Feeling It: Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning 2017042907, 9781138296794, 9781138296800, 9781351583954, 9781315099729

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FEELING IT

Feeling It brings together twelve chapters from researchers in Chicanx studies, education, feminist studies, linguistics, and translation studies to offer a cohesive yet broad-ranging exploration of the issue of affect in the language and learning experiences of Latinx youth. Drawing on data from an innovative social justiceoriented university-community partnership based in young people’s social agency and their linguistic and cultural expertise, the contributors are unified by their focus on a single year in the history of this partnership; their analytic focus on race, language, and affect in educational contexts; and their shared commitment to ethnography, discourse analysis, and qualitative methods, informed by participatory and social justice paradigms for research with youth of color. Designed specifically for use in courses, with theoretical framing by the coeditors and ethnographic contributions from leading and emergent scholars, this book is an important and timely resource on affect, race, and social justice in the United States. Thanks to its interdisciplinary grounding, Feeling It will be of interest to future teachers and to researchers and students in applied linguistics, education, and Latinx studies, as well as related fields such as anthropology, communication, social psychology, and sociology. Mary Bucholtz is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She was the founding director and is currently an associate director of SKILLS (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society), UCSB’s academic outreach, research, and social justice program. Dolores Inés Casillas is Associate Professor in Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is an associate director of SKILLS. Jin Sook Lee is Professor of Education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the current director of SKILLS.

FEELING IT Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning

Edited by Mary Bucholtz Dolores Inés Casillas Jin Sook Lee

First published 2018 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Taylor & Francis The right of Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to contact copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and these will be corrected in subsequent editions. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Bucholtz, Mary, 1966– editor. | Casillas, Dolores Inés editor. | Lee, Jin-Sook editor. Title: Feeling it : language, race, and affect in Latinx youth learning / edited by Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, Jin Sook Lee [editors]. Description: New York : Routledge, 2018. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017042907| ISBN 9781138296794 (hardback) | ISBN 9781138296800 (pbk.) | ISBN 9781351583954 (epub) | ISBN 781351583947 (mobipocket/kindle) Subjects: LCSH: Hispanic American youth—Language. | Language and education—United States. | Hispanic American youth—Racial identity. | Racism in education—United States. | Multicultural education—United States. Classification: LCC P40.5.H57 F44 2018 | DDC 306.44/08968073—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017042907 ISBN: 978-1-138-29679-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-138-29680-0 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-09972-9 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

To the past, present, and future SKILLS student researcher–activists, for teaching us.

CONTENTS

List of Figures and Tables x Acknowledgmentsxii About the Editors xv List of Contributors xvii   1 You Feel Me?: Language and Youth Affective Agency in a Racializing World Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee

1

PART 1

Teaching, Learning, and the Affective Challenges of Social Justice

27

  2 “Just” Emotions: The Politics of Racialized and Gendered Affect in a Graduate Sociolinguistic Justice Classroom Rachel Rys

29

  3 Joint Creation: The Art of Accompaniment in the Language Beliefs of Transformative Teachers Elizabeth Mainz

47

  4 Sounding White and Boring: Race, Identity, and Youth Freedom in an After-School Program Anna Bax and Juan Sebastian Ferrada

72

viii Contents

PART 2

Ideologies of Race and Language in the Lives of Youth

89

  5 “There’s No Such Thing as Bad Language, but . . .”: Colorblindness and Teachers’ Ideologies of Linguistic Appropriateness91 Jessica Love-Nichols   6 “I Feel Like Really Racist for Laughing”: White Laughter and White Public Space in a Multiracial Classroom Meghan Corella

112

  7 “You Don’t Look Like You Speak English”: Raciolinguistic Profiling and Latinx Youth Agency Adanari Zarate

132

  8 The Complexities in Seguir Avanzando: Incongruences Between the Linguistic Ideologies of Students and Their Familias149 Zuleyma Nayeli Carruba-Rogel PART 3

Youth as Affective Agents   9 Keeping Grandpa’s Stories and Grandma’s Recipes Alive: Exploring Family Language Policy in an Academic Preparation Program Tijana Hirsch

167

169

10 “Without Me, That Wouldn’t Be Possible”: Affect in Latinx Youth Discussions of Language Brokering Audrey Lopez

187

11 “To Find the Right Words”: Bilingual Students’ Reflections on Translation and Translatability Katie Lateef-Jan

212

Contents  ix

12 Co-Constructing Academic Concepts in Hybrid Learning Spaces: Latinx Students’ Navigation of “Communities of Practice” María José Aragón 13 After Affects Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee

233 255

Index269

FIGURES AND TABLES

Figures   3.1 The theme of accompaniment and the study participants’ individual motifs illustrating the theme 53   3.2 Tijana’s concept map of her language beliefs 54   3.3 Sebastian’s concept map of his language beliefs 57   3.4 Anna’s concept map of her language beliefs 60   3.5 Zuleyma’s concept map of her language beliefs 63   3.6 Audrey’s concept map of her language beliefs 65   6.1a Front of greeting card reads, “¿como frijoles?” spelled out in beans 125   6.1b Inside of greeting card reads, “How have you bean?” 126   7.1 Students’ brainstorming about racial profiling 138   7.2 Alberto’s smirk after sharing his story 144   8.1 Spanish-language version of the bilingual flyer inviting parents to attend Noche de Familia155   9.1 An English-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of heritage language maintenance 178   9.2 An English-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of intergenerational communication 179   9.3 A Spanish-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of bilingual and multilingual language development 180   9.4 A Spanish-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of love of all languages 181 10.1 Elisa repeatedly places her hand on and gestures toward her chest in connection with her feelings about language brokering (Example 1, lines 10–11, 18, 32) 194

Figures and Tables  xi

10.2 Elisa and Jessica react to Reyna’s turn (Example 2, line 28) 10.3 Fernando and Maria suddenly shift their gaze to observe Elisa’s embodied reaction to Reyna (Example 2, line 28) 10.4 Elisa grimaces in response to Reyna’s statement “Oh: like in a school setting? You kind of know:: what to say” (Example 2, lines 46–47) 10.5 Elisa disengages from Reyna and Jessica engages with Elisa (Example 3, lines 7–9) 11.1 Tania’s freewrite 11.2 Kassandra’s freewrite 11.3 Manuel’s freewrite 11.4 Natalia’s freewrite 11.5 Lucy’s freewrite 11.6 Nancy’s freewrite 11.7 Daniela’s freewrite

199 200

200 204 219 222 223 225 226 227 230

Tables 3.1 Demographic background of the study participants 9.1 General themes and group statements in the family language policy project

50 177

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

As the co-editors of Feeling It, we would like to offer our sincere thanks to the many people who have made this volume possible. This book is based on a social justice–centered academic program for youth that we created at the University of California, Santa Barbara: School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS). The SKILLS program would not exist without the tireless efforts and generous support of numerous individuals and organizations. First and foremost, we wish to express our deepest gratitude to the SKILLS youth researcher–activists for their wisdom, passion, insight, imagination, and courage and for allowing us to accompany them for a short way along their journey toward educational and sociolinguistic justice. We are also grateful to the SKILLS students’ family members as well as the partner teachers, administrators, and staff members at our partner schools and community organizations for trusting us to work with the young people in their care and for opening up their homes, classrooms, and other spaces to SKILLS teaching, research, and activism. Words are not enough to express our enormous debt to the many UCSB graduate and undergraduate students who have contributed to the success of the SKILLS program. Their dedication and vision as teachers, mentors, researchers, and partners in all aspects of SKILLS has been an inspiration to us. We want to acknowledge in particular the 2013–14 SKILLS team, whose extraordinary work provides the foundation for every word in this book. These include: •

The graduate teaching fellows, whose unflagging commitment to sociolinguistic justice was abundantly evident in the SKILLS classrooms every day and who have shared their experiences in these pages: Anna Bax, Zuleyma Carruba-Rogel, Juan Sebastian Ferrada, Tijana Hirsch, and Audrey Lopez; as well as Kayla Eisman Palakurthy and Katie Lateef-Jan, who developed and

Acknowledgments  xiii

taught a highly successful version of the SKILLS program for kindergarten and elementary students (not discussed in this volume). • The Center for California Languages and Cultures graduate assistants who efficiently and cheerfully carried out the tedious yet crucial behindthe-scenes work of coordinating a large and complex program: María José Aragón, Meghan Corella, Rachel Rys, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. • The many undergraduate SKILLS mentors who supported, encouraged, and inspired young people at our partner sites and provided them with role models of academic success and social commitment: Melissa Castillo,Vanessa Dominguez, Steven Garcia, Chandni Govindjie, Ashley Jordan, Celia Magaña, Jazmine Njissang, Jesus Orozco, Brenda Santamaria, Joleana Shurley, Kaveh Varjoy, and Lizette Wences. • The SKILLS field researchers who systematically documented our work within the program: Ofelia Bello, Nat Bury (who also served as a mentor), Christine Fuentes, Olivia Jaffe-Pachuilo, Tina Kim, Ester Lee, Anna Luo, Conness Miller, Juan Orozco,Yamily Sanchez Ibarra, Trynitie Taylor, Meagan Vigus, and Diane Villadsen. • The Center for California Languages and Cultures undergraduate interns, who processed a huge amount of data while also energetically helping with countless organizational details: Jacqueline Alcalá, Cassidy Copeland, Karen Delaney, Daisy Gomez, Cheryl Lee, Guadalupe Martinez, Donna Olson, María Reyes, Nathaniel Rosen, Andrea Withers, and Christine Yaklin. This volume emerged from our collaboration in a year-long interdisciplinary graduate seminar sponsored by UCSB’s Crossroads Initiative of the Graduate Division; we are grateful for their financial support. We also deeply appreciate the contributions of the eighteen seminar participants, who shared not only their knowledge and disciplinary perspectives but also their emotional and political investments in the issue of language, race, and learning. These participants include the five graduate teaching fellows; other enrolled students who conducted research and/or provided curriculum development and guest teaching for the SKILLS program, many of whom also contributed chapters to this volume: María José Aragón, Meghan Corella, Katie Lateef-Jan, Jessica Love-Nichols, Elizabeth Mainz, Rachel Rys, Hala Sun, Tiange Wang, Adanari Zarate, and Verónica Zavala; and three additional class members who attended the first quarter of the seminar. The seminar was also supported by an outstanding team of undergraduate research assistants: Iliana Avila, Esther Cisneros, R.Yibing Guo, Inez Hurtado Im, Angela Kempf-Luu, and Natalia Luna. We offer our thanks to Santa Barbara City College for enabling us to provide college credit at no cost to most SKILLS students over the years; we acknowledge in particular our 2013–14 partnership with Alice Scharper,Dean of Educational Programs; Jill Stein, Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; and Lauren Wintermeyer, Dual Enrollment Coordinator. In addition, we gratefully acknowledge the

xiv Acknowledgments

financial support of the Verizon Foundation as well as the following UCSB offices: Associated Students, Community Affairs Board Foundation, Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Department of Education, Department of Linguistics, Faculty Research Assistance Program, Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Academic Policy; Office of Education Partnerships, Office of Instructional Consultation, and Student-Initiated Outreach Program. We are grateful to the Routledge editorial team—the original commissioning editor, Rebecca Novack; current editor Judith Newlin; Kathrene Binag, the editorial assistant who oversaw the entire process; production editor Stacey Carter; and project manager Marie Roberts—for their interest in this project, their patience as the volume developed, and their meticulous work throughout the production process. Special thanks to the anonymous reviewer of the volume proposal for their enthusiasm and encouragement and to Elliot Hoey for creating the index. We would also like to express our gratitude to Manuel Unzueta, the artist who created the beautiful mural that appears on the cover of this book, and to Tony Mastres, who generously donated his professional services to photograph the mural. We are very appreciative of the audience interest and feedback we received at numerous academic conferences while this volume was taking shape, including the American Educational Research Association in San Antonio, Texas; the International Association of Applied Linguistics (AILA) in Rio de Janeiro; the Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies Retreat in Half-Moon Bay, California; the International Gender and Language Association in Hong Kong; and the Workshop on the Politics of Race and Language in Learning Contexts at UCSB. Special thanks to H. Samy Alim, Laura Graham, Adrienne Lo, Django Paris, Jeff Reaser, Angela Reyes, Jonathan Rosa, Ana Celia Zentella, and many other friends, colleagues, readers, reviewers, and editors for numerous clarifying conversations, invaluable suggestions, and unflagging encouragement. Any shortfalls lie with us, not with these insightful interlocutors. Finally, we offer both profound thanks and apologies to our families. We are endlessly grateful for their love and support, and for their patience as we spent holidays, vacations, evenings, and weekends “just doing one more thing” for this volume.

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Mary Bucholtz (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the director of the Center for California Languages and Cultures; she is also affiliated with the Departments of Anthropology, Education, Feminist Studies, and Spanish and Portuguese, as well as the Comparative Literature Program and the Latin American and Iberian Studies Program. A specialist in sociocultural linguistics with a focus on language, youth, and race, she is the author of White Kids: Language, Race, and Styles of Youth Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which examines how white teenagers in a California high school linguistically construct their own and others’ racial and youth identities. She directed the UCSB academic outreach, research, and social justice program SKILLS (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society) from 2010 to 2017 and currently serves as an associate director of the program. Her research has been supported by grants and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Spencer Foundation for Educational Research, the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and other sources. Dolores Inés Casillas is Associate Professor in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies, and a faculty affiliate in the Departments of Film and Media Studies, Applied Linguistics, and Latin American and Iberian Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her book, Sounds of Belonging: U.S. Spanishlanguage Radio and Public Advocacy (NYU Press, 2014), which received two book prizes, examines how immigration politics throughout the twentieth century have shaped and transformed the character and growth of U.S. Spanish-language radio. She is also co-editor with María Elena Cepeda (Williams College) of the Routledge Companion to Latina/o Media Studies. She has published essays on radio

xvi  About the Editors

humor, “accent” use within popular culture, immigration-based broadcasts, and the politics of language. She is a senior contributor to the academic and activist site Sounding Out! A Sound Studies Blog. She is also a former Hellman Faculty Fellow and former Faculty Fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies on Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She is an associate director of the UCSB academic outreach, research, and social justice program SKILLS (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society). Jin Sook Lee (Ph.D., Stanford University) is Professor of Education in the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Linguistics. Her research examines sociocultural factors that influence the learning and teaching processes of bilingual children as well as the maintenance and development of heritage languages among children of immigrant families. She co-edited The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the US (Multilingual Matters, 2009) and serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Multilingual Research, Language Arts, and The Journal of Asia TEFL. In 2011, she was a recipient of the Fulbright Core Senior Specialist Award in Applied Linguistics. She is the current director of the UCSB academic outreach, research, and social justice program SKILLS (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society) and UCSB’s Interdisciplinary Emphasis in Applied Linguistics. Her research has been supported by organizations such as the Foundation for Child Development, National Institutes of Health, and National Science Foundation.

CONTRIBUTORS

María José Aragón is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research focuses on students’ language and literacy practices in linguistically, culturally, and racially diverse learning contexts. She has been part of the SKILLS community for several years and has participated in the program as a teaching fellow as well as a member of the coordinating team. Her areas of interest include language and schooling, educational equity, sociocultural linguistics, critical pedagogy, and bilingual/dual language programs. Anna Bax, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, has been involved with the SKILLS program since 2013. Her master’s thesis demonstrated the positive effect of linguistics outreach programs like SKILLS on students’ language attitudes toward marginalized varieties of English. Her other research interests include euphemism and the discursive construction of so-called reverse racism, gender and interpretive agency in online dating, and the documentation, maintenance, and sociophonetic analysis of diasporic varieties of Mixtec in California. Zuleyma Nayeli Carruba-Rogel immigrated from Mexico to Amarillo, Texas, where she was raised in a low-income community. Despite adversity, she became the first Latina Gates Millennium Scholar in the Texas Panhandle. As an undergraduate McNair Scholar, she became committed to using research to address educational inequality. Dr. Carruba-Rogel earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara under the guidance of Dr. Richard Durán. She was a UCSB Crossroads Fellow and also received the UC President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship. She is the District Parent Engagement and Talent Acquisition Coordinator for the Amarillo Independent School District.

xviii Contributors

Meghan Corella is Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research examines how relations of power are reinforced and reconfigured through linguistic interactions, with a particular focus on young people and children from linguistically, racially, and culturally minoritized groups. She specializes in discourse analysis, sociocultural linguistics, and classroom ethnography. During her years as a SKILLS graduate student co-instructor and program coordinator, Meghan learned a great deal about social justice from Latinx students’ affective and intellectual engagements with language politics. Juan Sebastian Ferrada is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation explores the cultural and linguistic practices that LGBTQ Latinxs use to navigate articulating their gender and sexual identities in the family context. In addition, his work draws connections between queerness and Spanglish to theorize Spanglish as a queer Latinx linguistic practice. Other research interests include Latinx family politics, queer Latinx cultural production, and Spanglish. Additionally, Sebastian served as a teaching fellow for the SKILLS program in 2012 and 2014. Tijana Hirsch received her Ph.D. from the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her interests lie at the intersection of transnational family language policy processes and digitally mediated and networked life as captured through online ethnographic research. She is interested in the development of knowledge resulting from communications within online communities and its impact on languages within the family domain. Tijana also holds a B.A. degree from UCSB in Psychology and an M.A. degree from Tel Aviv University in Education with a specialization in Applied Linguistics (TESOL). Katie Lateef-Jan is a doctoral student in Comparative Literature at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with Ph.D. emphases in Translation Studies and Applied Linguistics. With Suzanne Jill Levine, she co-edited Untranslatability Goes Global: The Translator’s Dilemma, part of Routledge’s Advances in Translation and Interpreting Studies series (2018). Katie is a literary translator whose translations from the Spanish have appeared in Granta:The Magazine of New Writing and Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. A SKILLS teaching fellow from 2013 to 2017, she has taught at a learning center, a high school, and a youth group. Audrey Lopez is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural Linguistics at the University of California Santa Barbara, where she also earned her M.A. in Spanish Linguistics. She holds a B.A. in Linguistics and Latin American Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Audrey has over nine years of experience designing and leading participatory research, arts, and educational programming with youth in Southern California, Latin America, and Ghana.

Contributors  xix

Jessica Love-Nichols is a doctoral candidate in Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with emphases in Applied Linguistics, Environment and Society, and College and University Teaching. Before starting her graduate studies in linguistics, she taught first grade to emergent bilingual students at a community school in New York City and environmental science to third- through sixth-grade students in Matagalpa, Nicaragua. As a graduate student, Jessica was a teaching fellow in the SKILLS program from 2014 to 2017 at two high schools and a youth group. Elizabeth Mainz earned a Ph.D. in Cultural Perspectives and Comparative Education with an emphasis in Applied Linguistics from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research has appeared in a special issue of the journal Ethnography, focusing on the link between internet discourse and temporal frames as it applies to methodological choices. Her most recent work examines school climate and teacher evaluation. She has been a secondary English teacher for over ten years and is currently teaching in the Ventura Unified School District in California. Rachel Rys is a doctoral candidate in Feminist Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with emphases in Writing Studies and Productive and Reproductive Labors. She received her M.A. in Feminist Studies from UCSB and her B.A. in Linguistics and Gender Studies from Northwestern University. Her dissertation, “Powerful Marginality: Comics, Representation, and Feminist Theory,” examines how the narrative properties of the comics medium can address writing and representational concerns in feminist academic writing, including issues of reflexivity, embodiment, and temporality. She also works as an instructional consultant for graduate teaching assistants and first-time university instructors. Adanari Zarate is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She holds a B.A. in Child and Adolescent Development, an M.A. in Education, and an M.A. in Chicana and Chicano Studies. She has worked with Latinx youth for over ten years, both in her hometown of Santa Ana, California, and in Santa Barbara–area high schools through the SKILLS program. Her research interests include Latinx youth, raciolinguistics, and culturally sustaining pedagogies. Supported by a University of California President’s Dissertation Fellowship for 2017–18, Adanari is completing her ethnographic dissertation research, which focuses on raciolinguistic ideologies and practices of Spanish among high school–aged Latinx youth in Santa Ana.

1 YOU FEEL ME? Language and Youth Affective Agency in a Racializing World Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee

Introduction Racialization—the sociopolitical process of imposing structural disadvantage on certain kinds of bodies that have been categorized as phenotypically marked—is central to all forms of education. Given the very real risks for racialized youth in racist schools and societies, both academic researchers and progressive educators have worked to eliminate the numerous threats to the humanity, the well-being, and the very survival of youth of color. But more importantly, a less acknowledged yet powerful force regularly and courageously contests processes of racial inequality: young people themselves.Youth, and especially racialized youth, are far too often ideologically—and inaccurately—positioned as the passive recipients of others’ actions rather than as effective social actors in their own right. As a result, many of the academic, advocacy, and activist efforts to foster social justice in and around the educational sphere have positioned policymakers, teachers, and parents as the primary agents of social change, with youth framed primarily as its beneficiaries. Increasingly, however, those seeking to bring about educational justice have recognized the limits of an adult-centered perspective and have begun to call attention to young people of color as a fundamental source of sociocultural knowledge and sociopolitical transformation in their own right (Cammarota & Fine 2008; DeJaeghere, Josic, & McCleary 2016; Delgado Bernal 2002; Paris & Alim 2017). This volume aims to contribute to this scholarly, educational, and political project by examining the agency of young people of color in confrontation with the unrelenting racializing processes of hegemonic society as well as the often disparaging or marginalizing practices of even well-meaning adults. Our starting point for this exploration is the lived experience of Latinx youth, which endows

2  Mary Bucholtz et al.

them with substantial linguistic and cultural expertise, including ways of speaking and being that young people draw from their homes and communities as well as practices that youth themselves have created or adapted. Although this expertise is overlooked or overtly devalued in most educational settings, it is in fact the basis of important forms of knowledge too often missing from conventional classrooms. This knowledge in turn inspires racially minoritized young people to enact social change by resisting, subverting, and dismantling hegemonic ideologies and practices. We approach the issue of youth agency for social change from a linguistic vantage point because of the crucial importance of language in this dynamic. Language lies at the core of the racializing processes that undergird all forms of racism, from the creation of the potent fiction of “race” itself by means of racializing categories and labels (Leeman 2004) to the linguistic violence (Ek, Sánchez, & Quijada Cerecer 2013) produced by the ideological framing of the language of racialized groups as “disordered” and a “social problem” (Hill 1999; Hurtado & Rodríguez 1989; Urciuoli 1996). Yet language remains largely invisible and off-record as a resource for reproducing racial inequality (Baugh 2003). A “raciolinguistic” perspective (Flores & Rosa 2015; Rosa & Flores 2017; see also Alim, Rickford, & Ball 2016) is therefore needed in order to expose how race is created and perpetuated through language. But language is not only a central means of producing racial inequality; it is also fundamental to the deeply meaningful social identities created by the groups and individuals subjected to racialization. From this perspective, language is a powerful tool for resisting and rejecting oppression. In order to gain the fullest possible understanding of the role of language in the lives of young people of color, then, it is necessary to adjust one’s analytic perspective, at times zooming out to capture the large-scale sociopolitical processes of racialization at work across time and space and at other times zooming in to see how young people take action at particular moments in their everyday lives to define themselves and their families and communities against these processes. The chapters in this volume take this dual perspective in exploring young people’s encounters with the nexus of language and race. Some authors concentrate primarily on the forms of structural power that uphold racism—particularly ideology, the taken-for-granted cultural beliefs that sustain power through language and other semiotic processes. Other authors examine the practices of individual and collective youth agency that challenge and dismantle power, actions that are also largely linguistic and semiotic. Many chapters consider both aspects of this struggle, and a number of chapters offer critical reflections on the complex role of adults in this process—sometimes guiding youth, sometimes learning from them, at times working alongside young people to effect change, at other times reproducing racializing and marginalizing processes. A fundamental point that emerges across the individual chapters is that the raciolinguistic struggles described in these pages cannot be addressed by researchers, educators, and other well-intentioned adults simply by appealing to the traditional

You Feel Me?  3

scholarly and pedagogical tools of empirical evidence and logical argumentation. What replicates racism, whether virulent individual extremism or the no less violent structural injustices supported by white hegemony, is not reason but emotion. Racializing and other oppressive ideologies are rooted in dehumanizing affects—in visceral, embodied emotions such as fear, hatred, contempt, disgust, desire, and pity (Ahmed 2004; Ioanide 2015; Trainor 2008). In light of this reality, dispassionate rationality is a woefully inadequate weapon for combating racism. Moreover, youth of color bring their own affects to their efforts to overthrow racism. As a wealth of literature, scholarship, and political writing by authors of color over three centuries makes clear, to be racialized is a deeply emotional and bodily experience, one that cannot be apprehended through the intellect alone. To demand, as conventional schooling does, that students leave their emotions and perceptions at the classroom door and become disembodied thinking machines is to deny the very basis of minoritized young people’s knowledge and insight about race and racism.Thus, educators have a crucial role to play in facilitating, supporting, and validating the marginalized affective experiences of racialized youth and in offering young people new conceptual tools and perspectives for interpreting and acting on those experiences. In the next section we briefly sketch our theoretical understanding of affect in young people’s agentive actions to challenge racializing ideologies. This theoretical perspective emerged from our experiences of developing a special academic program focused on language and social justice; this program, which provides the ethnographic context for this volume, is described in the subsequent section. Finally, we offer a detailed description of each of the chapters, which exemplify a range of collaborative efforts within and around the SKILLS program to undo the profound educational and social inequities that youth of color must contend with.

Affect, Ideology, and Agency in the Lives of Racialized Youth Our conceptualization of affect is influenced in a general way by the recent “affective turn” in the humanities and social sciences, which calls for greater consideration of the emotional and embodied dimensions of human experience (Clough & Halley 2007; Gregg & Seigworth 2010). However, we differ from many of these theorists in their narrow understanding of affect as separate from agency, cognition, and language. Such artificial dualities do not capture the complexity of affect as a social and relational phenomenon. Taking a broader perspective, we define affect as the simultaneously cognitive, perceptual, and emotional experience of embodied encounter with the material world. Given the centrality of embodiment to affective experience, it is evident that affect is a key component of racialization (Berg & Ramos-Zayas 2015). For young people, this means that being socialized into a specific racial subject position entails being socialized into its attendant affects. Not only is racial ideology constituted within affects, as discussed in the previous section, but conversely it is

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also instrumental in the constitution of affects. For example, in educational settings youth of color are inculcated into ideologies of affective appropriateness that regiment their affective comportment and impose a moral order on their affective experience by stipulating the expected feelings and behavior of specific categories of racialized students (cf. Lei 2003). Similarly, Ana Ramos-Zayas (2011: 86) argues that racialized youth undergo a process of “racial learning” that involves the development of an “affective epistemology,” that is,“a set of rules and assumptions about affect and its adequate expression, interpretations of how others feel or should feel, and the creation or performance of an affective persona.” However, researchers and educators still do not know enough about how this process works in learning settings; as Michalinos Zembylas (2010: 254) notes, a great deal of work remains to be done on “the emotional aspects of racialization and ethnicization in schools.” The chapters in this volume seek to address this gap in knowledge. Like recent theories of affect, the extensive rethinking of agency across the social sciences and humanities has been deeply influenced by developments in critical race theory and feminist thought. Such theories refute simplistic notions of agency rooted in Enlightenment conceptualizations of the (white, male) social subject as an autonomous, intentional actor effecting his will upon the world through rational cogitation. Many current theorists instead recognize the social, relational nature of agency as well as its rootedness in the embodied specificities of human beings interacting in the material world. We take up a particular theoretical position in relation to this vast body of work: In our understanding, agency resides not in individuals but in actions; it is interactional and hence both linguistic and material; and it is inherently political (cf. Kockelman 2007). With regard to the first point, even in more recent approaches agency is often conceptualized as a “capacity” or “property” of agents, a formulation that problematically locates agency within individual entities as an immanent potential. We instead understand agency as a social and interactional phenomenon brought about through the relationship between entities, actions, and effects. Secondly, because interaction takes place in a world of both words and bodies, agency is necessarily a matter of both language and materiality. Finally, agency, whether individual or collective, is political: It acts upon the world and thus effects change and engages with power in socially consequential ways— whether to claim that power, to redistribute it, or to incapacitate it. It should be clear from this discussion that in our understanding agency and affect are closely aligned:While both have traditionally been theorized as individual internal states or qualities, we instead view these concepts as social, relational, and interactional, enacted through language and the body. We have found it particularly useful to bring these two phenomena together in the concept of affective agency, by which we mean the mobilization of social action in and/or through embodied cognition, emotion, and perception (see also Ferrada, Bucholtz, & Corella forthcoming). In other words, affective agency is the interactional experience of moving and being moved.

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The concept of affective agency was first developed by feminist scholar Susan McManus (2011, 2013) from the perspective of political theory. Rejecting overly rationalist liberal and radical theories of political action, McManus instead calls attention to social subjects as both thinking and feeling beings. She argues that affective agency is generated through relational encounter, as embodied emotional experience both constrains and enables sociopolitical action and change. Thus, in her view, an affective perspective on agency is necessarily “attentive to the ‘micropolitical’, quotidian bodily encounters that are constitutive of, rather than secondary to, structural or social agential formations” (2013: 137–138). For this reason, analyses built from the details of linguistic and embodied interaction, such as those exemplified in many of the chapters in this volume, are especially illuminating in understanding the workings of affective agency. It is important to note that affective agency is not qualitatively different from agency more generally; as with other theoretical refinements of agency that have recently been put forth, such as constrained agency (VanderStouwe 2016) and distributed agency (Enfield & Kockelman 2017), the purpose is not to proliferate multiple types of agency but rather to enlarge the theoretical understanding of agency as a complex but unified phenomenon. Affective agency is therefore a conceptual tool for highlighting the affective dimension of agency and the agentive dimension of affect. Our understanding of affective agency in education is very different from psychology-centered theories of students’ “motivation” or “engagement,” or from pedagogies that claim to teach “social emotional learning,” “emotional intelligence,” “emotional literacy,” or even “moral” feeling.Young people do not need to be taught how to feel or instructed in proper forms and expressions of emotion; they already know how they feel. The problem is that teachers may not know how their students feel, or they may not have been trained to build ethically and responsibly on those emotional experiences as a resource for socially transformative learning. Thus, just as racialized youth bring often unrecognized yet socially significant “funds of knowledge” to school from their families and communities (González, Moll, & Amanti 2005), they also bring what might be called “funds of feeling,” a closely connected and equally unnoticed form of knowledge and action. In the academic program that is the focus of this volume, young people of color do not separate thinking from feeling, knowing from doing. In this way, they enact affective agency, challenging racializing processes and advancing social justice for themselves, their peers, their families, and their communities.

The SKILLS Program The School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS) program began in 2010 based on a simple observation: Students in our undergraduate classes often experienced their initial encounters with academic discussions of

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language, race, and learning as transformative, yet they also frequently lamented that they had never been exposed to these issues in their previous schooling. The SKILLS program was established at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2010; in its first full year, SKILLS team members developed and taught a twentyweek college-level curriculum on language in social life to a classroom of fifteen high school students. Since that time the program has created partnerships with sixteen sites at ten schools and community organizations in six municipalities in the Santa Barbara area (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2015). SKILLS has been implemented in a wide range of learning settings, including as part of a required class in U.S. history in a continuation high school; as a standalone social science elective in a rural high school; as a fifth-grade social studies class in a bilingual immersion school; through in-school, after-school, weekend, and summer academic preparation programs such as Upward Bound and AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) on the UCSB campus and at various urban and suburban high schools; and as an optional enrichment opportunity in youth-serving community organizations. SKILLS has been taught in English, Spanish, and bilingually and has served over 800 young people. Although the majority of program participants have been Latinx high school students who are the first generation in their families to be college-bound, SKILLS has reached children, teenagers, and young adults ranging from kindergarten to community college. In addition to Latinxs, these young people include Native Americans, the children of indigenous Mexican immigrants, and smaller numbers of African American, Asian American, and white youth. Whenever possible, students receive college credit at no cost for their participation in the program, thanks to partnerships with a local community college. Inevitably, some aspects of the curriculum have shifted over time, but the SKILLS program has maintained its original goal of avoiding a “school-as-usual” approach: There are no tests, no quizzes, no lectures or traditional homework. Youth participants are instead guided to explore issues of language, power, race, and identity in their own lives and communities through open-ended discussions, hands-on activities, critical reflections, and original research, creative projects, and community action. The curriculum in each classroom is developed and taught by one, two, or three graduate student teaching fellows, supported by undergraduate mentors—themselves often first-generation college students—who act as teaching assistants in the classroom and who work with the youth participants one-on-one and in small groups. The mentors also conduct extremely popular interactive workshops and panels on all aspects of college life. The teaching team often benefits from the pedagogical expertise of a partner teacher who already knows the SKILLS students well; some teachers eagerly participate in all aspects of the program, while others prefer to observe from the sidelines or to withdraw altogether, and a few actively challenge the SKILLS curriculum and the UCSB team’s approach. (In the sites that are discussed in this volume, all partner teachers were supportive of the SKILLS program.)

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The SKILLS curricula vary from year to year and from site to site based on the interests of students, the recommendations of partner teachers, and the research specializations of the teaching team. The original curriculum consisted of four units of increasingly broad scope, although this general structure is adapted to meet the needs of the teaching fellows in each iteration of the program: language in the peer group (e.g., slang, Spanglish), language in the family (e.g., family language policy, intergenerational language use), language in the community (e.g., varieties of English and Spanish, language shift), and language in the world (e.g., online language use, linguistic racism). At the beginning of the five-month-long program, youth participants come to UCSB to meet their colleagues at other sites, to receive mentoring regarding college, and to explore the university campus through visits to classes, dorms, and dining halls. Students return to UCSB at the end of the program to share their work within SKILLS with the campus community at a day-long SKILLS Day conference with hundreds of attendees; they also present the results of their work to family members and the general public through bilingual Family Night events at their schools and community organizations and at SKILLS Night events at local public libraries. For most SKILLS participants, this is their first time speaking in public as well as their first time presenting themselves as knowledgeable authorities to an adult audience. This experience is often transformative, as young people’s powerful presentations and the deeply engaged audience response help them fully appreciate their own agency as linguistic and cultural experts and initiators of social change. While social aspects of language are addressed in all implementations of the program, the curriculum varies considerably depending on the expertise of members of the teaching team. Teaching fellows have been recruited from numerous departments at UCSB, including Anthropology, Chicana and Chicano Studies, Comparative Literature, Education, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Linguistics, Sociology, and Spanish and Portuguese. Overarching course themes or foci in specific classrooms have included language and race; language, gender, and sexuality; language and music; indigenous language preservation and revitalization; language and media; family language policy; and translation and interpreting. As the teaching team has expanded and as we have witnessed the potential impact of SKILLS in the lives of racialized students, the program’s conceptualization of language and society has likewise expanded to include a wide scope of interdisciplinary topics, and its focus on social justice, race and racism, and activism has become more explicit. Curricula, activities, and team research on the program are made available to other researchers and educators as well as the general public through the SKILLS website (skills.ucsb.edu). In 2013–14, the SKILLS program received special funding from UCSB’s Graduate Division through the interdisciplinary Crossroads Initiative. This funding enabled us to offer a year-long interdisciplinary graduate seminar, The Politics of Race and Language in Learning Contexts, as well as a related large undergraduate general education class, Language, Power, and Learning, that was cross-listed in all

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three of our departments. Funding was also provided to support five Crossroads graduate teaching fellows, who served as teaching assistants in the undergraduate class in the fall academic quarter and as teaching fellows in the SKILLS program in winter and spring. In addition, seventeen graduate students from seven departments enrolled in the Crossroads seminar; fifteen continued with the seminar in winter quarter and thirteen enrolled for all three quarters. An international Fulbright Scholar also attended the fall sessions. During the Crossroads seminar, participants explored issues of language, race, and inequality in education and shared their disciplinary and personal perspectives. All graduate students also created learning activities for the SKILLS program and whenever possible implemented these activities with youth at one of the three 2013–14 partner sites: two academic preparation classes at two different high schools and a youth organization. Each graduate student also carried out original research on some aspect of the SKILLS program; almost all of these studies are included in the present volume. Some projects examined specific learning activities (Lateef-Jan; Zarate), while others documented particularly significant moments within the SKILLS program (Carruba-Rogel; Corella; Lopez) or emergent themes and issues that developed in individual classrooms over the course of the program (Aragón; Hirsch). Other research focused on various members of the teaching team (Love-Nichols; Mainz) or reflected on the experiences of graduate students within the collaboration, whether as Crossroads students or as SKILLS teaching fellows (Bax & Ferrada; Rys). As several of the chapters in this volume discuss, this large and largely experimental interdisciplinary collaboration did not always run smoothly. There were significant conflicts in the Crossroads seminar and in some individual partner sites as people with very different life experiences, assumptions, expectations, and goals came together to work, learn, and teach. These struggles, though painful at the time, have helped us to rethink various aspects of the SKILLS program and how we can best prepare and support all participants; we believe that the program is stronger and more effective as a result of these challenges. Above all, the SKILLS program rejects traditional conceptualizations of what can be taught and learned in K–12 classrooms, by whom, and how, and reimagines taken-for-granted educational arrangements by asking What counts as knowledge?, Who counts as a knowledge producer?, and What counts as knowledge production? With regard to the first question, many of the issues we address in SKILLS curricula are intimately familiar to racialized youth based on their own lived experience, but these issues are rarely broached in students’ regular classrooms. By bringing these topics into learning spaces, SKILLS provides an academic reframing and new conceptual tool kit for youth to examine and critically reflect on language in relation to race, power, identity, and community. Comments like “I never had a word for that” or “I’ve never talked about this before” are common student reactions to SKILLS learning activities.

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But the goal of the program is not merely to equip SKILLS participants with academic vocabulary or even to instill in them a body of academic knowledge. As the second question above implies, far more important is the role of youth as producers rather than simply consumers of knowledge (Bucholtz et al. 2014). Young people of color already bring a great deal of knowledge and insight into SKILLS both as innovative linguistic and cultural experts and as agents of social change—as speakers of Chicanx English, Chicanx Spanish, Spanglish, and other languages and varieties; as participants in youth culture as well as the cultures of their families and communities; as racialized individuals and groups making their way in a racist society. Youth in the program create valuable new knowledge by combining their existing expertise with the insights they develop through their encounters with the SKILLS material. Because our model of teaching and learning is multidirectional and nonhierarchical, we learn at least as much from the SKILLS youth participants as they do from us (Lee & Bucholtz 2015). Finally, our answer to the third question above has changed considerably over time. Originally, SKILLS emphasized research as the basis of youth knowledge production within the program, including audio documentation of students’ own linguistic practices with their friends such as slang and translanguaging, linguistic oral histories of family members, and ethnographic studies of language use in local communities of practice, from surfers to firefighters to restaurant workers. However, the range of research activities quickly expanded to include additional topics, such as linguistic stereotypes in animated film and sexist microaggressions in everyday life. At the same time, we began to interrogate our focus on research as a privileged form of knowledge production.Teaching fellows led the way in guiding students to bring a critical lens and a social justice angle to their work within the program and to communicate through creative expression and communitybased action as well as academic language. We began to refer to the SKILLS participants as “student researcher–activists” to capture their multiple roles and contributions within the program (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee forthcoming). Our experiences in partnership with youth of color over the years have led us to formulate a set of guiding principles for the work we are trying to do. These principles—sociolinguistic justice, linguistic and cultural sustenance, and accompaniment—stem directly from what we have learned within the SKILLS program and are also shaped by the ideas of other scholars who share our concern with educational and social justice for racialized youth.

The Guiding Principles of SKILLS The creation of the SKILLS program has been organic and collaborative, guided not by top-down pedagogical or social theories but by our own and others’ experiences as educators seeking to support young people of color in their educational trajectories. The principles we outline here emerged from our work with youth

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and have continued to evolve as our experiences give us new insights into how best to do that work. The first of these principles, sociolinguistic justice, is central to the SKILLS program’s goal of supporting young people as they stand against policies, practices, and ideologies that deny them linguistic self-determination.The elements of sociolinguistic justice that we have identified are as follows (Bucholtz et al. 2014; Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2016): • •

societal awareness and appreciation of linguistic diversity and variation, the legitimation of all community languages and varieties for use across social spheres, • access to knowledge of and about one’s own linguistic heritage and repertoire as well as of sociopolitically powerful languages and varieties, • acknowledgment of all language users as linguistic experts, and • critical evaluation of how language is used to reproduce inequality and oppression. In the SKILLS programs we strive to advance all of these goals in different ways, from supporting students’ use of their full linguistic repertoires in the classroom to exploring academic research and critical perspectives on language to creating opportunities for youth to share and create their own linguistic and cultural knowledge. Our specific focus on a linguistic form of social justice originates in our recognition of the paramount importance of language in identity, culture, and community. For young people of color, the sense of selfhood and of familial and community belonging that is bound up with language is constantly under assault from dominant ideologies that racialize, marginalize, and devalue sociopolitically subordinated ways of speaking (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee forthcoming).Thus, language is a crucial form of cultural sustenance for young people. Our thinking about this issue is stimulated by recent calls to create pedagogies that are not only culturally relevant (Ladson-Billings 1995) but also culturally sustaining (Paris 2012; Paris & Alim 2014, 2017). As our experiences within the SKILLS program have shown us, educators must work to sustain young people’s languages and cultures in learning settings because language and culture in turn sustain young people (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2017). A final principle that guides our work is accompaniment, a form of collective action in which people with different life experiences and forms of expertise come together for a time to negotiate collaborative relationships that foster social change (Tomlinson & Lipsitz 2013). This principle stems from our unease with the neoliberal view that the purpose of social justice work with young people is youth empowerment (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2016; Kwon 2013). The notion of empowerment carries with it deeply problematic associations that reproduce rather than challenge social inequality by framing scholars, educators, and activists

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as benevolent agents of uplift and young people as hapless victims at worst, as selfsufficient bootstrappers at best. But in the SKILLS program socially transformative learning does not reside with only one person or role, and young people are well equipped with the agency to speak and act for themselves. The goal of SKILLS is simply to provide resources—from texts to tools to information to a forum for discussion and exploration—in order to enable youth to take action for social change in the way that means the most to them personally. These three principles—sociolinguistic justice, sustenance, and accompaniment— help us reflect on our work within the SKILLS program and keep us humble in assessing its effects. Our steps toward sociolinguistic justice are inevitably smaller than we would like and sometimes frustratingly slow. Our efforts to sustain the languages and cultures of the young people in the SKILLS program do not always turn out as hoped. And although it would be tempting to imagine that our collaborations with youth are always transformative in a deep and lasting way, accompaniment always comes with temporal limits, and the uncomfortable truth is that our brief time with these student researchers–activists often benefits our lives more than we benefit theirs. Our commitment to these principles has also helped us to understand the central role of affect in our work with youth and has enabled us to see how even as we try to move beyond rationalist discourses within the SKILLS program, we sometimes unintentionally reproduce them. At the same time, we also recognize that the impact of our acts of accompaniment in pursuit of sociolinguistic justice and cultural and linguistic sustenance may not always be immediately visible. As a number of chapters in this volume suggest, even singular moments—from a first encounter with an instance of racist discourse to publicly claiming the right to one’s own language—can have enduring effects.

Overview of the Volume Feeling It is organized into three sections. Part 1 considers the affective experiences and perspectives of faculty and graduate students involved in the SKILLS program in a variety of educational encounters. Part 2 examines how ideologies of race and language are affectively co-constituted in the everyday experiences of students of color both in and beyond the classroom. Part 3 investigates the variety of ways that Latinx youth use their affective agency to challenge ideological systems and take up positions of expertise in educational settings.Throughout the volume, the authors contemplate the intimate relationship between language, race, and affect and its role in the workings of structural power as well as individual and collective agency. The chapters in Part 1 set the stage for the volume as a whole by offering behind-the-scenes accounts of how the UCSB team members navigated their affective hopes and struggles in relation to SKILLS. Chapter 2 opens this section with an exploration of the complex and difficult emotions that arose during the

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year-long interdisciplinary Crossroads graduate seminar. Rachel Rys examines how this interdisciplinary space became fraught with tension, anxiety, and pain for many seminar participants as racial and disciplinary fissures formed in the first weeks of the course. Her chapter explores how ideologies of the role of affect in education shaped the seminar and how it was experienced by participants. Rys recounts a pivotal incident that took place early in the seminar, in which a graduate student expressed skepticism regarding the ongoing relevance of colonization for discussions of race and language, and in response several class members voiced strong and affectively layered disagreement. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s (2004) resonant phrase just emotions, Rys identifies two competing ideologies of “just emotions”: just in the dismissive sense of ‘merely’ or ‘only’, and just in the sociopolitical sense of ‘equitable’ or ‘righteous’. Through an analysis of her interviews with graduate students in the class, Rys shows the dominance of the first ideology in the discourse of seminar participants, who—despite explicitly valorizing affect in the abstract—nonetheless framed emotion as individual, ahistorical, and hence irrelevant to and disruptive of the educational process. She notes that by erasing the historical and political context of race and gender inequity, this ideology positions women and people of color as “oversensitive,” “out of control,” and even oppressive when they respond affectively to systemic oppression. Pointing to the alternative ideology of “just emotions” as affects that are tied to structural equity, Rys concludes by arguing that scholars, educators, and students who seek to advance social justice must also enact affective justice in the classroom. Although her chapter revisits an especially painful moment in the history of the SKILLS team’s collaborative work together, it is a necessary reminder of the often stark yet unacknowledged differences that may divide us from one another, as well as the difficulties many of us face in trying to move from a theoretical and political commitment to emotion to—as Rys puts it—“feeling and fighting for justice” in our own everyday lives. Chapter 3 shifts the focus to the anticipatory affects of the graduate teaching fellows in the SKILLS program as they looked ahead to working with youth on issues of race and language. Elizabeth Mainz discusses how the diverse personal histories, social relationships, and affective experiences of the five teaching fellows informed their language beliefs, and how they reflected on these beliefs in interviews with Mainz as they began to teach. Mainz draws a valuable distinction between language ideologies, which are constructed and circulated at the societal level, and individually created and held language beliefs, which are shaped not only by larger language ideologies but also by individuals’ histories of social encounter. She uses the SKILLS program’s guiding metaphor of accompaniment to discuss her interviewees’ beliefs and goals as teachers as well as her own research process. Critically reflecting on her initial use of traditional social science methods and concepts in designing and carrying out her study, Mainz notes that social justice–centered research, like social justice–centered teaching, cannot be rigidly

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controlled but should instead be understood as a fluid interaction among participants. She suggests that at its best, such research and teaching are forms of improvisational artistic and hence affective creation. A musician herself, Mainz identifies five language-related “motifs” that shape the overarching theme of accompaniment across the interviews: home and family, agency, political awareness and action, power and education, and expression. Although these motifs can be found in more than one interview, each interviewee develops a particular motif at length in their individual discussion. As a way of achieving accompaniment in her research, Mainz presents each speaker’s words at length and gives the interviewees the final word at each step in her analysis. In a final “coda,” she observes that through accompaniment both researchers and educators gain ideas, experiences, and feelings that continue to shape their language beliefs and thereby advance the collaborative work of sociolinguistic justice. Chapter 4 is coauthored by two of the graduate teaching fellows, Anna Bax and Juan Sebastian Ferrada, who worked as a team in a challenging nontraditional context, an after-school youth center.Whereas the other SKILLS sites were based in conventional educational settings, the Teen Center was institutionally and ideologically separate from school. Created as a safe space for low-income Latinx youth from ages 7 to 18, it enabled young people to experience freedom and exercise agency to a much greater extent than in their lives as students. Bax and Ferrada point out that despite the SKILLS program’s goal of offering youth an alternative to “school as usual,” its educational framing and structure fit uneasily with the openness and flexibility of the Teen Center, where young people could come and go at will, engaging in activities of their own choosing. In addition, as the authors note, it is often difficult for academics to adjust our ways of speaking in order to reach younger audiences. Bax and Ferrada reflexively analyze how young people at the Center agentively—and affectively—resisted the school-oriented nature of the SKILLS program by constructing racialized and linguistic difference between themselves and the graduate students, a project that was crystallized in one girl’s declaration that one of the graduate students “sounds white and boring.” Interweaving the daily reports that they and the undergraduate mentors wrote at the time with their own later critical reflections on their efforts to engage youth, Bax and Ferrada retrace key moments of friction during their sessions at the Center. This is a brave chapter: Rarely do educators and researchers fully acknowledge the painful stumbling blocks we encounter with such clear-eyed honesty and astute analysis (to be sure, we as the program directors are also well aware of the authors’ many pedagogical successes, which they do not recount here). In their conclusion, Bax and Ferrada reflect on how their affective encounters with young people can help adults who seek to connect with youth through the critical analysis of race and language. While the chapters in Part 1 valuably illuminate both the potential and the limits of social justice efforts, those in Part 2 turn attention to the ideological

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ground on which the education of Latinx youth plays out, and how these ideologies, simultaneously racial and linguistic, give rise to a range of affective positionings of and toward racialized young people within classrooms and other spaces. In Chapter 5, Jessica Love-Nichols discusses the raciolinguistic ideologies of three SKILLS partner teachers, concentrating in particular on the ideology of appropriateness, which has at least superficially replaced the ideology of deficit as the dominant discourse surrounding the education of minoritized language users (Flores & Rosa 2015). Love-Nichols notes, however, that the ideology of appropriateness still relies on deficit thinking and negative affects, with the result that even educators with a strong commitment to their students’ well-being may reproduce harmful ideologies in the classroom. Based on interviews that she conducted with the SKILLS partner teachers before the program began, LoveNichols examines two subideologies that contribute to the ideology of appropriateness: the ideology of formality and the ideology of worth. The first privileges “standard” English and academic language as “professional” and therefore more suited to the classroom setting than minoritized languages or varieties.The second imbues “standard” English with enhanced value that is then extended to speakers of this variety, so that speakers of other varieties are viewed as unintelligent or unworthy to be heard. Both ideologies position language form rather than the language user as the central issue, thereby erasing the reality that racialized speakers experience systemic racism and inequality regardless of the form of language that they use. Love-Nichols approaches her analysis both critically and sensitively. She insightfully notes the ways in which the partner teachers devalued the linguistic practices of their Latinx students, but she also acknowledges that as a former teacher, she herself has reproduced the ideology of appropriateness in her own classroom, motivated by emotions of care and concern for her students. Yet she also finds some hopeful signs in her data: The more experience a teacher had with the SKILLS program, the more likely they were to reject this ideology and embrace alternative affects. Love-Nichols concludes that programs like SKILLS, which are centrally concerned with youth, need to expand to include more opportunities for teachers to explore and engage with the counterhegemonic ideas on which such programs are based. Building on Chapter 5, Chapter 6 examines how a different but equally potent ideology, the racial ideology of colorblindness, reinforces hegemonic whiteness in the classroom. Meghan Corella investigates the use of colorblind strategies by white students and their white teacher to deracialize mock language as a form of racialized humor. She focuses on a classroom that differed from most other SKILLS partner sites in that it was a general social science class that included a majority of white students as well as smaller numbers of Latinx and mixedheritage students; in addition, the curriculum was taught by a high school teacher supported by undergraduate mentors, rather than a graduate teaching team. The chapter considers in depth a class discussion of mock language led by one of the

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undergraduate mentors, a woman of color. Corella shows that in this context the deployment of what she calls “white laughter”—that is, laughter that upholds rather than disrupts white supremacy—resulted in an affective order in which the perspectives of students of color as well as an educator of color were marginalized and devalued. Corella analyzes students’ white laughter in response to the examples of mock language–based humor presented by the mentor leading the discussion. She points out how white laughter and discourse worked together both to avoid acknowledging race and racism and to diminish their central role in such humor. Although some students of color aligned with the mentor’s attention to racism, white students pushed back, resisting the discourse of “offensive” racialized humor with a framing of such humor as “just funny” (a phrase that resonates with the dismissal of “just emotions” discussed by Rys in Chapter 2). Corella concludes that the strategies of colorblindness to which white laughter contributes constitute the classroom as a white public space (Hill 1999; Page & Thomas 1994). The chapter thus interrogates the simplistic view of laughter—or indeed, of any particular affective expression—in classrooms as inherently transformative or pedagogically valuable. Further, it demonstrates the persistence of the hegemony of whiteness even, and perhaps especially, within multiracial classrooms. Chapter 7 shifts analytic attention from the deracialization to the racialization of language in the lives of Latinx youth. Adanari Zarate considers how Latinx bodies are policed in everyday life based on ideological expectations regarding how perceived race and language should align. Drawing together Jonathan Rosa’s (forthcoming) work on raciolinguistic enregisterment, the human rights issue of racial profiling, and the closely related sociolinguistic phenomenon of linguistic profiling (Baugh 2003), Zarate offers the concept of raciolinguistic profiling as an ideological process that maps language onto racialized bodies. Recognizing raciolinguistic profiling as a form of everyday microaggression that Latinxs confront and affectively manage, she uses this concept to analyze three SKILLS students’ narratives of being racially interpellated in their workplaces through the use of language. Zarate begins her analysis by critically reflecting on her own experiences of being racially and linguistically policed as a light-skinned Chicana. She explores the affective complexities of this racial positionality, from the structural benefits of colorism to her experience of not being recognized as a speaker of Spanish. She then considers narratives of raciolinguistic profiling shared by three young Latino men in two different SKILLS classrooms. In each case, these young men were positioned in their workplaces as speakers of Spanish rather than as speakers of English. The narratives demonstrate the students’ impressive affective agency and linguistic ingenuity in challenging these microaggressions in a variety of ways, both in the moment and through their projects and presentations within the SKILLS program. Zarate argues that their agency enabled these young Latinos to politicize and bring to public awareness these episodes of racism, which they

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could have suppressed as humiliating personal experiences.The value of programs like SKILLS, she concludes, is to facilitate meaningful conversations about how individuals affectively experience and interrogate these systemic racializing processes. As a crucial component of such work, Zarate herself has played a crucial role in bringing issues of race and racism more explicitly and centrally into the SKILLS curriculum. Chapter 8 further broadens the contextual scope of analysis by considering family members’ affectively laden ideological understandings of the language of young bilinguals. Zuleyma Nayeli Carruba-Rogel analyzes a Noche de Familia (‘Family Night’) event that she and her co-educator organized at the high school where they taught in the SKILLS program. She finds that even in this intentionally inclusive bilingual event, parents’ complex ideologies of Spanish and English sometimes supported and at other times undermined the linguistic practices of youth. Carruba-Rogel discusses how she emotionally and intellectually accompanied her students through the shared process of understanding their bilingual worlds in new ways within SKILLS.The class’s reframing of Latinx linguistic practices like receptive bilingualism and translanguaging as bilingual abilities rather than as linguistic deficits was surprising, sometimes challenging, and potentially transformative—not only for her students but also for Carruba-Rogel herself, whose own life experiences as a bilingual Latina in some ways paralleled those of her students. Eager to share her students’ learning experiences with their families, Carruba-Rogel invited their mostly Spanish-speaking parents to the special bilingual Noche de Familia event, where students shared their own linguistic autobiographies as well as family members’ linguistic oral histories in English, Spanish, and Spanglish. In the audience responses afterward, many parents expressed pride in their children and appreciation of the SKILLS program, but CarrubaRogel also noted three dominant themes that sometimes introduced more negative affects toward their children’ language abilities: the celebration of Spanish language maintenance, the importance of language brokers, and the positioning of widespread youth linguistic practices such as Spanglish within deficit ideologies. Thus, some aspects of bilingual youth linguistic practices were valorized by these comments, while other aspects were overlooked or devalued; consequently, parental affects at times fostered and at other times constrained young people’s own affects toward their bilingualism. Carruba-Rogel concludes that in order to have the greatest impact, programs such as SKILLS must be more inclusive of families, creating opportunities for youth and their parents to have meaningful conversations about the effects (and affects) of language ideologies in their lives. Whereas the chapters in Part 2 collectively raise vital issues of how affectively rooted ideological work is done on and through language, Part 3 of Feeling It extends this discussion by considering how young people’s affective agency enables them to shape and make sense of their racialized educational experiences as expert language users.The chapters in this final section thus place racialized youth

You Feel Me?  17

at the center of theory and analysis and provide powerful examples of youth as affective agents, linguistic and cultural experts, and critical producers of knowledge and social action. Chapter 9 shares with Chapter 8 a concern with the dynamics of bilingual and multilingual families. Tijana Hirsch, one of the SKILLS teaching fellows, investigates how the students in her classroom—the vast majority of whom were of Latinx heritage—took up the concept of family language policy to reflect on and shape the role of language in their current and future lives. The starting point for Hirsch’s examination of this issue is a poignant discussion of her own family language policy as a multilingual mother living in the hegemonically monolingual United States. She goes on to describe her discovery of a Spanish-versus-English linguistic divide in her Latinx students’ linguistic autobiographies and discusses how she guided students to bridge this divide by formulating their own future family language policies, both collectively and individually, in order to promote bilingualism for their children and grandchildren. Through their group projects on family language policy, Hirsch’s students negotiated an overall statement or message and then engaged with that statement in a set of individually crafted posters. Her analysis demonstrates that different groups took up the idea of family language policy in different ways based on the policies in their own homes, which had had differential effects on their linguistic identities and hence on their affective agendas with regard to language in their future families. Although all of Hirsch’s Latinx students could be viewed as bilingual from the standpoint of linguistics, she found that some of the young people in her classroom identified as English-dominant and others as Spanish-dominant. As Hirsch demonstrates in her analysis, the first group focused its family language policies on the effect of language shift on family ties, the issue of most immediate affective concern to them, while the second called attention to the sociopolitical aspects of language and race, which was more affectively urgent in the lives of these youth. In her conclusion, Hirsch emphasizes the importance of providing classroom space for students to discuss their hoped-for linguistic future alongside their past and present, so that they can make deliberate agentive choices about family language policy for themselves and their children. Developing the theme of youth meaning-making around language in their families and communities, Chapter 10 considers how classrooms can create space for affective encounters among bilingual Latinx youth who act as language brokers in familial and public spaces. Audrey Lopez examines students’ sometimes conflicted and contradictory feelings about language brokering and how through linguistic and embodied action they negotiated these complex feelings with their peers. In a rich analysis of students’ on-record and off-record comments as well as their embodied communication through facial expression, posture, gesture, and eye gaze, Lopez traces the unfolding interaction through which students positioned themselves as affective agents by agreeing and disagreeing, forging alliances, and representing the affective experience of doing brokering work.

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Concentrating her analysis on a discussion of youth interpreting and translating activities that spanned two class periods, Lopez examines the contributions of two Latina students in particular: one who expressed pride and happiness in her work as a formally recognized interpreter in the public school system, and another who expressed anxiety and stress in her work as an informal interpreter and translator in helping her family with important institutional paperwork. The drama that unfolds reveals the high affective stakes involved in classroom discussions of language; Lopez’s analysis makes clear that simplistic feel-good rhetoric is inadequate to the task of understanding how Latinx youth navigate their bilingual worlds. In a powerful epilogue, Lopez describes how one of the students in the interaction under analysis so valued her Spanish-language abilities that when she was selected as a commencement speaker she ended up successfully challenging the school’s decades-old requirement that commencement speeches must be given in English only. Reflecting on both the classroom discussion and its resonances throughout the school and beyond, Lopez argues that educators must be attuned to the dynamics of peer discussions in order to understand the complexity of their affective experiences and how these can ultimately lead to social change. Chapter 11 builds on Chapter 10 by considering bilingual students’ affective engagement with the broad concept of translation, including the familiar youth practice of language brokering but also extending to a fundamental question for Latinx youth: how and whether languages can be made to mean “the same thing” and when and why languages—and even varieties of the same language—are construed as nonequivalent. Katie Lateef-Jan describes a learning activity she developed and led in one SKILLS classroom around the theme of translation, in which students explored this topic through written reflections and discussion of the bilingual poetry and prose of Chicana feminist theorist Gloria Anzaldúa, which offers a potent political statement about the limits of translation for bilingual Latinxs. Lateef-Jan emphasizes the importance of freewriting, a method she borrows from composition pedagogy, as a resource for enabling students to engage affectively with their own thoughts and ideas about language. Because of the process of sense-making that is inherent to this writing practice, she characterizes freewriting as a form of translation. In her analysis of student writings, Lateef-Jan identifies multiple interrelated themes, including the incommensurability between English and Spanish, the affective dimension of translation, the question of linguistic identity for bilingual Latinxs, and the ideological gap between the Chicanx Spanish of the peer group and the prestige variety taught in students’ Spanish classes at school. Given the intimacy of both Spanish and English in these young people’s lives, Lateef-Jan, much like Lopez in Chapter 10, finds that translation is a deeply personal and profoundly affective issue for bilingual Latinx youth, giving rise to a wide variety of emotional responses. Hence, some students’ reflections aligned with hegemonic ideologies while others offered resistant or transformative perspectives, but all were deeply engaged with the question of translation and

You Feel Me?  19

its role in their lives. In light of these moving personal responses, Lateef-Jan calls for the integration of the full range of youth translation practices in schools and classrooms as a way of validating and nurturing the expertise of bilingual youth. Finally, Chapter 12 investigates the process through which young Latinxs in the SKILLS program expanded their linguistic repertoires as they took up academic language as a tool for expression and reflection. María José Aragón focuses on how, in one classroom, students embraced the concept of the community of practice (Lave & Wenger 1991) to theorize their lived experience of Latinx language and culture as well as to evaluate others’ intellectual contributions. Earlier chapters demonstrate the damaging effects of privileging the language of school over the language that young people bring to school, an approach that imposes a deficit perspective on youth linguistic practices. Aragón instead considers a situation in which academic language is integrated with affectively rich everyday language in the hybrid learning space of the SKILLS classroom. Aragón begins her chapter by critically examining the theoretically and politically problematic notion of academic language in the education of minoritized speakers and then examines how a concept that is relevant to students’ lives can support rather than undermine their linguistic development. She traces the circulation of “community of practice” as a key concept in students’ discourse over several months, from its initial introduction as part of a classroom exploration of the concept to its incorporation in students’ discussions as a shared and familiar linguistic resource. Aragón launches her analysis by demonstrating how in their first encounter with the term, students and instructors jointly constructed a shared understanding of community of practice by embedding it within affectively resonant colloquial language and translanguaging practices. She goes on to demonstrate that as the program progressed, students took up the term as their own to make sense of their experiences as transnational bilingual Latinxs. By the end of the course, students were using the term as part of their linguistic repertoires to critically evaluate the research of their peers at other SKILLS partner schools during presentations at SKILLS Day. Aragón’s nuanced analysis shows that through the SKILLS program, youth gain new resources for critically, analytically, and affectively engaging with the world as well as contributing to academic knowledge. In a brief afterword, the three of us, as co-editors, reflect on our own affective responses to these deeply insightful chapters and the next steps they direct us to take as interdisciplinary researchers and educators in our efforts to advance linguistic, educational, and racial justice for Latinx youth.

Research as Linguistic Activism Given our political commitments, we view Feeling It not simply as a research report on sociolinguistic justice but also as an enactment of linguistic activism in its own right (cf. Charity Hudley 2013; Combs & Penfield 2012; Flores &

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Chaparro 2017; Mallinson 2017). Our direct action to support sociolinguistic justice through this volume takes three forms. First, all royalties from the sale of the book will go directly to the support of the SKILLS program. Second, throughout Feeling It, we use the form Latinx to designate people of Latin American descent regardless of gender identity, and Chicanx specifically for Mexican-heritage people. This form has rapidly gained ground recently over other supposedly gender-neutral forms such as Latina/o (or Latino/a), which continue to perpetuate patriarchy and the gender binary. When we refer to specific individuals whom we know to be female-identified or male-identified, we use Latina(s)/Chicana(s) or Latino(s)/Chicano(s), respectively. We leave these forms unaltered when they appear as part of official names (e.g., the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies). (For a more detailed discussion of Latinx, see deOnís 2017.) Second, a number of contributors to this volume make linguistic choices in their chapters that push back against U.S. racial, linguistic, and class-based hierarchies regarding the Spanish language. Their linguistic strategies disrupt the rarely questioned expectations of formal academic writing. For example, some authors have chosen not to translate some or all of the Spanish-language text that appears in their chapters.This decision stems from a variety of motivations.To begin with, for many bilinguals such translations are unnecessary and disruptive of the reading experience. In addition, treating Spanish and English as distinctive, sharply bounded codes promotes a rigid ideology of languages that does not correspond to the lived reality of translanguaging for many bilinguals (Otheguy, García, & Reid 2015). Moreover, contesting the ubiquitous imperative to defer to English monolinguals is a seemingly small yet deeply significant act of resistance to the racializing logic of language politics in the United States. A powerful passage from Gloria Anzaldúa’s celebrated essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” which is quoted by Lateef-Jan in Chapter 11 of this volume and also informs several other chapters, concisely explains the issue: Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. (1987: 39–40) For similar reasons, most authors have chosen not to mark Spanish-language text in italics, as is conventional in most formal writing. As a visual index of linguistic difference, the use of italicized Spanish in U.S.-based writing ratifies English as normative and Spanish as marked and even “foreign.” Once again, this practice positions readers as English monolinguals and marginalizes Spanish and its speakers.

You Feel Me?  21

However, not all authors choose to omit translations, and not all view the use of italics as inherently problematic; individual contributors have made their own thoughtful and well-reasoned decisions regarding these complex matters.We refer readers interested in learning more about such issues to Anzaldúa’s (1987) essay as well as to Dolores Inés Casillas (2014: xiii–xiv), Allison Fagan (2016), and Sonia Saldívar-Hull (2000).We also note that many chapters within this volume explore the racial politics of Spanish in the United States and provide useful references for additional reading.

Conclusion This volume aims to issue a challenge to traditional schooling, which enforces an ideological hierarchy of cognitive processes that devalues affect and valorizes forms of knowledge purportedly produced by an idealized “pure” reason separate from embodied, emotional experience. As we have argued in this introduction and as the contributors demonstrate in various ways in the chapters that follow, this ideology may be especially harmful to students of color by devaluing ways of knowing that are necessary to understanding racialized experience. When we began the collaboration that culminated in this volume, we did not anticipate that affect would be at its center. Instead, we discovered the vital theoretical, pedagogical, and political importance of affect only over time, as we interacted with young people and with one another. When we created the SKILLS academic program that is the focus of Feeling It, we set out to avoid, as much as possible, the trappings of “school as usual.” To that end, the program explores nontraditional topics with youth of color from both intellectual and experiential perspectives, it recognizes them as experts, knowledge producers, and agents of social change around issues of language, power, race, and identity, and it guides them to share their discoveries and insights and to use these to work toward social and especially sociolinguistic justice. And in the process, the program attempts to create learning spaces where emotions can be expressed, ideologies confronted, and change enacted. Our point is not to argue that scholars and educators should replace thinking with feeling. As Megan Boler writes, “A pedagogy that recognizes emotions as central to the domains of cognition and morality need not preclude intellectual rigor or critical inquiry” (1999: 110). Rather, we advocate incorporating affect into learning experiences as a necessary foundation for effective critique and transformation. To be sure, to call for the greater use of affect as a scholarly and pedagogical tool is not without dangers. In scholarship, intellectual argumentation continues to be the coin of the realm, and authors who veer too sharply from discursive norms may suffer in their professional advancement. The pedagogical risks are even greater. Educators may be tempted to spark strong emotional responses from students through the use of sensationalistic or painful material, without recognizing that such strategies may reenact historical racial trauma

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(Alvarez, Milner, & Delale-O’Connor 2016). Or classroom discussions of race and racism may devolve into outlets for white students (and teachers) to air their personal feelings of racial anguish or ambivalence, thus marginalizing the experiences of members of racialized groups, who are by definition those most affected by the racial system. Thus, educators who seek to make space for affect in their classrooms must exercise great care and attentiveness to the risks involved. But affect, as embodied, relational encounter with the world through thinking, feeling, and perceiving, is too socially and politically important to be relegated to the margins of teaching and learning. Affect enables youth and adults to come together in educational settings as whole human beings with specific subject positions and life experiences. Affect is also the basis of social justice, as other scholars have suggested: Though the presence or absence of emotions does not guarantee justice or injustice, emotion is still a significant component in the production or prevention of greater justice. Deeply entrenched social norms create and sustain the structures that privilege or oppress—norms which are attended by significant emotional response. Challenging those social norms means changing our emotional relation to them; that is, seeing the consequences of these norms as either gain or loss. (Zembylas & McGlynn 2012: 43) As the following chapters demonstrate from a variety of perspectives, this recognition—that the agency that drives social change is rooted in affect—is a necessary starting point for educators and researchers seeking social justice for racialized youth.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Alim, H. Samy, John R. Rickford, and Arnetha F. Ball (eds.). 2016. Raciolinguistics: How language shapes our ideas about race. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Alvarez, Adam, H. Richard Milner IV, and Lori Delale-O’Connor. 2016. Race, trauma, and education. In Terry Husband (ed.), But I don’t see color: The perils, practices, and possibilities of antiracist education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. 27–40. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. How to tame a wild tongue. In Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. 75–86. Baugh, John. 2003. Linguistic profiling. In Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, and Arthur K. Spears (eds.), Black linguistics: Language, society, and politics in Africa and the Americas. New York: Routledge. 155–168. Berg, Ulla D., and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. 2015. Racializing affect: A theoretical proposition. Current Anthropology 56(5): 654–677. Boler, Megan. 1999. Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2015.Team collaboration and educational partnership in sociocultural linguistics. American Speech 90(2): 230–245.

