The Language of Writing

“No one is a native speaker of writing.”

This truth researcher Paul Kei Matsuda quotes in his article, “Teaching Composition in the Multilingual–Second Language Writing in Composition Studies” is something that resonates with me as its something I have come to realize through my own experience as both a graduate student in a Writing Studies program and a graduate assistant in my university’s Writing Center. English as most speakers of the language conceptualize it by no means captures the language’s true complexity and adaptability. More, promoting English as some kind of “ideal” language ignores not only the rich complexity of other languages and their integration abilities the but also the ability of English itself to continuously evolve to meet the communication needs of its interlocutors. Suresh Canagarajah in their article, “The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued” explores how allowing second language learners to “mesh” English (SWE, specifically) with their first language benefits language acquisition and proficiency overall. But, again, more than that, allowing variants of English to have a place in formal or academic writing provides perspective, develops voice, and enriches communication as it develops proficiency in these other variants via exposure to them.

The ideas that 1) English is pluralized and 2) that grammar is ideological are not totally new but are certainly concepts becoming more apparent as our society becomes more global. Odds are, each and every one of us knows someone who is a second language learner. (Maybe it’s you!) More, we probably know someone who is bilingual/ multilingual–by that meaning this person has fairly balanced proficiency in all the languages they speak. Personally, I know my mother who can speak 3 languages (English, Spanish, & French) and my boyfriend who grew up speaking Russian at home and English at school. Interestingly, he did not develop much ability to write or read in Russian until taking classes in the language in high school. Anyway, the point of mentioning this is that most of us are familiar with persons for whom English is not their first language and so most of us are probably familiar with the variants of English that can and do arise. And, if you have somehow managed to evade interacting with a multilingual person in your daily life up until this point, I’m fairly certain you’ve been online where the pluralization of English is on show for all to see. To be honest, I consider the kind of English I use when I’m online to be its own dialect, separate from how I speak on a person-to-person basis. There are enough conventions I and probably many other follow/abide by when interacting online that they constitute their own variant.

How online interactions between interlocutors specifically affect English is something Canagarajah touches upon in their work and something I found to be interesting. Basically, online spaces become places where second language learners can negotiate and really actualize their own learning. Again, I work in the Writing Center on my university’s campus and I see students attempting to negotiate the standards of English all the time. It’s very clearly displayed in their work–places in the writing where the language takes an unexpected detour or communicates an idea via its organization on the page that is new, unexpected. So, this negotiation Canagarajah highlights is something that occurs whether or not a specific place is provided for it. Online, these negotiations are valuable learning moments for second language learners but, in university Writing Centers, I’m sorry to say these explorations often lead to disappointment. SWE is the variant that rules academia with an iron fist–that will slam down hard on unsuspecting students.

Now, while Canagarajah is pretty adamant that the kind of framework that would silence these kinds of negotiations is one that needs to be dismantled from the inside out, Matsuda seems more moderate in his approach to the situation. This may be because Matsuda’s work is more focused on how to best teach second language learners to use SWE and Canagarajah is definitely more interested in providing other variants of English the same legitimacy as SWE has in academic writing. It’s important to emphasize that distinction of purpose. Still, I believe both researchers provide meaningful insight into the specific challenges second language learners face when entering the sphere of higher education. Matsuda seems sensitive to the standard in place and so structures his ideas around how to best assist second language learners find fluency in the dominant variant. He’s not trying to promote radical change. And, for me, I found much of what he discussed to be relatable. As a Writing Studies scholar, I want to find and explore ways of overcoming the monolingual paradigm. But, as a gradate assistant in my university’s Writing Center, I also have a responsibility to assist in SWE proficiency. I perpetuate this system I am also seeking to overcome. This sort of tension is more downplayed in Matsuda’s work than in Canagarajah’s.

For me, stifling someone’s writing in any sort of way is taboo. More, it silences a valuable voice. I appreciate how Canagarajah also seems to touch upon that. I don’t believe they ever explicitly mention voice but I get this sense of it being promoted in Canagarajah’s work. Like, when they say negotiations of English are indicative of “rhetorical independence” and “critical thinking.” To me, those are fancy ways of saying voice. On the idea that Canagarajah’s work argues for the importance of voice in writing, I think there is much to be said.

