The style of discourse underlying writing instruction in this country, which has been termed essayist literacy by Scollon and Scollon and others, is grounded historically and culturally in the development of Western civilization. This style of discourse is the register of English used in academic situations, and it also has been found to be characteristic of some educated (especially male) mainstream speakers in other contexts. Because this register often differs from the naturally acquired discourse styles of students from nonmainstream groups, many such students face difficulties in writing instruction that mainstream students do not face. Given the importance of the essayist literacy register in this society, it is important (a) to make the characteristics of this discourse style explicit in order to increase the likelihood that writing instruction will be clear and available to all students, and (b) to learn about other discourse styles that are already known and used by students from a range of communities. A conceptual framework from the ethnography of communication is presented for studying verbal performances in different cultural contexts, and two examples of persuasive oral performances from ongoing research among Mexican immigrants are analyzed within this framework.

This study investigates the relationship between the oral and written language of one college-level basic-writing student who is a speaker of Vernacular Black English. One possible explanation for basic-writing students’ difficulties in writing is that they may inappropriately use features from their oral language in their written language. We found in this study that neither VBE patterns in the student’s oral language nor other features of orality which previous research has identified primarily account for his writing problems. For other such students, future research will need to explore 1) whether or not the use of oral, or the lack of literate, features account for problems in writing, and 2) the nature of other, as yet unidentified, features of orality and literacy.