The Critical Metadiscursive Functions of Transgressive Language in Middle School Student Storytelling

• In Event: Reconceptualizing Transgressive Language Practices as Critical, Community-Building Tools in the K–12 Classroom

Abstract

Overview: Student storytelling has been identified a location of creative criticality (Dyson, 1997; Wohlwend, 2009; Winn, 2011; Orellana, 2015; Thomas & Stornaiolou; 2016; Toliver & Miller, 2019). However, limited attention has been given to the “out-of-bounds” student talk that often arises in these less structured spaces. This study works in this gap, by examining one student, Damien’s, “transgressive” language practices in a storytelling group. While Damien’s comments might have been ignored or disciplined in normative school contexts, a metadiscursive analysis of these comments reveals how they reshaped both the group’s narrated story and its narrating context (Wortham & Reyes, 2015). This analysis suggests that transgressive language may function as powerful, nuanced critical tool.

Theoretical Perspectives: Theoretically, I work from the understanding that, in imaginative storytelling, language becomes a malleable object (Vygotsky, 1980; Bakhtin, 1981) open to metadiscursive reflection and change (Silverstein, 1993). Damien’s three-person storytelling group constantly debated multiple possible linguistic and narrative options. In doing so, they moved “heterogeneous stylistic resources, context-sensitive meanings, and conflicting ideologies into a reflexive arena where they [could] be examined critically” (Bauman & Briggs, 1990, p. 60), developing not only a story but also a metadiscursive layer of talk about how it should be told.

Method: This group met within a weekly “Superhero” project conducted within a seventh grade ELA class at a public middle school. In this project, students were asked to tell superhero stories set in their neighborhood. This paper specifically analyzes an ethnographic data set (Heath & Street, 2008; Blommaert & Ji, 2010) collected during the twelve sessions I spent in Damien’s group. This data set includes field notes, audio recordings, and the writing and images produced by the group. Damien’s irreverent language play in early sessions (and my own uneasiness with it as an adult in the group) led me to first code his transgressive language use and then analyze how these moments functioned in relation to the group’s evolving story.

Findings & Significance: In this paper, I will present two instances that represent how Damien transgressed “school-ed” boundaries in his storytelling. In the first, Damien’s used words like “shit” and “fuck” to add to the story and remark on its development. In the second, which occurred six weeks later, Damien evoked what Gallo and Link (2015) call “politicized funds of knowledge,” or the “real-world experiences, knowledges, and skills” (p. 361) that are often kept out of classroom contexts. Damien incorporated information about foster care, parental absence and household sustenance to regulate interpretations of the group’s superhero character. Although these instances may seem unrelated, both, I argue, metadiscursively interrupt and modulate the story, mediating representations of both the group’s fictional narrative and life in their real neighborhood. Damien’s comments suggest that “transgressive” language, which is frequently dismissed as inappropriate for school spaces, may, in fact, challenge linguistic norms that limit possibilities for imaginative meaning-making. We should instead make methodological and pedagogical space to consider how students may be using such language to undertake critical (metadiscurive) work.

Author

• Elizabeth Krone, The Ohio State University - Columbus