Bill,
It certainly makes a great deal of sense to tell students we are
helping them jump through other people's arbitrary hoops. Toi the
extent that we can't make them go away, perhaps it's the only ethical
approach. Maybe that means fighting the battle on the large fron as
well. If nothing else, that can free up instructinal time for far more
interesting topics, such as how great writing achieves its greatness.
You're right about lots of things, not least that ignoring grmamr has
pushed these issues below consciousness.
Craig >
There is -- and as far as I can tell, has been for a very long time -- a
> distinction between how the national and local publics react to markers
> of specific dialects when the markers manifest in speech vs. writing.
> When I was a child in Alabama, we were quite firmly drilled in the
> proper use of 'who' vs. 'whom', but no one tried to get me to pronounce
> 'thing' as anything other than 'thang'.
>
> I don't think this is a sign of greater tolerance of dialects in speech,
> however -- it's simply the case that the situation with speech is, in a
> sense, much more complicated by issues involved in local social networks
> and in maturational processes than is writing. *Sounding* Southern, in
> the South, can have strong advantages. And pronunciation patterns appear
> to "gel" in a way that use of grammar, etc. doesn't; one can find
> non-native English speakers who have mastered English grammar to the
> point where they pass for natives in writing, but almost no one who
> learns English as an adult *sounds* like a native when speaking (Joseph
> Conrad is the typical example of this effect). In other words, many
> speakers have quite valid reasons for not wanting to sound "Standard,"
> and those past puberty may not be able to without vastly more work than
> is (from their standpoint) worth it.
>
> There's something additional going on, though. The entire edifice of
> "Standard English," as it has been instantiated in the teaching of
> writing, is based on the cultivation of the notion that it's not *from*
> anywhere, and that it's not a dialect. You can't try to modify people's
> speech without their immediately recognizing that you're trying to get
> them to sound like someone from somewhere else (culturally or
> geographically), and that, in turn, immediately makes them aware of the
> power issues involved. You can tell a Southerner to use 'who' and 'whom'
> in writing, but telling him/her to say 'thing' instead of 'thang' makes
> it obvious that you want everyone to sound like a Yankee.
>
> What I'll non-neutrally call "enlightened" modern approaches to
> prescriptive grammar deal with it by explicitly acknowledging the power
> issues involved. We tell students that there is no valid historical
> reason for the idea that two negatives equal a positive -- but also that
> there's a vast gatekeeping structure that uses that point as a
> shibboleth, and so they need to know about it and be able to manipulate
> it to their advantage (in my college classes, I term the mindset that's
> needed "Applied Grammatical Cynicism"). In a sense, it's
> "metaprescriptive" grammar. Any attempt to explicitly connect spoken
> dialect and written English in the education system brings into play the
> unspoken assumptions about FSWE that most people have, and that's one
> thing, I think, that triggers some of the animosity toward alternate
> approaches to grammar. Traditional methods never brought this up, and by
> not talking about grammar at all, some of the methods in the past thirty
> years haven't either.
>
> Bill Spruiell
> Dept. of English
> Central Michigan University
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Patricia Lafayllve
> Sent: Monday, January 09, 2006 11:23 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: dialect use - a brief digression
>
> Craig wrote:
>
> I'm more and more uncomfortable these days with the notion that
> dialects are OK, but not "acceptable" in public discourse. I don't
> think that's at all true (public writing is far more interesting than
> that) or desirable. Effective writers draw on all their language
> resources. And when mainstream writers do that, they enrich all our
> lives.
>
>
> This is a digression from the main points being discussed. What Craig
> said
> above rang a chord in my head, though, and it might be worth noting. My
> husband is a high school administrator (assistant principal) in an urban
> setting. He is also very touchy about using SWE - he actually corrects
> my
> English, and more often than not, he's right!
>
> That said, he has also taught himself the varying dialects in his
> student
> population. He uses multiple dialects in his work as a way to enforce,
> and
> reinforce, his own points. In short, he knows when to speak, and how to
> speak, in a variety of situations and to the greatest effect.
>
> This is something I admire in him, and a point which I think it would be
> good to note. Having the rules, and operating within them, greatly
> enhances
> one's ability to communicate - and that does mean knowing when to speak
> which dialect.
>
> I am certain that my husband is not the only one who practices this. I
> just
> wanted to digress a moment and suggest that, as Craig mentions, not only
> do
> effective writers draw on their language resources, so do effective
> people
> in general terms.
>
> -patty
>
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