Transcultural Communicative Repertoires of Black and Latina/o Youth in Superdiverse Local Contexts

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Complicating Superdiversity Through Children and Youths’ Communicative Repertoires

Abstract

This paper explores the communicative repertoires of Black and Latina/o high school youth in a “superdiverse” local learning environment. Superdiversity has been taken up by European scholars to explain the “diversificiation of diversity” brought upon by current global migration patterns (Blommaert, 2013). However, in discussions of superdiversity, local contact zones--some of which have long been equally as diverse-- are often ignored (Guerra, 2004) as is the case for Black and Latina/o communities that have lived in contact with one another through out the United States. In this paper I ask 1) how do superdiverse learning environments provide evidence of peer language socialization (Goodwin & Kyratzis, 2011) in school settings? and 2) what are the implicit and explicit language ideologies indexed by youth in everyday classroom interactions?
Sociocultural language and literacy scholars consider language the premier tool in mediating learning and development, and urge practitioners to leverage the language practices of non-dominant youth for instruction (Hull & Schultz, 2001). This call has been difficult to attain, particularly for teachers of Black and Latina/o children and youth who are not confident in their ability to support language minority youth (Gandara, et al, 2005). In fact, leveraging the full communicative repertoires of non-dominant youth is an ideologically contested practice (Razfar, 2005) with teachers and students holding varying beliefs and ideas about what counts as language in formal learning settings. Therefore, a language ideological theoretical perspective informs this study (Kroskrity, 2006). I will highlight youths’ ideas and beliefs about their own language practices, those of their peers, and that of the classroom against larger social constructions of which languages have more currency, value and authority, and which speakers hold power in a respective setting, or not.
The data for this study emerge from a larger ethnographic study that took place in an urban secondary school I call Willow High School (WHS), in the Tajuata region of Southern California. Specifically, I conducted observations, made weekly visits to classrooms throughout the 2010-2011 academic year working alongside youth to document their communicative repertoires in four English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. I took detailed ethnographic fieldnotes supplemented by audio recordings of “naturally” occurring talk during each classroom observation. Additionally, I draw on semi-structured interviews conducted with eight youth focal participants during the study.
This study revealed that Black and Latina/o youth have expansive communicative repertoires that include the ability the use language flexibly across racial and ethnic boundaries. These youth recognized why, how and when they shift into and out of specific discursive practices. While they demonstrate awareness of these shifts, and normalized the use of “nonstandard” language practices, they often regarded these practices as problematic against larger standard language ideologies. This study adds to scholarship that seeks to treat the full communicative repertoires of non-dominant groups as a resource for learning. Additionally, the everyday communicative practices of these youth provides an understanding of local contexts of superdiversity and how and its relation to learning and development.

Author

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis