Working English in Rhetoric and Composition:

Global-Local Contexts, Commitments, Consequences

“Working English”—the title of the 2010 Watson Conference—aims to invoke the multiple meanings of the term work that appear in U.S. rhetoric and composition and that, in an era of the globalization and localization of English, inform questions such as:

• How can and do we work English (that is, employ, construct, and redesign it) in the process of learning and using it?
• How can we best make English work(that is, make it operate and function) effectively and equitably in public deliberations, cultural expressions, and educational practices?
• How do competing notions of the workings of the English language (that is, notions of its formation, apparatus, relations to other languages, and relations to the shaping of individual-collective selves and lives) affect teaching and research in rhetoric and composition?
• What different inflections of work and class are implied by these competing notions of working English?
  
  

The 2010 Watson Conference on “Working English” invites proposals for papers and panels on how best to articulate the work of rhetoric and composition as a U.S academic field (as a form of labor and an occupation)in light of its complex and constantly evolving global-local contexts, commitments, and consequences. We welcome presentations that probe the complex relations across the multiple uses of the term work in the theory-practice of the field and that interrogate tendencies to maintain binaries such as langue/parole, global/local, native/foreign, standard/dialect, spoken/written, literate/oral, official/vernacular, national/international, private/public, and functional/critical literacy.

Following are some possible lines of inquiry and questions for conference participants to pursue:

Global-Local Contexts: How do specific contemporary global-local conditions (geopolitical, social, cultural, economic, linguistic, technological, etc.) make it possible and necessary for literacy workers around the world to contest dichotomized approaches to the teaching and writing of transnational Englishes?  How might the field best respond to phenomena such as the vitality of indigenized Englishes (uses of English by peoples outside the metropolitan U.S./U.K. in non-monolingual contexts) or the simultaneous redesigning of U.S./U.K. English in the Anglo-American metropolis through the circulation of people, things, culture, information, technology, and language in the era of fast capitalism?

Agency: How might we best respond to individuals’ needs and desires to work both with and on received forms of English?  How are attempts to participate in language transactions—crossings, borrowings, barterings, hybridizings, switchings—instrumental to the emergence of new identities, structures of feeling, collectives, and alignments that contest the boundaries patrolled by territorialized notions of language, linguistic usage, and community?

Linguistic Struggle:  What frictions do hegemonic uses of English encounter as they come into contact with other uses of English and other languages at specific times and places?  How might those in rhetoric and composition—and in allied fields—address and make use of such frictions in their work?

Global-Local Exchanges: What might U.S. rhetoric and composition learn from users of English locally and around the globe, outside and within the academy, and throughout history to put English to work to alternative and counter-hegemonic ends? How might we learn from and contribute to literacy workers serving the interests of disenfranchised learners and users of English intra- and trans-nationally?

Trans-disciplinary work: What new concepts and lines of inquiry from other academic fields might inform as well as be informed by the efforts of rhetoric and composition to re-work the teaching and writing of English in the 21^st century? How might we make sense of and rework the institutional divisions of composition, ESL, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics?  How might we understand the history and status of U.S. college composition as a peculiar U.S. invention in a world where conditions instigating the “birth” of the field (for instance, the increasing cultural and linguistic diversity of college students) are now challenges that face educational institutions in countries where English has been designated the “native,” “official,” or “second,” as well as “foreign” language?

Courses of Action: What new directions can we take in our research, teaching, and program design to address both learners’ need to develop fluency in forms of English currently in market demand and their desire to use English in ways that challenge relations of exclusion, exploitation, and domination?

In addition to U.S. teachers and scholars of rhetoric and composition, this conference will feature literacy teachers, scholars, and administrators from within and outside the academy from around the world, including South Africa, South America, Eastern Europe, and China.  To enhance interaction among conference attendees, featured speakers will not only give papers during featured sessions but also attend and serve as respondents to concurrent sessions for the duration of the conference.

—Min-Zhan Lu, 2010 Watson Conference Director, Professor of English and University Scholar, University of Louisville