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Finessing the Grammar Checker Sarah Smith Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English Summer 8-12-2016 Strategic Error as Style: Finessing the Grammar Checker Sarah Smith Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Recommended Citation Smith, Sarah, "Strategic Error as Style: Finessing the Grammar Checker." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2016. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/167 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STRATEGIC ERROR AS STYLE: FINESSING THE GRAMMAR CHECKER by SARAH MCARTHUR SMITH Under the Direction of George Pullman, PhD ABSTRACT Composition studies lacks a comprehensive theory of error, one which successfully defines error in writing and offers a pedagogical response to ostensible errors that neither ignores nor pathologizes them. Electronic text-critiquing technologies offer some promise of helping writers notice and correct errors, but they are under-researched in composition and rarely well-integrated into pedagogical praxis. This research on the grammar and style checker in Microsoft Word considers the program as an electronic checklist for making decisions about what counts as an error in a given rhetorical situation. This study also offers a theory of error grounded in the idea of attention, or cognitive load, some of which an electronic checker can relieve in its areas of its greatest effectiveness, which this research quantifies. The proposed theory of error forms the basis for a pedagogy of register, understood as typified style, and establishes that error itself can be a strategic style move. INDEX WORDS: Error, Style, Grammar checker, Microsoft Word, Composition, Editing, Writing STRATEGIC ERROR AS STYLE: FINESSING THE GRAMMAR CHECKER by SARAH MCARTHUR SMITH A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2016 Copyright by Sarah McArthur Smith 2016 STRATEGIC ERROR AS STYLE: FINESSING THE GRAMMAR CHECKER by SARAH MCARTHUR SMITH Committee Chair: George Pullman Committee: Elizabeth Burmester Michael Harker Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2016 iv DEDICATION To my mother and my daughter, scholars both v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My field of rhetoric and composition nurtures scholars of notable generosity as well as rigor and scope, and one is fortunate to be mentored by fellow writing teachers when writing a dissertation. Given the interdisciplinary nature of my research, I have also been happy to find linguists and researchers in logophile industries such as dictionary building and grammar checking software to be kind in sharing their knowledge. I have thus been the beneficiary of more munificence than I can adequately note here, including a number of scholars who have kindly met with me, phone- or video-chatted with me, and exchanged correspondence pointing me towards sources and explaining aspects of their own research, including junior as well as august senior researchers. Still, a few people warrant particular mention. I am indebted to Caroline Haist and Canadore College for sharing her bank of data for testing the checker, as well as to David Major for sharing his. Craig Hancock, Deborah Rossen- Knill, Laura Aull, and the Language and Linguistics group at the annual Conference on College Composition and Communication were more valuable to me than they know, by helping me to find my tribe of likeminded researchers in the field. The rhetoric and composition faculty of Georgia State University has welcomed and challenged me from the start. My thanks to Elizabeth Lopez for giving me a rigorous introduction to composition research as a social science endeavor and to Jennifer Bowie for her early encouragement towards the inclusion of quantitative elements in our scholarship. Lynée Gaillet guided me through the studies that laid the foundations for this work, and Malinda Snow showed me that there are still lively-minded scholars interested in words and sentences. vi Especial thanks to Elizabeth Burmester and Michael Harker for their mentorship on this dissertation, from our earliest conversations about the topic to their thought-provoking contributions and encouragement as the research took shape and in its final stages. My profoundest professional gratitude to George Pullman. He has shown a gift for offering the right words at the right time to prompt substantive thinking, discovery, and rethinking – for knowing when to check in and when to let me muddle through. Mostly, in a way that somehow causes neither annoyance nor despair, he has known how to direct me back and back and back to the page, to the keyboard – to writing. Sir, you are a model for me in my own work with writers, setting a standard that I can only hope to approach someday. My thanks to those who those who have supported me personally – my mother, Ella, and Dwight: you have helped me make room in my life and yours so that I could smith my way through this massive endeavor. (Now we know why people get that look on their faces when they talk about finishing a dissertation.) To Cap: you have stayed at the ready to share from your encyclopedic memory. To Uncle Lewis: you have been steadfast in my corner throughout. To Russ and Sheri: you have listened to me ramble about these topics for what must have seemed an eternity. And to my Tiger team: you have been with me through this and everything for lo these many years with your kindness, patience, and brilliance. Each of you, my dearest family and friends, are invaluable to me, as I trust that you know. Many thanks. My beloved father, who made every important thing possible in my life, was here for the beginning of this journey but is not here for the end. Papa, you are ever remembered, missed, and appreciated. vii In a better world, it is true, readers might be more generous with their energies, pausing to divine the meaning of a writer or mentally to edit the errors out of his text without expecting to be rewarded for their efforts, but it would be foolhardy to bank on that kind of persistence except perhaps in English teachers or good friends. (That errors carry messages which writers can't afford to send is demonstrated by the amount of energy and money individuals, business firms, publishing houses, etc., spend on error removal, whether by correcting fluids, erasers, scrapped paper, or proofreaders.) – Mina Shaughnessy, Errors and Expectations, 1977 viii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................................................................................................ v LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................. xii INTRODUCTION. Error, attention, and the grammar checker ...................................................... 1 A. Research question ......................................................................................................... 4 B. Summary of Chapters ................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1. Theories, applications, and definitions of error ......................................................... 9 A. Error and style .............................................................................................................. 10 B. Public angst about error ............................................................................................. 12 C. Problems of definition and application .................................................................. 14 D. Loaded language in the checker ............................................................................... 17 E. Real-world use as the standard of correctness ....................................................... 20 F. Theories of error in rhetoric and composition ....................................................... 22 G. Defining error as an exchange of attention and meaning ................................... 25 CHAPTER 2. The Microsoft grammar checker ................................................................................. 34 A. The name of the Microsoft grammar and style checker ...................................... 38 B. Composition research on grammar checkers ......................................................... 39 C. The technological roots of grammar checkers ....................................................... 46 D. Testing the checker’s effectiveness.......................................................................... 58 E. Findings on the checker’s effectiveness ................................................................. 66 ix F. Conclusions, pedagogical implications, and further research on effectiveness 75 CHAPTER 3. Grammar and style, misnomers for correctness ....................................................... 84 A. Grammar: a needless war .......................................................................................... 84 B. Interconnected definitions of grammar .................................................................. 87 C. Grammar as the vocabulary of error and
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