ABSTRACT
American educators, and university professors in particular, have a long history of anxiety about who students are, who students should be, and who students become because of their college education; in current times, conservatives such as Allan Bloom, E. D. Hirsch, Dinesh Da Sousa, and progressive educators such as Stanley Aronowitz and Henry Giroux debate over who students should be. Among the issues raised in these culture wars are the ways students use language and literacy. Even liberal educators want students to become subjects of their disciplines’ discourse, without eliminating the languages and language uses they have brought from home. For example, departments of English want students to be interested in language and literature. If and when students appear disinterested, faculty are disappointed and even angry. Conflict over discursive subjectivity occurs not only between faculty and students but among faculty as well. Faculty may position themselves as hostile to the objectives of other fields of study, and in particular, they may resist ways of using language and literacy, which differ from what they perceive as their own disciplinary values. These differences of values about language and literacy are an integral part of the intellectual, ideological, and social milieu in composition programs, Writing Across the Disciplines programs, and Writing Centers.
