Language Diversity and Academic Writing encourages students to understand the diversity within their own and others' language and apply that knowledge to their academic writing. Readings by linguists, journalists, novelists, educators, writing researchers, and student writers explore a range of questions about language and writing: How does language reflect and construct our identities and influence how we are perceived by others? How do the features and rules of language and writing change over time and across situations? How do we position ourselves as writers in academic contexts and beyond? Questions and assignments for each selection provide a range of activities for students, and the website for the Spotlight series (macmillanlearning.com/spotlight) offers comprehensive instructor support with sample syllabi and additional teaching resources.



The Bedford Spotlight Reader Series is an exciting line of single-theme readers, each featuring Bedford’s trademark care and quality. An Editorial Board of more than a dozen compositionists at schools focusing on specific themes assists in the development of the series. The readers in the series collect thoughtfully chosen readings sufficient for an entire writing course—about 35 selections—to allow instructors to provide carefully developed, high-quality instruction at an affordable price. Bedford Spotlight Readers are designed to help students make inquiries from multiple perspectives, opening up topics such as subcultures,, music, borders, humor, monsters, happiness, money, food, sustainability, and gender to critical analysis. The readers are flexibly arranged in thematic chapters, each focusing in depth on a different facet of the central topic.

About the Bedford Spotlight Reader Series

Preface for Instructors

Contents by Discipline

Contents by Theme

Contents by Rhetorical Purpose

Introduction for Students

Chapter One: How Does Language Reflect Who We Are?

Lee Romney, Revival of Nearly Extinct Yurok Language Is a Success Story

Louise Erdrich, Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart

Amy Tan, Mother Tongue

Gloria Anzaldúa, How to Tame a Wild Tongue

Susan Tamasi and Lamont Antieau, Social Variables

Connie Eble, from Slang and Sociability: In-Group Language among College Students

H. Samy Alim, Hip Hop Nation Language

Chapter Two: How Does Language Affect How Others Perceive Us?

Marybeth Seitz-Brown, Young Women Shouldn’t Have to Talk Like Men to Be Taken Seriously

Dennis Preston, Some Plain Facts about Americans and Their Language

Cheryl J. Boucher, Georgina S. Hammock, Selina D. McLaughlin, and Kelsey N. Henry, Perceptions of Competency as a Function of Accent

Carmen Fought, Are White People Ethnic? Whiteness, Dominance, and Ethnicity

John McWhorter, Straight Talk: What Harry Reid Gets about Black English

Rusty Barrett, Rewarding Language: Language Ideology and Prescriptive Grammar

Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Intersecting Variables and Perceived Sexual Orientation in Men

Chapter Three: How Does Language Change (Whether We Like It or Not)?

Mark Peters, He Said, Sheme Said

Tom Chatfield, OMG—It’s the Textual Revolution

Naomi S. Baron, Are Digital Media Changing Language?

Douglas Quenqua, They’re, Like, Way Ahead of the Linguistic Currrrve

Edwin L. Battistella, Slang as Bad Language

Robert MacNeil, English Belongs to Everybody

Erin McKean, How Are Dictionaries Made?

Robert MacNeil and William Cran, The Language Wars

Rosina Lippi-Green, The Standard Language Myth

Chapter Four: What Do We Do When We Write?

Kevin Roozen, Writing Is a Social and Rhetorical Activity

Kevin Roozen, Writing Is Linked to Identity

Paul Kei Matsuda, Writing Involves the Negotiation of Language Differences

Peter Elbow, Speaking and Writing

Susan Wyche, Time, Tools, and Talismans

Mike Rose, Rigid Rules, Inflexible Plans, and the Stifling of Language

Carie Gauthier, Metaphors in the Writing Process of Student Writers (student essay)

Chapter Five: What Does It Mean to Write "Academically"?

Dan Berrett, Students Come to College Thinking They’ve Mastered Writing

Chris Thaiss and Terry Myers Zawacki, What Is Academic Writing? What Are Its Standards?

Susan E. Schorn, A Lot Like Us, but More So: Listening to Writing Faculty Across the Curriculum

J. Paul Johnson and Ethan Krase, Writing in the Disciplines: A Case Study of Two Writers

Paul Kei Matsuda, The Image of College Students and the Myth of Linguistic Homogeneity

Helen Fox, Worldwide Strategies for Indirection

Vershawn Ashanti Young, The Problem of Linguistic Double Consciousness

Nancy Sommers and Laura Saltz, Writing that Matters: A Paradigm Shift

Anne E. Whitney, "I Just Turned In What I Thought": Authority and Voice in Student Writing