Judy, et al.,

I'm tuning in late, but regarding your suggestion about turning to
Halliday's functional grammar, I have the following observation.  I visited
a class a few years ago in which the professor, a well-trained linguist,
was using functional terminology and concepts as an alternative to
traditional terms and concepts.  The motive was convincing: for the
students to understand how the language was working.  The results were less
than convincing in this instance, however.  The upper-level English majors
were not "ready" (in my opinion) for this analysis, for their  questions
were still at the concrete level: what is this, what is that?  with an
absence of "why" questions.  The students were still trying to figure out
what a subject was, let alone whether the "subject" was an actor or a
perceiver.  So, is there a logical progression?  Is a "subject" somehow a
term and concept that's prior to and implied by a term like "actor"?

I want my students to go beyond "what" to "why" and "how", but how does it
happen?  What has your experience been?

Sara Garnes
At 07:11 PM 2/2/99 +0000, Judy Diamondstone wrote:
>Edward, Johanna, and others on the list,
>
>I am not qualified to propose terms from linguistics because
>I've not been trained as a linguist.
>
>On the other hand, I AM qualified to say which terms have
>helped me to understand language, which have helped me to
>"open up" language for prospective teachers, and which hold
>promise from my perspective for learning language across
>grades and curricula.
>
>As these negotiations proceed, I hope you will consider
>a language of function terms as well as class terms. Although
>everyone including myself despairs at the idea of
>teaching systemic functional grammar -- a huge
>apparatus, admittedly -- the more I learn about language
>the more a meta-language of referential functions (Halliday's "ideational
>grammar") make sense to me, as a "way in" to how language works.
>
>For those who might know less even than I about SFG,
>the grammar I am referring to names grammatical functions
>like "actor"**  and "process" instead of class terms like "noun" and "verb"
>(** I actually prefer the term "actant" following Bruno Latour)
>
>One advantage of such terms for breaking up clause constructions
>is that most people have an intuitive grasp of the distinction
>"actor/process" which can be built on to develop a more elaborate
>and less intuitive sense of grammar. Another advantage, from my point
>of view, is that it DISRUPTS traditional grammar terms, which come
>with a load of prescriptivism, arbitrariness, boredom, in the
>experience of most non-linguists, and opens up the possibility
>for a different experience of language analysis.
>
>If anyone has  interest in pursuing this line of conversation,
>I hope you will contact me via my personal email. It's hard to
>know what others in the ATEG community, which is new to me,
>want or expect from the discussion.
>
>Judy
>
>
>
>
>
>Judith Diamondstone  (732) 932-7496  Ext. 352
>Graduate School of Education
>Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey
>10 Seminary Place
>New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1183
>
>Eternity is in love with the productions of time - Wm Blake
>
>
Sara Garnes
Associate Professor of English
Ohio State University
e-mail: [log in to unmask]