When I was last in Danville, Virginia, visiting my daughter, I raided the Goodwill bookstore yet again. I came away with books on poetry, of course--Imagism and Kenneth Koch's children book, "Rose where did you get that Red." But more to the point, I found "Woe is I" (1996) and "Feminist Critique of Language" (1990). I couldn't resist.
When I was in fourth grade, my grandmother taught me how to diagram sentences, since my teachers were not doing so. This future English teacher proceeded to teach the neighborhood children. Oh, well. What a shock when I discovered in graduate school that I had it all wrong. Let's see: there was Robert Hall's "Leave Your Language Alone" (later retitled "Linguistics and You") and an essay by Nelson Francis entitled "The Revolution in Grammar." It was all very enlightening.
English teachers, I learned, shouldn't try to be language cops, reinforcing class prejudices. Prescriptive grammar was class warfare; descriptive grammar was the enlightened way to go. This was in the era of Webster's Third, a dictionary that created great controversy. That was the 1960s; the 1970s produced "The Students Right to their Own Language," from the Conference of College Composition and Communication, sanctioned by the National Council of Teachers of English.
So, what about "Woe is I" and "Feminist Critique of Language"? When I was teaching grammar and English language history to undergraduates, future teachers, I spread the word. But I'm retired now, more interested in Koch's red rose than who and whom. "Woe is I" gets that right. As I used to tell my students, if you don't know which to use, always use "who." If you're wrong, nobody but an English teacher will notice. If you use "whom" wrong, you will sound like a pompous fool. Oh, well. (However, I still cringe when I hear somebody say "between you and I.") Now "they" and "their" used as singular pronouns is another story, too. "Woe is I" still insists that they are plural. "Everybody should mind his manners." But you heard them used in in the singular all the time, and an essay in "Feminist Critique of Language" insists that is quite proper; to insist the masculine singular stands for women as well as men is sexist and contrary to the reality of language usage. So there! I've said it. However, I'm just glad to be out of the fray.
But that doesn't get me off the hook. We still need to PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD.
I didn't. I didn't see, until I'd posted, that I said "Vision at Delphi" is not on Amazon. IT IS. It is NOW on Amazon. I'll try to be more careful this time and next--to make my grandmother proud.
When I was in fourth grade, my grandmother taught me how to diagram sentences, since my teachers were not doing so. This future English teacher proceeded to teach the neighborhood children. Oh, well. What a shock when I discovered in graduate school that I had it all wrong. Let's see: there was Robert Hall's "Leave Your Language Alone" (later retitled "Linguistics and You") and an essay by Nelson Francis entitled "The Revolution in Grammar." It was all very enlightening.
English teachers, I learned, shouldn't try to be language cops, reinforcing class prejudices. Prescriptive grammar was class warfare; descriptive grammar was the enlightened way to go. This was in the era of Webster's Third, a dictionary that created great controversy. That was the 1960s; the 1970s produced "The Students Right to their Own Language," from the Conference of College Composition and Communication, sanctioned by the National Council of Teachers of English.
So, what about "Woe is I" and "Feminist Critique of Language"? When I was teaching grammar and English language history to undergraduates, future teachers, I spread the word. But I'm retired now, more interested in Koch's red rose than who and whom. "Woe is I" gets that right. As I used to tell my students, if you don't know which to use, always use "who." If you're wrong, nobody but an English teacher will notice. If you use "whom" wrong, you will sound like a pompous fool. Oh, well. (However, I still cringe when I hear somebody say "between you and I.") Now "they" and "their" used as singular pronouns is another story, too. "Woe is I" still insists that they are plural. "Everybody should mind his manners." But you heard them used in in the singular all the time, and an essay in "Feminist Critique of Language" insists that is quite proper; to insist the masculine singular stands for women as well as men is sexist and contrary to the reality of language usage. So there! I've said it. However, I'm just glad to be out of the fray.
But that doesn't get me off the hook. We still need to PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD, PROOFREAD.
I didn't. I didn't see, until I'd posted, that I said "Vision at Delphi" is not on Amazon. IT IS. It is NOW on Amazon. I'll try to be more careful this time and next--to make my grandmother proud.
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