🚀 go-pugleaf

Claire Pedretti writes:
>
> >I've taught college Journalism courses off and on for ten years.  It
> >seems to me there are two ways to teach grammar.
> >
> >1.  As a set of arbitrary rules designed to "catch" you.
> >
> >2.  As a set of time-tested tools that are usually the best way to
> >express yourself clearly.
>
>
> I agree with your rejection of #1; however, I think #2 is mostly myth.
> If I can correct an error, it seems apparent that I knew clearly what
> was intended.  Nongrammatical is not a matter of clarity so much as it
> is a matter of convention, middle to upper class convention at that.

You may be able to "correct" an error, but many readers who are less
patient than you will not bother to try to understand what a writer
meant by some ungrammatical usage. Perhaps, worse yet, such
ungrammatical usage could label writers as ignorant or less competent.
Yes, it is a matter of convention, and it is by and large a symptom of
hegemonic control over language by the middle to upper class, but--I
think we do our students a tremendous disservice if they leave our
classrooms unable to communicate effectively using the grammatical
conventions current in the languages of power today. Does that mean we
should participate in producing conforming "organizational men"? No.
But understanding language conventions seems an important
preliminary step in effective criticism.

--
Bill Konrad
3jx@mace.cc.purdue.edu