Practice into Theory

Abstract

The term connotes, in the minds of much of the general public and some English teachers, instruction in prescribed usage. Complaints about students' grammar are often displeasure with dialectal variations, and English teachers are frequently held responsible for students' aberrations from proper language use. While questions of and attitudes toward usage remain compelling, they can obscure other important dimensions of language instruction. One of these is the issue of owning language. Publication of Students' Right to Their Own Language (1974) evoked a storm of controversy which continues to the present. I risk recollections of emotional controversies and rancorous usage disputes because this CCCC document underlines the significance of owner in language instruction. CCCC's 1972 resolution, which occasioned the 1974 publication, reads in part: We affirm the students' right to their OWN patterns and varieties of language-the dialects of their nurture or whatever dialects in which they find their OWN identity and style . . teachers must have the experiences and training that will enable them to respect diversity and uphold the right of students to their OWN language. (emphasis mine) The prominence of in this resolution and in the accompanying explanatory document emphasizes the personal, individual nature of language. All students own an idiolect, an individual language, when they begin school, and Students' Right to Their Own Language reminds us that students needs to continue owning their language if they are to use it effectively. When students relinquish ownership of language, they lose their capacity for self expression, fall into formulaic utterances which lack authenticity and power. Many contemporary teachers of writing including William Coles, Donald Hall, and Ken Macrorie demonstrate the weaknesses of depersonalized prose, and others such as Richard Lanham and