unfoldingoflanguage-blog

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Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Choice

The picture above somewhat shows the frustrations that students can have when learning about grammar and punctuation. When studied and memorized from worksheets with no context, it almost seems as if these pieces of grammar do not have any meaning at all. There is no connection made with the students and so they struggle to grasp the meaning and use of punctuation. Angela Petit argues that we need to teach punctuation, specifically the semicolon, through the exploration of language. I completely agree with this idea. Students will grasp onto a concept once they can connect it to their own work or something else they are learning in class. Petit also believes that addressing the semicolon as a rhetorical choice instead of a grammar rule gives the students more reason to learn about it and use it. When incorporating punctuation into your writing to give it style or meaning, you allow yourself to better understand the reason that particular piece of punctuation makes sense where you put it. 

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Why Revitalize Grammar?

It is necessary to revitalize grammar because giving worksheets to students to memorize will not help them when they have to apply those concepts to their own writing. Grammar needs to be taught in context with the lessons being taught in class, such as writing an essay. By working through the writing process and making connections to how language works, you give students the chance to understand the correlation between grammar and their every day communication. 

Something that stood out to me in this article was the idea that “Approaching complex skills of writing as one set of grammar conventions gives teachers an easy, one-size-fits-all way to respond to student writing” (D&L, 3). This is an unfair way to teach students because every student has different skills and abilities. By teaching them to a one-size-fits-all method, you are taking away their individuality and their identities. It is important that we tailor our grading methods in a way that allows for variety in the works of students.  

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Not All Errors Are Created Equal

The study done by Maxine Hairston was actually very cool to me because it showed that, even though they are not grammatically correct, certain grammatical errors are glossed over and ignored because they aren’t as bothersome as others. It’s crazy to think that people can just pick and choose what is an error or not based on how they feel about it. I found it interesting that one of the main errors that people had a big issue with was the “...substandard verb uses such as ‘When we was in the planning stage’...”, but they did not find any problem with leaving out or putting in the apostrophe in ‘its’ (Hairston, 4). In their written portions, the interviewees said that clarity and understandable content was the most important. Even though the most bothersome error still makes sense, people reject it. If you add in an apostrophe to ‘its’ when it shouldn’t be there, your sentence has a meaning that does not make sense. For example, you can say ‘They was at the park’ and you can still understand the meaning. If you say ‘The hawk speeds after it’s prey’ (The hawk speeds after it is prey), there’s no logical meaning - actually, the meaning changes completely. I think people have a problem with the first one because it seems ‘primitive’ and ‘dumb’ in regards to Standard English. I feel this relates to Chapter 2 in Grammar to Get Things Done because when people use ‘improper grammar’ (in concerns to Standard English) or a different dialect of English, they are seen as unintelligent and uneducated even though their language is grammatically correct to their community and understandable to those not in the community.  

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Standard English

Formal Standard English is necessary and useful to learn for writing and professionalism, but it is important to note that it is not the only “correct” form of the English language. It is simply a dialect of the English language, just like African-American English or Southern English. As educators, it is important that we teach formal standard English, but it is also important to embrace the different dialects that each student has. By shutting them down, you can take away their power, where they come from, and their identities. Crovitz and Devereaux believe that “We have to give our students a strong platform to develop and speak to their understanding of how the power of Standard English works in the world, as well as allowing them to assert, analyze, and detail the power that their own dialects have in their worlds” (C&D, 23). We need to assure our students that where they come from matters and that their dialect is not less important than Standard English. If we shut them down, it can make them question where they come from and who they are, which is not good because students should feel confident about themselves and their abilities in your classroom. By dismissing their dialects, you are treating them as if they are less intelligent and less important, and that can harm the educational and social development of the students. 

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G.U.M.

The authors of Grammar to Get Things Done start off the book by explaining what grammar is and how we have misunderstood it. Crovitz and Devereaux state that “...grammar is really about understanding, not about ‘correctness’” (C&D, 2). This statement stood out to me because I have always been taught that grammar was punctuation, proper tenses, etc. While these are important when talking about standard English, they don’t mean much when it comes to understanding the meaning of what someone is saying. Cultural dialects and the way we speak are languages that are also grammatically correct, simply in their own way. In the book, the example the authors use is “He and me went to the store” compared to “He and I went to the store” (2). It is important to understand that even though the first example does not fit the typical idea of being grammatically correct, it still is because we can understand the meaning of it. 

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The Unfolding of Language

In chapter 7, Deutscher gives the readers 6 paragraphs that show the development of the English language. The first paragraph is the simple “me Tarzan” stage, which is formatted in a straightforward actor then action setup. For example, “girl fruit pick turn mammoth see girl run” (Deutscher, 210). In the second paragraph, the words are switched up a little. This changes what the action is being placed on. For example, “girl pick fruit turn see mammoth girl run” (220). The third paragraph shows how grammatical conventions were added to make sentences more elaborate. For example, “girl pick fruit turn see mammoth she run to tree” (235). In his fourth paragraph, Deutscher adds property words (possessives, quantifiers, plural markers, and articles) in order to show how items function. For example, “a girl pick fruit turn see a huge mammoth she run to the nearest tree” (244). The fifth paragraph is where nouns and verbs are added. This is when concrete things are changed into abstract ideas. For example, “A girl was picking fruit one day. Suddenly she heard some movement behind her. She turned around and saw a huge mammoth. She ran to the nearest tree and climbed it” (254). The final paragraph that Deutscher provides us with is where current language stands today. For example, “A girl who was picking fruit one day suddenly heard some movement behind her. She turned around and saw a huge mammoth charging straight at her. She ran to the nearest tree and climbed up it...” (259).

