Composing as Struggle:

“the Othering” of

Writers of Other englishes

Men are not built in silence, but in word, work, in action-reflection.

(Paulo Freire, “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”)

Who is “the Other”?

Whoever “they” are not.

(unknown)

“English is best defined as an unstable process kept alive by the intense intra- and international struggle between and across english (peripheralized by the power of English under fast capitalism), and between and across diverse standardized englishes and their Othered, peripheralized englishes,,,whether we realize it or not, whether we acknowledge it or not, we take part in this struggle through every decision we make on which english to use and how to use it. Composition is boundary work.” (Lu, 2004)

ENGLISH HAS BEEN THE

LANGUAGE OF COLONIZERS FOR OVER 400 YEARS

English is the current Lingua Franca of the world---the language of money is English

WE ARE POWER

BROKERS

WESTERN CULTURE

•Rational• Strong•Masculine•Orderly•Fixed

THE “OTHER” CULTURE

•Irrational• Weak• Feminine• Disorderly• Changing

(Edward Walid Said- إدوارد سعيد وديع , Orientalism)

Words from “the Other”……..

“We were ‘Americanized’ about as gently as horses were broken in” (Eugene Lyons)

“Americanization often led Jewish students to seek either a full return to religious faith or a complete abandonment of Jewish identification” (Howe 1990)

“Any negro who is born in this country and undergoes the American educational system runs the risk of becoming schizophrenic” (Baldwin 1989)

“In deciding to become educated there will be times when basic writers will be forced to reject or betray their family and friends in order to succeed” (Rondinone 1991)

“ … when the first voice you hear is not your own”(Royster1990))

“Instead of presenting Our confusion as resulting from the Other’s ‘linguistic imperfection’, we might treat is as resulting from our lack of know-how or effort to make sense of how and why individual users of English might have come up with specific redesigning of standardized

designs" (Lu 2004)

“To be a responsible and responsive user of English, we need to delay our sound bites on what english this designer needs and how she needs to use it until we have studied her understanding of her discursive resources: the options opened up and closed down by her actual language expertise, affiliation, and/or inheritance as well as by her sense of her actual, imagined, and possible self and life.”

(Lu, 2004)

Closely analyze content and style to identify changes in aspects of one part of the text and another

Don’t treat shifts as imperfections, but as points of departure for engaging the writer in mapping complex discursive resources used during composing

Use that mapping to engage the writer in

considering reasons and ways of engaging with the englishes she is interested in acquiring (Lu)

Theoretical Assumptions about the relationship between language, power and subjectivity:

(1)A notion of discourse as a form of material practice operating though a grid of terms and questions to establish a body of knowledge, define a particular subject, and construct particular relationships between those participating in the discourse and various social institutions and systems of power(2)The notion that individual subjectivity is nonessentialized, emerging out of the process of conflict and change each time a writer thinks, speaks, reads, or writes(3)A view of ‘education’ as constituted by the social, political, economic, and cultural structures of a given time as well as constitutive of these structures(4)A concept of ‘hegemony’ or ‘domination’ that recognizes, on the one hand, the constraints which the dominant social and political forces of a given time and place exert on the individual work, and on the other hand , the range of alternative or directly oppositional politics and culture existing as a significant element in a society at any given time(5) The notion of human agency as “over determined”, working for social change but not in circumstances not of one’s choosing”

(Horner and Lu 1999)

Writing as Struggle

SCHOOL<--------------->conflict< ------------- >HOME

language/ good language/genre/ necessary genre/discourse productive discourse

Essentialist

formal approach views conflict as an

enemy of writers goal to acculturate or at

best accommodate “weak” students

student as product; language as capital

Shaughnessy, Bruffee, Farrell

Nonessentialist

contextual approach views conflict as a political dimension of discourse goal to actively engage students in the “borderlands” ”mestiza consciousness;” composition as boundary work Rose, Pratt, Anzaldua

Why are student writer’s variations considered “errors” but “expert” writer’s variations considered style? What of the notion of student “intentionality” in selecting structures perceived as “errors”? Can an error simply be a choice?

Student Writer vs. Expert Writer (error) (style)

An Example from “Chinglish”

Why would “public toilet” be translated as “collecting money toilet”?

Error or Stylistic choice?

You explain!

(Lu 2004)

Nobody listened to me until I held a Trigger to a man’s head

And he listened My friends listened

The mom listenedMy dad listened

My teachers listenedThe TV listened

They finally heard meWhy did it have to go so farYou should have heard me

That’s all I really wanted

(wishes to remain anonymous)