Johanna,
I agree 100%. You covered it all!
--
Christine Reintjes Martin
[log in to unmask]
>From: Jo Rubba <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
><[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Charrow's article
>Date: Sat, 18 Dec 2004 10:45:12 -0800
>
>Charrow deserves to be stripped of her linguist's credentials for her
>article. She has done a great deal to perpetuate public misunderstanding
>of both language and linguistics.
>
>First of all, she uncritically supports old-style prescriptivism, a tool
>which I suspect has long had more to do with excluding "undesriables"
>from elite social circles and elite professions than with standards of
>effective communication. In so doing, she also perpetuates the
>stereotype of linguists as slippery-slope liberals who support "anything
>goes" education ("As a result of linguists'
>refusal to be prescriptive, non-standard usages have crept into areas
>where they would not have been allowed 30 years ago, and have become
>accepted"). While she pretty correctly characterizes linguists'
>descriptive stance towards language, she seems to want to undermine it
>rather than defend it. She does not mention prescriptive intolerance of
>natural change in language (such as loss of irregular singular-plural
>marking in 'criterion, criteria'). She acknowledges the artificiality of
>the prohibition on splitting infiinitives, but decries the use of
>"their" as a singular generic, a common and natural usage before the
>18th-century grammarians got around to making their fussy (and sexist)
>prescriptions about epicene (generic) pronouns. Instead of condemning
>the linguistic insecurity that language snobbism causes in those who use
>"whom" hypercorrectivey, she furthers it.
>
>She doesn't address the numerous factors that make today's educational
>landscape different from that of the past. Our culture in general is
>anti-intellectual (thanks in no small measure to the political party
>that the Washington Times leans towards); corporations are far more
>interested in an ignorant, compliant, consuming populace than a
>well-educated one that might question their ethics. Visual media are
>taking over every aspect of communication and entertainment, except for
>the islands of text messaging and e-chat (soon, I'm sure, to be replaced
>by direct video-to-video communications). There is far less segregation
>in education. Back in the day, no one expected African-Americans or
>Hispanic migrant workers or American Indians to go much beyond eighth
>grade if they went to school at all, and the school facilities provided
>for minorities were inferior to those provided the middle class (though,
>sadly, the schools most inner-city kids go to today are far worse). For
>minority students (or, heaven forbid, women) to mix with the white male
>elite in the best colleges was highly controversial, if not downright
>unthinkable. Now, we are trying to offer educational opportunity to all,
>but at too high a level: We continue to condemn most minority students
>to inferior schools, then complain when we have to relax standards to
>get them into and out of college.
>
>Worst of all, she bases her article on tired populary myths rather than
>actual scientific observation of past and present teaching and usage.
>How many students in the past actually did master "good grammar"? Only
>those who went on to college, I suspect, or found employment in
>middle-class occupations. And how much of a role did language prejudice
>play in those two outcomes? If you grow up in a middle-class home, your
>language is much more likely to be like that of the school than if you
>grow up in a different class. As true back then as it is today,
>middle-class children have an automatic language advantage in school.
>This is eroding somewhat, due to change in the middle-class dialect
>(e.g., loss of 'whom' and pronoun-case changes) and to the decline of
>reading and intellectual pursuits in all social classes. But many of the
>grammar points today's pedagogical grammars harp on are still dialect
>differences: multiple negation, differences in reflexive pronouns, verb
>paradigms, "sit" vs. "set", and so on. A laundry list of changes in
>middle-class English and formal/informal differences also shows up
>(who/whom; "between you and I", loss of adjective/adverb distinctions;
>"lie" vs. "lay", etc.), evening the terrain somewhat, but not enough to
>erase the class advantage.
>
>Why doesn't Charrow follow standard scientific practice by studying the
>facts of the situation before writing her piece? I suspect it is because
>she finds it to her advantage to ride the current wave of nostalgic
>appeal to "the good ole days" rather than address real problems.
>Language does not cause, but reflects the intellectual interests of a
>culture. Charrow's professional publications address clarity in legal
>language. The Washington Times identifies her as working for the
>government. Perhaps she could better use her time cleaning up the
>propagandist Newspeak the current administration is mass-producing.
>
>***************************************************
>Johanna Rubba, Associate Professor, Linguistics
>English Department, Cal Poly State University
>San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
>Tel. 805-756-2184 ~ Dept. phone 805-756-2596
>Dept. fax: 805-756-6374 ~ E-mail: [log in to unmask]
>URL: http://www.cla.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
>***************************************************
>
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