The Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity in U.S. College Composition

Abstract

In Only and U.S. College Composition, Bruce Horner and John Trimbur identify the tacit policy of unidirectional English monolingualism, which makes moving students toward the dominant variety of English the only conceivable way of dealing with language issues in composition instruc tion. This policy of unidirectional monolingualism is an important concept to cri tique because it accounts for the relative lack of attention to multilingualism in com position scholarship. Yet it does not seem to explain why second-language issues have not become a central concern in composition studies. After all, if U.S. compo sition had accepted the policy of unidirectional monolingualism, all composition teachers would have been expected to learn how to teach the dominant variety of English to students who come from different language backgrounds. This has not been the case. While Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva argue that coursework on language issues (though certainly not a monolingualist approach) should be part of every English teacher's professional preparation (4), relatively few graduate programs in composition studies offer courses on those issues, and even fewer require such courses. As a result, the vast majority of U.S. college composition programs remain unprepared for second-language writers who enroll in the main stream composition courses. To account for this situation, I want to take Horner and Trimbur's argument a step further and suggest that the dominant discourse of U.S. college composition not only has accepted English Only as an ideal but it al ready assumes the state of English-only, in which students are native English speak ers by default.