Because literacy practices and literacy learning are products of a culture’s history and values—and a force for shaping a culture’s future—writing is unavoidably and necessarily a site of ideological production. People with power and influence to shape what matters in social contexts have historically decided how we write, what we write, and how we judge writing.
April Baker-Bell articulates linguistic justice as a framework that "is an antiracist approach to language and literacy education" (p. 7). She emphasizes that "As a pedagogy, Linguistic Justice places Black language at the center of Black students' language education and experiences. Linguistic Justice does not see White Mainstream English as the be-all and end-all for Black speakers. Linguistic Justice does not side-step fairness and freedom. Instead, it affords Black students the same kinds of linguistic liberties that are afforded to white students" (p. 7).
Extending Baker-Bell's definition of linguistic justice to writers of any racial or ethnic background, we recognize that all people have the right to use their languages, dialects, and rhetorics within any context--personal, professional, academic, or otherwise--so that they have the full range of their rhetorical knowledge to express themselves in ways that feel authentic.
🔑 Linguistic Justice & Diversity: Key Terms & Concepts
The language we use is always impactful. These are the key terms and concepts used throughout the Writing Center’s Linguistic Justice and Diversity work. Familiarize yourself with this background to better understand the goals of the program and support our writers.
Understanding some of the key concepts defined in this (work-in-progress) glossary can help each of us bring a mindset to our work that both
- better helps writers
- allows us to play even a small part in dismantling or avoiding linguistic traditions that have marginalized some writers because of the ways that identity markers like race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability have intersected with assessing and valorizing some uses of language
Knowing more about the contingent and ideological nature of Standard English, for example, and ways of working to push back on the damaging aspects of that concept through a linguistic justice and post-colonial approach to our work, can help you show respect in your appointments for each and every writer's linguistic background and traditions.
📕Linguistic Justice Glossary
Term | Definition & Scholarly Context | Application (how do we describe this/use this/apply this in the WC?) |
Standard Written English | To the degree that such a thing actually exists (it seems to obviously exist but also not be so clearly definable), a locally-bound variety of written English derived from a process of standardization in spelling, usage, & style that must be explicitly taught (unlike speech).
More broadly, a product of "a historical process which – to a greater or lesser degree – is always in progress...motivated in the first place by various social, political and commercial needs...[and thus] an ideology...an idea in the mind rather than a reality—a set of abstract norms to which actual usage may conform to a greater or lesser extent" (19).
James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, 2012 | This concept appears in appointments where writers who use multiple kinds of rhetoric in their daily lives come to the Writing Center wanting help to conform their English to what they perceive is the Standard Written English in academic contexts.
In these appointments, tutors have the opportunity to draw on the knowledge they have about Standard Written English and Linguistic Justice to empower writers and remind them of their agency to make decisions about their writing that feel authentic to them. Sometimes this looks like assisting writers in incorporating their own rhetoric, voice, or dialects in their writing, but this may also look like talking through a professor's expectations and possible perceptions of their writing. In any case, our job is always to provide information that allows writers to make their own choices about their writing, not to tell them to conform or not conform to Standard Written English. |
Linguistic Justice | "an antiracist approach to language and literacy education. It is about dismantling Anti-Black Linguistic Racism and white linguistic hegemony and supremacy in classrooms and in the world" (7).
April Baker-Bell, 2020
A framework for language and writing pedagogy that "implicates...the undoing of monolingual thinking and practices [and calls for] actions that would advocate for a plurality of languages, writing, and pedagogies" (288).
Ligia A. Mihut, 2020 | Linguistic Justice is a framework that tutors can apply to the whole of their tutoring. In appointments, this may look like affirming to writers that all ways of knowing, speaking, and writing are valuable and add to the collective knowledge and diversity of our DePaul community.
Since conventional language and writing in universities draw from racist power structures, writers may come to us upon the advice of a professor who misunderstands or devalues their multilingualism. Here, you have the opportunity to affirm the inherent value and worth of a writer's way of knowing and writing while navigating with them the choices they have in their writing. |
Contact Zone | “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power” (34).
