Volume 21, Issue 2/3

Special Issue: Confluences of Writing Studies and the History of the English Language

Published December 31, 2024

Guest editors: Chris C. Palmer, Kennesaw State University; Amanda Sladek, University of Nebraska at Kearney; and Jennifer C. Stone, Independent Scholar

The flowing of rivers is a common metaphor for language diversity within historical studies of English (Morse-Gagné, 2019; Smith & Kim, 2018). A confluence occurs when two rivers, like languages, come together, often in powerful and surprising ways. This metaphor can also extend beyond the specific topic of language diversity to describe the innovation that occurs when we challenge our disciplinary assumptions—when we scout other fields and dive into other bodies of scholarship. We see the confluence of writing studies and the history of the English language (HEL) as an underexamined area needing additional exploration and mapping. This double special issue extends the historical scope of writing studies broadly—including composition studies, creative writing, WAC/WID, and related subdisciplines—to account for these fields’ cross-currents with HEL. Examining these confluences can yield dynamic and innovative insights, including situating “proper English” as a social and historical construct, illuminating the ideological roots of emphasizing English in writing classrooms, and broadening understandings of the roots of writing practices in various institutional and professional contexts within and outside university halls.

Contents:

Confluences of Writing Studies and the History of the English Language: An Introduction
Chris C. Palmer, Amanda Sladek, & Jennifer C. Stone
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.01

Part 1: Against the Flow

Linguistic Currents in Writing Studies Scholarship: Describing Variation in How Linguistic Terms Have Been Borrowed and (Re-)Interpreted in Writing Studies
Kristen di Gennaro & Meaghan Brewer
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.02

In this article, we analyze how linguistic terms have been borrowed and reinterpreted across disciplines. Specifically, we describe how terminology associated with Applied Linguistics (AL) changed meaning as it entered the new disciplinary context of Writing Studies (WS), often resulting in confusion and turbulence between the two fields. As in other work on the History of English (HEL), our analysis thus considers how language change works both over time (diachronically) and across different communities of speakers (synchronically). Our analysis of how the terms code-switching, translingualism, translanguaging, and declarative and procedural knowledge have been used and defined in AL versus WS points to the disciplines’ different value systems. We argue that such differences in usage may also stem from WS’s need to establish itself as a discipline. We end by considering how WS and AL, informed by HEL, can work together to further our knowledge of language and language-centered pedagogy.

A History and Continuum of Written English Registers, Fields, and Genres
L. L. Aull
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.03

This article traces the history of college writing and suggests a different way ahead. To show why we need this approach, the article historicizes the start of postsecondary English as a paradoxical one, committed to egalitarian ideals while privileging narrow and exclusive English usage. To offer an alternative approach, the article synthesizes empirical linguistics and writing research in a continuum of written English. The continuum includes five things all writing does—connection, cohesion, detail, stance, and usage—on a sliding scale of interpersonal to informational linguistic patterns. To illustrate a continuum approach, the article maps authentic writing samples from informal internet writing to published formal writing on the continuum. This mapping poses questions at the nexus of writing and history of English studies, questions that help us interrogate the history and implications for registers, genres, and lexico-grammatical patterns rewarded and left out of higher education

Good Writing and Good English: The Shared English of Writing Studies, Prescriptivism, and the History of the English Language
Don Chapman
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.04

Prescriptive discourse, which favors certain variants over others, like different from vs. different than, has usually been characterized in terms of correctness in spelling, punctuation, word meaning, or grammar. Yet usage guides in the 20^th century have added numerous entries that focus more on style considerations than correctness, such as claims that neither new-fangled nor old-fashioned words should be used, that euphemisms and clichés should be avoided, or that pretentious or pompous variants should not be used. The style claims go so far as to condemn entire registers, like journalism, business writing, and government writing. The style that serves as a model for such prescriptive advice is typical of the style prized in 20^th-century writing instruction. The Good English (i.e. “correct English”) popularly thought to be the basis of prescriptive rules in the 20^th century was apparently supplemented by Good Writing typically taught in English departments. This same kind of Good Writing was also an important factor in defining the kind of English to be taught in typical history of the English language classes. By the end of the 20^th century, the idealized English language serving as the basis of writing instruction and the history of the English language had expanded considerably from the Good Writing typical of English departments. The Good English serving as the basis of prescriptive advice seems to be following suit.

