Exploring Community Through Literature and Life: Adolescents' Identity Positioning in Rural Appalachia

• In Event: 16.056 - Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: 16.056-7 - Examining Class and Identity Across Social Contexts

Abstract

This paper centers on three adolescents from rural Appalachia who highlight ways in which adolescents negotiate dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity and language. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural Appalachian high school. The objective was to investigate how the students discursively socially position themselves in relation to Appalachian stereotypes. Data analysis indicates that the adolescents in this study constructed local definitions and identity positions regarding language usage that complicated the dominant discourses of Appalachian identities. This study suggests that attending to local relations of power regarding language reveals both the implications and the disruptions in the dominance of mainstream speech patterns for Appalachian adolescents’ social positioning.

Author

• Audra Slocum, West Virginia University