Latino Linguistic Repertoires in an Intensely Segregated Black and Latina/o High School: Is This Superdiversity?

• In Event: 53.037 - Is Superdiversity the Way Forward for Educational Linguistics?

Abstract

This paper raises some concerns about the wholesale adoption of super-diversity as an analytical tool for the study of language practices among youth in US schools. In particular, it questions the efficacy of using super-diversity as a theoretical approach when working in racialized communities in the US who have experienced generations of segregation and marginalization. In particular, it points to the long history of linguistic contact between Black and Latina/o communities in the US and the ways that this history may inadvertently be erased by the super-diversity scholarship’s focus on the newness of contemporary globalization. While the super-diversity literature may describe these practices as remarkable or new, students in these communities are continuing in a long history of such fluid language practices in ways that are completely unmarked by the youth themselves. It argues that super-diversity scholarship must more explicitly theorize from local spaces that have been neglected prior to any conception of diversity becoming ‘super.’ This focus on the local entails a necessary analysis on the intersections of race with dominant language ideologies that promote the celebration of fluid language practices in dominant communities while stigmatizing them in racialized communities.

The paper then illustrates what such an approach might look like through a description an ethnographic study that took place in an urban secondary school in Southern California.
The paper explores the communicative repertoires of Black and Latina/o high school youth in a “superdiverse” local learning environment. This study reveals 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. Yet, when youth displayed their linguistic flexibility, teachers often engaged in repair practices, “correcting” and providing translations of student utterances that aligned with standard language practices privileged in schools, changing and altering the meaning behind students’ utterances as they related to classroom tasks.

The paper concludes that unlike the super-diverse settings explored in some research, the addition of language practices that have been historically devalued and stigmatized, like those described by the Black and Latino youth in this study remain unmarked except in official classroom spaces that represent white public spaces. The paper concludes that as super-diversity continues to be theorized in the future, it is imperative for scholars to keep an eye on the local while also continuing to account for the global shifts that are currently underway. Attending to the local may provide an understanding of the power dynamics that ultimately marks the language practices of a group as minoritized.

Author

• Danny C. Martinez, University of California - Davis