Writing as 'passing'
Helen Beetham,
imperfect offerings,
Jun 25, 2024
This article should be read from the bottom up as well as the top down, as the inference can work in either direction. The article begins as a critique of the Turing test (which says essentially that a computer has achieved artificial intelligence if it can fool a human) and Turing-like tests. Beetham offers the observation that Turing tests do as much to make humans appear as computers as they make computers as humans, since the only a text-based interface is used. But she then takes this a step further to suggest that higher learning itself changes the student as part of an identity-building process. Writing for assessment forces a person to interact differently than they would otherwise. As Beetham writes, "I think most students experience academic English as a profoundly 'other' discourse." The idea here, in both parts of the article, is to depict writing as an activity, not a product. As derived from Wittgenstein: "language is not representational form, however complex and inter-related, but action, interaction and expression."
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