Asao B. Inoue's Infrequent Words

Entry 32 Let’s return to the CCSS, and drill down a level to the grade-specific standards that the anchor standard L.11-12.1 (from post 30 ) is translated into. Through the details, we might see ways to teach through such outcomes that may be demanded of literacy teachers at both the secondary and postsecondary levels. Many of us teachers are required to use such universal standards or outcomes. The grade-level standards L.11-12.1.A and L.11-12.1.B are articulated for only eleventh and twelfth grades. And they are the more specific outcomes for classrooms. According to these two standards, eleventh and twelfth grade students should be able to do the following: “Apply the understanding that usage is a matter of convention, can change over time, and is sometimes contested” (L.11-12.1.A); and “Resolve issues of complex or contested usage, consulting references (e.g., Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage , Garner's Modern American Usage ) as needed” (L.11-12.1.B).  Standa...

Entry 28 To really understand what White language supremacy is exactly, and how we might decenter and counter it in our classrooms, we have to understand what the habits of White language, or HOWL, are. Their use and circulation is an important aspect of White language supremacy. HOWL can be used as a heuristic to help students identify these habits and critique them as they decide what they wish to take on as their own habits of language.  All people have habits of language, ways of seeing, saying, and judging things, ideas, and other people. These habits afford our ways with words. They also, when understood from a thirty thousand foot view, constitute the dominant rhetorical moves that are considered appropriate or preferred in any given context. That is, when we pan back and look at the long view of history and the wide view of who controls language practices in schools, universities, professions, and disciplines, this long and wide view of language habits reveals that elite, W...