what's language got to do with it?

Language is never innocent. Individual words and how we put them together is deeply tied to the identity we try to portray, the culture we came from, and the culture we try to demonstrate when we use those words. Today in class discussion one student mentioned that in certain parts of the south typical dinner meals are catfish caught by the men, and hush puppies. Another student complained that waffle house doesn’t know how to make grits. Then a third student asked what a hush puppy was. As an arizonan if I say I caught a catfish and we’re eating it for dinner the table would go elsewhere for dinner, they understand that the place I would’ve caught the catfish (the canals or lakes) are not spaces where fish are really considered edible. My student not knowing what a hush puppy is demonstrated her lack of cultural knowledge of a word. Again, language is never innocent. Our knowledge of words is meaningful, and our word choice is meaningful. If we’d never talked about community use of food words my students would never have had a reason to discuss hush puppies and grits, and other students would never have had a reason to acknowledge their lack of knowledge of those words.


In word choice outside of food, but still in the face-to-face classroom I will hand out an assignment, walk through what I’ve typed up, ad libbing as I go. I’ll also ask at various points (that organically feel like stopping points when walking through an assignment sheet) if everyone understands. If there are questions, clarification is offered, and other questions may arise based on one students question. Then the assignment will continue. As the students work through the steps of the paper writing process, my physical presence in answering questions the class before an assignment is due allows me and the student to negotiate the meaning until we reach a point where both teacher and student feel we are discussing the same thing with the same understanding so the ‘correct’ assignment will be turned in. this language negotiation happens f2f but what happens when we put composition classes in online spaces. Instead of receiving ad lib’d assignments, students simply download the assignment sheet, and are given the opportunity to contact the teacher if further clarification is needed. Instead of the teacher opening up the space for meaning negotiation, the student must do the work by showing up for a teacher’s office hours (whether virtual or f2f) or by composing an email. Either way the work load is shifted to the student. The student must put in work, and effort to negotiate the meaning of the classroom language, the teacher is no longer present to help start that negotiation, that discussion. Can we move this negotiation to online space? Can we virtually ad lib so students have the opportunity to negotiate the meaning? If we can, how do we move this?

We can also debate the usefulness of this meaning negotiation. Maybe students would be better off not being able to negotiate, but by simply writing the assignment. In a f2f classroom with 20 students, if 2 of them do not show up on the day the assignment is handed out, but they attend every class after then until the paper is due, will they have the same grasp on the assignment as the 18 students who were present?