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BACK TO THE CLASSROOM: AF ROCENTRICITY AND TEACHER-
RESEARCH IN FIRST-YEAR WRITING

presented by
STACI PERRYMAN-CLARK

has been accepted towards fulﬁllment
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BACK TO THE CLASSROOM: AFROCENTRICITY AND TEACHER—RESEARCH
IN FIRST-YEAR WRITING

By

Staci Perryman—Clark

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulﬁllment of the requirements
for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Rhetoric and Writing

2010

 

 

 

 

5?".

ABSTRACT

BACK TO THE CLASSROOM: AFROCENTRICITY AND TEACHER-RESEARCH
IN FIRST-YEAR WRITING

By
Staci M. Perryman-Clark

My dissertation, “Back to the Classroom: Afrocentricity and Teacher-Research in
First-Year Writing,” is a qualitative empirically-based teacher—research study that
examines the ways in which African American students and all students perform
expository writing tasks using an Ebonics-based Rhetoric and Composition focused ﬁrst-
year writing curriculum (WRA 125). I begin unpacking how Afrocentric pedagogy is
understood and situated in this project. While Afrocentric scholarship targets multiple
disciplines, including education and sociolinguistics, the primary audience for this project is
teachers and researchers in Composition Studies. I further address how the concept of
Aﬁ‘ocenuicity is understood by I) clarifying the relationship between Afrocentric pedagogy
and the Aﬁican and Aﬁican American worldview, since many deﬁnitions of Afrocentricity
suggest a focus on, or discussion of, African and African American worldviews; and 2)
explaining the relationship between Afrocentric pedagogy and Ebonics since many
Afrocentn'c courses focus on Ebonics as both communicative and cultural practices.

In subsequent chapters of the dissertation I situate my own work with teacher-

research within the context of four previous classroom and teacher-research studies on

Aﬁican American students. Based on these four studies I have found a limited focus on the ,

uses of Ebonics phonological and syntactical patterns strategically and rhetorically, in
addition to the focus being only on Aﬁican American students. I extend these composition

teacher and classroom-research studies by I) also including a discussion of phonology and

'_

Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students’ uses of Ebonics phonology and syntax purposefully,
and 2) including data ﬁ'om non-Black students that point to how they might beneﬁt also from
Afrocentric pedagogy.

After laying the groundwork for Aﬁrocentricity and teacher-research, I discuss the
ﬁndings from my own teacher-research study, with one chapter focusing on Aﬁican
American students’ expository writing patterns, and another chapter focusing on all students’
work produced in the Afrocentric curriculum. Data results from Aﬁican American students
reﬂect the ways in which Aﬁican American students employ AAR and Ebonics phonology
and syntax rhetorically across major writing assignments. When looking at all students’
work, my ﬁndings illustrate that students’ essays reveal tensions and conﬂicts reﬂected in
students’ writing, reading, and research practices. Improvement is still needed in argument
construction that moves beyond summary, the use of evidence, and citation practices. In the
conclusion, I discuss the methodological implications, surprises and limitations of the work
done with my WRA 125 course. I also acknowledge methodological challenges that emerge

both from the study itself in addition to how my institution’s human subjects review board

chose to interpret the study design.

In ‘ I

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I ﬁrst give praise, honor, and glory to the One who created me, the One who by

His mercy and grace made it possible for me to write this dissertation. I praise God
because I recognize that without Him, I could not have accomplished any of what I have

accomplished in my short time here at Michigan State University. I also acknowledge the

unconditional love He has granted me even when I doubted the ﬁnal outcome.

I also want to take the opportunity to thank my life partner and devoted husband,
Randall, who has held my hand every step of the way and lent many shoulders to cry on
at every stage of the process. My family—Rev, Mommy, and Tracee have also each lent
their support and have been with me every step of the way. I have felt their prayers and

without their support, I too recognize that none of this would be possible.
I further thank the committee that was there in the end to support me despite the

many-—-and often times—painful changes that took place within the past four years. I
especially thank my chair, Jeﬁ' Grabill, for stepping in to assume this role after many
changes and disappointments. I thank him for valuing my work and believing in me
enough to take on the challenge of being my chair. I also thank Geneva Smitherman (aka
“Dr. G.”) for her tough and everlasting love and support that she has given me for the
past four years. In many ways, she has served as a surrogate grandmother that never
spared the rod when I needed it most. I count it as a privilege for her to play such an
integral role in my scholarly and personal development. Special thanks also go to Malea’
Powell, Elaine Richardson, and Terese Monberg for the personal and intellectual support

they too have offered as committee members. Finally, I thank my special friends: Angela

Haas, Kendall Leon, and Steven Lessner for their undying love and support.

 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Tables ...................................................................................... vu
List of Figures .................................................................................... viii
Chapter 1 ............................................................................................. l
1.1 How this Study Began: an Introduction ............................................ l

1.2 Perspectives on Afrocentric Pedagogy and Aﬁican Worldviews ............... 5

1.3 The Relationship between Afrocentricity and Ebonics ......................... 15

1.4 Additional Critiques of Afrocentricity ............................................ 25

1.5 A Response to Critiques ............................................................. 30

1.6 Synopsis of Chapters ................................................................ 35

1.7 Conclusion ............................................................................ 37
Chapter 2 ............................................................................................ 38
2.1 Institutional Context for Curriculum Design ..................................... 38

2.2 Description of Major Writing Assignments ...................................... 45

2.3 Applications of Afrocentric Pedagogy through Ebonics ....................... 48

2.4 Applications of Cultural Relevance and Inclusion .............................. 51

2.5 Applications of Aﬁican Worldviews .............................................. 55

2.6 Applications of Liberation Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom ....... 59

2.7 Creating a Shared Sense of Collective Identity through Orality .............. 64

2.8 Applications of Call and Response in the Classroom .......................... 69

2.9 Concluding Remarks ............................................................... 75
Chapter 3 ........................................................................................... 77
3.1 Introduction .......................................................................... 77

3.2 Perspectives on Teacher-Research ................................................ 80

3.3 Four Teacher-Research and Classroom-Research Studies ..................... 84

3.4 Context for My Own Teacher-Research Study ................................. 95

3.5 Methods for Data Collection ...................................................... 101

3.6 Procedures for Data Analysis ..................................................... 103

3.7 Conclusion .......................................................................... l 15
Chapter 4 .......................................................................................... 1 l 7
4.1 Introduction ......................................................................... I 17

4.2 Structural Features of Ebonics .................................................... 119

4.3 Structural Features of Ebonics in Multigenre Situations ...................... 130

4.4 Discursive Features of Ebonics ................................................... 136

4.5 Multiple Ebonics Structural and Rhetorical Patterns ........................... 150

4.6 Conclusions and Implications ..................................................... 161
Chapter 5 .......................................................................................... 164
5.1 Introduction ........................ 164

 

5.2 Language Attitudinal Questionnaire: Attitudes toward Ebonics .. . . . . 166

5.3 The Disciplinary Literacies Assignment ........................................ 175

5.4 Students’ Skills and Knowledge and Programmatic Goals ................... 199

5.4 Conclusions and Implications ..................................................... 206

Chapter 6 .......................................................................................... 208

6.1 Introduction .......................................................................... 208

6.2 Methodological Criticisms of Teacher-Research ............................... 213

6.3 Surprises .............................................................................. 216

6.4 Concluding Remarks ............................................................... 217

Appendix ........................................................................................... 220
Bibliography ...................................................................................... 23 1

vi

 

LIST OF TABLES
Table 1.1 Language Focused Pedagogical Approaches ..................................... 49

Table 2.1: Assessment of Students’ Learning Goals ........................................ 199

vii

 

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Attitudes toward Spoken Ebonics in Class using Written Statement 169
Figure 1.2 Attitudes toward Written Ebonics in class using Written Statement 169

Figure 1.3 Attitudes toward Written Ebonics Formally Using Written Statement .. 169

Figure 1.4 Attitudes toward Spoken Ebonics in class Using Audio-tape ............ 170
Figure 1.5 Attitudes toward Written Ebonics in class Using Audio-tape ............ 170
Figure 1.6 Attitudes toward Written Ebonics Formally Using Audio-tape .......... 171

viii

 

Chapter 1

PERSPECTIVES ON AFROCENTRICITY AND EBONICS

1.1 How this Study Began: An Introduction
My interest in Afrocentricity began as a ﬁrst-year writing teaching assistant
completing my Master’s Degree at a mid-sized Midwestern university. At that time, I was

unsure whether or not I wanted to pursue interests in sociological and civic engagement

 

issues at the doctoral level. I had been greatly inﬂuenced by the African American church
that I attended, where my father served as pastor. Week after week I witnessed my
father’s preaching, a theology that focused much on liberation, and racial and gender
inequities. Understanding the need to be critical about issues of race, as they impact

social justice, I wanted to bring some of this teaching into the classroom.

During my ﬁrst year teaching a precollege writing course I sought to teach
students how to deveIOp a critical consciousness concerning race. I wanted students to
recognize how issues of race affect particular literacy and linguistic practices, and in
essence, educational policy. In some ways this wouldn’t be difﬁcult to achieve, since our
shared ﬁrst-year writing reader included several texts that engaged many of these
concerns. As a result, I could confront these issues in my classroom without deviating too
far from curricular resources.

By the end of the course I realized that my pedagogical approaches to race often
alienated students. As I was grading students' ﬁnal portfolios, I received a letter from a A
white female student who expressed her alienation because she did not share my same

racial and political views. She felt as though the course focused too much on African

 

 

 

i’

501

la;

American struggles and racism, noting that everyone in society is not racist. As proof, she
argued that many African Americans like Oprah Winﬁey and Bill Cosby were successful
and both have followings ﬁ'om people of all races. And this student had a point: Of

course everyone is not racist, and of course, there are Aﬁican Americans who aren’t in
poverty. Nonetheless, I felt that I had a point too. While there are some African

Americans who, by God’s grace, have made it out of poverty, signiﬁcant inequities

continue to exist.

 

The problem with my pedagogical approaches was not that they lacked sufﬁcient
theory; rather, the problem existed in the tools that I used to support my theoretical
rationale. I recognize that I am no sociologist, so in some ways, I may not have the
training and expertise that students expect that I have to confront these issues in a ﬁrst-
year writing course. This doesn’t mean that race has no place in the composition
classroom, though. After all, my students do come into the classroom raced, classed, and
gendered, and these sociological variables often do affect the literate experiences that
shape their lives. What I needed to understand was that students might have to draw these
conclusions on their own; perhaps I cannot draw these conclusions for them. That was
one signiﬁcant problem with my previous pedagogical approaches. I wanted to bring a
form of Afrocentricity that confronts racism into the classroom, while teaching and
arguing to students that racism exists. But, sometimes students needed to draw that
conclusion on their own. In other words, in order to prove that racism exists, students
sometimes have to ﬁnd experiences of racism on their own; at times the evidence with
which they are confronted is more powerful than the convincing we attempt to do as

teachers. Thus, I needed to adapt an Afrocentric pedagogy that gives students the

rhetorical tools necessary to draw the conclusions that they draw. I also needed to adapt
an Afrocentric pedagogy that doesn’t alienate students, but includes their own
experiences, as we all work to understand the problems associated with racist linguistic
and educational practices.

My previous experiences now shape the methodological work I do as a teacher—
researcher. I am interested in how all students understand and make sense of

Afrocentricity. Because the concept of Afrocentricity is signiﬁcantly broad, I want to

 

encourage students to make sense of Afrocentric pedagogy in relationship to particular
linguistic and rhetorical practices and how these inﬂuence the types of writing done both
in and outside of the classroom. I understand that 1 am not a sociologist, but I am a
writing specialist, and if we can deal with these issues in the context of writing, we can
understand how writing becomes a subject and not just an activity that people do. In
Process This: Undergraduate Writing in Composition Studies, Nancy C. DeJoy argues
that using Composition Studies as a focus in undergraduate writing courses is beneﬁcial
because
student writing can be illustrative, teaching us things about how certain practices
affect the process or products produced... [The problem is that] students are not
included in the process of analysis that constructs such knowledge from their
texts. Positioning students in relation to the discipline in such ways is part of a
larger related habit of excluding students from our discussions more generally. .
The idea that we can change the terms of this material reality by raising and/or
empowering individual consciousness without challenging these limited notions

of literacy in our disciplinary and professional spaces is misinformed. (14)

In the past, my pedagogical practices often excluded students’ contributions and their
dissenting views. But now, I want a more inclusive pedagogy and agree with DeJoy, who
proposes that we change our discipline’s exclusive practices toward students. I want to
design a course that introduced and included students in our disciplinary discussions,
while at the same time, implementing the Afrocentric ideologies that birthed my teaching
career. In a sense, I want the best of both worlds: an inclusive pedagogy and an

Afrocentric pedagogy, and I want to study the ways that both are attainable in the

 

classroom. This also means that I need to research students’ responses to such a
curriculum in order to examine particular sets of knowledge and writing practices that
were gained by the students.

This chapter unpacks how my new understandings of Afrocentric pedagogy are
understood and situated in a descriptive qualitative teacher-research study on an
Afrocentric language-focused ﬁrst-year writing curriculum. While Afrocentric
scholarship targets multiple disciplines, including education and sociolinguistics, the
primary audience for this project is teachers and researchers in Composition Studies.

This project is a descriptive qualitative teacher-research study on an Aﬁocentric
language-focused ﬁrst-year writing curriculum. Because there still exists a limited

amount of empirical and pedagogical scholarship on the beneﬁts of Afrocentric pedagogy

(Redd and Schuster Webb; Richardson), and because the concept of Afrocentricity is
often obscured in academic scholarship (McPhail 100), it is ﬁrst important to understand
the theories that inform how I understand Afrocentricity in this project. As both a teacher
and researcher, I decided to apply Afrocentricity to the study of Ebonics because I

believe Ebonics to serve as one of many concrete examples that clariﬁes the relationship

between Afrocentricity and African-based communicative practices. Thus, this chapter
also explains the relationship between Ebonics, as an Aﬁican-based cultural and
communicative practice, and the concept of Afrocentricity. Furthermore, because the
teacher-research study focuses on a ﬁrst-year writing class, my target audience is
members in Composition Studies, although scholarship on Ebonics and Afrocentricity
cross multiple disciplinary audiences. In the next section, I discuss the relationship

between Afrocentric pedagogy and Aﬁican worldviews. Such a discussion is necessary in

 

order to understand the philosophies and ideologies that inform how I understand

Afrocentric thought in the classroom.

1.2 Perspectives on Afrocentric Pedagogy in Relationship to African Worldviews
Before discussing how Afrocentric pedagogy is situated in Composition Studies,
it is ﬁrst important to explain the conceptual framework that guides my understanding of
Aﬁccentricity. I emphasize that most work with Afrocentric teaching does not come from
Composition Studies, but instead, is rooted in African and Aﬁican American studies
(Asante Afracentricity; Irvine “Afrocentric”), and K-12 education (Ladson-Billings
Teaching; Lynn and Parker “Critical Race”). Although this project is positioned
disciplinarily in Composition Studies, I ﬁnd it necessary to look at Afrocentric pedagogy
in multiple disciplinary contexts because these have contributed signiﬁcantly to my
understanding. This section will then discuss how Afrocentric education is typically
described and its elements, as they are situated in particular disciplinary contexts, each of

Which has guided how I apply Afrocentric pedagogy in this project.

Much scholarship dealing with Afrocentric education is sure to acknowledge
Moleﬁ Asante’s contributions to the concept of Afrocentricity. In The Afrocentric Idea of
Education Asante identiﬁes two sociological perspectives on education as they apply to
Afrocentric pedagogy: The ﬁrst is that “education is frmdamentally a social phenomenon
whose ultimate purpose is to socialize the learner; to send a child to school is to prepare
that child to become part of a social group” (170). The other is that “schools are
reﬂective of the societies that develop them” (170). Using these perspectives as a lens,
Asante asserts that Afrocentricity be used as a framework for students studying the
histories, peoples, and concepts from an Aﬁican worldview (an extensive discussion of
these worldviews in relationship to speciﬁc pedagogical practices takes place in Chapter
2). In her article, “Afrocentric Education: Critical Questions for Further Consideration,”
Jacqueline Jordan Irvine extends Asante’s work to provide the following discussion and
working deﬁnition, as she explains the elements of an Afrocentric curriculum:
The term Afrocentric is used widely and its deﬁnition has taken a variety of
meanings. Most agree that an Afrocentric curriculum is a systematic study of the
multidimensional aspects of black thought and practice centered around the
contributions and heritage of people of African descent. (201)
Asante more speciﬁcally deﬁnes Afrocentric education as
a frame of reference wherein phenomena are viewed from the perspective of the
African person. The Afrocentric approach seeks in every situation the appropriate
centrality of the African person (Asante, 1987). In education this means that
teachers provide students the opportunity to study the world and its people,

concepts, and history from an African worldview [. . .] Because all content areas

are adaptable to an Afrocentric approach, Aﬁican American students can be made
to see themselves as centered in the reality of any discipline. (171)

Asante further emphasizes that the Afrocentric approach understood in his essay
is not a variation of Eurocentric approaches, where Eurocentric worldviews comprise
“sum total of the human experience” (172). Afrocentric approaches to education are not
merely Afrocentric just because one adapts curriculum resources from and by persons of
African descent. It is not the people who make the curriculum Afrocentric; rather, it is the
ideology and worldview that determine whether or not an approach is Afrocentric. This

means that curriculum resources from non-blacks can be included, as long as these
practices are situated from the perspective, and within the interests of, people of Aﬁican
descent; and as long as they employ shared African-based worldviews. Subira Kifano
also provides two perspectives on Afrocentric education, one being “a development of a
liberation pedagogy within Aﬁican [American] communities,” and the other being
development of an “alternative value system that is responsive and responding to the
cultural and spiritual ethos of people of African ancestry” (209). The Afrocentric idea of
education, to which Kifano refers, is also grounded in worldviews employing educational
practices that are culturally situated within the interests of Aﬁican Diaspora people,
despite the institutional or organizational infrastructures.
In order to understand Afrocentric pedagogy, one must also become familiar with

African American worldviews, since many discussions of Afrocentricity speak in terms -

of understanding the African and African American worldview. When speaking of the

abstractness that is often associated with the African worldview, Mark Lawrence McPhail

argues that while Afrocentricity is often understood to reﬂect the underlying

epistemological and ontological assumptions of an African worldview, many of its critics
have suggested that “its centrist emphasis has served to obscure that worldview instead of
clarifying it” (100). Although much has been written on Aﬁican-based worldviews in
relationship to Afrocentric ideology, much of this discussion remains too conceptual and
particularly vague for both scholars and students.

While limited, some scholarship in rhetoric and composition attempts to deﬁne
what is meant by the Aﬁican and African American worldview. Adisa Alkebulan deﬁnes
the Aﬁican worldview as “the guiding principles and values that determine how Aﬁicans
respond to life and interact with the universe. Worldview is the means by which culture
determine what is beautiful and what is not” (34). In African American Literacies, Elaine
Richardson clariﬁes the African American worldview by stating: “When I say Aﬁican
American worldview, I am referring to the knowledge that Black folks have about how to
negotiate Blackness in everyday situations” (27). These are just a few examples of how
the African American worldview is typically deﬁned in disciplinary scholarship. Such
deﬁnitions, however, remain abstract. Therefore, in this chapter, I will attempt to make
Afrocentricity and its worldviews more tangible by identifying some aspects of this
worldview.

Mergence between the Sacred and Secular

A more speciﬁc aspect of the African worldview is the relationship between the
sacred and secular worlds. Geneva Smitherman identiﬁes Black speech associations with
the African worldview, including a connection between the sacred (church) and secular

(street). In her discussion of Black communication, Smitherman reveals that

[t]he Black communication system is actualized in different ways, dependent
upon the sociocultural context—for instance, “street” versus “church—but the
basic underlying structures of this communication network are essentially similar
because they are grounded in the traditional African worldview.»1n brief, that view
refers to underlying thoughts, patterns, belief sets, values, ways of looking at the
world and the community of men and women that are shared by all traditional
Aﬁicans (that is those who haven’t been westernized). (T alkin and T estifj/in 74)
With Smitherrnan’s conceptual framework of the Aﬁican worldview, the church refers to
any practices that are considered sacred, spiritual and/or religious (e. g. meditation,
praying, other abstract ritualized forms, etc); spiritual practices extend beyond any
speciﬁc religion or church denomination. The street refers to those secular or “everyday”
practices that do not have a direct sacred or religious purpose (e. g. paying bills, listening
to non-religious music, going to work for the man'). Further, this worldview, while a
way of seeing the world, extends beyond perception by including beliefs, practices, and
values that Aﬁican and African Americans share. What makes many working deﬁnitions
of Afrocentricity (and its relationship with African worldviews) less clear is the idea that
this worldview is something that must be perceived by people of African descent, even if
this perception is not articulated to, or understood by, members outside of these groups.

Perception (particularly in its relationship to a cultural epistemology) is usually discussed

1 Working for “the man” is an African American idiomatic expression that suggests how African
Americans must deal with those in powerful positions above them, usually, White folks. It is assumed that
when one works for the man, he/she is working for a white boss, and must obey the rules of his/her master
or risk being ﬁred. “The man” also refers to the one with the most power, usually the White man Even if a
boss is female, it is assumed that even she still must answer to the White man at some point.

 

 

 

theoretically and stop short at the praxis level. Explicit examples of these everyday
practices and beliefs are less often referenced. But, if we center more on concrete values,
beliefs, and practices, perhaps our understandings of the African American worldview
may become clearer. With Smitherman’s discussion of the Aﬁican worldview, while an
understanding of the spiritual and its relationship with the Aﬁican worldview may still be
abstract, when placing this abstractness in line with the street, we see more tangibly the
practices and beliefs that people of African descent most commonly share.

As Smitherman points out previously, there is a strong relationship between the
sacred and secular world, and between the spiritual and carnal. Even in the African
American church,2 where the spiritual is explicitly actualized, we see a similar connection
between the spiritual and secular; In the book, The Prophethood of Black Believers: An
African American Political Theology, James Deotis Roberts argues that the “secular and
sacred, the personal and the abstract, and the practical [each] interface” (xi).
Understanding the African American worldviews then requires understanding the
relationship between the spiritual and secular world, the personal and collective, and the
abstract and practical. This spiritual connection is often portrayed through narration, song
or dance. Cummings and Latta indicate: “When it comes to traditional Black rhetoric,
what Blacks say in the form of stories, dance, and song is the way they communicate
their feelings, beliefs, desires, values, and way of life” (66).

—_—_

2 Here I refer to the African American church as an institution that extends beyond particular religious
sects, or Christian denominations. Regardless of the religion or denomination, Aﬁican American Christian
churches, mosques, synagogues etc. similarly share many African-based religious traditions that connect
the scored with the secular world.

10

In Smitherman’s most recent book, Wordﬁ'om the Mother: Language and African
Americans, she reemphasizes the ways that the merging of the sacred and secular
becomes actualized in preaching linguistic and rhetorical discourse:

Our [Black] preachers continue to be masters of the rhetorical, linguistic,

inventiveness In the African way, blending the sacred and the profane,

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright Jr., [former] Pastor of Trinity United Church of

Christ in Chi-town, expertly incorporates vernacular street language. Preaching on

the subject “Demons and Detractors,” he takes us on a journey “to see what a First

Century text can teach those of us who live in the Twenty-First Century”. .. (66-7)
Using Aﬁican American preachers as an example, Smitherman clariﬁes that the
relationship between the sacred and secular is not only one aspect of the Aﬁican
American worldview, but also, it is a linguistic and rhetorical device used by Black
preachers to demonstrate a connection between the spiritual world (heaven) and the
physical world (earth) in which we live. In the Good Reverend Dr.’s sermon, Wright
merges the sacred and secular by applying the “First Century text” (The New Testament
of the Christian Bible) to the “Twenty-First Century” period in which we live.

Liberation

Another critical aspect of the African American worldview is the idea that
liberation must be acknowledged (Jackson 120). Asante states that Afrocentric
awareness

is when the person becomes committed to a conscious level of involvement in the

struggle for his or her own mind liberation [They are committed to working

11

toward] African liberation [or making a] constant determined effort to repair any
psychic, economic, physical or cultural damage done to Aﬁicans. (8)
Smitherman’s reference to Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright’s sermon too speaks to
liberation theology. In his sermon, Wright preaches:
Don’t you let what people say about you stop you from being who God says you
aaaaaarr'rreee! Other people don’t deﬁne you, so don’t let them conﬁne you [. . .]
All my White friends here tonight, White folk, listen to me, hear me tonight. You
aim no honky [. . .] You are a child of God [. . .] just like an Asian, an Aﬁican, an
Arab, an Indian, an Afghanistanan; an Iraqi is also a child of God [. . .] I’m an
equal opportunity preacher [. ..] Stop looking to other folk for validation an
affirmation, for deﬁnition and. recognition. God is the source of everything you
need! (qtd. in Smitherman 67) (emphasis added)
(The previous excerpt is also signiﬁcant because it most certainly contradicts the media’s
interpretation of Wright’s so-called racist and separatist rhetoric that plagued Barack
Obarna’s bid in the 2008 Presidential Election, but I digress!) In the Good Reverend Dr.’s
case, liberation is expressed by the freedom to deﬁne one’s own identity. As Reverend
Wright preaches, if you let people deﬁne you, then you also let them conﬁne you, and
anytime a person is conﬁned, they are most certainly not free. Also worth emphasizing is
the idea that liberation, while an important aspect of the African and African American
worldview, is inclusive to all people. To emphasize his point of liberation and equality,
the Reverend Dr. identiﬁes different races and ethnicities and how essential it is for each

of them to look to God and not to other people for “validation” and “deﬁnition.” In short,

12

while liberation is valued by African and Aﬁican Americans, it is also made available to
all people.
' The Relationship betwaen Liberation Theology and Liberation Pedagogy

In Liberation and Reconciliation: A Black Theology, Roberts also indicates that
when deﬁning Aﬁican American liberation theology (through Christianity),

the purpose of Liberation and Reconciliation [must be] taken seriously [so] that

one can fully appreciate its complete message [. . .] Black Theology must be

addressed to all in a language they can understand [. .. ] In a similar vein, it is
clear that Black Theology must closely be related to the black church. Its message
needs to challenge all Christians from the church to the pew. Its purpose is social

transformation for making life more human. (emphasis in original) (xiii)

Just as liberation pedagogy seeks social transformation in the classroom, liberation
theology too seeks a similar transformation in the African American church, in this case,
the Christian church. Christian education (the sacred) becomes connected Afrocentric
education (the secular). Both concepts accentuate the call for the liberation of
Aﬁicans/Aﬁican Americans.

Ricky Lee Allen contends that “unlike critical pedagogy [Afrocentric and critical
race theorists] take the side of liberation from white supremacy” (64). In his own
discussion of relationship with liberation pedagogy, Peter Murrell Jr. further states that
the

incompleteness of American education is in two critical respects contradistinctive

to Aﬁican pedagogy: (1) deep thought as both the process and the aim of

13

education for liberation, self-agency, and self-determination; and (2) community

participation in deep thought that ﬁrrthers and develops those ends. (34)
Liberation is one of many elements not only of the Aﬁican/African American worldview,
but also, one of many elements of Afrocentric pedagogy. In this way, the sacred and
secular is also merged as pedagogy and theology coincide. Because Christian or church
education is a critical aspect of the Black Church, liberation pedagogy becomes
implicated in church teaching and training. In fact, in many Black Christian
denominations members are expected—and church leaders often required—to attend both
Sunday School prior to Sunday morning worship AND Wednesday night Bible Study.
Traditionally on Wednesday nights (although days may vary with different churches)
church congregations combine “Prayer Meeting” with Bible Study. Prayer Meeting
usually occurs right before Bible study, when members of the congregation are given the
opportunity to testify, sing a song, or say a prayer.

When members testify, they acknowledge and affirm “the signiﬁcance or power
of an experience outside the Black Churc ” (Smitherman Testifyin 45). Testifyin’ at
Prayer Meeting offers many examples of the way the sacred and secular worlds interface.
When believers testify, they make overt connections between their relationship with God
(sacred) and their experiences outside the church (secular). Furthermore, the sacred and
spiritual experience of Prayer Meeting prior to Bible Study is signiﬁcant: The
sanctimonious nature of a Prayer Meeting prepares believers to engage in the intellectual
discourses associated with Bible Study. During Bible Study, teachers (not always the
preacher) may study and reﬂect on liberation theology by examining the relationship

between biblical passages on liberation (e. g. the Israelite’s freedom from Egypt) and

I4

African Americans’ freedom from slavery. Using the Bible and Prayer Meeting as
examples, liberation theology and liberation pedagogy unite.
Summary of the Elements of African American Worldview

While there are additional elements not acknowledged in this space, this section
addresses the speciﬁc elements of the Aﬁican Diaspora worldview, as they inﬂuence my
pedagogical work with Afrocentricity. The mergence between the sacred and secular and
liberation are the two elements Ideal with most in my classroom. I focus on the sacred
and secular in my pedagogy because I believe that students should be encouraged to
make sense and merge the literacies of the classroom with those outside of the classroom,
just as people of Aﬁican descent do when they merge sacred and secular shared
experiences. I also focus on liberation because I ﬁnd it to be a useful heuristic for
students to use when making sense of issues of racism. As a teacher, liberation pedagogy
includes all students’ experiences, and permits students to understand that liberation is
necessary for all citizens, and not just African Americans. While African Americans
identify with liberation, it is not exclusive to, African Americans’ shared experiences. As
a teacher, liberation pedagogy, then, seeks to free Afrocentricity ﬁ'om much of its

separatist critique.

1.3 The Relationship between Afrocentricity and Ebonics

While I focused previously on the relationship between Aﬁ'ocentric education and
the African and African Diaspora worldview, such a focus on Afrocentricity often
maintains a linguistic component as well, where teachers often position Ebonics as the

focus of curricular inquiry. Building on this linguistic focus, 1 specify my focus on

15

Ebonics in relation to African Americans, rather than someplace else in the Diaspora.
Since “Ebonics is a set of communication patterns and practices resulting from Africans’
appropriation and transformation of a foreign tongue during the African Holocaust”
(Smitherman 19), I believe an Afrocentric approach must account for Aﬁican-based
cultural and communicative practices. Because language is cultural, and because an
understanding of Afrocentric pedagogy requires a focus on African American cultural
practices, it is understandable that an Afrocentric curriculum incorporate Aﬁican
American language and communicative practices. Put simply, if one chooses to focus on
Aﬁican American communicative practices such a focus must include a discussion on
Ebonics, the language of African Americans. Alice Ashton Filmer states that “an
awareness of the sociolinguistic pressures facing African-American students is difﬁcult
for most outsiders, even sympathetic ones, to grasp without careful attention to the lived
experiences of black people” (“African American” 265). Asante adds that the
“sociolinguistics or racism and cultural imperialism have to be challenged and
neutralized in order to produce an area of respect where African Americans assume more
than a marginal role in their own discourses” (Manifesto .7).

In addition to this understanding, the conceptual framework that guides how I
understand Ebonics as a writing instructor is also worth mentioning. Because Ebonics is
the language derived from Aﬁicans’ transportation during the African holocaust, I
subscribe to the Africologist (what Teresa Redd and Karen Schuster Webb call,
“Afrocentric”) theory of the development of African American speech. Carol Blackshire-
Belay argues that an Aﬁicological paradigm “must view the language development of

African people from the perspective of Aﬁican agency” (“Location” 10).

I6

In relationship to Ebonics Kifano and Smith more speciﬁcally argue that the
Africologist theory of Ebonics “posit[s] an Aﬁican-centered view of the descendents of
enslaved Africans’ language [. . .] The Aﬁicologists contend that because Ebonics is not
‘genetically related to English,’ the term Ebonics is not a mere synonym for the more
commonly used phase ‘Black English’” (63 and 71). In response to
Africologist/Afrocentric theory, Redd and Schuster Webb ﬁrrther explain Smitherman’s
reasons for categorizing Ebonics as an African derived language. They note:

Smitherman also questions classifying [African American English] as a dialect on

the basis of mutual intelligibility. She points out that sometimes listeners

misunderstand AAE because they are not familiar with AAE communicative

strategies, such as reversing the meaning of a word [. . .] Because of such

. differences, Smitherman has started speaking of the “language” rather than the

“dialect” of African America. (15)
While classiﬁcations as to whether or not Ebonics is a language or dialect remain in
dispute (in both sociolinguistics and Composition Studies) (Redd and Schuster Webb 15-
16), an Aﬁicologist theory of Ebonics understands Ebonics as “enslaved Africans’
language,” and not an English dialect. And even though there are some clear linguistic
similarities between Ebonics and Standard English, and Ebonics and Southern English
(e.g. English vocabulary), the phonological, grammatical and syntactical structures of
Ebonics often bear more similarities to West African languages (Smitherman T alkin that
Talk; Smitherman Black Talk, Smitherman Word; Palacas “Liberating”; Perry and Delpit

Real Ebonics; Blackshire-Belay “Location”; Green African American; Baugh Beyond).

17

Because I do not consider Ebonics a mere nonstandard variety of English, it is
also necessary to make distinctions between different terminologies that are often used
interchangeably with Ebonics. Although many sociolinguists, compositionists and
educators often use Ebonics synonyrnously with Black English (BE), Aﬁican American
Vernacular English (AAVE), or Black English Vernacular (BEV), I want to clarify the
distinction I’m making between each of these terms, even though 1 used them
interchangeably in this study to account for readers who are familiar with different
terminology. I prefer the terms Ebonics or African Arnerican Language (AAL) because I
believe both to highlight Aﬁica’s presence in the origins of Black American language,
what I call its “Africaness.” BEV, AAVE, AAE, or BE seem to underscore the
Englishness associated with the language. With this idea of Englishness, BEV, AAVE,
AAE and BE also suggest that each are dialects or nonstandard, inferior varieties of
English. As Lisa Green states, Ebonics differs from terms like AAVE, BEV, and BE
“because [Ebonics] was created to refer speciﬁcally to the language of people of African
descent that had its roots in West Aﬁican languages, and not as a reference to any dialect
of English” (“African American” 77).

Many Africologists and other scholars caution the dangers associated with not
adopting an Afrocentric/Africologist theory of Ebonics, or relying on English-
based/Eurocentric understandings of AAL. Arthur Palacas states that he is more inclined
to believe that “Black English is a language to respect in its own right” and therefore, .
must be liberated ﬁom Euro-English (“Liberating” 345). Carol Aisha Blackshire-Belay
further contends that “even some of the best theorists [who study Ebonics] have been

trapped by categories of European domination” (5). And Kifano and Smith assert that one

18

 

of the problems with some Africologists is that while they acknowledge that “the
grammar rules of Ebonics follows the grammar rules distinctive of the Niger-Congo
African languages they often rely on and cite the works of many European and Euro-
American Aﬁicanists whose works are generally regarded as authentic and reliable” (77).

While I ﬁnd it problematic to primarily rely on European and European American
scholarship to explain the legitimacy of Aﬁican American communicative and cultural
practices, I would also caution the dangers associated with being exclusive to other
cultural groups and perspectives. With my own Afrocentric curriculum students will read
some work by European Americans and other non-black scholars because I believe that
Afrocentricity should be inclusive to all traditions. Arguments like Blackshire-Belay and
Kifano and Smith may potentially miss the mark when placing emphasis on the race of
the scholars’ scholarship and not the worldviews identiﬁed from the scholarship, as
Asante suggests we do when understanding the Afrocentric idea of education: Aﬁican
and Aﬁican American worldviews determine what make approaches Afrocentric, not the
race or ethnicity of the authors’ texts used in the curriculum.

Afrocentric approaches also require a language-focused understanding of writing
assessment. Sandra Kamusikiri understands an Afrocentric approach in relationship to the
study of Ebonics and writing assessment as an approach “in which both student and
teacher are informed about the history and tradition of AAE and the student writer and
his or her peers understand that AAE is a valid language choice when appropriate to the
subject, audience, and purpose of the essay” (202). She further adds:

By adopting an Aﬁ-ocentric approach to writing assessment, teachers can

appreciate the linguistic virtuosity of AAE speakers and see them “ as people who

19

have brought, originated, and transmitted certain unique mores and values to

create a culture that has survived continual efforts to annihilate it” (Haskins and

Butts 14). (202).

What is especially valuable in Kamusikiri’s discussion of Aﬁccentric approaches to
writing assessment is the idea that. a) students should be included in understandings of
writing assessment, b) students should be aware of Afrocentric approaches to writing
instruction and assessment, and c) students should be familiar with the linguistic elements
of Ebonics in order to contribute fairly and effectively to the evaluation of their peers’
work. The responsibility to celebrate Africanized modes of discourse, then, becomes that
of both teachers and students, and perhaps this is one reason why Afrocentric curricular
approaches that expose students to other linguistic and rhetorical traditions are especially
useful. Seen in this light, students are required to learn alternative linguistic systems
besides Standard English. Requiring students to demonstrate knowledge of alternative
language varieties may go a long way in encouraging students to participate in an
increasingly multilingual society.

In a review of sociolinguistic studies that successfully integrate African American
communicative practices into classroom instruction, Hollins, King and Hayrnan draw on
several examples of Afrocentric pedagogy. They note:

Heath’s (1983) decade long research in North Carolina, which examined language

learning and use in Trackton, a Black community in North Carolina, and [how it]

incorporated some interactional features into the classroom, is another study that

demonstrates that reducing sociolinguistic discontinuity between students’ home

20

and school environments can positively inﬂuence Black students’ participation in
school lessons. ..
Hollins found evidence of cultural congruence between aspects of Black
communicative behavior and teaching style... In their study of effective Black
teachers Henry (1990) and Ladson Billings & Henry (1990) suggest that the
rhythms, call and response and the use of proverbs. .. in the vocal expressive
communication patterns of African Americans [. . .] Foster (1987, 1989) found
evidence of code-switching. .. (236)

As we will see later in the next chapter, African-based communicative rhythmic patterns

like call and response and proverbial usage can successfully be drawn upon in Aﬁican

American 'students’ expository writing. In Chapter 2, I look extensively at how patterns

such as call and response can be integrated by the teacher in the writing classroom.
Kifano and Smith argue that Afrocentric pedagogy is also implemented as a

student-centered approach to language acquisition. They state:
Given [that education] is rooted in the larger human project of socializing children
in the values and views of the society, effective instruction of African American
learners who are also [English Language Learners] reﬂects African American
sensibilities, acknowledges the historical origins of [African American English],
sees literacy development for ELLs not as a linear process but as a continuum
where students interact within concentric circles of family, ethnicity, age, gender,
and school cultures. (84)

In other words, in order to teach African American students effectively, teachers must

also provide students with an understanding of their own cultural traditions, including

21

students’ home language practices. Such an understanding is critical especially for
students whose ﬁrst language differs ﬁom the Language of Wider Communication
(LWC), or Standard English (SE).

In Composition Studies, the relationship between Afrocentric pedagogy and
writing instruction is also typically framed by a discussion of Ebonics and African
American communicative practices. Elaine Richardson discusses the pedagogical
rationales associated with using an Afrocentric composition curriculum in African
American Literacies, which also draws on teacher-research about Aﬁican American
students in her writing course. She considers an Afrocentric (what she terms “African
American Centered”) approach to mean

the course of study of subjects (i.e. English language usage, literacy acquisition,

rhetoric, writing, education, for example) from the viewpoint of African

American experiences [. . .] Like many other American linguistic minority

groups, Aﬁican American Vernacular English speakers who wish to become

participants in mainstream institutions have to master spoken and written forms of
elite White American languages of commerce. (32)
In establishing a connection between language, literacy, and thtOﬁC-‘as they are

enhanced by culturally relevant curricular approaches—Richardson concludes:

[B]y integrating the speech styles, rhetorical, and literacy traditions of African
Americans into academic writing, we invite students to have a fair ﬁght with

discourses. Disconnecting them from their cultural histories and the heterogeneity
of their language and literacy practices is restricting their classroom literacy
experiences from the word go. (113)

22

Other scholarship in Composition Studies positions Aﬁ'ocentric pedagogy in
relationship to the Students’ Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL), a 1974 resolution
approved by the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) to
insure that all students, including those whose language varieties differ from Standard
English, be permitted to write in the language varieties of their nurture, or whatever
varieties in which they ﬁnd their own style. In their essay, “Students’ Right to

Possibility: Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric,” Keith Gilyard and Elaine
Richardson apply “Afrocentric” pedagogy to SRTOL. They admit that SRTOL is still
controversial because many teachers still believe that they should be “preparing so-called
minority students for success in the market place, all while many of the most successful
people in the market place are running off with fresh stacks of pretty little green ones
accumulated to the advertising beat of hip hop” (38).

The relationship between SRTOL and Afrocentric pedagogy has not been met
without conﬂict and outright resistance. David Holmes argues that “while ‘The Students’
Right to Their Own Language’ made avant-garde contributions to race, language, culture,
politics, and pedagogy, the document fell short of sufﬁciently complicating the links
among race, language, and identity for peoples of color” (Revisiting 101). Even though
SRTOL aims to promote academic success for people of color in composition
classrooms, it becomes less clear how the linguistic prejudice that the document seeks to
end speciﬁcally affects people of color in higher education. Others insist that SRTOL is

not directed exclusively at African American students because the resolution calls for all
students—not just African Americans—~to draw on “whatever dialects” in which they

ﬁnd their own style. As a result, critics contend that Afrocentric pedagogy cannot be the

23

primary purpose for applying SRTOL. Quoting directly from the SRTOL Resolution, it
states:
We afﬁrm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language—~the
dialectsof their nurture or whatever dialects in which they ﬁnd their own identity
and style. Language scholars long ago denied that the myth of a standard
American dialect has any validity. The claim that any one dialect is unacceptable
amounts to an attempt of one social group to exert its dominance over another.
Such a claim leads to false advice for speakers and writers, and immoral advice
for humans. A nation proud of its diverse heritage and its cultural and racial
variety will preserve its heritage of dialects. We afﬁrm strongly that teachers must
have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and
uphold the right of students to their own language. (emphasis added) (“Students’
Right” 74)

Using the language from the resolution as an interpretive framework, one might infer that
SRTOL functions as one example for why Afrocentric pedagogy should not be limited
exclusively to African American student populations. While I do consider Afrocentric

pedagogy to be particularly beneﬁcial for African American students, it should also
support all students. Comparably, SRTOL permits African Americans to draw on
Ebonics and other home language varieties, but it also, makes space for all students——
ESL students, students whose language varieties are different from Standard English, .
Ebonics speaking students, Spanglish speaking students, and even students whose home
languages are varieties of Standard English—to write using their own chosen language

patterns. Like SRTOL, Afrocentric pedagogy must also make spaces for students to

24

include their own cultural traditions. Understood this way, Afrocentric pedagogy
becomes a heuristic and inventive space from which students may build, as they apply

their own experiences.

1.4 Additional Critiques and Resistance to Afrocentricity

Critiques of, and resistance to, Afrocentricity often cross disciplinary contexts. In
Composition Studies resistance to Afrocentric teaching, in relationship to SRTOL, is also
manifested through the exclusion of Afrocentric curriculum resources and teaching
materials. Responding to the need to include students’ language varieties in the
composition classroom, educators also sought resources that provided tangible examples
for teachers how to include alternative language varieties. Scott Wible’s essay,
“Pedagogies of the ‘Students’ Right’ Era: The Language Curriculum Research Group’s
Project for Linguistic Diversity,” examines a Brooklyn College research project that
placed African American Language (AAL) and culture at the center of a composition
cuniculum during the SRTOL era. Wible argues, however, “[b]ecause of charged
political and educational discourses of the mid-1970’s. . .publishers shied away from
adopting the [research] group’s textbook manuscript. By not publishing, the LCRG and
its project perished [sic]” (444). Wible also adds: “In most present-day work around
issues of linguistic diversity and language policy, then, compositionists seem to agree that
the conversations informing the ‘Students’ Right’ theory did not lead to pedagogical
transformation inside the classroom” (444). To put it bluntly, neither SRTOL nor any
curriculum resources did nothin’ to make teachers change and do right by they

“nonstandard” writing students in the classroom. Furthermore, this tension pressured

25

many educators to abandon Afrocentric teaching methods and resources as culturally
relevant pedagogy in their implementations of SRTOL.

