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Chapter 7: Author And Workin' Languages: Chapter 7: Author And Workin' Languages

Chapter 7: Author And Workin' Languages
Chapter 7: Author And Workin' Languages
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“Chapter 7: Author And Workin' Languages”

Chapter 7: Author and Workin' Languages

University of Minnesota

Learning Objectives  

1. Define self-concept and discuss how we develop our self-concept.

2. Define self-esteem and discuss how we develop self-esteem.

3. Explain how social comparison theory and self-discrepancy theory influence self-perception.

4. Discuss how social norms, family, culture, and media influence self-perception.

5. Define self-presentation and discuss common self-presentation strategies.

Just as our perception of others affects how we communicate, so does our perception of ourselves. But what  influences our self-perception? How much of our self is a product of our own making and how much of it is  constructed based on how others react to us? How do we present ourselves to others in ways that maintain our  sense of self or challenge how others see us? We will begin to answer these questions in this section as we explore  self-concept, self-esteem, and self-presentation.  

Self-Concept  

Self-concept refers to the overall idea of who a person thinks he or she is. If I said, “Tell me who you are,” your  answers would be clues as to how you see yourself, your self-concept. Each person has an overall self-concept  that might be encapsulated in a short list of overarching characteristics that he or she finds important. But each  person’s self-concept is also influenced by context, meaning we think differently about ourselves depending on  the situation we are in. In some situations, personal characteristics, such as our abilities, personality, and other  distinguishing features, will best describe who we are. You might consider yourself laid back, traditional, funny,  open minded, or driven, or you might label yourself a leader or a thrill seeker. In other situations, our self-concept  may be tied to group or cultural membership. For example, you might consider yourself a member of the Sigma  Phi Epsilon fraternity, a Southerner, or a member of the track team.

A male-presenting runner competing in a race. The background of the picture is out of focus.

Men are more likely than women to include group memberships in their self-concept descriptions.  

Stefano Ravalli – In control – CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.  

Our self-concept is also formed through our interactions with others and their reactions to us. The concept of  the looking glass self explains that we see ourselves reflected in other people’s reactions to us and then form  our self-concept based on how we believe other people see us (Cooley, 1902). This reflective process of building  our self-concept is based on what other people have actually said, such as “You’re a good listener,” and other  people’s actions, such as coming to you for advice. These thoughts evoke emotional responses that feed into our  self-concept. For example, you may think, “I’m glad that people can count on me to listen to their problems.”  

We also develop our self-concept through comparisons to other people. Social comparison theory states that we  describe and evaluate ourselves in terms of how we compare to other people. Social comparisons are based on two  dimensions: superiority/inferiority and similarity/difference (Hargie, 2011). In terms of superiority and inferiority,  we evaluate characteristics like attractiveness, intelligence, athletic ability, and so on. For example, you may judge  yourself to be more intelligent than your brother or less athletic than your best friend, and these judgments are  incorporated into your self-concept. This process of comparison and evaluation isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but  it can have negative consequences if our reference group isn’t appropriate. Reference groups are the groups we  use for social comparison, and they typically change based on what we are evaluating. In terms of athletic ability,  many people choose unreasonable reference groups with which to engage in social comparison. If a man wants to  get into better shape and starts an exercise routine, he may be discouraged by his difficulty keeping up with the  aerobics instructor or running partner and judge himself as inferior, which could negatively affect his self-concept.  Using as a reference group people who have only recently started a fitness program but have shown progress  could help maintain a more accurate and hopefully positive self-concept.  

We also engage in social comparison based on similarity and difference. Since self-concept is context specific, similarity may be desirable in some situations and difference more desirable in others. Factors like age and  personality may influence whether or not we want to fit in or stand out. Although we compare ourselves to others  throughout our lives, adolescent and teen years usually bring new pressure to be similar to or different from  particular reference groups. Think of all the cliques in high school and how people voluntarily and involuntarily  broke off into groups based on popularity, interest, culture, or grade level. Some kids in your high school probably  wanted to fit in with and be similar to other people in the marching band but be different from the football players.  Conversely, athletes were probably more apt to compare themselves, in terms of similar athletic ability, to other  athletes rather than kids in show choir. But social comparison can be complicated by perceptual influences. As we  learned earlier, we organize information based on similarity and difference, but these patterns don’t always hold  true. Even though students involved in athletics and students involved in arts may seem very different, a dancer or  singer may also be very athletic, perhaps even more so than a member of the football team. As with other aspects  of perception, there are positive and negative consequences of social comparison.  

We generally want to know where we fall in terms of ability and performance as compared to others, but what  people do with this information and how it affects self-concept varies. Not all people feel they need to be at the  top of the list, but some won’t stop until they get the high score on the video game or set a new school record in  a track-and-field event. Some people strive to be first chair in the clarinet section of the orchestra, while another  person may be content to be second chair. The education system promotes social comparison through grades and  rewards such as honor rolls and dean’s lists. Although education and privacy laws prevent me from displaying  each student’s grade on a test or paper for the whole class to see, I do typically report the aggregate grades,  meaning the total number of As, Bs, Cs, and so on. This doesn’t violate anyone’s privacy rights, but it allows  students to see where they fell in the distribution. This type of social comparison can be used as motivation.  The student who was one of only three out of twenty-three to get a D on the exam knows that most of her  classmates are performing better than she is, which may lead her to think, “If they can do it, I can do it.” But social  comparison that isn’t reasoned can have negative effects and result in negative thoughts like “Look at how bad I  did. Man, I’m stupid!” These negative thoughts can lead to negative behaviors, because we try to maintain internal  consistency, meaning we act in ways that match up with our self-concept. So if the student begins to question her  academic abilities and then incorporates an assessment of herself as a “bad student” into her self-concept, she may  then behave in ways consistent with that, which is only going to worsen her academic performance. Additionally,  a student might be comforted to learn that he isn’t the only person who got a D and then not feel the need to try  to improve, since he has company. You can see in this example that evaluations we place on our self-concept can  lead to cycles of thinking and acting. These cycles relate to self-esteem and self-efficacy, which are components  of our self-concept.  

Self-Esteem  

Self-esteem refers to the judgments and evaluations we make about our self-concept. While self-concept is a  broad description of the self, self-esteem is a more specifically an evaluation of the self (Byrne, 1996). If I again  prompted you to “Tell me who you are,” and then asked you to evaluate (label as good/bad, positive/negative,  desirable/undesirable) each of the things you listed about yourself, I would get clues about your self-esteem. Like  self-concept, self-esteem has general and specific elements. Generally, some people are more likely to evaluate

themselves positively while others are more likely to evaluate themselves negatively (Brockner, 1988). More  specifically, our self-esteem varies across our life span and across contexts.

A young child holds a small silver and gold trophy. Their shirt is embroidered with the logo for a cricket club.

Self-esteem varies throughout our lives, but some people generally think more positively of themselves and some people think more  negatively.  

RHiNO NEAL – [trophy] – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.  

How we judge ourselves affects our communication and our behaviors, but not every negative or positive  judgment carries the same weight. The negative evaluation of a trait that isn’t very important for our self-concept  will likely not result in a loss of self-esteem. For example, I am not very good at drawing. While I appreciate  drawing as an art form, I don’t consider drawing ability to be a very big part of my self-concept. If someone  critiqued my drawing ability, my self-esteem wouldn’t take a big hit. I do consider myself a good teacher,  however, and I have spent and continue to spend considerable time and effort on improving my knowledge of  teaching and my teaching skills. If someone critiqued my teaching knowledge and/or abilities, my self-esteem would definitely be hurt. This doesn’t mean that we can’t be evaluated on something we find important. Even  though teaching is very important to my self-concept, I am regularly evaluated on it. Every semester, I am  evaluated by my students, and every year, I am evaluated by my dean, department chair, and colleagues. Most  of that feedback is in the form of constructive criticism, which can still be difficult to receive, but when taken in  the spirit of self-improvement, it is valuable and may even enhance our self-concept and self-esteem. In fact, in  professional contexts, people with higher self-esteem are more likely to work harder based on negative feedback,  are less negatively affected by work stress, are able to handle workplace conflict better, and are better able to  work independently and solve problems (Brockner, 1988). Self-esteem isn’t the only factor that contributes to our  self-concept; perceptions about our competence also play a role in developing our sense of self.  

