Here, here!!
Shimona Kushner
Technion-Israel Institute of Technology
Neve Shaanan, Haifa 32000
Israel
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Harbord" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, February 28, 2011 4:17 PM
Subject: Re: PhD in African English
Dear John and All,
This is a knotty problem. If we assume for the moment that your university
is in a position to specify that theses should be written in standard
academic UK or US English (ours does, for example), it is then possible to
argue that this thesis does not meet that standard, quite regardless of
whether or not it may be an adequate sample of Zimbabwean English.
Much more difficult is the next question of whether or not the student
should be required to demonstrate mastery of one of these 'prestige
dialects' as a requirement to being awarded the degree. Arguably the answer
is yes if he is going to be accepted as a member of the academic community
and publish (at least outside Zimbabwe). I consulted with an Indian
colleague on this and he said that while Indian English is a recognised
different variety of the language at the spoken level and in creative
writing, in academic writing, the standards would be very close indeed to
those of academic US/UK English and would not tolerate any significant
grammatical deviation.
Another key indicator a linguist would bring to the analysis is the
regularity of the 'non-standard' grammatical structures. Certain varieties
of English, eg. some US black dialects, or Norfolk dialect - which I speak -
have no third person 's' (eg. She go). Yet that third person 's' is
consistently absent unless the code is switched (the speaker changes to a
more formal variety due to some sociolinguistic contextual change related to
topic, audience, location or whatever). Within a PhD thesis, there should be
no occasion for the code to switch, therefore, all grammatical 'errors'
should be fully consistent throughout. If they are not, the student simply
does not master the code, or to put it in lay terms, he is not in control of
his own language.
The Russians, the Brazilians and the Indonesians are all required to meet
certain high standards of English as academics if they complete a PhD in
English - it is not clear that because someone speaks a variety of English
that is accepted as being distinct from UK/US English they should be exempt
from meeting this requirement. Unfortunately, universities do tend to fudge
the issue because it does not look good if their PhD candidates (that they
probably should not have taken in the first place) fail. This means that
someone gets employed to 'polish up' the English.
Writing support should have been on the ball with this student from the word
go. He should have been referred to a writing center or some other kind of
help after his very first written assignment and coached all the way so that
he could graduate with the skills he lacked on entry. That hasn't happened.
If I was God right now I would hurl a thunderbolt and fail him, and the
university and the student should both suffer the consequences. That,
however, isn't going to happen because it is a lot easier and cheaper to ask
someone else to rewrite the whole thing for him - he passes, the university
is happy, money is saved because about 700 euros spent on rewriting a thesis
is a lot cheaper than actually providing an effective writing support
program, and the copywriter makes a fairly good living. Low standards and
academic sloppiness and indifference about authorship is a win-win
situation; if it wasn't, writing support would be a lot more extensive in
every university in Europe.
In the present situation I would say two things:
1. Proofreading should be charged at commercial rates, whether the student
or the department pays.
2. Proofreading should deal with nothing other than " grammar, punctuation
and syntax" - there should be no effort to rewrite the text into a more
coherent argument. In other words, it should lay bare the relative
inadequacy or otherwise of the written argument.
I'm in a savage mood today, aren't I?
John
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