Students' "write" to their own language : teaching the African American verbal tradition as a rhetorically effective writing skill

ABSTRACTSTUDENTS' "WRITE" TO THEIR OWN LANGUAGE: TEACHING THE AFRICAN AMERICAN VERBAL TRADITION AS A RHETORICALLY EFFECTIVE WRITING SKILLByBonnie J. WilliamsThe 1972 Conference on College Composition and Communication's (CCCC) resolution declaring "Students' Right to Their Own Language" (SRTOL) defends the rights of students and all other writers to use different varieties of English. In addition, the 1988 CCCC adoption of the National Language Policy (NLP), which responds to the "English-Only" Movement, boldly asserts that English-Only is educationally unsound. However progressive these policies may be, there still remains a request from teachers on how to identify and develop effective pedagogies that advance language diversity in the classroom. The present research study offers one solution by introducing a comparative approach to writing instruction that recognizes African and African American contributions to standardized American written communication structures. Using culturally relevant pedagogy and culturally sustaining pedagogy as theoretical frames, I explore the effects of a "comparative approach" to African American Language and Literacy instruction, which makes clear that African American Verbal Tradition (AVT) may be incorporated into expected conventions for academic writing. This research study takes place in two first-year writing courses at a major Midwestern university in which students are introduced to AVT. AVT is a broad linguistic tradition, therefore I have selected five features of AVT to investigate: repetition, signifyin[g] and indirection, call & response, narrativizing, and sounding. My project uses Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as analytical methods to help me make sense of my data from students' written work, my field notes on our classroom experiences, and my audio taped transcriptions of students' reflective discussions. CRT helped me describe and understand the effects race had on students' attitudes, behaviors, and perceptions when exposed to anti-racist pedagogy that challenges negative assumptions about people of color in relation to education. I perform a close textual analysis of select transcripts using CDA and to examined how dominance and hegemony were reproduced or resisted in the students' text (essays) and talk (student directed conversations).