Self-Efficacy refers to the judgments people make about their ability to perform a task within a specific context  (Bandura, 1997). As you can see in Figure 2.2 “Relationship between Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, and Self Concept”, judgments about our self-efficacy influence our self-esteem, which influences our self-concept. The  following example also illustrates these interconnections.  

Figure 2.2 Relationship between Self-Efficacy, Self-Esteem, and Self-Concept  

Three overlapping circles. The top one is orange and says Self-Concept. The bottom left is blue and says Self-Efficacy. The bottom right is green and says Self-Esteem.

Pedro did a good job on his first college speech. During a meeting with his professor, Pedro indicates that he is  confident going into the next speech and thinks he will do well. This skill-based assessment is an indication that  Pedro has a high level of self-efficacy related to public speaking. If he does well on the speech, the praise from  his classmates and professor will reinforce his self-efficacy and lead him to positively evaluate his speaking skills,  which will contribute to his self-esteem. By the end of the class, Pedro likely thinks of himself as a good public  speaker, which may then become an important part of his self-concept. Throughout these points of connection,  it’s important to remember that self-perception affects how we communicate, behave, and perceive other things.  Pedro’s increased feeling of self-efficacy may give him more confidence in his delivery, which will likely result  in positive feedback that reinforces his self-perception. He may start to perceive his professor more positively  since they share an interest in public speaking, and he may begin to notice other people’s speaking skills more during class presentations and public lectures. Over time, he may even start to think about changing his major  to communication or pursuing career options that incorporate public speaking, which would further integrate  being “a good public speaker” into his self-concept. You can hopefully see that these interconnections can create  powerful positive or negative cycles. While some of this process is under our control, much of it is also shaped by  the people in our lives.  

The verbal and nonverbal feedback we get from people affect our feelings of self-efficacy and our self-esteem.  As we saw in Pedro’s example, being given positive feedback can increase our self-efficacy, which may make  us more likely to engage in a similar task in the future (Hargie, 2011). Obviously, negative feedback can lead  to decreased self-efficacy and a declining interest in engaging with the activity again. In general, people adjust  their expectations about their abilities based on feedback they get from others. Positive feedback tends to make  people raise their expectations for themselves and negative feedback does the opposite, which ultimately affects  behaviors and creates the cycle. When feedback from others is different from how we view ourselves, additional  cycles may develop that impact self-esteem and self-concept.  

Self-discrepancy theory states that people have beliefs about and expectations for their actual and potential selves  that do not always match up with what they actually experience (Higgins, 1987). To understand this theory, we  have to understand the different “selves” that make up our self-concept, which are the actual, ideal, and ought  selves. The actual self consists of the attributes that you or someone else believes you actually possess. The ideal  self consists of the attributes that you or someone else would like you to possess. The ought self consists of the  attributes you or someone else believes you should possess.  

These different selves can conflict with each other in various combinations. Discrepancies between the actual and  ideal/ought selves can be motivating in some ways and prompt people to act for self-improvement. For example, if  your ought self should volunteer more for the local animal shelter, then your actual self may be more inclined to do  so. Discrepancies between the ideal and ought selves can be especially stressful. For example, many professional  women who are also mothers have an ideal view of self that includes professional success and advancement. They  may also have an ought self that includes a sense of duty and obligation to be a full-time mother. The actual self  may be someone who does OK at both but doesn’t quite live up to the expectations of either. These discrepancies  do not just create cognitive unease—they also lead to emotional, behavioral, and communicative changes.

A close-up view of a recycling symbol, three bent arrows. The symbol is white, and printed onto what appears to be a blue plastic bin. The symbol is heavily scuffed.

People who feel that it’s their duty to recycle but do not actually do it will likely experience a discrepancy between their actual and ought selves.  

Matt Martin – Recycle – CC BY-NC 2.0.  

When we compare the actual self to the expectations of ourselves and others, we can see particular patterns  of emotional and behavioral effects. When our actual self doesn’t match up with our own ideals of self, we  are not obtaining our own desires and hopes, which can lead to feelings of dejection including disappointment,  dissatisfaction, and frustration. For example, if your ideal self has no credit card debt and your actual self does,  you may be frustrated with your lack of financial discipline and be motivated to stick to your budget and pay off  your credit card bills.  

When our actual self doesn’t match up with other people’s ideals for us, we may not be obtaining significant  others’ desires and hopes, which can lead to feelings of dejection including shame, embarrassment, and concern  for losing the affection or approval of others. For example, if a significant other sees you as an “A” student and  you get a 2.8 GPA your first year of college, then you may be embarrassed to share your grades with that person.  

When our actual self doesn’t match up with what we think other people think we should obtain, we are not  living up to the ought self that we think others have constructed for us, which can lead to feelings of agitation,  feeling threatened, and fearing potential punishment. For example, if your parents think you should follow in their  footsteps and take over the family business, but your actual self wants to go into the military, then you may be  unsure of what to do and fear being isolated from the family.  

Finally, when our actual self doesn’t match up with what we think we should obtain, we are not meeting what we see as our duties or obligations, which can lead to feelings of agitation including guilt, weakness, and a feeling  that we have fallen short of our moral standard (Higgins, 1987). For example, if your ought self should volunteer  more for the local animal shelter, then your actual self may be more inclined to do so due to the guilt of reading  about the increasing number of animals being housed at the facility. The following is a review of the four potential  discrepancies between selves:

• Actual vs. own ideals. We have an overall feeling that we are not obtaining our desires and hopes, which leads to feelings of disappointment, dissatisfaction, and frustration.

• Actual vs. others’ ideals. We have an overall feeling that we are not obtaining significant others’ desires and hopes for us, which leads to feelings of shame and embarrassment.

• Actual vs. others’ ought. We have an overall feeling that we are not meeting what others see as our duties and obligations, which leads to feelings of agitation including fear of potential punishment.

• Actual vs. own ought. We have an overall feeling that we are not meeting our duties and obligations, which can lead to a feeling that we have fallen short of our own moral standards.

Influences on Self-Perception 

We have already learned that other people influence our self-concept and self-esteem. While interactions we have  with individuals and groups are definitely important to consider, we must also note the influence that larger, more  systemic forces have on our self-perception. Social and family influences, culture, and the media all play a role in  shaping who we think we are and how we feel about ourselves. Although these are powerful socializing forces,  there are ways to maintain some control over our self-perception.  

Social and Family Influences  

Various forces help socialize us into our respective social and cultural groups and play a powerful role in  presenting us with options about who we can be. While we may like to think that our self-perception starts with a  blank canvas, our perceptions are limited by our experiences and various social and cultural contexts.  

Parents and peers shape our self-perceptions in positive and negative ways. Feedback that we get from significant  others, which includes close family, can lead to positive views of self (Hargie, 2011). In the past few years,  however, there has been a public discussion and debate about how much positive reinforcement people should  give to others, especially children. The following questions have been raised: Do we have current and upcoming  generations that have been overpraised? Is the praise given warranted? What are the positive and negative effects  of praise? What is the end goal of the praise? Let’s briefly look at this discussion and its connection to self

perception.  

A young child in a leotard, tights, and tutu poses holding a trophy. The trophy is gold and has the figure of a ballerina on top. Some experts have warned that overpraising children can lead to distorted self-concepts.  

Rain0975 – participation award – CC BY-ND 2.0.

