It seems that everywhere one looks these days within writing/literacy education, teachers are talking about language difference. Whether we are referring to English Learners with immigrant and refugee backgrounds, students of color who use multiple dialects, international students who are multilingual/L21 writers, or millennials engaging with social media, conversations about the writing classroom and curriculum are infused with a growing awareness of linguistic complexity. Now, more than ever, educators are eager for instructional strategies that celebrate and build on studentsâ linguistic resources. We do not just want to affirm the value of linguistic diversity, however; we also want to promote our studentsâ rhetorical agencyâto empower them to use language for a variety of academic, professional, civic, and personal purposes.
Yet many teachers struggle to enact this two-pronged vision of linguistic affirmation and rhetorical agency. On the one hand, we tend to be pragmatists: Most of us believe that practical, relevant writing instruction can expand studentsâ access to power and increase their opportunities at school, at work, and in their local and global (and even digital) communities. We want our students to come away from our classes with an expanded set of rhetorical knowledge and strategiesâa linguistic âutility beltâ that is fuller than it was when they entered our classrooms.
On the other hand, many educators are becoming more aware of the dangers of a purely âutilitarianâ approach to writing instruction. We knowâor are learningâthat education often (re)creates an uneven linguistic playing field, where some forms of speaking and writing are valued more than others. We want to level that playing field wherever possible. We know that writing instruction has traditionally upheld the linguistic status quo, which is disempowering to particular groups of students, including many multilingual and multidialectal writers. Under the guise of âbasic skillsâ and âstandards,â we have seenâand still seeâpractices that are ineffective and unethicalâfrom remedial curricula that aim to âfixâ student writers (Rose, 1985; Shapiro, 2011) to tests and other assessments that are punitive and/or discriminatory (Inoue, 2015; Poe & Elliot, 2019). Thus, in attempting to prepare students to write for the world that is, we may miss opportunities to co-create the world as we want it to beâa place where language difference is seen and treated as an asset, rather than a liability.
This tension between pragmatism (i.e., what students need for today) and progressivism (i.e., what the world needs for a more just tomorrow) puts many educators in an ideological bind. Again and again, I have heard both pre-service and practicing teachers ask some version of the following question: How can we teach writing in a way that reflects our commitment to linguistic diversity and social justice, while also preparing student writers for success in school and beyond?
This book is designed to answer that very question. Or, more precisely, this book provides many answers to that question, all of which are undergirded by a common theoretical framework: Critical Language Awareness (CLA). There are a number of ways to define CLA and the pedagogies that are informed by this theoretical framework, as we will discuss in Chapters 2 and 3. But for the sake of this introductory chapter, here is a working definition:
CLA Pedagogy is an approach to language and literacy education that focuses on the intersections of language, identity, power, and privilege, with the goal of promoting self-reflection, social justice, and rhetorical agency among student writers.
To help illustrate why we need CLA pedagogy, I present three common scenarios:
- Instructor A teaches a required writing course for first-years at her university. When she surveys her incoming students about their goals as writers, she encounters a wide range of answers: Some want to be able to write for their intended programs of study, which include everything from art history to zoology. Others want to be prepared to communicate for professional purposes. A few are engaged in local activism and hope to use writing to increase the visibility and impact of that work. What can this instructor realistically offer to students with so many different literacy goalsâparticularly when her own background is in English literature?
- Instructors B and C co-teach an Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate) English class at a highly tracked secondary school. After attending a workshop on inclusive pedagogy, they are committed to redesigning their course to increase representation from minority groups, including students who use English as an additional language (EAL) and students of color, as well as students from lower-income households. Their first step was to revise their reading list to include more writers from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. But where might they go from there? And how can they ensure that students from underrepresented groups feel that they truly belong in this class?
- Instructor D teaches a developmental/transitional writing class that has a mix of international and domestic students, most of whom learned English as an additional language. Many of his students seem resentful and unmotivatedâin part because they were required to take his course based on standardized test scores rather than choosing the course for themselves. After attending a workshop on translingual writing, Instructor D added a âcode-meshingâ assignment that invites students to include other languages or dialects in their academic writing. But student responses to the assignment range from mild interest to apathy to anxiety. How can this instructor set up and scaffold this assignment, so that students see it as valuable? What can he offer to those who do not see themselves as multilingual or multidialectal (i.e., who do not think they have multiple âcodesâ2 to begin with)? And how else might he make his course engaging and relevant to students from so many different backgrounds?
All of these hypothetical instructors are committed to student-centered teaching that responds to the needs, goals, and interests of a diverse student population. All of them want to promote rhetorical agency through their writing curricula and instruction. All of them seek an approach to writing pedagogy that is pragmatic but also progressive.
Is Pragmatism the Problem?
Yet much of the recent scholarship in writing/literacy studiesâparticularly around language differenceâseems to suggest that pragmatism is itself a problem. Often, teachers are given the impression that their desire to meet studentsâ immediate, practical needs is somehow in conflict with their commitment to promoting more socially and linguistically just schools and societies. One place we can observe this perceived tension is in a 2019 address given at the Conference for College Communication and Composition (CCCC)âthe largest annual gathering of postsecondary writing teachers in the United States. The speaker was Asao Inoue, an advocate of anti-racist pedagogy and policy, who was that yearâs conference chair.3 Inoueâs talk discussed how writing instructorsâWhite instructors, in particularâhave been teaching and assessing writing in ways that perpetuate âWhite language supremacyââi.e., a linguistic status quo that advantages students already familiar with dominant (traditionally White) norms and standards. This dynamic, Inoue explained, causes real harm to students from less privileged backgrounds, including many students of color. Responding to the pragmatic argument that teaching standardized4 English is âjust about preparation for the future, just about good critical thinking and communicating,â he says:
We must stop justifying White standards of writing as a necessary evil. Evil in any form is never necessary. We must stop saying that we have to teach this dominant English because itâs what students need to succeed tomorrow. They only need it because we keep teaching it!
Though Inoue does not rule out the possibility of including standardized English somewhere within an anti-racist writing curriculum, he does make clear that evaluating students on conformity with âWhite standards of writingâ perpetuates racial inequality. And since most teachers consider it best practice to assess students on what they learn in class, rather than on what they already know and can do, it seems that Inoue is calling for, at minimum, a marked decrease in emphasis on standardized English.5
Inoueâs address was intentionally provocative. And provocation is valuableâwe all need to be shaken up once in a while! But some attendees, myself included, felt that the talk set up an overly simplistic binary in which practicality is at odds with the aims of social justice. And indeed, if pragmatism is interpreted as a complete acceptance of the status quo, then it does seem logical that a purely pragmatic orientation is problematic. After all, one of the fundamental tenets of anti-racism is that if weâWhite folks, in particularâare not working to dismantle systems of racial inequality, then we are in effect maintaining and even strengthening those systems (e.g., Kendi, 2019; see also the work of Angela Davis).6
Clearly, Inoue is pushing us to ask ourselves: Do we want to be part of the problem or part of the solution to racial inequality? ...
