No sociolinguistics of writing?

I'm amazed that it is only literally just now that the first major consideration of writing through the lens of sociolinguistics is being done -- Theresa Lillis' book The Sociolinguistics of Writing having just been published this month. The written/spoken divide is wider than I thought, I guess!

Let me try to trace this.

Old-school structural linguistics is all about language as a system, a mental abstraction in your head. Not actually that interested in 'usage' per se.  Interested in the 'ideal speaker/hearer' (after Chomsky) -- the abstracted native speaker whose brain has in it the standard native language he/she acquired from birth.

Standard, idealized language, of course, is something that people rarely produce. (Hence the distinction between competence and performance in theoretical linguistics.) But it is something we can codify -- NB, write down -- and it's here that a weird paradox emerges, which Per Linell calls "the written bias in linguistics." Even though writing is a technology, a cultural innovation that allows us to represent language (that is, speech) in an abstract way, there is somehow a deep connection assumed between standard language, written language, and (crucially) that idealized NS speaker/hearer language deep in our brains. Linell's book points out that "language" is essentially conceptualized as a "structured set of forms, used to represent things in the world" in linguistics, and that this has led to an equation of written language with language, period.

Sociolinguistics, on the other hand, is not interested in 'pure language,' and though this might muddy the waters a bit, many social approaches that could be vaguely subsumed under sociolinguistics are not. Sociolinguistics is the natural result of years of thinking toward a conceptualization of language as a social practice rather than (or in addition to, to be more charitable) a set of forms.

 Sociolinguistics concerns itself with language usage -- data from real people using language, usually in the form of speech. So I'm wondering if it's because of the huge gulf in focus between language as a social practice people and language as forms people that sociolinguists don't ever seem to have considered written texts worth examining when it comes to to the central concern(s) of sociolinguisitics:  language variation and language change.

Is it really only in 2013 that this is seen as a reasonable thing to study, or is this something that disciplinary boundaries hath wrought? In other words, is it that texts are seen as the property of rhetoricians, philologists, literary theory people, or even structural linguists (stylistics?)? Is it that applied linguistics has come up with its own ways of analyzing written texts that doesn't really care about why certain groups of people use language differently in writing than others, or why writing practices change?

Is this a brand new field that is wide open, or has it just been taken for granted that the work is already being done by different people under different names?

Paul Brians on Common Errors in English

The following is a section from Paul Brians' retirement address. Brians is best known for his website "Common Errors in English Usage."Emphasis is mine.

I want to conclude by making a few remarks about the work that I’m best known for outside the university, my Web site Common Errors in English and the various publications derived from it. A standard objection to this sort of thing is that correctness in English usage is a social construction, and that the proper role of the professionals should be confined to tracking changing usage and celebrating diversity. Yet English professors are not the gatekeepers of usage, and their permission to stray from traditional usage goes unheard by the general public. Instead, people want to know how they can make themselves clear, impress their readers, communicate effectively.

It is precisely because language usage is an artificial social construction that one needs a lot of information to navigate the dangerous waters of modern English to avoid embarrassment and disdain. We can tell bosses that they should ignore the tendency of their job applicants to write “for all intensive purposes” and “one in the same.” They are not listening. The pronunciation by eastern newscasters of our neighbor state’s name as “Oregawn” alienates listeners. The tendency to call a slash a “backslash” confuses computer users. Mistakes are essentially social, but that does not make them unreal: we need to know the social reality which our words encounter when others read or hear them. Some English teachers are happy to critique the obfuscatory jargon and and cliches of bureaucrats but not to address the verbal gaffes of the downtrodden: but who needs more help? Who is more endangered by linguistic patterns that arouse contempt?

Alot (ha!) of this is very well put. I think Brians overstates it a little, though. The first part I've bolded may be a sort of objection, but it's not one that, if pressed, most professional applied linguists or others will make. I'm in a department with many well-known critical and socioculturally oriented scholars, and I frequently get comments on my papers which could be construed as "nit-picky" and as pointing out the very sorts of things that Brians lists on his site.

