the fight for good vs. evil continues apace..

Quote:

there have been studies about womans (vs men's speach) habits, and somem woman tend to phrase every statement (even ones they are sure of, like "my name is X" with rising tone --which is generally used in spoken english (Not generally a tonal language) to indicate a question.

Its more common in certain economic groups, but its not totally an economic pattern--it can be found at all social and economic levels.

when made aware of it, most of the woman were able to change their speech pattern.. at least for the sort term, while being studied.. but many woman relapsed back into the same pattern (when there was a follow up interview some months later)

I am going to the store now, is a statement.

but make the statement with a rising tone, and it sounds like a question..and as a question, its less assertive, (less threating to the what they beleive to be the established powers that they must obey?--its becomes a way of looking for approval.) it reflects insecurity on the part of the speaker.

we have come a long way baby, but there are still pockets of society that want to keep woman down on farm, barefoot and pregnant.. and girls raised in that sort of cultural norm tend to use the questioning habit of speaking. they feel uncomfortable making any statement. so everything they say becomes a question. It frustrating to deal with. and can become an entrenched habit.

Thanks for the laugh - a rising intonation as an indication of female submission?!! Hilarious stuff, especially since there are several English-speaking countries in which the rising intonation is considered characteristic of ALL speakers, regardless of gender. Keep looking out for those black helicopters, won't you?

> Mark is the blogmaster at witnet and the author of the linked article

yep, so I had assumed. You guys with websites and blogs play tag around the web with every mention or link, na?!

Well, I've had more time to look at the linked article. Interesting subject, though I have to say I found the arguments poorly reasoned and ridiculously loaded with tendentious assertions. I have limited detailed knowledge of the history of American education through the course of the 20th century, but what I do know of this, and similar models in other countries, makes many of the assertions of this article seem ludicrous. These a priori findings are often declared without regard to factual evidence � sometimes even despite internal contradictions in the material under discussion � and even where there is some evidence adduced, little attempt is made to quantify and qualify the value of the source. Some sentences are so packed with assumptions that even without digging into the detail of conflicting points of view a critical reader can see the poverty of analysis on display.

Having said that, I certainly understand that education has always been a battle-ground of conflicting views of how we want to mould future generations within our societies. I just can�t accept as credible the proposition that all American education is governed by �an oligarchy� and that this junta is enthralled by a Machiavellian desire to appease the narrow interests of a few major capitalists, in contrast to some unspecified golden age of pedagogy that celebrated a living breathing democratic republic.

(Back after traveling a few days)

Mav, do you not find the Woodrow Wilson quote telling? There rarely is a workable conspiracy involving large numbers of people. That's not really what's at issue here. I'm sure Wilson and his cohorts thought they were doing the best they could.

I think there has been a strong shift away from "the basics" to a load to toachy-feely tripe in the last several decades. I remember in high school (1972) getting put into "Honors" History and "Honors English" and learning little history, except for the Bantu tribe in South Africa, and no grammar. In English we were encouraged to be "creative" and as a consequence virtually all of the A students were taking speed and mescaline for something to occupy their attention. It was in a university class in Spanish that I finally realized I didn't know what a preposition was. It took years of finding the right university professors to help me read and write clearly. Looking back (and having taught Latin and Journalsim to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders; Freshman English to university students as a gradute student; Business English at Business College; legal writing to paralegals, and executive writing skills to California law enforcement at Command College at Cal Poly Pomona), there is a very clear pattern of mostly "unconscious" evil in our public education, with some conscious help from ideologues who operate in the education department and various Trusts and Foundations.

As always, evil is often not seen by the good, who have difficulty believing in it without have had a direct experience with it.

> a very clear pattern of mostly "unconscious" evil in our public education, with some conscious help from ideologues

ah, that I could entirely believe, Mark. Yep, that would be consistent with a lot of similar patterns I've seen elsewhere.

I guess if people of good intention, from whatever individual standopint, come together to battle out the details of what may work best, we'll never be *too far out from the central ground of common sense. In hindsight, I can understand that your blog entry was probably an elided reference to a whole bunch of stuff that you take for granted that other people recognise as the truth. Probably much of it is - as I said, I'm no specialist in US educational history. I just get apprehensive when too much is taken as an assumption on shared values, having learned the hard way!

Hey, you have an interesting voice - I hope you choose to stick around here at least from time to time; be good to hear more from you.

Yes, it's a pity they don't really teach grammar in grammar school. Never have. They teach some usage rules that usually contradict the grammar one learned, unconsciously, while growing up speaking the language.

