Teaching Writing: Beginning with the Word

Abstract

IN HER ADDRESS to the 1973 convention of the MLA (printed in the May 1974 issue of PMLA), Florence Howe gave me the keynote for my course in freshman composition, a phrase she borrowed from Paulo Freire: the of the word to name the world. I use it both to announce to my class and to remind myself exactly what we are doing there together. Beginning with the word is my way of getting down to basics. After the fact, I can see that there are pedagogical advantages to starting there. Words have it in them to command peculiarly intense attention; placed thus at the front of a sheaf of class notes, they function in a manner not unlike that served by the dumpling-shaped girl on the cover of a greeting card popular some years ago: Sex! she shouts, in a balloon at least as large as she is. Now that I have your attention . . . , explains the message inside, Happy Birthday. After writing Freire's phrase on the blackboard, I ask the students what they think it means, particularly what the notion of power is doing in the company of words. Someone inevitably recalls that the pen is mightier than the sword and, often, someone else remembers that there have been cultures in which speaking the name of the deity was forbidden, an implict tribute to the perils of namecalling. From these reflections of a socio-historical turn, we move easily to consideration of the groups in contemporary society to whom it matters a great deal what we call them. Since Rosary College contains a good mix of races and ethnic groups and is coeducational, most of my students can affirm the desire to assert over one's identity by claiming the right to name one's party and to have this designation respected by others. We have not yet reached my ultimate goal for the discussion, however, for I want the students to understand the more intimate satisfactions of word power, so that I can count on their commitment to exact expression in the writing assign-