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.

 

 

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-----

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