Bartholomae talks about “a necessary and enabling fiction at work” in student writing. Brilliant. That phrase puts words to an observation I’ve been making over and over again during this last month. I just haven’t been able to sit with it, to think on why all of the papers I’ve been reading sound disingenuous, overdramatic, or, more to the point, fictitious. What mindset are these students adopting that limits their use of genuine examples and authoritative tone?
Could it be that my students are writing to me, to a fictionalized version of me—some amalgam of all the voices they hear when they think of the sound of an instructor, an authority figure?
“When students are writing for a teacher… students, in effect, have to assume privilege without having any.”
I can’t remember asking for this kind of simulation, this parody of authority. But this is what I get. I can hear this assumption, this gesture toward the vague sound of academic discourse, in too many of my students’ essays. Who demands this of my students? How has this fantasy taken hold of their minds—that they cannot, as Bartholomae might suggest, “extend themselves” into their respective subject matters to explore and discover, that they must, instead, struggle outside of their means to take command, to instruct?
Bingo. Bingo on all counts (in my view, at least).
My question is what to do about it?
Unintentionally, this week has been all about Engfish, Mushfake, and Thesaurus Rexing as a means to inhabit authority, break into a discourse… or to “assume the position.”
I’ve seen undergrads do it, grads do it, faculty do it… and hell, I do it myself all the time.
But what do we do about it? How might we encourage academic (smart? informed? thoughtful? critical?) essays without accidentally urging students to “smarten up” their real thoughts?