The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition Author(s): Fan Shen Source: College Composition and Communication, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 1989), pp. 459-466 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/358245 Accessed: 20-06-2017 16:59 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms National Council of Teachers of English is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to College Composition and Communication This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Staffroom Interchange The Classroom and the Wider Culture: Identity as a Key to Learning English Composition Fan Shen, Marquette University One day in June 1975, when I walked into the aircraft factory where I was working as an electrician, I saw many large-letter posters on the walls and many people paradin around the workshops shouting slogans like "Down with the word 'I'!" and "Trust in masses and the Party!" I then remembered that a new political campaign calle "Against Individualism" was scheduled to begin that day. Ten years later, I got back my first English composition paper at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The pro fessor's first comments were: "Why did you always use 'we' instead of 'I'?" and "Your paper would be stronger if you eliminated some sentences in the passive voice." The clashes between my Chinese background and the requirements of English composition had begun. At the center of this mental struggle, which has lasted several years and is still not completely over, is the prolonged, uphill battle to recapture "myself." In this paper I will try to describe and explore this experience of reconciling my Chinese identity with an English identity dictated by the rules of English composi- tion. I want to show how my cultural background shaped-and shapes-my approaches to my writing in English and how writing in English redefined-and redefines-my ideological and logical identities. By "ideological identity" I mean the system of values that I acquired (consciously and unconsciously) from my social and cultural background. And by "logical identity" I mean the natural (or Oriental) way I organize and express my thoughts in writing. Both had to be modified or redefined in learning English composition. Becoming aware of the process of redefinition of thes different identities is a mode of learning that has helped me in my efforts to write in English, and, I hope, will be of help to teachers of English composition in this country. In presenting my case for this view, I will use examples from both my composition courses and literature courses, for I believe that writing papers for both kinds o courses contributed to the development of my "English identity." Although what I will describe is based on personal experience, many Chinese students whom I talked to said that they had had the same or similar experiences in their initial stages of learning to write in English. Two kinds of articles make up "Staffroom Interchange": compact descriptions of specific instructional or administrative practices and fuller essays of application, speculation, and introspection. "Staffroom Interchange" essays (normally under 3,000 words) should be written in a direct, personal style, and should use in-text documentation. Since submissions are sent to Con sulting Readers for review, authors should follow the guidelines for anonymous submission out- lined on the back of the title page. Fan Shen thanks Michael Wreen for his comments on an earlier draft of "The Classroom and the Wider Culture." College Composition and Communication, Vol. 40, No. 4, December 1989 459 This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 460 College Composition and Communication 40 (December 1989) Identity of the Self: Ideological and Cultural Starting with the first English paper I wrote, I found that learning to compose in En- glish is not an isolated classroom activity, but a social and cultural experience. Th rules of English composition encapsulate values that are absent in, or sometimes contradictory to, the values of other societies (in my case, China). Therefore, learning the rules of English composition is, to a certain extent, learning the values of AngloAmerican society. In writing classes in the United States I found that I had to reprogram my mind, to redefine some of the basic concepts and values that I had abou myself, about society, and about the universe, values that had been imprinted and reinforced in my mind by my cultural background, and that had been part of me al my life. Rule number one in English composition is: Be yourself. (More than one composition instructor has told me, "Just write what you think.") The values behind this rule, it seems to me, are based on the principle of protecting and promoting individuality (and private property) in this country. The instruction was probably crystal clear to students raised on these values, but, as a guideline of composition, it was not very clear or useful to me when I first heard it. First of all, the image or meaning that I attached to the word "I" or "myself' was, as I found out, different from that of my English teacher. In China, "I" is always subordinated to "We"-be it the working class, the Party, the country, or some other collective