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Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. London: Routledge. 25–44. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2017. Language and culture as sustenance. In Django Paris and H. Samy Alim (eds.), Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press. 43–59. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. Forthcoming. California Latinx youth as agents of sociolinguistic justice. In Netta Avineri, Laura R. Graham, Eric Johnson, Robin Riner, and Jonathan Rosa (eds.), Case studies in language and social justice. New York: Routledge. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Christopher VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Cammarota, Julio, and Michelle Fine (eds.). 2008. Revolutionizing education:Youth participatory action research in motion. New York: Routledge. Casillas, Dolores Inés. 2014. Sounds of belonging: U.S. Spanish-language radio and public advocacy. New York: New York University Press. Charity Hudley, Anne H. 2013. Sociolinguistics and social activism. In Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas (eds.), The Oxford handbook of sociolinguistics. New York: Oxford University Press. 812–831. Clough, Patricia Ticineto, and Jean Halley (eds.). 2007. The affective turn:Theorizing the social. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Combs, Mary, and Susan D. Penfield. 2012. Language activism and language policy. In Bernard Spolsky (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 461–474. DeJaeghere, Joan G., Jasmina Josic, and Kate S. McCleary (eds.). 2016. Education and youth agency: Qualitative case studies in global contexts. Cham: Springer. Delgado Bernal, Dolores. 2002. Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 105–126. DeOnís, Catalina (Kathleen) M. 2017. What’s in an “x”? An exchange about the politics of “Latinx”. Chiricú Journal: Latinx Literatures, Arts, and Cultures 1(2): 78–91. Ek, Lucila D., Patricia Sánchez, and Patricia D. Quijada-Cerecer. 2013. Linguistic violence, insecurity, and work: Language ideologies of Latina/o bilingual teacher candidates in Texas. International Multilingual Research Journal 7: 197–219. Enfield, N. J., and Paul Kockelman (eds.). 2017. Distributed agency. New York: Oxford University Press. Fagan, Allison E. 2016. Making language visible: Transcultural typography. In From the edge: Chicana/o border literature and the politics of print. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 75–96. Ferrada, Juan Sebastian, Mary Bucholtz, and Meghan Corella. Forthcoming. “Respeta mi idioma”:The affective agency of Latinx youth. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education. Flores, Nelson, and Sofía E. Chaparro. 2017. What counts as language education policy?: Developing a materialist anti-racist approach to language activism. Language Policy. DOI:10.1007/s10993-017-9433-7 Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85(2): 149–171.

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González, Norma, Luis Moll, and Cathy Amanti (eds.). 2005. Funds of knowledge: Theorizing practices in households, communities, and classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Gregg, Melissa, and Gregory J. Seigworth (eds.). 2010. The affect theory reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Hill, Jane H. 1999. Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–689. Hurtado, Aída, and Raúl Rodríguez. 1989. Language as a social problem: The repression of Spanish in South Texas. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 10(5): 401–419. Ioanide, Paula. 2015. The emotional politics of racism: How feelings trump facts in an era of colorblindness. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Kockelman, Paul. 2007. Agency: The relation between meaning, power, and knowledge. Current Anthropology 48(3): 375–401. Kwon, Soo Ah. 2013. Uncivil youth: Race, activism, and affirmative governmentality. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal 32: 465–491. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, Jin Sook, and Mary Bucholtz. 2015. Language socialization across learning spaces. In Numa Markee (ed.), Handbook of classroom discourse and interaction. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. 319–236. Leeman, Jennifer J. 2004. Racializing language: A history of linguistic ideologies in the U.S. Census. Journal of Language and Politics 3(3): 507–534. Lei, Joy L. 2003. (Un)Necessary toughness?:Those “loud black girls” and those “quiet Asian boys”. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 34(2): 158–181. Mallinson, Christine. 2017. Language and its everyday revolutionary potential: Feminist linguistic activism in the United States. In Holly J. McCammon,Verta Taylor, Jo Reger, and Rachel Einwohner (eds.), The Oxford handbook of U.S. women’s social movement activism. New York: Oxford University Press. www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780190204204.001.0001/oxfordhb-04-e-38 McManus, Susan. 2011. Hope, fear, and the politics of affective agency. Theory and Event 14(4). http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v014/14.4.mcmanus.html McManus, Susan. 2013. Radical political agency: Affective politics in the case of the Zapatistas of Chiapas. In Bice Maiguashca and Rafaelle Marchetti (eds.), Contemporary political agency:Theory and practice. London: Routledge. 137–162. Otheguy, Ricardo, Ofelia García, and Wallis Reid. 2015. Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6(3): 281–307. Page, Helan E., and Brooke Thomas. 1994. White public space and the construction of white privilege in U.S. health care: Fresh concepts and a new model of analysis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8: 109–116. Paris, Django. 2012. Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher 41(3): 93–97. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2014. Symposium: Culturally sustaining pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review 84(1). Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2017. Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press.

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Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. 2011. Learning affect, embodying race:Youth, Blackness, and neoliberal emotions in Latino Newark. Transforming Anthropology 19(2): 86–104. Rosa, Jonathan. Forthcoming. Looking like a language, sounding like a race. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosa, Jonathan, and Nelson Flores. 2017. Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46(5): 621–647. Saldívar-Hull, Sonia. 2000. Feminism on the border: Chicana gender politics and literature. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tomlinson, Barbara, and George Lipsitz. 2013. American studies as accompaniment. American Quarterly 65(1): 1–30. Trainor, Jennifer Seibel. 2008. Rethinking racism: Emotion, persuasion, and literacy education in an all-white high school. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press. Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. VanderStouwe, Christopher Jon. 2016. “Straight-ish”: Constrained agency and the linguistic constructions of sexual identities, desires, and practices among men seeking men. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara. Zembylas, Michalinos. 2010. Racialization/ethnicization of school emotional spaces: The politics of resentment. Race Ethnicity and Education 13(2): 253–270. Zembylas, Michalinos, and Claire McGlynn. 2012. Discomforting pedagogies: Emotional tensions, ethical dilemmas and transformative possibilities. British Educational Research Journal 38(1): 41–59.

PART 1

Teaching, Learning, and the Affective Challenges of Social Justice

2 “JUST” EMOTIONS The Politics of Racialized and Gendered Affect in a Graduate Sociolinguistic Justice Classroom Rachel Rys

Experiments in creating a new social order, a social movement, create not only spaces of new ethics but also new emotions. —Sarita Srivastava (2005: 41)

Emotion was being recognized in the classroom in a way that it often isn’t in graduate classrooms and that was unnerving for some students. I think for other students, probably what was unnerving was that it wasn’t being accorded enough respect and understanding. That students had to kind of fight for their emotions in a way that in another setting—in a more disciplinarily homogeneous setting or racially homogeneous setting—wouldn’t have been necessary. Alex, interview participant (original emphasis)

I became interested in the politics and pedagogies of affect while participating in an interdisciplinary graduate-level seminar called “The Politics of Language and Race in Learning Contexts.”1 As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the year-long seminar—referred to here as the Crossroads seminar—was funded through a university grant supporting interdisciplinary scholarship and drew students from Chicana and Chicano Studies, Education, Linguistics, and related departments to discuss, teach, research, and write about the racial and educational politics of language.The purpose of the Crossroads seminar, as stated in the course syllabus, was to interrogate the relationship between language, race, education, and power through a multidisciplinary and community-focused approach. The first quarter of the seminar focused on reading and discussing foundational texts about language, race, and power; the second quarter involved designing and implementing activities at local school and community sites through the SKILLS academic

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outreach program described in other chapters in this volume; the third quarter explored the ethics and politics of researching and writing about linguistic identity and sociolinguistic justice. Like the broader SKILLS program, the Crossroads seminar drew on the framework of sociolinguistic justice, or “self-determination for linguistically subordinated individuals and groups in sociopolitical struggles over language” (Bucholtz et al. 2014: 145). While many of the graduate student participants came to the course with extensive personal and academic experience with the course topics, other students approached these texts and discussions about language, race, and power for the first time. Seventeen graduate students, including myself, enrolled in the Crossroads seminar during the fall quarter. The seminar was cotaught by three professors, from the Chicana and Chicano Studies, Education, and Linguistics departments, respectively.The seminar’s interdisciplinary focus drew students from seven different departments: the three core departments of Chicana and Chicano Studies, Education, and Linguistics, and the four associated departments and programs of Comparative Literature, Latin American and Iberian Studies, Film and Media Studies, and my own department, Feminist Studies. The majority of the students, including myself, identified as white. A slightly smaller group of students identified as Chicanx or Latinx, and several students identified as Asian or Asian American. As suggested by the second opening epigraph above, the Crossroads seminar was marked by difficult personal, political, and disciplinary tensions. While the range of represented disciplines was an intentional attempt to create space for interdisciplinary conversations about race and language, the varying racial and disciplinary backgrounds represented in the classroom contributed to vast differences of opinion about the purpose and parameters of class discussion. The tensions of the Crossroads seminar came to a head during the second week of the quarter in response to a heated discussion about the relationship between colonization and beliefs about language. In what follows, I recount this discussion and its aftermath in some detail, drawing on interviews I later conducted with the graduate students and professors who participated in the seminar. The reconstruction below reflects my own memory of the classroom exchange, but it has inevitably been influenced both by the passage of time and by the multiple and conflicted retellings that emerged across the eighteen interviews completed for this project. In my memory, the conflict emerged during a discussion about the political effects of colonization on the status of Spanish in the United States, when one student, Casey, exclaimed, “When are people finally going to get over colonization?”2 Following this comment, another student—importantly, a student of color—responded emphatically, “Never! You never get over it.” A professor—also crucially a woman of color—replied as well, saying, “This is a hurtful comment. I am hurt by this comment.” Reactions to this exchange were deeply divided: Some students reported feeling shocked by Casey’s question, particularly within a graduate class that specifically focused on issues of race and power. Other students

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were shocked that the responses to this comment by the second student and the professor were so personal and so strongly expressed. Regardless of position, this early exchange made both race and language salient in the Crossroads classroom, not as abstract course themes or as objects of analysis, but as central and pressing concerns within the seminar itself. For the remaining eight weeks of the quarter, this exchange became a touchstone that surfaced and solidified conflicting personal and disciplinary beliefs about the role of emotion in the classroom. The course instructors attempted to address this conflict both directly and indirectly in a number of ways: For example, in the week following the exchange, the professors shared their own responses to what had happened and asked the students to do the same. In ensuing weeks, the class instituted a regular “check-in” activity in which every participant provided anonymous comments on an index card regarding their thoughts and feelings about that week’s discussion. However, even this exercise and its emphasis on feelings further polarized the class. For students who viewed Casey’s question about colonization as an innocent inquiry, the repeated return to the exchange week after week was seen as unnecessarily derailing discussion and forward progress. For students who viewed this question as an affront or an injury, the perceived flagrance of the question and its unacknowledged assumptions about race and power made it impossible to simply move on.While I had previously experienced similar classroom tensions over issues of race and privilege in Feminist Studies seminars, for students from less overtly political departments, these stark personal and ideological divisions were very new and very uncomfortable. Classroom tensions grew increasingly palpable as the quarter progressed, as our class struggled to reconcile the subject positions, histories, and epistemologies that continued to stimulate opposing and oppositional responses. Over the course of the quarter, graduate students restaged many of the same issues in the Crossroads seminar that the SKILLS program actively attempted to counteract: downplaying power and privilege in the classroom, dismissing personal experience, and minimizing the role of affect in sustaining dominant ideologies about language and race. One student, Adrian, reflected, I’ve never gone home and left a space more emotionally drained than that Crossroads seminar. I enjoyed being there, but was it was also very stressful a lot of the time. There were a few times I left the session, drove home, and cried all the way home. By the end of the quarter, many students had stopped participating in the class discussion altogether, worried that their words would be misconstrued or would further erode the classroom climate. To examine the complicated role of emotion in the Crossroads classroom, I interviewed fifteen fellow students (excluding one visiting scholar who was no longer in residence) about their experiences during the seminar. I also interviewed

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the three professors, although their comments do not appear in this chapter due to space limitations.These open-ended interviews covered a range of topics, but generally sought to identify participants’ beliefs and feelings about the role of emotion in the classroom. The timing of the interviews immediately following a challenging quarter, along with the general discomfort of talking about race, contributed to difficult and highly emotional interviews. Although I had originally planned for thirty-minute interview slots, most of the interviews stretched from one to two hours, as students worked through their complex and conflicting beliefs about emotion. The visible frustration, anger, and tears I observed during these interviews contrasted in striking ways with students’ stated responses to questions about emotion and classroom practice. Even after describing strong feelings of anger, frustration, sadness, or even excitement during the Crossroads seminar, many students repeatedly dismissed their own and others’ feelings in the classroom as “just” emotional. Even many students who declared their support and commitment to critical pedagogy and antiracist and sociolinguistic justice remained dismissive of the role of emotion and personal experience in the Crossroads seminar. Moreover, many of these students leveraged their critiques of emotion using racialized and gendered critiques of emotion that were also seemingly at odds with their stated support for sociolinguistic justice. The contrast between participants’ stated beliefs regarding emotion and the arguments they made in their interviews dismissing emotion raised several critical questions about the relationship between discourses about emotion and beliefs about classroom practice: What dominant discourses about emotion encourage students to dismiss classroom emotion as “just” emotional? What patterns of argument contribute to the disconnect between many students’ stated commitments to emotion and their narrow racialized and gendered arguments about emotion? How does the dismissal of emotion shape arguments about the theory and pedagogy of sociolinguistic justice and, critically, what alternative understanding of emotion is necessary to potentially do otherwise? Reading across the interview responses, I suggest that the pervasive pattern of dismissing emotion that I observed in these interviews is supported by dominant discourses characterizing emotion as a primarily individual feeling, disconnected from both history and power. These culturally dominant ideologies about emotion limit the type and intensity of emotional expression that students supported—sometimes without their conscious awareness and even against their explicitly stated political and pedagogical commitments. The noticeable disconnect between students’ stated commitment to antiracism and sociolinguistic justice and their individual, racialized, and gendered arguments dismissing emotion shows the urgency of examining these beliefs at length. Examining discourses about emotion requires us to think and rethink the role of emotion in relation to sociolinguistic justice, both within and beyond the classroom. In this chapter, I weave interview excerpts together with feminist and antiracist scholarship in order to examine how a narrow discourse of emotion shaped many students’ understanding of the Crossroads classroom and of their colleagues.

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The analyses I present in this chapter engage with the multiple connotations of the phrase just emotions. The first connotation of just emotions reflects the idea of emotions as trivial or irrelevant: “merely” emotions or “only” emotions. I argue that dominant ways of talking about emotion reinforce an understanding of emotion as individual, apolitical, and race- and gender-neutral. By framing emotion as a private and ahistorical psychological sensation, students depoliticized emotion and dismissed its rhetorical and creative capabilities. The second connotation of just emotions interrogates what it would mean to develop “just emotions,” that is, emotions oriented toward and in pursuit of justice. In The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed argues that “just emotions” are those that work “with and on, rather than over the wounds that surface as traces of past injuries in the present” (2004: 202). She argues that addressing injustice requires discursive and analytical tools that explicate the relationship between emotion, power, and justice. As I demonstrate throughout this chapter, these two connotations of just emotions reflect different relationships to power and privilege in the classroom. Building on Ahmed’s work, I argue that moving away from the dismissive understanding of emotion as “just” personal feelings requires us to recognize emotion as both socially shared and historically situated. Because emotion can be so easily dismissed as “just” personal opinion or as “just” a raw or uncontrolled response, understanding and attending to emotion has important consequences for developing pedagogy and politics that recognize and enact sociolinguistic justice. Instead of calling for a new or additional focus on emotion in research on language, race, and education, I argue that the definition and goals of sociolinguistic justice proposed by Mary Bucholtz and her coauthors (2014: 153) suggest that sociolinguistic justice is already a fundamentally affective pursuit, one that seeks to change beliefs and access to language in order to promote personal, cultural, and institutional belonging. By critically analyzing the discursive frameworks that privatize, pathologize, and depoliticize emotion, I hope to move from considering emotion as “just” emotional to thinking about what emotions do and can do in the struggle for sociolinguistic justice. Even several years after completing these interviews, this chapter was still deeply uncomfortable to write. Certainly, this discomfort reflects the political and ethical challenge of representing my colleagues as research participants, particularly when many of them are also co-contributors to this collection. In order to protect anonymity, I have made the decision to present interview excerpts using pseudonyms and without disclosing the racial or gender identity of the speakers or even their home department. Grappling with these limitations has been a practical and ethical challenge, especially as the arguments I make here suggest that both the expression and evaluation of emotion are deeply informed by race, gender, and disciplinary investment. While anonymizing these interviews has foreclosed an important opportunity to analyze the connection between positionality and beliefs about emotion, it has been instructive in other ways: Focusing on patterns of discourse—rather than individual speakers—demonstrates how

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individual responses reflect and enact entrenched public values that extend far beyond personally held beliefs. Beyond the ethical challenge of representing my peers, this project has also required me to grapple with the multiple ways that my own positionality and participation in the Crossroads classroom has shaped my analyses. Conducting and writing about these interviews has shown me how easily discourses about emotion can be used as tools for reproducing hierarchies of power in the classroom. As a white woman committed to feminist and antiracist pedagogy, tracing “just emotions” also requires me to trace my own implication in the circulation of uncritical discourses about emotion. At the time of the interviews, in solidarity with my classmates I chose to be interviewed by a research assistant, and in my responses, I can hear my own halting, partial attempts to make sense of the complex personal, affective, and disciplinary divisions present in the Crossroads classroom. Repeatedly returning to the events and aftermath of the Crossroads seminar is neither convenient nor comfortable—for myself, my colleagues, or the course instructors—but discomfort can itself be pedagogical (see Leibowitz et al. 2010).While this chapter recalls our early uncomfortable engagements with affect, it also reflects the significant work we have done “with and on, rather than over” the complicated emotions at the center of this seminar (Ahmed 2004: 202). In the messy work of pursuing “just emotions,” our discomfort must circulate alongside our celebrations and our hopes.

“Just” Emotions as “Only” Emotions I conducted eighteen interviews between December 2013 and February 2014, immediately following the first quarter of the Crossroads seminar. These interviews were open-ended but generally focused on examining students’ beliefs about the role of emotion in the classroom. I anticipated that questioning students about the role of emotion would possibly prompt them to discuss the difficulties of learning about race and power or to consider how their deeply held beliefs shaped their experiences of solidarity and division in the classroom.The interview responses, however, revealed an unexpected and pervasive pattern: Even though my question explicitly asked about the role of emotion, participants almost unilaterally reinterpreted the question to be about the value of emotion instead. This reinterpretation led students to focus on evaluating and categorizing their own emotional expressions—as well as the emotional expressions of their classmates— as either valid or invalid. This immediate move to evaluation is apparent in the following comments from three different students responding to the question, “What is the role of emotion in the classroom?” (emphasis added): Taylor: Angel:

I think it is valid because people feel those feelings and it’s going to affect their responses. Emotion is a valid part of this [i.e., classroom discussions about race]. It’s a real part of this. This happens all the time when people talk about these things. It’s going to be part of this space.

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Cameron: An emotional response is a valid response and is a way that a lot of people will respond, so in that sense I think it’s valid in the classroom. Can you say whatever you want and whatever you feel? I don’t know. But I do think it is valid in the classroom. Regardless of whether students ultimately defended or critiqued the expression of emotion in the classroom, they nevertheless responded through a framework of validity. The above excerpts seem to answer an entirely different question from the one I originally posed about the role of emotion, a question that was closer to “How do you feel about the way members of the class expressed emotion?” or “Should students be allowed to express emotion in the classroom?” Although I repeatedly attempted to shift the conversation back to the original query—an analysis of the role of emotion—participants continued to respond through this framework of evaluation. This pervasive pattern of prioritizing evaluation is striking. While the shift from analysis to evaluation is subtle, it nevertheless represents a significant ontological difference in the way emotion is understood. When students reinterpreted the interview question to prioritize evaluation, they shifted their task from analyzing the social function of emotion in the classroom to instead approving or disapproving of its expression. Based on the interview data, I argue that this turn to evaluation is underwritten by dominant discourses that frame emotion as individual, ahistorical, colorblind, and gender-neutral. The uncritical replication of these discursive frames led students to argue about emotion in ways that often contradicted their explicitly stated beliefs about the value of emotional knowledge. In the following subsections, I examine how these narrow arguments about emotion are reproduced and maintained.

Emotion as Individual and Ahistorical Megan Boler (1999) argues that public discourses about emotion frequently characterize it as an individual sensation—a personal expression that directly reflects an individual’s interior or psychological state. Individualized and privatized discourses about emotion elide the connections between emotional response and histories of power, allowing some students in the Crossroads classroom to dismiss or devalue their classmates’ visible and audible emotion as irrelevant, distracting, or apolitical. Other students constructed emotion as personal and private in order to distance themselves from uncomfortable or undesirable emotion. These arguments about emotion serve to protect power: When students use individualizing and dehistoricizing discourses about emotion to evaluate their classmates’ actions, they reinforce these narrow beliefs about emotion in ways that exempt them from feeling obligated to listen and engage. Individualized and dehistoricized discourses of emotion cast personal narrative and emotional expression as overly personal, indulgent, and disconnected from

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broader struggles for justice. The interviews show that students who intentionally or unintentionally dismiss emotion frequently use individualization to create distance: When emotion is personalized and privatized, it is also depoliticized. When it is depoliticized, it can then be easily dismissed. For example, one student, Dylan, described feeling frustrated when other students used class time to discuss their personal experiences of language discrimination, stating, It felt like sometimes people would just go off and off and off about this or that experience. It didn’t have anything to do with the class or what our common goal was and it didn’t really help to understand the situation. It was just people talking about themselves for hours. By dismissing personal stories as “just” talk, Dylan suggests that this type of classroom participation is too individualized to connect to the course goals. In fact, Dylan later described the discussions that occurred in the Crossroads seminar as “a bit self-indulgent,” suggesting that students’ personal stories were too private or sentimental to have a critical edge.This privatized framing of emotion authorized students to dismiss emotional and personal expression in the classroom—even when that expression directly related to an issue they otherwise spoke passionately about. For example, another student, Cameron, began their interview by speaking at length about the effects of colonization and racism on educational opportunities and classroom interaction. However, when speaking specifically about the Crossroads seminar, Cameron suggested that the intensified focus on Casey’s colonization comment and its responses ultimately detracted from the seminar’s goals: We kept getting tied up in these emotions and tied up in these personal stories and anecdotes and how someone was so hurt or how someone hurt someone else. I remember that whole thing that went on about colonization and that was just so, just so, why are we talking about this? [laughing]. Why are so many people offended? Why are we focusing on this thing that doesn’t have anything to do with what we’re trying to do? (original emphasis) Here Cameron characterizes the ongoing classroom discussion about Casey’s comment as a simple problem of hurt feelings between individual members of the class. By narrowing the issue of emotion to personal injury and individual offense, Cameron disarticulates emotion from broader relations of power. This individualization allows Cameron to dismiss the connection between the colonization comment and the actual histories of colonization that might cause this comment to hurt or offend. Cameron’s comments reflect what Cheryl Matias and Michalinos Zembylas (2014: 322) call “innocence by disassociation,” the distancing between one’s own experience and the experience of others. Cameron’s laughing questions, “Why are we talking about this? Why are so many people offended?”

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demonstrate how an individualized framing of emotion can be used to create distance, particularly from uncomfortable or implicating emotion. Although willing and able to discuss the history of colonization and its uneven effects on education in abstract terms, Cameron cannot or does not extend this same analysis to the Crossroads seminar and its students. By characterizing “that whole thing . . . about colonization” as no more than fleeting hurt feelings, Cameron creates distance from the issue while maintaining an innocent self-perception. As both Dylan and Cameron’s comments show, an individualized view of emotion privatizes and dehistoricizes the social relation of (in)justice, foreclosing any discussion of emotion as historically situated and collaboratively constructed. Because these hegemonic discourses individualize and depoliticize emotion, they can be used to argue that emotion is not simply irrelevant to the struggle for justice but, rather, actively works against it. In their interviews, multiple students suggested that the political potential of the Crossroads seminar was derailed when students either failed or refused to let go of feelings of anger or hurt. One student, Julian, argued that people who study or work in politically engaged contexts tend to become “so immersed in their emotions that they have trouble getting beyond them.” According to Julian’s argument, it is individuals who demonstrate strong emotion who bear responsibility for slowing or halting political movement. Because Julian views emotion as a barrier to political progress, the task of “getting beyond” emotion is therefore imbued with political urgency. This call to “get beyond” emotion notably mirrors Casey’s original suggestion that marginalized people should “get over” colonization. Both arguments suggest that the most pressing priority for the Crossroads seminar should be minimizing emotion, not examining the histories that have led to injury. This line of argument appeared across many of the interview responses, regardless of whether students supported or critiqued Casey’s original comment about colonization. Multiple participants argued that students who shared personal experiences or feelings about injustice in the classroom made it harder for their classmates to learn about and address those issues because they were forced to shift their focus from learning about race and education to monitoring their comments in order not to offend their classmates. One student, Morgan, critiqued a classmate’s suggestion that students should speak more sensitively about race and ethnicity by saying, “A few of us were maybe ready to take the leap of saying things and being open completely, while others expected to be protected, to have this shield around them.” Rather than examining the reasons that some groups of students might feel more comfortable “being open completely” than others, Morgan instead prioritizes individual evaluation, suggesting that “others” (here implying students of color) were simply not prepared “to take the leap.” By characterizing the desire for protection as a barrier to forward progress, Morgan suggests that the biggest problem of the Crossroads seminar was personal oversensitivity, regardless of the reasons that this request for protection was even necessary in the first place. Responding to the rhetorical reduction of historical trauma to individual oversensitivity, Ahmed

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(2015) argues, “Oversensitive can be translated as: sensitive to that which is not over.” As the student’s and professor’s original responses to Casey’s comment make clear, it is impossible to get over colonization because colonization, its effects, and its affects are not over. However, Morgan’s comment demonstrates how individualized discourses about emotion can be used to disarticulate classroom emotions from the very social and historical contexts that make their relevance clear. In fact, as these interviews demonstrate, an individualized framing of emotion actually forecloses an understanding of emotion as social and historical, making it difficult to examine how emotion is influenced and shaped by past histories of contact (Ahmed 2004). By drawing on discourses that cast emotion as individual and ahistorical, Julian and Morgan can dismiss their classmates’ emotions as ineffective and apolitical without needing to account for the histories of power that make Casey’s comment about colonization have a different emotional resonance for students from groups that have experienced historical trauma than for those who have not.

Emotion as Colorblind and Gender-Neutral In addition to framing emotion as an individual and ahistorical phenomenon, dominant discourses about emotion also rely on colorblind and gender-neutral language that conceals patterns of discrimination against women and people of color (Ioanide 2015: 11). Feminist and antiracist scholars argue that rationality has long been associated with maleness and whiteness, while emotionality is associated with women and people of color (Ioanide 2015; Lorde 1997; Lyman 2004; Srivastava 2005). The hierarchy of reason over emotion that is produced through these discourses allows members of dominant groups to easily characterize the speech and actions of women and people of color as inappropriately emotional. Importantly, this hierarchy is secured through colorblind and gender-neutral discourses that allow speakers to reinforce racialized and gendered hierarchies without sounding overtly racist or sexist (Bonilla-Silva 2010). When students use dominant racialized and gendered arguments about emotion to evaluate their classmates’ actions—even if they use colorblind and gender-neutral language— they reinscribe these dominant beliefs about power and control in the classroom. Because hegemonic discourses about emotion encode hierarchies of race and gender, critiques of emotion are often used as a proxy for other types of critiques, namely critiques of people and actions that attempt to identify or change relations of power (Lorde 1997; Lyman 2004). Individualized colorblind and genderneutral frameworks of emotion can be used to protect power by characterizing comments that critique inequality as overly emotional and comments that reinforce inequality as neutral and rational. Even students who hesitated to directly express their frustrations toward classmates who critiqued systemic power and privilege could freely express their displeasure in politically correct and socially accepted ways through the proxy of emotion. For example, one student, Rian, argued that several classmates, all of whom were women of color, had displayed

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“out of control” emotions that needed to be “harnessed properly.” Critiques of emotionality—and particularly of overemotionality—can be used intentionally or unintentionally to maintain hierarchy in the classroom (Bonilla-Silva 2010). Rian’s comment suggests that by displaying emotion, these students had disrupted the norms of control in the classroom. The language of this critique suggests that, for Rian, it was not just emotion that was out of control, but also particular students who had moved outside of the dominant norms of the classroom and needed to be “harnessed properly.” By leveraging this racialized and gendered critique through the framework of emotion, Rian reinforces a hegemonic view of power without actually needing to explicitly mention race, gender, or power. The often unacknowledged racialized and gendered assumptions that shape dominant discourses about emotion lead to arguments that prioritize emotional neutrality and limit the rhetorical and political role of emotion in identifying and addressing injustice. Several participants argued that students who experienced strong emotions in response to Casey’s colonization comment should have explained their feelings rather than expressing them. One student, Devon, suggested that the tensions of the seminar could have been avoided if the students and instructor who responded to Casey’s question had simply restrained their visible emotional reactions: I think that where we should draw the line with emotion is when we react very strongly to something that another person says. We should try to understand why we react strongly and we can say that we react strongly without that emotional response, without saying something mean or showing a face of disapproval. I think that that’s where we draw the line. Kind of just checking your gut response, taking a step back and then you can say like, “That comment really hurt me because, coming from where I come from . . .” rather than shouting, “NO!” (original emphasis) Here, Devon “draw[s] the line” between acceptable and unacceptable forms of classroom discussion based on tone and decorum, rather than content. Even when a student experiences anger toward a classmate’s comment, Devon suggests that they should domesticate their own anger (Lyman 2004: 145) and choose a response that prioritizes the other person’s potential feelings over their own actual and immediate feelings. This line of argument requires students who experience injury in the classroom to shoulder the additional emotional burden of teaching others about their pain and its origins. It also allows Devon to maintain a position of innocence or even victimhood: If a student fails to adequately explain their injury “without saying something mean,” they can even be held responsible for offending their own attacker. By drawing on colorblind and gender-neutral discourses about emotion, students can attribute abject emotionality to others while maintaining an ostensibly

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neutral and rational stance. In their interviews, several students reproduced these racialized and gendered arguments about emotion, characterizing their classmates who critiqued inequality and privilege as irrational and uncontrolled, while simultaneously suggesting that their own comments and actions were neutral and measured. For example, one student, Toby, stated: I feel like too many of the students in that class took that class because they feel personally victimized by society and I think they took that out on the students who did not happen to belong to their socioeconomic background or racial background. . . . I think that that sense of righteousness, of avenging some past wrong, manifested itself in aggression towards people who might not have those same sets of experiences. By rereading classmates’ critiques of power as anger and aggression, Toby asserts that students who felt “victimized” avenged those bad feelings by deliberately attacking more privileged classmates.This argument attributes abject emotionality to particular classmates (once again coded as students of color) by reinterpreting their critiques of power and violence as expressions of power and violence. At the same time, emotions deployed in support of power—anger, defense, guilt, and shame—are presented as neutral and rational, even though they are also emotional (Bonilla-Silva 2010; Ioanide 2015). By prioritizing evaluation and reproducing racialized and gendered hierarchies of emotion,Toby can comfortably inhabit this discrepancy: Even while accusing classmates of discrimination and aggression in highly emotional terms, Toby’s allegations are not framed as irrational or overemotional because they maintain hegemonic relations of power. Understanding how dominant discourses privatize, depoliticize, and dismiss the role of emotion in the classroom is important for advocates of sociolinguistic justice because these discourses also inform arguments that neutralize the anti-subordination goals of sociolinguistic justice. One alarming trend across the interviews was the tendency for students to use the concept of sociolinguistic justice to support their argument that all voices and all emotions were equally important in the classroom. As defined above, sociolinguistic justice emphasizes self-determination for linguistically subordinated populations—a structural argument that attempts to systemically revalue language and power. However, multiple students interpreted the term sociolinguistic justice to mean “everyone’s voice is the same”—an individualizing and depoliticizing argument that protects power. For example, one student, Dorian, argued that it was “hypocritical” for students to critique Casey’s colonization comment given the course’s central focus on sociolinguistic justice: We keep talking about policing and socialization and language and all this stuff, but that is exactly what was happening! It’s like, if that person didn’t know that [a comment like the colonization comment] was

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unacceptable—or even if they did—why are they being judged for it if this is what we’re arguing against? It seemed a little hypocritical. Dorian’s charge of hypocrisy shows the necessity of interrogating affect in relation to power. While Dorian’s comment defends expressions of hegemonic power in the classroom for the sake of equality, an analysis of just emotions requires us to examine how these types of expressions actually produce and maintain inequality. Such ahistorical and depoliticized arguments about the classroom are so pervasive that they even shape the responses of some students of color and speakers of minoritized languages. For example, when asked whether oppositional comments like the colonization comment should have a place in the Crossroads classroom, one student, Hayden, replied, “I think they do. I think they definitely do because we don’t want to silence the voices of people because we’ve been fighting not to be silenced for so long.” While Hayden’s response refers to an important history of silencing and marginalization, it downplays the histories of power and violence that make the desire to tell other students to get over colonization fundamentally different from the desire to be heard at all.

“Just Emotions” as Emotions Toward Justice Despite active efforts by students and instructors to recognize and revalue the role of emotion in the classroom, our Crossroads seminar largely failed to achieve this goal. The interview responses above demonstrate the urgency of affect: Even students who were interested in studying the relationship between language, race, and power reproduced limiting discourses about emotion that foreclosed discussion of the connections between them. As I have argued above, the immediate turn to evaluation and the disparagement of affect as “just” emotional are supported by and perpetuated through discourses that cast emotion as individual, ahistorical, colorblind, and gender-neutral. The pervasive dismissal of emotion does not simply reflect personal beliefs; rather, it reflects sustained and socially shared efforts to maintain and reinforce prevailing power relations (Ioanide 2015; Zembylas 2015). To counter the dominant discourses that sustain these dismissive attitudes toward emotion, I return here to my opening framework of just emotions, or emotions in pursuit of justice. Centering just emotions in the context of sociolinguistic justice requires us to strengthen our tools for talking about emotion in relation to power, history, and politics. I begin this section by analyzing the goals of sociolinguistic justice proposed by Bucholtz et al. (2014): linguistic valorization, legitimation, inheritance, access, and expertise. Importantly, I do not suggest adding emotion as a separate goal to this list, as doing so would rely on the same narrow understanding of emotion that I have critiqued at length above. Instead, I argue that the goals of sociolinguistic justice are already affective, shaped by a desire to change beliefs and structures of power and to recognize and revalue minoritized languages and their speakers. Sociolinguistic justice is a fundamentally affective pursuit, a fight

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for language, for history, for self-determination, for feelings. Given the critique of power at the center of this definition, I argue that the sociolinguistic justice classroom must work to enact—rather than simply study—sociolinguistic justice. If our goal is to valorize and legitimate language use and to allow for linguistic inheritance, access, and expertise, then the sociolinguistic justice classroom must also create the conditions through which this revaluing can occur. Analyzing the role of just emotions in the context of sociolinguistic justice requires us to examine how the definition and goals of sociolinguistic justice recognize, interrogate, and create new affective attachments. Sociolinguistic justice recognizes that language use is bound to social, cultural, and political processes and seeks to identify, recognize, and prioritize the experience of politically subordinated groups (Bucholtz et al. 2014: 153). The first two goals of sociolinguistic justice, linguistic valorization and linguistic legitimation, draw clear connections between language use and feelings of belonging and self-determination. Linguistic valorization calls for awareness and appreciation of linguistic variation and diversity, while linguistic legitimation seeks to revalue excluded linguistic repertoires across a range of social and institutional settings. According to this framework, individual and institutional recognition can be “profoundly transformative” for speakers of minoritized linguistic varieties because it creates and affirms a sense of belonging (Bucholtz et al. 2014: 146). The path to both of these goals is through affect: Both speakers and institutions must alter entrenched emotional investments and create new relations of value and legitimacy in relation to language practices. The third goal of sociolinguistic justice, linguistic inheritance, seeks to secure the right for language users to learn and pass along the endangered, minoritized, or stigmatized languages and varieties associated with their cultural background. Identifying, preserving, and transferring language practices develop affective and cultural connections to history and family. The fourth and fifth goals, linguistic access and linguistic expertise, seek related goals of autonomy and agency around language use. Linguistic access seeks to support the ability of all language users to develop a socially powerful and personally meaningful linguistic repertoire, while linguistic expertise calls for language users to be recognized and acknowledged in their own right as linguistic experts. As these goals demonstrate, sociolinguistic justice is fundamentally affective. In fact, affect itself is often the goal of sociolinguistic justice. Critically, however, sociolinguistic justice works specifically in pursuit of just emotions, social and transformative emotions that recognize histories of minoritized populations, cultivate these groups’ feelings of belonging and ownership over language, and fundamentally change relations of power within policy and discourse. Centering just emotions in the sociolinguistic justice classroom requires teachers and students to recognize sociolinguistic justice as a radically affective project—one that requires us to both acknowledge and change relations of power. Paula Ioanide argues that the “legacy of justice is rooted in people’s memories, visions, and emotional economies” (2015: 25). To engage this legacy of justice,

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students must be prepared to actively counter the patterns of argument that individualize, privatize, and depoliticize personal experience and affect. One way this work might begin is through recognizing the personal experiences, emotions, and investments that drew each of us to participate in the Crossroads seminar in the first place. Many graduate participants, myself included, were initially drawn to the Crossroads seminar and the SKILLS program because they represented an opportunity to do something different: to put theory into practice, to develop new kinds of pedagogy, to change norms about language, race, and education in our local community. One student, Sam, reflected on the role of emotion and experience in generating interest and belonging in the seminar: Emotion is the reason that many of us were attracted to the class. It generates ideas and memories and then I see an opportunity, not necessarily where I can intervene, but where I can fit in and contribute, a space with the sentiments of being aware of the struggles that many people live. Many of us have had challenges throughout our lives and we bring those emotions with us to class. As Sam’s comment shows, focusing on the origins and histories of one’s own emotions in critical relation to others changes the perception of emotion from being a barrier to being an “opportunity.” Understanding our own personal, cultural, and disciplinary investments in racial and linguistic justice is a necessary step toward constructing contextual, critical, and transformative arguments about classroom emotion. Exploring sociolinguistic justice from an interdisciplinary perspective requires us to consider our own investments as scholars and teachers, recognizing how our knowledge and teaching practices can potentially reinforce a narrow understanding of affect that shapes and limits the scope and possibility of critical theory and praxis. Just as the definition and goals I traced above underscore the central role of affect in sociolinguistic justice, the pedagogical approach of the SKILLS program in its school and community settings might provide a framework for engaging with knowledge and classroom practice in ways that are simultaneously powerful and attentive to power. As my colleagues expand on in subsequent chapters, graduate teaching fellows in the SKILLS program encouraged high school students to share personal experiences, to draw on outside information and examples, and to critically analyze how policies and practices produce hierarchies of language use. Although my interview participants largely critiqued the focus on emotion and personal experience in the Crossroads classroom, many of these same participants celebrated emotion and personal experience when discussing other teaching contexts, including the SKILLS program’s high school classrooms. Certainly, changing beliefs about the role of emotion in the classroom will require more than simply revisiting the goals of sociolinguistic justice or reexamining one’s pedagogical approach. However, the interview

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responses celebrating emotion in the SKILLS classrooms—especially in contrast to responses about the Crossroads seminar—suggest that attempts to enact sociolinguistic justice already require pedagogies of emotion that counter dominant discourses. In the sociolinguistic justice classroom, just emotions are not barriers or distractions to justice but rather are indispensable to identifying and changing the patterns of argument that sustain hegemonic beliefs about language and race in learning contexts.

Conclusion This chapter is an uncomfortable opening for this research collection.While many of my colleagues’ chapters examine affect as a resource for student agency (Hirsch, this volume; Lateef-Jan, this volume; Lopez, this volume) or as an ideological tool for negotiating conflicting beliefs about race and language (Carruba-Rogel, this volume; Corella, this volume; Zarate, this volume), this chapter argues that discourses about emotion are used in both intentional and unintentional ways to conceal, reinforce, and enact power in the classroom. As scholars, teachers, and researchers invested in sociolinguistic and racial justice, it is important for us to examine how our dominant tools for discussing emotion reentrench hierarchical norms about race, gender, and power. To change those norms, we must first recognize how we inhabit them. As the interviews demonstrate, graduate students’ uncritical replication of individualized, ahistorical, colorblind, and gender-neutral discourses about emotion both reflected and shaped their expectations about the purpose of classroom discussion in the Crossroads seminar and even what sociolinguistic justice might look like. I began by analyzing how students invoked these discourses in ways that dismissed emotion as “just” emotional, as a personal, apolitical, and unprofessional response to being personally offended. I suggested that the turn to evaluation is primarily a distancing move: When students focused on monitoring individual expressions of emotion, they avoided engaging with the histories that shaped emotions and the way they moved in the classroom. I then suggested that reframing just emotions as emotions toward justice supports a critical theory and pedagogy of affect that is simultaneously social and historical as well as attentive to racial and gendered difference. The tensions that emerged in the Crossroads seminar are perhaps unsurprising. While the exchange about colonization was a catalyst for reflecting on the role of classroom emotion, this exchange merely brought to the surface differing personal, cultural, and disciplinary beliefs that already divided the classroom, albeit less noticeably. The discomfort of the Crossroads seminar is reflected in the statement by Sarita Srivastava in the opening epigraph (2005: 41): “Experiments in creating a new social order, a social movement, create not only spaces of new ethics but also new emotions.” Recognizing just emotions as both a tool and a goal of sociolinguistic justice requires us to imagine and enact new ways of teaching

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and learning. As the Crossroads seminar, the SKILLS program, and similar initiatives actively try to do something new—create deliberately interdisciplinary conversations about race and language, engage academic research in community spaces, and change beliefs about minoritized languages and their speakers—such experiments require us to closely attend to the divisions and solidarities produced through the affects that emerge in these undertakings. Importantly, the affective life of the Crossroads seminar is far from over. The interview excerpts discussed throughout this chapter represent a particular moment in the course’s history, one that exposes the real emotional labor and limits of discussing issues of race, language, and emotion. However, Ahmed (2004) argues that affect is economic: As feelings move and circulate, affective investments change, and boundaries form and shift. In spite of the significant tensions reflected in these interviews, almost all of the students continued with the Crossroads seminar sequence for the next two quarters, returning each week to a space that, for many, had been emotionally fraught. Many of us have continued to work together over the years, teaching with SKILLS, presenting at conferences, drafting and workshopping chapters for this collection. At the time of the interviews, one student, Sandy, reflected on the potential affective and political future of the Crossroads seminar: I feel like this seminar was crucial for getting the SKILLS program to be better and to continue to grow and move in the right direction. But I don’t know if that worked. I don’t know if I will know, or how I will know the answer to that question. I mean, in a way, this [seminar] is like SKILLS. We can’t know what the effects will be, possibly until sometime much later. This research collection gestures toward those future effects of the Crossroads seminar. While this chapter has emphasized the moments of disconnection and rupture in graduate students’ arguments about emotion, this volume’s organizing theme of affect indicates our growth, movement, and commitment to a more complex and nuanced examination of the limits and potentialities of emotion in the pursuit of sociolinguistic justice. It is only through thinking critically about just emotions—their contours, histories, and effects—that we can continue to develop theories and pedagogies that recognize the central role of emotion in feeling and fighting for justice.

Notes 1 I use the terms affect and emotion interchangeably throughout this chapter. For an extended critique of the theoretical distinction between emotion and affect, see Elsbeth Probyn (2004). 2 All participant names have been changed to protect anonymity. The ethics and effects of this decision are discussed in greater detail later in this chapter.

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References Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge. Ahmed, Sara. 2015. Against students. Feminist Killjoys. June 25. http://feministkilljoys. com/2015/06/25/against-students Boler, Megan. 1999. Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2010. Racism without racists: Colorblind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Chris VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Ioanide, Paula. 2015. The emotional politics of racism: How feelings trump facts in an era of colorblindness. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Leibowitz, Brenda, Vivienne Bozalek, Poul Rohleder, Ronelle Carolissen, and Leslie Swartz. 2010. “Ah but the whiteys love to talk about themselves”: Discomfort as a pedagogy for change. Race Ethnicity and Education 13(1): 83–100. Lorde, Audre. 1997. The uses of anger. Women’s Studies Quarterly 25(1/2): 278–285. Lyman, Peter. 2004. The domestication of anger: The use and abuse of anger in politics. European Journal of Social Theory 7(1): 122–147. Matias, Cheryl E., and Michalinos Zembylas. 2014. “When saying you care is not really caring”: Emotions of disgust, whiteness ideology, and teacher education. Critical Studies in Education 55(3): 319–337. Probyn, Elspeth. 2004. Teaching bodies: Affects in the classroom. Body and Society 10(4): 21–43. Srivastava, Sarita. 2005. “You’re calling me a racist?”: The moral and emotional regulation of antiracism and feminism. Signs 31(1): 29–62. Zembylas, Michalinos. 2015. Rethinking race and racism as technologies of affect: Theorizing the implications for anti-racist politics and practice in education. Race Ethnicity and Education 18(2): 145–162.

3 JOINT CREATION The Art of Accompaniment in the Language Beliefs of Transformative Teachers Elizabeth Mainz

I worked my way through college as a piano accompanist to music students, playing with them for juries or recitals. When I first started out, I viewed it as just a matter of matching tempos and not getting lost from each other— —keep the beat!— —march along!— —don’t slow down! But as I grew and worked more with musicians I knew, the action changed from marching along together as two soloists to accompanying each other in joint creation— feel the pulse & breathe together & sense each other. Art exists in the feeling of connection between artists—not just between performers, but also across time and space to composers, to teachers, and to experiences that seep into your thoughts as you play. But somewhere in the beginnings of the research project that is the focus of this chapter, I forgot to create art. The bones of my project were constructed as though individuals are all soloists, with an interview protocol of carefully worded and ordered questions. I framed the topics of my study—language beliefs and teaching philosophies—as static products that the participants would be able to state succinctly and with little complication. Luckily, the participants in my study, the five graduate teaching fellows for the 2014 SKILLS program, had not forgotten about accompaniment, the ongoing social process of engaging in scholarly work focused on social justice (Bucholtz,

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Casillas & Lee 2016; cf. Tomlinson & Lipsitz 2013). Throughout our conversations, they emphasized accompaniment as the way they formed not only their teaching philosophies and practices, but also their language beliefs. They made it clear that accompaniment is not just one option among many, but rather the best way both to construct beliefs about language and to teach within a sociolinguistic justice context (Bucholtz et al. 2014). Interactions with one another, their students, and the SKILLS directors all impacted the instructors’ beliefs throughout their involvement in the program. Just as influential were their own past experiences, their interactions with others, and the influence of societal ideologies throughout their lives that helped them continuously shape their language beliefs. In their training and teaching practices, the instructors who are the focus of my study straddled two ideologically separated environments: the sites where they worked with young people and the graduate seminar where they explored these experiences intellectually. In this chapter, I examine how the teaching fellows constructed their language beliefs and teaching philosophies through a process of accompaniment with multiple educational artists and experiences.

Language Ideologies and Language Beliefs in Teaching Contexts Language ideologies and language beliefs interact in a complex matrix. Language ideologies represent shared sociocultural values and often invoke larger institutional stances; as hegemonic patterns, dominant language ideologies are perceived as the normal and uncontested way to view the world due to their reproduction in everyday practice (Blommaert 1999; Errington 2001; Gal 1998). In this way, language ideologies are used to rationalize or justify perceptions about language structure and use (Silverstein 1998). These perceptions often become myth-like, combining little fact with a lot of fiction to arrive at ideological stances about “proper” language use that are unsupported by research (Bauer & Trudgill 1998). Not surprisingly, then, education is a central environment for creating, sustaining, and changing language ideologies (Leckie, Kaplan, and Rubinstein-Avila 2013). Given the social nature of language ideologies, it can be difficult to separate out the role of an individual’s beliefs in this system. Just as in the metaphor of musical accompaniment, musicians are individuals but do not work in isolation, so too is this true of all members of society. Very little about language beliefs is created by an individual in isolation, but neither is the individual subsumed by the group. Rather, language beliefs may reproduce or intersect with the ideologies of a larger social group, but also incorporate personal experiences. These personal experiences differentiate the language beliefs of an individual from the language ideologies of a whole social group. Teachers’ beliefs about language deeply affect their students, especially if these line up with the overwhelmingly problem-oriented ideologies that institutions hold regarding students’ language (Ruiz 1984; Wiley 2007). If a teacher believes

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students’ language is a problem in their classroom, students struggle (Lei 2003; Meador 2005; Menard-Warwick 2008), but if a teacher believes all languages are resources (Ruiz 1984) or are essential in fostering linguistic and cultural pluralism (Paris & Alim 2017), students can thrive. For example, Jeff Siegel (2006) discusses a critical language awareness program that challenges institutional language ideologies by including marginalized varieties in the curriculum. The assumption on which Siegel based his approach is that what is perceived as “poor” academic performance according to current standards stems less from “poor” teaching and more from language ideologies that marginalize entire groups of students. With his approach, teachers can begin to change this situation by examining their own beliefs about languages and the accompanying experiences that produced them. Similarly, Barry Osborne (1996), drawing on the framework of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995), emphasizes the centrality of language and argues that not only must teachers be aware of the prevalence of racism in schools, but they also need to address racism directly in their classrooms. He acknowledges that teacher reflexivity regarding racial inequality “may be somewhat discomforting as we discover that we do not actually do what we think we do or say we do” (1996: 299). That is, since language beliefs are created at the intersections of personal experiences and larger ideologies, teaching practice can reproduce the very ideologies that teachers are attempting to reject in their beliefs (Helmer 2011; Razfar 2012). Subversion of language ideologies in the classroom is not as easy as flipping a switch; teachers may struggle to follow their own language beliefs about the value of pedagogies that are culturally relevant or culturally sustaining (Paris & Alim 2014), but in subtle or not so subtle ways, they may nevertheless continue to uphold institutional language ideologies (see also Love-Nichols, this volume). This situation gives rise to the following question: In an educational program that is focused on sociolinguistic justice with a commitment to valorizing students’ linguistic abilities and expertise, what do the instructors who create and implement the program believe about language? How do their language beliefs and their teaching philosophies interact? How do they create and sustain these beliefs in an educational and sociopolitical environment that may be ideologically at odds with the goals of sociolinguistic justice?

Joining Together: Who We Are and How We Came Here As discussed in the introduction to this volume, the SKILLS program directors selected the graduate teaching fellows through an interview process that focused on a combination of teaching and other life experience, research interests, and a commitment to sociolinguistic justice. The fellows chosen for the 2014 SKILLS program were Anna Bax, Zuleyma Carruba-Rogel, Sebastian Ferrada, Tijana Hirsch, and Audrey Lopez; all of the fellows have contributed their own chapters to this volume, which reflect on their experiences in SKILLS in a variety of

50  Elizabeth Mainz TABLE 3.1  Demographic background of the study participants

Languages

Identity

Anna

Audrey

Sebastian

Tijana

California English, French, Spanish White

English, Spanish

Spanish, Serbo-Croatian, English English, Hebrew

White and Filipina

Latino

Zuleyma Spanish, English, French

White, European, Mexican Southern American, European Mexican, Latina Mexico, Texas, Geographic Nevada, Maryland, California Former California Yugoslavia, ties California Delaware, California South Africa, Israel, California Age 22 28 25 34 26

ways. The fellows were all bilingual or multilingual, and, albeit through different frames, they were all consciously aware of the role of language in social life and in processes of power. They came from different educational and personal backgrounds, but they were all graduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara, at the time they worked with the SKILLS program. Tijana and Zuleyma were students in the Education Department, Anna and Audrey in the Linguistics Department, and Sebastian in the Chicana and Chicano Studies Department. Table 3.1 provides an overview of the five teaching fellows’ linguistic, ethnoracial, and geographic backgrounds as well as their ages at the time of the study. As described in more detail by other authors (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee, this volume; Rys, this volume), the teaching fellows participated with other students in a year-long graduate-level seminar that linked the tenets of the SKILLS program to issues of language and race in education and society. I participated in the seminar as a student as well, developing learning activities for the SKILLS classrooms, discussing theories and research, and reflecting with others on my own experiences with language, race, and education. In Fall 2013, the fellows also worked as teaching assistants for a large undergraduate course taught by Inés Casillas, focusing on issues of language and race in education. In Winter and Spring 2014, most fellows taught the SKILLS curriculum at area high schools in pairs (Zuleyma and Audrey) and individually (Tijana), while Anna and Sebastian taught as a team at a local teen center.

Setting a Tempo: Negotiating the Protocol This project arose from my research interest in the ways teachers view languages and how their thinking influences their own lives as educators and their

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interactions with students. I was a middle school and high school teacher of both English and English Language Development for ten years, and I witnessed a vast array of teachers and students interacting with one another with various degrees of frustration and compassion.This project gave me a chance to look more closely at a group of people who were in a teaching role but were not typical teachers, both because of their beliefs about languages and because of the content and design of their classes. I conducted one interview with each participant toward the beginning of their time teaching in the SKILLS program. Tijana, Audrey, and Zuleyma had already been teaching for a few weeks: Anna and Sebastian had begun planning but were not yet interacting with students. Each interview lasted for approximately one hour, and I entered each interview with my soloist repertoire, adhering to the score note for note—that is, my interview protocol (see Appendix). Tijana’s interview took place first, and as the interview morphed into a conversation with each of us taking up various threads of interest around the interview topics, I started to rethink how I should proceed. In our conversation, Tijana and I spoke with a spontaneity and informality that I had not expected. This did not necessarily change my methodological practice, but it did change my methodological thinking to incorporate the study participants as cultural guides (Spradley 1979). Although I followed my original protocol for the rest of the interviews as well, after the first interview I knew my repertoire well enough that I could just ask questions as they occurred in the conversation, interacting more naturally and leaving space for the interviewees to rhapsodize or improvise as they wished. During each interview, I asked the participants to create a concept map of their language beliefs. I intended for this map to help each interviewee focus on the key ideas that were important to them and to create a visual representation of their own concepts that we could talk about together. Joseph Novak and Bob Gowin’s (1984: 19) thoughts about concept maps highlight the purpose behind this interview technique: “Ideas that are novel, powerful, and profound are very difficult for us to think about; we need time and some mediating activity to help us.” I had previously used concept maps as a tool in my teaching in order to help students work through complex concepts, and I thought that it might be helpful for my study participants to have a way to construct their beliefs on paper as they spoke, a living text that they could alter and add to as they endeavored to explain their beliefs to me. However, unlike with my interview protocol, which I did not design to be flexible enough to accommodate participants’ individuality, I immediately recognized that it was important that each participant be allowed to create a concept map that was unique to them, without a required structure from me as the researcher. I presented each participant with a white piece of paper and a pen and asked them to visually represent their language beliefs on the page, so that we could use the map to guide our conversation. In this way, the map would not only give the participant and me a way forward in our conversation, but it would also represent the visualized thoughts of the participant at a particular moment in time.

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Thanks to my initial experience with Tijana, the nature of my methods had changed from a quasi-clinical interview protocol to a conversation driven by the interaction between myself as the researcher and the interviewee. But I kept a series of opening questions from the rigid structure that I had originally created, which I intended to use to elicit basic demographic facts about each interviewee and their background. One of these questions acted as the turning point in each conversation: What is your linguistic background? I had expected to receive answers of a few words and then move on to the next question, but the answers the interviewees gave were complex and varied. For example, Zuleyma asked, “What do you mean by that?” which threw me off guard, because I had considered the question clear and straightforward. In retrospect, I see that I was biased by my own linguistic background; my answer would have been a short sentence: “English, and I also speak some German.” I responded to Zuleyma that I meant that I wanted to know which languages she spoke and when she started speaking them. Her response showed me just what an intricate answer could be constructed for this seemingly simple demographic question, causing me to rethink not only my own bias in interviewing, but also how to analyze and view the data provided by the participants.

Linguistic Motifs: Language Beliefs as Accompaniment Although the teaching fellows shared some linguistic and educational training in common from the SKILLS seminar, their diverse backgrounds illustrate not only the dynamic process of forming language beliefs, but also the role of accompaniment in that process. Accompaniment is an “ongoing, negotiated social process of learning to talk and work together, in which all participants contribute different forms of expertise and understanding and from which they benefit in different ways” (Bucholtz, Casillas & Lee, 2016: 27). In the interviews, the participants laid out their language beliefs as ongoing, dynamic processes, rather than as static endpoints. Examining the motifs that appear in their explanations is a useful way to see this process in action. In music, a motif is a recurring idea that holds special importance and draws special attention from performers and listeners alike. A motif keeps coming back, sometimes articulated differently than before, sometimes hidden within other ideas, but the motif endures and helps the listener recall what is most important in the piece. I am differentiating between a theme and a motif in this analysis: A theme is what is most important, the large idea in the piece, whereas a motif can take many shapes, rhythms, and forms and is used to illustrate the larger theme. The study participants each had an individualized motif that they returned to again and again, building toward a larger theme that they all had in common: accompaniment in the formation of language beliefs and teaching for sociolinguistic justice.

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The linguistic motifs of the individual interviews revealed that the role of accompaniment was present within the SKILLS program and elsewhere; through their explanations, the participants showed that their language beliefs were consistently influenced by others and by events in their lives. Linguistic motifs kept emerging and coming back within our conversations, revealing the changing and flexible nature of the participants’ language beliefs through their individual motifs.The motifs they composed were home and family (Tijana), agency (Sebastian), political awareness and action (Anna), power and education (Zuleyma), and expression (Audrey) (Figure 3.1). Below, I present each participant’s concept map along with longer excerpts from our conversations that focus on their own most important linguistic motifs. The longer excerpts were transcribed using a poetic frame in order to represent the interviewees’ speech naturally (Patai 1988). I present the participants in the order in which they were interviewed. Further, to wholeheartedly engage in the spirit of accompaniment as described by the interviewees, I present their words at equal length to my interpretation of those words. Each section ends with the participant’s own words rather than my analysis.

Tijana’s Motif: Home and Family During the interview, Tijana represented her language beliefs on her concept map through the places she lived and the languages she speaks in connection to those places (Figure 3.2). Home is of particular importance to Tijana’s language

FIGURE 3.1

The theme of accompaniment and the study participants’ individual motifs illustrating the theme.

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FIGURE 3.2 

Tijana’s concept map of her language beliefs.

beliefs, an emphasis that aligns with her research interest in family language policy (Hirsch, this volume). Right away, she introduced the motif of multiple homes: that question “where are you from?” is really complicated because I really I identify with with all of them all of my experiences and my lives . . . okay so there’s the home language right but home as in the home I grew up in it’s different than than it is in my now home Tijana has a past home and a “now home,” and she is extremely aware of the changing ideological landscape of her different homes and its influence on her

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linguistic thinking. On her map, she wrote a plus sign (+) below RSA (Republic of South Africa), where she lived from elementary to high school and a minus sign (-) below USA (United States of America), where she currently lives. She used these two symbols to show the difference in attitudes toward multilingualism in these two countries. Tijana said she felt that the attitude in South Africa toward different languages was “open-minded,” “open in general,” and her heritage language of Serbo-Croatian was viewed positively there. In fact, her heritage language “really shaped how people saw” her and how she felt in South Africa—she noted that many people in South Africa were personally familiar with Serbo-Croatian as a language as well as the history of the region of the former Yugoslavia. Tijana felt similarly about Israel, where she had lived, learned, and taught as an adult: She described Israel as a “very multilingual multicultural country, it’s a very young country as well . . . people are very open and welcoming.” However, when Tijana moved to California as a senior in high school, she became aware of “hierarchies amongst European languages and how they’re viewed.” Many people didn’t even know what Serbo-Croatian was, and those that did devalued it—“anything that’s not Western in some ways is put down and that was my first negative experience with my heritage language.” Each of Tijana’s homes or places of residence had an impact on how she viewed multilingualism and how she felt about her own languages. The influences of these places and homes on her language beliefs are not restricted temporally—they are all ongoing and continuous. And even though she stated that she had a past home and a “now home,” throughout her interview Tijana discussed her homes and languages fluidly and without temporal boundaries, looping back and forth from one past home to her “now home” to another past home in a way that implied they were not sharply separated. Home and family were important influences on Tijana’s construction of her language beliefs in the interview; this was the motif she kept rephrasing and improvising upon. As the only parent among the group of participants, she highlighted family as a context in which she put her language beliefs into practice: but while I was in Israel I spoke English to my son so that’s that’s life which is not home or past or heritage it’s it’s like my second language . . . as a mother I had to make the choice

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I had to make a choice between English and Serbo-Croatian and I felt that clearly English would be more helpful for him—especially since all of our family lives in the US and a lot of people in Israel know English and so instead of completely not being understood at least he had some opportunities [laughs] to be understood at least partially there and so that’s why I chose English The intertwining of place, home, and family in Tijana’s linguistic decisions in raising her son also point back to her knowledge of the language ideologies in each of the countries she lived in as well as the need to be understood. She values multilingualism both for herself and for her son, but also had to make a practical linguistic decision about which of her languages would be most “helpful” for her son to learn. Her decision to raise her son in English rather than Serbo-Croatian was difficult, however; as she went on to say, it led to “struggling with maintaining [her] heritage language in the next generation because of that choice.” Tijana described her choice to focus on English as “conscious” and “clear,” but she also noted that “when you’re multilingual . . . as wonderful as it is there are all these additional problems to consider.” These “problems” contribute to Tijana’s language beliefs as she framed them in our discussion. As she described them, these beliefs were heavily influenced not only by her multilingual experiences as she grew up, but also by her son and the role she plays as his mother, a topic that once again invokes the motif of home and family. Tijana shows the accompanying nature that family can have over time and over many geographical landscapes in influencing the daily practices she now engages in with her son. Her interview shows the broad, flexible nature of her language beliefs: that being multilingual is both “wonderful” and problematic. But she also states unequivocally: I think the more languages the better in an individual like I just think I really do believe it’s true when they say you really truly get to know people once you speak their language

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Sebastian’s Motif: Agency During our interview Sebastian, like Tijana, also engaged with a motif of home and family, especially in discussing the family language policy decisions that his mother had made. As he noted, “she was really intent on having me and my sister learn Spanish first” before English as they were growing up in California. But Sebastian’s motifs focus more on his beliefs about agency, not only with regard to language, but also as part of his life in general. In his concept map (Figure 3.3), he creates a web of three languages and an action connected to his name in the middle. The three languages in the order he wrote them are Spanish, English, and Spanglish, and he labeled the action dealing with colonized languages, which he connects to each of the three languages in turn. Sebastian developed a list for each of the languages as he talked—who he spoke the language with, for what purposes, and sometimes within what context. But Sebastian spent the majority of interview time talking about two other words on his concept map: agency, which he listed under English, and political, which he listed under both Spanish and Spanglish. Below he introduces the motif of agency with regard to speaking Spanish, especially as a public form of resistance against staunchly monolingual language ideologies: when I speak Spanish in certain spaces it can be read as political because people

FIGURE 3.3 

Sebastian’s concept map of his language beliefs.

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or because especially if Spanish is not expected to be spoken or heard in that space so whether it’s in a classroom or in some type of I don’t know public— in like okay so an example Santa Barbara is a very white city so oftentimes me and my friends will be the only people that aren’t white like in a restaurant or a coffee shop or in a public space like that and sometimes we do speak Spanish and it’s not um I think it makes people uncomfortable sometimes [laughs] um and if it’s especially if we’re being loud or we’re laughing you know or we tend to be loud sometimes um it’s also this thing for me that like it it like takes up sonic space and it or it and it’s resisting sonically or resisting audibly Agency here is tied to Sebastian’s use of Spanish in white public space, in violation of ideological expectations (Hill 1999; see also Corella, this volume). Sebastian and his friends use Spanish in public with the express purpose of creating “sonic space” for themselves, standing against white, monolingual English ideologues who may be present. Where Spanish is concerned, agency for Sebastian focuses on group identity: He and his friends find strength and satisfaction in resisting the racial and linguistic status quo. This concern with agency is also closely tied to accompaniment: Sebastian describes a group of speakers accompanying one another in creating a “sonic space,” carrying on a conversation in the language of their own choosing while not worrying whether this choice makes the white people around them uncomfortable. Sebastian described this discomfort as “productive” and “necessary,” especially for white people who are “not made to feel uncomfortable very often, so it’s okay if [they] hear a little Spanish.”

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Sebastian also frames his relationship with English through the motif of agency, although in a different spatial, political, and relational context than with Spanish: I’m able to exert my agency like it is the language of the world and in our society and how things work and how you move forward I think and maybe I’m putting more value on it like it’s reinscribing you know language hierarchies or whatever but if I didn’t speak English I don’t think I could do— I wouldn’t have the same ease doing anything I do being a grad student or being a Ph.D. student whatever and people listen to you hopefully [laughs] the more so if you are a fluent English speaker In this way, Sebastian directly addresses English as a language of agency for him in the world and in academia specifically. It is a vehicle for agency, which he can use in specific contexts and situations to progress in the manner he wishes. Moreover, English is connected to work for Sebastian, as seen on his concept map, even though he says that now “it’s mostly English in the home . . . we all talk to each other in English even though everyone’s bilingual.” Therefore, English is not just about context or the people he speaks it with, but also about the purpose it serves for him personally, in this case, “ease” in academia. By contrast, with Spanglish, it is not only the context or situation that produces agency—agency is in the language itself. Sebastian describes Spanglish as “fun” and even draws “a bubble cause the tail’s more fun that way” on the concept map, rather than a box as for the other languages on his map. Spanglish is “just [his] own,” but he also describes it as “political.” Interestingly, Sebastian writes on the concept map that Spanglish is “the least structured” of the three languages, which he clarifies as meaning “casual.” At the same time, Spanglish appears to be the language of linguistic agency for him, because he talks about “reappropriating cultural sayings in Spanish” into Spanglish. It is a language that he and his friends can both use and create socially. All in all, Sebastian acknowledges the influence of all his languages on his beliefs and actions, but regardless of the language he is using, agency is a strong motivator: also I think like being able to make peace with both of them I mean like yeah English is English and it is a language of power in our society but

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like I’m a fluent English speaker like I’m a product of my environment in that sense like so use it to do good [laughs] use it to stir things up a little bit and both and both English and Spanish and Spanglish and whatever other variety you speak [laughs]

Anna’s Motif: Political Awareness and Action While Sebastian’s discussion of agency focused on political awareness, for Anna, political awareness itself emerged as the core motif of the interview. Anna directed our conversation to her awakening to and awareness of the political landscape of language as she has come to see it. Her concept map is a complex web of intertwining arrows, academic references, and quotations that sum up not only her understanding of her beliefs, but her continuous improvisations on them (Figure 3.4). Like a cadenza where the soloist continues to home in on a main theme, Anna

FIGURE 3.4 

Anna’s concept map of her language beliefs.

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connects herself and her beliefs to academic experiences, teachers, authors, and areas of study, eventually showcasing the intertwined nature of her thinking. In creating her map, Anna drew an X to represent herself as a product of “this,” referring to the center of her map reading “white supremacist capitalist hierarchy”—bell hooks. here’s me I’m a product of this I don’t like that but I am . . . so I’m inside this this made me but I really hate it so I’m trying to to break out not to break out I know I can never like change where I came from but to get out of it and then come around and attack it how do I do that this this is attack these asterisks are attack just sort of work from the inside Anna talked through her feelings about her own privilege, and as a white woman who also wishes to engage in societal change through education, I found our conversation to be extremely influential on my own thinking. The idea that she could not change her connection to the system she reviles frustrated Anna, but the idea that she could attack it from the inside gave her hope for change and inspires me as well. Even in the creation of her concept map, Anna visually represents what “attack” looks like, by placing asterisks on an arrow that is aimed at the circle of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Anna engaged with this idea specifically through linguistic issues. (In the next excerpt, these refers to the linguistic varieties she placed on her concept map: AAVE or African American Vernacular English and Chican@ Engl[ish].) the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy would have us all believe that these are

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illogical and that therefore their speakers are illogical and that’s why they like can’t be trusted to make decisions and are criminal and all these things but sociolinguistics was really my key to I knew that those weren’t true but I couldn’t articulate why I felt that way and we started looking at the structure of a language and when you realize that that’s the lie on which a lot of these really problematic assumptions are built everything else starts to unravel Anna’s realizations came through the field of linguistics as a way to disprove myths about language through scientific processes. It gave her a way to attack from the inside—to “unravel” the assumptions that she had long felt and now knew to be false. Anna focused on academic knowledge, relationships, and experiences to outline the changes in her thinking with each new influence that arrived in her life. But to define these experiences as solely academic or solely political would go against one of the larger dualisms she set up on her concept map: if I go from my first sociolinguistics class that was three years three and a half years ago and I definitely am not at an end point right now I’m at a point where I would I feel like I can help others get to start at least thinking about these things you know how they say the personal is the political for me the linguistic is the political

Zuleyma’s Motif: Power and Education Of all the participants, Zuleyma shared the most narratives, focusing our conversation on her experiences in education, both as a bilingual student and as an advocate for parents. At the end of each narrative, she added a phrase to her concept map (Figure 3.5), such as History of colonization, Language[s] are politics, and Zero sum game. Her map is a collection of lessons from her narratives, concepts that reinstate a motif of power in education. As she created the concept map, she told me that she preferred to think in words rather than in pictures, but she did include some arrows, lines, and other shapes on her map to show relationships, as in the seesaw in the middle of the map that portrays English above anything else to illustrate the “zero sum game” mentality of linguistic thinking in the U.S. educational system.

