Rules of engagement? Usage and normativism: public discourse and critical language awareness

Straaijer, Robin

doi:10.1017/s0266078414000066

Cited by 3 publications

(3 citation statements)

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“…Most importantly, they can motivate students to think about the role of language in their own life and in the life of their community. Development of CLA may be implemented with the help of different projects in which children and adult students collaborate with their peers in their own and other countries (Straaijer 2014, Karagiannaki and Stamou 2018, Scott-Monkhouse et al 2021.…”

Section: Critical Language Awareness and The Teaching Of Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Yelenevskaya

Protassova

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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The purpose of this article is to help language teachers at all levels of education to understand in depth problems posed by linguistic superdiversity. Based on the study of scholarly literature, documents of educational bodies and the authors experience in language teaching in different countries, the article answers the question of how the teaching of world languages such as English and Russian is changing due to the recognition that their functions and status differ in various countries. We explore why, despite gradual changes in curricula, there is still pervasiveness of pedagogies attempting to achieve a perfect command of the studied languages, without considering students needs and language repertoires, the local sociolinguistic situation and labor market requirements. We focus on methods of teaching English and Russian, taking into account various aspects of language ideologies related to mono- and pluricentricity. To show the dependence of language teaching on the socio-cultural situation, we apply the concept of Critical Language Awareness covering aspects of language variation and changes in attitudes to normativity, prescriptivism and regional language varieties. We also show that innovative pedagogies put new demands on teachers requiring that they have to adjust to new teaching formats, acquire skills of using educational technologies and teaching diverse student populations. The focus of the review on teaching English and Russian proves that despite different histories of their pedagogies, the interplay of language, ethnicity, identity, culture and education systems is significant for both, and without taking all these elements into account, the goal of educating effective multilinguals is elusive.

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Section: Critical Language Awareness and The Teaching Of Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Yelenevskaya

Protassova

2021

Russian Journal of Linguistics

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“…Priestley intended his Rudiments of English Grammar for a specific audience, as is evident from its subtitle, Adapted to the Use of Schools , and he later stated that his initial motivation for composing it was for use in his classroom – although its publication may have come too late for him to have done so himself (Priestley, 1806: 44; Straaijer, 2011: 37–38). Its positioning as a pedagogical grammar marks the work as normative – by their nature pedagogical grammars are normative in that they seek to instruct in how to use the language – but Priestley also telegraphs his normative intentions when he defines grammar as ‘the art of using words properly’, a definition that Ian Michael has pointed out is highly formulaic and that, with variations, appears in the majority of grammars of the era (Priestley, 1761: 1; Michael, 1970: 189).…”

Section: Priestley and Lowth's General Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rethinking the prescriptivist–descriptivist dyad: motives and methods in two eighteenth-century grammars

Wilton¹

2014

English Today

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Grammars, dictionaries, usage manuals and other linguistic references are traditionally categorized along a spectrum running from prescriptivist to descriptivist, yet for years problems with this system of categorization have been noted. Forty years ago Geoffrey Pullum cautioned against confusing methodology and motives when applying the ‘descriptive’ or ‘prescriptive’ labels (1974: 77–78). A few years later Emma Vorlat suggested a middle ground, that grammars codify the language along a continuum of prescriptive–normative–descriptive, that is codification based on arbitrary rules – usage by social elites – description without value judgment (1979: 129). Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade noted that Vorlat's categories are not discrete, with eighteenth-century grammars increasingly basing prescriptions on descriptions of actual usage as the century progressed (2000: 877). María Rodríguez-Gil further noted that prescriptive grammars often base their advice on description of the language of social elites (2003: 190). Joan Beal characterized Robert Lowth's eighteenth-century grammars as both ‘normative’ and ‘descriptive’ (2004: 106). And Robin Straaijer has noted that ‘it seems useful to view prescriptivism and descriptivism as being independent from one another rather than diametrical opposites’ (2009: 67–68). Yet, perhaps because of the baggage carried by the two terms, to date no one has made the leap to conclude that the two terms address entirely different domains altogether – Straaijer approached the brink but did not leap. Prescriptivism and descriptivism do not exist along the same continuum.

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“…This article is an attempt to add to the individual qualitative studies of historical grammar books of English that already exist (in the style of Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2011; Straaijer 2011; Navest 2011; Fens-de Zeeuw 2011; see also individual contributions in Leitner 1986, 1991; Tieken-Boon van Ostade 2008) by adding a quantitative dimension. This quantitative approach to historical grammaticography will in turn be linked to historical corpus-linguistic studies.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the success of prescriptivism: quantitative grammaticography, corpus linguistics and the progressive passive

Anderwald¹

2014

English Language and Linguistics

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This article connects the quantitative study of grammaticography with a more traditional corpus-linguistic investigation of the progressive passive. Based on a careful analysis of over 250 grammars of English published during the nineteenth century in Britain and the US, I will try to answer the question whether prescriptivism has had any influence on purported differences between British and American English in the rise of the progressive passive. This article will argue that text-type sensitivity is the overriding factor determining the occurrence of the progressive passive in the nineteenth century, rather than national differences between British and American English. Prescriptive comments during the nineteenth century did not influence developments in American English significantly. However, during the 1950s modern-style prescriptivism can be shown to have massive effects on American newspaper language. Combining quantitative historical grammaticography and corpus-linguistic studies can thus extend our insights into the factors that influence language change.

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Rules of engagement? Usage and normativism: public discourse and critical language awareness

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Teaching languages in multicultural surroundings: New tendencies

Rethinking the prescriptivist–descriptivist dyad: motives and methods in two eighteenth-century grammars

Measuring the success of prescriptivism: quantitative grammaticography, corpus linguistics and the progressive passive

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