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A Poet's Guide to Digital Proofreading Tools: Preface

Submitted by swamp-witch on Sat, 2023-03-18 18:30

Part 1: Disclaimer and Preface

My perspective on grammar and mechanics (and writing in general) has changed significantly since last I was here. I’ve learned a lot over the past several years.

From studying linguistics, I have learned about what linguists call descriptive and prescriptive approaches to language use. The prescriptive perspective is what most of us are likely familiar with from learning grammar in school. However, most folks outside of the field of linguistics are likely unfamiliar with the descriptive perspective.

Linguistic prescriptivism states:

There is a right, proper way to speak and write English. This proper way might be called Academic English, the Queen’s English, or other different names depending on where we are and who is teaching us. However, they all suggest the same thing: there is one correct, proper, superior, and intelligent way to communicate in English. All other deviations are wrong, unintelligent, sloppy, and unrefined. They are bastardizations of the once-pure language and represent the uneducated masses bringing culture and society down in some way. Educating people to adopt the proper standard is the only valuable and respectable way to teach English.

Proper English is representative of white, upper-class, and formally educated people. Improper English – such as slang and dialect – is representative of people of color, lower-class and uneducated people. One is clearly superior to the other. Additionally, non-native speakers who are learning English speak and write in “broken” English, which we can and should fix. Until we do help them fix it, they will appear improper and uneducated, burdensome, and out of place in the English-speaking western world.

People who adopt this approach to language might be who we call grammar police, grammar Nazis, pedants. At one point in my life, I wore it as a badge of honor to consider myself among these people. I was so smart that I could be the grammar police. I was so smart that I could be effortlessly pedantic. It was fun to be that way. That somehow made me better than others, worthy of respect and gratitude from those that I could teach to be more like me.

When I was first dedicating myself to learning about poetry, writing, critique, grammar, revision, and related subjects for the Neopoet community (and personal interest), I fell heavily into a prescriptivist framework. I saw a need for folks to learn about writing and improve their writing using our platform and the information I found about learning was prescriptivist. I imagine that I often saw normal, valid linguistic variation the same way I saw simple typos: errors to be fixed.

Poetry was an art to be refined, something that should be elegant and beautiful. The correct and best way to achieve that refinement was to strive for the excellence of “Proper English”. There were right and wrong ways to be a writer. There were right and wrong answers to the questions:

How should a poem be drafted, revised, and edited?
How should a poet on Neopoet treat their own poetry after posting it to the community?
How should writers prioritize writing concerns and what issues are most egregious?

"The prescriptive agenda almost always has an aspect of social gatekeeping. In this role, arbitrary features of language are used to block social advancement, to put people in their place or to keep them there."

– "Prescriptive and Descriptive Linguistics" by Dr. Mark Liberman, Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Arts and Sciences

In short, the prescriptivist approach prescribes one right way that is above all else. It is the job of educators and the educated to prescribe fixes to the errors all around them, until everyone is assimilated into the right way.

I have learned better.

Linguistic descriptivism states:

Language production (in writing, speaking, and signing or all other forms of language) is always evolving and always has evolved. We no longer speak Old English, for example, and it would appear as foreign to us as any other language we do not speak. Trying to stop language from evolving or considering it a bad thing is not a good way to spend our time.

Linguistic prescriptivism is exclusionary and damaging in the way that it positions some forms of language production superior to others. It is a slippery slope into agism, sexism, racism, ableism, xenophobia, classism, and other bigoted prejudices. It ties certain forms of language production to identities that it deems superior and places value judgements on the way people communicate.

Approaching language variation in poetry as something to be documented in a way that takes a snapshot of a people, a time, a culture, etc. is nothing new. For example, I have a 1970 edition of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. This textbook/anthology includes a preface that explains that while this anthology did “normalize ... spelling and capitalization according to modern American usage” (p. xxxix) for some of the included poems, unless this would “significantly obscure meter or meaning” or in instances of “contrivedly archaic or dialectic” writing. These poems were left untouched because, according to the editors, “normalizing and modernizing” wouldn’t be to the benefit of the reader; these texts would still be just as obscure and unclear as before (p. xxxix).

Thus, even almost half a century ago, some scholars understood the preservation and description of language as it was/is in dialect was a perfectly normal part of poetry. The preface and notes regarding the older poetry go on to further describe the language use of these historic poems, contextualizing them for readers. That is the goal of descriptivism.

Of course, we might argue that where they changed other poems to be “normalized and modernized” probably wasn’t the right choice, we understand that sometimes this is going to occur. Their intention was clarity, making the reading accessible to contemporary readers in the 1970s. That is a commendable intention. Nonetheless, today we might look back with 20/20 hindsight and wish they might have included the original and the paraphrase side by side to preserve the original as the poet wrote it, just like we often see in translated works.

With all that in mind, was linguistic descriptivism something these literary scholars were engaging in intentionally? Not necessarily, but the seeds were being sown then across the field of English studies – for what scholars call the linguistic turn (toward descriptivism) – in part thanks to the basic writing movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which recognized culture as an important constituent in teaching writing (Baddour, 2018, p. 62). Baddour credits professor Juanita Williamson as being instrumental at this time for recognizing the value of a home dialect in language learning and writing instruction. In addition, "Students’ Right to Their Own Language," a dialect-affirming statement by the Conference on College Composition and Communication – though dredging up plenty of controversy – came in 1974:

"We affirm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language -- the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their own identity and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another. Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We affirm strongly that teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language."

In short, the descriptive approach asks us to describe anything people actually experience in day-to-day language production and treat it with respect. When we describe language production in this framework, we will see the culturally-influenced patterns that emerge and that should be honored as markers of the folk who use them.

It’s not a simple dilemma; it’s not all black and white:

Of course, there are always gray areas and instances where concepts of prescriptivism can still be valuable teaching tools. Nonetheless, it is important to use those tools in a way that is not exclusionary, bigoted, and placing value judgements on a person’s usage of language. Learn more here: “Is there a place for prescriptivism?” by Eric Christensen of Brigham Young University (2022). I’ll discuss this balancing act more in the next part of this guide.

With this information in mind, in the following part, I will make suggestions on using proofreading tools which – for lack of a better option – tend to be built with prescriptivist rules as their foundation. I will suggest ways to navigate and utilize them effectively and with nuance as poets.

Further resources/ references: