It seems only fair to start with my own first-person admission: I am personally, pedagogically, and professionally interested in how students do and do not write about themselves in their papers. And as a composition instructor, I have seen that students, too, are deeply concerned with understanding the rules for writing, particularly around the use of the pronoun I. Their confusion is understandable: high school teachers, college professors, and writing handbook authors-all wrestling with how best to train students to becomes successful writers in and outside of the classroom-sometimes offer conflicting guidelines and advice. Some contend that first-person pronouns make a text more readable or better highlight a writer's own contributions, while others caution that first-person references are overly informal or subjective.1Scholars, though, consistently use first-person pronouns in their own writing-though this, too, is not uncomplicated. In a survey of 240 scholarly articles from well-regarded journals across a variety of fields, linguist Ken Hyland found that every article in the sample contained least one first person reference, with scholars in the humanities and social sciences self-referencing particularly frequently (Humble Servants 212).2 Despite this evidence that scholars commonly use first-person pronouns, Hyland believes this practice is still at odds with traditional attitudes. He observes that impersonality in writing is often institutionally sanctified as a signal of disciplinary mastery, yet it is also constantly transgressed in our scholarship (209). Because of this contradiction, Hyland argues that gauging where and when self-referencing is appropriate remains a perennial problem for students, teachers, and experienced writers alike (208).What becomes clear from this conflict is that we have historically and ideologically conflated first-person pronoun use with more informal, writing. But is this conflation warranted? To examine this, I argue that we must carefully refine what we mean by personal and academic writing. For although we have spent decades discussing the appropriateness and utility of these two writing styles (often as iterations of the seminal Bartholomae/ Elbow Debate, and, more recently, in productive explorations of alternative discourses and widened disciplinary conventions), we still largely intuit our own definitions of each kind of writing.3 And too often, these definitions are used to create a good-versus-bad, academic-versus-personal binary that student writing-and our own-simply does not follow. What makes writing academic? What makes writing personal? Can writing be both and personal? And, most relevant to the current study, does the use of first-person pronouns necessarily signal or encourage writing?Individual instructors will always, of course, have different preferences around first-person pronoun use; some will welcome it as a style that bolsters a student's voice, while others will dismiss it as inappropriate in an setting. This study is not intended to adjudicate this debate, nor will I use the results to make claims about the overall rhetorical effectiveness of selfreferencing. Instead, the study aims to look at how such first-person statements function, to appreciate their rhetorical variety, and to offer a critical vocabulary by which to respond to them.In addition to refining the way we look at first-person references, we also need to examine how frequently students are really using these pronouns or referencing their lives in their writing. Some instructors report that they consistently encounter responses in their students' papers, regardless of the assignment prompt, while others find evidence that students have rigidly internalized a proscription against using I at all.4 But beyond these conflicting anecdotal observations, there is surprisingly little understanding of our undergraduate students' actual writing practices. …

This article suggests that literacy development in immigrant, refugee, and other historically marginalized communities can be understood as a response to struggles in contexts of civic life. To illustrate this rhetorical conception of literacy:' the article examines a collection of anti-immigrant letters published in a Midwestern newspaper between 1985 and 1995 and the responses to these by a group of Southeast Asian Hmong refugee writers. The essay explores the relationships of content, form, language, and audience in the two sets of letters to show how the anti-immigrant rhetoric became the basis for new forms of public writing in the Hmong community.

From the early 1990s to the present, Ruth Frankenberg, David Roediger, coauthors Thomas Nakayama and Robert Krizek, and other academics have focused on race by uncovering, interrogating, and theorizing as a largely unacknowledged but vastly important rhetorical and epistemological system. Nakayama and Krizek consider relatively unchartered territory that remained invisible as it continues to influence the identity of those both within and without domain (291). Whiteness, they claim, wields power yet endures as a largely unarticulated (291). Further, they argue, whiteness has assumed the position of an uninterrogated space (293). Many whites, they argue, refuse to acknowledge their ethnicity, claiming simply to be human, thereby erasing from its history and social

John Hollowell, Michael P. Clark, Steven Mailloux, Christine Ross, Responses to "Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse:Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook", College Composition and Communication, Vol. 56, No. 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 329-334

Sometimes, you know, you have a moment. For us, this is one such moment. In coming together at CCCC, we leave our institutional sites of work; we gather together-we quite literally conveneat a not-quite-ephemeral site of disciplinary and professional work. At this opening session in particular, inhabited with the echoes of those who came before and anticipating the voices of those who will follow-we pause and we

Tenured Bosses and Disposable Teachers: Writing Instruction in the Managed University exposes the poor working conditions of contingent composition faculty and explores practical alternatives to the unfair labor practices that are all too common on campuses today. Editors Marc Bousquet, Tony Scott, and Leo Parascondola bring together diverse perspectives from pragmatism to historical materialism to provide a perceptive and engaging examination of the nature, extent, and economics of the managed labor problem in composition instructiona field in which as much as ninety-three percent of all classes are taught by graduate students, adjuncts, and other disposable teachers. These instructors enjoy few benefits, meager wages, little or no participation in departmental governance, and none of the rewards and protections that encourage innovation and research. And it is from this disenfranchised position that literacy workers are expected to provide some of the core instruction in nearly everyone's higher education experience. Twenty-six contributors explore a range of real-world solutions to managerial domination of the composition workplace, from traditional academic unionism to ensemble movement activism and the pragmatic rhetoric, accommodations, and resistances practiced by teachers in their daily lives.Contributors are Leann Bertoncini, Marc Bousquet, Christopher Carter, Christopher Ferry, David Downing, Amanda Godley, Robin Truth Goodman, Bill Hendricks, Walter Jacobsohn, Ruth Kiefson, Paul Lauter, Donald Lazere, Eric Marshall, Randy Martin, Richard Ohmann, Leo Parascondola, Steve Parks, Gary Rhoades, Eileen Schell, Tony Scott, William Thelin, Jennifer Seibel Trainor, Donna Strickland, William Vaughn, Ray Watkins, and Katherine Wills.

It s no secret that, in most American classrooms, students are expected to master standardized American English and the conventions of Edited American English if they wish to succeed. Language Diversity in the Classroom: From Intention to Practice works to realign these conceptions through a series of provocative yet evenhanded essays that explore the ways we have enacted and continue to enact our beliefs in the integrity of the many languages and Englishes that arise both in the classroom and in professional communities.Edited by Geneva Smitherman and Victor Villanueva, the collection was motivated by a survey project on language awareness commissioned by the National Council of Teachers of English and the Conference on College Composition and Communication.All actively involved in supporting diversity in education, the contributors address the major issues inherent in linguistically diverse classrooms: language and racism, language and nationalism, and the challenges in teaching writing while respecting and celebrating students own languages. Offering historical and pedagogical perspectives on language awareness and language diversity, the essays reveal the nationalism implicit in the concept of a standard English, advocate alternative training and teaching practices for instructors at all levels, and promote the respect and importance of the country s diverse dialects, languages, and literatures. Contributors include Geneva Smitherman, Victor Villanueva, Elaine Richardson, Victoria Cliett, Arnetha F. Ball, Rashidah Jammi Muhammad, Kim Brian Lovejoy, Gail Y. Okawa, Jan Swearingen, and Dave Pruett.The volume also includes a foreword by Suresh Canagarajah and a substantial bibliography of resources about bilingualism and language diversity.