Mary Louise Pratt, 1991
A way of understanding social spaces, like the writing center, in a way that "foregrounds the necessary conflict and struggle involved in any attempt to achieve multiculturalism in the United States of today [but which can be] challenging for all members of our society, those at the center as well as those on the margins" because it challenges "common-sense views of diversity," including the tendencies to "perceive cultures as discrete and self-contained rather than interactive and constructed in relation to others;... perceive ourselves as strictly inside one and outside the rest of cultures;...view our cultural identity as strictly determined by such markers as place of birth, nationality, skin color, or other biological features;...view issues of race, class, and gender as separate rather than intersecting" (232).
Min-Zhan Lu, 2014 | Tutors find themselves in the contact zone frequently, and providing competent and respectful tutoring requires tactful navigation of difficult situations.
Consider the situation where a writer brings in a paper that contains information that interacts with a tutor's own culture/identity/beliefs in a way that is positive, difficult, or even problematic. Tutors always have agency in these appointments to make observations about the writing based on their own experiences as readers. Through grounding their reactions to writing in their experiences as a reader, tutors enact two Writing Center core values: transparency and respect. Letting writers in on your experiences as a reader of their writing is one strategy for tutoring in the contact zone.
Tutors may also choose to employ one of the Writing Center’s core practices of asking questions. Through asking writers questions, a tutor can come to understand how a writer arrived to their conclusion, and this context may help a tutor hone their suggestions. Overall, leading with curiosity, not judgement, is a vital strategy when working in the contact zone. |
Post-Colonial Writing Center | A writing center "in which [tutors and writers] explicitly examine why and how certain features of academic discourse come to be features in the first place" (54).
Where tutors work with writers to "demystify writing processes by giving marginalized students insight into why certain conventions exist for certain discourses" and where tutors "aim to equip these students with the skills necessary for analyzing conventions so that they can translate their knowledge into successful writing practices beyond the university" (55).
Anis Bawarshi and Stephanie Peklowski, 1999 | When tutors' ethos and strategies are rooted in linguistic justice and diversity values, they help maintain a Post-Colonial Writing Center.
This may show up in appointments when tutors choose to question the standards of writing in academic spaces. For example, when a writer comes in looking to revise their writing to what is considered academic standard written English, tutors may engage them in a meta-conversation about how these standards have come exist, and then empowering the writer to choose how they would like to revise their writing based on this knowledge. |
Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity | "the assumption that college students are by default native speakers of a privileged variety of English [which is] seriously out of sync with the sociolinguistic reality of today's U.S. higher education as well as of U.S. society at large" (641).
Paul Kei Matsuda, 2006 | In appointments, tutors will often encounter the term "college-level grammar/writing" as a rubric category. The idea that there is one standard for what is "college-level writing" is rooted in the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity. This terminology is confusing, and is also usually indicative of western, colonial standards of what written English should be. Letting writers in on this myth can be a way to affirm their own rhetorics and ways of writing, but also empower them to make choices about their writing with this knowledge. |
🗣 Principles of Linguistic Justice
The Writing Center’s Linguistic Justice and Diversity training has become a cornerstone for the center's work. Here you will find the principles behind the program and how you can apply them to your own work within the Writing Center.
🕔 Take the Time & Make the Effort to Enact Linguistic Justice
Communicating with writers with respect and care—and in a way that isinformed about the complicated history and ideology of notions of Standard English—may take more time and effort than merely referencing what you read as errors or aberrations from what you understand to be correct grammar, usage, and style. You have the opportunity to enact linguistic justice principles in every appointment, and we encourage you to look for these opportunities in your appointments.
You need not detail the linguistic history of each and every thing you comment on in a given appointment—though you are welcome to provide such information to writers when you possess it and when you think it might help you enact some of the approaches to linguistic justice suggested in this document—but you should approach your feedback with care and take the time to offer accurate and contextualized feedback.
🤗 Some General Principles
Though surely few of you approach your work with writers in this way, it's nevertheless worthwhile to note that, as a tutor, you do need to police language . Rather, your role is to assist writers in meeting their goals, aiding in their writing process, and helping them navigate the contexts in which and for which they find themselves writing.
