Cross-Language Relations in Composition

13. Mapping the Cultural Ecologies of Language and Literacy

204 13. Mapping the Cultural Ecologies of Language and Literacy Michelle Hall Kells Implicitly or explicitly, we writers chart our way through language, culture, and multiple spheres of belonging to position ourselves in a world of relationships . We write to navigate our way through the people, ideas, places, resources, and work that constitute our local and global communities. Juan C. Guerra calls us all “transcultural citizens” (296). I like that notion—this emphasis on the idea of movement, migration, transition. It aligns with the migratory history of human existence. We are, after all, on one very long journey. How then do we map the cultural ecologies shaping language and literacy? I argue that this has become the central question challenging us as teachers in the classroom, scholars in the field of composition studies, and educational activists in colleges and universities. Mapping the field from multiple points of view, the contributors to this volume recognize and articulate the linguistic shifts in and beyond our classrooms . They respond to the ideological constraints of our discipline and acknowledge the consequences of linguistic imperialism and racism on our institutions and students. Moreover, these scholars engage the broad range of discourses shaping the worlds in which our students live and work. They chart the terrain by interrogating “English Only” policies, problematizing the phenomena of language shift and mixing, and examining the multifarious forms and functions of linguistic codes. Together, these authors illustrate that language diversity is intrinsic to our local, national, and global identities . This volume steps ahead of, alongside, and away from the political and social pulse of the moment. The national conversation on “diversity” initiated by the Conference on College Composition and Communication Committee on Diversity in 2008 similarly foregrounds questions related to ethnolinguistic pluralism.1 The impetus to construct a formal statement on diversity by the national-level professional organization of college composition teachers emerges out of a sociopolitical climate increasingly intolerant of difference (culturally, linguistically , nationally, ideologically, and so on). Colleges and universities locally +RUQHU&KLQGG $0 Mapping the Cultural Ecologies of Language and Literacy 205 and nationally grapple with the rise of incivility and violence on campus, a disturbing trend in public and private institutions across the nation. In her article in the Hispanic Outlook in Higher Education, Marilyn Gilroy details growing reports of aggressive student behavior as well as “incidents of racist and degrading remarks shouted out loud and scrawled on boards and posters around campuses” (8). Language and diversity are the proverbial two sides of the same coin in this public exchange. In 2008, Barack Obama, then a U.S. senator and Democratic presidential candidate, called for a national campaign to promote bilingualism, a bold and timely public recognition of the inherent and irrepressible linguistic heterogeneity of global citizenship.2 In turn, the acerbic responses to Obama’s affirmation of linguistic pluralism indexed the enduring volatility of these issues as exemplified by citizen groups across the nation—some bitterly expressed , as in a recent letter to the editor in Albuquerque, New Mexico: “As an American who clings to his religion and guns I am outraged that Sen. Barack Obama would make such a statement. . . . Sen. Obama has alienated many Americans and continues to demonstrate that he is not one of us. . . . English is the language spoken within our country which unites us.”3 When did bilingualism become a marker for being un-American? Min-Zhan Lu and John Trimbur in this volume delineate the push-pull tendency toward hypernationalism, anti-immigrant attitudes, and English Only policies that historically erupt along political fault lines during the most fractious periods in U.S. history. The alarmist xenophobia of the post-9/11 period and subsequent enactment of the Patriot Act have plunged the national consciousness into wholesale adoption of what Paul Kei Matsuda calls in his chapter the “myth of linguistic homogeneity.” The range of public reactions to language-use issues currently circulated in the media, questioned in the U.S. educational system, and debated in the civic sphere calls us as educators to consider carefully and examine closely the complex social, political, educational, economic, and historical dimensions of ethnolinguistic diversity. This volume responds to that call. These essays on cross-language relations provide a topo-map limning the contoured, rich, and often precarious terrain of linguistic pluralism. Each straddles the prescriptivist/descriptivist dilemma inherent to our field, seeking to describe language-in-use (Caribbean Creole, Ojibwe, Spanglish, Chinese, Japanese, Tamil, living-English, and so on) and at the same...