Abstract
In the 1960s, higher education become more accessible to historically excluded groups, such as women, minorities, and the working class, forever changing the culture and population of college campuses. As a result of these changes, in 1974 the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution was passed by the membership of the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC). Although the resolution evolved out of the growing need to address the variety of Englishes that are increasingly used at most schools, many first-year college composition instructors neglect to enact the resolution in their classrooms. Instead, many language teachers still cling to a pedagogy that favors the sole use of traditional academic discourse. Traditional academic discourse excludes the linguistic and cultural experiences of many Americans, especially historically underrepresented groups. Its mythos is so entrenched within American learning institutions that many teachers are at a loss of how to go about teaching traditional academic discourse differently or in conjunction with other pedagogies. As a result, I developed a pedagogy that reconciles the tension and conflict between the tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse, a pedagogy that transcends the border and boundaries of them both, thereby creating an equitable space for the study of composition that is unfixed, experimental, and liberating while still empowering students with the necessary knowledge to gain entrance to the dominant discourse. Sources of Data In order to develop a pedagogy that reconciles the sometimes conflicting tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse, I researched existing literature on composition theory, focusing mainly on the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution; the history of teaching composition and rhetoric in the United States; alternative discourses and hybrid genres; the matrix of language, power, and culture; and portfolio theory. Additionally, I developed a questionnaire, “Challenging the Traditional Discourse of the Academy: Authorizing Alternative Discourse Forms in the First Year College Composition Course” for California State University Sacramento (CSUS) teachers and students. As a result of the questionnaire, I was able to generalize about what teachers are doing in the classroom today, what students think about that, and how receptive teachers and students are to the idea of challenging traditional academic discourse. Conclusions Reached Based on my research, I was able to develop a pedagogy that includes the tenets of the “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” resolution and traditional academic discourse while correcting the failures of each. The Antevasinist Pedagogy, partially derived from both Critical Pedagogy and Border Pedagogy, is a portfolio-centered, multi-discourse, multi-genre approach that includes dialectical diversity and alternative rhetorical patterns in the classroom. Antevasinist teachers and students reconcile the conflicts and gaps among the “Students’ Right” resolution and traditional academic discourse by studying the conventions of each and problem-posing their connections and disconnections, by making the conflicts and questions inherent within them visible and explicit. When a course includes the conventions of traditional academic discourse and questions of power concerning exclusive, gatekeeping discourse communities, as well as including the conventions and politics concerning alternative discourses and hybrid genres in the curriculum, writers can transcend the boundaries and limits of these pedagogies. This transcendence cultivates authentically aware, self reflective writers who are not only critically conscious of themselves and their writing, but also of the audience and the rhetorical situation.