Nationalism, Composition Textbooks, and Standard English at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
Dan Martin
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.05

The invention of composition as a required course in the United States, a booming textbook industry, and an increased focus on nationalism perpetuated the standardizing of English language practices and curriculums in secondary and post-secondary schools in the late 19^th century and early 20^th century. Composition textbooks circulated both standard English (SE) and standard American English (SAE) throughout educational institutions across the country and closely correlated standard language practices with nationalism and national pride, which further codified and sedimented standard language practices in English curriculums and classrooms. In this paper, I analyze how several popular textbooks for teaching English in the United States established and enforced standards for English. Then I examine how several American textbooks for teaching composition and English directly associated nationalism with SE and promoted a national language practice. I argue that this correlation between nation and language formed an ideological network that empowered SE and SAE. To conclude this paper, I contend that using translingual and multimodal pedagogies to teach writing is an important first step educators can take to justify teaching and learning with and about diverse language practices. Students using multimodal and translingual writing practices to learn about themselves and to compose academic arguments that are as well-reasoned and researched as English-only print-texts can challenge the dominance and authority of SE and SAE.

Respectable Rubrics: Searching for Black Language in Faculty Training for Equitable Writing Assessment
Taylor Lewis & Jenni Eaton
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.06

Research has long claimed that rubrics provide the objective, fair, and equitable means by which to assess student writing. Recent moves in writing programs and composition classrooms have acknowledged the ways that writing assessment perpetuates linguistic violence, and shifts towards anti-racist assessment practices have ushered in grading mechanisms that are based on student-teacher contracts and labor, mechanisms that claim to uphold student-writer agency and voice. In this paper, we argue that though such assessment mechanisms are moving in the right direction, the historical roots of writing assessment, Black performance for a white audience, and the socialization of those who use rubrics to assess student writing run the risk of serving as tools of what April Baker-Bell has named respectability and/or eradicationist language pedagogies. We examine how a lack of faculty preparation to use contract- and labor-based writing assessment tools may perpetuate rather than eradicate linguistic violence in writing classrooms.

Biliteracy Agendas for WAC/WID Research and Teaching: On Mundane Genres, Translation, and Systemic Change
Joseph Wilson
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.07

This article addresses key issues in WAC/WID regarding translation and biliteracy. Informed by translingual scholarship, genre studies, and history of the English language research, it first defines translation politically and historically, and as always involving negotiations of meaning-making across linguistic repertoires and genres. It then reviews WAC/WID biliteracy scholarship to consider how colonially inflected translation ideologies might be addressed to support more socially just biliteracy research and teaching initiatives in WAC/WID. To anchor this otherwise theoretical/methodological conversation, this article narrates and revisits a scene where an interdisciplinary faculty council from a United States university discusses mundane scholastic genres, with implications for linguistic diversity across that university’s multi-campus system. The article concludes with place-based, localized strategies for revising mundane genres toward specifically anticolonial translation initiatives as part of a broader translingual activist project.

Part 2: Redefining the River(s)

A Historical Perspective on Gendered Language in Writing Studies Journals
Coleman Riggins & Amanda Sladek
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.08

This article examines how writing studies scholarship has responded to changes in society’s understanding of gender. Combining grounded theory and corpus linguistic analysis using a self-compiled corpus of journal issues published between 1970-2020, the authors track changes in the usage of gendered versus gender-neutral nouns and pronouns with generic referents. While the analysis of pronouns was inconclusive, patterns of noun usage in writing studies journals over time reveal an overall preference for gender-neutral language and a reduction in masculine-coded nouns across several journals in the 1970s and 1990s. Analyzing the changing language of this scholarship using a combination of methodologies from writing studies and linguistics reveals how the discipline thinks about gender in a concrete, practice-informed way.

