Here are the slides from my presentation on June 27 at the LPP conference at Carleton University.

Defining “Good Writing”: Attitudes and Ideology in Canadian University Language Policy

Educational language policies in higher ed (HE) such as correction keys, marking codes, grading criteria or rubrics at the course, departmental, faculty or institutional level guide the teaching and assessment of academic writing. These descriptions of what makes “good writing” on the lexical, grammatical and organizational level are not neutral, as educational language policy is a “mechanism that can turn ideology into practice or practice into ideology” (Shohamy, 2006). In many cases they embody covert attitudes and ideologies around “writtenness” (Turner, 2018) that value a specific type of academic writing: one that embodies a “smooth ride” via the elements of clarity, concision and accuracy, valued in Anglophone scientific writing since Enlightenment times.

Friction often arises when the taken-for-granted values around writing run up against writing that may differ from these norms (Turner, 2018), such as in the plurality of Englishes thriving in the linguistically-diverse setting of the contemporary Anglophone Canadian university (Preece and Marshall, 2020). Language that does not provide a “smooth ride” becomes marked; it ceases to be an invisible conduit of ideas and therefore becomes seen as a problem. Therefore, policies built on a foundation of “writtenness” and “good writing” often centre certain Englishes and English users, while marginalizing others (Hill 2011; Kubota et al., 2023).

In this session, participants will unpack the covert attitudes and ideologies that influence how we teach and evaluate academic writing in linguistically-diverse HE settings. The concept of “writtenness” and commonplace definitions of “good writing” will be unpacked. A case study drawn from a critical discourse analysis of language policy at three Canadian universities, drawing on Gee (2005) and Fairclough (2015) and the concept of “discourse-in-place” (Scollon & Scollon (2004, p. 10) will be shared. Finally, the role of HE language practitioners in implementing, appropriating and resisting policy will be discussed.