One of the main reasons I believe I found these articles to be so engaging is not only because I have had such intimate interactions with the work of second language learners but also because I feel so strongly about voice and about protecting its ability to be and its right to have space in writing. Second language learners are often disadvantaged when it comes to making this argument because the monolingual paradigm is so pervasive and so resistant to change despite being so capable of adjusting. English, if nothing else, is so adaptable to the needs of its interlocutors and so easily appropriated when it does fall short. Integration and infusion are entirely possible if the language opens itself to their possibilities. I, for one, am open to listening to new voices and for learning proficiency in variants of English–who knows what I’ll be able to say through them that I may not have been able to communicate until this point?

~Till next time~

Can You Hear Me?

“If I had a stack of essays without names on them, I could probably pick yours out.”

A former professor of Rhetoric and Writing Studies at my university told me this–in his charming, southern twang–and, since, it has stuck with me. To be honest, I did then and still do now take acknowledgements of “voice” as the highest of compliments. That someone hears me in my words is, really, all I want.

Obviously, I’m not all that up-to-date on how controversial the subject of “voice” is/can be in the field of Writing Studies.

Lucky for me, good ol’ Peter Elbow outlines the issues and concerns with “voice” in the community with his typical attention to detail and to contradiction in “Voice in Writing Again: Embracing Contraries”. Elbow provides some pertinent background information about the rise and fall of voice’s prominence in the field before delving into what I found to be most interesting about this piece–an exploration of theoretical and cognitive contraries and an embrace of a kind of plurality when it comes to concerns of voice in writing. Wow! That’s a mouthful!  As someone who is unfamiliar with the controversies surrounding voice in writing, I found Elbow’s breakdown and resulting compromise of the subject to be helpful in providing my conception of voice with necessary nuance.

See, what seems to be one of the biggest strikes against emphasizing the development of voice through writing is that doing so can be misconstrued as declaring that having a distinctive voice is all “good writing” requires.  Basically, how you say/write something becomes more important that what you are actually trying to relay or communicate. And, I definitely agree that that is a large problem which can quickly become pervasive. Speaking as a current citizen of the US and a–(n) unfortunate–survivor of the 2016 election, the effects of what happens when large groups of people allow the sound of someone’s voice–their supposed sincerity–to be of more import than the words they are actually saying are not “great” and do not pave ways for things to be “made great”. So, I understand why allowing concerns of voice to trump others is contentious.

Still, like Elbow, I don’t agree with researchers who believe that any consideration of voice whatsoever in writing should be dismissed. More, I disagree with researchers who believe “voice” should be dismissed because it simply does not exist. The idea that the voice heard in any given work is purely the creation of one’s context and culture colliding just chafes, if you will. Like, it doesn’t fit. I would never argue that context and culture don’t colour one’s voice–they’re inescapable in every other sense, so why would that change when it comes to our writing?–but I would also never argue they are a writer’s voice. Maybe it’s idealistic of me but I believe we all have this piece of ourselves that we keep tucked deep down inside, away from the world and it is this intact piece that makes some writing more impactful than others–like, we can hear when it is being tapped into, if that makes sense? I don’t want this to get all soul-searchy though so let’s move on!

Another reason why I think the idea of voice in writing being the creation of external factors alone doesn’t sit right with me is that this conception not only robs writers of their agency but tells them they never had any. I don’t know about anyone else but I certainly don’t appreciate feeling like a marionette.

Albeit in regards to reflection and not purely to voice, agency is something Yancey touches on also in “Reflection in the Writing Classroom”. In this article on the importance of teaching reflection as an integral stage of writing in the classroom, Yancey explains how, in this way, reflection becomes a means for students to articulate their own self-awareness. Reflection facilitates the joining of learning and knowing and so culminates in the development of the self. Basically, we come to know ourselves through explaining what we are learning and how we are learning it to ourselves. We self-actualize, develop agency through reflection.

Now, in my opinion, reflecting is not just a means of exploring one’s agency but also for developing one’s voice. It is reading what we’ve expressed back to ourselves and hearing what is going on in the text. I know Elbow emphasizes in his article the importance of being able to analyze purely the words written on a page, detached from any perceived voice, but, to me, when it comes to reflecting on one’s own work, it is as important to listen to what’s been said as to think about it. Really, when it comes to personal reflection on writing, I don’t think there should be a decoupling of those things. They should be integrated because they operate simultaneously in the writer–voice and text–regardless of how the conscious the writer is of this fact. However anyone else wants to define what I call my “voice”, it is how I hear my own writing as I am composing it! Sometimes, I’ll admit I don’t notice it–usually when I’m in the process of writing a more formal, academic work–but that doesn’t mean it goes away. Taking into account how words sound, listening for the self in writing, I believe is important to reflection.