Whether praise is warranted or not is very subjective and specific to each person and context, but in general there  have been questions raised about the potential negative effects of too much praise. Motivation is the underlying  force that drives us to do things. Sometimes we are intrinsically motivated, meaning we want to do something  for the love of doing it or the resulting internal satisfaction. Other times we are extrinsically motivated, meaning  we do something to receive a reward or avoid punishment. If you put effort into completing a short documentary  for a class because you love filmmaking and editing, you have been largely motivated by intrinsic forces. If you  complete the documentary because you want an “A” and know that if you fail your parents will not give you  money for your spring break trip, then you are motivated by extrinsic factors. Both can, of course, effectively  motivate us. Praise is a form of extrinsic reward, and if there is an actual reward associated with the praise, like  money or special recognition, some people speculate that intrinsic motivation will suffer. But what’s so good about  intrinsic motivation? Intrinsic motivation is more substantial and long-lasting than extrinsic motivation and can  lead to the development of a work ethic and sense of pride in one’s abilities. Intrinsic motivation can move people  to accomplish great things over long periods of time and be happy despite the effort and sacrifices made. Extrinsic  motivation dies when the reward stops. Additionally, too much praise can lead people to have a misguided sense of  their abilities. College professors who are reluctant to fail students who produce failing work may be setting those  students up to be shocked when their supervisor critiques their abilities or output once they get into a professional  context (Hargie, 2011).  

There are cultural differences in the amount of praise and positive feedback that teachers and parents give their  children. For example, teachers give less positive reinforcement in Japanese and Taiwanese classrooms than do  teachers in US classrooms. Chinese and Kenyan parents do not regularly praise their children because they fear  it may make them too individualistic, rude, or arrogant (Wierzbicka, 2004). So the phenomenon of overpraising  isn’t universal, and the debate over its potential effects is not resolved.  

Research has also found that communication patterns develop between parents and children that are common  to many verbally and physically abusive relationships. Such patterns have negative effects on a child’s self efficacy and self-esteem (Morgan & Wilson, 2007). As you’ll recall from our earlier discussion, attributions are  links we make to identify the cause of a behavior. In the case of aggressive or abusive parents, they are not  as able to distinguish between mistakes and intentional behaviors, often seeing honest mistakes as intended and  reacting negatively to the child. Such parents also communicate generally negative evaluations to their child by  saying, for example, “You can’t do anything right!” or “You’re a bad girl.” When children do exhibit positive  behaviors, abusive parents are more likely to use external attributions that diminish the achievement of the child  by saying, for example, “You only won because the other team was off their game.” In general, abusive parents  have unpredictable reactions to their children’s positive and negative behavior, which creates an uncertain and  often scary climate for a child that can lead to lower self-esteem and erratic or aggressive behavior. The cycles of  praise and blame are just two examples of how the family as a socializing force can influence our self-perceptions.  Culture also influences how we see ourselves.  

Culture  

How people perceive themselves varies across cultures. For example, many cultures exhibit a phenomenon known  as the self-enhancement bias, meaning that we tend to emphasize our desirable qualities relative to other people  (Loughnan et al., 2011). But the degree to which people engage in self-enhancement varies. A review of many studies in this area found that people in Western countries such as the United States were significantly more likely  to self-enhance than people in countries such as Japan. Many scholars explain this variation using a common  measure of cultural variation that claims people in individualistic cultures are more likely to engage in competition  and openly praise accomplishments than people in collectivistic cultures. The difference in self-enhancement has  also been tied to economics, with scholars arguing that people in countries with greater income inequality are more  likely to view themselves as superior to others or want to be perceived as superior to others (even if they don’t  have economic wealth) in order to conform to the country’s values and norms. This holds true because countries  with high levels of economic inequality, like the United States, typically value competition and the right to boast  about winning or succeeding, while countries with more economic equality, like Japan, have a cultural norm of  modesty (Loughnan, 2011).  

Race also plays a role in self-perception. For example, positive self-esteem and self-efficacy tend to be higher  in African American adolescent girls than Caucasian girls (Stockton et al., 2009). In fact, more recent studies  have discounted much of the early research on race and self-esteem that purported that African Americans  of all ages have lower self-esteem than whites. Self-perception becomes more complex when we consider  biracial individuals—more specifically those born to couples comprising an African American and a white parent  (Bowles, 1993). In such cases, it is challenging for biracial individuals to embrace both of their heritages, and  social comparison becomes more difficult due to diverse and sometimes conflicting reference groups. Since  many biracial individuals identify as and are considered African American by society, living and working  within a black community can help foster more positive self-perceptions in these biracial individuals. Such  a community offers a more nurturing environment and a buffer zone from racist attitudes but simultaneously  distances biracial individuals from their white identity. Conversely, immersion into a predominantly white  community and separation from a black community can lead biracial individuals to internalize negative views  of people of color and perhaps develop a sense of inferiority. Gender intersects with culture and biracial identity  to create different experiences and challenges for biracial men and women. Biracial men have more difficulty  accepting their potential occupational limits, especially if they have white fathers, and biracial women have  difficulty accepting their black features, such as hair and facial features. All these challenges lead to a sense of  being marginalized from both ethnic groups and interfere in the development of positive self-esteem and a stable  self-concept.

A close-up view of a young, female-presenting child. The child is a person of color.

Biracial individuals may have challenges with self-perception as they try to integrate both racial identities into their self-concept.  

Javcon117* – End of Summer Innocence – CC BY-SA 2.0.  

There are some general differences in terms of gender and self-perception that relate to self-concept, self-efficacy,  and envisioning ideal selves. As with any cultural differences, these are generalizations that have been supported  by research, but they do not represent all individuals within a group. Regarding self-concept, men are more likely  to describe themselves in terms of their group membership, and women are more likely to include references to  relationships in their self-descriptions. For example, a man may note that he is a Tarheel fan, a boat enthusiast, or  a member of the Rotary Club, and a woman may note that she is a mother of two or a loyal friend.  

Regarding self-efficacy, men tend to have higher perceptions of self-efficacy than women (Hargie, 2011). In  terms of actual and ideal selves, men and women in a variety of countries both described their ideal self as more  masculine (Best & Thomas, 2004). As was noted earlier, gender differences are interesting to study but are very  often exaggerated beyond the actual variations. Socialization and internalization of societal norms for gender  differences accounts for much more of our perceived differences than do innate or natural differences between  genders. These gender norms may be explicitly stated—for example, a mother may say to her son, “Boys don’t  play with dolls”—or they may be more implicit, with girls being encouraged to pursue historically feminine  professions like teaching or nursing without others actually stating the expectation.  

Media  

The representations we see in the media affect our self-perception. The vast majority of media images include  idealized representations of attractiveness. Despite the fact that the images of people we see in glossy magazines  and on movie screens are not typically what we see when we look at the people around us in a classroom, at work, or at the grocery store, many of us continue to hold ourselves to an unrealistic standard of beauty and  attractiveness. Movies, magazines, and television shows are filled with beautiful people, and less attractive actors,  when they are present in the media, are typically portrayed as the butt of jokes, villains, or only as background  extras (Patzer, 2008). Aside from overall attractiveness, the media also offers narrow representations of acceptable  body weight.  

Researchers have found that only 12 percent of prime-time characters are overweight, which is dramatically less  than the national statistics for obesity among the actual US population (Patzer, 2008). Further, an analysis of how  weight is discussed on prime-time sitcoms found that heavier female characters were often the targets of negative  comments and jokes that audience members responded to with laughter. Conversely, positive comments about  women’s bodies were related to their thinness. In short, the heavier the character, the more negative the comments,  and the thinner the character, the more positive the comments. The same researchers analyzed sitcoms for content  regarding male characters’ weight and found that although comments regarding their weight were made, they  were fewer in number and not as negative, ultimately supporting the notion that overweight male characters are  more accepted in media than overweight female characters. Much more attention has been paid in recent years to  the potential negative effects of such narrow media representations. The following “Getting Critical” box explores  the role of media in the construction of body image.  

