Listen to Episode 2
While individual pedagogical choices surrounding generative AI (genAI) matter and will continue to matter, we're also cognizant of the fact that programmatic choices matter too, particularly as we consider ways that genAI furthers existing linguistic injustices that have long been perpetuated by writing courses and programs, as the Institute of Race, Rhetoric, and Literacy noted in their 2021 Abbreviated Statement Toward First-Year Composition Goals.
Even as our disciplinary organizations have produced vital statements on the value of linguistic variation and the need for linguistic justice in the form of Students' Right to Their Own Langauge (Conference on College Composition and Communication [CCCC], 1974) and This Ain't Another Statement (CCCC, 2020), our discipline has also been complicit in forwarding notions of so-called "good" writing that are rooted in racism, classism, and xenophobia. For example, a recent MLA–CCCC working paper (PDF) on writing and genAI unfortunately suggested, "Writers who come from diverse and various linguistic and educational backgrounds may benefit from the more sophisticated grammar, style, and genre editing capabilities of large language models by receiving access to the 'language of power'" (MLA–CCCC Joint Task Force on Writing and AI, 2023, p. 10). Carmen Kynard (2023) reminded us that writing program rubrics and outcomes uncritically advance notions of "academic" English. Kynard argued, "It shouldn't come as a surprise that students will turn to AI to write [the] white-standardized essays" that fit those rubrics and outcomes.