The dilemma of the language-minority stud

If we define language fluency as more than simply a way of speaking, but also a
way of thinking, acting, and being, then we enter a conversation of language as
‘Discourse’ that was sparked by James Paul Gee. This conversation invokes discrete
designations of Discourse as home-based, school-based, dominant, and non-dominant.
These designations reveal divisions between Discourses that are believed to manifest
themselves in the identity formation of ‘language-minority students:’ those whose
home Discourse is non-dominant. The dominant Discourse that these students
encounter in school generates two documented paths: Richard Hoggart’s scholarship
boy and Herbert Kohl’s not-learner; both paths reflect the limited agency of these
students within academia. In order to counteract this delimiting of student agency, this
project proposes a progressive shift towards a post-modern conception of identity
formation; this can be accomplished by opening the Composition classroom to student authored, non-traditional, ‘hybridized’ Discourses.