I think I was taught a little grammar in grammar school, but that my mind was not prepared for it. I never acquired an understanding or appreciation for English grammar until I took Latin.

The problem with the grammar we learn unconsciously is that some of it is good usage, but not all of it is. Goodness is partly a matter of convention, but it's also a matter of utility.

I've long felt that the whole preposition-at-the-end-of-a-sentence thing was caused by the long time ignoring of the phrasal verb. The particle of a phrasal verb looks like a preposition and can come at the end of a sentence quite nicely. Then, when kids that had learned the phrasal verb naturally in the first few years of their lives were told by grammarians that prepositions should not end sentences and that the particles were really prepositions, rather than coming up with things like "up with which I shall not put," started putting real prepositions at the ends of sentences.

Hey, big guy, what say we get together when you get out of jail. Oh. Never mind. That's a prOposition at the end of a sentence.

the grammar one learned, unconsciously, while growing up speaking the language. There's a Funniest Home Videos clip where Mom is behind the camera, filming her chocolate-smeared toddler, and she says things like, "You didn't eat no candy, did you?", and "Are you sure you didn't eat no candy?" (To every question, of course, the kid says no.) And I think, "Lady, aren't you embarrassed to be heard on national television talking like that?" This is a pretty old clip; the kid's probably in grammar school right now, talking the same way as his mom.

"You didn't eat no candy, did you?"

Well, she's probably not embarassed by the way she speaks, because that's the way she speaks.

> Mom is behind the camera, filming her chocolate-smeared toddler

...thus proving herself a true American Mom by referring to chocolate as candy without being embarassed ('cause that's the way she speaks)

1. Crystallized sugar, made by repeated boiling and slow evaporation, more fully called sugar candy; also any confection made of, or incrusted with this. (In U.S. used more widely than in Great Britain, including toffee, and the like.)

OED2

After I took my first few semesters of German, I came to assume that prepositions at the end of sentences was something borrowed from that root. But that isn't the kind of thing I'm talking about. I think Jackie's closer to what I was talking about. There are people in my family who talk just like that woman - and it's fine when you're talking to your own family or other people who understand you.

The problem is that language like this is often either imprecise or incorrect. It's fine for some uses and utterly inadequate for others. Imprecision may not matter in every case. But precision needs to be sufficient for the circumstance.

Crystallized sugar

COED: 1 N. Amer. sweets. 2 chiefly Brit. sugar crystallized by repeated boiling and slow evaporation.

The problem is that language like this is often either imprecise or incorrect.

The woman's sentence is neither imprecise nor incorrect. I don't happen to speak like her, but I understand precisely what she's trying to say. Her grammar simply permits double, and no doubt triple, negatives to have strong negative meaning. Whereas, if some pedant intones, "He was not unkind." which is a double negative it has a slightly stronger positive meaning. One hears grammatical and inprecise sentences all the time. Grammar is not a magic salve for imprecision.

[Editted to complette a sentence fragment.]

Well said, nuncle - I was getting lazy about being bothered to argue with that tosh, er alternate view

The woman's speech was entirely appropriate for the circumstances. There are cases where imprecision is okay. This case is closer to what I'm getting at than the "where does a preposition go" case is. All I can say is that I've been in conversations with women like this - and I've heard conversations among men and women like this that were almost as funny as a "who's on first" routine. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes it makes communication much less effective than it otherwise might have been.

"Grammar is not a magic salve for imprecision."

In fact, it's possible that using perfect grammar can impede effective communication. It's possible, but not so common as the case of using improper grammar, I think.

I'm reminded of the cases where I'm tutoring and I ask the students to explain a certain idea - and I'm sure to correct them and to coax them into repeating the explanation correctly - both so that they are using the correct terminology and so that they understand how to think about the problem correctly.

Learning grammar is a good thing. I'm glad - grateful even - for what grammar skills I possess. Sometimes precision in language is unnecessary - particularly in English with all its redundancy. And sometimes it's crucial.

If the primary purpose of communication is simply to identify one's self as part of a particular group, then the lack of precision is fine. In some cases, even a slight difference in vocabulary or sentence structure can alter the meaning dramatically.

I've seen cases where a very slight difference in wording on a briefing slide is the difference between a 3 month project and a 3 year project. Many times when I've been asked to review technical papers, I've had problems with people reporting what they think they did. I try to tell them, "No, that's not what you did. You're confusing the issue."

"Well, the customer knows what I did."

"But people other than your customer are going to read this and come to erroneous conclusions about what you did and what can be deduced from it."
and so on.

