For me, this week it was all about Doug Hesse and Cindy Selfe. I'll be honest and say that the prospect of sitting in front of my computer for an hour just watching people talk wasn't thrilling. However, the reality of experiencing a webinar for the first time was kind of awesome, even if it was just a recording.

As I just mentioned, I'd never had the opportunity to see a webinar before, so to experience something that in itself was an example of multimodality, to learn about... multimodality, was funny.

To hear Selfe and Hesse (who had technological difficulties with his use of multimodality)speak on what they've been studying for years was enlightening to say the least. What I was able to particularly identify with was the idea that Hesse presented when he asked:

"Do you think the relative inexperience rhetcomp scholars and teachers may have with digital composition causes difficulties for our ability as a field to carry out the conversation...?"

Cindy replied with: "Yes, but that does not excuse inaction. Nor does it slow the pace of change."

What they were basically speaking to here was the fear some instructors of FYC (and I am definitely one of them, in a big way) who are terrified (me) of using technology in the classroom. Cindy asserts that we (other teachers like myself in this position) must learn with the times. Trends --in academia and the job market -- demand something more than learning to write an essay and having alphabetical literacy. The world won't slow down for teachers who can't/ are unwilling to adapt.

This transitions into what Alexander wrote in his article "Gaming, Student Literacies, and the Composition Classroom: Some Possibilities for Transformation." As an instructor I have to be willing to introduce technology into the classroom, but what if my students can't relate, or even navigate something like World of Warcraft, which he suggests using to "transform our approach to literacy" (37). Even if I can't even fathom using WoW in my FYC classroom, it opened my eyes to what could be done with multimodality if we simply move beyond the academic research essay.

...which one is which?

I'd like to apologize from the outset about the shortness of the forthcoming blog. I am getting over a cold from break and my brain isn't up to writing a ton. Sorry.

In Helmbrecht and Love's "Third-Wave Zines," Dr. Monroe challenged us to see if we could discover the difference between post-feminism and third-wave feminisim. In the middle of the article, Love and Helmbrecht addressed the "Ethos of One." In this segment they quote the observations of Catherine Orr when they say "postfeminism (a term often used erroneously alongside third wave) 'assumes that the [second wave] women's movement too care of oppressive institutions...'" (157).

Unless I missed another instance (which is entirely possible in my current state of mind), this is the only time in the article they mention the conflation of the two terms directly. Post-feminism simply states that women are people too and supports unity versus separation between men and women.

This is in seeming opposition to third-wave which embraces contradiction and clash. Third-wave accomodates diversity and change. To state it simply, they believe there is no one feminist idea.

Women are of many colors, creeds, ethnicities, religions, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds, and it seems that third wave feminisim and these zines are attempting to change cultural perspectives of "feminists."

I'm sorry for the surface glance at these articles. Hope everyone had a good break.

Burke actually kinda... made sense? What?

For the purposes of this blog, I'd like to focus on the article that drew me, Ernest Stromberg's "Rhetoric and American Indians."

"You persuade a man [sic] only insofar as you can talk his language by speech, gesture, tonality, order, image, attitude, idea, identifying your ways with his" (qtd. in Stromberg 5). After having dealt with his royal we, having Kenneth Burke applied to cross cultural rhetoric in such a painless way was quite refreshing.

As I stated in my last blog, academics traditionally come at the study of rhetoric from a Western perspective, "as if efficient writing was developed by Aristotle and everything before that was cave scratchings." In Ernest Stromberg's case it's not a matter of the chronological, it's a matter of outside v. inside the rhetorical circle. By that I mean, white writers view Native American rhetorics as simplistic, or even worse, non-existent.

In the outset of Stromberg's piece, he asks "Are there multiple rhetorics?" (Stromberg 1). This simple question frontloads his entire argument that even though academics profess a belief in multiple rhetorics, we continue to view rhetorics from non-white peoples through our own linear lenses. This contradiction is what prompts me to make the connection to FYC.

As instructors, we have been where our students sit now. We've gone through and been taught that there is one right model in high school. We've had our patterns shattered when we reached university... or did we? We still feedback on students' papers in such a way as to pull them back into the traditional writing fold.

Stromberg quotes Stephen Riggins and his process of "othering" (Stromberg 3). If one student dares put their toe across that line of alternate discourse, we lecture that it's okay, but in writing... I think not, good sir! Stromberg's application to Native American rhetorics is one in which he states that Native Americans must mask their own rhetorics to mesh with Western traditions just to be read, let alone understood. Academics have one way of doing things.

