Thanks to Carolyn and Judy for reminding me about SFG's third kind of
meaning, interpersonal. That's right where speech acts would fit. I
think it would be accurate to say that every utterance does have a
literal meaning; it's just that that's not the only meaning it has.
Every utterance has layers of meaning.

As to Bob's assertion that you can study language out of context, and
that that is the underpinning for the competence-performance
distinction, he will know as well as any linguist that the
competence-performance distinction is not accepted by most
functionalists and is therefore part of the formalist/functionalist
divide. One can study language out of context, but language never occurs
out of a context, so why study it that way? Sure, we need to divide up
our data and study it from different perspectives, just to make the
study manageable, but 'scientizing' the divisions into things like
competence vs. performance is not always the right path.

Craig raises some very important points, too. I knew that moving the
discussion into 'theoretical' ground would raise objections on the part
of people who don't have a lot of training in linguistic theory. But I
guess I'm going to get up on my high horse here and say something that
might offend some people: If you want to be a teacher of English
language, whether writing or grammar, you need to know your subject
intimately. In other words, you need to take as much linguistics as you
can--with plenty of focus on English linguistics, of course, but I
believe a course in general linguistics is also important, to understand
that not all languages do things the way English does. Craig shows
admirable willingness to devote time and energy, that is in short supply
for teachers, to reading linguistics. I don't mean you have to become an
expert in the most up-to-date formalist syntactic theory. But anyone who
wants to teach English, either to natives or non-natives, ought to study
general linguistics, the structure of English in depth, discourse
analysis, sociolinguistics, history of the language and language
acquisition. That's 6-8 college courses.

The tradition of training English teachers has focused on literature,
with MAYBE a grammar course thrown in, that grammar course being the
often very inadequate traditional grammar that linguists know does not
help one really understand the language in depth. Some are lucky enough
to be required to take one or two linguistics courses (which they hate
and dread), and that is not nearly enough. Language is complicated;
there is no escaping this fact. Just as a science teacher should know
much more science, and know it more deeply, than her 7th-graders need
to, a teacher of English language should know the language very well,
much more deeply than his students need to.

I've complained on this list before that 'English' is too mushy a label
and we need to sort out literature, language, and composition (and also
work on ways to see how they go together). It takes a lot of education
to specialize in all three (plus pedagogy!!); maybe our system is erring
collossally in requiring English teachers to do so. I wouldn't want to
shortchange literature or its interface with language, but someone
should be thinking out a more realistic way to prepare teachers and to
organize the teaching of English in schools.

A root issue, of course, is that our country does not treat teaching as
a true profession: resources and standards for teacher education,
employment, and retention are inadequate. In some countries, all
teachers must have the equivalent of a Master's degree, and the
government devotes huge resources to schooling. Here, that sounds like
pie in the sky, and as long as government and public attitudes stay as
they are, it will be.

Linguistics training would not only improve teachers' understanding of
the content they teach, but would also influence the mindset within
which it is taught, and therefore the mindset of the students. Perhaps
students could be brought to appreciate equally what they have
internalized as natural language users and what Hacker says they need to
do to be 'correct'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Associate Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-2596
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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