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Article
Translingual literacy, language difference, and matters of agency.
Faculty Scholarship
  • Min-Zhan Lu, University of Louisville
  • Bruce Horner, University of Louisville
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-1-2013
Department
English
Abstract

We argue that composition scholarship’s defenses of language differences in student writing reinforce dominant ideology’s spatial framework conceiving language difference as deviation from a norm of sameness. We argue instead for adopting a temporal-spatial framework defining difference as the norm of utterances, and defining languages, literacy practices, conventions, and contexts as always emergent, ongoing products of iterations, and thus manifestations of writer agency. Using the “White Shoes” essay from David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University,” we show how such a framework addresses the writer’s agency iterating the “same,” and how it resolves concerns to meet students’ need and right to learn both dominant and subordinate languages.

ORCID
0000-0002-8412-5454
Citation Information

This article was originally published in College English, Volume 75, Number 6, July 2013.