This article documents the impact of the 1996 federal welfare legislation on American Indian families in the state of Arizona over a period of four years. The authors analyzed primary data obtained from interviews with 445 former or current welfare families with children from three Indian reservations: Navajo, San Carlos, and Salt River. Compared…

Keeping in mind the Chinese character-combination "yuyan," with its multiple meanings of language, parts of language, the processes of language, and the products of those processes, the author depicts English as kept alive by many people and by many different ways of using it in a wide range of personal, social, and historical contexts.…

Arguing against the emphasis of traditional U.S. composition classes on linguistically homogeneous situations, the authors contend that this focus is at odds with actual language use today. They call for a translingual approach, which they define as seeing difference in language not as a barrier to overcome or as a problem to manage, but as a…

Relates the author's reflections on her early experiences as a student in China and her recent experiences as a composition teacher in the United States. Reveals how the frustration and confusion the author experienced growing up caught between two conflicting worlds ultimately helped her to grow as a reader and writer. (JD)

Describes the problem of importing multiculturalism into the writing classroom and specifically the possibility of a multicultural approach to writing style. Considers the ghettoization of student writing that appears to be riddled with "errors." (HB)

Describes how struggle and conflict are constructive for writers. Examines why this view of conflict had rhetorical power historically for theorists. Explores how and why this view persists among basic writing teachers in the 1990s. (HB)

Argues that Mina Shaughnessy's view of language as a politically innocent vehicle of meaning overlooks basic writers' need to confront the dissonance they experience between academic and other discourses. Suggests educators need to abandon the limitations of the essentialist view of language informing their pedagogy. (KEH)

Outlines four goals of the ideal literate self and describes them as an active response to various abuses of the "political potential of the personal." Recognizes that literacy is a trope and poses a literate self in the interest of social justice. Discusses four abuses and three examples regarding the politics of critical affirmation.…

This is an attempt to define what being a responsible and responsive user of English might mean in a world ordered by global capital, a world where all forms of intra- and international exchanges in all areas of life are increasingly under pressure to involve English. Turning to recent work in linguistics and education, I pose a set of alternative…

Examines two debates within the basic writing community (the reaction against Min Zhan Lu's early theoretical work and the recent acrimonious debate regarding Ira Shor's defense of mainstreaming) showing how they reflect conflicting models of the basic writing field, with "critical" discourse challenging the conventions and authority of…

Argues that Basic Writing students, teachers, and scholarship are crucial to enabling colleges and universities to realize their ideals of diversity, interdisciplinarity, and student-centered learning. Calls for more research exploring the potential of basic writing students to develop (and help others develop) "borderland" perspectives which may…

Explores the convergence between projects in ethnographic research and composition pedagogy that emphasize the critical power of experience. Argues that critical ethnography and pedagogy need to redefine "experience" and its function for research and teaching and that composition can help this redefinition by looking for ways to build…

This book convincingly shows that the United States should adopt multiculturalism so that it doesn't become monoculturally provincial in a global society, and so that it can survive in the twentieth century as a democratizing force rather than a future Bosnia. The book is divided into two sections: (1) "Theories and Issues in…

A compositionist teaching high school on an Athabascan Indian Reservation near Anchorage, Alaska, encountered considerable resistance from his students when attempting to see them through a college-prep program. Their initial hostility toward him masked their deep need for an adult role model who was not abusive, neglectful, or alcoholic. It was a…

The 21 essays in this book interrogate one another as they explore the relationships among politics, curriculum, and pedagogy in contemporary classrooms and cultures. Critical theory, the book suggests, is generated in and through classroom practice, rather than imported from without. After an introduction by James F. Slevin and Art Young, essays…