We as Solidarity and Resistance: A Critical Sociolinguistic Analysis of a Roundtable on the Every Student Succeeds Act

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 5
  In Roundtable Session: Language Policies and Educational Equity for Bilingual Education in the United States

Abstract

This paper will present an analysis of the multiple roles that person deixis has in a meeting of civil rights advocates on the topic of Florida’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and English Language Learner (ELL) education. I argue that the particular use of inclusive and exclusive personal pronouns by speakers at the conference represents an emerging identity of resistance against “the state” that is simultaneously meant to build solidarity with other stakeholders and the ELL community. Through this co-constructed identity, stakeholders invert the boundaries between ELLs and the state of Florida by positioning “the state” as the dangerous outsider to an ELL inclusive community

Author

• Juliane Bilotta, Rutgers University - New Brunswick