Shaping Language Policy in the U.S.: The Role of Composition Studies

Introduction: Situating Language Policy within Composition’s Past, Present, and Future

1 Introduction Situating Language Policy within Composition’s Past, Present, and Future in her chair’s address at the 2003 meeting of the conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), Shirley Wilson Logan asserted the importance of the organization’s language policies. She called on rhetoric and composition scholars to reread texts such as the 1974 Students’ Right to Their Own Language resolution and 1988 National Language Policy in order to better understand “the important principles they uphold” as well as “their salience in this moment in history” (“Changing” 333). Logan claimed that these language policies could usefully guide CCCC members in their efforts to improve language instruction and to advocate for literacy education in a moment when the student population is becoming ever more linguistically diverse. She declared, “As language arts educators, we ought to be at the center of all policy decisions that affect the teaching and learning of communication skills,” and she charged scholars “to have ready answers” when questions about linguistic diversity in education arise (335). Analyzing the CCCC language policies, Logan argued, can help rhetoric and composition scholars to discover “ready answers” and compose effective arguments in public debates about language diversity in schools and society. While Logan sees value in returning to these documents, at the time of their creation the CCCC language policies created confusion and sparked criticism about their efficacy for rhetoric and composition studies . Many scholars have been confused by the 1974 Students’ Right resolution , for example, because they expected it to offer more strategies for bringing its ideal to life inside the writing classroom. English Journal editor Stephen Judy used his December 1978 column to express such a view about the Students’ Right resolution: “One great weakness in the 2 | Introduction CCCC statement is that it talks about respecting and not interfering, but it doesn’t say anything about what the schools should do in a positive vein. It doesn’t attempt to describe what teachers can and should be doing to help kids learn language” (7). In 1976 Allen Smith similarly lamented that the “Students’ Right” policy seems to “spin in . . . circles” and leave us with the questions “what should we be teaching and for what purpose” (155–56), but he also challenged the policy’s theoretical soundness, describing it as “a contradiction,” “muddled,” and “mythical ” (155). More strident were those compositionists in the early 1980s who believed that the Students’ Right resolution and any subsequent CCCC language policies were simply the result of scholars becoming “wrapped up in ideological wars which [are] of little concern to them” (Parks 212). Contemporary responses to this language policy reveal similar disagreement and confusion about the specific contribution it makes to rhetoric and composition studies. Jerrie Cobb Scott, Dolores Y. Straker, and Laurie Katz talk about the “business” of the Students’ Right resolution solely in terms of specific teaching strategies (Preface xviii), while Patrick Bruch and Richard Marback believe that the policy is meant not to generate pedagogical talk about “practical problems and concrete solutions” but instead to foster public and professional dialogue about “visionary ideals and abstract ideas” such as dignity, justice, and rights (Hope 51). The 1988 National Language Policy, meanwhile, has recently been criticized by Bruce Horner for “attract[ing] little attention” (“Students’ Right” 741), but it has in fact generated confusion about its usefulness for the field’s efforts to improve conditions for language learning. Some scholars said they didn’t see how one could adopt a language policy that promotes multilingualism without ignoring the real-world demands for English language competency placed on students in their other classes and future jobs. In 1988, for example, Trudy J. Sundberg complained that the National Language Policy and the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Resolution on English as the “Official Language” did nothing but encourage teachers to let immigrants “avoid learning English, thus confining many of these students to self-perpetuating linguistic ghettos” (“Case” 17). Others were simply puzzled as to whether or not these language policies were even relevant. Harvey Daniels explained that many NCTE members were confused as to why the organization would oppose the English-only movement of the 1980s, for they believed that declaring English as the United States’ official language would seem to bring with it “the apparent uplifting of their own Introduction | 3 professional specialty” (Preface, viii). Writing more recently, Geneva Smitherman suggested that we should see the National Language...