Dawkins Reading Response

Summary

In his article “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool,” John Dawkins asks teachers to abandon teaching the grammar rules given in handbooks and to adopt a simpler method of teaching grammar. He says that grammar should not be taught so that students might avoid error, but so that students might better their writing. To do this, he says that teachers must teach their students that grammar is a rhetorical tool used to indicate relationships between clauses. Students can raise the punctuation (on the hierarchical scale given by Dawkins) in order to emphasize separation, or lower the punctuation in order to indicate a connection. Dawkins hopes that viewing grammar in such a way will allow students to think more closely about what they want to say with their writing.

 

Synthesis

The attention Dawkins gives to the importance of the rhetorical situation in the punctuation of a sentence reminds me of Kantz. In her article “Helping Students Use Textual Sources Persuasively,” she brings up the importance of always knowing the rhetorical situation of an article, as a reader. Dawkins takes this a step further and tries to make one aware of the rhetorical situation as a writer. 

 

Pre-reading Exercise

For me, grammar is the mechanics of writing; the sort of mortar with which we cement the bricks of our words into a stable structure. It includes capitalization, punctuation, syntax, inflected verb forms, participles, subject verb agreement, case agreement, number agreement, pronoun agreement… the list goes on.

 

Questions For Discussion and Journaling

 

1) Dawkins challenges the notion of grammar as taught by handbooks. He argues that grammar can be used rhetorically to communicate effectively to an audience, and that it should not be used as a rigid set of rules for the sake of being grammatically correct.

 

3) Raising refers to bumping up the expected punctuation to something above it on the grammatical hierarchy. Raising is a tool used to indicate separation. Lowering refers to, well, lowering the expected punctuation down to something below it on the grammatical hierarchy; lowering is a tool used to indicate connection.

 

6) I mostly ignore grammar as I write, unless I come across a particularly long sentence in which I am concerned my meaning might not be clear; then I take some time to consider how best to convey my meaning to the reader. I think Dawkins’ model of grammar is useful to someone like me who does not think about grammar overmuch. His hierarchy is a simple way of looking at grammar that will help me to determine the relationships I want to convey between my clauses.

 

Meta Moment

I think my teacher wanted me to read this article because abandoning the notion that grammar is a rigid, fixed set of rules is hard to do. The construct of grammar is one that has been very well ingrained in most students by the time they reach college, so reading an essay that gives good reasons why that notion should be dispelled is more effective than just having one college instructor say it. By reading this article, I realize that grammar is just another rhetorical tool, one I can employ to make effective choices in my writing. It gives me another weapon in my arsenal with which to get my message across to the reader.

 

Personal Thoughts

The Dawkins reading was really enlightening for me. I knew grammar could be used as a rhetorical tool (passive voice, fragments as sentences, etc.) but I never knew to what extent it could be used, what relationships you could convey through mere punctuation. Not to mention, his system of raising and lowering on the hierarchical scale of punctuation is easy to use and helpful to think about when writing.