Discourse Features of African American Students' Writings

Abstract

Research has confirmed that the communication style' of African Americans depicts an interpersonal (communal, holistic) emphasis (Cooper, 1981; Norment, 1990; Smitherman, 1977). Cooper (1981) observed that African American students tended to use the first person and we significantly more than the third person and the expression I feel significantly more than I think in written compositions they produced. Research on learning and cognitive styles also supports a holistic African American learning style. This research reflects a relational (rather than an analytical) style to be characteristic of African Americans. The relational style is defined as having a preference for a whole-to-parts order2 (rather than a parts-to-whole order) of analysis of information, a perceptual vigilance for person social cues over object cues, and a preference for contextually rich over contextually sterile abstract learning and problem-solving structures3 (cited in Bell, 1994). Writing, the written production of language, is a complex cultural linguistic process. When writers shape their discourse, they are making choices by applying certain expected sets of rhetorical, linguistical, cultural, and grammatical criteria to their writing. The attitudes a writer has acquired, consciously or unconsciously, about rhetoric, communication, written discourse, and even specific syn-