Other critics of Afrocentric pedagogy and curriculum design in composition
classrooms are not so much concerned with SRTOL; rather, they are more generally
skeptical of its pedagogical effectiveness, charging that regardless of whether or not
Afrocentric pedagogy is focused on Ebonics, it is unclear if Afrocentric pedagogy
actually works. In A Teacher ’3 Introduction to African American English: What a
Writing Teacher Should Know, Teresa Redd and Karen Schuster Webb discuss several
instructional approaches to teaching Ebonics speakers Standard Written English (SWE).
They identify one speciﬁc approach as “Afrocentric,” where Black teachers use
Afrocentric materials and strategies to identify with their Aﬁican American students.
Through instruction, they incorporate Black literature, group participation (including
Aﬁican American rhetorical styles such as call/response), and encourage Standard
English with a rhetorical style that “marks authors and speakers as Black” (97). The
instruction is not merely about the grammatical strategies that make African American
English (AAE) distinct from SE, but also, the rhetorical strategies most commonly
associated with Black culture. The problem with this approach, according to critics, is
that it fails to offer solutions/strategies for non-black teachers (and even some black
teachers) who wish to employ Afrocentric teaching methods. Other critics contend that
there isn’t sufﬁcient empirical evidence to support its effectiveness (98). And yet, others
caution that there are rrrinimal explicit resources and strategies on Afrocentric pedagogy

for writing teachers (Redd and Schuster Webb; Ball and Lardner).

26

In education, one critique of Aﬁ'ocentricity is that proponents of Afrocentric
pedagogy have not always convinced critics how an Afrocentric approach may beneﬁt
both Aﬁican American students and all students. Amy J. Binder’s case studies the
challenges for three K-12 school districts to implement successful Afrocentric
curriculums. Binder identiﬁes three of these challenges to the success of Afrocentric

design in the following excerpt, noting that

these three challenges were shaped by myriad cultural and organizational forces—

some at the level of resonance with cultural belief systems; some at the level of

state versus local school systems' curricular protocols; and some in the details of

local district policies, like testing, the tenor of previous revisions, and coverage by

the media. (87)
Also worth mentioning from this article is the fact that one critic of the Afrocentric
curriculum was more willing to “gamble” or “experiment” with a poorer set of
Washington DC. Aﬁican American students by trying the Afrocentric curriculum. Such
opponents were unwilling to incorporate it in other sections of the city where test scores
were higher, fearing that Afrocentric design would compromise these scores. The media
hoopla seems quite familiar with that displayed during the 1996 Oakland Ebonics
Resolution, where proponents wanted teach Ebonics as a means for teaching the
acquisition of Standard English. It still remains clear that Afrocentric scholars need to
make more progress with educational (including K—12 and higher education)
communities, public policy, and public perception.

Giddings also identiﬁes one of the challenges for Afrocentric education being

“the seeming lack of mass support from parents and community members,” (476) similar

27

to those challenges faced by the Oakland School District. In order to confront this
opposition Giddings recommends that educators “use information gained from social
science research that uses both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine and
report on the efﬁcacy of existing models of Afrocentric curricula” (476). Giddings urges
Aﬁocentric proponents to revisit earlier mass mobilizations of Afrocentric teaching
movements, including those taking place during the 1950’s and 1960’s Civil Rights
movements (477). The reason why these earlier movements were successﬁil is because
they had widespread support from parents and community members. In sum, for
Afrocentric design to be effective, we must not only appeal to the institutions where we
teach, but also, the Aﬁican American community at large. I see postsecondary education
as useful space for doing so, where many institutions in higher education are also
concerned with preparing its students for civic engagement and community activism.
Also worth noting is how the Civil Rights movement used college student workers (both
white and black) to spread the word. Perhaps we can encourage the students in our
college classrooms to spread their knowledge about reproducing systems of social
inequality, as realized in literacy and language pedagogy.

One of the largest—-—and perhaps—most signiﬁcant critiques of Afrocentricism
across disciplinary circles is its supposed tendency toward separatism. In addition to the
experiences shared at the beginning of this chapter, from additional past experiences
teaching with Afrocentric pedagogy, 'l have faced criticism from colleagues who contend
that Afrocentricity is not culturally relevant because of its exclusiveness. As a result,
critics have recommended a multicultural-focused curriculum because from their

perspective, multiculturalism is more inclusive to all students’ experiences;

28

multiculturalism is the hope in which critics seek to establish cultural relevance. As
Victor Villanueva reminds us, however, multiculturalism is not essentially productive:
Ethnicity and the cultural plurality suggested by multiculturalism appeal to
common sense in ways that can address racism-and sometimes they do, maybe
often—but without tugging at its hegemony with the kind of force so many of us
would wish [...] Multiculturalism hasn’t improved things much, not even at the
sites where students are exposed to such things. (“The Rhetoric” 650 and 651)
I agree with Villanueva that multiculturalism often becomes a means of putting off
conversations about racism. And I also agree that it hasn’t helped composition pedagogy
much because it offers a superﬁcial gloss over racism in addition to cultural practices,
. beliefs and worldviews. Afrocentricity serves to center on and counter hegemony in ways
that multiculturalism often does not. Multiculturalism, then, becomes a means of color-
blindness that ignores the implications of race and oppression by bolstering “reactive
rather than proactive strategies to redress discrimination” (Holmes “Afﬁrmative” 31).
And Ametha Ball and Ted Lardner also remind us: “Though there has been much
scholarly and public debate about multiculturalism in higher education, there is little
evidence to suggest wide-ranging, effective changes in writing and composition
classrooms” (28). In short, multiculturalism cannot replace the role of Afrocentricity in a
language-focused curriculum because it does not sufﬁciently address racism and

oppression, nor is there any evidence that suggests its beneﬁts more than Afrocentricity.

29

1.5 A Response to Critics: Toward Inclusion and Cultural Relevance
Despite such resistance, there is no reason why all students can’t beneﬁt from
Afrocentric pedagogical approaches that promote exposure to Aﬁican American
communicative practices. David Holmes provides a persuasive rationale for using
Afrocentric pedagogy in composition to teach all students, therefore, arguing that
composition scholars should continue to creatively incorporate the Aﬁican
American oral tradition into their classrooms. [All] [s]tudents should listen to and,
in most cases, see and listen to (via audio, video, and hypertext) the great
sermons, speeches, and songs of African America. For one reason, our students’
perceptions of American culture and so—called standard language are distorted
without this exposure. More importantly, the students will realize that they can
barely fathom the richness of a tradition that was mean to be heard and not read,
spoken and not written. (106)
Holmes’s understanding of Afrocentric pedagogy, including the exploration of African
American communicative practices, can be available to all students. Like Holmes, I argue
that exploring the richness of African American cultural practices enhances not only
Aﬁican American students’ literacy development, but also, all students. As we will see
later in this chapter, a literacy and writing curriculum that promotes development for not
only Aﬁican American students, but also, all students, will be critical to writing students’
successes in composition classrooms.
Lena Ampadu’s essay, “Modeling Orality: African American Rhetorical
Practices and the Teaching of Writing” also demonstrates effectively how and why

Afrocentricity can help all students become better writers because many African

30

American texts and speeches often serve as stellar examples of the writing we want our
students to produce; however, very few of these texts are cited as models in actual writing
textbooks. Ampadu argues: “What is not always noted is that Aﬁican American texts are
exemplars of audience-involving texts, which include highly orally based forms such as
letters and speeches” (137-8). Ampadu’s essay supports the call for Afrocentricity
because Aﬁican American texts can be placed at the center of discussion to serve as
written models for all students to consider or appropriate. And since the idea of providing
models of good writing exists in many composition courses (even though some writing
teachers/scholars do oppose the use of models), Afrocentricity can still be used to
accomplish the goals of any ﬁrst-year writing course (see Chapter 2 for an extended
discussion of this idea). Students are not expected to learn merely African-based and
Aﬁican American principles and practices for course content; instead, they are expected
to think more critically about the ways that these practices inﬂuence how students,
particularly, Aﬁican American students, choose to write. Through African American
texts, all students can reﬂect on their own reading practices in order to make choices
about the expository writing patterns at work in their own texts. In effect, students may
be encouraged to use these practices as heuristics and inventive spaces for becoming
better writers, although they need not have to.

Ball and Lardner also emphasize that through the study of language (in their case,
AAVE), teachers can adapt pedagogical practices that are culturally relevant for students.
They further conclude that

African American students’ preferred modes of expression should be included in

the curriculum, not only as building blocks for bridging African American

31

their ideas in a variety of forms. Including these devices in the writing curriculum
is a strategy that is in keeping with other educational approaches that have
successfully used the cultural resources of their students to enrich the learning
experience. (1 74)
Like Ball and Lardner, I believe that one effective way to apply Aﬁocenuic pedagogy is
through the study of Ebonics (what they identify as AAVE). Although analysis and
discussions of Aﬁocentric pedagogy in this chapter are not limited to Afrocentric design
in composition classrooms, as Ball and Lardner point out, Aﬁ'ocentric design (one
example of culturally relevant teaching) works well with writing pedagogy because like
culturally relevant pedagogy, it permits students to draw on their own forms of
expression, something that essentially can be done through the act of writing.

In education, Afrocentric pedagogy as it applies to inclusion is often understood

Afrocentric pedagogy, the contributions ﬁom Gloria Ladson-Billings need necessarily be
acknowledged. In its relationship to Aﬁican and African American culture, Ladson-
Billings deﬁnes culturally relevant pedagogy as
the kind of teaching that is designed not merely to ﬁt the culture to the students’
culture, but also to use the student culture as a basis for helping students
understand themselves and others, structure social interactions, and conceptualize
knowledge. Thus, culturally-relevant teaching requires the recognition of Aﬁican

American culture as an important strength upon which to construct the schooling

32

experience... [It] is a practice that celebrates African and African American

culture. (“Reading” 314)

students, since this is one of the primary populations with which she works. I ﬁnd it
necessary to clarify my applications of Afrocentricity as culturally relevant pedagogy
here because my work is not limited to the study and teaching of Aﬁican American
students. After all, Aﬁican American students comprise less than one-third of the

students taught and researched during this project. Extending culturally relevant .
approaches to all students is critical because while I argue that students need not be
Aﬁican American to beneﬁt from Afrocentric pedagogy, it is essential that teachers invite
them to make connections between their own experiences and Aﬁican American cultural
and intellectual traditions. It is also critical that teachers begin with the cultures that
Students bring with them into the classroom, as they encourage them to make

cOlmections. This involves using Afrocentric teaching to help all “students understand

themselves and others, structure social interactions, and conceptualize knowledge” (314).

33

Ladson-Billings further identiﬁes the following characteristics of culturally-
relevant pedagogy:

( l) The students whose educational, economic, social, political, and cultural
futures are most tenuous are helped to become the intellectual leaders of the
classroom...

(2) Students are apprenticed into a learning community rather than taught
isolated and unrelated skills...
(3) Students’ real life experiences are legitimated as part of the "oﬂicial
curriculum ..
(4) Teachers and students participate in a broad conception of literacy that
incorporates both literature and orature. ..
(5) Teachers and students are engaged in collective struggle against the status
quo. ..
(6) Teachers engaged in this broad vision of the curriculum are cognizant of
themselves as political beings... (emphasis in original) (“Liberatory” 386-8)
While Ladson-Billings’s work with culturally relevant pedagogy focuses primarily on
elementary school populations, it is clear that these characteristics for culturally relevant
pedagogy are also applicable to college composition classrooms. I also ﬁnd these
characteristics to be meaningful because while relevant for African American students,
they still can beneﬁt all teachers and students. Using these perspectives as a lens, I offer
Afrocentric pedagogy as one example of culturally relevant pedagogy as it seeks to teach
students from African cultural experiences and ways of seeing the world. Such a focus on

African-based cultural experiences does not mean that non-black students’ experiences

34

are not acknowledged. In other words, while African and African American culture may

be at the center of scholastic inquiry, all students’ experiences and ways of seeing the

world are included in the curriculum.

1.6 Synopsis of Chapters
In Chapter 2, “Unpacking the Afrocentric Curriculum, Unpacking Aﬁican

Worldviews,” I provide an extended discussion of the pedagogical rationale for
implementing Afrocentric pedagogy in relationship to Ebonics. The Afrocentric approach
I design here is inclusive to other traditions. For example, one can locate evidence of this
in the course assignments that invite students to analyze their linguistic practices and
readings (e.g. Gloria Anzaldua’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and Leah Zuidema’s
“Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching Against Linguistic Prejudice”).

In Chapter 3, “On Building a Teacher-Research Methodology,” 1 review previous
teacher and classroom research studies on Aﬁican American students and use these
studies as a lens for understanding the methodological choices that guide the study design
implemented in this project. I also provide examples of data from students in order to
show how I interpret and make sense of students’ work. These examples are used as a
lens for understanding the data and results interpreted in Chapters 4 and 5.

In Chapter 4, “How African American Students Be Writin’,” I provide rhetorical
analysis of African American students’ expository writing assignments regarding their

linguistic skills and writing practices associated with the texts they produce. This chapter

further seeks to address the following research questions:

35

What Ebonics-based linguistic practices do Aﬁican American student writers

employ?
What Aﬁican American rhetorical (AAR) practices do Aﬁican American student

writers employ?

How do Aﬁican American students employ Ebonics rhetorically?

In what ways does a linguistic-focused Afrocentric curriculum support Aﬁican
American students?

An integral portion of this project seeks to not only look at the ways in which
Aﬁican American students beneﬁt from an Afrocentric curriculum, but also, the writing
skills, knowledge and attitudes that all students gain and possess as well. In Chapter 5,
“Afrocentric Pedagogy for All Students: Toward a Pedagogy of Inclusion,” I look more
speciﬁcally at the skills, knowledge and attitudes that all students possess on Ebonics.

More speciﬁcally, I address the following questions:

How does Afrocentric pedagogy support all ﬁrst-year writing students' work

in a composition classroom?

What skills do all students acquire from Afrocentric pedagogical instruction?
What knowledge and attitudes do all students gain and possess? How have
these attitudes and knowledge changed over the course of the semester?
Taken together, Chapters 4 and 5 provide extensive analysis of the written results
that emerge from my teacher-research study. In Chapter 6, “Conclusion,” I discuss the.
methodological implications, surprises and limitations of the work done with my ﬁrst-

year writing course. I also acknowledge methodological challenges that emerge both

36

ﬁom the study itself in addition to how my institution’s human subjects review board

chose to interpret the study design.

1.7 Conclusion

This chapter addressed how the concept of Afrocentricity is understood by l)
clarifying the relationship between Aﬁ'ocentric pedagogy and the African and African
American worldview, since many deﬁnitions of Afrocentricity suggest a focus on, or
discussion of, Aﬁican and Aﬁican American worldviews; and 2) explaining the
relationship between Afrocentric pedagogy and Ebonics since many Afrocentric courses
focus on Ebonics as both communicative and cultural practices. This chapter also
acknowledged several critiques of Afrocentric pedagogy, with one major critique being
its supposed separatist position. By addressing separatist critiques I argued how
Afrocentric pedagogy can offer cultural relevance for all students. The next chapter
describes explicit pedagogical practices that demonstrate what Afrocentric pedagogy
looks like in an Ebonics-based ﬁrst-year writing course. These include linguistic forms of

instruction like contrastive analysis, and Afrocentric teaching methods like call/response.

37

Chapter 2
UNPACKING THE AFROCENTRIC CURRICULUM, UNPACKING AFRICAN

WORLDVIEWS

2.1 Institutional Context for Afrocentric Curriculum Design

Building from the perspectives of Afrocentricity that were outlined in Chapter I, I
provide speciﬁc examples of how Afrocentric pedagogy isapplied in a Tier I Writing
(ﬁrst-year writing) course, WRA 125 - “Writing: The Ethnic and Racial Experience.” I
argue that the assignments and course materials are also consistent with the shared
learning outcomes and objectives passed by the Tier I Writing Program (Guidebook 4),
thus demonstrating that Afrocentric curricular approaches can be implemented without
deviating from the objectives and learning outcomes designated by university writing
programs.

According to the Michigan State University course catalog, WRA 125— Writing:
The Ethnic and Racial Experience is a themed-based Tier I (ﬁrst-year) writing course that
focuses on “drafting, revising, and editing compositions derived from readings on the
experience of American ethnic and racial groups to develop skills in narration,
persuasion, analysis, and documentation.” WRA 125 is one of many courses offered in
the Tier I Writing Program. As course content, most instructors who teach sections of this
course select one speciﬁc racial or ethnic group on which to focus, and assign course
readings and other materials corresponding to these groups accordingly. Therefore, most
instructors ﬁnd it useful to add more speciﬁc versions of the course in addition to the one

identiﬁed in the course catalog. Because I believe a focus on African Americans as a

38

racialized group to be too broad, I specify my focus on Aﬁican American language and
communicative practices. In addition to the catalog description, my speciﬁc description

reads as follows:

Welcome to WRA 125! While the title of this class is highly generic, we will examine uniting the
American, ethnic and racial experience, using an Afrocentric framework to explore the ﬁeld of
Composition Studies. As we use an Afrocentric lens, we'll study more speciﬁcally, _ .
Ebonics/African American Language (AAL), and African American Rhetoric (AAR). As students,
you will be introduced to Ebonics/AAL and AAR as systems of speaking and writing, equally
legitimate to Standard Academic English (SAE), the writing that you typically do in school. In this
class, each of you will have the opportunity to write in SAE, AAUEbonics, or other language
varieties and languages. While many of you may or may not be familiar with AAL./Ebonics, it is
my hope that you all will have a clearer grasp on the language usage 0f African Americans, and
how this language ﬁts in college composition classrooms.

Since this is a Tier I Writing course, you will be expected to write. While we'll study the use of
AAUAAVE as a language and composition studies as a discipline, you will also practice
producing various pieces of writing. Our course goals are also consistent with the shared learning
outcomes passed by the Tier I Writing Program Committee. By the end of the course, hopefully .
you will have achieved the following goals as a student:

°To engage reading, writing, and research as epistemic and recursive processes;

' To understand AAVE/AAUEbonics as a valuable linguistic system, equally legitimate to
Standard English;

° To understand the rhetorical value of legitimating AAVE/AAUEbonics and other
languages/language varieties, in addition to recognizing the choices behind language variety
appropriation;

' To begin negotiating the use of different linguistic systems through audience expectations;

' To identify and use the appropriate conventions depending on genre and/or audience
expectations;

° To collect, analyze, and share information (both orally and written) through the research process;

° To develop arguments and present ideas to others in clear, effective, and persuasive prose in a
variety of genres; and

' To begin developing analyses of both verbal and visual texts in print-based and digital
environments.

When designing alternative curricular designs, in this project, I want to call
attention to the idea that teachers should make sure that their Afrocentric writing courses

are consistent with the institution’s ﬁrst-year writing programmatic outcomes and

39

objectives. In August 2008, as a member Tier I Writing Program Committee, I
coauthored the Guidebook for Teach Tier 1 Writing at Michigan State University that
discusses how instructors can use curriculum materials and resources to meet
programmatic objectives. As acknowledged in our Guidebook, the Michigan State
University mission statement reads as follows:
As a public, research-intensive, land-grant university funded in part by the state of
Michigan, our mission is to advance knowledge and transform lives by:

0 providing outstanding undergraduate, graduate, and professional education
to promising, qualiﬁed students in order to prepare them to contribute
fully to society as globally engaged citizen leaders

0 conducting research of the highest caliber that seeks to answer questions
and create solutions in order to expand human understanding and make a
positive difference, both locally and globally

0 advancing outreach, engagement, and economic development activities
that are innovative, research-driven, and lead to a better quality of life for
individuals and communities, at home and around the world.
(http://president.msu.edu/mission.php)

We further add a discussion of how our Tier 1 Writing Program contributes to the overall
mission of the University:
As part of the general education requirement, Tier I Writing contributes to this ,
mission by focusing on inquiry-based teaching and learning that encourages
students to begin to understand themselves as:

0 contributing members of MSU’s community of scholars

4O

- committed to asking important questions and to seeking rich responses to
those questions
0 developing the skills, knowledge, and attitudes necessary to improve the
quality of life for themselves and others through their scholarly, social, and
professional activities. (2)
Consistent with this mission, the Tier 1 Writing Program passed a series of shared
learning goals in order to foster inquiry-based teaching and learning. By using an inquiry-
based approach, our goals require students to demonstrate knowledge of writing, reading,
and research (Guidebook 4). These goals were passed by the Tier I Writing Committee
during the spring of 2008, and are designed to be ﬂexible enough to account for a variety
of curriculum materials and pedagogical approaches for instructors and students to meet
the shared goals. In our Guidebook, we state that these goals “do not require a
standardization of materials or pedagogical practices. They do, however, require that each
section of the course creates an environment in which inquiry-based teaching and

learning is fostered and encouraged” (2).

Because I designed a similar WRA 125 prior to the passage of the Tier I Writing
shared learning goals, I had to make sure the revised course carried out the mission and
new goals of the Program. Redesigning the course, then, required that I place larger
emphasis on research across different assignments (more on the assignments later). It also
required that I place more emphasis on community engagement; the focus on community
engagement was where I decided to connect Afrocentricity. By learning about African

American communicative practices and how they assist students’ understandings of the

41

collective identity that is shared by people of Aﬁican descent, was one focus, on which, I
wanted students to interrogate and ask rich and critical questions.

In their recent article, “From Language Experience to Classroom Practice:
Afﬁrming Linguistic Diversity in Writing Pedagogy,” Lovejoy, F ox, and Wills state that
“most composition programs do not have explicit language policies or program initiatives
that address linguistic diversity in the classroom” (262). With regard to writing, one of
our own programmatic goals states that students should “understand diction, usage, voice,
and style, including standard edited English, as conventional and rhetorical features of
writing” (4). As members of the Tier I Writing Committee, we decided not to require
students to learn only Standard English, in order to make room for the exploration of
other language varieties that meet speciﬁc rhetorical purposes. We agreed on this shared
learning goal to allow for increasing opportunities that explore alternative linguistic
systems and varieties. As Stuart Barbier reminds us, ““dropping standard English
statements [from programmatic outcomes] does not mean students will not be
using/learning it” (“Reﬂections” 263). This goal makes room for students to learn
Standard English without making it the primary goal of writing instruction. Standard
English becomes one of many language varieties made available to students. As opposed
to merely teaching Standard English, it becomes my job as an instructor to equip students
with the rhetorical decisions necessary for them to choose Standard English or other
language varieties effectively for various writing situations and contexts.

Our Program has also made the shared learning goals ﬂexible enough to account
for each of the themed Tier I writing courses taught in our program, although other

courses focus on gender, technology, or other racial and cultural themes. Many of the

42

texts that students read in WRA 125 also come from the Tier I Writing shared reader that
I co-edited, A Reader for Writers (published by McGraw-Hill in 2008), to account for
the different themed courses taught in the Program. Each text from the reader encourages
students and instructors to make connections between literacy themes in higher education
and the writing they are expected to produce. In A Reader for Writers, several texts focus
on Ebonics, African American rhetorical traditions, and Aﬁican American uses of
technology (Smitherman “Ghetto Lady”; Gilyard “Rapping”; Banks “Taking B(l)ack;
Nakumara “Cybertypes”; Nembhard “A Perspective”). The assigned readings are
designed to encourage students to think about issues related to the literacy autobiography,
cultural literacies analysis, disciplinary literacies analysis, and remix literacies projects.
Some instructors include a ﬁfth revised literacy autobiography assignment. Most
instructors also choose to sequence major writing assignments in this order, although
there is ﬂexibility for assignment sequencing. (Examples of ways to adapt each of these
assigmnents with course themes can be found in our Guidebook. Examples of each of
these assignments I designed for WRA 125 can also be found in our Guidebook.)

In our Guidebook, samples of each of the assignments I designed, in addition to
other themed-based course assignments, are included in order to provide examples for
how themed-courses can still meet the shared learning goals. The course I designed
addresses each of the shared objectives by using scholarship from Composition Studies
(and scholarship on Ebonics) to engage writing, reading, and research. In our Guidebook,
we situate writing, reading, and research goals within the context of invention, ’
arrangement and revision (IAR). With our Program’s understanding of IAR, we attempt

to move beyond the prewrite, write, rewrite process model by encouraging students to

43

examine the relationships between the ideas and practices that are created by the texts one
reads (invention), the relationship between the ideas and practices that are organized
within the text (arrangement), and the ways the writers aim to bring about change or
challenge speciﬁc beliefs and practices within a text (revision).3 Students ultimately
answer the following IAR questions (adapted from Nancy DeJoy’s Process This:
Undergraduate Writing in Composition):

1) What is Invention?

(What activities did the writer have to engage in to create the text?)

2) What is being invented?

(What ideas, practices, arguments, etc. are created by the text?)

3) What is arrangement?

(What is being put in relation to what?)

4) What is being arranged?

(How are things being put in relation to one another?)

5) What is revision?

(What is the writer trying to change (e. g. what ideas, practices, etc.))?

6) What is being revised?

(What strategies are engaged speciﬁcally to help the writer achieve the revisions?)
(71)

In WRA 125, students conduct IAR analyses of the texts they read in order to make

connections between the texts they read and those that they write. For each major writing

assignment, students are also required to conduct IAR analyses of the IAR choices they

M

3 .
For an extended discussion of Invention, Arrangement, and Revisron, please see Process This.
Undergraduate Writing in Composition Studies by Nancy DeJoy (Utah State Press, 2004).

44

employ in their own written texts, just as they do IAR analyses with the texts they read.
By using IAR as a lens, WRA 125 encourages students to critically engage writing,
reading, and research with each major assignment. While invention, arrangement, and
revision analyses are not designated Aﬁocentric, they can help students think critically
and rhetorically about the ideas presented in the text (the call), and how they respond to

what is presented in the text (the response) (more on call-response later in this chapter).

2.2 Description of Major Writing Assignments

During the fall semester of 2008, I designed four major writing assignments that
focused on Ebonics and Aﬁican American Rhetoric (AAR). As stated previously, these
four assignments were also adapted to accompany the new literacy-focused shared
curriculum including the following shared major assignment sequences: a literacy
autobiography; a cultural literacy assignment; a disciplinary literacies assignment, and a
remix literacies assignment. (Some instructors complete a ﬁfth assignment which is a
revised literacy autobiography, an assignment I opted not to include since students’
multigenre projects are often multimodal and complex.) For the literacy autobiography
assignment, students compose a linguistic literacy autobiography that analyzes their
spoken and written languages/language varieties at home and school.

In many ﬁrst-year writing curriculums, a personal experience narrative is usually
assigned ﬁrst to give students practice writing on topics with which they are most
familiar. The linguistic literacy autobiography assignment asks students to identify and
analyze the differences between their home languages and school languages, using Keith
Gilyard’s Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence and Smitherrnan’s “From

45

Ghetto Lady to Critical Linguist” (in Talkin that Talk: Language and Education in Black
America) as ﬁameworks. While literacy autobiographies and personal narratives are
common genres associated with ﬁrst-year composition courses, they are less often
assigned or discussed through Afrocentricity or sociolinguistics. Some critics caution that
a linguistic autobiography may privilege Aﬁican American, working-class, or ESL
students over middle-class Standard English-speaking students, who may ﬁnd that they
use the same language regardless of whether they are home or in school (I address later in
this chapter why assigned readings and materials that teach generally about language
awareness be included prior to the study of Ebonics). I argue, though, that this has not
been the case in any linguistically focused course that I’ve taught. In fact, because digital
language, text messaging, and instant messaging have become increasingly popular, even
White students ﬁnd it interesting to analyze the differences between the way they
compose in digital genres and the way they compose essays for school. I would also
argue that very few of our students communicate exactly the same way in school as they
do to their family and friends. Thus, discussions regarding code-switching are valuable
conversations to address with students as they produce texts and oral forms of
communication across genres and contexts.

The next assignment moves from individual communicative practices to the
communicative practices of particular online communities. For the cultural literacies
assignment, students formulate an argument regarding how AAVE is appropriated and/or

discussed in online and digital spaces.4 For this assignment, students analyze a personal

4 . ‘
Situated within the context of these classes and texts that students read, Ebonics and AAVE were also
used interchangeably.

46

website, a popular culture website, and an academic website in order to understand how
discussions and/or appropriation of Ebonics change, or do not change depending on the
website’s mode, audience, and purpose. To complete this assignment, students read
essays and articles on the use of African American Rhetoric in technology (including
Adam Banks’s “Taking Black Technology Use Seriously: Aﬁican American Discursive
Traditions in the Digital Underground; portions of Lisa Nakamura’s Cybertypes: Race.
Ethnicity and Identity on the Web; and Carmen Kynard’s “’Wanted: Some Black Long
Distance [Writers].’: Blackboard F lava-Flavin and other AfroDigital Experiences in the
Classroom”). Students also read essays on Black feminism and how visual images of
African American women are manipulated in digital environments (including Stephen
Knadler’s “E-Racing Difference in E-Space: Black Female Subjectivity and the Web-
based Portfolio” and Regina Spellers’s “The Kink Factor: A Womanist Discourse
Analysis of Aﬁican American Mother/Daughter Perspectives on Negotiating Black
Hair/Body Politics). Some of these texts are included in our reader (like Banks and
Nakamura); other texts are supplementary.

The third assignment shifts from a focus on online communities (broadly
conceived) to disciplinary communities. With the disciplinary literacies assignment,
students conduct research in academic journal articles published in Composition Studies,
and then formulate an argument about how Ebonics—based conversations in the ﬁeld have
changed over time. To complete this assignment, students were assigned articles on
Ebonics, language rights, and pedagogy between 1974 (beginning with the passage of the
Students’ Right to Their Own Language Resolution) and 2000 to read in class. These

essays were written by both African Americans in addition to those of other racial/ethnic

47

groups, thus suggesting inclusiveness of other points of view. Once we discussed these
articles as a class, students conducted research in academic journals that intersected the
ﬁelds of Composition Studies, sociolinguistics, and education. After they conducted this
research, they composed arguments that determine the state of Ebonics in rhetoric and
composition, and how discussions of Ebonics may or may not have changed over time
(Analysis of the work that students produced with this assignment is featured in Chapter
5). While research on Ebonics intersects several ﬁelds, students were given the option to
use research in related ﬁelds to Composition Studies to formulate their arguments.

The last assignment gives students the opportunity to synthesize key themes from
the course (and their previous essays) while demonstrating creativity. The ﬁnal essay is a
remix essay that asks students across Tier I Writing sections to take a previous project
and turn it into another genre (i.e., a public service announcement, or CD, etc.). For the
remix project I assign, students create a multigenre project where they take a theme ﬁ'om
one of their previous major projects and compose a multigenre essay based on that theme.
In the past, some students have used multigenre essays to compose a website of Ebonics
resources for students. Others have prepared print-based packets with handouts and

guides or preservice workshops for K—1 2 teachers teaching Ebonics.

2.3 Applications of Afrocentric Pedagogy through Ebonics

As discussed in Chapter 1, Afrocentricity is often positioned in relationship with
Ebonics in sociolinguistics and Composition Studies scholarship. Doing so makes sense
because a focus on language is critical for understanding the communicative practices

associated with African American cultural traditions. And, while I’ve identiﬁed the

4s

Aﬁicologist theories that inﬂuence my understanding of Ebonics in Chapter I, it now
makes sense to identify practical examples of how Ebonics was taught in my classroom.
The study of Ebonics as a rule-govemed language was introduced very early on in the
semester prior to introducing the major writing assignments because Ebonics serves as
the topic for each of the subsequent assignments. The following table is a summary of a
sequence of pedagogical approaches and resources for teaching Ebonics at the beginning
of the term. It includes an introduction to the study of language and language varieties
and an introduction to the study of Ebonics. What follows is an analysis of the

signiﬁcance and cultural relevance for implementing these approaches.

Table 1.1 Language-Focused Pedagogical Approaches

 

Pedagogical Approach or When to Use It Theoretical Rationale

Resource
Unit 1 Weeks l-4 Explores different disciplinary
scholarship on the
relationship between Ebonics
and autobiographical
scholarship

 

 

Unit 2 Weeks 5-9 Explores different disciplinary
scholarship on the
relationship between Ebonics,
AAR, and technology

 

Unit 3 Weeks 9-13 Research and assess different
aspects of Ebonics published
in Composition Studies

 

Unit 4 Weeks 13-16 Gives students the
opportunity to synthesize
course themes.

 

 

 

 

 

49

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Table 1.1 Language-Focused Pedagog'cal Approaches, cont.
Pedagogical Approach When to Use It Theoretical Rationale
or Resource
Administer a Language First and last day of class Permits both instructor and
Attitudinal Questionnaire students to exanrine and share
regarding students’ experiences attitudes about language and
with language and language see how they have changed
varieties
Have students watch the Week 1 Encourages all students to
American Tongues recognize that they all have
documentarys accents and speak language
varieties associated with their
own regions and social
identities
Assign students to read Leah Week 2 Dispels the myth that one
Zuidema’s “Myth Education: language or language variety is
Rationale and Strategies for better than the other; offers
Teaching against Linguistic practical resources and sample
Prejudice” from A Reader6 assignments for learning about
language awareness
Assign readings that teach the Week 3 Teaches students that just as
structure, phonology and syntax Standard English is rule-
of Ebonics (egs. Smitherman; governed, so is Ebonics
Redd and Schuster Webb;
Green) !
Contrastive Analysis Exercises Week 3 Handouts that help students
translate sentences from
Standard English into Ebonics
and vice versa and
compare/contrast the
similarities and differences

 

 

h

5
The full citation of this source is included in the bibliography.

6
The full citation of this source is included in the bibliography.

50

As illustrated in the previous table, it is necessary to introduce students to the study of
language and language varieties generally before speciﬁcally focusing on Ebonics. I ﬁnd
this pedagogical approach to be valuable because 1) it persuades all students against the
stigrnas and myths that are often associated with Ebonics (and any language variety that
differs from Standard English) by encouraging students to recognize how all language
varieties are systematic and follow certain rules; and 2) it encourages all students, not just
Ebonics speakers, to locate themselves within a regional dialect or language variety,
thereby, permitting them to realize that like Ebonics speakers, they too follow the
conventions of the language varieties of their home regions or sociocultural networks.
Later on in this chapter, I will demonstrate the connections between home and school
discourses in the ﬁrst assignment. The location of language varieties in home discourses

serves as a useful introduction to the ﬁrst writing assignment.

2.4 Applications of Cultural Relevance and Inclusion

Although this course is Afrocentric in ideology (meaning that it is centered on
African cultural and communicative practices and worldviews), 1 also believe it to be
inclusive to all people. This Afrocentric course underscores that while African American
epistemologies are placed at the center of inquiry, perspectives from other ethnic groups
may be included. For example, I include essays on Ebonics and/or language rights by
other scholars beside those who are African American (e.g. assigning Gloria Anzaldr’ra’s
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”, Leah Zuidema “Myth Education: Rationale and I
Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice”, Lisa Nakamura’s Cybertypes:

Race, Ethnicity and Identity on the Internet, all of which are included in A Reader for

51

Writers). I select texts not by the color of the author’s (3’) skin, but by whether or not I
believed their frameworks apply Aﬁican and/or African American worldviews and
epistemologies, and by how they make spaces for students to make connections between
the experiences of African Americans and their own personal experiences.

The study of Ebonics, in addition to Afrocentric curricular approaches, must
encourage students to make connections between African-based cultural and -
communicative practices and their own experiences. Doing so, may free Afrocentric
pedagogy from the separatist, exclusionary paradigm that has traditionally clouded
critics’ judgments of Afrocentricity. One of the major purposes for this project is to offer
Afrocentric pedagogy to all students, by allowing all students to contribute and share
their own personal experiences. Although the course focuses on Ebonics, students are
encouraged to use Ebonics as heuristic and inventive spaces for understanding their own
linguistic practices.

In this chapter, I wish to explain my attempts to establish cultural relevance for all
students. In theory, it is critical to include students’ personal experiences, but what does
inclusive Afrocentric pedagogy look like in practice? If Afrocentricity is made available
to all students, it is also necessary to demonstrate how all students use Ebonics and
Afrocentricity as a framework for discussing their own linguistic practices. After
studying the challenges with language acquisition for Ebonics speaking students, Ryan,7
a student who identiﬁes himself as Latino American, used Gloria Anzaldt’ra’s “How to
Tame a Wild Tongue” as a lens in one of his blog posts to look at how Spanish and '

English inﬂuence his linguistic literacy history. While data analysis and results are

7
Student elected to use a pseudonym as opposed to his actual name.

52

included in subsequent chapters, I include Ryan’s text here because it offers one of many
examples of how students who are not Aﬁican American make meaning in an
Afrocentric curriculum; the fact that students of other ethnicities can make meaning in
complex ways demonstrates the culturally relevance that Afrocentric pedagogy possesses

for all students. Ryan writes:

"We are a synergy of two cultures with various degrees of Mexicanness or Angloness. I have so
internalized the borderland conﬂict that sometimes I feel like once [sic] cancels out the other and
we are zero, nothing, no one. A veces, no soy nada ni nadie. Pero hasta cuando no lo soy, lo
soy." (Anzaldua)

At times, I am nothing or nobody. But even when I am not it, I am it. Here she is trying to talk
about how when you are half of something and half of another, sometimes that doesn't make a
whole in the minds of some people. Instead of being accepted by both groups, sometimes you are
cast away from them instead. Gloria Anzaldua's experience is somewhat similar to my own.

Growing up the son of a Salvadorian father and a white mother, I was caught in the middle of two
different worlds. Wholly one, wholly another, yet no one can comprehend that you can still be
both. When people ask me what I am, I'll tell them that I'm not mexican, but it's easier to pretend
that I am. Many people simply do not have a working knowledge of the world around them.
"Henriquez...you must be mexican. You're Irish and Scottish? But you're last name is Mexican...
Oh, your Dad is from El Salvador. What part of Mexico is that?"

I think that Anzaldua's experiences as a chicane were similar to mine. Until Cesar Chavez gave
her and her people an individual identity, she was caught in the "hispanic-american" limbo. I've
been in somewhat of a limbo too. Double standards exist with any race, and when you're more
than one race, it's more like a quadruple standard. Here at the MSU, I'm hispanic enough for them
to offer me "extra special help" because I'm from what they call a "historically disadvantaged
group". But, I am not hispanic enough to get any sort of scholarship ﬁ'om any hispanic
scholarship funds. People try to tag others with only one label. You can be white or black, asian
or native american. Anyone who tries to break the mold and branch out on their own path to ﬁnd
their own identity is told by everyone else how they should act. Anzaldua was told that her
spanish wasn't like the spanish of those around her. It was different and therefore wrong. They
just didn't realize that she wasn't " just mexican", but american as well and it was reflected in her
speech I haven't had my language corrected by anyone recently, but that's because spanish as a
language is fairly new to me.

In fact, I guess you could say it was completely foreign to me until high school. There were funny
sounding words, different names for everything, and that oh so famous spanish tongue rm'rrrroll
on each "r". Spanish was never spoken at my house when I was younger unless my parents were
talking about something secret that we weren't supposed to learn about, so when I made it to high
school, I made sure to take a Spanish class so I could finally get in on the secrets. None of my
classmates could fathom that I didn't already speak spanish. Even the teacher seemed taken '
aback when he learned that spanish wasn't my primary language. Here I was being told by
everyone that I must speak spanish because it couldn't be possible that I'm half white and spanish
wasn't spoken in my home. Turns out I wasn't hispanic enough for them, but when I tell them that
I'm going to mow someone's lawn, suddenly I'm not white enough. I don't know. I guess
Anzaldua was right: I am nothing and I am no one. Even when I am not it, I am it. Neither
hispanic, nor white, I'm going to have to create my own identity and claim it as my own.

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Ryan’s analysis is quite interesting because it reﬂects a sense of double-consciousness8
that not only African Americans negotiate, but also, one that people of color from other
racially and ethnically marked groups ﬁnd necessary to negotiate. On one hand, Ryan
acknowledges the pressure to learn Spanish because of his Latino heritage, but on the
other hand, because he is part-White, people connect him less to his Latino heritage since
he cannot speak Spanish. If we use an Afrocentric lens for understanding Ryan’s
discussion, we see tension between establishing a collective identity with a non-dominant
community and being a part of the “oppressor” group. Part of adapting Afrocentricity
ideologies also requires acknowledging “the primacy of cultural crisis in a heterogeneous
racist society” (Asante 9). In doing so, Afrocentricity confronts “all forms of
discrimination, persecution, and oppression simultaneously” (Asante Afrocentric 9). As
Asante further describes:
To put it bluntly, the suppressing of anyone’s personality, economic or cultural
expression, civilization, gender, or religion creates the state of oppression. The
operators of such systems or the enforcers of such individual or collective
suppressions are themselves participatory oppressors. What the oppressed must do
to regain a sense of freedom is to throw off the layers of oppression that result
from all forms of human degradation... (“Discourse” 650)
I interpret Ryan’s discussion as an example of how systemic oppression operates because
his cultural expression and civilization are suppressed. The fact that Ryan writes, “I am

nothing,” also speaks to a system in which oppression operates. In Ryan’s case,

8 . . . .

The term “double-consciousness” is often credited for being corned by W.E.B Dubors. Here, I interpret its
meaning to refer to the internal conﬂict that non-white citizens often have when being a person of color and
“Ving in America.

54

oppression operates in the form of the acceptance/rejection that Ryan experiences from
both Caucasians and Latinos. It also operates in a sense of problematic paternalism,
where Ryan is considered “hispanic [sic] enough to [be offered] ‘extra help’” because he
comes from a “‘historically disadvantaged group’." In this case, paternalism operates as a
type of oppression where the oppressed adopt a colonialist, “I must save these people”
attitude. And, as Ryan informs us, the oppressed also mimic the oppressors, when he
states that he is not considered “Hispanic” enough by Latino groups.

Perhaps, most importantly, Ryan’s discussion demonstrates how Afrocentricity is
inclusive of all students. When drawing on Afrocentric ideologies, we must be careful not
to position them as dichotomies, where black and white are cast in either/or terms, and
anyone in between is ignored. Such binary-like thinking can be construed as separatist
because it excludes those who are not African and African American or White. As Ryan
reminds us, “You can be white or black, asian or native American. Anyone who tries to
break the mold and branch out on their own path to ﬁnd their own identity [should not
be] told by everyone else how they should act.” Inclusion is necessary, particularly, in
ﬁrst-year writing classes, because as any writing teacher who skooled in composition

pedagogy know full-well how uniting teachers long for they students to feel comfortable

participating and contributing in classroom discourse.

2.5 Applications of African Worldviews
This section more speciﬁcally describes my WRA 125 pedagogical practices used

in the curriculum. In this section, I demonstrate connections between Aﬁocentric

Pedagogy, Aﬁican American worldviews, and my course requirements and teaching

55

practices. In the ﬁrst sections of this chapter I positioned speciﬁc examples of
Afrocentric pedagogical practices in relationship to language (Ebonics). It now makes
sense to focus on African-based worldviews as they apply to African language and
communicative practices because, “[w]ithout question, Aﬁica has the longest recorded
history of written documentation dating back forty thousand years” (Crawford 112). In
order to make sense of these values, the concept of Afrocentricity needs to be unpacked
with greater clarity.

During the ﬁrst week of class, I asked students to conduct a search on the term
Afrocentricity. Students were then asked to come to class prepared to discuss their results.
Although I did not specify which results they were to discuss, most students chose to
record results that gave a working deﬁnition for Afrocentricity, so for our class
discussion about their search results I asked students to identify 1) what Afrocentricity
means, 2) where they searched for the term, and 3) why they chose to search in that
particular place. Unpacking Afrocentricity became a useful space for introducing students
to research and academic search engines. Based on students’ searches, they gathered the
following deﬁnitions for Afrocentricity:

0 an intellectual perspective of African people;

0 a way to show Africans’ contributions to Western culture;

0 something that seeks to discover and interpret information through a different

ﬁlter from Eurocentric scholarship;

0 a worldview that emphasizes the importance of African people and culture.
The majority of students chose to search in the following electronic locations:

0 Wikipedia;

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0 Google;

0 http://www.worldagesarchive.com.
When students were asked why most of them chose to search in these locations, they
identiﬁed the following reasons:

0' Google is easy to use, and thus, very convenient;

- Wikipedia was the ﬁrst result that came up on Google; and

0 Wikipedia is a good place to ﬁnd factual information;

After addressing the students’ decisions based on their responses to the previous
questions, we discussed how different search engines and databases yield different
results, and how some search engines and databases may or may not be more credible
than other engines. For example, after discussing the results that students came to class
with, I assigned students to conduct a search again for Afrocentricity using Google,
Google Scholar, and JSTOR. From these results, my students concluded that Google
Scholar may be more credible than Google because it provides results from academic
papers, journals, books, and other publications written about Afrocentricity, while Google
displays a broad range of results that may or may not be as credible, peer-reviewed, or
evaluated by researchers. Issues of credibility become more complex when comparing
JSTOR and Google Scholar, however. Based on our searches in JSTOR, students
concluded that there is a trade off: It may be easier to ﬁnd peer-reviewed articles on
JSTOR than Google Scholar since JSTOR contains a database of mostly peer-reviewed
articles from academic journals written about Afrocentricity. Google Scholar also
contains peer-reviewed publications, but it is often more difﬁcult to exclude papers that

have not been peer-reviewed by scholars and experts of a particular discipline from its

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search results, since PDF and MS Word versions of conference papers, term papers, and
workshops are often included in Google Scholar. But Google Scholar has an advantage
over JSTOR because it yields the most recent results, while JSTOR only stores articles
published prior to a certain year. Furthermore, JSTOR only houses selected academic
journals, while Google Scholar often provides links to academic journals and databases
not housed in JSTOR.

