“The products of
academic literacy are freely available, but the processes that led to their
construction are known only to the insiders. What this means is that we scholars in the periphery have
access (although belatedly) to the journals, books, and other texts that are
important in our field, but we are left to guess the research and writing
process from faint hints in the products” (199).
I had to laugh a little about how easily this particular
comment, made by Canagarajah in “A Somewhat Legitimate and Very Peripheral
Participation,” could have been written by almost any graduate student
regardless of their geographical location.
Of course, no graduate student could get these words
published; no one pre-tenure would dare try. But in any case, as graduate students at the very beginnings
of our careers, we too are in several senses on the outer edge of
insiders. Perhaps this is not so
much the case geographically for some of us, but it certainly is temporally and
emotionally true of every graduate student I know. We are still learning the
conventions of our fields; still getting comfortable with the idea of having
specific fields.
I was just in conversation with another graduate student the
other day talking about trying to get an article together to send out for
publication (something that is now in this horrible job market a necessity as
soon as possible). This student
was frustrated, they kept saying how they just wanted to put something together
that didn’t “scream graduate student paper.” The person questioned—what is it that they [those reviewers]
will see that I don’t that marks my
work? [I wonder how often our students ask the same question…]
After reading these articles, especially those of
Canagarajah, it strikes me how much of our [those of us that stand in some
fashion on the periphery of a given writing situation] academic writing is
about “passing” in some fashion.
Canagarajah councils that his audience (other non-Western academics) to
name-drop articles/books that are unavailable, to write theoretical papers rather
than empirical ones, which use non-western methods of data collection, and, to
above all, be thoughtful about the ways in which they infuse the text with
their own voices (204). He controls his language use by identifying “sections
in the RA [research article] that would tolerate a different discourse more
easily” (204). In other words, he
inserts himself quietly, so as to get passed the lurking eyes of the reviewers.
Strikingly, in an article directed at using non-standard
varieties of English in classroom writing, Canagarajah invokes a similar
mechanism by which he believes that non-standard speakers might be able to
learn to “shuttle between communities in contextually relevant ways”
(593). He focuses on the idea of
“code-meshing” and calls for texts that are “multidialectical.” He uses articles
that rely to a small degree on elements of AAVE to illustrate how this careful
negotiation can be made. For
example, here too he highlights that the author uses the vernacular in ‘low
stakes’ moments in the text (607).
He sees the examples that he uses in both articles as small
steps (“a statement of intent, not a celebration of accomplishment” (613)) in
the effort towards envisioning a future of pluralized Englishes. But, thinking
about myself as on the periphery trying to gain access to a discourse
community, I have some questions that I’m left with at the end of our reading.
- Are these “small steps” that Canagarajah identifies really moving us towards a pluralized understanding of English in any meaningful and lasting way? Or, is this simply a token move?
- How do you strike a balance between “passing” and “code-meshing” in such a way that you gain access without losing your sense of voice in a text, without setting too much of yourself aside?
- To what degree is gaining access to the “inside” always also about the loss of something of ourselves?
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