Kathryn and Craig,

What we seem to be talking about here is Formal Standard Written English, a register that college students are required to master and that high school students intending to go to college need to be well on the way towards mastering.  It is the great gate-keeper in American society.  My college students see this immediately when I ask them to think back to high school classmates who didn't succeed at English and where they were now.  We talk about this, and it's clear to all that there are notable exceptions to the rule, but that overwhelmingly success at FSWE is a prerequisite to other socio-economic success.

The problem with this is that FSWE is constructed in different ways by different people, be they teachers, editors, employers, school board members, or parents.  Not everyone's FSWE is the same but frequently each person believes firmly that his or her FSWE is correct and widely accepted.  We can't teach to all of the which/that, stranded preposition, passive voice, ... preferences, so we have to make sure our students know that these preferences exist and that they may have to be sensitive to them.

And, by the way, they aren't all old.  As we've discussed before, the ban on possessive antecedents, which it the news a few years ago, shows up for the first time in the 1940s and than spreads to nearly all the standard grammar books, even though even the writers who tout it violate it often in the same work.  Sentence-initially "hopefully" isn't much older.  These are more matters of fashion and of societal myth as matters of grammar.

Herb

 
Hey, Craig,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I think I'll try pasting in some of
your points and replying to them individually--

Craig: " . . . the function of case has been 
shifting toward the pragmatic.  Is that a weakening of the language,
something we should fight against?   . . . At any rate, we
might be taking arms against the sea if we oppose it."

Kathryn: I 100% agree with you about the folly of fighting language
change--both because it would be a lost cause and because often language
changes specifically to meet users' changing communicative needs. But as
long as many language users (especially cultural gatekeepers) still
value the "old" conventions and follow them, it's helpful to know what
those old conventions are, how to follow them, and when it is wise to do
so (or when the conventions will improve clarity, communication,
richness, etc.). That's not a matter of fighting change; it's a matter
of understanding/navigating it. 


Craig: "I have a great deal of difficulty with the notion of "standard
English."  We tend to talk about it as if it were set in stone and was
actually existing somewhere to be studied and emulated."

Kathryn: I don't know anyone who is savvy about language who thinks that
standard English is static. One can study and emulate a set of
conventions without having to have them set in stone. After all, one can
study art or emulate the work of particular artists even as what our
culture regards as valuable art changes constantly. 
	But again, I didn't raise the issue of "standard English" as a
call to pedantic arms (a call to red pens?) but to wonder whether
employing a standard or working to improve student writing doesn't
necessarily *mean* to some degree being a prescriptivist and/or a
proponent of standard English. It doesn't mean that you employ every
prescription of Fowler's or that you fall into lockstep with the,
whatever, 2-5% of conventions of standard English that strike you as
arbitrary and undemocratic. But any time we accept that writing can be
improved or that some usages are "better" (clearer, more
"natural"-sounding, whatever) than others, we venture out of the bounds
of pure descriptivism, no?
	

Craig: "But that's a far cry from saying that a dialect is inherently
incorrect." 

Kathryn: I agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about dialects or
registers being "inherently" correct (or "inherently" aesthetically
pleasing or appropriate). Language use is clearly contextual. 


"I suspect we get to the same place from opposite directions, but I
also think the direction you come from has enormous repercussions.
Craig"

Likewise. 
Best to you,
Kathryn


-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 7:08 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: using "before"

Kathryn,

   I think this mostly comes down to differences in our views of
language.
 Yours may be more mainstream, but mine is more mainstream within the
writing (composition) community, which might explain why there's such a
gap between grammar and writing.
   I like the idea that anxiety is functional.  But when I'm feeling
anxiety in relation to my writing, it's not that it needs "correcting",
but that it isn't accomplishing what I want it to. (Not clear,
thoughtful, interesting, useful, convincing, whatever the purpose might
be.) Believe it or not, I work hard to make my writing seem like
something a person might actually say.
    If Herb is right (he has me convinced) the function of case has been
shifting toward the pragmatic.  Is that a weakening of the language,
something we should fight against?  I'm more apt to use it for
rhetorical effect to the extent that i understand it. At any rate, we
might be taking arms against the sea if we oppose it. I may not like
the law of gravity, but I have to live in a gravity world.
   A traditional view of grammar is that it's the set of constraints
that
govern what is considered acceptable within more formal discourse. 
Most writing teachers, and I'm certainly one, feel we need to hold that
in abeyance while writing answers far more important concerns.  There's
a pretty good literature out there that shows the compulsion to
"correct' writing (rather than revise) is characteristic of
inexperienced and ineffective writers. To the extent that we spend
considerable time getting students ready to meet arbitrary and
dysfunctional standards, we have distorted the whole notion of writing.
 As you know, though, I'm all in favor of a far deeper and wider
understanding of language.  Avoiding superficial error seems a
distraction from a far richer, far more interesting subject, the
language itself and how it works and operates.
    From a functional perspective, meaning happens in and through the
grammar.  These are rhetorical choices, not merely formal ones.
    I help people with writing for "formal" registers all the time.
Most
are very happy that I demand much more than correctness.   >
    I have a great deal of difficulty with the notion of "standard
English."  We tend to talk about it as if it were set in stone and was
actually existing somewhere to be studied and emulated.  It's an
abstract concept. Even if we decide it is evidenced by the work of the
"best writers", who are we to include in that category?
   I'm certainly not in favor of losing your reader by using terms or
constructs they aren't familiar with. But that's a far cry from saying
that a dialect is inherently incorrect. You write with your audience in
mind, and that may mean recognizing that their lives have been  more
privileged than your own.
    I suspect we get to the same place from opposite directions, but I
also think the direction you come from has enormous repercussions.

Craig



You say, "These prescriptions go on making people distrust their own
> language. . . . Rather than improving writing, I think they have the
> effect of shutting it down."
>
>
>
> I think that people are most often anxious when they feel they are
> inexpert. Sometimes they react to that anxiety by trying to become
more
> expert, and sometimes they react by shutting down. (I agree that a
> school grammar or teacher that seeks to shame a student or that
refuses
> to acknowledge linguistic diversity can heighten this anxiety-bad
> teachers are bad for students, period.) Ultimately, though, students
> will succeed when they learn to take responsibility for how they react
> to that anxiety, and educators will succeed when they encourage
students
> to take the former route by showing them how to become more expert and
> what the rewards will be if they do.
>
>
>
> I don't think it lessens anxiety to dismiss case rules as outmoded and
> irrelevant. Students will, rightly, have the uneasy feeling that other
> people are privy to information that they don't have. It may, though,
> lessen their anxiety if they can understand case rules and figure out
> when or if they need to bother to apply them. It will probably lessen
> their anxiety even more if they understand that in American English
case
> usage has shifted a great deal and that the shift has a lot to do with
> the difference they hear between formal and informal registers.
>
>
>
> You say, "We don't have to be prescriptivists to have . . .  high
> standards." This raises an interesting point. (I'm assuming you mean
> high standards for language use.) From a fully descriptive position,
> what would it mean to hold a student to a high standard? Doesn't a
100%
> non-prescriptive position mean nobody's language is "nonstandard"? If
no
> one's language is nonstandard, then what does it mean to reach the
> standard? I *think* what you mean is "We don't have to be pedants to
> have  . . . high standards"--? And amen to that.
>
>
>
> Best,
>
> Kathryn
>
>
>

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