LWRS June 2020 Volume 1, Issue 1

Pardon My Acento
and critical reclaiming of our alternative writing systems to not only “mark difference,”
but also to recover our Latinx rhetorical modes and transform possible futures of
writing and rhetoric for linguistically minoritized populations. Toward this goal,
reclaiming our acentos offers one way to make visible our Latinx writing and rhetorical
traditions, challenging deficit thinking paradigms that underline assumptions about
whose bodies and languages fit in the rhetoric and composition classrooms, and whose
bodies and languages need remediation. We can start this change by being careful and
diligent with our own use of the 26-letter Western colonial alphabet in order to bring
more visibility and awareness to alternative writing systems and by looking for ways to
introduce our diverse students to alternative writing systems in our classrooms, in our
mentoring, or in any other modes of contact.
Writing in Acentos
I return to Paris and Alim’s (2017) theory of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) for
my discussion on how writing instructors might engage alternative writing systems as
tools for critical consciousness building, like Freire (1996) called for, in the classroom.
In their theorization of CSP, Paris and Alim (2017) were careful to direct attention to
the fluidity and dynamism of languages, identities, and cultures, among youth and, in
particular, youth culture. They insisted that CSP must demand explicit pluralistic
outcomes and not recenter White Western norms and educational values. At the same
time, CSP should resist static or stereotypical reifying of cultural values and be flexible
and responsive to change. Finally, CSP must also be willing to critically engage with
reifications of contradictory or problematic cultural values. These are all practices that
we can keep in mind as we shape our pedagogy to be more mindful of alphabetic
difference
Thus, I ask that practitioners bear in mind how problematizing the 26-letter
Western colonial alphabet with students in the writing classroom might accomplish
those goals. If, for example, the 26-letter Western colonial alphabet is a tool of
racioalphabetic ideologies and indexical bleaching, then how might encouraging the
use of alternative writing systems in student writing yield more pluralistic outcomes?
And, how might hosting conversations about critical erasures through indexical
bleaching open a space for students to engage in dialogue about contradictory cultural
values? I offer ideas here for beginning this work and encourage practitioners to
carefully consider the goals of CSP and within their own classrooms, pedagogies,
students, and ways of knowing and doing when imagining how best to engage CSP in
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