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FIGURE 3.5 

Zuleyma’s concept map of her language beliefs.

Based on this drawing, Zuleyma described the main language ideologies in the United States: so there’s one thing that I always say it’s like you don’t go into the chess game strategizing for Chinese checkers and what I mean for that is like we are in the U.S. I understand that the language of power is however it was decided and I know how it was decided [laughs] but the language of power is how students have mobility so when I think of that I think of language of power and I think of that as a as a tool for mobility now the problem with this is that the standard English language is important for social mobility but it operates as if it’s a zero sum game in the U.S. when I see . . . the U.S. language ideologies I feel like they approach it in a zero sum game meaning that you can’t have be faithful to English and also have these other varieties you know

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Zuleyma frames English as “the language of power” and struggles with its important role both as a “tool for mobility” and as the product of a history of colonization, which she discussed in another section of our conversation. But the main conflict here is the ideological power that English is imbued with in the United States and its consequences for multilingual speakers in educational settings. Zuleyma began our conversation with a narrative of how as a student she had been “reclassified” from an English Language Learner class into an Englishonly educational setting—she is still unsure of what exactly happened, “but [her] teacher decided that [she] was smart so she just took [her] out of the remedial English class.” But in retrospect, what interests her is that her “parents were never welcomed into that conversation . . . it was just a decision made by [her] teacher.” In this situation, unequal power in the educational setting resulted in a lack of accompaniment between people connected to Zuleyma: her teacher and her parents. Experiences such as these influenced her beliefs about language, especially related to education: I see a lot of the politics in there because it’s like you want the communities that you want to stay in power to have more assets to remain in power so it’s okay to learn Spanish if it’s gonna help you with business but it’s not if it’s gonna help you maintain family relationships Zuleyma sees an imbalance in power between languages in the educational system, especially as it connects to students’ relationships. This also leads her, like the other participants, to address the political aspect of language through a lens of power. At this point, another form of accompaniment arises: not just the past influence of other people, relationships, societal ideologies, and experiences, but also the SKILLS program itself. The participants mirrored each other in a common theme of accompaniment toward the program’s goal of sociolinguistic justice. Zuleyma, like her colleagues, believes in using her languages as a teacher both to change the power structures and to enact her language beliefs: so I don’t do the [SKILLS] instruction in Spanish because I’m not going to assume that everybody understands it but I do interject with a lot of Spanish words because I know that they’ll get that so at least all the students in that classroom will have some understanding and if they don’t I’m okay with that too you don’t have to understand everything that comes out of my mouth which might be mean

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but that’s how I feel about it I think it’s one thing to say that all languages are equal and it’s another thing to say that style shifting is a skill and then not use it so I think it’s important to reflect that so that’s what I do

Audrey’s Motif: Expression In her interview, Audrey continues the political theme of her colleagues, but uniquely among all the participants, she does not represent the languages she speaks in her concept map (Figure 3.6). Instead, she develops the idea of understanding one another regardless of the language spoken. In this way, her motif, expression, directly ties to the larger theme of accompaniment. Audrey’s concept map is centered on the idea of linguistic empathy, an idea that she was exploring in her own research. At the bottom of her map, she placed this term in a rectangle, with a squiggly circle to contain all her ideas of what language is. In the upper left corner of this squiggly circle, Audrey describes language as voice + way to express yourself and listen to others. She drew a box around the word listen, accentuating the importance that listening plays in her language beliefs: at the base I see it like as this very powerful tool like at a very linguistic level but then at a very like

FIGURE 3.6 

Audrey’s concept map of her language beliefs.

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discursive kind of more political way as well so like having a voice and being able to use your language to like express yourself to others to listen to others as well to speak out to speak your mind basically is a huge tool that people oftentimes aren’t aware of like we use it all the time we text we write we’re like emailing and calling on the phone and like people use language all the time but they use it all the time but I think that like hides sometimes how powerful that is how powerful language can be For Audrey, the power of language is hidden in its constant use. She describes this power as potentially “political,” but the focus of her motif is not on political action, but rather on the everyday aspects of language: “express[ing] yourself ” and “listen[ing] to others.” In her concept map, she shows that these ideas are not neatly separate: She drew two arrows pointing from her definitions of language toward social + racial justice. That is, expressing yourself and listening to others can lead toward sociolinguistic justice by incorporating many forms of language: it’s this way to express yourself and to listen to others and that’s really powerful and I think a lot of times in the U.S. we think like “oh English this is the way” but there’s so many different ways of doing of expressing yourself and like so many different languages and like being open to different perspectives from those languages and experiences from those languages is really important Audrey notes and criticizes the ideological stance of English linguistic superiority as contradictory to her own beliefs. As she implies, if the purpose of language is to understand one another, then how can one language be superior to another? The core of her argument, that “being open to different perspectives from those languages and experiences from those languages is really important,” acknowledges that beliefs may be influenced by others and that perspectives are myriad and changeable through such experiences. Of course, without listening, or “hearing,” this point is moot:

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language is not only about like speaking but it’s about like hearing right a lot of times that falls by the wayside because we’re so like speaker oriented and voice oriented but like if you didn’t have this sort of system inside your head of language like you wouldn’t be able to understand like what others are saying or understand that— so it’s not only about expressing your view but it’s about having that view being understood by someone and being able to understand what they’re expressing to you or what they’re communicating to you

Coda In the interviews, each of the participants portrayed themselves as accompanied by and as accompanying others in the creation of their linguistic beliefs in their lives before and beyond their work in the SKILLS program. They discussed experiences, relationships, specific people, nationally based ideologies, geographic regions, and their own roles in varied contexts as continual influences on their language beliefs. Moreover, each of the participants also spoke of the role of accompaniment within the SKILLS program, especially with the other graduate student teaching fellows and with their students. Accompaniment was also central to this study. Making research, like making art, is a process that is (or should be) not only about the end product but also about the act of creation. As I quickly discovered during the research process, I was not the sole expert in these interviews, and it was not enough simply to follow my repertoire, the research protocol. Rather, the participants and I entered into an improvised conversation in which we both reflected on our thinking about language beliefs and teaching, as well as the echoes of past experiences and people that still reverberate in our heads. The participants in this study used their motifs to crescendo toward the theme of accompaniment—   power and education agency family and home —Accompaniment!— expression   political awareness and action —all the while drawing on myriad experiences of different tones and different influences, both minor and major. They engaged with past composers in their lives as well as present fellow performers. They demonstrated that their language beliefs were complex and changing, and they interweaved these with their ideas

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about teaching to create linguistic beliefs distinct from the ideologies of the larger society. The SKILLS program did not unilaterally create linguistic beliefs for the participants, but through their involvement, the teaching fellows gained even more experiences, concepts, and relationships from which to create their beliefs. In this way, they accompanied one another, their students, their partner teachers, their graduate student colleagues, and the directors of the SKILLS program in the ensemble work of sociolinguistic justice.

References Bauer, Laurie, and Peter Trudgill (eds.). 1998. Language myths. New York: Penguin. Blommaert, Jan. 1999. The debate is open. In Jan Blommaert (ed.), Language ideological debates. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. 1–28. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. London: Routledge. 25–44. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Christopher VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Errington, Joseph. 2001. Ideology. In Alessandro Duranti (ed.), Key terms in language and culture. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 110–112. Gal, Susan. 1998. Multiplicity and contention among language ideologies: A commentary. In Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press. 317–331. Helmer, Kimberly Adilia. 2011. “ ‘Proper’ Spanish is a waste of time”: Mexican-origin student resistance to learning Spanish as a heritage language. In Lisa Scherff and Karen Spector (eds.), Culturally relevant pedagogy: Clashes and confrontations. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 135–163. Hill, Jane H. 1999. Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–689. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal 32(3): 465–491. Leckie, Alisa G., Suzanne E. Kaplan, and Eliane Rubinstein-Avila. 2013. The need for speed: A critical discourse analysis of the reclassification of English language learners in Arizona. Language Policy 12: 159–176. Lei, Joy L. 2003. (Un)Necessary toughness?:Those “loud black girls” and those “quiet Asian boys.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 34(2): 158–181. Meador, Elizabeth. 2005. The making of marginality: Schooling for Mexican immigrant girls in the Southwest. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36: 149–164. Menard-Warwick, Julia. 2008. “Because she made beds. Every day”: Social positioning, classroom discourse, and language learning. Applied Linguistics 29(2): 267–289. Novak, Joseph D., and D. Bob Gowin. 1984. Learning how to learn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, A. Barry. 1996. Practice into theory into practice: Culturally relevant pedagogy for students we have marginalized and normalized. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 27(3): 285–314.

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Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim. 2014. What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review 84(1): 85–100. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2017. Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for educational justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press. Patai, Daphne. 1988. Brazilian women speak: Contemporary life stories. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Razfar, Aria. 2012. Narrating beliefs: A language ideologies approach to teacher beliefs. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 40: 277–296. Ruiz, Richard. 1984. Orientations in language planning. NABE:The Journal for the National Association for Bilingual Education 8(2): 15–34. Siegel, Jeff. 2006. Language ideologies and the education of speakers of marginalized language varieties: Adopting a critical awareness approach. Linguistics and Education 17: 157–174. Silverstein, Michael. 1998. The uses and utility of ideology: A commentary. In Bambi B. Schieffelin, Kathryn A. Woolard, and Paul V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language ideologies: Practice and theory. New York: Oxford University Press. 123–148. Spradley, James P. 1979. The ethnographic interview. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Tomlinson, Barbara, and George Lipsitz. 2013. American studies as accompaniment. American Quarterly 65(1): 1–30. Wiley, Terrence G. 2007. Immigrant language minorities in the United States. In Marlis Hellinger and Anne Pauwels (eds.), Handbook of language and communication: Diversity and change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 53–86.

APPENDIX Interview Protocol: Concept Map of Language Beliefs

First, Ask for Consent for the Interview and for Recording Interviewer: Do I have your consent to interview you, record the interview, and to use any artifacts we create today in my research?

Then Move on to Background Questions Interviewer: These first questions are to gather some background information before we start on the concept map. 1 2 3 4 5 6

What would you like your pseudonym to be? How old are you? What is your linguistic background? Where are you from? (Birthplace? Grew up? Educational locations?) What is your educational background? What teaching experience do you have? (Length, levels, content areas?)

Have the participant create a concept map centering on the term language beliefs. Participants may then draw the map based on what that term means to them, what their ideologies are, where they believe their ideologies have come from. It is important to let the participant lead the concept map with as little prompting as possible—the purpose is to see what the term means to them and what they’d like to talk about. Interviewer: On this paper, I’d like you to create a concept map centered on the idea of language beliefs. So you can include things like what this

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term means to you or how it relates to you personally or what implications it has in your life.What I really want here is to see what you think of this term so that we can create an interview that’s individualized and focuses on what’s important to you about this topic. If participants would like prompting, use questions 1–2 below. After the participant believes their concept map is complete, ask each participant questions 3–6, unless the questions have already been addressed.



1 What are your beliefs about language? What experiences in your life have influenced those beliefs? 2 What institutional language beliefs/ideologies have you experienced in your life? How did you react to these beliefs/ideologies? How did they differ from your personal beliefs?/How did they reinforce your personal beliefs? c How influential are institutional language beliefs/ideologies on your personal beliefs?

a b

3 What is your teaching philosophy? How is your teaching philosophy influenced by language beliefs? 4 How/Why did you get involved in the SKILLS program? a

What’s your personal investment in SKILLS?

5 What is the purpose of SKILLS from your perspective? 6 What challenges do you anticipate with language beliefs in the SKILLS classroom?

4 SOUNDING WHITE AND BORING Race, Identity, and Youth Freedom in an After-School Program Anna Bax and Juan Sebastian Ferrada

As scholars of the social and political world, we locate ourselves within a long tradition of community-oriented scholarship, in which research is undertaken not for its own sake but to further broader goals of social justice. In the last few decades, one means of working toward this goal has been to create educational or public outreach programs to bring the results of scholarly research to larger audiences. Such activities are often undertaken with students in secondary schools in order to enable youth to engage with the findings and methods of academic work before attaining college age. Linguists as well as scholars of race/ethnic studies and critical multicultural education have created a number of programs that fit this description: language and dialect awareness programs (Reaser & Wolfram 2007), youth participatory action research that encourages students to challenge the oppressive educational conditions that surround them (Irizarry 2011), and projects that bridge the two (Rosa 2017). The SKILLS program falls into this latter category, aiming both to explore the ways that language operates in participants’ own life experiences as intersectionally racialized subjects and to foster a critical, action-oriented perspective on transforming oppressive sociolinguistic conditions (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2016). When done right, programs in the vein of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995) or culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris 2012; Paris & Alim 2014, 2017) can produce remarkable effects. The two of us have served as SKILLS instructors for multiple years and have seen firsthand the transformative impact that program participation can have on students’ understanding of themselves as social agents. However, what it means to “do it right” can be much more complicated than it first seems. Despite the best intentions of academics who strive for community partnerships, the success of such programs is by no means guaranteed.

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In this chapter, we analyze our shared experiences of coteaching in a nontraditional SKILLS partner site in 2014.This undertaking proved to be challenging for both of us because the particularities of the site, a local teen center, made it difficult to implement SKILLS in the way we had originally planned. Many languagefocused academic–community partnerships are designed to take place within a school framework. As such, they rely on the taken-for-granted institutional structures and student–teacher roles that this framework entails. The SKILLS program, while aiming to move beyond the dull routines that too often constitute “school as usual,” is nonetheless designed with the customary resources of a school setting in mind. When we attempted to transplant the program to the Teen Center, we neglected to realize its foundation in schooling—school is even in the program’s name (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society). This chapter offers a reflection on the ways that our pedagogical practices shifted in response to the mismatch between our expectations of a school-like setting and the reality of the more free and open Teen Center space. Our experience demonstrates the importance of heeding the specific needs and affordances of the settings in which academics conduct community outreach programs. Unlike in a traditional school setting, the youth at the Teen Center were free— free to challenge the parameters of the SKILLS program, free to decide whether they wanted to participate at all, and even free to challenge us as individuals. At times, this freedom allowed the youth to openly express their frustration with us, which revealed the fissures between our expectations and the reality of the situation.With a shared commitment to racial and linguistic justice, our team aimed to create a liberatory educational experience for our students, but we inadvertently contributed to a situation where our teaching was often experienced as oppressive and restrictive. Because of the fluid interactional dynamics of the Teen Center, the youth were able to exercise their agency to speak back to this restrictiveness in a way they likely could not have done in a more formal educational setting. A number of reflexive pieces have addressed the question of how academics can form meaningful partnerships with educational institutions (e.g., Irizarry & Brown 2014; McCarty,Wyman, & Nicholas 2014, inter alia).We contribute to this body of work by turning a critical eye on our own efforts to conduct a liberatory program outside of the school context. In doing so, we identify a number of considerations that ultimately shape the success (or failure) of such programs, such as space and place, youth agency, and young people’s perceptions of program instructors. The chapter draws on excerpts from the daily reports that we and our undergraduate team members wrote up after each class session, which illustrate the sometimes visceral emotions we experienced throughout the collaboration. Although frustrating at the time, youth participants’ reactions to our presence in the Teen Center have ultimately transformed the ways that both of us approach teaching. While our individual experiences of teaching at the Teen Center inevitably differed, coauthoring this chapter best allows us to speak to the collaborative

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way in which we worked through the challenges that arose. However, because our subjectivities are also different in important ways, at the end of the chapter Sebastian provides his own reflections on his experiences as a Latino man experiencing racialization in a predominantly Latinx youth space.

Positionalities and Preparation To understand why our time at the Teen Center unfolded the way it did, it is important to describe our own ethnoracial and linguistic backgrounds (see Mainz, this volume) as well as those of our undergraduate team members. Sebastian is a Latino queer man who is bilingual in Spanish and English and frequently uses Spanglish with other Spanglish speakers. Anna is a white, middle-class queer woman who speaks “standard” California English. At the time of our coteaching collaboration, we were both in our early to mid-twenties, and both of us had had previous experience as teaching assistants for undergraduate courses. Our team was enriched by three undergraduate mentors, all from California: Jazmine, an Afro-Caribbean student who was already working at the Teen Center as a volunteer; Melissa, a Salvadoran American student; and Jesus, a Chicano student. Melissa and Jesus had native competency in both English and Spanish, and Jesus spoke a variety of Chicanx English that was similar to the variety spoken by some of the Teen Center participants. We were also joined by two white undergraduate research assistants, Diane and Meagan, who periodically video-recorded meetings at the Teen Center for research purposes but did not interact with the youth as closely as the mentors did. The Teen Center is located in a residential neighborhood adjacent to the University of California, Santa Barbara. The vast majority of the residents are undergraduate students, but the neighborhood also includes many working-class Latinx families. The Teen Center is open during after-school hours as a walk-in space for youth from these families. At the Center, young people can work on their homework with undergraduate volunteer tutors, socialize with friends, exercise and play sports, and engage in other recreational activities. The Center’s aim is both to foster a safe gathering space for local youth and to keep them from falling into trouble in the college student–oriented environment of the surrounding neighborhood. At our first meeting with the Teen Center’s directors, they informed us that the Center was a youth-centered zone: As one put it, “It’s their safe space in this college town.” They told us that the Center’s day-to-day functioning and programming were determined to a certain extent by the desires of the youth who used the Center.The more time we spent there, the more we began to see that the designation of the Center as “their space” was not merely a superficial feel-good slogan, but rather a commitment that deeply affected its operations. For instance, the presence of any individual young person on any given day was wholly unforced, because the Center lacked any expectation of minimal attendance. When youth

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did come, their involvement was on their own terms. They could decide when to switch between activities and when to leave the Center entirely. As we discuss throughout the chapter, the freedom that young people had at the Teen Center turned out to have a much greater impact on the SKILLS program than we had anticipated. As we began our preparations for the first class meeting, we quickly realized that we would need to make some dramatic modifications of the existing SKILLS curriculum so that it would be appropriate for the Teen Center, particularly for the group of youth whom we came to know over the course of our collaboration. A critical difference between the Teen Center and most other SKILLS partner sites was the age of the Center attendees. The typical SKILLS student is a high school senior, although the program has also worked with sophomores and juniors and a few younger students. While we refer to them here using the general term youth, the young people at the Teen Center ranged widely in age, from 7 to 18 years old, although those involved in SKILLS were at least 10. In this chapter, we use the term youth, rather than students, since the Teen Center emphasized not their school-going identities but their identities as young members of the local community. A total of eight participants consistently attended our SKILLS sessions, a smaller group than most classroom-based SKILLS sites. Seven of the eight identified as Latinx, with the remaining teenage girl identifying as Native American. Most participants were girls between the ages of 10 and 15.The only male participant who consistently attended our sessions was an 18-year-old, Jorge (all participant names are pseudonyms). The majority of the participants had bilingual competence in both Spanish and English, and several regularly spoke Spanish at home with their families. Sessions were sporadically attended by other youth, especially early on in the program. On some days, we had twelve or thirteen participants; on others, the six-person SKILLS team outnumbered the youth. As a result of the informal structure of the Teen Center, we did not have a complete list of our participants—and thus did not know their full age range— until the program began, at which point our curriculum preparation was already well under way. While we were excited to work with youth outside the usual reach of the SKILLS program, neither of us had ever had significant experience teaching students younger than high school age. Because we were anticipating a much older group of attendees, our pre-program planning was geared toward developing activities that were suitable for older teenagers. Once we learned that we would be working with youth as young as 10, however, our carefully devised plans had to be rapidly rethought. We soon discovered the challenge of creating activities that would be appropriate for and appealing to both preteens and college-aged participants. The two of us embarked on our coteaching with a shared commitment to using educational means to foster social, linguistic, and racial justice. Our curriculum arc was grounded in an examination of sociolinguistic variation, covering

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topics like codeswitching and the dismantling of ideologies of “good” and “bad” ways of speaking. We then built up to topics related to structural racism, such as intergenerational language shift within the family, English-only policies, and linguistic profiling. These sessions were designed to help youth critically examine their own and their families’ experiences of language use. To keep the topics relevant and engaging, we also strove to incorporate many elements of popular culture, such as videos, current songs, and internet memes. A number of our activities were adapted from previous SKILLS curricula, including some that Sebastian had developed in earlier years, and others had been created by participants in the year-long graduate seminar that was the starting point for this volume (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee, this volume). Once we realized that we would need to make sociolinguistics accessible to younger participants, the pedagogical materials from the Voices of North Carolina program (Reaser & Wolfram 2007), which was designed for eighth-grade students, became another invaluable source of material. Because activities were prepared with the typical SKILLS partner site in mind, they often presupposed a designated teaching space equipped with classroom staples: a whiteboard, a projector for showing videos, and multiple writing surfaces on which students could work.They also imagined that participants would already be in a school mindset when coming to SKILLS meetings and would thus interact in ways that were similar to how they engaged in conventional classrooms. None of these classroom trappings, however, were present at the Teen Center, and it took us some time to truly understand the profound effect this difference would have on our implementation of SKILLS. The Teen Center was the first noneducational institutional context that the SKILLS program had collaborated with. Although the Center directors were an invaluable support system for us and offered much-needed knowledge about the wants and needs of the youth, they necessarily filled a different role than that of the typical SKILLS partner teacher, who takes up a more direct supervisory role than the directors of the Center did. Thus, we were unable to draw on the mentorship of an experienced teacher to help us differentiate our instruction for the distinct age cohorts present in the space or to adapt the college-level SKILLS activities into language that a 10-year-old could understand. As our curriculum progressed, the Center directors did point out to us moments where they had observed activities falling short of their intended goals and offered suggestions for ensuring we did not confuse or lose participants, such as making activities more discovery-based and reducing our use of academic vocabulary. By the time they were able to bring these issues to our attention, however, the die had already been cast: We had managed to drive some youth away from participation in SKILLS altogether. If, before the program began, we had been able to anticipate the challenges that were likely to arise when teaching academic material to a mixed-age group in a nonschool context, our collaboration would likely have unfolded differently. As it was, we had to be flexible and adapt to the

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conditions of our site in an on-the-ground manner, often revising our curriculum plan dramatically based on the success (or not) of the previous day’s session. Although the original curriculum was already activity-based and media-heavy, it became clear that we would need to make it even more so if we had any hope of capturing participants’ attention.Witnessing blank looks and frustrated mutterings in some of our early meetings, we immediately realized that we needed to strip our discussions of any semblance of a lecturing tone, including jargon and some of the more academic subject matter that is typically central to SKILLS. Furthermore, we discovered that the school-like nature of the SKILLS program was fundamentally mismatched with the nonschool space of the Teen Center.

Space, Place, and Youth Freedom It was evident to us even before beginning our collaboration with the Teen Center that we would need to radically adapt the SKILLS program for that space. Not only was our participant population more varied than a typical SKILLS class, but the physical organization of the Teen Center differed significantly from that of an average high school classroom. As we quickly found out, these differences were not merely superficial; they profoundly impacted the success of our collaboration. In 2014, the Center was housed inside a bungalow best described as dilapidated (it has since undergone major renovations). We held our initial sessions in a corner of a large multipurpose room inside this bungalow, opposite a mural studded with symbols of Mexican culture, such as the Virgen de Guadalupe, the United Farm Workers flag, and images of Mexican icons like Frida Kahlo and Emiliano Zapata. SKILLS participants sat on couches, using large books and magazines as makeshift desks when they needed to complete written activities. Because there was no projector or whiteboard, we showed videos and other course material on a large laptop computer. Although the area we met in was blocked off visually by freestanding folding screens, these did almost nothing to soften the sounds from other activities taking place in the building. For instance, a pool table and a punching bag sat eight feet away from our corner. Non-SKILLS participants were free to use these at any point, and the noises of billiards balls often served as background for our sessions. The opposite side of the room had a row of computers and a cluster of tables for students to do their homework. In later sessions, we found that sitting at these tables—instead of on couches, as we had previously been doing—elicited the most generative and focused discussion. However, this informal pseudo-classroom arrangement ultimately proved unsuitable for the SKILLS sessions, as it failed to produce the sustained level of engagement that we had come to expect in a school-like setting. Whether we sat around tables or on couches, participants seemed to have a difficult time focusing on the material we presented during our 90-minute-long meetings. The first few times we met with them, the youth seemed reasonably

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interested in SKILLS and responded politely, but reservedly, to our questions. Neither they nor we fully knew what to expect at the beginning; we were mutually testing the waters of our working relationship. During those first days, the SKILLS teaching team was also trying to calibrate the way we talked about language and politics to an appropriate level. While planning, we had thought that we were effectively scaffolding the course material to be accessible for younger participants, but after seeing puzzled looks from some of the youth, we realized that we needed to break down our explanations still further. The undergraduate mentors confirmed this impression in their daily reports, noting that certain participants had privately expressed frustration or confusion to them. The reports provided the foundation for detailed team conversations about the best ways to adjust our curriculum, conversations that continued on a regular basis throughout our entire time at the Center. After some trial and error, we ultimately hit our stride and began planning suitable, hands-on classes. For example, we designed our unit on language in the family to involve an arts-and-crafts component in which participants traced their personal language history by drawing and decorating a linguistic family tree. Understandably, however, the ups and downs of the initial adjustment period had failed to capture the youth’s interest, and it proved difficult to recover from our slow start. In later sessions, attendees began to appear bored or frustrated, nestling into the couch cushions or simply staring at us blankly when we attempted to engage them with questions about their own language practices and attitudes. Of course, there were moments of clarity and connection with individual participants, but by and large the group began to be less and less interested in SKILLS. One of the more surprising elements of the youth’s gradual disengagement with the program was that one or more participants would simply stand up and leave midway through our sessions, often without informing the teaching team first. Sometimes this was because their parents had arrived to pick them up, but more frequently it was simply an indication that these youth had decided that they would rather be doing something else, whether it was playing outside or on the computer. The freedom with which participants chose to absent themselves was startling; we were often so taken aback that we were unsure how to respond, since they were so comfortable with walking away. In a daily report from March 3, Anna wrote: It’s frustrating when some of the kids walk away in the middle of the lesson and never come back, but I suppose that’s a natural consequence of them being free to go and come as they please. Hopefully we’ll be able to get them more excited to stay after we build more rapport in future lessons. In addition, because the Teen Center youth, unlike students at most other SKILLS sites, were not receiving college credit for their involvement in the program, we were unable to provide them with a clear motivation to show up to

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our meetings, apart from their own interest. With no grades to be jeopardized by skipping sessions, there was no real disincentive for choosing not to participate in the program. In hindsight, we realized that we found the Teen Center participants’ departures so surprising because we had been expecting them to operate according to the behavioral norms of a standard classroom. In a traditional public school setting, students arrive and leave on a set schedule. They are supposed to remain engaged—or at least pretend to be engaged—for as long as class is in session, and their class participation takes place entirely on the instructor’s terms. At the Teen Center, however, we lacked the authority to regiment the participants’ physical presence at the site. Their freedom to leave gradually led us to the recognition that the Center did not just diverge from a traditional classroom in its physical layout; rather, the entire paradigm with which youth engaged with the space was dramatically different. Because the Center was available to youth in the community as a retreat from the surrounding college town, young people were constantly circulating in and out of the building during business hours. While the Teen Center offered educational and enrichment programs, these were voluntary: The youth were not required to attend and often chose instead to avail themselves of homework help or simply to spend time with their friends on the Center’s property.We tried to fit the SKILLS program into this framework by not instituting a minimum attendance requirement.Whenever our team arrived, however, in an effort to be helpful one of the directors of the Center shepherded youth toward us, in effect compelling them to sit in on our session, even if they did not want to that day or were not among our regular participants.This expectation of required participation ran contrary to the standard procedures of the Teen Center. After this routine happened a few times, we noticed that some of the older boys who had been working on their homework would head outside and start playing an impromptu game of basketball when they saw us walking into the Center, so that they would not be asked to join in our discussions. In effect, our presence prevented young people from doing their homework inside. Although the director was only trying to help the SKILLS team by recruiting more participants, the restriction of the youth’s freedom to choose their activities ended up fostering resentment toward us. In her March 10 daily report, Jazmine wrote: [I] did notice that Rosa was defiant this day and it had nothing to do with SKILLS. This day she was having a hard time completing her homework and when [the director] told the students to start SKILLS she felt defeated and frustrated that she had to stop her homework. We have a unique program site so I think problems like this will arise. Being that the students are in our program at their own will (not getting graded or credit, etc.) we will run into students who are reluctant to be there or fully participate.

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However, some of the participants were not in the program “at their own will” at all, since they were being urged to attend sessions by Teen Center staff. Not surprisingly, certain youth began to avoid the Center entirely on days that the SKILLS team was scheduled to be present. Repeated absences also created pedagogical difficulties. Although we planned our sessions to be as modular and independent from one another as possible, it was impossible to avoid building on concepts that we had introduced on previous days. For instance, an early activity involved working with participants to unravel ideologies of “good English” and “bad English,” and threads of that conversation were present throughout most of the sessions that followed. When youth were absent for these foundational conversations due to our flexible attendance policy, it became difficult to get them up to speed. But even apart from the pedagogical implications, pushing young people out of the Teen Center was the last thing we wanted to do. As it became obvious that some youth were refraining from coming to the Center so that they did not have to attend SKILLS, we became increasingly uneasy. Much of the time in our team meetings was spent discussing our growing anxieties about driving youth away from the space, which had been expressly created to provide them a safe, inviting place to go after school. One of the major functions of the Teen Center was to keep youth from being tempted by the college-centered, party-heavy environment that pervaded the surrounding area, but our presence was disrupting the effectiveness of this goal. Moreover, young people’s absence from the Center also meant that they no longer had the opportunity to work on their homework with undergraduate tutors in the structured and supportive setting that had been created to maximize their academic achievement. In short, although the SKILLS program fulfilled the Teen Center’s aim of providing academic enrichment for attendees, our team’s presence ultimately came into direct conflict with the Center’s mission of fostering an appealing, welcoming space for youth to congregate. Now that we are more removed from our experience at the Teen Center, we recognize that the key problem was a clash of expectations. We had taken for granted that we would be working in a school-like dynamic, with a classroom layout, a consistent group of students, and a particular power relationship. Instead, as Jesus wrote in a report from February 19, “we [were] stepping into a space that belong[ed] to them,” not one in which we had final say. The Teen Center was not a school—in some ways, it was designed to be the antithesis of one.While normative American schooling contexts involve the regulation of students’ intellectual, embodied, linguistic, and social behavior in ways prescribed by the institution, the Teen Center was a free and open space in which local youth could determine for themselves which activities they would or would not participate in. In other words, the Center lacked the institutional power of a school to determine its attendees’ behavior, a difference that crucially shaped our interactions with youth at the site. In effect, the Center fostered more self-directed

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participation norms than are present in the majority of schooling contexts, allowing youth to determine the conditions of their own engagement.

Resistance and Youth Agency Because the participation norms of the Teen Center foregrounded youth agency, they generated the freedom for young people to resist fully taking part in SKILLS. It became apparent a few weeks into our collaboration how much “oppositional agency” (Ahearn 2010: 30) the Teen Center space afforded the youth to (dis) engage with us as they pleased. The participants exercised this agency to speak frankly to the SKILLS team, sometimes with the purpose of challenging us as individuals, sometimes to challenge the program itself. On the most difficult days, youth did not hesitate to vocalize their frustration at being required to participate. On April 2, for example, two 14-year-olds whom we refer to as Jessica and Rosa were not shy about telling Jazmine about their irritation, as illustrated in the latter’s daily report: I have had a talk with the girls that we should be welcoming and respectful at all times. Jessica’s response was “well I didn’t even want to do this anyway.” We just have to accept that we aren’t at a site where the students are required to be there. . . . So as a response to Jessica (and being that I work for [the Teen Center]) “even though we are very relaxed here . . . we have to have programs in place for you all so that this isn’t just Free-for-All Center.” The same day, one student challenged Sebastian directly, seeking to get us to leave the Teen Center space altogether. An excerpt from Sebastian’s daily report recounts this exchange: My small group discussion . . . was not very successful. The boys were distracted with their phones and acting silly, as were the girls on the opposite couch. They were not interested in my questions, and would listen for a few seconds, give a rushed response, then go back to ignoring me and the mentors. At one point, Jessica and Rosa asked if I was annoyed or if they annoyed me. I responded by saying that I wasn’t, and that I enjoyed coming every week to talk with them. Toward the end of that conversation Rosa said something to the extent of,“If we annoy you, will you not come back?” Needless to say, today was extremely difficult. Although these young people agentively made their dissatisfaction heard, the fact that we did not simply leave upon hearing their complaints meant that we were still seen as restricting their agency. The simple truth was that when the youth were participating in SKILLS, they could not exercise their agency in as unfettered a manner as they were accustomed to doing at the Teen Center.

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Even as we tried to adapt our own expectations of participation to the norms of the Center, our presence created behavioral issues that affected course dynamics. As noted above, April 2 was a particularly difficult day: Melissa and Jesus reported that participants were “acting silly,” “were not focused,” and “were getting out of hand.”To address this perceived unruliness, Jesus recommended that “there should be more implementation of strict rules and guidelines.” “Strict rules,” however, were exactly the kind of punitive pedagogical practice that we wanted to sidestep, because the SKILLS program generally aims to avoid the “school-as-usual” paradigm in which classrooms operate as disciplinary institutions. This rule-focused norm is so intertwined with what it means to teach in U.S. society that it can seem like a natural fallback when classroom management becomes challenging. Although our aim was to create a “deschooled” learning environment (Illich 1971), we were surprised by how difficult it was to avoid replicating the practices of “school as usual,” especially as academics whose professional training has taken place in such a framework. It was a struggle to find middle ground between school-style discipline and complete permissiveness. We did not want to enforce an attendance policy that would radically differ from the Center’s own, nor did we have grades or college credit to motivate participants. But neither did we want to “just have to accept”—as Jazmine had forlornly written in her April 2 report quoted above—that the youth would resent coming, play around during sessions, or avoid us entirely. This dilemma pursued us throughout the entirety of our time at the Teen Center. Put plainly, our attempt to remap classroom activities onto the Teen Center space had created fundamental incongruities. A classroom is regimented on multiple levels: behavior, age segregation, codes of conduct regarding language, dress, body movement, speech volume, and so on. The Teen Center, in contrast, operated as a sort of anti-school. It was a place where attendees could hang out in a mostly unregulated way, socialize with one another across age cohorts, play freely, and only do schoolwork when they felt like it. And yet, despite this definitional diametrical opposition, we continued trying to reshape the Teen Center into a classroom, at least with regard to certain elements. We tried to regulate young people’s behavior in ways that seemed minor to us, but that actually ended up radically affecting the success of the program. On a more basic level, by bringing the SKILLS curriculum into young people’s space we were requiring them to intellectually engage with us about complex academic issues of our choice, on our schedule. Furthermore, we were asking them to discuss topics that might have affected them personally or on an emotional level, a difficult task even if they had wanted to be there. And even when they spoke up, they did not seem to trust us to fully understand their experiences of linguistic and ethnoracial marginalization. Perhaps their mistrust can be traced to the academic language we used to talk about course material (see Aragón, this volume, for a more successful use of academic language in the SKILLS program). We wanted to foster generative discussions of participants’ own lives, but the

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scholarly, theoretical tone we employed ended up alienating the youth. The program may have reminded them too much of school, a decidedly unsafe space to talk about race for many youth of color. Our use of theoretical language was deliberate: We aimed to introduce a new way of talking about familiar experiences. But this goal was met with resistance by Jorge, the 18-year-old participant, who directly asked us one day why we were trying to teach the youth about topics with which they were already painfully familiar. Jorge’s question was a stark reminder that far from being automatically liberatory, academic language also has the potential to stifle the impact of muchneeded conversations about race and racism. Our daily reports document many moments when participants reacted negatively to school-like activities: We tried to introduce a new vocabulary term right at the beginning (language brokering), but I could sense their boredom and resistance to that almost immediately. Duly noted; we’ll stay away from academic-type definitions in the future, even if it’s only briefly. (Anna, March 17) The students are less engaged when we introduce terms to them. . . . The students stressed to me that they only want to do the program if it’s not like school work and being “lectured” reminds them of that. (Jazmine, March 17) When Sebastian told the girls that we would have a discussion after the skit Jessica made a comment that she didn’t want to participate because she had been in class all day. I’m not sure if the word “discussion” triggered this thought, but it is evident that the students are more inclined to participate when they feel that the lesson strays from an academic setting. (Melissa, March 19) Despite the unusual subject matter that we introduced, activities such as “introducing terms,” “lecturing,” and even “discussion” are canonical parts of the American school experience. Of course, the classroom can certainly be a space where students can interrogate issues of race, language, and personal experiences and use academic modes of analysis to gain extremely useful insights. Both of us have seen this happen when we teach undergraduates and at our other SKILLS sites; we know firsthand that it is possible. But at the Teen Center the youth demonstrated resistance to SKILLS because it seemed like an extension of school. Quite frankly, both of us speak like graduate students. While we attempted to curb our use of academic language, in our teaching roles we tend to speak louder and frame ideas as questions in order to elicit participation from the youth. Even when we toned down this teacherspeak, as instructors we spoke first and led the discussion.

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The consistent pushback we received showed us that the youth recognized the mismatch in trying to mold the Teen Center into a classroom. Although we tried to rework the curriculum into entirely activity- and media-based learning, moving as far away from school-like instruction as we could, the fact remained that the Teen Center was a place for hanging out, not for a continuation of the formal learning day.

Sounding “White and Boring” While some of the youth in the Teen Center were greatly resistant to participating in the SKILLS sessions, we learned early into the program that they had their own sophisticated understandings of issues related to language and race. Despite their disinterest in these topics in the form in which we presented them, these young people demonstrated their thoughts on language and race by redirecting the focus to us, and specifically to our legitimacy as instructors. Our subjectivities were of intense interest in particular to the two 14-year-olds mentioned above, Jessica and Rosa. On April 2, Jazmine wrote about these girls in her daily report: the middle school girls told me that they feel Anna talks “boring.” I asked them several questions after that to see what they really meant and it turns out the tone and academic language is what makes them think that. In our team meeting afterward, Jazmine revealed that the girls had actually described Anna’s speech as “white and boring,” a detail she had tried to spare Anna from learning. (For a very different framing of whiteness in another SKILLS site, see Corella, this volume.) Although Anna’s speech was thus racialized and problematized by the two girls, the primary focus of their evaluation was Sebastian. Below, we move away from coauthorship so that Sebastian can present his individual perspective on the ways he was racialized in the Teen Center space.

Sebastian My first formative teaching experiences were as a teaching assistant when I started graduate school. As a first-year graduate student at the age of 23, I was only a few years older than most of my undergraduate students, and I feared that I might reveal an inability to perform the authoritative role of “teacher” in how I dressed, spoke, and acted in the classroom. As a young queer Latino and a light-skinned person of color, I knew that students would make assumptions about me based on my skin color, how I dressed, and how I spoke. Nevertheless, I did not realize that these dynamics might work differently when I entered the SKILLS site. I am very aware that I am racialized as white by other people of color, which differs from how white folks read me: as mixed race, but always as a person of

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color. A constant source of tension and confusion surfaced with the youth at the Teen Center racializing both Anna and me as white, based on how they read us phenotypically, sartorially, and linguistically. While the youth seemed to take Anna’s whiteness for granted, they knew I was Latino: I repeatedly told them that I am Mexican and Chilean, and a fluent Spanish speaker.Yet they nevertheless continued to interrogate whether I was Latino. Their doubts about my racial authenticity seemed to be based on how they perceived my speech. Rosa and Jessica in particular asked me on several occasions, “Do you speak Spanish?” (see also Zarate, this volume, on the phenomenon of “looking like a language”). The following excerpts from my daily reports depict two different occasions when these two girls felt free to question my ethnoracial identity.The first occurrence took place on February 19, the first day Rosa attended one of our SKILLS sessions: Additionally, there was a new student who had not attended the first session, Rosa. When I asked her name, she replied, “Lupe.” Then the student next to her said, “No, it’s Rosie.” A third student then said, “It’s Rosa!” I then asked Rosa, “Which is it, Rosie or Rosa?” She was surprised at my Spanish-sounding pronunciation of her name, which seemed to spark her interest. With a puzzled look on her face, she asked, “Are you Mexican?!” This might be a personal dynamic to negotiate but it makes [me] wonder if the students do not read my ethnoracial identity as Latino, which could perhaps cause some distance? In our exchange, Rosa initiated a dialogue about ethnoracial identities through a discussion of names, accent, and race and ethnicity. Rosa’s joking claim to be named Lupe and her comments afterward suggest that she chose that name to racialize herself as Mexican and Spanish-speaking. Lupe, which is short for Guadalupe, is often racialized as Mexican because of Mexico’s religious icon, La Virgen de Guadalupe. Conversely, Rosa’s surprise at my Spanish pronunciation of her real name, which prompted her to ask if I was Mexican, signaled her skepticisms about my own ethnoracial identity. As sociolinguists have shown, evaluation of an individual’s linguistic abilities often stands in for evaluation of their ethnoracial identity (Zentella 2014). Rosa’s and Jessica’s doubt continued, even after my repeated assurances that I am Latino and speak Spanish; I understood that something about how I looked, spoke, and dressed did not align with their idea of how Latinxs are supposed to act. Reservations about my Spanish-speaking abilities were perhaps most prevalent because of how I speak English. By aligning how I spoke with white speech, the youth marked it and me as inauthentically Latino. The two girls’ constant questioning about my linguistic repertoire later extended to include questions about my skin color and ethnoracial identity. I am acutely aware that because I am light-skinned there are many privileges that I encounter by virtue of sometimes passing as white. However, my skin color had

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never been so thoroughly interrogated as it was during my time working at the Teen Center, where the youth often made comments like “You don’t look like you speak Spanish.” For example, on April 2, during a discussion of the politics of racialized names and their pronunciation, I shared an anecdote about an interaction I had had at a local grocery store. A cashier had asked if I was Mexican after reading my first name, Juan, on my debit card. He commented, “You don’t look like a Juan.” Rosa and Jessica both responded by saying, “Well, you don’t.” After a few frozen seconds, I made an effort to turn this (for me) uncomfortable moment into a learning moment. I posed questions to the youth about what someone named Juan was supposed to look like. I asked why I didn’t “look like a Juan” and what that meant. I encouraged them to consider what the name Juan stood in for and why those assumptions about names, race and ethnicity, and appearance might be made. However, the youth did not seem interested in continuing the conversation and continued to joke around. I summarized the interaction in my daily report: The question of my race and ethnicity came up (again). I was giving an example about naming in regard to how teachers always tended to abbreviate my name in school or how people always say, “You don’t look like a Juan!” I know where these comments are rooted in, but the kids were extra giddy today and took this as an opportunity to make fun. I heard comments like “You don’t look Mexican,” “You don’t look like a Juan,” “You look white,” to which the other kids responded with “Ooooooh!” I tried to use this as a “learning moment” and said, “OK, let’s talk about that and what that means,” but they were not interested. The youth’s questions about my Spanish ability may have had to do with their perceiving my Latino identity as different from theirs. Their ethnoracial identities were constantly marked because they lived in a predominantly white community. This difference was especially salient compared with how the youth interacted with our undergraduate mentor Jesus. Because Jesus spoke Chicanx English and was closer to their age, they were very comfortable with him, engaging in playful interactions with him. By contrast, the way I sounded, paired with my role as teacher, shaped participants’ perception of—and doubts about—my ethnoracial identity.

Conclusion While this chapter highlights many of the obstacles we encountered while attempting to implement the SKILLS program at a local youth center, our experiences ultimately helped reconfigure many of our attitudes toward teaching, especially in nontraditional formats. Our time at the Teen Center pushed us to reconsider our foundational assumptions about the best way to open up dialogue

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with students on issues of language, race, and power. Because we are both focusing our graduate studies on how to better teach and talk about race and language, we are well aware that we think about these issues in highly theoretical ways. At the Teen Center, as we were trying to create a space where youth could talk about linguistic racism, we ourselves were learning how to talk meaningfully about this topic to them. How do you explain to a 10-year-old Latina that when her teacher tells her to speak “proper” English, it is part of a larger racist hierarchy? In essence, how do we take the academic jargon out of our teaching, when we are being trained to use that very jargon to think and theorize about these issues? Critical scholars like Ivan Illich (1971) have claimed that education that takes place outside the paradigms of schooling is not only possible but preferable. But while it may be easy to imagine alternatives to the normative schooling framework, the practical implementation of these visions was much more difficult than we had anticipated. Although the SKILLS program strives to avoid “school as usual,” our experience shows how simple it is to inadvertently replicate the constricting structures of school even when trying to create liberatory programs. Our main experience of learning has been in traditional schooling environments, and so it is challenging to create novel learning situations that do not replicate the practices of school. We were startled to realize just how much we had internalized the need for such practices, despite our critical theoretical orientation toward them. We both see the true potential of SKILLS in its interdisciplinary foundations. Chicanx studies brings not only a historical approach to understanding sociocultural processes, but also an explicit and sustained commitment to social justice. Linguistics contributes analytic methodologies and centers language as the object of examination, enabling the exploration of multiple levels of social organization that are constituted and reproduced in and through language. Education is a critical component as well. Besides teaching us how to be teachers in the practical sense of creating curricula and lesson plans, the field also offers up insights from culturally responsive pedagogy to help us create a curriculum that goes above and beyond the traditional academic format, in which young people are almost never encouraged to learn about race and in which their agency and freedom are highly constrained. As we have discussed here, although it can be painful, it is vital for us as instructors to continually reflect on and question ourselves, our positionalities, and our pedagogical practices. Our goal as educators for social justice is to become better teachers, so that we can create a classroom that is accessible and engaging—and doesn’t sound so white and boring.

References Ahearn, Laura. 2010. Agency and language. In Jef Verschueren, Jan-Ola Östman, and Jürgen Jaspers (eds.), Handbook of Pragmatics. Wilrijk, Belgium: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 28–48.

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Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. London: Routledge. 25–44. Illich, Ivan (1971). Deschooling society. New York: Harper and Row. Irizarry, Jason G. 2011. Buscando la libertad: Latino youths in search of freedom in school. Democracy and Education 19(1): 1–10. Irizarry, Jason G., and Tara M. Brown. 2014. Humanizing research in dehumanizing spaces: The challenges and opportunities of conducting Participatory Action Research with youth in schools. In Django Paris and Maisha T.Winn (eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities. Los Angeles: Sage. 63–80. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal 32: 465–491. McCarty, Teresa L., Leisy T. Wyman, and Sheilah E. Nicholas. 2014. Activist ethnography with indigenous youth: Lessons from humanizing research on language and education. In Django Paris and Maisha T. Winn (eds.), Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities. Los Angeles: Sage. 81–104. Paris, Django. 2012. Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher 41(3): 93–97. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim. 2014. What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review 84(1): 85–100. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2017. Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press. Reaser, Jeffrey, and Walt Wolfram. 2007. Voices of North Carolina: Language and life from the Atlantic to the Appalachians. 2nd edition. https://linguistics.chass.ncsu.edu/thinkanddo/ vonc.php Rosa, Jonathan. 2017. Community as a campus: From language “problems” to “possibilities” in Latina/o communities. Paper presented at the conference of the Illinois Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages—Bilingual Education. Naperville, IL. Zentella, Ana Celia. 2014.TWB (Talking while bilingual): Linguistic profiling of Latina/os, and other linguistic torquemadas. Latino Studies 12(4): 620–635.

PART 2

Ideologies of Race and Language in the Lives of Youth

5 “THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS BAD LANGUAGE, BUT . . .” Colorblindness and Teachers’ Ideologies of Linguistic Appropriateness Jessica Love-Nichols

Introduction In June 2008 I moved to New York City to teach in a “hard-to-staff ” public school, where for several years I taught emergent bilingual students (i.e., “English language learners”; see García & Kleifgen 2010) and African American Englishspeaking students. To imbue new teachers with a sense of urgency, my training program focused heavily on the statistically poor educational outcomes for lowincome students of color and the drastic consequences these outcomes could cause—connecting kindergarten achievement with graduation rates and thirdgrade reading scores with prison populations. Underlying the program’s suggestions was the conviction that competency in “standard” English was critical to preventing these negative outcomes. If we just worked hard to give our students large vocabularies and highly evaluated oral expression abilities, we were promised, they would experience great success in school and, most likely, in life. Even as a teacher with enough background in linguistics to suspect that access to “standard” English was probably not enough to prevent racialized students from experiencing “profound institutional exclusion” (Flores & Rosa 2015: 165), I still felt a great sense of urgency to “help” my students gain access to “standard” English as quickly as possible. Thus, educators are put in an almost untenable position. Academic research on teachers’ language ideologies, however, does not always acknowledge the institutional context in which teachers are socialized and trained and in which they practice (cf. Malsbary 2014). Such research can also overlook the material and affective investment that most teachers make in their students, missing much of the complexity of the teacher–student relationship. In this chapter, I therefore seek to emphasize the relationship between teachers’ positive actions, intentions, and

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impact and the negative language ideologies that many teachers—and particularly but not only white teachers—still participate in. I endeavor to avoid the dominant ideology of white racism examined by Jane Hill (2009), which holds that the roots of racism lie only with immoral individuals, instead attempting to focus on negative language ideologies not as individual attitudes but rather as dispersed, shared systems of beliefs that, in many cases, are rooted in positive intentions. Researchers of language ideologies have extensively demonstrated that teachers’ implicit and explicit biases toward speakers of minoritized linguistic varieties have real and lasting effects on their students, including their academic achievement (Lei 2003), their educational experience (Skiba et al. 2011), and their sense of self (Alim 2004). To a certain extent, current educational institutional language ideologies have moved away from a deficit-oriented perspective on linguistic diversity in which any divergence from “standard” English is seen as a deficiency (Wolfram 1999), although deficit-oriented ideologies are still widely circulated (Avineri et al. 2015; see also Carruba-Rogel, this volume; Lateef-Jan, this volume). However, recent changes in institutional language policy represent only a superficial reframing of earlier negative language ideologies. Institutional materials about linguistic variation now often avoid explicitly deficit-oriented language, focusing instead on issues of appropriateness and context (Fairclough 2010; Flores & Rosa 2015).Where once marginalized languages were considered “ungrammatical” and “incorrect,” they are now said to be “informal” and therefore not suitable for “written, formal, and public” communication (quoted in Fairclough 2010: 236). Instead of replacing supposedly deficient or broken languages in students’ linguistic repertoires, educational materials now advocate teachers’ “adding” hegemonic varieties that students may use when “appropriate” while still “respecting” students’ home languages. As Norman Fairclough describes this ideology, “different varieties of English, and different languages, are appropriate for different contexts and purposes, and all varieties have the legitimacy of being appropriate for some contexts and purposes” (2010: 36; original emphasis). Such discussions assert the equality of all ways of speaking while simultaneously maintaining that some may be “inappropriate for the educational setting” or “unprofessional.” The British government’s 1989 Cox Report on the teaching of English in schools, for instance, states, Pupils need to be able to discuss the contexts in which Standard English is obligatory and those where its use is preferable for social reasons. . . . Nonstandard forms may be much more widely tolerated—and in some cases, preferred—when the language is spoken, informal, and private. (quoted in Fairclough 2010: 37; original emphasis) More recently, but in a similar vein, the U.S. Common Core Standard for Language Arts in grades nine and ten states that students need to be able to “adapt speech to a variety of contexts and tasks, demonstrating a command of formal

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English when indicated or appropriate” (California Department of Education 2013: 26). Similarly to other strategies of colorblindness employed in neoliberal discourses of race (Bonilla-Silva 2018; Corella, this volume; see also Rys, this volume), in which racial evaluations are displaced onto cultural frames, ideologies of linguistic appropriateness mask discriminatory practices by reframing the discussion away from race. Colorblind discourses of language, for instance, focus on the supposed insufficient vocabulary (Avineri et al. 2015) and lack of formality of racialized varieties to explain their “inappropriateness.” In this chapter, I examine the language ideologies of three white teachers who participated in the SKILLS outreach program, focusing on two main ideologies of appropriateness that emerged from the teachers’ reflections on student language. In the first ideology, which I term the ideology of formality, linguistic varieties other than “standard” academic English are considered inappropriate for school or other institutional contexts due to their perceived informality. Minoritized varieties in this ideology are seen as inherently less “formal” or “professional.” (For the flip side of this ideology among Latinx youth in a nonacademic setting, see Bax & Ferrada, this volume.) In the second ideology, which I refer to as the ideology of worth, a division is created between linguistic content and linguistic form such that minoritized varieties are seen as inappropriate for school because they do not convey the “content” of the students’ message in a way that will be perceived as intelligent and important by others. Whether because interlocutors may not be proficient in the students’ linguistic variety or because of some inherent deficiency in the form of the language, such speech styles are seen as unable to express the students’ thoughts in a format that allows listeners to hear them as “worthwhile.” Teachers drawing on this ideology often recognize that hierarchically positioning linguistic varieties in relation to one another is problematic, yet they nevertheless hold that minoritized ways of speaking are inappropriate for the classroom because they put the students at risk of being judged negatively by a supposedly generic—that is, white—listener.Through this ideology, teachers’ positive impulses to prevent their students from being perceived as unintelligent ultimately reinforce racializing discourses about marginalized varieties. Crucially, both the ideology of formality and the ideology of worth attribute power to linguistic form rather than to the speakers who use particular ways of speaking, thereby obscuring the social relations underlying these ideologies. By espousing the ideology of appropriateness, educational institutions nominally move beyond explicitly positioning minoritized varieties as “bad” and “broken,” replacing those ideologies with new discourses that assert that all forms of language are “equal” while simultaneously insisting that the language of racialized students is only suited for certain nonpublic contexts. This change, however, only serves to camouflage the continuing discriminatory nature of such ideologies. By locating the power to be seen as “professional,” “formal,” and “intelligent” within

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the realm of language, the ideology of appropriateness contributes to colorblind discourses by suggesting that if students simply used academic English, they would no longer suffer discrimination. In this chapter, I therefore argue that it is not enough to recognize student language as systematic and legitimate outside of the classroom; the educational institution must instead recognize the ideology of appropriateness as a reification of “standard” English and as a form of colorblind discourse that provides legitimacy to modern-day deficit-oriented ideologies.

Language Ideologies in Educational Contexts Research on the language ideologies of preservice and practicing teachers shows that most teachers possess negative attitudes toward minoritized varieties, underestimating the cognitive abilities of students who speak such varieties and judging their work more harshly (Baugh 1999; Byrnes, Kiger, & Manning 1997; Cross, DeVaney, & Jones 2001; Godley et al. 2006). Importantly, several studies demonstrate that teachers’ attitudes are not merely individual beliefs but are shaped by institutional policies (Helmer 2011; Razfar 2012), and have a negative impact on students both personally and academically (Lei 2003; Menard-Warwick 2008). Conversely, researchers have found that teachers who view students’ linguistic knowledge as a resource have a positive effect on their students both personally and academically (Paris & Alim 2017; Siegel 2006). A growing number of researchers seek to change language ideologies in the educational context through preservice classes, classroom interventions, and professional development programs. Unlike most programs of this kind, at the time of the research the SKILLS program generally focused on increasing students’ critical language awareness and for the most part did not include any formal training or professional development for partner teachers. This situation thus created a unique opportunity to investigate the effect on teachers of exposure to a critical language awareness approach that largely did not include teacher training and development. As my analysis demonstrates, without such explicit training, teachers in the SKILLS program drew heavily on colorblind discourses of linguistic appropriateness that reproduced negative language ideologies.

Linguistic Appropriateness as a Colorblind Discourse Colorblind discourses are bivalent in nature (McIntyre 1997): They can be used both as a strategy to avoid talking about race and thus to “insulate white people from examining their/our individual and collective roles in the perpetuation of racism” (1997: 46) and as a well-intentioned attempt to avoid a focus on racial difference as deficiency. One of the most frequent colorblind discourses of language is the ideology of appropriateness (Fairclough 2010; Flores & Rosa 2015), in which all linguistic varieties are nominally viewed as equal, but racialized varieties

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and languages are constructed as “inappropriate” and invalid in many public and institutional spaces. Ideological links between language and appropriateness have been well documented. Bonnie Urciuoli (1996), for example, argues that speech that is ideologically perceived as publicly appropriate is linked to a middle-class, white, English-speaking population, while the use of the Spanish language by Latinxs in the United States is often seen as disorderly and inappropriate (see also Zentella 2007). Observing applications of these ideologies in the school setting, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa (2015) note that the U.S. educational context has used both subtractive and additive approaches to language. In the subtractive approach, educators attempt to replace students’ home varieties with “standard” English, while in additive approaches, the goal is for students to acquire a hegemonic variety of English alongside their home variety. Flores and Rosa argue that both of these approaches are problematic in positioning “standard” English as an objective linguistic category that gives its speakers access to societal advantages and thus concealing the fact that racialized speakers can conform to hegemonic linguistic norms while still facing institutional exclusion: Failing to acknowledge language-minoritized students’ common racial positioning and the ways that such positioning suggests deficiency, which has been typical in appropriateness-based approaches to language education, normalizes these racial hierarchies and provides them legitimacy through the perpetuation of a meritocratic myth: the idea that access to codes of power and the ability to use these codes when appropriate will somehow enable racialized populations to overcome the white supremacy that permeates U.S. society. (2015: 166) Thus, the ideology of appropriateness is closely connected to the discourse of colorblindness. In this chapter, I build on previous critiques of linguistic appropriateness to show in detail how ideologies of appropriateness are constructed as a form of colorblind discourse in white teachers’ talk about their students’ language, even in a program with an explicit focus on sociolinguistic justice.

Talking With Teachers Before the beginning of SKILLS instruction in 2014, I conducted interviews with SKILLS partner teachers at three different schools—Nancy, Julie, and Steve (all pseudonyms). Both Nancy and Steve had participated in the program before, Nancy for one year and Steve for several. My interview with Julie took place before her first year of participation. Nancy and Julie were white women in their thirties or forties, and Steve was a white man in his fifties. All of the school

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populations in this study were roughly evenly divided between Latinx and white students, with smaller numbers of students from other backgrounds. Although teacher professional development was not a primary goal of the SKILLS program, the partner teachers were generally present for the majority of instruction and could participate in curriculum development and teaching to a greater or lesser extent. None of the teachers had previously met me, but they knew of my involvement with the SKILLS program, and during the interviews I highlighted my own background as a former primary school teacher in hopes of creating a friendly conversational context and shared basis for the semistructured interviews. All of the teachers were aware of my research interest in language ideologies in a general way, as I told them that I was interested in how their participation in the SKILLS program affected the way they “think about student language.” Because of my position as a linguist and their awareness of my research interests, the teachers appeared careful in their discussion of student language, although all of them approached the interview in an open and amicable way. Despite their care with the topic, however, at times the teachers drew on language ideologies that I considered deeply problematic. The emergence of these ideologies even in careful discourse highlights the effectiveness of colorblind discourses, but also presented a deep conflict for me as a researcher. Because of my strong identification with the teachers and the fact that many of these ideologies sprang from a genuine desire to serve their students, I was unsure of how to handle the situation. During the interview, I hesitated to engage the teachers about these problematic ideologies, and I ultimately let the opportunity pass, only providing relatively neutral answers to maintain a cordial atmosphere. Moreover, in analyzing the data I struggled with the task of representing both the teachers’ positive intentions and deep commitment to their students and the problematic nature of the language ideologies in which they participated. The data analyzed in this chapter are drawn from the audio recordings of these interviews.Two of the teachers were interviewed in their classrooms, one during the school day and the other after the end of class. The third partner teacher was interviewed on the University of California, Santa Barbara campus.The interviews lasted between thirty and forty-five minutes and were based on written questions covering topics such as the teachers’ experience with linguistics, their attitudes toward student language, and their perceptions of the effects of language in their students’ lives. I transcribed the interviews and coded them according to themes that emerged as salient across interviewees; portions of the interviews that were especially pertinent to the analysis were then transcribed to a higher level of detail, including the length of pauses, overlapped speech, and stress (Du Bois et al. 1993), and analyzed using a close discourse analysis approach. Linguistic appropriateness emerged as a salient theme in all three interviews, manifesting itself as the most relevant ideology through which these teachers perceived student language.The interviewees constructed, reinforced, and, in one case, challenged the ideology of appropriateness through two main subideologies, the ideology of formality and the ideology of worth.

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The Ideology of Formality As part of the ideology of appropriateness, the ideology of formality states that racialized varieties of English are not “appropriate” for the classroom because they are “informal,” “unprofessional,” or low-register. This ideology is reminiscent of Jane Hill’s (2005) discussion of the positioning of Spanish as out of place or inappropriate in white public space, while the Mock Spanish used by white speakers is perceived as well suited for socially taboo topics such as bodily excretions. According to the ideology of formality, the educational context, which is constructed as a formal space, is an inappropriate context in which to speak minoritized varieties, because their use is perceived as lacking the appropriate professionalism. The first excerpt illustrating the ideology of formality comes from my interview with Nancy. At the time of the interview, the high school where Nancy taught, whose mascot was the eagle, was undertaking a schoolwide initiative to promote professionalism, with the slogan “Eagles Are Professional.” This initiative attempted to encourage desired student behavior by linking such behaviors to those needed in the middle-class corporate workplace. Nancy had participated in SKILLS during the previous year and was about to begin her second year with the program. After asking her some general questions about teaching, I asked Nancy about the language ideologies she had held before participating in the SKILLS program. (1) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

JESSI;

NANCY;

JESSI; NANCY; JESSI; NANCY;

So how did you think of students’ language use, before, participating last year in SKILLS? .. Um, .. Gosh I don’t even know. Um. .. I think one thing, it’s really made me think a lot about is?, kind of this idea of professional or formal language?, [Mm] [and] how a lot of students, they may have never been exposed?, M[hm.] [to] it, And so I’ve kind of really— kind of rethought—

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20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36  37 38

JESSI; NANCY; JESSI; NANCY;

been thinking about how um, .. just looking at stu- each student’s background, and trying to figure out and understand, not only with their writing, but also with their language?. [Mm]. [As to where] maybe that gap is. And like my expectation as a teacher?, M[hm]. [How] much training or help might they need. With their language, and what they’re expected, because they honestly.. might not know?, what’s expected in a professional setting?, if they’ve only.. I mean if their main contact, you know, maybe at home it’s always informal language.

Throughout her response, Nancy draws on ideologies that are characteristic of a deficit orientation to linguistic variation (e.g., they may never have been exposed, line 15; where that gap is, line 27).Yet she also uses colorblind strategies to delink her students’ supposed language deficit from their racialized linguistic variety, an approach she characterizes as a positive change from her previously held ideologies before her participation in the SKILLS program. Instead of presenting her students’ home language as “bad” or “broken,” or portraying her students as inherently incapable of using “appropriate” language, she says that they may simply not have seen “professional” or “formal” language (line 12) and hence “they honestly might not know what’s expected in a professional setting” (lines 33–34). By framing her evaluation of students’ home language with respect to setting, Nancy also draws on colorblind discourses that conceal the problematic underlying nature of her focus on context. Although her affective investment in her students’ success is clear, by constructing students’ home language as “always informal” (line 38) and therefore inappropriate for the classroom, Nancy elides the racialized nature of what can be seen as appropriate for the classroom and reinforces harmful ideologies about marginalized varieties. In the next example, Nancy continues to reflect on the link between students’ home language and how they speak in school, revealing further the deficit orientation underlying the ideology of formality. Before the example begins, I have asked Nancy how participating in SKILLS changed her view of student language,

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and she becomes slightly more direct, although she still draws on colorblind terms to code her evaluations. (2) 1 NANCY; 2 3 4 JESSI; 5 NANCY; 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

I mean they honestly might not know, that a certain way to speak, or using slang is maybe inappropriate in that setting. Right. But for some of these kids, maybe they don’t have good examples at home, because .. um, you know parents’ language is not— maybe the same at home, as they’re using in those other environments, or um, it’s not as formalized because of lack of education.

In this response Nancy focuses further on students’ home language or variety as the root cause of their “inappropriate” speech in school (line 3), saying they might not “have good examples at home” (line 6) and attributing this linguistic lack in turn to a “lack of education” (line 14). Importantly, Nancy refers to different home languages as well as different varieties of English: She notes that “parents’ language is not—maybe the same at home” (lines 10–11) (she later refers explicitly to Spanish as the language of the parents of many of her students), and she also mentions that parents’ language is “not as formalized because of lack of education” (line 14), implying that they may use a “nonstandard” variety of English. While these statements are fairly direct examples of a deficit orientation, Nancy also draws on ideologies of appropriateness, mentioning the importance of “setting” (line 3) and “environment” (line 12). Here Nancy’s clarification of her earlier response in Example 1 makes explicit the link between underlying deficit-oriented thinking and the ideology of formality, as well as showing the importance of formality as an ideological building block in larger discourses of appropriateness. The next example illustrates a different teacher’s similar, if more masked, version of the ideology of formality. At the time of my interview with Julie, the SKILLS program had not yet started and Julie had only received a brief orientation to the program. During the interview, she constructed herself as knowledgeable about linguistics, however, mentioning that she had taken three linguistics courses as an undergraduate as part of her teacher training and using technical

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linguistic terms such as code. In Example 3 I ask Julie about her views on student language use (the same question to which Nancy responds in Example 1). Unlike the other teachers, Julie interpreted this question as asking about her philosophy of teaching language use. (3) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

JESSI; JULIE;

JESSI; JULIE;

JESSI; JULIE; JESSI; JULIE; JESSI; JULIE; JESSI; JULIE; JESSI; JULIE;

Um, okay so, how do you think about students’ language us:e. Um, the way that I always approach it in my classroom, is um, students need to not only be flexible thinkers?, they need to be flexible speakers, Which means they always have to know their audience and purpose, [Mkay]. [So we] talk a great deal about that, and we do— already had some initial discussions of, you know, you don’t talk the same way to your friends, that you talk inside a classroom, Mhm. You know the same way you don’t talk to your grandmother, [Right]. [Um] that there is a switching that occurs. [2Uh huh]. [2So there’s] no such thing as um.. bad language, we talked about that cause kids [will slip], [Mkay]. and use inappropriate words in the classroom, Mhm. but it’s.. the idea of context.

Julie produces an extremely fluent explanation of her approach to students’ language use. She speaks rapidly, and her relative lack of pauses and hesitation gives her response a rehearsed feel; it is possible, for example, that discussions of student language were addressed in institutional professional development workshops she previously participated in. Julie begins by mirroring language found in the Common Core standards for language arts, which state that students in ninth and tenth grades should be able to “present information, findings, and supporting evidence clearly, concisely, and logically such that listeners can follow the line of reasoning and the organization, development, substance, and style are

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appropriate to purpose, audience, and task” (California Department of Education 2013: 69; added emphasis). Julie uses exact wording from the standard—“they always have to know their audience and purpose” (line 7)—and the concept of context to invoke ideologies of appropriateness, stressing the need for students to be “flexible speakers” (line 6) and to know what might be “inappropriate . . . in the classroom” (line 23). At the same time, Julie frames the language ideologies she invokes as part of a larger, inevitable fact about the world rather than as her own opinions. She does so both by using general statements such as “students need to not only be flexible thinkers?, they need to be flexible speakers” (lines 5–6) and by using the generic pronoun you and present-tense verbs in statements such as “you don’t talk the same way to your friends, that you talk inside a classroom” (lines 13–14). These assertions, as well as Julie’s statement “there’s no such thing as bad language, but . . . it’s the idea of context” (lines 20–25), reproduce the ideology of appropriateness by providing a layer of colorblind discourse over a deficit-oriented language ideology. While explicitly stating that no way of speaking is “bad,” Julie implicitly suggests that some ways of speaking are not acceptable in certain contexts. By saying that “kids will slip, and use inappropriate words in the classroom” (lines 21, 23), she positions students as lacking the agency to intentionally control their register use and characterizes their everyday speech as inappropriate for the classroom. Framing the issue in terms of context and appropriateness allows the ideology to hold that all language varieties are equal, just appropriate in different situations, effectively masking the still problematic and racialized nature of constructing Latinx ways of speaking as invalid in the classroom. In contrast to Nancy and Julie, the third participant, Steve, rejects the ideology of formality, explicitly attributing this view to his participation in the SKILLS program. When I asked him how his experiences as a partner teacher in the program had changed the way he viewed student language, he responded as follows (Example 4): (4) 1 STEVE; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 JESSI; 10 STEVE;

I looked.. for, and still look for, the ability to.. communicate ideas and ideas well. Uh, But I was, um, .. much more concerned with proper English, Mhm. uh,

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11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE;

proper sentence structure, [Mm]. [uh], and clearly communicating in academic [English in the classroom], [Mm mhm]. which is now the big thing to be doing [in the classroom]. [Oh yeah]?. And they’re doing the ##, academic English, and sentence frames, and as I’m saying thatI’m saying what a waste of time in high school.

