This dissertation is accessible only to the Illinois State University community.
- Off-Campus ISU Users: To download this item, click the "Off-Campus Download" button below. You will be prompted to log in with your ISU ULID and password.
- Non-ISU Users: Contact your library to request this item through interlibrary loan.
Graduation Term
2014
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of English: English Studies
Committee Chair
K. Aaron Smith
Abstract
The anti-grammar movement within composition studies took hold after a failed attempt during the mid-twentieth century to integrate linguistically-based grammar instruction into the curriculum. While this movement has been celebrated as a theoretical turning point within the field, the abandonment of prescriptivist sentence-level pedagogies also led to the dismissal of sentence-level instruction and training in general with profound consequences for the field as a whole. In this dissertation, I will map the development of the anti-grammar movement beginning with the emergence of post-secondary composition instruction through more recent calls for linguistically-informed grammar instruction in order to show how this anti-grammar movement has also worked to stigmatize any kind of grammar instruction and, as a result, has led to the adoption of ineffective methods and to a widespread lack of structural knowledge that has delayed the application of sociolinguistically-informed pedagogies and diminished support for linguistically-informed resolutions and position statements by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication. I will then show how more recent efforts to reintegrate sentence-level instruction through the publication of a new generation of grammar resources and the promotion of linguistically-based pedagogies have also been significantly constrained by the anti-grammar tradition and by prescriptivist legacy, often resulting in pedagogical practices that are as discriminatory as the prescriptivist tradition and maintain existing systems of domination. Finally, I will illustrate how the anti-grammar movement has promoted a (raced and classed) binary thinking about language to the detriment of all students and argue for the field-wide inclusion of a variationist approach to grammar
Access Type
Dissertation-ISU Access Only
Recommended Citation
Lovelass, Stefanie Mescal, "Perpetuating Social and Racial Linguistic Inequalities: Sentence-Level Pedagogies in the Anti-grammar Age" (2014). Theses and Dissertations. 93.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/93
DOI
http://doi.org/10.30707/ETD2014.Lovelass.S