Cultural Divide A Study of African-American College-Level Writers

African-American students who speak Black English vernacular and who have ties to the vernacular rhetorical traditions face unique problems in accommodating the language of academe. Through rhetorical criticism of selected spoken and written texts of successful African-American students, Valerie Balester has made a first step toward a rhetorical focus. In Cultural Divideher analysis of eight African-American students' writing and speaking considers both their linguistic and rhetorical traditions, their situation as minority students in a large university, and their relationship to the researcher. Balester has learned much about these students' attitudes toward their own language and what they perceive as the language of academe. The students clearly use language to create or maintain identification with particular roles and they display the obvious pressure of young people who feel they must represent their race.Balester, Valerie is the author of 'Cultural Divide A Study of African-American College-Level Writers' with ISBN 9780867093254 and ISBN 0867093250.