Steve explicitly attributes one source of the ideology of formality to institutional policy, saying that “now the big thing to be doing in the classroom” (line 16) is “academic English” (line 19) and “sentence frames” (line 20). He also overtly resists this institutional priority, pronouncing the focus “a waste of time in high school” (line 22). Steve ascribes this realization to his involvement in the SKILLS program, saying that before he participated he was “much more concerned with proper English” (line 8) and now, while he still wants his students to be able to “communicate ideas . . . well” (line 3), he is less concerned with “proper sentence structure” (line 11) and “clearly communicating in academic English in the classroom” (line 14). Tellingly, however, even as Steve rejects the ideology of formality, he recognizes its impact on both classroom practices and students. The ideology of formality that emerges from Nancy’s and Julie’s responses and is resisted by Steve is one building block through which the larger ideology of appropriateness is constructed. I turn now to the second subideology, the ideology of worth, that emerged in my interviews with the three teachers.

The Ideology of Worth In the ideology of worth, a division is created between the linguistic form of an utterance and the idea it expresses. This ideology contributes to the construction of the larger ideology of appropriateness by framing racialized linguistic varieties as inappropriate for academic contexts because they do not clearly convey the message a speaker intends in a way that listeners perceive as worthwhile or intelligent. Illustrating this phenomenon, in Example 5 Julie moves away from her initial discourse that minoritized varieties are insufficiently formal for educational contexts and instead suggests that these varieties cannot successfully convey the “impression” that students want to give about their “actual thoughts.” The exchange occurs as Julie redirects the question I ask, changing the topic from

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what she herself hopes to learn through participation in the SKILLS program to what she hopes the students will learn. (5) 1 JULIE; 2 3 JESSI; 4 JULIE; 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

Well, what I’m hoping the students will—uh, like I said, be more aware of the power of language. Okay. That uh, without understanding how to switch, that you can find yourselves in a situation, where you’re giving the wrong impression, um, or not the impression you wished to give. Um these students really struggle with being in classes with other kids who have .. learned, .. the academic language, um they have the same ideas, but how they articulate it is very different. And as a result, other students don’t see them, .. in the same way. So, .. understanding the social aspect of language, and what that can do to an impression, So, and I think an increased awareness of their language use, and how that can impact, .. um, .. perspective, and um. . . So I’m hoping you— I guess that that exploration of, how does language fit in with power and impression, and demonstrating your actual thoughts, in a way that people, accept them as important.

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In this excerpt Julie focuses on her strong desire for her students to be able to make a good impression on those around them, expressing her concern that her students “really struggle” (line 10) in classes with other students who have “learned.. academic language” (lines 13–15); even though her own students’ ideas are just as good, they are not seen as such because of the language in which they are conveyed. Julie repeatedly uses the second-person pronoun you to place herself, as well as the interviewer, in the perspective of one of her students. She says, for instance, “you can find yourselves in a situation where you’re giving the wrong impression” (lines 6–7); she then corrects “the wrong impression” to “not the impression you wished to give” (line 9) and frames the issue as one of other people’s expectations, saying, “other students don’t see them,.. in the same way” (lines 18–20). Julie draws on the ideology of worth more directly in clarifying that she hopes that her students will become aware of this expectation in order to help them realize the importance of using “academic language” (line 15). She places the power to control others’ impressions squarely within language itself, saying she wants students “to be more aware of the power of language” (line 2) and stating that students need to understand “the social aspect of language, and what that can do to an impression” (lines 23–24). Julie’s displacement of this power away from the content of students’ discourse and onto the form of their language functions as colorblind discourse in this context—simultaneously masking the role of the biased listener in forming “impressions” of students and the link between students’ race and their language variety.This discourse therefore reproduces Flores and Rosa’s (2015: 166) “meritocratic myth,” in which if students are “aware of the power of language” (line 2) and speak “standard” English, they will create good impressions on their (white) classmates. The ideology of worth, by reproducing this myth, conceals the power of the listener to impose racialized expectations on marginalized students, thus reinforcing negative language ideologies and structural inequalities. Similarly, Nancy draws on the ideology of worth in responding to a question about what she learned participating in the SKILLS program the previous year (Example 6). She suggests that racialized varieties are inappropriate for the classroom because the students will be negatively “judged”—albeit by teachers, rather than by fellow students as discussed by Julie in Example 5 above. (6) 1 JESSI; 2 3 4 NANCY; 5 6 7 8

How did SKILLS change, the way you think about students’ language?. . . . I don’t know. How we react differently. Especially as teachers to, . . . It’s- it- and our expectations for what is—

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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

I mean but, definitely as a teacher, I mean, I’m even thinking and I know that linguists right?, just don’t make judgments?, They’re just observing?, But I— @@ teachers definitely judge right?.

Nancy displays a great deal of awareness of the expectations faced by her students, saying, “teachers definitely judge” (line 16) and stating that her participation in the SKILLS program has caused her to think about “our expectations” (line 8) and “how we react differently” (line 5) to different ways of speaking. She also goes on to say, in an excerpt not included here, that “language and race are ­obviously tied together.” While this awareness of racialized expectations represents a critical step in breaking down ideologies of appropriateness, Nancy continues to understand the issue through the deficit-oriented ideologies of appropriateness. She recognizes that her Latinx students face differing perceptions and expectations, but draws on the ideology of worth in attributing these perceptions to students’ inability to use the correct linguistic forms: “they honestly.. might not know what’s expected in a professional setting” (Example 1, lines 33–34). Similarly to Julie, while Nancy observes the discriminatory evaluations that her students face, she illustrates the colorblind nature of the ideology of worth by suggesting that if the students were to change the way they speak, they would no longer face those evaluations and expectations. The last set of examples represents a shift in the data—the teacher in these examples, Steve, explicitly rejects the ideology of worth while criticizing other teachers in general for their participation in the ideology. Steve, importantly, does not construct himself as a “typical teacher” and in fact positions himself in strong disalignment with other, generic teachers. When I asked him, for instance, in an excerpt not included here, if he thought it would be valuable for other teachers to receive linguistics instruction, he responded with a disclaimer that “teachers aren’t my favorite people in the world.” Before Example 7 begins, I have asked Steve about the most important thing he had learned through the SKILLS program. In his response, Steve reflects on his experience teaching emergent bilingual students, drawing on and challenging the same ideologies that affect speakers of nonhegemonic varieties of English. (7) 1 STEVE; 2 3 4

Oral communication, um, is- is different, and it should be [different],

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5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

JESSI; STEVE;

JESSI; STEVE;

JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE; JESSI; STEVE;

[Mhm]. and— and those differences should be accepted. Uh., And when there is lack of clarity, um, lots of Spanish speaking students in- in- uh- uh— this town. So, when, um, the- the student is telling me, .. Uh, Uh, I’m just barely understanding that?. Uhm, It’s- it’s what the student is telling me, and what I was hearing are— .. are two different things. @Mhm. Because I’m concentrating on his.. English, Uh huh. and not on-.. on his message. Mhm. Okay?. Yeah. So now I’m listening much more to the [message], [@@]. [rather than language], [Okay], [2interesting]. [2I mean rather than words].

Steve, like Julie, constructs a form/content division, drawing a distinction between what he variously refers to as the student’s “English” (line 24), “language” (line 32), or “words” (line 35), on one side, and “his message” (line 26) on the other. He then rejects the ideology that students who don’t speak “standard” English cannot be seen as intelligent, positioning miscommunication as the teacher’s responsibility by contrasting his past self, who did not listen to students in an unbiased way, with his present self, who has moved beyond this ideology. He states that in the past, “what the student is telling me, and what I was hearing are- are two different things” (lines 19–22), but now, “I’m listening much more to the message, rather than the language, I mean rather than words” (lines 30–35). In this way, while still adhering to a content/form distinction, Steve rejects the

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ideology that ideas expressed in a “nonstandard” or emergent bilingual variety of English are less worthwhile. He later states, however, that in his opinion most teachers erroneously accept this ideology, focusing more on the “form” than the “message” (Example 8): (8) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

JESSI;

But to other teachers, [why do you think it would be useful]?. STEVE; [To other teachers], .. Because they would really be able to communicate message with their students and they- they- theythey would be able to be .. um less concerned withwith form. JESSI; Mkay. STEVE; And more concerned with content and message. JESSI; Mkay. STEVE; Uh. When youwhen you set aside how it’s being delivered and just look for what they’re trying to communicate. Uh. Uh. I think you can get a better idea, of what a student knows. Because so much of teaching is how well you play the game. Uh. Uh. Excuse me. So much of learning, the way we measure learning, is how well they play the game.

Steve positions most teachers, as well as educational institutions, as fully participating in an ideology of worth, saying that if other teachers knew more about linguistics “they would be able to be..less concerned with form” (lines 8–11) and lamenting that “so much of..the way we measure learning is how well they play the game” (lines 27–29). He again creates a form/content distinction in students’ language, distinguishing “how it’s being delivered” (line 17) from “what

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they’re trying to communicate” (line 18), and he implies that educational institutions focus excessively on the form of student communication instead of “get[ting] a better idea, of what a student knows” (lines 21–22). Here Steve uses the phrase play the game to refer to students’ need to fulfill the expectations of teachers and educational institutions by speaking a hegemonic variety of English. Steve’s framing of institutional language ideologies displaces at least part of the power of perception onto teachers and other authority figures, thereby challenging the ideology of worth and resisting, to some extent, colorblind discourses of race. As the above examples show, in the ideology of worth, a content/form division is created such that linguistic varieties other than “standard” English are inappropriate for school because they will not be perceived by listeners as important and smart, causing the speaker to be seen as unintelligent. According to this ideology, students and teachers who lack proficiency in the home varieties of linguistically marginalized students will not recognize the complexity of such students’ ideas if they do not accommodate to the variety spoken by the hegemonic group. The teachers drawing on this ideology acknowledged its discriminatory nature and evaluated the situation as unjust. At the same time, by attributing the power to be perceived positively to the language itself, excluding some ways of speaking as institutionally invalid, and positioning students as responsible for choosing an “appropriate” way to speak to a white middle-class audience, the ideology both recreates and masks the fundamental barriers to institutional acceptance faced by students from politically subordinated ethnoracial backgrounds. Crucially, both the ideology of formality and the ideology of worth attribute the root cause of negative effects experienced by minoritized speakers to the form of their language, obscuring underlying societal power dynamics.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have examined two main teacher ideologies surrounding the language of racialized students through which institutional ideologies of appropriateness are enacted and reproduced even in the context of a program that explicitly seeks to challenge such ideologies. The first, the ideology of formality, holds that minoritized varieties are inappropriate for school or other institutional contexts because they are not sufficiently “formal” or “professional.” In the second, the ideology of worth, a division is created between linguistic content and form. Varieties other than “standard” English are then seen as inappropriate for educational contexts because they do not express the “content” of the words in a way that will be heard as important and intelligent. This ideology maintains that racialized language is less communicatively effective than hegemonic language, whether due to a (white) interlocutor’s lack of knowledge of the variety or due to a deficiency in the language form itself. I have aimed to show that both the ideology of formality and the ideology of worth obscure the underlying sociopolitical and historical context by ascribing

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power to a linguistic form rather than to the systematic inequalities and negative ideologies that inform listener perceptions of that linguistic form. While in some ways the ideology of appropriateness to which these ideologies contribute represents a step away from deficit-oriented discourses, casting racialized linguistic varieties as inappropriate for institutional settings naturalizes the necessarily discriminatory hierarchical positioning of ways of speaking. By attributing the ability to be seen as “professional,” “formal,” and “intelligent” to the way a racialized person speaks, rather than to the system of racial inequality, the ideology of appropriateness implies that if students of color spoke a hegemonic variety of English, they would have access to all of the symbolic capital enjoyed by their white peers and would no longer face “profound institutional exclusion” (Flores & Rosa 2015: 165). It is striking that all of the participants in this study were aware of the general intentions of my research as well as the goals of the SKILLS program, yet most were nevertheless comfortable drawing on these ideologies during our interviews. This situation suggests that the ideologies may be considered unproblematic even by well-intentioned teachers, who position themselves as advocates of minoritized students. While in this chapter I have investigated the ideology of appropriateness by focusing on the statements of individual white teachers who work with youth of color, it is important to recognize that this and other discriminatory ideologies are not rooted in the personal biases of specific teachers, but rather are institutional and systemic phenomena. Each teacher in this chapter draws on or rejects institutional ideologies of appropriateness in some way while reflecting on student language: Julie explains her philosophy on student language use through the lens and wording of official literacy standards; Nancy uses institutional settings and expectations of professionalism as the foundation of her own evaluation of linguistic varieties; and Steve explicitly frames ideologies of appropriateness as institutional phenomena when he rejects “academic English” and “sentence frames” as unacceptable institutional regulations of “appropriate” language. While one goal of this chapter has been to problematize racialized ideologies of appropriateness in educational contexts, it is also important to emphasize teachers’ affective and material investment in their relationships with their students. I do not want to represent teachers as intentionally discriminatory nor ignore their stated commitment to creating positive student–teacher relationships. At the same time, this personal commitment is not enough to overcome institutional racism. In fact, the ideology of appropriateness is insidious precisely because it appears to be in the student’s best interest. Most of the contexts in which the teachers in this chapter discussed “appropriate language” dealt in some way with facilitating their students’ success in school. Linguists and education researchers must therefore combat the ideology of appropriateness at the institutional level, recognizing the recent focus on appropriateness as only a superficial step forward, and in some sense a coded version of earlier deficit-oriented perspectives, making such perspectives harder to challenge.

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In the context of the SKILLS program and similar initiatives, resisting ideologies of appropriateness requires increased emphasis on teachers and their language ideologies. It is notable that the participating teacher with the longest exposure to the program explicitly identified and rejected an ideology of appropriateness, illustrating at least the possibility of dismantling colorblind negative ideologies in the educational context. Finally, one of the most obvious implications of this work is the necessity of recognizing appropriateness as a racialized ideology. For linguists and education researchers, the undoing of colorblindness in educational policies and practices around literacy standards, teacher training, and youth education should therefore be a vital priority. (As one example, see Aragón, this volume, on how SKILLS encourages students to use hybrid language practices in which academic language may co-occur with home and peer-based varieties.) As an elementary school teacher, I spent countless hours worried about my students’ linguistic development. I made colorful “word of the day” posters every night because I was taught that students like mine faced a deficit of thirty million words by the time they entered kindergarten, and I took suitcases, bags, and boxes to donation events to gather as many books as possible because my school’s administration was concerned that our students did not have a “culture of literacy” at home. I spent countless hours planning, securing resources, and preparing materials, all to induct my students into the very ideologies that perpetuate their oppression. While I now cringe to reflect on the racist ideologies I participated in and maintained, the experience showed me the insidious power of these colorblind language ideologies. As linguists and education researchers we have long challenged the discriminatory power of ideologies surrounding language use. It will be important for future work to recognize that these ideologies are so powerful in the educational context precisely because they are rooted in teachers’ sincere and urgent belief that participation in these ideologies is beneficial to racialized students.

References Alim, Samy H. 2004. You know my steez: An ethnographic and sociolinguistic study of styleshifting in a Black American speech community. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Avineri, Netta et al. 2015. Invited forum: Bridging the “language gap.” Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 25(1): 66–86. Baugh, John. 1999. Out of the mouths of slaves: African American language and educational malpractice. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. 2018. Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Fifth edn. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Byrnes, Deborah A., Gary Kiger, and M. Lee Manning. 1997. Teachers’ attitudes about language diversity. Teaching and Teacher Education 13(6): 637–644. California Department of Education. 2013. Common core state standards. www.cde.ca.gov/ be/st/ss/documents/finalelaccssstandards.pdf Cross, John B., Thomas DeVaney, and Gerald Jones. 2001. Pre-service teacher attitudes toward differing dialects. Linguistics and Education 12(2): 211–227.

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Du Bois, John W., Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, Susanna Cumming, and Danae Paolino. 1993. Outline of discourse transcription. In Jane A. Edwards and Martin D. Lampert (eds.), Talking data: Transcription and coding in discourse research. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 45–89. Fairclough, Norman. 2010. Critical discourse analysis:The critical study of language. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85(2): 149–171. García, Ofelia, and Jo Anne Kleifgen. 2010. Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs, and practices for English language learners. New York: Teachers College Press. Godley, Amanda J., Julie Sweetland, Rebecca S. Wheeler, Angela Minnici, and Brian D. Carpenter. 2006. Preparing teachers for dialectally diverse classrooms. Educational Researcher 35(8): 30–37. Helmer, Kimberly Adilia. 2011. “ ‘Proper’ Spanish is a waste of time”: Mexican-origin student resistance to learning Spanish as a heritage language. In Lisa Scherff and Karen Spector (eds.), Culturally relevant pedagogy: Clashes and confrontations. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. 135–163. Hill, Jane H. 2005. Intertextuality as source and evidence for indirect indexical meanings. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 15(1): 113–124. Hill, Jane H. 2009. The everyday language of white racism. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Lei, Joy L. 2003. (Un)Necessary toughness?:Those “loud black girls” and those “quiet Asian boys.” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 34(2): 158–181. Malsbary, Christine. 2014. “Will this hell never end?”: Substantiating and resisting racelanguage policies in a multilingual high school. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 45(4): 373–390. McIntyre, Alice. 1997. Making meaning of whiteness: Exploring racial identity with white teachers. Albany: State University of New York Press. Menard-Warwick, Julia. 2008. “Because she made beds. Every day”: Social positioning, classroom discourse, and language learning. Applied Linguistics 29(2): 267–289. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2017. Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press. Razfar, Aria. 2012. Narrating beliefs: A language ideologies approach to teacher beliefs. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 40: 277–296. Siegel, Jeff. 2006. Language ideologies and the education of speakers of marginalized language varieties: Adopting a critical awareness approach. Linguistics and Education 17: 157–174. Skiba, Russell J., Robert H. Horner, Choong-Geun Chung, M. Karega Rausch, Seth L. May, and Tary Tobin. 2011. Race is not neutral: A national investigation of African American and Latino disproportionality in school discipline. School Psychology Review 40(1): 85–107. Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder: Westview Press. Wolfram, Walt. 1999. Repercussion for the Oakland Ebonics controversy—the critical role of dialect awareness programs. In Carolyn T. Adger, Donna Christian, and Orlando Taylor (eds.), Making the connection: Language and academic achievement among African American students. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics/Delta Systems. 61–80. Zentella, Ana Celia. 2007. “Dime con quién hablas y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (in)security and Latino unity. In Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (eds.), The Blackwell companion to Latino studies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 25–39.

6 “I FEEL LIKE REALLY RACIST FOR LAUGHING” White Laughter and White Public Space in a Multiracial Classroom1 Meghan Corella

Introduction At first glance, the conditions on this day in March 2014 seem ripe for engaging students in the kind of discussion that makes the SKILLS academic outreach program an ideal space for advancing sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz et al. 2014). The class starts with light conversation between several of the classroom’s fourteen students and their teacher, Mr. Wilson, who has opened class with a casual “How’s it goin’?” as he sits on top of a student desk. A few minutes later, Ashley, an undergraduate mentor, is applauded by students as she steps up to the front of the classroom to lead an activity that she has designed. Soon most students are laughing together hysterically, sometimes throwing back their heads or pressing their hands to their mouths in mirth. For educators who view laughter as a sign of student engagement (e.g., Strean 2008) or embrace its liberatory potential (e.g., Horton & Freire 1990), what could be better?2 But what if the activity is designed for exposing laughter itself as a problem? In this chapter, I explore this question through an examination of student talk and laughter during a SKILLS activity organized around examples of racialized humor drawn from popular culture. Like the authors of other chapters in this volume, I call attention to the affective dimensions of engagement in the antiracist work of SKILLS by grounding my analysis in an understanding that how students think about race and racism also necessarily involves how they feel about race and racism. Drawing on previous work on race, emotion, humor, and laughter, I argue that much of the laughter heard throughout this class was what I call white laughter, for which I offer an expanded definition situated within the analysis below. This white laughter ultimately contributed to the construction of this classroom as white public space (Page & Thomas 1994; Hill 1998)—in spite of the fact that

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this classroom was racially diverse. I close by considering the implications of the tensions between social reproduction and social change within justice-centered educational programs like SKILLS. In particular, I emphasize that constructing antiracist learning spaces requires the explicit dismantling of white public space.

White Public Space and Racial Humor To the extent that they materially and symbolically reproduce racism, institutional spaces like classrooms can be understood as part of what Helán Page and Brooke Thomas (1994: 111) call white public space, which entails “particular or generalized locations, sites, patterns, configurations, tactics, or devices that routinely, discursively, and sometimes coercively privilege Euro-Americans over nonwhites.” Jane Hill (1998) draws on this concept in her analysis of how white Americans’ use of Mock Spanish contributes to the construction of white public space, which she characterizes as an arena in which people of color are intensely monitored for any signs of “disorder” while white people remain invisibly normal. White public space is constructed in part by various interrelated ideologies that serve the interests of the dominant group by keeping whiteness unmarked and attempting to frame race and racism as issues of the past. Of prime importance in the current sociopolitical context is the ideology of colorblindness, which entails the belief that a refusal to “see” race will create a new raceless social order. A closely related ideology, postracialism, “transforms color-blindness from future ideal to idealized present” (Howard 2014: 388) by holding that the moment of racial transcendence has already arrived. Related language ideologies include referentialism and personalism, which locate racism primarily in word meaning and speaker intention, respectively, and thus perpetuate the idea that racism would be all but eradicated if not for a small number of backward individuals (Hill 2008; Reyes 2011). In everyday interactional practice, these ideologies make for racial discourse that is decidedly more covert than Jim Crow or Trumpist forms of racism. To be sure, overtly racist talk persists, especially in white Americans’ interactions in intimate settings (see, e.g., Bonilla-Silva 2002; Hill 2008; Myers 2005), and increasingly in public settings, but the “new racism” or “new race talk” of the post–Civil Rights era tends to be subtle, slippery, and ambiguous (Bonilla-Silva 2002). One principal strategy of this ostensibly liberal race talk among white speakers is the avoidance of racial labels and topics through what Mica Pollock (2004) calls colormuting, or the related set of practices that Mary Bucholtz (2011) calls racial evasion, in which erasing race (using nonracial terms to talk about race) and delaying race (introducing racial labels late in discourse) produce circumlocution and inarticulateness in white speakers’ discourse about race. Other strategies of colorblind discourse include a reliance on diminutives to downplay the significance of racism, changes in the topic of conversation, and the use of generalized nouns and pronouns to present groups or individuals as deracialized (Anagnostopoulos,

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Everett, & Carey 2013; Bonilla-Silva 2002; McIntyre 1997). Alice McIntyre (1997: 46) has characterized this discourse as white talk, or “talk that serves to insulate white people from examining their/our individual and collective roles in the perpetuation of racism.” Even when white speakers do directly discuss racism, practices such as disavowing racism (Bucholtz 2011), attempting to blame people of color for continued segregation (Bonilla-Silva 2002), and telling “reverse racism” stories (Anagnostopoulos, Everett, and Carey 2013; Bonilla-Silva 2002; Bucholtz 2011) likewise achieve this insulating effect. Like the discursive strategies discussed above, the use of racial humor often contributes to the reproduction of white public space. From white speakers’ selfpositionings as congenial and cosmopolitan through their “humorous” uses of Mock Spanish (Hill 1998) to white college students’ framing of racial jokes as harmless fun among friends (Cabrera 2014) to the extreme racist humor found on websites that support the Ku Klux Klan (Billig 2001), racial humor—like other forms of what Otto Santa Ana (2009) calls hegemonic humor—can reinforce existing relationships of power. Of course, humor can also be counterhegemonic, serving as a crucial strategy within discourses of resistance (Bhabha 1994) and helping to “disrupt the impasse created by postracialism” (Rossing 2012: 44). Because humor reinscribes boundaries between social groups while at the same time giving license to cross lines and break with social norms (Billig 2001; Chun 2004), racial humor is an ideal site for analyzing tensions between social reproduction and social change. Given the polysemy of humor (and indeed of any linguistic practice), even a single interactional example of humor can provide insights into both processes. For instance, in her analysis of comedian Margaret Cho’s use of Mock Asian in her performances, Elaine Chun (2004) argues that Cho draws from and reproduces hegemonic racializing discourses while simultaneously critiquing them. As Chun discusses, it is not only the humor itself but also the audience’s reception of it that is ambiguous, as it is not always clear whether Cho’s audience laughs because they interpret her performances as decontextualizing Mock Asian from racist contexts or as directly indexing cultural models of Asians as comical figures. Just as racial humor is an ideal site for analyzing discourses of race, the classroom (unlike the relatively monologic performance venues of stand-up comedians) would seem to be an ideal site for interrogating interpretations of racial humor. Humor more broadly has increasingly been embraced in conventional pedagogies, with many educators celebrating its potential for increasing student engagement and for managing the classroom (e.g., Strean 2008). Others view humor not as a technology for managing students, but as potentially deeply transformative; for instance, critical literacy scholars have advocated for a Freirean “pedagogy of laughter” in which the teacher laughs with and learns from students (Lewis 2010; see also Johnson & Vasudevan 2012; Tierney 2013). Yet, historically, the classroom has often been viewed as an inappropriate context for uses of humor or, indeed, for discussions of race, in part because of the social markedness of the emotional dimensions of both humor and race. Western

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ideologies of rationalism hold that the classroom is a space for reason and objectivity, which are defined in binary opposition to emotion (Zembylas 2005; see also Rys, this volume). According to this logic, laughter and humor are expressions of emotion that represent “off-task” disruptions to learning (Tierney 2013: iii). Similarly, the topics of race and racism are often felt to be too sensitive or uncomfortable to be broached in the classroom, leaving many teachers unprepared to address the emotions around racism and antiracism (Spanierman & Cabrera 2015), much less the complexities of racial humor. Unsurprisingly, in the white public space of classrooms, discussions of race by students of color often occur below teachers’ radar ( Johnson & Vasudevan 2012; Reyes 2011; Tierney 2013). Research suggests that when teachers—especially white teachers—become aware of such instances of racial humor, they frequently respond by changing the topic (Reyes 2011) or even by taking disciplinary actions such as asking students to leave the classroom (Roberts, Bell, & Murphy 2008). In these and other ways, then, racial humor and students of color are marginalized within the white public space of the traditional classroom. Even multiracial classrooms with antiracist curricula can become a form of white public space. Although research analyzing student–student and student– teacher interactions in these contexts is relatively limited, existing studies highlight the often overwhelming presence of more broadly circulating ideologies of colorblindness and postracialism in such classrooms (see also Love-Nichols, this volume). For example, in their exploration of student discussions of racial progress in a multiracial high school English classroom, Dorothea Anagnostopoulos and her colleagues (2013) find that the white students in their study typically used the discursive strategies of new racism to trivialize and deny the racializing effects of the texts being analyzed, while it was usually left to students of color to point out these effects. Studies at the college level likewise show how differences in experiences, ideologies, and discursive strategies create “deep rifts” between white students and students of color in classroom discussions of racism (Rich & Cargile 2004: 354). Similar tensions among students of different racial backgrounds are evident in the classroom interactions analyzed in this chapter, as are tensions between antiracism and white public space, humor and seriousness, and critical laughter and white laughter. By analyzing how high school students and teachers in a multiracial SKILLS classroom talk and laugh (or not) about racial humor, this chapter contributes to the emerging body of research in these areas and to the overall project of advancing sociolinguistic justice by building on young people’s ability to read their racialized world in critically literate ways.

Researching in White Public Space My interest in understanding how race was discussed in a racially diverse SKILLS classroom arose largely from my experiences coinstructing a SKILLS elective class for an all-Latinx group of students as well as from my experiences as a graduate student

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in the multiracial Crossroads seminar and SKILLS graduate courses. As a white woman participating in these antiracist spaces over a period of several years, I had become increasingly aware of the oppressive presence of colorblindness and postracialism within classroom interactions, especially in uncomfortable moments when I realized my own complicity in these discourses. I had also begun to attend more closely to the emotional and intellectual labor involved in discussing racism and to the different forms this labor could take—not to mention different levels of awareness of this labor—depending on the positionalities of the participants (Rys, this volume). Given these interests, I decided to focus my analysis on the most racially diverse of the SKILLS settings for the 2013–14 school year: a classroom at a mid-sized rural high school where, according to educational data, approximately 70 percent of students were Latinx, 23 percent were white, 2 percent were Asian, 1 percent were Black, 0.6 percent were Filipinx, 0.3 were of two or more races, 0.2 percent were Native American or Pacific Islander, and 0.2 percent were Native American. Of the fourteen students in the class I focus on in this chapter, nine were white, three were of mixed race (two students were white and Latina, and one was Filipina and white), and two were Latina. One of the white students was an exchange student from Germany. In several important ways, the SKILLS classroom described in this chapter was an exceptional space within this school. First, although the school as a whole was not attaining California state goals for testing and other performance measures, most students in Mr. Wilson’s class were high-performing. Mr. Wilson, an Advanced Placement teacher with a master’s degree in history, worked to create a college-going atmosphere for all his students while at the same time projecting an approachable persona. As a white American man who had raised bicultural children with his Latin American wife and lived for many years in Latin America, he was also aware of the importance of explicitly valorizing cultural and linguistic diversity. Mr. Wilson’s class was thus unusual in providing opportunities for students to openly discuss sociocultural issues that other classes did not address. The structure and content of the SKILLS class expanded these opportunities. While Mr. Wilson’s version of the SKILLS curriculum centered more on structural linguistics and the relationship between language and culture than on the politics of race and language, the latter set of issues was often made salient through everyday classroom interactions among students. For instance, students frequently talked about the diversity of the linguistic, racial, and cultural identities represented in their classroom in conversations with one another and with SKILLS mentors, including Ashley, the biracial Chinese and Black American woman who designed and implemented the activity analyzed here. However, until Ashley’s activity, racialization of and through language had not been an explicit part of the curriculum. The activity, which Ashley entitled “Linguistic Representations” and framed as an examination of explicit and implicit language ideologies, was organized around discussion of four texts: three video clips from popular culture and one greeting card. These texts all exploited

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stereotypical linguistic features of racialized linguistic varieties—Spanish, African American English, and Asian English—for humorous effect. This particular SKILLS activity thus represented something of a departure from usual interactions in this classroom and in traditional classrooms more generally: First, discussions of race were no longer occurring solely in under-the-radar peer discussions but were being initiated by the teacher; second, the teacher for the day’s activity was not Mr.Wilson but an undergraduate mentor who was a woman of color; and third, humor was neither avoided nor used merely to engage students, but instead was intended as the focus of analysis and critique. The next section explores the complex ways that the students and the instructors, Ashley and Mr. Wilson, navigated these interactional and ideological challenges, and how classroom members both constructed and challenged white public space through their talk and laughter—or withholding of laughter.

White Laughter in the Classroom Although no explicit reference to race or racism appeared in the title or framing of Ashley’s activity, all the texts that she chose for this activity were related to racialized linguistic varieties, and students quickly recognized the centrality of race in their group discussion. For each text that Ashley presented, she asked the class to think about “how language [was] represented,” the implications of those representations, and the linguistic features salient within each representation. She also asked students to consider whether they found the outgroup use of mock varieties “offensive,” a question which students contrasted with possible interpretations of each example as simply “funny.” Thus, Ashley’s framing of the activity highlighted the relevance of students’ insights as linguistic analysts as well as their own personal reactions to and feelings about the potential offensiveness of each example.

Laughing in White Public Space The focus on students’ personal reactions to examples of racial humor in various ways simultaneously organized, encouraged, and limited critical analysis. Example 1 is taken from the class’s discussion of a clip from a vlog (a video blog) by Korean American comedian David So, whose YouTube channel performances draw on race, language, and gender stereotypes for comedic effect. In this particular vlog, entitled “Korean Lessons 101” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Zr6mh3kgjc), So mocks Korean-influenced English by both stylizing and metalinguistically commenting on common phonological and syntactic features of Mock Asian, such as the neutralization of the distinction between /r/ and /l/, the addition of a reduced vowel to a closed syllable, and the absence of articles (Chun 2004). So ends the video with a piece of advice to would-be “Korean accent” performers: “just remember to jumble all your words together and bastardize the English

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language.”While watching this performance, the SKILLS class erupted in laughter at many points, and the class’s discussion immediately following the video revealed that while some students dismissed this laughter as mere enjoyment, others recognized it as a potentially racializing gesture (for transcription conventions, see Du Bois 2006): (1) “I feel like really racist for laughing at that” (19:40–20:24) 1 VARIOUS @@@@ STUDENTS; 2 MR. WILSON; Was there any group that was not offended by that, 3 #or anywhere? 4 HALEY; I feel like really racist for laughing at [that]. 5 ALLISON; [I] was not offended at all. 6 #CARMEN; My grandfather #. 7 #ALLISON; #Because it happens with Mexicans, 8 it happens with everybody. 9 UNKNOWN; But= 10 MR. WILSON; =I think he didn’t offend women. 11 Did he offend women? 12 I don’t think he offended women. 13 MIKE; But they’re always offended, 14 so. 15 #ALLISON; Oh:. 16 VARIOUS Oh:. STUDENTS; 17 ALLISON; Truth, ] 18 [1truth. 1 19 VARIOUS [1 @@@ ] 1 STUDENTS; 20 UNKNOWN; [1 #What’d he say? 1] 21 HALEY; # supposed to be saying that [2 # 2] 22 UNKNOWN; [2 He said, 2] 23 “#women #are always offended.” 24 VARIOUS [3 @@@ ] 3 STUDENTS; 25 UNKNOWN; [3 They’re always 3] 26 VARIOUS [3 #### ] 3 STUDENTS; 27 MR. WILSON; [3 Okay, 28 sorry, ] 3



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29 30 31 ASHLEY; 32 33 34 35 36 ALLISON; 37 38 39 VARIOUS STUDENTS;

I- I’m sorry. My apologies. @@ Going back to that, is it- is it easier to laugh at because he-, well he’s Korean, so is it easier to laugh at because of [4 that 4]? [4 Oh, 4] if he was white, I’d be like, @@@@@@@@@@@

When the video ends, Mr. Wilson is the first person to speak. Possibly drawing on Ashley’s use of the word offensive at the beginning of the activity, in line 2 he asks the students whether “there was any group that was not offended” by David So’s portrayal of Korean-influenced English and its speakers. Mr.Wilson’s question draws attention to the fact that the comedian stylizes the speech of various groups in the video, including white speakers of Valley Girl-esque English, whom the comedian briefly mocks at the beginning of the video. In this sense, Mr. Wilson’s question aligns with Ashley’s initial discussion question about the affective and social implications of mock language. However, his use of generalizing words (i.e., any group and anywhere) upholds white public space in that it erases the racializing effects of the text and universalizes the experience of being offended—or being the butt of offensive jokes—to all groups in all places. Allison, a student of both white and Latina heritage, comments that “it happens with Mexicans, it happens with everybody” (lines 7 and 8), thereby momentarily acknowledging race by naming a particular ethnoracial group (i.e., Mexicans) while simultaneously building on the universalizing effect of Mr. Wilson’s comment by suggesting that people of all backgrounds routinely experience this kind of discrimination. These interactional moves closely resemble some of the common discursive tactics of colorblind discussions of racism. The ensuing discussion about who felt offended by So’s performance further deflects attention away from the topic of linguistic racism by moving toward the topic of gender. To be sure, gender is not irrelevant to this discussion, especially insofar as understandings of race and racialization can be greatly enhanced through intersectional explorations of other categories of social difference (see, e.g., Alim & Reyes 2011). However, the way gender is discussed in Example 1 is digressive and circumlocutory rather than intersectional. Mike’s comment that women are “always offended” (line 13) is characteristic of colorblind discourse in that it circumvents the topic of race; it also reinforces patriarchal ideologies of women as sensitive and emotional. Various students indirectly challenge this statement

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through overlapping talk in which they briefly exclaim in protest and quietly repeat Mike’s words (lines 16–26). Meanwhile, Allison, one of the most vocal members of the class, aligns with Mike by evaluating his comment as “truth” (lines 17–18) and by joining him in a high-five (line 23). While Mr. Wilson’s apologies (lines 27–30) indirectly acknowledge that ideological and interactional trouble has occurred, the hegemonic implications of Mike’s words go unexplored. Ultimately, then, the way the group talks about gender expands white public space by delaying the discussion of race and by reinforcing interlocking systems of oppression. Laughter plays a central role in this expansion of white public space. As they view the video during the several minutes immediately preceding Example 1, most students laugh loudly and frequently at So’s stylizations of and metadiscursive comments about the “train wreck” that is Mock Asian, and yet only one student chuckles softly at his imitation of white Valley Girl-esque English. The students’ laughter tends to have the effect of closing off opportunities for interrogating ideologies of race and other intersecting ideologies (such as gender discourses), even as it underscores the need for such interrogation. For instance, the laughter of several students (lines 19 and 24) following Mike’s comment about women’s supposed sensitivity (line 13) establishes a nonserious frame wherein anyone stepping forward to directly challenge his claim would risk being accused of having no sense of humor—an accusation that is an important weapon in the hands of dominant groups (Hill 1998). Hence, the group’s laughter is white laughter—that is, laughter that contributes to the construction of white public space by rendering people of color the objects of intense monitoring for “disorder.” White laughter endorses racially hegemonic humor, or humor that reinforces existing relations of power through its exploitation of oppressed groups as the butt of jokes (Santa Ana 2009), as is the case with much of the humor of the David So vlog. Like white talk, white laughter insulates white people from having to examine their complicity in the persistence of racism. It is important to note that given the real social and physical dangers of being perceived as lacking a sense of humor or being viewed as an “angry yet imprecise person of color” (Reyes 2011: 463), people of color may participate in moments of white laughter, as is the case in Example 1 and throughout Ashley’s SKILLS activity. Moreover, given the polysemy of humor, white laughter cannot necessarily be identified from white people’s laughter alone; rather, it occurs when laughter and discourse work together to advance white interests. Interestingly, the power of laughter to collude in systems of oppression is acknowledged by Haley, a white student, when she states that she feels “like really racist for laughing at that” (line 4). On the one hand, this remark offers a potential opportunity for a critical, open discussion of racial humor since it suggests that at least one member of the classroom recognizes the racialized nature of the vlog and the implications of laughing in response to the hegemonic humor it showcases. In fact, throughout the entire activity, this is the only mention of the word racist (related forms, such as race and racism, were never used).That the word is mentioned

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at all is significant in light of the colorblind tendency to avoid direct mentions of race and racism. On the other hand, Haley’s confessionalist remark recenters her own concerns by allowing her to strategically position herself as a nonracist through a disavowal of racism (Bucholtz 2011). That is, she acknowledges a feeling of complicity, but she does so while smiling, building on the nonserious frame of the discussion and ultimately rejecting the label for herself. Furthermore, her words imply that racism is locatable in an internal, affective personal reaction.This localizing of racism within the individual’s intentional or unintentional actions and reactions reinforces the ideology of personalism, thereby contributing to the advancement of white interests as it obscures the structural nature of racism.These issues go unexplored as the conversation veers toward gender and then back in the direction of the linguistic features exploited by So’s vlog.

Not Laughing in White Public Space As the discussion of So’s vlog winds down, Ashley guides the group into an examination of another text. This second discussion demonstrates that white public space may be expanded not only by the presence of white laughter but also by its marked absence. Example 2 features well-known actress and comedian Anjelah Johnson’s skit “Nail Salon” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baDJ-ZIvYy0, which, like David So’s vlog from Example 1, exploits stereotypical features of Mock Asian for humorous effect. Unlike So, however, Johnson is an outgroup member—she is of Mexican American and Native American descent. In fact, the jokes in some of her performances center on her own racial identity (e.g., https://vimeo.com/65512157). In “Nail Salon,” Johnson plays herself (speaking “standard” English) being attended by a Vietnamese manicurist. The skit depicts the manicurist and her colleagues as scheming saleswomen interested only in climbing the socioeconomic ladder: Through a combination of ostensibly incomprehensible English and manipulative sales tactics such as attributing Johnson’s lack of a boyfriend to the current state of her nails, the manicurist convinces Johnson to purchase upgraded services. While the skit has received thousands of likes and many positive comments on YouTube, some have characterized it as racist and have raised the question of whether it is legitimate for an outgroup member to use a mock variety, as Johnson does in this skit (e.g., http://group-teachingagainstracism. blogspot.com/2012/04/anjelah-johnson-beautiful-nail.html). In Example 2, Ashley poses this same question to the SKILLS students. In sharp contrast to the students’ frequent and loud white laughter in response to David So’s vlog, they have responded to Johnson’s skit with only a few chuckles and smiles. The absence of laughter from the students is rendered all the more noticeable through its juxtaposition with the frequent and loud laughter of Johnson’s original audience for this live performance of “Nail Salon,” which is audible as the clip plays in the SKILLS classroom.The reasons offered by several students for

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their lack of laughter advance the interests of whiteness in that they evoke a neoliberal white listening subject (Flores & Rosa 2015) who demands accurate and novel voicings of the Other, even at the same time as this listening subject denies the racializing effects of such stylizations: (2) “She had a really bad attempt” (26:55–28:16) 1 ASHLEY; 2 3 UNKNOWN; 4 5 HALEY; 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

#ALLISON; UNKNOWN; ASHLEY;

UNKNOWN; JESSICA; ANDREA; JESSICA;

HALEY; BECCA; UNKNOWN;

ALLISON; HALEY; ASHLEY;

Is it just not as funny because (.) she’s not Vietnamese?= Is it kind of painful [1 to #watch1]? [1No, 1] it was like, No, She had a really bad attempt at that [2 accent.2] [2Yeah. 2] Yeah. So you kind of see it and you’re just like, “No:,” like “no that’s not as funny,” like “you’re not very good.” Is that how you felt? Yeah. I [3 think- 3] [3I’ve 3] seen it [4 like #five #times. 4] [4 Yeah, 4] yeah I’ve seen it. I think it-I mean it is like, like if you have gone into a nail salon, like it, I don’t know. I think this actress is relatable. Yeah, it’s relatable. It’s pretty-yeah. Like the things that they say, but like maybe not (.) As extreme. Yeah. So, and do you-do you feel like she did a good imitation,

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33 34 ALLISON; 35 ASHLEY; 36 ALLISON;

or like in[5 ter 5]pretation, [5Yes. 5] of how #people #speak? That’s how [6 #it #is 6] when you’re in there. 37 UNKNOWN; [6Yeah. 6] 38 ALLISON; Not that they’re like constantly saying, 39 [7 ‘#like #you #should’7] 40 ANDREA; [7 #it #seems #like ] they’re like talking 43 like we think, 44 like “oh this is totally #crap,” 45 but what does that say about the ideologies that we have about these #certain people, 46 and this is how they speak? 47 ANDREA; I think it’s (.) 48 I don’t know, 49 I’ve never met (.) 50 I can’t say never, 51 but like that I remember, 52 I haven’t met people that necessarily (.), 53 are like that, 54 that are Asian, 55 I don’t know ###, 56 ASHLEY; So it’s like the ide[9 ology 9] 57 ANDREA; [9 that are 9] outside of a nail salon. 58 BECCA; Yeah,

60 UNKNOWN; Yeah. 61 BECCA; Like I don’t think it’s like #Asians #as a whole, 62 like that. 63 ALLISON; Yeah. 64 BECCA; When you go to a nail salon, 65 it’s kind of expected.

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Ashley’s question in line 1 renders the students’ lukewarm reception of the skit accountable and creates a potential space for analyzing its racializing effects. She directs the students’ attention to Johnson’s ethnoracial identity, much as she did in Example 1 when she asked the group whether David So’s identity as Korean made his vlog easier to laugh at. By formulating her question in this way, she is able to return to a theme she had highlighted at the beginning of the day’s activity: ideologies surrounding the ingroup versus outgroup membership of the comedian or stylizer. However, as in Example 1, the group does not enter into direct, in-depth discussion of this issue; instead, they collaboratively craft two other accounts: first, that Johnson’s stylization represents a “bad attempt” at the Vietnamese accent (line 6) and second, that several of them have already seen the skit (lines 16–18). These accounts invoke a scenario in which white laughter would have been present had the performance more closely fit the contours of white public space, a marketplace in which the discerning white consumer insists on accurate and novel representations of minoritized speakers, a form of entertainment that normalizes their own position of power. With regard to the first account, Haley’s statement that Johnson “had a really bad attempt at that accent,” subsequently ratified by two other students (lines 5–8), rejects the account offered by Ashley—namely, that it is Johnson’s positionality that renders the performance unfunny and possibly racist. This account allows Haley and the students who align with her to avoid the social dangers of being accused of being too “politically correct” or of lacking a sense of humor. On the one hand, Haley’s reasoning legitimizes white laughter as a valid response to well-executed stylizations of the Other, since her argument implies that she would have laughed if the comedian’s attempt at the accent had been good rather than bad—itself a line of argumentation that is indicative of white privilege insofar as it assumes that even non-Vietnamese–speaking people have the authority to evaluate the accuracy of a particular stylization of Vietnamese-influenced English. This argument represents something of a retreat from the position of nonracism that Haley constructed in Example 1 when she momentarily problematized her own white laughter. On the other hand, her reasoning functions similarly to her position in Example 1 in that it avoids taking an actively antiracist stance toward white laughter. Furthermore, by characterizing Johnson’s rendition as a “bad attempt,” Haley draws attention to the technical rather than the sociopolitical aspects of the performance, and hence she and her peers are able to delay a discussion of the racializing effects of the text. Other circumlocutions related to race and racism are notable throughout Example 2. Several students use discursive strategies of colorblindness, such as opting for generalized nouns and pronouns to present groups or individuals as deracialized, as is the case with Haley’s and Allison’s uses of they (lines 27 and 38, respectively), which obscures the issue of race and makes it unclear whether the students are referring to Vietnamese manicurists specifically or manicurists more

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generally. Another colorblind discursive strategy used by some of the students is to focus on location (i.e., nail salons) rather than people (i.e., Vietnamese/Asian manicurists), as is the case with Allison’s argument “that’s how it is when you’re in there” (line 36). This line of argumentation reemerges in lines 57 through 65, when Allison and two white classmates, Andrea and Becca, co-construct an account which characterizes the skit as representing ideologies of “just a nail salon” (line 59) rather than as a racialized representation of Asians as a group (line 61). Becca’s claim that “it’s kind of expected” (line 65) frames the semiotic practices stylized by Johnson as natural within this space rather than acknowledging that they are ideologically associated with Asians or even with capitalist salesoriented discourses. Although Becca does not expand on precisely what “it” is that is expected in a nail salon, the line of reasoning that she and her peers advance expands white public space by erasing the very ideologies of race and language on which Johnson’s skit relies.

Talking Back to White Laughter Whereas the class’s discussion of Mock Asian both discursively and affectively expands white public space, the discussion of Mock Spanish creates brief but important moments in which this space is challenged. Toward the end of the activity (approximately one minute after Example 2), Ashley presents the following greeting card, which draws on Mock Spanish to create a pseudobilingual pun:

FIGURE 6.1a

Front of greeting card reads, “¿como frijoles?” spelled out in beans.

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FIGURE 6.1b

Inside of greeting card reads, “How have you bean?”

As Jane Hill (2007: 280) argues, bean jokes like this one “clearly associate Spanish and its speakers with the lowest and most vulgar forms of humor,” yet most of the students in this classroom initially see it merely as “punny” or “cute.” When Ashley shows them the card, the majority of students as well as Mr. Wilson laugh, and the group then spends several minutes debating whether the word como in the text of the card is a conjugated form of the verb comer (‘to eat’) or whether it is the interrogative ‘how’. This conversation about the referential meaning of the words in the card is frequently punctuated by laughter from various members of the group. As with Examples 1 and 2, this delay in mentioning race—in this case, by focusing on the safer topic of grammatical and orthographic distinctions—is characteristic of colorblind discourse. Of course, the discussion of grammar is also reflective of the fact that the rest of the SKILLS curriculum at this site focused on structural linguistics. After the grammatical point has been discussed for several minutes, Ashley redirects the conversation, prompting students to consider the social implications of the message by questioning whether it is in fact funny. She asks, “Is it funny? I mean, I feel like, I don’t know, I don’t speak Spanish, but do you feel like this is offensive?” Although several students immediately answer that it’s “just funny” or “punny,” Allison (the student of white and Latina heritage who figured prominently in Example 1) points out that the use of small brown beans to spell out the message on the front of the card renders it “pretty offensive.” In the minutes thereafter, several other members of the class begin to weigh in with their opinions,

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often in ways that leave the burden of critiquing the text to the people of color in the classroom: (3) “They really don’t know what they’re talking about” (31:40–32:24) 1 KATELYN; I don’t feel like it’s offensive, 2 you know. 3 I don’t think it’s like funny, 4 I just don’t think it’s that offensive. 5 You know, 6 it’s like (.) 7 It’d be like the same thing (.) 8 like if, 9 well there’s not the same kind of thing, 10 Spanish #to English, 11 but it’s like, I don’t think it’s offensive, 12 13 cause you’re not like mocking their language, 14 you’re just using it [1 like 1] 15 ALLISON; [1 But maybe 1] it’d be different if you were from that #background.= 16 KATELYN; =Well yeah, 17 but like I wouldn’t be offended if I saw that like, 18 in the same way, 19 like English to French or English to Spanish, 20 like that. 21 Like I wouldn’t be offended. 22 Like [2 I don’t 2] 23 LORENA; [2 I don’t know 2], 24 I guess you can only really truly ask like, 25 a Spanish speaker or somebody like, 26 like (.) 27 I don’t know. 28 Cause I feel like when people say, 29 “Oh but that wouldn’t offend me,” 30 but they really don’t know what they’re talking about, 31 cause they’re not from that (.) 32 like background. In this exchange, Katelyn, a white student, uses strategies of colorblind discourse to argue that the text is not “offensive.” When she asserts that the greeting card is neither offensive nor funny (lines 1–4), her interactional moves resemble

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the “yes but no” strategy described by Bonilla-Silva (2002), which white speakers often use to appear to take a middle-ground position and consider all sides of an issue. Some of Katelyn’s contributions are also characterized by the incoherence typical of white speakers’ colorblind discourse, as when she states she wouldn’t be offended if she saw “the same thing” (lines 7–9) in “English to French or English to Spanish” (line 19). While somewhat unclear, her concession that “there’s not the same kind of thing [in] Spanish to English” (lines 9–10) suggests that she is aware of the unequal power relations between speakers of Spanish and English. Also notable is her transition from using the word offensive (lines 1–12) to using offended (lines 17–21). Though subtle, this shift indicates a movement from an argument that locates meaning within a given text (which is linked to the ideology of referentialism) to an argument that recognizes the possibility of different affective reactions and interpretations depending on the viewer. This change occurs only after Allison challenges her, pointing out that she might feel differently if she were from “that background” (line 15), a choice of words that allows Allison to bring up the importance of speaker positionality while avoiding overtly mentioning a specific ethnoracial or linguistic identity. Like Allison, Lorena, a Latina student who was on friendly terms with Katelyn, takes up the task of challenging Katelyn’s position and the white public space it entails. She does so in firm yet face-saving ways: Lorena’s use of hedges such as I don’t know and I guess (lines 23–27), along with her use of deracialized and depersonalized nouns and pronouns such as people (line 28), they (line 30), and impersonal you (line 24), allow her to avoid directly accusing Katelyn of aligning with a hegemonic ideology. These hedges and other forms of mitigation are by no means signs of uncertainty or imprecision, as they are often defined within dominant ideologies regarding these linguistic practices, especially as these practices relate to the intensely monitored speech of women and people of color. Rather, people of color may be obliged to undertake such discursive mitigations in interactions with white people and/or in white public space so as to counter the aforementioned widespread ideology that they are “angry” and “imprecise” (Reyes 2011: 463).Thus, while hedged, Lorena’s position is by no means unclear: She emphatically states that “you can only really truly ask” a Spanish speaker (lines 24–25), thereby highlighting the importance of speaker positionality in constructing understandings of the affective import of Mock Spanish and of mock language more generally. As she argues, those who have not been the targets of linguistic appropriation, mocking, and other forms of racializing and racist discourse “don’t really know what they’re talking about” (line 30).Yet when the discussion ends a few moments later, Katelyn’s position appears unchanged: She claims that “it shouldn’t be offensive” and that those who are offended by Mock Spanish are “diehard into their culture” and are simply reading things “too closely.” Since she is the last student to speak, the group discussion ends on a note that reaffirms white public space. Class winds down for the day as most students return to casually conversing and laughing with one another.

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Conclusion The many reverberations of white laughter throughout this SKILLS activity remind researchers and educators alike that dismantling white public space in schools requires not only antiracist curricula but also a commitment to listening closely to all aspects of classroom discourse. For researchers, this analysis highlights the need for greater attention to the role of humor in the classroom (Bell & Pomerantz 2016) and greater theorization of the nature of laughter. While it may sometimes seem to fade into the background as talk takes center stage, white laughter is not simply white noise to be ignored, but rather a form of interaction that speaks—often quite loudly—to racialized meanings as it contributes to the construction and expansion of white public space. Analysts must therefore attend carefully to laughter, seeking to distinguish transformative laughter from other, oppressive, forms of laughter (Lewis 2010), including white laughter. Of course, the meaning of laughter is not necessarily clear from laughter tokens alone. Talk provides a crucial context for understanding laughter, and because of their dialogicality, classrooms constitute an ideal site for analysts to investigate how participants think and feel about racial humor. For educators, the analysis undertaken in this chapter holds lessons about the importance of explicit and sustained efforts to dismantle white public space within justice-oriented, multiracial classrooms. The pervasive “folk-theory” idea that racial mixing in “diverse” institutions will end racism (see Hill 2008: 9), like other widespread ideals of neoliberal multiculturalism (Kubota 2014), fails to address the dominance of ideologies of colorblindness and postracialism. Now more than ever, educators must counter these delusions of whiteness by working within critical antiracist frameworks that engage rather than erase race. Importantly, as this analysis shows, students have many of the skills needed to participate in such discussions. While in many ways the discussions in Mr. Wilson’s classroom on this day replicated ideologies of colorblindness and postracialism, in other ways it allowed for disruptions of these ideologies and showcased students’ already sophisticated abilities to navigate the challenges of analyzing race and racism, thus defying stereotypes of youth as emotionally and politically disengaged. At a time when the United States and other societies across the globe are grappling with the increasingly overt presence of legitimized violence against minoritized groups, many students have a profound awareness of these issues. It is therefore crucial to provide spaces in which students can draw on their racial funds of knowledge, including the affective dimensions of their lived experiences as racialized subjects (Zarate, this volume). Building a humanizing educational space in which liberatory talk and laughter can advance sociolinguistic justice begins with recognizing the complexity, diversity, and depth of students’ thoughts and feelings about their racialized world.

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Notes 1 Acknowledgments: I am grateful to my Crossroads Seminar instructors and colleagues for their insights about this project and to intern Cheryl Lee at the Center for California Languages and Cultures for drawing my attention to this data and sharing her analysis of it. Special thanks are due to the SKILLS students, mentors, and teacher who opened their classroom to our research team. 2 All names except for Ashley’s are pseudonyms.

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Johnson, Elisabeth, and Lalitha Vasudevan. 2012. Seeing and hearing students’ lived and embodied critical literacy practices. Theory into Practice 51: 34–41. Kubota, Ryuko. 2014. The multi/plural turn, postcolonial theory and neoliberal multiculturalism: Complicities and implications for applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 37(4): 474–494. Lewis, Tyson Edward. 2010. Paulo Freire’s last laugh: Rethinking critical pedagogy’s funny bone through Jacques Rancière. Educational Philosophy and Theory 42(5–6): 635–648. McIntyre, Alice. 1997. Making meaning of whiteness: Exploring racial identity with white teachers. Albany: State University of New York Press. Myers, Kristen A. 2005. Racetalk: Racism hiding in plain sight. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Page, Helán, and R. Brooke Thomas. 1994. White public space and the construction of white privilege in US health care: Fresh concepts and a new model of analysis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 8(1): 109–116. Pollock, Mica. 2004. Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Reyes, Angela. 2011. “Racist!”: Metapragmatic regimentation of racist discourse by Asian American youth. Discourse and Society 22(4): 458–473. Rich, Marc D., and Aaron Castelan Cargile. 2004. Beyond the breach: Transforming white identities in the classroom. Race Ethnicity and Education 7(4): 351–365. Roberts, Rosemarie A., Lee A. Bell, and Brett Murphy. 2008. Flipping the script: Analyzing youth talk about race and racism. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 39(3): 334–354. Rossing, Jonathan P. 2012. Deconstructing postracialism: Humor as a critical, cultural project. Journal of Communication Inquiry 36(1): 44–61. Santa Ana, Otto. 2009. Did you call in Mexican? The racial politics of Jay Leno immigrant jokes. Language in Society 38(1): 23–45. Spanierman, Lisa B., and Nolan L. Cabrera. 2015. The emotions of white racism and antiracism. In Veronica Watson, Deidre Howard-Wagner, and Lisa B. Spanierman (eds.), Unveiling Whiteness in the 21st century: Global manifestations, transdisciplinary interventions. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. 9–28. Strean, William B. 2008. Evolving toward laughter in learning. Collected Essays on Learning and Teaching 1: 165–171. Tierney, Jessica Dockter. 2013. “It wasn’t like we were serious”: Laughter in the mediated action of race talk. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota. Zembylas, Michalinos. 2005. Teaching with emotion: A postmodern enactment. Greenwich, CT: Information Age.

7 “YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE YOU SPEAK ENGLISH” Raciolinguistic Profiling and Latinx Youth Agency Adanari Zarate

Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity. I am my language. —Gloria Anzaldúa (1987: 81)

Introduction Race continues to be a prevalent determinant of how social exchanges unfold. Despite being a socially constructed concept, race marks difference, nonwhiteness, and Otherness and thus shapes the lived experiences of communities of color (Omi & Winant 1994). Racial profiling, or the discriminatory practice of making assumptions about a person’s characteristics based on their racial appearance, links the attributes of an individual to an entire race. Within the last several years, there has been increased awareness and critique of racial profiling practices as they have manifested themselves through state legislation. For example, Senate Bill 1070 in Arizona, which was later found to be partly unconstitutional, requires police to determine the immigration status of those arrested or detained when there is “reasonable suspicion” that they are not in the United States legally (Campbell 2011; Stoever 2010). This law led the way for other states, predominantly in the Southwest, to enact similar legislation influencing law enforcement practices.This form of criminalization has spurred direct responses from members of affected communities, resulting in virtual campaigns and slogans such as “Do I look ‘illegal’?” in which thousands challenged the discrimination and persecution of the Latinx community through racial profiling (Caballero 2010). This new form of social network activism provides a novel platform for people to channel their emotional and political discontent. While this kind of racial profiling operates on a large governmental scale and receives extensive media coverage and circulation, it is important to note that

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racial profiling occurs across a multitude of settings, interpolating itself into everyday interactions like ordering a meal at a fast food restaurant or asking for directions. Moreover, the process of profiling based on racial appearance also involves linguistic expectations and assumptions. John Baugh (2003) explains that linguistic profiling is the auditory equivalent of visual racial profiling, in which the auditory cues of language are ideologically linked to racial, ethnic, and class identifications. Thus, racial profiling can lead to linguistic profiling and vice versa. In this chapter, I use Jonathan Rosa’s (forthcoming) concept of raciolinguistic enregisterment to analyze the close connection between racial and linguistic profiling. Raciolinguistic enregisterment describes an ideological process in which a person is assumed to speak a certain language solely based on racial signifiers that are marked as belonging to users of that language: what Rosa (forthcoming) refers to as “looking like a language” (see also Bax & Ferrada, this volume). For example, an individual who has visual signifiers of being Mexican may be ideologically interpreted by others as lacking the ability to speak English, leading to the individual being spoken to in Spanish regardless of their actual linguistic abilities and preferences. In the following analysis, I focus on three high school–aged Latino males participating in the School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society (SKILLS) program, who described work experiences in which they were racially profiled. More specifically, my analysis focuses on how these students’ appearance and skin tone led white individuals to make assumptions about their ability to speak Spanish. I argue that the young men were not simply racially profiled but raciolinguistically profiled in their experiences. Through an activity on racial profiling and subsequent classroom discussions during the SKILLS program, the students were able to share within a classroom setting their understanding of racial profiling and how this practice intersected with their personal lived experiences through language. In the data analyzed below, the three young men discussed in this chapter describe instances in which white customers or, in one case, a white manager approached them at their workplace speaking Spanish, reading their physical appearance and self-presentation as markers of speaking or understanding the Spanish language:That is, these youth were read as looking like a language. This chapter highlights how these young Latinos understood these racialized experiences and enacted their agency in response to them. I begin this chapter with my personal narrative as a light-skinned Chicana as a reflection on how my own lived experiences have informed my understandings of racial profiling, linguistic profiling, skin tone privilege, and agency.This experience informed my involvement in the SKILLS program and the way in which the student narratives that follow are presented and analyzed.

La güera ¡Pero mira qué güera te salió, Lupe! Being born to immigrant parents, the youngest of six children and the only one to be born in the United States, I was

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immediately signaled as la güera de la familia. I come from a long lineage of mestizaje: a mother who carries Spaniard blood and a father with indigenous roots. My mother is light-skinned and my father is dark-skinned. Out of six children, my parents had only two with dark skin like my father’s; my mother’s phenotype won the majority of battles. Although I have other siblings who are light-skinned just like my mother, I was special: la güera. My skin color comes with privilege. I remember to this day the praise I received as a child for my appearance in contrast to darker-skinned peers and siblings. Growing up, I never understood why despite having a last name that starts with the last letter of the alphabet (Zarate), which typically leads to students being assigned to sit in the back of the classroom, I always managed to be seated at the front. I was never placed in nor tested for English as a Second Language classes despite the fact that English was my second language, and as a student coming from a Spanish-only home, I likely needed English support. My skin color and my name have oftentimes left me in places of ambiguity; people cannot easily identify me racially or find signifiers of my Mexicanidad. It was not until much later in life that I began to understand the connection between my skin tone and my educational track through the phenomenon of colorism. Colorism, with its specific attention to skin tone, discriminates against individuals with a dark skin tone, typically among people of the same ethnic or racial group. This ideology allows lighter-skinned people of color to enjoy substantial privileges that are at times unattainable by their darker-skinned counterparts (Hunter 2007). My perceived whiteness or ability to “pass” due to the ideology of colorism made it easier for me to excel in an impoverished school district in Orange County, California, and has largely influenced my educational trajectory, getting me to where I am today. As a graduate student in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, I am in a space where I can acknowledge my privilege while also fostering my commitment to racialized and classed injustices. I am always bothered when others assume I do not speak Spanish. Spanish is my first language and my only means of communication with my parents—es mi corazón y mi lengua. Yet my skin tone has always been a marker for how others perceive me and interact with me linguistically. Conversely, my language ability was never a marker for my racial background, because I did not fit into stereotypical auditory cues that signaled my Mexicanidad. My experiences of linguistic profiling came largely in the form of microaggressions—the subtle, intentional or unconscious, verbal and nonverbal exchanges that are often insults (Solorzano 1998). “You speak English so well” and “You have no accent” were constant “compliments” that flooded my life. These microaggressions, primarily produced by white people, clearly positioned me as Latina and therefore as not expected to speak English “well” or “without an accent.” To many, especially fellow Latinxs, I was perceived not only as looking phenotypically white, but as sounding white too.

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My identity as la güera at home translated into a perceived whiteness in society— some Latinxs called me “la white girl,” a moniker for both my skin tone and my linguistic ability. To these individuals and others, I never looked like a language or sounded like a race (Rosa forthcoming) that corresponded to my Mexican racial identity. Because language often signifies culture, it is inseparable from ideas of community (Wa Thiong’o 1994).This connection leads to a clear understanding of how visual and auditory cues are inscribed for specific groups of people. Like language, self-presentation is a signifier for others to read and gain impressions from. How one presents oneself through choices in clothing, hairstyle preferences, and even makeup can signal one’s racial and ethnic identity (Mendoza-Denton 2008). Sadly, both historically and currently, U.S. society understands and minimizes Mexican culture and attire through stereotypical representations—for example, when non-Mexican Americans wear fake mustaches, oversized sombreros, and sarapes on the Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo. Therefore, self-presentation has proven to be especially important for the diverse Latinx community in order for its members to express their personal, social, and racial identities (Mendoza-Denton 2008). Up until halfway through middle school, my mother always sent me to school con mi trenza. I still chuckle every time I remember those days, when getting home and undoing that high ponytail trenza was both painful and satisfying at the same time.To my immigrant mother, hair pulled away from the face ensured that I looked well groomed and ready to learn. I had the privilege of having a stay-at-home mother. This ensured that her kids were sent off to school bien limpiesitos and ready to take on their day, preparations for success that my mother, living in a foreign country, felt she needed to fulfill for us. It was not until high school that school uniforms were no longer required. Starting high school coincided with my father’s company contracting more jobs and no longer needing to travel to the affluent parts of Orange County to bargain-shop for clothing at yard sales on Saturday mornings. A little more money allowed for my parents to buy us brand-new clothes and shoes that were in style. For me, this meant being able to receive clothes with American Eagle and Abercrombie & Fitch labels—brands that were being widely popular among affluent Orange County teens—for special occasions like birthdays or Christmas. My self-presentation coupled with my racial and linguistic presentation always influenced the way in which others interacted with me. I am not what others perceive me to be. I am a Chicana. I am a product of Mexican immigrants. El español es mi lengua. I share my story not because I believe that it holds a special truth or is an exception. My story is not unique, but it is my truth. It explains the way in which I see the world and how it is informed through my lived experiences. The privilege that my skin color has granted me has allowed me to avoid experiencing the negative ideologies associated with those who “look” Mexican. This privilege, however, has not exempted my family or my community, a community that is predominantly composed of working-class Mexican immigrants. I understand

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how Otherness is physically and visibly inscribed onto people’s bodies. The constant profiling and criminalization that Latinx communities experience (Romero 2006) informs my commitment to fighting against such oppressive acts through research, teaching, and activism. Acknowledging and accepting the levels of privilege that my appearance and bilingualism have granted me have been made possible by the spaces that I have been in that promote critical thinking and consciousness development. I did not gain a clear understanding of these concepts or participate in critical conversations about them until I reached the university level. It was then that I was able to develop a language to speak about my truths and experiences and participate in building avenues for others to do so as well: for those not yet at the university level or those who do not or will not have access to these kinds of spaces.