I'm inclined to push back a little and to say that some of the things he views as errors are very unlikely to be stigmatized (for example, in passing, he suggests that "firstly" isn't OK), and some things are very difficult to me to imagine anyone ever saying ("soup du jour of the day," "volumptuous"), but what I'd like to see is some empirical research about whether these are indeed common. Somebody should be able to do some pretty efficient corpus studies, no? That would be an interesting MA project.

And what I'd really like to know who these people are, the ones making these errors. I'm an overeducated, hyperliterate English teacher, so it's hard for me to imagine a world in which lots of people think "fowl swoop" is a thing.

Recent publications (by me) (with links!)

Heng Hartse, J. & Shi, L. (2012). Investigating acceptability of Chinese English in academic writing. Contemporary Foreign Languages 384(12), 110-122. Download here.

Heng Hartse, J. (2013). Foreign teachers, Chinese students, and 'English for Different Purposes.' English Teaching in China 2, 52-55. View or download the whole issue here.

Language attitude vs Language ideology

Sociolinguistic research has long used concepts such as stereotypes or attitudes to characterize sociocultural beliefs about languages and their speakers. Yet these notions emphasize individual psychology at the expense of the sociocultural level at which belief systems contribute to the structuring logics of power. 

(Bucholz & Hall, "Language and Identity")

...language ideologies are defined as explicit metalinguistic discourse or talk about language. From a traditional sociolinguistic view, language ideologies, for instance under the label of attitudes and beliefs, have been treated as representation fo internal mental processes and phenomena...attitudes and beliefs are subjective, stable experiences located in the individual. However, this notion is rather limited. Instead, the focus is is now turning to the variable nature of beliefs and attitudes and their discursive construction as well as their real-life contexts.... statements containing beliefs or attitudes are often produced among others, in particular recurrent interactional contexts to resist a certain view or a possible counter-argument. 

Gal (2006)...defines the field as a form of discourse analysis exploring the cultural, metapragmatic assumptions of how language is connected to its speakers and to the social world.

(Laihonen, "language ideologies in interviews: a conversation analysis approach" 2008)

...the observation of language attitudes in discourse - and more specifically language attitudes in interaction -- can provide the researcher (with things) that quantitative, statistics-based methods cannot.

(Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain "language attitudes in interaction" 2009)


Remember:

'Language ideology' is primarily a term that comes out of the tradition of linguistic anthropology, while 'language attitudes' is from sociolinguistics. There is very little overlap between the two in terms of keeping to their separate academic silos. They are also likely to use each other's terms interchangeably. You can see that the third quoted article here is basically arguing what the first two are, but is more solidly locating itself in sociolinguistics by sticking with the term 'attitude'. (The article also mentions that this discourse approach can be used in conjunction with matched-guise technique, which is a quantitative sociolinguistics method.)

It also seems as if 'ideology' has a more explicit connection to larger social discourses (hence the emphasis on various kinds of DA for studying this stuff), which 'attitude' seems to be pretty limited to individual expressions -- but this might not be true for everyone using these terms.

What is clear is that social constructionist theory is making inroads with people who study 'beliefs' about language (whether they call those attitudes or ideologies), as are the methodological tools of discourse analysis.

UBC's International Pathways Program: A new model ?

I don't know much about this new initiative at UBC, but it is going to be big -- they are spending $200 million on it.

UBC serves a local, national and international community and efforts are currently underway to strategically expand international student enrolment so that campus life and the student experience are universally enhanced. UBC’s International Pathways Program (IPP) as an adjunct to our expanding International Students Initiative (ISI) will allow UBC to significantly diversify the student body and increase the number of talented international students at UBC. The IPP will combine innovative teaching techniques with cultural and language support to provide a transformative program that will allow us to invite promising students from a more diverse array of countries while maintaining our base of direct entry students from traditional sources.

(That's from the "UBC 5-Year Capital Plan.")

The UBC student newspaper reported last year that Pathways would be a "separate but affiliated college," a kind of first-year program which would eventually allow students to enter UBC as 2nd-year students. "Separate but affiliated" worries me a little. The ideal situation, I think, would be to have credit-bearing language/culture/study skills courses, and this might be closer to that. I think of the first-year English programs at the Chinese joint-venture universities and wonder if this might be something like that. The JVU programs, however, seem to be much more integrated into the actual university. There's something a little off-putting about building a larger, more glorified "you're not actually a real student" style institution, of which there is already one at almost every university -- an English language institute. Incidentally, UBC's large ELI is supposed to be involved in Pathways, though I don't know how.

Anyway, something worth keeping an eye on. It could be a good thing (and even a place for me to look for a job in the future, maybe).

UPDATE: I note that this program has also been referred to as "A Bridge to UBC" and it does seem to provide actual credit courses despite the students not being enrolled in UBC. UBC's vice provost presented a sketch of the prospective program to the UBC student body association last fall and laid out the following steps (see the whole PPT here), with my emphasis:

We are proposing:
• An educational program developed for international students from domestic school systems that are significantly different from those found in North America and Europe
• A program to enable these students to complete first-year equivalent coursework, and
be prepared to enter UBC degree programs as second-year students:
- Preparation programs tailored to individual needs, with longer preparation programs for some students
- Development of English language skills for academic success, integrated with the  broader curriculum
- Course content based on UBC first-year credit programs and curricula
- The majority of instruction will be provided by full-time academic staff in a variety of teaching configurations
- A “living lab” for innovative undergraduate teaching
- A “high-touch” in-residence experience for all students, with strong social support, to address cultural acclimatization issues specific to different countries
 - A program that broadens our reach and enables students from diverse backgrounds to attend UBC 

NYU Shanghai and Sino-Foreign Universities

NYU Shanghai is being touted as the first/only Sino-Foreign cooperative higher education institution in the media lately, though it isn't -- there are literally hundred of joint programs, ranging from dual-degree programs to genuinely independent institutions jointly managed by Chinese and foreign entities (e.g., Xi'An Jiaotong Liverpool University, University of Nottingham Ningbo, United International College, SIAS International University, and others).

NYU, though, is the highest-profile American university to start a program, and is following what you might call the Nottingham model, where the foreign university essentially dictates the entire curriculum (aside from P.E. and Marxist thought, one assumes -- traditionally required courses for all Chinese university students).

So while it isn't the only or first university to start such a program, it is possibly the biggest, highest-ranked (#43 on the QS Rankings!), most prestigious (just the words "New York" command attention), and most PR-savvy. A lot of people will be watching to see how it succeeds or fails. A number of facets of this institution will probably be under scrutiny: academic freedom, success of graduates in terms of employment or grad school admissions, treatment of language (English proficiency of local students, and, one hopes, Chinese proficiency of foreign students*), and so on. It will be really interesting to see what comes of this venture.


*I'm not yet clear on how these will be treated, but so far there does not appear to be a "first year English" program in place, which is mandatory at many other joint-venture universities.

Wendell Berry on Global Thinking

“…love defines the difference between the ‘global village,’ which is a technological and totalitarian ideal, directly suited to the purposes of centralized governments and corporations, and the Taoist village-as-globe, where the people live frugally and at peace, pleased with the good qualities of necessary things, so satisfied where they are that they live and die without visiting the next village, though they can hear its dogs bark and its roosters crow.”

(“Standing by Words”)

“There can be no such thing as a ‘global village.’ No matter how much one may love the world as a whole, one can live fully in it only by living responsibly in some small part of it. Where we live and who we live there with define the terms of our relationship to the world and to humanity.”

(“The Unsettling of America”)

“In making things always bigger and more centralized, we make them both more vulnerable in themselves and more dangerous to everything else. Learn, therefore, to prefer small-scale elegance and generosity to large-scale greed, crudity, and glamour.

Make a home. Help to make a community. Be loyal to what you have made.

Put the interest of the community first.

Love your neighbors--not the neighbors you pick out, but the ones you have.

