Discourse Communities and Identity Dilemmas

We know that majority of community college students in Composition/ESL/developmental writing classes are entering a new discourse community: "academic English," the language of political/economic power.

We know that "academic English" may be vastly different from some students' home/community discourse experiences.

And we know that discourse is so tightly bound to issues of identity, power, class, ethnicity, and gender, so entering a new discourse may raise all sorts of identity dilemma for students.

So how, as writing teachers, might we help students negotiate these identity dilemmas, while we teach them academic discourse?

I feel that I need to develop much deeper understandings of sociolinguistics, race, identity, critical pedagogy and composition theory in order to adequately answer this question. Sounds easy... :-/

Considering that the majority of students entering composition/ESL/developmental writing classes are entering a new discourse community, and since discourse is so tightly bound to issues of identity, power, class, ethnicity etc, I wonder if future composition teachers should now have to study sociolinguistics before entering this field. I don't know if this sounds ridiculous or practical, but I'm also not sure how a teacher can answer such a complex question without understanding how and why dialects and types of discourse are connected to a person's identity, race, gender etc. In his article, Young references code switching and pluralism as possible solutions (which he disagrees with) to the problems some speakers of AAVE face when entering academic discourse communities. I feel that a teacher would need to understand sociolinguistic concepts such as code switching and pluralism before deciding how to navigate this issue in a classroom, and then finally becoming capable of navigating it.

Furthermore, I feel that it's important to recognize, be sensitive to, and deal with this issue, while also understanding my own limitations as a teacher and human being, who can't single-handedly solve students' identity dilemmas. I don't want this issue to completely dominate what I teach at the expense of anything else. However, I also don't wish for my pedagogical choices to contribute to the dilemma, or to cause further obstacles for students facing this issue.

I suppose awareness might be a good first step. First, as writing teachers we can deepen our own awareness of this issue, and raise awareness of it in our classrooms. Students can learn about the differences between dialects represented in each classroom (a knowledgeable teacher can help point these out, and students can share their own experiences). Standard English should also be discussed in relation to other dialects (we can't just expect students who speak other dialects to instantly adopt it, or to adopt it at all). There should be some explicit awareness raised about why Standard English became standard (not for any reasons related to linguistic superiority) and why it is favored in certain contexts. In a class where students struggle, expressivist approaches might be useful, as a start. I might consider implementing narrative writing and free writing, in which students are free to write in their own dialects to their own discourse communities, before moving towards writing for other types of audiences, such as academic audiences.

Like I said, I don't know the answer to this, but I look forward to participating in more discussions about it....