Demythologizing Language Difference in the Academy by Waldo Mark;

Author:Waldo, Mark;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 335496
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group

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Workshops for Designing Assignments and Grading Writing Across the Curriculum: A Difference-Based Approach

How could English departments and the compositionists within them have developed such an edge of superiority about the teaching of writing; and why, when that superiority is challenged by a WAC process that gives responsibility for teaching writing to the disciplines, could English become vindictive and hostile?

For an explanation, I turn to Karen Horney (1970), therapist and researcher into the neurotic condition, whose chapter “Neurotic Pride” is particularly applicable. I have changed Horney’s referents from the neurotic, the person, he, his, and himself to the English department, English, it, its, and itself. Given that (and the fact that I am not taking myself too seriously), here is the Third Force explanation of the phenomenon:

Even though god-like in [its] imagination, [the English department] still lacks the earthy self-confidence of the simple shepherd… . [English] still feels at bottom unwanted, is easily hurt, and needs incessant confirmation of its value. (p. 86)

Neurotic pride … rests on the attributes which [English] arrogates to itself in [its] imagination, on all those belonging to [its] particular idealized image. Here the peculiar nature of neurotic pride comes into clear relief. [English] is not proud of [the department it] actually is. Knowing [its] wrong perspective on [itself], we are not surprised that [its] pride blots out difficulties and limitations. (p. 90)

The idealized image is a product of [English’s] imagination. But this is not something which is created overnight. Incessant work of intellect and imagination, most of it unconscious, goes into maintaining the private fictitious world … through finding ways to make things appear different from what they are. (p. 91)

In terms of subjective experience [neurotic pride] makes [English] vulnerable, and does so exactly to the extent that [it] is obsessed by pride. It can be hurt as easily from within as from without. The two typical reactions to hurt pride are shame and humiliation. [English] will feel ashamed if [it does, thinks, or feels] something that violates [its] pride. And [English] will feel humiliated if others do something that hurts [its] pride, or fail[s] to do what [its] pride requires of them. (p. 95)

That any hurt to [English’s] pride may provoke vindictive hostility is well known. It goes all the way from dislike to hate, from irritability to anger to a blind murderous rage…. What operates here is the straight law of retaliation. (p. 99)

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