Language Awareness Readings for College Writers

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Language Awareness has long recognized the power of language and helped students understand and use that power critically and carefully as they make rhetorical choices about their own academic writing. The text provides extensive support for writing, while its relevant and engaging readings grouped into topics—such as community, discrimination, conflict, and gender—explore the pervasive influence of language on our lives.

“Language in Action” activities connect the everyday and the academic by examining current texts and visuals to enhance students’ understanding of the readings. This thriving book has now been revised with input from reviewers across the country to include fresh new readings and updated instruction that invites students into the conversation about the power of language.

1. Reading Critically
Getting the Most out of Your Reading
     Natalie Goldberg, Be Specific
     Henry Louis Gates Jr., What’s in a Name?
Reading as a Writer

2. Writing in College and Beyond
Developing an Effective Writing Process
     Rebekah Sandlin, The "Negro Revolt" in Me (student paper)

3. Writing with Sources
What Does It Mean to Write with Sources?
Write with Sources
Learn to Summarize, Paraphrase, and Quote from Your Sources
Avoid Plagiarism
     Jake Jamieson, The English-Only Movement: Can America Proscribe Language with a Clear
     Conscience? (student paper)

4. Understanding the Power of Language: How We Find Our Voices 
     Malcolm X, Coming to an Awareness of Language           
     Helen Keller, The Day Language Came into My Life     
     *Sherman Alexie, Superman and Me 
     *Jang Jin-sung, Reading Byron in Pyongyang
     *Emily Parker, You Can Keep Quiet, You Can Emigrate, Or You Can Stay Here and Fight  
     Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
   
5. Language Essentials: Making Sense of Words in the World 
     Susanne K. Langer, Language and Thought    
     Steven Pinker, Words Don’t Mean What They Mean
     *Melissa Fay Greene, Word Power for Babies 
     Ben Zimmer, Chunking
     *Raffaella Zanuttini, Our Language Prejudices Don’t Make No Sense 
     Lera Boroditsky, Lost in Translation

6. Language Communities: Where Do We Belong? 
     Paul Roberts, Speech Communities 
     Richard Lederer, All-American Dialects
     *Lou Ann Walker, Losing the Language of Silence
     Bharati Mukherjee, Two Ways to Belong in America 
     James Baldwin, If Black English Isn’t a Language, then Tell Me, What Is?
     Amy Tan, Mother Tongue
     *Eric C. Miller, Talk the Talk

7. Writers on Writing: How and Why We Write 
     Stephen King, Reading to Write 
     *Annie Dillard, Write Till You Drop
     *Steven Pinker, Good Writing
     Anne Lamott, Shitty First Drafts   
     William Zinsser, Simplicity 
      Donald M. Murray, The Maker’s Eye: Revising Your Own Manuscripts 
     *Bill Hayes, On Not Writing

8. Language that Manipulates: Politics, Propaganda, and Doublespeak 
     Donna Woolfolk Cross, Propaganda: How Not to Be Bamboozled   
     Newman P. Birk and Genevieve B. Birk, Selection, Slanting, and Charged Language
     George Orwell, Politics and the English Language
     *Maria Konnikova, The Lost Art of the Unsent Angry Letter 
     William Lutz, The World of Doublespeak  
      Jason Stanley, Language that Silences

9. Language that Changed the World: Words that Made a Difference  
     Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream
     John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address 
     *Malala Yousafzai, Address at the Youth Takeover of the United Nations  
     *Toni Morrison, When Language Dies: 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature Lecture
     *Elie Wiesel, The Perils of Indifference 
     Jonathan Swift, A Modest Proposal

10. The Language of Discrimination: Prejudice, Discrimination, and Stereotypes
     Andrew Sullivan, What’s So Bad about Hate?
     Gordon Allport, The Language of Prejudice 
     Firoozeh Dumas, The “F Word”
     Brent Staples, Black Men and Public Space
     *Wendy Kaminer, Why We Need to Tolerate Hate
     *Greg Lukianoff, Twitter, Hate Speech, and the Costs of Keeping Quiet
     *Kellie Carter Jackson, The “Threatening” “Thug” through History

*11. The Language of Conflict: Argument, Apology, and Dignity
     *Edwin Battistella, Sorry, Regrets, and More
     *Donna Hicks, Violations of Dignity
     *Michael Gardner, Flex Cop
     *Amy Westervelt, Letting Go
     *Rick Reilly, Regretlessly Yours: The No-Fault Apology
     *Paula Span, Wounded by the Language of War

12. Language and Gender: Power, Abuse, and Equality
     *Roxane Gay, The Careless Language of Sexual Violence
     *Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Happy Feminist
     *Emily Bazelon, The Meaning of Yes  
     Michael Kimmel, Bros Before Hos
     *Sharon Marcus, Are Catcalls Free Speech? 
     *Jessica Bennett, Why We Need to Stop Calling Powerful Women Bitches   
  
13. Current Language Controversies 
 How Does Technology Impact Communication in Relationships?  
     Alison Stein Wellner, Lost in Translation
     David Carr, Keep Your Thumbs Still When I’m Talking to You 
     *Sherry Turkle, The Tethered Self: Technology Reinvents Intimacy and Solitude   
 How Does Language Work in Advertising?
     Bill Bryson, The Hard Sell: Advertising in America    
     William Lutz, Weasel Words: The Art of Saying Nothing at All  
     *Kiera Butler, The Creepy Language Tricks Taco Bell Uses to Fool People Into Eating There  
     *Sage McHugh, Watch Out for These Buzzwords Food Companies Use to Hype That Their
      Products Are Healthy—They Don’t Mean Anything
How Is Language Involved in Lies, Slander, and Fraud?
     *Chana Joffe-Walt and Alix Spiegel, Psychology of Fraud: Why Good People Do Bad Things
     *Cienna Madrid, The Lying Disease
     *Tom Jacobs, Facts? We Don’t Need No Stinking Facts
     *Lyz Lenz, Fact-Checking Grandma

13. A Brief Guide to Writing a Research Paper