ABSTRACT
Two questions touch on the notion of “a grammar” in an English and literacy classroom in a fundamental way. One is: What is it that someone – whether teacher or student learner – in an English and literacy classroom needs to know? The other is: What are the social characteristics of those who are in the classroom, and above all, who are the students/learners? The first question is concerned with what the “content” of that grammar might be. The second, more profound in its implications, asks whether traditional notions of grammar can continue to be used when the social environment is such that conventions around representation no longer “hold”; when student learners assume to themselves notions of agency which undercut the power relations and forms of authority on which notions of grammar have traditionally been based. As far as the first question is concerned, teachers, I assume, have to have a clear sense of what student learners will need as a resource, as practical means for shaping their social, cultural lives, when they leave this classroom, move on into the next classroom maybe or act in their life outside school; and certainly, when they move into their life beyond the school. I take it that the students will need to have a thoroughly firm “hold” on those resources, coupled with the means for navigating a complex social and semiotic world. I conflate these perspectives into one, namely “What does a person need in their adult social life in order to take a full part in that life, with a clear awareness of the effects of their actions?” Neither English nor “Literacy” alone can supply that, though jointly they should provide the semiotic resources for taking a full part in the world of meanings of their social groups, finding their way around the meanings of their society and, most importantly, making their meanings in their world. As far as the second question goes, what is at issue is the very notion of “grammar” itself: traditionally seen as an authoritative compendium of entities and practices, a compelling source of rules to be followed, supported by social power – as in evaluations by others with variously serious consequences. Now, in an era of differently distributed power, of agency readily assumed by younger generations – even if that agency is not necessarily acknowledged by others – in the furtherance of their interests, in the era of “user-generated content” and
access to the means of potentially global dissemination of that content, the questions are: “What actually is ‘a grammar’?” and “On whose authority could it be founded?” and “What are the principles for meaning-making?” In other words, I am concerned here with that which is to be present(ed) and engaged with, “the content and shape” of the resources for making meaning and above all with the shape of the social environment in which – differently in different places and yet similar in essential respects – the English and literacy classroom is located. I assume that for that to be seriously explored, a prerequisite is a plausible conception of communication/meaning-making/learning and, with that, a conception of students/meaning-makers/learners as agentive in their interests.