Love this miraculous world that we did not make, that is a gift to us.

As far as you are able make your lives dependent upon your local place, neighborhood, and household--which thrive by care and generosity--and independent of the industrial economy, which thrives by damage.

 Find work, if you can, that does no damage. Enjoy your work. Work well.”

(“The Futility of Global Thinking”)

Some stuff on cosmopolitanism and language

I have a huge knee-jerk reaction against the term 'cosmopolitanism.' Probably because of, you know, Cosmopolitan magazine. But I'm trying to understand it.

Martin Guardado, "Toward a Critical Multilingualism in Canadian Classrooms: Making Local Inroads into a Cosmopolitan Identity":

Drawing on recent work on cosmopolitanism, global citizenship, and critical applied linguistics, this article examines the concept of cosmopolitanism as a viable goal in education in Canada. Particular attention is paid to the inclusion of global citizenship objectives in K-12 language programs in general and in heritage language (HL) curricula in particular. I make a case for consideration of the concept of cosmopolitanism as a key guiding principle at diverse levels of education in formal, non-formal, and informal settings. I argue that in the Canadian context, multilingual education could play a more prominent role in educational agendas as it has the potential to promote cosmopolitan ideals. I conclude that in the framework of official bilingualism and multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism can fruitfully add to discussions about the role of education in the emergence of a Canadian identity.

Suresh Canagarajah , Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations:

Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations introduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. Challenging traditional approaches in second language acquisition and English language teaching, this book incorporates recent advances in multilingual studies, sociolinguistics, and new literacy studies to articulate a new perspective on this area. Canagarajah argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English, which opens up various negotiation strategies that help them decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms.

Suresh Canagarajah , "The Possibility of a Community of Difference"  (concluding paragraph)

TO SOME EXTENT, THE ARTICULATION of my position on cosmopolitanism in this article has itself been dialogical. I have drawn from my South Asian, multilingual, and postcolonial backgrounds to engage with the scriptures as an evangelical. As a scholar, I am happy to negotiate with other scholars from different belief systems on common projects of intellectual inquiry or social change. Though I start from my position as a South Asian evangelical, I am open to learning from my engagement with others, critiquing my positions, and moving to more hybridized and richer positions. I want to have the humility to let God speak through the social encounters he has arranged for me. To think that I have nothing more to learn is to be proud. To fear that open engagement with others will damage my faith is to underestimate God‘s power and sovereignty. My faith and social positions do influence my teaching practice. As an instructor of English, I strive to teach students negotiation strategies that will enable them to engage with others of different languages and cultures. I remind Anglo-American students that rather than resting on their status as native speakers, they should treat English as a language commonly owned by diverse people around the world, with whom they have to negotiate on equal terms. I encourage both native and nonnative students to shift their perspectives from correctness to contextual negotiation; from mastery of a single code to developing a repertoire; from individual achievement to social collaboration; from treating their first language or culture as problems to treating them as resources; and from being product-focused to being process-orientated in their negotiation of diverse languages and cultures.

"Wrong Word"

To say a writer used the "wrong word" (cf Lunsford and Lunsford, 2008, p. 789) is a pretty serious claim, it seems to me*.

(*This is probably only something a PhD student would say.)

Still.

What is the difference between the following: "wrong word"/ "word choice error" / "inappropriate for an academic essay" / and just a stylistic preference?

And how on earth am I going to categorize this kind of thing?

For example, here are 6 people rejecting the use of the phrase "it is known to all" in an essay:


1 It is known to all: 
Not necessary – if its known to all then why state it

2 It is known to all:
I didn’t know that!  I always advise students to avoid this kind of phrase

3 It is known to all:
Overused, meaningless expression that makes a false claim (it may not be known to all).

4 known to all:
well-known (otherwise this is a bit presumptuous)

5 known to all:
Proper expression: “common knowledge”

6 to all:
Best to avoid superlatives and absolutes in a serious essay-unless there is strong supporting evidence. Try “it is commonly known”, or “many people know”

1-3 seem to be doing basically the same thing -- rejecting it because it's cliche, or a kind of 'empty phrase' that they don't like. (NESTs tend to really go after these things, by the way -- Chinese teachers do it much more rarely.)

