Harmonised lexical priming.

Question

Is it our main responsibility as language teachers to help produce language users whose primings harmonise with those already in positions of influence or power (see below)?

"The most important controlling mechanism in the great majority of cultures is education. Examinations are, amongst other things, attempts to ensure that only those whose primings harmonise with those already in positions of influence or power move into jobs that will in turn exercise influence or power over others. So in the UK, examination boards are required specifically to look out for grammar and spelling. Mastery of a subject is, again amongst other things, mastery of the collocations, colligations and semantic associations of the vocabulary of the discipline – mastery, in fact, of the domain-specific and genre-specific primings."

"By primed , I mean that as the word is learnt through encounters with it in speech and writing, it is loaded with the cumulative effects of those encounters such that it is part of our knowledge of the word that it co-occurs with other words."

http://www.monabaker.com/tsresources/LexicalPrimingandthePropertiesofText.htm

CalifJim · Accepted Answer

Yikes! What happens when you cross Quine with Derrida?

I couldn't finish the whole thing in one reading, but I bookmarked it and hope to return and finish later. Intriguing.

Is it our main responsibility as language teachers to help produce language users whose primings harmonise with those already in positions of influence or power?

As for this question, I would have to say that it would never have occurred to me to formulate anything remotely like this. I would never have thought of it as "harmonizing primings", of course, as this is a specialized term from this particular approach. And I would have softened the phrase "those already in positions of influence or power". It's much too harsh. It reads like a political manifesto. And considering the current situation in the U.S., it might be a big mistake for teachers here to encourage students to emulate the language of those in power -- in political power, anyway.

But I suppose there's a small element of truth in it somewhere, or at least in a softened version of it, to the extent that language teachers want to give students the practical skills to succeed in the language community at large. If 'harmonizing' is to be done, I feel the student is better off harmonized to an ordinary educated citizen -- in other words, to a sort of statistical norm, whatever that may be.

CJ

Milky · Answer

<As for this question, I would have to say that it would never have occurred to me to formulate anything remotely like this. I would never have thought of it as "harmonizing primings", of course, as this is a specialized term from this particular approach. >

Like it, though. Similar "jargon" put/get-in-line with, have a parity with, adhere to, follow...

<But I suppose there's a small element of truth in it somewhere, or at least in a softened version of it, to the extent that language teachers want to give students the practical skills to succeed in the language community at large. >

Would "the language community at large" be "those already in positions of power"? Are you talking about teaching a standard form?

Harmonised lexical priming.

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