Job Discussion Forums

[santi84]

[fluffyhamster]

[Chancellor]

A certain amount of prescriptivism is necessary or there is no foundation on which to build a student's mastery of spoken and written English. Language, by its very nature, has structure and patterns that differentiate language from gibberish. Linguists are free to philosophize about a field in which they are merely describing what happens in a language; but the teacher needs to show the student the way to English mastery and that process requires a degree of prescriptivism in the sense of teaching students things like how a sentence is formed in English, the use of tenses, etc.

[santi84]

[fluffyhamster]

I'm still puzzled as to why people are persisting here with the term 'prescriptive'; the fact is, it has negative connotations and will probably be a source of puzzlement to those "in the know" (which I'm assuming is a sizeable minority if not majority in TEFL, which generally aims to be more descriptive than not).

All you need to say really is that you teach or account for grammar (not a good or bad thing in itself - it's just a tool), and even if you profess not to, it will have formed the basis for some of the materials you might be using; in ostensibly grammarless lessons, there will be some sort of forms (vocab, lexis, phrases, whatever) that the student will have either been taught and then expected to use, or coming out with of their own accord (in attempts at communication), that will ensure that things are hardly struggling along at the level of complete formless 'gibberish' for long.

I mean, there is soon a point in every lesson at which we assess the success or not of the communication, and just because we might suggest alternative, more effective phrasings (from a potential range of 'em) etc does not make us necessarily "prescriptive" but simply helpful (and as I was suggesting before, in questioning Dedicated's definition, 'prescriptivism' pure and simple may be anything but helpful, in that a lot of it will run contrary to the perfectly standard usage that the students will meet in the outside world).

But hey, continue calling or having yourselves called prescriptivists in the context of this thread at least, if that's what you honestly prefer!

[Chancellor]

[johnslat]

Would anyone like to read a very interesting (in my not-so-humble opinion)
article?

December 1983

The Decline of Grammar

by Geoffrey Nunberg

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97mar/halpern/nunberg.htm


and there's also this one:

A War That Never Ends

The laws of grammar may be arbitrary, as those who would simply dismiss them assert. But arbitrary laws are just the ones that need enforcement

by Mark Halpern



http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/97mar/halpern/halpern.htm

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

Chancellor, what I personally think and say isn't important, but what people generally seem to (well, outside of this thread, at least!) surely is, and if prescriptivism has, linguistically-scientifically speaking, quite negative connotations, then what is the point of using that term in the general context of "empirical/descriptively-based prescriptivism" (which is the sort of clunky-term-yet-well-meaning approach that I'm assuming this thread is ultimately striving to arrive at, and what your 'it's structure and pattern that make a collection of sounds a language and, in order for communication to occur there needs to be a common understanding regarding that structure and pattern' sounds like [i.e. more or less structural linguistics as feeding into informed, halfway decent meat-and-potatoes FL teaching*, eh!], versus the essentially proscriptive nature of prescriptivism "proper")?

Hi John. I might try to get around to reading all of Nunberg's article (even though it's from a fair while back - 1983), but I'll probably give Halpern's (1997! reply) a miss - just going by the general tone of the following: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1168

*One can get away with teaching native speakers all manner of prescriptive nonsense in English class because most of them will stand some chance of realizing what is and isn't true; foreign learners however can't get hung up on shibbolethic minutiae and ultimately need to be given the real deal as much as possible.

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

Hmmm, having just read Halpern's post on the link you provided, I'm puzzled by what you found off-putting about its "general tone."

Regards,
John

[fluffyhamster]

Well, perhaps I should rephrase that as 'I don't recall much that struck me as essential, must-follow-up stuff, in what Halpern had to say, nor it seems did many LL readers who commented at any length.'

[johnslat]

Dear fluffyhamster,

But I did notice that one who might very well be "our own" Stephen Jones posted a number of times.

I found the posts interesting; I always love to see "academics" taking potshots at one another, defending their "turf." and their "sense of self"
(which seems to be intimately entwined with their need to be "right" when commenting about their field of expertise.) Question their notions and it's a personal attack.

Regards,
John

[Chancellor]

[fluffyhamster]

Who knows, perhaps the linguistics world really would be a better place if prescriptivism (more like, certain prescriptivists) had more influence (not that it hasn't in a way been prescriptive enough already, what with the likes of Chomsky holding court), and (and of course much, much more importantly) the wider world put to rights too simply on the basis of 'No more linguistic laissez-faire!'.

Imagine it: commoners (including academics) educated (at least in terms of English) to the point of being able ("What do you mean, 'Never really have been and probably never really will be permitted!'?!") to join the previously exclusive leadership club - a club which, had it been (been made) more concerned with prescriptive grammar (than it might or might not have been already) than with developing and pushing excessive debt, sub-prime mortgages etc as a means of growth and further profit, could've actually avoided a lot of the really pernicious, stemming-from-genuine-laissez-faire problems we now face, and made/kept the world a much better place to live! (Just "extrapolating" a bit here beyond the back cover/product description on Amazon of Mark Halpern's Language and Human Nature).

But seriously, while I have no doubt that the general way we think, talk and behave might always be indicative (of something or other), I rather doubt that linguistics is the real cause or even the solution to (wider) social problems, though it may just be an accurate cataloguer (if we actually allow "it"!).