Politeness and Praise: Rhetorical Issues in ESL (L2) Writing Center Conferences

Abstract

Anyone who has worked in a writing center can attest that thirty-to sixty-minute face-to-face consultations often make for awkward conversation. This awkwardness is due in part to the writing center conference's status somewhere in between a hier-archical classroom teaching situation and a casual meeting between equals. On the one hand, the conversation can be classified as institutional discourse because of the inherently unequal relationship between interactants; the consultant represents the institution while the student is bound by its rules and decisions (Murphy 3). On the other hand, writing center consultants strive to construct sessions in such a way that clients find them non-threatening and collaborative, making the conversation more egalitarian and personal. The writing center conference can thus be described as a hybrid of the classroom lesson and the friendly get-together. Therefore, although bound by institutional rituals and constraints (Murphy 3), the writing center con-sultation still cannot be clearly defined and can turn into a somewhat mutable speech situation that produces some discomfort for both parties.