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 ** "Understanding is a lot like sex; it's got a practical purpose, but that's not why people do it normally" - Frank Oppenheimer ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~