Accompanying as accomplices: Pedagogies for community engaged learning in sociocultural linguistics

Abstract

As a field, sociocultural linguistics has a long legacy of public scholarship that has worked to counter linguistic prejudices and inequalities perpetuated through language. Today, current community engagement within sociocultural linguistics increasingly takes a collaborative approach that includes students. In this article, I therefore explore how the field prepares both students and faculty for this work. In particular, I focus on courses with a service learning component, suggesting that these constitute key spaces for developing the commitments and capacities necessary for engaged work that advances sociolinguistic justice. I highlight the insights of existing scholarship on service learning in linguistics before turning to a more detailed discussion of pedagogical practice, drawing on current critical pedagogy literature that emphasize the importance of language and culture. Synthesizing two social movement perspectives, I propose a pedagogical framework that supports faculty and students in learning to accompany as an accomplice. I demonstrate the application of this model by discussing specific pedagogical strategies enacted in a community engaged course I taught on Language and Migration at a university in the United States. Ultimately, I suggest that developing social justice pedagogies is a crucial endeavor if we are to counter the ways that language has been used to justify inequalities and motivate violence towards racialized communities, both in the past and in the present.

Bridging the Researcher–Practitioner Divide Through Community‐Engaged Action Research: A Collaborative Autoethnographic Exploration

“…Importantly, conducting community‐engaged action research (Arnold, 2019) is also part of a growing trend to organize critical service‐learning programs (Leeman et al., 2011) and introduce social justice into language teacher education curricula (Avineri et al., 2019). We highlight two noteworthy recent community‐engaged studies in applied linguistics next.…”

Moving TESOL forward: Increasing educators’ critical consciousness through a racial lens

“…They may call themselves an "ally" but ignore structural inequities (Smith & Mayorga-Gallo, 2017), which privilege White ideologies. Moving beyond allyship toward accompliceship means accepting one's complicitness in inequitable systems (Arnold, 2019), which requires deep, difficult intrapersonal work. Racial and social justice educator DiAngelo's (2018a) White Fragility guides readers in the discomfort of questioning their roles within a system of White supremacy.…”

“…Answers like yes, but it is challenging mean educators see diversity not as a liability (Smith & Mayorga‐Gallo, 2017) but as different groups acting as equal partners in building equity through embracing cognitive dissonance at the expense of perceived harmony. Listening responsibly, having urgency for action, acting together, and leveraging one’s privileges strategically with marginalized groups in accountable ways increases inclusivity (Arnold, 2019), but facilitating open discussion on race can be tricky. Educators Sensoy and DiAngelo’s (2017) Is Everyone Really Equal?…”

Raitera, Ally, Accomplice: Giving Rides as Engaged Ethnography

“…Ethnographers working with illegalized im/migrant communities have called on colleagues to reject apolitical research agendas, and facile helping roles and instead become accomplices who are willing to risk privilege and participate actively in collaborative, egalitarian struggles against oppression (Arnold 2019;Gomberg-Muñoz 2018; see also Indigenous Action 2014). They enjoin researchers to enact complicity, moving beyond mere amity and to reject the widely-heralded stance of allyship, which they associate with white innocence and with fleeting, self-centering forms of support.…”