Narratives of Complaint: Translingual Subjectivities in the Basic Writing Classroom

Abstract

This study examines narratives of complaint in first-year composition (FYC) courses focused on basic writing. Video-recorded interviews provide ethnographic study at a Southern New Jersey university. During phase I, seven instructors and 28 students were interviewed. During phase II, the same seven instructors and 18 students from the original pool were interviewed again. Data was coded and analyzed for this dissertation. Discussion uses translingual literacy examining linguistically diverse students’ view of themselves in relation to college writing and how their view transforms. Students’ and instructors’ identification of themselves are considered ideologically embodied in speech acts of complaining, informed by discursive practices arising in heterogeneous classrooms. Discursive practices provide intercultural struggle, informing how students learn and transform through dialogue in courses. Findings show dialogue, constituted in complaints, allows for reflection on centrifugal and centripetal forces exerted on language use as students enter into academic discourse. Dialogue grants insight into genre of complaint as narrative, revealing roles of victim and abuser. Findings further explicate the speech genre of complaint as constituted by “troubles talk” laying blame for wrongdoing. Complaints as habitus (Bourdieu) show student identity in formation, contrasting with instructors’ more focused and stylistic complaints. A case study shows how complaints shape a story, informing student identity in attitudes toward writing and college writing. Complaints are seen as co-constitutive of relations of power and inequality in the writing classroom. Inclusive pedagogical strategies are proposed focusing on code-meshing and critical language awareness, encouraging awareness of ideological and rhetorical implications of (home) language(s) and the written forms introduced in the academy