This essay focuses on the grammar–rhetoric–composition program at the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlaltelolco, a sixteenth–century institution of higher education in Mexico, to argue for a more amply conceived set of colonialist beginnings for American composition. As an emergent site for North American composition–rhetoric, Tlaltelolco launched phenomena familiar to contemporary scholarship, for example composition-rhetoric as attractor for public debates about race and class, as sponsor of debased curricula for people of color, and as re–enforcer of linkages among color, class, aptitude, and local discourse practices.

Argues that Joseph Conrad’s political novels belie the sweeping and vague rhetoric sometimes used to describe them. States that Conrad, disillusioned with materialism in his political novels, imagines that “industrialism and commercialism” may foster wars between democracies. Contends Conrad’s interest is at least divided between a grammar of motives and a grammar of political cause and effect.

Examines the roles of collaboration in the sciences and humanities by focusing on the complicated relationship between syntax and semantics. Uses scholarship on the social study of science to discuss strategies for collaboration in the humanities. Discusses why those studying language and literature are in a particularly good position to understand the nature of intellectual collaboration and its benefits.

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Edward A. Kearns, Michael Walker, Kathleen McCoy, Mark Balhorn, Four Comments on "The Politics of Grammar Handbooks: Generic He and Singular They", College English, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Apr., 1994), pp. 471-475

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Teaching with great literature gives me the feeling of being anointed yet unworthy; still feel compelled to bring great works into my classroom. Any teacher of freshman composition needs to be grounded, but an adjunct teacher of freshman composition needs to be especially grounded. So, ground myself on the likes of Martin Luther King, Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Einstein, Lao Tzu, Gertrude Stein, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Stafford, Plato, and James Joyce. feel somewhat brazen in doing so, for am not a superpowered specialized scholar, but love these works and believe in their power of conversion. believe they are not meant to be our sacred and closeted gems, but our air and food and water and shelter. It has been my experience that there has been a shift in composition courses, away from reading literature until basic skills have been learned. have found that literature can be used to teach grammar and pass on the goods at the same time. The writers mentioned above are on my guest list, and for the most part am in the business of toying with my guests. Halfway through the semester, hand out a section of Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech where I've deliberately tampered with grammar, spelling, and punctuation, and expect my students to right my wrongs. count on their ears, which believe more dependable than their ability to memorize a list of ever-changing rules. I've reduced the Tomorrow .. . passage in Macbeth to a discussion of subject and predicate. But it's with my most precious saint of words, Mr. Joyce, that I've truly tested my students. At the end of the semester, my students must add punctuation and in other ways make articulate the last six hundred words of Molly Bloom's poignant rambling soliloquy-the so-called stream of consciousness.' This exercise has on occasion gotten me into the deeper waters of the English Department. At first glance it appears to test the student's ability to tolerate tedium, but when students look at it a second time, they realize that they are being called upon to translate the stuff of dreams into the stuff of tangible communication-which is indeed hard work. When readers take it upon themselves to look at this block of unpunctuated prose, they will see that the option is to either sink or swim. One either remains barred from the private sea of consciousness, and, dumbstruck and resentful,

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BECAUSE THE FRESHMAN COMPOSITION CLASS is usually the students' first introduction to college, what better place to challenge sexist reading, writing, and thinking? What better place to help students understand the relationship between language and thought? Instead of grammar-book rules that instruct students to avoid the masculine pronoun when gender is unclear, classroom activities can encourage students actively to explore their sexist values and draw their own conclusions. These activities should attack sexism at its roots by examining the cultural conditioning which both encourages faulty thinking and limits options for women and men. At the same time, through an examination of sexism, teachers can get at some of the students' persistent writing difficulties, such as generating essay topics, supporting topic sentences with sufficient proof, and selecting appropriate words and tone. Even though students have read and written for the better part of their lives, they seem unaware of the power of language to condition minds. They do not recognize that the assumption that males hold all prestigious positions lies behind the business correspondence salutation of Dear Sir. Nor can they identify the cultural bias toward single women reinforced by the titles Mr., Mrs., and Miss. If confronted directly with this sexism, many students acquiesce by using Ms. and by revising all he pronouns to read he/she. Nonetheless, they view such practices as arbitrary, senseless, and bothersome. A study of the causes and effects of sexist language can be integrated with and grow naturally from existing course structures and objectives. The three activities which follow are designed to explore the implications of sexism while building reading and writing skills. The first comprises word lists that develop awareness of sexist language used in literature and in students' own writings, while the second explores fairy tales that, like other literature, transmit sex role stereotypes and biases. The third considers research topics related to the two preceding activities. These three activities can be arranged in several sequences to develop writing objectives. For example, a teacher who views writing as a discovery process might use the following sequence: (1) students look at the data in the Hemingway passage from differing viewpoints, manipulate the data, and form tentative hypotheses; (2) students, in a

