Includes bibliographical references (pages 161-168).

African-American students who speak Black English Vernacular and who have ties to the vernacular rhetorical traditions face unique problems in accommodating to the language of academe. Most of the attention of compositionists attending to these students has been focused on dialect - specifically on the rather negative phenomenon of "dialect interference," in which Black English Vernacular is said to intrude on the writer's efforts to product Standard English. Through rhetorical criticisms of selected spoken and written texts of successful African-American students, Valerie M. Balester has made a first step toward a rhetorical focus. In Cultural Divide her analysis of eight African-American students' speech and writing considers both their linguistic and rhetorical traditions, their situation as minority students in a large university, and their relationship to the researcher. Balester has learned much about these students' attitudes toward their own language and what they perceive as the language of academe. The students clearly use language to create or maintain identification with particular roles (i.e., good student, knowing peer, helpful research assistant), and the display the obvious pressure of young people who feel they must represent their race. It is also apparent that the students draw upon such African-American rhetorical strategies as "signifying," "sweet talk," and "marking" not only in their talk but also in their writing. By noting these influences, Balester offers us a new way to read the texts of African-American students, one that acknowledges the positive value of vernacular culture. Ultimately, she suggests that we should reconsider our notions of appropriate academic discourse.

Also issued online.

SACFinal081324