Scholars in the field of writing center studies have previously, and continue to, criticize writing centers for upholding unjust systems, arguing for more practical, equitable, and inclusive anti-racist pedagogies–namely through means of linguistic justice. Within this is a call for more attention to the practices of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) tutors and to Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). In this small, IRB-approved project, we interviewed three BIPOC tutors employed at an MSI and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI), exploring how these tutors conceptualize linguistic justice and how they practice it within their work at their university writing center. By listening to the experiences of these three tutors, we gained insight into the nuanced and complex ways in which their lived experiences and histories influence how they conceptualize linguistic justice, both for themselves and in their work in the writing center. Our research revealed how the multiplicity, complexity, and nuance of identity—specifically self-identification and belonging, the use of multilingualism and code-switching, and the defining of one’s authentic voice—affect how a tutor understands and performs linguistic justice. We hope that sharing these tutors’ voices will highlight a need to recognize the intersections and multiplicity of language, discourse, and identity that shapes tutors’ experiences with linguistic justice work as well as acknowledge the labor they perform when engaging in that work in the writing center.

My intent in this qualitative study was to illustrate if and how inequalities in power and authority exist in interactions between tutors and multilingual (ML) tutees set in a university writing center in a predominantly White institution (PWI). Using Fairclough’s model of critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a guide, I analyzed selected transcripts to uncover how “language shapes and positions” tutors and tutees (Fernsten 45). I propose that using CDA to examine writing center transcripts can be an effective training tool for tutors working with multilingual writers. By analyzing how their discourse choices may unintentionally bolster linguistic dominance and diminish ML students’ voices, tutors can adapt their approaches while also identifying discourse choices that lead to constructive, collaborative interactions.

Writing center antiracist and linguistic justice statements, like mission statements, articulate the values and beliefs of an organization, and can be powerful tools for social and institutional change. However, they can also be ineffectual or meaningless if their calls are not actualized or they do not have buy-in from writing center staff. This study explores the linguistic features of antiracist and linguistic justice statements posted on the websites of R1 university writing centers in the United States. Grounded in Critical Discourse Analysis, a theoretical and methodological approach which centers the political and powerful impacts of language, we analyzed the pronouns, verbs, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) language among these statements. This analysis revealed that such statements use we/our language referring to writing centers and they/them language referring to students/writers; use writing center-relevant action verbs, such as help , develop , and support ; and use modal verbs such as will, connoting future, and potentially present, actions. We also observed a discourse orientation towards DEI efforts rather than specifically centering racial justice. Taken together, these findings present a model of the linguistic choices of antiracist and linguistic justice statements which other writing center professionals could consider when writing their own statements; however, we also argue that writing center staff and researchers must be aware of the ways in which their well-intentioned language may inadvertently hedge their commitments to racial justice.

Throughout the 2010s, “success” became a common descriptor in writing centers, academic units, and student services. While the term carries connotations of professional achievement and economic improvement, it is rarely explicitly defined. This ambiguity is an example of how the interests of public institutions of postsecondary education are entangled with neoliberalism. Using a corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis approach, this essay examines uses of the ideograph “success” within an original mini-corpus comprising the webspaces of eight writing centers from one large state university system in the United States. The analysis considers how writing centers contribute to neoliberal discourses of “success” that are defined by specific political and business ideologies, reinforce white supremacist ideology, and require students, tutors, and others associated with writing centers to adopt those same perspectives.

I interviewed four current writing center tutors who self- identified as antiracist to answer the questions of: How do self-identified antiracist writing tutors at a university writing center define and practice antiracism? What factors limit these practices? After collection, I analyzed the data in three rounds, once inductively, and twice deductively, using a critical whiteness conceptual framework. Tutors suggested education on linguistic justice and code-switching, centering student voice, and disrupting power dynamics as key orientations in their self-identified antiracist practice. However, it was also found that tutors employed a White Educational Discourse throughout the interviews, often avoiding words and letting others off the hook, limiting the effectiveness of these orientations. Further, it was found that tutors often located antiracist practices in areas of the writing center ecosystem that were outside of their control, such as the purpose of the writing center. This study does not seek to criticize writing center tutors, but rather to provide insight into the effectiveness, opportunities, and limitations of antiracist praxis at writing centers. To conclude, I offer questions implicated in this study and directions for further research.

Writing center tutors strive to facilitate participation from student writers, particularly student writers who are not native speakers of the conference language. This study investigated one way that tutors might better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn at talk and thus better understand when they might make way for student writers’ active participation. This study examined four minimal responses (MRs)— mmhm , uhhuh , yeah , and ok —at the beginning of student writers’ turns at talk. It differentiated between MRs that were free standing, constituting the entire turn and suggesting passive recipiency, and MRs that were not free standing, suggesting speakership incipiency. Importantly, the study differentiated between the MRs of native English speakers (NESs) and non-native English speakers (NNES). NNESs used free-standing mmhm far more than NESs, suggesting that the NNESs may have extended the use of mmhm to a greater array of discourse contexts. NNESs used free-standing yeah far more frequently than they did non-free-standing yeah , suggesting that yeah would not have been a reliable signal for tutors that NNESs would extend their turns at talk. This study also found that both NESs and NNESs used ok to signal not only consideration of but also agreement with tutors’ evaluations or acceptance of tutors’ advice about lower-order concerns. Understanding how MRs vary from passive recipiency to speakership incipiency might help tutors better understand student writers’ intent to contribute a substantial turn and thus indicate when tutors might wait for student writers’ participation.

