It’s always the one section that gets me. This semester, as with any semester, the students on their own have their idiosyncratically varying degrees of earnestness, wittiness, cynicism, engagement, playfulness, and what-have-you — but I’ve got one FYC section in particular that, when you get them together in the classroom, just hits that critical mass and they play off one another and crack wise all class long. And they clearly know I like it — this is the same section that called my bluff on the morse code thing — so there’s a comedic undercurrent just waiting to bubble over from the moment class starts.
Today, we were doing peer editing, with a little added mini-lesson at the start of class about proofreading for cliché. I made the usual points about cliché often serving as an act of linguistic belonging, as not-necessarily-empty signification of shared values and vocabulary, and so as necessarily contextual, but much of the purpose was to engage with some of the tired Army phrases they’ve been relying upon to excess: “squared away,” “drive to succeed,” “dedicated leader of character,” “drive on,” “rise to the challenge,” and of course “hooah” stand as prominent examples. We came up with some obvious examples of clichés from celebrities and politicians — “That’s hot,” “Stay the course” — and then I asked for volunteers to offer some of their own.
Silence.
Teacherly coaxing on my part.
Continued silence.
More coaxing. More silence. Expression of mild frustration on my part. Finally, from me: “C’mon. What’s wrong? Can’t you come up with anything?”
First cadet: “I think the cat’s got their tongue, sir.”
Second cadet: “I agree, sir. You’re kinda opening up a whole big can of worms here.”
I mean, they’re good. And they kept it up, too, lading the ongoing discussion with all sorts of clichés, Army and otherwise. I think part of the point I was supposed to get was an indication of resistance; of them saying, in effect, “Look, Mr. Civilian Professor, we’ve just spent three months acclimating to this discourse community and learning its terms of value, and now you want to come in and mess with that?” I’m imagining some sort of archetypal version of the student hypothesized in David Bartholomae’s “Inventing the University” come to life, striding off the page and flipping all of academia two raised middle fingers.
I laughed out loud at the end–I like that image too!
Your students sound really cool, by the way.
I love reading about that section!
I also laughed aloud.
How about “so and so constructs x as y.” Is that not a cliche and badge of belonging?
Huh. And here I was, thinking you were dead, dear friend, and doing my best to put together an adequate encomium. The discourse communities to which we belong apparently construct author-function presence even in our absence, construct the ghostly traces of our past words as evidence of our absent presence, and so turn the discursive places where we’ve always been into clichés that we only notice as such in the conspicuous absence of their originator.
I kid, of course. I kid. I’m glad to see the Tutor’s ghostly comment-presence, especially in the context of the recent dust-up with Scruggs, the blogger now known as Et Alia, and that certain smart and prominent English scholar and academic blogger.