Advances the idea of using the workshop format for basic writers' development as writers. Finds that workshops generate conversations and discussions that encourage social, political, and economic awareness to help basic writers discover who and where they are in society. (PA)

Explores ways basic writers theorize identities that locate them in the larger culture. States that as part of the composing process students need to locate their own notions of the writer in a dominant culture that has labeled them "at risk." Studies student texts for "theories" about writing and identity; moves to construct…

Argues that Mina Shaughnessy's view of language as a politically innocent vehicle of meaning overlooks basic writers' need to confront the dissonance they experience between academic and other discourses. Suggests educators need to abandon the limitations of the essentialist view of language informing their pedagogy. (KEH)