ABSTRACT
Smitherman’s writing practice might seem extreme to some readers. Among other things, they might feel that it is difficult to interpret texts that don’t employ a shared code. They might find themselves helpless against the diversity of codes that inhabit a codemeshed text, many of which they might not be familiar with. Veteran composition instructor, Pat Bizzell (2010), has recently asked: “How does one read a codemeshed text?” The essays written by her multilingual students pose unsettling questions for traditional notions of literacy: How do we interpret a codemeshed text when it uses languages we may not be familiar with? How do we assess deviations from SWE? How do we judge the rhetorical effectiveness of texts which challenge traditional notions of coherence? If Bizzell seeks new orientations to literacy, Vanessa Sohan wonders about a new orientation to literacy pedagogy when she asks: “How can we as teacher-scholars change the way we respond to (read-write-think about) and teach the words of ‘others’ so as to work against the grain of dominant discourses and habituated ‘systems of hearing’ designed to undercut ‘minority’ voices?” (Sohan, 2009, p. 274). She finds that the dominant orientations to literacy don’t permit her students to respond to codemeshed texts effectively. Such concerns are understandable. The dominant orientations to literacy are not friendly to translingual writing. We have to consider alternate orientations that present strategies of reading and writing that enable us to deal with textual hybridity.
