(The grammar police are here!)
I'm writing this post in response to Kevin's comments from yesterday (here).
I hope it would come as not surprise that I agree completely with him. I'm writing this post to elaborate on the theme in the interest of articulating my own thoughts on the matter and of prompting discussion.
One of my students yesterday said, "But Ma'am, what if I don't talk like that?" His was a valid question.
My response? "I don't either." The truth is, I routinely say "they" in reference to a singular antecedent. My reason is simple: singular use of "they" is an oral habit; it's part of our vernacular. The way we speak is not the same as the way we write. I don't pretend otherwise. (As a matter of fact, in the classroom, I find myself fighting the vestiges of the crazy notion that we should "write like we talk"; I suspect this "rule" arose to combat excessive formalism in writing.)
I pointed out to my charges that I also use the word "got" a great deal in speech, but almost always in a slang sense that I wouldn't consider using in formal or academic writing. For example, "I gotta go" (when I mean "I must go" or "I have to go"). My status as a Texan (we're a bit like Marines: once a Texan, always a Texan) provides several simple examples of oral habits we obviously wouldn't use in standard American English, "y'all" being the most obvious.* All dialects have similar words that college students understand intuitively not to write; once they realize they already know to exclude certain expressions from their written speech, they are more open to the notion of learning where more lines are drawn, and respecting those lines.
* Also, my vernacular includes such expressions as "I told him where the cow ate the cabbage" and "That ain't right" and "Gitonouttahere!" I wouldn't think of including these expressions in any formal work, either, unless my goal was to call attention to them or myself. Every vernacular has its "accepted usage" and "accepted expressions" which clearly have no place in "proper" (Standard) English. This is self-evident. We just quibble about what we think should be included in SAE and what should not.
My point of origin also grants me an opening to discuss the perceptions non-dialect speakers have of other dialects. When I left home at 18, I realized fairly quickly that many people will hear a Texas accent and assume the speaker is stupid. This may be due to the comparative slowness (to other dialects) of the delivery and it probably incorporates stereotypes to some degree, as well. To be fair, northern dialects sound strange to our ears, as well ("Youse guys," for example, has always sounded retarded to me, even while I understand it's no more retarded than "y'all"). While Standard American English promotes linguistic snobbery (the notion that something is "right" or "wrong" and the person who doesn't know the rules will never completely have "membership" in the group), it also--to a great degree--provides the basis for a language we all learn and that we can communicate effectively in.*
* I know. I ended a sentence with a preposition. Go ahead. Call me on it. I dare you.
Equally important, though, is that while intelligent folk acknowledge the ultimate unfairness of any dialect being "better" than any other (Standard American English being "better" than Ebonics, for example), the fact is that human beings judge one another's intelligence and "fittedness" for a job or situation based largely upon their perceptions of how she speaks. Whether we like it or not*, those around us judge our intelligence based upon our mastery of the language--the Standard American English language (or, as the case may be, Standard British Usage). Students who hope to advance in our culture must embrace this fact: No, it isn't fair. But it is a fact of life. Fight it at your peril.
* How egotistical are we to presume the world does or should care whether we like something!
In my second semester of freshman composition (about five years after my first semester of it), I wrote a paper on the Ebonics controversy raging in Oakland at the time. My initial impression was that it was silly to teach children their home dialect.* After I read a while, though, I thought, "Well...why not? What makes SAE better?" We can interpret this question two ways: (1) "What makes SAE inherently better?" or (2) "What makes SAE better in some situations?" The interpretation you choose dictates your position on the issue. My answer to number 1, of course, is "nothing." If I had stopped thinking there, I would have taken the side of Ebonics in the issue.** My answer to number 2 is that, if our goal is to give these children a fighting chance in our world, we will teach them to read, write and speak its language.
* I'm experiencing deja vu. I must have written about this here before.
** However, more difficult questions arise from the "teach the dialect" position, such as "Should we teach predominant dialects everywhere, instead of SAE?" This is fair, but it would be chaotic, and in the long run, it would promote more widespread dialectical snobbery than we already have, as well as the development of separate languages over time.