In terms of self-concept, media representations offer us guidance on what is acceptable or unacceptable and valued  or not valued in our society. Mediated messages, in general, reinforce cultural stereotypes related to race, gender,  age, sexual orientation, ability, and class. People from historically marginalized groups must look much harder  than those in the dominant groups to find positive representations of their identities in media. As a critical thinker,  it is important to question media messages and to examine who is included and who is excluded.  

Advertising in particular encourages people to engage in social comparison, regularly communicating to us that  we are inferior because we lack a certain product or that we need to change some aspect of our life to keep up with  and be similar to others. For example, for many years advertising targeted to women instilled in them a fear of  having a dirty house, selling them products that promised to keep their house clean, make their family happy, and  impress their friends and neighbors. Now messages tell us to fear becoming old or unattractive, selling products  to keep our skin tight and clear, which will in turn make us happy and popular.  

“Getting Critical”  

Body Image and Self-Perception  

Take a look at any magazine, television show, or movie and you will most likely see very beautiful people. When you  look around you in your daily life, there are likely not as many glamorous and gorgeous people. Scholars and media  critics have critiqued this discrepancy for decades because it has contributed to many social issues and public health  issues ranging from body dysmorphic disorder, to eating disorders, to lowered self-esteem.  

Much of the media is driven by advertising, and the business of media has been to perpetuate a “culture of lack”  (Dworkin & Wachs, 2009). This means that we are constantly told, via mediated images, that we lack something. In  short, advertisements often tell us we don’t have enough money, enough beauty, or enough material possessions. Over  the past few decades, women’s bodies in the media have gotten smaller and thinner, while men’s bodies have gotten  bigger and more muscular. At the same time, the US population has become dramatically more obese. As research  shows that men and women are becoming more and more dissatisfied with their bodies, which ultimately affects their  self-concept and self-esteem, health and beauty product lines proliferate and cosmetic surgeries and other types of

enhancements become more and more popular. From young children to older adults, people are becoming more aware  of and oftentimes unhappy with their bodies, which results in a variety of self-perception problems.  

1. How do you think the media influences your self-perception and body image?

2. Describe the typical man that is portrayed in the media. Describe the typical woman that is portrayed in the media. What impressions do these typical bodies make on others? What are the potential positive and negative effects of the way the media portrays the human body?

3. Find an example of an “atypical” body represented in the media (a magazine, TV show, or movie). Is this person presented in a positive, negative, or neutral way? Why do you think this person was chosen?

Self-Presentation  

How we perceive ourselves manifests in how we present ourselves to others. Self-presentation is the process  of strategically concealing or revealing personal information in order to influence others’ perceptions (Human et  al., 2012). We engage in this process daily and for different reasons. Although people occasionally intentionally  deceive others in the process of self-presentation, in general we try to make a good impression while still  remaining authentic. Since self-presentation helps meet our instrumental, relational, and identity needs, we stand  to lose quite a bit if we are caught intentionally misrepresenting ourselves. In May of 2012, Yahoo!’s CEO  resigned after it became known that he stated on official documents that he had two college degrees when he  actually only had one. In a similar incident, a woman who had long served as the dean of admissions for the  prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology was dismissed from her position after it was learned that she  had only attended one year of college and had falsely indicated she had a bachelor’s and master’s degree (Webber  & Korn, 2012). Such incidents clearly show that although people can get away with such false self-presentation  for a while, the eventual consequences of being found out are dire. As communicators, we sometimes engage  in more subtle forms of inauthentic self-presentation. For example, a person may state or imply that they know  more about a subject or situation than they actually do in order to seem smart or “in the loop.” During a speech,  a speaker works on a polished and competent delivery to distract from a lack of substantive content. These cases  of strategic self-presentation may not ever be found out, but communicators should still avoid them as they do not  live up to the standards of ethical communication.  

Consciously and competently engaging in self-presentation can have benefits because we can provide others  with a more positive and accurate picture of who we are. People who are skilled at impression management  are typically more engaging and confident, which allows others to pick up on more cues from which to form  impressions (Human et al., 2012). Being a skilled self-presenter draws on many of the practices used by competent  communicators, including becoming a higher self-monitor. When self-presentation skills and self-monitoring  skills combine, communicators can simultaneously monitor their own expressions, the reaction of others, and  the situational and social context (Sosik, Avolio, & Jung, 2002). Sometimes people get help with their self presentation. Although most people can’t afford or wouldn’t think of hiring an image consultant, some people  have started generously donating their self-presentation expertise to help others. Many people who have been  riding the tough job market for a year or more get discouraged and may consider giving up on their job search.

A person tying a blue patterned tie. The photograph is taken from a high angle, so we see their torso and hands, but not their head.

People who have been out of work for a while may have difficulty finding the motivation to engage in the self-presentation behaviors  needed to form favorable impressions.  

Steve Petrucelli – Interview Time! – CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.  

There are two main types of self-presentation: prosocial and self-serving (Sosik, Avolio, & Jung, 2002). Prosocial  self-presentation entails behaviors that present a person as a role model and make a person more likable and  attractive. For example, a supervisor may call on her employees to uphold high standards for business ethics,  model that behavior in her own actions, and compliment others when they exemplify those standards. Self serving self-presentation entails behaviors that present a person as highly skilled, willing to challenge others, and  someone not to be messed with. For example, a supervisor may publicly take credit for the accomplishments of  others or publicly critique an employee who failed to meet a particular standard. In summary, prosocial strategies  are aimed at benefiting others, while self-serving strategies benefit the self at the expense of others.  

In general, we strive to present a public image that matches up with our self-concept, but we can also use self presentation strategies to enhance our self-concept (Hargie, 2011). When we present ourselves in order to evoke  a positive evaluative response, we are engaging in self-enhancement. In the pursuit of self-enhancement, a person  might try to be as appealing as possible in a particular area or with a particular person to gain feedback that will  enhance one’s self-esteem. For example, a singer might train and practice for weeks before singing in front of a  well-respected vocal coach but not invest as much effort in preparing to sing in front of friends. Although positive  feedback from friends is beneficial, positive feedback from an experienced singer could enhance a person’s self concept. Self-enhancement can be productive and achieved competently, or it can be used inappropriately. Using  self-enhancement behaviors just to gain the approval of others or out of self-centeredness may lead people to  communicate in ways that are perceived as phony or overbearing and end up making an unfavorable impression  (Sosik, Avolio, & Jung, 2002).

“Getting Plugged In”  

Self-Presentation Online: Social Media, Digital Trails, and Your Reputation  

Although social networking has long been a way to keep in touch with friends and colleagues, the advent of social  media has made the process of making connections and those all-important first impressions much more complex. Just  looking at Facebook as an example, we can clearly see that the very acts of constructing a profile, posting status  updates, “liking” certain things, and sharing various information via Facebook features and apps is self-presentation  (Kim & Lee, 2011). People also form impressions based on the number of friends we have and the photos and posts that  other people tag us in. All this information floating around can be difficult to manage. So how do we manage the  impressions we make digitally given that there is a permanent record?  

Research shows that people overall engage in positive and honest self-presentation on Facebook (Kim & Lee, 2011).  Since people know how visible the information they post is, they may choose to only reveal things they think will form  favorable impressions. But the mediated nature of Facebook also leads some people to disclose more personal  information than they might otherwise in such a public or semipublic forum. These hyperpersonal disclosures run the  risk of forming negative impressions based on who sees them. In general, the ease of digital communication, not just on  Facebook, has presented new challenges for our self-control and information management. Sending someone a sexually  provocative image used to take some effort before the age of digital cameras, but now “sexting” an explicit photo only  takes a few seconds. So people who would have likely not engaged in such behavior before are more tempted to now,  and it is the desire to present oneself as desirable or cool that leads people to send photos they may later regret  (DiBlasio, 2012). In fact, new technology in the form of apps is trying to give people a little more control over the  exchange of digital information. An iPhone app called “Snapchat” allows users to send photos that will only be visible  for a few seconds. Although this isn’t a guaranteed safety net, the demand for such apps is increasing, which illustrates  the point that we all now leave digital trails of information that can be useful in terms of our self-presentation but can  also create new challenges in terms of managing the information floating around from which others may form  impressions of us.  

