The Erasure of Language.

I nherent in the names of the English departments within which most of us spend our professional lives is a history that assumes some focus on language not language in general (now the province of linguistics) but the English lan guage, not some other languages, new or old, and, at least ostensibly, not merely the "literature" of English. Yet within each of three major compartments of instruction in English departments-literary studies, rhetoric and composi tion, and English Education-I see a declining focus on language in the last three decades. My sense of this decline derives from years of classroom experi ence teaching writing (and literature), years of professional conference atten dance, and years of research in rhetoric and composition, literature, and technical writing. What follows draws on a number of sources and method ologies and tells a tale sometimes circuitous but also in accord with recent historical accounts by such scholars as Richard Fulkerson, Richard Haswell, and Robert Connors, all of whom have chronicled changes that run parallel to