Using Our SKILLS The SKILLS program seeks an alternative to “school as usual” in order to achieve sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz et al. 2014). This approach includes adopting teaching styles that avoid a “top-down” approach and attempt to dismantle the hierarchy of knowledge production and reproduction. By creating a coteaching/ colearning environment for all classroom members, this space enables classroom discussions that bridge between classroom life and everyday experiences outside of school (Lee & Bucholtz 2015). Just as important, the SKILLS program is committed to acknowledging the various forms of knowledge that students come into the classroom with, not limiting them to what the school system deems valuable knowledge. Students share their knowledge at SKILLS Day, the culminating public event of the program, which allows all participating students to develop a poster or podium presentation on their research or community action projects to share with attendees.The acknowledgment of students’ funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 1992) allows for pedagogical choices and practices that create a classroom climate in which students’ lived experiences are valued. In this context, SKILLS instructors have the opportunity to develop activities and conversations with a more culturally relevant and culturally sustaining pedagogical approach (LadsonBillings 1995; Paris & Alim 2017). Given the goals of the SKILLS program and students’ experiences, issues of race often arise in the classroom, as shown in the following analysis. The data collected for this chapter emerged from two specific teaching moments in two different twelfth-grade classrooms: a classroom discussion of Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) influential essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” and a set of activities on racial profiling (see also Carruba-Rogel, this volume, and Lateef-Jan, this volume, for the use of Anzaldúa’s essay in the SKILLS program). Anzaldúa’s piece reflects on her personal linguistic and racial struggles as she navigates the physical and imaginary borderlands of being a Mexicana Tejana in the United States.The decision to include Anzaldúa’s piece as a teaching tool was made by the 2014 SKILLS

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team at one of the partner high schools. As a team, they decided to read the text aloud as a class, having individual students and instructors volunteer to read each section. A large-group discussion followed, with many students offering personal experiences or opinions on the topic of others’ perceptions of the self. This text and discussion was a fruitful moment. Although I was not a teaching fellow that year, I was a member of the Crossroads seminar, which allowed me to have engagement and input into SKILLS classrooms (see Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee, this volume, and Rys, this volume, for discussions of the seminar). I saw great value in having culturally relevant and sustaining readings available to Latinx students living in a predominantly white area. It is not very often that high school students have the opportunity to engage with texts that speak directly to the complex intersections of their personal and social identities. Through Anzaldúa, students were invited to think about the historical legacy of having others question their language, identity, and authenticity. In 2015, I had the opportunity to become a teaching fellow at a different high school, working alongside an experienced teaching fellow, Meghan Corella, from UCSB’s Education Department. In keeping with the SKILLS program’s mission to create sociolinguistic justice within our classrooms, Meghan and I felt it was extremely important to talk more directly and specifically about race and racial ideologies than the curriculum had done up to that point. As a graduate student in Chicana and Chicano Studies, I cannot speak to social injustices without speaking to race and ethnicity. The inclusion of Anzaldúa in the curriculum the year previous to my involvement was the ideal starting point to creating conversations around language and racial ideologies and how they influence the lived experiences of Latinx communities. In making the choice to continue the conversations about language and identity that the Anzaldúa reading had started within the SKILLS program the previous year, I decided to bring this conversation out of the narrative realm and into everyday practices that directly affect communities of color. In order to do so, I created a learning activity on racial profiling. (This and other curricula are available on the SKILLS website: skills.ucsb.edu.) This was the first time I had developed and implemented a SKILLS activity that addressed race independently of issues of language.The class discussion on racial profiling, which I led, followed the reading of Anzaldúa on a previous day. Not all classrooms are alike, as our reading of Anzaldúa demonstrated. The students volunteered to read aloud and participated when asked, but the discussions were not as fruitful as they had been in the 2014 classroom; something was a bit off that day. Instead, Meghan and I swapped the large-group discussion for individual journaling. It was in the journaling that we saw students’ interest in themes that did not arise in the discussions, primarily the theme of how others perceived them (a topic that was of central interest in the 2014 classroom as well). It was into these connections and interests that the racial profiling activity fit. The activity introduced students to Arizona’s recent wave of discriminatory laws

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(Cammarota & Aguilera 2012). I chose Senate Bill 1070 in order to familiarize students with Arizona’s troubling racial climate and the ways in which institutions of power legalize and legitimate the profiling and policing of people of color.The coupling of a theoretical, creative essay such as “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” with state legislation allowed students to link an author’s personal ideas expressed on a printed page with very real material practices and consequences. In beginning this activity, I asked the students to develop a definition of racial profiling based on their own interpretations of the term, together with how they had seen racial profiling manifested through actions or practices. Figure 7.1 presents the students’ collective brainstorming. I served as a scribe and documented their thought processes on the classroom whiteboard. The students’ definitions and interpretations of the term racial profiling highlighted their understandings of racial, gendered, and linguistic stereotypes and assumptions associated with people’s visual appearance. It is often wrongly assumed that youth do not understand complex topics such as racial profiling or that they are too immature to engage in such critical conversations. However, the opportunity to share their understanding of the term showed that they were fully aware of and knowledgeable about this supposedly adult topic even before I began formally introducing concepts. Although Meghan and I had created an activity that we thought addressed issues specific to racial ideologies, the students made it clear that language was inextricable from the conversation. The connections that they made spoke to their understandings and experiences with raciolinguistic enregisterment. For example, in their brainstorming, students voiced the relationship

FIGURE 7.1 

Students’ brainstorming about racial profiling.

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between language and physical appearance, explaining how visual racial markers influence others’ assumptions of an individual’s language proficiency. This raciolinguistic relationship is noted in Figure 7.1 as “looking Asian = no Spanish.” Giving students the floor to demonstrate their knowledge was the beginning of validating their understanding and lived experiences of raciolinguistic profiling. It also informed me and Meghan, as teaching fellows, how students discussed such issues as they brainstormed, including their vocabulary (such as race/ethnicity and sexual orientation) and the playful yet serious tone they felt comfortable using in that space, as when they used drawings in their brainstorming to explain what profiling could look like. Following the student-led brainstorming activity, Meghan and I presented the students with a media clip (www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydFJVgUbE40) detailing Senate Bill 1070. The clip presented a brief yet thorough explanation of the bill, featuring different perceptions of the law and its possible ramifications for Arizona residents. The clip was meant to help students analyze how institutional legal practices like policing and profiling directly influence how people navigate and negotiate public interactions. Prefacing the classroom conversation with two different components (the Anzaldúa reading and the racial profiling activities) allowed us to open a dialogical space with students to speak about the topic and invite personal reflections of how they understood racial profiling and saw it intersecting with their own lived experiences. In order to create a space that was comfortable for all students, we chose to do this sharing time in both whole-class and small-group discussions. To wrap up the activity and get the students to continue to critically think about such controversial concepts, we staged a mock debate, asking students to argue for or against immigration and profiling laws, even if they did not agree with the position they were assigned. This was an important component for me to include, as I find it essential to always provide an opportunity for students to think about alternative perspectives.Whether arguing for or against a position, students need to understand the opposing side’s point of view, even if they do not agree with it. This develops and strengthens their own arguments. Speaking about our personal experiences and perceptions within a classroom is unfortunately not normalized and sometimes is perceived as unacceptable within that space (Rys, this volume). Given the difficulty in speaking about our lived experiences, especially those that are racialized, in a space that does not usually foster it, the students’ willingness to participate and share in this activity is admirable.

The Narratives of los valientes The freedom given to SKILLS fellows in their teaching style manifested itself in the variety of data that came from these classroom activities. The student narratives analyzed below originate from a SKILLS program participant from 2014, Alberto, and two participants from 2015, Luis and Adrian (all students’

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names are pseudonyms). The data include a video recording of a 2014 classroom discussion featuring Alberto, ethnographic fieldnotes of 2015 classroom discussions in which both Luis and Adrian participated, and Adrian’s 2015 SKILLS Day project and presentation. In the 2014 classroom, an undergraduate research assistant recorded daily interaction on video. In our classroom in 2015, Meghan and I did not have an undergraduate research assistant collecting video data in our classroom; we instead used data collection methods like fieldnotes, visual documentation of the writing on the whiteboard, and written student work, which did not interfere with our goal of student-centered learning and collaboration. I refer to the three students that are the focus of my analysis as los valientes (the courageous ones). By referring to them in this manner, I am highlighting their valor, which I recognized in the various ways in which they conveyed and enacted their agency in confronting experiences of raciolinguistic oppression and profiling. To be sure, others in their classrooms may have also experienced and engaged in stances like those highlighted by the three young men. However, these students were notable in finding the strength to publicly share incidents that could be understood by themselves and others in their community as frustrating, demeaning, and above all racialized. Their valor to speak personally to this topic allowed them to develop an understanding of the relationship between race and language not only for themselves but for others around them as well. It is important to note that all three young men were born and raised in the United States and identified as at least bilingual (Spanish–English)—Alberto in fact identified as trilingual (Spanish–English–French). The student narratives that follow present and represent the various levels of agentive resistance they enacted in the face of raciolinguistic enregisterment in their workplaces.

Luis Luis was my student in the 2015 SKILLS program. He was a very vocal student who always had substantive personal experiences to share on topics discussed in the classroom. A self-identified Mexicano, Luis was a light-skinned, dark-haired, thin-framed young man who frequently wore plain white T-shirts with jeans or khakis and sported a mustache, which he constantly referred to as a proud signifier of his Mexicano identity. During the classroom discussion of personal encounters with racial profiling that followed the initial brainstorming and media clips, Luis promptly raised his hand to participate and share his experiences of being raciolinguistically profiled at his workplace. Luis worked at the restaurant of a local golf course, where he described his coworkers as middle-aged Mexicano men. He laughed about being identified as the “young one” in the kitchen, who was there to help wash dishes or serve diners: el ayudante. We can begin to understand Luis’s choice to identify as Mexicano given his experiences working as an ayudante to the working-class

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Mexicano cooks and cleaning staff in the back, developing a playful relationship with them, and feeling himself to be part of that work community. Luis, who was quite candid in his storytelling, began by telling the class about being raciolinguistically profiled by his white male manager on multiple occasions. Since most of his coworkers were adult Latino men who did not speak English, the manager’s linguistic assumptions about their language abilities extended to Luis. He described how one day his manager entered the kitchen of the restaurant and, without asking whether Luis spoke English, immediately spoke to him in what Luis called “choppy Spanish.” As his classmates laughed at his description of his manager’s Spanish, Luis’s tone became enthusiastic, as if he knew they would get a kick out of what was to come next. The manager, in his “choppy Spanish,” proceeded to ask Luis to climb a ladder in order to bring something down from a shelf.To the manager, Luis’s physical appearance was a marker of Spanish language use. Luis, without any hesitation, responded to the manager in English, saying, “Yeah, I got it.” Regardless of whether Luis’s language choice in response to his manager was deliberately designed to challenge his raciolinguistic assumptions, his use of English rather than Spanish shows his agentive resistance to the manager’s racializing act. Luis could have stayed silent and climbed the ladder to acquire the item or he could have replied in Spanish, but instead he chose to show that he should not be lumped into a stereotypical category: His Mexicano appearance was not a marker of his language ability.

Adrian Adrian told his narrative about racial profiling on the same day as Luis. Adrian was a student in the same classroom, but unlike Luis, he needed a little warming up before he was willing to share his personal experiences. Adrian, who selfidentified as Mexican American, was phenotypically dark. He usually wore workout clothes and had a slender athletic physique; he was a lacrosse player at the high school. In contrast to Luis’s willingness to share in a large group setting, Adrian was more private. As the larger group discussion wound down, Meghan and I shifted the students into small groups to accommodate those who were not as keen on speaking to the entire class. At their tables, students began to talk about how they understood racial profiling and how they or someone they knew had experienced it. It was in this smaller space that Adrian felt comfortable enough to share his experiences. Adrian’s original narrative is taken from the fieldnotes of an undergraduate mentor who facilitated the discussion.1 During the discussion, Adrian told his peers that in his workplace, the local zoo, he was frequently raciolinguistically profiled as a Spanish speaker. He explained that because his appearance was marked as Mexican in the zoo’s predominantly white public space (Hill 1999; see also Corella, this volume), zoo visitors, who were primarily white, constantly

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addressed him in Spanish. Once visitors found out that he spoke English, Adrian recounted that they responded with half-hearted explanations such as, “Oh, sorry. You don’t look like you speak English.” When the students again formed a larger group following their table conversations, Meghan and I asked if anyone had anything to add to the previous discussion. At this point Adrian chose to open up and share his zoo anecdote with the entire class.When addressing the whole class, Adrian concluded his story by admitting that racial profiling influenced the way he saw others. He gave the example of people crossing the street when seeing someone approaching who looks dangerous solely based on their self-presentation and phenotype; he then bravely admitted to have done so himself, yet now, he said, he realized that “it’s fucked up.” Adrian’s explanation of his own experience of racial profiling as well as his admission that he himself had been a perpetrator of it, were both key components to developing his awareness and resistance against this discriminatory act. Because Adrian was not a student who was quick to participate or share in large groups, his participation in this discussion and his willingness to share personal experiences both of being racially profiled and of profiling others was momentous for Meghan and me as a teaching team. We felt he had made significant strides with this student, sparking enough interest to lead him to finally want to share. This perception was reinforced in Adrian’s decision to choose racial profiling as the topic of his SKILLS Day project. Despite his private demeanor, Adrian decided to write a spoken-word piece addressing facts and statistics about racial profiling laws while integrating his own experiences into the piece. He bravely shared this poem with a room of over two hundred audience members on the UC Santa Barbara campus. Below, I share a part of his work: If I begin to speak Spanish I could also be targeted to be asked for my identification because of my heritage, my skin, and my language. My skin color makes me and makes all of us. If we all thought justly the world would be a better place. I’m pushing to STOP racism and STOP ruining lives that matter. STOP pulling minorities over just because of their looks or “suspicious behavior.” STOP killing our kind for following orders police officers gave them. STOP blaming us for your problems, and STOP making yourselves the victim when they’re the authoritative power that have a deadly weapon and use it towards unarmed innocent minorities. STOP and think and the world would be a better place. Adrian’s poem shows his complex understanding of his physical appearance and its ramifications. Through this spoken-word piece, Adrian speaks to the very real material consequences of looking like a language, beyond the raciolinguistic experience of being spoken to in Spanish. Adrian’s decision to highlight much more serious consequences of profiling, such as the deadly threat it poses to the profiled person, speaks to his understanding of the lived experiences of communities

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of color. His own lived experiences and those of his community urge him to demand a world where racial profiling needs to STOP.

Alberto Unlike the other two students, Alberto was part of the 2014 SKILLS program at a different high school. He was phenotypically dark-skinned and identified as Chicano; as previously stated, he identified as trilingual, having taken French as his foreign language requirement in high school. The 2014 SKILLS instructors described Alberto as a generally quiet student who made infrequent yet significant contributions to classroom discussions. Although I did not know him well, I got to meet him during a classroom visit when I went in to help students with their final projects for SKILLS Day. Like Adrian, Alberto chose to focus on the topic of racial profiling for his project. From the day I worked with him and saw his presentation at his SKILLS Day classroom run-through in his classroom, I could see that he was very passionate about issues surrounding racial profiling. Alberto’s narrative clearly exemplifies his reaction to being treated as “looking like a language.” He provided his story during a large group discussion following the reading of Anzaldúa’s “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” The SKILLS teaching fellows prompted discussion of the essay’s theme: outsiders’ perceptions of who we are and how we identify. One of Alberto’s classmates prefaced her response by sharing with the group that in the United States she is seen as Mexican, whereas her family in Mexico calls her “la gringa.” Even before she had finished her story, Alberto promptly raised his hand to share with the group. In his usual terse style, he said, “Freshman year I worked at [a local] Taco Bell and some people would come in, and I guess they’d take the ‘safe route’ [here he gestured in quotes with his fingers] and speak Spanish—so I would respond in French.”The class chuckled appreciatively at his story. In order to contextualize Alberto’s narrative and the customers he encountered, it is important to note that the community where he worked was over 70 percent white. Alberto’s narrative demonstrates that a racial profiling incident may be immediately met with an agentive response. It also exemplifies his valor in standing up for himself when interacting with white customers. Alberto’s use of trilingualism was a form of agentive resistance toward the raciolinguistic assumption that young Latinxs “look like they speak Spanish.” Aware of his marked racial appearance, he acknowledged that white customers thought Spanish would be the “safe route” when ordering food from him. His choice of words—“the ‘safe route,’ ” marked gesturally with scare quotes—to characterize the use of Spanish is very telling, revealing his understanding of the process of raciolinguistic enregisterment. To white customers, Alberto looked like a Spanish speaker; moreover, he worked at a Mexican-themed fast food restaurant, Taco Bell, so they assumed he must not speak English; therefore, they decided it was necessary to speak to him

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in Spanish. This raciolinguistic reasoning is even more bizarre given that there is nothing authentically Mexican about Taco Bell. Not only was Alberto aware of this racialization but he also clearly challenged it by introducing French into his interactions. His inclusion of French, a language that is generally understood to have more linguistic capital and fewer racialized associations than Spanish (e.g., Lippi-Green 2012), can be read as an example of Alberto’s understanding of the act of raciolinguistic profiling. In this incident, he used his languages as a tool for fighting against oppressive, normalized practices. I remind readers that Alberto self-identifies as Chicano, a politicized and empowered Mexican identity that rejects Eurocentric ideals (Pérez & Peña 2005). This identity can largely explain his agentive resistance and immediate response to the profiling—not replying in Spanish, as he was expected to do, or in English, as Luis did, but rather using French, a high-prestige language that he hoped would stump his customers. In the video recording, one can visually see and hear Alberto’s gratification when sharing his story with the SKILLS class. His final smirk as he finished his story, as we can see in Figure 7.2, belongs to someone who is satisfied with his efforts to make white customers feel foolish for speaking to him in Spanish solely based on his appearance. In preparation for SKILLS Day, Alberto was grouped with three other students who had also chosen racial profiling as their presentation topic.The students gave a collaborative PowerPoint presentation to the SKILLS Day attendees, which provided general definitions of the term racial profiling and included personal narratives as to how each of them had experienced this form of discrimination. In this public setting, Alberto shared another work experience in which he had been raciolinguistically profiled, this time as a self-checkout assistant at the local public library: “One of these [white] people comes up to me and asks me, ‘Hello, do you speak English?’ And while I didn’t take offense to that, I thought, ‘Well, okay, this

FIGURE 7.2 

Alberto’s smirk after sharing his story.

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might be fun. So I spoke in French.” I vividly remember—and a video clip of that day confirms—the audience’s roar of laughter and applause as Alberto shared his story, acknowledging and reinforcing his choice to use French as a means of fighting against raciolinguistic assumptions.

Agents of Change In their everyday lives, Latinx youth encounter and actively navigate the racializing experiences of racial and linguistic profiling. The narratives by Luis, Adrian, and Alberto show that in the white public space of their workplaces, spaces that required and normalized the use of English, their appearance influenced their linguistic interactions. Their phenotype and self-presentation marked them as Spanish speakers, as racialized, as Mexican: they looked like a language. The ways in which these young Latinxs interpreted, shared, and acted on these raciolinguistic profiling incidents show the multilayered agentive resistance that they each possessed. By multilayered, I mean the different kinds of agentive resistance that each student demonstrated as well as how these were layered into new contexts through sharing their narratives in large and small group discussions, the ways in which each young man responded to the white person they were interacting with, and their agency in selecting this topic for their SKILLS Day presentations to share with the wider community. Although the layers differed with each student, all three young men demonstrated their valor and agency by sharing their lived experiences with their classmates and the SKILLS team. As previously mentioned, racialized experiences can spark emotions like anxiety, frustration, and shame.These students’ decision to share their stories displayed their understanding and acknowledgment of their lived experiences not as shameful but as political and as significant enough to share with others. From these initial experiences of raciolinguistic profiling, the layers of agentive resistance continued to unfold. Luis and Alberto both decided to take immediate action against the profiling they experienced by responding in a language other than Spanish, acknowledging the oppressive act and challenging the raciolinguistic assumptions behind it. The most powerful examples of these students taking a stand against racial profiling and saying “¡Ya basta!” was their choice to make this topic the focus of their SKILLS Day presentations. Through their decisions to speak out against racial profiling in the (still) white public space of the local university, they actively sought a change toward oppressive acts that affect themselves and their community. They understood that their lived experiences were not singular but a recurring series of events. By sharing their personal narratives and the original projects that emerged from them, these students were able to help their classmates and the SKILLS Day attendees recognize and interrogate similar ideologies about language and race. The valor demonstrated by all three young men in taking a public stance against racial and raciolinguistic profiling inspires a world that Adrian envisions and demands in his spoken-word piece, one

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that would STOP criminalizing and demeaning his comunidad based on what its members look like.

Conclusion: We All Need SKILLS In a period when racial turmoil and racial profiling are at an all-time high, with political leaders normalizing hate and discrimination (Stalsburg 2016; Thompson 2017), it is imperative that conversations about racial and linguistic justice continue to take place within classroom settings.Youth, especially youth of color, already have the language and tools to be able to interpret, understand, and act on racialized interactions like those experienced by Luis, Adrian, and Alberto; acknowledging and legitimating these experiences in a classroom setting helps young people to amplify their understanding of injustice and their actions against it. As explored in this chapter, students of color are already well aware of the ways in which they are racially and linguistically burdened by a racist society. When youth are given the chance to speak about their profiling experiences, as they are within SKILLS classrooms, they gain a new form of understanding and a new way to name the oppression they experience. Moreover, as an educator and researcher of color, by bringing conversations about race into the classroom and offering tools to help students make sense of such oppressive experiences, I am able to fortify my commitment to Latinx communities. The SKILLS students and the experiences they shared again remind me to check my light-skinned privilege and push me to make a change for my gente. The student narratives presented in this chapter demonstrate the strength of the SKILLS program in building and providing a space for students to feel validated in their linguistic and racial identities. At its best, the program fosters a space where students are validated for their lived experiences and allows them to build a community where they can talk about issues of language and race. Equally important, it is a space where instructors of color like myself can bring their subjectivity and identity to the forefront of their teaching. We are not teaching to a textbook or to a test. We are teaching with our hearts and through our own lived experiences. My subjectivity as a Chicana, the daughter of immigrants, and a committed codeswitcher was always at the forefront of my conversations with the students. Sharing who I am and how these topics are very personal to me from the beginning of the program allowed me, together with my coinstructor Meghan, to create a space for the majority of students to relate to us and, with time, to feel comfortable enough to share with us, the entire class, and the broader community. As previously mentioned, the activity that Meghan and I developed on racial profiling was one of the first times that a SKILLS class took an explicit and direct focus on race; the program has since developed a strong commitment to placing race at the center of the curriculum alongside language. It is important to note that classroom conversations about race can be difficult and do not always work (see Corella, this volume, for one example). Therefore, building the type of

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teaching space where such conversations can take place is imperative for educators concerned with racial and sociolinguistic justice. Activities and topics do not always work the same for every instructor, but this does not warrant avoiding discussions of race and racial ideologies with youth. Language and race are inseparable and must be dealt with as such. As shown in this chapter, students themselves recognize the necessity to speak simultaneously to both language and race as they navigate raciolinguistic ideologies in their daily lives.

Note 1 My thanks to Jevante Davis for providing fieldnotes of Adrian’s narrative during the small-group discussion.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands: la frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute. Baugh, John. 2003. Linguistic profiling. In Sinfree Makoni, Geneva Smitherman, Arnetha F. Ball, and Arthur K. Spears (eds.), Black linguistics: Language, society, and politics in Africa and the Americas. New York: Routledge. 155–168. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Christopher VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Caballero, Axel W. 2010. Do I look “illegal”? Latino nationwide movement building. Huffington Post. June 30. www.huffingtonpost.com/axel-woolfolk/do-i-look-illegallatino_b_558513.html Cammarota, Julio, and Michelle Aguilera. 2012. “By the time I get to Arizona”: Race, language, and education in America’s racist state. Race, Ethnicity and Education 15(4): 485–500. Campbell, Kristina M. 2011. The road to SB 1070: How Arizona became ground zero for the immigrants’ rights movement and the continuing struggle for Latino civil rights in America. Harvard Latino Law Review 14: 1–21. Hill, Jane H. 1999. Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–689. Hunter, Margaret. 2007.The persistent problem of colorism: Skin tone, status, and inequality. Sociology Compass 1(1): 237–254. Ladson-Billings, Gloria. 1995. Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal 32: 465–491. Lee, Jin Sook, and Mary Bucholtz. 2015. Language socialization across learning spaces. In Numa Markee (ed.), Handbook of classroom discourse and interaction. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. 319–336. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 2008. Homegirls: Language and cultural practice among Latina youth gangs. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Moll, Luis C., Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez. 1992. Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31(2): 132–141.

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Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial formation in the United States. New York: Routledge. Paris, Django, and H. Samy Alim (eds.). 2017. Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. New York: Teachers College Press. Pérez, Emma and Devon Peña. 2005. Chicanos and Chicanas. In Suzanne Oboler and Deena Gonzalez (eds.), Encyclopedia of Latinas and Latinos in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. 322–332. Romero, Mary. 2006. Racial profiling and immigration law enforcement: Rounding up of usual suspects in the Latino community. Critical Sociology 32(2–3): 447–473. Rosa, Jonathan. Forthcoming. Looking like a language, sounding like a race. New York: Oxford University Press. Solorzano, Daniel G. 1998. Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience of Chicana and Chicano scholars. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 11(1): 121–136. Stalsburg, Brittany L. 2016. Trump and the normalization of hate. Huffington Post. May 23. www.huffingtonpost.com/brittany-l-stalsburg-phd/trump-and-thenormalizati_b_10101492.html Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. 2010. The noise of SB 1070: Or do I sound illegal to you? Sound Studies. August 19. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2010/08/19/the-noise-of-sb-1070/ Thompson, Ian. 2017. Discrimination under the guise of “religious freedom” is still discrimination, President Trump. American Civil Liberties Union. January 31. www.aclu.org/blog/ speak-freely/discrimination-under-guise-religious-freedom-still-discrimination-presi dent-trump Wa Thiong’o, Ngũgĩ. 1994. Decolonising the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Nairobi: East African Educational Publishers.

8 THE COMPLEXITIES IN SEGUIR AVANZANDO Incongruences Between the Linguistic Ideologies of Students and Their Familias Zuleyma Nayeli Carruba-Rogel

In California, a state that officially banned all languages other than English within public school spaces for an entire generation of students, any educational program that challenges monolingualism is politically significant and personally transformational for young Latinxs.1 The SKILLS program seeks to examine and change dominant language ideologies by creating spaces where we critically reflect on our linguistic worlds and the elements that affect how we perceive, understand, and use language. I say we because in the SKILLS classroom that I describe in this chapter, we were all students, we were all linguistic experts, and we were all educators learning with and from one another (Lee & Bucholtz 2015). I start by drawing on Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) and Paulo Freire (1983), whose writings provide tools to help us understand how our social worlds, and our evolving insightfulness about these worlds, shape our beliefs and understanding of language and literacies. I then describe the context for the SKILLS program that my coinstructor and I developed and implemented, and I discuss how the transformations in our students’ linguistic ideologies created incongruences across their different social worlds. Next, I introduce the Noche de Familia (Family Night) event, where family members provided impromptu reactions to their children’s research presentations. I examine the three main themes that emerged during this event: linguistic appreciation and language maintenance; immigrants’ linguistic difficulties and the need for language brokers; and language ideologies and the devaluing of young people’s language competencies. Ultimately, I demonstrate how the parents’ perspectives were reflective of our own beliefs—those of students and instructors alike—prior to the SKILLS program. Our linguistic journey brings attention to the transformative role of SKILLS in changing both students’ and educators’ perceptions of language and identity.

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This chapter is written in a mixture of English, Spanish, and Spanglish. Unlike some other contributors to this volume, I have chosen to signal to the reader by way of italics when I use Spanish. As a multilingual speaker, I find a visual identification useful in prompting me to mentally switch between my linguistic varieties; this marker is intended to assist multilingual speakers, not to otherize Spanish. I chose not to translate my own Spanish and Spanglish both in order to celebrate multilingual speakers and to reject the role of English as the expressive norm in academic writing. Most importantly, I want to use this platform to unapologetically write in the language that best expresses my sentiments. This act of self-empowerment is a reflection of the transformative effect that SKILLS had on my own linguistic ideologies and concept of self. However, translations are provided when data is presented in order to include the reader in the data analysis. As cultural beings, we do not develop our linguistic ideologies in isolation from our communities; on the contrary, our social worlds deeply influence how we think about our language and hence ourselves. In Anzaldúa’s (1987) classic essay, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” she narrates how she was taught to feel ashamed of her language and concludes, “Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself ” (1987: 59). Anzaldúa’s powerful words reveal the extent to which our language ideologies are intertwined with our identities—and the extent to which both are shaped by our social worlds (see also Lateef-Jan, this volume, and Zarate, this volume, for other discussions of Anzaldúa’s work). The connection between language, society, and acculturation is valuably made in Freire’s (1983) theory of the liberatory power of literacy. Freire asserts, in an often quoted statement, “Reading the world precedes reading the word, and the subsequent reading of the word cannot dispense with continually reading the world. Language and reality are dynamically intertwined” (1983: 1). Freire shows us that we are first social–cultural beings who learn to read the world before we learn to read the word. Our experience of reading the word in turn alters the way we read the world, and as we challenge our understanding of the word, we also challenge our perception of the world and our position within it, interrogating and rewriting the distribution of power within and across our worlds. In the classroom where my coinstructor and I taught, the SKILLS program created a space where we all challenged our understanding of the words that shaped our identities—words like bilingualism, Spanglish, pochx, Mexican American, and Chicanx—by critically reflecting on power, race, and inequality within our worlds. Through this continual process of self-reflexivity, we interrogated and to some extent rewrote distributions of power. Each of us authored ourselves in different ways; these processes were painful and by no means easy or even completed. The Noche de Familia event that we hosted as part of SKILLS provided a venue where students could share original research projects with their families that were testaments of their linguistic transformations. The SKILLS class that carried out this collective work consisted of twentyfive senior students in a college preparation class at Mission City High School

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and their instructors and mentors. All students were Latinx and all but three identified as bilingual or multilingual. Of those three, one identified as a receptive bilingual (a term we introduced through the SKILLS program, referring to those who understand but do not speak their heritage language) and the other two were English monolinguals. Most students had been members of the college preparation program since middle school and had well-established bonds with one another. Our SKILLS team comprised two graduate teaching fellows who worked as coinstructors, Audrey Lopez and me, the partner teacher Ms. Rose, four undergraduate research assistants, and four undergraduate mentors. Both Audrey and Ms. Rose had previous experience with SKILLS, and both were familiar with the curriculum and the program’s goals. Unlike my colleagues, I did not have any previous experience with the SKILLS program. At the time I joined the program I was a doctoral student in the Department of Education at UC Santa Barbara, itching for the opportunity to teach at the high school level. For over a decade prior to graduate school, I had served underrepresented families and students of a variety of ages and ethnoracial backgrounds through coaching, mentoring, tutoring, and teaching. I was yearning for the opportunity to draw from my experiences and apply them to a nontraditional classroom. I will admit that I was stunned when the SKILLS directors selected me as a teaching fellow. I am not a linguist but rather an education scholar whose research focuses on parental engagement. At the time I did not possess the theoretical background that could have seamlessly aligned me with the program’s mission and its core values—but what I had instead was a lot of heart and ganas to serve in this capacity. I resonated at a very personal level with our students. Like me, they were Latinx and the first in their families to have the opportunity to pursue a college education. Like many of them, I too was an immigrant who was raised in poverty. I saw myself in my students and was committed to providing them with a rich and meaningful learning experience (Mainz, this volume, discusses how my background informs my teaching philosophy). In working toward this goal, I had el gran honor of coteaching alongside Audrey. Teaching SKILLS was challenging for us: We were from different disciplines and had dissimilar sociocultural backgrounds and very distinctive personalities. As a teacher, Audrey is kind and empathetic, while I am more direct and firm. We managed to combine our talents to balance and strengthen each other, which was especially important in the context of our SKILLS curriculum, in which we constantly addressed emotionally laden topics such as sexism and racism. I drew from my sociocultural experiences to set the stage for students to share their own stories, while Audrey’s acute awareness of the emotional climate of the classroom ensured that we were producing a safe space for us all to be vulnerable. Meanwhile, Ms. Rose shared her years of expertise to help us work with our students more efficiently and effectively. She reined us in when we were too ambitious and urged us to slow down when we moved too fast.

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Together the three of us also relied heavily on our team of eight undergraduates. These students differed in their cultural, economic, and educational backgrounds but not in their passion and commitment. Our team included a vibrant Afro British male exchange student from England (Nathaniel “Nat” Bury), a quiet but deeply observant woman of South Asian descent (Chandni Govindjie), four Latina students (Vanessa Dominguez, Christine Fuentes, Celia Magana, and Ofelia Bello) and two Latino students (Steven Garcia and Juan Orozco). The undergraduate team members’ proximity in age to the high school students enabled them to play the role of peers and mentors instead of authority figures. They sat next to the SKILLS students, listened to their struggles, and guided each of them on their own linguistic path. Every student had their own battle. Some were trying to embrace their Spanglish (the mixing of Spanish and English), others wrestled to accept that not speaking Spanish did not make them any less Latinx. Some were hearing for the first time that bilingualism was a strength and not a deficit. And because our own linguistic ideologies are likewise socially constructed, we too needed the help and guidance of our peers to maneuver, alter, and take ownership of our linguistic journey. When the SKILLS class started, our students unanimously saw Spanglish and receptive bilingualism through deficit perspectives. They did not arrive to those linguistic ideologies alone; they encountered them daily at school, at home, and in the media. Students shared numerous stories describing how society at all levels and in all places attempted to influence their linguistic selves (see also Zentella 2007). Alberto, an employee at a local Taco Bell, reported that he responded in French to customers who marked him as a Spanish speaker, as a way to check them for making assumptions about his ethnoracial origins and linguistic abilities (see Zarate, this volume, for more about Alberto’s story). Luciana oftentimes had to prove to society that she was Latina and a Spanish speaker because she was read as white. She shared in class that her peers would demand that she demonstrate her Latinaness by uttering sentences in Spanish. Most students learned to whisper in español after it was policed by their teachers as an inappropriate way to communicate in class. Others were shamed by their peers for their “pocho”—that is, “Americanized”—Spanish or their Spanglish codeswitching. Xóchitl, a proud Latina and Spanish speaker, had to prove to customers in her after-school job that she could speak English, while when visiting family in Mexico she was discredited for her pocha tongue. Camila struggled to view her receptive bilingualism as a skill in its own right rather than as a reflection of her lack of Latinaness. Our students’ linguistic ideologies were obviously influenced by their lived experiences, cultural geographies, the linguistic policies they had been subject to, and their entire social worlds. As a counterpoint to such dominant language viewpoints, we supported students in their process of understanding that no language or variety is superior, that Spanish, English, Spanglish, and Chicanx English are each whole, beautiful, and powerful. These ways of speaking are not mistakes. We underscored that spoken languages constantly evolve, as can an individual’s linguistic ideologies (Anzaldúa 1987; Aparicio 1998; Gaspar de Alba 1988).

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As team educators, we were responsible for helping these young scholars embody liberating and empowering truths about their linguistic selves, a journey that Freire reminds us is continuous. Our students showed us that even though we are socialized into specific ways of being, doing, and thinking about language, we can learn new ways of being and challenge the old.Yet while our students in SKILLS were painfully struggling to view their linguistic varieties in empowered ways, the world outside did not support them in this process. This gap influenced our creation of the Noche de Familia event. Our SKILLS team had a duty to share the scholars’ linguistic journey in order to help diminish the incongruence between their linguistic ideologies and their many worlds. As discussed in the introductory chapter (Bucholtz, Casillas, and Lee, this volume), students’ work culminated in formal presentations during SKILLS Day at UC Santa Barbara, where they presented their research and activist work to raise awareness and help educate a wider audience. But what about the spaces they navigated every day? What about their homes, their families? At SKILLS Day we only addressed the UCSB community, but not our students’ home communities, whose members’ heavy work schedules made them unable to attend. Could we then truly say that we had helped ease the challenges of our students’ linguistic journey? If we ignored this responsibility, would they sustain pride in their Spanglish, their Spanish, their receptive bilingualism, or could some find themselves pressured again into a state of shame? Students daily faced implicit and explicit language policies and ideologies riddled with deficit perspectives that pervaded their worlds, including their very homes. We had to acknowledge that the SKILLS scholars’ immediate worlds—their home, school, and community— likely held the very views that had socialized them into identifying their linguistic abilities through deficit perspectives. Our students’ families were not directly part of SKILLS; unlike in other work I have done (Carruba-Rogel 2016), they were not involved in guided conversations that supported linguistic–ideological transformation and self-reflexivity. We wanted to host Noche de Familia so we could address with parents some of the concepts discussed in class. My training in parental engagement insisted that I not disregard the imperative role that la familia plays in our students’ worlds. I anticipated that there would be a growing disconnect between students’ and their families’ linguistic ideologies as they continued with the program. Noche de Familia was a weeklong project that showcased the second unit of our curriculum, Language in the Family. This unit shepherded students through personal critical reflection on the role of languages in their lives and how language connected to their identity formation. As part of the unit, students carried out both a linguistic autobiography and a linguistic oral history with a family member. At the end of each project, the scholars presented their analysis, findings, and reflections informally to their peers; these works embodied their linguistic empowerment. Through Noche de Familia we wanted to provide a familiar yet formal venue where students could share their projects with their families in the linguistic variety of their choosing.

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Noche de Familia was a necessary space for the students, for their families, and for us. We needed to honor our scholars’ voices and skills as well as to recognize that our work did not begin or end in the classroom. At the same time, we needed to offer parents a space and opportunity para entender y ver lo que les estábamos enseñando a sus hijos. Given our students’ demographics, we understood that hosting a family event meant reaching out to families who had traditionally been marginalized by American schools. Research shows that a commonly held myth about the Latinx family is that parents do not care about their children’s education; this myth is used to explain why Latinx parents are underrepresented in schoolsanctioned forms of involvement (e.g., school committees, parent-teacher conferences, back-to-school night). Scholars who have challenged this myth argue that such parents in fact are involved and care deeply about their children’s education (Villenas & Deyhle 1999; Zarate 2007); however, schools do not acknowledge or value the ways in which Latinx parents participate in their children’s education. By failing to acknowledge this social–cultural disconnect, schools notoriously fail to engage Latinx parents in meaningful ways. Cognizant that Latinx families are marginalized and even excluded from participating in school-sanctioned events, Audrey and I took several steps to ensure that our students’ parents felt as if they were among family at Noche de Familia. It was typical for our students’ parents to work two jobs; thus, we wanted to give them ample time to adjust their schedules in order to attend. Roughly a month in advance, we started sending double-sided Spanish/English flyers home with students and asked them to invite their parents to the event. In the middle of the flyer was a large image of a family fiesta in the plaza of a Latin American pueblo, centered on a backdrop of crops at sunset. In the flyer we invited parents to attend Noche de la Familia, informing them that their children would present on a research project that they had developed in SKILLS. In addition to the date, time, and location, we also specified that snacks would be provided (Figure 8.1). But a flyer alone is not an effective way to reach out to marginalized communities because it is impersonal; it is informing them, not inviting them.We therefore asked students to provide us with their parents’ names and telephone numbers as well as an appropriate time to call. I started contacting parents two weeks prior to the event. When parents first answered the phone, they were rather nervous that their children’s maestra was calling them at home. For this reason, I started off by felicitándolos como padres por los logros de su hija/hijo. Overall, they were very happy to hear positive comments about their children. One mother in particular responded con lágrimas de alegría. She told me that she knew her daughter, who had been accepted to the University of California, Berkeley, was an exceptional child. This mother recognized todas las ganas que su hija le metía a la escuela, yet she had never received a phone call from any of her teachers confirming what she saw in her daughter’s commitment. Me agradeció por haberle llamado y dado esa alegría. I was touched by the parents’ dedication to be presentes. Some who worked two jobs attempted to rearrange their schedules so they could be there aunque

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FIGURE 8.1

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Spanish-language version of the bilingual flyer inviting parents to attend Noche de Familia. (Names have been blurred for confidentiality purposes.)

nada más fuera por media hora. Others could not get out of work pero mandaron a la tía o al hermano mayor en su lugar. It was inspiring to see how enthusiastic these families were about being presentes when they were engaged in ways that culturally resonated with them. The event was a commitment for the students as well. Like their parents, these students were extremely busy: Some were deeply involved in extracurricular activities and others held after-school and weekend jobs to help support their families. They too struggled to change their schedules or to find someone

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to substitute for them at work. In the end, only three of the fifteen students who readied their presentations were unable to participate in Noche de Familia. Overall twenty-three family members attended the event, the majority of whom (seventeen) were adults; two older siblings also attended en representación de su familia. Although parents were notified that childcare would be available during the event, they did not make use of it because their younger children also wanted to witness their big sisters’ and brothers’ presentations. The SKILLS team made every effort to ensure that the event was welcoming in other ways as well. As the families entered the school’s library where the event was to take place, recordings of rancheras, cumbias, and mariachi played in the background. The library was decorated with colorful papel picado y adornos mexicanos. Family members registered at a table filled with dulces mexicanos. Another table nearby covered in manteles displayed botanas including pan dulce, turkey wraps, chips, and homemade salsa. The families and SKILLS team members mingled for a few minutes before the event started. Nos aseguramos de tomar tiempo para saludar a los padres y invitarlos a que comieran. The Noche de Familia event was primarily held in Spanish and interpreted into English by the presenters; individual interpreters (UCSB undergraduates) were also available, although no one requested this service. An undergraduate research assistant recorded the entire event on video, focusing on the students and later their families, who provided impromptu feedback on their children’s presentations. All of the families granted consent to use their recorded data for research purposes. Following an English-language introduction by Ms. Rose, Audrey and I hosted the event. I served as the master of ceremonies and mainly communicated in Spanish, while Audrey mostly spoke in English. We started by welcoming the families to the event and thanking them for being presentes. We briefly informed them about the mission of SKILLS and how the program operated and later introduced the range of projects that they were about to see. Overall, twelve scholars presented their work, with their delivery lasting from four to six minutes each. Seven shared their linguistic autobiographies and five focused on their oral history projects. Three students communicated in English and one in Spanglish; the rest opted for Spanish. Audrey and I had hoped that more scholars would present their oral history projects, since the majority of them had interviewed their parents. We felt the event would provide an excellent opportunity for students to honor the challenges and accomplishments that their parents had made para poder brindarles mejores oportunidades en los Estados Unidos. However, a number of scholars expressed hesitancy, noting that their parents would not feel comfortable having sensitive information shared in class that could reveal their own legal status or that of a family member.This situation was an important reminder of the problems of trust and risk that many Latinx parents face in school spaces. After the scholars’ presentations, the parents were given an opportunity to share their feedback regarding their children’s projects o algo que tuvieran presente

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en el corazón. Seven parents spoke, two of whom were husband and wife; all of the parents’ feedback was in Spanish. Their responses fell into three main themes. First, while parents expressed linguistic appreciation of students’ Spanish maintenance efforts and the SKILLS program, they showed less regard for their children’s diverse linguistic talents and their English development. Second, parents alluded to a communicative divide that they experienced in U.S. society, and they underscored the need for language brokers in day-to-day community spaces such as schools and restaurants (Orellana 2009). Finally, parents expressed deficit perspectives toward their children’s use of Spanglish as well as toward Spanish varieties that they considered to be underdeveloped. With respect to the first theme, parents congratulated students for their Spanish maintenance efforts and emphasized their community’s need for more Spanish speakers. For example, Reyna’s mother disclosed her orgullo in her daughter’s ability to learn not one but two Spanish varieties. She commented that because her husband was of Mexican descent and she herself was of Guatemalan descent, Reyna had to learn doble español. Parents also recognized students’ efforts to continue developing their Spanish by taking classes at school. In support of her daughter and other students, Elisa’s mother said, “Les agradezco a todos los muchachos que están aprendiendo el español para que puedan comunicarse también en español” (‘I want to thank all of the kids who are learning Spanish so that they can communicate in Spanish too’). Naila’s mother stated that she encouraged her daughter to continue learning Spanish because a lot of people have a need for her linguistic talents. She quoted herself telling Naila, “Síguele así con el español para que ayudes a las personas” (‘Continue on this path with your Spanish so that you can help people’). This concept of linguistic stewardship was also distinguishable in the scholars’ presentations. As discussed in detail in Audrey’s chapter (Lopez, this volume), several of the students in SKILLS participated in an after-school program at the high school in which they used their linguistic competencies to provide interpreting and translating assistance in institutional spaces such as schools. Through their presentations, these students communicated to their families the varied services that they provided to community members by drawing on their linguistic talents. Also in relation to the theme of language maintenance, family members voiced their gratitude to the SKILLS program for promoting Spanish appreciation and for encouraging students to maintain their cultural and linguistic roots. Isabel’s mother summed up the purpose of SKILLS as follows: Uds. están haciendo lo posible para que se conserve el español, y es bueno, es bueno. Porque muchos de los muchachos saben español y les da vergüenza.Yo no sé por qué les da vergüenza, si el español es muy bonito. ‘You’re all [i.e., the SKILLS team] doing what’s possible to conserve Spanish, and that’s good, it’s good. Because a lot of the youth know Spanish but they’re ashamed of it. I don’t know why they’re ashamed of it, if Spanish is very beautiful’.

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Parents’ responses further revealed that they associated Spanish maintenance with cultural maintenance. For example, Reyna’s father remarked, “Qué bueno que no han perdido sus raíces cada uno de ustedes señoritas y jóvenes que han pasado” (‘It’s good that each one of you ladies and gentlemen that have gone forth [and presented] have not forgotten your roots’). Although parents expressed an appreciation for their children’s Spanish abilities and maintenance, they did not recognize their bilingual and multilingual talents. Students presented in English, Spanish, and Spanglish, and some stated interest in other languages as well, such as French and Japanese.Yet parents’ linguistic praise solely focused on Spanish. For example, Naila’s father said, “Yo le quiero agradecer a ella [Naila], y no sólo a ella. Estoy viendo las presentaciones de todos los demás. Están muy bien hechas, qué bueno, y qué bueno que les guste el español” (‘I want to thank her [Naila], and not only her. I’m also seeing the presentations of all the other [students]. They’re really well done, it’s good, and it’s really good that you all like Spanish’). This appreciative comment overlooks the fact that not all students shared their work in Spanish. This praise for and focus on Spanish may appear dismissive of the work and linguistic talents of the students who exhibited their skills in other varieties. I would argue, however, that we are most capable of hearing and recognizing words that are familiar to us or make sense in our worlds. It is unclear whether parents’ lack of explicit acknowledgment of the broader linguistic talents of their children was due to their own Spanish dominance and self-announced limited English abilities. It is likely that parents solely expressed appreciation for students’ Spanish presentations because those were mainly the ones they comprehended. In association with the second theme, immigrants’ linguistic difficulties, parents shared their struggles as Spanish speakers navigating an English-dominant society and simultaneously highlighted the importance of language brokers in their community.Through these stories, parents not only addressed the communicative divide that existed in their social worlds but also indicated their own linguistic expectations. Such ideologies are evident in a narrative of habitual personal experience told by Naila’s mother: A mí me ha pasado, muchos lados que voy y a veces- veces por el miedo, por los nervios de no hablar inglés, porque luego a veces no sé cómo decir las palabras, les pregunto, “¿Hablan español?” “No.”Y son personas mexicanas y siempre me han dicho que no hablan español y uno se siente mal porque- porque no sabe cómo comunicarse con ellos. Mejor agarro y me voy porque, pues, no sé cómo- cómo pedirle las cosas en inglés. ‘It’s happened to me, in a lot of places that I go to, sometimes- sometimes due to the fear and the nerves of not speaking English, because sometimes I don’t know how to say the words, I ask them, “Do you all speak Spanish?” “No.” And they’re Mexican people (i.e., people of Mexican descent). And they’ve always told me that they don’t speak Spanish. And one feels bad, because- because one doesn’t know how to communicate with them.

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I get up and leave, because, well, I don’t know how- how to ask for things in English’. This mother’s narrative reflects a linguistic expectation toward employees in shops and other public settings who appear to be of Mexican descent and therefore to have the capacity to communicate with her in Spanish. Other parents described similar experiences of a communicative divide; these comments revealed that parents expected individuals who looked Latinx to be able to speak Spanish.Yet such an expectation was not realistic, particularly in a state such as California that had taken political and legal steps to strictly limit the use of all languages other than English. Losing one’s Spanish was not a choice; students had to struggle to keep their home language, to speak it, to validate it. However, not many parents were aware of the amount of energy and commitment it took to maintain and develop a language that had been banned in most educational settings. Parents’ ideological expectations revealed the importance of extending our conversations within the SKILLS program beyond the classroom and into students’ homes. These expectations applied not only to store clerks but also to the students themselves. Some parents shared stories about facing a communicative divide in their own homes as a result of children’s varying linguistic capacities. For example, Elisa’s mother, after congratulating the students for their efforts to develop their Spanish, commented that her children other than Elisa did not speak Spanish well: Y bueno, a mí me ha pasado porque mis hijos, los demás hablan español no bien, así también corto.Y pues les digo una palabra, y “¿Qué quiere decir eso, qué pasa con eso, y por qué?” Hacen demasiadas preguntas. ‘And, well, this has happened to me, because my other children don’t speak Spanish well, it’s short too. And, well, I say a word to them, and “What does that mean, how does that happen, and why?” They ask too many questions’. In sharing her experience of the communicative divide in her own home, Elisa’s mother negatively characterized the Spanish of her other children as (no bien ‘not well’; corto ‘short’). These descriptions are common perceptions of so-called pocho Spanish, which is widely devalued in Spanish-speaking communities and equated with language loss.These parents’ verbalized deficit perspectives toward their children’s linguistic talents lead us to the final theme in the data. In the third theme, parents’ valorization of Spanish at times led them to express language ideologies that resulted in the devaluing of young people’s language competencies. One parent in particular, Isabel’s mother, vocally undervalued her daughter’s Spanglish, depicting it instead as mocho (‘choppy’) Spanish. During the SKILLS class Isabel drew strength from Anzaldúa’s concept of linguistic pride and legitimization to embrace the truth that her Spanglish was not a mistake. Once she learned that the meshing of two linguistic worlds was a skill and not a

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reflection of incompetency, she refused to return to a state of apology and shame. During Noche de Familia Isabel was more than ready to display her pride in her Spanglish. Isabel began her presentation by noting that she focuses on “mi vida de mi autobiography de linguistics y lo voy hacer en inglés y español. Spanglish” (‘my life of my linguistic autobiography, and I’m going to do it in English and Spanish. Spanglish’). Isabel’s dynamic linguistic performance was beautiful, powerful, and fun. She exemplified that Spanglish was indeed a skill that requires its users to understand and maneuver through two cultural and linguistic worlds at once. Only listeners who also understood Spanglish had the full ability to follow her words. Due to her experiences in the SKILLS program, Isabel felt empowered to utilize a school space to exhibit her Spanglish skills before her peers and family—in fact, she was the only student who presented in Spanglish, making this act of courage and pride even more impressive. Unfortunately, however, Isabel’s demonstration was not well received by her mother, who began her comments by saying, “Ella mucho español no sabe, y lo poco que sabe es bien mocho” (‘She doesn’t know a lot of Spanish, and the little bit that she knows is choppy’). Isabel laughed and looked embarrassed, as her mother continued, pointing to two other students, “Pero admiro a ella, y a otra señorita que tomaron clases de español” (‘But I admire her, and the other young lady who took Spanish classes’). At this point another student, Reyna, who was sitting behind Isabel, placed her hand on Isabel’s back, and Isabel acknowledged Reyna’s support by smiling. Apparently unaware of how her words were affecting her daughter and her classmates, Isabel’s mother went on: Yo a ella muchas veces “Agarra español, agarra español.” Uno les dice, uno les dice. Qué bueno que las que saben más. Y sí es cierto, mientras sepan los dos idiomas tienen las puertas- se les abren más puertas.Vamos avanzando. ‘I [have told] her lots of times,“Take Spanish [classes], take Spanish.” One tells them and tells them. It’s good that the ones that know more do [take Spanish classes]. And it’s true, so long as they know both languages they’ll have the doors- more doors will open for them. We’ll continue advancing’. Isabel’s mother publicly devalued her daughter’s aptitude in English, Spanish, and Spanglish by interpreting her linguistic talents through deficit perspectives. She identified Spanglish as language loss and failed to appreciate her daughter’s creativity, linguistic flexibility, and mastery of both languages. It is likely that Isabel’s mother deprecated Spanglish in an attempt to look out for her daughter’s future in the best way she knew how—after all, she did say that students’ mastery of both English and Spanish would provide them with better life opportunities. I was taken aback by the response of Isabel’s mother, yet it embodied why we wanted Noche de Familia to take place. She reflected the growing incongruence

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between the linguistic ideologies that pervaded students’ worlds and their own changing perspectives within the SKILLS program. In that moment I knew I had to speak up. Our student was being publicly belittled by her mother for manifesting a skill that we had encouraged them to take pride in. Reyna’s hand could not be the only show of solidarity and apoyo. If I did not use that space to express the program’s position on students’ linguistic varieties I would lose my students’ respeto y confianza. After all, how could I tell them that all languages and varieties were equal and that Spanglish was not a mistake if when it was treated as one I did not take a stand? I responded with the following statement: Esa es una de (..) que tratamos de que sea unos de los grandes enfoques de la clase, es de que los estudiantes umm tengan (..) valoren (. . .) su (..) los diferentes idiomas que ellos hablan. No nada más el inglés y el español y unos que le entran al francés y al japonés, pero también la mezcla, el spanglish, la mezcla del español y el inglés, eso es una técnica también porque estás navegando dos mundos lingüísticos a la misma vez, y queremos-cuando los estudiantes empiezan- a ojalá a tener más orgullo en las diversidades que ellos hablan, que ellos tienen, les-le-le dan más ganas. So, nos da mucho gusto de eso. Gracias por reconocerlo. ‘That’s one of-(..) that we try to have as one of the main foci of this class, is for our students umm to have (..) that they value (. . .) their (..) the different languages that they speak. Not only English and Spanish, and those that are into learning French and Japanese, but also the mixture, Spanglish, the mixture of Spanish and English, that’s also a technique because you’re navigating two linguistic worlds at the same time, and we want- when the students start to- hopefully to have more pride in the diversities that they speak, that they have, they-they-they will put in more effort (to develop their abilities). So, we are very pleased with that. Thank you for recognizing it’. In my response I consciously paused to carefully choose my words. I recognized that as their children’s teacher, I would be held in high cultural regard by Latinx parents, who would trust my expertise as la maestra quien es bien educada. I also did not want to offend Isabel’s mother, who had shown courage in sharing her opinion with all those present. It is evident that we did not have the same linguistic beliefs or understanding of what SKILLS teaches, but perhaps we could have come to a shared understanding if offered a safe space to engage in that discourse. In summary, parents’ responses during the Noche de Familia event provided the SKILLS team with a peek into the linguistic ideologies that they likely expressed in their homes. Parents showed a unified appreciation toward students’ efforts to maintain their Spanish, yet students’ diverse linguistic talents were underappreciated or seen through deficit perspectives. Parents shared their own experiences with the Spanish/English communicative divide to express a need for language brokers and to underscore the importance of students’ Spanish maintenance. Through their

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stories, they voiced deficit perspectives toward both Spanglish and diverse forms of Spanish. These comments at first disappointed me, as they were starkly different from what our students embodied. But it was important for me to realize that the parents’ responses mirrored the ideologies that our students, and even I myself, had held before participating in the SKILLS program. Listening to the parents’ remarks was like listening to my own students share their stories—and it was like listening to my previous self. Through the SKILLS class our linguistic ideologies had evolved from a deficit perspective into one of empowerment and self-liberation. Before SKILLS, I had never heard the term linguistic ideology. Up until then, I had not been afforded the opportunity to discuss Spanglish or the politics of bilingualism. I was in the world but did not understand the words. Through SKILLS, my perception of the word changed drastically, simultaneously altering my position and my authoring of my world. I needed that liberation. I needed that understanding. And with it came a responsibility for sociolinguistic justice. Through reflection I realized that prior to SKILLS my linguistic ideologies were strongly influenced by the relationship between language and politics. As an immigrant from Mexico I lived in Texas, where I very quickly learned that my native tongue was bad. In English as a Second Language classes I was allowed to speak Spanish, but once I stepped into the outside world, my tongue was policed. Too many times I was told by educators only to speak in English. “If you don’t like it, go back to your country,” teachers would often tell me, a message that was likewise echoed by my classmates. My lengua was unpatriotic and heard as mere noise (Stoever 2010). I fought to legitimize my Spanish tongue, yet I failed to realize that through my own assimilation process I too oppressed, I too silenced, I too harmed, I too illegitimized the linguistic assets of others. Just as I was looked down upon for my “bastard” tongue, I looked down on other Latinxs who for numerous personal and institutional reasons did not develop their fluency in Spanish or who spoke Spanglish. I had a deeply rooted social understanding of my own political position but I was not aware of how I policed and injured others. Oppressed people oppress people. When Audrey and I were planning our SKILLS curriculum, she proposed that we discuss bilingualism and Spanglish. I remember the look of disbelief on her face when I shared my deficit perspective toward Spanglish. Audrey tried to explain to me that contrary to my beliefs, Spanglish reflected not a lack of skill but rather a multitude of skills. She explained to me that Spanglish speakers’ codeswitching underscores complex mastery of two social–cultural and linguistic worlds (Zentella 1997). I realized then that we need both because we are both (Anzaldúa 1987). Through this teachable moment I began to reflect critically on my experiences, but Audrey’s words were not yet mine. We decided that she should take the lead in teaching our students about bilingualism and Spanglish and I would take a seat and learn from her. Our students, like myself, saw Spanglish as a deficit. The

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next sessions consisted of painful reflection for all of us, students and instructors alike. We were living critical pedagogy, we were constantly naming the world, reflecting critically on it, and then acting in new ways.We were reconceptualizing what we had previously learned and attempting to purge these old perspectives. We read Anzaldúa, who calls us to take pride in our many tongues and linguistic capabilities, all of which are additive. And gradually, I started to witness a transformation in our students, as I did in myself. We were no longer apologizing for our Spanglish; we were no longer hearing it as noise. Through SKILLS I reflected on and altered my own linguistic ideologies and identity, a journey that I traveled along with my students. At times those reflections were difficult, but they were needed. I know how powerful SKILLS is because it helped me take back all of my tongues and also to recognize how I was contributing to the problem. By picking and choosing which linguistic varieties hold value, we silence their users and impede sociolinguistic justice. Over the course of many weeks, I witnessed our students’ struggle to own their Spanglish, their Spanish, their Chicanx English, their receptive bilingualism. Students began to author and position themselves differently within their worlds. During Noche de Familia, Isabel felt empowered to display her skills and legitimize Spanglish. And although her presentation was not well received by her mother, Isabel did not revert to a place of shame. During SKILLS Day at UCSB the following month, she used her presentation to educate a professional audience about the assets of Spanglish. She powerfully asserted, “Spanglish is a skill, not a mistake.” Isabel also revealed her previous deficit perspectives and how they affected the way she thought about herself: “I always thought that Spanglish was a mistake because I either couldn’t speak English right or couldn’t speak Spanish right so I mix the two together. I just thought I was dumb. ‘I don’t know anything.’ ” She continued by saying that through SKILLS she learned that far from being a linguistic deficit, Spanglish requires command of both English and Spanish. Isabel’s testimony underscores how intertwined our language ideologies are with our identities, and her experience reveals that spaces that allow for self-reflexivity can have transformative effects. Isabel concluded her group’s presentation by stating that no one knows a language to a full extent, not even those that earn an MA, because language evolves and we keep learning it every day. We would like to challenge you all to start paying attention to all these languages and give appreciation to those that speak them. Not only did Isabel proudly take ownership of her Spanglish and see it for the skill that it is, but along with her group, she challenged the audience to notice and appreciate the linguistic abilities of others. Like Isabel, many of our students had transformational moments reflective of their own linguistic liberation. As Audrey describes in her chapter (Lopez, this

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volume), Elisa made local history when she delivered her commencement speech in Spanish. Although she faced resistance, Elisa fought so that a language other than English had a place of power and value in an official event. Unfortunately, not all students reached a similar state of empowerment. For example, Camila was a receptive bilingual who struggled to view her linguistic ability as a skill. Because of her physical appearance, others assumed that Camila spoke Spanish, but she did not. She was socially conditioned to feel shame for not speaking Spanish. The SKILLS team attempted to help her see her receptive bilingualism for the skill that it was. It was painful to watch her struggle to take pride in the linguistic abilities that society had repeatedly told her were worthless.Through Camila’s journey I was painfully reminded of the many people that I myself had silenced with a dirty look. Camila showed us that five months clearly is not enough time to help students rewrite their worlds. But just because we cannot finish important work does not mean we do not have a need and responsibility to help start it. Looking back, as instructors Audrey and I could have better used the space of the Noche de Familia event to express appreciation for our students’ linguistic talents. We should not have assumed that our students’ linguistic diversity would be understood or heard. Instead we could have encouraged these scholars to include teachable moments in their presentations in order to give parents the opportunity to reconsider their linguistic ideologies. For example, we could have facilitated a conversation around bilingualism (including receptive bilingualism) and Spanglish and how our conceptualization of these abilities evolved throughout the SKILLS program. These notions were explicitly included in students’ SKILLS Day presentations, because not for one second did we assume that an Englishdominant professional audience would naturally comprehend the complexities under which Latinx language operates. Yet we failed to anticipate that our students’ parents would mirror the ideologies we ourselves previously held, and unless given the opportunity to think of language differently, they would use the lenses they brought with them to interpret our students’ work. In sum, Noche de Familia started a necessary conversation that remains unfinished. As educators we must continue to consider creative and practical ways to involve students’ families and address their many worlds. Our experiences have shown both that changes are possible and that we have more work to do to reduce the incongruences that students face in the many worlds that they navigate. Vamos avanzando.

Note 1 California’s Proposition 227 outlawed nearly all bilingual education in favor of Englishonly instruction (Crawford 1998). In November 2016, Proposition 227 was overturned with the passage of Proposition 58.

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References Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Aparicio, Frances R. 1998. Whose Spanish, whose language, whose power?: An ethnographic inquiry into differential bilingualism. Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures 12: 107–135. Carruba-Rogel, Zuleyma. 2016. Para que sepan que sabemos: Latin@ parents projecting concientización through the activation and negotiation of their mediational tools. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, Gevirtz Graduate School of Education. Crawford, James. 1998. Language politics in the U.S.A.:The paradox of bilingual education. Social Justice 25(3): 50–69. Freire, Paulo. 1983. The importance of the act of reading. Journal of Education 165(1): 5–11. Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. 1988. Literary wetback. Massachusetts Review 29(2): 242–246. Lee, Jin Sook, and Mary Bucholtz. 2015. Language socialization across learning spaces. In Numa Markee (ed.), Handbook of classroom discourse and interaction. Malden, MA: WileyBlackwell. 319–336. Orellana, Marjorie F. 2009. Translating childhoods: Immigrant youth, language and culture. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Stoever, Jennifer Lynn. 2010. The noise of SB1070 or do I sound illegal to you? Sounding Out! Sound Studies Blog. August 19. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2010/08/19/ the-noise-of-sb-1070/ Villenas, Sofia, and Donna Deyhle. 1999. Critical race theory and ethnographies challenging the stereotypes: Latino families, schooling, resilience and resistance. Curriculum Inquiry 29(4): 413–445. Zarate, Maria Estela. 2007. Understanding Latino parental involvement in education: Perceptions, expectations, and recommendations. Los Angeles: Tomás Rivera Policy Institute. Zentella, Ana C. 1997. Growing up bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York. Malden, MA: Basil Blackwell. Zentella, Ana, C. 2007. “Dime con quién hablas, y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (in)security and Latina/o unity. In Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (eds.), A companion to Latina/o studies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 25–39.

