Bob, Craig, et al.
I've yet to see a discourse-vicious grammar, but I've seen a number that
are discourse-apathetic. It's hard to talk about discourse if you're
restricted to individual sentences, and many grammar theories do take
the sentence as the maximum unit of analysis. That's not necessarily a
problem for a grammar in its role as part of a linguistic theory (it all
depends on what the theory says elsewhere; the issue is internal
consistency)...but it is a problem for a grammar text for English
courses.
But then, even authors that are committed to a "sentence maximum"
theoretical position usually don't confine their classroom texts to
individual sentences. It's perfectly possible (as Bob and others on this
list have demonstrated) to talk about in inter-sentential patterns (?
Polysentential?) even if you don't think they're fundamentally the same
kind of thing as intra-sentential ones (or that a subset are different,
etc.). I suspect that discourse-apathy in a classroom text is a problem
of audience awareness more than anything else. The fact that few
grammar texts don't start at a discourse level and move inward may
result simply from our inherited tradition and from publisher/purchaser
inertia. If it looks too weird, schools won't buy it.
Bill Spruiell
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 12:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A discourse friendly grammar
Bob,
I have no problem with your suggestions. Many people on this list
have been trying to heal the split between the study of language and
English as a discipline, so I expressed the wrong tone. I was trying to
say that English as a field has not adequately valued the study of
language and linguistics as a field has not always presented a
description of language that can be easily applied. The word "blame"
doesn't have to be a part of that. I'm hoping that my own efforts can
be a small part of the solution.
Craig
Robert Yates wrote:
I have several observations about the following line in a recent post.
Craig Hancock <[log in to unmask]>
<mailto:[log in to unmask]> 04/17/09 8:08 AM >>>
. . . . And it may very well
be that linguists are much to blame for not giving us a discourse
friendly grammar to work with. . . .
****
First, it is always interesting to blame people in one discipline for
failure to provide what a person needs in their own discipline. To
blame linguists for not providing a person with what that person needs
implies that linguists need to pay attention to that person's needs.
Perhaps, linguists' concerns are not that person's concerns. If that is
true, then it seems strange to "blame" people for not caring about what
you care about.
Second, the phrase, discourse friendly grammar, suggests that there are
discourse unfriendly grammars. I wonder what one might find in a
discourse friendly grammar that is not in a discourse unfriendly
grammar. I wonder what is discourse unfriendly in a grammar that
describes what is possible in a language.
Third, and perhaps most important, in the volunteer organizations I
belong to, if you think something needs to be done, you have just
volunteered to do it. I think this same principle applies in academic
disciplines. If you notice some kind of work is missing, then perhaps
you should provide what is missing instead of "blaming" people for not
giving you what you need.
Bob Yates, University of Central Missouri
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