This is related to composition theory, if not related to the readings for the class.
I suppose I could talk about audience awareness in reference to the guest speaker in 603 this morning, but I'd rather talk about grammar. I'd usually rather talk about grammar. (Do I mean I'd rather talk about grammar than talk about something else, or do I mean I'd rather talk about grammar than listen to a talk about grammar?)
One thing that concerns me is a near dismissal of value-related questions. Tim Hadley made a reference to "African American English" and how he won't devalue it as a spoken language, but he would teach speakers "standard written English." There's a couple things that concern me about this (which I'd've loved to have discussed at the time, given the chance).
1) What is standard written English? Am I to believe that all professional and academic forms of written English are the same? I know better. I suppose I could counsel business students in the writing center to take on the discourse of the creative writing students. But it seems that there is no one standard written English. The professional English in business is different from the professional English of creative writing, on the level of the word, the sentence, and organization. So which written English should I be teaching?
2) Is is really value neutral to teach children which form of English is "standard"? My dad would say yes. But I think if you're obligated to accept the child's spoken language as valuable, then the same goes for their written language. Why do we say that spoken language can't be judged? Well...we didn't talk about that. I'd like to know exactly what Hadley thinks about that, to be sure. My inclination is that it's because the accepted dialect is accepted for social reasons. There's nothing inherently better about the different ways of talking.
So...what's inherently better about the different ways of writing? Writing tends more towards standardization because in print, you can't go back and explain your meaning if your audience is confused. And you can't share nonverbal clues about meaning (beyond such things as scare quotes). So there's more incentive for standardization. The problem is, I don't believe there is a single standard. So while I think we should teach standard forms of written English, I don't believe we should act as if they are value neutral and not based on social convention.
In conclusion, I really want to know what the difference is between teaching a student to use a standard dialect in writing and teaching students to avoid split infinitives. Both are social rules, aren't they? Why is one okay and not the other?
3 comments:
Standard English is a prestige dialect - it is the dialect with the greatest influence. You're right that there's nothing that makes it intrinsically better, but it's useful for all English speakers to learn. It doesn't mean that they have to give up their nonstandard dialect. Different dialects are appropriate in different situations.
Standard written English is based on how the language is actually used by writers. Prescriptive rules, such as the split infinitive, have little to do with how the language is used.
The prescription against splitting the infinitive is not part of standard written English. It was introduced in the 19th century by analogy with Latin. Most usage books today ignore this prescription.
that's weird, because as far as I know, no modern style book has a prescription against it.
Well, certainly it's sometimes pretty awkward to split infinitives. In the Writing Center here I have occasionally advised students that while avoiding splitting infinitives is not a hard and fast rule (though their most stylistically conservative professors will care), putting more than one word between the "to" and the verb often makes the sentence hard to read. Just as one should keep the "only" as close to what it modifies as possible.
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