body. Both political pressure and literary tradition require that "I" be somewhat hidden or buried in writings and speeches; presenting the "self" too obviously would give people the impression of being disrespectful of the Communist Party in political writings and boastful in scholarly writings. The word "I" has often been identified with another "bad" word, "individualism," which has become a synonym for selfishness in China. For a long time the words "self" and "individualism" have had negative connotations in my mind, and the negative force of the words naturally extended to the field of literary studies. As a result, even if I had brilliant ideas, the "I" in my papers always had to show some modesty by not competing with or trying to stand above the names of ancient and modern authoritative figures. Appealing to Mao or other Marxist authorities became the required way (as well as the most "forceful" or "persuasive" way) to prove one's point in written discourse. I remember that in China I had even committed what I can call "reversed plagiarism"-here, I suppose it would be called "forgery"-when I was in middle school: willfully attributing some of my thoughts to "experts" when I needed some arguments but could not find a suitable quotation from a literary or political "giant." Now, in America, I had to learn to accept the words "I" and "Self' as something glorious (as Whitman did), or at least something not to be ashamed of or embarrassed about. It was the first and probably biggest step I took into English composition and critical writing. Acting upon my professor's suggestion, I intentionally tried to show my "individuality" and to "glorify" "I" in my papers by using as many "I's" as possible--"I think," "I believe," "I see"--and deliberately cut out quotations from authorities. It was rather painful to hand in such "pompous" (I mean immodest) papers to my instructors. But to an extent it worked. After a while I became more comfortable with only "the shadow of myself." I felt more at ease to put down my thoughts without looking over my shoulder to worry about the attitudes of my teachers or the reactions of the Party secretaries, and to speak out as "bluntly" and "immodestly" as my American instructors demanded. But writing many "I's" was only the beginning of the process of redefining myself. Speaking of redefining myself is, in an important sense, speaking of redefining the word "I." By such a redefinition I mean not only the change in how I envisioned my- This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Staffroom Interchange 461 self, but also the change in how I pe only one set of values, but now it had "myself," which I knew was a key to meant not to be my Chinese self at all. wrestle with and abandon (at least tem previously defined me in myself. I ha not see myself as a Marxist by choice) familiarize myself with a system of c ideology of collectivism and adopt the as in literature classes, I had to make society and literary materials through rialism and historical materialism, I now the other way around, i.e., to learn t point of view of "idealism." (I must ad use a Marxist approach in their teachin The word "idealism," which affects m loaded with social connotations, and ca key word can be a pivotal part of redef To me, idealism is the philosophical f tion: "Be yourself." In order to write which actually meant not to be my Ch glish self and be that self. And to be t accept idealism the way a Westerner Westerner sees himself in relation to knew a lot about idealism. But on the knew a lot about idealism through th Marxism, but I knew little about it fr the word "materialism"--which is a m edly been "shown" to be the absolute and words like "right," "true," etc., word "idealism" always came to me w like "absurd," "illogical," "wrong," et cious and ridiculous enemy of Marxist tion imprinted in my mind had it, is that all that exists is the mind and its tical materialism which sees the mind difficult to see that idealism, with its vides a philosophical foundation for th human minds, and hence individual hu myself as of primary importance--an im figures idealism. in English composition-wa My struggle with idealism came mainl about works such as Coleridge's Literar long time I was frustrated and puzzl Emerson-given their ideas, such as "I borrowed from Descartes) and "the tra because in my mind, drenched as it w little voice whispering in my ear "You human consciousness, which is not ma lectual conscience refused to let me beli and the material world secondary. Fi This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 462 College Composition and Communication 40 (December 1989) world with my head upside down. When I imagined that I was in a new body (born with the head upside down) it was easier to forget biases imprinted in my subconsciousness about idealism, the mind, and my former self. Starting from scratch, the new inverted self-which I called my "English Self" and into which I have transformed myself--could understand and accept, with ease, idealism as "the truth" and "himself" (i.e., my English Self) as the "creator" of the world. Here is how I created my new "English Self." I played a "game" similar to ones played by mental therapists. First I made a list of (simplified) features about writing associated