So, ages ago I developed some exercises in sentence
construction that ask students to consider grammar as plastic form,
i.e., something that can be manipulated and shaped in the service of meaning.
An old version of the exercise is here. It asks students to craft sentences
whose grammatical posture mimics the posture of the bodies in some images I
supply.
I’ve typically introduced the exercise by making a
distinction between form and content, putting grammar on the side of form, and
then bringing in a version Wittgenstein’s picture theory of language: i.e., W. argues that the world (both the one outside our heads and the one inside it) isn't made up of discrete things but of relationships, actual and potential, between things. Some of those relationships are physical, and their form is described by mathematics and the sciences based on it; others are ideational, and their forms is described by logic. It's via language, then, and specifically grammar that, according to W., mind and world come into coherent contact. Language
connects the world of ideas inside the mind with the world of things outside it by translating into grammatical form the formal relationships that govern the two
worlds: logical form and, e.g., geometrical form (the form of space).
It’s kind of a wacky exercise, which some students have found really fun and others fairly baffling. It's been on my mind lately because in a couple of weeks I'm due to teach a progymnasmatum on ekphrasis. I feel like there’s more that can be done with this old exercise, though I’m not sure exactly what. So if you’d like to collaborate on revising and/or delivering, please let’s start chatting in the comments! I'm not wed to any of the particulars of this idea as represented in the assignment; it's the core of it that I'm interested in.
It’s kind of a wacky exercise, which some students have found really fun and others fairly baffling. It's been on my mind lately because in a couple of weeks I'm due to teach a progymnasmatum on ekphrasis. I feel like there’s more that can be done with this old exercise, though I’m not sure exactly what. So if you’d like to collaborate on revising and/or delivering, please let’s start chatting in the comments! I'm not wed to any of the particulars of this idea as represented in the assignment; it's the core of it that I'm interested in.
The only way I can think to begin collaborating, John, is to try the exercise myself.
ReplyDeleteSo, I chose one image from each of the three sets, as directed, and I am including those here. I explain my reasoning for each, as the assignment directs, and I also note the difficulties I experienced. I found, as I worked on these sentences, that my language, as well as my grammar, kept wanting to embody the sentence. Does the assignment welcome that, or am I cheating somehow?
Set 1: The spray from the hydrant—so cold, so necessary—has caught these children up, in their varying postures of delight and surprise—one boy couldn’t help but take his clothes off—and we know that just outside the frame—the browned-out façade of the buildings behind—the adults are sitting, wearily, overheated, unable themselves to throw themselves into the wet.
Note: I was trying for something breathless, but I also wanted to capture the very temporariness and immediacy of the kids in contrast to something else.
Set 2: With a remote in her hand that might be deployed and a cigarette in her hand that might be smoked, she is reclined.
Note: I wanted to make this sentence as passive as possible, to position the figure as inert, delaying all the actual action until sometime after the sentence itself. The phrase “was reclined” is more of a British than American use of English, but I don’t think it’s incorrect.
Set 3:This tangle, this arm, this knee, this elbow, this sharp forehead, this fisted hand seem tensed, recoiled, waiting for the blow to come.
Note: I wanted something fragmented, but I also felt that if I went on too long, the sentence would read in some way like my first sentence.
These are wonderful, Juli. I especially like the remote/cigarette one. So tricky to convey inaction grammatically. I reminds me a bit of a sentence that a student once produced from the photo of the plumed dancer (I'm paraphrasing): "The bright, white, delightful tail (and the dancer, too) was full of feathers, feathers, feathers." I love how the parentheses both remove the dancer from action and, like her costume, envelop her on both sides.
DeleteTo your question: I recall asking students to try to embody the image purely grammatically, i.e., without any words that directly refer. I also recall that no one could figure out what I meant. Probably, it takes a good long time to be that comfortable thinking purely formally :)
John,
ReplyDeleteI liked this assignment. I tried two sentences of my own to see what my mind would do. I can report that my mind enjoyed the process, felt sort of a Faulknerian pull into language. And, the practice came at a good time.I appreciate this whole thing. Even then, however, my mind went to Charlie in my 8 a.m. class, who cannot write a paragraph and who, when asked to think about the origami bird as an argument in a graphic novel, could not muster an idea about what a bird might mean, let alone write about it. I have several students this quarter who are lost to language or, maybe, just plain lost. So, anyway, I appreciate the excerices. It is, as Virginia Woolf called it, a space for "loosening the ligatures." I try to reconcile that with what I can do to help Charlie. Best, Carol
Thanks, Carol! I shall ever think of this as the ligature-loosening exercise. Your point about Charlie is well taken. I wonder: What exercises could we devise specifically to address lostness to language? Can Charlie be brought fully into the logos, or is he cursed to eternal preterition?
DeleteWay back, years ago, at Pitt, in my first year teaching at that school, Dave Bartholomae was one of two profs who had written the shared syllabus outline and who taught the required pedagogy seminar. One of the exercises he had us do in class and then asked us to do with our students involved taking a poem (we were reading Lynn Emanuel's collection The Dig) and then asking them to replicate a poem's syntax and structure with another topic. The poems included a series of full sentences, fully punctuated, and students had to figure out what was happening with each sentence in order to replicate its structure on their own.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if a Charlie would be able to do something like this before being asked to take on John's assignment? It seems to be one step down in a Bloom's Taxonomy kind of way, replicating and adapting before creating.