Date:    Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:22:40 +0000
<br>From:    Lynne Murphy  M_Lynne_Murphy[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]BAYLOR.EDU 
<br>Subject: banning words
<br>
<br>dennis baron, who taught me how to teach writing, argues that one should
<br>not ban words in freshman comp essays.  in spite of my blacklist,  i
<br>don't entirely disagree with him--that is, if we're talking about
<br>banning words or phrases because they're "grammatically incorrect" or
<br>"ugly".  i don't care if they use 'like', i encourage them to use the
<br>first person, etc.  what i'm trying to do with my blacklist is to make
<br>the students aware of high-schooly phrases that keep them from saying
<br>what they actually mean.  so, e.g., my (right now very short) list says
<br>that unmodified 'society' should not be the subject of a sentence.
<br>without this rule, i get essays with lots of sentences like "society
<br>says that women should be thin."  two problems:  which society?  (there
<br>are certainly social systems in which the claim is not true.) and how
<br>can a society "say" something? (does society have a mouth?  a book of
<br>law?)  so, this rule is intended to force them to get specific and
<br>sensical in their claims--e.g., "in american society today, women are
<br>rewarded for being thin and punished for being fat."  similarly "the
<br>dictionary" is banned because there is no single abstract dictionary.
<br>(i also make them cite specific editions of bibles instead of _the_
<br>bible, but that's just my little catholic/unitarian rebellion at a
<br>baptist university.)  grammar is only 10% of the final grade of my
<br>papers, but content is 60% (the rest is organization & use of sources),
<br>and meaningless phrases haven't much content.  i try to use the
<br>blacklist as a way of starting them thinking about words--making it
<br>clear that these are phrases that are student cliches, but that any
<br>phrase can be used meaninglessly.  these phrases give them examples and
<br>ways of thinking about their words.  i hope.
<br>
<br>still avoiding essays,
<br>lynne
<br>
<br>--
<br>M. Lynne Murphy
<br>Assistant Professor in Linguistics
<br>Department of English
<br>Baylor University
<br>PO Box 97404
<br>Waco, TX 76798
<br>