Code-switching pedagogies do not consider that some features of African American Verbal Tradition (AVT) are rhetorically effective mainstream communication structures in academic writing. My research asserts that when teaching language/ dialect difference in majority white school settings, contrastive analysis techniques such as these may have…

In this article, the author uses storytelling to retell moments in the history of our field. Using personal anecdote alongside critical race theory and critical whiteness studies, she critiques the Writing About Writing movement by re-situating it in history: first narrating it as a contemporary of the Translingualism movement, and then comparing…

This symposium, "Barack Obama's Significance for Rhetoric and Composition," aims to provoke and renew disciplinary conversations about the meaning of an age now nearly past, as well as to pose questions that resonate for presidential rhetoric generally. It includes: (1) "Obama's Rhetoric: Black Talk Flow, White Folk Fluent"…

For the past few decades, composition researchers have devoted critical attention to studying the ways that African American students employ Africanized linguistic and rhetorical patterns successfully in expository writing situations. More recently, research has focused on the use of African-based rhetorical patterns, since the use of African…

This article argues that mid-1970s discourses of literacy crisis prompted a problematic shift toward color-blind ideologies of language and literacy within both disciplinary and institutional discussions of writing instruction for "high-risk" minority students. It further argues that this shift has continuing import for contemporary…

An allegorical argument favoring the use of both standard dialect and nonstandard dialects in English speech. (RB)

The research cited suggests separate language materials are not needed for college level black and white students. (JH)

Considers four linguistic assumptions which bear on any multidialectal teaching situation: There is no single monolithic Standard English in the United States, a given native speaker is not structurally or linguistically deficient, differences among dialects are superficial, and the matter of dialects is one of social status. (RB)

If we want monority students to be able to speak out effectively for their rights, we must teach them, without destroying their own voices, to use language that cannot be labeled substandard. (JH)

While a student's intimate speech is his own business; not teaching him to speak and write standard English will seriously handicap him in his future life. (JH)

This special report presents the resolution on language adopted by members of the Conference on College Composition and Communication in April 1974, and the background statement explaining and supporting the resolution. The statement includes answers to some of the questions the resolution might raise, such as: What is meant by dialect? Why and…

As custodians of the past, teachers have an obligation to teach edited American English. (DD)

Intends to trace a line of thought from early rhetoricians and scholars to contemporary researchers, thinkers, and practitioners that both emphasizes critical pedagogy and values Black culture, especially its vernacular language. Concludes that there was always an African-American contribution to the field of composition in some way or another.…

Argues that the responses to the Oakland, California ebonics resolution miss what made the resolution so significant while also making debate about it so intractable. Proposes that compositionists who acknowledge attitudes that made the resolution so significant can productively engage the larger public regarding literacy education in a racially…