Monday, March 5, 2012

Bad Advice from English Teachers

Older Daughter is in an English class where they write multiple drafts of every paper. One recent draft was "corrected" by other students. Older Daughter got a comment from the correcting student that said "Remember, don't use ; or :. They're not formal!"

Sainted Husband sent the English teacher an e-mail saying that he's published several books and served as the head of the linguistics department at a famous university and has never heard that there was anything wrong with ; or :. He got an e-mail back from the English teacher, who said that he discourages the use of ; and : because "the kids write so many run-on sentences."

Well, wouldn't it be better to teach the correct use of ; and :, instead of giving the kids the impression there's something wrong with them?

In another example of bad advice from English teachers, I was very surprised to read this post on Catherine Johnson's teaching blog, about Groucho Marx's famous elephant joke. I usually agree with Catherine, who is a founder of the kitchen table math blog, but not this time.

The Groucho joke is not an example of a misplaced modifier; there's nothing wrong with his original statement, "I shot an elephant in my pajamas." Linguists would describe it as grammatically ambiguous but pragmatically unambiguous. That's why the joke works; grammatically, it's possible that the elephant is wearing the pajamas, but pragmatically, everyone hearing the statement for the first time assumes that the speaker is wearing the pajamas.

Catherine's proposed "correction" (really, there's nothing to correct) is that the statement should have been "Wearing my pajamas, I shot an elephant." This is in no way more correct or preferable to "I shot an elephant in my pajamas."

Ambiguity is an inevitable part of natural language. It's not a bug, it's a feature! There's no getting rid of it.

Here's an example of ambiguity used by linguists: "I saw a man with a telescope." Did the speaker see a man by looking through a telescope, or was the man that he saw holding a telescope? This one is both grammatically and pragmatically ambiguous.

Here's another one: "Visiting relatives can be boring." Is the activity of visiting relatives potentially boring, or are the relatives visiting you potentially boring? Again, this one is both grammatically and pragmatically ambiguous.

For more discussion of different types of ambiguity, see this post about writing recommendations: Linguistic Humor, Ambiguous recommendations.

9 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I put up a link to your discussion -- !

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  3. Should have read the entire post before commenting!

    Right: the joke works because of the tension between grammatical and pragmatic 'correctness.'

    I'm trying to help my students not write sentences that are unintentionally funny.

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  4. Thanks, Catherine!

    I was thinking some more about this: you said in your post:

    ***
    Adjectives, adjective phrases, & adjective clauses have to be "next door" to the words they modify.
    ***

    Where did "have to" come from? I haven't had time yet, but I'm sure I can dig up many passages from well-respected authors who did not always put the adjective clause next to the words it modifies. The choice of where to put the adjective clause is usually a stylistic one, relating to the emphasis in the sentence.

    I'm sure you've read plenty of sentences where the adjective clause is removed from its antecedent, and never even noticed. It's a very common pattern in written English.

    You say:

    ***
    I'm trying to help my students not write sentences that are unintentionally funny.
    ***

    The thing is, "I shot an elephant in my pajamas" isn't funny. It isn't even unclear. It only becomes funny with the follow-up sentence, "how it got into my pajamas ...". The second sentence is funny because it violates our pragmatic understanding of what the first sentence meant.

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  5. Catherine, if one of your students wrote this sentence:

    ***
    I saw the planet with my telescope.
    ***

    would you red-pencil it ("What was the planet doing with your telescope?") and tell the student she should have written:

    ***
    With my telescope, I saw the planet.
    ***

    I doubt you would notice any potential ambiguity in the first sentence, because pragmatically there's no problem. This is the exact same situation as the elephant sentence.

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  6. How about this sentence?

    ***
    I love you with all my heart.
    ***

    Here, "with all my heart" modifies the verb "love". It is actually not possible to put the clause next door to the word it modifies. Neither of these sentences is possible in English:

    ***
    (NOT) I with all my heart love you.

    (NOT) I love with all my heart you.
    ***

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  7. Hi I’m Heather! Please email me when you get a chance! HeatherVonsj(at)gmail(dot)com

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  8. After years of participating in writing workshops, both creative and expository, and teaching them, I've come to feel that they are a mistake. Students tend to give bad advice because most don't recognize originality or juicy complexity when they see it and a teacher can't do much about the power of peer pressure. Good writers with weak egos dumb themselves down or give up. I'd love to be a researcher in education and give Borges and other very subtle and strange writers without attribution to grad level workshops and record what happens.
    Rosemary

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  9. I've come to believe that teaching any creative subject is extraordinarily tricky.

    Recently, I was signed up to take an art class with a particular teacher whom I've known for many years. I really love her, as a person and as an artist. I was bitterly disappointed when she had scheduling problems and wound up not being able to teach the class.

    The class re-formed as a studio class with no teacher. I'm taking the class, and to my surprise I find I'm getting more out of it without the teacher. I'm less self-conscious, I'm more focused on how I want my work to develop, and I don't get interrupted by the teacher's commentary.

    There's no simple answer here. I know I've learned a lot from this teacher in the past. I also know that classes fill a very important social function. But it's very difficult to get all the planets aligned just right.

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