It can be hard, no doubt, to know how exactly to help a given writer. Even when we learn more about linguistic justice and diversity, we know that sometimes other people may not be aware of these ideas and instructors or potential employers may ungenerously judge writing and writers harshly. We also sometimes don't have a lot of information about a writer's assignment or themselves, so we have to guess at what, if any, standards for writing to which they might be held accountable.
All of this is to say that we know that being a tutor is a challenging spot to be in and so one overarching way to enact linguistic justice is to avoid decontextualized normative feedback. Instead, refer to documented standards like citation and style guides when referencing standards or rules and frame such information to writers as advice that they can choose to implement or not. It may seem like a small thing, but the way in which language use and intelligence—and even one's worth as a person get conflated—can be overwhelming and marginalizing for many writers and so we should seek to avoid such conflations and implications.
⏳ Some Examples of Taking Time & Effort to Contextualize Feedback
Instead of...
This doesn't make sense...
...provide context for your comment
I read this sentence a few times because I was unclear exactly what it meant because for me as a reader I expected...
Instead of...
You need a citation here
...provide context for your comment
According to the APA guidelines, which you mentioned your professor required, this quote would require a citation
Instead of...
You left out a comma here and should add one; check other places too where you left a comma out
...provide context for your comment
The Chicago Manual of Style's section 6.19 on serial commas (you can use your BlueSky login to access the whole book online!) calls for the use a comma before the "and" in a series of three or more items (the "Oxford" or "serial" comma)
👷♂️ Work Hard(er) to Understand Writers
When reading a writer's writing and in speaking with them during real time appointments, make an effort to understand what a writer is saying; don't be too quick to assume that something they wrote or said is wrong because you don't understand it immediately.
Sometimes as readers or listeners we lack the context to understand a given utterance and it's not a deficit in the writer or speaker, but an instance where we need to make more of an effort. This applies of course to our work with writers for whom English is an additional language, but also in appointments with any writer. Be generous and curious and avoid dismissing or judging things too quickly—"attitudinal resources, such as patience, tolerance, and humility to
negotiate differences can help speakers decode the unique features of the interlocutor
and sustain a conversation" (Canagarajah (2006), p. 205).
🤯 Writing Centers as Contact Zones
The Contact Zone was a term first coined by Mary Louis Pratt (1991) and it refers to “social space(s) where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermath” (p. 34). The idea of Writing Centers as Contact Zones—or potential Contact Zones—has driven lots of work within the field on redefining how to navigate and negotiate the Writing Centers’ location within academic spaces and their work with writers. On this page, you will find how the DePaul Writing Center uses and understands the notion of the Contact Zone to inform our work, and the Linguistic Justice & Diversity program.
🤔 Negotiate Difference in the "Contact Zone" of the Writing Center
Given the range of courses and topics of study at DePaul and the myriad backgrounds and identities of both our staff and the students and writers engaging in these courses and topics of study, any particular Writing Center appointment you're in can become a contact zone—“social space(s) where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (Pratt, 1991, p. 34). Negotiating differences in a contact zone can, we know from experience, bring "rage, incomprehension, and pain"; it can also involve "exhilarating moments of wonder and revelation, mutual understanding, and new wisdom—the joys of the contact zone" (Pratt, 1991, p. 39 ).
It is important to understand that while they may include some discomfort or disagreement, these situations are educational and necessary in a college environment.
💪 You Have Agency in the Contact Zone
We understand that, at times, you may feel the need to detach yourself from your individual experiences to approach tutoring from an ostensibly objective or more-removed stance, and you are welcome to do so if and when this feels appropriate to or comfortable for you.
We do want to also make it explicit that you are invited to foreground your own experiences to inform your appointments and in your work with writers. You can absolutely tell writers you disagree with their ideas or arguments. You can explain to a writer how some aspect of your identity shapes how you respond to their writing. But you are never required to do so—this is up to you.
Put differently, we ask that you acknowledge sensitive or potentially offensive material in whatever way(s) feel(s) most comfortable to you.
☝Suggestions for Navigating the Contact Zone of the Writing Center
In your work with writers
- Listen "as well as talk, take criticism as well as give it, provide support as well as judgment, experiment and take risks” (Annas, 1986, p. 15).
