Week 4: Codemeshing, Creativity, and Learning-by-Doing

For me, what stood out most about our readings for this week were the diverse ways in which English is negotiated and adapted by novice speakers (to use Canagarajah's preferred term). All four of the articles we read depict a growing English-speaking population that is flexible and creative in their use of English, that is aware of and relies on context to enable specific interactions in English, and that is not flouting Standard English, but instead "work[ing] from within the existing rules to transform the game" (Canagarajah, "World Englishes" 599).

While I would previously have assumed that novice English speakers would be at a disadvantage when it came to deriving an understanding of the conventions of a given genre by looking at samples, both Canagarajah and You offer examples of the innovative strategies these speakers use to negotiate unfamiliar speaking/writing situations. You's work with the online message boards of Chinese writers of English shows that novice speakers will not only learn conventions of English through these conversations, but will create new conventions unique to the codemeshing of Chinese, English, and Internet language. This is one of several instances in which novice speakers are adapting English to suit the rhetorical situation and to meet very particular needs, primarily social and professional. (I'm also recalling last week's reading by Ibrahim that showed us a similar socially-driven use of hip-hop English by novice speakers).

At the same time, what struck me about Canagarajah's article on academic writing is the assertion that no one innately knows how to do this specific kind of writing. Rather, he reminds us that "it is not formal study of rules, but actually practicing the relevant discourse of the community one wishes to join that leads to one's insider professional status" ("Peripheral Participation" 197). Everyone has to learn this research article genre by practicing it. The difference is that advanced English speakers have access to resources that enable that learning (e.g. a community of peers interested in publishing, technologies that enable certain kinds of research, a variety of texts both popular and obscure). In spite of this, novice speakers are still committed to learning-by-doing. So the question becomes: How can we facilitate this learning-by-doing in our pedagogy, in a way that allows student work to use language creatively, to incorporate their voices and language varieties in a way that doesn't compromise the academic context of the assignment? I like Canagarajah's suggestion of creating codemeshed academic texts, but I wonder how this works in practice: How does it get presented to students? What this would look like in an assignment? How would this be adapted for students who already speak/write in a more standard form?

Week 3: Hip-Hop Language and the Classroom

The statement that resonated most with me from the readings this week follows Ibrahim's discussion of language use as a method of identification and belonging for the African students in his study. He states, on page 365, that "one invests where one sees oneself mirrored." I was immediately troubled by the statement. The question for me became: If I am not a mirror of my students, in appearance, cultural or socioeconomic background, language variety, or otherwise (of course, there are dozens of categorizations that separate me from any one of my students), how will they become invested in me and, by extension, the course?

Ibrahim uses this concept of mirroring as part of a larger call to action, asking teachers to "First, identify the different sites in which our students invest their identities and desires, and, second, develop materials that engage our students’ raced, classed gendered, sexualized, and abled identities” (366). This allowed me to then read his "where one sees oneself mirrored" as a request that students see themselves represented in my pedagogy, my assignments, and the day-to-day teaching of the class. This is somewhat of a relief, in that it takes some of the burden off of me to be a hip-hop scholar or a fluent speaker of AAE or any other variety of English I might encounter in the classroom. At the same time, there has to be room in my pedagogy to allow for students to teach me what they know, what their practices are, what they see in the world that feels relevant to them, and what they could be opened up to based on their backgrounds and experiences.

This is where I see the "critical awareness" discussed in Alim to be so important. Asking students to do ethnographies and other projects in which they have to pay attention to their language, something to which they may not be accustomed regardless of how "standard" their English is, seems like it could be a revelatory experience for both them and me. It might also help navigate some of the difficult territory that I envisioned getting into when we spoke about the Matsuda and Matsuda article and the notion of "teaching the non-dominant forms." If I’m not “teaching” it, but I’m learning it based on their research (as Ibrahim says, according to a Freireian model), I don’t see how it could be oppressive to students who reject non-standard English or to those who speak a non-standard variety. 

With this in mind, it seems to me that part of cultivating that awareness has to include asking students about the influences on their language that exist beyond the family, their peers, and the classroom. It has to move into a discussion of popular culture and the movies, music, websites, etc. that affect their ideas about what should and shouldn’t be said and what constitutes cool/weird/uncool, modern/outdated language.  If we deny popular culture in language learning, we’re denying the tremendous effect it has on our students’ lives, identities, and relationships. As Pennycook (quoting Grossberg) states in Chapter 5: “Popular culture is implicated in the ‘multilayered, fragmented collection of meanings, values, and ideas that we both inherit and construct and which largely define our taken-for-granted interpretations of the world’” (81). If students are already doing this “tak[ing]-for-granted,” asking them to be more observant and critical about the language they're hearing and speaking seems appropriate. 

Week 2

A common thread that ran throughout the texts we read was the push-and-pull between the homogenization of language and culture that the spread of English can bring and the potential for varieties of English to make the language more useful and to become forces for resistance. I could not help but think about the imposition of language as it happens through globalization and colonization and to compare that to my own teacherly ideology. I think a lot of well-intentioned, but perhaps under-informed teachers (and by this, I really mean myself) recognize the conflict in imposing expectations about student language use. Does it serve students better to teach them what they may be expected to know or to try to appreciate and incorporate what they already do know? To clarify, I often feel like I am white-washing (what would a better term be? Standard English-washing?) students’ unique expression when I “correct” their grammar, move them away from the vernacular, or assume what they meant to write/say is different from what they actually wrote/said. Of course, this feels oppressive and I want to work against it. I found the Matsuda article useful in this regard, in that it advocated teaching dominant and non-dominant varieties, while also promoting an understanding of the importance of context, audience, situation, and credibility.

At the same time, I keep returning to Pennycook’s discussion of hip hop English as (he quotes Ibrahim) a “counterhegemonic undertaking” (11). How, then, could our classrooms become sites for such an undertaking? I’m considering this question in my current position as a composition instructor, but I haven’t felt as confused about it when I’ve taught creative writing in the past. In the space of a writing workshop, hybrid, non-standard, vernacular, informal, “incorrect” language is as common as language that adheres to Standard English. That’s not said to valorize creative writing, as I think the standards of “legibility” and “comprehensibility” that Matsuda describes are met no better in an introductory creative writing course than they are in an English composition course. Rather, I think it says a lot about my skewed theories and underlying generalizations. Why are my standards for academic/professional language still one way, while those for creative pursuits are another? Along those lines, am I fully able to “differentiate between ‘errors’ and creative innovations” (Bolton 458)? These are questions I have to consider as I consider teaching both in my specialization and outside of it.

Trying this out

Hi everyone,
This is my first time blogging for a class (and blogging in general). Just hoping this posts correctly!
-Erin