| This study explores the models of language inherent in the history of thought and scholarship on composition, literacy and language influencing those operating both tacitly and explicitly in the beginning college writing classroom. Using scholarly, ethnographic and case study methods, this study argues that as participants of academic culture, beginning students and seasoned teachers alike, share notions of the nature and purpose of speech and writing reflecting a traditional bifurcation of perspectives on language: as seen either from the viewpoint of the speaker experiencing language as energeia, or from the observer viewing language as a rule-governed artifact. However, the classroom models reflect attenuated and polarized versions of their traditional scholarly forms. This study contributes to the restoration of the classroom models by exploring them in various social-historical contexts of composition, literacy and linguistic studies, from the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Ferdinand de Saussure, to the debate over pedagogy at Dartmouth. An ethnographic study of two Basic Writing classrooms and case studies of the experiences of five student writers illustrate the function of traditional models as they interact with each other in the classroom, becoming dynamic forms in the relationships among the institution, the teacher, the students, and their experiences with language. Teacher and student writers who recognize their own tacit models, as well as parallels between their own experiences and traditional theoretical struggles, can gain insight thereby into many of the problems encountered in both their writing classroom and their texts. This study concludes that when balanced within a functional repertoire of models, the traditional models for language can be legitimate and helpful constructs for the teaching and learning of writing. However, both teachers and students must combine an understanding of this heritage with the self-reflection necessary to discover their own models of language and the forms they take in their particular classroom context. |
