Learning from Language: Symmetry, Asymmetry, and Literary Humanism

1. Symmetry, Asymmetry, and Literary Humanism

1 This book is primarily for teachers and prospective teachers of English, although I believe it will interest scholars in the fields of language, rhetoric, and discourse generally. It is the result of many years of teaching courses in language and linguistics to students of literature and rhetoric, and one of its primary goals is to bring these fields into friendlier conversation with each other. I do not intend to survey every critical and philosophical issue in the extensive interface of these disciplines. This book is for the advanced student of literature, rhetoric, or composition studies, who may be taking that first course in linguistics or philosophy of language; the professor who may be rethinking the structure and content of that course in English language for prospective teachers; or the experienced teacher looking for a chance to reexamine those murky relations within the language, literature, and rhetoric triangle of English Studies. Although some of my terminology is new, the basic questions are very old: Do words (does language) reflect reality? Can the study and practice of language itself—considered apart from the subjects and disciplines that language encodes and communicates—make you a smarter, wiser, and better person? Teachers of language and literature have always tended to 1 Symmetry, Asymmetry, and Literary Humanism 2 Symmetry, aSymmetry, and literary HumaniSm think so, and this affirmative answer is what I will term symmetry. Many of these teachers now realize, however, that there are serious objections to symmetry, as well as a history of erroneous thinking and practice on the subject; and so they’d rather not be questioned too closely on particulars. In fact, many have lost confidence that the question can be answered affirmatively at all. A host of scientific and philosophical developments in the last half century, as well as a host of educational failures—in a civilization that wants earnestly to promise the extended benefits of literacy to all its citizens—have seriously eroded that confidence. My goal is to offer a prospect of restoration. Even though specific attributions of symmetry have often been wrong, sometimes resulting in ineffective practice, our basic intuitions of symmetry are valid, demonstrable, and usable. Language does teach us something, if we listen in the right places, and learn from it in the right ways. For individuals in the field of English Studies, there are practical and personal as well as philosophical urgencies to the symmetry question, and the following conditions can be regarded as symptomatic: • Most of us would describe ourselves as “lovers of words” or “lovers of language,” but few of us have any distinct or communicable sense of what these phrases entail. • Philology, conceived originally as the historical study of language, and oriented toward the establishment and understanding of early English texts, once held a secure place in the study of letters. But linguistics, understood broadly as the scientific study of language in general, has no such security. A national survey in 1969 discovered unanimity among American leaders in English Studies that the preparation of English teachers should include at least one course in “the English language”; however, that same study discovered no agreement about the content of such courses, and no agreement at all about the “points of application” of linguistic principles to the needs of English teachers (Pearson and Reese). No greater state of agreement has developed since that time. • Although courses in “English Linguistics,” “Linguistics for Teachers,” and “History of the English Language” do exist in nearly every program of English education, the primary points of application upon which most would be found to agree are actually negative. That is to say: differences among spoken varieties of English, either geographical or social, are not indicative of accomplishment or intelligence, Symmetry, aSymmetry, and literary HumaniSm 3 and efforts to modify them are not productive; the formal teaching of grammar does not result in better writing and speaking; the differences between prestigious and nonprestigious usage do not have anything to do with clarity of thought or true elegance of expression; and an educational emphasis on such matters has, in any case, little positive effect, even on usage itself (for an interesting critical perspective on “History of the English Language,” see Crowley 11–42). • Quite fortunately, a half-century’s labors in sociolinguistics and language history, combined with other sources of critical consciousness, have led to forms of language instruction that celebrate (rather than worry about) the diversity of...