9.29 - Plagiarism

China again?

Pennycook cites Kearney's three paradigms of imagination, linking the mimetic with China's view of authorship. We know the mimetic, or divine inspiration, is a busted romantic ideal. The western alternative, somewhere between the productive and parodic may be problematic, but at least we know writers aren't struck with thunderbolts when they create. We know the old view isn't the way writers write. Why, then, do we not bust China's view? We can all agree that denying women the right to vote is wrong, right?* We can universally get behind that as a basic human right, right? Where is the line drawn between culture ("We shouldn't judge them using our values, that's just the way they are") versus the continuing push toward modernization/globalization ("We are going to force these countries to abandon slavery and get with the program whether they want to or not")?

Plagiarism isn't slavery and it isn't oppression, but if the academy is going to function the way it needs to, everyone has to get with the program. Minor citation issues are one thing and are easily correctable, but the wholesale reproduction of a text (or patchwork reproduction) is something none of us should tolerate.

We're inextricably linked with the writing of our past. China's view of plagiarism derives from Confucian values (Bloch). The West's view of leniency toward plagiarism derives from Christian notions of forgiveness and absolution.

Depending on how the conversation goes tomorrow, I might just scribble out Pennycook's name and write my own - then hand that in as my course paper.

*That sentence is my ten (ki-shoo-ten-ketsu). Take that, Kaplan.

9.23 - Voice

The American liberal educational system promotes the self. English as a language, as a rhetoric, as a culture - also promotes the self. The self is a necessary construct for power/dominance/authority resistance. When you learn English, you're learning a particular brand of individualism, and no one said it should be easy. If your socio-cultural norms make assertive writing difficult, you'll be at a disadvantage from other students. And if you were raised by a family of poets, you might have a hard time in math classes. You're a bright kid, you'll figure it out. If I write in a loud voice in China, I'd get corrected for it. And they'd be right for doing it.

If we can call the opposing view of voice in writing as collective, group-oriented, and interdependent, why do we accept that as a culture and resist attempts to change it? Why do we not call Freire's oppressive homeland his culture and leave it alone?

Voice in writing is a beautifully ambiguous metaphor - and that's why it works. Voice means whatever the student wants it to mean. It could mean style, it could mean distance, it could mean audience effect. Promoting voice does not mean you're ignoring the multiple voices that go into a text. It does not mean you are ignoring the social element. But it does mean a student will have to try on a different hat.

9.16.09 Reflection

Having heard but never known what CR was, this week's readings were interesting for their implications and frustrating for the ways scholars nit-pick. The main theme I saw from critics of CR was that nothing can be defined adequately to have a discussion. This is the dance of the post-modernists. We don't know what culture is, we don't know what language is, we can't define what "English" is (Casanave 38). My god, we have to start somewhere. Words have meaning, they have definitions, these definitions limit what we can discuss - and that's their point. If culture means everything, then it might as well mean nothing. The Atkinson/Matsuda conversation carried this further with the criticism that if CR is to become a genuine field, it must have a theoretical basis, or that it must start with observable data. We have to start somewhere. Don't worry if the term is limiting, don't worry if "intercultural" suggests "A" when you'd rather focus on "B". It's a word, we're smart enough to go beyond it. If the field isn't progressing, then we'll change it. Manufactured problems, imagined roadblocks, and self-indulgent musings on definitions get us nowhere - because even when successful, we end up tearing down the term because it's too limiting. It may be intellectually stimulating, but this kind of wheel-spinning gets nothing done.

As for the concept of CR or IR, it makes intuitive sense - we are composed from our language, our language shapes the way we think, what we can think, and how we communicate. A culture does not create a word until it needs one. A friend once told me of a small tribe in Africa that has no terms for directions, positions, or locations as we know of them. Instead, everything is referenced based on its location to either the River or the Forest. This culture does not have words for circumnavigate or kilometer because they don't need them. They have no use for the concept and have thus not established a definition.

I was speaking to Bee today and he raised an interesting point - if it is true, so what? What do we do with this knowledge? If we can identify general patterns of thought based on the writing of specific cultures (of course this won't apply to everyone, but if we can see patterns in the aggregate of texts), then what do we do? Sequester students? Call them out? How does this aid us in teaching? I don't know, but I'm sure it can help us somehow. The readings suggest that we're still trying to figure out the specifics.

Reflection 9.9.09

Atkinson's article made me think of how TESOL practitioners would benefit from composition theory while composition practitioners would benefit from second language theory. Second language writers make mistakes, as do native speakers. How 2L teachers view those mistakes may be misguided, because if they expect fluency and accuracy as they learn the language, they might be surprised to find that native speakers have similar troubles. My point is this: writing is difficult for everyone no matter the level of skill. Hemingway rewrites the final page of a novel eighty times before he gets it right - why should we expect students (of any level or context) to go through an easier process?

Matsuda's history of the post-process movement seems to fit with this idea that Composition and TESOL are not simply branches of the same tree, but that they are the same branch. TESOL-ers have a stronger background in the cognitive and cultural development of language learners compared to composition instructors who are generally insulated within an American context. But how much could we learn from each other, considering American native-speaking students are still learning English at the college level; as am I still.

Quick point about Casanave's call for sociopolitical research: I'd love for my dissertation to be a case study to avoid years of data collection, but I don't agree that it should be sociopolitically-oriented. Call me a self-deluded hypocrite if you want, but I'd rather aim for a neutral classroom than one that is politically-driven. I wouldn't know where to start or what to agenda to set, anyway.

Second Language Autobiography

I don’t have a second language. I’ve often joked that once I master English, I’ll start working on another language. I took five semesters of Italian in high school and three semesters of Spanish in college, but, ten years later with no practice, it would be difficult for me to understand or be understood in those languages. The classes involved little writing, focusing instead on conversational fluency. What little writing I do remember made me understand the difficulty others may face when learning a new language. Idioms and contextualized expressions can’t be found in a dictionary, a fact I discovered while writing a brief scene for my Spanish class in which a customer orders string beans at a restaurant. When two other classmates performed the scene with me, the teacher laughed when I mentioned string beans. Apparently, what I had said translated literally as “rope balls.”

I was recently in Paris for four days and found the experience alienating and exciting. Everyone spoke a code language that I knew nothing about. A college professor once told us that English is nothing more than German vocabulary spoken with a French accent, but that didn’t help me navigate my way through café menus and museum ticket booths. My accent, an obnoxious Philly mumble, didn’t carry when I tried my damndest to sound like a Parisian. I picked up a few words, spoke slowly, and apologized with body language to everyone who spoke at a normal pace. Conversations became a game to me. The goal was to understand and be understood; the challenge was using a limited vocabulary to accomplish often complex communicative acts. We then went to London, where I felt like I had been given back my tongue.