Craig:

 

We have a course here at Central that *overlaps* with what your proposed course focuses on, but is not right on target. It deals with applied linguistic methods for describing/analyzing texts. There are a couple of things I would draw from it that might be useful for inclusion in the course you’re talking about:

 

(1)                 Dealing explicitly with the relationships between grammar and genre, with the latter term applying more specifically than simply “fiction” or “poetry.” Recipes, for example, are a genre, as are assembly instructions – but the two are different, and the difference is partly manifested through grammatical choices. Being able to “write like a professional” entails mastering the conventions of the particular professional genres, and that includes using the right constructions. We use John Swales’s work as a basis for some of that. Biber and Finnegan are also useful (there are, of course, quite a number of Systemic works in that area, but I wasn’t sure if you’d want to make the course “theory-specific”). An added benefit of using genre as an avenue into discussions of grammar is that it lets you tie in a good bit of sociolinguistic information rather naturally, especially if you start discussing who produces and consumes the texts.

 

(2)                 Looking at the grammatical and lexical correlates of “cohesion”; for example, pronoun/antecedent relations, noun/noun relations that function rather like pronoun/antecedent relations (“NCLB legislation…..this law…..the requirements…”), use of linkers, choice of what to make theme, etc. Approaching those as cohesive devices allows you (ironically, I suppose) to tie together a number of important but otherwise disparate elements.

 

We expect any piece of good writing to “hold together” as a text, and to be recognizable as fulfilling the functions that readers expect that type of text to fulfill in a way they can process (and, one hopes, like). A lot of that has to do with grammatical choices – and (partly contra Yates, here) they’re the type of grammatical choices that go well beyond what we normally think of as instinctual knowledge of language. Native English-speakers know to put “the” before a noun, not after, and know implicitly how to make passives, but they frequently don’t know whether using one or not is the best idea in a particular paragraph.

 

Bill Spruiell

 

Dept. of English

Central Michigan University