Based on the results found in scholarly search engines and databases, students
reconstructed their own working deﬁnitions for Afrocentricity. Surprisingly, based on the
deﬁnitions for which students searched, they found similar results. Most deﬁnitions
pertained to intellectual perspectives of people of Aﬁican descent, or Aﬁi can
worldviews. I then asked students to highlight words in each of these deﬁnitions with
which they were less familiar. Students identiﬁed intellectual perspective, Eurocentric,
and most commonly, worldview, as some of these terms. Because the term worldview is
highly abstract, students ﬁrst needed to identify what that term meant for them. Most
students deﬁned worldview as a way of seeing the world, and then determined that
Afrocentricity as a way in which Africans and African Americans see the world. This
deﬁnition was still too theoretical to grasp. As a focus for the rest of the Fall 2008
semester, the class posed the following question as a lens for understanding the rest of the
intellectual work we sought to accomplish in the course: How do Aﬁicans and African
Americans see the world?

In relationship with this activity, I also want to highlight how this exercise taught
many skills associated with research practices, skills that are often taught in ﬁrst-year

writing. First, this exercise exposed students to the skills necessary to research secondary

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sources. Students had to select keywords to search terms (in this case Afrocentricity), as
they made critical intellectual decisions on the evaluation of sources. From this exercise,
students also had to consider where sources came from, and how the locations of sources
speak to issues of credibility. They also gained some exposure to academic search
engines and electronic databases. As we will see in Chapter 5 introducing students to
these databases early on prepared the way for the work they are required to produce for

their disciplinary literacies writing assignments.

2.6 Applications of Liberation Pedagogy in the Composition Classroom

Liberation pedagogy is a familiar concept addressed-in education, theology, and
Composition Studies, where we often refer to the works of Paulo Freire. With speciﬁc
reference to the composition classroom, Carmen Kynard applies aspects of liberation
pedagogy to digital environments in her African American vemacular-focused ﬁrst-year
writing classroom. In her essay, “‘Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]”:
Blackboard Flava-Flavin and other AfroDigital Experiences in the Classroom,” Kynard
invites students to “position themselves inside of a (digital) long-distance struggle for
liberation and see their writings and experiences as part of a larger liberation movement”
(330). As I understand it, Kynard’s applications of liberation pedagogy not only liberate
students to draw on Afrodigital vemaculars and linguistic manipulations pertinent in
some online environments, but also, enable students to “meet and shape [their] sense of
themselves as writers, thinkers, and social agents [where they] are re-envisioned in [a]
kind of cyberspace as constructers of and co-participants in black intellectual and

rhetorical tradition . . . now AfroDigitized” (332).

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In my own course, similarly to Kynard, liberation pedagogy is recognized in a
safe linguistic space where students are free to “let loose on what we often think of as
conventional, acceptable modes of face-to-face with you, maybe gettin in your face”
(331). In order to understand how students can freely manipulate linguistic choices,
students ﬁrst read parts of Smitherman’s T alkin and Testifyin, T alkin That Talk, and
Gilyard ’3 Voices of the Self: A Study of Language Competence (both are included in A
Reader for Writers), where each scholar manipulates—and often translates—texts from
Ebonics to Standard English and Standard English back to Ebonics. Liberation is not only
approached through an examination of required texts that address how Ebonics speaking
students and writers should be free to use their home languages (although I do believe
Ebonics-speaking students-wand all students should be given this liberty); liberation also
demands that students be equipped with the critical skills necessary to work for social
change, in this case, the promotion of linguistic awareness and diversity. These skills may
be identiﬁed through critical reﬂection on linguistic awareness, but they may also
become identiﬁed when students locate the relationships between societal racism and
linguistic prejudice. (In Chapter 4, I examine the ways in which African American
students, let loose and get down, as they style and proﬁle.)

As previously discussed in this chapter, to account for connections between
linguistic prejudice and societal racism I assigned the documentary, American T ongues9
at the very beginning of the semester. Although the documentary is more than twenty
years old, it still points to current visible (and invisible) markers that suggest that the

stigmatization of Ebonics (and other forms of linguistic prejudice) has at least as much to

9
Americans Speaking is an updated version of American Tongues that can also be used by teachers.

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do with the linguistic elements (phonology, semantics, morphology etc.) cf the language,
as it does the speakers who speak the language. Although students are encouraged to
acknowledge racism by making connections between racial prejudice and linguistic
intolerance, they may also ﬁght additional forms of intolerance (sexism, homophobia,
etc.) that similarly correlate with linguistic prejudice, or they may choose to confront
other prejudices that extend beyond linguistic narrow-mindedness.

Like Kynard’s discussion of students’ work in AfroDigital environments, as a
class, we also considered the implications for liberation pedagogy with the speciﬁc
language and rhetorical choices students were free to make in their digital written work.
During my Fall 2008 course we discussed issues of appropriateness and how language
choices depend on the genres in which we write, in addition to perceptions and
assumptions made by audiences who read these genres. In one particular class discussion
we talked about how we use language differently for different writing situations. For the
ﬁrst paper, since students are asked to compose a linguistic literacy autobiography in
which they analyze the differences between their home and school languages, we
discussed the consequences and implications for negotiating home and school language
choices. Using our ﬁrst assigrunent as a framework, we talked about the linguistic styles
used on our blogs, since students are required to post prewriting exercises and responses
to readings to their blogs. Some students claimed that because their class blogs discuss
literacy and academic issues, most of them felt compelled to use some variety of
Standard English in order to prove their credibility and ability to respond "intelligently"
to academic audiences (we complicated this notion of a Standard and issues of

intelligence, correctness, etc. in subsequent class discussions). Others attempted to draw

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on other varieties of English, including texting or digital language (that may or may not
include Ebonics and Hip Hop Language) because of the genre in which they were
composing. Since they were in fact composing on a blog, and since blogs are digital, they
argued that digital and text message language should be acceptable.

When students identify the consequences behind their language choices, they still
have to make a choice. As the CCCC Students’ Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL)
reminds us, students have the right to choose whatever languages and language varieties
in which they want to write. Part of really understanding these rights, I believe, especially
pertains to how we encourage students to recognize and make speciﬁc linguistic
decisions based on these rights. The idea behind SRTOL often stops short at equipping
students with the contextual knowledge needed to make an informed decision about their
rights, and not just whether or not they have the right to make a choice (Zuidema 667).
And as Kynard reminds us, even when writing teachers invite students to consider the
consequences behind such choices,

[t]here is often a type of binary thinking: Standard English is one side, and

anything non-English and/or non-standard is on the other side, and you simply

just code-switch back and forth between the two sides. A type of tug-of—war game
is played where seemingly different registers are easily separable on opposite
sides of the rope, never moving in the same direction, always traveling opposite.

(Kynard 331-2)

Providing students with a much richer understanding of SRTOL—as well as the
complexities associated with making linguistic choices—may serve as one speciﬁc

example of how liberation pedagogy can be applied and realized in composition

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classrooms. Instruction on linguistic freedom and language choice must move students
beyond the concept of code-switching, particularly in digital spaces where Standard
English/Ebonics binaries become blurred or less identiﬁable.

Although rhetoric and composition scholars have historically acknowledged
linguistic prejudice and worked signiﬁcantly to afﬁrm students’ home languages and
language varieties, our disciplinary practices often point to the idea that students must
still demonstrate proﬁciency in Standard English (Barbier “Reﬂections”). The CCCC
Position Statement on Ebonics (1998) states that CCCC “strongly support[s] the call for
additional research on how educators can best build on existing knowledge about Ebonics
to help students to expand their command of the Language of Wider Communication
(“standard English”) and master the essential skills of reading and writing” (par. 5).

While the CCCC Position Statement on Ebonics acknowledges Ebonics as a legitimate
linguistic system, the focus of the previous quote points to the idea that Ebonics should
be used to support students in learning Standard English.

Furthermore, in rhetoric and composition, disciplinary discussions on the
legitimacy of alternative language varieties are often framed in terms of toleration, and
not celebration. In other words, disciplinary scholarship presents multilingualism
(including Ebonics) as a deviation from the standard rather than an indication of
versatility and power. A. Suresh Canagarajah asserts that “every time teachers insist on a
uniform variety of language or discourse, we are helping reproduce monolingualist
ideologies and linguistic hierarchies” (“World Englishes” 587). Multilingualism
primarily becomes valuable when students are able to expand their command of Standard

English; other linguistic varieties (especially Ebonics), while legitimate, are positioned in

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opposition to the standard. As a writing teacher and a teacher-researcher, I ask: Should
Ebonics be used merely to support students in expanding “their command of the
Language of Wider Communication”? Can a focus on alternative linguistic varieties be
the primary goal for instruction in a ﬁrst-year writing course, or should Standard English
always be the main goal? What happens when writing courses place an altemative

linguistic variety at the center of scholastic inquiry, and not Standard English?

2.7 Creating a Shared Sense of Collective Identity through Orality in the Writing
Classroom

My ﬁrst-year writing courses also draw on the concept of establishing a
community or “collective identity” of students. When I speak of collective identity, I do
not interpret it to mean sameness; instead, I understand collective identity to mean shared
senses of intellectual and scholastic engagement. While I don’t expect everyone in the
class to agree or reach consensuses about the material discussed, 1 do believe the students
in my classes represent shared knowledge on fairness, an exposure to (and at times, an
acknowledgement of) racism, and exploration of African-based intellectual traditions.

In my courses, one critical aspect for understanding how communities reﬂect a
sense of shared cultural knowledge is also understanding how collective identity is
reﬂected by the community’s communicative practices, in this case, Ebonics. If collective
identity can be demonstrated by a community’s culturally-based communicative
practices, Ebonics may be an effective heuristic pedagogically for students who may‘not
clearly comprehend the abstractness associated with African American worldviews,

particularly when these worldviews are made so obscure in academic scholarship.

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Language is a concrete example of how shared identities and knowledge are made
transparent. Because spoken and written languages are more easily identiﬁable, I ﬁnd that
positioning Afrocentric pedagogy alongside discussions of Ebonics is quite valuable.
Michelle Foster’s study of Aﬁ'ocentric schools in San Francisco identiﬁes several
explicit examples of Aﬁican American cultural practices, practices that can readily be
applied to classroom discourse, including displays or oral and visual African-based
rituals:
The display of visuals that are Afrocentric, everyday predictable rituals, Aﬁican
American curricular content incorporated throughout the curriculum, situational
enactment (the use of classical cultural ethics as a method of classroom
management, i.e. doing maat, incorporating things that are good for Black
children, i.e. Rhyme, rhythm, repetition, and movement, and things that are good
for all children, i.e. student centered activities. (qtd. in Kifano and Smith 86)
Moreover, as Smitherman also states, in Black America, the oral tradition has served as a
fundamental vehicle for gittin ovuh. The tradition preserves the Afro-American
heritage and reﬂects the collective spirit of the race. Through song, story, folk
sayings, and rich verbal interplay among everyday people, lessons and precepts
about life and survival are handed down from generation to generation. Until
contemporary times, Black America relied on word-of-mouth for its rituals and
cultural preservation. (emphasis added) (73)
Smitherman’s discussion of orality then ﬁts Afrocentric pedagogy because through
orality students are also urged to make connections between the everyday experiences of

African Americans, the lessons faced, and means of survival. Orality also draws on the

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concepts of a collective identity and connection between the sacred and secular
(especially in black theological discourse; see previous chapter), also indicative of the
Aﬁican Diaspora worldviews. To clarify, orality is one way students explore and
understand cultural practices and values of people of Aﬁican descent. Another way
students understand these worldviews is by locating the everyday practices and survivals
of Aﬁican people at the center of scholastic inquiry. Lessons, precepts about life, and
survival are a few of many ways students may understand African worldviews.

One way that we apply oral traditions is by producing oral reports/speeches on the
work that students produce throughout the semester. For one assignment, students were
assigned oral reports to illustrate their understandings of the 1996 Oakland School
District Resolution on Ebonics and the 1979 Ann Arbor Black English Case in order to
understand the general public’s and educators’ interpretations on Ebonics and linguistic
awareness (or lack thereof). To complete these tasks, students conducted Internet
searches on both cases in order to determine how each was represented by the public,
and/or by academics on the Web. These historical landmarks were used as references for
addressing disciplinary arguments made by compositionists and sociolinguistics during
the 1970’s, 1980’s, 1990’s, and 2000’s. For the disciplinary literacies assignment
students used these historical landmarks to formulate arguments about the composition’s
attitudes toward Ebonics in the ﬁeld, and how those attitudes have changed over time.

What is interesting about this topic is how through discussions of Ebonics,
students learned more about the ﬁeld. When I ﬁrst introduced the disciplinary literacies
assignment, students completed an activity that prompted them to use JSTOR and Google

Scholar to look for sources on Ebonics and Composition Studies. To complete this task,

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students were asked to record the keyword searches they used when searching for
sources, the types of sources, they found, and any additional trends they noticed when
searching, just as they had done when searching the term, Afrocentricity. These trends
then prompted us to discuss various elements of scholarly discourse and the ﬁeld’s
discourse. Based on their ﬁndings, students used the following keywords:

o Representations of AAVE in Composition Studies

- AAVE in College Composition Studies

0 “AAVE in college”

- Ebonics Composition Studies

0 AAVE Composition Studies

0 AAVE in Composition Studies

0 AAVE and Composition Studies

0 Ebonics in Composition Studies

0 Ebonics in Composition

0 Representations of AAVE in College Composition Studies

0 AAVE Composition
‘ After gathering a list of keyword searches, students explained why they tried certain
keywords. Some students noted that Ebonics and AAVE are often used interchangeably
in the ﬁeld, and by relying on one term, they might miss key articles that use the other
term. Other students insisted that they needed to put in Composition Studies in quotations
marks to exclude sources that discuss Ebonics in other related disciplines like

sociolinguistics and education. Others indicated that if they only searched for

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“Composition Studies” the results were too broad; they only wanted sources that
discussed both Ebonics and Composition Studies.

Like the Afrocentricity search activity, the Ebonics/AA VE and Composition
Studies search activity also prompted us to discuss the different genres and conventions
associated with scholastic discourse. Students noted that the majority of their results in
JSTOR were journal articles, essays, and book reviews. With Google Scholar, however,
students noticed that books, edited collections, book reviews, journal articles, essays,
electronic resources, and academic papers were all included. With these observations we
discussed the conventions of published books, published articles, and sources that were
not peer-reviewed. Because Google Scholar results generated academic papers and
conference papers, and because the disciplinary literacies assignment speciﬁcally asks
students to draw from sources published in academic journal publications, students were
to proceed with caution and review sources carefully. One student asked if academic
books and edited collections could be included in his/her sources, since the assignment
only asks for journal articles. The student accurately identiﬁes books as peer-reviewed
publications that are also credible, scholarly sources that should be used. If students were
to make an argument about the ﬁeld, then only referring them to journals may be
misleading because it excludes book-length projects and edited collections, all of which
are needed to make an argument about the state of the ﬁeld.

Both the study of Afrocentricity and Ebonics/AAVE/Composition Studies open up
a repertoire of disciplinary and scholarly conversations about how the academy operates.
Students learned more from applications of Ebonics and Afrocentric pedagogy besides

the cultural and communicative practices of Aﬁican Americans. They also learn how

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Ebonics is talked about in Composition Studies, how things get published in the
academy, and how to do secondary research on scholarly sources. And, they became
more familiar with the various genres of published scholarship. Introducing students to
conversations about scholarship, the academy, and how things operate provide students

with glimpses of how writing is situated in disciplinary contexts.

2.8 Applications of Call-Response in the Classroom

Additional oral forms of discourse such as call~response were also applied to my
teaching practices. Call-response certainly is no stranger to rhetoric and composition
scholarship; we’ve seen much analysis of this in rhetorical analysis of the Black church,
composition classrooms, and other community literacy settings (Smitherman;
Richardson; Moss Community; Lathan) where the mergence between the spiritual and
secular is often actualized. Elaine Richardson identiﬁes these forms of call-response as
“dialogues,” which “are an attempt to translate ...ideas and philosophies into a Black
discourse pattern, call-response, for the beneﬁt of community literacy” (African
American Literacies 57). Smitherman asserts:

The Aﬁican-derived communication process of call/response. .. [reﬂects a]

spontaneous verbal and nonverbal interaction between the speaker and listener in

which all of the speaker’s statements (“calls”) are punctuated by expressions

(“responses”) from the listener [. . .] Like most other Aﬁicanisms in Black

American life, call-response has been most carefully preserved in the church.iBut

it is a basic organizing principle of Black American culture, generally, for it

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enables traditional black folk to achieve the uniﬁed state of balance and harmony

which is fundamental to the traditional African worldview. (104)

As Smitherman defines it, the concept of call-response is both verbal and non-verbal.
Because the verbal concept is one of the most visible ways to see call-response enacted,
one might easily apply this concept to requirements that students participate in oral
discussion. Going beyond traditional participation requirements in composition courses
that require all students to participate (usually through oral or digital discussion forums
and listservs), I more explicitly engage in call/response dialogue with the students
directly in the classroom in ways that extend beyond oral-based student participation,
although my understanding of call-response often requires students to immediately “talk
bac ” verbally to me during class discussions. For example, when I’m explaining the
syntactical or phonological structures of Ebonics, I may ask students, “You dig?”
(meaning, “do you understand?), and they orally (and sometimes visually) respond back.
This requires students to speak back while I’m instructing. Although there is a minimal
amount of lecturing that takes place in a writing classroom, the lectures that are
conducted are highly dynamic and dialogic.

Smitherman also speciﬁcally makes use of applications of call-response to the
composition classroom. Smitherman states: “Since blacks communicate best by
interacting with one another, they can also learn best by interacting with one another.
[Furthermore, just as] blacks aren’t passive communicators or listeners, they aren’t
passive learners” (220). While Smitherman’s discussion of implementing call-response
into the classroom focuses on the beneﬁts for African American students, I’d also suggest

that call-response can help all students see the value in dialogic interactions with each

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other. Shared learning practices like call-response can aid students as they participate in a

communal, collective educational experience. And as Smitherman acknowledges, White
(and non-black) students also need to learn about these discourse intellectual practices

like call-response and other forms of orality (Testiﬁ/in 23 5).

In A Community Text A rises: A Literate Text and a Literacy Tradition in African
American Churches, Beverly Moss addresses how Aﬁican American preachers and their
congregations make use of the call-response. Although Moss makes a key rhetorical
move by beginning with a rhetorical analysis of the verbal elements initiated in the call-
response, Moss makes another critical move by pointing out the relationship between
call—response and a collective shared identity preachers must share with their

congregation, while also establishing an acceptable ethos with the people:

[T]o be effective preachers, these ministers must simultaneously create bonds
between them and their congregations. In other words, they must build trust
between their congregation and themselves; they must build their own identities
as part of the congregation. At the same time, these ministers must show that they
are leaders worthy of standing in the pulpit before the congregation. (65)
Quite eloquently, Moss demonstrates the complexities for preachers to be respectable
authorities, while at the same time, establishing a sense of a shared collective identity and
cultural understanding with their congregations. Rhea Estelle Lathan sees an interesting
parallel between the ethos that preachers must establish with their congregations and the
ethos that teachers must establish with their students. Lathan argues that the preacher’s

use of call-response “is a complicated act because similar to the teacher[/]student

7l

relationships, the move from the pew to the pulpit tends to signal a sense of distance from

the congregation” (74).
It is also critical that Moss makes the move from the verbal to the nonverbal since

as Smitherman suggests, the use of call-response is also nonverbal. Like Smitherman,
Lathan’s interpretation of call-response extends beyond the verbal, but unlike
Smitherman’s discussion, Lathan does not consider call-response spontaneous; instead,
call-response is an intellectual act that calls for critical reﬂection of both the call and
response:
When call-and-response is situated in a particular place and time, [. . .] we see
critical intellectual work being performed [. . .] In this context, call-and-response
operates out of an intellectual tradition that connects literacy practices, meanings
and values with individual group identity and autonomy. Through call—and-
response participants deﬁne themselves while validating their collective
experiences. Most importantly, call-and-response in this context, represents a
crucial intellectual activity because it requires a considerable capacity for
knowledge (emphasis in original) (76).
Lathan critically identiﬁes the intellectual activity necessitated by call-response, where
the rhetorical act extends beyond spontaneity; for Lathan, the fact that critical intellectual
, activity is necessary disrupts the idea of spontaneity because participants must think
before they initiate the call, and think again before they initiate the response. The
interpretation of call-response works exceptionally well in a writing classroom
application: For teachers, the concept of call-response should extend beyond having

students repeat what the teacher (or caller) says (responds to). As Lathan suggests here,

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call-response should require both teachers and students to engage in critical intellectual

activity before when they call or respond.
Ball and Lardner’s applications of call-response in African American Literacies

Unleashed: Vernacular English and the Composition Classroom speak to more tangible
examples of how call-response may be applied to writing classrooms, particularly with
regard to class discussions. They indicate:
Call and response embodies an interlocking and synergistic communicative
dimension in which members of a group participate interactively by adding their
otvn voices [with] others to serve both as counterpoint and counterforce,
alternating, stimulating, and encouraging each other and receiving the stimulus of
others until a collective agreement or regeneration is achieved. In the successful
community-based classrooms [. . .] observed, students use patterns of high
interaction, personal engagement, and call and response to bring their own
voices—and to invite others to do likewise—into a complementary or even
challenging relationship with the discussion at hand so that all particrpants might
benefit ﬁ'om the power of those combined voices. (152) (emphasis added)
Although Ball’s and Lardner’s conceptual framework for call-response may readily be
applied to oral-based class discussions, I argue that like Lathan’s conceptual ﬁ'amework,
call-response can also be applied in the writing classroom in ways that extend beyond a
verbal response from students to a teacher’s directions. For example, when I taught an
Afi'ocentric curriculum for the very ﬁrst time during the spring of 2007, I assigned '
students to complete multi genre projects. The call (from me, the instructor) was to create

a self-designed multigenre essay, usually in the form of a print-based handbook or

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packet, with an Afrocentric theme students selected ﬁom the course. The response, from
many students in the class, was to create websites that included different genres
representing their themes. This prompted me to redesign the multigenre assignment for
the fall 2008 semester, giving students the option to choose whether their project would
be print-based or digital. This example of call-response moves beyond a verbal response,
since many students indicated their desires to create websites in a written proposal. Call-
response here also reﬂects critical intellectual activity: Students determined that a linear,
print-based document would not sufﬁciently capture the rhetorical moves they needed to
make for multigenre multimodal compositions. In one student’s case, she wanted to
include a YouTube video of herself with her brother show-boating on the b-ball court in
order to demonstrate applications of Aﬁican American rhetorical strategies including
braggadocio, so-called Obscenities, and signifyin. '0 A printed handbook or packet would
not permit her to do this, but a website on the rhetorical features of Ebonics with a
hyperlink to the YouTube video as an example, would. Thus, while call-response may be
an effective rhetorical strategy for class discussions, it can be equally effective for written
or composition-based intellectual activities. As Ball and Lardner also remind us, the idea
that “every teacher ultimately becomes adept at the use of call-and-response-style
interaction is not the goal. The positive, participatory environment that can be engendered

through call-response———that is the key” (153). I see this idea essential for both verbal and

10
For an extensive list of Aﬁican-based rhetorical features, see Redd and Schuster Webb’s A Teacher 's
Introduction to Aﬁ'ican American English, pp. 42-50.

74

nonverbal discourse. The idea that students are invited to participate in intellectual

discourse is the key idea for promoting a community solidarity in the classroom.

2.9 Concluding Remarks
This chapter sought to make two key rhetorical moves: one, to identify a clearer

relationship between African and Aﬁican American worldviews and Afrocentric
pedagogy; and two, to provide practical examples of how these worldviews are—and can
be—implemented into ﬁrst-year writing course design. In other words, I aim to move
from a theoretical discussion of Aﬁican and Aﬁican American worldviews to practical
applications of these worldviews. In this chapter I devoted explicit space to identifying
and applying Aﬁican worldviews because 1) limited attention has been paid to
speciﬁcally identifying the worldviews associated with Aﬁican American language and
culture, and 2) limited attention has been paid to how these worldviews become visible in
the curriculum materials and resources that adapt Afrocentric pedagogical methods.

I focused in greater detail on these worldviews because I wanted to highlight the
necessity of understanding Afrocentric worldviews in their relationship to Afrocentric
curriculum design. I believe that such a move must be made ﬁrst before one chooses to
design Aﬁ'ocentric course materials, or materials teachers may believe to be Afrocentric.
Ladson—Billings states:

Cultural competence [requires] teachers to have in—depth understanding of culture

and its role in human cognition... [M]erely providing teachers with Aﬁican and

Aﬁican American curriculum will not ensure their internalization of the

information and the appropriate use of it. Further, white teachers often believe

75

that information about Aﬁican and Aﬁican Americans is necessary to improve the

“self-esteem” of black children [. . .] Rarely do white teachers see this information

as a counter narrative to the dominant Eurocentric script [...] The real challenge

of most teachers is to recognize authentic expressions of Aﬁican and Aﬁican

American children and support them. This can only happen when teachers are

open to study and experience Aﬁican and African American culture. (193)

I wish to reemphasize the point that Ladson—Billings makes when referring to the use of
Afrocentric curriculum design in order to improve the self-esteem of Aﬁican American
students. Although pedagogy that works to improve self-esteem may be useful, especially
with writing instruction, what is more necessary is the need to not only challenge the
“dominant script,” but also, the need to encourage students themselves to recognize the
cultural and intellectual practices of Aﬁican Americans, and how these are represented in
rhetoric and composition scholarship. The way I apply Afrocentric pedagogy moves
beyond the role of teachers in curriculum design to include students.

This chapter also demonstrated how Ebonics is speciﬁcally applied in the
classroom. With each assignment, students place Ebonics at the center of their scholastic
inquiry. Students are also invited to place Aﬁican American culture at the center, by not
only examining Ebonics and the cultural politics behind the language, but also, by
exploring the ways in which Aﬁican American Rhetoric inﬂuences the way Ebonics
becomes appropriated in print, digital, and visual environments. In short, using language

as a framework, students eventually come to investigate many additional aspects of

Aﬁican American culture.

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Chapter 3

ON BUILDING A TEACHER-RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3.1 Introduction

Because I identify the methodology in this project as a descriptive qualitative
teacher-research study, ” this chapter provides a discussion of how Afrocentric pedagogy
and Aﬁican American linguistic practices are studied using teacher-research. While there
is extensive work done with Afrocentric pedagogy and language in education, Aﬁican
American studies, Composition Studies, and sociolinguistics (Asante; Kamusikiri;
Richardson; Richardson and Gilyard; Kifano and Smith “Ebonics”), limited attention has
been paid to its relationship with teacher-research. This chapter addresses teacher-
research in Composition Studies by analyzing some of the previous teacher and
classroom-research studies on Aﬁican American student writers that do exist.‘2 I use
these studies as references for describing the methodological practices that I draw on in
my own teacher—research study.

Teacher-research has contributed signiﬁcantly to rhetoric and composition’s
professional and disciplinary identity. It has also contributed signiﬁcantly to how we

understand the linguistic and rhetorical practices associated with African American

 

ll . . . . .
Although several methodologies may be assocrated wrth teacher-research (e.g. quasr-expenments,
classroom ethnographies, etc), I am interested in teacher-research as its own distinct methodology that

takes into account any data gathered from a teacher’s classroom.

12 . . . . . . .
Due to the lrmrted representation of teacher-research studies on African Amencan students in

Composition Studies, this chapter also analyzes classroom-based research studies, as both address the
Pedagogical implications for working with African American students.

77

student populations. During the mid to late 1990’s and early 2000’s Composition Studies
saw a signiﬁcant amount of empirical teacher-research that focused either on the use of
Ebonics in student writing or Afrocentric curriculum design (Richardson; Richardson and
Gilyard; Canagarajah; Ball). Currently, however, many recent works on Afrocentric
pedagogy focus less on empirical study and more on speciﬁc strategies for teaching
African American student writers (Ball and Lardner Literacies Unleashed; Redd and
Schuster Webb A Teachers Introduction, Canagarajah “The Place”). Recognizing the
need for Aﬁican American research in these areas, my work aims to shift the focus back
to empirical teacher-research studies on Aﬁ'ocentric pedagogy and language.

Of the recent empirical teacher-research on African Americans, most
studies/researchers focus primarily on how African American students adapt African
American linguistic, rhetorical, and discursive styles, or how they employ Ebonics syntax
in their academic essays, whether deliberately or otherwise. Less often do teacher-
research empirical studies address how African American students employ both Ebonics
syntax and Aﬁican American rhetorical styles at the same time.13 And, few empirical
studies address how African American students may appropriate Ebonics phonology and
syntax both strategically and rhetorically (see Canagarajah’s “The Place of World
Englishes” and “Safe Houses”); many studies, instead, focus on an increase or reduction
on Ebonics. syntactical features in essay exams (Fogel and Ehri; Richardson; Szpara and

Wylie). Even more rarely do studies in composition address African American students’

written use of Ebonics-based phonological features in expository texts since the use of

 

l3 . . . .
Elame Richardson looks at both syntax and rhetoric in the teacher-research study featured in African
American Literacies.

78

many structural features have declined signiﬁcantly over the past several decades
(Smitherman “Black English”). As a result, future teacher-research that focuses on
Aﬁican American students’ uses of phonology, syntax, and rhetorical features is still
needed.

This chapter reviews four teacher-research and classroom empirical studies in
composition that either focus on Aﬁican American students’ use of Ebonics syntax, or
Afiican American students’ use of Aﬁican American rhetorical practices in composition
classrooms in order to extend methodological possibilities for understanding Aﬁican
American students’ (including their phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical patterns)—
and all students’—writing practices. I have selected these four studies because each study
has inﬂuenced how I understand and apply teacher-research methodological practices in
my own composition classroom.

In the sections that follow, I identify the conceptual framework that inﬂuences

how I understand teacher-research, as it is situated in this project. I ﬁrst begin with a
discussion of teacher-research in education and Composition in order to provide a
conceptual framework that examines the relationship between classroom/teacher-research
and Afrocentric pedagogy. I am interested in studies on African American students that
do one of the following things: a) self-identify their pedagogy as an African American-
Centered, or Afrocentric; b) speciﬁcally study the rhetorical, literate, and linguistic
practices of African American students and analyze these with African-based
communicative practices in mind; or c) rely on additional African-based worldviews and

discursive practices to study African American students as empirical data (An extended

79

discussion of Aﬁican worldviews as they apply to Afrocentric pedagogy was addressed

in Chapter 1).

The latter sections in this chapter shift to analyses of four classroom and teacher—
research studies on African American students, as they are situated in Composition
Studies. I also choose to review these four studies in Composition Studies to establish a
clearer relationship between African American students’ writing and teacher/classroom-
research. Because my own work focuses on ﬁrst-year writing students, I ﬁnd a review of
the Aﬁican American communicative practices used in writing classrooms to be
necessary for laying the groundwork for my own study which will be analyzed in
subsequent chapters. And, by providing extended understandings of Afrocentric
pedagogical practices, I also provide additional spaces for rethinking teacher-research
methodological scholarship in Composition Studies. Thus, my work aims to extend
previous teacher-research scholarship on African Americans by providing opportunities

to include all students as participants in our studies on Afrocentric pedagogy and

Ebonics.

3.2 Perspectives on Teacher-Research as They Are Situated in This Project
Before discussing teacher-research and its relationship with Afrocentric pedagogy,
it is first important to identify the theoretical framework that guides my understanding of
teacher-research. While discussions of teacher-research may vary, and while it often does
intersect many different ﬁelds, for the purposes of this project, I ﬁnd it most useful to
discuss its relationship with education and Composition Studies. This section, then,

identiﬁes my own understandings for using teacher-research as a research-based

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methodology, a practice that I ﬁnd to involve teachers collecting and analyzing empirical
data from the students taught in teachers’ classrooms. My conceptual framework for
teacher-research is in no way intended to provide a deﬁnitive deﬁnition of the term;
instead, it is meant to demonstrate how such a framework for teacher-research inﬂuences
my own work with the Aﬁ'ocentric pedagogy and curriculum design.

While it is debatable exactly when teacher-research became a major research
methodology in education and Composition Studies, most sources agree that the 1990’s
marked a prominence in teacher-research scholarship (Baumann and Duffey—Hester;
Cochran-Smith and Lytle). In their discussion of teacher-research as a distinct
methodological practice, James Baumann and Ann Duffey-Hester identify the 1990’s as
being

marked by the resurgence and coming of age of teacher research... [This] recent

renaissance [. . .] has resulted in the publication of numerous compendia [. . .], full-

length books [. . .], and essays on classroom research. [. . .] In spite of the
proliferation of published teacher research studies, relatively little attention has
been paid to the methodology processes and how they evolve and mature...

(“Making Sense” 1)

Although there were a signiﬁcant number of teacher-research publications during the
1990’s, limited attention has been paid to the methodological implications associated
with teacher-research. For Baumann and Duffey-Hester, the focus has been more on the
pedagogical components surrounding teacher-research and less on the methodological

practices that inﬂuence teacher-research processes and practices.

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The conceptual framework that inﬂuences how I understand teacher-research
requires a consideration of its role both pedagogically and methodology, as trends in
teacher-research scholarship often address one or more of these roles. In their article
“Teacher-Research: A Decade Later,” Marilyn Cochran-Smith and Susan L. Lytle
(1999) identify ﬁve major trends that characterized teacher-research during the 1990’s,
including:

(a) the prominence of teacher-research in teacher education, professional

development, and school reform; (b) the development of conceptual ﬁ'ameworks

and theories of teacher-research; (c) the dissemination of teacher-research beyond
the local level; (d) the emergence of critique of teacher-research and the teacher-
research movement; and (e) the transfonnative potential of teacher-research on

some aspects of university culture. (15)

As shown in the previous excerpt, such trends also point to speciﬁc pedagogical and
methodological implications for doing teacher-research. From a pedagogical perspective,
teacher—research can be used to enhance professional development and school reform,
thus shaping particular practices associated with institutional programs and curricula.
From a methodological perspective, the results from teacher-research studies can
potentially disseminate beyond the individual classroom in order to transform
disciplinary and institutional practices.

Baumann and Duffy-Hester further indicate that

most [deﬁnitions of teacher-research] include several common characteristics.

[. . .] Being present daily in the research and work environment, teacher

researchers have an insider, or emic, perspective on the research process. This

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provides them a unique, situation-speciﬁc, participant role in the inquiry. [ . . .]

Theory and practice are interrelated and blurred in teacher research. It is this

mixture of reﬂection and practice, or praxis, in which a teacher’s personal theory

within a ﬁeld converge and affect one another. (2)

As noted previously by Baumann and Duffy-Hester, my understanding of teacher-
research locates it as a place where theory and practice, and pedagogy and research
intersect. If I simply categorize teacher-research as a type of scholarship that studies a
teacher’s practice, I am not taking into the account the active role of the researcher in the
classroom, as (s)he critically analyzes, interprets, and disseminates data But if I simply
categorize teacher-research as another form of empirical work, I am not considering the
pedagogical role the teacher assumes in the classroom. Also worth emphasizing is the
fact that theory and practice both drive and inﬂuence my pedagogy and methodology, as
there are speciﬁc theories of Aﬁocentricity that inform how I teach and research. Thus,
in this project, I discuss both my pedagogical rationale for using Afrocentric pedagogy
(see Chapter 2), in addition to the methodological implications surrounding my
commitment to Aﬁican American—and all—ﬁrst-year writing students.

In sum, the conceptual framework that guides how I understand teacher-research
considers the following: I) a methodological practice that is data-driven 2) a practice that
disseminates written ﬁndings beyond the local classroom, and 3) a practice that uses data
collected from the teacher’s classroom with aims to transform university and disciplinary
Pedagogical practices. Although teacher-research does range from informal observation
and reﬂection, to a formal dissemination of empirically-driven data, for the purposes of

this study, I am primarily interested in a teacher-research study where the

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teacher(s)/author(s) reference or cite their own students’ essays or other student empirical

work as primary data from their own classrooms.

3.3 Four Teacher-Research and Classroom-Research Studies: Richardson, Richardson
and Gilyard, Ball, and Canagarajah

In this section of the chapter, I shift the focus from my perspectives on teacher-
research to Afrocentricity by addressing four teacher and classroom empirical studies in
composition that either focus on Aﬁican American students’ use of Ebonics syntax, or
Aﬁican American students’ use of African-based rhetorical practices in composition
classrooms in order to identify opportunities for future work with teacher and classroom-
research. I use these studies as a framework for building my own methodology of

teacher-research on African American students. In building this methodology, I call for
extended work with Aﬁican American students’ intellectual discourse.

I ﬁrst begin with Elaine Richardson’s (2003) “Aﬁican American Centered
Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy: Theory and Research” study on how Aﬁican
American students learn about African American language and literacy practices because
it makes an effective argument for why and how teacher-research can in fact be
empirical. Richardson’s methodology is a quasi-experiment. She identiﬁes this
methodology as a quasi—experiment because the participants are not selected at random;
instead, they are selected because they are students in her writing classroom, where they
are required to attend class, complete each assignment and participate in class (98). The
students took a prewriting exam at the beginning of the experiment; and an exit exam that

addressed their attitudes toward Ebonics linguistic, literate and rhetorical practices,

84

whether students appropriated Ebonics syntax in their writing, and whether or not these
attitudes and/or appropriations changed by the end of the semester. Her primary methods
consist of discourse analysis of student texts (both syntactical and rhetorical), including
both qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis (98-100).

Richardson’s quasi-experimental study on how her basic writing composition
students work through an Afrocentric curriculum draws on both Aﬁican American
teaching, written, and oral practices. Richardson concludes that students’ ﬂuency in
producing academic writing was enhanced by creating an Afrocentric curricular approach
to teaching composition, and by allowing students to draw upon African American
rhetorically-based practices to complete writing tasks. By the end of the study, nearly all
of her students wrote or said explicitly that they saw the value in learning and adapting
African American literate and rhetorical practices in writing classrooms.

Richardson’s conceptual and theoretical ﬁamework for this study is sound on
many levels. Grounding this study in the theory of Afrocentricity greatly enables her to
address her research question as to whether an Afrocentric curriculum will help students
improve ﬂuency in academic writing. Using an Afrocentric curriculum as a focus permits
her to examine students’ attitudes about African American linguistic and literate
practices. By utilizing these practices pedagogically and explicitly in writing classrooms,
students can readily determine whether they decide to accept or reject the value and
legitimacy of Aﬁican American literate practices.

Using an Afrocentric curricular approach also raises many pedagogical issues for
what it means to adapt altemative/cultural rhetorical approaches for teaching writing as

opposed to adapting traditional forms of writing instruction that both traditionally and

85

historically privilege White middle-class students. Conducting this study enables writing
teachers to see that placing alternative literate and rhetorical traditions at the center of
composition instruction will similarly help students acquire skills necessary to write more
ﬂuent academic prose (in both Standard English as well as another language variety).
Traditionally, many writing teachers charge that if students don’t learn dominant or
traditional forms of writing, they will not develop the academic skills necessary to write
for other disciplines in the academy, which similarly privilege dominant forms of writing
and Standard English, nor will they have the communicative skills necessary to enter the
workforce once they graduate from college, despite the fact that “many of the most
successful people in the market place are running off with ﬁesh stacks of pretty little
green ones accumulated to the advertising beat of hip hop” (Gilyard and Richardson
38).This study counters these claims by examining the ways in which students are
exposed to alternative literacy practices while still learning how to write for academic
audiences that often prefer Standard English at the same time.

Along with the theoretical curricular approach that Richardson offers, the research
design itself also possesses many strengths. Including both qualitative and quantitative
instruments of measurement is useful because both support each other, thus offering a
much richer account of the data gathered rather than selecting one method over the other.
For Richardson to study the usage of Ebonics, Standard English and other language
varieties, quantitative data are useﬁrl. For example, in the pretest she can literally count
the number of times students use Ebonics syntax as opposed to Standard English. With
the posttest, she can then determine whether the amount of Ebonics syntax increases or

decreases. When working with qualitative data, Richardson can effectively provide

86

discourse or rhetorical analysis from student texts to not only measure syntax, but also,
examine whether or not, and how, students’ attitudes toward Aﬁican American literate
practices have changed over the course of a semester. The fact that she was able to draw
qualitative (textual) evidence from several of her students’ papers on their changes in
attitude really strengthens her study.

While Richardson’s data and analysis in the chapter, “African American Centered
Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy: Theory and Research,” focus on how students
employ Ebonics syntax, her study with Keith Gilyard in “Students’ Right to Possibility:
Basic Writing and African American Rhetoric,” speciﬁcally focuses on how Aﬁican
American students draw on African American rhetorical styles that are not syntactically-
based. Using the CCCC SRTOL Resolution as a fiamework, Gilyard and Richardson
begin with the following theory about SRTOL and pedagogical practice: '4

There was never a shortage of ideas about how SRTOL could be implemented

beyond a liberal pluralist paradigm, just a shortage of empirical models. We offer

one. In doing so we shift the terms of engagement somewhat; we extend the
notion of “Students [sic] Right to Their Own Language” to a question of

“Students’ Right to Possibility.” We acknowledge language rights at the outset,

and this allows us to place our emphasis on the ways of knowing and becoming

that our students exhibit—and that we help them exhibit—as they negotiate the

structure of academic schooling. (39)

 

l4 . . . .
For an extended discussing of SRTOL in relationship to Afrocentric writing pedagogy, see Chapters 2
and 4.

87

Gilyard’s and Richardson’s discussion emphasizes both a pedagogical and empirical
model for those wanting to integrate SRTOL into practice. In their study, classroom-
research becomes the methodology for which the authors aim to apply SRTOL, while
they also argue how their Afrocentric composition curriculum becomes possible through
SRTOL.

Gilyard and Richardson then describe and analyze their own study of ﬁfty-two
Aﬁican American students using the same Afrocentric basic writing curriculum
researched in “African American Centered Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy.” This
time, a panel of researchers outside this classroom looked speciﬁcally at rhetorical and
modes of Aﬁicanized discourse used in the student essays. For each student enrolled, the
panel of writing specialists from varied racial/ethnic backgrounds scored their out of class
essays.

Of the African-based rhetorical styles, researchers found evidence of some of the
following patterns existing in students’ writing: '5

0 Call and Response — Ebonics writers often ask rhetorical questions or engage in

other dialogic acts with their audiences and readers in their academic texts. A

writer may also return “repetitiously to the prompt [or written task] as a structural

device, checking for constant connection with the question or text at han ” (42).

These texts frequently elicit a response from the reader, although readers do not

necessarily respond aloud to audience members. Dig?

 

rs . . . . , . ,

While more discursive patterns were identiﬁed and analyzed in Gilyard s and Richardson 3 chapter, I
focus on these patterns because such rhetorical patterns were more commonly used in my own classroom
Practices, and found in my own students’ essays.

88

Signifying - Ebonics speakers often make use of indirection to illustrate a point.
They may “employ oppositional logic, overstaternent, understatement, and/or
reliance on reader’s knowledge of implicit assumption that is taken to be common
knowledge (shared world view)” (42). If you still don’t understand what
signifying means, ax yo momma.

Rhythmic, dramatic, evocative language or imagery - Many Ebonics speakers are
skillful at using metaphoric and other types of visual language. For example, one
student in the study writes: “Our history through the eyes of white America after
it has been cut, massacured [sic], and censored is pushed down Blacks throath
[sic]” (42).

Narrative Sequencing - Ebonics writers will often tell a story in their writing,
regardless of whether or not the genre they compose in fact is a narrative. Even
for research essays or seminar papers, students may narrate their processes.
Narrative sequencing is heavily inﬂuenced by African-based traditions of orality
and proverbial use to tell stories. It is also common in the Black Church, where
preachers narrate biblical stories in order to illustrate a main point or message for
the congregation to take away (Redd and Schuster Webb 46; Smitherman Talkin
and T estifyin 148—150; Gilyard and Richardson 42). In the conclusion of this
project, I narrate my experiences with institutional review boards skeptical of
race-based research.

Cultural values, community consciousness - “Expressions of concern for the
development of African Americans; concern for welfare of entire community, not

just individuals” (42).

89

0 Cultural references - These refer to culturally-speciﬁc “items/icons that usually
carry symbolic meaning in the [African American] community” (42).

a Field dependency -— This pertains to the idea of “personalizing phenomena,” or
demonstrating a lack of distance from various topics and/or subjects. Ebonics
speakers may often do this in attempt to establish a rapport with their audiences
(42).

