Walking a Raciolinguistics Path Con Mi Abuela

• In Event: Understanding Lived Raciolinguistic Realities Through Autoethnographies of Education Scholars

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to illustrate ways I employed autoethnographic techniques to study and articulate the intellectual journey that informs my work as a teacher educator and researcher committed to anti-racist education. Like the journey Nelson Flores (2019) describes, I too experienced fluidity and tensions between the Spanish I heard and attempted to speak at home and the English I was taught to use in school and other formal settings. In their work, one way Flores and Rosa (2015) move to expand thinking about language learning as a colonizing project is shared via their explanations around the ways appropriateness is connected to the larger colonialism project. This explanation is salient to my work as an anti-racist teacher researcher as it cuts across contexts to reveal the ways that difference is continually pathologized to maintain the dominant culture. People are socialized via schooling and other institutions to believe that we can somehow determine worthiness by determining gradations of sameness--and worse, that things we do not understand are dangerous. The constructs of dominant language, correctness, appropriateness, and acceptance provide palpable examples of the way a system of understanding, like language, can be used as a normalizing tool in the types of social control and sorting that take place in formal educational spaces. For this study, I used a raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015) framework to engage in reflective analysis of key personal and professional experiences selected for the study. I employed autoethnographic techniques to situate these experiences within the broader socio-political contexts of my childhood, schooling years, and professional development. Data sources included reflective journal entries based upon recollections of interactions with my grandmother and schooling experiences, past professional communications where language presented as a racialized issue, personal communication with colleagues, friends, and relatives to gain their perspective of events, and archival information about current events during various time periods. Once I gathered data to help contextualize and interpret the events I had chosen to analyze, I categorized the data to reflect internal and external forces at play as I made decisions about how to present my linguistic identity in a variety of situations. Through this autoethnographic work I created a space to intellectualize personal experiences that continually inform my work as a scholar and researcher. Along with my fellow contributors in the book project, my work gives voice to the variety of ways that language is used to perpetuate otherness as a social trope to maintain the current racialized social order. Understanding this idea is key to moving toward providing educational opportunities that resonate with students and communities.

Author

• Jeannette Alarcon, University of Houston