Stylistic Practice, Appropriateness, and Agency at a Public Arts High School

• In Event: 68.023 - Do You Hear What I Hear? Raciolinguistic Ideologies Across Educational Contexts

Abstract

A key component of Flores and Rosa’s (2015) critique of appropriateness-based approaches in education is their inability to explicitly engage students in resisting the racialized hierarchy of U.S. society. This speaks directly to the role of education in developing students’ agency, or their “socioculturally mediated capacity to act” (Ahearn, 2004). Here I explore students’ linguistic and social practices as forms of resistance to hegemonic narratives of race and raciolinguistic ideologies, and argue that these practices point to differences in how they conceive of their own agency. Those differences, in turn, highlight the role of the institution in constraining student agency, and thus its potential to foster alternative forms of agency.

This paper focuses on two racialized students whose resistance to normative ideologies differ with regard to their linguistic practices as well as their forms of participation in the institution. The analysis is based on interviews and field notes from a yearlong linguistic ethnography of a public arts high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both students are critical of school policy, but their forms of critique differ. Whereas Tamara engages in the institutionally-sanctioned routes to reforming school policy, Michael has disengaged from the institution and participates in informal critique. For example, while serving as a representative to school administration, Tamara vocalized her frustration with the predominant whiteness of school faculty. In contrast, Michael describes a time he publicly mocked a group of white students performing a song with “no soul,” explicitly connecting it to his dissatisfaction with the school’s focus on classical music, which neglects the artistic contributions of composers from racialized communities.

These opposing forms of participation in turn align with each of the students’ stylistic practices. Tamara, who is African American, reports categorical code-switching between AAE at home and a more standardized variety at school, and she discusses avoiding certain clothing choices that might invoke racialized stereotypes about black women. Michael, who is Latino, employs a wide range of linguistic features associated with Chicano English, and has a unique clothing style (within the context of the school) that reflects his involvement in electronic dance music (EDM) culture.

Taken together, these divergent social practices reflect an institutionally-engaged “appropriate” stance on the one hand, and an institutionally-disengaged disregard for appropriateness on the other. Tamara conceives of her agency within the institution and Michael finds his in opposition to the school. Crucially, both students have insightful critiques of the ways that dominant narratives about race and racialized language operate in their school. But despite her performance of the idealized appropriateness, Tamara remains frustrated with a perceived lack of progress. And though divesting from the institution licenses Michael to ignore appropriateness, it potentially reproduces his own marginalization. The educational implication of this analysis is that the school’s role in constraining student agency should not be underestimated. Supporting students in such processes of critical reflection of their own schools would be one step toward promoting forms of agency that are institutionally-engaged but also irreverent of the normative ideologies that reproduce oppression.

Author

• Teresa Pratt, Stanford University