1. What impressions do you want people to form of you based on the information they can see on your Facebook page?

2. Have you ever used social media or the Internet to do “research” on a person? What things would you find favorable and unfavorable?

3. Do you have any guidelines you follow regarding what information about yourself you will put online or not? If so, what are they? If not, why?

Key Takeaways  

• Our self-concept is the overall idea of who we think we are. It is developed through our interactions with others and through social comparison that allows us to compare our beliefs and behaviors to others.

• Our self-esteem is based on the evaluations and judgments we make about various characteristics of our self-concept. It is developed through an assessment and evaluation of our various skills and abilities, known as self-efficacy, and through a comparison and evaluation of who we are, who we would like to be, and who we should be (self-discrepancy theory).

• Social comparison theory and self-discrepancy theory affect our self-concept and self-esteem because through comparison with others and comparison of our actual, ideal, and ought selves we make judgments about who we are and our self-worth. These judgments then affect how we communicate and behave.

• Socializing forces like family, culture, and media affect our self-perception because they give us feedback on who we are. This feedback can be evaluated positively or negatively and can lead to positive or negative

patterns that influence our self-perception and then our communication.  

• Self-presentation refers to the process of strategically concealing and/or revealing personal information in order to influence others’ perceptions. Prosocial self-presentation is intended to benefit others and self serving self-presentation is intended to benefit the self at the expense of others. People also engage in self enhancement, which is a self-presentation strategy by which people intentionally seek out positive evaluations.

Exercises  

1. Make a list of characteristics that describe who you are (your self-concept). After looking at the list, see if you can come up with a few words that summarize the list to narrow in on the key features of your self concept. Go back over the first list and evaluate each characteristic, for example noting whether it is something you do well/poorly, something that is good/bad, positive/negative, desirable/undesirable. Is the overall list more positive or more negative? After doing these exercises, what have you learned about your self-concept and self-esteem?

2. Discuss at least one time in which you had a discrepancy or tension between two of the three selves described by self-discrepancy theory (the actual, ideal, and ought selves). What effect did this discrepancy have on your self-concept and/or self-esteem?

3. Take one of the socializing forces discussed (family, culture, or media) and identify at least one positive and one negative influence that it/they have had on your self-concept and/or self-esteem.

4. Getting integrated: Discuss some ways that you might strategically engage in self-presentation to influence the impressions of others in an academic, a professional, a personal, and a civic context.

References  

Bandura, A., Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (New York, NY: W. H. Freeman, 1997).  

Best, D. L. and Jennifer J. Thomas, “Cultural Diversity and Cross-Cultural Perspectives,” in The Psychology of  Gender, 2nd ed., eds. Alice H. Eagly, Anne E. Beall, and Robert J. Sternberg (New York, NY: Guilford Press,  2004), 296–327.  

Bowles, D. D., “Biracial Identity: Children Born to African-American and White Couples,” Clinical Social Work  Journal 21, no. 4 (1993): 418–22.  

Brockner, J., Self-Esteem at Work (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988), 11.  

Byrne, B. M., Measuring Self-Concept across the Life Span: Issues and Instrumentation (Washington, DC:  American Psychological Association, 1996), 5.  

Cooley, C., Human Nature and the Social Order (New York, NY: Scribner, 1902).  

DiBlasio, N., “Demand for Photo-Erasing iPhone App Heats up Sexting Debate,” USA Today, May 7, 2012, accessed June 6, 2012, http://content.usatoday.com/communities/ondeadline/post/2012/05/demand-for-photo erasing-iphone-app-heats-up-sexting-debate/1.  

Dworkin, S. L. and Faye Linda Wachs, Body Panic (New York, NY: New York University Press, 2009), 2.  Hargie, O., Skilled Interpersonal Interaction: Research, Theory, and Practice (London: Routledge, 2011), 261.  

Higgins, E. T., “Self-Discrepancy: A Theory Relating Self and Affect,” Psychological Review 94, no. 3 (1987):  320–21.  

Human, L. J., et al., “Your Best Self Helps Reveal Your True Self: Positive Self-Presentation Leads to More  Accurate Personality Impressions,” Social Psychological and Personality Sciences 3, no. 1 (2012): 23.  

Kim, J. and Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee, “The Facebook Paths to Happiness: Effects of the Number of Facebook  Friends and Self-Presentation on Subjective Well-Being,” Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 14,  no. 6 (2011): 360.  

Loughnan, S., et al., “Economic Inequality Is Linked to Biased Self-Perception,” Psychological Science 22, no.  10 (2011): 1254.  

Morgan, W. and Steven R. Wilson, “Explaining Child Abuse as a Lack of Safe Ground,” in The Dark Side of  Interpersonal Communication, eds. Brian H. Spitzberg and William R. Cupach (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum  Associates, 2007), 341.  

Patzer, G. L., Looks: Why They Matter More than You Ever Imagined (New York, NY: AMACOM, 2008), 147.  

Sosik, J. J., Bruce J. Avolio, and Dong I. Jung, “Beneath the Mask: Examining the Relationship of Self Presentation Attributes and Impression Management to Charismatic Leadership,” The Leadership Quarterly 13  (2002): 217.  

Stockton, M. B., et al., “Self-Perception and Body Image Associations with Body Mass Index among 8–10-Year Old African American Girls,” Journal of Pediatric Psychology 34, no. 10 (2009): 1144.  

Webber, L., and Melissa Korn, “Yahoo’s CEO among Many Notable Resume Flaps,” Wall Street Journal Blogs,  May 7, 2012, accessed June 9, 2012, http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/05/07/yahoos-ceo-among-many-notable resume-flaps.  

Wierzbicka, A., “The English Expressions Good Boy and Good Girl and Cultural Models of Child Rearing,”  Culture and Psychology 10, no. 3 (2004): 251–78.

Workin' Languages:  Who we are Matters in our Writing

Sara P. Alvarez, Amy J. Wan, and Eunjeong Lee

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Overview

The steady increase of movements of people around the world has transformed the face, potential, and expectations of the US writing classroom.* These intersecting shifts have also contributed to critical discussions about  how writing educators should integrate students’ linguistic diversity and  ways of knowing into literacy instruction. This chapter’s central premise is  to share with students how the work that they already do with languages  has great value. Specifically, the chapter introduces terms, concepts, and  strategies to support students in identifying how their own multilingual  workin’ of languages contribute to the making of academic writing. Our  goal is to support students in recognizing the value of their own language  practices and to provide strategies that students can use to rethink their  own relationships with writing. Orienting practices around translingual ism and envisioning students’ language work as that of “language architects” creates opportunities to uplift, value, and sustain students’ rich  language practices, as well as ways to critically understand their academic  writing experiences.  

When you think about writing for school, you’re probably imagining composing “formal/academic writing” where you are trying to make yourself sound like an expert, putting on an  objective “academic” tone that can often feel far removed from your own  voice. You might have the experience of “cleaning up” your voice to make  yourself sound “appropriate,” aware that people who read your writing might make assumptions about how much you know based on what words  you use. Because you often move in and out of different languages (beyond  English) or lingos—how you communicate with your best friend vs. how  you communicate with your coworker at the local electronics store, for  instance—you might be trying to filter out variations of your voice for  those different ways of communicating. Doing this work, essentially trying to silence your voice, can be exhausting. And honestly, this reduction  of your voice can make writing feel difficult, irrelevant, and monotone  (aka boring).

The three of us, too, have wrestled with questions like, “How do I bring  my own voice into academic writing,” and “How does who I am matter  in my writing?” Over the years, we have developed a number of writing  strategies and approaches that help us shift away from our own self-doubts  and writing hurdles. What if you didn’t have to turn off who you are when  you’re writing? What if we shared with you that the different ways you use  languages in your everyday life can fortify your writing as you design your  academic voice? As we show in this essay, we have gained critical practices  to embrace all of our languages as part of who we are, shifting our writing  from what’s “appropriate” or “standard” to thinking of our language vision,  playfulness, and voice as part of what it means to be a language architect.

