PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: LEARNING FROM THE AMERICAN "EBONICS DEBATE" FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
المؤلف:
Tara Goldstein
المصدر:
Teaching and Learning in a Multilingual School
الجزء والصفحة:
P55-C3
2025-09-25
341
PEDAGOGICAL DISCUSSION: LEARNING FROM THE AMERICAN "EBONICS DEBATE"
FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
Private and Public Linguistic Identities: Personal and Professional Reflection. In the reflection activities, writer Richard Rodriguez was represented as believing that his ability to access opportunities and privileges in the United States depended on his ability to assimilate. Successful assimilation depended upon keeping his private and public linguistic identities separate. In an autobiographical essay about her own Black Language/Standard English bilingual education, literature scholar Joyce Hope Scott writes:
We were taught specifically that we had a public and a private face, and different languages through which the two distinct personas could be animated. These languages were in a dialogic relationship with each other, and our responsibility was to understand and master this linguistic paradigm rather than to perceive the languages as in conflict with each other."1
Like Richard Rodriguez, Joyce Hope Scott was taught to separate her public and private identities through language. However, unlike Rodriguez, whose parents, following the advice of Richard's teachers, only spoke English at home once Richard began school, Scott also learned that there was a place for both languages in her communal experience:
My mother taught me the beauty of both Standard and Black English by reading to me when I was young, first the classic fairy tales then later Dickens, and English and American poets ... European tales, such as East of the Sun and North of the Wind or the legends of Thor or Zeus, were read or told in Standard English. Local folk tales, lore and African-American tales were told in the Black vernacular."2
Thinking about your own bilingual education, to what extent, if at all, did you learn that there was a place for different languages in your communal experience? In what ways, if at all, were you taught the languages you spoke could exist alongside each other? Thinking about the bilingual education of your own students, in what specific ways can you play a role in teaching them that there is a place for all the languages they speak?
Journal Writing in English. In scene 3 of Hong Kong, Canada (included in Appendix A), English teacher Ms. Diamond tries to encourage a student Carol Shen to practice English through journal writing. Carol resists the activity and tells Ms. Diamond, "What is in my heart, I want to write in Chinese." Ms. Diamond responds by suggesting that Carol write about school things, like the talent show, if writing about personal things in English is difficult. Carol hesitantly, or perhaps reluctantly, takes up this suggestion when she "slowly unfolds her hands, picks up her pen, and begins writing." What do you make of Ms. Diamond's intervention in this scene? Do you see journal writing about school things as an effective way of helping students practice English and learn that there is place for English in their everyday experience? Why or why not?
Imagining Carol's Journal Entry. Assuming the character of Carol Shen in Hong Kong, Canada, write a journal entry in English that describes either how you feel about performing in the upcoming talent show or how you felt after performing in the talent show. Share your entry with the rest of the group and compare the different ways you imagined how Carol felt about performing in the talent show. If you are able to use a language other than English, write a second journal entry in that language. What are the differences between the two entries you have written? How do these differences relate to Carol's desire to write about personal, heartfelt matters in Chinese? Do these differences change your views on journal writing explored in activity 2 above?
Looking at Intersections of Race, Language, and Class. While I have turned to work from the Ebonics debate, it is important to point out that the speakers of Cantonese at Northside were in a different economic, political, and social position than the speakers of Black Language at Prescott. African French psychiatrist, Frantz Fanon, has written that "every dialect, every language, is a way of thinking. To speak means to assume a culture." Applying Fanon's words to the Ebonics debate, African-American sociolinguist Geneva Smitherman has written that speakers of Ebonics have assumed a cultural legacy of slave descendants of African origin. "To speak Ebonics is to assert the power of this tradition in the quest to resolve the unfinished business of being African in America."3 This cultural legacy, the ongoing struggle to fight poverty, linguism, and racism, is different from the struggle faced by Cantonese speakers at Northside, who experienced discrimination from a more privileged economic position. In the words of antiracist psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum,
Not all people of color are equally targeted by racism. We all have multiple identities that shape our experience...When one is targeted by multiple isms—racism, classism, heterosexism, ableism, anti-Semitism, ageism—in whatever combination, the effect is intensified. The particular combination of racism and classism in many com munities of color is life-threatening."4
In what ways might the schooling experience of Cantonese speakers at Northside differ from the schooling experience of Black Language speakers at Prescott? In what ways might the benefits of living and attending school in a middle- and upper middle-class community have mediated the Northside students' experience of different forms of discrimination?
Ambivalent and Changing Investments in English. Following Euro-Canadian researcher Bonny Norton, I have argued that ESOL learners can experience ambivalence around their investment in English. Norton has also suggested that, in addition to feeling ambivalent about their investment in English, some ESOL learners experience change in their investment or lack of investment in English. Learners' investments are not fixed in time or space. In the last scene of Hong Kong, Canada, Wendy reflects back on her strategy of choosing to only speak English at school so that she would have more opportunities to practice. How is Wendy's investment in English ambivalent and/or how does her investment change throughout the play?
1 See Scott (1998).
2 See Scott (1998).
3 See Fanon (1967) and Smitherman (1998).
4 See Tatum (1997, p. 13).
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