Like Smitherman’s 1994 study on high school students who took the NAEP (“Blacker the
Berry”), Richardson and Gilyard found that Aﬁican American students who employed
more Black rhetorical strategies, as indicated from the examples above, scored higher
than those students who did not (45). As a result, Gilyard and Richardson concluded that
Aﬁican American Rhetoric (AAR) can serve as an opportunity for applying SRTOL to
classroom practices. Pedagogically, this study also raises implications for those teachers
who are unfamiliar with many African American rhetorical features, and may
misunderstand key arguments African American writers aim to make; they may also
ineffectively and inaccurately mark students down for using these discursive patterns. I
remember my own high school days when my AP English teacher told me to take out a
part about African Americans being kings and queens, and God’s chosen inheritors in
their own home lands because it supposedly had nothing to do with Bigger’s second-class
status as a chauffer in Native Son (even though I was using this metaphor to demonstrate
that Aﬁican Americans had no business being slaves, servants, or chauffer drivers from
jumpl). Had she been familiar with some of these rhetorical features, she might have

recognized this imagery. So the moral of the story is, if ya don’ know now ya know!

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It is also worth noting how both of the previous two studies discussed
complement each other. While the ﬁrst study focuses mostly on syntax, the latter study
shifts its focus toward rhetorical discourse, although Richardson’s ﬁrst study does
acknowledge the problems associated with reducing Ebonics only to syntax. Because
Gilyard’s and Richardson’s study is textually-based, the primary research methods are

mainly qualitative, since quantitative data cannot best analyze the richness of the
rhetorical styles identiﬁed ﬁom each student’s essay. As previously noted, Richardson’s
other study, “African American Centered Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy,” does
effectively make use of quantitative data, as she records the reduction of Ebonics syntax
features in students’ essays. Put together, both studies underscore the values associated
with recognizing Aﬁican American linguistic practices, both syntactically and
rhetorically, and qualitatively and quantitatively.

Ametha Ball’s earlier qualitative study (published in 1996) in, “Expository
Writing Patterns of African American Students” also highlights how Afiican American
high school students draw on African American rhetorical styles, while still meeting the
requirements for academic writing at the same time. Although Richardson’s and
Gilyard’s, and Richardson’s methods rely solely on textual analysis, Ball’s positions
student texts in relationship with personal interviews, thus adding more complexity to the
ways in which African American students understand their own appropriations of AAR.

And while Richardson, and Gilyard and Richardson use examples of textual evidence
from nearly their entire population of students, Ball’s evidence is limited to ﬁve texts

from four case study students attending a West Coast high school. This permits Ball to

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provide very detailed and rich accounts of how Aﬁican American students engaged in
these writing situations, and their experiences with writing their texts the her study.
Similar to many of the patterns found in the Gilyard and Richardson study, Ball
found evidence of the following discursive/rhetorical strategies used by high school
students:
0 Use of repetition;
- Establishing rapport with one’s audience (e. g. using lexical terms like “we’re”)’
o Exhibiting performance in the style and delivery of the text;
0 Using orally-based organizational patterns in school-based genre tasks (e.g., in the
ﬁve-paragraph essay);
0 Engaging in interactive dialogue or call/response with audience (e.g., “you know
what I mean?”);
0 Using common Aﬁican American idioms that assume mutual understanding of
shared cultural experiences; and
0 Linking topics through personal anecdotes or narrative sequencing. (34)
From her analysis of these patterns, Ball ﬁnds two key principles that are noteworthy.
The ﬁrst is the need to create multiple spaces for a diversity of voices, and to “[cultivate]
a desire to actually ‘hear’ those voices. Within traditional writing classrooms
exposition continues to lack broad participation of diverse voices in identifying,
constructing, and formulating the knowledge we expect all students to master” (34). The
second principle is the need to understand how African American strategies are used
strategically to promote classroom success, where teachers may actively integrate

African-based modes of discourse into the classroom cuniculum (35). For example, one

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of Ball’s participants recalls a story she wrote using many Aﬁican-based discursive and
syntactical strategies, but only received a B- from her teacher because she used the word,
“ain’t” (27). I also recall my own experience where the teacher instructed me to take out
the Aﬁican kings and queens part. With both cases, because the teachers did not listen to
these voices, and because the recognition and study of Aﬁican American rhetorical
strategies were not integrated into mainstream curricula, both students received lower
scores, hence, decreased success in their composition classrooms.

A. Suresh Canagarajah’s study featured in “Safe Houses in the Contact Zone:
Strategies of African American Students in the Academy,” investigates how African
American students negotiate their racial identities during a summer writing course
designed “to induct such students gradually into the ‘academic culture’ in order to
improve their retention rate” (174). Comparable to the Gilyard and Richardson, and
Richardson studies, nearly all (ten of the twelve) of the students in the classroom were

African American; the participants in Canagarajah’s study were all African American.
Because African Americans comprised a large majority of this course, they felt a stronger
sense of community. Canagarajah writes:

The safe houses of the African-American students were motivated by some of the
peculiarities of the way my course (and research) was organized. Being a sizable
body of students, they could develop a sense of “community” that was difﬁcult

for the students from other ethnicities in the class. Furthermore, though students
could have constituted themselves in class or gender terms to form safe houses,
the purpose of the Preview course and the curriculum I adopted heightened their

ethnic consciousness at the cost of other identities. It is possible that as I set out to

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focus on Aﬁican-American students, I may have overlooked the activity of safe
houses deﬁned according to other group afﬁliations. (175)
After describing the context of the study Canagarajah provides analysis on how
the African American students situate their academic writing rhetorically. Of the many
rhetorical devices associated with African American students’ writing and oral discourse,

Canagarajah found evidence of the following:

o Rhythmic discourse (181);

Topic association (183);

“Voice merging” or sampling/citing other voices as a connnunicative practice
(187-8);

Mimicry - employing white academic language and conventions (188);
Fronting - “a seeming conforrnism that masks deeper oppositional tendencies
[T]his practice has been historically developed by African-Americans in the face
of pressure from mainstream society” (188-9); and

0 Person-centered arguments (191).

Many of the devices identiﬁed by Canagarajah (topic association, person-centered
discourse) are also consistent with the rhetorical patterns found in the Ball, and Gilyard
and Richardson studies. With each of these studies, the researchers also draw similar

conclusions. Each calls for multivocal voices in text production, and “meeting point[s] of
heterogeneous cultures and ideologies” (Canagarajah 195), and each study calls for .
educators to make spaces for African American students to draw on their own linguistic
styles in academic writing, while at the same time, acknowledging the hegemonic

relationships that privilege dominant discourse and language styles (including Standard

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English) over other alternative linguistic systems. Perhaps each of these studies
represents different verses of the same song. Anybody wanna spit another verse at the

mic?

3.4 The Context for My Own Teacher-Research Study

Despite the richness in all four of the studies previously described, there is still
room for extended research on Aﬁican American students. And although I would‘be the
ﬁrst to admit that Composition Studies has come a long way in retarding linguistic
prejudice, the four previous works discussed still leave a few unanswered questions for
writing teachers and researchers. My ﬁrst question pertains to how these studies help
support not only Aﬁican American students, but all students. The four studies previously
analyzed focus exclusively on African American students and don’t explicitly provide
resources for those wishing to apply Afrocentric curricular methods for White students,
especially given the fact that White students typically account for the largest populations
of students in our ﬁrst-year (non basic-writing) composition courses (HBCU’s be another
story!) Not to mention the fact that Canagarajah overlooks the contributions of non-
Black students in his Preview class, a limitation he does acknowledge to be sure. But
what might White students gain from learning about Ebonics and African-based
rhetorical devices? And what happens with students who aren’t Black but aren’t White
either? What about students who don’t identify Ebonics or Standard English as their ﬁrst
language? Don’t all students need exposure to alternative linguistic and rhetorical writing
systems too? As Leah Zuidema cautions, the SRTOL Resolution and many other

organizations in English Studies stop short at encouraging all students—not just students

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of color to learn about language rights. She argues that very few organizations including
the

International Reading Association (IRA) and National Council of Teachers of
English (N CTE) devote attention to the need for all students to study language
variation. For example, while IRA and NCTE publications and position
statements emphasize teachers’ responsibilities to accept and accommodate
diverse students’ languages, no ofﬁcial statements have been made about teaching
students themselves to be accepting of linguistic diversity. Even the frequently
cited (and recently reafﬁrmed) Conference on College Composition and
Communication’s resolution Students ’ Right to Their Own Language (1974) stops
short of declaring the need to teach students about peoples’ rights to their own
language.(emphasis in original) (667)
Thus, if Afrocentricity truly fosters many of the rich literate and rhetorical practices that
can beneﬁt all students, we then need more empirical work demonstrating that such is the
case. Recall that Teresa Redd and Karen Schuster Webb note that some of the limitations
of Afrocentric approaches to teaching composition are that they don’t offer enough
strategies for non-Black teachers wishing to employ an Afrocentric approach, and there
remains very limited empirical work demonstrating that an Afrocentric approach is
sufﬁcient (99). The empirical work that does exist focuses primarily and exclusively on
teaching African American students.
Another issue that most of these studies do not explicitly deal with is how African
American students employ Ebonics phonology and/or syntax rhetorically. None of the

studies provide any analyses or identiﬁcation of students’ usage of Ebonics phonological

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features; perhaps a discussion of phonology was not included because students may have
drawn on few if any of these features. With regard to syntax, Ametha Ball provides a hint
of the implications for students wishing to draw on Ebonics syntax in her example of the
student who is graded down for using “ain’t.” But within the context of this student’s
essay, the use of “ain’t” also becomes an issue of word choice for the teacher and not just
syntax (verb conjugation), and other than that, we don’t really see more explicit evidence
for how and why African American students choose to manipulate Ebonics syntax,
despite potential consequences for evaluation, grading, and assessment. The Gilyard and
Richardson, and Richardson studies also do not clearly address how the students might
explain their syntactical choices rhetorically; however, Ball’s study does leave some
room, but she does not designate space (at least in the article) for students to account for
the choices behind syntax and syntactical usage be it through personal interviews or
expository texts. Although she gives students the opportunity to explain why they chose
or did not choose to employ African American rhetorical and idiomatic styles, from her
analysis, the students do not discuss their syntactical choices. With the student who took
out African American idioms for fear he would be graded down by his Hispanic teacher
(32), I wonder if he similarly chose not to use Ebonics syntax for the same reasons.
Although Canagarajah does provide some linguistic analysis of how Aﬁican
American students employ Ebonics syntax rhetorically (180), the analysis of Ebonics
syntax is limited to oral discourse and mail messaging, while rhetorical analysis of
African American discourse patterns (not related to syntax) is primarily conducted in
students’ expository texts. I am left to wonder to what extent African American students

may use Ebonics syntax rhetorically in formal writing assignments and major essays to

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illustrate arguments (Canagarajah does acknowledge this argument in a more recent
work, “The Place of World Englishes: Pluralization Continued,” where he argues that
Mainstream English (ME) need not be the only language appropriate for formal writing
situations). If students truly have the right to their own languages, is it possible to employ
the syntactical conventions of their home languages in academic discourse, or is this right
only designated for oral or informal discourse? Is Ebonics only appropriate for certain
informal genres like instant messaging, text messaging, or emails to friends? ls content
truly more important than form? If Ebonics be so good it’s baad, why min ’t it be used in
formal writing situations (Smitherman “So Good It’s Bad”)?

Examining the ways in which Aﬁican American students employ Ebonics
phonology and syntax rhetorically as deliberate and strategic acts are two of three major
focuses in my own work as a teacher-researcher. Building explicitly on these precedent
studies and on the tradition of teacher-research as I have articulated in this chapter, my
work is a descriptive qualitative teacher-research study that examines the linguistic and
rhetorical features Aﬁican American students perform in expository writing situations,
including the four major writing assignments offered by the Afrocentric curriculum.“5
Although I am interested in the Aﬁican-based linguistic and rhetorical practices that
Aﬁican American students use, I am also interested in how they do so deliberately and
purposefully.

A third focus in my work is the study of all students’ beneﬁts. Because these
precedent studies focus exclusively on African American students, my teacher-research

study also examines the work that all students produce from the Afrocentric curriculum.

“—

l6 . . . . .
See Chapter 2 for an extensive discussron of these major wrrtrng assrgnments.

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With all students (including non-Black participants), I am interested in what they learn
about writing, reading, and research in relationship with our Program’s shared learning
goals. My work includes non-Black students in order to offer both an inclusive
Afrocentric pedagogy, as well as a methodological argument that points to the need for
research on non-Black students’ work in Afrocentric and Ebonics-based curricula.

My study took place during the fall semester of the 2008-2009 academic year.
The class for the study was a WRA 125 —- Writing: The Ethnic and Racial Experience
ﬁrst-year writing class focused on Ebonics and Afrocentric pedagogy. Students were not
recruited for the class, but student-participants were recruited during the ﬁrst week of
class. Although students knew that they were registering in a race and etluricity-based
section of a ﬁrst-year writing course, they did not know that the course would focus on
Ebonics prior to registering. Twenty-three students were registered (N = 23), of which
twenty two successfully completed the course by the end of the semester. ‘7 Of the
twenty-two students who completed the class, twenty-one students signed consent forms
to participate in this primarily qualitative descriptive study (n = 21). A pseudonym was
requested by two students granting consent to use work from their assignments. All other
students granted consent to use their ﬁrst names.

Of the twenty-one participants featured in this study, six were African and
Aﬁican American (ﬁve were Aﬁican American and one was African); two were of Asian
ancestry, one was of Latino descent; and thirteen were of European and European

American descent (twelve were European American and one was European). These

l7 .
One student stopped attending class within the ﬁrst couple of weeks the semester. The student did not
ofﬁcially deregister from the class.

99

racial/etluric demographics add complexity to the ways that Afrocentric pedagogy has

typically been described in disciplinary scholarship (Redd and Schuster Webb). In

contrast to previous studies on Afrocentric pedagogy in relationship to African American

students, my study focuses on all students, the majority of whom are not Aﬁican

American. In doing so, I argue that non-Black students can also beneﬁt from the study of

Afrocentricity in purposeful ways.

In relationship to Aﬁican American students, I more speciﬁcally address the

following research questions concerning African American students’ writing:

What Ebonics-based linguistic practices do African American student writers
employ in assigned essay texts?

What African American rhetorical (AAR) practices do African American student
writers employ in these texts?

How do African American students employ Ebonics-based syntactical and

phonological patterns rhetorically in purposeful ways?

Essentially, in what ways does a linguistic-focused Afrocentric curriculum

support Aﬁican American students?

In addition to research on Aﬁican American students, I am interested in

examining the following research questions with respect to all students:

How does Afrocentricity accomplish the goals and requirements of an
institution’s program?
What skills, knowledge and attitudes do all students gain from the study of

Afrocentricity and Ebonics?

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o Essentially, in what ways does a linguistic-focused Afrocentric curriculum

beneﬁt/not beneﬁt all students?

3.5 Methods for Data Collection

Given these questions and given the types of students enrolled in the class, I chose
the following options for data collection and analysis: collection and analysis of speciﬁc
assignments from student texts and collection and analysis of all students’ responses to a
language attitudinal questionnaire. Many of the indicators pertaining to my research
questions on Aﬁican American students and all students were found in student writing, so
I collected student writing.

Because I am interested in looking at the ways that African American students
employ Ebonics syntax, phonology, and rhetorical features across expository texts, I
referenced African American students’ writing across the four major assignments
produced from the curriculum. When dealing with African American students’ texts, I
referenced the works of six Aﬁican and Aﬁican American student participants in this
study (n = 6).18 Of the six Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students featured in this study,
three were male and three were female. A pseudonym was requested by one African
American participant in this study; the other Aﬁican and African American students have
chosen to remain on ﬁrst name basis only. By studying each of these students, I do not

suggest that all Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students employed each Aﬁican-based

 

‘8 African and African American students were selected based on their own self identiﬁcation as a person
of African descent. All but one Aﬁican American student enrolled in this course granted informed consent.

lOl

linguistic and rhetorical convention identiﬁed later in this chapter on all occasions, nor do
I suggest that the Ebonics and Aﬁican-based rhetorical features were only appropriated
by Aﬁican and African American students. Although I found evidence ﬁ'om each African
and African American student using some AAR and Ebonics syntactical and
phonological patterns on multiple occasions, all students did not use all the patterns that
will be discussed on all occasions.

In addition to looking exclusively at African American student texts, I also took
textual artifacts from all student participants’ responses to the disciplinary literacies
assignment. By looking at the disciplinary literacies texts, I measure speciﬁcally
students’ skills and knowledge that they gain from the Afrocentric curriculum in
relationship to the Tier I Writing Program’s writing, reading, and research goals
(Guidebook 4). ‘9 Of the twenty-one participants featured in this study, twenty students
granted consent to use excerpts from their essays in the written results (11 = 20). While I
look at African American students’ work across assignments, with other students’, I focus
my attention on the disciplinary literacies assignment. This is because I believe the
disciplinary literacies assignment to be the best assignment for illustrating the work that
students can do with each of the writing, reading, and research goals of the course. The
disciplinary literacies assigrnnent represents some students’ most complex work, and
because it was completed later in the term, there was greater improvement in comparison
to the ﬁrst two assignments. Thus, I wanted to assess their best work in relationship to the

leaming goals. To recap, this assignment asks students to research journal articles in

l9 .
While the term knowledge is abstract, I speciﬁcally understand students’ knowledge in terms of the
trends that they discuss and identify in disciplinary conversations on Ebonics.

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Composition Studies and make an argument about how the ﬁeld deals with Ebonics.
Completing this assignment then requires an understanding of research practices, and
processes, in addition to writing and reading processes, since students must critically
locate, evaluate, interpret, and write about the articles they ﬁnd on the subject.

Additional indicators regarding students’ attitudes and beneﬁts from the
curriculum were found by posing speciﬁcally-targeted questions to all students. For
these, I designed a language attitudinal questionnaire to assess students’ attitudes toward
Ebonics in order to chart students’ progress toward negative perceptions of Ebonics. On
the ﬁrst day of class students were asked to take a language attitudinal questionnaire,
both as a participatory requirement for the course, and as a component for the teacher-
research study. The same questionnaire was administered to students on the last day of
class in order to see how students’ knowledge and attitudes have changed over the course
of the semester. Of the twenty-two students completing the class, seventeen students took
both the pre and post language attitudinal questionnaires (n = 17). Results are only

included and analyzed for those students who took both the pre and post questionnaire.

3.6 Procedures for Data Analysis

To address questions related to African and Aﬁican American students, I rely on
textual artifacts ﬁom African and African American students’ four major writing
assignments because I am interested in exploring the ways that African and Aﬁican
American students draw on Ebonics and AAR across different assignments, genres, and
writing situations. I position sociolinguistic and rhetorical scholarship in relationship with

the assignments used in the curriculum in order to examine their knowledge and

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execution of such practices. In reference to Ebonics and AAR scholarship, I employed
the following processes when looking across Aﬁican and Aﬁican American student texts:
I) I identiﬁed the most common Ebonics-based phonological, syntactical and rhetorical
patterns; 2) I read through each African and African American student’s essay sentence
by sentence; 3) I put excerpts from these sentences into those categories corresponding to
the most common African-based phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical patterns; 4) I
selected the clearest examples of each of these patterns for me as a researcher to identify;
and 4) I provided closer readings of texts based on these patterns that I found to be
especially meaningful as a teacher-researcher.

When identifying the phonological and syntactical patterns I reference Lisa Green
(“What is Aﬁican American English”) and Geneva Smitherman (Talkin and Testijjzr'n).
Based on this scholarship, the following is a summary of the most common phonological
patterns that I sought to code from student texts: I) the absence of ﬁnal consonant where
in ’ or /in/ is used for tag;20 the initial voiced /th/ sound being written as the /d/ sound; 2)
the absence of the middle and ﬁnal consonants; 3) contraction of going to being
pronounced as gon '; and 4) the vowel plus /ng/ is rendered as /ang/.

In T alkin and Testzﬁtin: The Language of Black America, Smitherman states: “In
linguistic environments where the initial th sound is voiceless, it is pronounced the same
way as in white speech, as in thought, which is always thought (not dought), or thing,

which is thing, or more usually thang (not ding or dang)” (l 7). In addition, the vowel

plus /ng/ in thing, for example, is rendered as thang. The ang sound as opposed to the ing

 

20 . . . .

While other varieties of English (including Southern White English and Appalachian English) also dr0p
the g in the /ing/ sound, what is distinctive for Ebonics speakers is that most ﬁnal consonants are absent,
whereas the g is the only ﬁnal consonant dropped in other varieties of English.

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lspﬁlu

sound pattern used in students’ texts also consistently follows the phonological
conventions associated with Ebonics. With the case of /ing/, in many cases, the ﬁnal
consonant /g/ is absent, and /in/ (or in ’) is used instead (17). In her overview of the
Ebonics phonological rules, Lisa Green ﬁrrther states that
AAE [African American English] speakers produce t and f (voiceless) sounds in
environments where voiceless th occurs in other varieties of English but produce

d and v (voiced sounds) in environments where voiced th occurs in other varieties

of English. Also, AAE speakers often produce the d sound at the beginning of a

word where voiced th occurs in other varieties of English (cf. dese and these), but

they usually produce voiceless th sounds at the beginning of all words in which it

occurs in other varieties of English. (86)

When dealing with syntax I coded for the following most cormnon Ebonics-based
syntactical patterns that existed across African American students’ texts: I) the presence
of zero copula 9;“ 2) the use of the habitual be verb; 3) zero 5 form in subject agreement
and/or verb conjugation; and 4) the use of multiple negation. When identifying the rules
governing Ebonics sentence patterns, several sources in sociolinguistics and rhetoric and
composition have written extensively on the presence of the zero copula (a) and habitual
be verb rules. In brief, the zero copula (0) refers to the absence of any conjugation of the

verb to be (e. g. “he skinny”). The habitual be verb refers to conditions where the action

 

2' I acknowledge linguistic debates concerning whether or not certain phonological and syntactical, features
were deleted or absent in Ebonics. Some linguists argue that the deletion of certain sound patterns or
syntactical structures implies that these patterns were dropped from the English language, while those who
posit these patterns as absent, argue that since Ebonics is not derived from English, such patterns (including
the zero copula) could never have been dropped, and therefore are simply absent (Smitherman “Dat

Teacher”). Because I subscribe to the Africologist theory of Ebonics (see chapter 2), I choose to use the
term “absent”.

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occurs habitually (e. g. “I be analyzing data” which means, “I analyze data on a
continuous basis”) (Smithermanl 9). When dealing with multiple negations in sentences,
Smitherman states the rule very simply: In Ebonics, “if the statement consists of only one
sentence, negate every item. ..” (T estijfyin 31)

When identifying the rhetorical patterns, I reference several of the works of AAR
reviewed previously in this chapter (Richardson and Gilyard; Ball; Canagarajah), in
addition to some scholarship referenced in Smitherman’s most recent book, Word from
the Mother: Language and African Americans. Using these works as references, I then
looked for and identiﬁed similar patterns that were used in my six African and Aﬁican
American students’ four major writing assignments and compiled a list of the most
common rhetorical patterns. They include: I) the use of ﬁeld dependency or person-
centered arguments, which pertain to the idea of “personalizing phenomena” (Gilyard and
Richardson; Canagarajah); 2) identifying shared cultural values of community
consciousness (Gilyard and Richardson; Ball); 3) the use of mimicry where African
American students employ white academic language and conventions (Canagarajah;
Gilyard and Richardson); and 4) the use of imagery and provocative language (Gilyard
and Richardson). There were occasional uses of signifying (Gilyard and Richardson).

After my initial coding of Aﬁican American students’ texts, I identiﬁed examples
of the Ebonics-based patterns, the students who used them, and the essays in which
students employed them. On many occasions, there were multiple uses of various
Ebonics phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical patterns within the same sentence or
excerpt from African and Aﬁican American students’ texts. Such passages with multiple

uses that I found particularly meaningful as a researcher, and those passages that I found

106

to have signiﬁcant implications for composition teachers, I chose to analyze more
extensively. Once the patterns were identiﬁed, and examples were recorded, I provided
rhetorical analysis of particular students’ texts to speak to the ways that writing teachers
may learn and beneﬁt from the discussion and implementation of Afrocentricity and
Ebonics.

The following is example of a student text where I coded for multiple uses of
Ebonics phonological, syntactical and rhetorical patterns. The student text is a poem that

was included in the ﬁnal multigenre project. She writes:

Hey how y’all doin

Dey be some great thangs happenin

I learned Ebonics in ma WRA class
Now, I be speakin it like crazy

Do you wanna try it out?

It be fun, trust me

Although ma teacher be interesting
She goofy wit dose projects sometimes
Dey be fun though

It be killin me so bad

With this particular excerpt, I coded line-by-line as opposed to sentence-by-sentence,
since the genre in which the student writes is a poem. In the ﬁrst line, I coded “doin” as a
phonological feature where /in/ is used for ing. In the second line [“Dey be some great
thangs happenin”], multiple Ebonics-based phonological features are present. The student
ﬁrst substitutes the /d/ sound for the /th/ sound in “dey.”. Next the vowel plus /ng/ in
thing, for example, is rendered as thang. And, she also substitutes the /in/ for /ing/ in
“happenin” again. With regard to syntax, she makes use of the habitual be verb when she
writes, “be some great thangs happenin.” The next line does not include any apparent
Ebonics-based phonological, syntactical, or rhetorical patterns. The fourth line includes

the habitual be verb again when she writes, “Now, I be speakin it like crazy.” The ﬁfth

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line doesn’t include any apparent Ebonics-based patterns again, and the sixth and seventh
lines employ the habitual be verb when she writes, “It be funny” and “Although ma
teacher be interesting.” The eighth line is one of a few occasional examples of signifying,
an Aﬁican American rhetorical pattern that employs an “oppositional logical” or
“reliance on reader’s knowledge of implicit assumption that is taken to be common
knowledge” (Gilyard and Richardson 42). The student signiﬁes when writing, “she
goofy,” when she makes reference to the instructor’s (me) “goofy” demeanor. Such a
reference assumes that readers are familiar with either the individual teacher’s disposition
in the class or the disposition of nerdy or goofy English/composition teachers in general.
The ﬁnal two lines include additional incorporations of the habitual be [e. gs “dey be fun
though” and “It be killing me so bad. . .”, and the next to last line substitutes the /d/ sound
for the /th/ sound when she writes, “dey be fun. . .”. Using an example such as the
previous student’s demonstrates the ways that my students execute multiple Ebonics-
based patterns in a given passage on multiple occasions. The execution of Ebonics-based
patterns can further be identiﬁed as a writing skill that demonstrates the student’s ability
to engage both Ebonics and Standard English in writing situations that she deems
appropriate.

To determine how African American students employ such Ebonics-based
patterns rhetorically and deliberately, I also rely on textual artifacts of students’ essays. I
chose to look at texts as opposed to merely interviewing students and asking them about
their linguistic choices because I wanted to see how students acknowledge and execute
these patterns through the act of writing, and within the context of their own essays. Such

a move demonstrates complex intellectual skills and knowledge that not only shows that

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students have learned the structural and rhetorical features of Ebonics, but also suggests
that they know how and when to apply them for contexts that they determine are most
appropriate. I look for students’ explicit reference and identiﬁcation of such
phonological, syntactical, and/or rhetorical patterns in their own writing. For example,
later on in the previous student’s poem, she writes: “It was very important/Learnin about
de history/Rhetorical features of AAVE/F0 example: check dis out/Beyoncé be braggin
dat /She no longer a single lady.” The student not only directly addresses rhetorical
features, but also demonstrates her ability to apply them when she provides an example
of Beyoncé and braggadocio (Redd and Schuster Webb). She also makes a cultural
reference to Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” song by saying that Beyoncé is no longer single
herself (she recently married rapper Jay~Z), thus illustrating the cultural knowledge that
members of the African American community and her generation share with music. (This
poem will be analyzed with greater detail in the next chapter.)

Another way that I coded for students’ use of Ebonics rhetorically is by looking at
the ways that they style shift in their own essays. If they switched back and forth between
different styles and phonological and syntactical patterns, and explained the purposes for
doing so, I interpreted their use of Ebonics to be a deliberate and rhetorical act. Consider

the following example:

We’ve all seen comedy sketches that point out the one African American who works in the ofﬁce
building among his white coworkers. After a board meeting, everyone starts slapping high ﬁves
giving pats on the back and say encouraging things like “Good job” and “Way to go.” When the
congratulations get to the lone African American in the ofﬁce his coworkers switch to Ebonics and
say things like “Dats what I’m talkin’ bout, brotha,” as if he doesn’t understand Standard English.

When the student writes, “Dats what I’m talkin’ bout, brotha,” he does so deliberately

and purposefully in order to show that necessities of being able to code-switch between

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Ebonics phonology, general words and phrases, and Standard English. Thus, when
students use Ebonics rhetorically, they understand the situations that they identify as
requiring Ebonics for certain conununicative circles, where they feel it to be accepted and
appropriate. Such purposeful decisions are oﬁen applied explicitly in their essays.

In contrast to the system used to code Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students’
texts, a different system of coding was used when dealing with students’ disciplinary
literacies texts. When reading students’ disciplinary literacies essays, I coded for
common themes across students’ responses to the state of Ebonics in the ﬁeld. With both
Aﬁican American students’ essays and all students I wanted to see what writing practices
students gained and identiﬁed through expository texts. The differences between looking
at African American students’ texts and all students’ texts exist in the writing contexts
that I was interested in examining as executions of those practices. With African
American students’ texts I wanted to see how they engaged writing practices across
assignments. With all students, I wanted to investigate the ways in which they engaged
writing practices with one speciﬁc assignment in relationship to my institution’s
programmatic goals.

The themes that I identiﬁed are the most common ones discussed in students’
disciplinary literacies essays. More speciﬁcally, the themes that I coded for were: 1)
identiﬁed strengths and weaknesses of the CCCC SRTOL) Resolution; 2) an
acknowledgment of explicit pedagogical and curricular approaches used for
implementing Ebonics; 3) the continued demand for changes in teachers’ attitudes
regarding Ebonics; 4) identiﬁcation of disciplinary progess and the need for more

progress; and S) identiﬁcation of research methods and methodologies used to study

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Ebonics. Common themes in students’ responses will speak to the skills, knowledge, and
attitudes that students gain and identiﬁed through the investigation of Ebonics. The
disciplinary literacies assignment is then intended to measure students’ knowledge and
attitudes about Ebonics, in addition to their knowledge and attitudes about Composition
Studies. The ways in which they discuss both Ebonics and the ﬁeld will be used to
measure particular writing and research related skills. Such ﬁndings will be used to
identify the beneﬁts and limitations of the Afrocentric approach used to teach about
Ebonics, the ﬁeld, and, in essence, writing.

Based on all the students who granted me permission to cite evidence from their
disciplinary literacies essays, I was able to code each student’s response into one or more
of the aforementioned categories. For each theme I referenced a few examples in order
demonstrate and analyze the ways that students talk about Ebonics in the ﬁeld. Based on
students’ discussions, I then noted strengths and areas for improvement in their responses
in order to assess the relationship between their own work and the shared learning goals.
For example, a student who stated that there are limited explicit pedagogical strategies
included in the CCCC SRTOL document, but did not provide any evidence or citations of
this, shows that particular research skills and processes are lacking. Or, a student who
frequently incorrectly cited a source in MLA or another citation system, demonstrates
that while the student understands “the logics and uses of citation systems and
documentation styles,” they have demonstrated limited proﬁciency in “at least one

citation system” (Guidebook 4). Such examples reveal the skills that students are most

proﬁcient at, and those skills that require improvement.

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Consider the following example of how I coded a theme ﬁ'om a student’s text and
assessed their work in relationship to the shared learning goals. The student writes:

Year after year, more and more journals are popping up about the composition studies ﬁeld and
the analysis of what needs to be done for all students to be receiving equal opportunity education
and competing against each other in the same level. [. . .] Writing a paper for a required college
class, which focuses mainly on AAVE, and learning about its rhetorical and linguistic features, it

is clear that there has deﬁnitely been improvement on appropriation of this English variety since
the I970s...

The central idea in the previous excerpt is that progress has been made in the ﬁeld
concerning the study of Ebonics though more “work needs to be done for all students to
be receiving equal opportunity education and competing against each other in the same
level.” Therefore, I place this excerpt into the identiﬁcation of disciplinary progress and
the need for more progress category. What is missing from this paragraph (and the rest of
the essay) is a detailed discussion of what this progress looks like, and speciﬁc areas for
making more progress. In relationship to the shared learning goals that discuss writing
and research processes, I conclude that although the student can identify and locate
particular themes, improvement is needed in his/her ability to “apply methods of inquiry
and conventions to generate new understanding” (Guidebook 4). In other words, the
student simply summarizes key ﬁndings in the ﬁeld but builds limited knowledge since
solutions for additional progress are not offered. She indicates that she has learned a lot
from the research process when she writes: “Writing a paper for a required college class
[. . .], it is clear that there has deﬁnitely been improvement” but doesn’t really specify the
new knowledge that (s)he has learned or generated.
When dealing with student texts, my coding procedures were strictly qualitative;

in contrast, when looking at all students’ attitudes concerning Ebonics in the language

attitudinal questionnaire, I relied primarily on quantitative analysis although some

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qualitative elements are included. Qualitative data require students to write open-ended
responses regarding their attitudes toward Ebonics. I perceived students who saw Ebonics
as acceptable for particular communicative contexts as having more favorable attitudes
toward the appropriateness of language, and those who viewed Ebonics as unacceptable
as having less favorable attitudes toward the appropriateness of the language. For
example, if a student writes, “If the teachers [sic] ok with it then I think it’s totally ﬁne,”
the student is perceived as having a positive reaction toward the apprOpriateness of
Ebonics. In short, each method of data collection, student texts and the language
attitudinal questionnaire, examines the skills, knowledge, and attitudes of ﬁrst-year
writing students in an Afrocentric curriculum. Each is critical because they demonstrate
students’ ability to execute particular writing skills, their ability to make sense of those
skills being/not being executed, and the relationships that exist between accomplishing
the writing skills designated by the institution’s program and using a specialized non-
traditional Ebonics-based approach to teach those writing skills. If Ebonics is used as a
heuristic for teaching writing, then attitudes toward the language must also be addressed.
Quantitative results from both pre and post questionnaires were also tallied to count
the number of students who had more or less favorable attitudes toward the
appropriateness of Ebonics at the beginning and end of the course. Quantitative-speciﬁc
questions ask students to rate the appropriateness of speakers and writers using Ebonics
in particular contexts, with 1, being not appropriate at all; 2, being somewhat appropriate
(but not deﬁnitely appropriate); 3, being deﬁnitely appropriate (but not extremely

appropriate); and 4, being extremely appropriate. If students rated the use of Ebonics as a

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I, then they were perceived as having less favorable reactions toward the appropriateness

of Ebonics. Questions three and four request that students use this rating system:

3. Read the following passage and respond to the set of questions following this passage:

Derrick is a fellow student in your English composition class.22 When the instructor
asked for Derrick’s response to a required reading, Derrick replied: “I ain’ really get da
gist of t. I mean de author just be goin’ round and round in circles; be kinda be sayin’ da
same thang over and over. It just don’ make no kind of sense to me.”

In the series of questions below, 1) circle the number which most closely corresponds to your

reaction, and 2) explain your responses.
KEY: I-not appropriate at all; 2-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely

appropriate
1. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:

2. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class.

I 2 3 4
Explain:

3. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:

4. Listen to the following audio recording and respond to the following questions:
KEY: l-not appropriate at all; 2-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely

appropriate
1. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:

2. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class:

1 2 3 4
Explain:

3. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:
1 2 3 4

 

22 . . . . . . . .
Students may interpret this question to mean in the WRA 125 course, or in any given composrtron
classroom.

23 . . .
Because some speakers may have different attitudes toward spoken and written Ebonics, an audio-taped
version of the text written in the previous question was recorded for students to listen to in order to see if

any attitudes toward the spoken and written texts differed.

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Explain:

In sum, the questionnaire is intended to measure all students’ attitudes about

Ebonics at the beginning and end of the course. I draw on these questions to assess

students’ knowledge of, and attitudes toward, Ebonics at the begimring and end of the

course. I wanted to see how what students have learned about Ebonics at the end of the
course inﬂuences both their own writing skills and styles, in addition to their favorable or
less favorable attitudes toward the language. I included the data collection and analysis
in addition to student texts because the questionnaire provides a more direct and concrete
accounting for what students know at the beginning of the semester, and what they
learned by the end of the semester. Such a method is intended to show the beneﬁts of

Afrocentricity for all students.

3.7 Conclusion
This chapter situates my own work with teacher-research within the context of
four previous classroom and teacher-research studies on Aﬁican American students.
Based on these four studies I have found a limited focus on the use of Ebonics
phonological and syntactical patterns strategically and rhetorically, in addition to the
focus being only on African American students. I extend these composition teacher and
classroom-research studies by 1) also including a discussion of phonology and African
and African American students’ uses of Ebonics phonology and syntax purposeﬁilly, and
2) including data from non-Black students that point to how they might beneﬁt also from

Afrocentric pedagogy. The next chapter provides data results of African and Aﬁican

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American students’ work with the Afrocentric curriculum; the following chapter provides

results from all students.

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Chapter 4
HOW AFRICAN AND AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDENTS

BE WRITIN’

4.1 Introduction

As discussed in Chapter 3, many teacher and classroom-research studies on
Aﬁican American students focus either on how students employ Ebonics-based
syntactical features or on how students employ Ebonics-based rhetorical features in
student writing. More recently, however, research has focused on the use of Aﬁican-
based rhetorical patterns (Richardson and Gilyard; Ball; Canagarajah), since the use of
Aﬁican American students’ Ebonics-based syntactical features has declined over the past
decades (Smitherman “Black English”). Previous research on Aﬁican American students’
ability to draw on Aﬁicanized patterns in expository writing often focuses on writing that
is performed in limited contexts including essay exams (Gilyard and Richardson; Fogel
and Erhl; Smitherman), email/digital textural genres (Canagarajah “Safe House”; Kynard
“Wanted”); or creative writing-based assignments (Ball “Expository”). This study
focuses on writing performed across assignments that require a diversity of contexts,
genres, and writing situations. Based on the research gathered from my students,
however, I argue that l) Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students draw upon Ebonics-
based syntactical, phonological, and rhetorical patterns in appr0priate and purposeful
ways, and 2) their ability to employ Ebonics phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical
patterns across different genres and assignments speaks to their rhetorical sophistication.

In other words, in ways that expand ﬁndings from previous studies, I argue here that

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Aﬁican and African American students can leverage both the structural and rhetorical
features of Ebonics and then use them across multiple contexts, genres, and writing
situations.

To build on this argument, I ﬁrst provide discussion and analysis of the ways in
which Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students manipulate Ebonics structural features
(including phonology and syntax) in highly purposeful ways across different writing
assignments and writing situations.24 Following this, the second section of this chapter
highlights the ways that African American students manipulate phonology and syntax in
their multi genre essays. In doing so, I illustrate the complexities associated with African
and Aﬁican American students’ abilities to negotiate particular linguistic choices across
the different genres and writing situations present in the same writing assignment.
Following the second section, I show how Aﬁican and African American students
employ Ebonics rhetorical patterns across different writing assignments and contexts. To
provide more depth to the discussion, the ﬁnal section shows how one particular student
strategically employs Ebonics phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical features in a
disciplinary literacy research assignment. His ability to execute each of these features in a
literature review-focused research paper on Ebonics and rhetoric and composition
scholarship speaks volumes to the ways that Ebonics-based practices become executed in
expository writing. In essence, what this chapter says about Aﬁican and African
American student-writers is that they are capable of using Aﬁicanized forms of
expression in situations that often have not been understood as appropriate, and that such

forms of expression can be used successfully across writing situations and genres where

24 .
See Chapter 2 for an extended discussion of these assrgnments.

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students have typically not been shown as successful when using Ebonics in these

situations.

4.2 Structural Features of Ebonics: Students’ Africanized Phonological and Syntactical
Patterns

When Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students employ Ebonics phonological and
syntactical features, they often do so for self-identiﬁed purposes, purposes that I interpret
as the strategic and rhetorical manipulation of Ebonics phonology and syntax. I focus ﬁrst
on phonology in this section because limited scholarship in rhetoric and composition
directly analyses the ways that African American students use Ebonics phonological
patterns; most studies focus on either African American students’ use of Ebonics syntax
(Richardson; Smitherman “Black English; Fogel and Ehrl), or African American
students’ use of Ebonics rhetorical patterns (Ball; Canagarajah; Richardson and Gilyard).
As discussed in Chapter 3, I focus on the following Ebonics-based phonological patterns:
The absence of ﬁnal consonants in sound clusters; the initial voiced /th/ sound being
pronounced as the /d/ sound; the absence of the middle and ﬁnal r; the contraction of
going to being pronounced as gon '; and the vowel i plus /ng/ sound being pronounced as
/ang/.

In my analysis, I also focus on the following Ebonics syntactical features: the
presence of zero copula (a); the presence of the habitual be verb; the use of the third
person singular verb form; and the presence of double or multiple negation. By
identifying and analyzing both phonological and syntactical features, I demonstrate the

ways that African American students employ these features across writing assignments

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III-illrllluu

and contexts, and the purposes that they identify for employing such features. Such a
move illustrates sophisticated familiarity with these Ebonics~based features, in addition to
students’ profound ability to execute Ebonics patterns for different purposes and contexts.
Furthermore, such purposes that students identify for executing particular Ebonics
phonological and syntactical patterns include examples where students want to convey a
speciﬁc idea or phenomenon; to deﬁne a speciﬁc word, phrase or idea; to illustrate
examples of code-switching; or to execute, identify, and/or analyze the genres that
students determine necessary for using Ebonics phonology and/or syntax.
Uses of Ebonics Phonology and Syntax to Convey a Speciﬁc Idea or Phenomenon

On many occasions, African American students rely on Ebonics phonological
and/or syntactical patterns to help illustrate a speciﬁc point or idea. Such choices
demonstrate the purposefulness associated with employing these patterns strategically.
The following examples from Marquise’s writing illustrate the ways in which students
often use Ebonics phonological and/or syntactical patterns in to illustrate speciﬁc points
and ideas.25 These examples are used by Marquise across three different writing
assignments. The assignments in which the patterns were used are provided and

identiﬁed in parenthesis:

 

25As addressed in Chapter 3, six African and African American students participated in this studyfl‘hese
participants are identiﬁed by the following names: Marquise, Bola, Candace, Jordan, Marcus, and
Antonice. Bola is African; all other students are African American. One student, Marquise, is identiﬁed by
pseudonym. All other students are identiﬁed by ﬁrst name. Each participant in this study employed one or
more Ebonics structural and/or rhetorical/discursive patterns in written essay assignments. Thus, excerpts
Of particular patterns from students’ texts will be identiﬁed by students’ ﬁrst names.

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Marquise:

”Why yall make it so hard to undastand my talkin, " is what my grandfather always says when the
younger family members tilt their heads, lost in conﬁrsion when having a conversation with him.
(Literacy Autobiography Assignment)

The thing about that, people, whether it’s family or complete strangers, lack patience to analyze
my unique form of speech. For example, I might use AAE pronunciations along with formal
English, like when I speak to my mother, I may say, “momma, what sto’ do you be getting
groceries from?” (Literacy Autobiography Assignment)

“U need to shut yo big head up befo’ I come do it 4 ya!” is something that my ﬁiend Kiaira would
tell me when I scold her excessive partying. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

The world has become so standardized that even as I type, I am being criticized for my use of
grammatical features (dis freakin’ spell check is irritatin’). (Disicplirrary Literacies Assignment)
For example, if I were to write a statement once in Standard English (SE) and also in AAVE,
which would the general audience respond to more quickly? The SE form of the statement without
a doubt! Here is an example:

We always be ova our grandma house, eatin ’ up her food.
We ’re always over at our grandmother '3 house, eating all her food.
(Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

With each example, Marquise uses multiple Ebonics phonological patterns [e.gs.;
“dis freakin spell check is irritatin ’”; “We always be ova our grandma house”] (where the
/ing/ is rendered as /in/ and the /o/ rendered as a); he also uses the habitual be verb [e. g.
“. . .what sto ’ do you be gettin these groceries from”]. In the last example, Marquise also
the habitual be verb, but does so redundantly [e. g. “We always be ova our grandma
house, eatin ’ up her food.”]. Because it is implied that the subject (in this case, we) is
habitually over grandma’s house, the word always is optional, and therefore, makes the
sentence redundant. Instead, the sentence could simply say, “we be ova our grandma
house.” However, Marquise is also correct in omitting the s from the word grandma to
show possession.

