Descriptive Writing, or, are we the comma police?

I've been reading David Foster Wallace's essays, and become a big fan. I love the intuitive way he structures them, I love his use of American idiom, and I've discovered I share a lot of his crotchets and obsessions. He's a self-conscious writer without being precious, and he is occasionally hilariously funny (his footnotes are the best!) But one of the things I noticed, was that he uses an idiom that I almost always mark incorrect on my students' papers: he habitually writes, "a couple things," in phrases like, "I bought a couple books yesterday," instead of "a couple of things" or "a couple of books." This is wrong, isn't it? Wallace wrote for The New Yorker and Harper's among other icons of journalistic correctness, so I'm a little confused. I think it's wrong-- has Chicago Style changed when I wasn't looking? (I appeal to you, my reader, for reassurance.)

One of the essays in Consider the Lobster addresses exactly this sort of question. It's a review-essay on A Dictionary of Modern American Usage by Brian Garner and you can find it here. (Don't forget to read the footnotes -- they're the best part). "Tense Present: Democracy, English and the Wars Over Usage" is pretty entertaining reading for people like us, because it makes fun of both sides in our discipline's debate over the place of grammar in the literature classroom, that is, of both Prescriptivists who believe that grammar rules are transcendently and universally correct, and those Descriptivists who believe that the rules for making meaning with words are essentially innate, and that everything else is governed by social context. Wallace tries to carve out a position somewhere between the two, in the process providing an introduction to terms and issues that is comprehensible to the proverbial educated lay reader, (and probably anathema to linguists). I recommend it to you, not because I agree with everything it says, but because it's funny, and because it provides a common vocabulary for us to discuss marking grammar errors in upper level course assignments.

Now I know that Arnie is a long time-Prescriptivist, especially on the subject of commas, and probably Kim Blank too, while I am (perhaps) a moderate Descriptivist, and have definitely found myself delivering the same speech to students that Wallace describes in the latter part of the article. I know that in the past some of our first-year instructors have flunked papers for one comma splice, or one misplaced modifier, even though our colleagues in the sciences regularly published peer-reviewed papers with these ubiquitous errors completely unremarked. What's the value of correcting a student's split infinitive, when professional writers commit them all the time and still make money? Are Susan Doyle's copy-editing students taught to correct all the grammar errors in their subject-text, or merely to correct to the appropriate usage level for a particular publication? And is there a universal standard of "correct" written English, or merely, as Wallace says, a provisional one based on audience?

This was Elizabeth's idea . . .

That is, Elizabeth G-W, who suggested it over coffee last week. We were talking, as usual, about department politics. You should blog about this, she said, possibly because she was tired of listening. Or, more optimistically, because she thought what I had to say might be of use to someone else. So -- here it is -- one more thing for you to read.

Elizabeth and I (and Jamie, and Gerry Van Gyn) were sitting in Finnerty's talking about the department's recent wrestling with the idea of a final exam in upper level courses. For some of us, if you don't know, this was a very painful and depressing and frustrating debate, so frustrating as to prompt talk of leaving the department, creating a break-away programme/department/club under a sort of separatist/sovereignty-association plan. Sounds like a lot of paperwork, I said. Wouldn't it be better if we could just come to some sort of a consensus?

(Now, I'm the last person to underestimate how much work it is to come to a consensus. I am a veteran of various social-justice organizations that, in the 80s, claimed to embrace consensus decision making. I know that the process involves long meetings, and coffee, and sometimes harsh words and other forms of heart-burning. But when it is done, everyone should feel "heard" (yes, in the "counselling" sense of the word), and some kind of way forward becomes apparent. So I think in some situations, it's worth the time.)

Our current decision-making processes are not conducive to the building of consensus. Simple majority votes in department meetings are obviously not consensus-building tools, and in fact tend to alienate and marginalize those who disagree. Committee assignments are a useful and important way to build consensus, but only when the committees are composed of colleagues who represent discordant and even violently opposed viewpoints. A committee that represents all shades of opinion on a topic, and works its way through to a recommendation, is one that builds friendship and community and morale; one that is composed of people already committed to a course of action is just a tool for wielding the power of the majority. This is a point that the committee on committees doesn't always grasp.

Many of the issues we address in department meetings are ones in which it is important to have everyone "on-board." That's because decisions we take as a group have to be implemented by members as individuals. We are all smart people, responsible researchers, conscientious teachers. How foolish do we look, as a department, when a senior, tenured colleague tells his students --"I think this form of evaluation is dumb, but I have to do it because the department says so?" And believe me, a lot of this sort of thing has been going on.

In our case, consensus might be built through a wider and less structured discussion of basic issues in our profession. For example--

What do we think, as individuals and as a department, of the usefulness of various techniques of student evaluation or the place of grammar in the curriculum?

What kind of process do we expect when we collaborate to set and mark PhD exams, or evaluate course proposals?

What if we discuss this sort of thing just for fun, when there's no motion on the floor and nothing in particular at stake?

I'm not suggested we make department decisions always by consensus (the Women's Studies department used to do this, and I understand it led to some marathon meetings). Rather, I'm suggesting we just discuss some of the presuppositions we bring to our classrooms, our department meetings, and our work for the university as a whole. And that's what this blog is for.