Bob,
   I'm not sure why you want to manufacture differences. I never claimed
Perera was about "correctness". And I don't think most people on the
list would have trouble with the idea that much technical writing (much
writing in academic disciplines) is badly written. Orwell takes on the
issue in Politics and The English Language. "Objective consideration of
contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that..." is the opening
of his rewrite of Ecclesiastes. "I looked around and I saw..." Joseph
Williams does a nice job in "Ten Easy Lessons in Style and Grace." He
shows how clarity is often accomplished through putting actors in the
main slots and preserving action in the verbs against a self-important
tendency to nominalize. Elbow has been writing about it for some time,
though the drafts I have have been prepublication, so I'm not sure
where to send you. His notion is that the ear hears a much more
accessible version of texts, and the examples he uses are generally
highly nominalized. I have been helping a student prepare for the
GRE's, and at least half of the passages seem to be much less clear
than they ought to be. I also helped a student out recently with a
doctoral paper, and she admitted after awhile that she was afraid to be
clear. Being clear makes you vulnerable. Not many people know how to do
it.
   There is a certain kind of self-importance that comes from imitating
the forms of technical discourse, and sometimes it seems highly
dysfunctional.Here's a quick example from a journal I just found close
at hand: "Another reason that students' critical thinking might be
unwittinlgly limited through oral discussion without written
translation might be the passion and eloquence with which the
instructor's theoretical position is communicated." "Might be" is main
verb. Everything before it is a single noun phrase subject, everything
after it a single noun phrase complement. All the processes are buried
within the noun phrases. It's the kind of language we would not expect
in speech, and it is much more difficult to understand than it needs to
be, even in context.
   Bad writing is easy to come by. I'm surprised by the request.

Craig>

 Craig,
>
> Perera's work has absolutely NOTHING to do with correctness.  For our
> colleagues in K-12 settings, it is valuable research.
>
> Craig writes:
>   . . . .we don't have a mainstream body of research looking at
> language maturation for native
> speakers. The whole debate about grammar tends to focus on
> "correctness".
>
> ********************
> Again, I am troubled by the very general nature of this claim.
> Craig writes:
>
>    In Writing Science, Halliday directly takes on the notion that
> science
> pushes changes in language that are necessary, but can become highly
> dysfunctional.
>
> *******
> Exactly what are the changes that SCIENCE (any particular branch of
> science?) has "pushed" on the language making it "highly
> dysfunctional"?
>
> I find it interesting that someone who abhors a focus on "correctness"
> praises work that seems to find a particular genre of writing
> dysfunctional.
>
> I am unaware of any examples from science that makes the LANGUAGE
> dysfunctional.  Craig, can you provide us with some examples?
>
> Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
>
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