Kathryn,
   You're right; I wasn't responding point by point, but trying to step back a bit and discuss how a term like "gatekeeper" might look to someone on the front lines of composition. I didn't mean to imply that anyone who is a prescriptivist is automatically prejudiced.  But I do want to say that the SYSTEM is racist in effect and we need to speak out about that more than we do. Those of us who feel that we are expected to get students ready to meet these prescriptive standards can feel caught between a rock and a hard place.  We do damage when we impose the standards and damage when we ignore them.  That's the point Gretchen was trying to make, I think, in her post.  We don't feel we are being given the authority to determine sensible standards for ourselves, but are asked to impose someone else's.
    Herb's post is particularly helpful because he points out that one person's "standard English" is not the same as another's. I think some teachers feel we need to help students avoid any possible error.  Who knows what will show up on standardized tests?  If these are high-stakes tests, shouldn't we cover all the bases? There's a terrible logic to that, and no one wins. 
    There is a prescriptivist tradition within English, and I don't think it's helpful to imply that anyone interested in "improving language use" is therefore a prescriptivist. Whole language proponents tend to argue that language automatically improves in a "language rich environment." I have problems with that because it doesn't deal with knowledge about language or address the issue of its usefulness.   I would add "functional" (not just descriptive versus prescriptive) to the discussion.   Instead of asking whether something is correct, we can ask if it is effective.  Before we can ask that, we need to know what the writer is trying to accomplish. (In Australia, this is mediated through a focus on genre. Functional approaches are being introduced in other parts of the world.) 
   I certainly do want my students to be "validated" and "respected", but I'm uncomfortable with the touchy/feeley implications of that. (You probably don't intend that.)  Part of respecting my students means having a high sense of their potential, which means I am usually unhappy with their early drafts and early papers.  For the most part, they haven't thought them through. For the most part, other teachers haven't pushed them very hard.  But I have found that becoming interested in their writing gives them an incentive to go back and take it a step or two further. When they invest in the writing, it often improves rapidly.  Students don't invest when we ask them to "correct."  Students should be asked to revise simply because good writers revise.  Prescriptive teachers often subvert this process with excess emphasis on correctness. This argument dates back to the sixties, process versus product approaches, but I think it's still a viable distinction. Prescriptive approaches tend to put excess emphasis on superficial aspects of the product. If you ask students about revising, they will often talk about "correcting."  
    The most functional part of standard English (to the extent that a standard exists) is the punctuation system. I'm very much in favor of teaching far more grammar than we do, and one advantage to that would be that students would actually know what we are talking about when we talk about standard punctuation practices.  A comprehensive knowledge about language can be put to use in so many ways, and I suspect we are in solid agreement about that. In that sense, though, we are at odds with both camps, the prescriptive (which often corrects without explanation), and the progressive, which assumes that any attention to grammar is regressive.  We need ways to assure the prescriptivists that we have high standards and ways to assure the progressives that we share progressive goals, like empowerment, diversity, and inclusiveness. 
   You and I have had lively and interesting talks about the conservative nature of the publishing industry. I would love to see "advice about language use" that respects the innate ability of the common language user and is more deeply grounded in the science of language.  I think we have a unique opportunity to address that in the ATEG Scope and Sequence project. I also think the world is ready for instructional materials that rise to this challenge, including a new kind of handbook. A publisher willing to invest in that risk may be in a unique position as inevitable change moves forward. If you offer a better mousetrap, the market will follow.
   I want to say, also, that it's a delight to talk this through.  If I thought it were just a matter of arguing for throwing out 2-5% of the prescriptive rules, we would have no reason to disagree.  It could very well be that some attempts to "improve language use" are having the opposite effect.  I'm arguing for a very different approach.  You are being gracious in looking for a clarification of position.
   
Craig     
     

Rogers, Kathryn (HRW-ATX) wrote:
[log in to unmask]">

I don’t get the sense that this post is a response to any of the points that I made, particularly. I suspect that, as in most descriptivist/prescriptivist melees (how did I get here?), we are using vocabulary differently. For instance, I use “prescriptivist” to mean “someone who makes prescriptions for improving language use.” I believe that you mean “a prejudiced person who wields linguistic information to ‘make people feel inadequate.’” I think that, by definition, all prescriptivists make prescriptions for improving language use. Certainly *some* do so in a way that is prejudicial or intimidating, but I don’t think it’s a definitional characteristic. So when I say, I think you may be to some degree a prescriptivist, I don’t accuse you of being Cerberus to the Tower of the Privileged, and no offense is intended.