Architects, as Professor of Education Dr. Nelson Flores describes, make  critical design choices to capture their own unique vision. Dr. Flores ex plains that as designers of meaning, language architects carefully consider  how to work with their own languages and voice for the most successful  communication in a specific situation (25). In other words, how you speak,  act, and negotiate language in uneven power contexts is your working as a  language architect. As Dr. Gwendolyn Pough, Professor of Women’s and  Gender Studies and Dean’s Professor of the Humanities, argues about our  language and writing, “we all do language. That is our greatest strength”  (303). Following Dr. Flores’s and Dr. Pough’s arguments, we pose that  in how we “do” language as language architects, we labor, exercise, and  push ideas and boundaries about writing. This is what we mean by workin’  languages.  

This chapter shares how we, as writers and scholars, and what Dr.  Ofelia García, Professor Emerita of Urban and Bilingual Education, calls  emergent and experienced bilinguals, work as language architects, and resist those critical feelings that push us to suppress our own voices. We take  a research-based stance on how power dynamics and assumptions about  language and “good writing” often reinforce the idea of a singular standard  and English language form. As we have shown in our scholarly work, such writing “standards” often reflect historical and existent prejudices and in equities in our society that racialize writers and their divergent lived experiences (Alvarez and Wan; Lee and Alvarez). If you’re reading this essay for  your writing class, your instructor likely understands this. Therefore, this  chapter is also an invitation for you, our reader, to conscientiously inquire  into the richness of your own voice in writing, and to critically uptake the  work it takes to fully capture this potential in your own writing practice.  Your disposition and attitude towards writing, as well as continuous writing practice, are part of the workin’ required to move within and against  so-called writing standards.  

We begin with a brief discussion of why who you are matters in your  writing by introducing how writing scholars have recently discussed the  way people do language on a daily basis, specifically about how our ideas  about language shape—and at times restrict—how we write in schooling  contexts. Then, we share a few strategies that can help you to more actively  bring all of your language practices and related experiences in your writing.  

Why Who You Are Matters in Your Writing

We want to start by recognizing that embracing who we are in our writing  is a journey. It takes time for each of us to feel confident that “I matter in  my writing” and comfortable with seeing ourselves as language architects.  In our K-to-Ph.D. schooling experiences, the three of us have identified a  number of situations that taught us to believe that the full extent of our  voices did not belong, matter, or “fit” in “academic or formal” writing  settings; even now, we occasionally find ourselves experimenting with new  ways of bringing our full selves into our writing. In this manner, we must  acknowledge that while schooling spaces may mean well, they often engage ineffective and harmful writing approaches that view the richness of  our language(s) as problems to “fix” (Kinloch).  

For example, as an international student of color who used to speak  English as a non-dominant language, Eunjeong felt pressured to make  herself sound less of who she is—a multilingual, transnational, and im migrant-generation scholar with ample experiences with how to work languages. Eunjeong often focused on following the “rules” of writing, mainly  “finding” lexical and syntactical “errors,” commas, and article usage. She  often sought to be read as “objective” and “neutral.” Subtracting her voice  from her own writing was not difficult for Eunjeong given the prevalent  focus on English proficiency and stigma surrounding international and  immigrant-generation students like her. To Eunjeong, this stigma and standard assumption about how to assess “good” writing is like the air we  breathe; it’s always there, and no one needs to point that out to you.  

We believe it’s not just Eunjeong who does language in this way. Our  various experiences of learning what writing is, and how we should practice it, unfortunately, have often enforced a deficit perspective. When it  comes to writing, ideas about what is “appropriate” are often at the heart of  judgments about whether writing, and by extension the author, is “good.”  These judgments also often connect to what social scientists identify as a  process of racialization, by which specific and codified racial meanings are  applied to communities of people, their languages and cultural practices.  Thus, judgments on “good” writing extend inequities and negative racial  codings in our society while suppressing our linguistic and cultural pluralism. More so, these beliefs about good “academic” writing often reinforce  so-called standard written English, a way of falsely understanding writing  in an English language as objective and monolithic.

Yes, you read this correctly: standard written English is not an objective  set of criteria. Instead, it is an ideal that centers a “norm” often conceived  as white, upper-middle class, “accentless,” and male, built from a myth  that our society needs only one language (without any form of variation)  for unity (“Talk American”). Of course, such a belief does not capture  our multilingual reality. Many of you, who communicate within families, school, work settings, and online spaces in different languages, likely  already know this and have gained great expertise on workin’ languages,  even though school and other authoritative bodies might make it seem  otherwise. And yet, the idea of standard English powerfully maintains  our unequal realities, erasing and/or exoticizing our highly multilingual  world. Dr. Flores (mentioned earlier) and Dr. Jonathan Rosa, Professor of  Linguistic Anthropology, have crucially pointed out how the idea of standardized English (both written and spoken) as the “appropriate” language  relies on the racialization of students, regardless of their actual language  use (157-158). For instance, while Princess Charlotte of Cambridge, UK,  is praised for engaging her Spanish and English bilingualism, multilingual  students, who are viewed through a racializing lens, are often told that  their bilingual practice is inadequate in academic spaces.  

The narrow understandings of what is “appropriate” and/for academic writing are ideological, that is, based on a dominant system of ideas, so  deeply rooted that they seem intangible and unquestionable— “like the air  we breathe” as Eunjeong mentions above. And while a writing class alone  can’t change existing inequalities and prejudices, it must work to highlight  how these values have been constructed, so all of us writers can conscien-tiously challenge how what is considered “good” and “clear” writing greatly depends on this dominant system of values.  

Our workin’ of language(s) then reckons with the damage brought on  by monolingual ideology. As Dr. April Baker-Bell, Associate Professor of  Language, Literacy, and English Education, rightly argues in her book on  Linguistic Justice, the judgment of Black Englishes in all their rich variant  forms as “lesser than” so-called standard English constitutes linguistic racism (16). In this manner, our way of workin’ languages—both what we see  as crucial language in our writing and how we do language as language  architects—looks toward linguistic and racial justice. What we mean by  this is that your voice and all the ways you use it—as part of who you are— makes all the difference, and therefore, should be amplified and cultivated.  

Our strong belief that who we are and how we critically use language  matters in our writing is sustained by an understanding of language identified as translingualism. An approach that resists monolingual ideology,  translingualism views our different and varied language practices as critical in inquiring, supporting, and sustaining the full range of richness in  our voices (Horner and Alvarez). Adopting translingual-oriented practices  and attitudes means we, as language architects, work to sustain cultural  and linguistic pluralism, based on language research and against linguistic  injustice. While translingualism as pedagogy should be taken up collectively—by schools and committed educators who are judging and assessing  your writing—many of your writing practices can also reflect this trans lingual orientation.  

Any time you are about to start a “new” writing assignment, you are  already equipped with ample ways of voicing and translating, with tools  and ways of knowing. Tuning into the abundance of your voice, identifying its many variations and how these plural ways of voicing work with  and for different types of audiences, is a way to continue building on your  experiences, your linguistic resources, as language architects. The more you  practice your different ways of communicating, the stronger and broader  these resources become. Being aware of the richness of your linguistic resources when you write, as well as conscientiously engaging these resources  can guide you in becoming a more effective writer, and, more importantly,  one that feels more genuine to yourself.

Tuning into Your Strengths:  

Strategies and Approaches

In this section, we offer specific ways of using our rich language practices  to understand how they might contribute to our academic writing. These  writing strategies and practices are oriented by translingualism, as they have  been designed to support you in engaging your own linguistic experiences,  positionalities, and practices at different moments of composing in a range  of writing situations (e.g., traditional alphabetic-based text, multimodal,  public writing).  

