Recently I was in a fatal incident: Personal narratives and social identities

Abstract

This work focuses on Wes, a Black student in a 9th grade English Language Arts (ELA) class taught by Ms. Henry. Wes was socially identified as a violent, problematically challenging, and “naturally” academically unambitious student by Ms. Henry based on the perceptions of Wes drawn up from broader social discourses of race/gender identities and also from authorized institutional (school) “acceptable” and narrowly defined ways to perform classroom roles. Using discourse analysis to examine Wes's contributions during one classroom discussion, this work explores how Wes achieved identities other than those imputed on him while explicitly countering prevailing institutional notions of him as a Black adolescent, his linguistic practices, and by extension, speakers of Black Language.