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last.updated 11.18.07

Race & Ethnicity

Purpose

Issues of race and ethnicity create obvious tensions with current traditional pedagogies that push all students to conform to a single rhetorical standard. The readings for today allow us to explore this tension by opening the conversation to diverse rhetorical systems and what they offer to our practices.

Before Class

• Read Kaplan "Cultural Thought Patterns..." [BB]
• Read Kubota and Lehner "Towards a Critical Contrastive Rhetoric" [JSLW 13.1]
• Read Crawford "The Multiple Dimension of Nubian/Egyptian Rhetoric" [BB]
• Read Pennell "Implementing Students' Right to Their Own Language" [BB]
• Read CCCC's Statement on Student's Right to their Own Language [BB]

FreeWrite

Other than the practices suggested by the authors, how would you incorporate the rhetorical diversity that we have learned in these readings into your writing courses?

Questions and Discussion (by Elif Guler)

Kaplan “Cultural Thought Patterns...”

• What do you think about the structure of Kaplan’s essay, for instance, the way that he grounds his rationale for his project between pages 11-14? Do you find this kind of grounding (using excerpts from theoretical studies about language, some of which have never really been scientifically proven) plausible?
• Kaplan states that as a result of an analysis of six hundred student essays in three basic language groups, they found that the paragraph development in Semitic languages is “based on a complex series of parallels constructions.” He, then, claims that “this kind of parallelism may most clearly be demonstrated in English by reference to the King James version of the Old Testament.” Do you think that this is relevant evidence? Why or how?
• What do you think about Kaplan’s methodology? What aspects of this study are plausible? What aspects are refutable? On what basis?
• What do you think the contemporary value of Kaplan’s study is?

Kubota and Lehner “Towards a Critical Contrastive Rhetoric”

Kubota and Lehner state that traditional contrastive rhetoric (starting with Kaplan) reinforced static binaries between English and other languages which resulted in viewing students from different cultures as “culturally lacking.” Hence, they called for an “alternative conceptual framework” which should build on a “non-essentialist” understanding of culture and rhetoric. Do you agree? Consider that, as one of the first scholars to propose a need for a study of contrastive rhetoric, Kaplan stated that, “the expected sequence of thought in English is essentially Platonic-Aristotelian sequence, descendent from the philosophers of ancient Greece and shaped by subsequently by Roman, Medieval European, and later Western thinkers. It is not a better nor a worse system than any other, but it is different” (emphasis mine).

Crawford “The Multiple Dimension of Nubian/Egyptian Rhetoric”

Crawford claims that despite the fact that Africa has the longest recorded history of written documentation dating back forty thousand years, a conventional (Western-centric) understanding of rhetoric deliberately ignores an accurate historical continuum of rhetoric that reflects the contributions of the Nile valley complex and other indigenous African cultures. What do you think the real origins/reasons of such misinformation and miseducation may be? (The following question comes also from my ignorance) what ideological and/or political assumptions may be lying beneath this ignorance?

Pennell “Implementing Students’ Right to Their Own Language”

In his essay, on page 229, Pennell refers to a member of the NCTE committee behind “Students’ Right,” Smitherman who admitted that the resolution “did not go far enough in praxis.” Thus, Pennel suggests that the organizations that produced these resolutions “were simply paying lip service to language awareness in the composition classroom.” Do you agree? What are your observations as to a praxis of student’s right to their own language in your own or your peers’ composition classrooms?

CCCC's Statement on Student's Right to their Own Language

How realistic do CCCC’s and NCTE’s resolutions on “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” sound to you in the current stage of the world (e.g. indecisive between modernism and postmodernism)? Were you familiar with these resolutions before? Have they ever influenced your teaching practices or do you consider adjusting your future practices accordingly?