Using young adult fiction to interrogate raciolinguistic ideologies in schools

Ian Cushing,Anthony Carter

doi:10.1111/lit.12277

Ian Cushing, Anthony Carter

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12277

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Abstract

AbstractThis article reports on an UKLA funded study which is working with young readers to explore the use of fictional texts to interrogate raciolinguistic ideologies in schools. We draw on data generated from workshops where young students read and responded to Front Desk, a 2018 novel by the Chinese writer Kelly Yang, which centres around a young immigrant girl who is the target of systemic language discrimination. We describe how literary texts might serve as an entry point into examining the pervasive, intersectional, institutional and systemic nature of language discrimination, focusing on how schools can be hostile spaces for speakers deemed to not conform with ‘standard’ language practices amidst raciolinguistic ideologies which construct racialised speakers as inferior, deficient and unwelcome. We show how students used Front Desk and the workshops as a space for (a) describing the surveillance, stigmatisation and erasure of their own language practices through tracing raciolinguistic contours between fictional and real worlds; (b) interrogating the raciolinguistic ideologies and punitive listening practices of white authoritative subjects; and (c) conceptualising language discrimination as intersectional and institutional.

Highlights

Ana and Hamza here point to the raciolinguistic ideologies and listening practices of authoritative bodies (Flores and Rosa, 2015), as part of a discussion about Front Desk, a 2018 young adult (YA) fiction novel by the Chinese writer Kelly Yang, which centres on a young immigrant girl of Ana and Hamza’s age who is the target of language discrimination in school (Yang, 2018)
This article has shown how fictional texts can be used as an entry point for young people to discuss, make sense of, and interrogate raciolinguistic ideologies, tracing the contours between fictional and real worlds whilst questioning the listening practices of authoritative bodies and policies
Our work builds on US-based scholarship examining raciolinguistic ideologies in education (e.g. Flores and Rosa, 2015), and research which uses fictional texts to challenge raciolinguistic ideologies and language stigma in schools (e.g. Baker-Bell, 2020 pp. 102–117)

Summary

Introduction

Successive governments have designed education policy so that standardised English is granted elevated status, with racialised speakers asked to modify their language practices in line with such standards as to be heard as conforming and legitimate These dense webs of mechanisms include language tests, curricula, standards for teachers and the schools inspectorate (see Cushing, 2021a), buttressed in part by conservative UK media discourse which frames critical educational linguists as ‘race radicals’ (e.g. Phillips, 2020). Such policies and ideologies work to erase the home language practices of racialised speakers whilst reifying notions of the ‘native’, ‘ideal’ and ‘standard’ speaker Such policies and ideologies work to erase the home language practices of racialised speakers whilst reifying notions of the ‘native’, ‘ideal’ and ‘standard’ speaker (e.g. Leung et al, 1997; Gundarina and Simpson, 2021)

Literature and language discrimination

Methodology

Conclusion

Aims