The English classroom is a space where students from across the social spectrum are socialized and cultivated to become practitioners of Standard Written English (SWE), but how can the language of the working class be reconciled with the language of the classroom? This subject is of personal interest to me despite my ambiguous place in the working-class world; neither of my parents maintained labor jobs during my childhood (my father is disabled and unemployed; my mother worked “under the table” jobs periodically). Perhaps it is most appropriate to say that I grew up in poverty because my family survived on welfare benefits. Calling myself working class is a loaded gun because many working-class people may see me as simply poor since my family had no marketable labors skills or experience of which to speak. So even though I sometimes call myself a working-class student, do I actually have the right to this label? Or would it benefit me to say once and for all that I’m poor? I will use “working-class” in this essay to refer to people who are/have been labor employees, the indigent, or the dependents of the aforementioned.

Jim Gee discusses this friction between home and school discourses in his essay “What is Literacy?” According to Gee, “discourses are intimately related to the distribution of social power and hierarchical structure in society,” (53). Because I was raised in a working-class home, I was already relatively removed from the public sphere of authority and success. In order to gain access to this realm of power I had to acquire a secondary discourse—that of the academy. While all students have a primary discourse acquired through their family or guardians, “it is of course a great advantage when the secondary discourse is compatible with your primary one,” (56). Privilege discourse favors the privileged, so middle- and upper-class students are instantly more prepared for higher education.

For the most part, my family exists in an insular world dominated by the familial and domestic spheres. Their (our) primary discourse is one of oral tradition and social joviality, accompanied by a charming Boston accent. However, I have had far greater opportunities to acquire secondary discourses. For example, while my older sister was homeschooled, I attended a predominantly white, middle-class high school. I had part-time jobs throughout my teenage years, participated in civic and art groups, and eventually went on to Emerson College, a prestigious communications and performing arts private college. It was in this environment of assumed homogeneity that I quickly shed my Boston accent and assimilated into the communication styles of the upper-middle-class students around me.

At Emerson, uniqueness and creativity are highly valued—that is, if your self-expression reaffirmed middle-class values and expectations. We could all be as artsy, irreverent, talkative, and creative as we wanted, so long as we maintained the illusion that we were all the same by having parents who expected us to go to college, who paid our rent, who taught us how to be confident, cultured, communicative, and above all marketable. Being a quick learner, I easily figured out how to pass as middle class. I, too, complained of being “poor” (college student poor, not perpetually poor), molded my speech to reflect and accommodate those around me, and easily made friends with students and professors. It was a matter of academic and social survival. What I didn’t know then was that my experience was common, textbook even, among students from non-dominant discourses.

Basil Bernstein coined the terms “restricted” and “elaborated” to differentiate the discourses of working-class and middle-class people. According to Bernstein, restricted code is that which is context bound—language that expresses something in a precise time and at a certain place. Elaborated language, the mode of the middle class, is that which can be parlayed by generalities (Kutz & Roskelly). Graceful handling of generalities is, of course, perfectly suited for tackling academic dilemmas. If you have to write a paper on health care policy, are you going to write about how your aunt lost her benefits at her job or about how Canada and the U.S. differ in their social policies? Most professors would prefer you choose the latter approach in order to show your synthesis of ideas, reading, and research. What seems obvious to the professor may not be obvious to the student. Despite the flaws of Bernstein’s model (for one thing, the terminology clearly devalues working class discourse), there is some merit to his ideas. Bernstein’s model is helpful in that it shows how educational institutions inherently favor middle-class discourse. Therefore middle- and upper-class students already come to school with a privileged stance. According to Kutz and Roskelly, Bernstein’s approach is valuable in that “schools provided, in Bernstein’s terms, an elaboration or extension of social identity for the middle-class child, while they forced a change in social identity for the working-class child,” (60). That is, it’s not simply that poor students have a more difficult time in mainstream schools, but that they are made to feel shame for their self-expression, values, and lifestyles. The perpetuation and internalization of this shame leads many students to drop out or become reticent.

In Shirley Brice Heath’s seminal ethnographic study of Appalachian communities, Ways with Words, she describes how lower-class citizens are not socialized into the dominant discourse the way middle-class people are. Heath describes how the black and white middle-class townspeople of her study were more familiar with the language of public institutions because for generations they had been part of the town’s administration. Heath states, “unlike Roadville and Trackton folks, they have not been tied by the historical circumstances so closely to home communities, limited work opportunities, and restricted education,” (11). If you work a labor job and socialize mostly with your family and neighbors, chances are your discourse is different from the mainstream. Middle class people understand the language of bureaucracy, legal transactions, and public institutions because conversations about such things are part of their everyday discourse. They are at an instant advantage because they are already socialized to participate in public and civic life. Once socialized into this discourse, which clearly has an advantage in terms of material wealth, the speakers become gatekeepers of it.

