I am confident that Herb Stahlke has forgotten more linguistics than I
will ever know.  So, at the risk of being shown
to be wrong, I am still going to take issue in some of his observations
about linguistic theories and pedagogy.

Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:

>I strongly support Bill's concerns over the application of linguistic
>theories to teaching.  We've seen this trend in motion from the days of
>Charles Fries' structural grammar back in the 50s, and it flourished
>like poison ivy with the Paul Roberts' reduction of early
>transformational grammar in the 60s.
>
I have read some of the papers on the debate that took place in College
English and College Composition and Communication
in the 1950s and 1960s on the role of linguistics and pedagogy.

First, linguistic theories were absolutely crucial in challenging the
privileged position of Standard English.  I recommend a reading of
Geneva Smitherman's 1999 paper in College Composition and Communication
for a review of this debate.  The use of linguistic
theory lead directly to the NCTE's resolution on a Students' Right to
their Own Language.

To give a very simple example, without a theory of language I think it
is impossible to show that no dialect is superior to another.

Second, if there has been any advance in how to teach certain
grammatical structures, it has been by work of DeBeaugrande and
Noguichi.  In noting that a yes-no question provides a way of
determining whether a string of works is an independent clause, both are
using a FORMAL property of English to identify an important structure
for students to understand what a "complete" sentence is.

Now, perhaps, there is a "functional" explanation for this fact about
English, but I don't know what it is.

The following statement is absolutely right.

> But formal theories of language are about
>language and formal theory, not about pedagogy and praxis.
>
One of the jobs of applied linguists is to figure out how such formal
theories applicable to pedagogy.

>
>I think the contemporary model theoretic concept that most influences
>the non-linguistic world is modularity, the idea that different areas of
>syntax, as well as phonology and different areas of semantics, represent
>separate mental modules that communicate with each other rather like
>functions in a computer program.  Some persuasive popular writing has
>been done on this subject, Pinker's books especially.  But this is
>simply another case of seeking psychological reality for a theoretical
>construct, and that path doesn't help pedagogy.
>
Let me suggest there is value to these theoretical constructs.  If all
dialects of English share a lot of fundamental principles in common and
the differences we
notice are based on how some of these fundamental principles are
realized,  it is pedagogically useful for teachers to know how they can
describe those differences
to instruct their students.

A theory which argues the differences we perceive are related to input
and are truly different structures leads to a completely different pedagogy.

Bob Yates, Central Missouri State University

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