4 verges on that, but you could also say it's arguing this is a 'word choice' problem, with a simple substitution of a more appropriate phrase (which again, is a register thing, too).

5 is straight-up correction, probably related to register, but possibly not -- I could just as easily imagine it as a correction of an 'awkwardly worded' phrase ("it is known to all" does sound weird to me).

6 is very clearly looking at it from the perspective of what is considered appropriate for a serious academic essay written by a university student.

So, my question is, does it matter if I differentiate what is going on in each of the comments? Because if I do, I might drive myself crazy.

I can hear the voices of my committee echoing in my head: "It depends on what your research question is."

Oh, but my research questions are damn slippery things that seem to grow and change and shift whenever my mind isn't on them.

I need to print those suckers out, tattoo them on my arms, repeat them like a mantra. I really do.

Right Grammar, Wrong Habit

This about sums up the views of one of my participants, which I've seen in some other participants' responses to 'unacceptable' language:

"The student actually is not wrong in terms of grammar," but the "language habit" is wrong.

Several Chinese teachers refer to "language habit," which I still don't have a clear handle on the meaning of, but in this case she explained that she was referring to a kind of native speaker habit.

Which, considering that mention of habitus and hypercorrection the other day, makes sense. Though I still think calling this "hypercorrection"isn't really fair. It's more like NESTs are "hyper-relaxed" about grammar -- the Chinese teachers are just being "strict," as the participant said. Or, as she also put it: "Your emphasis is on meaning, but my emphasis in on whether they can use language in the right way."

Perhaps it's only from the perspective of the Centre that we have the luxury to focus on meaning and not form -- probably because facility with English means something different here than it does there, so to speak. In China, as many other Asian countries, being good at English isn't really for the purpose of communicating, per se, but for mastering a subject to pass tests, gain knowledge, gain access to jobs, etc.

I hope I don't sound like I'm denigrating that. We NESs get a little precious about our language sometimes when we feel like people don't view it as the magical wonderful beautiful language of the King James Bible and Shakespeare -- which it is, of course! -- and it would probably be better if we accept that for some people, writing an essay is really just a way to demonstrate that you studied hard and know your stuff.

On the other other hand (?), plenty of Chinese teachers I talked to bemoaned students' utilitarian attitudes about English. There is still -- for many English teachers NS & NNS -- a kind of push-and-pull between English as in applied linguistics and English as in the humanities. I suppose there is room for that tension.

The Future of Applied Linguistics

"What do aspiring applied linguists see as their own future needs and goals? Where do they want to be placed? Which sorts of issues do they want to deal with and in which countries or communities? Are they confident that on the basis of their graduate-level education they have the resources and experience to deal with the range of future challenges awaiting them? And what exactly are those challenges?"

Patricia Duff, Facing the Future Now: Reflections from a Student of Applied Linguistics, 1992 

Kind of amazing to see something written by one of my committee members, and a very distinguished scholar, at the beginning of her academic career. Worth thinking about these questions, though perhaps they can only be answered in retrospect. The second two questions are kind of haunting to me -- I've got applications in to two incredibly different institutions at the moment, though won't be doing any more apps until next year. If I got either job my future would be vastly different (a small local school with a speciality vs. huge international research university). I wonder if much has changed in the 20 years since she wrote this?

