Bill,
As you well know, our statements are never complete because we cannot state everything about something in a statement, and because we often lack a common background. We can express only partial truth about an issue. We would need a continuous,progressive dialogue to clarify statements and points in order to see if our perspectives differ or not.
So far, you have made some assumptions about what you call my assumptions, but how can you be sure that what I stated in my short comments is a summary of my perspective on the issue discussed? You cannot. I believe that you have understood me for the most part because of the brevity of my statements and lack of continuous, progressive dialogue in which we would confirm or disprove each other's understanding on the issue in question.
Yes, you have read me correctly when you "assumed" that I believe that communication requires a common communicative basis - lexicon, grammar, socio-cultural and political context, etc. I do not think that some dialect variation prevents communication, but I believe that too much dialectal variation could lead to - as you know - the collapse of communication because of the birth of new languages. I also believe that in most societies a command of the power and prestige dialect matters the most for all practical purposes. Have you read "Language and Social Context" edited by Per Paolo Giglioli? Somewhere in the book,if I am not mistaken, someone states that a dialect without a state is just that, while a dialect with a state is a language.
As for the "prescriptive vs. descriptive" dichotomy, well, we know that all language is prescripted during socialization, and that the contrast between the above notions could be useful only in a theoretical/didactic context. What choices did you have when you learned your English in the early childhood? None! If you were born in a poor and illiterate black family you would speak illiterate black English, or "Ebonics" (to use the politically correct term). If you were born in a poor illiterate Appalachian family you would speak the same illiterate English. We speak the language of the humans who socialized us, and it takes a lot to change that language to something else.
I mentioned Chomsky only to make the point that history repeats. Forty years ago most linguists were worshipping Chomsky and his language theories until other people came and showed that he was wrong. Most language theories are proven wrong after some time although in the beginning linguists believe that those theories are the ultimate answer to the fundamental questions about language. To accept any theory without ever questioning it is anti-scientific and shows gullability, which is not the attitude of a scientist and researcher.
Of course, again, you can pick of my statements because no matter how hard I try to make my statements complete I will never succeed to do so. I am sure that I have already left something out in this mesage, too.
Eduard
----- Original Message -----
From: "William C Spruiell" <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Saturday, September 24, 2011 3:17:11 PM
Subject: Re: The "Anti-Grammar Forum"
Eduard,
You are, I think, making an argument that starts with a quite valid observation -- that communication requires a basis that the communicants can assume is shared -- but I'd like to argue that you then overstretch it. Here are three problems with it:
(1) You seem to be assuming that a Standard ensures comprehension and that dialect variation condemns it. The effect of "sharedness" on comprehension is probably more like an S-curve. *No* two people completely share conventions, of course, but as some of the conventions start differing, there is a drop-off in mutual intelligibility. The "top" of the curve is fairly flat, although the slope increases rapidly past a certain point. But that point doesn't correspond to the "Standard" vs. "non-Standard" distinction. Two people speaking Standard English (pretending, for the moment, it's well-defined) may understand each other less than two people speaking different dialects, depending on the situation. An example: I was trying to read a current article on Minimalism last week; I'm sure it was in Standard English, but I didn't understand much of it; I think I understood more of "Trainspotting," even without the subtitles. A factor that has nothing to do with "+/- Standard" may affect comprehension far more than does whether the speaker is using Standard subject-verb agreement.
(2) You seem to be assuming that everyone on the other side of the fence from you thinks that the prescriptive/descriptive divide is absolute. The existence of a now-sizable body of research on the social malleability of grammaticality judgments indicates that a lot of linguists are quite aware of the fuzziness of this kind of boundary, and I've seen arguments that language can't be analyzed well in the absence of a recognition as a mechanism of social regulation (I'll try to dig out the article ref on that). As in most social-research fields, we make distinctions because they're useful, then blur them because pretending that they hold as absolutes is simply wrong.
(3) You're assuming that most English language educators agree with Chomsky about the relation of language to meaning. This, in turn, assumes that most English language educators know what Chomsky's theories actually are. Most of the time, discussions of Chomsky in education don't support the validity of that assumption. I'm saying this as someone who strongly disagrees with most of Chomsky's linguistic theories. I'd love to pile on with the Chomsky-dissing, but only about things that really are his fault (like his conflation of modeling with explanation).