 

And you don’t care to “correct” writing but to “revise” it. Absolutely okay by me. I don’t think the shift removes the activity from the realm of prescription, though. Revision is certainly not, as I understand it, a descriptive activity. I think what you’re advocating is a kind of prescriptivism that (1) ignores a small subset of language “rules” that you and many others find arbitrary/dysfunctional and (2) makes sure students feel validated and respected. Do I misunderstand?

 

Best,

Kathryn

 

From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Craig Hancock
Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 9:27 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: using "before"

 

Herb, Kathryn,
     You guys do a nice job of arguing for semi reluctant adherence/resignation to the current status quo.  I enjoy tilting at windmills, so I'll keep at it a bit longer.
    "Gatekeeper" has a different ring to me than it would to most people because I work with non-traditional students and know the way it has been used in the past.  Shaughnessy calls it the first stage in her taxonomy of maturation for developmental teachers. (She calls it "Guarding the Tower").  A teacher decides he/she wants to protect the academy from the barbarian hordes (in her case, open admissions students) who would degrade it. Students are tested at entry and put into "remedial" classes largely on the basis of surface error.  They are then grilled and drilled in the hopes of getting them to write correct sentences, after which they will be taught how to write correct paragraphs, correct short themes, and so on, with a terrible success rate that the teacher chalks up to innate lack of ability. At any rate, the academy is protected from the perceived assault on standards.  A much better approach is to simply assume their ability, take their writing seriously, and watch the natural changes that occur as they learn to shape their writing in meaningful and effective ways. Instead of saying we will take them seriously when their language changes, we can take them seriously from the start and achieve much more rapid change as a result. This partly requires a serious listening to life stories rather different from our own and recognizing enormously valuable insights that come from differing perspectives.
   Of course, these students suffer more than others from our failure to teach seriously about language.  They come to us with very little metalanguage to work with. Their language has been "corrected", but not explained.
    If we resign ourselves to the inevitability that our student writers will be held to dysfunctional standards, we are abdicating our responsibility, which is to use our expertise wisely.  I'm surprised at the number of studies of "error" (such as the Connors-Lunsford) that note that certain dialect "errors" are the most heavily stigmatized without reaching the conclusion that we are prey to heavily racist practices that spill over into language.  All the burden seems to be placed on the students to change to fit these kinds of reprehensible prejudices.  It certainly does make sense to prepare students to face an unfriendly world, but we can tell the truth about it much more than we do.  
    Two treatments of this that I find very sensible are in Ed Schuster's Breaking the Rules...  and "The Language Maven" chapter in Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct. Both talk about what Schuster calls "mythrules" and their tendency to perpetuate themselves precisely because we expect them to continue.  "Most", according to Pinker, "make no sense at any level... The rules conform neither to logic nor to tradition, and if they were ever followed they would force writers into fuzzy, clumsy, wordy, ambiguous, incomprehensible prose, in which certain thoughts are not expressible at all" (385).   Pinker criticizes these  self-proclaimed experts for two principal "blind spots" : "One is a gross underestimation of the linguistic wherewithal of the common person....The other...is their complete ignorance of the modern science of language" (412-13).  
    Some of the studies of grammar instruction seem to show that they impede the teaching of writing, and that may very well be best understood in relation to the above. In order to write well, you have to have some trust that the language you have available is up to the task.  Prescriptivists tend to make people feel inadequate.  Tell them you are a grammarian, and many people will become instantly uncomfortable, tell you their grammar is terrible, and that they'll have to watch what they say.  In other words, they are likely to shut up.  The other way that it impedes is that it is an arbitrary obstacle.  Instead of spending time focused on whether the writing accomplishes more important goals, we get distracted into attending to surface features.  The writing gets corrected rather than revised.  This other grammar thing (prescriptive) takes over. There are solid studies that show this.
   Of course, the more knowledgeable ALL of us are about grammar, the less likely it is that this sort of thing will happen.  This should include a healthy respect for the linguistic sophistication of the everyday language user and a healthy distrust of the self-proclaimed experts. It should also include a serious, sustained look at how meaning happens within the grammar of the language.  Sentences are very flexible in the information they contain and in the way that information is organized.  In an effective text, they work in harmony with other sentences and in harmony with a writer's evolving purposes. We can develop an understanding of grammar that attends to this and helps us accomplish the real work of writing.  
   Instead of testing how people behave, we should test what they KNOW.  You can certainly make a case that it's not TEACHING of grammar, but IGNORANCE about grammar that does the most harm.
   I didn't respond directly to Gretchen's thoughtful post, so I'll add a point here.  We need to do something to empower teachers like her, who want to do what's sensible but feel caught up within a dysfunctional system.  I know what it's like to feel that every error a student makes for another teacher reflects back on the writing teacher who let them through the gate.  Even when our focus is mostly on the student (as it seems to be for Gretchen) we can feel that our hands are tied, that we need to get them ready to jump through hoops we never would have invented on our own.  We need to speak up at the highest levels if we hope to free up dedicated teachers and influence thoughtful change.
  