"Even as Burke defines rhetoric as a process of establishing 'identification' between self and other(s)... many American Indians [were] haunted by an official United States rhetoric of assimilation that proclaimed a unity just so long as it was 'our' unity...a shared sense of identity, was to be only one way: the white way" (Stromberg 3).

FYC students are haunted in the same way, by one unfamiliar writing territory that they must traverse in order to make the grade. Formatting, diction, vocabulary... all these things and more make up a writing environment that is hostile at best if one is not familiar with it.

We must, as writing teachers, talk the talk and walk the walk. If we lecture about alternative discourses, let the students use them. Let them use their voices, and use different lenses to view their writing. Don't let unfamiliar patterns result in a "frequently uninterested and even hostile audience" (Stromberg 6). Let them do things their way instead of yours (or academia's). Let us try to correct the intellectual imbalance.

Who am I to tell them to enter the borderlands?

On my first day teaching English 101 here at WSU I knew I was most likely to have students who could identify with me, in that I'm white, have a "mainstream" religion and am affliated with a Western style of education. But then Bob Eddy told us we had to teach our students about the deep-seated pervasiveness of racism in the United States. Okay. I've read the theory. Wait. I'm white. I'm not poor. Who am I to tell them to enter the borderlands in their writing? What authority do I have?

I had my students read "Diving In" by Mina Shaughnessy and "The Silenced Dialogue" by Lisa Delpit. It took a little coaxing and persuading, but I told them, that despite the fact that these articles were written in the 70s and 80s respectively, the views regarding culture clash between student/ teacher were old, but not outdated. However, there are those few that I thought about when I read Andrea Lunsford's questions to Gloria Anzaldua on page 53.
"...they are more threatened than puzzled...Many of my students are from small farming communities...Most of them are Anglo, and they say things like, 'She sounds so mad. Is she mad? And who is she mad at" (53)?

So, on top of teaching them about cultural rhetoric and then trying to drum the mindset of academia into their heads, I attempt to allow them headway in finding their identity in writing. Anzaldua says that identity is simply uniting the labels. "Anzaldua rejects ongoing efforts to label her...Only your labels split me" (Lunsford 43). She sees herself as one person made up of these things.

She says that our culture (the overarching culture of the United States) is such that until she is able to stop translating when she slips into Spanglish in her writing, that her language will be illegitmate (qtd. in Lunsford 45). Academia looks at rhetoric from a stringently Western point of view. As if efficient writing was developed by Aristotle and everything before that was cave scratches. The mestiza rhetoric mindset Lunsford is advocating for allows us to open the door to multiple rhetorics from all over the world, from all cultures.

"The Chinese term most commonly used to translate the English rhetoric is xiuci" (Swearingen 34). Unfortunately I am unable to reproduce the Chinese characters faithfully. "On the one hand, xiu means 'decorate' or 'embellish,' and ci means 'speech' or discourse...' On the other hand, xiu also means 'adjust' or 'make appropriate,' and ci means 'explanation, eloquence, and poetic performance" (Swearingen 34). The true meaning of Chinese rhetoric gets lost in Western translation.
Steretypical views of Asian rhetoric see swirls of flowery language with little comparison to our neat and tidy ethos, pathos and logos. However, Swearingen introduces the diea that further study of "Chinese rhetorical traditions has revealed numerous practices of logic and argumentation, layer upon layer of double meanings and allusions...and layers of meaning that are far more intricate...(Swearingen 33).

So when we (as teachers, instructors and students) walk into a first year composition classroom, we have to come at our lessons with a open mind. In that, I mean, our students write for us with/ through all manners of rhetorics and our job will be much easier if work towards Lunsford's Mestiza Rhetoric.

If that's what you're asking... i'm not telling...

First off, I would like to apologize to Malcolm (our, as rumor has it, fabulous presenter last week) and the rest of my classmates for bailing on our meeting at the last minute. It was not a good day, health-wise, for me.

As I was reading the two pieces for this week, I couldn't help but be reminded of my grandmother. Now, I come from a white, upper-middle class background and I'm probably the most open-minded of the bunch. So, while my complete lack of diversity doesn't connect me to the article and chapter at all, my grandmother's lack of tact does. Upon meeting random strangers, she would ask embarrassingly personal questions. Of course, now that I mention it, I can't think of an example. Typical. But that's what was in my head and is now blabbed onto this page.

