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Characterizations of Readers in College Composition Courses : = Language Ideologies and Inequitable Shifts in the Communicative Burden.

Record Type:	Language materials, manuscript : Monograph/item
Title/Author:	Characterizations of Readers in College Composition Courses :/
Reminder of title:	Language Ideologies and Inequitable Shifts in the Communicative Burden.
Author:	Smith, Kendon M.
Description:	1 online resource (156 pages)
Notes:	Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-12, Section: A.
Contained By:	Dissertations Abstracts International84-12A.
Subject:	Education. -
Online resource:	click for full text (PQDT)
ISBN:	9798379564063

Characterizations of Readers in College Composition Courses : = Language Ideologies and Inequitable Shifts in the Communicative Burden.
Smith, Kendon M.

Characterizations of Readers in College Composition Courses :Language Ideologies and Inequitable Shifts in the Communicative Burden. - 1 online resource (156 pages)

Source: Dissertations Abstracts International, Volume: 84-12, Section: A.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Michigan, 2023.

Includes bibliographical references

The writing advice offered by college writing instructors and textbooks is often grounded in appeals to readers. Writing advice that discourages the use of language varieties other than Standardized English, for example, might appeal to certain readers' lack of familiarity with such varieties. Though this advice reinforces the basic rhetorical concept of audience awareness, it can also perpetuate discriminatory ideas about language. Recent scholarship in composition studies has explored the effects of language-based discrimination in the writing classroom, including how assessment standards that appeal to Standardized English can disadvantage students of color and students from lower socioeconomic class backgrounds. While composition scholars have given much attention to the ways in which preferences for Standardized English are perpetuated in the writing classroom, this attention has not yet extended to the role played by writing instructors' and writing textbooks' characterizations of readers. This dissertation reports on two studies that examine how college writing instructors and textbooks characterize readers and the role that these characterizations play in perpetuating standard language ideologies. The first study draws on methods from systemic functional linguistics to analyze a corpus of college writing textbooks. The second study uses constructivist grounded theory methods to analyze interviews with college writing instructors. The first study reveals that textbooks characterize readers and writers differently and that these differences are used to place a larger portion of responsibility for the communicative act onto the writer. As a result, writers are tasked with conforming to the language prejudices of readers who prefer Standardized English while readers' language prejudices are left unchallenged. The second study finds that many instructors appeal to various readers' understanding of a text when judging whether a particular language feature in a student's writing is appropriate. This move risks perpetuating standard language ideologies by introducing a vaguely defined reader who prefers Standardized English and dictates the appropriate conventions of the discourse community, despite these judgments relying not on an actual reader but rather on instructors' untested conjectures about those readers. This study also finds that when instructors are asked to consider the accuracy of conjectures about readers that inform writing advice, those instructors tend to be more critical of writing advice that perpetuates standard language ideologies. Three major implications emerge from these studies. First, because uncritical reliance on conjectures about readers can perpetuate language prejudices, composition studies researchers should conduct more audience research in order to minimize the need for conjectures and develop a greater understanding of how readers actually interact with written texts. Second, writing teachers should focus on fostering students' critical language awareness, encouraging both writing instructors and writing students to critically engage with conjectures about readers, which can combat the harmful results of standard language ideologies. Finally, textbooks should offer more accurate depictions of readers, which would add needed depth to the current depiction of readers and act as a counterbalance to characterizations of readers that perpetuate preferences for Standardized English.

Electronic reproduction.
Ann Arbor, Mich. :
ProQuest,
2024

Mode of access: World Wide Web

ISBN: 9798379564063Subjects--Topical Terms:

555912
Education.
Subjects--Index Terms:

Language ideologyIndex Terms--Genre/Form:

554714
Electronic books.

Characterizations of Readers in College Composition Courses : = Language Ideologies and Inequitable Shifts in the Communicative Burden.
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