Hannah Gerdes
The idea that language itself is embedded with deep sociopolitical meaning is something I’ve been researching for almost two years. It began when I was a sophomore and a new writing tutor, where I began seriously looking into how Standard Written English (SWE) functions in academia. What follows is a culmination of this research, including a number of student responses to interviews I conducted regarding student’s perception of the Writing Center and SWE[1].
Standard Written English is generally thought of as an academic language comprised of the syntax, grammar, and diction deemed “acceptable” in university-level papers. However, my focus then was on race and, to a lesser extent, class. From this perspective, we can think of SWE as primarily the language of upper- and middle-class white families (Davis 5). Because Standard Written English is often the only acceptable form of academic language, those who have been brought up using it, that is generally white people, are given access to the legitimacy and power it affords while people who don’t, predominantly people of color, are not. Put briefly, the rigid rules of academic writing are, at best, excluding qualified writer’s through a process of thinly veiled tone-policing and, at worst, propagating systematic racism. Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan’s book Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change articulates the implications of SWE more completely, writing;
What it does mean is that excluding languages that people of color historically have used as tools of resistance and automatically including languages spoken by privileged white people in the realm of what counts as ‘Standard English’ necessarily creates a system of inequality in which many people of color are expected to be bidialectal or bilingual as a condition for being taken seriously as communicators whereas privileged white people- regardless of their actual speech- always always speak a language of power. (43)
Greenfield and Rowan reaffirm the notion that “language is central to minority success in education, and educational equity is a matter of social justice” (Avineri, et. al 2). Rhetoric doesn’t just speak about political issues but is in itself political, especially in a society and an academic environment that often silences black and brown voices. Recognizing the political implications of equitizing languages radically shifts the role of the Writing Center to become not only an inclusive space but an activist one. While an inclusive space is accepting to students from all walks of life, an activist space consciously examines its own role in propagating injustice and actively seeks ways to promote social justice.
Recent literature has been committed to understanding the way language importantly interacts with systems of power, recognizing that language disparities have the potential to prevent some students from feeling welcome in spaces like their campus’ Writing Center, for fear their voices will not be accepted. So, what are the implications of the Writing Center as a political entity and how exactly can the Writing Center become an activist space?
First, it is important to recognize that SWE will always exist in academia, and that in many ways its existence is a positive one. Having a standardized dialect unifies academia. It prevents us from “talking past each other” so to speak. There is immense value in learning how to write well with SWE. Graduate schools, job applications, and business writing all require the ability to use SWE effectively. For better or for worse, SWE opens certain doors for young academics and creates the illusion of trustworthiness and authority. In an IRB approved study on my campus about student perceptions of SWE, one of my interviewees argues, in recognition of the systemic inequities in language, “I don’t think that Standard English is going to change anyway.”[i] It is clear that many underrepresented groups could benefit from a stronger education in SWE. It would be naive to simply disregard the need to effectively teach SWE, especially to underrepresented groups who want it.
However, this does not mean that Writing Centers ought to disregard the messy social implications of SWE. Surely, part of a Writing Center’s responsibility to underrepresented groups is to provide them the tools necessary to write effectively in SWE and thereby make an easier transition into college and the academic world as a whole. Nonetheless, it seems just as important for the Writing Center to empower these students to write with their authentic voice because as Avineri et al. write, “Numerous studies highlight that language use is socially, politically, and economically consequential and that language and speech are fraught with power” (2).
Therefore, in order to better balance the implications of SWE, some scholars argue that Writing Centers must work to deconstruct the dominant pedagogy of language and instead emphasize the value of linguistic diversity. Vershawn Ashanti Young in his article, Should Writers Use They Own English?[2], offers a tangible example of this. He argues,
Instead of prescribing how folks should write or speak, I say we teach language descriptively. This mean we should, for instance, teach how language functions within and from various cultural perspectives. And we should teach what it take to understand, listen, and write in multiple dialects simultaneously. We should teach how to let dialects comingle. (112)
Young labels this “comingling” as “code-meshing.” Code-meshing at the Writing Center is more than simply encouraging a student to write in their native voice. It requires specific education on the strengths of dialects. For example, “In the 1970’s linguist William Labov noted that black students were ostracized because they spoke and wrote black dialect. Yet he noted that black speakers were more attuned to argumentation” (Young 116). Code-meshing leads to more effective rhetoric for all parties, and it opens the door for a more linguistically diverse academic community.
