I remind Bob Yates of the very first macro-objective of 3S:

"A   Every student, from every background, will leave school with the
ability to communicate comfortably in standard English, and the ability
to
write comfortably in formal standard English, with awareness of when use
of the standard dialect is appropriate."

I've said this so many times before; I'm gonna say it one more time.
Please store it away for future reference:

There's no argument that the standard is necessary for every student in
school. The question is what sort of approach to educating students in
the standard dialect is going to be most effective. It is clear from
experience that traditional 'good/bad English' approaches are often
demotivating and less effective than diversity-acknowledging approaches.
Diversity-acknowledging approaches are also scientifically accurate,
while good/bad Enlgish approaches are not. I disagree with Bob on his
position on language attitudes (and am working on an article for SIS on
that point), so I don't believe that acknowledging diversity and
teaching the truth about language variation is impossible. My position
on linguistic insecurity is quite different from Bob's. We don't need to
continue to support the kind of linguistic insecurity that Bob thinks is
inevitable. I don't think it's inevitable. It would be nice to hear from
other 3Sers on this point. The article laying out Bob's point of view is
linked to the ATEG website: 'We're all prescriptivists, aren't we?'

Text grammar: This refers (for me, for now) to the way grammatical
choices of sentence constituents (what is coded as subject of a
sentence, what's in the predicate; other grammatical roles such as obj.
of preposition and possessive) work in creating coherence in a text. I
find two main aspects of coherence: (a) maintaining topic thread
(signalling to the reader/listener whether or not we are still on the
same topic/subtopic of a text) and signalling what the writer/speaker
assumes is already known by the listener/reader vs. what is 'news' to
that person. These two functions are fulfilled by grammatical choices,
although the patterns are tendencies rather than rigid rules. There are
many more-specific patterns of how grammar serves text functions. For
instance 'referent-tracking' ('which person or thing mentioned already
in the text is this particular sentence about?') plays a role in whether
or not a subject of a sentence is a pronoun or a phrase with a lexical
noun or a proper name.

One small example: Text topics and subtopics more often appear as
subject of a sentence than non-topics of a text. My analysis of a text
about Robert Redford, for instance, finds Redford in subject position
500 times, with no other subtopics or non-topics reaching anywhere near
that number. When a paragraph is centered on a subtopic (e.g., Redford's
films or his family or events in his life story), subjects of the
sentences tend not to be Redford, but persons/things related the
subtopic. In such paragraphs, the continued relevance of those subtopics
to Redford is signalled by Redford appearing as object of a preposition
('he wrote a book about Redford'), possessive ('Redford's wife,
so-and-so'), or direct object ('so-and-so, who directed Redford in blah-blah').

I am a rank novice at discourse analysis. Authors such as Sandra
Thompson, Paul Hopper, M.A.K. Halliday, Wallace Chafe, Talmy Givon, Knud
Lambrecht, Susanna Cumming are the experts. There are books and articles
on the known patterns, and some patterns hold across large numbers of
languages. I haven't done a lot of data work so far to test the claims,
and some claims are hard to test, but what I have examined fits the
patterns.

I find this aspect of grammar extremely important because it is THE WAY
WE CONTEXTUALIZE GRAMMAR INSTRUCTION. It is the interface between
grammar, writing, and style. Structuring a sentence in pattern A rather
than pattern B will have an impact on the coherence of a text, and it
also determines the style of a text (violating the topic/subject
pattern, for example, renders a distinctive style). This is a major
point in defense of teaching grammar, I believe.

Of course, this makes the most sense if one views grammar instruction as
a process of educating students about their 'writing tool-box'. It makes
less sense within a 'grammar as fix-it' philosophy, in which conforming
to standard grammar is the main concern. On the other hand, functional
grammar can be very helpful for students who have trouble writing
coherent texts, and have to fix this trouble.

As to the thought-language relationship, I laid out my position as
completely as is relevant to this list, I believe, in my previous
posting. I'll spare readers a repetition of it here.

Johanna

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Johanna Rubba   Assistant Professor, Linguistics
English Department, California Polytechnic State University
One Grand Avenue  • San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
Tel. (805)-756-2184  •  Fax: (805)-756-6374 • Dept. Phone.  756-259
• E-mail: [log in to unmask] •  Home page: http://www.calpoly.edu/~jrubba
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"Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose,
but that's not why people do it normally"  -            Frank  Oppenheimer
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