Original_To:  BITNET%"mbu-l@ttuvm1.bitnet"
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.mbu-l
Date:         Sun, 13 Dec 1992 15:49:00 EDT
From:         "Composition Digest (Robert Royar,
              Moderator)" <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>
Subject:      (Fwd: *C&CD*) Long post for MBU-L (1)

Entry: 1
Date: Fri, 11 Dec 1992 17:16:35 -0800 (PST)
From: Gardner Campbell <CAMPBELL%USDCSV.ACUSD.EDU@Sdsc.BITnet>
Subject: Long post for MBU-L (1)
Message-id: <921211171635.37d0@USDCSV.ACUSD.EDU>
Comments: X-Vmsmail-To: SMTP%"R0MILL01@ulkyvx.Bitnet"
Reply-to: Computers & Composition Digest (R. Royar) <R0MILL01@ULKYVX.BITNET>

Hello all.  I won't get all this the way I want it, so please
bear with me.  I may get part of it right; I'll certainly get
part of it wrong.  Okay.  Here come's a long post.

I'm pleased to see Bob C. back on MBU.  I felt bad about his
exit but found the discussion too hot to enter.  This time I
unlurk to say with distress that I find the temperature going
up again in ways that make me profoundly anxious.  Specifically,
I find some replies to Bob's statements/quotations regarding
grapholects and stable language communities harsher and more
personally judgmental than the situation warrants (in my
opinion).  Whether or not one finds Hirsch's arguments in
*The Philosophy of Composition* persuasive, one needn't infer
that Bob's motives for finding Hirsch persuasive are
self-serving or covertly patriarchal/racially insensitive/
right-wing [or any wing]/intolerably bigoted.  Let me state
that more strongly.  One SHOULDN'T infer that Bob agrees with
Hirsch because he wants intolerable oppression to enjoy
official institutional sanction, not unless one wants to
operate wholly out of a hermeneutics of suspicion, a
hermeneutics that in my experience works against community
and justice, not for them.

Here are the tonally disturbing moments I found in a
recent *Computers and Composition Digest*, the moments that
prompt this post.

Susanmarie Harrington writes:

*I don't see the grapholect as a stable dialect, Bob.  The
*printing press made possible greater circulation of texts
*in the London variety of English and was one of the forces
*in the move toward standardization.  But if you look at essays
*written in 1800 and essays written in 1980 you'll see a definite
*difference in language over time.  I'd agree that "academic
*discourse" can be something we unapologetically teach our
*students as the most common written dialect of university
*writing, but I wouldn't call it stable.

*I'm not arguing that it's OK to encourage students to write
*in their dialects and I'm certainly not arguing that writing
*should be a transcription of spoken language which, like,
*would certainly be, like, hard to read, as Bob notes.  But it
*doesn't seem reasonable to say that any form of language is
*stable, and I'm leery of discussions of language that assume
*that some dialects are inherently better than others (I don't
*think that anyone here is consciously asserting that, but it's
*an insidious idea that seems to lurk beneath some of this
*discussion; at least I'd like to warn against it).

I find these remarks sane and humane, whatever I think about
the merits of the argument regarding language and
stability--until I get to the part beginning "I'm leery...."
I for one detected NO value judgments regarding the *inherent*
worth (however *that* might be defined) of specific dialects
in ANYTHING Bob C. wrote.  Obviously Susanmarie wants to
qualify her implication that THIS discussion of language
assumed "that some dialects are inherently better than others"
when she inserts the parenthetical statement that absolves
MBU-ers from "consciously asserting that."  Yet she qualifies
the qualification and, in my opinion, restores the complaint
she sought to soften, indeed restores it to its original
urgency and then some, by calling it "an insidious idea"
(and so it is, *if indeed it is present*) that she suspects
may be "lurking beneath some of this discussion" (I hope
"lurk" is an inside joke here, Susanmarie, and not unironic).
The post concludes rather solemnly, if charitably, with an
ethical caution that reveals once again, however gently, the
profound suspicions Susanmarie finds herself voicing, albeit
(as she confesses) in the absence of any evidence.