In offering these strategies, we start with a premise: as people who do  language on a daily basis in different and plural ways, we/you, writers must  work to gain confidence and a sense of pride in our own diverse multilingual practices (Lee and Alvarez). We contextualize this premise in the everyday realities of our world, where linguistic racism and linguistic injustice continue to impact our communities differently. This means that many of  us whose languages are racialized in various ways may have to work their  academic writing contexts more so, or differently.  

Cultivating Your Words  

A frequently encountered struggle we face as writers is when the “right”  words don’t come to us easily. For instance, as a college senior and a high  school English Language Arts (ELA) student-teacher, Sara recalls the experience with a writing assignment for her Secondary Education course and  facing a blank MS Word screen for what felt like a number of hours. Sara  remembers thinking, “¿Como empezar? The right words aren’t coming to  me. I don’t know what is more frustrating, that I know I have a paper  due and I can’t get it started, or that I’m actually dedicating this time to  my frustration?”

The struggle with finding the “right” words has a lot to do with how we  have been taught to censor our voices, how we extend monolingual ideology on ourselves. But one way to counter this struggle is by proceeding to write  (sketch, outline, list, draw) whatever words and ideas come to us as we  think about the task at hand. Engaging a writing assignment in this form  allows us to mess with the writing process, and to open up opportunities  for ourselves to hear the many variations of our languages. Once we have  some words, ideas, frustrations on paper, we give ourselves small writing  tasks, like “just write whatever you can or feel about X topic for 5 minutes.”  We might go back to a passage in a related reading and write about our  response. We might record ourselves talking and then write down what we find useful. The writing will sound the closest to how we sound in our  heads with multiple languages and ways of speaking—the very same way  it did for Sara in her mind. This strategy moves us toward the critical and  creative aspects that can feel liberating and purposeful about writing, moving us beyond the restrictive forces brought on by monolingual ideology.  Instead of treating writing as a technical skill that we either have or not,  we, as language architects, design ways to sustain the embodied richness  of our voices.  

Cultivating our words as language architects compels us to then go  back to what we wrote and revise, choosing and shaping what we hope for  that specific writing situation—a particular moment, task or assignment.  We revisit our writing—as a way to rethink, rewrite, and reconfigure  our ideas, but also to better understand ourselves as thinkers. Examining  how we shape our writing classifies as editing, one of the critically dynamic aspects of writing revision. Once we work our languages this way,  we can shift our attention to lower-priority concerns in writing, such as  proofreading. Proofreading refers to those revision practices that focus on  checking for lexical norms and other technicalities, such as style manuals,  use of commas, and capitalization. In this cyclical and higher-lower priority-oriented process, we are abandoning approaches to writing revision  that either look to “weed out” the difference in our language, or simply  accept such difference without critically engaging with it. So, yes, even  concerns deemed as lower priority deserve some critical inquiry. For instance, throughout the years, Sara has learned to pay closer attention to  how individuals idiosyncratically use commas as a way to express emphasis  and tonality in their writing.  

Sizing up the Situation

Sizing up the situation means tuning into what other people are saying  and how they’re saying it. It means surveying and observing the situation  as you consider how you will step in. For instance, Amy’s language choices  are still informed by a childhood moment when she felt that she could  not fully join her family’s mixed English and Cantonese conversation. We  think about these moments of trying to understand what’s expected when  we’re thinking about how to best approach a writing situation.  

To start writing this chapter, for example, one of the first things we did  was read previous contributions to Writing Spaces to get a sense of the expected tone and the structure. In reading what fellow writers had done, we  wanted to get a feel for what these sounded like and what “moves” the authors made in each piece. Several started with an anecdote, talked directly to readers, and explained a number of scholarly concepts in a straightforward way so that student writers could gain new or further familiarity with  these terms. We also noticed that there were always specific suggestions,  demonstrations, and examples. Part of doing this examination was also  imaginative—how could we contribute to an ongoing conversation and  push it forward? How different were the chapters from one another and  which could we imagine our chapter being like? But part of this was practical—how many citations were included in each chapter? How did writers  move from one idea to another? How many sections did writers use and  what was the structure like? We read like writers, as Mike Bunn explained  in an earlier volume of Writing Spaces (71-86).  

We started writing by mimicking these moves, strategizing what we  were seeing in other writings and taking on a similar tone and structure.  Sometimes, we could more actively imagine ourselves writing this chapter.  Sometimes we couldn’t. And when it seemed like we weren’t sure what to  say, we just kept writing (yes, we wrote for 30 minutes to an hour every  week), knowing that we could use each other’s and the reviewers’ feedback  to revise later. We used this process to think about the expectations of this  particular kind of writing. But for us, this strategy was a starting point for  getting words going and in tune with the tone of the task. We found that  by becoming familiar with the way the other chapters were written, we  drew on our own voices with those expectations and our hopes in mind.  

Engaging this tuning in practice is not a matter of whether you can or  “can’t” write “like that.” Tuning in is about acknowledging that you as a  writer can work to identify how your fellow writers make their moves and  how you will play yours based on that knowledge—and your own writing  purpose. Surveying the situation can then help ease your writing anxieties as you are expected to lean back and analyze the form and function of  these other texts, and how writers, like you, like us, play our cards. Sara  conceives of this practice as “tuning in without losing your rhythm; remix ing that song you like so much for your own good.”

This process might look different for you; What’s important is: 1) figuring out how you can best gain entry into the context of the situation by  sizing it up; 2) negotiating a balance between the expectations of the writing situation and your hopes for your own voice, knowledge, and authority  about what you feel is important to say about this topic.  

Building a Writing Community

As much as our writing process is about what and how to do language,  supporting ourselves throughout the process is equally important. After all, if we can’t make ourselves ‘finish’ (i.e., you have a ‘finished’ version of  your writing), all of our efforts for workin’ language won’t be made visible  to our readers. The resources to support our writing process can come in  many forms and, therefore, can help us see how we can cultivate our writing space, even when it doesn’t seem like it.

For instance, most writing assignments have their own requirements  in formatting and content/organization that we are expected to meet. For  this reason, when Sara feels that the writing isn’t coming along, and she’s  “tried all the things,” she often starts her writing process by checking on  the style and structure requirements of writing assignments. Reflecting  back on that very same Secondary Education course she took, Sara recalls  the following memory: “I have several tabs open: 1) Wikipedia page on  the school; 2) school’s official website; 3) 2 PDFs which I’ve highlighted  and read before about schooling and teaching writing in urban schools; 4)  Purdue OWL’s sample paper for MLA citation format; 5) Purdue OWL’s  guidelines for how to incorporate in-text citations. I begin with what seems  easiest, likely of less importance, but it literally sets the page. Drawing on  the sample paper from Purdue OWL and its instructions, I set up my first  page in MLA format. In front of me is the hard copy of the assignment. I  go over it, and create a “rough” outline of what I need.”

Like Sara’s example, the resources we draw on to complete a writing  assignment can be set by the teacher or other authoritative models we need  to consult (such as style guidelines), which may make us feel constrained in  tuning into our experiences, positionalities, and language practices. However, we can still center who we are in other aspects of writing by considering how resources can be channeled through the people in our daily lives.  You can design your own community of writers that can help you through  the process of cultivating your voice and purpose in writing—a friend, a  writing center tutor, a family member, someone who you trust and would  like to share your ideas with, but also who knows you well and is willing to  hear what you care about.  

When Eunjeong feels stuck in fully expressing her argument and the  connections among ideas, she often turns to her husband. More often than  not, in the process of trying to explain, Eunjeong finds a way to resolve  the connection she is trying to strengthen in her writing. But also in the  process of explaining, her partner, who grew up in a different culture, language, and geographical setting, offer a series of questions or comments:  “I saw a similar case for my cousin in [a rural town]”; “This may make  sense in Korean, but to me, not sure because…”; “Mexicans do this, and I  know my Indian friend’s family did this when I was young”; “Why would you use that word, but not X?”; “How does this relate to what you were  talking about earlier?”; “Okay, so you are trying to say Z or something  else?”; “What word would that translate to in Korean? Because in American English, I think it wouldn’t translate easily.”  