Monroe states "a white person might make conversation by asking direct questions that attempt to locate a new acquaintance within a social, professional or educational network" (38). I reflect back on the many introductions I've made of myself and others in my life and am amazed to see how well I conform to just that standard. Of course, there are those questions you just don't ask, but it's all relative to social interactions and who it is you're talking to.

Of course, my g-ma just didn't care, but that's neither here nor there.

Gee is wonderful in his ability to use explicit examples in his writing. When he says "People build identities and activities not just through language but by using language together with other 'stuff' that isn't language," I think of the way I talk (too fast and too much) but with hand motions and variations in tone. But it varies greatly depending on who I'm talking to: professor, long time friend, new acquaintance, etc.

Speaking and writing aren't the same. As much as I try to convince my students of that, they still insist on shortening "legitimate" to "legit" and the like. There is a different between spoken and written language, and English 101 is meant to give students the basics of academic writing. In Monroe's chapter she details the absence of AAE in the Detroit students' writing, but notes they all spoke it fluently (51). I think that there is definitely room for code switching and using vernacular in academic writing but that they (the students in 101) need to learn the rules of multiple literacies before they can break them.

The Tale of Samuel Whiskers: Developing literacy at home

When I read Gee's "Language and Identity At Home," I couldn't help but focus on his examples of children's explicit speech outside academics. His first example, "Jennie," reminded me implicitly of stories I heard about myself as a child.

Even before I could read, my mom would read me Peter Rabbit books and my favorite story was The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. Let me remind you, I couldn't read, but when my mom read, if she made one mistake, I corrected her with verbatim quotes from the book. I wasn't using my own words to describe what she was missing, but instead using storybook language to say what I wanted; which was for her to get the book right. (I was a teensy bit spoiled).

This is reminscent of Gee's theory that language in the home prompts children to learn to describe what is around them and how to interact with others. "What is happening here is that a little girl, who cannot yet 'really' read, is learning and practicing non-vernacular forms of language associated with school..." (Gee 23). Gee suggests that children begin non-vernacular speech acquistion extremely early, so that by the time they get to school, all the necessary varieties of language are present in the brain an personality (Gee 24).

My question is how this applies to first year composition? Gee says that it is no matter if a child can read at high levels. What does matter is that the student can adapt those beginning skills to different academic literacies/ varieties of language in later grades. He elaborates by stating that if these languages aren't fostered and supported at home, the students will feel as if they don't belong at school (Gee 37).

If my mom hadn't allowed me to correct her in my "Beatrix Potter literacy," (as stupid as that sounds) would I be able to adapt my skills to the levels I've acheived to date? Maybe not, but what about the way Gee concludes his article? With the idea that maybe it's not the way the languages are learned, but instead which are more exciting? How does that play into how we adapt in our early language development?

I'm sorry about the inquisitive conclusion to this blog, but this article left me with a few questions.

"Hey" v. "Hello" = Academic v. Colloquial language

Patricia Bizzell states right up front that there is a fissure in the way members of society use language. Jacqueline Royster agrees when she puts up for examination her three insights about language. Insight number one states that "Academic discourse, like all language use, is an invention of a particular social milieu" (Royster 25).

Basically what these two women are saying is that when academics teach language to students, they are teaching something alien. Something that these residents of our classrooms have never encountered: academic discourse. It's a matter of us versus them.
"There is the language, the discourse of academe and there are other languages and discourses that are not academic" (Royster 24). We really are a haughty bunch aren't we?

When I started teaching English 101 approximately, oh 3 weeks ago, give or take a minute or two, and attempted to describe different forms of literacy to my students I got various versions of "literacy is the ability to read and write, and maybe understand the text." I was shocked, but I shouldn't have been. After spending a semester surrounded by the creme de la creme of English academics, I should have expected to be confronted by this (whaddya know?) different form of literacy. We use words like "drastic revision" to describe our students' work. "Whether by intent or by default, we have centralized in our conversations [with other academics] a default view of what can be sanctioned as good writing (as enacted through a traditional view of the freshman essay), a view that has functioned ultimately to tether, rather than enable an evolving discussion" (Royster 24).

This reminds me of my second paper assignment for the classes I teach. So far we've (as a class) discussed what they expect out of an English 101 class and their personal definitions of literacy...of which you heard an aforementioned example. This next essay is about writing from sources, and I gave them Mina Shaughnessy's "Diving In" and Lisa Delpit's "The Silenced Dialogue" to read and pull from. These women offer a position that it is the teachers who ought to be doing the adapting, rather than the student. I wanted to see what they thought of that position. I'll try to keep you updated on those results.

