ABSTRACT
If students-or ‘subjects’—of English are habitually invited, in the name of English, to write stories, essays and other things; if writing is of central educational significance and also of general cultural significance, then it must be worth trying to theorize this phenomenon, in spite of the daunting scale of the task. The practices of writing in English invite many questions. Any serious attempt to review, question, or to reassess the content and values of the subject would need to look again at writing in a number of ways. Such a venture would need to examine the practices of writing in English and the ideas about writing purveyed by English.