Notes on Wendell Berry, globalization, language, & education

• When Berry talks about poetry he is talking about his vision for the right use of language.  I don't know if he views poetry as the highest/best use of language but when he talks about it he is usually talking about ethics and standards in language.
• In general Berry is against "specialization" in language and knowledge, i.e. the way universities arrange disciplines. I think this has to do with uprooting human action from community/place.
• Berry suggests these questions should be asked of poetry, rather than taking it as a professional, disembodied, specialized field where poets write for other poets:

• What good is it?
• Is it at home here?
• What do the neighbors think of it?
• Do they read it, any of them?
• What have they contributed to it?
• What does it owe them?
• We could/should probably ask the same questions of the language(s) and communication strategies we teach. This makes good sense if you are in a community ESL situation where your primary goal is to welcome immigrants, newcomers, etc. to your community
• But the issue here, as Berry rightly notes, is that the globalized industrial economy has created a situation of "destroyed communities." Two related problems for language education: genuine community life is barely possible, and the motives and purposes people have for language learning are frequently not based on being rooted in a place.
• We are encouraged to think of neoliberalism / late capitalism / globalization as the Way it Is now, and that we need to educate for this -- think of James Gee's "people as portfolios," or human capital. That this should be an accurate or ethical view of humanity seems inimical to Berry's though, Christian though, or humanist thought more generally.
• Yet it is clear that most English teachers and students buy into globalization pretty wholeheartedly, either because we see it as offering good possibilities for human flourishing on an individual scale (though again, Berry would probably rightly suggest that it does not allow for community flourishing, which ultimately is detrimental to individuals and humanity as a whole), or because we see that it is an inevitable organizing principle of who we are and what we do.
• I'm concerned that we can't necessarily escape having a "global orientation" to our language and our profession because of current material conditions -- concerned because, as Berry writes, the idea of a "global community" or "global village" is a metaphor that could (should!) never actually exist. This may result in a rejection of "imagined communities" at a conceptual level (even though we should certainly allow students to be motivated by their own desires).
• The question I'm left with is "How can we integrate the slow, the small, the permanent, and the communitarian into a world where the fast, the large, the transient, and the cosmopolitan are basically the rule?" I can't think of a good answer, though there are several, probably:
• Commitment to living and working in one place
• Intentional cultivation of (temporary) community in classrooms, institutions, etc (this isn't very satisfying, but a posture of inclusivity and love probably goes a long way)
• Refusal to view people as portfolios/capital, even though we want to teach strategies that will allow people to get to where they want to be; view people as individuals rooted in communities, and encourage them to view themselves 
• ...

• There is probably more to be said here, especially about Berry's rejection of specialization, and some basic ideas of contemporary rhetoric (e.g., ambiguity, flexibility of language and meanings, etc). Overall I'm concerned about whether Berry's vision of ethics and standards in language use (and by extension teaching and learning,  I think) can a) be shown to be other than the Complaint Tradition, and b) square with ideas of polysemy, heteroglossia, ELF without a common grammatical core, and so on. I think we could take Berry to say that "Standard" language should actually be rooted in its attachment to communities and local ways of being, and merely lament that strong communities are rare in many of the situations where we live and work.

The accountability of language

“Any coherent account of the capacity of human speech to communicate meaning and feeling is, in the final analysis, underwritten by the assumption of God’s presence.”

George Steiner, Real Presences

"The author of the utterance, with greater or lesser awareness, presupposes a higher superaddressee ...whose absolutely just responsive understanding is presumed, either in some metaphysical distance or in distant historical time. In various ages and with various understandings of the world, this superaddressee and his ideally responsive understanding assume various ideological expressions (God, absolute truth, the court of dispassionate human conscience, the people, the court of history, science, and so forth)."

M.M. Bakhtin, Speech Genres

"My concern is for the accountability of language -- hence for the accountability of the users of language.  To deal with this matter I will use a pair of economic concepts: internal accounting, which considers costs and benefits in reference only to the interest of the money-making enterprise itself, and external accounting, which considers the costs and benefits to the 'larger community.' ...One of the primary obligations of language is to connect and balance the two kinds of accounting....A reliable account is personal at the beginning and religious at the end.

Wendell Berry, Standing By Words

2013 Conferences

Some things that are happening this year that may be of interest. Obvs not going to them all!

