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From: ken@ihuxq.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.nlang
Subject: Literacy
Message-ID: <605@ihuxq.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Feb-84 14:49:21 EST
Article-I.D.: ihuxq.605
Posted: Tue Feb  7 14:49:21 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 9-Feb-84 22:23:38 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Naperville, IL
Lines: 55

--
Oh, about a month ago, I plunged into the grammar debate with the
battle cry, "If you can't write it right, you can't think it right."
Our friend jj took this personally for some reason, and the two of
us went a few rounds, which was fun.  Soon thereafter, some twit
posted something to the effect of "Ha-ha-ha, that's bad grammar--the
proper statement is 'if you can't write it *correctly*...'" with
some irrelevant ramblings about adjectives and adverbs.

I didn't respond, since if said twit could not comprehend the
not at all subtle difference in meaning between "do it right" and
"do it correctly", there was little hope of any rational interchange.
But it got me thinking about the relationships among spelling,
grammar, and literacy.  Lo and behold, yesterday I found a marvelous
snippet on that very subject.  So try this out for size:

---------------------------BEGIN QUOTE------------------------------

Indubitably, the literate person is familiar with the conventions
of "correct" English and can use them or even or even fool around
with them as he chooses.  Knowing the difference between "who" and
"whom" is like knowing how to finger scales; the one doesn't make
you literate and the other doesn't make you a musician.  The
writer who *doesn't* know the difference between "who" and "whom",
like the musician who doesn't know how to finger scales, had
better have one hell of a lot of talent.  There are such people.
They are amazing, but are not produced by schooling.  Such people,
in fact, ought to stay away from schools and protect their talents.
The ordinary student has little if any talent, and if he is to
become literate he will need to know all the mechanical trivia we
can teach him.  That, however, will not make him literate.

The literate person is in control of those techniques special to
writing rather than speech.  He can formulate sentences that make
sense.  He can choose the right word from an array of similar
words.  He can devise structures that show how things and statements
about things are related to one another.  He can generate strings
of sentences that develop logically related thoughts, and arrange
them in such a way as to make that logic clear to others.  He can
make analogies and define classes.  He can, in writing, discover
thought and make knowledge.  Because he can do these things, he
can, in reading, determine whether or not someone else can do these
things.  He is familiar with the technology of thinking.  To accept
anything less as our definition of literacy is to admit that hardly
any of us will ever be able to think about anything.  That may be
true, but to admit it is to assure it.

------END QUOTE--(Richard Mitchell, "Less Than Words Can Say")------
-- 
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JE MAINTIENDRAI   ***** *****
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