Outsiders' views of the value of linguistics

[Brian MacWhinney]

Sorry not to be responsive to Fritz's original question, but the theme of the role of linguistics within language teaching is itself a great one.  As Craig notes, the crux of the issue is about which theory of grammar is to be applied.  When I write a morphological parser for Spanish, I rely heavily on cyclical rule application and principles of feeding and bleeding.  But, I don't think for a moment that a second language learner of Spanish sets up ordered rule application in their head.  Instead, irregular forms trump regular forms because of their frequency, a la Bybee and many others.  But, it is still helpful to teach learners that the Spanish subjunctive derives from the first singular present.  In fact, once you tell this to learners, they sometimes have a bit of an ah-ha experience.  There are hundreds of cues that can be stated in simple explicit ways to markedly help L2 learners, whether it is about mountains and deserts taking the definite article in English or French nouns ending in -age being masculine.  Of course, the learner must eventually proceduralize use of these cues.  But if they are stated in simple ways, then learners can get them.  So, yes, linguistics is solidly relevant here, but only if the patterns are clearly and simply formulated, as I noted in my SSLA commentary in 1997.   Does this amount to "watering down" linguistics? Sort of "linguistics light"?  I am not sure. 

I am not saying that this is the only possible input from linguistics to SLA.  There are several more and elaborating each of them would make this a very long email.  The point is basically the one that Craig makes -- it depends on how linguistics is packaged.

OK.  I will add a disclaimer.  I have only done a very small amount of language teaching myself, but I have spent a great deal of time in curriculum development for cyberlearning.  Classroom contact and/or native speaker contact is crucial, but learners can also benefit from books, computers, films, dictionaries, and so on.  Use of any one method does not preclude the use of others.

-- Brian MacWhinney



On Oct 21, 2010, at 1:08 PM, Craig Hancock wrote:

>     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]
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>