As more writing centers move to include synchronous chat as a writing center consultation option, writing center researchers and practitioners must continue examining the affordances and constraints of the medium. In this article, we analyze four synchronous online consultation transcripts from one writing center’s pilot program to evaluate consultation patterns and arcs, approaches to teaching and tutoring, and the role of digital language, or netspeak (Crystal 19), in tutors’ feedback. We use this preliminary analysis to argue that writing center tutors can effectively use synchronous tutoring to meet the needs of diverse student populations, but these consultations might be more effective if tutors thoughtfully utilize some of the best practices of face-to-face tutoring. One finding suggests that tutors might engage student writers in online consultations more effectively by employing soliciting and reacting techniques more often than unintentionally using directive structuring practices, which can serve to limit dialogue with student writers (Fanselow 21; Davis et al. 29). Additionally, although netspeak can potentially establish common linguistic ground with writers, tutors should be aware of the disadvantages of using an informal tone and non-academic language in chat consultations; in fact, student writers might benefit from reading tutors’ chat feedback in Edited Academic Discourse. By employing the positive elements of face-to-face consultations in chat sessions, this medium has the potential for effective tutoring in a space where many students feel most comfortable. Our analysis may serve as a heuristic for others to use in assessing chat consultations, developing tutor training, and initiating future research on this consultation option.

This pilot study details how a Practitioner Inquiry methodology was implemented as both a practice and research heuristic in our center. I explain how I draw from the foundational tenets of Practitioner Inquiry (Nordstrom) to foster collaboration among consultants and between consultants and the director in the running of our center. At the same time, I employ Practitioner Inquiry as a framework to produce Replicable, Aggregable, Data-supported (RAD) research to determine the efficacy of this approach in terms of consultant learning and their professionalization through qualitative and quantitative discourse analysis on consultants’ end-of-semester anonymous evaluations of their experiences working in the center. Recent scholarship points to the potential benefits that working in writing centers facilitates for consultants (Kail et al.), and represents our centers as pedagogical spaces that engender consultant learning and professionalization. This article furthers this work through an empirical investigation of the less examined subtopic of the director-consultant relationship in the context of the administration of the center. In addition, it acts as a case study that illustrates the efficacy of Practitioner Inquiry as a methodology for both practice and research.

Abstract This article speaks into the pervasive silence on the subject of faith in writing center and writing program work. Through revisiting Sharon Crowley’s Toward a Civil Discourse and investigating silence, we encourage “ counterfudamentalist work ”: work that counters fundamentalist methodology by inviting fundamentalists and believers and nonbelievers of different kinds into nonliteralist and open-minded ways of reading writing-centered experiences involving religious faith and secularism. The three authors of this article offer personal narratives about their own experience with faith in their centers/programs and use different theoretical perspectives to start a necessary dialogue on faith and religious experiences. By interweaving theoretical perspectives, research, and personal narratives involving our WPA work, this article argues that writing center/program administrators must do the same, and we hope to model the types of conversations we must bring into our centers.

Abstract In this article I report the results of action research focused on white writing center tutors’ attitudes toward white privilege. I studied four semesters of my tutoring internship course at a linguistically and ethnically diverse university, analyzing white tutors’ written responses and classroom discussions connected to a survey and an assigned article focused on white privilege and tutoring. The themes that emerged in tutors’ “white talk” (McIntyre) regarding initiating/assimilating students to academic discourse caused me to rethink my curriculum and make white privilege a more central part of discussions about tutoring throughout the course.

The recent call for replicable, aggregable, and data-driven (RAD) research of writing center effectiveness motivated this study. In writing centers, the primary objective is to improve writers through one-to-one conversations. Improvement in writers, defined here in terms of rhetorical awareness, has proven difficult to measure. In this article, the authors describe how they developed a scale to measure rhetorical awareness, specifically purpose, genre, and audience awareness. Using both discourse and content analyses, they applied the scale to student responses on reflection forms collected over two semesters at an HBCU to see if rhetorical awareness might be observable and measurable. Although the responses of students who visited the center more than once within six months did not show changes in their rhetorical awareness, as the authors had hoped, the results seem to reveal more about the social context than individual students, suggesting that current-traditional pedagogy persists. Aggregating data with this methodology may open new lines of inquiry for researchers of writing and allow them to track trends in discourse on writing.

Abstract In an attempt to create more meaningful and effective assessment, the Howe Writing Center at Miami University implemented a new post-consultation/exit survey. During the course of the Fall 2012 semester, over 800 students responded to the post-consultation survey. Writing center theory has documented the limitations of the post-consultation survey; however, this type of feedback still represents the best and most accessible way to assess and expand the knowledge of writing centers. This assessment project provided important feedback concerning the writing center at Miami University about student demographics that use the writing center, including academic year and classes students wanted to work on. The assessment project also contributes to writing center theory and discourse by providing a different narrative for non-native English speaking students and native English speaking students that use the writing center. The assessment challenges the view that writing from non-native English speaking students is only concerned with so-called "lower order" writing issues and writing from native English speaking students is primarily concerned with so-called "higher order" writing issues. Instead, it was found that non-native English speaking students are interested in working on many "higher order" concerns and were very similar, after sentence-level concerns, in their writing needs to native English speaking students.