Job Discussion Forums

[fluffyhamster]

What makes you think an EFL classroom is "narrow"? It certainly couldn't be any narrower than your mind, which doesn't seem to have room for even one sentence's likely context.

[Chancellor]

[fluffyhamster]

I'm not quite sure what sort of dichotomy you guys are trying to draw here - there is after all only one world which we (and hyphens) inhabit.

Yours must surely be one of the biggest cop-outs ever seen on Dave's, and you guys should be ashamed if you call yourselves English teachers in any sense of the term (particularly ESL teachers - hardly the easiest branch of English to teach, and where BS doesn't get you very far for long).

[stillnosheep]

Any reader unable to understand that the President's speech to small business men, is unlikely to be deliverd to an audience consisting solely of the those of dinimutive stature, and that, in an otherwise unspecified context, the expression "English Language Teacher" refers to anything other than a Teacher of English, has problems with understanding standard English far more profound than can be dealt with by attempts to prescribe hard and fast rules for the use of hyphens.

Mind youl, the OP was referring to American English...

[stillnosheep]

Double post

[stillnosheep]

Any reader unable to understand that the President's speech to small business men is unlikely to be delivered to an audience consisting solely of those of diminutive stature, and that, in an otherwise unspecified context, the expression "English Language Teacher" refers to anything other than a Teacher of English, has problems with understanding English far more profound than could be dealt with by any misguided attempt to prescribe hard and fast rules for the use of hyphens.

Mind you, the OP did refer to users of American English...

[Henry_Cowell]

[fluffyhamster]

No desire to keep up with the Joneses at all, then, Henry? Probably you just aren't able to anymore eh, you poor old doddery s*d.

[jr1965]

[Henry_Cowell]

[Stephen Jones]

Dear Henry

Admittedly you are not the person who considered missing the hyphen out to be dumbing down, but my point is that there is no source that suggests 'English Language Teacher' without a hyphen, is 'proper' as our friend Chancellor says.

You may consider the phrase to be ambigous; but as stillnosheep says:
Any reader unable to understand that the President's speech to small business men is unlikely to be delivered to an audience consisting solely of those of diminutive stature, and that, in an otherwise unspecified context, the expression "English Language Teacher" refers to anything other than a Teacher of English, has problems with understanding standard English far more profound than can be dealt with by attempts to prescribe hard and fast rules for the use of hyphens.

You give examples from Einsohn but at least three of the 'non-ambigous' examples are not so:

real estate agent -- the age of the internet has indeed spawned a large number of virtual estate agents

high school student -- it has been noticed, Henry, that, in many places, an alarming number of students are high in school hours, particularly after lunch break.

social service providers -- in the UK, Russia, and Germany at the very least there are as many curmedgeolny service providers as social ones


Now these three examples are just unlikely, as 'English language teachers' referring to English teachers of unspecified languages. or 'ill educated offspring' to academically-inclined offspring temporarily disabled by sickness.

What you fail to see with all this talk about 'fluffy, fuzzy, sheepish thinking' is that your interpretation of the rules is just one of many, and indeed the rules are often not what you claim them to be. Indeed I have a generally low opinion of the linguistic knowledge of copy editors; they often are woefully ignorant of the simplest of linguistic terms and see no need to actually learn about the language they are supposed to be the guardians of.

A clear example of this latter point is the recently-added section on Grammar to the Chicago Manual of Style which would have been out-of-date in 1904, and shows no sign of having taken into account any research done since then.

[Henry_Cowell]

I don't think I understand your point, Stephen. I can think of contexts in which "English language teacher" might be acceptable and unambiguous, but I would still hyphenate it in all contexts in my own writing.

[stillnosheep]

In which case, to be consistent, you should also hyphenate all such phrases as 'The Roman Emperor' to guard against the possibility of being misunderstood as wishing to refer to an Emperor (maybe of China) who also happened to be a Roman.

The only dumbing down that is occuring is thanks to the editors of certain, apparently American 'style guides' who would do well to remember Wittgenstein's message that language is a tool, and that these confusions occur when we 'go on holiday' with language instead of using it for the purpose for which it was developed: Communication within a social and linguistic context. In any case, the style guides, all refer to the need for hyphenation to avoid ambiguity. In the cases cited there is no ambiguity - as long as we do not 'go on holiday' with our language - and hyphenation just looks clumsy and clunky, except of course to those who have become accustomed to such clunkiness in written English. When speaking, hyphenation is silent, and competent language users infer meaning from context. The thought of possible 'ambiguities just does not arise when communication is taking place, only when we start playing the game 'What other meaning(s) could these words be used to convey in another context?'

If the meaning is clear within the context in which the words are used such hyphenation is both ugly and unneccessary.

[dmb]

[fluffyhamster]