In each example, Marquise identiﬁes the reasons as to why the Ebonics form of
certain words and sentences is used. Marquise uses Ebonics phonology to indicate how

his grandparents sound and speak. Marquise so uses Ebonics phonology and syntax to

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demonstrate how he talks in his home language with his mother, when writing, “sto’” and

“you be gettin...” What is also interesting is how Marquise similarly explains how his
ﬁiend would write to him in an instant message using the absence of ﬁnal consonants [e.g
“U need to shut yo big head up befo ’ I come do it 4 ya!”]. The linguistic choices used in
his disciplinary literacies essay are perhaps the most SOphisticated and complex because
Marquise does not merely write how someone would say or write a text to him in
Ebonics; instead, Marquise provides a critique of how Microsoft Word often autocorrects
the spelling of certain words to make them consistent with Standard English (SE), when
he deliberately intends for the word to be written in Ebonics. To illustrate this idea,
Marquise includes in parenthesis, “dis ﬁeakin’ spell check is irritatin’.” Marquise’s
ability to manipulate different Ebonics phonological rules for speciﬁc purposes, and
explain these purposes in writing, shows knowledge and awareness of several of the
structural patterns of Ebonics, in addition to an astute ability to execute these patterns in
strategically determined contexts for speciﬁc purposes.

Using Ebonics Phonolog/ and Syntax to Deﬁne a Word, Phrase, or Idea

On many occasions, Aﬁican American students employ Ebonics to help explain
or deﬁne a word, phrase, or idea. This practice was most often executed in students’
literacy autobiographies. Because the ﬁrst assignment asks students to identify the

differences between their home and school languages, for Ebonics speakers whose home

languages they identify as different from SE, one might expect to ﬁnd speciﬁc examples
of these differences. Furthermore, because this assignment provides students with the
option of conducting contrastive analysis of their home and school language varieties,

many Aﬁican American students provided sentences or phrases written in Ebonics prior

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to translating their meanings into SE. In several cases, the students introduce a term,
sentence, or phrase, and then translate the meanings for those most familiar with the oral
conventions associated with SE (students’ uses of speciﬁc phrases that demonstrate

shared cultural understandings will be discussed later in this chapter). Here are a few

examples that illustrate this move:

Marquise:
The term “city slicker" had a close relation to the different dialects spoken by African Americans

in the 20th century. For example, when a man from a major city, such as Chicago or New York,
visited family in the south, he would be immediately ostracized by the community, based on his
appearance and his formal way of speaking. The elders would call him "cityﬁe " in which they

believe he couldn't survive without the conveniences of the city.

Marcus:
She ended up going upstairs, grabbing me by the ear, and bringing me downstairs. She told me to
grab a twitch (branch) off the tree.

Jordan:
“Was good, cuz? " was a popular phrase that was spoken amongst my classmates. I would usually
answer back in a similar style saying: “Not much. Sup witchu? " This was not the preferred style

for me, but I didn’t want to be anymore ofan outcast than I already was.
With each of these examples, the students deﬁne a word, phrase, or sentence used in
Ebonics-based discourse prior to analyzing its overall meaning. With the ﬁrst example,
Marquise introduces the term, “city-slicker” (and later “cityﬁed”), provides an example
of its application, and then explains the signiﬁcance of the term in his own literacy
history. With the second example, Marcus chooses to translate the term “twitch” (also
known as, “switch”) into the SE by putting “branch” in parenthesis. With the ﬁnal
example, Jordan provides examples of phrases in Ebonics, in addition to Ebonics syntax.
The ﬁrst phrase, “Was good, cuz,” means, “How are you doing,” with cuz being short for
cousin. (Now to be clear, the person need not be your actual cousin to be referred’to as a
cuz. This phrase originated in response to the notion of Black folk having many

biological and extended family). The next term and sentences, “Not much. Sup witchu”

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reﬂect Ebonics-based grammatical and phonological conventions. If we translate, “sup
witchu” into SE, meaning “What is up with you,” or “What’s going on,” we notice the
absence of the to be verb, also known as the zero copula. Notice with Jordan’s example,
however, he does not carry contrastive analysis out completely because no translation
into SE is provided; nonetheless, his example illustrates how students understand the
meanings of different terms, phrases, and sentences in Ebonics and SE. The fact that

students provide words, phrases, and/or sentences in Ebonics demonstrates their ability to

use Ebonics purposefully as they translate their meanings in Standard English.
Use of Ebonics Phonology and Syntax to Illustrate Examples of Code-switching
While in some cases, students identiﬁed particular terms and sentences in Ebonics
prior to explaining their meanings in SE, other students illustrate how they manipulate
Ebonics or SE in both orally and written discourses by discussing code-switching in their
literacy autobiographies. In other words, Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students
consciously write how they speak and write in Ebonics for certain contexts and SE for

other contexts. The follow examples discuss Aﬁican American students’ familiarity with

and awareness of code-switching:

Marquise:

I guess it wasn’t one of my smart moments to assume that people have the inability to adapt. Now
in my case, pe0ple believe that my speech is as formal as it can get, in which I use the exact forms
of words, as if I ’m an avid reader of Webster’s Dictionary. The thing about that, people, whether
it’s family or complete strangers, lack patience to analyze my unique form of speech. For example,
I might use AAE pronunciations along with formal English, like when I speak to my mother, I

may say, “momma, what sto’ do you be getting groceries from?” That seems to occur naturally
(Yet they say that I speak white...ok). The thing that I believe is the most funniest is how my
brothers mock my speech, but it’s naturally being mixed into their own... To sum it up, [must say
that Smitherman’s writings, as well as Redd and Schuster-Webb opened my eyes to how AAE can

be considered as an official language.

Candace:

My mother explained to me that I had to learn to use my “business voice” on my essay or report
that nwded to be turned into a professor or teacher. She explained that my “business voice” had
to sound like “white peoples voice” when I wrote papers, essays or even when speaking to people

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outside of my city. It wasn’t hard for me to ﬁgure out what “white people voice” sounded like. I
could tell the difference because of where I lived... The way they spoke when my mother and I
went shopping sounded a lot clearer and different than how people sounded in Detroit... My
mother would use her “white peoples voice” when she was talking to my doctor, the salesman in
Gross Pointe, even some of the bill collectors. I was impressed at how she would say, “Candace,
get in here and do dees dishes now” but when the phone rang, she would say,” Hello. Johnson’s
residence, Sharon speaking”. The passage in our “Reader for Writers” book hit right on the nose
when Kieth Gilyard told how his mother was a “. ..bidalectal speaker, capable of producing Black
Language and Standard English” (28). My mother was the master of that, and she often got her

way when she did it.

Jordan:
If we take a step backward and look at the situation from a different standpoint we may see where

issues may stem from this code switching. We’ve all seen comedy sketches that point out the one
Aﬁican American who works in the office building among his white coworkers. After a board
meeting, everyone starts slapping high ﬁves giving pats on the back and say encouraging things
like “Good job” and “Way to go.” When the congratulations get to the lone Aﬁican American in
the ofﬁce his coworkers switch to Ebonics and say things like “Dats what I ’m talkin’ bout,
brotha,” as if he doesn’t understand Standard English. Do you really think that the African
American doesn’t understand Standard English? There’s a possibility that he speaks Standard
English just as ﬂuently as his coworkers. The same could be said to Aﬁican Americans who
switch from Ebonics to Standard English when they talk to their waiter or their boss. There’s a
good possibility that they have an understanding of Ebonics and its rules of syntax. The delivery
of the content probably doesn’t matter as long as the proper key words are in place.

What is quite interesting about each of the previous examples is not only African
American students’ ability to identify and understand the certain contexts that require
Ebonics or SE, but also, the ways that they actually—and quite deliberately—code-
switch in written discourse. These contexts are those that they choose to identify as
appropriate or not. To be clear, the fact that students determine the contexts and situations
that require them to code-switch is not intended to suggest that for those contexts and
situations when they choose not to use Ebonics, that Standard English is the only
language variety that is appropriate. With the ﬁrst example, Marquise writes the sentence,
“momma, what sto’ do you be getting groceries from,” in Ebonics prior to explaining the
how we code-switches and translates into SE. Candace similarly writes the sentence,
“Candace, get in here and do dees dishes now” in Ebonics prior to explaining how her

momma be switchin to her “business voice.” Jordan writes, “Dats what I’m talkin’ bout,

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brotha,” prior to explaining how this sentence is viewed appropriately or inappropriately
depending on the context and audience.

What each of these examples further tell us is that 1) my Aﬁican and African
American students can use examples written in their home languages to show how they
code—switch, 2) they are consciously aware of audience expectations that may require
them to code-switch for certain situations, and perhaps, most importantly, 3) that they can
write strategically and deliberately in Ebonics as they determine which circumstances
demand its necessity. In other words, if students are expected to understand the concept
of code-switching, and if they are expected to provide examples of the ways in which
they code-switch, then such circumstances must also require them to employ Ebonics in
their texts if they are to explain how they shift from Ebonics to SE depending on oral and
written discourse. What makes the previous excerpts exceptionally rich is the fact that
these students don’t merely tell us that they code-switch in different contexts; instead,
they show us how they code-switch, the purposes for code-switching, and the rhetorical
tools and skills necessary to make the switch successful.

Use of Ebonics to Execute, Identify), and/or Analyze Ideas across the Different Genres

In many cases, students speciﬁcally identify speciﬁc genres that they ﬁnd
necessary for making particular linguistic choices. Previous discussions of linguistic
decisions addressed spoken discourse; however, linguistic choices must often be
negotiated with both print and digital genres. In the following example, Marquise offers a
different example of a conversation from an American Online Instant Messaging (AIM)
text message conversation with a friend in order to demonstrate the differences between

the way he writes at home and at school for his own literacy autobiography paper:

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Kiaira DatDeal at 10:50pm September 30
lol 0 wow...interestin lol

im sure u can ﬁnd sumbode in bubbard lol
Marquise E at 10:52pm September 30

oh thats mad funny..like akers aint hood 2

Kiaira DatDeal at 10:53pm September 30
lol it aint fa real fa real...but sumtimes i cant tell who live in bubbard and akers..we all b in both

lol

Marquise E at 10:58pm September 30

yeah they kinda mellow ova there. did u go 2 the advantage? the other two was there...
Kiaira DatDeal at 10:59pm September 30

naw i aint go..i juss stayed in ma room watched a movie and fell asleep lol

Marquise E at 11:01pm September 30

i wish i could pass out like dat

Kiaira DatDeal at 11:13pm September 30

Lo] why u make it seem like i gotta sleepin problem or sumthin...shyt i aint go to sleep till dis
momin lol

Marquise E at 11:18pm September 30

naw, u put that image in my head...passin out walkin down the street

Kiaira DatDeal at 11:19pm September 30

lol never...i b tired but not enough to pass out lol

In the previous excerpt, it is clear that for Marquise, his use of Ebonics in home
environments consists primarily of phonological features, although a few examples of the
Ebonics syntactical conventions are used. In the ﬁrst line of his message, we notice the in
(/In/) sound of the word, “interesting”; in other examples, he writes “sleepin,” “sumthin,”
“passin,” and “walkin.” Marquise also makes use of the /d/ sound for voiced th sound
with “dat,” and substitutes the a sound with words like “ova,” “fa” (for), “gotta,” and
“ma” (my). What we also notice with Marquise is the fact that he applies the a
phonological rule to sounds to which that phonological rule does not generally apply in
Ebonics (for example, in Ebonicsfo ’ would typically be the correct use of for). Perhaps
this might suggest an example of hypercorrection, where the over application of the
Ebonics rule is applied to another Ebonics rule. Although ﬁnal consonants are absent in
Ebonics, the spelling of fa should be fa to be considered correct in Ebonics, since only the
ﬁnal consonant r is absent, and not the vowel a. We are typically accustomed to
examples of hypercorrection from Ebonics students when they over apply a Standard

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English rule to other sentences written in SE. We also see a couple examples of habitual
be verb (Ebonics syntax) in the previous excerpt, where Marquise writes “we all b in
both” and “i b tired but not enough to pass out”. Marquise’s examples are unique because
while they make use of the habitual be verb, the spellings of be (b) are consistent with the
conventions of text messaging/digital language. Thus, Marquise’s use of Ebonics
phonological and syntactical patterns are complicated by the fact that he also employs
linguistic patterns consistent with digital language, a ﬁnding that ﬁrrther demonstrates the
linguistic varieties that Marquise is capable of using on multiple occasions.

Literacy autobiographies, however, are not the only contexts in which students
demonstrate their ability to execute speciﬁc Ebonics phonological and syntactical
patterns. Students also executed the following Ebonics phonological rules in their cultural
literacies and disciplinary literacies essays: the absence of ﬁnal consonant, where in ’ or
/In/ is used for ing; the absence of the middle and ﬁnal r; the initial /th/ being rendered as
/d/; and the contraction of going to rendered as gon ’. The fact that students are able to
execute Ebonics phonological patterns across writing assignments demonstrates their
ability to determine the writing contexts necessary for its usage. Additional examples of

students’ execution of these patterns included the following:26

Bola:
For instance, I posted my [facebook] status as [...] is workin ’ on a project. (Cultural Literacies

Assignment)
“U luk sassy? Whose’ de lucki dude” (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

Marquise: '
“U need to shut yo big head up befo' I come do it 4 ya (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

We always be ova our grandma house, eatin ’ up her food (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

 

26 . . .
Words are italicized to assist readers in identifying the phonological or grammatical rule being
employed.

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And I aint gon ’ b surprised (Cultural Literacies Assignment)
Naw dat ain’t a good look, fa real! (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

The ﬁrst example from Bola [“I posted on my [facebook] status. . .”] is worth discussing
because Bola identiﬁes a genre (electronic writing on facebook/web page) and then uses
the phonological pattern in’ in order to illustrate how using this pattern is appropriate for
the genre and rhetorical situation, where multiple languages and varieties of English are
appropriate—-—and at times expected—on a platform like facebook.

Ebonics syntactical features were used, but minimally in students’ cultural
literacies and disciplinary literacies assignments. They include the third person singular
verb form, and double or multiple negation. The following two examples are illustrative
of those rules:

rm" man singular Verb

Jordan:

[...] nearly everyone on KanYe West’s blog use some form of AAVE’s rhetorical or grammatical
features that [...] reveal their racial afﬁliation. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

Mm lg Negation
Marquise:
Naw dat ain 't a good look, fa real! (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

While Ebonics phonological and syntactical patterns were used across writing
assignments, they were used most frequently in African American students’ literacy
autobiographies. Perhaps this was because the autobiography as a genre was most
personal and familiar (since students were writing about themselves), and students felt

most comfortable experimenting with such patterns in more familial contexts

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creatively for her multigenre essay. In this text she employs Ebonics phonological

features in order to demonstrate AAVE appropriation:

urself to help me help her coz u have already helped me enough .anyway I be waitin on ur reply.
luv u and miss her. i still really luv dis chick (rudy). While u keep doin’ ya thang. take care...

--- En date de : Lun 24.] I.O8, ndifontah bola <kel_cbola@yahoo.com> a écrit :

De: ndifontah bola <kel_cbola@yahoo.com>
ijet: Re: hey dear

A: censiper@yahoo.ﬁ'
Date: Lundi 24 Novembre 2008, l9h59

Hey dear, how r u? i guess ok and nothin’ much. if so den i'm so happy for u as alway. well dear
sorry i wasn't able to read my emails till today, and i found out dat it sent me a mail concernin'

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rudy, but i didn't see it til today. Yeah i heard from Fritz and Pachinko dat y’all are rehearsin' fo 8
party. dats great. i'm so proud of y’all. Anyway i'll try ma best wit wat i can help with, and try to
help wit dat befo the 1 1th. Take great care of urself and remain blessed. Remember i luv and miss
u so bad. Imma bounce now. Talk to ya later.

because portions of the email text are written in French [e. g. a écrit, which means,
“written by”]. This demonstrates that the default language for Bola’s messages is French.
In her literacy autobiography, Bola explained how she speaks several varieties of the
Aﬁican dialects associated with her tribe while also learning French and English in
grammar school. It is clear that Bola’s multilingual capabilities underscore the

complexities associated with language use in expository writing. Requiring Bola to

In another genre entry Bola appropriates Ebonics phonological features, although
there are a few instances of Ebonics syntax as well. Such apprOpriation is illustrated in
the following poem written about the WRA 125 class in order to demonstrate the ways in

which Ebonics can be employed in classroom discourse:

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The previous poetic excerpt not only shows Bola’s exceptional ability to draw on various
Ebonics-based phonological features, but it also illustrates her understanding of some of
the rhetorical patterns and syntactical structures that govern the language. In the previous
passage, on several occasions, Bola makes use of the habitual be, and sometimes, she
even makes use of the zero copula, when she speaks of the teacher (me), “she goofy”
(also a form of signifying), and of Beyonce’ Knowles, “she no longer a single lady,” thus
making a cultural reference to Beyoncé’s music. “Beyonce be braggin” that also reﬂects
her ability to employ not only Ebonics phonological features and cultural references with
regard to Beyonce’s music, but also rhetorical patterns that include braggadocio (more on
students’ appropriation of AAR patterns later in this chapter). Teresa Redd deﬁnes
braggadocio as an Aﬁican American rhetorical practice that includes “boasts about
oneself or heroes” (“Untapped” 224). In essence, Bola’s poem provides us glimpses of
the skills and knowledge she gained from the Afrocentricity language-focused
composition curriculum. She demonstrates an awareness and familiarity of the syntax,
phonological features, and rhetorical pattems, and she also demonstrates an ability to
apply and appropriate them effectively in given writing contexts.

In another example from a multigenre project, Candace doesn’t explain the
linguistic choices she proposes in her Multigenre essay per se, but instead, strategically
Style shifts back and forth between Ebonics and SE in the PowerPoint presentation she
Created for her ﬁnal project. The theme of her PowerPoint project, titled, “You, Me, &
AAVE,” was the appropriation of AAVE in mainstream culture. To convey this theme,
She chose to compose a poem, an editorial comic advertisement, a visual collage, and a

diary entry in order to dispel myths and misconceptions about AAVE in mainstream

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culture. On the ﬁrst slide of her PowerPoint, where she introduces her themes and genres
to her audience, she chooses to use SE. When introducing and summarizing the genres on

her slides she also uses SE. In her introduction to her personal diary entry, she writes:

I wrote my diary entry based on my personal feelings of how people perceive other people based
on how they sound when they talk. I have also talked about howl feel when I feel misunderstood
or when someone is using prejudgment on me because of the color of my skin. I discussed certain
instances where I was prejudice to someone because of their accent and because of their skin tone.
At the end of the entry, I talk about how I learned to be acceptable to everyone and to think about
what I say and to think before I act. I chose this piece because it shows how some people may
think about those who don’t speak in AAE, or who don’t speak the way they do and how they feel
about the situation. This was my perception of how I felt about my roommates. I am currently the
only African American in my room, the other three are Caucasian.

In the previous excerpt, Candace associates speech with skin color in order to
demonstrate the ways that Ebonics speakers are “misunderstood” and judged based on
both. Although she obviously ﬁnds fault with this form of prejudice based on linguistic
choices, she still chooses to explain this understanding in SE.

When the slides provide screen captures of her actual diary entries, entries that
she chooses to display handwritten on notebook paper, she goes back and forth between

SE and Ebonics. In her ﬁrst entry, “Go Green,” she writes the following:27

Dear Diary,

I guess I state ain’t Bad considering I see black pe0ple. Like Real talk from where I stay. I see .
nothing but Black people. I like the fact that I can talk how I want to, I mean, [. . .] With four whrte
girls. Molly cool as me though. A little of me rubbin off on her. The other 2 are more like upscale

boutique bougie females for real.

All of em from uptown close to the clans and stuff, even Molly. Molly’s mother is from Detroit so
I guess that’s why her attitude changed. At ﬁrst nobody talked to me (Scared Ill pull my gun out.)

Maybe the “hood” in me showed right. So anyways.

They sound like average white chicks . “ m
The ﬁrst entry immediately leads into the second, trtled Go Black .
Like they appear to be white but they talk like they are one of me. Poor babies. They try so hard t
be like me or black

 

27 . . .
Complete entries are shown in then entirety.

I33

Times go on and I see more and more Crayola outa them

That shit bothers me to all ends. I mean they automatically assume the worst outta me... but I neva
yea I did, white trash. But as time went on, the ignorance faded. The more they loosened up the
more I seen out of them. To be honest they are normal. They never seen my kind before and they
was just tryin to get a feel for me? I got white experience. I’m not gonna like though, they
probably didn’t talk to me because of how outgoing l was. I’m a city girl, theyre small time
females. They expect urban outta me, not black. Sometimes my ignorance is ignorant.

The second entry is followed by the ﬁnal one, titled, “Go White”:

One thing I hate though is that not all white people are like them. But whats funny is when I went
to the south I notice everybody talked the same. Except for me and my Detroit goons (we got a
national rep). We were the outcasts. They were the majority. The way they talked was sloppy! All
that long ass unnecessary switching of them words. Then when they loud argue, I want to scream.
Later that week as I found out they gave me the accent. The Dirty dirty.

-+Damn its-—

1 actually liked it though. I wanted to keep the crap but couldn’t... It came back to the D.

I guess I’m angry that people are prejudice anyways... I am, but not anymore. I actually want an
accent and ignorance to fade away.

From these entries we see the writer’s struggle with her own form and others’ forms of
racial and linguistic prejudices. These entries reveal that linguistic prejudice isn’t only an
issue for whites who make judgments about the speech patterns of African Americans,
but also, Aﬁican Americans who unfairly judge speakers based on other speakers’
linguistic choices. One point that Candace wants to emphasize is the idea that we often
make judgments about a person based on the way (s)he speaks. As Leah Zuidema states:
Many of us feel free to make judgments about others because of the ways that
they use language. We make assumptions based on ways that people speak and
write, presuming to know about their intelligence, their competence, their motives
and their morality (Wolfram, Adger & Christian, 1999). As [Vivian] Davis (2001)
explained, we assmne that because we know a little about how people speak or

write that we also understand “what they wear, what they eat, how they feel about

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certain things including birth, death, family, marriage, and what they believe

about the world and their place in it” (p. 1 ). (668)
Like Zuidema, I ﬁnd that this is exactly the point that Candace conveys in her entries.
From these entries we see the closely knit relationship between linguistic prejudice and
overall judgments that pe0ple make about other people’s identities. With the ﬁrst entry,
Candace tells how White females made judgments based on her speech, particular
judgments that speak to the ways that African Americans have been stereotyped in
mainstream culture. With the second entry, she continues to show the ways that White
speakers negotiate their own negative attitudes toward Ebonics speakers all the while
appropriating African American communicative patterns for their own use. This point
speaks volumes to our understanding of the overall theme of her project. On one hand,
people make negative assumptions about the language of African Americans, but on the
other hand, we ﬁnd evidence of its appropriation in mainstream culture (her collage and
advertisements demonstrate ways that general terms and phrases associated with Ebonics
(e.g. Apple Bottoms) have become part of mainstream and popular culture). With the
ﬁnal diary entry, Candace also takes responsibility for the ways that linguistic prejudices
continue to perpetuate mainstream culture by telling of her experiences with Southern
English speakers. While she admits her own prejudices, she attempts to reconcile them by
acknowledging that they are in fact prejudices, and that a change in one’s attitude is
necessary.

Although this genre highlights signiﬁcant knowledge about sociolinguistics and
linguistic prejudice, Candace’s linguistic choices are also noteworthy. If one notices, she

employs more Ebonics in the ﬁrst entry than the latter two, although some Ebonics is

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used in each of these entries. When she references the ways that White females judge her
based on her skin color and the way that she speaks, she employs more Ebonics
phonological features and syntax [e. gs. “neva”; “A little bit of me rubbin off on her”].
But when she references her own forms of linguistic prejudice, she uses less Ebonics.
Although her style still reﬂects a nonstandard variety of English in many cases, there are
less Africanized phonological and syntactical patterns used. From Candace’s work, then,
we see quite extensively how the subject matter inﬂuences her linguistic choices. In other
words, when she is being judged by how she talks, we see more appropriation of Ebonics.
But, when she is the one who judges other people based on their linguistic choices, we
see less Ebonics. From Candace’s work, we see quite effectively how she manipulates
Ebonics phonological features and syntax quite rhetorically, a point that shows writing
teachers and educators how we can equip students with the rhetorical skills and tools

necessary to truly give students the right to their own language.

4.4 Discursive Features of Ebonics: Students’ Africanized Rhetorical Patterns

While my previous discussion focused on the ways that Aﬁican American
students manipulate Ebonics phonological features and syntax strategically and
rhetorically, I further illustrate the skills and knowledge that Aﬁican American students
demonstrate within their own writing, what I call, stylin ’ and proﬁlin ’. Stylin ' and
proﬁlin ’ is a metaphor that I use to reﬂect students’ ability to draw on African American
rhetorical patterns that are not phonologically or syntactically based. Building from the
rhetorical and discursive features identiﬁed and analyzed by Richardson, Richardson and

Gilyard, Ball, and Canagarajah in Chapter 3, I further identify and analyze these African-

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based discursive practices found within my own students’ expository texts. In doing so, I
discuss how African American students’ use of such patterns emphasizes the ways that
they may style and proﬁle, or show off across different writing situations. In contrast to
students’ uses of Ebonics phonology and syntax, students more often used Ebonics
rhetorical patterns across each of the four major writing assignments. In my analysis of
Aﬁican American Rhetorical features, I focus on the following: 1) the use of ﬁeld
dependency or person-centered arguments, which pertain- to the idea of “personalizing
phenomena” (Gilyard and Richardson 42; Canagaraj ah); 2) identifying shared cultural
values of community consciousness (Gilyard and Richardson; Ball); 3) the use of
mimicry where African American students employ white academic language
and conventions (Gilyard and Richardson; Canagarajah); and 4) the use of imagery and
provocative language (Gilyard and Richardson).
Field Dependency: Personalizing Phenomena, and Person-Centered Arguments

In many writing situations, students often chose to personalize phenomenon or
develop person-centered arguments. Gilyard. and Richardson deﬁne ﬁeld dependency as
the following: “Involvement with and immersion in events and situations; personalizing
phenomena; lack of distance from topics and subjects” (42). Using their deﬁnition as a
framework, I apply this understanding to Aﬁican American students’ close proximity as
subjects to the arguments in which they construct. Such arguments often address
students’ self-expressed beliefs about events or cultural phenomenon. This rhetorical
pattern was used across each of the four major writing assignments. Examples of ﬁeld
dependency are as follows (in some instances 1 italicize portions of these texts to

emphasize where the ﬁeld dependency/person-centercd arguments appear):

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Marquise:
Now being the simple kind of guy that I am, I try to respond to things with a straight forward
mentality. (Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

There was a recent blog in which a BET journalist contacted the FBI concerning the hateful tactics
being used by the McCain/Palin ticket against the Obama/Biden ticket. The explosive post brought
out anger-fueled AAVE dialogue in the form of reader comments... This takes me back to an
observation I made, where emotions play a huge role in the use of AA VE, whether it being
happiness, or pure ﬁrry. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

What is most powerful from that statement, in my opinion, is the use of empowerment, in which
African Americans have this natural born instinct to defend their rich and constantly
misunderstood culture. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

[We] must not rule out the general purpose of writing, which is correcting the ﬂow of the literary
piece. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

Marcus:

Even though these differences exist the truth is they exist with everyone so no one should be
judged on this topic one way or the other. I believe that everyone has the right to be their self and
doesn ’t have to act drﬂerently or feel uncomfortable in drﬂerent situations. My use of language
changes throughout the day whether it’s “chillin” with my teammates, or going to class and
interacting with other people. Everyone cares about the impression they leave on someone after
they have a conversation with them. So my philosophy is, be yourself let the real you come out
and do not let anyone think you are less of a person because of it. (Literacy Autobiographies
Assignment)

Bola:

As Kynard talked about blogging and web blogs of his students in [“Wanted: Some Black Long
Distance [Writers]’: Blackboard F lava- F alvin and other Digital Experiences in the Classroom],
she encourages teachers to use weblogs in their classroom, get their student engaged with intemet
and experience what is happening in cyberspaces I remember in one of my lecture classes last
week, not to mention the class, my professor is a white. My professor gave an example in class
about diﬁerentiating races, saying “when whites are studying and taking care of business, Blacks
are in the streets, taking in crack cocaine and doing drug dealing (Cultural Literacies
Assignment)

As for my third genre, it came ﬁ'om group four. This is about personal and private writing. I chose
email. After taking this course, I realized that I could now write in AAVE. I was so excited and
deeply touched to use this as one of my genres for this project. Students actually put into practice
what they learn from classroom in other situations. Using my writing as an example, student put
AAVE into practice outside the classrooms. This is the more reason why I stress on the fact that
teachers should encourage and allow the practice of AA VE in classroom. (Multigenre/Remix

Assignment)

Antonice:

I feel I connected the most with is Smitherman ’s “Ghetto Lady " passage. In this she speaks about
how when she was a young girl, she was constantly under linguistic attack, thus causing her to go
into a silent mode to avoid them. To attend college she had to take and pass a speech test, which
she failed. “. . .they were linguistically and culturally biased against all varieties of US.
English...” She states, “. . .Although the overwhelming majority of those who failed these tests
were People of Color I recall that there are a couple of whites in my group...” [. . .] This expresses
how broad the English language is, and how it shouldn’t be a speciﬁc right way to talk I feel that
another aspect that causes bias in writing and mostly speaking is the attitude of the writer.
(Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

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You don 't have to be a rocket scientist to express what you are trying to say to someone, and that
is something Aﬁican Americans have used now and in the past. He feels that “African American
Vernacular English can accomplish what Standard English can not.” (Rickford 268) AAVE brings
a different attitude and personality to a speech that SE doesn’t for example when I go to church my
pastor may breath a certain way or say “and-a " in between his sentences to add emphasis.
Something that I don 't particularly see in 0 SE based church that I have also attended.

(Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)
While I would argue that person-centered argumentation is not limited to African
American students’ expository texts, it is still clear that African American students draw
on such arguments in written discourse. And, when they are not developing a person-
centered argument, an argument that revolves around their own epistemologies and ways
of seeing, many of them do personalize additional phenomena. In Marquise’s ﬁrst
example offered from his literacy autobiography, he links his identity to the way he
commruricates in oral discourse, thus, demonstrating how he personalizes phenomena.
With his other examples, we see development of person-centered arguments. In his
cultural literacies assignment, he connects his observations about language (AAVE) with
the comments posted in response to the 2008 presidential election. For his disciplinary
literacies assignment, he develops yet a different kind of person-centered argument when
he makes use of the collective “we”.

Other students personalize phenomena and arguments in unique ways. With
Bola’s example from her cultural literacies essay, she not only references a course text,
but also personalizes the argument she plans to make by showing the relationship
between that text and her own experiences in the classroom. With Antonice’s example
from her literacy autobiography, she establishes a connection with the texts she reads and
explains how this connection helps her formulate an argument. If we compare her

disciplinary literacies example with Marquise’s (when he develops a collective “we”),

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Antonice establishes a collective you. I consider both of these examples to be consistent
with ﬁeld dependence/personalizing phenomenon because they demonstrate a lack of
distance between the one’s thoughts and the arguments and ideas that are being invented.
With each of his examples—and others—the concept of person-centered arguments and
personalizing phenomena is intended to illustrate Aﬁican American students’
engagement and immersion in the events, topics, and arguments they choose to explore.
Shared Cultural Values, Community Consciousness

In Chapters 1 and 2, I talk extensively about the elements associated with the
African and African American worldview, one being a sense of collective identity and
shared community consciousness. Gilyard and Richardson further state that cultural
values and community consciousness express “concern for the development of African
Americans: concern for the welfare of [an] entire community, not just individuals” (42).
Using this deﬁnition of community consciousness as a reference, I ﬁnd evidence of the
following examples from Aﬁican and African American students’ texts. In some cases,
students choose to show community solidarity with the identiﬁcation with African
Americans as a racialized group. In other cases, they demonstrate this solidarity with
African American youth:

Marquise:

The treatment of people speaking with eloquence can still be seen among today‘s youth I, for one

am criticized by my black peers for using full words in my speech. (Literacy Autobiographies
Assignment)

What is most powerful from that statement, in my opinion, is the use of empowerment, in which
African Americans have this natural born instinct to defend their rich and constantly
misunderstood culture. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

With the computer age being dominated by the younger generation, the use of Standard English on
the social web has diminished drastically in the past few years. This has caused older generations
to look down on the youth because of the “misuse” of today’s technology. (Cultural Literacies
Assignment)

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Today Blacks are charged with dealing with a conﬂicted sense of identity in which speaking a
particular vernacular can mean acceptance in one community and rejection by another...
(Multigenre/Remix Assignment)

A staple in the African digital community has become the BET ofﬁcial website. (Cultural
Literacies Assignment)

Bola:
Unity and equality should prevail in the Nation (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

The black artists and celebrities try to express their success to the community especially due to
some racial discrimination Aﬁican American went through and still going through. For instance,
On December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks was asked to give her seat to a white
man, on the Bus. When she refused she was asked to get off the bus by the bus driver. (Cultural
Literacies Assignment)

Jordan:

In recent years, however, that barrier of the digital divide has been crossed and African
Americans have found themselves back into the trenches of the battle for equality. (Cultural
Literacies Assignment)

The movement brought about plenty of studies. Most of those scholarly researches centered
around African American youth. Questions of why Aﬁican American students were not as
successful as their European American peers were brought to the attention of scholars. Some of
them blamed racism as the reason why African American students performed less spectacularly
than their peers. The other stance on the argument was that African American students were
“culturally deprived” unlike Whites. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

Another reason why Ebonics was put down was because it was something that African Americans
identiﬁed with. During the Civil Rights era not a lot of people wanted to see African Americans
equally represented in society. All sorts of measures were taken in order to make sure that African
Americans still received the short end of the stick. This included doing things like putting down of
Black culture. Everything about the culture was disenfranchised from the way women were their
hair to the words that came out of their mouths. Because Ebonics was the language largely used by
African Americans it was heavily critiqued and made a mockery of in order to belittle the culture.
(Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

Educating African American youth most likely included the putting down of their home language,
Ebonics, during their class periods. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

All of the research done on African American culture and language made Ebonics a popular topic
as the years went on. Ebonics remained on the radar even aﬂer the Civil Rights movement. The
negative taste that went along with the language did not go away either. (Disciplinary Literacies
Assignment)

Each of these examples are meaningful because they not only call attention to how

Aﬁicaii and African American students selfidentify with the African American ‘

community in particular ways, but also, because they stress the tensions that often create

generational conﬂict within the African American community, what many African

l4l

Americans term as the Old Skool versus New Skool debate. In many of their cultural
literacies essays, writers identify with the New skool, and discuss the ways in which
technology continues to separate them from Old skool members of the Aﬁican American
community. In Race, Rhetoric and Technology: Searching for Higher Ground, Adam
Banks states:
The presence of these modes online shows the ways that “the structural
underpinnings of the oral tradition remain basically in tact even as each new
generation makes verbal adaptations within the tradition. Indeed, the core strength
of this tradition lies in its capacity to accommodate new situations and changing
realities” (p. 199) but they are central to it—without these discursive practices
from an Aﬁican American oral tradition [electronic writing spaces] could not
exist. (79)
Like Banks, the students’ discussions offered previously not only emphasize the cultural
understandings they share with other African American youth, but also emphasizes the
ways in which, despite generational changes, African American forms of discourse are
alive and active online. Thus, the Aﬁican American oral tradition—and the community
who participates in this tradition—continues to pass down its communicative practices
from one generation to the next, practices that now appear to be present in digital
environments.
Mimicry: Employing White Academic Language and Conventions
Earlier in this chapter, I described the ways that African American students
negotiate their linguistic choices between Ebonics and Standard English strategically.

When my students do choose SE in certain context, they often do so, as they attempt to

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mimic white academic language and its conventions. At times, such a form of mimicry is
illustrated by their syntactical and/or vocabulary/diction; at other times, this mimicry is
illustrated by their attempts to minric speciﬁc citation practices. The following examples

will provide evidence of these moves:

Marquise:

There has been extensive research on the use of AAVE in university classrooms, speciﬁcally in
Composition Studies, where ﬁrst level writing students struggled to succeed in the course work.
While most scholars believed that the problem was caused by the lacking strength of the dialect
users, based on their socioeconomic origins. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, people were quick to dismiss the AAVE factor from American culture,
especially academics. This project is to focus on AAVE/Composition Studies, but I believe that
the culture of the dialect must ﬁrst gain positive ground in the country, if not the world before
introducing ideals of language equality in academia. As P.A. Ramsey states in “Teaching the
Teachers to Teach Black-Dialect Writers,” “Dialects are simply diﬁ‘erent!”(Ramsey, Teaching
Black-Dialect, 200) [. . . ]As Tiffany Jones explains in “You Done Lost Yo’ Mind” by
acknowledging the linguistic divide, many African Americans have been ostracized from their
AAVE-using counterparts, for simply following the grammatical “rules” set by the white
academic world. She states,” Today Blacks are charged with dealing with a conﬂicted sense of
identity in which Speaking a particular vernacular can mean acceptance in one community and
rejection by another.”(Jones, You Done Lost Yo‘ Mind, 6) (Multigenre/Remix Assignment)

Marcus:
When speaking and writing in dialects, there are enormous differences but there are also
similarities. (Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

Jordan:

For as long as I can remember I’ve been deemed a well-educated and well-mannered young man
by my family, neighbors, acquaintances, and peers. The ﬁrst thing that most of them take notice of
is often the way I’m dressed which is often conservatively favoring a polo and slacks in most
occasions. Secondly, they’ll notice that my speech is nearly ﬂawless apart from the occasional
stutter. They tell me that I sound like an intelligent young man who is bound to be a doctor or a
lawyer one day. They acquire all of this just from my dress and my speech. Believe it or not, I am
not on the road to be a doctor nor a lawyer. I wasn’t valedictorian or anything close to the top ten,
twenty, or ﬁﬁy percent of my graduating class. In fact, I was rated 118 out of 248, and the
valedictorians and salutatorian didn’t always speak as clearly and as ﬂawlessly as I did. They
spoke in Ebonics and AAE in the lunchroom as well as the classroom. The only place where their
speech consistently surpassed mine was in English class where the masses seemed to miraculously
have possession and knowledge of the same skills that I employed during all hours of the day.
(Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

When one speaks of the digital divide they’re usually referring to the gap that exists between
people who have the Internet and those who don't. It also is used to describe those who can
effectively use the connections to their advantage. It is not enough to simply have access to the
World Wide Web. It’s important to possess knowledge on how it works as well. Web pages and
web language has its own rules and Aﬁican Americans were leﬁ out of the coding process that got
these websites off the ground. That being said, not many African Americans knew how to use the
Internet as a means of researching or classifying...

I43

In recent years, however, that barrier of the digital divide has been crossed and African
Americans have found themselves back into the trenches of the battle for equality. The ﬁrst course
of action in this ongoing war was to establish a home base on this new digital space. Giving
Aﬁican Americans 8 sense of self in these spaces that were at one point in time meant to be
racially neutral has done that (Banks, 2005, p. 100). Everyone who used the Internet was assumed
to be White, middle-class, and male until proven otherwise. The use of different languages like
AAVE would give one’s race away and expose them to prejudice and possible discrimination on
these digital spaces. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

I was able to research another source for my argument on the use of AAVE in composition
studies. I read a review on John Russell Rickfords’ book Smken Soul. Rickford spoke on Aﬁican
American actors, comedians, rappers, even preachers. He expresses his feeling of AAVE being

What is important to notice from the previous passages is the way that each of these
students style shiﬂ from the linguistic conventions associated with Ebonics to those
associated with the academy. We especially notice the ways that Jordan switches to
formal language that is oﬁen associated with the academy when he discusses the ways in
which his formal speech practices distinguish him from peers. In another example, Jordan
contextualizes the concept of the digital divide in order to argue how Aﬁican Americans
still struggle with technological access in digital environments; the language in which he
chooses to construct these arguments further mimics a variety of standard academic
English.

In other instances, not only do Aﬁican and Aﬁican American students’ linguistic
choices seem to mimic the academic conventions associated with the academy, but also,
the types of argumentation patterns and uses of evidence similarly mimic these
Conventions. If one notices in each of these excerpts, there is an attempt to mimic the
Conventions associated with MLA and APA citations systems, although in some cases,
these citations are formatted incorrectly. Nonetheless, what is most critical is not the fact

that some citations should be formatted correctly, but the fact that students are

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consciously aware that while citation systems are oﬁen a requirement for academic
writing, different forms of evidence are acceptable and required for other literate texts. In
her book, A Community Text Arises: A Literate Text and A Literacy Tradition in African
American Churches, Beverly Moss complicates the concept of textual evidence and

academic literacy by discussing the ways that the Aﬁican American preacher’s sermon as

a textual artifact often does not require him or her to cite textual evidence or

acknowledge his/her sources. Moss states that
ministers’ use of textual evidence, for instance, may be useful in helping students

understand how to integrate written sources as evidence within their academic
texts... [Sermons] provide good examples of texts that integrate different types of
evidence within the text: textual evidence, personal narratives, historical evidence,
and so on [. . .] Tire greatest problem faced by many students whose primary
model of a literate text does not match that of the primary model in academic
literacy is ﬁnding the tools to help them recognize such sites of negotiation, be
they sites of conﬂict or common ground. And the next problem is to turn these
sites into resources that can make them multiliterate. (156-7)
Moss’s points concerning the knowledge and appropriate application of academic literacy
signiﬁcantly call attention to the purposes in which my own students attempt to mimic
citation practices. As stated previously, students know that they must employ citation
practices as textual evidence, but more importantly, they recognize the appropriate
contexts and sites for this negotiation. If we take Jordan’s argument about the digital
divide in relationship to African Americans in digital spaces, for example, we see

Jordan’s awareness of the need to cite Adam Banks’s work in Race, Rhetoric and

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Technology: Searching for Higher Ground because like Banks, I ordan seeks to
complicate the notion of a digital divide that separates the haves from the have-nots,
considering that there are still racial differences between users online when they both
have’access to a given technology, in this case, the Web. In the ﬁrst sentence of her

excerpt, Antonice’s example also overtly shows the intellectual processes needed to

inform readers of the citations practices needed for evidencing her argument as she
reference’s Rickford’s Spoken Soul, a familiar text associated with Ebonics scholarship,
although the text was never assigned in class.

In other cases, mimicry is demonstrated when students explain the

methodological decisions that guide their use of sources. Antonice’s example also
provides readers with a glimpse of the methodological process work needed to do
research for her disciplinary literacies assignment,28 when she identiﬁes key authors and
sources needed to be references, sources, she had to locate and evaluate critically on her
own. In his own disciplinary literacies essay, Marquise’s discussion that denotes the
research that has been done on Ebonics in rhetoric and composition also provides us with
some understanding of how students read and interpret the methodological practices
associated with a given discipline. From Marquise’s passage, we see an implicit argument
of the conﬂicting positions on language rights being a racial issue or language rights

being an issue of class in the ﬁeld, as he invokes a discussion of socioeconomic status. I

will demonstrate later in this chapter through Marquise’s disciplinary literacies essay the

ways that he draws on multiple AAR traditions while negotiating his mimicking of the

 

28
See Chapter 2 for an explanation of this assignment, and Chapter 5 for an extended discussion of

students’ responses to this assignment.
I46

academic conventions as the same time, when he writes that there “has been extensive
research on the use of AAVE in university classrooms, speciﬁcally in Composition

Studies, where ﬁrst level writing students struggled to succeed in the course wor .”

Through his example I argue that students can use Ebonics effectively in formal writing

situations, including research papers.

Imagery and Provocative Language
In several cases, African and Aﬁican American student writers draw on imagery

or dramatic and provocative language. In these cases students will often make use of

metaphors, signification, [and/or] vivid imagery” (Gilyard and Richardson 4]). The

following excerpts represent students’ execution of imagery and metaphoric language

across writing assignments:

Marquise:

He puckered his lips as if he were trying to use them as hands, and started mouthing every word
that I spoke. (Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

My friends say that it’s like I have a slang-speaking twin and we switched dimensions. (Literacy
Autobiographies Assignment)

There is an invisible bond between Aﬁican Americans when using digital spaces when it attacks
against the race come from outsiders (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

Basically, the creations of African American websites is not necessarily for sharing the rich
background of the Black community, but for that “mean green.” It’s the capitalization of the
nation’s economy, where ethnicities, predominantly Black are attracted to digital communities,
gaining close to nothing while billions of dollars are being made under their nose. It’s almost as if
the activity of AAVE only exists on the Internet for proﬁt. (Cultural Literacies Assignment)

Bola:

When growing up in Cameroon, in West Africa, all I knew at a tender age to say was mommy and
daddy. (Literacy Autobiographies Assignment)

Candace:

I could write and make my words seems like little pictures of art, something like the works of
Leonardo De Vinci. (Literacy Autobiographies Assignment) ,

Times go on and I see more and more Crayola outa them. (MultigenrelRemix Assignment)
The other 2 are more like upscale boutique bougie females for real (MultigenrelRemix

Assignment)
Jordan:
1 47

Since then AAVE and speakers of AAVE have come to face a different enemy after defeating bad
publicity. Ebonics speakers were forced to face the great wall that put them in the slow lane on the
information super highway. That enemy was the digital divide (Nakamura, 2002, p. 396).