Bill Spruiell
On Sep 24, 2011, at 9:26 AM, Eduard Hanganu wrote:
John,
If you are not speaking and writing a "prescriptive" English, then we are not communicating because I don't know what your words mean and I don't know what grammar rules you use to organize them. Your words may mean something else based on your personal definitions in your own idiolect. You need to define for me the sense or dictionary meaning in your own dictionary. What do you mean by "estimate"? How about "percentage"? How about "linguists," etc. You also need to give me a detailed account of the rules you used to organize your words in phrases, sentences, and discourse. You need to teach me the sociolingustic conventions that define your language communication. You need to teach me YOUR LANGUAGE.
Most if not all speakers of the English language speak a language "prescribed" to them when they became socialized in English. When you were an innocent victim of your parents, they forced on you the English lexicon and the grammar they used. You had no choice. You could not use your own word definitions, or organize language in your own way. You were forced to acquire/learn their own definitions and their own language organization, which actually was not their own but was forced on them by their parents - the society in which they lived.
There is a mythical, false, and anecdotal distinction between "prescriptive" and "descriptive" that is circulated as a doctrine in language circles based on the profound lack of understanding that the very people who use the distinction speak and write in an English that has been prescribed to them by the society in which they live. The few examples of "prescriptive" English that are so often mentioned and circulated as proof that "we linguists don't prescribe but describe English" are false examples of "description." Those who use them have forgotten that they are using a language prescribed to them, and that what they are describing now is actually a prescripted language. They are thinking and working in an illogical, irational, vicious circle.
As for your thought that "what you learned about linguistics and language arts education conflicts with about 75% of what I say," well, too bad. I don't know who were your instructors, and what books you read during your education, but most English language educators still live by the myths prescribed to them by their educators. Myths they have never questions. Such as that the myth promoted for decades by the great Chomsky that language does not necessarily have meaning, and that we can separate language from meaning without a sweat.
The great Einstein taught that no object in the univers can exceed the light speed. Now researchers find out that this is not true. Apparently, some particles - neutrinos - travel at a speed that exceed the light speed, and all Einstein's relativitity theory appears to need a reevaluation. So it is in language education. We have been fed some myths, and some of us don't want to think, but want to live by those myths in spite of all evidence that points to the contrary.
Eduard
________________________________
From: "John Dews-Alexander" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 3:42:48 PM
Subject: Re: The "Anti-Grammar Forum"
Eduard,
If you had to estimate a percentage of linguists worldwide who share the views you describe in your recent emails, what would that percentage be? I am not attempting to be coy at all. I am seriously interested. I ask because everything I've ever learned about linguistics and language arts education conflicts with about 75% of what you say. I'm not faulting or attacking your point of view. Have I just read the wrong books and had the wrong professors? Or would you consider your views "non-mainstream"? Who are the linguists I should read to get more information on the type of linguistics you describe?
John
On Fri, Sep 23, 2011 at 3:25 PM, Eduard Hanganu <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
Craig,
I am a LINGUIST, not a GRAMMARIAN. I am not a grammar school teacher or a high school teacher. In my undergraduate and graduate studies I have studied phonetics and phonology, morphology and syntax, semantics, pragmatics, discourse analysis, sociolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, etc. From my perspective, the concept of "grammar" as discussed on this forum seems to be limited, narrow, and incomplete, and the distinction between "descriptive" and "prescriptive" in language is nonsensical. Someone said, "We describe in order to prescribe." Most examples of "prescriptive" English are so pathetic that they make me weep, and those who insist on the distinction don't seem to understand the ultimate purpose of language - communication.
The whole purpose of English language education is to "prescribe" how people should speak and write in order to produce a consesus language. The alternative would be for each one of us or for groups of people of various sizes in this country to coin words that have a meaning only for individuals or for grouns, and to build an unlimited number of individual or group grammars. If we followed this course of action we would soon loose the ability to communicate between individuals and groups. We would witness a modern Tower of Babel.