Of course, working-class students are not the only students who experience friction when trying to fit into academic discourse. Non-native speakers, people from non-traditional learning environments, women, and many other groups feel alienated by academic discourse. When these students come to school they are disoriented. Not only must they take in the complicated information of their courses, but they also must navigate the new discourse used by their peers. Faced with this outsider status, students have several options: try to acquire/learn the new discourse, silence themselves, or drop out. Choosing any of these options means the student will inevitably struggle. That is because most teachers, from kindergarten up to the university level, ignore multiple discourses and focus only on the “right” way of using SWE. As Kutz and Roskelly explain, “…most schools have regarded ‘home’ language and anything else that students carry with them ‘from the outside’—stories, ideas, beliefs—as excess baggage rather than chests of tools to aid their learning,” (57).

If we see the classroom the way Kutz and Roskelly do, as places where individuals converge and learn from one another, then we appreciate the ways students can be arbitrators of knowledge. Individual lifestyles, manners of speech, belief systems, etc., can become part of classroom content.

But teachers can use the content of students’ lives to form the content and narratives of the classroom, so that students feel “a part of” instead of “apart from.” This notion of having the “word reflect the world” gets to the very heart of Paulo Freire’s view of pedagogy. For example, when teaching an adult literacy class, Freire taught the word “brick” by showing a picture of bricklayers building a house (26). Because his students were laborers he used a representation that would speak to them. His students were do-ers, so he showed people doing something. The “outside” world of the classroom was brought inside in a meaningful way. Freire says, “[W]ords should be laden with the meaning of the people’s existential experience, and not of the teacher’s experience,” (25). This is a revolutionary idea, for the classroom to be conducive to learning from both the teacher and from one another. Thus development comes from the validation of the students’ lives and the teacher’s experience as a professional.

How is this desire for a multiplicity of discourses reconciled with the pressing expectations and demands of acquiring academic discourse? According to The Practical Tutor, SWE is a dialect that no one speaks, and therefore is like a second language for all students (Meyer and Smith). Because students from all backgrounds come to the university and write in SWE, SWE is actually an egalitarian dialect. While such a notion is tempting, it is akin to the naïve desire for the entire global community to speak English, just for the sake of convenience. Yes, people who are socialized into SWE can communicate with each other, but they do so at the risk of hiding or losing parts of themselves. By no means am I suggesting that we do away with SWE. Rather, while we uphold SWE as one way to express academic ideas and expectations in the U.S. classroom, we must also emphasize to our students that SWE is to be used in addition to their primary discourse. SWE is a discourse that can allow students to gain ideas, identity, and income within certain professional markets. Furthermore, it can be acquired without losing or degrading one’s primary discourse because SWE, like all discourses, is context bound—appropriate for achieving certain goals in certain circumstances. Understanding this is key to the delicate balance we all strive to maintain in negotiating our assortment of discourses.

In Negotiating Academic Literacies, teacher and writer Min-zhan Lu describes her personal struggle trying to reconcile the bourgeois English of her family with the proletariat Standard Chinese of her classroom. No matter where she was or how she expressed herself, she felt as if she were compartmentalizing her speech, writing, and identity to fit a given situation. As an adult she came to realize that giving students mere tools to pull out when a situation arises is counterproductive; instead students must see their multiple discourses as reflections of themselves and as a source of strength and struggle. Lu advises other teachers, “Don’t teach them to ‘survive’ the whirlpool of crosscurrents by avoiding it. Use the classroom to moderate the currents. Moderate the currents but teach them from the beginning to struggle,” (83). The classroom can be the site of dissecting discourse issues and acquiring academic discourse. If a teacher is candid and tenacious enough to confront discourse hegemony, students can begin to articulate their experiences with their discourse privilege.

To be able to swim between discourses, to navigate the currents, means being able to communicate and bond with a variety of people. Moderating the academic discourse gets to the very essence of why education matters. If students can operate intellectually and socially on multiple levels, then they stand a greater chance of being able to communicate in numerous settings. Possessing an assortment of discourse styles and strategies is liberating; it means choosing which discourse to use. Using and being able to critique discourses becomes a source of power.

