The Nine Lives of "Linguistic Deficiency"

[GABRIELLA MODAN]

What I think is interesting about students' clinging to the ideology of 'good' grammar is that, at least in my experience, the ideology of good grammar is rarely accompanied by any actual *knowledge* of grammar (i.e. metalinguistic awareness of grammatical systems). This is why it's so hard to dislodge the difference = deficit model: students are unlikely to understand that their language attitudes are not linguistically based, if they don't understand that/how their attitudes are at odds with linguistic facts. 

An example: I teach an intro to linguistics class for students who are training to become middle and high school English teachers. They are strongly opposed to such sentences as "Joe and me went to the store", because they think using 'me' sounds hick and uneducated. But they are equally strongly opposed to sentences like "Mom took Joe and me to the store", also because they think using 'me' sounds hick and uneducated. Some of them remember that they learned in high school to put "me" in the latter sentence because you would say "Mom took me to the store", but it's counterintuitive to them to do it, and they have absolutely no idea what the logic of using 'me' is, because they don't know the concept of subject and object. Because their correct-grammar ideology is based in attitude and not in grammar, they hypercorrect to such an extent that they say and write things like "Katie and I's project". I say this not to deplore hypercorrection (which is clearly the way the language
 is going), but to make the point that it's difficult to convince students that their language attitudes do not jibe with the linguistic facts when they do not know what the lingustic facts are and do not understand basic linguistic concepts. So the tools that we need to give them are the basic tools of linguistic analysis. 

I know that the discussions I have with my students about linguistic discrimination are important and useful to them, and I'm gratified (as well as disturbed) when they write comments on their evaluations like "I now know that English is not superior to other languages", but more and more I think that my students might be better served if I threw away all my intro to linguistics textbooks and used Walt Wolfram's 8th grade language awareness curriculum instead -- particularly since many of my students express frustration that they never learned any of these basic linguistic concepts in K-12. I'd be curious to know if anyone has taken such an approach.

Galey



----- Original Message -----
From: "Harold F. Schiffman" <haroldfs at ccat.sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Saturday, February 10, 2007 10:22 am
Subject: Re: [Linganth] The Nine Lives of "Linguistic Deficiency"