AAAL: Dallas, Texas March 17-20 [Presenting on dissertation research]

CELT: Dallas Baptist U, March 20 [Presenting Wendell Berry & ELT]

TESOL: Dallas Convention Center Dallas, Texas, USA March 20-23, 2013 [not going]

BCTEAL: Douglas College, April 26-27 [deadline Feb 22]

CILS (UBC): May 3 [deadline Feb 28] not going

IOP (UBC):  May 11 [deadline Feb 26] not going

LLED Grad Conference (UBC): May 25 [deadline Feb 8] not going

ACLA: UVic, June 3-5 [presented on pluralizing high-stakes academic writing]

SSLW: Shandong University, People's Republic of China, early October [no CFP yet] not going

IAWE 19: Arizona State University, Nov. 16-18 [April 15 deadline] presenting on PhD study

"Highly Comprehensible, Reasonably Unirritating, but Linguistically Unacceptable"

The title comes from Santos 1988. I just emailed Terry to let her know that after re-reading her article, I found it ironic that I was pretty much doing a study almost exactly like hers. I don't think her work had a big influence on my decision to go the direction I'm going, but I feel like I have a better sense of how to marry "acceptability judgments" + "world Englishes" + "L2 writing" after looking at her framework more carefully.

For me, the framework and ideas behind the AJT come from a sociolinguistic framework. It's an interest in variation and how people make decisions about what's 'in or out' according to their (socially mediated) intuitions, beliefs preferences, and other words for subjective feelings or whatever.

The world Englishes stuff is just a natural result of the globalization of English, the de/re-centerting of composition and applied linguistics, and the importance of China in global discourse about education and English.

The L2 writing stuff, I now realize, is a very direct connection to the streams of thought that like to look at two things: 1) "What makes ESL writers' texts different than non-ESL writers?" and 2) "How do readers react to those differences (aka errors)?" #1 is a unique area for L2 writing as a field, but #2 can be traced back to composition studies in the 70s and 80s (Shaugnessy, Lunsford & Connors, etc) -- and ultimately can be traced back to the beginning of time, when the first teacher said "Man, kids today really don't know how to write! They keep putting apostrophes in the wrong places [or whatever]."

Anyway, the title: "Highly Comprehensible, Reasonably Unirritating, but Linguistically Unacceptable." Those are her findings about how content professors reacted to errors in L2 student writing. Isn't it pretty wack how those things don't all add up? That's why I want to keep doing this kind of research.

Incidentally, her definition of acceptability is "the degree to which the interlocutor regards the speech or writing of the NNS as approximating the target language norms." Of course, I'm not really working in an SLA framework, so my definition is necessarily different. Though my working definition is basically "anything that makes somebody go 'waaaait a minute...'" Which is not that scientific, but in a pinch, it'll do.

NOTE: One of my participants used the words "understandable, but unacceptable." Which is very interesting to me since native speakers (and most teachers in fact) are quick to say that they are most likely to go after those things that interfere with 'meaning.'

Wendell Berry on Language

From Wendell Berry's Community by Anne Husted Burleigh

How is understanding of the Incarnate Word essential to our understanding of the relationship of language and truth?

I believe that we have to try to make our words faithful to reality. Language has to maintain its power of reference to actual things, and everything depends on that power of reference and that community of knowledge, or else the word doesn’t get out.

In our age, people don’t have common understanding of the same words.

That makes for considerable difficulties, especially if they don’t talk carefully with one another. It is always good to talk with people who understand things differently from your way, but that requires careful talk. Any common effort obviously requires careful talk.

If we believe that words do refer to reality and our words have to be true, we still have to communicate with those who have accepted individualism and subjectivism. They operate on the premise that words really don’t mean anything except what the individual wants them to mean. Can we bridge that gap?

No. All one can do is speak as truly and clearly as one can. I think one’s abilities to correct anything are limited. It is important to know what the limits of your abilities are. A person can make a difference within a fairly small boundary. Not very many people can change very much.

They can’t change the world, but they can change their little corner of the world.

Well, I know that you can improve a few acres. You can take good care of a few acres. Your ability to take care of other humans is more limited than your ability to take care of an acreage simply because humans, in the main, would rather take care of themselves.

------

(there's a lot more, but I don't have books in front of me. More on this soon.)