This has been one of the most useful and probing discussions I've followed on and language list in some time.  Thanks to you all for some very thoughtful comment.

I'd like to focus for a moment just on Johanna's last paragraph.  In our undergrad English Ed. program, which is run entirely by the English department, we require courses in Language and Society and English Linguistics (descriptive grammar, currently Morenberg), and some students also take courses in the history of English, Discourse Structure, and Language and Gender.  They should be leaving our program with a fairly sophisticated understanding of language, and some of them do.  However, there is a lso a sizable number who, although they do the work and perform reasonably well on assignments and exams, simply don't believe us.  We are up against a structured body of myth, that no feasible amount of teaching seems able to overcome.  Perhaps it's just that they know that when they start their teaching careers they'll answer to older teachers, administrators, school board members, and parents who not only don't believe us but believe that linguistics is perverse, if they've heard of it at all.  They're much more likely to be persuaded by the Mark Halperns than by the Labovs, McWhorters, Lippi-Greens and Lakoffs.  I've worked with a lot of teachers, and the pressure on them to conform to public grammar is not something they can resist.  This is what we're up against, not simply educating future teachers better.  We have to change a complex body of myth.

Herb Stahlke
Ball State University
 

<<< [log in to unmask] 11/ 5  5:05p >>>

Linguistics training would not only improve teachers' understanding of
the content they teach, but would also influence the mindset within
which it is taught, and therefore the mindset of the students. Perhaps
students could be brought to appreciate equally what they have
internalized as natural language users and what Hacker says they need to
do to be 'correct'.



                        

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