with my old identity (the Chinese Self), both ideological and logical, and then beside the first list I added a column of features about writing associated with my new identity (the English Self). After that I pictured myself getting out of my old identity, the timid, humble, modest Chinese "I," and creeping into my new identity (often in the form of a new skin or a mask), the confident, assertive, and aggressive English "I." The new "Self" helped me to remember and accept the different rules of Chinese and English composition and the values that underpin these rules. In a sense, creating an English Self is a way of reconciling my old cultural values with the new values required by English writing, without losing the former. An interesting structural but not material parallel to my experiences in this regard has been well described by Min-zhan Lu in her important article, "From Silence to Words: Writing as Struggle" (College English 49 [April 1987]: 437-48). Min-zhan Lu talks about struggles between two selves, an open self and a secret self, and between two discourses, a mainstream Marxist discourse and a bourgeois discourse her parents wanted her to learn. But her struggle was different from mine. Her Chinese self was severely constrained and suppressed by mainstream cultural discourse, but never interfused with it. Her experiences, then, were not representative of those of the majority of the younger generation who, like me, were brought up on only one discourse. came to English composition as a Chinese person, in the fullest sense of the term, with a Chinese identity already fully formed. Identity of the Mind: Illogical and Alogical In learning to write in English, besides wrestling with a different ideological system, I found that I had to wrestle with a logical system very different from the blueprint of logic at the back of my mind. By "logical system" I mean two things: the Chinese way of thinking I used to approach my theme or topic in written discourse, and the Chinese critical/logical way to develop a theme or topic. By English rules, the first is illogical, for it is the opposite of the English way of approaching a topic; the second is alogical (non-logical), for it mainly uses mental pictures instead of words as a critical vehicle. The Illogical Pattern. In English composition, an essential rule for the logical organization of a piece of writing is the use of a "topic sentence." In Chinese composition, "from surface to core" is an essential rule, a rule which means that one ought to reach a topic gradually and "systematically" instead of "abruptly." The concept of a topic sentence, it seems to me, is symbolic of the values of a busy people in an industrialized society, rushing to get things done, hoping to attract and satisfy the busy reader very quickly. Thinking back, I realized that I did not fully understand the virtue of the concept until my life began to rush at the speed of everyone else's in this country. Chinese composition, on the other hand, seems to embody the values of a leisurely paced rural society whose inhabitants have the time to chew and taste a topic slowly. In Chinese composition, an introduction explaining how and why one chooses this topic is not only acceptable, but often regarded as necessary. It This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Staffroom Interchange 463 arouses the reader's interest in the t composition) and gives him/her a se "noodles" contrasting a spiral Orien approach ("Cultural Thought Pattern glish as a Second Language, Ed. Ken may be too simplistic to capture th think they still express some truth clears the surrounding btishes before tern in Chinese writing goes back t fore doing anything, Kong says in hi by their proper names (expressed by before touching one's main thesis, on tion: how, why, and when the piec proper foundation on which to buil years after Kong, this principle of through the formal essays required "Ba Gu," or the eight-legged essay. T the eight-legged essay, is like the pee til the reader finally arrives at the ce Ba Gu still influences modern Chin discussion of this logical (or illogical dents' efforts to write in English ( Teacher in China," College English textbook for composition lists six ess steps to be taken in this order: tim (Yuwenjichu Zhishi LiushiJiang (Sixty Beijing Research Institute of Educa Most Chinese students (including m tion. The straightforward approach to co logical. One could not jump to the t topic. In several of my early paper clearing approach-persisted, and I h understanding) topic sentences. In w gave out themes. Today, those paper false English openings. For example wrote the forced/false topic senten the next few paragraphs, I talked ab and so on, before I talked about wha one could always learn something ev The Alogical Pattern. In learning E another cultural blueprint affecting m that very often I was unconsciously called the creation of "yijing," which the word "yijing" is: yi, "mind or cient approach which has existed in of much discussion, yijing is a comp But most critics in China nowadays se ical approach that separates Chinese and criticism. Roughly speaking, yij ment while reading a piece of literat creative process of inducing oneself, This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 464 College