Carnival, Drama, and Middle School English Learners: The Language of Play and Resistance

• In Event: 70.028 - Bakhtin's Carnival: Laughter, Embodied Learning, and Participation Across Diverse Educational Contexts

Abstract

In this paper, I explore how Bakhtin’s (1984) concept of carnival can be useful for understanding student behavior and language use in a drama class for English Learners (ELs) in an urban middle school newcomer program. I discuss how playful language allowed for surprising opportunities for engagement and participation, reminiscent of Bakhtin’s (1981, 1984) descriptions of the liberating experience of carnival. I also look at how students used carnival moments to give voice to their dissatisfaction with their experiences in the class and newcomer program they attended.

Bakhtin’s (1984) describes carnival as a “a pageant without footlights” (p. 123) where “everyone is an active participant” (p.123) According to Bakhtin, during carnival, people are temporarily freed from divisive social hierarchies and participate wholeheartedly in mockery, parody and pageantry. Simultaneously, using the purview of Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2010) and Lensmire’s (1994) work on carnival in a writer’s workshop (1994), I examine how carnival was an ambivalent phenomenon that also gave certain students space to act as clowns and implicitly critique their experiences in learning. Also drawing from Bakhtin’s work, Radigan (2002) describes the classroom clown the “arbiter” of “resistance” (p. 260). Along these lines, I look at the concept of carnival and classroom clowning, both how they afford language use and participation and informs us about the social climate of the classroom.

This paper comes from a yearlong, instrumental case study (Stake, 2000) of a classroom in a diverse middle school in the Bay Area of California. The instrumental case study format allowed for in depth data collection to better understand life in one socially situated classroom, as well as the broader implications for adolescent ELs learning English.

The data from the study consists of field notes gathered from participant observation, interview transcripts from student and teacher interviews, and transcripts from video taped observations. Using analytical tools such as iterative coding (Saldaña, 2013), Discourse Analysis (Gee, 2011) and Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 2010), the results of this study indicate that carnival behavior increased risk taking and investment, which, in turn, facilitated language use.

This paper dovetails with findings in the field of literacy (Lensmire, 1994, 2011) and ESL (Toohey, Waterstone & Julé-Lemke, 2000) that carnival can serve as a useful interpretive lens to examine classroom life. Further, this paper lends support to the notion that teachers should encourage carnival moments in order to allow their students to explore repertoires of expression that are not included in typical classroom conversations. More broadly, this paper adds to the conversation about middle school ELs and drama-based instruction, which, with its celebration of play and carnival, can give linguistically diverse students opportunities to laugh, move, speak and learn.

Author

• Anneliese Cannon, University of Wisconsin - Madison