These questions often guided Eunjeong to see where in her writing she  needed to “spend more time.” Also, importantly, the people that Eunjeong  consults help her to continue writing in ways that acknowledge and amplify different values and experiences of her own and others, and ultimately  help sustain her writing. The process and actual conversations in building  your own writing community may look and sound different. But what’s  crucial is that by working our languages and ideas this way, we centralize  not only our voice but also the voices of others who we trust and who care  for/about our writing.  

Finding Your Audience  

We can center who we are in our writing not only through what we write  about and how but also in considering who we are writing for. By this, we  mean who motivates us to write, who would we want to share this piece  of writing with, and who does this writing impact the most? Throughout  our schooling, we learn to carry the assumption that we need to write  for an “academic” audience that is far removed from our upbringing and  community ways of knowing. But rarely are our families, friends, or other  community members understood as part of our audience, although they  are very the people, including ourselves, that academics learn from, and in  turn, are supposed to serve.  

What if we think of our audience beyond academics and actively write  for people who we share our lived experiences with? What if we foreground  their experiences, perspectives, and ways of using language in our writing  and start thinking about how our writing impacts ourselves and our communities? These questions likely impact not only the way we understand  what is expected of us as writers but also the way we write, including the  words we choose, the examples we draw on, and even the amount of details  necessary to explain an idea. With “academic” audiences, we often think  the expectation is to show how much we know about a particular topic,  using “scholarly” articles or other published accounts that support our argument (e.g., summarizing and interpreting a scholar’s work, using quotes  and statistics, etc.). Of course, thinking of our audience beyond academia  does not mean we won’t do any of this work. But when we see our writing  reaching beyond our classroom or university, we can approach writing in a  much more personally relevant and just way.

In our own work as educators and researchers, what motivates our research and writing are our own experiences in, with, and as a part of our  communities. And along with many of you, we often ask the following  questions to centralize our and our communities’ ways of living, knowing,  and doing language: How is the discussion in the textbook, articles, or  mainstream media relevant to ourselves and our communities? How does  what we’re reading represent our unique experiences? For instance, one  motivation for us to write this peer-reviewed chapter was that many texts  for college writers reinforce monolingual ideology and what is “appropriate,”  rather than centering the rich language practices writers, like us, like you,  already have.

Writing for our communities can also come down to how we do language in our writing to better reach our communities. This can mean  that we might have to go beyond what’s conventionally understood as an  “essay,” or even “writing.” For instance, what languages should we use to  make our writing most understood by our audience? Is our alphabetic  writing the most impactful choice? Should we include images, sound, and  colors? How can we best explain an idea? With whose words, stories, experiences, and examples, and in what language(s)?  

How you can center yourself and your community in relation to who  you’re writing for can certainly go beyond these questions. But your decision to think about your audience beyond “academia” is a way to show  that our families, friends, and people in our communities and their lives— their language and cultural practices, histories, and ways of living—and  the knowledge from their lived experiences matter. More so, it is a way to  confirm what we have learned along the way, that your voice, as connected  with that of your communities, shapes and transforms academic writing.  In this way, who we are addressing in our writing also becomes a way of  demonstrating who matters in our lived realities and experience, in our  lives, and who shapes who we are in our writing.  

Closing Thoughts

The strategies we’ve discussed here will help you turn to your own translingual-oriented practices, which are, of course, embedded in your own lived  experiences and worlds and the ways that you’re already workin’ languages.  These approaches centralize your own practices so you can continue languaging and stance-taking away from the deficit perspective in the various  writing tasks you might encounter as a student and as a writer in the world.  And importantly, translingual stance-taking and workin’ of languages is a work toward linguistic justice for all—particularly for those of us whose  languages are racialized in different ways. If the ways that we do language  cannot be equal, then as a society we must collectively work to change that.  

As you finish this chapter, we hope that you understand that self-doubt  about your writing is more often about the people reading and judging  your writing than it is about your writing practice. Instead of focusing on  what you “lack,” we encourage you to value your language and various  experiences in different languages and think of yourself as language architects (Flores), drawing from the way you work with languages in your  everyday life, in order to build writing where your full self, the strength of  your voice, and the magnitude of your languaging is present, continuously  “resistant” and amplified (Kinloch). And we hope you continue to carry  that understanding and a loving gaze on your own writing and others’.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Sara P., and Amy J. Wan. “Global Citizenship as Literacy: A Critical  Reflection for Teaching Multilingual Writers.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult  Literacy, vol. 63, no. 2, 2019, pp. 213-216.  

Baker-Bell, April. Linguistic Justice: Black Language, Literacy, Identity, and Pedagogy. Routledge, 2020.

Bunn, Mike. “How to Read like a Writer.” Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing, vol. 2, 2010. Eds. Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemiliansky. WAC  Clearinghouse. Accessed: 24 August 2020. https://writingspaces.org/bunn--how to-read-like-a-writer

Canagarajah, Suresh. Transnational Literacy Autobiographies as Translingual Writing. Routledge, 2019.

Cisneros, Sandra. “Only Daughter.” Latina: Women’s Voices from the Borderlands, edited by Lillian Castillo-Speed, Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1995,  pp. 156-60.

Flores, Nelson. “From Academic Language to Language Architecture: Challenging Raciolinguistic Ideologies in Research and Practice.” Theory into Practice,  vol. 59, no. 1, 2020, pp. 22-31.  

Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. “Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic  Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education.” Harvard Educational Review, vol. 85, no. 2, 2015, pp. 149-301.  

Frohman, Denice. Accents. YouTube, 30 Dec. 2013, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=qtOXiNx4jgQ

García, Ofelia. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Wi ley-Blackwell, 2009.  

Gonzales, Laura. Sites of Translation. University of Michigan Press, 2018.

Horner, Bruce, and Sara P. Alvarez. “Defining Translinguality.” Literacy in Composition Studies, vol.7, no. 2, 2019, pp. 1-30.  

House, Silas. Kentucky Author Silas House Reads from His New Novel, “Southernmost.” YouTube, 1 June 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_qB8OBCkrE Kinloch, Valerie. “‘You Ain’t Making Me Write’: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and Black Youth’s Performances of Resistance.” Culturally Sustaining  Pedagogies: Teaching and  Learning for Justice in a Changing World, edited by Django Paris and H. Samy  Alim, Teachers College Press, pp. 25-41.

Lee, Eunjeong, and Sara P. Alvarez. “World Englishes, Translingualism, and Racialization: The Question of Language Ownership in the US Postsecondary  Writing Classroom.” For a special issue (World Englishes and the Translingual Movement) for World Englishes, vol. 39, no. 2, pp. 263-274.  

Lyiscott, Jamila. 3 Ways to Speak English. YouTube, 19 June 2014, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=k9fmJ5xQ_mc.

Martinez, Aja Y. “A Personal Reflection on Chican@ Language and Identity  in the US-Mexico Borderlands: The English Language Hydra as Past and  Present Imperialism.” Why English? Confronting the Hydra, edited by Pauline  Bunce, Robert Phillipson, Vaughan Rapatahana, and Ruanni Tupas, Multilingual Matters, 2016, pp. 211-219.

Martínez, Tiffany. “Academia, Love Me Back.” Tiffany Martínez, 27 Oct.  2016, https://vivatiffany.wordpress.com/2016/10/27/academia-love-me-back/. Pough, Gwendolyn. “2011 CCCC Chair’s Address: It’s Bigger than Comp/Rhet:  Contested and Undisciplined.” College Composition and Communication, vol.  63, no. 2, 2011, pp. 301-313.

“Talk American.” Code-Switch from NPR, 8 August 2018, https://www.npr.org/ transcripts/636442508

Vuong, Ocean. A Life Worthy of Our Breath. Interview by Krista Tippett, 30 Apr.  2020, https://onbeing.org/programs/ocean-vuong-a-life-worthy-of-our-breath/.

Part Two: Research and Understanding
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