Anyways, what Bizzell and Royster are trying to say is that academe is a "specialized territory," and that those outside of it don't understand those inside (Royster 23). They encourage us to work for change, to work for a blending or at least slight cohesion in different types of discourses; to make academic discourse at least a teensy tiny bit more accessible.

We can try.

Alternate Dicourses - I'm not sure how to tell my students it's OKAY

Sorry I took the deadline for this post down to the wire... Lost track of time. This is first class I've taken in graduate school to attempt to explain to me the overall use of alternate discourses in academia. While I'd been exposed to the idea before, but I'd never tried to convey it to someone else, as a teacher does for a student.
When I tried to explain something like different types of literacies to my first-year-comp students, they looked at me like I was crazy. Because I couldn't find a way to even explain the definition of the alternate discourse concept, I could not find a way to incorporate it into my teaching style. They've been exposed to the traditional model for so long, that Bizzell's idea of different discourses in the teaching of writing/composition is alien to them, and to be honest, not a little alien to me as well.
She (Bizzell) sees traditional academic discourse as a way of promoting hegemony in the classroom. If traditional methods use language that comforts white, male, middle class students, she encourages us to challenge our students into stepping outside their boundaries. (Hybrid 11)
After she quoted Dr. Villanueva, I automatically thought of something Dr. Eddy spoke on when he described alternated forms of the English language and how putting slang, other languages, and personal narrative, etc. into academic texts was a form of hybrid discourse.
I do have to agree with Bizzell's thoughts on eeveloping a curriculum that uses alternative/ hybrid discourses, but wasn't sure how to go about that in the FYC classroom. The majority of the students I'm teaching are fresh out of the high school English classroom. Maybe they took AP or Honors English but the University comp program is still unfamiliar to them.
In reading Bizzell's "Basic Writing" I couldn't help but think about how many papers I have read in the Writing Center over the last 3.5 years. Students come in every day with assignments insisting they have to write it the professor's way or their grade suffers. My job at the writing center as a tutor is to help them do that in the most efficient/painless way possible. Most professor's in other fields aren't (in my experience) open to alternative discourses in the classroom. Traditional is the least "messy." If I could tell just one student to step across that traditional/ alternative discourse line, I wonder what they would come up with?
As a teacher I have to try to find a way to teach students what they need to know to survive their other college writing, but expand their idea of discourse/ literacy beyond what they know. By allowing them to keep their writing style, I think they can create a new niche for themselves in academia. We have certain standards for how we critique college writing and they'll have to live up to that, but it doesn't mean they have to lose their voices.

Mary Pratt's "Arts of the Contact Zone" got me thinking as to exactly how limited my experience with this type of rhetoric I was. When her son, Sam, was learning how to say the name Carl Yastremski, I was reminded of the times I've had to call out names during attendance and butchered them. His first-grade antics were reminiscint of my limited literacy with cultures different from my own.

On page 582, Pratt defines "contact zones" as "the space of colonial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable conflict..." (582).

While I'm not sure coercion is involved to any measurable degree, I can say there is a definite degree of inequality between myself and the students I teach.

Like Guaman Poma, who used Quechua and ungrammatical Spanish in his New Chronicle, my students aren't always comfortable crossing that zone to create a message I am able to understand. In their eyes, I'm the Spanish: the one in charge of the situation.

Pratt uses a variety of examples of contact zones across literacies, but it was Robert Kaplan in his article "What in the World Is Contrastive Rhetoric?" that got me to reconsider what questions I was aking of my students and the different way they might answer them.

I might not be able to pronounce their names at the beginning, but to create a successful contact zone, the classroom must be a safe place where they can answer Kaplan's five questions.

1: What may be discussed?

2: Who has the authority to speak/write? Or: Who has the authority to write to whom under what circumstances?

3: What form(s) may the writing take?

4: What is evidence?

5: What arrangement of evidence is likely to appeal (be convincing) to the readers?

Kaplan states that for the "individual who does not participate in the monolingual, monocultural assumptions that dominate the composition classroom" these questions are terrible, because the answers might not be the right ones.

And each student must learn this for themselves, and the teacher has to be open to connecting with students for that to occur. The students will answer each question individually and each will be different than the student next to him/her. The classroom is a contact zone in a way that a tourist stop is...

After a limited time you never see these people again, but you have a drastic affect on the further actions of the people you are immersed in the contact zone with. So pay attention to each face and interaction.