When writing is taught through conferences between a student and teacher, the authority of the teacher profoundly influences what students think and say about writing. Also, as students learn to deal with their teacher's authority, they develop strategies for talking about writing tasks in voices that are authentically their own. An examination of a particular conference between student and teacher revealed their negotiation of authority. Specifically, the teacher suspected that the student had formulated a thesis that he did not believe, but one that he thought might be politically appealing to the teacher. Before the student ventured a thesis true to his own political stance, the teacher refused to disclose how he expected the student to revise the paper, focusing on the content of the paper rather than the argument structure. Once the thesis changed, the teacher allowed the student to consider the form his argument should take in writing. The teacher, in effect, granted authority for the student to express his own opinion, thus allowing him to learn to distinguish between the authority he can possess over what he says in and about writing and the authority over strategies of argument that he must surrender to the teacher. Through this kind of examination of authority in writing conferences, an understanding can be gained about social influences on the writing process. Such knowledge is crucial if teachers are to construct models of writing processes that describe not only the production of individual, autonomous texts, but also account for the cultural forces that constitute those texts. (A partial transcript of the writing conference and a linguistic analysis of it are appended. Fourteen references also are included.) (SRT)