Contradictions in Peter Elbow's "Inviting the Mother Tongue"

Elbow, Peter. “Inviting the Mother Tongue: Beyond ‘Mistakes,’ ‘Bad English,’ and

     ‘Wrong Language.’” JAC: A Journal of Composition Theory 19.3 (Summer 1999):

     359-88. EBSCO. Web. 16 February 2013.

Peter Elbow’s piece suggests two courses of action in dealing with nonstandard dialects in the writing classroom: 1) For students to be invited to write in their “mother tongue” or the dialect they are most comfortable in as they compose in the writing classroom and he 2) Advocates for Standard Written English (SWE) as students move towards the final composing stage through the assistance of their instructors. He invokes scholars like Lisa Delpit, who advocates for students learning the language of power, but he suggests doing so as part of a process that allows for establishing their initial thoughts and organization in the dialect they are the most comfortable with and then helping them copy-edit to SWE for the final draft.

He cites Lippi-Green to make the point that a student’s mother tongue is a deep part of who they are and that these dialects are not broken or wrong, but notes the stigmas of these dialects by a good portion of the general public (362). He argues that SWE is no one’s mother tongue and that everyone has to learn it in order to succeed in academia. He suggests that instructors need to help nonstandard dialect speakers attain SWE in the final draft by assisting them in copy-editing.

Some of his final discussion points argue that it is not so hard to make syntax and grammar changes, but this assumes that students of different dialects and multilingual students understand their grammatical issues and know how to make these changes or can easily be taught outside of classroom hours (382). He initially empowers students to use their mother tongue, but later states that

“carelessness about surface language is not the same as carelessness about meaning, thinking, organization, and clarity” (382). Yet, students of different dialects are not “careless” about their grammar and punctuation, they have not had cultural and educational experiences that have made them literate in SWE forms of grammar and syntax.

He addresses some of the concerns other scholars might have, like the needs for students to substantially change their rhetoric and thinking in order to achieve these goals and admits that this will be especially difficult for nonstandard language speakers (373). This seems like a contradiction, as he stated earlier that all students, even standard speakers, will have to transition to copy-edit because writing and speech are different dialects, but then he says that nonstandard dialect speakers will have more work to do. If it requires certain students to do substantially more work and move away from their own rhetoric and thinking, how could it maintain an open invitation of the mother tongue?

If Elbow wants to advocate that students need to learn the language of power and prestige in order to “survive” in academia that is one thing, but to suggest they can both maintain their own mother tongue in the writing process while simultaneously requiring them to make changes to their nonstandard dialects is a direct contrast of interests.