Craig

Stahlke, Herbert F.W. wrote:

Kathryn and Craig,
 
What we seem to be talking about here is Formal Standard Written English, a register that college students are required to master and that high school students intending to go to college need to be well on the way towards mastering.  It is the great gate-keeper in American society.  My college students see this immediately when I ask them to think back to high school classmates who didn't succeed at English and where they were now.  We talk about this, and it's clear to all that there are notable exceptions to the rule, but that overwhelmingly success at FSWE is a prerequisite to other socio-economic success.
 
The problem with this is that FSWE is constructed in different ways by different people, be they teachers, editors, employers, school board members, or parents.  Not everyone's FSWE is the same but frequently each person believes firmly that his or her FSWE is correct and widely accepted.  We can't teach to all of the which/that, stranded preposition, passive voice, ... preferences, so we have to make sure our students know that these preferences exist and that they may have to be sensitive to them.
 
And, by the way, they aren't all old.  As we've discussed before, the ban on possessive antecedents, which it the news a few years ago, shows up for the first time in the 1940s and than spreads to nearly all the standard grammar books, even though even the writers who tout it violate it often in the same work.  Sentence-initially "hopefully" isn't much older.  These are more matters of fashion and of societal myth as matters of grammar.
 
Herb
 
 
Hey, Craig,
 
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I think I'll try pasting in some of
your points and replying to them individually--
 
Craig: " . . . the function of case has been 
shifting toward the pragmatic.  Is that a weakening of the language,
something we should fight against?   . . . At any rate, we
might be taking arms against the sea if we oppose it."
 
Kathryn: I 100% agree with you about the folly of fighting language
change--both because it would be a lost cause and because often language
changes specifically to meet users' changing communicative needs. But as
long as many language users (especially cultural gatekeepers) still
value the "old" conventions and follow them, it's helpful to know what
those old conventions are, how to follow them, and when it is wise to do
so (or when the conventions will improve clarity, communication,
richness, etc.). That's not a matter of fighting change; it's a matter
of understanding/navigating it. 
 
 
Craig: "I have a great deal of difficulty with the notion of "standard
English."  We tend to talk about it as if it were set in stone and was
actually existing somewhere to be studied and emulated."
 
Kathryn: I don't know anyone who is savvy about language who thinks that
standard English is static. One can study and emulate a set of
conventions without having to have them set in stone. After all, one can
study art or emulate the work of particular artists even as what our
culture regards as valuable art changes constantly. 
        But again, I didn't raise the issue of "standard English" as a
call to pedantic arms (a call to red pens?) but to wonder whether
employing a standard or working to improve student writing doesn't
necessarily *mean* to some degree being a prescriptivist and/or a
proponent of standard English. It doesn't mean that you employ every
prescription of Fowler's or that you fall into lockstep with the,
whatever, 2-5% of conventions of standard English that strike you as
arbitrary and undemocratic. But any time we accept that writing can be
improved or that some usages are "better" (clearer, more
"natural"-sounding, whatever) than others, we venture out of the bounds
of pure descriptivism, no?
        
 
Craig: "But that's a far cry from saying that a dialect is inherently
incorrect." 
 
Kathryn: I agree that it doesn't make sense to talk about dialects or
registers being "inherently" correct (or "inherently" aesthetically
pleasing or appropriate). Language use is clearly contextual. 
 
 
"I suspect we get to the same place from opposite directions, but I
also think the direction you come from has enormous repercussions.
Craig"
 
Likewise. 
Best to you,
Kathryn
 
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar
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