When last we left this topic, I had laid down some idealistic clap trap about the standards for education and young people, calling out the wizened people of my generation and older as unnecessarily hard on today’s kids and their academic achievements. However, that post didn’t address the question of grammar and conventions in the case of Jacqueline Howett’s book. The book was full of convoluted sentences and questionable grammar, the blame for which was firmly laid at the lack of standards in today’s classroom.
To discuss this topic thoroughly, I have to wear three hats: that of ESL class coordinator, that of technical writer, and that of classic English teacher.
As I put on the first hat, I can tell you that successful communications are not so much implicit in materials as they are negotiated by participants. We can go into all sorts of issues such as cross-cultural writing conventions and assumptions of normality, but in the case of publishing, given that we have a set of conventions to work with (the grammatical and communicative conventions of the published book), these issues do not apply as much. Books have the serious disadvantage that the negotiation between the author and the reader is frozen on the page, and therefore can not adapt as it occurs. Interpretation will still have variance, but the author cannot address miscommunications.) Still, it’s good to know that there is no cultural baseline normal for communication. Yes, really.
As an English teacher, I want to tell you that English professionals don’t care about your spelling and grammar. No, we don’t. I always run into the scenario at parties that when people find out I’m an English teacher, they immediately modify their level of speech. Monitoring of grammar takes place. Given my background in linguistic theory and cross-cultural (I’m not a grammarian!), I always find this amusing. I really don’t care as long as we can negotiate meaning.
However, in my classes, I do hold my to conventional US grammar and spelling standards. Why? I don’t care, and I know better, right? This is when I put on my technical writer hat.
The answer is that the rest of society cares, as witnessed by the Howett response. Of course, we should care, for the purposes of future employment and education. Conventions exist for a reason–to ease communication. Readers are annoyed when they can’t get your message easily. It’s not their job to do the work. Learn the conventions of the message produced. Learn the expectations of the audience. Give them what is expected. The communication is then more likely to be successful.
Some people take risk with convention and experiment, and this is fine if you take the reader along with you. You can’t lose the reader.
I’m not surprised that Howett lost her readers. She wasn’t doing anything new or innovative. She was flying in the face of convention by not giving her readers simple surface editing consideration. If Howett had not relied upon herself as an editor, she might have had more success. If she could have been taken under the wing of someone who understood the conventions of publishing, she might have had even more success. It is most likely that her writing did not attract those people, so she was on her own.
Where the situation breaks down is extending Howett’s lack of conventional surface level editing and convoluted sentences and applying them in general to “those kids today.” Howett’s communication fails for a variety of reasons, and a new paradigm of communication is not among them. Basic comprehensibility is. I can, however, produce young writers who are doing just fine, who have been raised under the same auspices of internet, video game, and episodic culture. Howett’s situation can be verified by looking around the internet, but to make the generalized jump from Howett to a generation based on her case, or the case of other self-publishers on discounts several easily located examples to the contrary.
So…Howett messed up. Once she releases her piece into the wild, she has to take responsibility for that. BUT it has very little to do with today’s academic standards, or the different rhetorical ways in which a new generation processes a world. Howett disregarded conventions and will by virtue of that choice receive the censure she has received.
I won’t even touch on her own defense of her choices. That’s not my field of expertise. 🙂
And that’s all I got to say about that.
Catherine
