ABSTRACT
In 1972 the Executive Committee of the Conference on College Composition and Communication passed a resolution asserting the Students’ Right to their Own Language. The resolution was adopted as policy by the larger body of CCCC in 1974 and has, presumably, provided a foundation for our work on the teaching of writing over these past eleven years. Yet, in the final session of the 1985 Minneapolis CCCC, “Academic Discourse and the Individual Imagination,” a debate in which Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg argued for the primacy of academic discourse and Lil Brannon and Cy Knoblauch for that of the individual imagination in our writing courses, the ultimate disagreement between the two sides, each of which was working to empower students through their use of language, came to rest on this very issue. The real question, as stated by Pat Bizzell in her closing remarks, and echoed in audience response, was whether, if we start with the student’s own language, we will ever get to academic discourse.
