DD raises the central question when he asks, "What has this to do with grammar?" Obviously there are multipledefinitions of "grammar," most of the legitimate, and under many of them, lexis is a part of grammar. Grammatical choices and word choices represent important options we want out students to be aware of and to use intelligently. Certainly discourse analysis falls under a broad definition of grammar, and it is in just such domains as discourse analysis and lexis that the useof politically, religiously, or socially loaded terms naturally belongs. If we want our students to become careful,critical readers of popular media, then we have to train them to analyze how terms like "death panel" are used. When the Republicans changed the estate tax code and use the term "death tax" to accomplish that goal, they were clearly loading the argument in ways useful to them. When the Democrats talk about a "public option," they're doing the same thing. If we don't teach our students to recognize these ploys, we are not serving them well. A good example of this is when the law banning "partial birth abortions" was passed without a clause protecting the life of the mother. If the medical term "late term abortion" had been used, perhaps this would not have been the case, but "partial birth abortion" framed the question in such a way that those, even many who oppose abortion on demand, supporting protections for the life of the mother were unable to get that protection into the bill. Framing is a part of structuring discourse, and we have to teach our students how to detect that. This is simply critical thinking, not taking a political position in the classroom, which I agree teachers should not be doing.
Herb
Herbert F. W. Stahlke, Ph.D.
Emeritus Professor of English
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306
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________________________________________
From: Assembly for the Teaching of English Grammar [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of DD Farms [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: August 23, 2009 10:18 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: OFF TOPIC ATEG
At 04:20 p.m. 23/08/2009, Robert Yates wrote re socialized as a term
of opprobrium : . . . In the States, "socialized" seems to have
become a term to put in front of programs that a person considers
"unAmerican." I wonder why no one has observed that public libraries
are clearly a socialist institution par excellence. . . No one, to my
knowledge, has proposed eliminating "socialized libraries". . .
DD: Nor for USPS. Nor for Farmers' Cooperatives. But what has this to
do with grammar?
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