Writing in the Devil's Tongue: A History of English Composition in China - PDF
نویسندگان: Professor Xiaoye You
خلاصه: Asense of complacency, if not outright chauvinism, is tangible these daysin certain parts of American composition studies. Sensational state-ments of one kind or another—“Composition Studies Saves the World!”;“Globalizing Composition”; “Transnationalizing/Globalizing Rhetoric andComposition Studies”; and so forth—reveal not only tremendous disciplin-ary pride but also compositionists’ confidence in what the discipline cando: namely, rescue the troubled world at large.1 And why shouldn’t we beconfident about what the discipline can achieve? After all, we have gaineda better understanding of our students, students of diverse linguistic, cul-tural, racial, sexual, and class backgrounds who have made such a strongpresence in American universities since the 1960s; and we have developedeffective pedagogical approaches to address those students’ needs. Project-ing this national experience to the rest of the globe, we naturally becomeoptimistic. Indeed, the rest of the world is also hopeful now, looking toAmerican composition studies for standards of English writing practicesand proven pedagogies.As the teaching of composition is increasingly connected to global po-litico-economic dynamics, our disciplinary effort to lift composition out ofnarrow nation-state bounds is the right direction to go. However, Americancomposition scholars do not seem fully cognizant of the geopolitical differ-ences and stakes involved in the teaching of English writing. For one thing,while English has been taught as the native language, the official language,or a second language in the United States, it is typically taught as a foreignlanguage in the majority of nations in the world. A different name for Englishentails a different history of the language in a particular country. A differ-ent name for English entails a whole different constellation of values andpractices in teaching English writing