(Cultural Literacies Assignment)

The Internet was looked at as merely a playground. The rest of the world was moving right along
with its advancements and African Americans were left to bite the dust. (Cultural Literacies

Assignment)

The language has only moved forward in this decade, though, so this is a positive. Looking back at
history and where the language has come from as far as badly it was talked about and defaced
shows resilience that was truly unmatched. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)

The consensus that they all came up with always seemed to be consistent: Ebonics is not a
language. To the protestors, Ebonics broke all the rules of Standard English. It also had no real

rule or syntax structure simply adding to the list of incapabilities of the language. The protestors
would seem to have their way with the public view for some years especially in the age of the

disco. (Disciplinary Literacies Assignment)
In African and Aﬁican American students’ literacy autobiographies we notice how

students use imagery and vivid language in their descriptions of their linguistic practices.
Marquise’s example, “He puckered his lips as if he were trying to use them as hands, and
started mouthing every word that I spoke,” vividly identiﬁes the visible cues that mark

the ways that one might speak. Instead of merely informing readers of how one

communicates in particular contexts, Marquise descriptively shows readers this type of
communication. With Candace’s discussion of her penmanship, she does not merely tell
readers that her hand writing is neat; instead, she uses metaphoric language to compare
her penmanship to De Vinci’s art. With Bola’s discussion of the chronological
development of her communicative practices, she doesn’t merely tell readers of her

communicative practices when she was young. Instead, she describes these practices

vividly, as she establishes a stronger connection with readers by writing, “tender age” and
when all she knew how to say was “mormny and daddy.” Doing so encourages readers to

make connections between her experiences of childhood nostalgia and their own.

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Aﬁican and Aﬁican American student writers don’t only employ metaphoric
language when talking about themselves, however. Even when referencing scholarly
material, they often do so quite descriptively. If we offer Jordan’s excerpts as examples,
we notice the provocative language he employs as he identiﬁes the digital divide as the
enemy of the digital age. Furthermore, his use of strong and provocative language
continues in his disciplinary literacies assignment when he states: “The protestors would
seem to have their way with the public view for some years especially in the age of the
disco.” Notice that Jordan’s word choice of “protestors” for critics of Ebonics, a term that
has a much stronger connotation than “critics” or even “opponents.” And also notice how
Jordan associates historical phenomenon with the status of Ebonics in Composition
Studies: His use of “the age of disco” perhaps establishes a stronger connection with
readers than if he were to merely state that during the 1970’s critics viewed Ebonics
negatively in the public sector. In short, African American students demonstrate
exceptionally the ways they might establish stronger connections with audiences when
they employ provocative and metaphoric language. They further illustrate the ways that
students can be descriptive as they show readers what is happening in their texts, as
opposed to merely telling readers what happens in a given text, and they are able to write

descriptively across different genres and writing situations.

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4.5 Multiple Ebonics Structural and Rhetorical Patterns Illustrated in a Writers’ Text

As is the case with students who draw on multiple forms of Ebonics phonological
features and syntax, students can also draw effectively on multiple African American
discursive practices in provocative ways while writing formal research essays. I chose
discuss Marquise’s disciplinary literacies essay (that asks students to argue how
Composition Studies’s stance on Ebonics has changed over time) in this chapter because
I believe that his work offers teachers a prime example of the ways in which Aﬁican
American communicative practices can be included and implemented in additional
expository writing contexts. Discussion and analysis of this essay is central to my
argument because it shows how African American students can successfully employ
Ebonics in genres and contexts where they have not typically been shown as successful.
Analysis of this work illustrates how Ebonics can be used strategically and appropriately
in formal research papers. I am also interested in Marquise’s essay because he acutely
employs additional African American rhetorical strategies not commonly appropriated in
other Aﬁican and African American students’ texts. I include his essay in its entirety
because it speaks to the richness of the African American communicative tradition, in
addition to the writer’s ability to mimic the academic conventions in extremely

purposeful ways:

AAVE has come a long way since being used by African American slaves close to 500 years ago.
This is especially true when it comes to academia. Ever since the late 1960’s, AAVE was

considered as a black scar on the American English language in universities across the nation. As
time progressed, the rich culture of AAVE began to receive recognition. My plan is to show how

There has been extensive research on the use of AAVE in university classrooms, specifically in
Composition Studies, where first level writing students struggled to succeed in the course work
While most scholars believed that the problem was caused by the lacking strength of the dialect
users, based on their socioeconomic origins. The professors were also to blame for not
understanding their pupils’ needs. With saying this, instructors were also in of need of teaching. In

150

P.A. Ramsey’s “Teaching the Teachers to Teach Blackaialect Writers”, he shares an experience
in which his knowledge of Black Vernacular English was put to the test. In the spring of 1979,
Ramsey was offered the opportunity to instruct a graduate level college course based on strategies
teachers could use to help Black-dialect users become better writers. The moment he accepted,
regret set in, caused by his lack of knowledge in AAVE. Was it because he was black? Or maybe
he may have been brought up in an impoverished area? Also with him not being familiar with the
dialect, how could the class he was expected to instruct (all white students), respect him? Even
though regretting his involvement, he pressed on. The concept of his class was based on the use of
national journals focused on English and Comp. Studies. By taking this route, his grad students
began to show their opinions about black dialect, where they simply wanted Ramsey, a black man,
to explain how to “ﬁx” the writing habits of black-dialect users.

The thing that Ramsey wanted his students to realize was an authentic enhancer to Standard
English and more than just a dialect. The coruse was to implement practicality over theory based
presumptions, in which he ultimately wanted to eliminate the common misconceptions of black
dialect-users. Ramsey states in his writings that he wanted a class that helped teachers guide
students into writing more effectively. As the class progressed, the focus was shifted to how all
writers could produce better literature, and not just dialect users. As Ramsey states in his
observations:

What I learned from our inability to stay on the topic of the course was that maybe we did not
really need the course. The real problem was not how to teach black dialect speakers to write, but
how to teach any student to write. The basics of writing, like how to organize, how to develop a
paragraph. how to write with speciﬁcity rather than in generalities-are aracial. Of course there
are special nuisances when teaching dialect writers: how to get that ”s” on the third person
present tense singular and the "ed” on the past tense. But these grammatical irregularities, though
they grate on the ears and eyes of almost every English teacher, are minor when compared to the
problems of teaching that essays must proceed logically and clearly and be about one, and only
one, "thesis idea. (Ramsey pp. 1 98-1 99)

The point that Ramsey is making is that even though AAVE has visible ﬂaws, we must not rule
out the general purpose of writing, which is correcting the ﬂow of the literary piece.

With Ramsey having taught remedial writing courses to dialect users, he was able to use his
techniques in class, where they may serve a purpose to the graduate students. He did this by
having his class critique a dialect writer’s paper each week and break it down with open
discussion. Also Ramsey notices how the curiosity of the graduate students expressed a new form
of racism, in which he states:

The very volume of material on black dialect has sanctioned a type of racism which masquerades
as "the English professor's excuse. " It goes something like this: "We've admitted these
[’unqualiﬁed minority' understood] students, and ah, I don ’t know how to teach them to write.
They, ah, have dialect problems, and ah, I don ’t know what to do with them. " Does this sound
familiar? It does to me: "They, " "them, " "the blacks, " "those exotic primitives over there are so
diﬂerent/dumb/dark, I don’t know what to do with them. They're nothing like me. " The very
quantity of literature on dialect speakers and writers supports the saying, they're-so-diﬂerent-
therefore-l—can't-teach-them attitude. ” What I found was that my graduate students were afraid to
teach minority students to write because the graduate students felt they did not know enough.
When I thought about conversations I had had with my colleagues, I found the same to be true of
most of them. No wonder I kept getting the remedial composition courses. I was one of the few
who did not believe that my black students were too exotic to teach (I hope "exotic" in the
mind of enlightened English professors does not read "dumb "). If enough college teachers assume
this humble I-don't-know-how posture, the eﬂect will not be unlike that of the slave laws which
forbade "them" to learn to read and write. (Ramsey pp. I 99-200)

151

Ramsey goes on to say that if teachers can’t instruct without researching the greatest African
American linguists, they may never grasp the ability. I agree with Ramsey on this point, because I
believe that teachers were given all the tools they would need to teach different language
backgrounds, whether standard or not. I also believe that teachers must create their own strategies
to guide students into better writing, or at least comprehensible to the majority, while encouraging
them to continue using their home languages.

" What I ventured to share with my graduate students was that I was not nearly as worried about
the attitudes of my black students toward their own dialects as I was about the attitudes of my
white colleagues, the attitudes of the graduate students themselves, and the attitude of the white
students they would someday teach. If we want to change attitudes towards dialects, the place to
begin is with white students, not black ones. White students are the ones who will one day most
likely be in the power positions. They are the ones whom the dialect speaker will need to speak
and write for. (Ramsey pp. 200—201 )

In his writings, it is obvious that he hasn’t really grasped the idea or the purpose of what AAVE
serves. In the statement above, it comes off as if he is saying that we must play the game along
with Standard English users to keep the ﬂow going. Even though he believes in black-dialect, he
doesn’t take it seriously. From what I’ve read, it seems as though Ramsey was unmotivated in
changing the views of his colleagues and students, but more like patting them on the hand, when
they showed slight discrimination towards the use of black dialect.

Naw dat ain’t a good loci; fa real!

Unlike Ramsey’s experience with AAVE, Ametha Ball’s, “Expository Writing Patterns of African
American Students” takes on a more experimental approach in research of AAVE’s role in
Composition Studies. In her writings, Ball gives reason why AAVE users in college suffer in their
ﬁrst year writing classes. The main cause is of lack in preparation in composition She ﬁgures that
most students who are behind tend to have come from impoverished inner-cities, where education
is sub-standard to suburban and, even rural areas. These students are then looked over in college
level courses, labeled as slow or remedial. What Ball tries to provide is examples of how students
have been able to produce quality writing, using their regular daily language, while providing
simple guidelines uncovered through her study of language diverse students.

Ball begins her research with a young African American girl, in which she records and critique the
narrative of how the girl was embarrassed by the criticism she received for using a vernacular term
in her writing. After the girl shares her story, Ball goes further by asking questions leaning more to
the psychological side, in which she covers the emotions and level of motivation the girl had after
receiving such hard criticism from her former instructor. This student could speak for the majority,
because this is how it feels to sit down and compose a paper, with an off the wall topic, poking
your brain consistently. The ideas that may come to mind are easily shattered by the thought of
having to use Standard English to receive a respected grade for the piece. The problem with this is
that AAVE users have a difficult time jumping out of that vernacular “box”, where it seems as
though they are stuck between expressing themselves in a comfortable manner and slowly falling
behind at the hands of their instructor.

Over the many years that Ball has studied the writing habits of African American students, she has
become more supportive of the students, in which she becomes defensive when scholars criticize
the language as being “sloppy” or an “uneducated dialect.” This is especially true when students
are faced with the dreaded “red pen”, something that tends to demolish the proud work of many
AAVE users. Ball continues her research by closely monitoring four urban high school students,
in which she collects two types of data over a one year period, she states:

I visited these students' classroom twice each week and conducted detailed text analyses of the
students' writing during the second half of their Ilth-grade year and the ﬁrst half of their 12th-

152

grade year. Three of the four students, one male and two females, described themselves as bi-
dialectal. They spoke AA VE sometimes but were mainstream American English speakers most of
the time. (Meaning) that is, most of the time they were speakers of the language of wider
communication in American society. One male, however, described himself as an AA VE speaker a
majority of the time. In particular, most of the time he used a logical, systematic pattern of
language expression that is characterized by a highly consistent syntax, pronunciation, and
lexicon that is the ﬁrst dialect learned by many lower and working-class African American youth
throughout the United States. As is the case with many AA VE speakers, these four students
demonstrated an ability to skillfully manipulate and interchangeably use AA VE, mainstream, and
academic English during discussions-style switching with ease depending on their degree of
personal engagement in the conversation and the topic being discussed. These students tended to
use more AA VE features in their speech when they were more engaged in a conversation. (Ball

pp. (28))

Ball visited these students only twice a week, which does not seem to be an effective amount of
time to collect enough data. Just think about it, what if the students were only providing Ball with
the information she was looking for on those two days. They may have exhibited totally different
behaviors on the other days of the week. Personally, I believe that I am bi-dialectal, in which I can
switch back and forth between AAVE and Standard English, but it mainly depends on the
environment (Home, work and school life). After conducting her research, Ball had this to say:

Schools and employers oﬁen— times picture a majority of AA VE speakers as victims of "language
poverty" or "illiteracy, " anthropologists, social historians, and folklorists have detailed the long-
standing rich verbal and literary tradition, including forms of oral and written narratives, rhymes,
stories, rhythmic expressions, sermons, and jokes characteristic of this culture (Heath 1 989).
Becoming more aware of these historically divergent views about my students' language and
literacy abilities, especially as they relate to their out of school oral and written literacy practices,
helped me to recognize the skills and resources these students bring to the class.

Something that I said all along, people must not focus on the grammatical features of AAVE, but
to look at the historical base and its rich culture before making a fair decision on whether it can be
considered on the same level as Standard English. For example, how could a griot tell a West
African story by using a Standard English translation, it would defeat the whole purpose! Or that’s
like an Aﬁican slave historian trying to write the lyrics to old slave hymns using Standard English;
this would cause the songs to lose their character. After the school year ended for the students,
Ball decided to extend her research for three last sessions in the summer. She wanted to test the
students on their comfort levels out in an informal environment. She required the students to write
a letter to a person they felt comfortable with, where judgment played no role. From what she
gathered, one thing played a major role, the method of experience. She could see that the students
were using personal experience to engage their audiences, in which they would easily relate and
understand. Based on these ﬁndings, Ball comes up with this idea:

Such illustrations give English educators concrete examples to examine and provide illustrations
that can help them in developing an expanded notion of available resources that students can use
to express their ideas in classroom settings. By demonstrating speciﬁc instances when AA VE
speaking students have successfully included culturally inﬂuenced strategies and styles of
expression in their writing, it becomes evident that such inclusions that emerge in their students'
texts may not represent random instances of poor writing. Some of the culturally influenced
discourse strategies these students have used included:

1. Using repetition to create formulaic patterning

2. Establishing a link or sense of rapport with the audience through the use of inclusive lexical
terms like "we're"

3. Taking on a quality of performance in the style and delivery of the text

153

4. Using orally-based organization patterns in addition to the topic associations compare and
contrast patterns and the traditional ﬁve paragraph essay used in most classrooms (see Ball 1 992)
5. Using interactive dialogue with the audience with phrases like ”you lmow what I mean, man "

6. Using common Aﬁrican American idioms that assume mutual understanding based on similar
cultural experiences;

7. Linking topics through the use of personal anecdotes and narratives interspersed within
expository texts.

By looking closely and critically at these students' written texts, I recognized that they participate
in many discourse communities (home, school, workplace, etc.) and that each of these
communities may have preferred norms for eﬂective communication (i. e., specialized vocabulary,
politeness norms, organizational patterns, etc. ). A socio-cultural view of language supports the
notion that different cultures may value and use particular language and literacy behaviors not
practiced in other discourse communities. (Ball pp.34)

It’s interesting to see that she was able to formulate these strategies based off of the students’
input. She has uncovered a very common practice of inclusiveness in writing, something that sort
of goes against the grammatical grain. It brings warmth to writing, in which the reader sinks right
into the piece. As Ball pointed this out, I realized that this strategy could be traced back to Africa,
speciﬁcally the western region, where griots, or village storytellers, intertwines the audience into
the story, particularly when it comes to morals that should be followed to maintain stability in the
community. Ball also notices how the students used repetition in their writing, creating a pattern.
I’m not entirely sure what that means, in terms of being a strategy. Does that mean that she
believes that students tie things together in their writing by using the same terms repeatedly? She
also goes on to say that AAVE users put on an unintentional performance in their writing, which I
take as saying that students implement personality when composing. Now that is a strategy that I
believe all writers should use so that their views can be retained by readers. Ametha Ball
expressed full understanding of the use of AAVE in writing and composition. She treats AAVE in
writing as equal as Standard English, which I believe is the ﬁrst step towards AAVE being
acknowledged as an authentic form of American English. By Ball being one the highest scholars
of AAVE amongst others like Geneva Smitherman, the acceptation of vernacular language in the
world shall soon come.

Scholars in AAVE have gained much ground since the 1970’s, when the concern of AAVE related
problems with students ﬁrst surfaced. But in the late 1990’s to early millennium, scholars have
introduced new ideas in which they conﬂict with the guidelines put in place by distinguished
scholars, most notably Geneva Smitherman, who in the mid-1970’s wrote, “Its Bees Dat Way
Sometime,” which all AAVE literature that has followed has cited from. An example of
conﬂicting ideas is from a Valerie Balester, a rhetorician from Texas A&M University. In
September of 2000, Balester wrote in the jom'nal of College Composition and Communication, in
which she shares her views on the use AAVE in college writing courses. Balester’s piece titled,
The Problem of Method: Striving to See with Multiple Perspectives, she states that she went
“against the grain when it came to AAVE use in Composition by considering it as being richer
than a dialect. Balester, being a Caucasian woman working at a predominantly white university,
she was unfamiliar with the history of AAVE use, and decided to engage in experimcntal research
on AAVE use. The issue with that she based the use of AAVE on race rather than socio-economic
backgrounds. This rs assuming that since AAVE rs closely related to Aﬁ'ican Americans, they’ re
the only users of it. When she was faced with criticism based off of this, she stated.

By describing participants as speakers of AA VB, 1 am not in any way stigmatizing them.
Furthermore, I took pains to show that speaking AA VE cannot be equated with race. I am guilty of
describing my students as outsiders. In fact, this was a model applied to most students of
composition, one that appealed to me and to many composition scholars of the time. Although I
viewed all students as novices reaching toward that elusive "academic discourse. " I saw African
American students as more alien, more outside. bell hooks’ eloquent expressions of the pain

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experienced by many Aﬁican American students, even those who could in no way be described as
"basic, " perhaps influenced my view. To me, this as well as accommodation theory in linguistics
oﬂered some explanation of their struggles. (Balester pp. 130-131)

It’s highly noble of her to say that she is well aware of African American struggles in academic
discourse! In fact it is highly disrespectful to isolate African Americans, placing them in a
“special” category in which they may need different learning strategies to achieve college level
comprehension of Composition. So instead of defending her views, Balester further “dug a deeper
hole” into the discussion. In Multiple Perspectives, Balester’s whole argument is ludicrous, simply
based on the following comment, in which she states:

I resisted the stigmatization of AA VE by discussing its history and manifestations and by
explaining that its use is not a mark of low socioeconomic status or limited exposure to Standard
English or schooling. (Balester pp. 131)

Now early in Balester’s argument, she stated that she had no prior knowledge of the history of
AAVE! She seemed to have contradicted herself into a corner, as soon as she faced criticism from
colleagues. Now I’m not trying to bash Valerie Balester, because I mean I’m only a college
ﬁ'eshman, but when you state an unclear idea or belief to academia, you kind of deserve it. There
is one statement that I can agree with her on. She believes that AAVE can be used successfully, if
only it was accepted in Composition Studies. At the same time, Balester seems to be stuck to idea
of only African Americans speaking/writing in AAVE. She separates black students from other
races who may face similar writing issues, by making this statement:

This is their linguistic legacy, an important aspect of their linguistic repertoires that can serve
as a scaffold in acquiring other registers. At the same time, teachers ignorant of this tradition or
prejudiced against any but formal academic registers of English can undervalue these devices,
even punishing students for their use. (Balester pp. 132)

In my opinion, I feel as though Balester caused more harm to the subject of AAVE then promoted
it. By sharing her views, gives scholars more of a reason to Oppose the use of the vernacular
language in writing and composition. In today’s world, if you express your opinion, it’s mandatory
that it can be followed up with proof or examples. What I would suggest to Balester is that the
next time she composes literature stating her Opinion, that she discusses them with colleagues in
her discipline. I also noticed that Balester focuses on grammatical aspects of AAVE, and not so
much the Speciﬁc ideas presented by it. She constantly stresses the point that AAVE has not
received it’s recognition by Composition Studies, because of this small issue. Yes, it’s true that
syntax is the main flaw of AAVE, but at the same time, the less it is discussed the more attention
the other factors can receive.

Syntax has become the most debatable facet in AAVE, only because it has never conformed to
what Standard English has evolved into. The use of “aim” and the occurrence of double negative
sentence structures come to mind when thinking of common problems with AAVE. People ﬁnd
difﬁculty in looking past the physical wording of ideas and not the ideas itself. For example, if I
were to write a statement once in Standard English (SE) and also in AAVE, which would the
general audience respond to more quickly? The SE form of the statement without a doubt! Here is
an example:

We always be ova our grandma house, eatin ' up her food.
We 're always over at our grandmother 's house, eating all her food.

The world has become so standardized that even as I type, I am being criticized for my use of
grammatical features (dis ﬁ'eakin’ spell check is irritatin’). When will things become more liberal,
in which all languages and dialects can exist without the notoriety of being different? The answer
is still unknown, but things are beginning to change. In Leah Zuidema’s writings titled, Myth

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Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice, she speaks upon
how the people view the variety of languages in the modern world today. She gives prime
examples as to how dialects, including AAVE can affect the stability of the Earth, she states:
These assumptions are not inconsequential thoughts. People act on their ideas, and as a result,
prejudice becomes active discrimination. Employment, promotions, grades, recommendations, and
business agreements are just a few of the things that may be aﬁcted (negatively or positively) by
reactions to the ways a person uses language in speech or writing. (Zuidema pp.352)

This is especially true when it comes to applying for employment. When most people attend an
interview, they use a more formal way of talking so that they can be understood most effectively.
If an individual went into an interview speaking in their home language, they are guaranteed to be
turned around almost immediately. This goes back to saying that the ideas of an informal dialect
speaker must be the focus and not the diction or eloquence. To also view this from a scholastic
standpoint, nothing is more critical about languages and dialect than academia. From elementary
school to college courses, criticism runs wild.

I hate to repeat this so many times, but the status of AAVE, along with other dialects must receive
their due respect. It can only occur if more scholars like Geneva Smitherman, P.A. Ramsey, and
Ametha Ball step up to the plate and encourage the world that variety can never be considered
negative.

From Marquise’s essay we see both his successes and struggles with his
appropriation of the academic conventions. We notice his attempts to cite sources,
although most of these attempts are not successful. But, while his citations are formatted
incorrectly (he italicizes direct quotes and titles of articles and essays), he is in part
successful with his ability to summarize, critique, and evaluate the sources he uses. He
not only states his afﬁrmation and disagreement with particular scholars’ arguments; his
close reading of referenced sources and texts demonstrates an acute awareness of the
arguments made, in addition to places where the authors’ points may be strengthened.
While many of Marquise’s views are subject to interpretation and debate regarding his
ability to critique certain scholars’ work, for a ﬁrst-year writing student, Marquise’s text
indicates his ability to mimic the academic conventions associated with disciplinary
critique. And, notice that he even adds a subheading to mimic discursive practices

associated with academic publications and texts!

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But Marquise’s language ain’t straight-up Standard Academic English. After
reading his essay, we also notice several places where he style shifts between Ebonics
and SE in his appropriation of Ebonics phonological features and syntax when he writes:
“dis freakin’ spell check is irritatin’” and “Naw dat ain’t right for real!” He also makes
use of various AAR strategies to establish stronger connections with his audience. In one
example, he writes, “if I were to write a statement once in Standard English (SE) and also
in AAVE, which would the general audience respond to more quickly? The SE form of
the statement without a doubt!” Asking this rhetorical question exhibits a call/response-
like pattern that requires readers to consider the question and potentially respond to it.

Let’s also consider the rhetorical practices at work in the following passage taken

from Marquise’s essay. He writes:

Now early in Balester’s argument, she stated that she had no prior knowledge of the history of
AAVE! She seemed to have contradicted herself into a comer, as soon as she faced criticism from
colleagues. Now I’m not trying to bash Valerie Balester, because I mean I ’m only a college
freshman, but when you state an unclear idea or belief to academia, you kind of deserve it.

In the previous passage, not only does Marquise establish a strong connection with his
audience in his direct address and conversational tone (a rhetorical pattern also identiﬁed
by Gilyard and Richardson, but not used frequently by other students—see Gilyard and
Richardson 41), but he also develops various forms of person-centered arguments. In
doing so, he links his status as a college freshman with that of scholars in order critique
Valerie Balester’s admitted lack of familiarity with AAVE. He then, uses Balester’s lack
of familiarity to signify directly (another AAR strategy), when he states, “when [stating]
an unclear idea or belief to academia, you kind of deserve it.” I’m not suggesting that his
interpretation of Balester’s text is valid, but what is important is how he draws on both

AAR patterns and the conventions associated with academic discourse.

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Marquise also makes use of repetition, a repetition that he is sure to acknowledge:

I hate to repeat this so many times, but the status of AAVE, along with other dialects must receive
their due respect. It can only occur if more scholars like Geneva Smitherman, P.A. Ramsey, and
Ametha Ball step up to the plate and encourage the world that variety can never be considered
negative.

It is signiﬁcant that Marquise acknowledges this repetition because he demonstrates to
readers the use of repetition as a rhetorical and purposeful act. He isn’t merely repeating
ideas because he has nothing else to say; rather, he makes use of repetition to emphasize
meaning—that the status of AAVE in Composition Studies is not where it should be.
What is also interesting about Marquise’s previous excerpt is the way that he pays a
shout-out to African American scholars who promote language rights, a discursive
practice associated with both Hip Hep and the African American community more
generally.

Perhaps the idea that I’m most fascinated by in Marquise’s essay is the way that
he is able to identify various AAR patterns and apply them at the same time in one entire
essay! In fact, he makes use of all of the AAR patterns that he references from Ball’s
work (“Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students”) in his essay. As
previously stated, he uses “repetition to create formulaic patterning” (Ball 28). He also
establishes “a link or sense of rapport with the audience” when he writes: “Now early in
Balester’s argument, she stated that she had no prior knowledge of the history of
AAVE!” (28). Moreover, as previously discussed, Marquise establishes strong
connections with his audience by “using interactive dialogue with the audience with
phrases like” ‘now’ (28).

His text also takes on “a quality of performance in the style and delivery” as he

styles shifts between Ebonics-based syntax, AAR, 55, and additional conventions Of

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academic language. In some instances, his text also exhibits a sermon-like performance
when he writes: “By Ball being one the highest scholars of AAVE amongst others like
Geneva Smitherman, the acceptation of vemacular language in the world shall soon
come.” The delivery of his text ﬁnther employs “orally-based organization patterns in
addition to the topic associations compare and contrast patterns” as he blends oral
discourse with the written discourse associated with academia as he blends anecdotes and
examples of AAVE with the scholastic arguments he aims to make (28). Consider the

following statement from Marquise’s essay:

For example, how could a griot tell a West African story by using a Standard English translation,
it would defeat the whole purpose! Or that’s like an African slave historian trying to write the
lyrics to old slave hymns using Standard English; this would cause the songs to lose their
character.

Marquise draws on proverbial modes of oral discourse to link topics when he compares
the necessity for writing Ebonics in the classroom on certain occasions to the necessity of
West African griots needing their home language varieties to tell a story, an oral-based
genre. He sets up this comparison to demonstrate that in order to keep it real and
establish a more powerful and authentic voice, it is necessary to write in home language
varieties because writing in SE would cause texts to lose their character or identity. What
is also interesting about this passage is that it assumes an understanding of shared cultural
experiences (28). It assumes that readers are familiar with the orality and storytelling that
is associated with the West African griot tradition. It also assumes that readers are
familiar with the song and dance rituals associated with the African American slavery
tradition.
The ﬁnal interesting pattern that Marquise uses (as identiﬁed by Ball) is by

linking “topics through the use of personal anecdotes and narratives interspersed within

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expository texts” (28). We especially see Marquise’s linking of topics with personal
anecdotes when he critiques works of referenced scholars, particularly in his work with
Balester’s text when he links her arguments with his status as a college freshman. In
reference to Ball’s work, he also links topics with her work by comparing his status as a
“bi-dialectal” speaker who can switch back and forth between Ebonics and SE to the
Aﬁican American student participants in Ball’s study. In the following passage, Marquise

ﬁrrther links his own personal understandings of Ball’s text by stating the following:

As Ball pointed this out, I realized that this strategy could be traced back to Africa, speciﬁcally the
western region, where griots, or village storytellers, intertwines the audience into the story,
particularly when it comes to morals that should be followed to maintain stability in the
community. Ball also notices how the students used repetition in their writing, creating a pattern.
I’m not entirely sure what that means, in terms of being a strategy. Does that mean that she
believes that students tie things together in their writing by using the same terms repeatedly?

Marquise’s work with Ball not only demonstrates his engagement with the text, but also,
demonstrates the ways that he links his own personal understanding of the text with the
argrunents that are written and expressed by the referenced scholar. He acknowledges his
uncertainties with the text and raises critical questions about what exactly is meant by
Aﬁican American students’ use of repetition because it is unclear to him whether the use
of repetition refers to the repetition of certain words or phrases, or whether it refers to the
repetition of certain ideas or concepts.

In sum, we can learn a great deal about the skills and knowledge that Marquise
has gained regarding the study of Ebonics. As writing teachers, we can acknowledge the
Strengths of his texts, as well as the areas in which he needs work. As a teacher-
researcher, I recognize the work and instruction still needed on citation systems, and I
also recognize that additional instruction is needed in argument construction. While I

applaud his engagement and strong attempts at scholastic critique, as writing educators,

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we might encourage Marquise—and all of our students—to look more critically at the
whole contexts of scholastic sources before selecting particular quotes, passages, or ideas
to critique. For example, he criticizes Balester for her lack of familiarity with AAVE
prior to doing research on her African American students; however, what he does not
consider is that Balester was merely explaining her positionality as an origin story to her
project. She had in fact, done her research on AAVE as she conducted research on
African American student writers, but was unfamiliar with AAVE scholarship before the
project began.

Despite some issues with his attempts to mimic the conventions associated with
academic language and discourse, Marquise’s text still offers many possibilities from the
study of Afrocentricity and Ebonics as he mixes Ebonics phonological features and
syntax purposefully with SE. His text also shows the ways in which he purposefully
mixes AAR and additional oral-based discursive practices with the rhetorical practices
associated with scholastic discourse. In some instances, AAR is necessary for stronger
impact; in other cases, SE and citation practices as evidence are essential. Through the
study of AAR and Ebonics Marquise’s text provides us with an understanding of the
ways that students may take the knowledge they gain from the study of AAR,
Afrocentricity, and Ebonics and apply and appropriate it deliberately and rhetorically in

particular writing situations, including literature review research papers.

4.6 Conclusions and Implications

In essence, this chapter provides evidence of the ways that African and African

American students can manipulate Ebonics phonological, syntactical, and rhetorical

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patterns across different writing assignments, contexts, and genres. From their texts, we
ﬁnd evidence of not only their knowledge of such Ebonics structural and discursive
patterns, but more importantly, their ability to execute them in highly sophisticated ways.
While students may or may not have been completely conscious of the structural and
discursive patterns that they executed, what is clear is the fact that they can identify these
patterns in texts besides their own, and appropriate them in their own texts. Students are
also able to use such patterns with autobiographical writing in ways that help illustrate
particularly ideas; students are capable of employing Ebonics to deﬁne words, phrases, or
ideas; and they are skillful at using Ebonics to demonstrate the ways in which they code-
switch. The fact that students can explain and provide speciﬁc examples of how they
code-switch in academic writing requires a critical level of intellectual engagement.
Students can also employ Ebonics structural and discursive patterns in genres besides
personal narratives. Their texts illustrate their ability to employ such patterns across
multigenre texts, where each genre requires its own rules and conventions; across
research papers, where students must also follow the conventions associated with citation
and research practices; and across texts, where either digital composing or analysis of
digital texts is required.

Finally, we see how one student strategically employs multiple structural and
discursive patterns in the most challenging of genres for students, the disciplinary
literacies research paper. Marquise’s text not only provides compelling evidence that
Africanized patterns of expression are appropriate for research essays, but also, he
demonstrates a profound ability to use these patterns and still engage many of the

conventions necessary in academic writing. His text—like others—illustrates a repertoire

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of contexts in which Ebonics can be used purposefully and strategically. Such work not
only supports the argument that students have the right to their own language, but also,
demonstrates that students are capable of discerning how and when to use the right to
their own language. The fact that Marquise and other students are able to employ
numerous Aﬁican-based structural and discursive patterns provides composition teachers
with compelling evidence that African American linguistic and stylistic choices are rich,
sophisticated, and alive and well in college composition classrooms.

The next chapter shows the ways in which all students might beneﬁt from an

Afrocentricity linguistically-focused curriculum.

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Chapter 5
AFROCENTRIC PEDAGOGY FOR ALL STUDENTS: TOWARD A PEDAGOGY OF

INCLUSION

5.1 Introduction

In this chapter, I provide discussion of what students have learned about Ebonics,
writing, and Composition Studies and how their attitudes have changed toward Ebonics
by the end of the semester. I further assess what students learned in relationship to my
institution’s Tier I Writing Program shared learning goals.29 Because our Program’s goals
revolve around writing, reading, and research skills and processes (Guidebook 4), I am
interested in how an alternative curricular approach still helps students meet these goals
in relationship to writing, reading, and research skills and practices.

As discussed in Chapter 3, to assess the ways that Afrocentric pedagogy supports
all ﬁrst-year writing students, I rely on two methods of instrumentation. The ﬁrst is a
language-attitudinal questionnaire, designed to ask students questions about their
attitudes toward Ebonics. The second method, textual analyses from students’
disciplinary literacies essay assignments, assesses students’ writing in relationship to
programmatic learning goals. I focus on both methods because my course objectives aim
to introduce students to Ebonics as a legitimate form of communication, to introduce
students to the discipline of Composition Studies, and to fulﬁll the shared learning goals

designated by the Tier I Writing program.3O Thus, the connection between these methods

29 Please see appendix for a list of the Tier 1 Writing Program’s Shared Learning Goals.

3 . . . .
0 See Chapter 2 for an extended discussron of course goals and learning objectives.

164

is primarily pedagogical in nature: I wanted to ﬁnd evidence that an Afrocentric
cuniculum supports all students in learning about Ebonics and accomplishing course and
programmatic goals. The goals that I focus on later in this chapter require students to
demonstrate the following:

0 Writing for purposes of reﬂection, action, and participation in academic

inquiry;

0 Understand that various academic disciplines and ﬁelds employ varied genre,

voice, syntactical choices, use of evidence, and citation styles;

0 Demonstrate the ability to locate and employ a variety of sources for a range

of purposes;

0 Understand the logics and uses of citation systems and documentation styles;

0 Be able to critically evaluate a variety of sources in purposeful ways;

0 Apply methods of inquiry and understanding to generate new knowledge; and

0 Demonstrate competence with one citation/documentation system.

As also discussed in Chapter 3, I chose to look at the disciplinary literacies
assignment in relationship to the learning goals because I believe this assignment to be
the most complex and challenging since it reﬂects the work that they have done with the
learning goals toward the end of the semester, and because this assignment requires that
students execute more shared learning goals than the other three major writing
assignments. Therefore, the disciplinary literacies assignment can best assess students’
abilities to locate and engage critically in various forms of scholarly research, both of

which are required by program’s shared learning goals.

165

Furthermore, while students may demonstrate their proﬁciency with the learning
goals differently in other assignments, I am most interested in students’ abilities to
execute the learning goals with a particular assignment that also requires them to
demonstrate their knowledge of rhetoric and composition as a discipline. In the ﬁeld,
while students’ work on Ebonics has been previously assessed in essay exams, creative
writing genres, and digital composition’s (Richardson and Gilyard; Ball; Canagarajah),
disciplinary scholarship has yet to uncover the work that all students can produce in
essays that require students to make sense of disciplinary conversations with Ebonics.
Thus, in addition to my pedagogical rationale for selecting this assignment for
assessment, 1 also ﬁnd that a discussion of students’ work with the disciplinary literacies
assignment is a productive space for our ﬁeld to begin thinking more critically about the
ways that students make sense of the discourse and its conversations surrounding our

discipline.

5.2 Language Attitudinal Questionnaire: Attitudes toward Ebonics

One way that I look at knowledge gained from the study of Ebonics is by discussing
the ways that students’ attitudes change toward its appropriateness. My hypothesis was
that students would have less favorable attitudes toward its appropriateness at the
beginning of the semester (in the pre questionnaire), and that these attitudes would be
more favorable once students learned more about Ebonics being a legitimate linguistic
system (in the post questionnaire). The language attitudinal questionnaire is a series of six
questions that asks students to ﬁrst reﬂect on their experiences being corrected with oral

and written discourse, their writing styles and practices, and their attitudes toward

166

Ebonics. The purpose of administering the questionnaire, then, is two-fold: As a teacher,
I wanted to get a sense of students’ experiences and attitudes toward writing and
linguistic practices, and as a researcher, I wanted to get a sense of the attitudes that they
demonstrate toward Ebonics.

My hypothesis that students would hold less favorable attitudes toward the
appropriateness of Ebonics on the pre and post questionnaires held true. Students’
knowledge and attitudes reﬂected in the pre questionnaire often spoke to the expectation
that the writer or communicator’s linguistic patterns be consistent with the rules
governing Standard English. Their responses in the pre questionnaire especially reinforce
limited knowledge of Ebonics as a rule-govemed (and legitimate) linguistic system. By
addressing these forms of knowledge and attitudes, I designed questions that would allow
me to see if attitudes toward Ebonics changed depending on whether or not the statement
was written in Ebonics or spoken in Ebonics. For instance, questions 3 and 4 from

questionnaire speciﬁcally address both spoken and written Ebonics:

3. Read the following passage and respond to the set of questions following this passage:
Derrick is a fellow student in your English composition class. When the instructor asked
for Derrick’s response to a required reading, Derrick replied: “I ain’ really get da gist
of’ t. I mean de author just be goin’ round and round in circles; be kinda be sayin’ da
same thang over and over. It just don’ make no kind of sense to me.”

In the series of questions below, 1) circle the number which most closely corresponds to your
reaction, and 2) explain your responses.

KEY: l-not appropriate at all; 2-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely
appropriate

1. The appmpriateness of students speaking this way in class:
1 2 3 4
Explain:

2. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class.

167

l 2 3 4
Explain:
3. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:
4. Listen to the following audio recording and respond to the following questions:

KEY: l-not appropriate at all; Z-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely
appropriate

I. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:
2. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:
3. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:
1 2 3 4
Explain:
I interpreted any attitude that viewed Ebonics as not appropriate at all as a less favorable
attitude toward the language, and any attitude that viewed it appropriately as a more
favorable attitude toward its appropriateness. Figures 1.3 through 1.8 identify the

differences in attitudes on pre and post questionnaires when looking at spoken and

written Ebonics in particular contexts.3 '

 

3 .
l If a student gave two answers (e.g. circling both 2 and 3), I tallied one vote for each category.

168

Eight; 1.1: Attitudg toward Smken Ebonics in Class usingWritten Statement

 

 

 

 

 

 

Frequency of Students
Reporting Responses

Appropriateness
Scale

Figure 1.2: Attitudes toward Written Ebonics in class using Written Statement32

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

m
in? g :0'.;;,«\ “°" Pre
'0- a
‘3‘; " / ‘. +Post
E5 1 1
0 t of f . "4:
Egg. 1 2 3 4
a: a: Appmpriateness
Scale

Figure 1.3: Attitudes toward Written Ebonics Formally Using Written Statement33

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

s g 201

e 3 3

e or 2 "°" Pro
0 '3 O

5 g 3 +Post
3' a»

a: -8 °‘

.02 1 2 3 4
Appropriateness
Scale

 

32 . . . .
One student chose not to answer the question in the post questionnaire.

33 . . . .
One student chose not to answer the question in the post questionnaire.

169

Figure 1.4: Attitudes toward Spoken Ebonics in class Using Audio-taped Statement}4

 

 

 

 

 

U!
u U!
s a u
“g g 10
a O- 8
:2 3 --~-- Pre
o a: 6
s s 2
a 3 °
8 Q) 1 2 3 4
u_ a:
Appropriateness
Scale

Figure 1.5: Attitudes toward Written Ebonics in class Using Audio-taped Statement35

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 .
.I ‘ .. u
0 iii-"HOW

1 2 3 4

Frequency of Students
Reporting Responses
a GI

. « r ’ '
V '0
g 3

Appropriateness
Scale

M

34
. One student reported it as being both somewhat and deﬁnitely appropriate for Derrick to speak Ebonics
m class in the post questionnaire.

35
One student reported it being both somewhat and deﬁnitely appropriate for Derrick to write Ebonics in
class in the post questionnaire.

170

. . . . . . 36
Figure 1.6: Attitudes toward Written Ebonics Formally Usrng Audio-taped Statement

20 1

 

15 O

- -- Pre
10 ‘

5 4!.T‘IX‘.‘ _ . — PO“

0 4-——-r-'o-i-—PI-."'

 

 

 

 

 

Frequency of Students
Reporting Responses

Appmpriateness
Scale

What is important about these numbers is the direction of change. With the pre
questionnaire, students’ ﬁndings reveal that very similar attitudes exist toward both
spoken Ebonics and written Ebonics, since the same number of respondents reported it
being not appropriate at all to write formally in Ebonics after hearing both the spoken and
written Ebonics texts when taking the pre questionnaire (see Figures 1.5 and 1.6).
Students also bore slightly similar attitudes toward writing in Ebonics for class when
hearing both the spoken and written texts (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4). With the written text,
while seven students reported it being not appropriate at all for Derrick to write Ebonics
for class (see Figure 1.3), eight students reported a similar attitude when hearing the
spoken version on the pre questionnaire (see Figure 1.4).37 What is clear from these
ﬁndings is that the majority of students in my class initially reported having less

favorable attitudes toward both spoken and written appropriateness of Ebonics, thus

 

36 . . . .
One student did not Circle :1 response. but did note that it depends on the context.

37 - ' c o -

Because the data set is too small, a statistical test cannot measure whether or not there IS srgmﬁcant
difference between attitudes toward spoken and written texts. As a researcher, all that I can conclude is that
students held similar attitudes since similar numbers of students responded similarly to both spoken and

written versions of the statement.

171

making the work that we sought to accomplish in the class more challenging (with regard
to changing students’ perceptions and attitudes), yet deﬁnitely necessary.

What is also interesting, though, is the degree to which students’ attitudes
changed by the end of the semester. From these results, we see changes in attitudes
toward both spoken and written Ebonics. While sixteen students in the ﬁrst questionnaire
reported that writing formally like Derrick was inappropriate when reading the written
statement, only nine reported it as inappropriate in the post questionnaire (see Figure 1.5).
Another interesting ﬁnding is the changes in students’ attitudes toward the use of Ebonics
in classroom. While eight students initially said it wasn’t at all appropriate for Derrick to
write in Ebonics for class when hearing the audio-taped statement, zero respondents
reported it being not at all appropriate to write like Derrick in the post questionnaire (see
Figure 1.6).

Perhaps many students’ attitudes changed because they acquired more knowledge
about the legitimacy of Ebonics, especially those acknowledging the appropriateness of
Ebonics in a writing class. By the end of the course, however, once students acquired
more knowledge about Ebonics, they adjusted their attitudes accordingly. For example, in
the post questionnaire, some students commented on the legitimacy of Ebonics, while no
respondents acknowledged its legitimacy as a language in the pre questionnaire. One
student writes: “If the teachers [sic] ok with it then I think it’s totally ﬁne [. . .] Standard
English isn’t the only language. AAVE has rules too.” Another student writes: “[Writing
in African American Language (AAL) for class is extremely appropriate because]
students should be able to write in AAL, as it is equal to SE.” And, ﬁnally, another

student writes: “[It’s appropriate because] it’s an Ebonics class.” The fact that such

172

students recognize Ebonics as a rule-governed system and a legitimate topic appropriate
for a language-focused class further shows that they have acquired more knowledge
about the language and its legitimacy.

This does not mean that students’ perceptions of Ebonics are clear, cut and dry, as
we see some tensions associated with students’ responses. In the post questionnaire, two
students reported being more on the fence when determining whether or not Ebonics was
appropriate to write for class and formal writing situations. Another student chose not to
answer a couple of the questions when reporting attitudes toward Ebonics. The largest
change, however, was in the number of students reporting that Ebonics was not
appropriate at all to write in the class when hearing both the spoken and written Ebonics
texts. When hearing the spoken text, zero students reported it being not appropriate at all,
and when reading the written text, one student reported it being not appropriate at all.
Although the number of students reporting writing in Ebonics as inappropriate for formal
writing situations decreased when reading and hearing the spoken and written texts, more
students still responded to it being not apprOpriate at all to speak and write formally than
those students who reported it being not appropriate at all to speak and/or write in
Ebonics exclusively for class. These tensions seem to suggest that while students are
familiar with the legitimacy of Ebonics, they recognize that others who aren’t familiar
may make particular judgments on Speakers who do not use Standard English. One
student writes: “[Derrick] wouldn’t be taken seriously just like i wouldn’t be taken

seriously if I wrote a formal piece in the way I speak with my friends.”38 Another student

 

38 . .
Because of the personal meaning associated With less favorable attitudes, I choose not to reveal the
speciﬁc names corresponding to these attitudes.

