Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics: Remixing of the Communal and Hegemonic in an After-School Program

• In Event: Community-Based Action Research Toward Participatory and Transformative Educational Language Policy

Abstract

This paper explores the development and implementation of a Culturally Sustaining Systemic Functional Linguistics (CS SFL) framework and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project (Youth Art Institute; YAI) instituted within an afterschool program in a middle school in the American Southeast. The purpose of the project was threefold: a) help youth to identify and explore the assets and challenges found in their communities, b) develop equity-centered policies to address them, and c) support the development of semiotic resources that students could employ in meeting their needs. This program was developed in coordination with teachers and multilingual students at Chestnut Middle school.
To center the needs of these minoritized students, Culturally Sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Paris & Alim, 2014; Paris, 2012) and Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) (Harman, 2018) were placed in conversation with each other. CS SFL combines Paris and Alim’s (2017) belief that “culturally sustaining pedagogy exists wherever education sustains the lifeways of communities who have been and continue to be damaged and erased through schooling” (p. 1) and Halliday’s (1978) socially and functionally-oriented theory of language, SFL. Paris (2012) and Paris and Alim (2017; 2014) conceptualized CSP as an approach where educators help students nourish their languages and cultures while developing the ability to examine community and academic practices critically. CSP decenters White middle-class values and accomplishments as the universal measuring stick. CSP also inculcates “sociopolitical consciousness” (Ladson-Billings, 2014, p. 75), as it deconstructs the artificial dichotomy between everyday and specialized language (Flores & Rosa, 2017). SFL complements CSP because it theorizes meaning-making as emerging from a socially constructed pliable and remixable configuration of semiotic choices adapted for particular purposes and audiences. As a linguistic theory and methodology that centers the socially constructed nature of language, SFL allows users to clearly see the often-deficient ideologies that are acted upon and created through policies. SFL’s tools such as field, tenor, and mode (Eggins, 2004) make these ideologies visible. The cross-pollination of CSP and SFL was key in the development of this program.
YAI was built around 12 flexible and responsive learning modules. The modules helped youth examine the assets and challenges they found in their community. The modules included photovoice, modeling, and Boalian theater. Students were able to explore, deepen, and in some cases develop new semiotic resources that they used to analyze, deconstruct, and remix community and dominant literacy(ies) and languaging practices and policies. This process supported them in developing community-centered projects and policies that addressed student identified areas for improvement/reinforcement.
A critical ethnographic stance and discourse analysis were used to analyze data and interactions (e.g., Fairclough, 2003; Martin & Rose, 2003). Analysis of the data (i.e., video and audio recordings, photographs, reflection journals) indicates that YPAR coupled with CS SFL, a) supported most youth in expanding their semiotic repertoires, b) brought to light the internalized deficient framings of racialized youth, c) promoted cross-generation conversations and d) help to facilitate the co-construction of new communities policies to support the development of youth as active civic agents.

Author

• Jason D. Mizell, University of Miami