Rebecca Disrud
University of Washington Tacoma
The question of to what extent universities should enforce standard English conventions, if at all, is a pressing one, but the voices of students most affected by decisions either to endorse standard language ideology or to withhold instruction about codes of power are often missing from the discussion. This presentation describes how I redesigned my university’s credit-bearing, quarter-long tutor training course as an inquiry-based investigation into the evidence on language learning, code-meshing, descriptive grammar, and linguistic racism. At the end of the quarter, most students advocated for both continued instruction in standard English and for wider acceptance of language diversity.