have any effect on society’s attitudes toward speakers of nonstandard Eng-
lish, but it will most certainly have an effect on our students’ lives. Their hori-
zons will be limited, and many at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale will
remain ghettoized. On this basis alone, I would argue that we must push stu-
dents to reach their full potential, especially with regard to language. Our so-
ciety is growing ever more competitive, not less, and Standard English,
because it is inclusive rather than limiting, is a basic requirement for social
and economic opportunities.
First Language Acquisition. Language acquisition is such an impor-
tant topic in discussions of grammar that we examine it here more than once.
The goal is to consider acquisition from different perspectives to gain a full un-
derstanding of what it entails. In this context, the previous sections examined
the assumption that grammar instruction leads to better writing, and they ex-
plored the confusion in education about the nature of grammar, what it entails,
and how it differs from usage. Understanding why the errors in student writing
are largely matters of usage rather than grammar requires us to look closely at
the process of becoming a native speaker of a language.
Language acquisition begins at birth and is made possible by the existence
of special features in the body and brain that became dedicated to language
production and comprehension through evolution. An upright posture al-
lowed our respiratory and articulation systems to shift to the vertical, which
enabled easier control of breathing, necessary for nuanced articulation, a
wider range of sounds, and effective management of intonation and rhythms
(de Boysson-Bardies, 2001). We have a genetic predisposition to develop and
use language, what Pinker (1994) described as “the language instinct.” As
Jackendoff (2002) stated, “It is part of being human that a child ... learns to
speak” (p. 70). This genetic predisposition underlies Halliday’s (1979) obser-
vation that a 1-day-old child will stop crying to attend to its mother’s voice
and that a mother “will stop doing almost anything, including sleeping, to at-
tend to the voice of her child” (p. 179).^10
But language is not innate in the strict sense of, say, the ability to see or walk.
The neurophysiological apparatus must be stimulated before it will become op-
erational, as illustrated by several tragic cases of abused and abandoned chil-
dren. One of the more famous involved a girl called “Genie,” whose mother
kept her tied up in a room for years and never spoke to her. “Genie” had no inter-
actions with other people until authorities discovered her at age 13. She had not
36 CHAPTER 2
(^10) We should note that fathers display similar behavior but that it is more observable in women be-
cause they generally are primarily responsible for feeding and caring for infants.