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.