Composition and Communication 40 (December 1989) piece of art, to create mental pictures, in order to reach a unity of nature, the author, and the reader. Therefore, it is by its very nature both creative and critical. According to the theory, this nonverbal, pictorial process leads directly to a higher ground of beauty and morality. Almost all critics in China agree that yijing is not a process o logical thinking-it is not a process of moving from the premises of an argument to its conclusion, which is the foundation of Western criticism. According to yijing, th process of criticizing a piece of art or literary work has to involve the process of creation on the reader's part. In yijing, verbal thoughts and pictorial thoughts are one. Thinking is conducted largely in pictures and then "transcribed" into words. (Ezr Pound once tried to capture the creative aspect of yijing in poems such as "In a Station of the Metro." He also tried to capture the critical aspect of it in his theory of imagism and vorticism, even though he did not know the term "yijing.") One charac teristic of the yijing approach to criticism, therefore, is that it often includes a description of the created mental pictures on the part of the reader/critic and his/her mental attempt to bridge (unite) the literary work, the pictures, with ultimate beauty and peace. In looking back at my critical papers for various classes, I discovered that I unconsciously used the approach of yijing, especially in some of my earlier papers when I seemed not yet to have been in the grip of Western logical critical approaches. I wrote, for instance, an essay entitled "Wordsworth's Sound and Imagination: The Snowdon Episode." In the major part of the essay I described the pictures that flashed in my mind while I was reading passages in Wordsworth's long poem, The Prelude. I saw three climbers (myself among them) winding up the mountain in silence "at the dead of night," absorbed in their "private thoughts." The sky was full of blocks of clouds of different colors, freely changing their shapes, like oily pigments disturbed in a bucket of water. All of a sudden, the moonlight broke the darkness "like a flash," lighting up the mountain tops. Under the "naked moon," the band saw a vast sea of mist and vapor, a silent ocean. Then the silence was abruptly broken, and we heard the "roaring of waters, torrents, streams/Innumerable, roaring with one voice" from a "blue chasm," a fracture in the vapor of the sea. It was a joyful revelation of divine truth to the human mind: the bright, "naked" moon sheds the light of "higher reasons" and "spiritual love" upon us; the vast ocean of mist looked like a thin curtain through which we vaguely saw the infinity of nature beyond; and the sounds of roaring waters coming out of the chasm of vapor cast us into the boundless spring of imagination from the depth of the human heart. Evoked by the divine light from above, the human spring of imagination is joined by the natural spring and becomes a sustaining source of energy, feeding "upon infinity" while transcending infinity at the same time . Here I was describing my own experience more than Wordsworth's. The picture described by the poet is taken over and developed by the reader. The imagination of the author and the imagination of the reader are thus joined together. There was no "because" or "therefore" in the paper. There was little logic. And I thought it was (and it is) criticism. This seems to me a typical (but simplified) example of the yijing approach. (Incidentally, the instructor, a kind professor, found the paper interesting, though a bit "strange.") In another paper of mine, "The Note of Life: Williams's 'The Orchestra'," I found myself describing my experiences of pictures of nature while reading William Carlos Williams's poem "The Orchestra." I "painted" these fleeting pictures and described This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Staffroom the Interchange 465 feelings that seemed to lead me t between man and nature. A parag tone," The poem first struck me as a mu sounds in my ear, I seemed to be wa spring morning. No sound from h now sitting under a giant pine tree Nature. With the sun slowly rising creek) and the clarinet (the rustl overture. Enthusiastically the violi French horn (the mumbling cow) "in (bears) got in at the wrong time. Th tinued to play. The musicians of Na "Together, unattuned," they have t along. The symphony of Nature is lik consist of random notes seeking a " life Love is that common tone shall raise his fiery head and sound his note. Again, the logical pattern of this paper, the "pictorial criticism," is illogical to Western minds but "logical" to those acquainted with yijing. (Perhaps I should not even use the words "logical" and "think" because they are so conceptually tied up with "words" and with culturally-based conceptions, and therefore very misleading if not useless in a discussion of yijing. Maybe I should simply say that yijing is neither illogical nor logical, but alogical.) I am not saying that such a pattern of "alogical" thinking is wrong-in fact some English instructors find it interesting and acceptable-but it is very non-Western. Since I was in this country to learn the English language and English literature, I had to abandon