In this essay, the author explores the curious irony that a discipline and a profession organized around the study and teaching of language and literacy have had so little influence on the discursive constructions (policies) that govern the teaching of language and literacy. Part of the problem, as the author sees it, is simply that so little…

When scholars write about their research in writing programs' archives, they often face the ethical question of whether to name the administrators who were involved in documents. The author identifies and provides examples of three basic orientations to this issue, which he calls overt-historical, covert-qualitative, and hybrid-institutional.…

For the last several years, composition scholarship has unfortunately neglected the paragraph. Theories about it, however, have a rich history. Eventually, it involved conflicts between prescriptivists and descriptivists, as well as between members of the latter group and the branch of descriptivism called functionalism. In this article, the…

Provides a history of disciplinary discourse in English studies. Reveals that this new kind of writing--self-conscious, reflective prose--is creating a new "life form" in academic culture. Suggests that in order to recognize this culture, educators need to conduct research into the language academics use to define, describe, and change…

Discusses the contributions to the teaching of composition made by Fred Newton Scott, founder of the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Michigan in 1903. (DD)

Presents a sampling of the issues contained in the rhetoric and composition papers presented at the Modern Language Association at the end of the nineteenth century. (EL)

Presents detailed information about school English, a functional variety that has influenced twentieth-century American vernaculars and the writings of most Americans. Sets school English in its nineteenth-century context and comments on factors that have favored its survival. Comments briefly on the Black English case in Ann Arbor, Michigan. (RL)

Argues that in part through theory, but mostly through hands-on practice, teachers help students develop an awareness of form as simultaneously constraining and generative that will empower them to understand, use, and even invent new forms for new purposes. (FL)

Tracing the literature on writing conferences during four tension points in higher-education enrollments--the 1890s, the 1930s, the 1950s, and the 1970s--the author suggests that conferences have been championed primarily at those moments when students were both more numerous and more diverse, an urge countered, however, by faculty working…

Argues that the crisis of identity in English studies today is the result of continued failure to come to terms with radical changes in the concept of literacy occurring between the founding of the Modern Language Association and the formation of the National Council of Teachers of English. (EL)

Offers a lesson in educational history as the first step in discussing the core curriculum in contemporary higher education and "unity in diversity," the theme of the 1980 convention of the National Council of Teachers of English. (RL)

Suggests strongly that teachers of English should help students become more skillful at analyzing the messages on war they receive, so they can confront the nuclear predicament and begin developing alternatives. (CRH)