ABSTRACT
Composition teachers regularly encounter sentences, paragraphs, and essays, which, to varying degrees, are not consistent with the expectations of college writing. These teachers must respond both to the contents of such pieces, and to the lexical and syntactic choices made by the student writer. These responses are inevitably informed by what writing teachers believe about language: Its nature and ability to represent what its users think (if perhaps not how they think), as well as how it is being, or should be, used. These beliefs may be explicit, implicit, or even inchoate, and, thus, difficult to specify. But they are there, and one of this chapter’s goals is to give shape to some them. A corollary goal of the chapter is to guide readers through a survey of the area of linguistic diversity and the questions about language that it addresses. Its ultimate goal is to contribute to the ways in which teachers can assist students in taking control of their writing. Along the way, readers may encounter some of the sources of the friction that occurs when diversity and institutional expectations meet. But an awareness of these sources (and of the friction), as much as a developing knowledge about linguistic diversity and its relationship to writing, should contribute to writing teachers’ success in responding to their students.
