Craig,
I'm with you completely on that. My students who have complained about inconsistency in prescriptive rules among their instructors all have had the good sense to write the way the instructor want. If that means not using a serial comma or not using "which" to introduce restrictive relatives or some other idiosyncrasy, they catch on fast. It becomes fodder for often light discussions in class. As to Brad's rules for past perfect, I must say he is the only person I've ever seen insist on that particular practice, and so I would agree that these particular rules of his are a personal foible rather than a prescriptive rule, much less a rule of English grammar.
Herb
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: 2009-04-30 22:47
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Making Peace In The Language Wars
Herb,
The point I was trying to make in my last post (apparently, to Brad at
least, without success) is that an individual is not in a position to
declare something "acceptable" or "correct." Brian's point, I think, is
similar--he mentions a "relevant audience." So I can have a much
different attitude about sentence fragments than the handbooks do, but
I need to alert my students to the fact that they are "considered" an
error in formal writing. It is conventional practice to put a comma
before a conjunction linking independent clauses in the US, but not
standard in England. I much prefer the US practice, but couldn't, in
good conscience, call British practice "incorrect." I don't have the
authority to do that. It might be akin to declaring my own speed
limits. Mine might be better, but they are not the law, and it would be
wrong to imply that they are.
Brad keeps pointing out that he finds "errors" in all grammar books,
but doesn't have the grace to mention that these books are not breaking
their own rules--they are breaking Brad's, and Brad's rules are not
widely known or even narrowly accepted.
When an individual teacher dictates an idiosyncratic practice and calls
it "correct", he/she is acting unprofessionally.
An example might be "You can't start a sentence with "but" or "because."
I don't know a single handbook that would back that up. If a teacher
wants to give that as advice, and so many of them do, they should admit
that most authorities don't agree. That's, I think, the main source of
frustration.
I also believe it's our responsibility to pass on a deep understanding
of how language works. No one owns the language. It's not just that we
don't want to say anything barbarous, but that we have deeply important
things to say that need to find their appropriate form. Whether writing
is "effective" is a different question. As Bill implies with the
reference to Huck Finn, effective often requires the non-standard.
I hope that's not too rambling. Standard practice is a real thing out
there in the world, and, as Brian says, it can (and should be)
described. A single individual can't declare an alternative standard.
For that to change, you have to bring people around to your side.
Craig
Brian,
>
> You're pinning me down on practice, which is fair enough. For practical
> purposes I'm going to refer students to their writing handbook, whichever
> one the Writing Program faculty have chosen, but I'll also direct them
> away from any glaring idiocies in the manual. And I'll remind them of
> Orwell's rule vi: Break any of these rules sooner than say anything
> outright barbarous.
>
> Thanks for the Connors&Lunsford reference. That's the article I was
> referring to.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Sullivan, Brian P
> Sent: 2009-04-30 18:29
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Making Peace In The Language Wars
>
> Herb,
>
> I think I agree with you, but are you suggesting that we shouldn't teach
> "prescriptive rules" at all, or that we should ground those rules in
> descriptive grammar and also teach students to make the many choices that
> are open to them within the bounds of the "rules"?
>
> One of the studies you're referring to might be "Frequency of Formal
> Errors in Current College Writing, or Ma and Pa Kettle Do Research,"
> Robert J. Connors and Andrea A. Lunsford, College Composition and
> Communication, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 395-409. They had a bunch
> of trained readers look at a huge batch of marked-up student papers from
> many college students across the country, and they found, among other
> things, that there was wide variance among instructors as to what kinds of
> errors were detected and marked.
>
> In the same essay, though, they acknowledge that errors can be distracting
> and confusing and that "errors are not merely mechanical, therefore, but
> rhetorical as well." To me, this suggests that we can't escape
> "prescription" altogether; we can help students learn to make more and
> more conscious choices as they write, but we also have to teach to them to
> avoid choices that some relevant audiences will consider bad. (To do that,
> of course, we first have to describe the kinds of choices that those
> audiences find acceptable and unacceptable.)
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of STAHLKE,
> HERBERT F
> Sent: Thu 4/30/2009 12:40 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Making Peace In The Language Wars
>
> There have been studies, including some published in CCC, I believe,
> demonstrating that composition teachers do not agree on what the
> prescriptive rules are and that papers may pass or fail depending on whose
> prescriptive rules are governing the decision. We assume that there is a
> well known, widely agreed upon body of rules that we call prescriptive
> grammar. It turns out that this ostensibly public grammar is a construct
> that doesn't in fact have the same content from one teacher/editor/critic/
> to another. This inconsistency leads to considerable frustration on the
> part of students, who frequently have different instructors demanding
> opposite treatments of points of grammar, as we have all learned from our
> own students' frustrations.
>
> Herb
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of O'Sullivan, Brian P
> Sent: 2009-04-30 12:13
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Making Peace In The Language Wars
>
> I agree that descriptivists and prescriptivists each have valid jobs to do
> and needn't be either merged or opposed to each other. The tricky part,
> though, is whether and how prescription is informed by description.
>
> Without describing "how people actually speak [or write]," or how the most
> respected speakers and writers actually speak and write, how will we know
> what to prescribe? If we assume, a priori and without checking, that we
> know "the standard to which educated people adhere," don't we risk
> replicating antiquated or folkloric standards and making ourselves
> irrelevant? If, hypothetically, writers win pulitzers and critical acclaim
> while violating presumed conventions, doesn't it seem unlikely that these
> particular conventions really affect how "educated people...judge the
> writing of others"?
>
> Brian
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar on behalf of Brad
> Johnston
> Sent: Thu 4/30/2009 11:14 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Making Peace In The Language Wars
>
> Someone wrote:
>
>
>
> It is a pleasure to see in action an accomplished linguist such as
> Jespersen, who understands that the language exists as the product of
> those who speak it, who observes carefully, and who reports on actual
> language practices as exemplified by celebrated practitioners. Compare
> that with our resident fanatic, who considers himself a language dictator
> and who reports on the practices of our most eminent writers and linguists
> only so he can pronounce them to be in violation of his peculiar dictates.
>
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~
>
>
> Garner's Modern American Usage, by Bryan A. Garner, c.2003.
>
> Making Peace In The Language Wars -page xxxi-
>
> Prescribers seek to guide the users of a language -- including native
> speakers -- on how to handle words as effectively as possible. Describers
> seek to discover the facts of how native speakers actually use their
> language.
>
>
> ~~~~~~~~~
>
> This speaks to the difference between what linguists do, study how people
> actually speak, and what grammar teachers should do, instruct students in
> what is considered "standard" for their era.
>
> Language changes over time but in any given era, e.g., 19th century
> England or 21st century America, there is a standard to which educated
> people adhere and by which they judge the writing of others and, to a
> lesser degree, the speech of others. Such a standard makes the language
> more precise and makes the transmission of ideas and information more
> reliable than is typical of the language of the streets.
>
> .brad.30apr09.
>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at: http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html and select "Join or
> leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
> To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface
> at:
> http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
> and select "Join or leave the list"
>
> Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
>
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
To join or leave this LISTSERV list, please visit the list's web interface at:
http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/ateg.html
and select "Join or leave the list"
Visit ATEG's web site at http://ateg.org/
|