What Can the History of the English Language Research Offer? A Diachronic Corpus-Based Approach to Research in Writing Studies
Wen Xin
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.09

Recent scholarship has called for deeper communications and collaborations between writing studies and language studies because such interdisciplinary connections can facilitate the growth of both fields. While research has explored the potential exchanges between writing studies and language-related fields (such as applied linguistics, second language writing, and sociolinguistics), few studies have focused on the intersections between English historical linguistics and writing studies. This article partially fills the gap by demonstrating how a diachronic corpus-based approach from history of the English language research can be an effective methodological tool for historical research in writing studies, which has been of great interest to writing studies scholars. This article first offers three reasons why a diachronic corpus-based approach can methodologically contribute to historical research in writing studies, and then it illustrates the practice of such an approach by studying the changing disciplinary trends in writing studies from 1997 to 2022 in a self-built, diachronic corpus. To identify the disciplinary trends, word frequency lists and keyness analysis (TF-IDF as procedure) were used. The results indicate both perennial interests and five-year, periodical activities in writing studies over the past 26 years.

Translingual Gateways: A Collaborative Autoethnography of Two Transnational Scholars’ Academic Socialization and Transdisciplinarities in Writing Studies
Shakil Rabbi & Md Mijanur Rahman
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.10

In this article, two transnational scholars of English studies engage in a collaborative autoethnography to illustrate the generative potential of translingualism as a scholarly common ground for writing studies and the history of English language studies. The argument hinges on the notion that translingualism’s open-endedness to, and welcoming of, students' and instructors' linguistic diversity can make it a disciplinary pathway for transnational scholars to use their diverse World Englishes in writing classrooms. Based on case studies of their autobiographical narratives of professional development, experiences teaching in college writing classrooms, and engagement with translingual scholarship, the article shows how (a) translingualism works as a gateway (i.e., point of entry) into writing studies for scholars who are World Englishes users and (b) histories of the English language mediate this disciplinary socialization. Three major themes that emerge from a comparative analysis of the materials and that relate to the authors’ distinct approaches to writing, underlying motivations for linguistic and academic pursuits, and disciplinary orientations are discussed.

Pixs and Stones: Comparing Legalese through a HEL Lens to Innervate Our Composition Courses
J.A. Rice & Trini Stickle
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.11

Comparing legal, policy, and statute writing—from stone records of ancient Britain civil servants to opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court—this article demonstrates how weaving threads of textual language variation and change can innervate writing in the disciplines and history of the English language courses, particularly courses designated for general education. We describe and illustrate our use of rhetorical theory and linguistic analyses to develop our students’ soft skills, i.e., ideals of liberal education, and their applied skills, i.e., professional competencies, which lead to better employability. Specifically, we use the paralogic rhetorical theories of Thomas Kent (1993; 1999) to demonstrate the opaque relationship between language and meaning aided by the use of linguistic analyses—register-specific lexical choices, discipline-dictated syntactic structures, occasionally morphological and phonetic variation, and the principles of language change. We present three lessons focused on the use of legal texts that build strong citizenry through increased understanding of writings that serve as social contracts and by which students learn and practice professional codes, employ new tools such as AI, and practice presenting and responding to different perspectives centered on difficult social problems through the ages (e.g., slavery, racial inequity). Aptly, we conclude with a call for joining these two approaches as a productive pedagogical and research collaboration as the world of texts and oral data could be better examined through such dual perspectives.

From Old English Poetry to the Modern Novel: Beowulf, Writing Craft, and the Adaptation of Language
Sharon Emmerichs
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.12

Using adaptation theory and my own novel, Shield Maiden, published in 2023 by Hachette, I examine how history of the English language (HEL) scholarship intersects with creative writing and writing craft. I’ve identified a large gap in our knowledge and understanding of how HEL can give us perspective and access to ancient texts and primary source materials while helping writers navigate from languages of the past to modern English. I use Shield Maiden as a case study for this relationship and demonstrate how to pay homage to the original text without imposing colonialist silencing over marginalized voices.

History and the Teaching of Dialect and Slang in Screenwriting
Mitch Olson & Chris C. Palmer
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.13

This article explores academic and industry perspectives on the use of dialect, slang, and historical language in screenwriting. It offers a chronological overview of major screenwriting manuals’ treatment of dialect and slang (or lack thereof) 1946-2020. It then presents survey data of 53 currently-practicing screenwriters’ views on working with dialect and historical language in scripts, as well as their sense of possible changes in the industry regarding attitudes towards diverse voice representation on the page. It concludes with examples from a teaching sequence that illustrates strategies for writing with dialect, researching it, and ethically considering its usage in scripts. Situating this work as an important intervention in historical English language studies as well as writing across the curriculum/writing in the disciplines, the article advocates for a focus on teaching concrete, actionable steps that align academic practices with industry norms. It also encourages students to critically engage with those practices and norms.

