Japanese Immigrant Youth Contesting Racialized Linguicism at School: Explicating Counternarratives and Discursive Enactments of Transnational Identity

• In Event: Roundtable Session 23
  In Roundtable Session: Race and Racialized Experiences in the Context of Multiple Languages and Literacies

Abstract

This case study reports on how four 1.5-generation Japanese immigrant youth contested the English-only ideologies and racialized linguicism taking place at their Midwestern urban public high school. Significantly, the type of linguicism that the youth were experiencing at school was racialized, meaning that their peers and teachers drew on race-based assumptions about their academic abilities, patriotism, and self-worth in relation to their linguistic expressions. The conceptual framework offers a complex portrait of how the youth discursively articulated their own counter-narratives through multiple expressions of their ethnic, gender, language, and transnational identities (Lee, 2006). The final section will offer recommendations for schools and teachers to promote inclusive learning environments that encourage multiple cultural and linguistic expressions.

Author

• Rachel Endo, Hamline University