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Language Policy Committee “Talkin’ ‘Bout a Revolution” A conversation with Geneva Smitherman on Language, Power, and Social Change Austin Jackson and Bonnie Williams Dr. Geneva Smitherman (“Dr. G”) has been a central figure within almost every radical change in the field of writing, rhetoric, and composition studies over the course of nearly a half-century. From her leading role in the 4C’s Students’ Right to Their Own Language Resolution and creation of the National Language Policy and Language Policy Committee, to her own pioneering scholarship on African American Language and advocacy in the King “Black English” federal court case, Dr. G’s work as a scholaractivist in the language rights struggle has had a transformational impact on how we engage issues of language, power, and social justice. With the publication of Talkin andTestifyin (1977),Dr.G changed,quite literally,the nature of academic discourse on critical language studies—with much of this seminal work written in the language of Black America. This in-depth conversation reveals some of Smitherman’s most personal and significant experiences and roles of leadership in the on-going struggle for language rights. Smitherman reflects on the roles she played in the formation of the Conference on College Composition and Communication ’s Language Policy Committee (1986) as well as the development of the National Language Policy in 1988. In this candid, and sometimes raw and uncut interview, Dr. G reveals her involvement in radical activism during the heady days of the Black Liberation Movement in the sixties and seventies, as well as the significant impact of the Black Power movement on her political consciousness. She also talks extensively about how her early work in African American Studies and Black Feminism/Womanism influenced her work as critical linguist and scholar activist.The following conversation marks Dr. G’s final interview as active faculty; she is slated to transition (“’Fade to Black,’like Jay-Z,”in Dr.G’s cool,hip,soulful parlance) from University Distinguished Professor to Professor Emerita in 2011. The Formation of the Language Policy Committee and the National Language Policy AJ: Dr. G, you’ve played a key leadership role in almost every major radical change in language scholarship, policy, pedagogy, and literacy and rhetoric studies. From Students’ Rights to Their Own Language, Listening to Our Elders 88 the formation of the Language Policy Committee, and the creation of the National Language Policy to your own pioneering sociolinguistic work on African American Language and Hip Hop—how did it all get started? GS: Well let’s see, we need to go back to 1986.The Black Movement was just about dead at that point, and we were in the Second Reconstruction of Nixon and Moynihan’s “benign neglect”policy for addressing the race crisis. Black people are on their own. Simultaneously, around ’82 or ’84, S.I. Hayakawa launches this movement to make English the official language, first of California and eventually the entire US. Being a big time linguist, he got a lot of national attention.The White Left was like the Black Left, tryna figure out,“Well where do we go next?”Cause the White Left was also in limbo, in terms of where to target political activism, and they was getting jammed too, just as Blacks and Latinos were. In 4Cs, the progressive White Left was very distrustful of C’s leadership at that time. It was in the early 80s. C’s was in New Orleans and hotel workers were on strike.The Progressive Caucus had petitioned the leadership to move the Convention somewhere else. Cause they was like, “We ain gon cross the union lines.” But C’s leadership balked because they would have to pay a big penalty fee for cancellation and higher fees for a different hotel at a different location because it hadn’t been booked in advance. All about the Benjamins; C’s leadership put money concerns ahead of principles of workers’ rights and social justice. It was a big, big mess, and the Progressive Caucus felt that 4Cs had not been responsive to its membership. I don’t remember how the Progressive Caucus came up with their plan to enter into the English-only fray, but at the 1986 Convention, with the bitter memory of the politics at that New Orleans Convention in mind, they demanded that 4Cs take a position against English-Only and establish a committee or commission to be active in the struggle against Hayakawa and “Official English.” But before...

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