On Canagarajah's "Critical Academic Writing and Multilingual Students"

Academic writing is all but one component of the academic literacies that need to be developed in higher education. Canagarajah (2002), in analyzing what critical academic writing means in relation to multilingual students, gives a wider perspective if not a redefinition of the multilingual student. The latter is not only seen as being competent in navigating two or more languages and hence studies English as a second, foreign or fourth language; but between two varieties of English, such as Black vernacular or any other form of “nativized” English in British former colonies such as Pakistani English, and standard Anglo-American English. The same definition applies to any student who comes from a cultural capital (Bourdieu) that is not compatible with that promoted by school or education in general. So, I believe that Canagarajah’s reconceptualization of the multilingual student in this sense is more comprehensive and inclusive. As composition teachers or second language writing teachers, we need to take this redefinition into consideration; otherwise we may run the risk of promoting some sort of “linguicism” in our classroom.

Taking such a perspective in teaching critical writing enables us to reconsider our attitude towards linguistic difference. According to Canagarajah, in ESOL history there has been a shift from “difference-as-deficit” to “difference-as-estrangement” to, nowadays, “difference-as-resource”. However, unfortunately not all teachers or teacher/scholars have been receptive of the latter development. I’m really concerned about how such teachers will be dealing with ESL students in their classrooms. If one has been exposed to all this literature and is unable to transform his/her pedagogy, or at least to challenge it, and try to use alternative pedagogies so as to be fair to the “multilingual” students that are present in the classroom, then such a teacher is unable to practice critical teaching and will be unable to accompany students to compose critically.

It is legitimate for “multilingual” students to use their linguistic and cultural capital (Bourdieu) to develop their academic literacies, and it is the teacher’s duty “to take the students’ own explanations and orientations into account, situated in their own cultural and linguistic traditions” (Canagarajah, 2002, p. 13). I further believe that this applies not only to multilingual students but to all students because each student brings with her particular lived experiences and background that should not be traded against the requirements of academic lieteracies, but rather renegotiated in a new discourse that the student will ultimately appropriate. This way, the student will be empowered by having the opportunity to reconstruct her reality by resisting “the normalizing gaze” and the “normative discourse” (Foucault) imposed so far not only in ESOL but in any other discipline. This is the negotiation model that Canagarajah calls for. Pennycook (2007, p. 5) in his studies found that in many Expanding countries, English is seen “in terms of new forms of resistance, change, appropriation and identity”. Similarly, Canagarajah (1999) has shown how Sri Lankan teachers and students maintain their own identities in their own “private sites of learning”, and thus, facing what he called “linguistic and cultural imperialism”. His (2006) study demonstrated, in the same line of thought, many ways whereby the local values and identities are negotiated and represented in oral, written, and digital communication in English in Sri Lanka. Additionally, Ahmar (2009) explored the way English language is used in Pakistan, and showed that despite being the language of the former colonizer, “the English language in Pakistan represents Islamic values and embodies South Asian Islamic sensitivities….[and that] there has been some success in expressing resistance to colonial discourses through Pakistani English”(Ahmar, 2009, p. 188).

To end with, I think that as composition or second language writing teachers, if we are to teach critical academic writing to our students, we need to be critical, open to change, and ready to challenge our pre-existing beliefs and assumptions as to what critical academic writing is as a subcomponent of academic literacies.