{"id":19977,"date":"2014-09-12t10:12:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-12t15:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/?p=19977"},"modified":"2014-09-12t10:12:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12t15:12:39","slug":"teaching-difference-and-power%e2%80%94with-our-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/2014\/09\/teaching-difference-and-power%e2%80%94with-our-language\/","title":{"rendered":"teaching, difference, and power\u2014with our language"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>by nancy chick<\/a>, cft assistant director<\/em><\/p>\n

i\u2019ve been thinking about the role of language in the cft\u2019s theme of \u201cteaching, difference, and power<\/a><\/strong>.\u201d\u00a0 during the first semester of my first faculty position, fresh out of graduate school, i spoke the language of my dissertation. beautiful (to me) multisyllabic terms, an elegant (to me) theoretical framework for my entire world view, references to the authors and thinkers i admired most, and allusions to historical and cultural details i determined to be significant.\u00a0 i\u2019d been immersed in those words, ideas, and moves for months\u2014years, even, if you include the gradual emergence of a specialization.<\/p>\n

one day, i was chatting with the dean, and he encouraged me to reconsider how i (try to) communicate with my students and my colleagues in areas outside of my own–and not just across disciplines but also in different specializations within my field. i was stunned. while elements of this conversation were troubling to me then and now, i started noticing how others in this context were (and weren\u2019t) communicating with each other. in retrospect, i’m grateful for his challenge.<\/p>\n

i looked around at the colleagues i interacted with most: they were from english (my field), geography, biology, history, and communication studies. my english colleagues were, however, specialists in composition or 18th<\/sup> century poetry or medieval literature or postmodernism.\u00a0 i looked around at the students i interacted with in class and in campus organizations:\u00a0 they were from local farms, small towns, or the reservation.\u00a0 they were younger and older than i, working anywhere from 15 to 40+ hour-a-week jobs off campus. some drove an hour or more to get to campus each day. many were far from naming a major.\u00a0 my dean\u2019s question was spot on.\u00a0 what was i communicating to the people around me through my language?<\/strong> from that day on, i became mindful of how i talked with those around me.<\/p>\n

while preparing for today\u2019s teaching. writing. learning.<\/em> institute<\/a>, i revisited linda flower\u2019s classic essay, \u201cwriter-based prose: a cognitive basis for problems in writing<\/a>\u201d (1979).\u00a0 she describes the structures and functions of what she calls \u201cwriter-based prose,\u201d or language that<\/p>\n