Writing and Reading: The Missing Elements in Historical and Contemporary Studies of English Language Writing
Harvey J. Graff
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.14

Scholarly disciplines are historical reservoirs riven with contradictions. Often unaware of their own history, the humanities lead in complications, with English departments outpacing other fields of study. Both writing and English language and literature studies exhibit long-standing omissions and conflicts. This essay explores their similarities and differences, emphasizing the centrality of literacy—both reading and writing—to these concerns. These are elements of what I identified in 1979 as “the literacy myth.” They are often central across fields, disciplines, departments, and today cross-campus initiatives. However counter-intuitive it may seem, serious interest in the fundamental human activities of writing and reading, in necessary relationship with each other, is among the common major missing links in the subfields of English. To a historian of literacy, I emphasize that lack of attention to the inseparable actions of writing as a form of expression and reading as mode of understanding marks writing studies and history of English language. It is empirically, theoretically, and logically impossible to study or comprehend one without the other. Writing and reading are inseparably interrelated. This essay begins an interrelated critique and proposal for change. These fundamental connections are clear from studies of traditional classics through the present in English and English translation. We cannot understand either the production or the consumption of writing and printing, the making of meaning(s) itself, without central attention to literacy, that is, reading and writing especially taken together. What I first defined as the literacy myth continues to stand as both cause and consequence of this persisting gap in approaches and understanding.

A Conversation with Ellen Cushman and Naomi Trevino: Literacy, Recent Histories, and Indigenous Language Persistence
Ellen Cushman, Naomi Trevino, Jennifer C. Stone, & Amanda Sladek
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.2-3.15

Guest editors Jennifer C. Stone and Amanda Sladek sat down with Ellen Cushman and Naomi Trevino to discuss how they see themes from the special issue intersecting with their current work. Ellen Cushman is currently Dean's Professor of Civic Sustainability at Northeastern University and Co-director of Northeastern Lab for Digital Humanities and Computational Social Sciences. She is also a Cherokee Nation citizen and has been working with Cherokee community members on the Digital Archive for Indigenous Language Persistence (DAILP). Naomi Trevino is the Associate Project Manager for DAILP and has been working on the project since they were an undergraduate major. Naomi does a lot of the behind-the-scenes work with the technical side of things, making the road maps in the grant plans into a reality with the help of some of the other developers.

Volume 21, Issue 1

Published June 10, 2024

A lot is happening behind the scenes at ATD, and I am pleased to share some of it. Initial submissions are up. My suspicion is that research efforts that slowed amid COVID are back on track, with more scholars submitting findings. We continue to see a significant percentage of revise and resubmit manuscripts come back for another round of review, which I read as an indicator of the quality of the feedback provided by our team of consulting readers. It is still too soon to make firm predictions beyond this year, but I think we may be positioned to return to regular issues published quarterly. To put that possible trajectory in context, the current issue is our first single issue since Fall 2019.

Our first issue of 2024 features articles on the important role of listening in writing fellow work, on the challenges of navigating writing expectations in the first year of a doctoral program, and on undergraduates’ views of science and interventions for STEM education to expand attention to the social. The issue concludes with q a series of reflections on Harvey J. Graff and his contributions to writing studies.

Introduction to Volume 21, Issue 1/2
Michael J. Cripps
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.01

Featured Articles:

“There are other ways to answer this:” Development of Pedagogical Content Knowledge via Listening as a Benefit to Writing Fellows across Disciplines
Naitnaphit Limlamai, Emily Wilson, & Anne Ruggles Gere
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.02

While much research has been devoted to understanding how peer tutoring benefits tutors, less attention has been given to how peer tutors develop pedagogical content knowledge as an additional benefit of working with students as they write. In this qualitative study of 15 undergraduate Writing Fellows (writing-focused peer tutors who work in large undergraduate gateway courses at the University of Michigan), we explore how Fellows describe their interactions with students in order to understand how they developed more nuanced knowledge of content and honed their pedagogical skills. We use the framework of interpretive and hermeneutic listening in a novel way in order to understand how the Fellows’ listening orientation towards students informed their pedagogical strategies. We found that Writing Fellows took students seriously as sense-makers and used their numerous interactions with students and their close proximity to novice perspectives to develop flexible thinking about the subject and to inform their teaching.