IN The Bald Soprano Ionesco satirizes the grammar samples he studied while learning English, and many of us still remember some absurdly useless fragment, like How old is your aunt?, from a freshman foreign language class. But what about our own composition textbooks and tests? Humor, and opportunities to smile and share that pleasure with students, are welcome. But when I consider one of the findings of the second round of reading tests (1974-5) by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which demonstrated a decline in students' ability to detect irony, I wonder whether some of our grammar samples may not be suggesting unsuitable messages, to say the least, to students who are disposed, or decide, to read them literally. Such a discomfiting possibility occurred to me recently when a group of freshman composition students balked at doing this sentence combining exercise:

Now if there is anyone in this piece of writing who desires something dearly, it is surely the student writer, who is reaching for poetry and, for all his clumsiness, nearly succeeding. In the years since I first read this paper, the term has become for me and my friends synonymous with a certain kind of student error: the strained metaphor, odd juxtaposition, or honest misconception which inadvertently reveals a fresh perspective on the matter at hand. I will try to demonstrate that the true tasty fruit possesses its own inner logic, that it is a sure sign of a capacity for creative and structured thought, and that this potential is worth cultivating. Mina Shaughnessy begins her ground-breaking book, Errors and Expectations (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) by observing that the freshmen in her basic writing class made mistakes in grammar and syntax because no one [had seen] the intelligence of their mistakes or thought to harness that intelligence in the service of learning (p. 5). What I propose is that Shaughnessy's perception applies equally to the errors in tone and diction made by students when writing about literature. In general, tasty fruits are borne in greatest profusion by the papers of students who are bright but not adept at standard English or the standard methods of literary criticism. It was an open-enrollment student who produced the following observation on religion in America:

I AM A MIDDLE-AGED SPECIMEN of the human race, one who has been raised in the United States with English as my native tongue, and yet, even given the benefit of a university education and years of practical experience using English, I am prone to err in my use of English. Why? But why ask such a question: for is it human to err? Yes, and if the errors are distributed more or less at random, there would be no need for further inquiry: on the other hand, if a particular error is repeated habitually, then it may be possible to adduce a causal mechanism. This I shall attempt to do for the error of the infinitive. The infinitive is a peculiar kind of error, for those who frequently defend their practice, and in defense point with glee to splits committed by wellknown writers. In many cases the cited author may be dead, and it may be impossible to query the author as to whether he regarded that as an error or not. In one instance, Sheridan Baker, as recounted in The Complete Stylist and Handbook (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1976), responded to exactly that kind of citation by a student and queried Walter Lippmann as to whether a given was justified in his mind (p. 213). The response was that the was a slip which had escaped detection. But is a really an error? Yes, if we accept the proscriptive rule that one should an infinitive. Now, however, I can ask a different question, which, I hope, will get at the heart of the matter. Why has the proscriptive rule, as taught to each student, induced in the mind of every student a transformation rule such that infinitives regularly are avoided? That is, one studies grammar in school so as to acquire patterns of speech and habits of thought that will result in the generation of acceptable English. It is my contention that the rule not to split is insufficient, by itself, to induce in the mind of every student a generative grammar such that only unsplit infinitives are produced. Some, of course, may learn to avoid infinitives, but others do not. And for those whose internal generative grammar does include a mechanism that generates, automatically, unsplit infinitives, the proscription always will require what seems to them an unnecessary after-the-fact patch. The splitters, therefore, defend their behavior because, to them, it seems natural to split. To or to split, that is the problem: whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the generation of infinitives outrageously split, or to invent new rules of grammar, and by promulgating end them. But what new rule of grammar could be likely, in union with the existing rules of grammar, to induce in the mind of the

Black town, beige woods, green frozen creek, All now, this moment, stilled, Our steeple clock Transfixed, the mineral twigs Intact, this park's arterial loss Suspended, do rebuke me, Gone amiss In minute thefts to break My bond, who set my face, my sticks, My springs against a thief, Time on my crux To nail: my thirty-three Deliquesce, so sly, I might now wink My hand, bone, lymph away: Not all my ink Keeps to my word or want, Arrests the sun, resurrects the tree, Or translates out of my water So little wine: All miracles not done.