- Avoid essentializing your own experience as universal because doing so implies in important ways that your experience was one of many possible experiences. Instead, use "I" statements to frame your perspective as purely your own.
- Avoid referring to a fictional, generalized reader, aka "your reader," because it's hard if not impossible to predict how a particular reader besides you might respond to reading something and certainly impossible to know how any reader might respond; see item directly above and have confidence that hearing your unique perspective as a reader will benefit the writer.
🙋♀️Ask the Right Questions
Questions are a vital part of reflection—a core Writing Center value—and we hope that questioning is a practice that all of our staff members engage in. Here, you will find some reflection questions that may help guide your work enacting our principles of Linguistic Justice & Diversity.
🕵️♀️Questions to Ask Writers
Rather than making assumptions about individual writers, make it a practice—in synchronous appointments and when appropriate in written feedback letters—to ask them questions like:
- Is there a style and usage guide you want us to use as we discuss your writing?
- What do you know about your audience—professor, admissions committee, etc.—and their standards for language use?
🤳Questions to Ask Yourself
Rather than focusing on how you can "fix" a writer's work, ask
- How can I assist my writer in reaching their personal goal for this assignment?
- How can I provide my writer with resources that may assist them in the future?
- How can I affirm my writer's linguistic identity and provide suggestions that might best strengthen their personal style, voice, rhetorical approach, or genre?
When you find writing unclear, ask
- What is making the writing unclear to me as a specific, particular reader, given my own set of linguistic resources, history, and experiences?
🌎Language and Linguistic Justice
In our work at the Writing Center, it becomes essential for us to acknowledge the power that language has and how some everyday language can contribute to oppression. This content is designed to give tutors resources for learning more about the history and scholarship behind the vision of the program, as well as give actionable steps in addressing the everyday language of oppression tutors may encounter in the Writing Center.
🛑 Address the Everyday Language of Oppression*
How Language Can Perpetuate Oppression
- Avoids discussing difference
- Erases differences
- Assumes uniform readership
- Minimizes significance of discrimination
- Speaks of oppression as only in the past
- Exoticizes
- Presents stereotypes as evidence
- Disrespects sources from "other" perspectives
- Fails to distinguish sources' views from writers' own
- Misunderstands or misrelates sources' views
How Tutors and Writers Can Challenge Oppression through Attention to Language
- Clarify meanings together
- Express understanding of one another's meanings
- Discuss meaning and use of sources
- Pose counterarguments
- Maintain a non-combative tone
- Address language without accusations of intentional oppression
- Name the "elephant in the room"
- Learn to better identify and address language that perpetuate
*Title for this section and two lists quoted verbatim from Suhr-Sytsma, M., & Brown, S. E. (2011). Theory in/to practice: Addressing the everyday language of oppression in the writing center. The Writing Center Journal, 31(2), 13-49.
📃Linguistic Justice & Diversity Training
Following the Writing Center's acknowledgment in our Mission Statement of writing as a powerful and ubiquitous modality of and for learning, and DePaul University’s commitment to education for diverse cultural and ethnic groups, the Linguistic Justice & Diversity Training program aims to continue tutor education regarding diverse linguistic traditions both within and beyond the DePaul community.
The Linguistic Justice & Diversity Training program is one way we enact DePaul’s mission to ennoble "the God-given dignity of each person” by researching, recognizing, and legitimizing linguistic traditions beyond what is putatively called by many “Standard English.”
Through collaborative activities, discussions, and reflections, the Writing Center provides tutors with necessary continuing education in linguistic history and diversity to better serve the writers with whom we work. As part of their onboarding, new tutors complete . All tutors participate in additional Linguistic Justice & Diversity training sessions throughout the academic year.
📃Resources
Resources Database
Search “linguistic justice” in the Resources Database for articles and other resources.
The CCCC Demand for Black Linguistic Justice
We endorse the July 2020 CCCC's Demand for Black Linguistic Justice and express our solidarity with its demand as a part of our commitment to anti-racism. We believe that Black Language, Black Writers, and and Black Lives matter.