Navigating Contradictions while Learning to Write: A Disciplinary Case Study of a First-Term Doctoral Writer
Lizzie Hutton, Mandy Olejnik, & Miranda C. Kunkel
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.03

For most graduate writers, acclimating to doctoral-level inquiry is fraught with numerous tensions, whether regarding the development of scholarly identity (Gardner et al., 2014), navigating graduate school’s newly decentralized sources for support (Simpson, 2012), or mastering the writing and research conventions that govern disciplinary practice. Using a Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) framework, this case study analyzes the first-term experiences of Miranda, a first-year PhD student from the field of gerontology (who is also a co-author), and the tensions she feels around the drafting and revision of a single paper. Drawing from Engeström (1987), we theorize Miranda’s challenges around motive, authority, and expert feedback as comprising three “contradictions” engendered by the contemporary activity system of doctoral-level learning-to-write, contradictions that at once challenge the writer’s going presumptions about writing even while they enable new concepts and solutions to emerge. This analysis finally encourages researchers to take a wide, cultural-historical view of the many contexts in which doctoral students write during their first terms, including the instructor-led classroom, the larger culture of the program and institution, and the current high-pressure realities of doctoral-level academic study in the United States.

Leveraging Grant-Writing for Transforming Students’ Normative Views of STEM
Maureen A. Mathison & Alexandria DeGrauw
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.04

Today, efforts in WAC/WID to address social issues are gaining traction. Parallel to the shift in WAC/WID is a shift in STEM. Practices in STEM are responding to larger social concerns that include recruiting more diverse populations and improving research in consideration of its value and consequence to various publics. Rather than conceive of STEM as a homogeneous group or as representing narrow interests of progress, the social context of STEM is also gaining traction, though the uptake is slower. STEM instructors often lack the knowledge to incorporate social issues into their curriculum, much less address social change through writing instruction. This article contributes to the social turn in WAC/WID STEM in two ways. First, it examines STEM students’ attitudes toward science to find out how they view the social in science since its importance in STEM is increasing, but instruction is lagging. And second, given our results, we suggest grant-writing as one way to facilitate the social into STEM writing pedagogy because of its critical importance as a genre in the field.

Harvey J. Graff: A Tribute
John Duffy, Mike Rose, Michael Harker, Patrick W. Berry, & Peter Mortensen, with response by Harvey J. Graff
DOI: 10.37514/ATD-J.2024.21.1.05

Social historian Harvey J. Graff is nothing if not prolific and wide-ranging across time, space, and disciplines. In an academic career spanning some fifty years, Graff has published on interdisciplinarity, the history of childhood, and urban history, among many other topics. In recent years, as professor emeritus of English and history and Ohio Eminent Scholar and Academy Professor at Ohio State University, Graff has established himself as a formidable public intellectual, weighing in on issues in higher education, contemporary politics, and the U.S. media. In recognition of his contributions, several scholars whose research owes a debt to Graff decided to offer at the 2017 Conference on College Composition and Communication in Portland, Oregon what was in essence a festschrift to Graff, a public testament of how his vision of literacy scholarship enhanced their own. Several of those papers are collected here, along with a summary reflection by Graff himself. We have chosen to publish these papers, those of us who were present in Portland, well after that event. We do this not because Graff requires additional acclamation—the list of awards and honors is extensive—but rather as an affirmation of his enduring influence on our work, on literacy studies, and on writing studies more broadly.

The mission of Across the Disciplines is to provide information for— and an opportunity for interaction among—scholars interested in writing, speaking, reading, and communication across the curriculum (CAC). We welcome contributions of the following kinds:

• articles (both linear and hypertext) on CAC theory, practice, and research
• reviews of publications addressing CAC theory, practice, and research
• papers formerly presented at scholarly conferences but not published elsewhere

Authors are encouraged to ground the texts they review within ongoing conversations of interest to ATD readers, WAC/WID researchers, and writing studies scholars, drawing on published literature to establish the scope and nature of that ongoing conversation. ATD does not publish articles that focus solely on describing a program, an assignment, or a sequence of assignments; such descriptions, when included, must be a central component of an empirical study or theoretical discussion.

For more information about submitting to this and other journals and book series available through the WAC Clearinghouse, please see the Clearinghouse's Invitation to Contribute.