Poster #42 - Shades of Deeper Meaning: Studying Dialect Variance Among 21st Century Rural Midwestern High School Students

• In Event: 79.052 - MTCC Poster Session 19
  In Poster Session: 79.052-4 - Teaching Across Multiple Spaces

Abstract

Students sometimes have difficulties in acquiring fluency in the academic dialect. This study is an investigation of the lived experiences that high school students have with the conflicting ideologies between dialects and their responses to them. Through students’ own voices, struggles with opposing identities and gaining access to variant dialects are explained as they express their ideas about dialectal differentiation in a 21st century classroom. Using the theoretical frameworks of sociolinguistics, social constructivism, and critical language pedagogy, the research was constructed with these questions in mind: What are the relationships that rural northwest Ohio high school students have with Academic English? How do those relationship affect the acquisition of Academic English as part of their cultural identity?

Author

• Rebecca M Nelson, University of Nebraska - Kearney