[PLUG-TALK] A pair of pants (was: software program)

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Fri Feb 24 00:54:13 UTC 2012


On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:39:19 -0800
Keith Lofstrom <keithl at gate.kl-ic.com> dijo:

>On Wed, Feb 22, 2012 at 07:24:01PM -0800, John Jason Jordan wrote:
>> I am a linguist. By definition that means that I am a descriptive
>> linguist. Descriptive linguists merely report and analyze what
>> speakers do with their language. There are no value judgments, no
>> right or wrong, no good or bad. 
>...
>> Still, it makes me think of high school dropouts flipping burgers. :(
>
>John the linguist is more forgiving than John the reader.
>
>A linguistic experiment:  submit two linguistics papers
>with the same facts and conclusions to a linguistics
>journal.  One is written in impeccable English;  one has
>clunky grammar.  Which will get accepted?  If both are
>accepted, which will get cited?  While linguists report
>and analyze what speakers do, they pay more professional
>attention to colleagues who follow the rules.

There are several failures here.

First, study discourse analysis, a relatively new field of
linguistics. Discourse analysts have done amazing things at
categorizing types of language acts. The part of discourse analysis
that is missing here is the study of genres. I do not speak the same in
front of friends over a beer as I do when addressing a class. Nor is
the writing I am doing right now suitable for a journal article. We all
shift genres constantly all day long. And then there are power
positions, age of the interlocutors, and host of other factors that
cause the language in use to vary. I actually use multiple negation
occasionally in speech, for emphasis, and have done so all my life. I
would never use it in a journal article.

Second, in reference to journal articles, as Paul noted, the important
part is what you have to say. Spelling and punctuation, and usually
even more, are the job of the editor. I have not found a single PhD
in the PSU Department of Applied Linguistics who can spell English worth
a damn. Yet they have all published numerous papers and books. As long
as you have something interesting to say and you can handle citations
and references in proper APA style, you're home free. And my computer
can generate perfect citations and references automatically in APA
style, so I don't even need to know that any more. I should add that it
is the norm these days for journals to demand payment from authors to
have their work published. The requirements for acceptance have
changed. 

Finally, burger-flippers don't write articles for peer-reviewed
journals. They are also, by and large, capable of switching genres. The
burger-flipper alone with peers in the back of the restaurant probably
uses coarse language, up to and including the f-word. I can guarantee
you that such language did not come out of the kid's mouth during the
job interview. It is true that my language skills afford me a wider
range of genres, but that does not make the burger-flipper's language
wrong or invalid, nor does it make mine better or more correct. Each is
perfectly suited to the needs of the user in the setting in which it is
used.




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