The Politics of Academic Language: Towards a Framework for Analyzing Language Representations in FYC Textbooks.
Year: 2018

This article argues that composition studies' professional artifacts and pedagogical materials can perpetuate tacit ideologies about academic language that are in conflict with our field's larger goals toward social justice and inclusion in FYC. In order to exemplify a systematic analysis of our artifacts and materials for their tacit language ideologies, the author compares how three popular FYC textbooks The Norton Field Guide to Writing, Everyone's An Author, and They Say, I Say represent academic language in seven major categories: name, placement, definition, characterization, features, examples, and instruction. This textbook analysis illuminates how no representation or discussion of academic language can be neutral, and it also illuminates the obvious gaps that still exist between scholarship on academic language and textbooks' representations of academic language. The author ultimately advocates for this kind of systematic and proactive analysis across our professional artifacts and pedagogical materials so they might be revised to better align with social justice and inclusion initiatives. Especially since the emergence of "Students' Right to Their Own Language" in 1974,{1} first year composition (FYC) instructors have wrestled with how to best represent, characterize, and teach "academic language." Tensions abound between valuing students' multiple language varieties and ensuring they can successfully write in a "standard" variety considered suitable for academic discourse (Canagarajah, "Pluralization" Hall; Leki; Matsuda, "World Englishes" Schroeder et al. Stuckey; Zamel){2} These tensions have only increased since scholars have continued to connect language with identifying factors like race and class, which for the most part position white, middleand upper class students closer to academic language than students of color, working class students, or multilingual students (LippiGreen; Inoue) Meanwhile, starting with Bruce Horner and John Trimbur's groundbreaking article, "English Only and U.S. Composition" and progressing into the translingualism movement, monolingualism itself has been recognized as an ideological myth (Matsuda, "Myth" Trimbur) and these scholars have advocated for the FYC classroom as a pluralistic and diverse linguistic space. Thus, how we represent and situate academic language among our students' language varieties becomes significant in establishing a socially just and inclusive FYC classroom. Although many scholars have recognized how the inherent politics of academic language necessitate shifts in our writing pedagogies (see collections edited by Bruch and Marback; Smitherman and Villaneuva; Scott et al. these shifts are often at odds with our professional artifacts and pedagogical materials. In other words, our scholarship may be progressing, but our everyday materials are not necessarily progressing with it. As early as 1979, when expressivist and social approaches to writing instruction were branching off from current traditional ones, Richard Fulkerson worried that writing instructors might be using the classroom practices of one pedagogical philosophy, the assignment prompts of another, and the evaluative practices of still another a pitfall he calls "value mode confusion" (347) I fear we may be experiencing a similar value mode confusion when it comes to representing "academic language" in FYC. It is my contention that, even if our pedagogies attempt to account for the politics of academic language, they often fail because they are, in A. Suresh Canagarajah's words, "still guided by outworn paradigms. We cannot pour new wine into old skins" "Foreword" xiii) Here, our scholarship is the new wine, but our professional artifacts and pedagogical materials are the old skins. In this article, I offer an example of how our professional artifacts and pedagogical materials can perpetuate tacit ideologies about academic language that are in conflict with our field's larger goals toward social justice and inclusion in FYC. This example is a comparative analysis of how three FYC textbooks represent and inevitably convey value judgments about academic language. I first review the politics of academic language by examining how any language variety, including academic language, is tied to identity, values, and ways of knowing. Next, I systematically compare how three popular FYC textbooks, The Norton Field Guide to Writing, Everyone's An Author, and They Say, I Say, represent academic language in seven major categories: name, placement, definition, characterization, features, examples, and instruction. I end by considering the implications of this comparative analysis. Throughout this article, I purposefully use the vague term "academic language" to refer to the language variety most commonly expected in academic writing; this vague, undefined term allows me to examine how academic language is represented within different textbooks without establishing my own representation as a point of comparison. While academic language typically encompasses some version of "standard English," I am using the term "academic language" in my analysis of FYC textbooks in order to specifically examine the variety of language expected or valued in the academy as opposed to myriad professional settings. The purpose of this comparative analysis is to exemplify an investigation of our professional artifacts and pedagogical materials for their embedded value judgments. Uncovering these tacit ideologies about academic language is a first step toward resolving value mode confusions and constructing the socially just and inclusive FYC for which our scholarship advocates. The Politics of Academic Language Understanding the politics of academic language begins with acknowledging that all languages are strongly linked to their users' identities and community membership. In a foreword titled "3/5 of a Language?" David Bloome begins with this epigraph: "A definition of language is always, implicitly or explicitly, a definition of human beings in the world" (xi) Languages, then, are not merely functional tools but are bound to histories, cultures, and communities. The languages one speaks reflect community memberships, and each of these communities does not simply require "vowel shift[s]" but also requires "us to adopt ways of speaking, thinking, feeling, acting, and valuing" (Bloome xiii) While identifying factors like race and ethnicity do not determine language varieties, they are often markers of those varieties since languages reflect community membership. H. Samy Alim and Geneva Smitherman beautifully describe this link between language, being, and community: The artful use of language..is a source of pleasure, entertainment, reflection, and of course, socialization. It's not only where you learn to speak the language of those you love; it's where you learn to love and be loved. It's where you have your first formative experiences of being a member of a family, a community, a culture. It's where you develop your first notions of where you are and who you might become. (58) We see language as always intertwined with community membership and ways of being, and many speakers shuttle between languages as they shuttle between their communities. However, as Bloome notes, some language communities are more compatible than others (xiv) and thus which languages are valued by social institutions becomes an issue of politics. The compatibility between one's language varieties and academic language is a factor that can disadvantage students in the FYC classroom. For example, Horner and Trimbur alert us that "the first year writing course actually embodies a language policy that privileges English in relation to other languages" (595, emphasis in original) Unsurprisingly, they find that the development of FYC as a monolingual space is strongly linked to cultural histories and social identities. By diversifying the language varieties valued in FYC and our culture at large, they argue, we will be the better for including "different speakers, thinkers, and writers speaking, thinking, and writing differently" (615) This valuing of diverse language varieties for the diverse knowledges they cultivate has also been the rallying cry of the translingualism movement, which "sees difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a resource for producing meaning in writing, speaking, reading, and listening" (Horner, Lu, Royster, and Trimbur 463) This approach insists that increased fluidity between and across all language practices can lead to "new ways of knowing" and "more peaceful relations" (467) What I'd like to draw attention to in these arguments is that norms and standards for language are not about language itself but about ways of thinking and ways of valuing certain social identities or communities. In the FYC classroom, then, students whose language communities already closely resemble academic language may be able to make a slight shift to meet academic language's standards, but for other students, the shift is more dramatic, and it could mean leaving cultural and social values behind to adopt the language of the academy. Peter Elbow is one of many scholars who recognize the exclusive power of academic language when he notes, "I wonder if we really want to teach this discourse stance once we notice the messages it sends: 'We don't want to talk to you or hear from you unless you use our language'" (147) This inflexibility to accept other language varieties in academic writing aligns with Asao Inoue's observation that language can act as a "hegemonic discourse" (24) Academic language as a hegemonic discourse follows the general hierarchal organization of most varieties of English: "Those varieties of English associated with white, northern, middleand upper class communities are perceived as better than those varieties of English associated with groups such as Afri