PART 3

Youth as Affective Agents

9 KEEPING GRANDPA’S STORIES AND GRANDMA’S RECIPES ALIVE Exploring Family Language Policy in an Academic Preparation Program Tijana Hirsch

This is a story about a journey of past reflections, present interpretations, and future relationships with language, in which I have had the privilege of accompanying a group of bilingual teenagers. As in any story of a journey, this story is about someone; it is personal. In deciding how to approach the telling of this story, I sat pondering who and what it is really about. I realized that although this is seemingly a simple question, the answer is complex, multilayered, and multidimensional: It is a story about family, immigrants, society, and language, both my own and my students’. By learning about the academic concept of family language policy (Spolsky 2004), students were afforded the time and space to explore and communicate their experiences, feelings, and desires related to language. Family language policy is the study of “explicit and overt planning in relation to language use within the home among family members” (King, Fogle, & Logan-Terry 2008: 907).The family domain is viewed as instrumental or “critical” in language learning and maintenance efforts (Spolsky 2012). The topic of family language policy gave students a way to tell their story of coming face to face with how language affected and was affected by their lives, how they saw its presence or loss, and how the larger societal discourse about language, power, and race/ethnicity spoke through their experiences and plans for the future. For many of these students, their family language policies were initially chosen and implemented by parents, grandparents, and other family members in their homes. Through explorations of their own family language policies, students often came to plans of action to produce change around language in their families, both present and future. In telling the story of our journey about language(s) in our lives, I start with a reflection of my own experiences with language(s), because the sharing of our journeys with

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one another shaped the ways in which my students and I were able to reflect on and interpret our own experiences as well as those of others. *** In 2013, my first year back in the United States and my first year back in school after many years away, I was fortunate to come across a team of professors who recognized my passion for unpacking the social realities embodied in language. I am passionate about candid discussions of social experiences of and with language(s). I was selected as one of five graduate teaching fellows for the interdisciplinary SKILLS project, which allowed me the opportunity to exercise this commitment with a group of seniors in a local high school, San Gilberto High School (a pseudonym), along with a team of three undergraduate students at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I knew that I was very fortunate to have this opportunity, but I realized through my time with the SKILLS students that they were fortunate as well, not necessarily to take a class with me (although I hope that they found it beneficial), but to be provided the time and space to think about and unpack their own experiences with, feelings toward, and hopes for language(s) in their lives. Despite the fact that in an immigrant, multicultural, multilingual country such as the United States, language is a fundamental part of every individual’s experience and reality, youth rarely find space or time in formal educational settings to reflect on language(s) in this way. As a graduate teaching fellow in the SKILLS program, I had a team of three undergraduate students to assist me in the class, two as student mentors and one as a research assistant who video-recorded classroom activities and took field notes. All three undergraduates came from different departments: Linguistics, Global Studies, and Psychology, providing the students with a unique opportunity to learn about different areas of study through their interaction with the undergraduate students. For about five and a half months, my team and I entered the classroom and shared ninety minutes each week with about thirty high school seniors in San Gilberto High School’s AVID (Achievement Via Individual Determination) program, which supported students traditionally underrepresented in higher education in reaching educational and professional goals, from high school graduation to college and careers.While the two largest groups at the school were Latinxs and whites, this classroom was majority-Latinx and had no white students. This particular group of students consisted of four male and twenty-six female students who had been together in the same AVID class with the same teacher for all four years of high school.This gender asymmetry was not unusual in AVID classes, given the particular obstacles facing Latinos versus Latinas in pursuing higher education (see Saenz & Ponjuan 2009). The students were like a family: They knew each other well, they were mostly supportive of one another, if not always in agreement—but day in and day out they shared their lives together. Twenty-eight of the thirty students were bilingual in Spanish and English, according to the linguistic definition of bilingualism

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as alternation between two languages (Romaine 1995), although some did not consider themselves to be so (I say more about this later). One student was bidialectal in “standard” English and African American English, and one was trilingual in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese. Twenty-eight students were Latinx, all but one was first-generation or second-generation immigrants in the United States, most were first-born, and all were the first in their families to apply to college. Although the class was structured like a family, AVID focuses on the individual, and through our time together I increasingly recognized this aspect of the class as our students disappeared and appeared for weeks at a time due to other obligations in their quest for “individual determination.” In telling this story, I am my own main research tool, desperately trying to balance my insider and outsider perspectives as well as awareness, empathy, and distance (Bhatti 2012; Eisner 1991) in order to arrive at the truth as I see it. I should therefore share a bit about myself and my approach to my task as a graduate teaching fellow, which may explain my decision to introduce my students to the concept of family language policy. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, followed by other roles or categories I see myself fitting into, such as an immigrant, a scholar, a teacher, a student. I gave birth to my first child in Israel, outside of an English-speaking context, and I consciously instigated a family language policy that included the English language, due to its usefulness and status in the world, over my own heritage language—a language that no longer exists in the form in which I still refer to it: SerboCroatian. I deliberately chose a language that would better benefit my child in both the short and long terms, with regard to the number of speakers worldwide who would be able to understand him, as well as the educational and career opportunities he would have in the future if he spoke it fluently. Serbo-Croatian did not stand a chance; it was not a fair contest. My son is now fluent in English and Hebrew. I am very proud that one aspect of his heritage is maintained. I have had a second child since then, this time within the English-speaking context of the United States, and due to the choices I made with my first-born, the choices for my second son were affected, if not already made. Because my first-born is not fluent in Serbo-Croatian, I once again chose to let it go, settling for teaching both of my sons several songs, some basic phrases, words, and endearment terms that come out naturally for me only in Serbo-Croatian. My choices were and are deliberate and strategic. With absolutely no prospect of my family ever living in any part of former Yugoslavia, the choice was clear yet also sad. It is unfortunate that sayings and jokes that my mother and I share will not be understood by my children, at least not entirely; nuances in meanings truly are lost in translation. Based on my own language journey, I became interested in the field of family language policy, specifically family-negotiated language policies within the home domain. I am also fascinated by Joshua Fishman’s (1966) classic three-generation model of language shift, as explained and dictated by fluency and use. In this model, which describes my lived experience, the first generation is dominant

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in the heritage language and must learn the majority language, the second generation is fluent in the societally dominant language but still uses the heritage language (albeit to a different degree), and the third generation is largely monolingual in the majority language (i.e., English in the United States). Fishman’s model interests me because juxtaposed against my experience of lacking community members who spoke Serbo-Croatian (which contributed greatly to its loss in my home), I see in California a large community of Spanish speakers who still experience language loss and abandonment at an accelerated rate compared to what Fishman’s model describes: Within two generations and in some cases within a single generation, Latinxs in the United States are becoming monolingual English speakers (Parada 2013). Knowing how valuable and personal one’s heritage language is, as well as how painful it is to experience language loss, I am left questioning what kinds of messages, policies, or ideologies are encountered by the Latinx community, such that not even the power of numbers, with respect to the community within the United States as well as speakers around the world, is able to deflect its loss. In combining my identity positioning and my scholarly interests with the social reality of California and the United States more generally—the persistent, rapid, and seemingly inevitable tendency toward linguistic assimilation and English monolingualism, which has been written about for over forty years (Lieberson, Dalto, & Johnston 1975)—it is not surprising that I brought this focus to the SKILLS classroom and was able to connect with my students’ experiences on a very personal level. The most influential social context of a person’s life is the family, and specifically caregivers and siblings (Toman 1961), followed by peers (De Houwer 1999). I saw SKILLS as an exciting opportunity to create a space within which first-generation and second-generation immigrant youth could explore their language histories, their current linguistic realities, and their hopes for the future, with a particular focus on the family. Today’s youth are the future of their heritage languages and will determine whether these languages will face survival or generational and familial linguicide (Crystal 2000). To be clear, I am in no way saying that my agenda was to encourage my students to maintain their heritage languages. That was neither my goal nor the goal of the SKILLS program. Instead I wanted to guide them in exploring ideas and concepts related to language, power, and race in a truly supportive space, so that they could make an informed and deliberate decision about language in their own and their families’ lives, with full knowledge of the realities of language shift (see also Bucholtz et al. 2014). My time with the SKILLS students was limited. In hopes of sparking their interest in and awareness of language, I asked them to start their explorations on language by writing their linguistic autobiographies. Biographical narratives such as linguistic autobiographies help narrators make sense of personal experiences (Kramsch & Lam 1999; O’Brien 1990), contribute to their sense of who they are (Schiffrin 1996), and even shape who they become (Bruner 1987). But such narratives are shaped and represented in ways that are dependent upon the

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audience (O’Brien 1990), so it was important that I approach the beginning of this discovery process with as little pressure or audience influence as possible. After discussing the meaning of the two key terms, linguistic and autobiography, I let the students know that submission of their work to me was voluntary and, if they preferred, could be kept anonymous. The result was submission of linguistic autobiographies by eighteen of the twenty-seven students present in class that day, with roughly half of the eighteen submitted anonymously. I also briefly shared my own linguistic autobiography after being asked about my linguistic background by one of the students. As I read the autobiographies that had been shared with me, I conducted a preliminary inductive analysis using methods of textual content analysis as well as narrative analysis, with the goal of uncovering “the underlying thematic or rhetorical pattern running through these texts” (Huckin 2009: 14) with respect to heritage language maintenance and family language policy. At the same time, I maintained awareness of the co-construction of the narratives as formed between the narrators (the students) and the audience (myself) as well as the larger sociohistorical perspectives and experiences being communicated in these autobiographical accounts. The co-construction I am referring to was not active; I did not comment on the students’ autobiographies or shape them directly in any way. I was, however, present and I was the one who had asked them to write their stories, hence introducing myself as the audience. Three aspects of the narratives struck me. First, all the students, regardless of their self-declared strength in or comfort with particular languages, chose to write their linguistic autobiographies in English. Presumably in part this was because I was the audience—although I am multilingual, I do not speak Spanish—and in part it was because of the school setting; no matter how much the SKILLS program tries to frame itself as different from traditional school, it remains an institutional educational context (see also Bax and Ferrada, this volume). Sociohistorically, it may have been ingrained in my students’ minds that to communicate with the world outside their homes and local communities, they were “obviously” expected to use English. Although we brought languages, and not simply language in the singular, into the foreground during our time together, I had not offered the option for my students to write their autobiographies in a language other than English, and they did not bring it up. I am assuming that they had not even considered it. Second, although I approached the reading of the autobiographies inductively, I expected to find a group of students who identified as bilingual (or trilingual in the case of the student who spoke Vietnamese as well as English and Spanish), but what I found from my students’ collective telling of their personal experiences with languages in their lives was that they had learned that they had to choose a single language identity. All twenty-eight of the bilingual Latinx students identified as either English-dominant, reporting loss of the heritage language and the occurrence of language shift, or Spanish-dominant, reporting stress and anxiety

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with the use of the English language. Although the purpose of this exercise was not to evaluate my students’ bilingualism, I can say that at least those who identified as Spanish-dominant were indeed very much bilingual, relating their linguistic autobiographies clearly and effectively to me, the audience, in what they identified as their “weaker” tongue, English. I have a hunch that, at least in some cases, the same is true in the opposite direction. As Ana Celia Zentella (2007) has pointed out, given the politics of race, class, and language in the United States, such linguistic insecurity is widespread among Latinxs regardless of their actual language abilities. Third, the ideas that contributed to the division of my Latinx students into English-dominant and Spanish-dominant groups were identified by the students themselves. Although both the English-dominant and the Spanish-dominant groups mentioned the home and the family, as well as larger sociopolitical issues such as race, ethnicity, and culture, for those who identified as English-dominant, loss was a primary theme, while for those who identified as Spanish-dominant, greater emphasis was placed on sociopolitical experiences.This distinction is illustrated in the following examples. Those who self-identified as English-dominant focused on the change in heritage language use within the family domain and across time, some communicating this loss matter-of-factly, others expressing sorrow over the loss in varying degrees. (Narratives appear in their original form, without editing. I have added boldface to show each student’s key references to the home and family and/or to the larger society outside of the home.) The conversations that make me most uncomfortable is when I am speaking to someone who only understands and speaks Spanish, because I will get stuck on my words or I don’t know how to say certain words or I don’t know how to say to certain word or phrase and it will make it harder for me to communicate with them. When I was little I knew how to speak Spanish CA but then as I grew up my parents didn’t enforce me to always speak it so my Spanish disappeared. I do wish my parents enforced me to speak Spanish because I want to feel comfortable speaking to Spanish people or even to my grandma. On the other hand, those who identified as Spanish-dominant tended to focus more directly on larger sociopolitical concepts and issues. I am very uncomfortable speaking/communicating with anyone in my first period class. I’m uncomfortable doing so, because I don’t know who they are, they don’t know who I am, we are completely different ethnicities & I feel as if they are more superior than I am because they have a different more educated form of communicating. I speak English when I’m at school or with people who speak English to me. I speak Spanish with my

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parents & family. Not only with them but if I go to a store & see that the person ringing me up speaks Spanish I speak Spanish with them. Although extremely eloquent in her “weaker” tongue, this student seems to feel intimidated by her (presumably white) classmates and ties this intimidation to their language and race/ethnicity, emphasizing the difference between herself and others: “we are completely different ethnicities.” She ties language to race/ethnicity and feelings of inferiority and even touches on labor divisions as she sees them. Although she could have mentioned any profession, she specifically brings up a store clerk as someone she thinks of as being Spanish-speaking (see also Zarate, this volume, on Spanish speakers in the workplace). Through these narratives my undergraduate team members and I learned of young people’s interpretations of the sociopolitical climate in which languagerelated struggle was (and still is) present and brewing among Latinx youth in this community, depending on their degree of self-perceived fluency. Both the self-described English-dominant and Spanish-dominant groups clearly identified the three domains found in previous research to be most influential in the lives of youth—home and family, peers, and school—placing the experiences of Spanish language maintenance or loss within the family and English language acquisition and experiences within the school context. Yet as the above examples demonstrate, even within this small group of Latinx bilingual youth, a gulf emerged based on self-perceived language proficiencies. The space, time, politics, and histories in which narratives are produced are represented within and in turn shape the stories that are told (Denzin 1989; Linde 1993; Pavlenko 2001, 2007). The two groups that emerged in these narratives are thus not accidental; they encapsulate the social constructions, the discourses, circulating within Latinx communities in the United States regarding Spanish and bilingualism (Aparicio 1998). The pull of heritage language maintenance on the one hand and the push toward English language proficiency on the other is experienced and articulated both by the individual and the community—the simultaneous push and pull between the roots and the leaves, so to speak, if we think of immigrant communities in metaphorical terms as growing plants that are rooted in a shared heritage even as they branch out into new spaces. After engaging with our linguistic autobiographies, the students and I turned to discussions of language, power, and race while exploring the intertwined processes of research inquiry and critical reflection. The undergraduates and I guided the students in developing their own projects focused on family language policy and planning by investigating the language policies implemented by their caregivers in the past and the change in and negotiation of these policies in their families over time. Then they reflected on what their family language policy was at the time of their research before moving on to the future and planning their own family language policies that they hoped to implement once it was their turn to do so. We were on the road to discovery of how the languages in their lives lived

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and how in some cases these languages went to sleep, at least in some families (cf. Leonard 2008). In order to guide their explorations, I asked the students to think about each of the following questions: • • • •

whether they speak one language with one person and another language with another person within their homes or families; whether they are asked to respond to family members in a certain language or whether such expectations exist without being explicitly stated; how language use had changed in their lives and what could have contributed to that change; and who the active participants were in the formation of their family language policy and how each family member’s role in this process changed over time.

As a part of the final reflective stage of the research process, each student identified what was most important to them regarding the languages in their present and future lives in the form of a thematic statement, a motto. After sharing their statements with one another, they formed eight groups based on thematic similarities across their statements, with three to five students in each group. The students spent the remainder of their journey in SKILLS working together in their thematic groups and negotiating final group statements to share with the world, quite literally, both through poster presentations during the SKILLS Day event at the UC Santa Barbara campus at the end of the program and on the SKILLS website (www.skills.ucsb.edu). Although the students’ journey up until that point had been very personal, moving from linguistic autobiographies to current family language policies in their homes, the group negotiation of the final statements was collective and thus was symbolic of their future families and the negotiations that would potentially take place in instigating a language policy within those families. Just as family members often explicitly negotiate before a policy is implemented, only to renegotiate again at a later date, these statements had to be agreed upon by all of the group participants. However, the students’ individual voices were maintained by creating a set of posters around each group’s theme; that is, each poster displayed the group’s message together with each individual group member’s statement. Across the eight groups, four broad themes emerged: heritage language maintenance, intergenerational communication, bilingual and multilingual language development, and the love of all languages. Table 9.1 presents the eight group statements according to these general themes. I interpret the statements within the first two thematic groups—heritage language maintenance and intergenerational communication—as assuming a personal stance: Students explicitly state what they want or do not want. The rest of the groups take on a more guarded position, addressing broader trends somewhat less boldly. It is probably my familiarity with the writers of the group statements that led me to read two different sources of affect in them, knowing details such

Grandpa’s Stories and Grandma’s Recipes  177 TABLE 9.1  General themes and group statements in the family language policy project

General theme

Group statements

Heritage language maintenance

“Our mission for our kids is to make them understand that the color of their skin is a map of their history, and that on this map is its own culture and language.” “We want to pass on our cultural language to our future generations.” “We want our kids to communicate with their older generations in order to keep grandpa’s stories and grandma’s recipes alive.” “Communication is an important part of being a family.” “We hope being bi- and multilingual is as important for future generations as it is to us. So the value of language will always be carried on.” “We aspire for the future generations to believe that there is no language barrier. The way to start is with our own family.” “Love can be spoken in 6,912 languages & embraced by our children.” “Every language has the potential and POWER to change the world.”

Intergenerational communication Bilingual and multilingual language development Love for all languages

as the individual anecdotes behind these group statements. What I hear echoing in the background of the statements are issues of home language use, language dominance, and young people’s resulting linguistic proficiency and their interaction with the outside world. In class we discussed power in many ways, from its practical day-to-day manifestations to discursive, societal expressions on a large scale: from parents choosing the language of the home, thereby affecting children’s future knowledge and experiences, to social discourses through which superiority or inferiority of various languages is communicated, to accents and how they are perceived, to labels and their consequences. In their thematic statements, I could see some of these ideas resonating with students, based on their personal experiences. For their individual contribution to the group project, each student created a handwritten statement interpreting their group’s thematic statement in their own way; each student was then photographed holding their statement, and the resulting image was incorporated into a poster that stated the group theme.The posters for each group thus had a unified appearance and theme while also reflecting the unique perspective of each student. The handwritten statements that the students produced for their individual posters were rooted in their own experiences and narratives. I present four examples of these posters, one illustrating each theme; all four posters were created by Latina students. The theme of heritage language maintenance is taken up by an Englishdominant student in relation to her own linguistic situation; she writes, “I want

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my children to learn the SPANISH language so they can carry their heritage in a way I could not” (Figure 9.1). The resonance of personal experience is also the subtext for the theme of intergenerational communication addressed in a poster by a very quiet student who seemed to me to be English-dominant: “I hope my kids don’t forget where they came from. I would like for my children to speak Spanish to their grandparents without any barriers” (Figure 9.2).

FIGURE 9.1

An English-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of heritage language maintenance.

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FIGURE 9.2

179

An English-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of intergenerational communication.

The importance of bilingualism not only for family connection but also as a larger sociopolitical force is evident in the individual statement written by a Spanish-dominant student on the theme of bilingual and multilingual language development: “I want my kids to embrace their language (Spanish) & have their voices heard no matter where they come from” (Figure 9.3). This blending of personal and political perspectives is also found in an individual statement on the theme of the love of all languages, in which a Spanish-dominant

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FIGURE 9.3

A Spanish-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of bilingual and multilingual language development.

student writes, “I want my children to love all the languages of the world by learning to love their own. Spanish” (Figure 9.4). Each of these individual statements reflects in different ways on the discussions and negotiations around their group statements, and each was informed by individual students’ own identities and experiences. It is therefore useful to examine the group statements in more detail. I focus the following discussion on four of the group statements from Table 9.1 that most clearly exemplify how

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the differences of identification within this small group of Latinx bilingual youth are rooted in the different family language policies of their homes. Three of the statements were written by entirely Latinx groups of students, while the fourth statement was written by five students, four Latinas and the student who was bidialectal in “standard” English and African American English. I then discuss the link between family language policy, sociolinguistic justice, and SKILLS. In their statements, these youth positioned themselves as “either/or”—they were either

FIGURE 9.4

A Spanish-dominant student’s individual poster on the general theme of love of all languages.

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Spanish-dominant or English-dominant—and within their discourses and narratives we see different foci emerge. English-dominant students wrote about family ties and the loss of heritage language, while Spanish-dominant students wrote about the connections between race, culture, history, and language—which are influenced by social and political aspects but also the very personal aspects of the self that are publicly visible and audible and that set us apart from others. The first group statement I consider is the following:“Our mission for our kids is to make them understand that their color of their skin is a map of their history, and that on this map is its own culture and language.” This statement was negotiated and written by four students, three female and one male, all four of whom identified as Spanish language-dominant. All four students came from homes in which their heritage language, Spanish, was lived in as part of daily life and as a result maintained. Their statement is fueled by their experiences with the larger society. In such a short statement they manage to include some extremely complex constructs: race, history, culture, and language. They communicate through those constructs their struggles for their pride in who they are to win out over the social discourses of inferiority. They vow to instill in their children pride in that which is visible (race) and audible (language) and which embodies the history and culture of their people.When they say that they hope to bring both pride and heritage language maintenance into their future family language policies, I read this as a statement created by youth who have struggled to reconcile the differences between the home and the outside world. Although the family language policies of their homes allowed them to maintain links to their heritage and to gain a sense of pride, it also made them feel detached or isolated in other domains, where little value was placed on their heritage language and culture and the focus was instead on monolingual “standard” English. The second statement I want to discuss is “We want our kids to communicate with their older generations in order to keep grandpa’s stories and grandma’s recipes alive.” This message did not mention complex issues of race or culture explicitly. On the surface it seems simple, yet digging deeper I uncovered the reality of youth who struggled with their limited ability to connect with the “older generations,” their grandparents, due to lack of comfort with or limited proficiency in their heritage language, Spanish. The statement was negotiated and written by three female students who self-identified as English-dominant and who grew up in homes where the family language policy leaned toward the societally dominant language, English—where heritage language, though almost certainly not heritage culture, took a back seat. As I reread the above statement, its simplicity disappears and what is left is students’ longing to connect to their heritage, their culture, in its original tongue; after all, “words are the surface of culture” (Agar 1993: 79). In the students’ statement we also find embedded a commentary on the cultural structure of gender roles, at least of generations past: grandfathers tell stories, and grandmothers create culinary memories. To these students what mattered most to share with the world was not their public experiences outside

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of the home, as was the case with the previous group discussed. Rather, for these students, what was most important to highlight was their very personal and private inability to connect linguistically with people they love. The third group statement of interest is “We aspire for the future generations to believe that there is no language barrier. The way to start is with our own family.” This statement was negotiated by three Latina students. Although placid on the surface, this statement’s depth and dynamism are only uncovered by introducing background information on the authors. Two of the three students were cousins. One self-identified as Spanish-dominant, the other as English- dominant. The third student was a friend of the Spanish-dominant cousin; she too was Spanish-dominant. The cousins did not usually sit together, and I had only by chance found out that they were related (one of the other students mentioned it in passing). Their group worked on their statement in awkward silence. Upon reflection, I realized that the family they were talking about, at least partly, was the two cousins’ own family, the one they were born into and in which the power of their parents’ choices affected their current knowledge, experiences, and relationships. The barrier they were addressing was not exactly the problem of meaning negotiation, but rather the barrier to accept each other with their different linguistic orientations, the situations they were born into, the choices that were made for them, and the choices that were theirs to make. The barrier they hoped to address, it seemed to me, was that of acceptance both within their immediate family and among Latinxs on a larger scale. The fourth and final statement I want to highlight is the following: “Every language has the potential and POWER to change the world.”This statement was written by four Latinas and an African American student. The striking resonance of inclusiveness and referencing of topics we had discussed was touching to me. In their negotiations, these students had recognized, heard, accepted, and embraced the discourses of inclusion that were the focus of the SKILLS class, with both the phrase every language and the word POWER written in red and emphasized through capitalization. The power the students were referring to was both the structural power we had discussed that caused division and the agentive power they had seized in this task to include and unite across linguistic difference. As these examples indicate, the experiences of this classroom of largely Latinx students were divided, a division that was communicated both individually through their posters and narratives and in the statements negotiated within their thematic groups. Those who felt confident in the societally dominant language, English, turned inward toward the home to look for relationships in their mother tongue. Those who felt confident in their heritage language looked outward toward the larger society for recognition and acceptance of their heritage and its language. This is particularly interesting when viewed against the backdrop of Bonnie Urciuoli’s (1996: 35) discussion, over two decades ago, of “ethnically safe” spaces for Spanish language use. Not much has changed: English is found in the public sphere; Spanish is limited to the private sphere if present at all, and its use in

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nondesignated spheres results in the burden of linguistic self-surveillance, resulting in the act of “repair” toward the dominant language, English (Cashman 2002: 40). Through my journey together with the students in their process of exploration and language-related self-discovery, I realized how the SKILLS program promoted social and sociolinguistic justice. This was a journey of accompaniment (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2016; see also Mainz, this volume). My team and I provided the space, tools, time, and language for students to explore the most personal of all language issues: students’ family language realities and their interactions with the outside world, and they did so within a context that is usually and unfortunately separate from the home, namely, the school. We reconciled these different worlds and, at least for a limited period of time, infused the school space with affect by bringing students’ experiences and realities, their hopes and desires, into the foreground. With our encouragement, students used their agency to take up the opportunity to explore their opinions and experiences and to communicate their thoughts and desires about the languages in their lives through formal public presentations. Allowing them the time to explore their experiences individually and collectively and the space to share them publicly gave the students the opportunity to seize the present and plan for the future in order to keep generational connections alive, by making deliberate choices regarding the languages in their lives. The last time my students and I met was in late May 2014.They were graduating seniors and summer was upon them. Before, between, and after our classroom discussions of language, they shared with me their excitement about the upcoming prom, news of their acceptances to various universities, and their plans for the future. During that last meeting, I thanked the students for welcoming my undergraduate team and me and for sharing their stories with us. I wished them the best of luck in the future. I had learned so much from them; I hoped they had gained something through their time with me. I did not expect it, but as I was about to say my final goodbye and start packing up, a student raised her hand. I invited her to speak. She looked around and, with hand gestures that included everybody in her comment, said, “I wanted to thank you for discussing this stuff, because it’s so important, and no one ever talks about it.” She was right. It is important. For me, this moment confirmed my conviction of the importance of programs such as SKILLS and my work as a scholar—the importance of enabling multilingual/bilingual students to explore their very personal experiences with language(s) through family language policy, in order to become better equipped to make conscious and deliberate choices for the future. I had returned to school after many years away to do work that is important, needed, and wanted.Through my time with the students and my own experiences I (re)discovered two simple facts: First, parents do what they think is best for their children given the situation and information they have and second, it is never too late to (re)discover and (re) connect with our languacultures (Agar 1993).

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References Agar, Michael. 1993. Language shock: Understanding the culture of conversation. New York: William Morrow. Aparicio, Frances R. 1998. Whose Spanish, whose language, whose power? An ethnographic inquiry into differential bilingualism. Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures 12: 6–25. Bhatti, Ghazala. 2012. Ethnographic and representational styles. In James Arthur, Michael Waring, Robert Coe, and Larry V. Hedges (eds.), Research methods and methodologies in education. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 80–83. Bruner, Jerome. 1987. Life as narrative. Social Research 54(1): 11–32. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. London: Routledge. 25–44. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Chris VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Cashman, Holly R. 2002. Constructing a bilingual identity: Conversation analysis of Spanish/English language use in a television interview. Texas Linguistic Forum 44(1): 33–47. Crystal, David. 2000. Language death. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Houwer, Annick. 1999. Environmental factors in early bilingual development: The role of parental beliefs and attitudes. In Guus Extra and Ludo Verhoeven (eds.), Bilingualism and migration. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 75–96. Denzin, Norman. K. 1989. Interpretive biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Eisner, Elliot W. 1991. The enlightened eye: Qualitative inquiry and the enhancement of educational practice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fishman, Joshua. 1966. Language loyalty in the United States. The Hague: Mouton. Huckin, Thomas. 2009. Content analysis: What texts talk about. In Charles Bazerman and Paul Prior (eds.), What writing does and how it does it. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 13–32. King, Kendall A., Lyn Fogle, and Aubrey Logan-Terry. 2008. Family language policy. Language and Linguistics Compass 2: 1–16. Kramsch, Claire and Eva Lam. 1999. Textual identities: The importance of being nonnative. In George Braine (ed.), Voice and visions: Non-native educators in English language teaching. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 57–72. Leonard, Wesley Y. 2008. When is an “extinct language” not extinct? Miami, a formerly sleeping language. In Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Jia Jackie Lou, Lyn Fogle, and Barbara Soukup (eds.), Sustaining linguistic diversity: Endangered and minority languages and language varieties. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. 23–33. Lieberson, Stanley, Guy Dalto, and Mary Ellen Johnston. 1975. The course of mothertongue diversity in nations. American Journal of Sociology 81: 34–61. Linde, Charlotte. 1993. Life stories: The creation of coherence. New York: Oxford University Press. O’Brien, Tim. 1990. The things they carried. New York: Broadway Books. Parada, Maryann. 2013. Sibling variation and family language policy: The role of birth order in the Spanish proficiency and first names of second-generation Latinos. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 12(5): 299–320.

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Pavlenko, Aneta. 2001. Language learning memoirs as a gendered genre. Applied Linguistics 22(2): 213–240. Pavlenko, Aneta. 2007. Autobiographic narratives as data in applied linguistics. Applied Linguistics 28(2): 163–188. Romaine, Suzanne. 1995. Bilingualism. 2nd edition. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Saenz, Victor B., and Luis Ponjuan. 2009. The vanishing Latino male in higher education. Journal of Hispanic Higher Education 8(1): 54–89. Schiffrin, Deborah. 1996. Narrative as self-portrait: Sociolinguistic construction of identity. Language in Society 25: 167–203. Spolsky, Bernard. 2004. Language policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Spolsky, Bernard. 2012. Family language policy—the critical domain. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 33(1): 3–11. Toman, Walter. 1961. Family constellation. New York: Springer. Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Good English as symbolic capital. In Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. 107–135. Zentella, Ana Celia. 2007. “Dime con quién hablas y te diré quién eres”: Linguistic (in)security and Latino unity. In Juan Flores and Renato Rosaldo (eds.), The Blackwell companion to Latino studies. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. 25–39.

10 “WITHOUT ME, THAT WOULDN’T BE POSSIBLE” Affect in Latinx Youth Discussions of Language Brokering Audrey Lopez

Introduction Youth language brokering has been defined as the multiple practices in which children, typically of immigrant parents, use their knowledge of two or more languages and cultures to speak, read, write, and do things for others (Orellana 2009). Despite a growing body of scholarship on this practice (Lee, Hill-Bonnet, & Raley 2011; Orellana 2009; Reynolds & Orellana 2014;Tse 1995, 1996), the youth who engage in it have remained largely invisible in the U.S. public sphere, in which minoritized languages and their speakers are often racialized, marginalized, and devalued (Hill 1998; Urciuoli 1996; Zentella 1996). Key to this invisibility is the widespread but misleading belief that bilingual speakers have a “natural” ability to translate and interpret for others. Such assumptions often erase important complexities of language brokering that impact youth, such as structures of power and privilege among participants, as well as the emotional dimensions and affective labor involved in brokering and related practices (see also Lateef-Jan, this volume). Recent research has begun to focus on youth’s affective experiences of language brokering (e.g., Kam 2011; Kam & Lazarevic 2014;Weisskirch 2006, 2007). These studies, most of which are survey- and/or interview-based, tend to focus on young people’s emotions toward language brokering as either positive or negative and how these emotions may correlate with mental health outcomes. While such approaches map out key affective dimensions of language brokering, they favor a static, binary model of affect and portray brokers as isolated, psychologically bounded individuals. Thus, more research is necessary to capture the emotional complexity of language brokering. One model is Marjorie Faulstich Orellana’s extensive and influential body of ethnographic research that illuminates the social and interactional complexity

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of youth language brokering, often featuring adolescents’ experiences of language brokering as described in their own words (Eksner & Orellana 2012; Dorner, Orellana, & Li-Grining 2007; Dorner, Orellana, & Jiménez 2008; Orellana 2003, 2009; Orellana, Lee, & Martínez 2011; Reynolds & Orellana 2014). Orellana (2009) finds that when young people experience negative emotions toward language brokering, this affective experience is connected to contexts in which participants occupy unequal positions of structural power, such as a child interpreting between her parents and a salesperson, doctor, or teacher. Further, research by Adriana Esquivel (2012) demonstrates that young adults’ feelings toward brokering are complex and dynamic and that as their practices change over time, so may their feelings. Orellana also brings the topic of language brokering into educational curricula, creating a classroom space in which students who broker can reflect on these experiences (Reynolds & Orellana 2014). This chapter builds upon this work to focus on how the emotions of youth who broker shape the social space of the classroom. I pay particular attention to students’ socioemotional histories and moment-to-moment affective interactions as created through embodied responses such as gesture, gaze, facial expressions, and other material resources that signal how emotions are bodily felt, communicated, and perceived. In doing so, I argue for an understanding of bilingual youth as agents constantly engaged in processes of meaning-making about their emotions toward language brokering both through self-reflection and in social interactions with others.

Reflecting on Language Brokering in the SKILLS Classroom Working from a sociolinguistic justice approach to education (Bucholtz et al. 2014), the SKILLS academic outreach program connects students’ lived experiences of language, race, and power—including language brokering—to a collegelevel academic curriculum in local public high schools and other settings. The program is based on a model not of “empowerment” but of “accompaniment” (see also Mainz, this volume); as the program directors write, rather than seeking to “empower” youth, our work has a more modest goal: to acknowledge and engage with the young people we work with as sociopolitical agents who already have rich life experiences and insights that we can learn from and contribute to as we accompany them for a short time along their educational paths. (Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2016: 28) My coinstructor Zuleyma Carruba-Rogel and I aimed to enact the goal of accompaniment by structuring the twenty-week SKILLS curriculum in

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topic-based units that encouraged deeper exploration of a single issue in the context of students’ lives (e.g., linguistic profiling, heritage languages, (un)official language policies) through conversations, discussion, and reflection activities over several class periods. The data used in this study were taken from a three-day unit on language brokering at Mission City High School (a pseudonym). The data include video and audio recordings, ethnographic fieldnotes and observations, and daily written reports about classroom dynamics and interactions. In addition to the two graduate teaching fellows, Zuleyma and myself, the class was supported by the high school partner teacher, a student teacher, and three undergraduate SKILLS mentors. The class comprised twenty-five Latinx students, twenty-two of whom identified as bilingual in Spanish and English, and eighteen of whom had had experience with language brokering. For me, as a mixed-race (white and Filipina) woman and a second-year doctoral student in linguistics at the time of the research, my interest in what Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) calls “the borderlands/la frontera” is both personal and professional, leading me to do research with youth translators and interpreters, who often navigate experiences in and around the borderlands.

Overview of the Language Brokering Unit The SKILLS language brokering unit aimed for students and instructors to jointly examine the linguistic, interactional, and emotional complexity of language brokering in a way that validated and legitimized students’ linguistic heritage and experiences (Orellana 2009). The unit also aimed to increase awareness of language brokering and linguistic repertoires for all students, including those who might not have had brokering experience as well as those who regularly brokered but who might not have realized that their peers shared such experiences (Eksner & Orellana 2012). Exploring language brokering processes as part of their linguistic repertoires of practice (Orellana, Lee, & Martínez 2011) provided a context for students to investigate many of the concepts that Zuleyma and I had discussed so far in the SKILLS curriculum. We also wanted students to build an understanding of how languages function across different contexts; exploring boundaries and differences between such spaces and participants was a way of jumpstarting discussions of language and power. Specific learning objectives for the three-day unit were as follows: • • • •

to define the concepts of language brokering and language repertoires; to identify instances of language brokering in the media and in students’ own experiences; to analyze instances of language brokering with peers to understand the work that is done in such encounters; and to utilize various modes of communication—visual/spatial, aural/oral, written— to reflect on and communicate experiences and opinions of brokering.

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These learning objectives were integrated over three one-hour class periods in a single week. Our goal on the first day was to introduce the concept of language brokering through a guided open discussion of two video clips of youth language brokering, one from the film Spanglish and the other from the UCLA Center X website (https://cxarchive.gseis.ucla.edu/xchange/repertoires-oflinguistic-practice/suppliment-to-lesson-plan/basic-introductory-activities). The discussion around these clips was active, with students voicing strong opinions about society’s expectations and stereotypes of brokering versus the everyday realities of this practice. On the second day of the unit, students read journal entries by child language brokers taken from the same website, and were asked to write a reflection either based on their own experiences or in response to the journal entries. Zuleyma’s and my original plan for the third day had been to build on the conversations and resources of the first two days to foster small-group discussions about language brokering experiences, with the goal of having some students volunteer to share their own experiences with the class. However, during the first two days of the unit, we noticed that students often talked about brokering in terms of affective experiences. Students’ most common positive statements about brokering included mentions of pride and happiness, whereas the most common negative statements involved mentions of annoyance, frustration, and stress. Students often described these emotions by sharing a specific brokering experience in which they remembered feeling this way (e.g., helping their families, helping patients at the local hospital, helping at school events). While I heard and listened to the statements, I was not necessarily thinking of incorporating them into our third day’s activities.Yet in our weekly meeting with our undergraduate mentors, Zuleyma emphasized the importance of taking some time with students to unpack those statements: Why did they feel this way? Did they always feel this way? What happened in the interaction to lead them to feel this way? What could others have done to create a different brokering outcome? Based on our discussion, we decided to ask students these questions and help them identify what aspects of the brokering situation—such as the context, the participants, or the translation task—they thought contributed to their feelings. Our goal was to create meta-awareness around the affective dimensions of language brokering, including the affective and emotional labor that student interpreters do. The data analyzed in this chapter are from this discussion unpacking students’ affective statements about language brokering. The data focus primarily on two students, Elisa and Reyna, as well as a few students and friends who sat near them in the classroom (Jessica, Luz, Thalia, and Fernando). Elisa was a first-year participant in the SKILLS program. She was heavily involved in extracurricular activities, especially Mission City High School’s student interpreters club, a volunteer group of high school students who

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provided interpretation for Spanish-speaking parents at events like Back to School Night and Parent Teacher Association Meetings at local elementary, middle, and high schools. Jessica and Luz were Elisa’s good friends who often sat next to her in the SKILLS classroom; both of them often brokered for their families. Reyna was a second-time participant in SKILLS, having previously been involved in an optional after-school SKILLS program two years before. She thus had more experience with the program than most of her peers and was a frequent contributor to discussions, quickly remembering or picking up on many of the concepts Zuleyma and I introduced to the class. Elisa and Reyna had known each other for three years as classmates in the college preparation course through which the SKILLS program was offered at their high school, but they were not close friends and typically sat on opposite sides of the classrooms. As I was reviewing the video data for this chapter with our teaching team, several of the undergraduate mentors commented that they had sensed tension between Reyna and Elisa from the beginning of the SKILLS program. Whatever its initial cause or history, this tension became clear throughout the third day of this unit, as Reyna and Elisa each described very different experiences with language brokering, leading to the increasingly polarized class discussion seen in the following analysis.

Conflicting Affects in Reflections on Language Brokering In preparation for the day’s activities, I wrote on whiteboards around the room the four most common affective statements about language brokering from the previous class discussion (I feel happy, I feel frustrated or annoyed, I feel stressed out, I feel proud) and asked students to spend a few minutes chatting about these statements with their neighbors. I then asked if any students wanted to give an example of a time they may have felt this way, and why they thought they felt that way. This question opened up an active discussion that lasted for the entire length of the class. During the conversation between students and instructors, a lengthy backand-forth discussion took place almost exclusively between Elisa and Reyna across the classroom, in which each shared very different affective experiences of language brokering. The examples analyzed below come from a six-minute section of this discussion during which Reyna, Elisa, Zuleyma, and I attempt to negotiate between these two experiences. The examples are presented in sequential order. Elisa opens Example 1 by sharing her emotions about brokering across various contexts with the school’s interpreters’ club, prompting a response from Reyna and later a follow-up from Elisa. In the example, Elisa’s linguistic description and embodied practices work in concert to assist her in constructing an extremely positive relationship and affective experience

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of language brokering. (Transcription conventions follow Du Bois et al. 1992.) (1) Elisa shares her experience of brokering at a parent-teacher Open House 1. AUDREY; 2. 3. ELISA; 4. AUDREY; 5. 6. ELISA; 7. AUDREY; 8. ELISA; 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

25. 26. AUDREY;

And you said it wasn’t annoying. So how do you feel when you do it? Um, And people can feel different ways at different times, [about the same thing], [No, yeah], Yeah. Everyone has their own opinion. Umm, Well I feel really.. happy that I’m able to help, like— well because I’ve experienced it in so ((Elisa holds left hand many ways, to chest)) I’ve done it with my family: in school:, out of school:, and like— um, the one I really like the most, like— I’m not saying I don’t like my family, but, ((Elisa taps chest with I feel really, like, happy that I do it when I go right hand; several students shift their gaze to her)) and umm, interpret for like, other schools? For like the Open House, and the parents come and visit the class, And um, hear the teacher speak, like— Oh, this is what the course is going to be about.

And like last time I did it, it was like a first grade class? =Aw::.

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27. ELISA; 28.

29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40.

And then there’s like, parents that don’t speak English? And I’m able to, like, translate and interpret what- whatever the teacher says, So that they can get, like, the message, and, get more involved in their students’ education. Because without— I feel like without me, that wouldn’t ((Elisa gestures toward be po:ssible? chest with right hand)) So I’m really happy that I can help these kids out, because you don’t know (,) what their future’s going to be like.= ZULEYMA; =You’re making my heart sing. AUDREY; Aw::! ELISA; Oh. ((Elisa glances at Audrey, returns gaze to Zuleyma)) STUDENTS; @@@ ZULEYMA; I’m so happy. STUDENTS; @@@ ((Elisa nods))

Through both discursive and embodied means, Elisa constructs a strong positive stance toward language brokering, framing the consequences of her work for others and herself as socially and emotionally positive. She repeats feeling “really happy” about her work in lines 10, 18, and 33 and embodies her personal connection to this work by placing her left palm on her chest and holding it there (line 11) while mentioning her extensive brokering experience (Figure 10.1). Elisa quickly repeats this gesture with emphasis on the word feel in line 18 (where she draws the gaze of several students) and again with the word me in line 32: I feel like without me, that wouldn’t be po:ssible? Here, she clearly states the contribution and impact of her language brokering: She makes it possible for Spanish-speaking parents to get involved in their children’s education, something that she frames as potentially life-changing for elementary students: You don’t know what their future’s going to be like (line 34). Both Zuleyma and I are extremely positive in our responses to Elisa; our reactions are affective and affiliative. In line 26, the Aw:: I express is connected to my own positive memories of previously working with kindergarten and preschool students. In lines 35 and 39, Zuleyma’s positive evaluations of Elisa’s turn are both affiliative and appreciative, strongly aligning with Elisa’s highly affective

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FIGURE 10.1

Elisa repeatedly places her hand on and gestures toward her chest in connection with her feelings about language brokering (Example 1, lines 10–11, 18, 32).

narrative. Zuleyma also gestures with her hands in a way suggestive of wings fluttering. While she often shared powerful experiences with the class in an intimate way, this outpouring of positive emotion was not the norm, and here it surprises both the students and me: in line 36, my second Aw::! is a positive response to Zuleyma’s emotions, and laughter from multiple students at this moment

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(lines 38, 40) also potentially marks the intimate, affective nature of Zuleyma’s words. Elisa appears both embarrassed and flattered by Zuleyma’s statement and nods her head in acknowledgment. When Reyna, sitting on the opposite side of the classroom, raises her hand and takes the floor, she offers a very different perspective on language brokering. This contrast begins the back and forth turns at talk between Elisa and Reyna, as they each attempt to negotiate the distance between their very different emotional experiences of brokering. In Example (2), Reyna uses a variety of linguistic resources to construct as stressful her experience of brokering legal documents for her parents. (2) Reyna shares her experience of brokering legal documents at home 1. 2. 3. 4.

ZULEYMA; REYNA; ZULEYMA; REYNA;

5. JESSICA;

Yes ma’am? Um, [Thank you for your service]. [I—I under]stand where she’s coming from, [Thank you for your service2]!

6. 7. REYNA;

[because yes, like2],

8.

12. 13. 14.

it does make you feel good in front of others, especially if it’s like, to translate something they wouldn’t have understood before? Um: but I think that’s different. Like in a school setting? I think— If you’re a translator?

15.

that’s what you do:?

9. 10.

11.

((Jessica and Elisa turn toward each other, exchange glance)) ((Elisa smiles and nods at Jessica))

((Jessica raises eyebrows, opens eyes wide))

((Luz shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors)) ((Jessica scrunches nose and eyebrows together, raises eyebrows as she shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors; Ariana shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors))

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16.

I think that’s different than,

17.

if it’s something spontaneous,

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

that your parents are like, Oh, here, Trans[late this for me]

AUDREY; [Mm:::] REYNA; And you’re like, Oh my god,

I have no preparation, or anything like that, you know? ZULEYMA; Mmm: [So you]—

28. THALIA;

[I agree] with that.

29. ZULEYMA; Okay, so you’re talking abo:ut 30. What expectations— 31. How do people perceive your ability to broker then? 32. REYNA; I feel like my parents—that they think, 33. “Oh yeah, you’re good,

34. 35. 36. 37.

you know English, you’re fine, you can do this like that.” Like, “It’s okay, [just translate] this”-

((Luz shifts gaze back to Reyna; Jessica shifts gaze back to Reyna)) ((Ariana shifts gaze back to Reyna))

((Jessica scrunches nose and eyebrows together, shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors; Elisa shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors)) ((Elisa quickly raises and then lowers her hand; Jessica’s facial expression remains scrunched looking toward instructors))

((Elisa and Jessica shift gaze back to Reyna)) ((Jessica taps feet together, leans forward)) ((Jessica uncrosses arms, uses left hand to swipe hair to one side, taps feet on the ground continuously)) ((Reyna snaps her fingers))

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38. ZULEYMA; [And you’re like] 39. REYNA; And I’m like “Oh my god! 40. U:hh, 41. I need some ti:me to read this over, 42. And come up with a way to say it to you.” 43. And like44. if you have to translate for parents, 45. I feel like— 46. Oh: like in a school setting? 47. You kind of know:: what to say. 48. At least in—

49.

((Jessica shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors)) ((Elisa grimaces while shifting gaze from Reyna to instructors))

that’s my opinion.

Reyna carefully and bravely offers up an experience of language brokering that contrasts both with Elisa’s positive experience and the instructors’ highly affiliative responses to Elisa. Reyna’s turn at talk is complex: She explicitly acknowledges Elisa’s position in line 4 (I understand where she’s coming from) and develops supporting reasons for why someone might feel positively about brokering experiences. However, Reyna’s next utterance, Um: but I think that’s different (line 11), signals a shift away from Elisa’s experience, and she presents a narrative that highlights multiple dimensions of brokering interactions—including participants’ identities and expectations—that carry vastly different emotional consequences for interpreters. From across the room, Elisa’s close friend Jessica sits in her chair, arms crossed, listening to Reyna. When Reyna begins to differentiate her experience from Elisa’s in line 11, Jessica raises her eyebrows and opens her eyes wide, orienting to Reyna’s talk as potentially problematic. With lines 14 and 15 (If you’re a translator, that’s what you do:?), Reyna suggests that how and to what degree students identify as interpreters or translators can and does differ, with great impact on their affective experiences of brokering. She proposes that the experience of a person who identifies as an interpreter and claims this identity as “what they do” (presumably a reference to Elisa’s position) is qualitatively different than the experience of being a “spontaneous” interpreter (line 17). She cites the example of her personal experience of being subject at any moment to being called upon by others—in this case, her parents—to translate material at home even though she has “no preparation” (lines 17–24). For Reyna, being asked to interpret unexpectedly is linked to affective experiences of stress

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and surprise, indexed in lines 22 and 23 by her stylized exclamation of her reaction: And you’re like, oh my god. She suggests this level of stress is markedly different than what a student interpreter in a school setting might experience and conjectures that interpreters in that context “kind of know:: what to say” (line 47), perhaps because of student interpreters’ deeper familiarity with the linguistic content and interactional context of a school environment. Thus, Reyna’s contribution deftly touches upon complex issues of identity, agency, and power that highlight the relational dimensions of brokering and how these may lead to vastly different affective experiences and stances. In response, Zuleyma connects to a moment in Reyna’s turn at talk in which she voices her parents’ request for brokering (Oh, here, translate this for me, lines 19–20). In asking Reyna to describe what kinds of perceptions participants might hold about her brokering skills, Zuleyma provides Reyna space, time, and support to discuss what she thinks her parents think: that Reyna and her bilingual language abilities are sufficient to successfully broker for them. Reyna snaps her fingers in concert with the final word of line 35 (You’re fine, you can do this like that), momentarily embodying the speed and relative ease with which her parents expect her to be able to complete the brokering tasks at hand (see also Weisskirch 2013: 1153). Throughout Reyna’s turn, students on each side of the room bodily engage with what she says, in contrast to their lack of embodied reactions to Elisa’s earlier turn. Jessica’s change in facial expression in line 11 is the first visible affective response. A few seconds later, at the end of Reyna’s line 15 (that’s what you do:?), Jessica scrunches her eyebrows and nose and shifts her gaze toward the instructors, potentially signaling disalignment with Reyna’s stance. Almost simultaneously, Luz and Ariana, both sitting in the same row as Jessica, also shift their gaze toward the instructors, possibly to gauge our responses to the conflicting stance Reyna is constructing. In doing so, they further mark Reyna’s stance as problematic. Jessica’s, Ariana’s, and Luz’s responses are the first embodied signs that students are orienting to these emerging viewpoints as potential “drama” within the classroom. Elisa, who is following Reyna’s talk intently, anticipates the end of her classmate’s turn and raises her hand to contribute to the conversation, but quickly lowers it when Thalia, a student on Reyna’s side of the classroom, aligns with Reyna in line 28; Jessica maintains her scrunched expression (Figure 10.2). With Thalia’s contribution, the opposing viewpoints begin to solidify on each side of the room, and additional students begin to engage. Two students sitting near Reyna, Fernando and Maria, who have had relatively little spoken participation in the discussion so far, suddenly glance toward Elisa, the person most likely to be affected by Reyna’s statements and Thalia’s subsequent agreement (Figure 10.3). Reyna’s generalization about brokers in school contexts (lines 46–47) prompts both Jessica and Elisa to turn their gazes from Reyna to the instructors and elicits an additional grimace from Elisa (Figure 10.4). In the final part of the interaction, the distance between Reyna’s and Elisa’s positions widens into open conflict, as each offers additional opinions and

“Without Me, That Wouldn’t Be Possible”

FIGURE 10.2

199

Elisa and Jessica react to Reyna’s turn (Example 2, line 28).

experiences to support her perspective. This divide is echoed in spatial terms, as Reyna and Elisa sit on opposite sides of the classroom with their friends, who actively engage in the debate through embodied, affective reactions, creating alignments and solidarities around each point of view. In Example 3, Reyna initiates a sequence that leads to the highest point of tension throughout the day’s discussion, as Elisa conducts an emotional side conversation with Jessica. (3) Elisa issues an off-record challenge to Reyna’s position

4.

For like, legal doc-documents, You don’t want to mess up. Like, what if you say something that’s wrong? And like, what if-

5.

with teacher things,

1. REYNA; 2. 3.

((Elise is looking at Reyna))

((Elisa shifts gaze away from Reyna; lowers gaze; Luz shifts gaze from Reyna to instructors)) ((Jessica closes eyes, turns head to the right, leans head on palm of left hand; scratches her head; shifts gaze away from Reyna to right, puts head in left hand)) ((Elisa looks back at Reyna; Luz looks at Reyna with slight smile; Jessica rubs her eyes))

FIGURE 10.3

Fernando and Maria suddenly shift their gaze to observe Elisa’s embodied reaction to Reyna (Example 2, line 28).

FIGURE 10.4

Elisa grimaces in response to Reyna’s statement “Oh: like in a school setting? You kind of know:: what to say” (Example 2, lines 46–47).

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6.

You have a paper or whatever,

7.

You can kind of,

8.

[uh1],

9. ELISA;

[She’s1] [insulting me2]!

10. REYNA;

[improvise2]?

11. JESSICA; 12. REYNA; 13. JESSICA;

Yeah, [A:nd1], [she’s pushing your buttons1],

14.

[shh2].

15. REYNA; 16. ZULEYMA;

[you can get your point across2]. Mmhm.

17.

So some—

18.

some brokering spaces,

19.

might have more,

20. REYNA; 21. ZULEYMA;

[Leeway]. [legal]—

((Luz shifts gaze to instructors, then down, maintains slight smile; Jessica continues rubbing eyes with face turned in Elisa’s direction)) ((Elisa shifts gaze from Reyna to straight ahead, sits rigidly back in seat with her back straight; Jessica opens eyes)) ((Jessica smiles and turns head fully toward Elisa; Elisa’s mouth opens)) ((Elisa looks at Jessica, puts right hand on her own chest as Jessica puts right hand on Elisa’s left shoulder; Elisa smiles slightly as she speaks; Luz turns gaze toward Elisa and Jessica)) ((Jessica remains turned toward Elisa with hand on Elisa’s shoulder))

((Jessica pats Elisa’s shoulder twice, smiling; Elisa turns to look at instructors, mouth open, slightly smiling)) ((Elisa turns to look at instructors, mouth open, slightly smiling))

((Jessica takes hand off Elisa’s shoulder, looks towards instructors, smiling)) ((Elisa purses lips, looking at instructors; Luz continues to look at Elisa and Jessica)) ((Elisa looks toward camera; Jessica leans in toward desk, uses hands to cover smile and slight laughter; Elisa and Jessica turn heads slightly to meet gazes with Luz; all three smile)) ((Luz looks down and laughs quietly; Elisa shifts gaze to straight ahead with mouth slightly open; Jessica continues to giggle while looking at Luz)) ((Luz and Jessica meet gazes; Jessica quickly raises eyebrows and continues to giggle, shielding her laughter with her hands))

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22.

23. 24.

or bi:g type of different consequences. Which affecting some— being able to affect the engagement of parents in school is big—

((Jessica shifts gaze toward instructors, biting nails)) ((Luz shifts gaze back toward instructors))

In this example, Reyna first contrasts her and Elisa’s experiences by examining the distinct brokering contexts. She weighs the increased pressure she feels due to the gravity of potential consequences in a legal context (line 1) against factors she feels make brokering easier in educational contexts: the availability of supporting materials (line 6), the ability to improvise with no negative impacts (lines 7, 10), and the supposed ease of the interactional goal (line 15). While not stated explicitly, Reyna’s observations point to a keen perception of different surveillance practices to which different brokering contexts are subject, as well as to the unique difficulties inherent in simultaneously occupying the roles of broker and daughter. Reyna’s comments support previous findings that youths’ affective experiences of brokering are connected to their status as participants who occupy unequal and vastly different positions in structures of power (Orellana 2009). However, Reyna’s speech could also be interpreted as minimizing the complexity and impact of Elisa’s brokering work; she frames the content and tools of brokering work in educational contexts as “teacher things” and “a paper or whatever” (lines 5, 6). As the only student at this point who has shared experiences about brokering in an educational context, Elisa’s embodied affective response to Reyna’s position treats this contrastive example as a personal insult. As Reyna speaks, Elisa shifts her gaze momentarily away. At the same time, Jessica overtly shifts her attention away from Reyna, leaning forward, turning her torso, resting her head on one hand, closing and then rubbing her eyes, thus taking up an embodied affective stance that positions her own opinions or feelings as different than (or indifferent to) Reyna’s. It is unclear if Jessica is actually disengaging from listening to Reyna, or if she is employing these embodied actions to communicate her disinterest to others around her. Yet Jessica stops rubbing her eyes and opens them just in time to notice Elisa’s change in posture and gaze and instantly reads Elisa’s embodied reaction, evident through Jessica’s smile in line 8. Her smile works as a recognition and validation of Elisa’s affective stance, a claim supported both by the simultaneity of Elisa’s next line (She’s insulting me!, line 9) and Jessica’s embodied gesture of care and comfort as she turns fully toward Elisa, reaches out, and puts her hand on Elisa’s shoulder (Figure 10.5).

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When Jessica agrees with Elisa in lines 11 and 13 (Yeah, she’s pushing your buttons), Luz turns her gaze toward Elisa and Jessica, watching as Jessica keeps her hand on Elisa’s shoulder for several seconds (lines 10–16). Jessica then turns toward Elisa and Luz for a moment of shared gaze and laughter between all three students (lines 18–21). Jessica’s rich embodied and discursive engagement with Luz and Elisa during this time constructs an affective stance toward what Reyna is saying—crucially in ways that enable this stance to be recognized, validated, and even adopted by others around her. As the conversation continues, the two girls’ constellations of friends begin to orient to and align with their respective viewpoints, increasing the tension and division between the two sides of the classroom. Yet even as the tension grows and Elisa makes her disagreement with Reyna explicit, Reyna and Elisa continue to channel their speech and gaze through Zuleyma and me at the front of the classroom, potentially in an attempt to manage the tension by avoiding direct confrontation or conflicting claims of epistemic authority. (4) Elisa issues an on-record challenge to Reyna’s position 1. ELISA;

2. ZULEYMA; 3. ELISA;

=I think everything is equally important. Yeah. I just felt-

4.

Like I’m not trying to be mean,

5.

But, I feel like a little bit insulted,

6.

Like, whoa, this, like, translating this for these little kids and their parents,

7.

((Elisa lifts right hand, palm up; Luz turns to look at Elisa; Jessica keeps hands near mouth, smiles slightly, raises eyebrows, looks at Elisa sidelong)) ((Jessica and Luz laugh loudly)) ((Elisa touches chest with left hand then right hand; Jessica raises eyebrows; Luz continues to laugh)) ((Faviana turns to look at Elisa; Elisa gestures outward with both hands; Luz brushes forehead and tucks hair behind ear; Jessica sits back, takes hands away from face to tuck hair behind ear)) ((Elisa touches both hands to chest)) ((Isabel and Faviana turn to look at Elisa momentarily, smile, laugh, and turn back toward front)) ((Jessica sweeps hair back with right hand, eyebrows raised)) ((Elisa holds out right hand, palm up))

FIGURE 10.5

Elisa disengages from Reyna and Jessica engages with Elisa (Example 3, lines 7–9).

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9. 10.

is not as important as a legal document? They could, likego to college,

11.

or like,

12.

get inspired and get, I don’t know, like, I feel like everything is important. That’s not what I meant@,

8.

13. 14.

15. REYNA;

16.

17. JESSICA: 18.

I meant [like the legal documents is important], [Oh my go:d].

19. REYNA;

like, in the moment,

20. ZULEYMA; 21. REYNA; 22. ZULEYMA;

Yes, Yeah. I think this is very important,

23. 24. ZULEYMA;

25.

because brokering in all spaces is,

you know?

((Elisa holds out left hand, palm up))

((Elisa pushes away from body with right hand)) ((Blanca tilts head back toward ceiling, rolls eyes)) ((Elisa brings right hand close to chest, pushes out from body)) ((Elisa taps desk hard with both hands)) ((Elisa turns both hands palm up and outwards)) ((Blanca smiles and laughs; turns left to make eye contact with neighboring student; Jessica smiles, closes eyes; Luz and Ariana turn toward Reyna; Elisa turns gaze toward Reyna, mouth open))

((Jessica rolls eyes and smiles)) ((Luz laughs, leans forward, and strikes her desk with both hands)) ((Faviana smiles and laughs; Isabel smiles, stretches and shifts forward and back in seat; Ariana smiles and adjusts glasses; Blanca covers face with sweatshirt sleeve and hand over forehead)) ((Jessica and Luz meet gazes)) ((Jessica raises eyebrows and laughs)) ((Jessica and Luz begin to laugh as Luz covers forehead with left hand, leaning forward in her desk with eyes closed)) ((Jessica and Luz laugh)) ((Luz laughs as she tilts head down towards desk, closes eyes; students cough; Isabel starts to adjust purse on desk; Faviana plays with hair; Jessica shifts back in seat))

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26. ELISA; 27.

28. ZULEYMA; 29. 30. 31.

((Elisa nods)) ((Elisa raises right hand, clasps forefinger and thumb together and “taps” air as she says “agree”; Jessica smiles; Arline meets gazes with Luz, smiles and looks down as she starts to laugh)) like all brokering is ((Luz nods and continues to laugh)) ve:ry important. It’s challenging, ((Elisa looks at Zuleyma and nods; Ariana shifts back in desk)) and it’s difficult, ((Elisa looks at Zuleyma and nods; Ariana crosses arms)) and it requires a lot of skill. Yeah, I agree with that.

In lines 1 through 14, Elisa broaches the conflict head-on: she interrupts Zuleyma, actively interjects her point of view into the conversation (I think everything is important), explicitly (albeit mitigatedly) expresses her affective stance as “a little bit insulted,” and explains why she feels that all types of brokering are important. Students orient to this interjection as possible drama within the classroom in embodied ways: Jessica and Luz react by changing gaze direction and facial expressions (line 1) and nearby students (Ariana, Faviana, Isabel) turn their bodies and gaze toward the back row where Jessica, Elisa, and Luz are sitting. Other students also orient to Elisa’s turn, but not always in ways that align with her stance, as seen most notably in Blanca’s extended eye roll in line 11. When Reyna addresses the conflict by stating with a slight laugh, “That’s not what I meant” (line 15), the affective tension in the classroom reaches a palpable peak. Students throughout the classroom respond to the heightened tension in various embodied affective ways: Jessica rolls her eyes as she whispers “Oh my go:d,” Luz and Ariana giggle, and Blanca covers her face partially with her hands (lines 17–19). In fact, a frame-by-frame analysis of embodied movement during this moment demonstrates that all visible students treat it as highly delicate and potentially uncomfortable: Everyone in the frame moves in some way after Reyna’s declaration, whether shifting back and forth in their seat, turning to look at each other, laughing, readjusting their glasses or hair, crossing or uncrossing their legs, shuffling papers on their desk, rummaging through a purse, or tapping their feet. In the final part of the interaction, Zuleyma takes on the challenging task of negotiating the two students’ positions as well as the heightened tension in the classroom. First, she validates the discussion and conflict by naming it as “important” (line 22). She then makes four separate assertions about language brokering that resonate with what Elisa and Reyna have previously stated: that all language

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brokering is “important,” “challenging,” “demanding,” and skill-based (lines 28–31). This approach legitimizes both students’ experiences and allows space for multiple simultaneous emotions to exist toward brokering. In addition, Zuleyma’s tag question you know? in line 25 invites students’ agreement that all language brokering is important. Elisa responds affirmatively and immediately on both linguistic and embodied levels: she “taps” the air as she says, “I agree with that” (line 27). The alignment, agreement, and resonance between Elisa and Zuleyma minimizes the differences between Reyna’s position and Elisa’s. By framing the discussion in these more general terms, Zuleyma works to align and decrease distance between students’ viewpoints, thus diminishing some of the classroom tension. The discussion continued on after this part of the conversation, opening up to include other students who shared their experiences as the class collectively examined institutions’ responsibilities to provide interpretation and translation services. Crucially, a single clear cause, factor, or explanation for the divergence between Elisa’s and Reyna’s viewpoints about language brokering was never identified by instructors or accepted by all students. Therein lies the complexity:Youth recognize that all brokering is important as well as that each specific brokering experience is relational and uniquely shaped by the participants and politics of the interaction. The classroom became tense precisely because both of these perspectives exist simultaneously in young people’s language brokering experiences. By not reaching a clear resolution between the two perspectives, the dialectical tension created in the classroom was allowed to stand. Although students treated this tension as emotionally delicate—as indexed by laughter, facial expressions, and shifting postures, glances, and gazes—they were also able to validate and engage with the contradictions and complexities presented by their peers. The rich peer interactions in the preceding analysis illuminate the contextually dependent, relational nature of language brokering, in which pride, stress, ambivalence, frustration, and joy can exist simultaneously and without contradiction. Such interactions between students highlight detailed awareness of their own and others’ feelings, the potential impact and consequences of their work, and imbalances of power within brokering interactions. Maria Puig (2002) notes that youth who broker are often highly attuned to social situations, which enables them to deftly engage in language and cultural brokering interactions. Thus, it may be precisely because of the interactional complexities entailed in navigating dual linguistic and cultural frames of reference that these students may be experts in recognizing and negotiating situated emotions moment to moment through both language and embodied action.

Epilogue Six weeks after this discussion, the students in Zuleyma’s and my classroom came to the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus for SKILLS Day, the

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culmination of the program in which students collaboratively share the results of their research during an event open to UCSB students, scholars, and local community members. Although Elisa and Reyna were in different presentation groups, both included language brokering as part of their final presentations. During Reyna’s presentation, for example, she remarked, “I never knew language brokering was a thing.” By explicitly naming language brokering as a “thing” that they had learned about within the SKILLS classroom, Reyna and her classmates were able to engage in conversations that helped illuminate the complexities of brokering and its relational nature, as well as their feelings about it (see also Aragón, this volume). Similarly, in her group’s presentation entitled “El poder del poder” (‘The power of power’), Elisa articulated her perspective on brokering: “Bilingualism helps us broker. It helps me broker in different communities of practice that I translate for and interpret for. Like when I translate in Open Houses for parents. Everything is equal. Our multiliteracies operate in contentious spaces.” While Zuleyma and I probably helped Elisa with the wording for that last line, her statement echoes students’ classroom conversations, highlighting the networks of power that youth language brokers constantly navigate on both interpersonal and institutional levels. Her example encourages scholars and instructors to move toward a multidimensional understanding of language brokering experiences as always existing in complex networks of political, social, and historical relationships and as always occurring within situated, embodied interactions. Elisa continued her presentation by describing how she had built on her learning about bilingualism and brokering within SKILLS to effect change on an institutional level. As a top-performing student who had been chosen as one of four student speakers for that year’s high school graduation, Elisa wrote and submitted her speech in Spanish. The school administration informed her that the speech could not be considered for the graduation ceremony unless she translated it into English. Elisa, who took great pride in her identity and ability as an interpreter, stated in her SKILLS Day presentation that she could have translated the speech, but that she refused to do so and instead demanded that the school approve the Spanish version. In arguing her case to the Mission City High School administration, she cited the fact that there were no written school rules or regulations against giving graduation speeches in languages other than English, and she pointed out that a large percentage of the families and students attending the ceremony would be able to understand Spanish—in the case of many parents, better than English. Eventually, the school administration acquiesced and allowed her to present her speech in Spanish at graduation in June 2014, with a written English translation in the program, marking the first time a Mission City High School graduation speech was given in Spanish. Thus, Elisa asserted her agency as a youth broker and shifted the power dynamics between herself and the institution, which would normally dictate exactly when, where, and to what extent she should and could use her bilingual

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abilities—namely, to fulfill its language access needs within the institution, not in other instances of students’ choosing, and especially not during an institutionwide event open to the public. Elisa’s refusal to translate her speech into English recognized and used her power as a language broker to directly work against the linguistic erasure and exclusion of Latinx youth and their families from Mission City’s educational system.

Conclusion In this chapter, I have shown how bilingual youth in the SKILLS program expertly employed discursive and embodied resources to share complex emotional experiences, construct and recognize affective stances, and negotiate relationships. The affective interactions within the SKILLS classroom foreground the need for researchers and educators to look—and listen—to peer discussions as an important site of expertise and sense-making for bilingual youths’ brokering experiences. Students’ sophisticated conversations and the nuanced emotional skills they employed in navigating these conversations challenge scholars to develop an understanding of young people’s affective experiences of language brokering that is as complex and dynamic as they are. The above analysis has shown that peer discussions of language brokering are a crucial site of meaning-making for youth interpreters. Because language brokering was an explicit part of the SKILLS curriculum, students were able to name, validate, engage with, and make sense of some of the contradictions and complexities they had observed through their lived experiences as brokers—and they did so in ways that continue to inform their actions on interpersonal and institutional levels. During the question-and-answer period after Elisa’s SKILLS Day presentation, a UCSB professor asked Elisa if she thought her experience in the SKILLS program had “empowered” her to stand up to the school administration and to give her graduation speech in Spanish. Elisa responded by stating,“I already am empowered. But yes, the SKILLS program helped me be even more empowered to do this.”There can be no clearer illustration that our work for sociolinguistic justice in the classroom can, and does, accompany students on their journeys as agentive changemakers.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/ Aunt Lute. Bucholtz, Mary, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee. 2016. Beyond empowerment: Accompaniment and sociolinguistic justice in a youth research program. In Robert Lawson and Dave Sayers (eds.), Sociolinguistic research: Application and impact. London: Routledge. 25–44. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Chris Vanderstouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157.

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Dorner, Lisa, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, and Rosa Jiménez. 2008. “It’s just something you do to help your family”: The development of immigrant youth through relationships and responsibilities. Journal of Adolescent Development 23(5): 515–543. Dorner, Lisa, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana, and Christine P. Li-Grining. 2007. “I helped my mom and it helped me”:Translating the skills of language brokers into improved standardized test scores. American Journal of Education 113(3): 451–478. Du Bois, John W., Susanna Cumming, Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, and Danae Paolino (eds.). 1992. Discourse transcription. Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics 4. University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Linguistics. www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/research/ santa-barbara-papers#Volume4 Eksner, H. Julia, and Marjorie Faulstitch Orellana. 2012. Shifting in the zone: Latina/o child language brokers and the co-construction of knowledge. Ethos 40(2): 196–220. Esquivel, Adriana. 2012. Language brokering a dynamic phenomenon: A qualitative study examining the experiences of Latina/o language brokers. Scripps Senior Theses 52. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/52 Hill, Jane. 1998. Language, race, and white public space. American Anthropologist 100(3): 680–689. Kam, Jennifer. 2011. The effects of language brokering frequency and feelings on Mexican heritage youth’s mental health and risky behaviors. Journal of Communication 61: 455–475. Kam, Jennifer, and Vanja Lazarevic. 2014. The stressful (and not so stressful) nature of language brokering: Identifying when brokering functions as a cultural stressor for Latino immigrant children in early adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 43: 1994–2011. Lee, Jin Sook, Laura Hill-Bonnet, and Jason Raley. 2011. Examining the effects of language brokering on student identities and learning opportunities in dual immersion classrooms. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 10(5): 306–326. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich. 2003. Responsibilities of children in Latino immigrant homes. New Directions for Youth Development 100: 25–39. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich. 2009. Translating childhoods. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, Clifford Lee, and Danny Martínez. 2011. More than just a hammer: Building linguistic toolkits. Issues in Applied Linguistics 18(2): 181–187. Puig, Maria E. 2002. The adultification of refugee children: Implications for cross-cultural social work practice. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment 5(3): 85–95. Reynolds, Jennifer, and Marjorie Faulstich Orellana. 2014. Translanguaging within enactments of quotidian interpreter-mediated interactions. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology 24(3): 315–338. Tse, Lucy. 1995. Language brokering among Latino adolescents: Prevalence, attitudes, and school performance. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences 17: 180–193. Tse, Lucy. 1996. Language brokering in linguistic minority communities: The case of Chinese- and Vietnamese-American students. Bilingual Research Journal 20: 485–498. Urciuoli, Bonnie. 1996. Exposing prejudice: Puerto Rican experiences of language, race, and class. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Weisskirch, Robert S. 2006. Emotional aspects of language brokering among Mexican American adults. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 27: 332–343. Weisskirch, Robert S. 2007. Feelings about language brokering and family relations among Mexican American early adolescents. Journal of Early Adolescence 27: 545–561.

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Weisskirch, Robert S. 2013. Family relationships, self-esteem, and self-efficacy among language brokering Mexican American emerging adults. Journal of Child and Family Studies 22: 1147–1155. Zentella, Ana Celia. 1996. The “chiquitification” of U. S. Latinos and their languages; Or, why we need an anthropolitical linguistics. In Risako Ide, Rebecca Parker, and Yukako Sunaoshi (eds.), Proceedings of the third annual Symposium About Language and Society— Austin (SALSA). Austin: University of Texas, Department of Linguistics. 1–18.

11 “TO FIND THE RIGHT WORDS” Bilingual Students’ Reflections on Translation and Translatability Katie Lateef-Jan

Introduction: The Many Forms of Youth Translation When we learn to speak, we are learning to translate. —Octavio Paz ([1971] 1992: 152)

The above quotation by Mexican poet Octavio Paz prompts us not only to recognize translation as a widespread and common practice, but also to expand our definition of translation beyond its traditional constraints as an isolated interlingual event undertaken by trained professionals. Such an expanded view is evident in what William F. Hanks and Carlos Severi call the “universality of translation”: Fully accurate translation is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, and yet translation is ubiquitous in social life.We do it all the time. Not only experts translate, but ordinary speakers do too, in the course of everyday activities. Bi- or multilingualism, code switching, blending, crossing, paraphrasing, reported speech, and giving accounts are all well-established sociolinguistic phenomena, and all may involve the same key elements as canonical translation. (2014: 2; emphasis added) If we understand translation as a cover term that includes a wide range of practices in both writing and speech, then youth translate all the time: Bilingual young people interpret and codeswitch between languages, and both bilingual and monolingual children and youth style-shift, paraphrase, summarize information, and retell stories. Many Spanish–English bilingual high school students in California encounter translation primarily through language brokering, the “mediational

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work that children do as they advocate for their families and negotiate between monolingual speakers” (Orellana 2009: 25). Moreover, practices like paraphrasing occur throughout the California Common Core State Standards in literacy and writing (Orellana & Reynolds 2008). Extending Paz’s metaphor, learning how to write—how to effectively use language both to create meaning and to negotiate identity—is akin to the process of translation. For high school seniors in particular, these literacy-building skills are imperative in the transition to college. For Chicanx students in California, however, learning academic discourse takes place within an educational system that institutionalizes and perpetuates linguistic inequality. Scholar of Chicanx poetics Alfred Arteaga elaborates: “To speak, or even to attempt to learn to speak, sparks a display of power from the dominant group. It is within this system of unequal discursive relationships that Chicanos speak and write” (1994: 12).The 2017 passage of Proposition 58, which dismantles nearly twenty years of forced English-only instruction in California schools as imposed by Proposition 227, is a key step toward supporting and valorizing students’ home languages and multiliteracies. Still, discriminatory and deficit-based ideologies severely limit the presence of translation in the classroom, a situation that has led Guadalupe Valdés (2003) to call for an understanding of bilingual youth translators as gifted. Similarly, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana (2009) champions recognizing the work of child and adolescent translators. Focusing on students’ perceptions, feelings, and experiences of translation as it occurs in their daily lives, she argues that “knowing that the practice can be both stressful and exhilarating can guide [educators’] ways of responding to it” (2009: 120); a similar point is made by Audrey Lopez (this volume).This chapter analyzes, as both Orellana and Lopez do, the complex affect involved in translation events, but expands the context beyond brokering to take into account the breadth and fluidity of the phenomenon. Arteaga defines the United States–Mexico border as “a space where English and Spanish compete for presence and authority” (1994: 11). It is in this space that the work of Texas-born Chicana poet and activist Gloria Anzaldúa emerges, as exemplified in her essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” from the groundbreaking book Borderlands/La Frontera:The New Mestiza (1987). Anzaldúa explores the role of translation in the Borderlands: Does translation, like bilingualism and codeswitching, encourage collaboration or competition between Spanish and English? What are the affective dimensions of such translation events? Anzaldúa focuses in particular on the political dimensions of translation, such as the replacement of nonhegemonic varieties of Spanish with hegemonic English and the accommodation of monolingual English speakers through translation. This chapter analyzes spontaneous writing, or freewrites, produced by Spanish–English bilingual students of Latinx descent at a California high school in response to excerpts of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue.” The students’ freewrites reveal their perspectives on the day-to-day stakes of translation and translatability as well as the emotions involved in this process.

