Abstract

Through a collage of storied vignettes written by Morgan– a pansexual Lumbee tutor– and Elise – a white, bisexual writing center director– we discuss the implications of enacting linguistic justice through code meshing in the writing center. Specifically, this article discusses the racial, political and cultural complexities of enacting linguistic justice in the writing center and the lived experience of a Lumbee tutor code meshing and “value meshing” her way through writing center sessions. Using the term “value meshing,” we describe the emotional labor of contending with complex histories of race, culture, discrimination, institutional and internalized racism when code meshing as writing center professionals. From both the perspectives of administrator and tutor, we argue the term “value meshing” can serve as shorthand for the complex emotional burden of consistently negotiating our language, our identities, and our sometimes conflicting cultural values, especially in collaborative settings like the writing center. We call for writing center professionals to carefully attend to the emotional burden of tutors of color as they enact linguistic justice through code- and value-meshing. Keywords : Linguistic justice, Lumbee English, antiracism, code-meshing, value-meshing, linguistic diversity, wellness, White Mainstream English At the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (UNCP) Writing Center, Morgan’s laugh can be heard all the way down the hall. It echoes into the writing center director, Elise’s (Dr. Dixon’s) office. Some days, upwards of seven tutors will squeeze into Elise’s tiny office to chat, and our collective laughter cascades down the hallways of the building. These things didn’t start until Morgan became a tutor. While she was still in Elise’s writing center tutor training course and even after she began as a writing center tutor, Morgan would pop into Elise’s office for consulting advice, then to share stories about life. Elise noticed that this composed and quiet student’s language was changing in the process: her voice was deeper, her laugh louder and more at ease. She called most of the tutors “baby” and sent the g’s at the ends of her -ing words runnin’. Like all the tutors, Morgan had been trained by Elise that the writing center valued all languages and dialects, and that home languages are welcomed and delighted in at the writing center. Morgan’s comfort in sharing her home dialect was linguistic justice at work. Along with her fellow tutors, she had been trained by Elise to reorient her relationship to White Mainstream English (WME), to see language and dialects as morally neutral while recognizing that certain dialects had been devalued because of their connections to specific regions, cultures, races, and classes, and therefore to the prejudices to which they had been attached. In class, Elise had taught Morgan about code meshing and code switching (Delpit, 1995; Smitherman, 1986; Young, 2010), linguistic justice (Baker-Bell, 2020; Kynard, 2013), students rights to their own language (CCCC Language Statement Committee, 1974), as well as the implications for identity’s connection to language in the writing center (Condon, 2012; Denny, 2010; Dixon, 2017; Faison & Condon, 2022;  Faison & Trevino, 2017; Green, 2016). Most importantly, Morgan had come to understand that her language–however she chose to share it–was valued and valuable to her writing and her work as a tutor, so she spoke and wrote in ways that felt most authentic to her, free of the fear of judgment. A couple years into her career as a tutor for the center, and as Elise and Morgan’s friendship had deepened, Elise told Morgan, “I can tell when you’re comfortable in a situation because you start speaking Lumbee English more.” Morgan laughed, and then immediately spoke in White Mainstream English (WME): “I guess I do speak differently depending on my comfort level.” Elise noticed that her comment had shifted Morgan’s entire demeanor. Her shift into WME signified her discomfort at a white woman’s recognition of her language, culture, and identity. Despite our closeness, our identities and their histories weighed heavily on the observation. This story is one of many we aim to tell about the complexity of enacting linguistic justice in a writing center. More specifically, at the University of the North Carolina at Pembroke–a minority-serving institution (MSI), and historically American Indian university in the American South–language is rooted in very specific and complex histories of racism and white supremacy. UNCP was founded by Lumbee tribal members with the intention to train Native American public school teachers (UNCP, 2023). Many Lumbees speak Lumbee English, a dialect spoken by their descendents for generations. While Lumbee English can be heard in the halls and classrooms of UNCP, the widely accepted view amongst Lumbees (one also reinforced by most UNCP faculty) is that Lumbee English should not be used in academic writing. Despite being a dominant dialect at UNCP, the case for why Lumbee English remains subjugated lies between the realms of the Lumbee community, already socially and culturally nuanced, and the institution of UNCP as a model of Native excellence, perseverance, and resilience yet also a perpetrator of whiteness through institutional modeling and a majority white faculty. Despite being situated in the heart of Lumbee country (Pembroke, NC), where Lumbees live as the majority race, UNCP itself hosts a diverse faculty, staff, and student body that displaces Lumbees to a minority racial group (in their own college). Lumbee people, then, traverse complex terrain in which the foundational pride of community, identity, and language are present but are still often required to warp themselves into more approachable, digestible pillars of intelligence and validity by showcasing a written capability to conform and perform in WME. Navigating these linguistic complications is not unlike the connections Green (2016) draws between Dubois’ “double consciousness,” Smitherman’s “linguistic push-and-pull” and Green’s own conception of a triple consciousness, or, later, like a linguistic graft versus host disease wherein her home language is suppressed and transplanted with other languages that all fight to persist within her (pp. 75-76). Culture, language, race, and power consistently intermingle to create precarious and sometimes impossible circumstances in which minoritized people are forced to deny parts of themselves in order to foreground others, and vice versa. Thus, in this article, we discuss the racial, political and cultural assumptions existing between the lines of linguistic justice in the writing center and the lived experience of a Lumbee tutor code meshing and “value meshing” her way through writing center sessions. In Linguistic Justice, Baker-Bell (2020) calls for frameworks that interrogate and examine the specific linguistic oppressions experienced by linguistically marginalized communities of color and account for the critical distinctions between their linguistic histories, heritages, experiences, circumstances, and relationships to white supremacy. (p. 18) Drawing from Morgan’s personal stories about her experiences as a Lumbee tutor in the writing center, we aim to provide a framework for considering the emotional complexity felt by linguistically marginalized tutors of color in the writing center. Using the term “value meshing,” we describe the emotional labor of contending with our relationships to complex histories of race, culture, discrimination, and institutional and internalized racism when code meshing as writing center professionals. We cannot code mesh without value meshing, and making visible the emotional labor of value meshing importantly highlights just how difficult and emotionally fraught linguistic justice work in the writing center can be. We present the concept and term “value meshing” as a tool with which to use as a shorthand for the complex emotional burden of consistently negotiating our language, our identities, and our sometimes conflicting cultural values, especially in collaborative settings like the writing center. As a term, value meshing serves to make more visible the entanglement of language, race, class, and culture when we code mesh, and more broadly, when we engage in and advocate for linguistic justice, especially in a writing center setting. Value meshing, then, helps us read “between the lines” of what occurs when tutors of color enact linguistic justice through code meshing.