Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Craig Hancock]

      For an international take on this see /Beyond the Grammar Wars,/ 
edited by Terry Locke, Routledge, 2010. It includes an article I 
co-authored (with Martha Kolln) on the story of English grammar 
instruction in the states.
     Unfortunately, the teachers in the states are still resistant to 
direct attention to language outside of minimalist intervention (error 
attention) in writing and what they call "literary elements" in 
literature. In general, the prevailing idea is that learning a native 
language takes care of itself. What needs to be attended to (with as 
little metalanguage as possible) are discrepencies between the child's 
language and Standard English. English teachers take many courses in 
literature, a course or two in composition, and typically a single 
course in language, which may include theories about why teaching 
directly about language is unproductive. Much of this dates back to the 
sixties. If grammar is thought of as a formal system, largely 
independent of discourse and cognition, then there's no direct transfer 
to writing. There's little awareness that alternative approaches to 
language are not only possible, but increasingly well developed.
     I believe the US system is ripe for change, but as Dick points out, 
it's hard to have a conversation with people who have very little 
background in language.

Craig

On 10/21/2010 5:47 AM, Richard Hudson wrote:
> As a postscript, I can answer your question more directly by saying 
> that linguistics has had a great deal of explicitly recognised 
> influence on official policy in the education of England (and maybe 
> other bits of the UK), which I document in my paper "How linguistics 
> has influenced schools in England" 
> (http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/papers.htm#influence). The snag 
> is, of course, that most teachers don't know enough about language to 
> apply the official policy (because, as I said before, linguistics 
> isn't part of their university curriculum). But the fact is that 
> 'knowledge about language' and 'language awareness', both of which are 
> derived directly from (Hallidayan) linguistics, are part of the 
> official curriculum.
>
> Dick
>
> Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
>
> On 21/10/2010 09:34, Richard Hudson wrote:
>> Dear Fritz,
>> I agree entirely with Olga. The discussion has a very anglo-phone 
>> bias away from education - the UK, USA etc all have a tradition in 
>> which school teachers aren't expected to have learned anything about 
>> language at university, so academic research on language isn't 
>> relevant to education. We're very different from many parts of 
>> Europe, where grammar teaching is an important part of the school 
>> curriculum and trainee teachers update their understanding at 
>> university. I'm sure in a country like that, linguistics would be 
>> justified in part by its contribution to education. I don't know of 
>> any bibliographical source for this - if anyone does, I'd love to see 
>> it. I've written quite a bit about the value of linguistics for 
>> education (see www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/papers.htm) but haven't 
>> been able to do much on that line except pick up odds and ends from 
>> gossip. (I do have evidence that school kids know a great deal more 
>> grammar in countries such as Spain - see 
>> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/ec/ba-kal/ba-kal.htm.)
>>
>> Dick (Hudson)
>>
>> Richard Hudson www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/dick/home.htm
>>
>> On 20/10/2010 18:43, Yokoyama, Olga wrote:
>>> Fritz,
>>>
>>>
>>> I take it that your article is about the academic community's 
>>> attitudes towards linguistics. Although not part of your topic but 
>>> still very important for the status of linguistics and the budgetary 
>>> decisions made especially in public institutions are attitudes 
>>> towards linguistics in the lay society. We all have experienced the 
>>> routine questioning along the lines of "Oh, you're a linguist? So 
>>> how many languages do you know?". Misunderstandings out there are 
>>> vast and we linguists need to address them. One way my department 
>>> did it this summer was by addressing the Arizona ruling on teachers 
>>> with accented English in a public conference, which combined 
>>> international scholars and practitioners in one room 
>>> (http://sites.google.com/site/uclalinguisticdiversconf2010/). U. 
>>> Oregon's Olympiad for secondary school students is another step in 
>>> the right direction. Linguists need to start talking to the public 
>>> at large and make sure that the future generations don’t vote for 
>>> closing linguistics and language departments (cf. the latest SUNY 
>>> Albany case) based on budget considerations combined with glaring 
>>> ignorance about what language studies are.
>>>
>>> Olga
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Olga T. Yokoyama
>>>
>>> Professor and Chair
>>>
>>> Department of Applied Linguistics and TESL
>>>
>>> University of California, Los Angeles
>>>
>>> Tel. (310) 825-4631
>>>
>>> Fax (310) 206-4118
>>>
>>> http://www.appling.ucla.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu 
>>> [mailto:funknet-bounces at mailman.rice.edu] On Behalf Of Frederick J 
>>> Newmeyer
>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 20, 2010 10:13 AM
>>> To: Funknet
>>> Subject: [FUNKNET] Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> For a survey article that I'm writing, I plan to assemble quotes 
>>> from people outside the field of linguistics on what they see as the 
>>> value, or lack of value, of work done in linguistics. So I would 
>>> like to cite published quotes from psychologists, anthropologists, 
>>> literary specialists, etc. on their views about the value/relevance 
>>> of linguistics for their particular concerns and its value/relevance 
>>> in general. Can anybody help me out by pointing me to relevant quotes?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Let me give one example of the sort of thing that I am looking for. 
>>> The late computational linguist Fred Jelinek reportedly wrote: 
>>> 'Whenever I fire a linguist our system performance improves'.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks. I'll summarize.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Best wishes,
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --fritz
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> fjn at u.washington.edu
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Frederick J. Newmeyer
>>>
>>> Professor Emeritus, University of Washington
>>>
>>> Adjunct Professor, University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser 
>>> University
>>>
>>> [for my postal address, please contact me by e-mail]
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>