Johanna,
Like Herb, I was deeply struck by your last paragraph and don't
know the extent to which you are asking writing teachers and grammar
teachers to finesse a contradiction that the field of linguistics seems
unable and unwilling to resolve -- how to pay proper homage to the
unconscious rules of the language while helping students understand what
they need to do to be correct. Certainly one reason why Herb's students
leave his class ready to revert is their common sense realization that
texts are not equal in the eyes of the world, that they will be judged
by the language they use, and that traditional grammar, with its hard
and fast rules about correctness, is at least a solid post to lean on.
Like you, I am deeply appalled by the lack of knowledge about
grammar in my field. Believe me, teaching nontraditional students and
doing lonely research into the nature of grammar is akin to committing
professional suicide in the eyes of many of my colleagues. Sometimes I
feel I have a maid's eye view of the university and of the academy; I
know a great deal, and one of the reasons I am able to know a great deal
is that I am willing to risk being utterly powerless.
It may surprise you to know that there is fierce opposition to the
teaching of grammar in my field, and that the fiercest opponents cite
linguists as allies. I don't think you can attribute all this problem
to the laziness of English teachers. The argument, as I have pieced it
together over the years, goes as follows. Since Chomsky, we know that
language is learned rather than taught. The best way to accomplish this
is to create a rich language environment. Instead of direct instruction
in language, we will give students exposure to great literature. (Hence
training teachers to teach literature and inhibiting the teaching of
grammar.) We will give them real (or quasi real) writing assignments and
take their ideas seriously, teaching grammar only in context and trying
to burden them with as little as possible. Since we have some
background in sociolinguistics, we have come to realize that much of
what we used to insist upon in usage is simply dialect variation, and
the attitudes we often take toward a dialect often mirror racist or
classist elitism. (All dialects are rule driven. All dialects seem
equal. The fact that some are more prestigious is a continuation of
long standing prejudices.) The argument against teaching grammar also
includes at least the rumor that studies have shown direct teaching of
grammar to be harmful. (Though no one I have talked to has ever read
those studies.) If these same teachers have been exposed to grammar
locally, they have taken a course in generative grammar (the only real
game in town.) And this approach, at the risk of over generalizing,
tries to account for the permissible forms in the language and then
describe the unconscious rules that generate them. A passage from
Shakespeare and a passage from an overbearing fuinctionary can be laid
side by side, described through these sentence generating diagrams, and
treated as if they are absolutely equal. (There is, in fact, nothing at
all in this approach that would allow us to choose between them.) The
knowledge of grammar, in other words, built through a course like this,
is absolutely irrelevant to reading and writing. It seems to take pride,
in fact, in being irrelevant. It has, almost by virtue of its
disinterestedness, no practical application. And the teacher so
trained, having nothing to do with the grammar in future years, soon
loses track of it.
If you want teachers to take these courses without hating and
dreading them (I think grammar is the sexiest subject in the world),
then stop treating language as if it were a dead fish. (I can imagine a
response here. We argue in the field whether the fish was always dead
and whether it should treated like a dead fish or like a fish that had
once been alive.) Anyone taking grammar locally will not only most
likely be exposed to a generative grammar, but will probably not be told
that there are other, competing grammars.
Let me continue my gadfly challenge in another way. Once I stated
that AS A WRITER AND A TEACHER OF WRITING TO NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS I
had found functional grammar enormously useful, many of you started
arguing among yourselves about what you know already about the grammar
and whether it has any value. It didn't occur to anyone that I had
anything to say that hadn't been fully explained yet (which it hadn't.)
It was treated as an issue for the linguists to argue about, not as a
question on which a writing teacher would have a very unique and
important perspective to bring to bear . I could be so bold as to say
that you fail to get the answer right because you refuse to listen to
the question, the question being, what knowledge of grammar is useful to
the understanding of texts and the teaching of writing. How can we
give curious students a foundation in grammar that can be put to
practical use?
I do have answers to these questions which I do not by any means
think of as final. We will not be successful and perhaps should not be
successful in redeeming the teaching of grammar to mainstream students
until we can resolve the contradiction between the disinterested study
of grammar and the need to read and write thoughtfully and effectively.
( I didn't say correctly.)
Perhaps all those stubborn souls holding on to traditional grammar
have something to tell us as well. Texts are not equal in the eyes of
the world. They don't want to let go of a trusted aid with nothing to
replace it with.
Halliday sums up the three kinds of meeting encoded in text on page
179, as he moves from attention to the clause to attention to smaller
units (group, and expanded word, and phrase, a contracted clause.) It
doesn't replace the value of following his argument in all its attendant
detail, but it is a nice overview.
I hope this helps.
Craig
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