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WHEN W. NELSON FRANCIS said that, he didn't have it in mind to fun nobody. For sure there was no way he could have knowed, twenty years ahead of time, that his words would look like something meant for a bitter joke today. The revolution he was talking about (using structuralist linguistics to teach English) hasn't happened vet, to begin with. And to go on with, another one-generative transformational linguistics-has come along in the meantime and turned out about as useful to a teacher as a rubber crutch. The structuralists and the transformationalists haven't either one of them come up with the sweeping consequences Francis was so sure about. Structural linguistics gets used mostly in foreign language classes; and transformational grammar, in spite of two three papers saying that it might could be a little bit of use after all, has swept right into and right back out of English classes, leaving precious little behind itmaybe a good word or two said for sentence-combining exercises.1 There was the Roberts English Series, poor sorry thing, that no doubt meant well; all it did in the long run was teach a whole generation of English teachers to despise transformational grammar forevermore. Chomsky himself, they'll tell you, said T-grammar had no place in anybody's English class, and they're with him on that; by now you won't hear much else said on the subject amongst teachers. Seeing as how all this is true, it's purely radical of me to say that I disagree with all that; it's radicaller yet to say I think I can prove I'm right. Let me get the radicalities over with first off, then, by saving that six years work has got me convinced that transformational grammar for sure does have a place in

WHEN T. S. ELIOT penned the words, Let us go then, you and I, he could hardly anticipate that students and teachers of English grammar would find so much interest in his use of the first person pronouns. As a linguist I found nothing amiss in his expression, but one day I overheard a colleague explaining that the grammatically correct form of the sentence should have been, Let us go then, you and me, so that the pronouns (you and me) would be in the objective case, together being the appositive of the us, the subject of the infinitive phrase, us go, which is the object of the verb let. Wait a grammatical minute, I interrupted. sentence is absolutely correct; you are simply being misled by a surface structure which has the same form as the objective case but, which, in fact, is not. The words that followed cannot be printed here, but I will attempt to reconstruct my argument to convince other traditionally minded colleagues of the error of their ways and to restore a degree of grammatical dignity to J. Alfred Prufrock.

In that twenty-five-year series of books and articles spotlighting poor Johnny's writing and reading problems, educators and laymen have offered dozens of reasons for Johnny's plight. Some blame too much TV watching; some blame progressive education and the drift away from basics, phonics, and grammar usually; some criticize school systems that have switched to new forms of grammar, like transformational, which may have confused the kids. The reason Leroy writes poorly is that he can't hear the sound of his voice on paper. He's the high school kid who says to his English teacher: can tell you about that story, but I can't write it. Hle's not kidding. He has the voice for it, he can even get excited about it, but he doesn't have the training to put that voice on paper. So what's the solution? Well, let's look at Leroy's problem a bit more closely-and maybe the reason our schools produce so few really good writers. If you write well, you will have no difficulty reading the sentences belowaloud. Want to try it?

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THE WRITING WORKSHOP of the CUNY community college where I worked is housed in a windowless, reconverted science lab walled with concrete blocks. It has been half dark since the Administration removed lights during the budget crunch. Every day we saw confused students, though there have been fewer since the death of Open Admissions. In the back of the room, horizontally filed, were the worksheets. Since originally appearing in this form, they have been collected into a hot-selling grammar, especially designed for community college students. book represents the principles and practices upon which the workshop was originally founded. Paradoxically, it also lays out the strangulating theory of knowledge upon which remedial writing instruction is often based, a theory which denies students the things they really need to know. hip grammars are seemingly unlike the traditional ones. old grammar books abound with subliminal ideological content presented as mere exercise. Sixth Edition of the Prentice-Hall standard, Handbook for Writers, asks students to locate the clause to be diagrammed above the base line in the sentences: This is a mixed economy toward which both communism and capitalism are moving, and The continent of Africa is now divided into nations, but tribal divisions are more faithfully observed. hip grammars have little of this upfront politicking. Instead, they pretend to survey the nitty gritty details of daily urban life. sentences students get to play with deal a lot with partying, interpersonal relationships, and the neighborhood. Wider topics and wider transferences from the particulars of daily life to the general characteristics of the system we live in are discouraged. And the discouragement masquerades as aid and help to the struggling remedial students. Chapter One of Grass Roots by Sandberg and Fawcett promises help in Getting Started. authors then write that step one in getting started is limiting:

