I have a very hard time reading messages from ATEG - "it" (ATEG?) tells me my
reader can't read mime.  I get a lot of code.  SOmetimes I get word wrap and
sometimes not.  The archives aren't much better.  I've thought of
unsubscribing, but I find what I can pick up of the conversations between Craig
and Herb especially so tantalizing that I try to read them, though I know I
miss a lot.  I am unable to follow exchanges of short dialogue, since I get
frustrated in searching for the bits.

I did want to reply to Craig's saying a few days ago that linguistic grammars
haven't made a dent in prescriptive attitudes.  (My one-line summary of a much
longer statement, which I can't copy because of all the intervening code.  I'm
never sure I've gotten a good sense of the whole; I hope my comment wasn't
already made elsewhere.)

I first taught linguistics to ed students at Indiana in the late 70's as an
intern.  I taught it at IUPUI in the early 80's, at Western Illinois in the
late 80's and late 90's, at U of NE at Omaha in the mid 80's.  I continue to
teach it, though the courses have changed substantially in some ways.

The students I have now are not nearly as resistent to the idea of dialects as
rule-governed systems as they use to be.  I used to have Black students come up
to me after class and ask if I "believed in" Black English," as though it were
a statement of faith.  Some of those students dropped the course when I said
yes.  Now, I may have a small group of students who want to challenge the
conclusions that dialectal rules of phonology, morphology, and syntax lead us -
that all varieties are systematic.  But I have not had a Black student simply
deny the existence of Black English since about 1982.  That kind of denial just
doesn't show up anymore. That seems to me to indicate substantial progress.


Joan Livingston-Webber
Department of ENglish and Journalism
Western Illinois University
                      Better a pack of greyhounds than a pack of camels

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