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6. THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE: Localizing Transrhetorical Texts in Gl/Oklahoma Classrooms by Rachel C. Jackson
- Southern Illinois University Press
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90 6. THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE HERE Localizing Transrhetorical Texts in Gl/Oklahoma Classrooms Rachel C. Jackson My People Are not quaint They’re not colorful They ain’t odd nor funny nor picturesque Nor strange, Nor humorous, And they’re not strangers You introduce with big long words. It makes me sore to hear or to see or to read How you big long haired writers Whack away at my people Chew and cut and saw away at my people Grind and drill and whittle away at them Trying to make like you are their savior Or their way shower Or their finder, Or their discoverer, Like Balboa, like Columbo . . . —Woody Guthrie, Oklahoma folk musician, “My People” GLOBALIZATION, THOUGH CONCEIVED and usually discussed in monumental terms as a universal phenomenon, occurs most intensely at the local level where individuals experience it in their lives. Surely the forward slash (or in some cases a hyphen) in the term “global/local” indicates this relationship between these two apparent antonyms. The global precedes the local and yet depends upon it as well, leans into it in fact, ultimately becoming it. The The People Who Live Here 91 forward slash joins the opposing terms into one even as it punctuates the ambiguous space between them. Where does the global end and the local begin? For rhetoric scholars and composition teachers, this question merits consideration in our efforts to understand the impact of globalization on our work and on our students. What rhetorical models do we offer them in our composition classrooms as we train them to navigate discourse and debates concerning globalization in their homes and communities, and to what degree are these models locally effective? As citizens, writers, rhetors, and rhetoricians, students will certainly encounter globalization most immediately at the local level and engage with it at the level of local rhetoric. In their homes, on their campuses, and in their communities, students confront not only the particular local material realities of globalization but arguments being made about them as well. As Woody Guthrie asserts in his poem, likely in response to Dust Bowl era identifications of Oklahomans, the best people to rhetorically represent a place are the people who live in that place. In Oklahoma generally, discourse on globalization will not appear in the language of global capitalism or academic theory. Likely it will occur in the language of the people who live here, ripe with their values, histories, idioms, and dialects—and rich with examples of shared local experience and subsequent transcultural linguistic exchange. Oklahoma was first a home to a widely diverse population of indigenous peoples, some of whom were native to the region and others who were forcefully relocated here, and to African Americans and African Native Americans who suffered removal from the South as slaves of tribal members. African Americans seeking autonomy in the political climate of Reconstruction and European Americans chasing prosperity in the Progressive Era came to Indian Territory in their pursuit. This complex history has long qualified the state as a site of useful investigation into the issue of transcultural literacy, to borrow a term from Patricia Bizzell’s argument herein. But globalization itself and the patterns of globalization that have emerged over the course of time obscure local manifestations and thereby distort conversations that attempt to address them. As Brice Nordquist characterizes literacy education in his chapter in this volume, Standardized Written English and standardized composition curricula that attends it present “difference as division” and thereby marginalize certain voices and rhetorical practices while ascribing dominance to others. While the goals of translingual literacy animate Nordquist’s argument, and transcultural literacy likewise inhabits Bizzell’s exploration, I am concerned with working toward the goal of what I will call local transrhetorical [3.137.178.133] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 21:50 GMT) 92 Rachel C. Jackson literacy. In the argument that follows, I use “local” to mean those histories, rhetorics, cultures, economies, and discourses occurring primarily within state boundaries, including smaller civic boundaries within the state as well, such as towns, campuses, and communities. By “transrhetorical” I mean those rhetorical practices arising from and facilitating transcultural movement , interaction, and exchange, between both individuals and groups. Local transrhetorical literacy thus focuses on understanding and utilizing local sites of rhetorical exchange between cultural groups. Because of the import of standardized rhetoric and rhetorical models from beyond the state via both mass media and composition and rhetoric textbooks, Oklahoma writers and rhetorics, and certainly texts produced...