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THE WORDS PALINDROMIE palindromic refer to a well-known formal pattern that is shared bv certain words, clauses, sentences, paragraphs, verses: e.g., Odo tenet mulum, madidam mappam tenet Anna, Anna tenet mappam madidam, mulum tenet Odo.' It is this formal pattern, which always occurs at least on the level of the letters in these language units, that is important here. The palindrome is essentially a reversal pattern that pivots around a center. However, since the quantity of letters in a palindrome mayv be odd or even in number, the center of a palindrome might be one of two kinds. If there is an odd number of letters, the center will be a non-repeated letter, the c in A man, a plan, a canal-Panama!2 And if there is an even number of letters, the center will be a point in space, it were, between two identical letters, between the two a's in Subi dura a rudibus.3 Except for their reversal pattern, the twofold nature of their centers, the equality reversed identity of their two halves, palindromes are not fixed formally are highly variable in length complexitnr.4 Indeed, a palindrome may vary from these ideal conditions still be a palindrome. For instance, the comma the word and are notipart of the reversal pattern in as Lewd did I live, evil I did dwel.5 The possibility of such variations, which are generally held to a minimum, might be a further characteristic of the palindrome, inasmuch the demands of syntax meaning sometimes make them unavoidable.

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THE NON-LINGUIST who has conscientiously tried to keep abreast of developments in linguistic theory may well be ready to give up. Linguistics, especially transformational grammar, has matured recently at an alarming rate, so that transformational grammarians may seem to have developed increasingly narrow interests and, moreover, to have become so embroiled in the muddy business of securing their own positions, digging themselves in on a narrow front, that whether they are involved in civil war or are continuing to extend the frontiers of linguistic knowledge is often very unclear-even to themselves. I fancy that scarcely a single transformationalist will bother to raise his head as Professor Chafe wings his way overhead firing enthusiastically but erratically in all directions. The outsider is much more likely to notice the high-flier, and he needs some help in assessing the significance of Chafe's sally-perhaps it would not be out of place to give him at the same time some reports from the transformational trenches, and to assure him that all is still well there. I shall assume that he is reasonably familiar with Chomsky's Syntactic Structures1 and the main developments in transformational grammar up to about 1965, when Chomsky published his Aspects of the Theory of Syntax.2 Not that I believe the college English teacher has any (narrow professional) reason to bother much about contemporary linguistics. On the contrary, recent developments in transformational grammar should make it perfectly clear that there is no hope whatever of making direct use of that approach to linguistics in English teaching-at any rate not along the lines of existing attempts. And Chafe's work seems even less relevant.

In the sixties in all English-speaking countries there was a marked swing away from formal methods of teaching writing and a corresponding interest in methods that are broadly termed creative. More and more teachers were persuaded that can't write writing, and that you only write well when you write what keenly interests you. The central responsibility of teachers became the arousing of interest in each writing task, thereby engaging the mental-emotional energy and creative resources of students. I have supported this emphasis, especially against attempts to push the secondary schools into comprehensive study of one or other of the new systems of grammar. But I have not seen any need to go as far as those who now exclude from their classes all reference

(for an outstanding article in PMLA) for the year 1968 was laid upon Stanley B. Greenfield's Grammar and meaning in poetry (PMLA 82.377-387 [1967]) in New York City on Fourth Day (four French hens, three turtledoves, etc.), but I guess he got money. In the following pages I will first demonstrate that this essay is a pointless, not very good article, then turn to asking why it was that the Most Valuable Essay of the year award was so made. This is not a pretty thing to feel compelled to do, but unless we face such questions squarely, we will continue to operate some great distance below the level of integrity displayed by the athletic world. To begin: Greenfield's essay seems to deal with but two matters:

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