Strickland, Donna and Crawford, Ilene. “Error and Racialized A Way to Move

Strickland, Donna and Crawford, Ilene. “Error and Racialized Performances of Emotion in the Teaching Of Wrirting.” A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies. Eds. Dale Jacobs & Laura R. Micciche. Boyton/CooK: Portsmouth, NH.

“The ‘habitus,’ for Bourdieu, ‘is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways. The disposition generates practices, perceptions and attitudes which are ‘regular’ without being consciously co-ordinated or governed by any ‘rule’ (68).

“Further, the primary work of this dominant pedagogical violence ‘is to organize an emotional world, to inculcate patterns of feeling that support the dominant interests, patterns that are especially appropriate to gender, race, and class locations’ (1998, 223)” (68).

“Williams discovered that people claim to be equally sensitive to all errors when, in fact, there are a number of errors people miss most of the time. Most likely to be noticed and responded to immediately are errors that violate ‘the rules that define bedrock standard English’ (Williams 1981, 159).”

The thing of it is, I agree. We are in a place, the university, where we are attempting to teach a language. This language is standardized for more efficient performance on the part of both reader and writer.
“In addition to controlled behavior, controlled speech was another important way in which whites could distinguish themselves as morally different from Blacks” (71).

Why is it that people assume that language correction correlates with a feeling of superiority and morality? If I cannot understand you, we do not communicate. Race notwithstanding.

“The similarities between emotional and linguistic schooling are telling. Both are a set of skills that ‘normal’ children develop to succeed in life—in the schoolyard and later in the workplace” (72).

“These historical and contemporary examples demonstrate that the schooling of language and the schooling of emotion are never far apart” (72).
“Jane Hill demonstrates that ‘language panics are not really about language. Instead, they are about race. . .” (73).

I don’t care how people speak—outside the college classroom. Even inside the classroom when they are just talking. Language takes precedence when the conversation is meant to be academic in nature and not casual communication between friends or acquaintances. Can I not have it this way without being considered racist? Just out of curiosity, what would have happened if I’d have submitted my writing sample with the GRE in Ozarkian normal?

“Emotion is a powerful technology that connects language, morality, and order, producing a highly racialized sense of self” (79).

Farrydiddles. I’m the one that this article is pointing fingers at. I’m the person who expects papers to be turned in in an appropriate collegiate form of Englisih. I’m also the one who will correct how my students speak in the classroom. Why? Because I believe that if we are to promote an academic style of writing, and why else would we teach composition, then we should do so. I do not do this with malice, and I certainly do not “cut down” my students’ use of localized language. What I say to them is that “This is an English class. We want to learn how to write in a way that is efficient and effective across the board in an academic setting. It is not a matter of race, but a matter of language difference. What would have happened had I gone into a Spanish or German classroom and simply learned some of the language, but reserved the rest for my own interpretation? Adding English words where I felt it was more my own upbringing? I’d not have passed the course.