These paragraphs are extremely interesting because they show how language has evolved over time. What stood out to me was the fact that, while the phrases and sentences were changing, the meaning stayed the same. Nothing was taken away or altered, grammatical conventions were simply added to the paragraphs to make the reading more cohesive and understandable.

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Forces of Creation

After reading so much about the destruction of language, it was refreshing to finally hear about language creation. Chapter 5 was very intriguing because Dr. de Troy was basically saying that the destruction of language is also the creation of language. Without this destruction, language would never evolve or develop, leaving us stuck. Something that stuck out to me was the word ‘gonna’. The “destruction” of the phrase ‘going to’ has created a new word that can stand on its own and hold its own meaning. I knew that ‘gonna’ came from ‘going to’, but I never really thought about the fact that ‘gonna’ has its own meaning. What baffled be at first was the idea that you can say “I am going to a concert”, but you can’t say “I’m gonna concert”. This example clearly shows that the destruction of ‘going to’ created something new and helped our language evolve.   

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The Great Vowel Shift

While reading the article “How much shifting actually occurred in the historical English vowel shift?”, it was interesting to see how the author explained that it was not a shift, but really a merging of the vowels. Stockwell claims that when there is overcrowded vowel space, they just merge into one unit instead of shifting to a completely new sound. 

Another interesting thing comes from the NPR broadcast: the northern city shift. Professor William Labov says that “The short vowels in English, pit, pet, pat, have been standing still for a thousand years, while the long vowels did their merry chase. It's called the great vowel shift. But long about 1950, the short vowels in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Rochester, began to move. It's called the northern city shift” (NPR). I am from the Chicago-land area and when I go on trips, or even when I come to school here in the UP, I can point out the differences in the way people talk compared to back home. After listening to the different words being spoken, such as ‘black’ and ‘block’ or ‘buses’ and ‘bosses’, it was crazy to me to think that there can be such a big difference in meaning with the way vowels are pronounced. 

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Forces of Destruction

The story of “The Elders of Idleford” was quite thought-provoking because, if language is always being destroyed, our current language may end up in a similar state. It all started off with not wanting to waste the energy used when raising your tongue all the way to the top of your mouth to pronounce the sound k. The people kept coming up with shorter and less wasteful ways to make sounds, eventually ending up with no sound at all. The way language is being destroyed is through human laziness. As seen in the photo above, texting slang is used as a way to type faster because we want to get our message out as soon as possible with the least amount of effort. Cutting out a majority of the vowels shortens the words, but they are still able to be understood by the person receiving them. In the book, Deutscher says that losing “just one vowel is a fairly light casualty” (Deutscher, 89). If losing one vowel of a word is a light casualty, what is it when you continue losing them throughout the language? Destruction. Eventually, we will not be able to communicate effectively with our current language because a shorter, vowel-less version will take its place.

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The Year That Changed English 

This podcast was really cool and informative to me because, when I have previously learned about the Norman Conquest, it was never tied to the English language. I never knew how much of an impact battle and war had on our language and the way it developed. Something that was very interesting to me was that the words in our language to describe warfare generally all come from the French language. Words such as army, war, soldier, and battle all come from French, and this really shows the impact that this conquest had on the language of the Anglo-Saxons. 1066, the year of the Norman Conquest, is very crucial when studying the evolution and development of our language because this was a turning point for how we speak and write today. 

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A Castle in the Air

‘Castle in the air’ is a way of saying that what you are trying to obtain is unrealistic and simply impossible. I feel this chapter really sets the tone for the whole book because Deutscher is letting his readers know that there is no definite beginning of language. It is unrealistic of us to believe that we will have a straightforward answer of what language is and how it has developed. We will not have answers at the end of the book, just concepts and ideas that can possibly explain how language has evolved over time.

Something else I found interesting was the idea of “natural” language and how it does not exist. Deutscher says that “…it becomes clear that neither the English nor the Turkish order is any more natural than the other. Both orders are just cultural conventions” (Deutscher, 24). Language varies from place to place, so there is no right way to speak or write. Every culture has a different background that helped form the language spoken there, so it is unrealistic to think that one language is more correct or perfected than another.

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A Marvelous Invention 

I never really thought of language as an invention to begin with, but after reading the introduction to The Unfolding of Language, it makes sense how it is perceived that way. The interesting part that Deutscher brings up though, is the fact that “Language is mankind’s greatest invention - except, of course, that it was never invented” (Deutscher, 1). I stopped after reading this line to question everything because I was thinking: wait, where did language come from? We never really think about how the words we say came about or why humans began using language to begin with. Deutscher does not promise us any answers to these questions, but he does plan on exploring the evolution of language in order to see how we got to where we are today.