Pedagogy Jan 2025

Writing Before and Beyond Monolingualism

Megan Behrend

Abstract

Abstract If writing studies today is engaged in a project to remake composition pedagogy apart from modern language ideologies, then medieval writing reminds us that such ideologies were not always dominant. This essay asks how medieval texts, written before monolingualism became normative, might help student writers to imagine possibilities for composing beyond monolingualism. What happens when students are invited to read Dante Alighieri's defense of his Italian vernacular in book 1 of the Convivio alongside contemporary defenses of linguistic diversity more commonly taught in the first-year writing classroom? As this experiment suggests, assigning medieval texts in composition courses offers at least two advantages to student writers in support of linguistic justice and critical language awareness learning goals. For one, contradicting a modern view of translingualism as deviation from a monolingual norm, students learn that writers have had to assume language difference, rather than homogeneity, as a condition of composition for most of history. Second, the juxtaposition of medieval and contemporary, far from flattening historical difference, prompts students to think even more specifically and critically about the conditions for and consequences of translingual practices in particular times and places.

Journal
Pedagogy
Published
2025-01-01
DOI
10.1215/15314200-11463007
Open Access
Closed
Topics
first-year composition writing pedagogy multimodality translingualism

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (3)

  1. Lu et al. (2016)
    Guest Editors’ Introduction: Translingual Work
    College English
  2. Bunn (2013)
    Motivation and Connection: Teaching Reading (and Writing) in the Composition Cl…
    College Composition and Communication
  3. Horner et al. (2002)
    English Only and U.S. College Composition
    College Composition and Communication
Also cites 6 works outside this index ↓
  1. Dante Alighieri (1996)
    De vulgari eloquentia
     ↗
  2. Lippi-Green (2012)
    English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States
     ↗
  3. Mallette (2021)
    Lives of the Great Languages: Arabic and Latin in the Medieval Mediterranean
     ↗
  4. Smitherman (1998)
    Ebonics, King, and Oakland: Some Folk Don't Believe Fat Meat Is Greasy
    Journal of English Linguistics  ↗
  5. Walkowitz (2020)
    On Not Knowing: Lahiri, Tawada, Ishiguro
    New Literary History  ↗
  6. Young (2010)
    Should Writers Use They Own English?
    Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies  ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →

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