PROJECT PLANS | thegrammardebate

Questions and Plans for Project

Now that I have completed my directed reading, the time has come to figure out what steps I am going to take next. My first step after this directed reading, is to read more. I feel that the more I read about the issue, the more I find to read and the more interested I become. On the "Additional Sources" page, I have attached several articles that I may use as well as images of books that may prove useful for this project. I think that it may be a bit difficult to determine which articles I will be analyzing if I read so many, but at least I will know what is available in the field and will be well-versed in the conversation. Aside from reading everything about stasis and the grammar issue that I can, then I will select a number of articles that will serve as the example texts for analysis. I will examine how these articles are discussing grammar and determine at which stasis the breakdown is occurring.

Then for the project itself, I plan on exploring/answering the following questions:

                  • What is the general history of the grammar issue and how is it
                     separated into different “eras”?
                  • What is stasis theory and why would it be useful to apply it to the
                     grammar issue?
                  • How can we look at specific texts or articles to determine a breakdown
                     in stasis?
                  • How can stasis theory help our understanding of the persistence of the
                     grammar issue?

Although these questions are not exhaustive with what I want to do in my project, I think that they do provide the basic framework for where I see the project going. I also wonder if I should open up the grammar issue to the public at large rather than remaining in college composition. Since Time Magazine’s “Why Johnny Can’t Read” ignited such a fire in public outrage in our “national writing crisis,” I wonder if it could be useful to see how popular ideas affected the academy.
Whether I include the public sentiment in a major way or not, I am very excited to begin this project. I think that it not only offers a good blend of rhetorical theory and the composition field (these two often seem separated in academia), but that it offers a fresh and useful perspective on an stale and stagnant argument.