Changing Language System

Introduction

One difficulty in addressing the core concern of this paper - how linguistics can inform the teaching of writing - is that neither linguistics nor the teachings of writing are monolithic fields. The central position I will be taking - that this is fundamentally a functional question, a question about how language itself functions within an effective text - is likely to be interpreted differently by a linguist than it would for a writing teacher, since linguistics has 'functional' schools as well as schools that are more formal (structural or generative). Schools of linguistics that may think of them as 'progressive' have some views about language in common with more traditional approaches to composition.

These linguistic schools have varying views about how language is acquired; about to what extent the underlying forms are innate or learned. If language is a mechanical system, essentially meaningfully neutral, essentially innate, then there may be little value to the writer or writing teacher in exploring its nature, little value in parsing sentences or learning the systems for describing its underlying formality. If, on the other hand, the forms of language are inherently, organically linked to discourse context and to meaning, and if these forms are not at all innate, but acquired over a lifetime of interactive use, then linguistics may have an enormous amount to offer the writing teacher and writing student, insights that go well beyond the minimum needed to write conventionally or correctly (Schleppegrell, 2007).

Some Background on Grammar

Traditional school grammar

It may be a rough truth to say that most people consider traditional school grammar and grammar to be one and the same, since school grammar has, historically at least, been the view of grammar presented to them in school or the grammar cast out of school in the liberal movements of the sixties and seventies, the grammar most soundly discredited by the empirical studies that fail to show a quick crossover between instruction in grammar and improvement in writing. Though it brings with it a terminology that carries over into other, more scientifically grounded grammars -noun, verb, adjective, adverb, modifier, conjunction, preposition, auxiliary, transitive verb, intransitive verb, subject, and predicate are core examples - it also can be said to define those terms fairly poorly and to move too quickly from word types to sentence types without enough attention to intermediate word groups, like the phrase and the clause.

It tends to carry with it a number of prescriptive rules that seem arbitrary and capricious, having more of a life in the handbooks than they do in the practice of successful writers. 'Once introduced, a prescriptive rule is very hard to eradicate, no matter how ridiculous'. These include rules against splitting infinitives, starting sentences with land, but, or because, ending sentences with prepositions, and so on. I like to debrief my students on what they know about grammar when entering college, and questionable rules seem to be the bulk of it. Even when clearly more rhetorical than grammatical - rules about ...