Carol,

I think you're right.  When we borrow a term from another field where it'ss well defined and apply it in our own field or in general discourse, we pretty much invariably misuse it and water down its meaning.  This has happened with the physics term "quantum leap" and it's happened with linguistic terms like "deep structure" and "surface structure."  As someone who's taught phonetics and phonology, I almost cringe when I hear reading specialists use "phoneme" to mean "speech sound" and talking as if English, regardless of dialect, has a fixed number of them.  To be fair, there are terms that educators use with care that other fields use more loosely.  And, of course, when a term slides from a discipline into popular vocabulary, the discipline loses both control and ownership of it.  We saw a minor example of this just recently with a brief discussion of "dangling participle."

Herb

Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN  47306
[log in to unmask]
________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Cynthia Baird [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: September 26, 2008 10:44 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Paradigm Shift?

I tend to call "paradigm shift," as used in educational circles, nothing more than pandering to the masses.  When the going gets tough or when the learners quit learning, we call for a paradigm shift.

Maybe I am not as intellectual in my definition as some people--the whole idea of "paradigm shift," in my opinion, is a cloak for lowering educational standards.

I, too, may be an "old fogey."

--- On Wed, 9/24/08, Terry Tiernan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
From: Terry Tiernan <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: Paradigm Shift?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008, 11:32 AM


STAHLKE, HERBERT F wrote:
>
> Carol,
>
> I’m pretty much with Bill on the meaning of “paradigm shift.” I
> associate the term with Thomas Kuhn’s seminal book “The Structure of
> Scientific Revolutions,” which was required reading when I was in
> graduate school back before the first moon landing.
>
> A term like this tends to get coopted by other disciplines, in this
> case other than the history and philosophy of science, and I suspect
> your student was using not to describe a paradigm shift in
> communication media but rather to justify a broad neglect of the most
> important technology of information storage, retrieval, and transfer
> in the history of humanity: the printed page.
>
> I won’t just now go into my association of this neglect with the
> trivialization of constructivist learning theory by converting it into
> an all-pervading pedagogical approach. More on that later, if anyone’s
> interested in a retired guy’s rant.
>
> Herb
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Spruiell, William C
> *Sent:* 2008-09-18 18:50
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Re: Paradigm Shift?
>
> Carol,
>
> /Paradigm shift /is something I associate with revolutions in
> scientific theories, but not automatically with shifts in everyday
> practices, although those might eventually follow. I think there /has/
> been something that we could call a paradigm shift in models of
> “literacy,” in that what were originally models only of reading have
> been expanded to deal with other “literacies” (I’m using quotes not
> because I don’t like this approach, but because I’m still a bit
> conflicted over using a term that refers to letters for things that
> letters aren’t involved in; i.e., I’m a fogey). Saying that science
> needs to discuss how people “read” visual images and the like is not
> the same, though, as saying that we now think they don’t need to read
> written texts.
>
> Some students (and others) do seem to assume that acknowledging the
> utility of a wide range of modalities means that we can abandon
> written text, and I suspect they see discussions of multi-literacies
> as verifying that assumption and signaling the end of written text as
> a medium. This view can dove-tail with an overextension of discussions
> of multiple learning styles (“I’m not a verbal learner, so I
shouldn’t
> have to read anything”). In my classes with education majors, I try to
> get them thinking about the subject by asking them to come up with a
> visual symbol for relationships like “although” – just as visual
> representation is much better at some things than language is,
> language still lets you handle concepts that can’t be visualized with
> any degree of generality. And written text is still the best means of
> making language persistent and rapidly navigable (you can use an audio
> recording, but….ever try to skim one of those for particular pieces of
> info?).
>
> Bill Spruiell
>
> Dept. of English
>
> Central Michigan University
>
> *From:* Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] *On Behalf Of *Carol Morrison
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 18, 2008 5:17 PM
> *To:* [log in to unmask]
> *Subject:* Paradigm Shift?
>
> Hello Grammarians,
>
> I was a bit astounded today when one of my freshman writers announced
> in class that there has been a "paradigm shift" from reading
books to
> viewing films and other visual texts as a means of acquiring
> knowledge. This was immediately after I took an informal poll to ask
> how many class members read books. (Only 2, including myself, raised
> their hands). I was impressed with the student's insight, but also
> wondered if this related to his poor writing skills and the writing
> skills which seem to be lacking in other students who don't
"read."
> I'm not really trying to discuss the relationship of reading and
> writing so much on the grammar list, but rather the usage of
"paradigm
> shift." I've always struggled with terms like this and also with
terms
> such as "agency" which are buzz words in academia, but used in
so many
> different contexts that their meaning becomes fuzzy to me after a
> while. Any thoughts? (About "agency" or "paradigm
shift"?)
>
> Thank you!
>
> Carol
>
>
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Herb,

I'm interested; rant on, please.

Terry Tiernan
Department of English & Communication
Potsdam College
Potsdam, New York

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