173

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writes: “It is ok for the students to speak this way in class but not ok for a formal writing

 

piece. A formal writing piece is just what it says it is formal.”

Other students justify their responses by arguing that in formal settings, since
Standard English is most familiar, it should be expected that speakers and writers
conform to these conventions. One student writes: “Writing a formal piece must be able
to reach out to a broad audience. The use of informal dialects may not be understood
correctly.” Another writes: “Formal pieces usually use SE and don’t have contractions.”
Thus, while students understand the legitimacy of Ebonics being appropriate for some
contexts, by the end of the class, many of them concluded that it is not always appropriate
to use in other writing and communicative contexts.

In sum, the pre and post language attitudinal questionnaires reveal that students
possessed less favorable attitudes about the appropriateness of Ebonics on the pre
questionnaire than on the post questionnaire, although some students still questioned the
appropriateness of Ebonics in formal written contexts in the post questionnaire.
Furthermore, students’ comments about the legitimacy of Ebonics speak to the
knowledge that they have acquired about Ebonics being a legitimate linguistic system and
topic worthy of discussion in a language-focused course; their comments toward
audience expectations to justify their choices also reveal that students are thinking
critically about the politics of language and how they inﬂuence particular discourse
environments. And, the fact that students provide reasons for their choices may further
suggest their ability to argue toward the appropriateness of Ebonics in various contexts.
What perhaps may be challenging is the fact that while students are familiar with its

legitimacy, they may have a harder time convincing those less familiar of its legitimacy

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that Ebonics is appropriate in various contexts. Nonetheless, students are still able to
explain the decisions that guide when and where they determine Ebonics to be

appropriate.

5.3 The Disciplinary Literacies Assignment: An Execution of Students’ Writing Practices
In the previous section, I focused on students’ attitudes toward the
appropriateness of Ebonics in their language attitudinal questionnaires. Such changes in
attitudes reﬂect students’ knowledge of the legitimacy of Ebonics. In order, to prove this
claim, however, it is also important to provide further evidence of the knowledge students
have acquired when learning about Ebonics. Therefore, I assess their knowledge of
Ebonics in relationship to the disciplinary literacies assignment. The disciplinary
literacies assignment requires that students demonstrate knowledge of Ebonics and the
ﬁeld of rhetoric and composition, by addressing the ways that Ebonics is discussed in
disciplinary scholarship. I also focus on this assignment because much scholarship on
ﬁrst-year writing students calls for students’ writing practices to be studied empirically in
relationship to academic and/or professional writing; many argue that such writing should
also be relevant for the rest of students’ collegiate careers and majors (Nelms and Dively;
Bergmann and Zepernick; Wardle). Others argue that ﬁrst-year composition be revised as
an introductory course to the discipline of Composition Studies (Downs and Wardle). In
“Disciplinarity and Transfer: Students’ Perceptions of Learning to Write,” Linda S.
Bergmann and Janet Zepernick assess students’ experiences with learning to write in

disciplines related to their majors. They write:

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[Many teachers in other disciplines consider] English classes [to be] personal and
expressive rather than academic or professional, and therefore drink that teachers’
comments and suggestions represent an unwarranted “intrusion” into students’
own personal and intellectual territory. However, they consider writing in other
classes as part of their socialization into the disciplines those courses represent...
[Students’] failure to credit English classes with having taught them to write was
not, therefore, grounded in students’ belief that what they learned about writing in
one setting could not be applied in others, but rather in their perception that the
writing done for English classes was inherently not “disciplinary” or
“professional” and therefore offered few features that could be transferred. (129)
The lack of disciplinarity in relationship to composition appears to be an interesting
theme in relationship to writing assessment in the ﬁeld. In addition to introducing
students to the ﬁeld and requiring that students have more knowledge of Ebonics, another
purpose of this assignment was to assess students’ execution of these goals in relationship
to the disciplinary literacies assignment in order to respond to the call that ﬁrst-year
writing courses establish a clearer relationship between ﬁrst-year writing classes and
disciplinarity. Therefore, I am interested in how students engage scholarly knowledge in
rhetoric and composition because I also believe that ﬁrst-year writing courses should
respond to the call for disciplinarity, where our discipline’s practices are investigated as a
source of scholastic inquiry.
A summary of the writing prompt used with the disciplinary literacies writing
assignment reads as follows (a copy of the writing prompt also appears in the appendix of

writing assignments):

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For this essay, you'll be asked to develop an argument as to whether Composition Studies
effectively discusses the usage of [African American LanguageJ/AAVE as a language/language
variety, and whether or not discussion on the topic has changed or evolved over time. To do this,
you will also consider referring to speciﬁc journals (CCC, College English, Teaching English in a
Two-Year College, The English Journal, JAC or others) to gain a sense of what is occurring more
recently in the ﬁeld...

Your analysis should include the following:

- An Argument/Thesis on how composition studies discusses issues of AAVE/AAL;

- A discussion of how AAVE/AAL has been discussed historically (1970’s ~ 2000) through
course readings”; and

— A discussion of how AAVE/AAL is more recently discussed in composition studies (2000-
present) in related journals within the ﬁeld.

To accomplish these requirements ...you’ll want to draw on evidence of at least 2 course readings
to make your claim. In your discussion and analysis of course readings, you might consider
providing summaries of each reading and authors’ stance, referring to speciﬁc examples from the
readings to support the authors’ main idea(s), and then shifting toward formulating your own
argument that analyzes each authors’ effectiveness in discussing AAVE/AAL within the ﬁeld.

Next, you’ll need to research more recent scholarship within Composition Studies, by consulting
journals in College Composition and Communication (CC C), College English, Journal of
Advanced Composition (JA C), or Teaching English in a Two- Year College... Once you’ve
searched and browsed articles within any of these journals regarding AAVE/AAL, you’ll then
select AT LEAST 2 to explain how they also support your overall argument/claim on the
representation of AAVE...

In short, you should carefully analyze a minimum of AT LEAST 4 sources (2 reflecting course
readings assigned in class and 2 reﬂecting scholarship demonstrated in recent journals from the
online databases). In your discussion of each article, you should make an argument/thesis that

demonstrates whether or not composition studies as a discipline effectively discusses scholarship
concerning AAVE/AAL and whether or not such discussion has changed/evolved over time.

When making sense of the work that students produced with this essay, I ﬁrst read
each essay in order to identify patterns and themes that I found to recur frequently across
students’ texts.4o From these recurring themes, 1 then selected those that identify the ways
that students interpret disciplinary conversations; I chose themes relating to disciplinary
conversations because they demonstrate the knowledge that students also have acquired

of rhetoric and composition as a discipline, one of the primary goals for the course.

—_

39 . . .
I begin With the 1970’s because this decade marks the passage of the CCCC Students’ Right to Their
Own Language Resolution.

40 . ,
By frequent use, I mean patterns that recurred in at least ﬁve or more students essays.

I77

0 identiﬁed strengths and weaknesses of the CCCC Students’ Right to Their Own
Language (SRTOL) Resolution;
0 an acknowledgment of explicit pedagogical and curricular approaches used for
implementing Ebonics;
0 the continued demand for changes in teachers’ attitudes regarding Ebonics;
0 identiﬁcation of disciplinary progress and the need for more progress; and
0 identiﬁcation of research methods and methodologies used to study Ebonics.
Later in this chapter, evidence of these themes will be used to identify students’ skills,
knowledge, and areas for improvement in order to demonstrate the ways that Afrocentric
Pedagogy through the study of Ebonics supports students’ writing practices.

An Assessment of the Strengths and Weaknesses of C C C C SRTOL
I begin with a discussion of SRTOL, acknowledging (as I did in Chapter 2) that

SRTOL is not limited to the promotion of African American students’ language rights;

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The following passages ﬁ'om students’ texts reveal the relationships that exist
between SRTOL and Ebonics, as they acknowledge the progress, strengths, and

limitations of the document:

This is where the Students Right to Their Own Language (STROL) comes into the picture. First
suggested in 1972, it wasn’t ratiﬁed by the members of CCCC until two years later. It states:

We afﬁrm the students' right to their own patterns and varieties of language-the dialects

respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their own language. (CCC)

Without actually mentioning AAVE, the CCCC wrote this resolution mainly to address speakers
and teachers of AAVE. Teachers have the responsibility to become informed about AAVE.
However, if the teachers remain uninformed about AAVE then what chance does it have at being
e general public? This is especially true in the area of writing and composition
where today most documents are written in standard English. Some may argue that even though
you have the right to your own language, you have the responsibility to become famrlrar wrth

standard English.

Sheila:

 

 

4!
A Pseudonym was requested by the student.

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1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication or CCCC created a resolution
called the “Students’ Rights to Their Own Language.” The CCCC’s main purposes are to
eliminate the prejudices of Speakers of different dialects and give the students the right to speak
and write in their own language. However, what’s most remarkable about the resolution is that it

wanted it to make the teachers adjust to how they teach students who speak a different dialect— a
theme that would be recurring throughout my discussion. This resolution encourages the teachers

students’ language. These resolutions are very bold and ambitious and would really help the
dialect speakers to express themselves better if followed correctly, however it doesn’t mask what
it doesn’t do. These resolutions are good in theory but not in practice. It would be good if the

In 1974, the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” Resolution was published in an attempt to
call attention to the fact that students should have the right to speak and write in their own

language, no matter what language that may be... The SRTOL resolution was a huge step for the
ﬁeld of Composition Studies as it was the ﬁrst time that it had been ofﬁcially stated that a student

should be able to speak or write in which ever language they choose. This section of the
resolution says that it is unacceptable to prefer one language or dialect over another and that all

With each of these excerpts, students attempt (sometimes accurately, other times
questionably) to assesses the strengths and shortcomings of the SRTOL document. In
Ryan’s response, although the idea that SRTOL was written “mainly to address speakers
and teachers of AAVE,” is up for debate, his response does establish a relationship
between teachers’ responsibilities to promote language rights, and the communicative
patterns of Ebonics-speaking students whose language may deviate from Standard
English. For Ryan (and other students), one of the ﬁrst steps associated with SRTOL’s

progress is an acknowledgment of the legitimacies of alternative language varieties,

including Ebonics.

Although students clearly understand some of the purposes of the resolution, we

can still use SRTOL as a learning opportunity to teach students how to strengthen

I80

arguments. While students do have a point that the document does not clearly present
students’ perspectives, and while the document may not provide explicit pedagogical
strategies, none of these excerpts provide sufﬁcient evidence to support these claims.
Perhaps we might encourage students to identify and analyze speciﬁc points and ideas
from the actual document in order to demonstrate where such gaps exist. We might also
encourage students to consider. other sources that build on SRTOL by including student
perspectives and pedagogical strategies (Kinloch; Ball and Lardner). In these cases,
students merely tell readers their impression of the document without showing or proving
their claims.

As instructors, we might also encourage students to resist absolutes like, “most”
or “always.” Sheila assumes that most teachers still do not enforce SRTOL, a claim that
while possibly accurate, is certainly debatable without sufﬁcient evidence. To be clear,
however, Sheila’s discussion of SRTOL still makes meaningful contributions. Later on in
Sheila’s essay, she argues that SRTOL calls for teachers to adjust their attitudes toward
language varieties that deviated from Standard English. She later states that “what’s most
remarkable about the resolution is that it wanted it to make the teachers adjust to how
they teach students who speak a different dialect— a theme that would be recurring
throughout my discussion.” Later in this chapter, I further discuss students’ identiﬁcation
of themes in the ﬁeld that continue to demand a change in teachers’ attitudes.

As previously described by students, everythang associated with SRTOL ain’t
hunky dory. Students’ assessment of SRTOL also seems to echo Smitherman’s

discussion in “CCCC’s Role in the Struggle for Student Rights” where she states:

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By no stretch am I saying that compositionists have all been doing the right thing
over the decade since the passage of the National Language Policy. What we are
witnessing, though, is a developing sociolinguistic sophistication and political
maturity about language rights issues. As the ﬁeld of Composition-Rhetoric has
evolved, so too has the language consciousness of CCCC professionals. Further,
theorists now recognize the need to address realities relative to students' native
language/dialect in the comp-rhetoric context, a posture that has, unfortunately,
not always been the case. (369)
Smitherman’s discussion of the CCCC’s role with SRTOL is critical because not only
does it highlight the progress that Composition Studies has made in relationship to
SRTOL, but it also recognizes a need for continued progress. One way my students point
out areas for progress is by mentioning potential areas of hypocrisy associated with
promoting language rights while still teaching Standard English. As Ryan argues,
although the document seeks to position alternative language varieties as equal to
Standard English, there is still an assumption that students should still learn Standard
English. This point suggests that if alternative language varieties are primarily acceptable
for informal and low-stakes writing tasks and if Standard English is positioned as the
primary language variety suitable for formal writing situations, then Standard English
continues to remain the superior language variety to others, despite SRTOL’s insistence
that all language varieties are equal. This moreover demonstrates that attitudes toward
the legitimacy of Ebonics need to be adjusted so that Ebonics may gain equal status to
Standard English. Ryan’s understanding of this argument might be strengthened,

however, if he referenced more recent scholarship that similarly points out these

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hypocrisies with their discussions of SRTOL. In other excerpts, students reference
Canagarajah’s “The Place of Word Englishes: Pluralization Revisited,” a text that
critiques the superiority of mainstream Englishes and the mere toleration of world
Englishes and alternative language varieties.

As students also identify, another problem with the resolution is that while passed,
there’s no mandate requiring teachers in the discipline to actually support it. Despite the
wide margin that SRTOL was passed by (Smitherman 358), according to the SRTOL
document, the voter turnout was fairly low, only being approved by a 79-20 vote
(“Students’ Right”). Students’ identiﬁcations of this problem is signiﬁcant because when
discussing SRTOL in class, many students concluded that if the voter turnout was this
low, the CCCC would have no way of knowing the opinions of those who did not vote on
the resolution, which were many. In light of this, students concluded that the lower
turnout may suggest that the document lacks enforcement, and thus, many teachers of
writing may still not support SRTOL. As such, writing teachers could potentially
maintain pedagogical practices inconsistent with the document’s philosophy.

Students’ interpretation of this lack of mandate is also consistent with research
conducted by the CCCC language Policy Committee. In their 2000 “Language
Knowledge and Awareness Survey Final Report,” the committee found that teacher
education courses in linguistics and language varieties were necessary because surveyed
respondents lacked familiarity with both the SRTOL Resolution, as well as an
understanding of alternative linguistic systems (“Language Knowledge”). Scott Wible

Speciﬁcally states:

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In fact, as the CCCC Language Policy Committee reported in its recent survey of
members of the CCCC and National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE),
many compositionists have never ever seen the ink and paper—let alone the
substance—of the “Students’ Right” policy, as two-thirds of the survey
respondents were unfamiliar with the resolution (14-15). (443)
Thus, the idea that the majority of respondents (who are members of CCCC) were not
familiar with the document, may suggest that there is no mandate that requires members
of the organization support it. According to students, if the document is not enforceable,
then SRTOL seems good in theory, but fall short of philosophical practice. In this case,
the problem is not with students accurately identifying the lack of enforceability; instead,
the problem lies with students’ ability to provide evidence of this limitation, although
such claims and limited evidence may suggest where students might look with additional
research had students chosen to revise these essays a ﬁnal time. The limitations
associated with accuracy are also understandable because in order to prove this point,
student-researchers would need to have a more extensive working knowledge of the
CCCC, its committees, and the research that the organization has conducted in
relationship to students’ rights.

As also discussed, like the lack of philosophical practice offered from the
document, students’ analysis of SRTOL indicates, while good in theory, the resolution
also falls short in providing explicit examples of pedagogical practice. Their ﬁndings are
also consistent with what Smitherman has discussed in the “CCCC’s Role in the Struggle

for Student Rights,” and more recently, Valerie Kinloch’ 3 discussion in “Revisiting the

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Promise of ‘Students' Right to Their Own Language’: Pedagogical Strategies.”
Snritherrnan writes:

It seemed that the Students' Right background document was welcomed because it
was informative in terms of dreary; however, it did not go far enough in praxis.
CCCC leadership acknowledged the need for something more in the form of

explicit teaching materials, sample lesson plans, and a more practically-oriented
pedagogy. (365)
And, Kinlock states more recently:
We must do more than theorize about student differences and language variation.
We must use a rights rhetoric such as Students' Right to encourage students to
become active learners and critical thinkers inside and outside of classrooms if we
are, in the words of Smitherman, "taking care of business" (Talkin and Testifyin
216). .. Let us afﬁrm the rights of students to their own language by afﬁrrning the
practices they bring into classrooms as they enhance their critical thinking,
reading, writing, and performing skills. (109)

Kinloch’s work with SRTOL is also signiﬁcant because it identiﬁes speciﬁc strategies for
putting SRTOL into practice, using her own students’ conversations about the resolution
from class discussions as lenses. It also demonstrates how we can use the document (and

disciplinary scholarship) to teach explicit pedagogical strategies related to writing,

reading, and research. While students can make the claim (from Smitherman’s analysis)
that originally, the SRTOL did not sufﬁciently put theory into practice, more recent
conversations like Kinloch’s, however, provide evidence of increasing pedagogical

Strategies in support of SRTOL and Ebonics-speaking students.

185

An Acknowledgment of Explicit Pedagogies Used to Teach Ebonics
While many students argue that the SRTOL resolution stops short at the praxis

level, and that it needs to be updated to discuss speciﬁc pedagogical strategies more

extensively (beyond the bibliography that was updated in 2006 at the end of the
document), they do acknowledge and identify the more recent pedagogies with respect to
Ebonics-speaking students. Based on students’ responses to the disciplinary literacies
assignment, they have identiﬁed the following Ebonics-based composition pedagogies:
Afrocentric pedagogy used to support self expression; contrastive analysis of Standard
English and Ebonics; bridging from home languages to Standard English; the promotion
of bidialectalism; and the promotion of code-switching. I classify these pedagogies into
strategies that seek to implement Aﬁican-based cultural practices, and those that are
based on the teaching of linguistic phenomena, practices that can be applied to any

language or language variety (e.gs. teaching bidialectalism, contrastive analysis, etc).

Implementation ofAﬁ'ican-based Cultural Practices in the Classroom

Justin:
curriculum to a major mid-westem University. This study was done with 24 African American

students. This new curriculum was trying to use the experiences that the students bring to the
classroom and not treat them like black pieces of slate. By using their experiences I mean allowing
the students to use their background in their writing in the class. By giving these students the
ability to express themselves in their own styles was very empowering for these students. “The

idea that black anything is nothing was so deeply embedded into their consciousness that their

Elaine Richardson tells about a study done in 1996 about applying an African American type of

behaviors sometimes reﬂected this sad truth.” Elaine Richardson, “Critique on the Problematic of

Implementing Afrocentricity into Traditional Curriculum: "The Powers That Be”’[...] Elaine

Richardson is saying that these African American students have been convinced to believe that
their backgrounds and home languages are not considered credible for any type of formal writing.

By allowing these students to use their home language and experiences in their writing these
students seemed to be instantaneously liberated, with much self-conﬁdence. The implication of
African American curriculum can be very beneﬁcial for students, through gaining self-conﬁdence

and exposing them to diversity.

Kelly:
[Elaine Richardson] explained that the African-centered composition curriculum is based in ﬁve

theoretical traditions. The ﬁrst being Aﬁccentricity, which “is an inclusive approach to
phenomena that encourages knowledge of centeredness of self.” Also, “African American

186

students’ literacy education should involve their experiences and be experienced by them,”
(198)... The second theory is “politicizing literacy instruction is highly compatible to the

situation of the AAVE student,” (Richardson 199). Black literacy has been political all the way
back to slavery. This theory allows students to have knowledge of their heritage and the struggle

that it included. This education will help students to strive to deﬁne their ﬁrtures, (Richardson
199). .. Today’s classrooms however tend to approach students as though they are blank slates.
Looking through the different scholarship on the ﬁeld, it has been found that many students are
taught to write in Standard English, and as thought they know nothing. Students are treated as
students. Richardson is giving solutions to going against the idea that students are just students.

Both Justin and Kelly successfully identify the relationships that exist between the
celebration and promotion of African American worldviews and culture, and African
American linguistic practices. Justin speciﬁcally references Richardson’s discussion of
“Afrocentric” pedagogy and argues that because her cuniculum focuses on Aﬁican
American students, the Afrocentric focus permits students to celebrate their home
language and cultural practices. Kelly states that another way to position Afrocentric
pedagogy in the classroom is by celebrating African American cultural and
communicative practices in ways that politicize the concept of Black literacy, a practice
that acknowledges the heritage and struggle of Aﬁican American people. Each approach,

then, acknowledges Afrocentric pedagogical roots.
Students’ work with African-based cultural communicative practices not only

demonstrates how they identify pedagogical practices, as they are discussed in the ﬁeld,

but also, demonstrates their ability to analyze the problems associated with disconnecting
Aﬁican American students from their home cultural practices. As my students suggest,

African Americans’ cultural practices should be not only tolerated, but also celebrated.

Later on in her essay, Kelly writes:
Too many classrooms have students who write what the teacher or professor wants to hear, and do
not actually think about the assignment and make it their own. In her student research, Richardson
found that many students accepted their oppression,(209). This fact that students have accepted
this oppression is a daunting concept. The classroom setting is a place that should allow the

student to grow as a person, and to learn more about their backgrounds.

187

Kelly makes an interesting point that it is often assumed that African American students
are not familiar with Standard English just because many of them draw on Ebonics-based
patterns on some occasions, when she writes, “Looking through the different scholarship
on the ﬁeld, it has been found that many students are taught to write in Standard English,
and as thought they know nothing. Students are treated as students.” In “Reading Past
Resistance: A Response to Valerie Balester,” Jacqueline Jones Royster and Jean C.
Williams also point out the problems associated with scholars like Balester assuming that
Aﬁican American students are not familiar with the discourses and discourse
communities that are often associated with the academy. They note:

Balester labels students as alien (adjective) with regard to the production of
academic writing and with regard to their cultural knowledge of life in
universities. We see this view as different from students being alienated, as hell

hooks so eloquently articulates it, by the social and political processes permitted
to predominate in our thinking and in the systemic Operations of university
environments, regardless of the abilities of students to produce academic prose
and regardless of whatever prior knowledge of university life they hold. (138)
I ﬁnd that this is exactly the point that Kelly highlights: The conversations surrounding
Ebonics-based discourse in the ﬁeld at times operate with the assumption that culturally-
relevant and linguistic-focused pedagogical instruction is primarily necessary because
Ebonics-speaking students have limited exposure and practice with executing the
conventions associated with academic discourse, including Standard English. This idea
further demonstrates not only Kelly’s knowledge of the discourse surrounding this

conversation in the ﬁeld, but also, an attitude that is consistent with the need to give

188

Aﬁican American students—and all students—the agency to take ownership in their own
learning experiences and writing processes.
Teaching of Linguistic Phenomenon

As students also identify, not all Ebonics-based pedagogies are exclusively
derived directly from the study of Afrocentricity. Some pedagogies, however, represent
an investigation of linguistic phenomenon that may be applicable to the study of other
languages and language varieties as well. In other words, while contrastive analysis,
bridging, bidialectalism, and code-switching methods have often been used for
implementing Ebonics into composition curricula, these approaches have also been used

to teach other ESL and ESD speakers.

Brody (Contrastive Analysis):

In J.R Rickford’s Linguists, Education, and the Ebonics Firestorm he discussed the 1996 Oakland
School Board Ebonics Resolution and its “Contrastive Analysis” approach towards linguistic
education. With a fresh and current perspective on the topic (published in 2006) Rickford stated
that, “An approach that took students’ language into account, as the Contrastive Analysis approach
does, is still more likely to succeed than one that does not” (88).

Brooke (Bridging from home languages to Standard English):

In 1971, “The primary goal of The Language Curriculum Research Group at Brooklyn College is
the teaching of Standard American English, with special emphasis on writing skills” (Gilyard 14).
This trend was relevant in many other areas not just at Brooklyn College. Many scholars believe
that in teaching students Standard English without incorporating their home languages is giving
these students great advantage. They believe that Standard English is the language of the future
and is needed to be successful in oral and written communication. At Brooklyn College, in the
early 1970’s, incorporated a coursed designed for students who used many AAVE grammatical
features in their writing. This program was designed not to teach these students Black English but
was developed because of their AAVE features in their formal writing (Gilyard 14). In doing this
the students could feel more comfortable around their classmates and although the course did not
include Black English, the teachers could recognize and help the students slowly develop Standard
English in their formal papers.

Nick (Bidialectalism and Code'switching):

A way for teachers to incorporate code-switching of language varieties into classrooms is using
Bidialectalism. “Here the procedure is to allow students to retain their language but to enhance
their linguistic range by acquiring the standard form as a second languages, much as one would
gain facility in using a foreign language” (Nembhard 435). Using this Bidialectal strategy will
help beneﬁt Ebonics speaking students by teaching them how to use standard language varieties
without putting down their own home languages. This technique will help eliminate students from
feeling that they need to fade in the background, and could progress them to become more
successful in school. However, language varieties other than Standard English have not always
been incorporated in schools and composition studies.

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As is the case with students who identify Aﬁican American-centered pedagogies,
discussions on speciﬁc forms of linguistic instruction also demonstrate students’ ability
to identify key trends in the ﬁeld’s conversations. What we notice ﬁom this particular
thread of student conversations, though, are the ways that students conﬂate different
linguistically-based terminology in potentially problematic ways. While one linguistic
term may be related to another and while one linguistic pedagogical approach may be
used to supplement another, as an instructor, it is critical to point out the technical
differences that exist between each of these terms. For example, while contrastive
analysis is commonly used when teaching bidialectalism (perhaps this is why the terms
are discussed together), one can promote bidialectalism without necessarily teaching
contrastive analysis. Contrastive analysis often requires comparison and analysis of the
linguistic (often syntactical) differences between one language/language variety and
another. Bidialectalism means being ﬂuent in two different dialects. One can be ﬂuent in
two different dialects without being consciously able to identify the differences between
the two language varieties. Students also conﬂate bidialectalism with code-switching. In
linguistic terms, the difference between bidialectalism and code-switching is that code-
switching involves subtler shifts in language choices employed by speakers and writers,
where the communicator may shift back and forth simultaneously between two linguistic
codes, languages, or dialects in a given context. Bidialectalism involves more signiﬁcant
changes in language patterns, thus resulting in the communicator completely changing his
or her language variety depending on the particular context. I would also add that while
related, code-switching suggests the speaker’s and/or writer’s ability to shift back and

forth between languages/language varieties (codes), while making purposeful decisions
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regarding these shifts. In contrast, one can be bidialectal (ﬂuent in two different dialects)
and not as skilled at identifying the appropriate occasions for code-switching; a
bidialectal speaker may or may not be able to identify language variety differences even
when he/she uses two different language varieties. The confusions associated with these
pedagogies differ from those associated with the implementation of Afrocentric

‘ pedagogies.

Such confusion also seems to correlate with the limited discussion of speciﬁc
attitudes toward these linguistic pedagogical approaches. In the previous section, students
were more likely to analyze their own opinions (as illustrated through Kelly’s example)
in relationship to the identiﬁed Afrocentric pedagogies. In this section, however, students
primarily summarize the linguistic-based pedagogies, and identify the scholars ’ opinions.
When dealing with linguistic terminology, my ﬁndings illustrate how students often
revert back to the summary-based discourse with which they are most familiar in attempt
to understand and make sense of the disciplinary-based linguistic terminology.

Continued Demands for Self-Eﬁ‘icacy and Changes in Teachers ’ Attitudes

Another theme that many students traced was disciplinary discussions on the
necessity for the teachers to change their attitudes regarding Ebonics. In Aﬁ'ican
American Literacies Unleashed, Ball and Lardner argue that self-efﬁcacy (through the
exploration and examination of teachers’ personal reﬂections and expectations) is a
critical component to acknowledging, confronting, and changing teachers’ negative
attitudes toward Ebonics. Students also identify the necessities for teachers to
acknowledge, confront, and change attitudes, a progression that they identify quite early

on in disciplinary conversations (during the 1970’s) and even more recently (from 2000-

191

present). In doing so, students’ responses reveal that self-efﬁcacy still needs to be
acknowledged; while there is an acknowledgement of the progress concerning the
legitimacy of Ebonics, a change in teachers’ attitudes is still necessary. Comparable to
the progress and need for continued change, as reﬂected through students’ previous
discussions of SRTOL, and comparable to Smitherman’s discussion in “CCCC’s Role in
the Struggle for Student Rights,” the fact that conversations on Ebonics continue to call
for changes in teachers’ attitudes, suggests that everyone ain’t convinced that students

have the right to their own language:

Tyler:

At the end of the 703, in 1979, P. A. Ranrsey writes “Teaching the Teachers to Teach Black-
Dialect Writers.” [. . .] I agree with him when he argues that the problems are with the teacher not
the student; teachers need to look past the color and read the paper. In addition, he believes that
Black students should have the choice whether or not to learn Standard English...

Kara:

Richard Marback writes about Ebonics users as well. He identiﬁed that there are “‘negative
attitudes toward the language [Ebonics], lack of information about the language, inefficient
techniques for teaching language literacy skills, and an unwillingness to adapt teaching styles to
the needs of Ebonics speakers‘” (Marback, 13). This statement is something that teachers need to
take into account. With STROL in effect, teachers need to adapt their teaching styles to ﬁt all of
there students needs. The negative attitudes towards Ebonics need to be (trapped so teachers can
focus on their students as students and not as students of different race.

Carrie:

During the 2000’s, however, there was still some linguistic prejudice against AAVE. In the article
“The Place of World Englishes in Composition: Pluralization Continued” by A. Suresh
Canagarajah, he shows that many teachers still do not believe AAVE is always appropriate in
composition. In his article, Canagarajah puts AAVE into the category of “World English” (WE),
and groups Standard English into “Metropolitan English” (ME)...

[Canagarajah] says that most teachers believe that AAVE is suitable for informal, everyday
communication, but not for formal and serious texts or interaction. By saying “WE for informal
classroom interactions; ME for formal production,” (594) Canagarajah is saying that he believes
World Englishes, or AAVE in this case, are suitable for classroom interactions such as students
working together, but not for formal productions like teacher instruction. This article illustrates
that currently, AAVE is accepted as a language and most scholars believe that it can be used
effectively in the classroom and writing but that many teachers do not implement these thoughts in
their classrooms.

Tyler’s discussion of teacher attitudes is signiﬁcant because he illustrates the ways in

which teacher attitudes and self-efﬁcacy continue to be addressed in disciplinary

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this progression, as she acknowledges the problem (lack of information about Ebonics),
conﬁ'onts it (stating that teachers need to account for this information) and explicitly calls
for the need to change negative attitudes toward Ebonics.

What is interesting about students’ claimed hypocrisy toward the legitimacy of
Ebonics is the fact that many students held similar beliefs about the appropriateness of
Ebonics in formal contexts in their post language attitudinal questionnaires. Thus, while
students held the ﬁeld responsible for tensions associated with the appropriateness of
Ebonics, many of them bore similar beliefs about its appropriateness by the end of the
course. In short, students’ disciplinary literacies essays demonstrate their knowledge of
the ﬁeld’s discourse, while also demonstrating particular attitudes toward the ﬁeld’s
progress and lack thereof, many of which are similar to their own.

In relationship to acknowledging the change of teachers’ attitudes, Ball and
Lardner further state that .

One barrier to effective teaching of AAVE-speaking students is negative attitudes,

compounded by the lack of information about the language system and effective

techniques for teaching language skills, all of which is manifested in an

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unwillingness to adapt teaching styles to students’ aptitudes and needs. A second
barrier to change, though, is the lack of alternative models. Teachers’ subjective
perceptions of their work are difﬁcult to change due to the lack of role models.
Smitherman notes that changing language attitudes means changing worldview.
This can be a difﬁcult task. That being the case, we need to drink more carefully
about the dynamics of the change. (57)
Ball and Lardner not only point out the need for continued changes in teachers’ attitudes,
but also, the need for alternative pedagogical models to support these changes. Like Ball
and Lardner’s discussion, Carrie’s discussion also demonstrates a continued need for
progress regarding teachers’ attitudes. For Carrie, although many scholars and
compositionists acknowledge Ebonics as a linguistic legitimate system, many of them
still possess the attitude drat it is not appropriate for classroom discourse. This idea is
consistent with Ball and Lardner’s discussion that suggests that a lack of alternative
models for implementing Ebonics into the classroom may in part be to blame. Carrie’s
reference to Canagarajah’s essay “The Place of World Englishes” valuably demonstrates
her understanding of how composition must continue to work toward accepting Ebonics
in the classroom, even after teachers recognize and accept its linguistic legitimacy.
What is also interesting about my own students’ work with the disciplinary
literacies assignment is the fact that while students argue that SRTOL lacked an extensive
discussion of explicit pedagogical strategies, their own understandings of disciplinary
scholarship reveal that unlike Ball and Lardner’s discussion, research does not

necessarily point to the lack of teaching techniques. In fact, as previously demonstrated,

Students were able to identify speciﬁc pedagogies for teaching Ebonics students,

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Katerina:

From different terminology to different pedagogy, the explosion of opinions in discussing AAVE
in composition studies could easily be traced back from the 19703 to the present. Many teachers,
researchers, and compositionists have been evaluating the importance of bringing the Black
English in the classroom spaces in order to provide the non-standard speakers learn how to
compose in Standard English. Even though The Oakland Resolution didn’t exactly resolve the
problem to the extent where an actual decision for improvement was made, it brought to the

that there has deﬁnitely been improvement on appropriation of this English variety since the
19708. There are still many more obstacles to overcome, but the ﬁrst steps'in provrdmg the
teachers with information and motivation on how to be successful in their job have been made;

now it’s up to the teachers to understand how important it is for them to put it to use.

Justin: .
Recently in this ﬁeld AAVE has been becoming more appropriated. I feel that many scholars in

composition studies have expressed the importance of implementing AAVE styles into students

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learning. Keith Gilyard and Elaine Richardson in Students’ Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and
African American Rhetoric said, “Attempting to answer this question takes us beyond appreciation
of AAVE and recognition of its equality to other language varieties to a consideration of AAVE’s
role in a creative, intellectually engaging, persuasive, and at times revolutionary discourse.” [ . ..]
Keith Gilyard and Elaine Richardson are trying to emphasize the importance for students to be
allowed to maintain their own language in today’s education systems. Students use their language
as a way of identifying who they are, and by trying to change this language does more than
changing how the student sounds. This strips students of their ethnic culture and where they are
from. We need to allow for students to use their own language like AAVE in the education

system. This shows drat AAVE is becoming more widely accepted as its own language allowing
for it to become more appropriately discussed.

Based on students’ responses, they identify the following forms of disciplinary progress:
1) an acknowledge of Ebonics as a legitimate linguistic system; 2) an increased
awareness of the linguistic and rhetorical patterns of Ebonics; and, 3) an understanding of
explicit pedagogies for implementing Ebonics. They further acknowledge that continued
work on these areas needs to be done, as these issues have not been resolved. What is
missing, however, are speciﬁc examples of areas in disciplinary scholarship where
continued progress needs to be made. In many cases, students summarize historical
progress, but provide limited discussions of where the ﬁeld needs to go next. Students
also assumed that most compositionists are familiar with the patterns of Ebonics, an idea
that as previously discussed with SRTOL and the “Language Knowledge and Awareness
Survey,” raises concern. Although they accurately identify the breath of work done in
both sociolinguistics and Composition Studies on the legitimacy, structure, and patterns
of Ebonics, without further empirical evidence, they cannot assume that most
compositionists and composition teachers are familiar with its legitimacy, structure, and
patterns.
Identification of Disciplinary Research Methods and Methodologies

Perhaps, one of the most interesting ﬁndings of patterns in students’ responses is

not their discussion of disciplinary progress and needs concerning their identiﬁed

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pedagogical strategies; rather, what is the most interesting ﬁnding are students’
discussions of research methods and methodologies used to discuss Ebonics. The
following discussions point to identiﬁed methodological trends in Ebonics-based
disciplinary conversations:

Bryan:

As is the case with many AAVE speakers, these four students demonstrated an ability to skillfully
manipulate and interchangeably use AAVE, mainstream, and academic English during discussions
- style switching with ease depending on their degree of personal engagement in the conversation
and the topic being discussed. These students tended to use more AAVE features in their speech
when they were more engaged in a conversation and when talking with peers. (28) Ametha
explains that AAVE seemed to be more noticeable when the student was speaking than when he or
she wrote. Ball concludes her research study by arguing that AAVE is an important aspect of
writing for these students because it helps to bring out their personal and cultural experiences.
When that happens, they will have the desire to continue writing.

Ray:

[Canagarajah] cites these words from another scholar, Mary Louise Pratt ﬁom her article Arts of
the Contact Zone. Canagarajah uses it in the context of a study of a class he did. His study
involved a ﬁrst year college writing class he taught over the summer for ethnic minority students
that was made to help them adjust to what he calls “’academic culture’, in order to improve their
retention rate”. He noted that the African Americans, who were a 10-5 majority over students of
other ethnicities in the class, formed Safe Houses (Canagarajah, 5). In the Safe Houses, the
students could communicate about writing issues using their own rhetorical elements that come
from AAVE. The point that Canagarajah makes, is that in order to really get the most out of
writing from speakers of certain other dialects or languages (speciﬁcally AAVE in his article) the
teacher must work to emphasize on the speciﬁc techniques and stylistic patterns that are found
from their speciﬁc dialects, and through focusing on the students’ culture work teaching basic
writing skills.

Ivy:

The only research methodology scholar can do is to collect writing sample from students to prove
that AAVE is better than SE in other discourse community in term of rhetorical feature.
Nevertheless, AAVE has gained some recognition in academic institutions. As time goes on
AAVE will make more progress in the near future as more research will be conducted by
scholars... In 1990s and the ﬁrst decade of the 21“ century, certain usages of AAVE were seen
effectively used in composition studies. “Expository Writing Patterns of Aﬁican American
Students" published by I_3__aﬂ in 1996 concluded that teachers gave higher scores to students used
discourse styles in their writing while considering syntactic features are errors in writing; The
result derived from her case study has profound meaning because her comments were primarily
based on her classroom teaching experience, being speech/language pathologist and collect writing
samples ﬁ'om writing assignments of various groups, as well as deﬁning their purposes in writing
the pieces and selecting their own topics. When many scholars make unique comments on AAVE
usage based primarily on research results, the methodology employed in a research plays an
important role in establishing its validity. M discussed usage of AAVE from students’
perspectives provided an effective way to uncover the usage of AAVE in academic writing.
Students enrich their writing piece by skillfully integrate their daily language or discourse feature
of AAVE. . .

197

In Q3 yard and Richardson’s journals published in 2003 and 2001, both of them employed
classroom research to compile an empirical data from students [. . .] The qualitative and
quantitative data present in Richardson and Gilyard’s journal provide concrete evidence to support
the research result. Apparently, the earlier research has affect people’s point of view to adopt
AAVE in academic writing, mostly I think it also has to do with more and more people have
gotten acquired with AAVE which has became rampant language among teenagers.

While students were less adept when developing analyses of the limitations associated
with SRTOL and identiﬁed pedagogies, they more extensively identify and analyze
research methods and methodologies used to study Ebonics in the ﬁeld. Both Ray’s and
Ryan’s discussions identify how case studies on African American students can be used
to demonstrate pedagogical opportunities for implementing Ebonics into the composition
curriculum. And, while they successfully identify the relationship between methodology
and pedagogy, as instructors, we can provide opportunities for them to move beyond
identifying and summarizing the research methods and methodologies toward developing
a more thoughtful and thorough analysis of the signiﬁcance of employing these methods
and methodologies. Despite these summaries, though, it is still interesting to see how
ﬁrst-year writing students can begin identifying research practices. Such a skill can
potentially serve useful as they write research papers and conduct additional research
across their collegiate careers.

lvy’s discussion of research methods identiﬁes trends in disciplinary scholarship
to move from identifying the legitimacy, structure and patterns of Ebonics, toward
conducting empirical research on Ebonics-based communicative practices. In the second
paragraph of Ivy’s discussion we see the beginnings of a rich and extensive analysis.
What Ivy does quite skillfully is position different studies on Aﬁican American students
alongside each other (as I do in Chapter 3) not only to compare and contrast the

difference in research methods and methodologies, but more importantly, to demonstrate

I98

a relationship between research methods used to support students’ successful use of
alternative language varieties in writing, and the disciplinary scholarship that reﬂects
empirical evidence for incorporating alternative language varieties into pedagogical
practice. As instructors, we might encourage Ivy to explain more thoroughly the
conclusions and large sweeping claims that she draws based on her methodological
understandings, especially the claim she makes about the prevalent use of AAVE among
teenagers. Nonetheless, Ivy’s prose provides teachers with a starting point with which to

work, as we see evidence of the beginnings of an analysis.

5.4 Relationship between Students’ Writing and Programmatic Goals

As illustrated in the previous section, students’ responses to the disciplinary
literacies assignment reveal their ability to execute various practices relationship to the
Tier I Writing Program’s shared learning goals. An assessment of their writing practices
also provides an indication of areas needed for improvement in relationship to these
goals. The purpose of positioning students’ work alongside institutional programmatic
requirements is intended to show not only how Afrocentric pedagogical instruction can
support all students, but also, how it can support students in accomplishing the writing,
reading, and research goals necessary for the successful completion of students’ ﬁrst-year
writing requirements. Table 2.1 offers a summary of the programmatic goals that students

are most skilled at, as well as those that require additional improvement:

I99

Table 2.1: Assessment of St

 

[ Goal

Skill

 

fudents’ Learnin Goals

Some Skill, Some
Improvement
Needed

i

Improvement I
Needed

 

writing for purposes of
reﬂection, action, and
participation in academic
mail!

 

 

 

Understand that various
academic disciplines and
ﬁelds employ varied genre,
voice, syntactical choices,
use of evidence, and
citation syles

 

ability to locate and
employ a variety of sources
for a rangggf purposes

 

Understand the logics and
uses of citation systems and
documentation styles

 

Be able to critically
evaluate a variety of sources
in purposeful ways

 

Apply methods of inquiry
and understanding to

 

 

ﬂerate new knowledge
Demonstrate competence
with citation/documentation
s stem

 

 

 

 

x i

 

Based on responses to the disciplinary literacies assignment, students possess the

most knowledge of, and are most astute at executing the following Tier I Writing shared

learning goals: using “writing for purposes of reﬂection, action, and participation in

academic inquiry”; reading and understanding “that various academic disciplines and

ﬁelds employ varied genre, voice, syntactical choices, use of evidence, and citation

styles”; conducting research that demonstrates “the ability to locate and employ a

variety of sources for a range of purposes”; and understanding “the logics and uses of

citation systems and documentation styles” ( Guidebook 4). Students’ areas for

improvement include the need to move toward “critically evaluatIing] ... a variety of

200

sources in purposeful ways”; applying “methods of inquiry and conventions to generate
new understanding”; and demonstrating “competence with one citation system/document
style” (4).

As a teacher-researcher, it is clear from students’ responses that they understand
that when writing about Composition Studies, they are reﬂecting on the work and
scholarship produced in that discipline, as they participate in academic inquiry. We
especially ﬁnd evidence of such reﬂection when students connect disciplinary
conversations with their own personal experiences and/or observations. Kelly reﬂects on
the problems associated with assuming that African Americans have limited knowledge
and exposure to academic discourse and Standard English. Another example of reﬂection
is Ivy’s discussion on how research in the ﬁeld has changed. She writes: “Apparently, the
earlier research has affect [sic] people’s point [sic] of View to adopt AAVE in academic
writing,[sic] mostly I think it also has to do with more and more people have [sic] gotten
acquired with AAVE which has became [sic] rampant language among teenagers.”
Despite surface level issues (particularly in ivy’s case), with each example—as well as
many others—students attempt to add to disciplinary conversations by connecting
disciplinary themes with their own thoughts and personal opinions.

Through students’ discussions we also ﬁnd evidence that students read in ways
that provide understandings of the discursive patterns and styles associated with
Composition Studies. One example of their execution of this learning goal can be seen
through the ways in which students refer to scholars in the ﬁeld and adopt diction and
additional terminology often used in sociolinguistic and Composition Studies journals.