Disclaimer:  make no mistake.  I am NOT arguing about
dialectical stability or grapholects or language value
or anything of the sort here.  I am arguing that there
is indeed an insidious, though no doubt well-meaning,
tendency everywhere, even on MBU, to find immorality in
our dialectical opposites.  I want to alert us to this
tendency in this instance and deplore it here, for I
find the evidence of Bob C.'s posts will NOT support
such a construction of his morality or his motivations.
Simply put, I think those who disagree with Bob C. are
jumping to moral judgment too quickly in this case.

Another example, and a worse one in my opinion.

Liz Hamp-Lyons writes in reply to Bob C.:

*Bob, re. grapholects:
*I think that's mostly nonsense.  One only needs to read
*a while in the comp literature, then switch over to the
*linguistics literature, or the theology literature, to
*see the wide variations in dialects across disciplines
*(or "discourse communities", which turn out to be much
*the same thing as dialect-using communities).  heck,
*one only needs to compare articles in CE with those
*in RTE to see what I mean.  Our written codes are,
*maybe less varied than our spoken ones, but they are
*hardly more stable....  [material deleted]

I am upset by the tone of the opening statement.  I know
from *personal and very bitter experience* (but that's for
another time) how stubborn and dogmatic (and wrong-headed,
in my opinion) E. D. Hirsch can be, and I am ENTIRELY
sympathetic to those who find some of his work less than
satisfactory.  Yet as Bob C.'s reply points out, one
cannot call Hirsch's statements regarding grapholects
and stability "nonsense."  You can call them mistaken,
no doubt, and perhaps they are.  But "mostly nonsense"
implies that the assertions belong to a discourse
community utterly and permanently alien from the one
we believe we should construct, that Hirsch has no
sense to offer anyone who wants such a community--and
anyone who thinks he does isn't one we want in our
community, anyway.  "Mostly nonsense" thus strikes
me as a purgative, not a reply; the phrase was used
incautiously, I think, and is far too harshly judgmental
for the occasion.


A final example, and the one that finally drove me to this
lengthy post. Judy Boss writes:

*Bob C., this may seem nitpicky, but since you cite the
*prose of Browne, Burton, and Milton as "unreadable"
*by students as pre-1700 "corner," and since I teach the
*prose of that period and earlier, I'd like to
*mention that Burton's prose was considered eccentric
*even by his contemporaries and Milton's exceedingly
*erudite by his contemporaries.  Students can read and
*understand the prose of Sidney, Jonson, and Bacon,
*however.  You should perhaps consider, too, that when
*I was an under-graduate Spanish major and learned the
*"grapholect/dialect" of 16th-century Spanish, I found
*that I could read and understand Italian of the same
*period, though I had no knowledge of or training in
*Italian.  I think the issue may be more complex than
*you wish it were.

I do not agree with all of Judy's assertions regarding
Renaissance prose, but no problem there.  My heart aches,
however, at that last line (last lines and first lines:
perhaps there's a paper there somewhere?).  "I think the
issue may be more complex than you wish it were."  Compare
Judy's sentence with this alternative I just composed:
"I think the issue may be more complex than you think it
is."  The difference is apparent, I think.  Judy's sentence
implies a *wish* for all sorts of nasty and unpleasant
things on Bob's part.  She does not imply but states directly
that Bob wishes for a simple issue instead of a complex one;
I find the implication of Bob's unpleasant desires in the
fact that all of us (I believe) would judge a moral agent
irresponsible, even vicious, who deliberately overlooked
or falsified the complexity of a moral situation.

I cannot discover such moral irresponsibility in Bob C.'s
post.  Perhaps the fault is in my reading.  I have to
wonder also whether Bob hasn't endured some preliminary
efforts at silencing because he's said things that have
pushed some buttons in people's emotions.

We are a community.  I believe that our first duty to
each other is to love each other, and thus enable trust,
and thus enable voice.  That goes for students,
colleagues, spouses, lovers, children, everyone.  I have
long admired the way MBU tries hard to live up to these
ideals of community.  If I didn't believe in you people,
I'd have been too cynical to compose and send this post.
But I sure hate to see vigorous dialogue compromised, or
frictive, authentic love impaired.  I agree with whomever
said it on this list:  we MUST believe that we can learn
*from*, not just *about*, other speakers.

Gardner Campbell
University of San Diego
Campbell@usdcsv.acusd.edu


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