Chinese "pictorial logic," and to learn Western "verbal logic." If I Had to Start Again The change is profound: through my understanding of new meanings of words like "individualism," "idealism," and "I," I began to accept the underlying concepts and values of American writing, and by learning to use "topic sentences" I began to accept a new logic. Thus, when I write papers in English, I am able to obey all the general rules of English composition. In doing this I feel that I am writing through, with, and because of a new identity. I welcome the change, for it has added a new dimension to me and to my view of the world. I am not saying that I have entirely lost my Chinese identity. In fact I feel that I will never lose it. Any time I write in Chinese, I resume my old identity, and obey the rules of Chinese composition such as "Make the T modest," and "Beat around the bush before attacking the central topic." It is necessary for me to have such a Chinese identity in order to write authentic Chinese. (I have seen people who, after learning to write in English, use English logic and sentence patterning to write Chinese. They produce very awkward Chinese texts.) But when I write in English, I imagine myself slipping into a new "skin," and I let the "I" behave much more aggressively and knock the topic right on the head. Being conscious of these different identities has helped me to reconcile different systems of values and logic, and has played a pivotal role in my learning to compose in English. This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 466 College Composition and Communication 40 (December 1989) Looking back, I realize that the process of learning to write in English is in fact a process of creating and defining a new identity and balancing it with the old identity. The process of learning English composition would have been easier if I had realized this earlier and consciously sought to compare the two different identities required by the two writing systems from two different cultures. It is fine and perhaps even neces- sary for American composition teachers to teach about topic sentences, paragraphs, the use of punctuation, documentation, and so on, but can anyone design exercises sensitive to the ideological and logical differences that students like me experienceand design them so they can be introduced at an early stage of an English composition class? As I pointed out earlier, the traditional advice "Just be yourself" is not clear and helpful to students from Korea, China, Vietnam, or India. From "Be yourself" we are likely to hear either "Forget your cultural habit of writing" or "Write as you would write in your own language." But neither of the two is what the instructor meant or what we want to do. It would be helpful if he or she pointed out the different cultural/ideological connotations of the word "I," the connotations that exist in a group-centered culture and an individual-centered culture. To sharpen the contrast, it might be useful to design papers on topics like "The Individual vs. The Group: China vs. America" or "Different 'I's' in Different Cultures." Carolyn Matalene mentioned in her article (789) an incident concerning American businessmen who presented their Chinese hosts with gifts of cheddar cheese, not knowing that the Chinese generally do not like cheese. Liking cheddar cheese may not be essential to writing English prose, but being truly accustomed to the social norms that stand behind ideas such as the English "I" and the logical pattern of English composition-call it "compositional cheddar cheese"-is essential to writing in English. Matalene does not provide an "elixir" to help her Chinese students like English "compositional cheese," but rather recommends, as do I, that composition teachers not be afraid to give foreign students English "cheese," but to make sure to hand it out slowly, sympathetically, and fully realizing that it tastes very peculiar in the mouths of those used to a very different cuisine. On Stories and Scholarship Richard J. Murphy, Jr., Radford University In The Making of Knowledge in Composition (Boynton/Cook, 1987), Stephen North claims that we need to give credit again to a kind of knowledge that has in recent years been deprecated. According to North, this knowledge-what he calls "lore"has a profound influence on all of us involved in composition studies. It is practitioner knowledge, the knowledge of teachers. Teachers need to defend it, and themselves, North says, "to argue for the value of what they know, and how they come to know it" (55). This is the task I want to work toward here. These are notes toward a re-evaluation of teacher knowledge and of what I think is the most important form in which that knowledge is represented-stories. Making Autobiography Barbara Hardy says that human beings cannot keep from telling stories. Sleeping and waking we tell ourselves and each other the stories of our days: "We mingle truths and falsehoods, not always quite knowing where one blends into the other. As we sleep we dream dreams from which we wake to remember, half-remember and almost This content downloaded from 131.247.202.64 on Tue, 20 Jun 2017 16:59:12 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
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