In her chapter "Putting One's Business on Front Street," Barbara Monroe discusses a certain group of Detroit high school students and their interactions with tutors from the University of Michigan during the 1990s. Through the project's span, interesting data and observations regarding the relationships of the students, tutors, and educators.
One fascinating--and understandable relationship-- was that of sexual identity and the gender relationships' effect on written communication. In particular, I found it interesting that the tutor-student relationships between females often included personal notes, or borderline "secrets" that are channels for female friendship (Monroe 48). While the male tutor-female student partnerships were the most professional and productive, the female tutor-male student dyads were the least productive. There are many social implications in the noticeable effects of this relationship; for example, there may tension between an older man and a younger woman due to the ages of each and the historical implications of marriage of older men to young women. It may be difficult to establish long-term, close relationships where personal information is shared due to legal precedence, or a least a perception of what may be seen as "wrong." As for the female tutor-male student dyads, it does not surprise me that they were less productive; however, I imagine that their relationship was more personal than the male-female pairs as there is less of a social stigma or likelihood of misinterpretation of their relationship. Personally, I have found a slight difference between females and males with my work in the Writing Center. Female students appear to be more comfortable when sitting down with me for a tutorial than males; perhaps this is due to similar communication styles between women or due to my ostensible authority over them or their work where males may feel defensive. Or, perhaps, this is merely an attempt to find similar relationships in Monroe's project within my own experiences.
Another fascinating aspect to the tutor-student relationship was the conscious and unconscious attempts to break stereotypes, from tutors de-emphasizing their "richness" and students' attempts to show their success in school through GPA (Monroe 46-47). In order to establish a relationship, many of the participants actively bring themselves out of their stereotyped role; often, however, unconscious comments sometimes show more than intended. However, the relationships broke stereotypes simply through communication; the two groups would not have likely worked together without the help of the project. In and of itself, the unconscious elements of the relationships and work established through the project did more to break stereotypes than the conscious, planned attempts.
Lastly, the relationship between Standard American English (SAE) and African American English (AAE), as well as the written Edited American English (EAE) show the importance of code-switching and style-switching within the students' oral and written practices. The students clearly knew when to use each according to what was appropriate for each situation and to whom the student was speaking. Style-switching seemed to be necessary for students' reputation in social circles, while code-switching was necessary for school, church, or professional situations. How each student spoke--or wrote--was directly associated to their audience, demonstrating awareness of their surroundings and importance of conveying a message.
Works Cited
Gee, James. "Tools of Inquiry and Discourses." Ch. 3. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. 20-35.
Monroe, Barbara. "Putting One's Business on Front Street." Ch. 2 in Crossing the Digital Divide, pp. 31-69.
I too have found that there are significant differences between tutorials in the Writing Center with men and with women, though I'm obviously coming from a somewhat different perspective. I think the most important difference is how much style- and code-switching I do in these gendered differences; I've found that with WMC or WWC men, shifting into a more colloquial or working class dialect improves the outcome of the tutorial, whereas with women a more AAE dialect (albeit with a bit more humor, indirect language, and use of hedge-words, denoting a bit more feminine intimacy) tends to produce better tutorials. Howevever, I often jump into a more strict and direct AAE dialect with ELL students who express a struggle with EAE.
ReplyDeleteJust thought these might be some examples for you to think about in your next tutorial in the WC...once you start noticing them, you won't be able to stop :D