language and rhetoric in the aspect of distinguishing an error from an artistically motivated deviation from the grammatical norm.