At my current institution, the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the challenges of discourse navigation are apparent. Our student body reflects a huge range of nationalities, economic classes, languages, genders, and academic experiences. Appropriately enough, we are also well equipped with composition theorists and teachers who can respond to the needs of students. As tutors we are in an interesting position; we are perhaps new to the discourse’s conflicts while negotiating our place within the University. We are expected to be good representatives of higher education, but also be able to relate to freshman. Our notions of discourse are developing, and so are our tutoring strategies.

Early on in the semester I tutored R, a young African-American man, who wrote a paper that was quite informal, almost conversational, and included a lot of rhetorical questions. His paper was well organized, and he clearly explained his ideas. I didn’t make his lack of SWE an issue because I felt that his essay was well written without it. I mentioned his work to the professor, and she said as long as he wrote complete sentences he didn’t have to use SWE. I felt relieved. However, later in the semester, I learned that he had withdrawn from the class because he failed to meet the expectations of Composition 101. His teacher claimed that he could not, in fact, write in complete sentences adequately, despite his perfect attendance and positive attitude. I had mixed emotions when I heard this because although I had only seen one of his essays, I felt he was an adequate freshman writer. Had I been too easy on him? Had his professor been too hard on him? While my initial reaction was disappointment that he withdrew, another part of me that recognized that withdrawing may have been the right choice for the student. If a student is new to a discourse, as R certainly was, then it can take some time and maybe several tries before the discourse “sticks.”

While I only met with R once, I worked with other students throughout the semester. M was in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class, having recently moved to the U.S. from Egypt. He was a hard worker, but very slow at revising his papers. There were a number of issues that came up due to the academic discourse he was used to using. For one thing, no matter how often we talked about staying on topic, his papers always seemed to spin off on tangents. These tangents were usually helpful in creating a more full picture, but they never really proved the point of his thesis. For example, the first paper of the semester was a personal essay based on the idea of border crossing. It took several weeks for M to hone his paper down into something that fulfilled the requirements of the assignment. I tried to emphasize the language of the assignment in order to help him find direction. I would say things like, “Okay, how is this a border?” or “How did you cross that border?” Yet his paper still contained long-winded stories, such as a tangent about crashing his car while on the way to school. It took many questions from me to determine that this was an important element to his paper, because without the ability to drive, he would not be able to attend class and cross his language border. The structure of the American essay was an extremely difficult concept for M. After five weeks and him asking me again for clarification of what a conclusion should be, I asked him what an essay in Egypt would look like. He said, “I would put my conclusion in the middle of the paper and use it to raise more questions. Then I would answer those questions in the rest of my paper.” I was torn ideologically. While I didn’t want to be a SWE enforcement officer, I also didn’t want to see more of his extremely off-topic papers. Furthermore, for him to come to an American university, trust me as a mentor of sorts, and leave an intro composition class not knowing the basics of SWE organization would be doing him a disservice. I was visibly stressed by the gap between M’s Egyptian style and the American style of composition. While I fretted for a moment, he looked at me and said, “Don’t worry. I can do this. I can learn this. It will be easy.”

This session was an “A-ha!” moment for me. While I personally struggled with imposing a form on M, he had already made peace with his new discourse. He wanted me to show him what an American professor expected. Working with M, I truly realized that multiple discourses can be reconciled. In no way did I shut out M’s other languages, alphabet, or discourses. In fact, in one session he showed me how to write my name in Arabic. In another session, while his class was reading the novel The Kite Runner, he showed me how the author had translated from Arabic to English. Because I appreciated his knowledge of Egyptian and Arabic, and because he yearned to understand English, we maintained a positive learning environment. No discourse was valued more than another; rather, M added to his already diverse discourse menu.

All of this theorizing leads us to more questions: what would a classroom that respects multiple discourses look like? What would the assignments look like? Would academic writing change? Would SWE be discarded, causing the English field to spiral into anarchy? First, college professors and students must have an explicit discussion about discourses. This may be uncomfortable for the participants—after all many students have been silenced and shamed in classrooms. However, I think it is important for the conversation to take place. Students would have the chance to participate and would probably be relieved that the subject came up. Second, the structure of class lessons must attempt to accommodate several discourse styles. For example, some female students have trouble entering into heated conversations where it seems like emotions are flaring. Similarly, students from other countries who are not used to debate or giving oral presentations may feel overwhelmed. While we, of course, want stimulating, provocative class discussions, we also want students to feel like they are in a safe space. After all, dramatic as it may sound, many students come to college having never been asked their opinion. I suppose that’s why we encounter so many freshmen who are astonished to learn that they can use “I” in a paper. Because these students don’t have the confidence to express themselves, we need to create situations where their input is encouraged. Small group work is a good way to make more voices heard. If the class breaks into groups and then reports back to the entire group, there is not only a greater chance that more students will speak, but students are also afforded the opportunity to be experts. They can report back to the class and feel a sense of ownership stemming from their knowledge and the chance to share it.

