Calling pedants, teachers, wordsmiths and class warriors.

snowleopard - so you would agree that John Prescott is uglier than Jude Law? And of course you are quite right to prefer ugliness to beauty if you so wish.

I have only skimmed the thread, sorry. (Am just taking a break from marking my students' essays, so can't stay long... but you know I'm a sucker for threads with the word 'pedant' in the title!)

I feel that (1) is, as others have said, primarily a pronunciation issue, so it wouldn't bother me unduly.

The inarticulate way in which the sentence is expressed might bother me a bit, and in particular the 'somefing to do with history', just because I'd hope that final-year students would be able to come up with something a bit more specific than that.

At first glance (2) would bother me more, because it is fundamentally ungrammatical. In writing, I'd say that it is downright 'wrong'. However, I completely take the point that it is an acceptable dialect form. It wouldn't make me cringe if I heard it, say, on Eastenders or in the street. In speech, choosing to use this form or not would be a question of register. When I first read this, I did feel that it is probably not an appropriate register for a seminar at university. If the student was using it in a presentation, for example, I'd probably feel that s/he should try to adopt a more 'formal' register. However, if it's part of a relaxed discussion then I wouldn't have a problem with the student speaking her/his 'normal' language.

I'd hope that, if s/he does on to be a teacher, s/he would try to use standard English (not RP, but an English which conforms to the grammatical rules normally expected in writing) in the classroom, as a way of setting an example to her/his students. If these students are likely to get Firsts, they are clearly able to write coherently and to distinguish between registers. (At least, I should bloody well hope so!)

Why the question about absolute truths then, if it wasn't relevant to this discussion?

I never said that, or anything remotely like that.

You know what, I would prefer Prezza to Jude - honestly. See, it's all a matter of opinion. IMO Prezza is extraordinarily ugly and a tosser, but I hate pretty-boy looks even more, and Jude is the epitome of vacuous pretty-boy - I like rough men.

Hmm this thread could wander off-track...

Well, obviously non-posh accents are objectively absolutely uglier than posh ones. Everyone knows that.

I didn't realise a 2;1 was average. In my day that was good. Have standards dropped that much ?

The idea that the "ugliness" of an Essex or London accent is an "absolute truth" is laughable

molesworth - so you don't believe in absolute truths?

Anna, you're certainly not correct - politically or otherwise

I don't have any problem saying that one way of speaking English is better than another. I am not politically correct (thank goodness).

snowleopard - personally no, I don't think it's a matter of opinion. But perhaps you think that, say, John Prescott, is very attractive and Jude Law ugly?

Do they write correctly? If so, I wouldn't be bothered about how they spoke.

Aaaarrrghhh definitely - I don't belong on this thread

But finding dialects ugly is surely a matter of opinion? And you defenitely can't start saying some are better than others - well you can, but not in a university teacher role - unless you want to be kicked out for discrimination...

Some dialects can be attractive... neither of the examples given by Shylock were anything other than horrendously ugly.

But dialects can be beautiful! Lots of pop music is written in dialect, and is still beautiful.

I think it's tragic that students in English Literature who want to be teachers don't aspire to speak beautiful English. What is wrong with our society that we don't value our amazing language more?

Thanks Bink, sorry, I missed that point!

As long as they understand what standard English is and that they need to use it when they're writing - and for formal occasions like job interviews - then I think dialect-based varioations in grammar are OK for classroom-speak. I'm in Scotland and here they say "Does that need washed?" etc. which is totally not standard English grammar and sounded mad to me when I first heard it - but it is a valid dialect and likewise with "I done that" and soemthign a lot of Londoners do, using "I've" - "I've went to the doctor and I've said to her..." for normal past tense. Likewise Black English Vernacular (BEV) dialect has a lot of non-standard grammar rules - but they are rules, and always work the same way, so it's not lazy, it's a consistent system.

The "fing" thing is just accent - just like Irish "t'ing" or whatever. Though it does annnoy me when people adopt it deliberately to try to sound cool. I knew a very posh woman once whi did that and it used to drive me mad.

Point is that these students want to be teachers - so that in due course they will be models for their pupils' speech. So they should get practised at using appropriate register.

Not that Shylock's students = children.

My students would be furious if I used any analogy that equated them with children

i don't think it would be difficult to do, in fact i think it would help to establish a teacher/student relationship. they are supposed to be learning after all.

Good point NQC - sort of returns me to my suggestion, which I know could be tricky to pull off*, that Shylock tell her students (from the off) what is expected of them - so that there isn't that tension as b/w tutor & peers.

*I'd do it by referring to how acknowledged it is that teachers are models for children's speech.