Composition: History & Theory: 1990 - 1999
Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone
Description
Min-Zhan Lu’s article “Professing Multiculturalism: The Politics of Style in the Contact Zone” focuses on the way ‘errors’ in student writing are perceived in light of multiculturalism. The article grows out of two concerns: that composition teachers too often divide form and meaning by teaching grammar/copyediting separately from content, and that composition teachers want to give their field validity and importance but still treat beginner/outsider writing different from the writing of “experts”. She gives historical examples of the way style and multiculturalism have intersected using the experiences of Gertrude Stein and Theodore Dreiser. Both Stein and Dreiser were approached before the publication of their first novels in regards to their “idiosyncratic style” – Stein got away with it by virtue of her “perfect” educational background and the fact that she was a native English speaker, whereas Dreiser got help editing his novel because he was a German native with limited formal education. The lesson here being that style can only be purposeful if the writer already knows what she is doing. Lu moves on to write about the frustration many students feel about their inability to master grammar, something that is considered a “basic” that beginning college students should already grasp. Students who need help (and the teachers who help them) are therefore shoved to the periphery of English studies. Lu’s way of combating this disconnect between form and meaning is to use the classroom as a potential “contact zone,” a place where “error-ridden” student writing is relevant to critical analysis. Her example of the “can able to” segments shows how students in her contact zone classrooms eventually begin to see the relationship between particular forms and the meanings they create in different contexts. This process of negotiation (how to correct the error “can able to” in a student’s writing) is meaningful for all students involved, because it allows them to see the meaning and context behind the codes of academic discourse that they are being asked to master. Without this negotiation, students simply absorb the codes without understanding – they make choices in their writing without knowing why they’re making those choices. The negotiation that takes place during “error” correction allows students to integrate their own voices into academic discourse. This process also allows students to become comfortable making mistakes and become more sensitive to the way “real” writers navigate through contending discourses. Lu makes a point at the end of her article that learning the conventions of academic discourse are important (students still have to be able to write for the professors with the red pens), but the process of negotiating error correction in a multicultural context broadens the range of choices and options facing student writers.
Author
Courtney K. McCann
Date of Upload
11/03/09