Journaling is another good way to give students a writing opportunity. Journaling, however, should not just be about getting one’s thoughts out on paper. Rather, in order for journaling to be an opportunity for personal and academic growth, some stipulations must be placed on the assignment. For example, journal entries must contain complete sentences. An assignment like this is likely to remove most of the stress that comes with “academic” writing. Journaling is a way to reconcile the personal with the academic. In Exploring Literacy, Eleanor Kutz provides a comprehensive model of a libratory classroom. Her system emphasizes an inquiry-based approach to teaching, asking students to evaluate readings from multiple perspectives. Believing that the best learning comes from personal investment, she also asks students to write memoirs: “A memoir, as a formal genre, offers a way for writers to reflect on their past experiences and explore their relevance to the present, but also to make those private past experiences public in a way that will speak to a larger audience,” (97).

Because the memoir is more formal than journaling, it requires that students adhere to more strict structural rules. Since students are writing about themselves, their ability to satisfy structural formalities will be eased; their vested emotional and intellectual interest will motivate them to tackle the formal constraints. Students must write, bearing in mind that an audience who does not know them will need to be able to understand their language and story. Moreover, the memoir assignment bridges the personal/public rift even more than journaling. It is an assignment that asks the student to bring his or her life to the academic community. In fact, having students share their memoirs with each other takes this notion one step further.

Composition theorist Nancy Sommers felt the same tension between the academic and the personal in her own life. In her essay “Between the Drafts,” she describes her family’s struggle with discourses, their desire to express themselves and see the world the “right” way. As an adult, Sommers entered academia and lost her sense of self, always looking for more credible sources to back up her ideas. Speaking with a colleague, she recommends he read Foucault. When he is taken aback by her recommendation, Sommers realizes “he had his own sources aplenty that nourished him. Yet he hadn’t felt the need to speak through his sources … his teaching stories and experiences are his own; they gave him the authority to speak,” (28). Long used to citing famous philosophers, this interaction makes Sommers realize the importance of her own experiences, deductions, and values. She then tries to find a way to bridge the gap between the personal and the professional. After some soul searching, Sommers comes to see the confines of adhering to an either/or world of expectations. That is, she finally comes to realize that she cannot live as simply a mother one moment and simply a scholar the next. Rather, the parts of her life can be an organic whole—she can be a scholar who sees the value in her own experiences and voice. “These either/or ways of seeing exclude life and real revision by pushing us to safe positions, to what is known. They are safe positions that exclude each other and don’t allow for any ambiguity, uncertainty. Only when I suspend myself between either and or can I move away from conventional boundaries,” (29).

For Sommers, and for an institution that seeks inclusion, moving away from binary systems of identification and expression is of the utmost importance. We cannot expect scores of individuals to walk into our classrooms with whole lifetimes of experience and ask them to kindly wipe their feet and leave their bags in the hallway.

Sommers’ ideas have many implications for tutoring. She recognizes the shortcomings of academic discourse by saying, “the journey between home and work … is a journey of learning how to be both scholarly and reflective,” (29). Sommers stresses the importance of bringing together one’s disparate selves to form an organically whole, thinking individual. Most writing-intensive courses tend to be in the humanities. That is why I find it ironic that so many professors try to evoke the Every Student voice from their students, instead of encouraging reflection along with analysis. If we are taking courses that get to the very nature of what it means to be human, shouldn’t our own authentic humanity be part of the dialogue?

It takes creative, invested professors and tutors to combat the constraints of academic discourse. Teachers must go out of their way to formulate assignments that encourage students to draw from their first discourses while also utilizing the benefits and finer points of SWE and academic discourse. Having my background and being an English scholar proves that academic discourse can be immensely rewarding, both personally and professionally. Only when students have a vested interest in choosing and using discourse styles will the libratory and economic results of academic discourse pay off. Only then will students feel that they can contribute effectively to the world.

Works Cited

Gee, James Paul. "What is Literacy?" Negotiating Academic Literacies. eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Mahwah: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates,1998.

Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways With Words. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Kutz, Eleanor. Exploring Literacy. Boston: Pearson Longman, 2004.

Kutz, Eleanor and Hephzibah Roskelly. An Unquiet Pedagogy. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1991.

Lu, Min-zhan. "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle." Negotiating Academic Literacies. eds. Ruth Spack and Vivian Zamel. Mahwah: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 1998.

Meyer, Emily and Loise Z. Smith. The Practical Tutor. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.

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