Why is the American education paying every year English language teachers and other educators? In order to "prescribe" behavior in language, arts, and science. This is called "socialization," and without socialization creatures born to humans are will not become human.
Instead of speaking about "grammar" I would rather speak about language structure and its communicative, rhetorical purpose. If we cannot communicate in language, the production of sounds, words, and strings of words is irational and useless. It is necessary for humans, in order to communicate through language, to "prescribe" what words and strings of words mean so that they could all use those words and word strings to mean the same thing. We don't live in Alice's wonderland, and we are rabbbits, ascribing personal and arbitrary meanings to words if we want to communicate because if we did so we would loose very rapidly the ability to communicate with each other and one another.
Language use has a DIRECT and SPECIFIC purpose: TO COMMUNICATE. If we forget its purpose, then we are lost.
Eduard
________________________________
From: "Craig G Hancock" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, September 23, 2011 11:18:12 AM
Subject: Re: The "Anti-Grammar Forum"
Eduard,
These leaves me with some questions. 1) Are you ONLY interested in what makes something Standard, or does your interest in grammar go beyond that? In other words, once something is determined as Standard English, are there other things we can observe about its grammar that are useful and beneficial? Is our only concern making sure language conforms to norms or should we also think about ways in which grammar contributes to rhetorical effect or to meaning? 2) Are you at all troubled by the fact that many of the rules of prescriptive grammar seem rather arbitrary? One example might be the “due to” versus “because of” distinction in a recent post that many of us felt was on shaky ground. How do we determine whether something is standard or not? 3) Does that mean that literary texts that use dialect in one way or another should be expunged from the canon? I’m thinking of books like “Huckleberry Finn” or “The color Purple”, much of the poetry of Robert Burns and Langston Hughes, the plays of August Wilson (so many of our plays, for that matter), and so on? How do we deal with the fact that a great deal of highly valued literature is built on creative use of the vernacular?
The final question, I guess, might be how we stimulate widespread acquisition of the standard. Is disparaging dialect a necessary step in that direction? I don’t think many of would disagree that knowing Standard English is a central goal. How do we accommodate other goals as well, including encouraging fluency?
Craig
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>] On Behalf Of Eduard Hanganu
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 6:52 PM
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: The "Anti-Grammar Forum"
Well,
Maybe the difference in perspective between the two of us is that you consider different "grammars" that govern different "varieties" of the English language, while I recognize only ONE GRAMMAR, the Standard English Grammar. Of course we all speak our own idiolects, and use various registers depending on the linguistic context, but if those idiolects and registers do not follow the rules of the Standard English Grammar I cannot call those "varieties" or "registers" good English, but to the degree to which they differ from the Standard English I call them "illiterate English." Anecdotally, someone mentioned to me that "Ebonics" as a "language variety" does not differ much from the broken English that some poor, illiterate people speak in the Appalachians. What is the common denominator between these two "varieties" of the English language? Illiteracy.
Eduard
________________________________
From: "Dick Veit" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
To: [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, September 21, 2011 5:18:07 PM
Subject: Re: The "Anti-Grammar Forum"
The assumption in several posts that there can only be one variety of English for every occasion flabbergasts me. Aren't we all masters of many registers? In an earlier post I wrote that one language phrase "bugs the hell out of me." I deemed that informal expression to be appropriate in this forum, just as I would consider it inappropriate in many others. I know the difference. You do too. Your language in writing journal papers is identifiably different from your language in an email to colleagues and different from your speech in conversing with friends while watching a football game or in talking on the phone with your insurance agent. You have no trouble making the adjustments. That is what being a sophisticated user of language is all about.
I taught writing for forty years, and my goal was always for students to master the principles of formal written English. There are accepted conventions that educated people need to learn. Another goal was for them to understand different registers and to know which is appropriate to use in different situations. And yes, students can master that too.
When someone in this forum observes that an informal expression is grammatical in a certain register or dialect, they are simply describing what they observe and not making a moral judgment. Such an observatrion doesn't mean that (1) they do not believe in teaching formal written English, (2) they favor teaching students to write Ebonics, or (3) the world is coming to an end.
Dick
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