> All:
> 
> Thanks to all who responded to my critiques; I can't possibly 
> address all
> the fine points raised at this moment, but maybe later I can sift 
> throughthem.  It's a huge issue!
> 
> The thing I started out to say, and wanted to address more fully, 
> that of
> how we TEACH about ideologies, how we try to debunk them, etc. is that
> when we have students who are would-be teachers, they tend to 
> think of
> themselves as defenders of "truth", i.e. good grammar, good
> English/French/whatever, and they often feel beleaguered: they are 
> on the
> barricades, fighting back the forces of corruption, sloth, 
> ignorance, etc.
> etc. and we want to strip them of their defenses?
> 
> When you take away from them their only armor (grammatical 
> "correctness")they are left without any defenses, and they feel 
> bereft, helpless, and
> therefore they tend to cling to the ideology of "good grammar", 
> and reject
> the whole argument.  We've got to give them other tools, other 
> arrows for
> their quiver, or we will not have reached them, and they will dig 
> in their
> heels and go off to their jobs disgusted with us academics.
> 
> [I've been a language teacher, too, and know what this feels like: I
> taught Tamil for many years, and I would occasionally get heritage
> students in the class who either spoke a non-standard dialect of 
> Tamil at
> home, or had an idiolect of Tamil that was not what their parents 
> spoke,and since I was just some veLLakaaran teaching *their* 
> language, why
> should they accept what I was asking for? My problem was that I was
> supposed to have some criteria for what was an acceptable, 
> comprehensibleform of the language, and couldn't accept something 
> that's clearly not.]
> 
> Maybe the question is really about what is "grammatical" in the 
> end. I try
> to use the example of how 'gonna' is becoming grammticalized as an
> auxiliary verb in English, and how some uses of it are clearly
> UNgrammatical (e.g. using it with direction, as in *"I'm gonna 
> London",which ought to be derivable from "I'm going to London" but 
> isn't) whereas
> others are acceptable and used even by English teachers in colloquial
> speech, i.e. "I'm gonna do it" (from "I'm going to do it").
> 
> The problem is, teachers etc. even if they admit that "I'm gonna 
> do it"
> differs somehow from *I'm gonna London" they don't see it as a
> *grammatical* issue, because they still cherish the notion [ideology?]
> that 'grammatical' means "correct, acceptable, formal, good" 
> English, the
> variety they are supposed to teach their students, failing which, they
> fail as teachers.
> 
> So somehow we gotta get around this; I'm not sure how.  (Note that 
> 'gotta,sposeta,' and 'hafta' also fit into this category, and 
> close behind them
> are 'shoulda, woulda, and coulda')  If teachers are aware of anything,
> it's pedagogy, and our pedagogy on this may not be adequate to the 
> task.
> Hal
> 
> On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, John McCreery wrote:
> 
> > On 2/10/07, Alexandre Enkerli <enkerli at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > This is getting very interesting, IMHO.
> >
> > Indeed, it is. Allow me to offer a proposition that is, at least,
> > researchable: "Ideology" is the kind of term that Chicago 
> sociologist> Andrew Abbott identifies as a syncresis, a term whose 
> ambiguity is
> > essential to its meaning and also accounts for its popularity in
> > academic and other discourse. Let me go further and suggest that
> > "language deficiency," the term from which our discussion began, is
> > another example.
> >
> > I am, serendipitously, reading Abbott's _Chaos of Disciplines_, 
> whose> primary  theme is the role of fractal oppositions in 
> defining academic
> > quarrels and, thus, the social organization of academic disciplines.
> > The terms involved in fractal oppositions (quantitative vs.
> > qualitative, for example) are used indexically. Their meaning shifts
> > from situation to situation, but the contrast they draw is
> > intelligible in the situations in which they occur. Thus, at one
> > level, sociologist divide themselves into quantitative and 
> qualitative> branches. A generation later the same distinction 
> reemerges within
> > each of the two camps, with "pure quantitative" sociologists
> > distinquishing themselves from other quantitative sociologists who
> > pollute their models with narrative and qualitative description and
> > "qualitative" purists, who never saw a number they didn't hate,
> > distinguishing themselves from those who incorporate 
> quantitative data
> > and simple quantitative models into their narratives, whenever they
> > seem useful.  What precisely, the original distinction means varies
> > depends on who is contrasting "us" with "them" but the contrast 
> works> as an index of distinction wherever it is used.
> >
> > It is having introduced this notion of fractal oppositions that 
> Abbott> goes on to distinguish the terms used in such oppositions 
> from what he
> > calls "syncreses." The meanings of terms in this category aren't 
> just> slippery, tending to vary across situations, the contrary 
> ideas they
> > embody are inextricably part their meaning; ambiguity is their 
> essence> and, thus--here is a test linguists will like-- they are 
> not used
> > indexically, as fractal oppositions are. Instead they recur as 
> topics> that never fail to arouse interest,  posing questions that 
> are never
> > resolved because any attempt to define their meanings as 
> restricted to
> > one of their constituent contraries immediately evokes the response
> > that points to the other as another important consideration.
> >
> > Abbott's type case is the term "stress," in which two ideas "damage
> > caused by society" and "failure to adjust to society's demands" are
> > both omnipresent. So who is to blame for stress? Society? Or the
> > individual? The question is endlessly debated, on Oprah and Dr. Phil
> > as well as in the massive academic literature Abbot reviews, but the
> > problem remains unresolved. "Stress" is an endlessly fascinating 
> topic> for discussion, but, if Abbott is right, no resolution is 
> possible.>
> > Now, I first thought of this analysis in relation to "linguistic
> > deficiency," which, it seems to me, poses exactly the same 
> problems as
> > "stress." Who is to blame if children graduate from school 
> unschooled> in the language that the national or global economy 
> makes a condition
> > of success? Who is at fault here? Society? The individual who failed
> > to learn? The nation that wants one thing? The minority group that
> > wants another? Insofar as the discussion is framed in terms that
> > assume a blame game and evoke sides whose positions are both 
> implicit> in that frame...the game goes on. No progress is made.
> >
> > It takes only a little thought, however, to recognize that 
> "ideology"> is another syncresis. Here the history of the term 
> ranges from one
> > extreme, a clearly articulated, consciously held set of ideas that
> > motivate a particular political program, to the other (by way of
> > Gramsci and Foucault) in which the ideas are assumed instead of
> > articulated, acted upon subconsciously, and, indeed, only arise into
> > consciousness when they are challenged, typically in fragmented or
> > distorted forms  (more like neurotic symptoms than the Summa
> > Theologica) .  The debate over which view is right oscillates 
> back and
> > forth, with various twists and turns in between. At the end of the
> > day, however, we arive at the situation that annoys Hal 
> Schiffman so
> > much, the muddle that Richard Senghas finds, instead, promising.
> >
> > The critical point though is that, if ideology is, indeed, a 
> syncresis> and works like "stress" the muddle will not be a step 
> on the road to
> > enlightenment. The muddle will be interminable.
> >
> > Thus, one fears, undergraduates, the majority of whom need to 
> get on
> > with their lives and will not be able to stay in the ivory tower
> > playing the glass bead game forever, will mainly get headaches from
> > hearing their teachers try to valiantly sort out the latest 
> variations> in a game that appears to go nowhere. Their teachers 
> will continue to
> > complain that the students just don't get it, but if someone rudely
> > asks "Get what?"...What will their answer be? Fifty-three possible
> > definitions of ideology? That and four bucks will get you a cup of
> > Starbucks coffee.
> >
> > The kind of discussion of ideology provided by Terry Eagleton, 
> when he
> > contrasts an obviously ideological statement, "Prince Charles is the
> > handsomest man in England" with a mere matter of fact, "Prince 
> Andrew> has the brain of a chipmunk." Or observes, noting the need 
> for common
> > ground in political discussions that, "If we are discussing
> > patriarchy, by which you mean a system of social domination in which
> > men are superior to women and I mean a small town in upstate New 
> York,> we are not having a political discussion." This is, at least,
> > entertaining.
> >
> > The method of minimal contrasts and a clear sense of how a small,
> > finite set of basic elements can generate an infinite range of
> > combinations that conform to some rules but not to others? An
> > appreciation of the fact that syntactic theories describe 
> languages as
> > if they were shiney new erector sets but that actual languages are
> > more like old erector sets, with some pieces missing and others
> > replaced with odd bits of bubble gum and rubber bands or 
> whatever else
> > it was that the last generation had in its pockets when it 
> played with
> > the set. That's very useful stuff, indeed.
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > John McCreery
> > The Word Works, Ltd., Yokohama, JAPAN
> > Tel. +81-45-314-9324
> > http://www.wordworks.jp/
> >
>