If writing is, like Elbow asserts, a transaction between humans then reflecting is a transaction between selves. And, that, I think connects to something else Elbow said in his article that really resonated with me: “We don’t have to read or write the same way every time” (183). Reflection is a means for realizing that.

 

****

~Till next time~

On the History of Rhetoric & Composition Studies

To be accurate, Lauer’s “Rhetoric and Composition” is more a cross between a brief history on the eponymous subjects and a crash course in the theories composing the discipline as a whole. It’s not really a full history on the subject of composition or of rhetoric. In all fairness to Lauer though and, again, for the sake of accuracy, I believe I should disclose I took a course for a whole semester on rhetoric and writing as an undergrad and I wouldn’t say I received a full history on the subjects either! The breadth of the field and of the research being conducted within the field is something I do believe Lauer did an effective job communicating. Also, just how expansive the study of rhetoric is now is another aspect of the field Lauer explored and explained well for “newbies” to the discipline.

And, now that I have established my novice status, I would like to delve into my thoughts on this reading. Since there was such an abundance of information–an almost overwhelming amount–I’ve decided to focus my reflection on what “stood out” to me most. While reading this work, the parts that most caught my eye are ones I think I may want to pursue more in the course of my own studies which may be a self-centered way to read a text–or not, according to which rhetorical mode/school of thought you subscribe.

Anyway, what first struck me while reading this article is not how many disciplines or modes rhetoric transverses and not the pedagogical applications of rhetoric but the individual vs. the sociocultural divide. What I mean by that is how a number of theories seem to focus either on the individual as propagator or on society/context as the mastermind behind rhetorical acts. More than that, there seems to be whole bodies of study devoted to researching whether a rhetorical work is facilitated by a writer or merely filtered through the writer–is the voice within the work the writer’s? Or their society’s? The agency or lack thereof of a writer/rhetor is a topic that fascinates me because I’m a writer, aren’t I? Is what I’m writing now mine or is it something circumstance has twisted the strings just so to get out of me? That whole concept is disconcerting in the best kind of way.

After moving past that mini-existential crisis, another part of this reading that captured my attention was style, which is a topic near and dear to me. In many academic articles I read in my undergrad, style always seemed to be relegated a minor concern–something to review once a work was completed and not something you should overly invest in. But, as I believe Lauer touches on, style and voice are intertwined and voice is essential to writing because it sets the tone–no, is the tone–of your work. I have never understood how style can be regarded as a mere superficial detail. This whole article, I believe, does a decent job of communicating that the study of rhetoric is the study of the interconnectedness of writing’s many parts. Researchers and theorists all have their niches but studying rhetoric is, at its core, the attempt to understand not just the interactions of writing processes, but the larger intersection of humanity and communication(?). At least, this seems to be the case in the field since the “social turn.”

One of the last parts of this reading that gave me pause almost as much as it held my attention was the section on writing ideologies. What with my invested interest in the individual/social divide in the discipline, I guess this isn’t a surprise but, here, I’m mainly focused on the theories–postmodernist and Barbara Couture’s–Lauer discussed. The postmodernist ideology removed the agency of the writer from the equation and forwarded moral relativism while Couture’s instilled people with purpose and their writing as, ultimately, a facilitator of truth. (At least, that’s what I interpreted.) Finding truth through writing is something I, personally, believe in already but I found it interesting that it was an actual key component of a writing ideology. Also, I wonder how effective the methods of this ideology are at determining truth (Truth? Does Couture mean Plato’s big “T” Truth?). Regardless, I think it would be both fascinating and enlightening to study the processes one goes through in order to arrive at their–or the–truth on the page.

Overall and as cliché as it may sound, Lauer’s article/book chapter gave me a lot to think about and provided me with a better sense of the study of rhetoric and composition’s purview. I wish I could say more about what I have read but there’s just so much information I was provided and it’s difficult to process it all, let alone respond thoughtfully to all of it! And, rhetoric is a thoughtful subject. Every word and turn of phrase comes with a hidden message at least a dozen researchers are already attempting to decipher and then compose a study around, right?

So, that said, I think I’m going to allow you, my–faithful (if you’ve made it this far!)–readers, return to your thoughts as I return to my mulling over twisted strings, the voice ringing in my words mine?, and the truthiness of things.

~Till next time~

***If you are interested on reading more of my thoughts, you can check out my blog on eliterature & digital storytelling here***