Candace writes: “Scholars and linguists are aware of AAVE rhetorical and grammatical

201

features now and see that there can possibly be a solution to eliminate the divisions...”
Katerina writes:

From different terminology to different pedagogy, the explosion of opinions in discussing AAVE
in composition studies could easily be traced back from the 19705 to the present. Many teachers,
researchers, and compositionists have been evaluating the importance of bringing the Black
English in the classroom spaces in order to provide the non-standard speakers learn how to
compose in Standard English.

From both Candace’s and Katerina’s examples, it is clear that students have picked up on
the language used to describe researchers in the ﬁeld (linguists, compositionists,
researchers, teachers, etc). It is also clear that ﬁom reading scholarship in various
academic journals, book chapters, and articles, students have identiﬁed pedagogy as a
central role in disciplinary scholarship. Like the examples of mimicry offered in Chapter
4 where students’ attempt to mimic the language and discourse often associated with
Composition Studies, I argue that this mimicry could not be executed sufﬁciently had
students not ﬁrst read ﬁeld-based scholarship and recognized the discursive practices
associated with the ﬁeld.

Because research execution is a critical skill associated with the disciplinary
literacies assignment, it is expected that students’ responses would illustrate their ability
to engage in various forms of research. More speciﬁcally, in relationship to the shared
learning goals, students’ responses demonstrate their ability to locate sources for a range
of purposes. With each theme in disciplinary conversations identiﬁed by students, we
ﬁnd evidence of their ability to identify and locate sources and apply them in ways that
connect disciplinary themes and trends in research. For example, when dealing with

pedagogy, students were able to locate different pedagogical techniques, both Afrocentirc

202

and linguistically-focused, and when dealing with methodologies, students were able to
locate particular empirical studies.

Students are attempting to move toward “critically evaluat[ing] a variety of
sources in purposeful ways” (4), but have not completely developed this skill yet. In
many cases, students’ responses merely summarize sources and disciplinary trends.
Although, in some instances, we see the beginnings of analysis, critical evaluation of
sources is still a skill where most students need some additional improvement. Perhaps
students’ inability and/or reluctance to critically evaluate disciplinary conversations and

sources stems from the ways in which student discourse has traditionally been positioned
in the ﬁeld. Nancy DeJoy argues that student critique and analysis is traditionally seen in
terms of students’ identiﬁcation of and with course texts. She notes that
by the end of high school it is possible that students themselves perceive the use
of such critical strategies as inappropriate and/or unexpected. It is possible that
the fundamental split between identiﬁcation of and with the terms for making
meaning is foreign to most students by the time they graduate from high
school. (19)
As an instructor, I take partial responsibility for students’ analysis of disciplinary themes
often being limited an identiﬁcation ot7 and or with course texts, especially considering
that the disciplinary literacies assignment prompt proposes that students begin with a
summary of disciplinary texts. This is not to suggest that surmnary as an inventive
strategy is not useful, nor is it to suggest that such summary-related strategies are not
critical in order for students to demonstrate their knowledge of the ﬁeld and its

disciplinary conversations. Instead, the point that I emphasize here is that students’

203

limited development of analysis in many cases is also limited to their identiﬁcation of and
with sources. When students rely only on these invention, arrangement, and revision
strategies, their discussions oﬁen summarizes course themes, and when claims are made
based on referenced sources, their discussions are often not sufﬁciently supported with
additional evidence.42
Along these lines, students need additional work with the learning goals that
states that students should be expected to “apply methods of inquiry and conventions to
generate new understanding” (4). Because students’ responses oﬁen rely on summarizing
and identifying disciplinary trends and themes, many of their discussions do not
necessarily generate new knowledge that has not already been explored in the ﬁeld,
although one could argue that the summaries that students produced generated new '
knowledge for the students, even if this knowledge is not new to the ﬁeld. While students
summarize key conversations, and while those summaries often don’t add anything new
that hasn’t been addressed in the ﬁeld’s published scholarship, the fact that students can
identify various themes in disciplinary scholarship with such accuracy does indicate that
they are attempting to generate some knowledge on their own. What students might build
on, however, is how they can use these disciplinary themes to offer new
recommendations for the ﬁeld with respect to its methods, pedagogy, and philosophies
toward the study of Ebonics.
In some cases, students’ analyses also reveal their limited knowledge about the

ﬁeld and academic methodological practices. I offer students’ discussions of the

 

42 . . . . . .
For an extended discussron of invention, arrangement and revrsron, see Chapter 2 and Nancy Deloy’ s
Process This: Undergraduate Writing in Composition Studies.

204

linguistically-based pedagogical approaches and conﬁrsions/conﬂations with linguistic
temrinology as one example. Other examples stem from students’ discussions of research
methods. In Ivy’s case, she seems to confuse research methods with methodologies when

she writes:

When many scholars make unique comments on AAVE usage based primarily on research results,
the methodology employed in a research plays an important role in establishing its validity. 3ng
discussed usage of AAVE from students’ perspectives provided an effective way to uncover the
usage of AAVE in academic writing.

From this excerpt, it seems that Ivy is actually describing Ball’s research methods, not
her methodology (case study), as she discusses the ways that Ball collected and made
sense of data gathered from students.

While students “understand the logics and uses of citation systems and
documentation styles,” responses also reveal that students need extensive improvement
demonstrating “competence with one citation system/document style” (4). As
acknowledged with Marquise’s disciplinary essay featured in Chapter 3, many students
offer frequent examples of incorrectly formatted citation systems. Some students also
incorrectly document sources as journals when they are in fact journal articles and book
chapters. Although a necessary thing to point out as an opportunity for pedagogical
instruction, as both a teacher and a researcher, however, what is most important to me is
the idea that students understand the necessity of using citation systems and

documentation styles, as the reference academic sources.
Although the analysis provided from student texts in this section has been critical
at times, this does not suggest that students did not produce signiﬁcant or meaningful
work. I also urge compositionists in the ﬁeld not to be overly critical in acknowledging

some of students’ shortcomings. We should expect that students’ responses reveal some

205

limited exposure and knowledge of the ﬁeld, especially since WRA 125 (a ﬁrst-year

writing course!) is the ﬁrst class in which they have encountered the ﬁeld. Thus, the work
that they have done with the disciplinary literacies assignment is exploratory, and for
them, serves as an introduction to the ﬁeld and its disciplinary conversations. As a
teacher-researcher, I also acknowledge the complex intellectual work that they have done
well with this assignment. They have successfully identiﬁed the shortcomings associated
with SRTOL and various ways that research has been done. Their ability to identify
disciplinary themes reﬂects common threads associated with disciplinary conversations,
in addition to their engagement in our ﬁeld’s conversations, work that should be

applauded.

5.5 Conclusions and Implications
Students’ work with both the questionnaires and disciplinary literacies assignment

reveal how my class has just begun scratching the surface with respect to personal and
disciplinary attitudes toward Ebonics. They recognize the need to accept the language
variety as legitimate and equal to Standard English, yet they also recognize that potential
consequences for students who use their own languages in contexts beyond our
classrooms and disciplinary conversations. As a teacher-researcher, although 1 did not
expect as many of my students to view Ebonics still as inappropriate for formal writing
situations by the end of the semester (especially given that African American students’
work featured demonstrates that Ebonics can be used effectively in formal writing

situations), their responses are certainly understandable. While I still feel that such

attitudes should change, perhaps, it is unrealistic to expect these attitudes to change as

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quickly and drastically in one semester, especially given the fact that those who are both
members of our discipline and the public still hold similar perceptions toward the use
Ebonics in formal contexts.

Students’ work with the disciplinary literacies assignment not only reveals some
tensions that are reﬂected in our disciplinary conversations, but also, reveals tensions and
conﬂicts reﬂected in students’ writing, reading, and research practices. Improvement is
still needed in argument construction that moves beyond summary, the use of evidence,
and citation practices. Despite the limitations associated with students’ writing, reading,
and research processes, Composition Studies can still beneﬁt from students’
understandings of the work that the ﬁeld has done concerning Ebonics. Students’ changes
in attitudes point to progress that the ﬁeld has made concerning linguistic prejudice. Their
responses to the disciplinary literacies assignment not only identify themes in the ﬁeld’s
conversations, but also, offer the ﬁeld a reminder of where we are and where we need to
be in the struggle for student rights. Although much of students’ work reﬂects a summary
of where the ﬁeld was historically in the struggle, where it is now, and where it needs to
be, there’s nothing wrong with reminding the ﬁeld once more of the problems and gaps in
research on Ebonics and students’ rights. The work that students produced with this
assignment is merely a beginning for potential conversations that the ﬁeld may continue
have concerning students’ discourse and contributions to the struggle. Perhaps
subsequent work in this area may point toward a more critical analysis of the struggle that
continues to generate new knowledge to and for the ﬁeld. Nevertheless, ﬁndings reveal
that Afrocentric pedagogy can still support students in meeting institutional required

learning goals to a great extent.

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Chapter 6

CONCLUSION: REFLECTING ON THE PROMISES AND LIMITATIONS OF

TEACHER-RESEARCH

6.1 Introduction

I consider the work done with ﬁrst-year writing students in this project to be a
work in progress. And, I am extremely grateful to my Fall 2008 WRA 125 class, for their
cooperation and signiﬁcant contributions to the work completed for this project. But,
before offering concluding remarks conceming this project, I wish to reﬂect on the
challenges and criticisms that have directly inﬂuenced the work completed for this
project, as well as the limitations and surprises of this project.

This project is a project that almost never happened, as there were several
ideological and methodological challenges and criticisms to the work that I’ve sought to
do with African American students and all students. Therefore, I will devote space to the
particular ideological criticisms directed speciﬁcally at this project. Later in this chapter,
I will reﬂect on methodological criticisms. Although I touched brieﬂy on some of the
challenges and criticisms endured from my commitment to Afrocentric pedagogy and
studying Aﬁican American students in Chapters 1’ and 2, I want to reﬂect more
extensively on particular institutional challenges associated with obtaining human
subjects (IRB) approval for this project. Because the study of African American students’

language patterns is often uncharted territory when dealing with human subjects, there

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were many misunderstandings from reviewers who were unfamiliar with the implications
for doing qualitative Afrocentric work.

When applying for IRB approval to collect data analyzed in this project, there
were additional misunderstandings about its ideological purpose. One reviewer took
particular issue with my initially proposed Question 3 featured on the language attitudinal
questionnaire (Results of the ﬁndings from this questionnaire were analyzed in Chapter

5.) The ﬁrst version of this question that was proposed to IRB is presented below:

3. Read the following passage and respond to the set of questions following this passage:
Dessie is a fellow student in your composition class. When the instructor asked for
Dessie’s response to a required reading, Dessie replied: “I ain’ really get da gist of t. I
mean dc author just be goin’ round and round in circles; he kinda be sayin’ da same thang
over and over. It just don’ make no kind of sense to me.”
In the series of questions below, I) circle the number which most closely corresponds to your
reaction, and 2) explain your responses.
KEY: l-not appropriate at all; 2—somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely
appropriate
I. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:
1 2 3 4
Explain:
2. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class:
I 2 3 4
Explain:

In response to this item, a reviewer made the following comment:

First let me apologize for commenting on method. But the quote from "Dessie" in the instrument
is as stereotypically racist a question as I've ever seen. And in my years of teaching high school
English in primarily black schools, I never heard Black students shove that much had English into
one response. So might it be that the underlying message of that question is, "this is how we think
Black people talk, even in a formal English class?" Which does move the issue under IRB
purvrew.

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And writing that comment, I considered the possibility that the researcher may him or herself be
African American.

In many ways I was not surprised that the reviewer had taken a very common stance on
the supposed illegitimacy of Ebonics. In fact, the comments here seem to support my
hypothesis that students would take a similar attitude before being introduced to an
Afrocentric curriculum and the study of Ebonics. But what troubles me most about this
reviewer’s response was the fact (s)he was attempting to advocate for Aﬁican American
students, and made inaccurate assumptions about stereotypes in Aﬁican American
culture. Since when is “Dessie” a stereotypical name? I happen to know more White
“Dessies” (short for Desiree?) than Aﬁican American ones. It also troubles me that the
reviewer commented on something that IRB reviewers are explicitly told not to comment
on (method), and even apologizes for breaking the rules! In response to all the h00pla
over a dang name, the name was changed to Derrick on the questionnaire that students
received during the Fall 2008 course. I assume that we can agree that there are White and
Black Derricks?

When I responded to this comment, I told the reviewer how offended I was as an
African American researcher, and then proceeded to lecture on the legitimacy of AAL
etc., and concluded by telling him/her to read Smitherman’s T alkz'n and T estrfyin. I only
lectured on the legitimacy of AAL because the reviewer inaccurately interprets Dessie’s
language as a “bad mouth full of English.” Although I did not expect the reviewer to be
familiar with AAL scholarship, since colleagues in the academy still are not, I was highly

surprised that the reviewer made inappropriate comments on the researcher’s methods

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and accused me of using potentially racist methodological practices. I guess I expected a
lil’ more formal professionalism when dealing with IRB.

After reading my comment, the reviewer gave the following response:

I anticipated the response. Let me add only that the language used by "Dessie" - however sta --
portrays her as completely dismissive of an academic assignment. And equally dismissive of an
instructor's attempt to engage her. Not a way one wants to see students portrayed. But I’ll let that
go and "approve” as soon as the other reviewers well-stated comments about using one's students
as subjects are addressed. It's a t0pic the IRB reviewers spend a lot of time on.

This response troubled me even more than the initial one. How does (s)he even know that
Dessie’s comments are dismissive of an academic assignment, when the question is a
hypothetical one, and the assignment has not been identiﬁed? And how does (s)he know
that the instructor does not attempt to engage her? The reviewer assumes that this is the
case, even though these issues cannot be determined. Such assumptions have inspired the
discussion of Afrocentric pedagogy offered in Chapter 2 in order to demonstrate the
pedagogical beneﬁts associated with teaching Ebonics and Aﬁ'ocentricity. Such beneﬁts
were also offered in Chapter 5.

While the reviewer claims to be commenting on “method” I consider his
arguments to be more ideological than methodological in nature because the reviewer
does not make references to any methodological implications reﬂected by the question.
For example, the reviewer does not make mention of the relationship between validity
and the overall purposes for the project. In other words, the reviewer does not question
whether such a question measures what the research design expects it to measure. (S)he
does not ask the researcher to explain any methodological decisions guidingthe proposed
question. The reviewer, instead, asserts himself/herself as the “ﬁnal say” on ideological

perspectives in relationship to both Ebonics and Aﬁican American culture, and dismisses

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my expertise and personal and cultural frameworks in attempt to not only speak for the
African Americans participating in the study, but also for me. This is exactly the problem
Jacqueline Jones Royster sees in “When the First Voice You Here is Not Your Own”
when those unfamiliar with particular cultural experiences try to serve as the authority
over such experiences. Royster states: “Seemingly, we have been forever content to let
voices other than our own speak authoritatively about our areas of expertise and about us.
It is time to speak for ourselves, in our own interests, in the interest of our work, and in
the interest of our students” (39). Had the reviewers given me a sufﬁcient chance to
speak, perhaps things may have turned out differently?

I talk about IRB issues in this chapter to underscore the challenges associated
with the ways that institutions interpret and respond to scholars of color doing research
on their own folks. I also want to reemphasize the need for institutions to trust those of
color to be ethically responsible for their own groups. By trust, I do not mean blind trust;
I am not suggesting that reviewers automatically accept proposed projects when
researchers of color propose to do research on their own ethnic minority groups. What is
implicated by trust here is the notion that when scholars wish to do any research that
involves a discussion of race, reviewers should proceed with caution before challenging
racist assumptions or stereotypes they think may be present. Unless the study possesses
the potential to cause obvious harm or adverse risks to the participants, scholars doing
research on their own groups should be given some beneﬁts of doubt and the authority to
speak on what is best for their own people. While I understand that institutions must
protect human participants and students at all costs, in doing so, they must acknowledge

the limitations they possess when dealing with particular racial, ethnic, and/or gender

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groups of which they are not a part. There are times, as previously described, when
reviewers do not know how to protect particular populations. In these cases, reviewers
must work effectively with researchers of color to see that participants are being

protected while trusting researchers of color to deal ethically with their own groups.

6.2 Methodological Criticisms of Teacher-Research

As was discussed with reference to ideological criticism, I also wish to reﬂect on
methodological criticisms that inﬂuenced the work completed for this project. Such
criticisms speciﬁcally inﬂuenced the ways in which I approached the data gathered and
analyzed with all students’ texts featured in Chapter 5. Chapter 5’s work was guided by a
previous pilot study designed to show how all students can contribute knowledge
concerning Ebonics, language rights, and pedagogy to the discipline of Composition
Studies. In that pilot study, I draw on Nancy DeJoy’s discussion of the
consumption/adaptation model that characterizes how student discourse is often
positioned in the ﬁeld. DeJoy argues that "the major professional organizations of the
discipline set aside issues of student agency and subjectivity as constructive in and of
English studies, replacing them with arguments about the values of standard English
given 'the way things are’" (2). She further adds that that while many scholars have
effected positive change in Composition Studies, rarely has anyone attempted to revise
the “unequal relationships that drive a situation in which literacy is, by deﬁnition,
primarily an act of consumption and adaptation for some [ﬁrst-year writers] and primarily
an act of participation and contribution for others [teachers/scholars]” (9). Delay asks us

why we don’t ask students to approach writing scholarship as contributing participants in

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the ﬁeld, since they do have “signiﬁcant contributions” to make (64). Using this
understanding as a reference, I included responses to students’ disciplinary literacies
assignments from my Spring 2007 course, responding to key themes in Ebonics-based
discourse that they identiﬁed in the ﬁeld, similarly to the way I present themes in Chapter
5, although there were some differences in the themes that were found. By looking at
student texts, I essentially argued that we can use these texts as references for
understanding how students perceive conversations in our ﬁeld, and how we might
include students in our own conversations about our research and scholarship.

Although I submitted this article to three journals, so far, 1 have been unsuccessful
making this argument (3 revise/resubmit version of that article is still pending). Many of
the criticisms with this article have been mostly methodological in nature. Some
reviewers argued that the ways that student discourse as data was positioned in the article
was nothing more than an expressivistic exercise: The texts were merely inserted
throughout the article with limited analysis from me as the teacher-researcher. I’d argue,
however, that there was analysis done with student texts. But, the analysis that reviewers
were looking for were various forms of criticism and evaluation of student texts. Many
reviewers argued that because students’ responses focused more on explication than the
generation of new knowledge, without constructive criticism from the teacher-researcher,
students’ texts were not strong enough to stand on their own.

Such a criticism, I believe, is a valid one. This is why I positioned student texts
from my Fall 2008 course in relationship to the shared learning goals, where’I could
assess the strengths and limitations of these texts as a teacher-researcher. However, I am

still concemed with the need to position student texts in relationship to evaluation and

214

scoring because even when objectionable, we still need to meet students where they are
and listen to what they have to say. Nonetheless, in this project, I have attempted to
compromise by evaluating students’ texts in relationship to the shared learning goals
offered in Chapter 5. I chose to look at their texts in relationship to the assessment of
strengths and weaknesses identiﬁed from programmatic objectives because evaluation
must be done for a pedagogical purpose. In other words, student texts should not be
evaluated for the sake of evaluation; rather, the evaluation of student texts must be used
to shape programmatic pedagogical practices. As a teacher, I am interested in exploring
how Afrocentric pedagogy supports students’ completion of program identiﬁed goals. As
a researcher, I am interested in discussing the intersections between pedagogical and
programmatic policies in relationship to disciplinary methodological practices. Thus, the
evaluation of student texts was used not to criticize the work that students have done, but
to understand where Afrocentric pedagogy supports them with particular writing, reading,
and research practices, and where improvement in relationship to these areas is still
needed.

As stated at the beginning of this chapter, I understand this project to be a work in
progress. In doing so, I acknowledge the methodological limitations of the work done
with this project. Some might take issue with my argument of using Aﬁican and Aﬁican
American students’ texts to explain how they use Ebonics linguistic and discursive
practices deliberately and rhetorically, as Opposed to interviewing students directly to ask
them about the strategic choices that guided their linguistic practices. The ﬁrst reason that
African and Aﬁican American students were not interviewed is because only one student

agreed to participate in an interview once the class ended. Other students chose not to do

215

interviews for a myriad of reasons. Despite the fact that I did not interview students, I do
believe that the fact that many students explained and reﬂected on particular linguistic
decisions both in the language attitudinal questionnaire, as well as their essay
assignments, provide compelling evidence that they are conscious of such purposeful

decisions that inform their writing practices.

6.3 Surprises

There were several surprises from the data results gathered in this project. As
previously discussed in Chapter 5, I expected more drastic changes in attitudes with
respect to the appropriateness of Ebonics. But these attitudes weren’t the only surprises to
come about. I also expected more students to use the terms AAL or Ebonics, but from the
data gathered and analyzed, most students chose AAVE. I attribute this in part to the fact
that the assigrnnents (see Appendix) each use AAVE (although they also use AAL).
Some might question why I included the term AAVE on the assignments, when I prefer
the terms AAL and Ebonics, since I argue in Chapter I that my understanding of these
terms is not synonymous. The reason for including this term is because AAVE remains
one of the most common terms used in Composition Studies. By including assigrunents
that require students to research the language in relationship to the ﬁeld’s discourse, I
needed to include each of the terms that students might encounter in disciplinary
scholarship. Students were in fact aware of the different terminology; we especially ﬁnd
evidence of students’ uses of different terminology in the Ebonics and Composition

Studies research activity discussed in Chapter 2. Despite the different terminology used

216

to discuss Ebonics in the ﬁeld, and despite the fact that perhaps, AAL is the most recent
term used in various sociolinguistics and education circles, most students used AAVE.
Another surprise that I didn’t expect from this project was the prevalent use of
Ebonics-based phonology. When I ﬁrst began researching for this project, I initially
sought to look only at syntax and AAR, because I didn’t expect such a high use of
phonology; however, once I began analyzing Aﬁican American students’ texts, I found
Ebonics-based phonology to be used more frequently than its syntax. Such a ﬁnding
beneﬁts the ﬁeld because Ebonics-based phonology in student texts has rarely been
discussed or addressed in rhetoric and composition’s scholarship. More importantly, we
can use students’ purposeful appropriations of the phonology to make an argument for its

rhetorical use in composition classrooms.

6.4 Concluding Remarks

The purpose of doing this project is to shift the direction back to a focus on the
classroom. In shifting this focus I want to make it very clear that I am in no way
dismissing any research that does not maintain a school-based pedagogical focus, quite
the contrary. I actually believe that one of the strengths of Composition Studies,
education, African American studies, and many other disciplines, is that there is rich
diversity in our research practices and methodologies; that’s the good part. The bad part
arises when we rank and value certain research methods over others. And when we
continue to base our hiring decisions, tenure promotions and other awards on the types of
research scholars conduct, and not on the quality of research conducted, we risk

rewarding and penalizing the wrong people. Therefore, this project also has implications

217

at both disciplinary and institutional levels that determine the types of research that gets
valued, rewarded, and funded.

I also want to end this chapter by reﬂecting on my own experiences as a teacher-
researcher. As a PhD candidate in Rhetoric and Writing wishing to do professional work
with teacher-research, I was advised by some peers to abandon teacher-research and
follow newer trends in Composition Studies. I have also been told that teacher-research is
not rigorous enough, and that by conducting a teacher-research project, I am taking the
easy way out, since teacher-research is supposedly done out of convenience. I too have
been informed that by specializing in teacher-research, I will limit the types of job offers
I will receive from research-extensive institutions. I of course, ﬁnd fault with each of
these suggestions and recommendations. I would argue that teacher-research is one of the
most difﬁcult types of research to conduct because of the teacher’s closely knit
relationship with her data, thus making it difﬁcult to account for bias. Although as a
teacher, it may be convenient to collect data, other methods (like using Survey Monkey to
conduct a survey—click, click) and methodologies that don’t require teacher-research are
also often chosen out of convenience, but perhaps do not get critiqued as often. I would
also add that there are still many unanswered questions that teacher-research has yet to
address in the ﬁeld, and this can produce severe effects for our students, especially our
Aﬁican American students.

I stand by teacher-research because of my commitment to African American
students. Because Aﬁican American students are more likely than their White
counterparts to leave college without ﬁnishing, I feel that it is in part my responsibility as

an educator to be a literacy sponsor to those who may otherwise leave the university due

218

to the absence of many African American support systems. This is why I do teacher-
research; this is why I see composition as a space for supporting and mentoring Aﬁican
American students (in part due to smaller writing class sizes and the fact that I teach at a
very large institution!) As for my future job, I am well aware that some of these
institutions may value research and so-called more rigorous forms of scholarship, but I
would also argue that this warning imposed on me, is similar to the argument that those
in the social and natural sciences have traditionally accused those of us in the humanities
of producing less rigorous scholarship. Despite these claims and accusations, and despite
being a discipline in the humanities, those of us in rhetoric and composition still have
enjoyable careers and jobs we love (well at least I love mine!). I therefore conclude by
urging the call for us to go back into the classroom since there is more work to be done.
By completing this project I also hope to restart and continue conversations about
teacher-research as an interdisciplinary methodological practice in various ﬁelds. From
this study, I hope to demonstrate that teacher-research isn’t just about teaching; it’s also
about research. In addition to those interested in Afrocentric education, writing pedagogy,
and curriculum and instruction, I also hope that those professors of, and students in,
graduate-level research methods courses ﬁnd some value in examining the
methodological arguments made in this project. Hopefully, various ﬁelds can begin to
have more discussions about the methodological implications of doing empirically-based
teacher-research, and hopefully these conversations will encourage practitioners from

various disciplines to go back into the classroom.

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APPENDIX

LANGUAGE ATTITUDINAL QUESTIONNAIRE

Name

 

Preliminary and Post Questionnaire (to be administered at beginning and end of course)

3. Has your spoken language ever been corrected or criticized? If so, please describe this particular
experience.

2. Has your written language ever been corrected or criticized? If so please describe this experience.

4. Read the following passage and respond to the set of questions following this passage:

Derrick is a fellow student in your English composition class. When the instructor asked
for Derrick’s response to a required reading, Derrick replied: “I ain’ really get da gist
of't. I mean de author just be goin’ round and round in circles; he kinda be sayin’ da
same thang over and over. It just don’ make no kind of sense to me.”

In the series of questions below, I) circle the number which most closely corresponds to your
reaction, and 2) explain your responses. '

KEY: l-not appropriate at all; 2-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extreme1y
appropriate

220

2. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:

1234

Explain:

3. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class:

1234

Explain:

3. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:

l234

Explain:

221

4. Listen to the following audio recording and respond to the following questions:

KEY: I-not appropriate at all; 2-somewhat appropriate; 3-deﬁnitely appropriate; 4-extremely
appropriate

3. The appropriateness of students speaking this way in class:

1234

Explain:

4. The appropriateness of students writing a formal piece in this way for class:

1234

Explain:

5. The appropriateness of students writing this way for class:

222

1234

Explain:

5. Please explain a time (in or out of school) when a writing style similarly to the one used above
might be more suitable to write in than formal English.

6. If you were to describe your own writing style, what speciﬁc styles do you typically use and why
do you use them? How might these styles strengthen your writing? How might they weaken your
writing?

223

FOUR MAJOR WRITING ASSIGNMENTS
Assignment 1: Literacy and Language Autobiography

Background:

For this ﬁrst unit, you will be introduced to the study of African American Language (AAL)/African
American Vernacular English (AAVE) including its features, and how various writers use it both in school
settings and outside of school settings. You will also have the opportunity to examine various regional
dialects within the US. Hopefully, by the end of this unit, you will be able to associate yourself with a
language or dialect community and describe how you encounter these languages/dialects in different
settings.

Task:

As a frame for this assignment, we will draw from select chapters from Keith Gilyard’s Voices of the Self
literacy autobiography, in which he describes signiﬁcant literacy events and practices, as he encounters his
negotiation between his home language (AAVE/AAL) and school language, Standard English.

Your task for this assignment will be to construct your own literacy autobiography that gives a detailed and
speciﬁc account of the various ways that you encounter language both in school and outside of school. For
this essay, you may wish to construct a chronological literacy narrative where you describe your
experiences with how your literacy practices reﬂect language usage, or you may wish to provide a non-
chronological analysis. In either case, you’ll address the following questions: What are the differences
between the way you use language at home, and how you use it in school? What types of literacy practices
do you use to read and write in both settings, and how do they reﬂect your choices in using home and
school language?

To complete this assignment, you will want to refer to speciﬁc and detailed examples of how your home
and school languages differ. In order to achieve these ends, you will be encouraged to explore oral
communication, written communication, and/or written digital communication (including AIM, text
messaging, writing on your facebook wall, or email). To do this, you rrright consider writing portions of
your essay in your home language, and then, translating and analyzing the signiﬁcance in Standard English,
as Gilyard does in Voices of the Self You’ll also need to include an analysis of 1-2 course readings we
have encountered so far this term. For your analysis, you can either compare and contrast your experiences
to those of the authors/readings, or you can use the readings to “talk back” to your experiences, where you
anticipate how the author would support, reject, or add to the experiences and literacy events you’ve
previously outlined in this essay. In either case, a rich and extensive analysis that incorporates evidence
from the readings is required.

Developing Work (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): These assignments are writing explorations
that give you practice writing chunks that may or may not lead to ideas for your Essay 1. Each of these
exercises is required and will be worth 10 points each.

a) For your ﬁrst writing exploration, you will construct a literacy autobiography or narrative of l-2
signiﬁcant events in your life that identiﬁes and analyzes the differences between the way you use language
in school and the way you use it at home. Be sure to describe not only scenarios that deal with the
differences between the way you speak at home and school, but also, note experiences with how your use
of language to read and write differs from the way you read and write both in school and at home.

b) For your second writing exploration, you'll practice analyzing course texts. For this essay, select a
Speciﬁc quote/passage/ idea that resonates with you from one of the readings. Summarize that passage or
idea, and explain either how it is similar/different from the experiences outlined in your literacy narrative,
OR use this exploration to analyze how you think the author(s) would support/reject or add to those
experiences you’ve previously outlined.

224

Required Readings for this Assignment:

Gilyard, Keith. “Rapping, Reading and Role-Playing.” Voices of the Self' A Study of Language Competence.
I991. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Ed. Collin Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, and Nancy C DeJoy.
Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2008. 25-40.

Redd, Teresa and Karen Schuster-Webb. Chs. 1-2. Teacher '3 Introduction to African American English:
What a Writing Teacher Should Know. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2005.

Smitherman, Geneva. “It Bees that Way Sometime: Present-Day Sounds in Black English.” T alkin and
T estijfvin: The Language of Black America. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 197 7.

---. “Introduction: From Ghetto Lady to Critical Linguist.” T alla'n that Talk: Language and Education in
Black America. 2000. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Ed. Collin Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, and

Nancy C. DeJoy: Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2008. 53-64.

Zuidema, Leah. “Myth Education: Rationale and Strategies for Teaching against Linguistic Prejudice.”
Journal of Adolescent Literacy 48.8 (May 2005): 668-675. Rpt. in A Reader forWriters. Ed. Collin
Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, and Nancy C. DeJoy: Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2008. 351-366.

Optional Readings for this Assignment:
Anzaldua, Gloria. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” Borderlands: La Frontera = The New Mestiza. I987.

Rpt. In A Reader for Writers. Ed. Collin Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, Nancy Dejoy. Boston:
McGraw Hill, 2008. 3-11.

 

Assignment 2: Cultural Literacies

Representation of AAVE/AAL in Digital Spaces

Background:

Up until this point, we have looked speciﬁcally at the linguistic features of AAVE/AAL as we reflected on
our own language practices. Some of you even provided analyzes of how you write differently in digital
environments. People are now doing more writing on the web, including blogs (web logs), personal web
sites, discussion forums and even on AIM. This project will then ask you to examine how AAVE exists in
these spaces. In effect, you will address the following question: How is AAVE discussed and/or
appropriated in personal, popular culture, and academic websites?

Task:
To complete this assignment, you’ll select each of the following:

1) A personal or company website, web page, or web log (blog)
2) A popular culture site (like www.bet.com or www.people.com/people)
3) And an academic website or web page (like www.msu.edu or www.msu.edu/~smither4)

(We’ll discuss the conventions of each of these web sites and deﬁne what popular culture, personal and
academic web sites look like).

Once you’ve selected your three sites, you’ll develop an argument or thesis that should reﬂect/address the
above question. After you’ve formulated an argument, you will then complete a rhetorical analysis of these
sites that draws on evidence from your selected websites, in addition to evidence from at least 2 sources
we’ve discussed in class. All of the evidence you provide should speak to your major thesis or argument as

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to how AAVE is discussed and/or appropriated in online spaces. You will also need to include a Works
Cited Page, complete with full citations (both print and electronic).

Developing Work

DW3a (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): Select one of your three sites to analyze carefully.

Here, you’ll want to identify a major argument as to how AAVE seems to be discussed and/or appropriated,
and then refer to speciﬁc examples, quotes, and passages on the web site to support your claim We’ll also
talk at length as to how websites should be cited in MLA.

DW3b (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): Now that you have selected at least one web site, you’ll
want to compare the work that you did in DW 3a to at least one of the readings/web sites we’ve read in
class. Do they represent AAVE similarly or differently in these spaces? In what ways?

Possible Readings to Use with this Assignment:

Banks, Adam. “Taking B(l)ack Technology Seriously.” Race, Rhetoric and Technology: Searching for
Higher Ground. 2005. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Ed. Collin Craig, Staci Perryman~Clark, and
Nancy C. DeJoy. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008.

Kynard, Carmen. “‘Wanted: Some Black Long Distance [Writers]’: Blackboard Flava-Flavin and other
AfroDigital experiences in the classroom. Computers and Composition 24.3 (2007): 329—345.

Nakamura, Lisa. “Cybertyping and the Work of Race in the Age of Digital Reproduction.” Cybertypes:
Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. 2002. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Ed. Collin Craig,
Staci Perryman-Clark, and Nancy C. DeJoy: Boston: McGraw- Hill, 2008. 396-432.

Spellers, Regina. "The Kink Factor: A Womanist Discourse Analysis of Aﬁican American
Mother/Daughter Perspectives on Negotiating Black Hair/Body Politics." Ed. Ronald J ackscn
and Elaine Richardson. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 223-243.

 

Assignment 3:
Disciplinary Literacies Assignment
Representations of AAVE/AAIJEbonics in Composition Studies

Background

In the last units, we focused more on the linguistic features of AAVE/AAL, and how it exists in digital
environments; in this unit, we will focus more on the scholars who discuss AAVE/AAL features and
student writing in composition studies. For this assignment,_we'll learn more about AAL/AAVE, and how it
affects language and educational policy, college writing, and the teaching of writing. For this, we'll read
various articles within the ﬁeld of composition studies as an introduction to the discipline of teaching
writing and students who speak/write AAL/AAVE.

Task:
For this essay, you'll be asked to develop an argument as to whether composition studies effectively
discusses the usage of AAL/AAVE as a language/language variety, and whether or not discussion on the
tOpic has changed or evolved over time. To do this, you will also consider referring to speciﬁc journals
(CCC, College English, Teaching English at a Two- Year College, English Journal, JAC or others) to gain a
sense of what is occurring more recently in the ﬁeld. You can gain access to these journals by going to
www.1ib.msu.edu, where you can search JSTOR or the Literature Online (LION) database. Your analysis
should include the following:

 

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- An Argument/Thesis on how composition studies discusses issues of AAVFJAAL;

- A discussion of how AAVE/AAL has been discussed historically (1970’s —- 2000) through course
readings; and ‘

- A discussion of how AAVE/AAL is more recently discussed in composition studies (2000-
present) in related journals within the ﬁeld.

To accomplish these requirements, you’ll ﬁrst want to refer to the course readings to make an argument or
claim as to whether composition studies fairly and effectively addresses issues of AAVE/AAL. For this,
you’ll want to draw on evidence of at least 2 course readings to make your claim. In your discussion and
analysis of course readings, you might consider providing summaries of each reading and authors’ stance,
referring to speciﬁc examples from the readings to support the authors’ main idea(s), and then shifting

toward formulating your own argument that analyzes each authors’ effectiveness in discussing AAVE/AAL
within the ﬁeld.

Next, you’ll need to research more recent scholarship within Composition Studies, by consulting journals
in College Composition and Communication (CCC), College English, Journal of Advanced Composition
(JA C), or Teaching English at a Two- Year College. Access to these journals can be granted on campus
through www.1ib.msu.edu. lSTOR.com, Literature Online (LION), and additional MSU library electronic
indexes (we’ll work together as a class in learning how to navigate online indexes). Once you’ve searched
and browsed articles within any of these journals regarding AAVE/AAL, you’ll then select AT LEAST 2 to
explain how they also support your overall argument/claim on the representation of AAVE. An annotated

bibliography and Works Cited page will also accompany your work, and be included in the submission
packet (more details later).

In short, you should carefully analyze a total of AT LEAST 4 sources (2 reﬂecting course readings
assigned in class, and 2 reﬂecting scholarship demonstrated in recent journals from the online databases).
In your discussion of each article, you should make an argument/thesis that demonstrates whether or not
composition studies as a discipline effectively discusses scholarship concerning AAVE/AAL and whether
or not such discussion has changed/evolved over time.

Developing Work:

3a) (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): For this assignment, you’ll carefully work with one of the
readings we’ve read so far. Here, you’ll summarize the author’s main idea, supporting evidence of that
idea, and how you think it discusses scholarship of AAVE/AAL in composition studies. What does the
reading seem to say about AAVE/AAL? Does it effectively make an argument about its role in
composition studies? If so, how? If not, what’s missing?

3b) (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): For this assignment, you’ll respond to the same questions
listed for DWZa, but this time using evidence from 1 recently published article in a related journal you
found in the library databases (2000 — present).

Annotated Bibliography (to be printed out and turned in): For this assignment, you will produce a source
description of AT LEAST four of the sources you intend to use. You will summarize each source, and then
explain how they are relevant to your research. Correct MLA citation is required (more details later).

Possible Readings to Use with this Assignment:

Ball, Ametha. “Expository Writing Patterns of African American Students.” The English Journal
85.1(1996): 27-36. '

Canagarajah, A. Suresh. “Safe Houses in the Contact Zone: COping Strategies of African-American
Students in the Academy.” College Composition and Communication 48.2 (May 1997): 173-196.

Conference on College Composition and Communication. “Students’ Right to Their Own Language.”
College Composition and Communication 25 (Fall 1974): 25.

227

Gilyard, Keith and Elaine Richardson. "Students' Right to Possibility: Basic Writing and Aﬁican American
Rhetoric." Insurrections: Approaches to Resistance in Composition Studies. Ed. Andrea
Greenbaum. Albany: SUNY UP, 2001. 37-51.

Nembhardt, Judith. "A Perspective on Teaching Black Dialect Speaking Students to Write Standard
English." The Journal of Negro Education 52.1 ( l 983): 75-82. Rpt. in A Reader for Writers. Ed.
Collin Craig, Staci Perryman-Clark, and Nancy C. DeJoy. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008.

Smitherman, Geneva. “CCCC’s Role in the Struggle for Language Rights.” A Usable Past: CCC
at 50, Part I. Spec. issue of College Composition and Communication 50 ( l 999): 349-
376.

 

Assignment 4: Remix Literacies
Final Multigenre Project

Background:

The “multigenre” essay (MGE), a term coined by Tom Romano, asks students to see, understand, interpret,
and know a subject through multiple genres. In employing genres as both a lens and a rhetorical tool, the
multigenre research paper asks students to be explicitly creative and scholarly, to pay close attention to
matters of style as well as matters of research.

Throughout the term, hopefully you have been collecting several themes pertaining to composition studies
and AAVE. For this unit, you will be asked to compose a MGE that examines a theme pertaining to AAVE
either in composition studies, in online spaces, or in other environments.

In order to complete this assignment, there are several key ingredients make for a successful multigenre
essay (MGE):

I) *A focused research question or, even better, a focused thesis or theme. The genres in the essay should
explore a common theme as to how AAVE is represented from multiple perspectives; you will probably
want to draw from the past written essays to convey a new theme.

2) *A speciﬁc audience. You should choose genres that you think will most effectively communicate your
idea to a speciﬁc audience and, ideally, share your work with that audience. You will need to consider the
speciﬁcs of this audience when you make decisions about the purpose of each genre. In the reﬂective essay
(4-5 pp.), you will write about how those considerations affect your decisions.

3) *A variety of sources from multiple perspectives. As above, the MGE should explore an issue from
different perspectives. Therefore, collecting evidence from these perspectives is essential, so you will need
to include at least 3 sources as evidence for this project. You may use evidence from sources we’ve read
this term, or you may ﬁnd your own. But in either case, the evidence you choose should appropriately
reﬂect the genres you compose yourself. In your reﬂective essay, you will cite and analyze the
evidence/sources you used to create your MGE and how you incorporated those sources into your genres.

4) ‘An understanding of the conventions of different genres. If you are going to choose to write "a news
story," it needs to look, sound, and act like a news story -- or whatever genres you use.

5) *An overall design, template, or layout to assemble your entire project. Once you have decided on your
individual genres, you‘ll need to choose how you'll want to group them together as a whole project or

packet. Do you want the entire project/packet to be a handbook or guide (electronic OR print) for teachers
teaching Ebonics speakers? A website with materials on Ebonics? A cuniculum handbook (electronic OR

228

print) for students learning Ebonics? A handbook (electronic OR print) for teachers wanting to introduce
hip hop or African American visual rhetoric into the classroom?

6) *Creativity! The MGE requires that you be creative about incorporating sources into your genres.
Task:

1) You will also provide an introduction/cover page (print OR electronic) that summarizes the genres
you’ve composed and a brief abstract of their purposes (I page). This introduction should also
clarify what information the reader needs to know before reading your genres.

2) To complete this essay, you will need to compose a 4-5 page reﬂective (to be handed in separately
from the MGE project) essay that describes the theme of AAVE/composition studies you’ve
chosen, why you chose this theme, the evidence from at least 3 sources (can included course
readings or other sources used to convey this theme), and an analysis of how the evidence supports
your theme. A correctly formatted Works Cited page and full in-text MLA citations are required
here.

3) In addition to your reﬂective essay and introduction, you will also compose four different genres
(see categories) that represent your theme. We’ll work extensively on how to master the
conventions of these genres and what they should look like. But each genre should reﬂect your
overall theme of AAVE and composition studies. These genres, then will be assembled as a
packet, website, or your choice of template.

Developing Work:

DW4a Topic Proposal (approx. 500 words; to be posted on Blog): For this essay, you discuss the
main theme/thesis argument you want to convey about AAVE and composition studies. You’ll discuss
why you’ve chosen this theme, the evidence you’ll draw upon, and how that supports your theme. Full
MLA citation and a Works Cited page are required.

DW4b: (To be printed and handed in): For this DW, you’ll compose two different genres that you
intend to incorporate into your MGE. The genres should clearly convey the main thesis/theme you
want to make about composition studies and AAVE/AAL.

Genres: You will choose 4 different genres from 6 different groups (You CANNOT choose 2 genres from
the same group). Remember, each of these genres can be done in electronic form (i.e. on the Web) or print:

Group One—Newspaper/Magazine Writing (at least 2 pages if printed)
News Story (like something on p. 1)

Feature story (like in an entertainment section)

Editorial Magazine Feature

Series of (at least 3) letters to the Editor Sensational News Story
Obituary Sports Story

2-3 Comic Strips Editorial Cartoon Advertisement

Something else you clear with me

Group Two—Imaginative Writing (length depends on choice)

Monologue (by one person) (2 pp.) Dialogue (between 2 people) (2 pp.)

Scene from a Play/Movie/I‘V Script (3 pp.) Children’s/Fantasy/Other Fictional Story (in
a particular genre) (2-3 pp.)

Poetry (I p.) Creative Non-Fiction piece (2-3 pp.)

Song Lyric (with or without music) (2-3 pp.)

Something else you clear with me

Group Three—“School” Writing (at least 2 pages if printed)

Worksheet for Students

229

Writing Assignments for Students
Scholarly Article (like those we’ve read)
Textbook Introduction or Partial Chapter
Other Course Text Dictionary/Glossary
Class Plan

Something else you clear with me

Group Four—“Personal/Private” Writing (at least 3 pages if printed)
Journal Entry Letter Exchange between 2 or more people

Email exchange between 2 or more people Diary Entry

Recipe

Book Club Report

Photo Album or Scrapbook

Something else you clear with me

Group Five-Workplace/Professional Writing (at least 3 pages if printed)
Memo Workplace

Report

Exchange of Professional Letters between 2 or more people

Resume

Something else you clear with me

Group Six—Visual Pieces (all must include 1 page-- if printed-explanation or link to project)
Map Collage (with explanation of theme)

Drawing/Painting Video

Poster Book or CD Jacket

Photographs (with explanation of theme)

Something else you clear with me

Possible Readings:
Your readings

Past course readings
Sample MGE Projects

 

230

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