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This chapter’s methodology follows the tradition of Frances Aparicio (1998), whose analysis of differential bilingualism, based on her collection of linguistic autobiographies from Spanish–English bilingual college students (both Latinx and white), examines the enduring effects of linguistic colonization. As Aparicio writes: To theorize exclusively about linguistic hybridity and colonialism among U.S. Latino/as without historicizing hybridity and without analyzing the material, socioeconomic, and affective aspects of bilingualism in the lives of individuals is to fall into what JanMohamed has coined the “humanistic closure” in postcolonial scholarship. Rather than repressing and excluding the political history of [linguistic] colonization (JanMohamed 79), this ethnographic work examines the repercussions of linguistic and educational policy on young US Latino/as and Anglo-American college students. (1998: 9–10; emphasis added) The analysis of student writings in this chapter shares Aparicio’s focus on youth language practices and echoes her call for greater attention to the affective and material dimensions of bilingualism. Aparicio frames her students’ writings as complementary to the voices of many Latinx authors who articulate “their own schooling and linguistic dilemmas in their ethnobiographic texts,” and she critiques the predominant interpretations of these texts within academia as fictive rather than as “historically-grounded realities” (1998: 10). This chapter’s approach is similarly rooted in reading—and teaching—Anzaldúa’s narratives as history and theory, recognizing the pedagogical usefulness of an ethnobiographical text (Vélez-Ibáñez 1996) like “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” to spark students’ own articulations of linguistic and educational realities. I also draw on African American writer June Jordan’s poems and essays on African American English as another example of ethnobiography-as-theory. Indeed, Jordan’s rich and varied work constitutes a translation theory of the American literary landscape in and of itself. In the following discussion, I use the prism of translation to consider the effects of linguistic racism in academic settings on California Latinx high school students’ experiences of bilingualism.

“Bilingual lifewriting” in the Borderlands: Teaching Translation via Gloria Anzaldúa The ability to commensurate two textual (and thus social) fields without distortion . . . puts more than metaphysics at risk. —Elizabeth Povinelli (2001: 321)

“How to Tame a Wild Tongue” formed the centerpiece of an interactive learning activity on translation that I developed and led as a guest instructor at San

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Gilberto High School in Spring 2014 as part of the SKILLS academic outreach program. The activity aligned with the class’s curricular focus on family language policy, as developed by graduate teaching fellow Tijana Hirsch (see Hirsch, this volume). Anzaldúa’s complex affect is grounded in her bilingual poetics; Martha Cutter (2005: 196) categorizes Anzaldúa’s bilingual writing in Borderlands/La Frontera as “translative discourse.” Reading Anzaldúa as a translation theorist offered students a chance to consider both everyday brokering and more creative kinds of translation. Anzaldúa’s piece is equal parts poetry and ethnography, an example of “bilingual lifewriting” (Besemeres 2004: 141) that encompasses and ultimately exceeds both genres to put forth a theory of Chicana literature and language. Mary Besemeres characterizes bilingual lifewriting as showing the “incommensurability between emotion concepts in [an author’s] two languages” (2004: 145; see also Panayiotou 2004). Not only is “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” theoretically rich, but it also functions as a powerful personal narrative. Anzaldúa’s writings (Anzaldúa 1987; Keating 2009) have this “natural narrative” quality (Pratt 1977: 44) and often include Anzaldúa’s vivid recollections of community speech practices and anecdotes from her childhood that retain their original orality, even in essay form. In this way, her piece influenced the SKILLS students’ freewrites, which were likewise personal, layered, and narrative, and exhibited a “verbal virtuosity” in their reflections on language (Labov quoted in Pratt 1977: 40). Before the students and I arrived at “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” my opening remarks introduced translation in its many forms. Beginning with language brokering, I highlighted its utilitarian purpose—to convey a message and help others—in contrast to literary translation’s explicit focus on reproducing an author’s voice. I then played a scene from the 2004 film Spanglish in which a young Chicana girl, Cristina, translates for her mother during an exchange with the mother’s employer. She translates literally, in a rapid-fire, clearly scripted performance that masks the skill and work behind language brokering. The scene represents Cristina’s performance of the Spanish language—as well as her presence as a child in a decidedly adult exchange—for comedic effect; it thus deemphasizes the utility and the often high stakes of language brokering. Students in the SKILLS classroom instantly noted the discord between Hollywood’s representation of a translation event— especially how quickly Cristina translated and her lack of nervousness, despite being in the high-pressure situation of communicating for adults—and the kinds of translation that took place in their own daily lives. The clip prompted students both to reflect on language brokering as a complex set of linguistic skills and to consider the role of translation in their interactions with others. The concept of literary translation that I next introduced offered students an alternative way of thinking about work between languages—a process many had not considered before. Our discussion moved from language brokering to the question “What does it mean to be literary?” with the aid of video clips of spoken word performances as well as June Jordan’s comments on The Color Purple

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(1985: 365), Alice Walker’s 1982 novel, which many high school students encounter in American literature classes. The class concluded with a reading of Anzaldúa’s poem “To Live in the Borderlands Means You” (1987: 216–217) and a short activity in which students orally translated part of the poem from English into Spanish. Before doing so, however, the students put their thought processes onto paper during an activity inspired by writing studies scholar Peter Elbow (1989). For Elbow, freewriting is inseparable from emotion and emotional language while also fueling analytic and critical thinking. He pinpoints the “characteristic move” of freewriting as “[starting] from feelings” and moving to “[figuring] things out” (1989: 44). The results of the students’ freewrites, discussed at length below, show students not only as gifted translators and skilled readers of Anzaldúa’s poetics and theory, but also as writers, translators, and ethnographers of their own translation experiences. As a literary translator from Spanish into English, I positioned myself as the audience of the students’ freewrites, soliciting descriptions of translation events from students’ lives, their emotional reactions, and finally their opinions on the value of translation. For my analysis, I collected audio and visual recordings of the 90-minute class session as well as the students’ writings. Of the twenty-six students present, twelve freewrites are excerpted in this chapter, and seven of these are included as images because of what they reveal about students’ thought processes (e.g., Wite-Out marks, crossouts, phrases bolded in ink). All student names have been changed. As students traced the path of translation events they had participated in from the initial stress of these tasks to the creativity involved in translation to the reward of a successful translation encounter, they brokered my understanding of the many dimensions of these experiences. Accordingly, my analysis positions students as agents in their writing, examining their nuanced reflections as efforts to make legible, in their own words, a rich and often unrecognized process. Creative as opposed to literal translation emerges in students’ work as an important form of agency—as a way of working through the affective experience of negotiating bilingual identity—even as it functions pedagogically as a confidence-boosting and literacy-building activity. Below, I showcase the emotional complexities and creative potentialities of youth translation as a practice that enacts meaningful communication and develops communicative agency. Making legible and legitimate the presence of translation in educational spaces has the power to inform culturally sustaining pedagogies and to affirm the “languages, literacies, and cultural practices of students across categories of difference and (in)equality” (Paris 2012: 93). Debates in postcolonial translation studies about translatability (Apter 2013; Bassnett & Trivedi 1999; Simon & St-Pierre 2000; Tymoczko & Gentzler 2002) have examined literary translation through the lens of power but have not sufficiently incorporated the everyday experience of bilingual speakers of marginalized varieties into their analysis. By contrast, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” speaks to the high risk of everyday translation into “standard” English, with its

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privileging of speakers of the language of power. Anzaldúa presents translation as a betrayal of her hybrid Chicana identity: it sharpens the borders of her multilingual identity, prevents interlingual collaboration, and reinscribes colonial power dynamics. As she writes in perhaps the most famous passage of her essay: Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language. Until I can take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself. Until I can accept as legitimate Chicano Texas Spanish, Tex-Mex, and all the other languages I speak, I cannot accept the legitimacy of myself. Until I am free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate, while I still have to speak English or Spanish when I would rather speak Spanglish, and as long as I have to accommodate English speakers rather than having them accommodate me, my tongue will be illegitimate. (1987: 39–40; emphasis added) The trenchant style of this statement is striking, as is the negative affect that Anzaldúa—a writer who regularly moves between languages, genres, and oral and written traditions in her work—associates with translation in the theory she puts forth here. Anzaldúa’s comments are especially powerful when read alongside Orellana’s (2009) findings on the multidimensional affective experience of child translators. In the next section, I explore the issues of translation and especially untranslatability that the SKILLS students and I discussed via the work of both Anzaldúa and Jordan.

Engaging Untranslatability: Gloria Anzaldúa and June Jordan’s Literary Interventions I confess that by the next day I was no longer sure of my identity. . . . Early morning: do you say la mañanita? —June Jordan ([1985] 2007: 340–343)

Anzaldúa and Jordan are rare literary figures who are also powerful observers of the everyday sociolinguistic dynamics of their communities—writers who engage multiple kinds of translation. Both writers move between languages in their work, and both maintain the firm belief that a writer’s poetic identity is inextricably linked to the language she writes in, leading them to rebuff acts of translation. In a Paz-esque poem titled “Problems of Translation: Problems of Language” dedicated to her Chilean translator, quoted above, Jordan describes the disorienting experience of reading her poems translated into Spanish. She tackles the “lost in translation” cliché, wondering at first if mañanita retains the associations prompted by early morning: “But then we lose/the idea of the sky uncurling to the light.” The poem ends, however, with the Spanglish lines “even sweeter/por la mañanita,”

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an affirmation of poetic enrichment via translation. Still, Jordan, like Anzaldúa, remains aware of the power dynamics of translation and the dangers of translating out of marginalized varieties into hegemonic English. Her political writings, for example, center on the exclusion of Black English from academic discourse and the systemic erasure of Black children’s language in public schools. For its part, “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” demonstrates how the translation of everyday speech into hegemonic English evidences the communicative burden (Lippi-Green 2012: 72–74) that is placed on Chicanx communities. In this context, unlike in Jordan’s poem, translation—an act reflecting this communicative burden—is the enemy of codeswitching as language play.What is at stake for both Anzaldúa and Jordan, then, is a struggle between the principle of translatability of languages (Hanks & Severi 2014) and the politics of untranslatability (Apter 2013) in the U.S. context. In the essay “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You and the Future Life of Willie Jordan,” Jordan describes teaching a college class on African American English in which “translation from Standard English into Black English or vice versa occupied a hefty part of our coursework” (1985: 367). Translation served as a powerful pedagogical tool to help students deepen their understanding of—and creatively play with—the inner workings of two languages. Jordan describes translating the opening lines of The Color Purple from the Black English of Walker’s original text to hegemonic white English with the help of her students, most of whom were Black: “Our process of translation exploded with laughter and hilarity and even hysterical, shocked laughter. The Black writer, Alice Walker, knew what she was doing!” (1985: 365). I quoted this passage to the SKILLS class to initiate a discussion of literature, voice, and ineffective translations. In her essay, Jordan refers to her belief in untranslatability: A speaker’s or writer’s use of language cannot be disentangled from her identity, just as an author’s style cannot be disentangled from her message. Like Anzaldúa, Jordan believes in the untranslatability of language that conveys an intensely political and emotional message, one “with so much heart at the dead heat of it” (1985: 371). When her student Willie Jordan’s unarmed brother is murdered by the police, the class makes a decision to write a letter to the police in Black English. “We expressed ourselves in our own language,” she writes (1985: 372). The class makes the decision not to translate their letter into hegemonic white English—not to accommodate speakers of the language of power. (I showcased Jordan’s powerful essay in another SKILLS classroom in 2015, much as “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is the focus of the learning activity discussed in this chapter. The learning activity based on this essay can be found on the SKILLS website: skills.ucsb.edu.) The SKILLS students noticed a similar skepticism about translation in Anzaldúa’s call, quoted previously, to be “free to write bilingually and to switch codes without having always to translate.” The highly affective and manifesto-like nature of this passage—and of the piece as a whole—struck one student,Tania, in particular. After reading selections from “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” Tania raised her

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hand. “I have a question. Is Gloria, is she, um, does she take a negative perspective on this? Because I feel like she’s aggressive when she’s saying something. I feel like she’s aggressive and she’s trying to make a point.” In referring to Anzaldúa as Gloria Tania treats the writer as a peer—considering not just the text itself but also the author’s identity, the activist behind the words—as she contemplates the merits of and complex motivations behind her “negative perspective” on translation and its threat to the legitimacy of linguistic hegemony. Tania further contemplates Anzaldúa’s strong claims—and the impact of the piece’s negative affect on her as a reader—in her carefully worded, nuanced freewrite (Figure 11.1). (I transcribe the freewrites shown in the figures without editing or changing the text in any way.) Who decides whats the official language to be spoken? Gloria Anzaldúa claims that she would rather speak Spanglish than having to comfort the English spearkers. I believe that the language as well as the individual has developed and evolutionize through out centeries, Anzaldúa not only speakes her mind, but her reaction is an agresive direct to the public or reader. Wite-Out marks are visible where Tania rewrote speakes her mind, showing her process of revising and revisiting the expression. Throughout the class period, I asked students to consider Anzaldúa’s reaction to translation, framed—as Tania writes—not only by the personal–political context of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue,” but more importantly by each student’s own experiences, perceptions, and beliefs. After class, Tania described to me a process she was constantly undertaking in school: translating Spanish-language poetry into English and English-language poetry into Spanish “for it to make sense” to her, a comprehension tool that is common for second-language speakers but one that is also an unrecognized creative skill, especially in language and literature classrooms. When June Jordan translated Shakespeare’s 116th Sonnet into Black English, she commented on the process of translation-as-sense-making that Tania described (2007: 587–588).

FIGURE 11.1

Tania’s freewrite.

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Jordan’s translation act draws attention to the hypocrisy of linguistic prestige, pointing to the limits of institutionally powerful English, untranslated literature, and a dominant literary discourse that is detached from bilingual and bidialectal communities. In this sense, Jordan celebrates translation that enables understanding and creates new readerships while adding a layer of meaning to the original text. Both Jordan and Anzaldúa object to a form of translation that upholds the hegemony of “standard” English rather than including multiple languages and linguistic varieties. What is needed is an approach to youth translation that engages the everyday linguistic practices of bilingual students while taking seriously the political reservations of writers like Anzaldúa and Jordan. Translation, as an integral part of youth language, if conceptualized differently can subvert the norms of white hegemonic English, challenge the “standard,” and encourage students to be creative with all the languages they speak.

The Process of Freewriting: Immediacy, Emotion, and Metalinguistic Awareness in Student Responses How real you see that language comes to life when you speak it. —Kevin, SKILLS student

Elbow defines freewriting as “thinking onto paper,” adding, “as though no ‘translation’ is required” (1989: 56). Thus, Elbow acknowledges, like Paz, that the transition from thoughts and emotions to written language is already a process of translation. In the context of the SKILLS classroom, writing facilitated and enriched students’ reflections. Moreover, students knew their freewrites would be collected by me and their instructors as an assignment, which ensured participation and introduced an audience. In addition, I provided focus for the freewriting activity by projecting on a PowerPoint slide four questions that students could respond to if they needed or wanted guidance: Question 1: How does Anzaldúa feel about translation? What are the reasons she gives? Question 2: Do you agree with Anzaldúa’s stance? Question 3: Can you think of an example—a personal experience or feeling—that supports her view? Question 4: Can you think of an example that contradicts her view? I stressed that these questions were optional and could be modified or ignored. “So whatever comes to mind?” one student clarified, and I responded with an enthusiastic “Yes!” I did not want to delineate strict parameters or limit the students’ responses, so I discussed different kinds of translation but did not specify which kind they should write about. Immediately before the freewriting activity, I projected Anzaldúa’s passage on translation on a PowerPoint slide and read it

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aloud to students, emphasizing her phrase without always having to translate. Most students loosely used Anzaldúa’s negative stance toward translation as a springboard for their own opinions, while some responded primarily to one or two of the questions. Bringing political, decolonial literature into the classroom—literature that celebrates the voices of marginalized communities and calls attention to linguistic discrimination—can initiate crucial conversations about language, race, and power. D’warte (2010: 1) argues that such conversations between students and teachers have far-reaching consequences in and outside of the classroom; this kind of exchange, she states, “interrogates how language is used to meet our social needs [and] builds on students’ strengths, while also deepening students’ metalinguistic awareness and enhancing their linguistic repertoire.” Accompanying these conversations with freewriting further heightens students’ awareness of the role of language. Freewriting as described by Elbow (1989) is characterized by directness of expression and emotional states of increased excitement and engagement. In his discussion of freewriting in creative writing classes, Elbow speaks of the emotional and empowering effect of metacomments, the “experience of finding language for these reflections on language” (1989: 69). As suggested by both D’warte’s and Elbow’s perspectives, this metalinguistic component was central to the SKILLS students’ reflections on translation. The act of putting into words a complex and fluid linguistic process—a process that even scholars struggle to describe—became an act of translation in itself, one that is mirrored in the content of the reflections. This metalinguistic exploration took place first in the guided freewriting activity and again in the resulting conversations between me and the students both as a class and one-on-one after class. The unrehearsed nature of the students’ reflections is apparent in the way their ideas unfold and deepen within the activity. The layers of their freewrites illustrate the complexity of youth translation events, in line with Elbow’s argument that freewriting encourages but does not guarantee honesty and reflexivity. Moreover, the metalinguistic nature of freewriting about language reinforced students’ focus on the immediate experience of youth translation as a deeply personal and affective process. “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” is a rich resource for this kind of reflection, and it is important to note that Elbow’s ideal freewriting exercise includes discussion of the writing experience as well as a follow-up class based on the content of the responses. After I read what students had written, I saw that there was much to continue discussing, but as a one-time guest instructor I was unable to extend the activity beyond a single class period. In their freewrites, students were particularly interested in Anzaldúa’s concern for labels, categorization, and identity. Anzaldúa writes, for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? A language which they can connect to their

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FIGURE 11.2

Kassandra’s freewrite.

identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves—a language with terms that are neither español ni inglés, but both. (1987: 35–36; original italics) In her written response, one of the SKILLS students, Kassandra, wondered what her own “english-spanish speaking language would fall under” (Figure 11.2). Afer reading the exerpt it just made me question what my english-spanish speaking language would fall under or what my language would be considered. Translating in general has always been difficult for me. At times I’ve had to translate for my parents & I just can’t find the right words at times and I get stuck. I can speak spanish fluently though, but when it comes to translating it’s a lot more difficult for me. Kassandra moves into a discussion of translation immediately after wondering “what [her] language would be considered,” which perhaps implies a similar question about the place of translation in her repertoire. After reflecting on stressful instances of language brokering, her concluding sentence displays her awareness that the challenge of translation lies beyond native fluency in Spanish and English. Here, she refutes the myth that translation is not a skill but rather the automatic result of bilingualism.

“I Am My Language”: Identity and Representation Across Student-Depicted Translation Events We translate to be translated —Suzanne Jill Levine (1991: v)

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Translation is an essentially communicative act—one that always, even in the realm of self-translation, involves two or more voices, identities, and ways of speaking. Marjorie Orellana and Jennifer Reynolds analyze youth translation events by examining “how participants [position] themselves in and through language in relation to one another” (2008: 53). Seen through the lens of Aneta Pavlenko’s work on multilingualism and emotion (Pavlenko 2006; Pavlenko & Blackledge 2004), translating (or not translating) is a young person’s way of representing and positioning her voice in relation to a parent’s or another family member’s, to a friend’s or a teacher’s, or to an author’s, and consequently negotiating her own identity. As SKILLS student Manuel expressed it in his freewrite, “The form of how you speak resembles yourself ” (Figure 11.3). 1) 2)

She feels as if society is saying her language isn’t real. Because of that she questions that if her language isn’t real is she not real? I strongly agree, because the form of how you speak resembles yourself.

This beautifully worded sentence contains echoes of Anzaldúa’s assertion Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity while also connecting to the class discussion of literary translation, June Jordan’s comments on the use of Black English in The Color Purple, and the link between voice and identity. Throughout the selected freewrites, many students considered their own Chicanx identities. Daniela responded to the guiding questions in this way: “Being Chicana myself, and having my Spanish teacher tell our class that the way we speak Spanish is wrong to the actual Spanish in Mexico so I can see the reason within Gloria Anzaldúa’s writing” (see also Figure 11.7). Daniela’s powerful point resonates with the experiences of many heritage language speakers in their language classrooms as their varieties are considered “wrong,” nonstandard, or uneducated in comparison to the prescribed forms depicted in textbooks and valorized by teachers. This generational, transnational, and class-based dynamic (see also Carruba-Rogel, this volume; Love-Nichols, this volume), as institutionalized in academic settings, influences not only the perception of Chicanx Spanish and

FIGURE 11.3

Manuel’s freewrite.

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Spanglish, but also the social perception of translation. When students internalize prescriptivist attitudes and educational policies, they doubt their abilities as translators, which appears in their freewrites as concern for “right” versus “wrong” words. Negative associations with translation and youth translation in particular arise in part from the sociopolitical failure to acknowledge the immense communicative skill involved in surmounting untranslatability. In another student freewrite, Gabriela writes, “It’s hard when you are divided between two languages” (emphasis added). This seemingly simple yet rich statement points to the potential for interlingual collaboration within translation. The term divided, less negative than other options like stuck or caught, suggests a space for students with multiple linguistic competencies that sociolinguistic practices like translation, codeswitching, and style shifting can inhabit. Gabriela does not address the external sources of this division, but discriminatory initiatives in support of English-only education certainly foster linguistic divides between the home and school spaces. Bilingual students are dual but not stuck, and translation, when considered from the perspective of meaningful communication, is difficult but not impossible.

Creativity as Communicative Agency: The Inefficacy of Literal Translations The untranslatable is that which has not yet been translated. —David Bellos (quoted in Vinokur & Réjouis 2018: 19)

In their freewrites, students showed a sophisticated understanding that literal translations prove inadequate in transmitting meaning fully and effectively. “When I translate, normally I do not say word by word, which I feel is very complicated,” Natalia writes (original emphasis). She continues by articulating how she resists literal translations (Figure 11.4). While reading this paper I thought about when I translate. Normally I do not say word by word, which I feel is very complicated. Sometimes I do not have the correct words to say or I dont know a word so I use some of the context to help me out with the word.Translating is very complicated and I feel like its a lot of work. I give props to the people who do that as their job. However it helps others and you feel good about it specialy when someone says your good at it. (original emphasis) Natalia does not identify the details of the translation event or events that she has in mind, although her response gives the impression that she is considering many types of translation. Her comment on translation as a “job” could refer to a club of student translators who interpret for Spanish-dominant parents during Back to

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FIGURE 11.4

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Natalia’s freewrite.

School Night at the high school (a similar club is discussed by Lopez, this volume). Or perhaps Natalia is responding to my telling the class that I work as a literary translator. Or perhaps she is referring to both situations and others as well. In any case, Natalia’s word choice, that one can be “good at” translating, indicates her understanding and appreciation that the skill involved in translation extends beyond fluency in two or more language varieties. Furthermore, she acknowledges that “correct”—that is, literally translated—words are not the only option and are not necessarily the most effective in conveying a message or fostering understanding. In the same vein, Clara writes, “When I translate I don’t say exactly the words that people say, I find a similar word. I like how it feels to help someone understand. I think translating is very important.” And although another student, Ofelia, begins her freewrite by calling youth translation events that involve teachers “nerve-wrecking” (an apt respelling), after a few sentences describing her process of translating, she concludes with, “Translating is helpful.” It is important to note that Natalia, Clara, and Ofelia all arrive at the communicative value and the “exhilarating” reward of translation that Orellana describes above only after they have rejected literal translation (word by word in Natalia’s description and exactly the words for Clara) and have detailed the ways in which they strive for equivalence instead of exactitude. The innovations they point to—using context rather than correctness to turn a phrase, finding words that are similar but not the same to explain an idea—require critical consideration of figurative language and are often employed in literary translations. These bilingual high school students display sophisticated metalinguistic awareness in their freewrites: Recognizing that translation events necessitate the representation of identities different from their own, these students possessed a heightened understanding of effective communication across contexts and relationships—and across language divides.

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Translation in High Schools and Translation-Inspired Pedagogies Standard means the rule, the norm. Anyone deviating from the standard is therefore “wrong.” —June Jordan ([1972] 1981: 66)

In a section of her essay headed “Linguistic Terrorism,” Anzaldúa writes, “Chicanas who grew up speaking Chicano Spanish have internalized the belief that we speak poor Spanish. It is illegitimate, a bastard language” (1987: 83). In her freewrite, SKILLS student Lucy speaks to the process of internalizing this label as it endures in school settings (Figure 11.5). I’ve always known that “Chicano Spanish” was known as “a bastard language” & it’s made me feel bad for knowing & speaking it. No one in my life speaks “Spainard Spanish” so when I was taught that in my Spanish classes I would get upset because I would interupt into my Spanish & I would be told I was wrong. Same defination, same idea, different ways to say it & I would be “wrong”. I didn’t understand. When she talks about her not being 100% sure with herself until all the languages she spoke were considered Spanish & I understood that because the way you speak is part of you.

FIGURE 11.5

Lucy’s freewrite.

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Lucy’s powerful response to Anzaldúa’s remarks attacks the ideology of the standard—that “right” and “wrong” varieties of Spanish exist and that Chicanx Spanish is not even acknowledged as Spanish—and shows her understanding that grammaticality according to the rules of Castilian Spanish “does not equal communicative effectiveness” (Lippi-Green 2012: 10). Her statement echoes Daniela’s description, quoted above, of being told by her Spanish teacher that Chicanx Spanish is wrong and inferior to Mexican Spanish. Lucy similarly describes moments when she “interrupts” or “breaks” into her Spanish and her Spanish teacher tells her she is wrong, framing her variety as a violation of correctness. Nevertheless, Lucy puts the word “wrong” in quotation marks; how can spoken language that communicates the same idea but in a different way be incorrect, she wonders. The devastating emotional effects of Spanish teachers’ prescriptivist and deficit-based ideologies can be seen in the resonances of “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” in Lucy’s freewrite. It is also important to note the effects of these harmful ideologies on students’ perception of their own translation experiences. Lucy’s rejection of the idea that Chicanx Spanish can be “wrong” when it is communicatively effective has implications for translation. Her reflection shows her belief that meaning can be translated and transmitted in many valid ways. The “lost in translation” cliché suggests that a translation—a different way of speaking or writing—is necessarily of lesser quality than the original. However, if a translation act is communicatively effective, it should not be judged as less-than. There are many ways to translate effectively, but students grapple with the pressure of using the “right” words, as though there is a single magical combination. This pressure

FIGURE 11.6

Nancy’s freewrite.

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comes from adults’ prescriptivist misunderstanding of the translation process as rooted in the ideology of the standard. While Lucy describes her Spanish class as governed by the hegemony of Castilian Spanish, another student, Nancy, characterizes school as an English-only space. Translating spanish into english is hard. It takes to much time to find the right words for just one word. Anzaldúa’s viewpoint I somewhat I agree with.We should be able to speak our own language whenever we want. But to translate things from spanish to english shouldn’t be an option especially at school. If we are at school we are expected to speak english & write in english. Nancy’s ambivalent freewrite echoes other students’ preoccupation with the “right” words while addressing the academic expectations of bilingual students “to speak english & write in english.” Delineating the school as a space where Anzaldúa’s advocacy for free bilingual expression does not apply, she appears to include translation in the Anzaldúan repertoire of bilingualism, codeswitching, and Spanglish. Nancy suggests that like these practices, translation too threatens the English-only classroom, perhaps via the collaboration of Spanish and English. Yet, simply from a pedagogical standpoint, invaluable literacy-building work occurs in translation. Nancy acknowledges that the “right” word may be many words—words that capture an idea and arise out of a creative process that involves interpretive work, critical thinking, and accurately conveying an experience.

Epilogue: Legibility in the “Borderlandias” and Sociolinguistic Justice Translation in [Anzaldúa’s] words is that language is alive. —Lily, SKILLS student

Not just the message but the sound. —June Jordan ([1985] 2007: 342)

The SKILLS students and I concluded my visit to their class with a reading of Anzaldúa’s 1987 poem “To Live in the Borderlands Means You,” an intellectually demanding, politically charged, and emotionally intense piece. Its use of language is complex and by no means easy to translate, yet the SKILLS students put forth creative, original solutions to the linguistic problems that the poem presents. Students took turns reading the powerful stanzas aloud, as the poem is meant to be heard. From the perspective of sound studies, Dolores Inés Casillas (2016) quotes Simon O’Sullivan in her discussion of the sounds of Spanish-language

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music and radio in the United States: “O’Sullivan insists that, ‘you cannot read affects, you can only experience them.’ I would add, ‘through sound’ to stress the ways in which sound travels and emotionally anchors a listener’s body” (original emphasis). The influence of oral traditions in Anzaldúa’s work and its reflections of everyday speech engaged the SKILLS students as Spanish–English bilingual readers and listeners, acutely receptive to the affective meanings communicated through the sounds of the poem. After reading the poem together, we discussed its closing lines: To survive the Borderlands you must live sin fronteras1 be a crossroads 1 sin fronteras: without borders In a final activity, I asked students to translate these predominantly English lines into Spanish. I initiated their task by asking, “What’s striking about her use of language in this poem? As you read it out loud what are some things that you noticed?” Tania responded by noting Anzaldúa’s codeswitching. The poem moves seamlessly between Spanish and English, and rather than interrupting the poem to provide a translation, Anzaldúa includes a footnote for monolingual English speakers. The placement of the translation at the end, a strategy Anzaldúa uses elsewhere, including Nahuatl–English translations (Keating 2009), allows the poem to be a dialogic space of free bilingual expression, uninhibited by the communicative burden to accommodate monolingual readers. The significance of Anzaldúa’s bilingual poetics becomes apparent in the reading of the poem, when the reader herself becomes a translator. As Cutter affirms (2005: 24), at its best, “translation can be a form of radical bilingualism and can encourage the reader to think/speak/read in more than one voice.” The poem accomplishes this effect in its structure and organization, as can be seen in Tania’s comment on Anzaldúa’s use of language in the poem: “She’s strong. She’s strong in feeling and she gives emotion. Instead of, like, describing the words in English, she puts them in Spanish so the reader can feel how she feels. Sort of ” (emphasis added). Here, Tania is thinking through complex concepts of affect, meaning, and translatability—not only how words invite certain emotions, but also how emotion contributes to linguistic meaning (Besemeres 2004; Pavlenko 2008). Anzaldúa’s poetics emotionally engages Tania’s own bilingual repertoire, even as monolingual English-speaking readers are pushed to experience the effects of translation. The translation activity offered students a brief glimpse into the potential of creative translations to allow for multiple interpretations and multiple modes of representation, a process that students both demonstrated and witnessed. Daniela, for example, interpreted “sin fronteras,” a phrase left in Spanish in the poem, in her own terms. “It just sounds really nice,” she said, “like, yeah, there’s no limits.” When I asked about alternative ways to translate the phrase, she offered “without

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barriers.” She also creatively rendered the English term Borderlands as the Spanglish Borderlandias, not the Spanish La frontera, as Anzaldúa did, and shared her neologism enthusiastically with the class. This moment was especially important given Daniela’s freewrite, in which she discusses internalizing her Spanish teacher’s deficit-based ideology regarding Chicanx Spanish (Figure 11.7). Being Chicana myself, and having my Spanish teacher tell our class that the way we speak Spanish is wrong to the actual Spanish in Mexico so I can see the reason within Gloria Anzaldúa’s writing. It may feel right to us but in reality we use the wrong terms or words or use words that actually don’t necessarily exist. For Daniela to triumphantly share with the class her coinage of Borderlandias, a term that “actually [didn’t] necessarily exist” prior to her translation of Anzaldúa’s lines, shows this student’s transformation via creative literary translation—and via Anzaldúa’s celebration of linguistic innovation in response to discrimination against her voice. Spanglish informs Daniela’s translation as an engagement between translation and codeswitching that builds a bridge between these sociolinguistic practices. Literary translation activities demonstrate to students that the “right” words do not always follow the rules of either “standard” English or Castilian Spanish, and it also makes vivid to them that translation requires invention to capture an idea, an emotion, or an identity. In this way, Daniela’s Spanglish translation mirrors Anzaldúa’s discussion of language change and Chicanx Spanish: Chicano Spanish is a border tongue which evolución, enriquecimiento de palabras nuevas por ated variants of Chicano Spanish, un nuevo responde a un modo de vivir. Chicano Spanish language.

developed naturally. Change, invención o adopción have crelenguaje. Un lenguaje que coris not incorrect, it is a living (1987: 35, original italics)

FIGURE 11.7

Daniela’s freewrite.

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Enabling students to creatively translate in the classroom demonstrates that this process need not exclude codeswitching and style shifting in order to be successful and that these practices can enrich each other if not viewed as separate. Moreover, a fluid conceptualization of translation for Spanish–English bilingual students—one that engages all the languages and styles in their repertoires—is compatible with Anzaldúa’s poetic aims. Following Daniela’s lead, this chapter calls for an expansion of the definition of youth translation and for academic recognition of the practice as generative for critical thinking, literacy-building, and self-esteem. After class, Tania approached me and told me that she had had previous experience with literary translation from Spanish into English as a research assistant to a teacher at San Gilberto High, a Chicano poet. She remarked, in an echo of Anzaldúa’s poem, that you need to know both cultures to translate well, and she inquired about translation programs and majors in college. She told me that she was constantly engaged in translation, both literary and everyday, but she was hesitant to call herself a translator. For students like Tania, bringing translation activities and translation-inspired pedagogies into classrooms can engage a process that is integral to both bilingual identity and academic success. Such an approach has the potential to transform bilingual students’ self-perception, helping them to recognize the skills and the giftedness behind their translation abilities.

References Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books. Aparicio, Frances R. 1998. Whose Spanish, whose language, whose power? An ethnographic inquiry into differential bilingualism. Indiana Journal of Hispanic Literatures 12: 5–26. Apter, Emily. 2013. Against world literature: On the politics of untranslatability. Brooklyn, NY: Verso. Arteaga, Alfred. 1994. An other tongue. In Alfred Arteaga (ed.), An other tongue: Nation and ethnicity in the linguistic borderlands. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 9–33. Bassnett, Susan, and Harish Trivedi (eds.). 1999. Postcolonial translation: Theory and practice. New York: Routledge. Besemeres, Mary. 2004. Different languages, different emotions? Perspectives from autobiographical literature. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 25(2–3): 140–158. Casillas, Dolores Inés. 2016. Listening (loudly) to Spanish-language radio. Sounding Out! The Sound Studies Blog. https://soundstudiesblog.com/2015/07/20/listening-loudly-tospanish-language-radio/ Cutter, Martha J. 2005. Lost and found in translation: Contemporary ethnic American writing and the politics of language diversity. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. D’warte, Jacqueline. 2010. Talking about text: Engaging in critical metalinguistic talk. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO. https://cxarchive.gseis.ucla.edu/xchange/repertoires-of-linguistic-practice/studentcommons/talking-about-texts

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Elbow, Peter. 1989. Toward a phenomenology of freewriting. Journal of Basic Writing 8(2): 42–71. Hanks, William F., and Carlos Severi. 2014. Translating worlds: The epistemological space of translation. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4(2): 1–16. Jordan, June. [1972] 1981.White English/Black English:The politics of translation. In Civil wars: Observations from the front lines of America. New York: Simon & Schuster. 59–73. Jordan, June. 1985. Nobody mean more to me than you and the future life of Willie Jordan. In On call: Political essays. Boston: South End Press. 123–139. Jordan, June. 2007. Directed by desire: The collected poems of June Jordan. Port Townsend, WA: Copper Canyon Press. Keating, AnaLouise (ed.). 2009. The Gloria Anzaldúa reader. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Levine, Suzanne Jill. 1991. The subversive scribe:Translating Latin American fiction. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press. Lippi-Green, Rosina. 2012. English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States. 2nd edition. New York: Routledge. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich. 2009. Translating childhoods: Immigrant youth, language, and culture. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, and H. Julia Eksner. 2012. Shifting in the zone: Latina/o child language brokers and the co-construction of knowledge. Ethos 40(2): 196–220. Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich, and Jennifer F. Reynolds. 2008. Cultural modeling: Leveraging bilingual skills for school paraphrasing tasks. Reading Research Quarterly 43(1): 48–65. Panayiotou, Alexia. 2004. Bilingual emotions: The untranslatable self. Estudios de Sociolingüística 5(1): 1–19. Paris, Django. 2012. Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher 41(3): 93–97. Pavlenko, Aneta. 2006. Bilingual minds: Emotional experience, expression, and representation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pavlenko, Aneta. 2008. Emotion and emotion-laden words in the bilingual lexicon. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11(2): 147–164. Pavlenko, Aneta, and Adrian Blackledge. 2004. Negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Paz, Octavio. [1971] 1992. Translation: literature and letters. Irene del Corral, trans. In Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet (eds.), Theories of translation: An anthology of essays from Dryden to Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 152–162. Povinelli, Elizabeth A. 2001. Radical worlds: The anthropology of incommensurability and inconceivability. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 319–334. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1977. Toward a speech act theory of literary discourse. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Simon, Sherry, and Paul St-Pierre (eds.). 2000. Changing the terms:Translating in the postcolonial era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press. Tymoczko, Maria, and Edwin Gentzler (eds.). 2002. Translation and power. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Valdés, Guadalupe. 2003. Expanding definitions of giftedness: The case of young interpreters from immigrant communities. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G. 1996. Border visions: Mexican cultures of the Southwest United States. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Vinokur,Val, and Rose Réjouis. 2018. On collaborative translation. In Suzanne Jill Levine and Katie Lateef-Jan (eds.), Untranslatability goes global:The translator’s dilemma. New York: Routledge. 19.

12 CO-CONSTRUCTING ACADEMIC CONCEPTS IN HYBRID LEARNING SPACES Latinx Students’ Navigation of “Communities of Practice” María José Aragón Introduction In school, students of color are often confronted with the reality that the languages spoken in their homes and communities are deemed unfit for education and must be replaced with school-sanctioned language practices, such as academic language. Researchers concerned with the educational experiences and trajectories of these students have cautioned against the use of rigid conceptualizations of academic language, which often equate students’ capabilities with test scores, while failing to account for their complex relationships with language inside and outside the classroom (Bunch 2014; Durán 2008; Gutiérrez & Orellana 2006; Snow & Uccelli 2009;Valdés 2004;Walqui 2000). Studies have highlighted various aspects of academic language that can make its mastery challenging for students, such as its lexical and grammatical features (Bailey 2007; Schleppegrell 2002) and its stark departure from linguistic forms and registers that students have acquired in other contexts (Bunch 2014; Schleppegrell 2002). In addition to these linguistic challenges, students from nondominant groups are often provided with limited opportunities to gain exposure and develop fluency in the use of academic language due to various forms of school-based discrimination and segregation (Valdés 2004). For these students, the obstacles associated with learning academic language can be compounded by issues of race and power stemming from, among other things, the widely held deficit ideology that continues to shape education policies and practices in the United States (Gutiérrez & Orellana 2006; Gutiérrez, Morales, & Martínez 2009). Although all students need academic language in order to achieve a variety of tasks and goals that are crucial to their academic development, the way that academic language and concepts are taught and assessed in schools often reflects

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little consideration for students’ “repertoires of practice,” which Kris Gutiérrez and Barbara Rogoff (2003: 22) define as “the ways of engaging in activities stemming from observing and otherwise participating in cultural practices.” Largescale assessments, which are increasingly used as the primary measure of student achievement, obscure the heterogeneity and diverse linguistic skills of minoritized groups, such as English learners, while providing “ ‘thin’ coverage of what students know and can do” (Durán 2008: 318). Scholars advocating a more fluid understanding of language in the classroom propose constructing learning spaces that leverage students’ diverse funds of knowledge (Moll et al. 1992)—particularly the knowledge they have acquired as members of their families and communities— and hybrid language practices (Gutiérrez, Baquedano-López, & Tejeda 1999: 289), understood as “the coexistence, commingling of, and contradictions among different linguistic codes and registers in the course of everyday activity.” More recently, Ofelia García and Li Wei (2014) have highlighted the integral role of emergent bilinguals’ translanguaging practices in making meaning in educational contexts and expanding opportunities for learning. Rather than focusing on individuals’ knowledge or competencies in one or more languages, they characterize translanguaging as “the speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of language, but that make up the speakers’ complete language repertoire” (García & Li 2014: 22). Adopting teaching approaches that are consistent with these perspectives consequently requires challenging deeply held assimilationist ideologies and creating spaces in which students have opportunities to question and redefine how language is taught in school. This chapter examines how Latinx students enrolled in the SKILLS program adopted and negotiated their understanding of one particular academic concept: communities of practice. By analyzing examples of how the concept was applied in classroom interactions as well as in students’ work, I argue that the SKILLS students and instructors were able to co-construct a space in which their personal experiences and hybrid language practices were positioned as valuable resources for learning. Further, students’ multiple ways of appropriating the term communities of practice provide insight into how academic concepts can be made relevant to the students’ lives and employed for the purpose of meaningful academic and personal work while promoting sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz et al. 2014).

Reconceptualizing Academic Language Despite the substantial literature on the development of academic language in a range of fields, from second language acquisition and bilingual education to numerous subfields of linguistics, there is little consensus on how academic language should be defined and how students’ academic language skills can best be assessed (Haneda 2014; Valdés 2004). One of the most influential definitions of academic language, particularly in the field of second language acquisition, has been Jim Cummins’s (1979) distinction between Cognitive Academic Language

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Proficiency and Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills. Cummins’s perspective has since been challenged on the grounds that portraying students’ interpersonal communication skills as less cognitively demanding than their academic language skills creates a false dichotomy and is misleading, given the multitude of complex linguistic practices that individuals engage in as part of their daily interactions with others (Bailey 2007; Hawkins 2004; Valdés 2004; Walqui & Van Lier 2010). As an alternative to Cummins’s and other traditional definitions that focus on contrasting academic language with conversational or informal language, George Bunch (2014) proposes reconceptualizing the dichotomy in order to acknowledge the large variety of linguistic resources students employ while engaging in academic tasks. Rather than asking whether the language that students use is academic, he suggests shifting the focus to how students use language and what purposes different linguistic registers serve. In his reframing of academic language, Bunch offers two concepts that aim to capture both the varied goals of language use and the intended audiences for academic activities. The first of these concepts is the “language of ideas,” which, as Bunch (2014: 74) states, “consists of the use of any and all linguistic resources students bring to bear on the engagement in and completion of an academic task.” By contrast, the “language of display” constitutes “evolving oral and written texts [that] students develop, either individually or as a group, to present to particular academic audiences” (Bunch 2014: 74). This distinction is useful in attempting to broaden the lens used to examine students’ linguistic practices because it foregrounds how engaging in academic tasks inevitably requires strategically combining a variety of linguistic resources. Other scholars advocating for a sociocultural approach to academic language (Gutiérrez & Rogoff 2003; Haneda 2014; Hawkins 2004; Walqui 2000, inter alia) have underscored the importance of viewing all learning as socially situated and inextricably tied to students’ experiences of transitioning between multiple discourses and identities. Mari Haneda (2014: 128) argues that the term academic language is restrictive in that it treats the acquisition of register as an end in itself rather than as part of students’“expanding linguistic repertoires,” which are shaped by their lived experiences and existing linguistic practices. She proposes replacing academic language with academic communication, which more accurately captures the interactional and dynamic aspect of academic language use and positions it as one of many linguistic tools and semiotic resources students can employ “when [it] is appropriate to the action undertaken” (2014: 128). This definition further aims to challenge linguistic hierarchies that often position academic language as superior to other registers and varieties and marginalize nondominant groups of students on the basis of their language use.

Academic Language in Action in a SKILLS Classroom The data for this chapter were collected in a college-level Language and Society class for first-generation college-bound students at Mission City High School as

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part of the SKILLS academic outreach program. The instructional team comprised two graduate student instructors, Audrey Lopez and Zuleyma CarrubaRogel, and a partner teacher, along with four undergraduate mentors and four undergraduate researchers, who were responsible for classroom data collection. The chapter is based on the analysis of classroom discourse documented using video recordings and observations over the five-month duration of the course, as well as analysis of students’ presentations and research assignments. In order to examine how students co-constructed their understanding of the concept of communities of practice, I focus on examples drawn from approximately thirty hours of video data, which include the activities in which the concept was introduced and later instances throughout the course where students incorporated or applied the term in their own work and class discussions. The term communities of practice, originally introduced by Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger (1991), has been explained in the following way: “an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations—in short, practices—emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor” (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet 1992: 464). Lave and Wenger (1991) characterize communities of practice as having three main features: a shared domain, a community of individuals engaged in repeated and joint activities, and repertoires of resources and practices resulting from individuals’ mutual engagement.Within the SKILLS curriculum, the concept of communities of practice was introduced during the second week of the course, as part of a unit on slang. I selected the concept for analysis due to students’ responsiveness to the term and its continued use throughout the course. After two initial discussions devoted to discussing communities of practice, students revisited and incorporated the academic concept into their work and reflection in a variety of ways, allowing them to connect with and share their personal experiences. The following analysis is divided into three sections.The first section illustrates how the students and instructors in the class co-constructed their understanding of the concept of communities of practice. The second section provides examples of how students appropriated the concept and employ it to explore their linguistic heritage, and the final example demonstrates how the academic concepts and linguistic knowledge acquired within SKILLS allowed students to position themselves as experts and members of their own community of practice.

Constructing a Shared Narrative In this section, I analyze examples of students and instructors sharing their experiences related to participating in and moving between different communities of practice. I argue that by integrating accounts of personal experiences into classroom interactions, the instructional team provided students with both a space and a model for how to relate their own experiences to a new academic concept while legitimizing the use of hybrid linguistic practices in the classroom.

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In the first of two class periods on communities of practice, one of the graduate instructors, Zuleyma, spent the initial part of the class giving a brief interactive lecture accompanied by PowerPoint slides outlining the key characteristics of various concepts, including community, practices, shared repertoires, and communities of practice. In her description, Zuleyma focused on the role of shared practices within communities, which she characterized as repeated actions and activities that “help to define a community.” While her description of the concept was based on Lave and Wenger’s original definition, she deliberately did not mention the authors or provide a formal definition to students beyond the bullet points outlined in the slides; this broader definition allowed students to access and appropriate the concept in multiple ways. Zuleyma further emphasized that all individuals are members of multiple communities of practice and may adopt a variety of practices through their engagement in different groups. Given the SKILLS curriculum’s focus on language, she highlighted language use, including slang and linguistic styles, as central to individuals’ participation in and affiliation with specific communities of practice. After having presented the concept to the class, Zuleyma went on to share her own experience transitioning between her home community of practice in Texas and her academic communities of practice when she went to college. In the following example, she describes the challenges she encountered in attempting to remain connected to her community and notes how adopting new practices altered the way she was treated and perceived by her family and friends back home. This transition was particularly relevant to the students, as the majority of them were college-bound. (See the Appendix for transcription conventions.) (1) 1 ZULEYMA; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

When I went off to school, I mean, I’m from the hood. And then I went off to school, and I’ve been in school all these years, and I’ve picked up other different ways, and I was so out of my community that, whenever I would get back, it was kind of like, I would feel more and more of an outsider. You know. So I had to very quickly, get back into the lingo, of where I was at, because I didn’t like being called out on it. Because I didn’t want to be,

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17 18 19 20 21 22 VANESSA; 23 ZULEYMA; 24 VANESSA; 25 ZULEYMA; 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

uh, so separated, from where I was from. You know, [So], [Did they] start calling you a coconut? Mande? (‘Come again?’) Did they start calling you a coconut? No, because I was born in México. They could never call me a coconut. @@@ Like “What? Come on @ I have my stamp.” ((pats right upper arm with left hand)) But, yes. I would get— I would get some of that, like, “Well, You know you’re— You sound white.”

In Example 1, Zuleyma begins her narrative about her own communities of practice by identifying as coming “from the hood” (line 3). Because this exchange took place during the second week of the course, the students did not yet know Zuleyma well. In this context, not only is her use of the slang term hood and its strong association with marginalized racial and socioeconomic groups powerful due to its informal nature, but it also clearly positions Zuleyma as a person of color, allowing her to build a connection with the students. She goes on to describe how going to college led her to acquire “different ways” (line 6), and how she had to develop the ability to “get back into the lingo” (line 13) in order to reestablish ties with her home community in the Texas Panhandle when she returned. She further explains how adopting new practices at college made her feel like “more and more of an outsider” (line 10) at home, and how she did not like “being called out” on acting different (line 15). Her account powerfully and vividly highlights the tensions arising from attempting to navigate different communities of practice, as well as the central role of language in defining access and membership into communities of practice. The SKILLS students’ engagement with this narrative is evident in their responses. In line 22, one of the students, Vanessa, interrupts Zuleyma to ask if

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“they” (i.e., members of her home community) started calling her a “coconut,” a derogatory term for a Latinx who is perceived as racially inauthentic. When Zuleyma asks Vanessa to repeat the question, she introduces Spanish into the interaction and uses the Mexican Spanish expression “Mande?” (line 23)—a translanguaging practice that students do not typically encounter in other classes, especially given the English-only policies of California’s public schools. Vanessa’s reaction relates Zuleyma’s narrative to a concept that she is familiar with and that she may have direct experience with in her own life. Vanessa’s choice to use the racialized slang term coconut is likely also a response to the instructor’s speech style and use of slang. Zuleyma initially responds by jokingly denying the possibility of being labeled a coconut because she was born in “México” (which she utters using Spanish phonology; line 25) and touches her arm while affirming that she has a “stamp” to prove her Mexican identity (line 30). She later explained to me that she was referring to the vaccination scars that many Mexican-born individuals have on their arms, which have become an identity marker among Mexicans in the United States. Zuleyma goes on to acknowledge the student’s question and recognizes that even though she was not called a coconut she did “get some of that” (line 34) and has been told that she “sound[s] white” (line 38). In doing so, she validates Vanessa’s question and establishes a connection between the student’s own cultural knowledge and the new academic concept that she herself has introduced. Another significant aspect of Zuleyma’s sharing of her experience with the class is the affective component of her narrative. While she talks about adopting different “ways” as a result of joining new communities of practice, she also focuses on what it felt like to go back home and not want to be excluded or singled out for speaking and acting differently. From a pedagogical standpoint, tying an abstract concept such as communities of practice to personal experiences that are authentic and relatable to students’ lives is importantly different from providing students with an academic textbook definition of the term that cannot convey the emotions associated with these experiences. Moreover, Zuleyma’s use of translanguaging and different registers to illustrate the concept highlights her personal connection with multiple groups and languages and helps create a space in which these practices are validated and acceptable. Zuleyma’s discussion of personal experience in this example not only helped to create a hybrid learning space within the classroom, but it also served as a model for how to make sense of an unfamiliar academic concept. This benefit became clear in the following class meeting, which Zuleyma dedicated to learning about the students’ own communities of practice. She began by inviting the three undergraduate mentors in the class to share their own experiences of being part of different communities of practice. Following Zuleyma’s model from the previous class, a common thread throughout the three mentors’ narratives is the transition from a home community to college and the types of issues that emerged in trying to navigate and reinsert themselves into different communities of practice. Lumy,

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one of the undergraduate mentors, echoed many of the issues raised by Zuleyma during the previous class (Example 2). (2) 1 LUMY; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

And now when I go back home, it’s like, the- the way I speak, My Spanish got really bad, just because I stopped speaking it a lot. So when I try to talk to my parents, they’ll be like, “What happened to you?” Like, “You used to say this right. Now you’re not saying it right.” I or- I speak Spanglish a lot. Which I wouldn’t do a lot, But now I do. So I noticed that like, My communities of practice, the changes that I saw, like, went through my language. Like, my language changed a lot. Because I started to adopt, more of like a chill: slang here, And back home it’s more like, ghetto. More hard.

In her description of the transition from high school to college, Lumy emphasizes the role of language in maintaining her connection to her home community and specifically her family. She describes how her Spanish has suffered as a result of going to a predominantly white university and how this has affected her ability to communicate fluidly with her parents, who have responded negatively to the changes in her Spanish language abilities (line 8). She goes on to describe another change: having gone from speaking “ghetto” slang (line 25) to adopting “a more chill slang” (line 23). The use of the word ghetto suggests that there are significant racial and socioeconomic differences between her community of practice at home and the community she has become a part of in college. In line 26 she refers to her previous “ghetto” way of speaking as “more hard,” contrasting

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this with the “chill” speech style that she has adopted at college, which is perhaps more acceptable within her new community of practice. While Lumy shares her experience, one of the students sitting closest to her, Natalia, observes her attentively, with her body turned toward her as she speaks. Her sustained attention during this particular part of the class period becomes relevant during a group discussion shortly afterward in which students are asked to share their own personal experiences as members of different communities of practice. During the small-group discussion, which is facilitated by Lumy, Natalia describes how taking Advancement Placement (AP) classes in preparation for college has negatively impacted her ability to communicate with her family in Spanish (Example 3). (3) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

LUMY;

FELIPE;

LAURA; FELIPE; NATALIA;

#LAURA; NATALIA;

And as students, like, what role does that play?, in like the way you talk, the way you act, (1.1) Sometimes it pretty much, it depends on what classes you take, what course you’re in. AP classes are for people who challenge themselves more, and those people are generally, you know, They’re mostly white. So:, Yeah. ((nods, smiles)) So then your accent changes too. (0.8) Because, @ Because I remember when I was in sixth grade, I— like, I think I had like a, you know, a ghetto accent, because my school was, (H) predominantly Hispanic, so like I was just like, used to,

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30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

(0.5) just you know, speaking Spanish and English, and everyone understood, but then:, with like AP classes, you just start to cha:nge, and then you forget thi:ngs, and then you start speaking Spanglish with your parents, a:nd, you can’t stop. And then you sound pocha. @@

In response to Lumy’s question about their communities of practice as students, Felipe states that students’ language use varies across different classes in their high school and implies that these classes represent distinct communities of practice. He claims that students enrolled in AP classes “challenge themselves more” (line 10) and begins to explain how this affects their language use. Felipe’s comment reflects internalized stereotypes about the kinds of students who are enrolled in AP classes and the higher academic status that accompanies being part of these communities of practice. Laura adds that the students in AP classes are “mostly white” (line 13). The fact that Laura equates being an AP student with being white further reinforces the shared understanding that being a member of an academically selective course requires adopting language that is not only distinct, but also associated with a white majority. Similar language ideologies appear in Mary Bucholtz’s (2011) work with California high school students, where white students enrolled in advanced courses acknowledged the racial imbalance in those courses, but attributed the low representation of students of color to a perceived lack of parental education and support, rather than to systemic discrimination. Natalia builds on Laura’s comment, adding, “so then your accent changes too” (line 16). Her use of the generic you indicates that she is describing an experience she believes to be common and familiar to her peers. She goes on to describe her own transformation moving from a “predominantly Hispanic school” (line 27) to her current school, where she is enrolled in AP classes and no longer uses Spanish. Echoing Lumy’s narrative, she identifies her accent in the previous school as “ghetto” (line 25). She further attributes being enrolled in AP classes to “start[ing] to change” (line 36) and “forgetting things” (line 37). The result of this transformation, which in her portrayal seems almost inevitable, is that she now speaks Spanglish with her parents and sounds “pocha” (line 41). Pocha is a derogatory term used to characterize individuals of Mexican origin in the United States who are perceived as Americanized because they speak little or no Spanish (see also Carruba-Rogel, this volume). Like the term coconut, pocha/o is used to mark

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an individual as an outsider, as someone who does not act and/or speak in ways that are consistent with the established practices of a given community. Natalia’s account takes up several features of the narratives told by Zuleyma and Lumy, including the theme of linguistic transformation and emotional distancing from her family or home community, the use of slang and Spanish terms to signal affiliation with different groups, and the socioeconomic and racial differences between academic communities of practices and home or family-based communities of practice. These themes seemed to resonate with several students, including Natalia, who continued to reference them in the context of a whole-classroom discussion. After the group activity, the class reconvened and Zuleyma asked members of each group to share some of the points from their discussion with the rest of the class. When she asked the class if they had encountered any challenges in having to navigate different communities of practice, Natalia volunteered to share her experience (Example 4): (4) 1 NATALIA; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ZULEYMA; 17 18 NATALIA; 19 20 21 22 23

Um, (0.6) Well like I was saying here. In my group, Like in u:h, (0.9) So AP classes influence your accent? (0.6) So, (1.1) Before I used to go to a school that was predominantly Hispanic and, so my accent was more like, (H) ghetto:. @@ ((makes air quotes with fingers and smiles)) And um, so I would speak [Spanglish more], [Call it Raza]. More Raza. More Raza. Okay ((smiles)). And um, When I came in high school, or junior high, and I got into like higher-level classes,

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24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36

Um, (0.9) They kind of— Like you have to be aware, of the people that are around you, like you can’t just speak in Spanish, because not everyone is going to understand what you’re saying, So your language starts to change, as well as your accent, And then you speak Spanglish at home, because you can’t speak Spanish as well as you used to, And then you sound like a pocha. @@@

In this retelling, Natalia again labels her accent while at her previous school as more “ghetto” (line 13) and laughs at her own characterization. Zuleyma corrects Natalia, telling her to use the term Raza instead, a reference to the 1960s Chicanx civil rights movement; this connection seems to be an attempt to reframe the linguistic practices that Natalia has categorized as “ghetto” as associated with a more positive—and politically engaged—ethnoracial identity. Natalia expands on her original explanation of why her Spanish has, in her view, deteriorated, stating that in “higher-level classes” (line 23) not everyone speaks Spanish and that because of this she has had more limited opportunities to use the language (lines 27–30). Although she does not state it explicitly, the need to accommodate to English monolinguals by not speaking as much Spanish is clearly related to her being in the linguistic and racial minority in her AP classes. In the final portion of her narrative, she describes the chain of events that have led her to change the way she speaks Spanish and to speak more Spanglish. Again, she displays awareness that this is a common experience shared by others in the class by using the generic pronoun you rather than I (lines 27–35). Her generalized narrative seems to reaffirm that there is a predictability to the progression of going from being fluent in Spanish to speaking Spanglish at home and finally to sounding “like a pocha” (lines 31–35). The examples discussed thus far indicate that students viewed moving between communities of practices and experiencing changes in language use as a result as a common, even inevitable, consequence of their schooling and involvement in academic communities of practice (see also Love-Nichols, this volume). The instructor’s and mentors’ use of personal accounts to illustrate the concept of communities of practice provided a way for students to begin talking about and critically reflecting on their own experiences while creating a participatory classroom environment in which these experiences were validated. Moreover, the use

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of various linguistic registers and languages by the instructional team opened up the learning space to hybrid linguistic practices and established these practices as valuable resources that students could draw on in classroom discussions and academic work. In order to illustrate how students’ understanding of the concept of communities of practice continued to evolve in this classroom, the following section examines how students appropriated and employed the concept in the context of academic assignments.

“El pueblo” as a Community of Practice The two class meetings that introduced the concept of communities of practice laid the foundation for students’ understanding of the term and established ways of applying and relating to the concept that reemerged throughout the course. In initial classroom discussions and later work, students identified a wide range of communities of practice that they considered themselves members of, including sports teams and other extracurricular clubs and activities, religious groups, and their places of work, as well as their peer groups and families. In this section, I focus on how the concept of communities of practice was applied specifically in the context of students’ exploration of their linguistic heritage. As the following examples illustrate, the concept proved particularly useful in allowing students to analyze and discuss their transnational identities and experiences. One of the assignments that students were required to complete shortly after the classes on communities of practice was to write and share their linguistic autobiographies. The assignment also included a visual component, which most students chose to complete in the form of a drawing or small poster. Students were asked to give brief class presentations on their autobiographies and answer questions posed by their peers and instructors. As part of this activity, two students focused on their affiliation with communities of practice in Mexico. Their use of communities of practice to understand these affiliations is significant because unlike most other ways of categorizing groups or communities, the concept’s emphasis on shared practices allows people to consider themselves members of a community of practice despite being physically distant from it. As Patricia Sánchez (2007) highlights in her work on immigrant Latina youth, transnationalism is a fundamental aspect of immigrant youth identities and allows individuals to develop expertise in a wide range of linguistic and cultural practices. These sources of expertise are rarely acknowledged or valued in school contexts; hence, creating a space where students feel comfortable sharing such experiences can be powerful in pushing the boundaries of what is viewed as legitimate knowledge in the classroom. In Example 5, which takes place during a student’s presentation, Zuleyma asks the student, Pilar, to talk about why she chose to self-identify as Mexican American on her linguistic autobiography poster. Pilar seems conflicted about how to weigh

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these two aspects of her identity; in responding to Zuleyma’s question, she states that she feels she has primarily been shaped by the “ways” of her Mexican parents. (5) 1 PILAR; Well my parents are Mexican, 2 and I was obviously born here, 3 but, 4 I sometimes feel like I’m more Mexican than American, 5 because, 6 My— 7 Well my parents are Mexican, 8 so they’re obviously going to teach me their ways, 9 So I don’t really know what the “American” way is, ((makes air quotes with fingers)) 10 you know? 11 I just— 13 Besides knowing English?, By using the word way(s) (lines 8 and 9), Pilar appears to be referring to cultural practices that extend beyond the use of a particular language. Further, by expressing uncertainty about what constitutes “the American way” (line 9)—“besides knowing English” (line 13)—she distances herself from the idea of being American at all and suggests that speaking English does not tie her to a particular community or identity. Following the discussion of her poster, Zuleyma asks Pilar to share the first paragraph of her autobiographical essay by reading it aloud. In Example 6, an excerpt from her paper, Pilar highlights the value of Spanish in giving her access to a community of practice that she cares deeply about: el pueblo. (6) 1 PILAR; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

“Proudly a Mexican American, and value a hundred percent, my culture and where— from where my parents came from. That’s why Spanish is very important for me, because, that’s all they speak in el pueblo. (‘the village’) And it involves me in a very personal, and completely different, community of practice.”

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In this passage from her essay, Pilar portrays her Mexican American identity as a source of pride (line 1); however, when she mentions “my culture” in line 3 she appears to be specifically referencing her Mexican background and her parents’ community of origin (line 4) rather than a U.S.-based culture. Pilar also emphasizes the value of Spanish in allowing her both to be involved in (line 8) and to feel connected to her family’s village in Mexico. Although moments earlier she minimized the importance of English in defining her Americanness, in the essay she indicates that speaking Spanish is central to her Mexican identity and to her ability to communicate with her family in el pueblo. The fact that she uses the Spanish term el pueblo rather than the English term village is another example of how students in the SKILLS classroom felt free to use translanguaging and hybrid linguistic practices to more authentically represent their relationships with different communities of practice (see also Lateef-Jan, this volume). Another student who was particularly interested in her linguistic heritage and its indigenous roots also identified with a community of practice in Mexico in her linguistic autobiography. During her presentation, this student, Laura, shared a drawing she had made of the island in Michoacán where her family was from and spoke about how visiting the island was a turning point for her because it was the first time she had felt proud to be Mexican. Laura expanded on her linguistic autobiography for the final project for the course, which she presented in front of a large audience during the SKILLS Day conference at the University of California, Santa Barbara campus. In her final presentation at UCSB (Example 7), Laura again described how visiting the island had changed her perspective about her identity and had allowed her to appreciate the value of the Tarascan language (an indigenous language native to the region of Michoacán) and its communities. (7) 1 LAURA; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13

When I was younger, I wasn’t really proud of being Mexican. Um, I didn’t really care about my heritage. I was just like, “Uh, I’m Mexican. That’s cool.” But going to the island really opened my eyes, and changed my view, I had the opportunity to see, how language plays such an important role, in their communities of practice.

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Similarly to Pilar, Laura emphasizes the central role of language in these communities of practice on the island. In Example 8, she goes on to explain how the loss of the Tarascan language within her own family has led her to become aware of how communities of practice can “make” or “destroy” a language (lines 3–4). (8) 1 LAURA; 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

I however, don’t want to lose my heritage and my language. I have seen how communities of practice can either make a language, or destroy it, For my research I have written that, language— That when people don’t practice a language enough, it becomes vulnerable to dying out. When a language does die out, the whole culture dies out, and is lost.

In this example, Laura describes communities of practice as having influence over the preservation of language and as being legitimate entities that play an active role in shaping their linguistic practices. She also highlights her own desire, and what she describes later in the presentation as her “responsibility,” to maintain her heritage and protect her language from “dying out” (line 8). Although Laura focuses on the practices of island residents, she also clearly views herself as connected to these communities of practice by identifying Tarascan as “my heritage and my language” (line 2). Identifying as part of a community from which she is geographically removed highlights Laura’s ability to use the concept of communities of practice to capture her evolving relationship with an aspect of her identity that she has recently discovered. Laura’s project, like that of many of the other students, allowed her to integrate her personal interests and experiences in navigating different communities of practice with her analysis of broader social issues related to the politics of language, which often lead nondominant students such as herself to feel that their linguistic heritage is not valued by the broader society. While students such as Pilar and Laura were able to use the concept of communities of practice as a lens to analyze their linguistic heritage, incorporating the term into their linguistic repertoires also became a way for students to signal their affiliation with the SKILLS class itself.

Students as Experts and Researchers During one of the final class meetings of the course, the students engaged in a conversation reflecting on the SKILLS Day conference they had just participated in, evaluating their own presentations and those of other participants. One of the

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students, Santiago, expressing some criticism about presentations by students from another school, argued that in some cases the scope of their presentations was not well defined and that it was unclear if they were focusing on linguistic issues as he and his peers had done in their presentations (Example 9). (9) 1 SANTIAGO 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 AUDREY; 23; SANTIAGO 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37

It was kind of hard for me to find, the scope, of what they were trying to be relevant to:, within their own projects, you know, Cause I was— I was assuming it was like, community— you know, linguistics, and a certain community of practice, but then like I thought about it, I’m like, “Well how does it relate to the uh, ((topic of student presentation deleted))? you know, how do— I don’t know, but well like, I didn’t exactly know what their prompt was, and I didn’t get a takeaway point, you know from that, From that. which I felt that all our, um projects, we did very well, We were— We:, we were able to give relevance to our, significant? that you mentioned the— for— um, of what— like the reason that we did the research, and how the research had to do with, you know, the significant point in our slides.

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In articulating his critiques to the rest of the class as part of a relatively informal conversation between students and instructors, Santiago notably uses a number of academic concepts related to his work in the course. He begins by expressing concern about whether or not the students from the other school were focusing on “linguistics” (line 10) and “communit[ies] of practice” (line 11) in their presentations and applies a number of other academic terms, such as scope (line 2), relevance (line 28), and research (line 34) to identify the aspects that were lacking in their presentations. Incorporating these concepts allows Santiago to demonstrate his expertise and position himself as more knowledgeable than those whose work he is critiquing. By using academic terms he has learned in the course to describe the shortcomings of a presentation by the students from another school, he also reaffirms his membership in this class. He goes on to say that stating the relevance of the projects is something that he and his peers “did very well” (line 25) in their presentations, again referencing a shared classroom identity, based in part on the use of specific linguistic practices and expertise. Following Santiago’s reflection on the presentations, one of his peers, Vanessa, raised her hand and supported his position by stating that she also felt that the students from the other school had been unsuccessful in applying the concept of communities of practice to their work: “Like I could see where they were trying to go. Communities of practices and stuff, like input that, but they didn’t touch on that mainly.” Both of these critiques suggest that to the students in the class, identifying a community of practice for the project was an important component of the assignment and a way to give their work focus and direction by providing a unit of analysis. Santiago’s contribution also displays a level of ownership of the academic terms he uses, as well as confidence and pride stemming from being able to apply them effectively in an academic context.This sense of ownership suggests that when academic concepts are introduced in ways that resonate with students, these terms can become a means of enacting agency and engagement as learners and knowledge producers.

Conclusion The preceding analysis highlights several important issues associated with how academic language and concepts can be framed in ways that are more responsive to the needs as well as the existing knowledge and resources of students from marginalized populations. One of the key features of the SKILLS classroom where this study was conducted was an openness and acceptance of hybrid language practices and translanguaging. Although students were expected to complete various academic assignments in the form of papers and presentations throughout the course, the language used while interacting with others and making sense of the concept of communities of practice integrated the use of English and Spanish as well as various linguistic registers. It is also important to note that the use of different registers by instructors and students did not seem to generate conflicting

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messages for students or impede them from using formal language when presenting their work for an academic audience during their final presentations at UCSB. In this sense, Bunch’s (2014) distinction between the “language of ideas” and the “language of display” proves useful in thinking about the various purposes that language might serve in any given academic task, as well as students’ agency in selecting from a toolkit of linguistic and discursive resources. However, the above analysis indicates that in certain situations the language of display does not necessarily have to be conceived as entirely separate from the language of ideas and that space should be created within academic discourse to recognize the value of incorporating hybrid linguistic forms that allow for students’ voices and opinions to be heard and represented more authentically. Another issue that clearly emerges from students’ work and interactions in this SKILLS classroom is the central place occupied by race and power dynamics in their own understanding of their identities and linguistic practices. Students were acutely aware of how their academic advancement directly correlated with the (perceived) loss of their Spanish abilities as well as how language played a central role in negotiating membership and maintaining affiliations with multiple communities of practice. Taking advanced classes, while a source of academic status, was paired with feelings of exclusion and marginalization. Students’ complex and dynamic relationships with various communities of practice and with different aspects of their identities highlights the need for teachers to create learning environments in which diversity and hybridity are embraced and leveraged to facilitate all students’ participation, engagement, and inclusion. As Haneda (2014: 130) argues, making academic language acquisition the end goal of education denies students the opportunity to engage in rich processes of exploration in which academic language becomes the means to accomplish meaningful work both within and beyond the classroom. Citing Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo (1987), she advocates that students be encouraged to “read the world” rather than “the word” and “to critically engage with a civic society that is heavily text-mediated, fully participating in the larger society and using their academic communication skills effectively to achieve their own goals” (Haneda 2014: 134). For students from marginalized communities in particular, such as those served by the SKILLS program, redefining the role and goals of academic language is crucial to providing educational spaces that support students in the pursuit of their interests, while recognizing and valuing who they are as learners, knowers, individuals, and members of multiple communities of practice.

