The title of this infographic references John Trimbur’s anecdote about the reactions from (some) writing instructors after CUNY became open access in 1969. While Kenneth Bruffee and Mina Shaughnessy, among others, responded with close reading of student work to understand their rhetorical choices, others looked at the entrance essays of students and exclaimed, “What is this shit?” Rather than ask, “what is this shit?” when faced with texts written in forms other than Standard Edited American English (SEAE), this website proposes an alternative question: “what is translanguaging?”
