What kind of student were you in school? The “quiet one?” The “know-it-all?” The “bad kid?”

Many people who devote themselves to education believe that all children are unique individuals, and hope that schooling helps each one realize his/her/their full potential. At the same time, the highly-structured nature of traditional schooling (what Freire (2000) called “banking education”) expects conformity to standards, and a key product of that type of schooling is a host of labels for those who don’t “fit” — “English Language Learner,” “Student with Interrupted Formal Education,” “At Risk.” These labels can endure long after a student leaves school, shaping their sense-of-self and identities long after they leave school.

Betsy Rymes’ book, Classroom Discourse Analysis, spells out a framework for analyzing classroom talk and discourse, in recognition of the ways that the language used by students and teachers can both heighten normative expectations for student identities and subjectivities in classrooms, and subvert them. While her book might be of interest to educational researchers, Rymes’ audience for this book is primarily teachers. She argues that if teachers pay special attention to how they and their students’ language use is shaped by (1) social context in and out of the classroom, (2) interactional contexts (e.g. how teachers pose questions, how they listen and facilitate dialogue), and (3) the ways they and their students exercise agency, they stand a better chance at understanding the totality of their students’ communicative repertoires, rather than making snap judgments about what “kind of” student someone is based on a superficial read of a student at one moment in time. Rymes argues that through this approach to analysis, teachers might promote learning, given that “classroom talk and interaction… give voice to a wide range of communication, augmenting the repertoires of everyone in the room. In this way, a classroom develops as a learning community not by eliminating elements from children’s repertoires but by developing overlap and building common ground” (Rymes, 2016, p. 20).

I’ve found Rymes’ framework to be a useful took for reflecting on classroom discourse in one of the middle school classrooms where I do my field work. In this site, there are a couple of boys who have been positioned at the margins of the classroom. A teacher’s first impulse might be to view all of those ways these students don’t fit the norm: They are older than your average 7th graders, have “low literacy,” are consistently sent to the principal’s office, are often present for just a few minutes of the class period, and use their phones or engage in side conversations. Rymes’ discourse analysis framework would encourage teachers to go beyond these momentary impressions to take a multi-level view — considering how various factors about the students (their ages, race, gender) might shape how their discourse practices (which include their speech, but also other ways they communicate — their clothing, they postures, etc) get interpreted by teachers and administrators at the school. Teachers might take a closer look at the kinds of questions they ask these students, the ways they expect them to engage, and provide more opportunities for student voice and agency. Once teachers complete this analysis, Rymes’ work advises teachers to focus on what they can control — their reactions and responses to students, how they “make the weather” in their classroom.

This is an empowering stance for a teacher. At the same time, there are a myriad of structural factors that contribute to why some students are / are positioned as disconnected from formal schooling, and discourse analysis can’t solve all of those issues. Taking a page from Freire’s book, it is my hope that if greater attention is paid to critical analysis of classroom discourse, teachers and students might be prompted to take action to shift the oppressive systems around them.

For some reason, Marco didn’t have permissions to post on our group site, so I’m posting on his behalf.

From Marco:

Raciolinguistics and I

This week we were tasked to look over White Racist Discourse in the U.S. — exploring Hill’s work on Mock Spanish, described as covert discursive practices used by Whites that may indicate a jocular stance and/or perpetuate negative stereotypes about “Spanish-speaking” populations (Hill, 2008). Rosa’s approach refutes Hill’s proposal on Mock Spanish by arguing that these linguistic practices are synonymous with race instead of analyzing the language just part of what constitutes an ethnoracial identity through the paradigm of Raciolinguistics. Being a heritage speaker myself, I have to agree.

I was born and raised in New York, a first generation child of Dominican parents and a heritage speaker of Spanish (which was spoken in the household) and otherwise English in the academic setting. If we go by the context of a “prestige dialect” and it being identifiable within the United States, try as I must to assimilate or become the ideal speaker of this dialect, racialization via my ethnic features will always prevail. I would be a Hispanic first, and an American second.

My mother comes from a small town in the Dominican Republic, Santiago Rodriguez. In my adolescence I would frequently visit with her to unite with relatives, friends, and embrace my native culture. Although the experiences were far from negative, I was never truly considered Dominican amongst my own family, friends, or the people in general. Other instances of racialization, but in this scenario, it was largely linguistic. “I did not sound like a Dominican” was the popular notion. My prosodic features, with a blend of my L1 and L2, deviated from what is the norm with Dominicans..and thus, I was American. Would this be able to change with time and effort?

During my time as an ESL teacher in Pan American International High School — the question of how I identify was quite popular among my students. They were overly curious as to, me being born and raised in the United States as a child of Dominican parents — how would I identify myself given the cultures made up a large part of who I am. My students, hailing from areas where it was primarily linguistic ideologies that defined a large part of who you were, I felt deserved that answer. I explained that I identified with both being American and Dominican, questions about the authenticity of the former brought up  plenty of healthy debates which, I hope would help with their own ongoing constructions as immigrants to the United States.

When it comes to my own identity, as I’m sure it is the case with many other first generation Latinx — how I identify has always been in a sort of limbo. I am well aware I do not fit the standard description of an American, but I am. My linguistic features neither allow be to become truly Dominican either, but I also am. So I embrace the hybridity proudly, with definitions as to how I label myself being anything but static.

Ultimately, these experiences are examples of Raciolinguistic dynamics at play. Within the United States, my linguistic practices have little to no effect on my racial identity, for it will always be a constant factor regardless of dialectal preferences — my racial identity IS what I am. In the Dominican Republic (and to a larger extent the Latinx population), linguistic ideologies help shape a racial identities.

References:

Hill, J. H. (2008). The everyday language of white racism. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

Alim, H. S., Rickford, J. R., & Ball, A. F. (2016). Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.