Let It Resound, Loud: Black English, Black Ontologies, and Mathematics Discourse

• In Event: Critical Orientations to Language in STEM Education: Praxis Beyond Replacement of Labels

Abstract

Objectives

Elsewhere, I have focused on the important role of at least three forms of capital that Black children possess. While I briefly revisit those three forms of capital, I focus this presentation on the form of capital that prioritizes linguistic patterns and communication. I tell a deeper story about how identity, specifically Blackness, is reflected in Black English (Author 2, 2020). The purpose here is to articulate how this language serves Black children well in their approach to more complex mathematical thinking, and how it can be understood as at least one aspect of Black ontology.

Theoretical Framework/perspectives

From sociology, I pull from the idea of cultural capital, and more specifically what Carter (2003) has identified as Black cultural capital. Carter asserted that a non-dominant cultural capital might include preferences for linguistic, musical, or interactional styles- preferences that closely resemble those laid out by Boykin (1994). I have sought to think about the capital that I present here as at least one of the ways that Black people exist in this world and take on their realities. Extending the work from linguistic scholars focused on African American language (AAL) (Lanehart, 2015) to speak about Black children’s bidialectalism (Martin et al., 2019), I argue that language is merely one of the ways that we begin to conceptualize the many layers of an ontological Blackness.

Data Sources

This work comes from a larger project that focused on Black children’s forms of capital. I conducted a systematic literature review (Machi & McEvoy, 2016) in which I included articles that were both explicit and implicit in identifying cultural capital focused on the intersection of mathematics learning with Black children and Black culture. The search was conducted on July 10, 2019 within three education databases: ERIC, Education Forum, and PSYCHInfo. I focus here on the lessons learned from the articles referencing AAL.

Substantiated Conclusions

Firstly, I describe how these articles and manuscripts help me to theorize ways that mathematics education can affirm the linguistic capital of Black children as it appears within mathematics discourse, and assert that it has often served as another site of marginalization (Hudley & Mallinson, 2017). Secondly, I describe how AAVE shows great promise for my own philosophy of mathematics education which prioritizes the use of language, especially in the case of structuring formal mathematical proof (Ernest, 1998). I situate this conversation in a larger discourse about relevant theories (e.g., community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), Afrocentricism (Asante, 1991), and culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 2006)) that celebrate this capital and link it to Black students’ culture and ontologies.

Significance

The current research landscape does not typically connect ideas of high-quality mathematics instruction (e.g., mathematics discourse) to AAL, and as researchers we may find it worthwhile to study the ideas that Black students propose and the way they interrogate these ideas in conversation with one another. It would be worthwhile to analyze how Black students intertwine “mathematical language” (use of terms like functions, proofs, or sequences) and their own forms of AAL.

Author

• Nickolaus Alexander Ortiz, Georgia State University