References Bailey, Alison L. (ed.). 2007. The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test. New Haven, CT:Yale University Press. Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race, and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Allina Mojarro, Elena Skapoulli, Chris VanderStouwe, and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. Sociolinguistic justice in the schools: Student researchers as linguistic experts. Language and Linguistics Compass 8(4): 144–157. Bunch, George. 2014. The language of ideas and the language of display: Reconceptualizing “academic language” in linguistically diverse classrooms. International Multilingual Research Journal 8(1): 70–86. Cummins, Jim. 1979. Linguistic interdependence and the educational development of bilingual children. Review of Educational Research 49(2): 222–251. Du Bois, John W., Susanna Cumming, Stephan Schuetze-Coburn, and Danae Paolino (eds.). 1992. Discourse transcription. Santa Barbara Papers in Linguistics 4. University of California, Santa Barbara, Department of Linguistics. www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/research/ santa-barbara-papers#Volume4 Durán, Richard P. 2008. Assessing English-language learners’ achievement. Review of Research in Education 32(1): 292–327. Eckert, Penelope, and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 1992. Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology 21: 461–490. Freire, Paulo, and Donaldo Macedo. 1987. Literacy: Reading the word and the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey. García, Ofelia, and Li Wei. 2014. Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Gutiérrez, Kris D., Patricia Baquedano-López, and Carlos Tejeda. 1999. Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity 6(4): 286–303. Gutiérrez, Kris D., and Marjorie F. Orellana. 2006.The “problem” of English learners: Constructing genres of difference. Research in the Teaching of English 40(4): 502–507. Gutiérrez, Kris D., P. Zitlali Morales, and Danny C. Martinez. 2009. Re-mediating literacy: Culture, difference, and learning for students from nondominant communities. Review of Research in Education 33(1): 212–245. Gutiérrez, Kris D., and Barbara Rogoff. 2003. Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher 32(5): 19–25. Haneda, Mari. 2014. From academic language to academic communication: Building on English learners’ resources. Linguistics and Education 26: 126–135. Hawkins, Margaret R. 2004. Researching English language and literacy development in schools. Educational Researcher 33(3): 14–25. Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moll, Luis C., Cathy Amanti, Deborah Neff, and Norma Gonzalez. 1992. Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice 31(2): 132–141. Sánchez, Patricia. 2007. Cultural authenticity and transnational Latina youth: Constructing a meta-narrative across borders. Linguistics and Education 18(3): 258–282. Schleppegrell, Mary J. 2002. Linguistic features of the language of schooling. Linguistics and Education 12(4): 431–459. Snow, Catherine E., & Paola Uccelli. 2009. The challenge of academic language. In David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance (eds.), The Cambridge handbook of literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 112–133.

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Valdés, Guadalupe. 2004. Between support and marginalisation: The development of academic language in linguistic minority children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 7(2–3): 102–132. Walqui, Aída. 2000. Strategies for success: Engaging immigrant students in secondary schools. ERIC Clearing House on Languages and Linguistics. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED442300 Walqui, Aída, and Leo Van Lier. 2010. Scaffolding the academic success of adolescent English language learners: A pedagogy of promise. San Francisco, CA: WestEd.

APPENDIX Transcription Conventions

; . , ? : = @ (1.1) [ ] [2] (H) (Hx) ((words)) words (‘words’) Adapted from John W. Du Bois et al. (1992).

Speaker attribution Terminative intonation Continuative intonation Appeal Prosodic lengthening Latching Truncated/cut-off word Laughter Measured pause of greater than 0.5 second Overlap (first pair) Overlap (second pair) Inhalation Exhalation Analyst comment on gesture or gaze Spanish Translation

13 AFTER AFFECTS Mary Bucholtz, Dolores Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee

Introduction: Political Effects and Affects Since we began the collaboration that was the starting point for this book back in 2013, much has changed in our university, the state of California, the nation, and the world. Much has also changed in the SKILLS program and in our teaching and research, in part due to these larger-scale changes but in greater part due to our experience of collaboration with one another and with the brave and brilliant graduate students—some of whom have now earned their Ph.D.s—who share their thoughts, feelings, and insights within this volume. At the level of institutional and political changes, the most obvious difference is the new political landscape in which we find ourselves. The Trump regime makes explicit and unmistakable the longstanding white conservative affects of racial hatred, fear, and domination that many white liberal Americans had tried to downplay or ignore, resulting in their own affective “performances of vulnerability, suffering, and anxiety” in the wake of the election (Rosa & Bonilla 2017: 203). We have seen the effects of these turbulent white affects and the policies that they give rise to in the SKILLS program, particularly in the well-founded fears of the Latinx youth researcher–activists regarding their own and their family members’ future in a racially hostile nation. These circumstances have spurred the SKILLS team to increasingly overt engagement with political issues in their classrooms, sometimes with the enthusiastic support of our partner teachers and at other times in spite of their resistance or reluctance. It has also inspired us to make the use of Spanish more central to SKILLS: In addition to an existing class with youth from a Mexican indigenous immigrant community, which is taught in both Spanish and English, following the 2016 election we expanded the program to a Spanish/English dual-language

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immersion charter elementary school as well as to English Language Development classes for high school students who have recently arrived in the United States. In this way we have been able to support and validate young people’s Spanish abilities both pedagogically and politically.We see the role of SKILLS not merely as offering young people new perspectives on their lived experience with language but crucially as forging alliances with racialized youth as they use their affective agency to confront the nation’s long and ongoing history of racism and especially the retrograde form that it has taken in this new political era. While the United States as a whole has been moving in dangerous directions, the state of California has begun, in small but significant ways, to undo some of its own history of racist policy. Most notable in this regard is California voters’ passage of Proposition 58 in November 2016, which repealed the ban on bilingual education instituted by Proposition 227 in 1998. Proposition 58 was developed by a Latino state senator, Ricardo Lara, and placed on the ballot by a vote of the California Legislature—facts that indicate how much the state’s political and demographic landscape differs both from the California of the past and from the United States of the present day. The educational effects of this change in the law are still unclear, but encouragingly, it authorizes local school districts throughout the state to bring back primary language support for English language learners and to create dual-language immersion programs, thus enabling students to maintain and develop their home languages even as they acquire an additional language. However, the repeal of Proposition 227 comes too late for an entire generation of California youth, most of them Latinx. Nearly all of the students we have worked with in the SKILLS program since its inception have experienced their U.S. schooling exclusively in English, a situation that has resulted in feelings of shame or frustration about their abilities in their home languages—and often about their English as well. SKILLS has sought to address this imposed affective positioning in several ways: first, by calling attention to students’ home language abilities—including unrecognized or devalued abilities like receptive bilingualism and the use of a distinctive U.S.-based variety of Spanish—as valuable cultural knowledge and hard-won achievements in the face of racist and xenophobic educational policies and practices; second, by acknowledging youth as linguistic innovators who keep language vibrant through creative practices such as translanguaging and the use of slang; and third, by directly challenging the raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa 2015) that uphold white supremacy in the United States. Validating young Latinxs’ pain and anger at what the educational system has taken from them by force goes hand in hand with valorizing their abundant linguistic, cultural, and political knowledge, abilities, and insights. Finally, the university where the three of us teach has also undergone important changes since the SKILLS program began. In 2015, the University of California, Santa Barbara was designated a Hispanic-Serving Institution by the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities, the first major research university to achieve this status. This shift in our institution’s student population has directly

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benefited the SKILLS program, which actively recruits undergraduate and graduate student team members whose backgrounds are similar to those of the youth participants. To be sure, this status also creates serious concerns about the commodification of Latinx students as emblems of campus “diversity” (Urciuoli 2010) as well as their exploitation for special funding that may or may not directly benefit them. However, the transformation of our campus to more closely reflect the demographics of our state and our region is an important step toward greater social and educational justice for Latinx communities. In light of these political and demographic changes, our understanding of what SKILLS is and can be has also changed. But as we noted above, the biggest impact on our work within the program and as researchers, educators, advocates, and activists has come not from these larger shifts but from our experiences within the program itself, through the sometimes difficult, often invigorating, but always necessary intimacies of teaching and learning, talking and writing with one another and with our graduate and undergraduate students. In the introduction to this volume, we discussed the intellectual and political projects that are at work in the contributors’ chapters. In this afterword, we want to go more deeply into the emotional stakes of this collection of research as well as its insights for our work in the SKILLS program going forward.We especially seek to reflect on our own and our graduate students’ affects in undertaking and pursuing this project, because the development of these chapters from the authors’ initial research plans to their multiple draft manuscripts and now the printed volume has been a viscerally emotional experience for all of us.

Academic Affects Although emotion is always a key factor in the creation of scholarship of any kind, the affective dimensions of the research process are generally erased from most research products or relegated to carefully contained expressions of affect at the margins of academic writing. With so few models to turn to, it is especially admirable that the contributors to this volume, all of them at the beginning of their scholarly careers, were willing to explore the issues of affect so deeply and powerfully. Every author pushed themselves (and in our writing workshops we collectively we pushed one another) well beyond their comfort zone—exploring literatures in unfamiliar fields, examining data from new analytic perspectives, exposing their own affective experiences in their writing, confronting the emotional challenges of academic writing, and reflecting constructively and critically on the relationship between their own and others’ embodied subjectivities. Inscribed in these chapters is the dual affect of pain and hope that accompanies the uncertain processes of creation, discovery, and struggle—processes that are inherent to meaningful research and meaningful teaching and learning alike. Our introductory chapter addresses the intellectual stakes of affect as it intersects with language and race, but it does not address the personal stakes of the issue

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for each of us as authors, editors, and directors of the SKILLS program. Here we are inspired by our student–colleagues’ fearlessness and generosity in sharing their emotional, embodied experiences of language, race, and education both before they arrived at UCSB as graduate students and in their lives as scholars and educators at the university. Each of us discusses our own experiences below in the first person singular, since our disparate subject positions offer very different perspectival angles on the experience of collaboration with youth, teachers, undergraduate and graduate students, and one another.

Mary I’m somewhat surprised to find myself involved in a project focused on affect. I’ve spent much of my career steering clear of psychological approaches to language, which for the most part I find sterile and unpersuasive, and even in my personal life I’m avowedly unsentimental. But through the SKILLS program, the Crossroads initiative, and my own teaching and research, it became clear to me that a psychological approach isn’t the only way to understand affect. Inspired by work that demonstrates the social, cultural, embodied, and interactional dimensions of supposedly interior psychological processes of thinking and feeling (e.g., Hutchins 1995; Meyer, Streeck, & Jordan 2017), as well as the inherently political nature of these processes (e.g., Ahmed 2004b; Berg & Ramos-Zayas 2015), I began to understand cognition and especially emotion as crucial to the questions that drive me as a scholar: questions of identity, of agency, and of power. Perhaps the real surprise, then, is that it took me so long to take up the question of affect. My previous research on language, race, and white youth was shot through with affective issues (Bucholtz 2011), and much of my work is grounded in ethnography, in which the researcher’s subjectivity is acknowledged to have a central role. Moreover, my teaching focuses on emotionally fraught topics of race as well as gender and sexuality. Yet, somehow, I imagined that my own affective positionality was irrelevant to exploring affect in my research and teaching. Two teaching experiences helped me to recognize the fundamental importance of affect.The first, as described in Chapter 2 of this volume, was the intensely affective environment of the Crossroads seminar, where thinking and feeling were more visibly interconnected and rooted in embodied subject positions than in any other class I had taught or taken. Unlike the fields of Chicanx studies or education, emotion has been shunned in linguistics as inappropriate to a discipline with scientific pretensions. Moreover, as a white woman from the rural Midwest, where emotionality is often seen as dangerous and out of control, I had been socialized to regulate and repress my emotions in public space. Thus, when emotions came to the forefront of our seminar discussions, I had no experience to draw on for how to engage effectively as a professor and simultaneously an affective being in my own right—to put it bluntly, I freaked out and froze up. Fortunately, my colleagues and students in other disciplines were more familiar with this terrain and

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offered valuable guidance to me and other seminar members who felt similarly unprepared to enter into strongly affective encounters in classroom settings. The second teaching experience came in Spring 2014, when the Crossroads seminar was wrapping up and I was teaching a large lecture class on language, gender, and sexuality. In a horrific incident at UC Santa Barbara, a young man planned and carried out multiple murders, for twisted reasons of misogyny and racial resentment. Confronting this event with my students affectively, intellectually, and politically forced me to acknowledge that I could no longer leave my emotions at the classroom door. I have discussed some of the affective issues that arose at that terrible time in the history of our campus in a short publication and a longer, unpublished piece (Bucholtz 2016, 2017). These experiences have made me a more emotionally engaged, honest, and—I hope—effective teacher and researcher. It is now evident to me that affect is a crucial part of the experience of collectively building knowledge, but one that I have buried for most of my academic career, both for my own self-protection in the emotionally perilous world of academia and the larger white-dominated society and because for many years I didn’t have a way of conceptualizing affect that made sense to me as a scholar. My affective encounters with the SKILLS team—as my students, colleagues, teachers, and friends—have moved me in every sense of that word to spend the rest of my career finding ways to break down the artificial barriers between activism and scholarship, between research and teaching, and between thinking and feeling. I continue to try not to fall into the academic stance of emotionally detached “objectivity” that protects me and other white researchers and educators from fully acknowledging the painful realities of racial injustice in the lives of our racialized students, colleagues, and research participants. I work, often unsuccessfully, to resist relaxing into comfortable familiarities in my professional life, to challenge the structural privileges of whiteness, and to experience my own personal “pedagogy of discomfort” (Boler 1999: 175) as a necessary part of the ongoing process of learning and unlearning race. It is all too easy to shelter in the safety of white supremacy, but given the precarious ground that people of color must walk every day, recognition of and critical engagement with our own and others’ affects is an important way for us white people to become more fully human.

Inés Although demographic research confirms that Latinx youth do not place Spanishproficiency as a primary indicator of their racial and/or ethnic identification (Lopez 2016), none of these studies actually address why. When English dominance is validated, particularly in futuristic, optimistic terms (Rosa 2015), there’s much less attention placed on the various institutional and informal ways that the United States engages in the public shaming of native Spanish speakers and their families. From English-only work policies and struggles to staff translators

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at school meetings or health clinics to the mocking of accented speakers in U.S. popular culture, words generate disconcerting public perceptions about Spanish, Spanish-dominant speakers, and Spanish-accented speakers. Together, in Sara Ahmed’s (2004a) terms, these racialized ideas comprise an affective economy, where the circulation and distribution of images, words, and objects elicit emotions across social and psychic fields. The SKILLS program addresses how such affective economies impact our own self-perceptions and biases about language, identity, and belonging. The SKILLS experience deliberately departs from these troubling dominant narratives. The program situates often painful and complicated ideas about language proficiency with those of race, migration, and colonization. For instance, in using Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1987) essay “How to Tame a Wild Tongue” to address familial, peer and school relationships with Chicanx English, Spanish, and the politics of translation, SKILLS, as seen in Chapter 11, encourages students not only to reflect on how language use is often policed but also to recognize the creative ways that language challenges ideas about bilingualism, proficiency, and/or fluency. It also forces non-Chicanx and Latinx students to grapple with Spanish outside the confines of a Spanish-language textbook; it provides an opportunity for students to accompany one another through discussions that distinguish between power and privilege; and it demonstrates how interdisciplinary approaches enrich our understandings of language. My home department of Chicana and Chicano Studies was founded on the premise of teaching and articulating racialized notions of power and to motivate students of color to advocate for themselves as well as for others who are politically disenfranchised. Indeed, discussions of Spanglish and forms of Chicanx Spanish and English are topics often raised in our courses, where the majority of students are Latinx. My involvement with SKILLS and my teaching cross-listed undergraduate courses and graduate seminars, especially during the current “Build the Wall” era, have often reminded me that what I say may be second-guessed by how I say it. For this reason, as a bilingual Chicanx professor, I’ve felt an intense pressure to speak with authority (sternly), to cite quantitative as well as qualitative studies, and to self-monitor my speech (specifically my academic English)—and I have also experienced a profound sense of emotional vulnerability. In my own writings on U.S. Spanish-language media (e.g., Casillas 2008, 2011, 2014), it’s woefully apparent that Spanish holds a racialized and classed form of status. In capitalistic terms, Spanish is largely recognized as commercially unattractive by English-language media industries.Yet, for communities largely defined by language, class, and migration, Spanish plays the role of ally and provides a sense of solidarity during heightened moments of anti-immigrant anxieties. When I teach UCSB’s large undergraduate course Language, Power, and Learning, which emerged from our Crossroads collaboration, inevitably, Latinx students are faced with affective situations when we analyze the use of words like “lonche” (lunch) and “rentar” (to rent); the “accented” pronunciation of “Gual-mar” (Wal-Mart) or

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“Con-fleis” (Corn Flakes); and the development of new-ish terms such as “washeros” for car wash personnel or “lavaplatos” for dishwashers—in short, we discuss how language is, indeed, living but also reflective of our affective economies: the racialized and classed standings of Latinx communities in the United States.

Jin Sook I remember spending the earlier part of our Crossroads seminar trying to figure out how to teach across the three disciplines represented by each of us and what it means to do so. Intellectually I was stimulated just thinking about and seeing the intersections and connections made across our disciplines, awed by the freshness of the ideas presented; emotionally I was intimidated by the newness of interdisciplinary teaching and worried that I might overstep the boundaries of disciplinary and classroom managerial authority. I think I went into this context with a misguided assumption that because the participants, including the instructors, had self-identified as having a commitment to racialized youth and social justice and had voluntarily elected to there, we were ready to address sensitive and emotionally charged issues.The need to discuss or explicitly address how we were going to create a safe space for the participants didn’t come up until we had already begun the seminar, when a student casually expressed their opinion about the “need to get over colonization” (see Chapter 2), a remark which exploded into hurt emotions and tension among the participants in the room. Although we never fully reached a point where we were truly able to create a safe space for all during the year-long seminar, it was that moment that starkly showed us all as class members how unprepared we were to deal collectively with the deeper and broader issues of racism and implications of the racialization processes. It forced us to be more honest and more introspective about our own affective positionalities, just as we regularly expected from the SKILLS youth researcher-activists. As an Asian of Korean heritage who spent the earlier years of my childhood in the United States, somewhere along the path I trained myself to be nonreactive to and dismissive of injustices and hurtful emotions that were induced by things out of my control, like my race and ethnicity. I think this was my defense mechanism to protect my heart. In my own youth, I never had the opportunity to see myself as a social agent of change or to acquire tools to counter the processes of racialization, as some of the SKILLS youth researcher–activists have had. In fact, my silence and my willingness to just “cope” with injustices fit the mold of the “model minority,” a patronizing label that positions Asians as passive, compliant Americans in the American hierarchical polity (Lee 2009). Although I found myself resonating with many of the social injustices and prejudices experienced by Latinx youth that we worked with and whose stories are recounted in these pages, I questioned my legitimacy to claim any emotional connection or parallel to what Latinx students experience, as if somehow the racial marginalization of Asians were less severe or less valid. As we know that processes of racialization

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affect all youth of color, albeit in different ways, I hope today’s youth do not succumb to numbing tactics as I did earlier in my life but are awake to their emotions and given the tools and support to embrace their affective agency, a goal that has become more prominent and clear with our work via SKILLS. As the incoming director of SKILLS, I look forward to expanding our program to reach more varied populations of students, including Asian Americans, whose activism has been less visible and whose voices have been less heard in our communities (e.g., Hoang 2015). Given the emotional tensions in our Crossroads seminar, I would have never imagined that the topic of affect would be the common bond that would bring our cross-disciplinary work together. Although in the field of education there has been much lip service paid to the importance of educating the emotional and social aspects of the whole child, in reality the curricular activities and learning outcomes that seem to count center around measurable rational qualities such as language ability or reading comprehension ability, rather than the emotional or transformational affects of a child who goes from being monolingual to bilingual or from a novice to a fluent reader. How do we even begin to study or measure the complexity and the extreme messiness of affect? The contributors to this volume have made a brilliant start. I am immensely grateful for what I have learned about affect through the work of our contributors, which has enabled me to grow affectively as a scholar, researcher, educator, and person, and I continue to be greatly inspired by the courage of our SKILLS participants to express their most vulnerable emotions in front of others. It has become clear to me that the role of affect cannot be overlooked if we want to do work that truly makes a transformative difference in the lives of students. Even if it means stepping out of our comfort zone, we need to start rethinking and refocusing on the core of what it means to be human—emotions.

Affective Readings The individual and collective experiences we reflect on above gave shape to this volume, helping us to see (finally) that the work we had been carrying out together was not only about language, race, and education but also, crucially, about affect. And although much of the time the three of us have spent working together has been focused on the affects of others—our students in the Crossroads seminar, the youth participants in the SKILLS program, the volume’s contributors working to overcome affective obstacles like writer’s block and imposter syndrome—our own affects have been at the heart of our work as well. As our final (for now) reflection on this project, we want to discuss how these chapters have affected us personally as sources of understanding and insight as we continue to improve the SKILLS program. Although the original Crossroads seminar participants have not yet had an opportunity to come back together as a group to revisit the tensions and challenges

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recounted by Rachel in Chapter 2, as an intellectual and political intervention, her writing has had effects that go well beyond those expected for academic scholarship. It has profoundly influenced our work as mentors and instructors of graduate students by helping us envision and begin to create graduate classrooms that make room for emotion as central to scholarly inquiry. As Rachel writes, “Recognizing just emotions as both a tool and a goal of sociolinguistic justice requires us to imagine and enact new ways of teaching and learning.” As this book project comes to fruition, we hope to reconvene as many seminar participants as possible for an informal reunion, to take stock of where each of us stands intellectually, politically, and emotionally following our time together and how Rachel’s deeply honest work helps us reexamine our earlier dialogues with one another in the seminar classroom and with her in the interview process. Self-reflection is also a valuable element of Chapter 3, where Liz forthrightly discusses how her initial social science–oriented approach to her research overlooked the reality that research interviews, like musical performances, cannot be fully planned and controlled but instead rely on interaction in the moment. As Liz shows, when the researcher truly approaches the interview encounter as a conversation, the research emerges as the co-constructed product of interviewer and interviewee, and the resulting discoveries are much richer. Another important insight that we take from Liz’s interviews with the SKILLS graduate teaching fellows is the need for educators to have an opportunity to reflect on our own educational, racial, and linguistic experiences, background, and goals before we enter the classroom as well as throughout the teaching process. For Liz, a former teacher herself, inviting such reflection and acting as an interlocutor for her research participants enabled her to accompany the teaching fellows for part of the way in their individual teaching journeys. Finally, her musical metaphor is a necessary reminder that all social encounters—from music making to teaching to research—are artful experiences from which our affective selves cannot be separated, as seen in her poetic representations of each interviewee’s primary “motif.” In the same way, Chapter 4 by Anna and Sebastian is a courageous act of selfreflection and self-critique. We are in awe of their ability to step back and offer an analytic perspective on the difficulties they experienced in trying to translate the SKILLS program for a nonschool setting. And although the experiences they so candidly describe were specific to a particular situation, all of us have similar painful memories of teaching struggles (including, for the three of us, the teaching challenges documented in Rachel’s chapter about the Crossroads seminar). Most professors wouldn’t be willing to share such experiences with their own colleagues, let alone an international audience of readers. And although Anna and Sebastian are too kind to say so in their chapter, we ourselves failed to do enough to anticipate the difficulties that the radically different context of the Teen Center would present. As readers, we can best honor their courage and insight by looking critically at our own assumptions as educators, the countless small and large ways in which our teaching practices—from graduate seminars to

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undergraduate lectures to programs like SKILLS—continue to reproduce “school as usual” despite our best efforts to do otherwise. Jessi’s chapter on the raciolinguistic ideologies of three SKILLS partner teachers invites reflection in a different way. Her analysis is both critical and compassionate, emerging as it does from her own subject position as a former teacher whose own ideologies toward her racialized students were not so different from those her interviewees expressed. Her discussion makes clear that one shortcoming of the SKILLS program is its failure to collaborate with partner teachers as fully as it should.With its unusual critical focus on language and race, the SKILLS curriculum introduces new ideas and perspectives not only to students but also to their teachers; however, the program does not provide teachers with a space to explore these ideas before they encounter them in the classroom alongside their students. We have therefore missed an opportunity to prepare teachers to engage with and contribute to the curriculum as full partners. Jessi’s research is vital in helping us to see how SKILLS can strengthen its commitment to teachers and engage them in the same kinds of intellectual and affective explorations that we undertake with their students. Like Jessi’s chapter, Meghan’s contribution to the volume raises a fundamental issue for the SKILLS program: the problem of whiteness. Not only are the vast majority of public schoolteachers white and thus often unprepared on the basis of their life experience to address race effectively with their students (Matias 2016), but as Meghan demonstrates in Chapter 6, even the best-planned discussions of race may be derailed or disrupted classrooms with a majority (or even a vocal minority) of white students. Her analysis reveals that these disruptions work largely through white affects that claim center stage and shut down other possible ways of feeling, seeing, and experiencing. It is evident that a different form of the SKILLS curriculum needs to be developed for such classrooms, as well as different strategies for guiding classroom interaction. In addition, Meghan’s chapter shows us that we have a special responsibility to our undergraduate team members, particularly those who are themselves from racialized groups, to ensure that they feel fully prepared and supported when they take the lead within the classroom. Addressing these urgent issues will be central to the ongoing development of the SKILLS program. In moving from ideologies within the classroom to larger sociopolitical processes, Adi underscores the intellectual and affective power of narrative—a central pedagogical and political resource for critical race theory and other antiracist perspectives (e.g., Solórzano & Yosso 2002). Her own narrative of being raciolinguistically positioned not only offers a powerful personal account of the inseparability of language, racialization, and affect but also serves as a form of accompaniment for the three students—los valientes—whose narratives she goes on to discuss. These students’ courageous classroom narratives and political statements, as analyzed by Adi, also provide us with an important example of how to examine the relationship of language and race with students from a raciolinguistic perspective

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(Rosa & Flores 2017). Relatedly, Adi’s perspective as a Chicanx studies scholar has been invaluable in shifting the SKILLS curriculum toward a more central focus on race and racism. For us as SKILLS directors, this impetus pushes us to ensure that all of our instructors, regardless of their own disciplinary background, feel prepared to frame their teaching around these crucial issues. Zuleyma’s scholarly expertise likewise sheds light on an area where SKILLS falls short: giving parents the opportunity to engage with the issues that the program explores. As a specialist in involving parents in their children’s education who is herself a bilingual Latina, Zuleyma brought a much-needed perspective to our collaborative work, reminding us that our responsibilities as educators do not stop with our students. SKILLS has primarily involved parents and other family members as participants in students’ research and as audiences for their work, but Zuleyma’s chapter demonstrates that much more can and should be done to create meaningful connections between parents and the program. Parents’ own experiences with language and race in some ways mirror and in other ways diverge from those of racialized youth, and it is crucial both for young people and for the adults who work with them to understand these experiences. Conversely, parents often don’t know about their children’s raciolinguistic encounters and their affective impact. A crucial role for SKILLS, then, as shown by Zuleyma’s own example, is to foster intergenerational dialogues in ways that are as safe and constructive as possible for all participants, providing information and support as well as spaces and structures for open, respectful communication. Tijana’s chapter provides a similar reminder that young people’s families, present and future, are key contexts for them to engage with language as a social, cultural, political, and affective site. Tijana’s transnational journey as a bilingual mother resonates with her students’ family language policies and their bilingual aspirations for their future children, enabling her to connect with her students’ linguistic autobiographies on a personal and affective level. At the same time, she shows that the SKILLS program must recognize the diversity of experiences and identities among bilingual Latinx youth.To be sure, SKILLS adapts its curriculum for each classroom in order to meet the needs of different groups, but Tijana’s work calls attention to the fact that even within a single classroom a particular activity may result in different kinds of learning experiences and affects for individual students. Moreover, students’ own experiences may not align with the categories that we impose on them: As Tijana notes, although she considered all of her Latinx students bilingual, they themselves felt compelled to choose a single identity as primarily English speakers or primarily Spanish speakers. For SKILLS to serve all students effectively, we must be attuned to the diversity of students’ linguistic identities. This diversity of student perspectives is also evident in Audrey’s chapter, which highlights the skilled interactional and affective work that both students and educators perform in moments of disagreement and disalignment. Understanding these dynamics is critical to the success of teaching approaches—such as those

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that are central to the SKILLS program—that introduce personally relevant, emotionally laden topics into the classroom and invite students to reflect on these topics from the perspective of their own experiences. To undertake such a pedagogical strategy without careful reflection and preparation risks the well-being of youth who have already endured racialized traumas throughout their schooling and other life experiences. But this chapter showcases the effectiveness of teachers who are well prepared and deeply invested in their students: Audrey and her coteacher Zuleyma’s empathy toward their students, and their skill in managing the complexities of students’ strongly felt and contrasting affects, offer these young people both validation and new perspectives. As shown in Katie’s chapter, another key source of insight into students’ sometimes shared and sometimes divergent experiences and understandings is their writings. While journal writing has been a regular component of the SKILLS curriculum, Katie’s incorporation of pedagogical insights from composition studies provides a valuable starting point for developing a fuller focus on literacy activities as part of the program. The affective power of writing is on abundant display in this chapter, which beautifully interweaves literary and scholarly quotations, student writing, and Katie’s own analysis. The inclusion of images from the students’ journal writing further enhances the chapter’s affective power: Each student’s handwritten reflection gives us as readers a sense of the embodied and emotional process of thinking and writing that gave rise to each text. Finally, María’s chapter offers a valuable perspective on the SKILLS program’s goal of advancing educational justice. Even as the SKILLS team strives to provide an alternative to “school as usual” and to valorize the ways of speaking and writing that students bring with them into the classroom, we need to recognize that academic language, when introduced in the right way and for the right reasons, can provide young people with powerful new ways of conceptualizing and naming their experiences. At the same time, as the language of power, the academic register offers racialized youth a potent tool (but not unlimitedly so) for gaining entry into the white public space of most U.S. institutions of higher education. María’s work foregrounds the importance of drawing on students’ own personal and affective experiences to enable them to explore, take up, and make use of a key academic term, community of practice. As with many other chapters throughout the volume, María’s chapter shows that personal narrative is a vital resource for racialized youth in the social justice classroom, functioning as testimonio that lays claim to the narrator’s right to make their own meaning (Delgado Bernal, Burciaga, & Flores Carmona 2012). These chapters make us think, but just as importantly they make us feel—and it is a credit to the power and honesty of the authors’ writing that it continues to stir our emotions even after we have read and discussed multiple drafts over several years. We have learned a great deal from each of the contributors about language, race, and education; about the lives and knowledge of racialized youth;

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about socially meaningful teaching and learning; and about bringing our whole beings—our ideas, our emotions, our embodied subjectivities—to the work of understanding these issues.

Conclusion This volume documents part of the long journey that the three of us have taken in accompaniment with our graduate and undergraduate students, our school and community organization partners, and the youth who have participated in the SKILLS program, but it also offers a road map for the future of the program and related initiatives. As we have learned both from our experiences within the program and from reflecting on those experiences through the Crossroads seminar and the creation of this text, affect is central not only to learning but also to teaching and research as well as to participation in the collective work of social change. For young people who have been the targets of processes of racialization, affects are powerful ideological weapons for positioning racialized groups within hegemonic structures—but they are equally powerful tools for mobilizing such groups and individuals to enact social agency to resist and reject this positioning. Like the youth of color who have been part of SKILLS, we too have found in our affective encounters within the program the agency to enact social change. In light of what we have learned, we have redoubled our efforts to make the SKILLS program a valuable intellectual and affective experience for all participants—most crucially the youth researcher–activists whose creativity and wisdom inspire us, but also their teachers and family members as well as the dedicated graduate and undergraduate students who have generously contributed their time, energy, and passion to the program. Our vision of the program has changed considerably from the original and rather simple goal of exploring issues of language that young people rarely get the opportunity to discuss in schools. Instead, our driving purpose is now to create contexts for collaborative and transformational learning, teaching, and activism. As we move forward together with young people, their teachers, and our current and future graduate and undergraduate students, we aim to continue to work toward sociolinguistic justice and to forge collaborations grounded in the lived experience, linguistic and cultural expertise, and affective agency of racialized youth.

References Ahmed, Sara. 2004a. Affective economies. Social Text 22(2): 117–139. Ahmed, Sara. 2004b. The cultural politics of emotion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Anzaldúa, Gloria. 1987. How to tame a wild tongue. In Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Spinsters/Aunt Lute. 75–86. Berg, Ulla D., and Ana Y. Ramos-Zayas. 2015. Racializing affect: A theoretical proposition. Current Anthropology 56(5): 654–677.

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Boler, Megan. 1999. Feeling power: Emotions and education. New York: Routledge. Bucholtz, Mary. 2011. White kids: Language, race, and styles of youth identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bucholtz, Mary. 2016. Why bodies matter: Discourse and materiality after mass murder. Unpublished essay. www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/faculty/bucholtz/research Bucholtz, Mary. 2017. Why bodies matter. In Jillian R. Cavanaugh and Shalini Shankar (eds.), Language and materiality: Ethnographic and theoretical explanations. New York: Oxford University Press. 260–264. Casillas, Dolores Inés. 2008. A morning dose of Latino masculinity: U.S. Spanish-language radio and the politics of gender. In Angharad Valdivia (ed.), Latina/o communication studies today. New York: Peter Lang. 161–184. Casillas, Dolores Inés. 2011. Sounds of surveillance: U.S. Spanish-language radio patrols la migra. American Quarterly 63(3): 807–829. Casillas, Dolores Inés. 2014. Sounds of belonging: U.S. Spanish-language radio and public advocacy. New York: New York University Press. Delgado Bernal, Dolores, Rebeca Burciaga, and Judith Flores Carmona (eds.). 2012. Chicana/Latina testimonios: Methodologies, pedagogies, and political urgency. Special issue of Equity and Excellence in Education. Flores, Nelson, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85(2): 149–171. Hoang, Haivan V. 2015. Writing against racial injury:The politics of Asian American student rhetoric. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Hutchins, Edwin. 1995. Cognition in the wild. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Lee, Stacey J. 2009. Unraveling the “model minority” stereotype: Listening to Asian American youth. Second edn. New York: Teachers College Press. Lopez, Mark Hugo. 2016. Is speaking Spanish necessary to be Hispanic? Most Hispanics say no. Pew Research Center. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/19/ is-speaking-spanish-necessary-to-be-hispanic-most-hispanics-say-no Matias, Cheryl E. 2016. Feeling white:Whiteness, emotionality, and education. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers. Meyer, Christian, Jürgen Streeck, and J. Scott Jordan (eds.). 2017. Intercorporeality: Emerging socialities in interaction. New York: Oxford University Press. Rosa, Jonathan. 2015. Racializing language, regimenting Latinas/os: Chronotope, social tense, and American raciolinguistic features. Language and Communication 46: 106–117. Rosa, Jonathan, and Yarimar Bonilla. 2017. Deprovincializing Trump, decolonizing diversity, and unsettling anthropology. American Ethnologist 44(2): 201–208. Rosa, Jonathan, and Nelson Flores. 2017. Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46(5): 621–647. Solórzano, Daniel G., and Tara J. Yosso. 2002. Critical race methodology: Counterstorytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry 8(1): 23–44. Urciuoli, Bonnie. 2010. Entextualizing diversity: Semiotic incoherence in institutional discourses. Language and Communication 30: 48–57.

INDEX

accompaniment 9 – 13, 47 – 48, 58, 64 – 65, 67 – 68, 184, 188, 260, 263; and language beliefs 52 – 53 Achievement Via Individual Determination 6, 170 – 171 activism 7, 10, 19 – 21, 129, 132, 145, 257, 259, 262, 267; student researcheractivists 9, 153, 163, 184, 208–209, 255, 261, 267; see also culturally sustaining pedagogies; social justice; sociolinguistic justice Advanced Placement 116, 241 – 244 affect 3 – 5, 15 – 16, 18, 21 – 22, 29 – 45, 187 – 188, 190, 218, 229, 239, 255, 257 – 259, 262, 264; anger 32, 37, 39 – 40; in the classroom 11 – 12, 14 – 15, 17 – 18, 30 – 32, 34 – 45, 91 (see also classroom (behavioral norms in); depoliticization of 35 – 38, 43; discomfort 33 – 34, 44, 58, 86, 257, 259; and emotion 45n1; frustration 32, 36, 61, 73, 78 – 79, 81, 190 – 191; hurt 36 – 37; pride 16, 18, 150, 153, 157, 159 – 161, 163 – 164, 182, 190 – 193, 209, 247, 250, 256; and racism 3, 38 – 41, 112, 121, 129, 188; shame 145, 150, 152 – 153, 157, 164, 256; stress 195 – 198; and teachers (see teachers); see also emotion affective agency 4 – 5, 13, 15 – 17, 256, 262, 267 African American English see English

African Americans 6, 116, 183, 214, 218 Agar, Michael 182, 184 agency 3 – 5, 13, 16 – 17, 22, 57 – 60, 198, 216; and English 59; and Spanglish 59 – 60; youth agency 2 – 3, 7, 11, 13, 15 – 17, 44, 53, 73, 81 – 84, 101, 133, 143 – 145, 184, 188, 208–209, 216, 251; see also affective agency; resistance Aguilera, Michelle 138 Ahearn, Laura 82 Ahmed, Sara 3, 12, 33 – 34, 37 – 38, 45, 258, 260 Alim, H. Samy 1 – 2, 10, 49, 72, 92, 94, 119, 136 Alvarez, Adam 21 – 22 Amanti, Cathy 5, 136, 234 Anagnostopoulos, Dorothea 113 – 145 anger see affect antiracism 32, 38 – 41, 112 – 113, 129; antiracist classroom (see classroom); see also racism Anzaldúa, Gloria 18, 21, 132, 136 – 139, 143, 149 – 150, 152, 159, 162 – 163, 189, 213 – 223, 226 – 231, 260 AP see Advanced Placement Aparicio, Frances R. 152, 175, 214 Apter, Emily 216, 218 Aragón, María José 8, 19, 82, 110, 208, 233 – 253, 266 Arteaga, Alfred 213

270 Index

Asian Americans 6, 117 – 125, 138 – 139, 261 AVID see Achievement Via Individual Determination Avineri, Netta 92 – 93 Bailey, Alison L. 233, 235 Ball, Arnetha F. 2 Baquedano-López, Patricia 234 Bassnet, Susan 216 Bauer, Laurie 48 Baugh, John 2, 15, 94, 133 Bax, Anna 8, 13, 49 – 50, 60 – 62, 72 – 88, 74, 84 – 85, 93, 133, 173, 263 Bell, Lee A. 115 Bell, Nancy D. 129 Bellos, David 224 Berg, Ulla D. 3, 258 Besemeres, Mary 215, 229 Bhabha, Homi K. 114 Bhatti, Ghazala 171 bilingualism 16 – 20, 59, 140, 151 – 164, 173 – 183, 187 – 188, 208 – 209, 212 – 216, 218 – 219, 222 – 225, 228, 231, 237 – 250, 256, 265; emergent bilingualism 91, 105, 107; see also language brokering; multilingualism; Spanish (and English); translation Billig, Michael 114 Black see African Americans Blackledge, Adrian 223 Blommaert, Jan 48 body 1 – 2, 4 – 5, 15, 17, 136; see also embodiment Boler, Megan 21, 35, 259 Bonilla,Yarimar 255 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 38 – 40, 93, 113 – 114, 128 Bozalek,Vivienne 34 Brown, Tara M. 72 – 73 Bruner, Jerome 172 Bucholtz, Mary 1 – 25, 4, 6, 9, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 47 – 48, 50, 52, 72, 76, 112 – 114, 121, 136 – 137, 149, 153, 172, 184, 188, 234, 242, 255 – 268, 258 – 259 Bunch, George 233, 235, 251 Burciaga, Rebeca 266 Byrnes, Deborah A. 94 Caballero, Axel W. 132 Cabrera, Nolan L. 115 California 55, 149, 159, 172, 213, 239, 242, 256

California Department of Education 92 – 93, 100 – 101 Cammarota, Julio 1, 138 Campbell, Kristina M. 132 Carey, Carleen 113 – 115 Cargile, Aaron Castelan 115 Carolissen, Ronelle 34 Carpenter, Brian D. 94 Carruba-Rogel, Zuleyma Nayeli 8, 16, 44, 49 – 50, 52, 62 – 65, 92, 136, 149 – 165, 153, 188 – 191, 193 – 198, 202 – 203, 206 – 208, 223, 236 – 240, 242 – 246, 265 – 266 Cashman, Holly R. 184 Casillas, Dolores Inés 1 – 2, 5, 6, 9 – 10, 21, 47 – 48, 50, 52, 72, 76, 137, 153, 184, 188, 228, 255 – 268, 260 Chaparro, Sofía E. 19 – 20 Charity Hudley, Anne H. 19 Chicanx 18, 77, 85 – 87, 134 – 135, 140 – 141, 143 – 144, 213, 215, 217 – 218, 223, 226 – 267, 239, 244, 246, 260; Chicanx English (see English); Chicanx Spanish (see Spanish); identity (see identity (Chicanx)); see also Latinx Chicanx (terminology) 20 Chinese 116 Cho, Margaret 114 Chun, Elaine W. 114, 117 Chung, Choong-Geun 92 classroom: affect in (see affect (in the classroom)); antiracist classroom 113, 115, 129, 146 – 147; behavioral norms in 31, 76, 79, 82, 93, 97 – 98, 101 – 102, 114 – 115, 117, 139, 245, 264; majority-Latinx classroom 17, 75, 115 – 116, 151, 170, 189; majoritywhite classroom 14 – 15, 30, 241 – 244; multilingual classroom 30, 170 – 171, 189, 234; multiracial classroom 14 – 15, 115, 129, 171 (see also identity (selfidentification)); sociolinguistic justice in (see sociolinguistic justice); see also education, pedagogy Clough, Patricia Ticineto 3 colorblindness see ideology (of colorblindness) Combs, Mary 19 Common Core 92 – 93, 100 – 101, 213 community of practice 19, 234, 236 – 250, 266 concept map technique 51 content analysis 173 conversation see interaction

Index  271

Corella, Meghan 4, 8, 14 – 15, 44, 58, 84, 93, 112 – 131, 137 – 139, 141 – 142, 146, 264 Cox Report 92 Crawford, James 164n1 critical race theory 4, 264 Cross, John B. 94 Crossroads seminar 7 – 8, 11 – 12, 29 – 30, 50, 137, 258 – 263, 267; affect in 29 – 45; participants’ identities in 33 – 34 Crystal, David 172 culturally sustaining pedagogies 9 – 11, 49, 72, 87, 110, 129, 136, 146 – 147, 149 – 150, 184, 214, 216, 234, 236, 250 – 251, 256, 260, 262; see also pedagogy Cumming, Susanna 96, 192 Cummins, Jim 234 – 235 curriculum see SKILLS (activities, curriculum) Cutter, Martha J. 215, 229 Dalto, Guy 172 deficit ideology see ideology De Houwer, Annick 172 DeJaeghere, Joan G. 1 Delale-O’Connor, Lori 21 – 22 Delgado Bernal, Dolores 1, 266 Denzin, Norman K. 175 DeOnís, Catalina (Kathleen) M. 20 DeVaney, Thomas 94 Deyhle, Donna 154 disagreement 30 – 32, 35 – 41, 124, 160 – 162, 198 – 208, 265; see also resistance discomfort see affect discourse (linguistic) see fieldnotes; freewriting; interaction; interviews; narratives discourse (social): of emotion (see emotion); racial 93 – 96, 98 – 109, 113 – 115, 118 – 129 (see also ideology (of appropriateness, of colorblindness, of worth), white laughter); rationalist 2 – 4, 11, 38, 259; see also ideology; language ideologies discourse analysis 96 Dorner, Lisa 188 Du Bois, John W. 96, 118, 192 Durán, Richard P. 233 – 234 D’warte, Jacqueline 221 Eckert, Penelope 236 education 3 – 5, 12, 14, 19, 21 – 22, 235, 256, 262 – 263, 265; language ideologies

of (see language ideologies); see also classroom; pedagogy Eisner, Elliot W. 171 Ek, Lucila D. 2 Eksner, H. Julia 188 – 189 Elbow, Peter 216, 220 – 221 embodiment 3 – 5, 17, 144, 188, 191 – 195, 198 – 201, 203, 207–208, 209, 241; see also body emotion: discourses of 32 – 41, 44; gendered 32 – 33, 38 – 41, 119; see also affect empowerment 10 – 11, 153, 160, 188 Enfield, N. J. 5 English 15, 17 – 20, 55 – 59, 99, 149 – 150, 157, 171, 173, 176, 246, 256; academic English (see language (academic)); African American English 61, 214, 218 – 219, 223; Chicanx English 9, 61, 73, 86, 152, 163; hegemony of 62 – 64, 66, 158 – 159, 172, 182 – 184, 213, 217 – 218, 220, 228, 239, 244, 259; Korean-influenced English 117 – 119; and Spanish (see Spanish (and English)); “standard” English 14, 87, 91 – 95, 101 – 104, 106, 108 – 109, 121, 216, 220;Valley Girl English 119 – 120; Vietnamese-influenced English 121 – 125 English language learners see bilingualism (emergent) Errington, Joseph 48 Esquivel, Adriana 188 Everett, Sakeena 113 – 115 expertise 2, 9, 16 – 17, 129, 158 – 160, 215, 219, 222, 224 – 245, 231, 234 – 235, 245, 248, 256, 265; see also knowledge Fagan, Allison E. 21 Fairclough, Norman 92, 94 family 5, 7, 9, 16 – 17, 53 – 57, 172, 174 – 184, 191, 193, 198, 265; language ideologies (see family language policy; language ideologies); Latinx family (see Latinx) family language policy 7, 17, 54, 57, 169, 171, 175 – 183 feminism 4 – 5, 38 – 41; see also emotion (gendered) Ferrada, Juan Sebastian 4, 8, 13, 49 – 50, 57 – 60, 72 – 88, 74, 81, 84 – 86, 93, 133, 173, 263 fieldnotes 73, 78 – 79, 81 – 86, 189 Filipinx 50, 116, 189

272 Index

Fine, Michelle 1 Fishman, Joshua 171 – 172 Flores, Nelson 2, 14, 19 – 20, 91 – 92, 94 – 95, 104, 109, 122, 256, 265 Flores Carmona, Judith 266 fluency 175 – 177, 182, 222, 240, 265; see also bilingualism Fogle, Lyn 169 freewriting 18, 213 – 214, 216, 219 – 228, 230 – 231, 266 Freire, Paolo 112, 149 – 150, 153, 251 French 50, 143 – 145, 152 frustration see affect funds of knowledge 5, 129, 136, 234 Gal, Susan 48 García, Ofelia 20, 91, 234 Gaspar de Alba, Alicia 152 gender 20, 38 – 44, 117, 119 – 120, 138, 170, 182; gendered emotion (see emotion) Gentzler, Edwin 216 German 52, 116 gesture see embodiment Godley, Amanda J. 94 González, Norma 5, 136, 234 Gowin, D. Bob 51 Gregg, Melissa 3 Gutiérrez, Kris D. 233 – 235 Halley, Jean 3 Haneda, Mari 234 – 235, 251 Hanks, William F. 212, 218 Hawkins, Margaret R. 235 Hebrew 50, 171 hedging 128 Helmer, Kimberly Adilia 49, 94 Hill, Jane H. 2, 15, 58, 92, 97, 113 – 114, 120, 126, 129, 141, 187 Hill-Bonnet, Laura 187 Hirsch, Tijana 8, 17, 44, 49 – 51, 53 – 56, 215, 265 Hoang, Haivan V. 262 hooks, bell 61 Horner, Robert H. 92 Horton, Myles 112 Howard, Philip S. S. 113 Huckin, Thomas 173 humor 14 – 15; and hegemony 114, 120; offensive 117 – 128; and pedagogy 112 – 115, 117, 129; racialized 112, 114, 117; see also laughter Hunter, Margaret 134 hurt see affect

Hurtado, Aída 2 Hutchins, Edwin 258 identity 10, 17 – 18, 75, 85 – 86, 121, 124, 128, 134 – 135, 140 – 146, 150, 173 – 174, 182, 217, 221 – 223, 248 – 251, 259, 265; Chicanx 20, 134 – 135, 140 – 141, 143 – 144, 217, 237 – 242, 245 – 247; Latinx 20, 84 – 86, 239; self-identification 30, 50, 75, 85 – 86, 134 – 135, 140, 143 – 144, 151, 173 – 175, 189, 198, 261; see also researcher subjectivity ideology 2, 10, 12; of appropriateness 14, 92 – 95, 99 – 102; of colorblindness 14 – 15, 35, 38 – 44, 93 – 96, 98 – 101, 104 – 105, 108, 110, 113, 115, 119, 124 – 125, 128 – 129; of deficit 14, 16, 19, 92, 98 – 101, 105, 110, 152, 157, 160 – 162, 227 – 228, 230, 233; of formality 14, 93, 97 – 102, 108 – 110; of knowledge 2 – 3, 21; patriarchal 119; pedagogical 8, 79 – 80, 82 – 83, 114 – 115; of postracialism 113, 115, 129; racial 3, 14 – 15; raciolinguistic (see raciolinguistic); of white racism 92, 113; of worth 14, 93, 102 – 110; see also discourse (social), language ideologies Illich, Ivan 82, 87 immigrants 6, 132 – 133, 135, 151, 158, 162, 171 – 172, 187, 245 – 247 indigenous peoples see Native Americans interaction 4 – 5, 13, 17, 97 – 108, 115, 118 – 128, 188, 191 – 208, 209, 236 – 244, 246 – 250, 263, 265; see also interviews; narratives interdisciplinarity 7 – 8, 29 – 30, 87, 260 – 261, 267 interpreting see language brokering; translation interviews: with Crossroads seminar participants 12, 29 – 45; with graduate teaching fellows 12 – 13, 47, 49 – 67, 70 – 71, 263; with partner teachers 14, 95 – 108 Ioanide, Paula 3, 38, 40, 42 Irizarry, Jason G. 72 – 73 Jiménez, Rosa 188 Johnson, Anjela 121 – 125 Johnson, Elisabeth 114 – 115 Johnston, Mary Ellen 172 Jones, Gerald 94

Index  273

Jordan, J. Scott 258 Jordan, June 215, 217 – 220, 226, 228 Josic, Jasmina 1 Kam, Jennifer 187 Kaplan, Suzanne E. 48 Keating, AnaLouise 215, 229 Kiger, Gary 94 King, Kendall A. 169 Kleifgen, Jo Anne 91 knowledge 8 – 9, 16 – 17, 19, 21, 136, 139, 146, 219, 224 – 225, 231, 233 – 234, 245, 249 – 250, 256; see also expertise Kockelman, Paul 4 – 5 Kramsch, Claire 172 Kubota, Ryuko 129 Kwon, Soo Ah 10 Labov, William 215 Ladson-Billings, Gloria 10, 49, 72, 136 Lam, Eva 172 language 2, 10, 65 – 67, 87, 104, 217, 233 – 235, 265; academic language 8, 14, 19, 82 – 83, 87, 102 – 104, 233 – 235, 237 – 245, 250, 257, 266; heritage language 55 – 56, 173 – 183, 189, 223, 245 – 248, 251; home language 92, 98 – 99, 153, 159, 169, 171, 176 – 179, 182, 184, 240 – 244, 251, 256; informal language 92, 97, 237 – 239, 243; language beliefs (see language ideologies); language form 102 – 109, 233; language loss 159, 169, 172, 174, 176, 182, 248; language maintenance 157 – 158, 169, 171, 176 – 177, 182, 248, 251; language policy 92, 102 (see also family language policy); language shift 17, 171 – 172; minoritized language 92 – 95, 97, 99, 108, 187, 218, 223 (see also English (African American, Chicanx, Koreaninfluenced,Valley Girl,Vietnameseinfluenced); mock language 14 – 15, 119, 128; see also Mock Asian; Spanish (Mock Spanish) language brokering 16 – 18, 157 – 158, 187 – 210, 212, 215; see also bilingualism; Spanish (and English); translation language ideologies 12, 16, 20, 54 – 55, 61 – 64, 91 – 110, 162, 235, 260, 264 – 265; in education 94 – 95, 224; individual vs. social 48; and language beliefs 12, 48 – 49, 52 – 68; monolingual 57 – 58; parents’ 157 – 162; of personalism

113, 120 – 121; of referentialism 113, 128; resistance to (see resistance); teachers’ 48 – 49, 91 – 111, 223, 227; see also discourse (social); ideology; raciolinguistic Lara, Ricardo 256 Lateef-Jan, Katie 8, 18 – 20, 44, 92, 136, 150, 187, 212 – 232, 247, 266 Latinx 15 – 19, 74 – 75, 84 – 86, 95, 101, 152, 154 – 164, 174, 214, 234, 256 – 257, 260; community 132, 135 – 136, 146, 172, 176, 257, 261; family 74, 135, 153 – 155, 157 – 161, 164, 209, 212 – 213, 237, 240 – 241, 247 – 248; identity (see identity); youth (see youth); see also Chicanx Latinx (terminology) 20 laughter 36 – 37, 112 – 131, 140 – 141, 145, 160, 194, 203, 207 – 208, 218, 244; absence of 121 – 122; white laughter 15, 112, 117 – 129 Lave, Jean 19, 236 – 237 Lazarevic,Vanja 187 Lee, Clifford 188 – 189 Lee, Jin Sook 1 – 2, 5, 6, 9 – 10, 47 – 48, 50, 52, 72, 76, 136 – 137, 149, 153, 184, 187 – 189, 255 – 268, 261 Lee, Stacey J. 261 Leeman, Jennifer J. 2 Lei, Joy L. 4, 49, 92, 94 Leibowitz, Brenda 34 Leonard, Wesley Y. 175 Levine, Suzanne Jill 222 Lewis, Tyson Edward 114, 129 Lieberson, Stanley 172 Li-Grining, Christine P. 188 Linde, Charlotte 175 Lippi-Green, Rosina 144, 218, 227 Lipsitz, George 10, 47 – 48 literacy 150, 213, 266 Li Wei 234 Logan-Terry, Aubrey 169 Lopez, Audrey 8 – 10, 17 – 18, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 44, 48, 49 – 50, 65 – 67, 112, 136, 151, 154, 162 – 167, 172, 187 – 211, 213, 234, 236, 265 – 266 Lopez, Mark Hugo 259 Lorde, Audre 38 Love-Nichols, Jessica 8, 14, 49, 91 – 111, 115, 223, 244, 264 Lyman, Peter 38 – 39

274 Index

Macedo, Donaldo 251 Mainz, Elizabeth 8, 12 – 13, 47 – 71, 74, 151, 184, 188, 263 Mallinson, Christine 19 – 20 Malsbary, Christine 91 Manning, M. Lee 94 Martínez, Danny 188 – 189, 233 Matias, Cheryl E. 36, 264 May, Seth L. 92 McCarty, Teresa L. 73 McCleary, Kate S. 1 McConnell-Ginet, Sally 236 McGlynn, Claire 22 McIntyre, Alice 94, 114 McManus, Susan 5 Meador, Elizabeth 49 Menard-Warwick, Julia 49, 94 Mendoza-Denton, Norma 135 Meyer, Christian 258 microaggression 15, 86 Milner IV, H. Richard 21 – 22 Minnici, Angela 94 Mock Asian 117 – 125; see also Asian Americans Mock Spanish see Spanish Mojarro, Allina 9 – 10, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 48, 112, 136, 172, 188, 234 Moll, Luis 5, 136, 234 monolingualism 17, 172, 212, 229, 244; see also bilingualism; language ideologies (monolingual) Morales, P. Zitlali 233 multilingualism 17, 55 – 56, 175 – 176, 212; multilingual classroom (see classroom); see also bilingualism Murphy, Brett 115 Myers, Kristen A. 113 narrative analysis 173 narratives 15 – 16, 62, 64, 139 – 146, 156 – 159, 172 – 183, 214, 218 – 220, 222 – 228, 230, 237 – 250, 264, 266; see also interaction Native Americans 6, 75, 247 Neff, Deborah 136, 234 Nicholas, Sheilah E. 73 Novak, Joseph D. 51 O’Brien, Tim 172 – 173 Omi, Michael 132 Orellana, Marjorie Faulstich 157, 187 – 189, 203, 213, 217, 223, 225, 233 Osborne, A. Barry 49 O’Sullivan, Simon 228 – 229

Otheguy, Ricardo 20 outgroup 121, 124, 143, 243 Pacific Islanders 116 Page, Helan E. 15, 112 – 113 Panayiotou, Alexia 215 Paolino, Danae 96, 192 Parada, Maryann 172 Paris, Django 1, 10, 49, 72, 94, 136, 216 partner teachers see SKILLS (partner teachers) Patai, Daphne 53 Pavlenko, Aneta 175, 223, 229 Paz, Octavio 212 – 213, 220 pedagogy 10, 21 – 22, 87, 214, 218, 221, 228, 231, 234, 239, 263 – 264; and humor (see humor); pedagogical ideology (see ideology); see also classroom; culturally sustaining pedagogies; education Peña, Devon 144 Penfield, Susan D. 19 Pérez, Emma 144 phonology 239 political correctness 123 politics 5, 11 – 12, 17, 30 – 46, 60 – 62, 174, 179 – 180, 218, 255 – 257, 260 – 261 Pollock, Mica 113 Pomerantz, Anne 129 Ponjuan, Luis 170 Povinelli, Elizabeth 214 power 2, 4, 33, 35, 38, 40, 42, 44, 62 – 65, 93 – 94, 104, 177, 187 – 188, 198, 203, 208–209, 216 – 218, 233, 251; see also agency Pratt, Mary Louise 215 pride see affect Probyn, Elspeth 45n1 pronouns 20, 101, 104, 113 – 114, 124, 128, 242, 244 Propositions 58 and 227 55n1, 213, 256 Puig, Maria 208 Quijada-Cerecer, Patricia D. 2 race 31, 132, 233, 251, 264 racial evasion 113, 124 – 126 racialization 1, 3 – 4, 15 – 16, 84 – 86, 93, 108 – 109, 119, 128, 141, 261; and language 2, 14 racial profiling 132 – 133, 136 – 143, 146 raciolinguistic: enregisterment 133, 143; ideology 14 – 15, 84 – 86, 256; perspective

Index  275

2, 264; profiling 15 – 16, 132 – 133, 139 – 147, 158 – 159, 238 – 239 (see also racial profiling); see also language ideologies racism 2 – 3, 14 – 16, 36, 49, 87, 92, 94, 109 – 110, 112 – 115, 117 – 121, 129, 256, 259, 261; and affect (see affect (and racism)); and diversity 129, 257; erasure of 14 – 15, 22, 109, 115, 120, 124, 128; see also antiracism; ideology; language ideologies Raley, Jason 187 Ramos-Zayas, Ana Y. 3 – 4, 258 Rausch, M. Karega 92 Razfar, Aria 49, 94 Reaser, Jeffrey 72, 76 Reid, Wallis 20 Réjouis, Rose 224 researcher subjectivity 34, 49 – 52, 74 – 75, 84 – 87, 96, 105, 116, 124, 128, 133 – 136, 146, 151 – 152, 170 – 171, 189, 216, 257 – 262 resistance 2, 13, 15, 20, 81 – 84, 114, 141 – 145, 150, 259, 267; to language ideologies 14 – 15, 20, 49, 57 – 59, 101 – 102, 105 – 108, 110, 114, 119 – 120, 125, 128; see also disagreement Reyes, Angela 113, 115, 119 – 120, 128 Reynolds, Jennifer 187 – 188, 213, 223 Rich, Marc D. 115 Rickford, John R. 2 Roberts, Rosemarie A. 115 Rodríguez, Raúl 2 Rogoff, Barbara 234 – 235 Rohleder, Poul 34 Romaine, Suzanne 171 Romero, Mary 136 Rosa, Jonathan 2, 14 – 15, 72, 91 – 92, 94 – 95, 104, 109, 122, 133, 135, 255 – 256, 259, 265 Rossing, Jonathan P. 114 Rubinstein-Avila, Eliane 48 Ruiz, Richard 48 – 49 Rys, Rachel 8, 11 – 12, 15, 30 – 46, 50, 93, 115 – 116, 137, 139, 263 Saenz,Victor B. 170 Saldívar-Hull, Sonia 21 Sánchez, Patricia 2, 245 Santa Ana, Otto 114, 120 Schiffrin, Deborah 172 Schleppegrell, Mary J. 233

“school as usual” 6, 8, 13, 21, 73, 82, 87, 136, 264, 266; see also classroom (behavioral norms in); ideology (pedagogical) Schuetze-Coburn, Stephan 96, 192 Seigworth, Gregory J. 3 Senate Bill 1070 132, 138 – 139 Serbo-Croatian 55 – 56, 171 – 172 Severi, Carlos 212, 218 Shakespeare, William 218 shame see affect Siegel, Jeff 49, 94 Silverstein, Michael 48 Simon, Sherry 216 Skapoulli, Elena 9 – 10, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 48, 112, 136, 172, 188, 234 Skiba, Russell J. 92 SKILLS (School Kids Investigating Language in Life and Society) 13, 15 – 16, 19 – 21, 30, 43 – 44, 64 – 65, 72, 93 – 94, 101 – 102, 104 – 105, 110, 133, 136, 146, 150 – 151, 172, 184, 188, 234, 236, 250 – 251, 255 – 258, 260, 262 – 263, 267; activities 13 – 19, 75 – 78, 82 – 83, 112, 116 – 128, 136 – 139, 153, 169, 172, 175 – 177, 189 – 190, 214 – 216, 218, 220 – 221, 228 – 229, 236, 245, 248; curriculum 6 – 7, 9, 75 – 78, 82, 87, 116, 146, 153, 188, 209, 215, 255, 265; goals of 6, 8 – 11, 13, 136; graduate teaching fellows 6 – 9, 12 – 13, 47 – 50, 52 – 68, 74, 137, 151, 170 – 171, 189, 236 – 237, 257 – 258; guiding principles of 9 – 11; history of 6 – 9; partner teachers 6 – 7, 14, 76, 95 – 110, 151, 189, 236; undergraduate mentors 14 – 15, 73 – 74, 78, 116 – 117, 152, 189, 236, 239 – 240 SKILLS Day 7, 19, 136, 143 – 144, 153, 163 – 164, 176, 208–210, 247 Snow, Catherine E. 233 So, David 117 – 121, 124 social interaction see interaction social justice 1 – 3, 9, 22, 44, 66, 72, 87, 257, 267; as focus of research 12 – 13; see also activism; sociolinguistic justice sociolinguistic justice 9 – 11, 19 – 21, 30, 32 – 33, 40 – 45, 66, 75 – 76, 115, 129, 136 – 137, 155, 188, 228, 234, 263, 267; and affect 33, 41 – 43; in the classroom 12, 17, 19, 21, 48 – 49, 112, 129, 136 – 137, 139, 146 – 147, 149, 172, 184, 188, 209–210, 216, 234, 245; see also culturally sustaining pedagogies

276 Index

Solórzano, Daniel G. 134, 264 space 58, 76 – 77, 95, 97, 146, 149, 150, 154, 188, 213, 216, 224, 228, 234, 236, 245, 251; interdisciplinary space 12, 30; safe space 13, 74, 151, 161, 183, 261; student space 13, 73 – 75, 77 – 83; white public space 15, 58, 97, 112 – 121, 124 – 125, 128 – 129, 141, 145, 266; see also classroom Spanierman, Lisa B. 115 Spanglish 7, 9, 16, 57, 59, 95, 150, 152, 157, 159 – 163, 217, 224, 230, 240, 242, 244, 260 Spanish 20 – 21, 57 – 58, 85 – 86, 95, 97, 99, 125 – 128, 134, 157 – 158, 172 – 183, 209, 240 – 242, 244, 246 – 247, 251, 255, 259 – 260; “Americanized” Spanish 152, 159, 242 – 244, 256, 260 – 261; Chicanx Spanish 9, 18 – 19, 217, 223, 226 – 227, 230, 239, 260; and English 15 – 19, 85, 95, 128, 134, 139 – 145, 160 – 161, 163 – 164, 173 – 175, 181 – 183, 209, 213, 215 – 217, 219, 221 – 222, 227 – 231, 255, 260, 265; Mock Spanish 97, 113 – 114, 125 – 128; pocho Spanish (see Spanish (“Americanized”)); representation and translation of 20 – 21, 150 Spolsky, Bernard 169 Spradley, James P. 51 Srivastava, Sarita 29, 38, 44 Stalsburg, Brittany L. 146 Stoever, Jennifer Lynn 132 St-Pierre, Paul 216 Strean, William B. 112, 114 Streeck, Jürgen 258 stress see affect students see activism (student researcheractivists); classroom; pedagogy; SKILLS Swartz, Leslie 34 Sweetland, Julie 94 Tarascan 247 – 248 teachers 48 – 51, 84, 91 – 110, 114 – 115, 152, 161, 221, 227, 258 – 259, 261, 263 – 264; and affect 91, 98, 109, 255; and language ideologies (see language ideologies); white teachers 14, 22, 92 – 93, 95 – 96, 108 – 110, 115; see also SKILLS (graduate teaching fellows, partner teachers) Tejeda, Carlos 234 Thomas, R. Brooke 15, 112 – 113 Thompson, Ian 146

Tierney, Jessica Dockter 114 – 115 Tobin, Tary 92 Toman, Walter 172 Tomlinson, Barbara 10, 47 – 48 Trainor, Jennifer Seibel 3 translanguaging 19 – 20, 234, 239, 247 translation 18 – 21, 187, 212 – 232, 266; and racism 190 – 208, 210, 213, 216 – 217, 229; untranslatability 217 – 220, 224; see also language brokering Trivedi, Harish 216 Trudgill, Peter 48 Trump, Donald 113, 255 Tse, Lucy 187 Tymoczko, Maria 216 Uccelli, Paola 233 undergraduate mentors see SKILLS (undergraduate mentors) Urciuoli, Bonnie 2, 95, 183, 187, 256 U.S. Common Core Standards see Common Core Valdés, Guadalupe 213, 233 – 235 VanderStouwe, Christopher Jon 5, 9 – 10, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 48, 112, 136, 172, 188, 234 Van Lier, Leo 235 Vasudevan, Lalitha 114 – 115 Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos G. 214 video recordings 189, 191 – 208, 236; see also body; embodiment Villenas, Sofia 154 Vinokur,Val 224 Voices of North Carolina 76 Walker, Alice 216, 218 Walqui, Aída 233, 235 Warner-Garcia, Shawn 9 – 10, 30, 33, 41 – 42, 48, 112, 136, 172, 188, 234 Wa Thiong’o Ngũgĩ 135 Weisskirch, Robert S. 187, 198 Wenger, Etienne 19, 236 – 237 Wheeler, Rebecca S. 94 white laughter see laughter whiteness 3, 14 – 15, 38, 84 – 85, 93 – 95, 113 – 116, 122, 129, 242 – 244, 255, 259, 264; white listener 93, 104, 108, 122; white speech 84 – 86, 113; white supremacy 15, 61, 95, 256, 259; white talk 114 white public space see space

Index  277

whites 6, 14 – 15, 22, 58, 61, 94 – 95, 97, 113 – 116, 127 – 128, 133 – 134, 141, 143 – 144; white teachers (see teachers) Wiley, Terrence G. 48 Winant, Howard 132 Wolfram, Walt 72, 76, 92 Wyman, Leisy T. 73 Yosso, Tara J. 264 youth 1 – 2, 9, 73 – 75; Latinx youth 13 – 19, 74 – 75, 85 – 86, 93, 105, 132 – 147, 149,

152, 154 – 164, 173 – 175, 181 – 183, 207 – 209, 220 – 228, 236 – 251, 255 – 257, 259 – 261, 265; youth agency (see agency) Zarate, Adanari 8, 15 – 16, 44, 85, 129, 132 – 148, 150, 152, 154, 175, 264 – 265 Zarate, Maria Estela 154 Zembylas, Michalinos 4, 22, 36, 115 Zentella, Ana Celia 85, 95, 152, 162, 174, 187