I'm not saying that one has to use perfect grammar all the time or that one has to forget whatever "natural" grammar one possesses. But expecting students to use only the grammar they learn at home (and that seems like the case you're making) makes about as much sense as expecting students to use only the math they learn at home.

But expecting students to use only the grammar they learn at home (and that seems like the case you're making) makes about as much sense as expecting students to use only the math they learn at home.

I expect students to learn the grammar of standard English if they are to make it through school and university, but then I am a teacher as well as a writer. I don't suggest that one's native dialect, (which it is important to stress has a perfectly good and learnable, yet different from the standard's, grammar), is the one to use in writing an essay or one's thesis. Rather than trying to coerce a person, who only speaks the dialect they learned at home, with imprecise statements about their grammar being incorrect and/or imprecise, you would be going far to point out to them, that they need to learn to write, and to a lesser degree to read, standard (US / UK) English. There's a vast difference between telling somebody that they have no grammar, and telling them that they have to, in effect, learn a new language, with different grammatical rules. And they have to learn when and where to use their different languages / dialects / registers. That's all I'm saying. Many people are incabable of telling a coherent story, but that has little to do with their grammar, but their story-telling skills. This is the problem I have with most grammar mavens, that while I've spent a goodly part of my academic and post-academic life reading about languages and linguistics, they cannot be bothered with learning a bit more about language and linguistics, than what is presented in their old-fashioned and out-dated manuals of usage. That's all I'm saying.

"This is the problem I have with most grammar mavens, that while I've spent a goodly part of my academic and post-academic life reading about languages and linguistics, they cannot be bothered with learning a bit more about language and linguistics, than what is presented in their old-fashioned and out-dated manuals of usage. That's all I'm saying. "

Then I think we agree. I've said similar things in the past, but not this exact point. I don't think I know enough about grammar to correct mavens. But I do understand well - and have believed for a long time - that sometimes gratuitously following rules can lead to ineffective communication. On the one hand, making a case for using imperfect grammar can sound like sour grapes coming from someone like myself who is not an expert in the subject. On the other hand, one has to make some effort to communicate effectively in some circumstances - and it has to go beyond the rules. Even if one were intimately acquainted with all of the rules, one couldn't assume that the person at the other end of the ether is equally familiar.

Some time ago I wrote a post about an acquaintance of mine who fancied himself an editor. One of his pasttimes was editing famous works of authors. He could take any piece of beautiful and perfectly understandable prose and turn it into a list of words that conveyed no more meaning than a list of physical properties would convey about one's perceptions of a rose. You know that scene in "The Joy Luck Club" where the boyfriend puts a bunch of soy sauce on the mother's best dish and thinks he's fixed it? That's how we felt as we read his edits. The first time I told this story I left out a detail - his additional commentaries were very enlightening and worth reading. It's strictly his edits that I had made us squirm.

years ago, a friend of mine (then teaching chemistry) failed a student for a poorly presented answer on chemisty lab reports

his attitude was this was perfectly valid, well written lab reports made the science clear, (and would allow other to verify the results. he maintained English classes existed exclusively to teach grammer so students could write clear and concise lab reports... (the english department was thrilled with this idea, but.. they backed up him and when the student appealed to the english department!)

My husband's sister was teaching a science course at the university level. One of her students said, in class, "Why should we have to write good English - this is a science class." Her response was that language was the best communication tool we had, so they had better learn to use it.

I have one employee who says things like: "So he's like 'why can't I put this fish in with that one?' and I'm like 'Because that one will eat this one'" I grit my teeth because she's good enough in the store that I can put up with her speech. I also like her. But I would never? Hire someone? Who put four question marks? In every sentence?

there have been studies about womans (vs men's speach) habits, and somem woman tend to phrase every statement (even ones they are sure of, like "my name is X" with rising tone --which is generally used in spoken english (Not generally a tonal language) to indicate a question.

Its more common in certain economic groups, but its not totally an economic pattern--it can be found at all social and economic levels.

when made aware of it, most of the woman were able to change their speech pattern.. at least for the sort term, while being studied.. but many woman relapsed back into the same pattern (when there was a follow up interview some months later)

I am going to the store now, is a statement.

but make the statement with a rising tone, and it sounds like a question..and as a question, its less assertive, (less threating to the what they beleive to be the established powers that they must obey?--its becomes a way of looking for approval.) it reflects insecurity on the part of the speaker.

we have come a long way baby, but there are still pockets of society that want to keep woman down on farm, barefoot and pregnant.. and girls raised in that sort of cultural norm tend to use the questioning habit of speaking. they feel uncomfortable making any statement. so everything they say becomes a question. It frustrating to deal with. and can become an entrenched habit.