"Cray Cray Up in the Hizzay": Examining How Racialized Language Practices Mediated the Identities of "Struggling" Readers

• In Event: Co-Constructing Notions of Linguistic Prestige

Abstract

Students of color who also do not meet the academic expectation of school occupy “double bind identities” (Artiles, 2011, p. 437), making them vulnerable to microaggressions (Dávila, 2015) and disproportionate representation in special education (Artiles, Harry, Reschly, & Chinn, 2002; Beratan, 2008; Blanchett, 2006). This paper explores the ways various language practices mediated identities of reading struggle for three boys of color in one fifth-grade classroom. Conceptually, this paper draws on the sociocultural linguistic lens of Bucholtz and Hall (2005). Through it, I considered the phenomenon of identity construction as dynamic and emergent in interaction. Employing the principles outlined by Bucholtz and Hall (2005), I examined the ways participants positioned themselves and others through relational and indexical discursive moves.

Methodologically, this paper relied on fieldnotes documented during participant observations, video/audio recordings of classroom interactions around text, and semi-structured interviews. Data were collected across interactional groupings, including whole group, teacher-facilitated small groups, student- led small groups, and one-on-one teacher/student interactions. The primary criterion for selecting focal students was that he have an institutional biography (Collins, 2012), or a narrative documented in school records and told by teachers, of a struggling reader. Two of the students were formally labeled learning disabled and the third receive general-education pullout reading instruction by a reading specialist. Each of them was of color. I have worked to consider identity positions of race and disability simultaneously, because racism and ableism are “interconnected and collusive” (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013). When students occupy marginal positions along both of these ideological axes, the material consequences can be devastating, including failure to graduate from high school and limited post-secondary education and job opportunities (Blanchett, 2010).

The classroom in which these data were collected was “culturally and linguistically complex” (Ball, 2009), with varieties of both English and Spanish used every day. The relative prestige of these linguistic practices was locally defined (informed by broader language ideologies) through participants’ evaluations of orientations to on-going talk. In other words, within this classroom community, the participants valued some languages over others. When focal students used stigmatized language varieties and text was central to the interaction, their identities as readers were also implicated.

Analysis of the data suggests that within this classroom community, Spanish was seen as a valuable resource for both academic and social work. The teacher and students (including the focal students) used Spanish to make sense of words, phrases, and concepts academically. They also used Spanish in play and in conversations outside the official curriculum. On the other hand, when students (especially the focal students) drew on stigmatized language practices (like Black Language and Chicano English) while engaged in academic work, their classmates, and occasionally the teacher, positioned them marginally by contesting and negating their contributions to discussions.

These findings contribute to the scholarship on the interactional co-construction of identity by sharing the experiences of these students. Additionally, it extends the scholarship on social construction of struggle by considering the ways racialized and stigmatized language practices were leveraged to position students who were institutionally labeled as “struggling” readers.

Author

• Michiko Hikida, The Ohio State University - Columbus