However, implementing Young’s advice in Writing Centers is difficult. Writing Centers are often constrained by administrative goals, faculty criteria, and students’ preconceived notions about what academic language looks like. Working within these restrictions creates certain risks to the work of dismantling SWE. One student I interviewed implicitly acknowledges this framework. When responding to the question of how the Writing Center can better accommodate non-standard dialects, she says,
I think, I’m not quite sure how much the Writing Center could do, because it kind of seems like a larger issue. Kind of like even if you use ain’t … and ain’t has been very widely used for decades. Very few professors are going to let that slide in a paper. So maybe it’s somewhat of, at this point would be … the task would be more of, hey, let’s figure out how we can incorporate the dialect in a way that academia at large would accept.[ii]
Within these kinds of restrictions, with the Writing Center itself often being a marginalized space on campus, our options are limited. If Writing Centers make too radical of a change, they run the risk of losing their place within the academic conversation. Students would not trust us to give advice if that advice goes against the professor’s criteria. Student interviewees continually referenced professor requirements as a limitation to the effective teaching of non-standardized dialects at the Writing Center. As one subject claims, “the Writing Center’s there to support academic writing that’s done for classes generally and so the type of English that they promote and try to keep students using in writing is the Standard written English that the professors will expect.”[iii] Moreover, an administration would place less value (and possibly funding) into a Writing Center that explicitly resists faculty expectations. In contrast, doing too little to affirm linguistic diversity lets down both underrepresented groups on campus and the mission of the Writing Center itself. We run the risk of creating a space that is not accessible to the groups who may need it the most. I asked students if they feel the Writing Center affirms non-standardized dialects. One student responded, “No. From things that peers have told me, in terms of feeling comfortable using the Writing Desk, in particular first-generation college students or students who English is their second language, I feel that that is, from what they’ve shared, is not a part of their Writing Desk experience.”[iv] There is clearly more work to be done.
Predominant Writing Center philosophy emphasizes the role of the Writing Center as primarily an educational one. However, in practice, often the wider campus community views the Writing Center as playing an editorial role. (This was affirmed by my students interviewees, including one who stated, “from what I understand of the Writing Desk, it’s more about ideas… and little grammatical things, but when I go into the Writing Desk I don’t feel it’s to change the language of my paper.”[v]) These conflicting views of the Writing Center often lead to confusion on the part of students and tutors, which in turn can dilute the educatory power of a optimally functioning center. Reaffirming the Writing Center as an educational space would allow tutors to clearly and purposely define the space as one open to educating all students about both SWE and non-standardized dialects. To do this, centers should focus on shifts in advertisement, work to clarify and communicate each center’s mission[3], and offer more educationally focused programming such as writing workshops or course-embedded tutoring.
Tutors have been trained to emphasize writer’s agency for things like argumentation and structure; we can likewise extend this philosophy to explicitly deal with language. Instead of being limited to the dilemma of what to do with the dialect in front of you, tutors would be better trained to demystify the messy entanglements of language, power, and race. Moreover, even within a system that limits the Writing Center’s ability to radically change the language of academia, the center itself becomes a space openly committed to affirming non-standard dialects, even if some of the papers that leave it are standardized.
Works Cited
Avineri, Netta, et al. “Introduction: Reimagining Language and Social Justice.” Language and Social Justice in Practice. Netta Avineri, et al., editors. Routledge, 2019. 1-16.
Davis, Bethany. “Enduring Patterns: Standard Language and Privileged Identities in the Writing Classroom” Dissertation. University of Michigan. 2011. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/84509/bdavila_1.pdf;sequence=1
Greenfield, Laura, and Karen Rowan. Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Utah State University Press, 2011.
Young, Vershawn. “Should Writers Use They Own English?” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 12/13, Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, Apr. 2010, pp. 110 17,http://search.proquest.com/docview/876959443/.
[1] These interviews were conducted under an IRB approved study. Participants were interviewed under the condition of anonymity.
[2] Notably, Young’s article is written in African American Vernacular (AAVE), further supporting the ability for academia to accommodate non-standardized dialects.
[3] As an example of mission, the Writing Center at St. Olaf has recently added a Social Justice Statement to its mission. It reads as follows: The tutors at the St. Olaf Writing Desk and Speaking Space believe that all voices and dialects are important and valuable in the academic conversation, and we believe tutoring can promote social justice. We are committed to creating a space where students and tutors of all backgrounds一in terms of race, ethnicity, color, creed, nationality, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, age, religion, marital status, veteran status, socioeconomic status, ability, education, and linguistic background一can feel confident expressing themselves through writing and speaking. We expect students and tutors to model respect and cultural humility.
[i] Subject 4. In-person interview with author. February 15, 2020.
[ii] Subject 6. In-person interview with author. February 17, 2020.
[iii] Subject 7. In-person interview with author. February 22, 2020.
[iv] Subject 1. In-person interview with author. February 9, 2020.
[v] Subject 3. In person interview with author. February 14, 2020.
About the Author
I am senior, majoring in philosophy at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN. I have been working as a writing tutor for three years and am especially interested in how the Writing Center interacts with issues of equity and justice. Next year, I’m planning to attend law school.