My position on the prescriptive/descriptive debate is right in the middle, by the way. We do not master our language until we develop the ability to sense the appropriateness of any given word, phrase, or even sentence structure on our audience. We speak a living language, meaning it evolves as we speak it. Pure prescriptivists would lop off each new shoot of the language as it appears; they seem to want a dead language. Dead languages are comforting; you always know the rules, you spell everything correctly, and they contain no surprises. Dead languages also do not adapt to new circumstances. What makes people think our language is "perfect" and should be preserved intact now? I'm sure people thought the same thing in Chaucer's time, too.
However, most languages change at about the same rate as the continents drift. In order to get along in the world--and what else, ultimately, is the purpose of communication?--we must walk the line between "accepted usage" and "prescribed usage" as the occasion demands. For this reason, most "but the dictionary says" arguments miss the point.* Dictionaries are only a starting point for determining what a word means. We must also take into account the speaker, the audience, and the delivery. Also, many of our language's expressions are so fuzzy and subject to individual interpretation that we can't even agree on a reasonable definition after protracted discussion (take "pornography," for example). "The dictionary says" arguments that presume to settle such disputes are hopelessly naive.
* My first response on such occasions is usually some form of the question "Which dictionary?" Dictionaries tend to lean toward prescriptive language, as it's difficult to keep up with current accepted usage.
My most common (frustrated) student complaint is something along these lines: "Every teacher wants something different! [ARgggggh!]" Sometimes, a student will actually throw his hands up or roll his eyes and sigh melodramatically as he says this.
This frustration arises from an unexplored need or expectation that the world be black and white (where "black" is right, of course ;), and "white" is wrong). I can't say for sure, but I suspect I get more than the usual amount of such thinking, because I teach gray areas in a school that caters predominately to black-and-white thinkers. The Academy is an engineering school. My students often have substandard verbal scores on their SATs, but they usually have a propensity for mathematics and engineering, where the answers (until they're in the PhD levels, anyway) are clearly and predictably right or wrong. When they are confronted with an academic problem where the answer is dependent upon circumstance, they recoil in pain and confusion. They resist. All too often, they simply give up. They decide there is no answer. I think the plethora of right answers in writing confuses and frightens them, and they don't have the tools to (1) divide the group of "right" answers from the group of "wrong" answers, or to (2) select the best "right" answer. Black and white answers can be known; gray answers, by their very nature, accept an element of the unknown (and demand more clarity of thought).
And so it is that when one of my students expresses the "It's completely arbitrary!" frustration, I answer yes and no. Communication* may seem arbitrary, but it isn't completely arbitrary. I point out that the student automatically expresses himself in different ways to different people. He will talk to his own mother in a way he wouldn't to his grandmother. He bases his mode of expression upon assumptions about his audience's knowledge of his subject, its familiarity with his terms, its biases, its convictions, its ability to influence him or his life (authority figure?), his motivation for communicating, his mood, his audience's mood, and...you get the idea. Furthermore, he normally can depend upon voice inflection and body language to aid his communication, and he interprets feedback from his audience the same way. Deep down, he intuitively understands that he makes myriad judgments on the fly each time he opens his mouth. Why would written communication, then, be the black and white endeavor he wants it to be (or thinks it should be)?
* Note: When they throw up their hands and say they never know what to write, they're speaking of "how to write a paper to please teacher X." I respond by expanding the subject under discussion from papers to communication. I've made great headway by employing this simple replacement; apparently, the average student doesn't think of writing papers as yet another act of communication--a means of sharing meaningful and informative ideas through words only with an audience which may be known or unknown.
By the way...I pointed out to my students yesterday that I'm not infallible. If I tell them X is right but it doesn't sound right to one of them, they were welcome to look it up (from a respected grammar source, preferably) and bring in the evidence. I am learning, too. We'll see if any of them take me up on it. I misspoke yesterday on my explanation of antecedents. ;) (Not intentionally, of course. I merely proved again the truth of the maxim: You don't know what you do and don't understand until you try to teach it.)
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