World Englishes, translingualism, and racialization in the US college composition classroom

Abstract

This paper examines the connection between language ownership and racialization as discussed in world Englishes (WE) and translingualism. WE and translingualism have expanded both epistemological and ontological spectrums in understanding how Englishes have been used, understood, and transformed in different global contexts, challenging a monolingual orientation to language and literacy. Yet, less questioned is how the very approach to various ways of 'owning' Englishes contributes to WE and translingualism's work of linguistic justice. In this regard, we argue that the issue of racialization needs to be foregrounded in these two bodies of scholarship to better account for racialized students' language practices and ownership. Situating this examination in the US college composition classroom, we discuss how the conceptualization of language ownership can extend monolingual and racializing ideologies. We conclude by calling for a more linguistically just view of language ownership as a way to undo the racial-linguistic stratification in educational contexts such as the writing classroom.

Forum: Serving African American English Speakers in Schools Through Interprofessional Education & Practice

“…We have not yet arrived at a point in time in which children are no longer judged by "the skin they speak" (see Delpit & Dowdy, 2008), the style of their narrative, nor by the dialect in which they express ideas. This is, in part, because school-based practitioners and stakeholders-beset by the idea that standardized varieties of English are the only acceptable forms of communication-do not encourage language variation in the classroom (Lee & Alvarez, 2020). Acting on such beliefs limits the linguistic repertoire of all children in U.S. classrooms.…”

Toward a Transnational University: WAC/WID Across Borders of Language, Nation, and Discipline

“…In contrast, challenging monodialectal ideologies is central to translingual scholarship and is situated at the core of code-meshing (Canagarajah, 2006;Horner, et al, 2011a;Lee & Alvarez, 2020;Young, 2014). As Hall explains, a translingual approach assumes that "all the languages a person knows can be active in the present moment of reading or writing, that all the components of one's complete communicative repertoire are, at least potentially, simultaneously in play in a mutually re-enforcing manner."…”

Writing Toward a Decolonial Option: A Bilingual Student’s Multimodal Composing as a Site of Translingual Activism and Justice

“…This article examines how a self-identified Latina bilingual student, Patricia, 2 engages with multimodality, presenting her multimodal composing as an important site of translingual activism and justice with a decolonial potential (Baker-Bell, 2020; Mignolo, 2018; Mihut, 2019). The hegemonic colonial conceptualizations of language, writing, and knowledge-making, set by White, European norms, are deeply entrenched in writing classrooms, perceiving multilingual students’ language and literacies from a deficit lens as always “approximation” to or “lack” of the standardized English (Alvarez, 2018; de los Ríos & Seltzer, 2017; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Lee & Alvarez, 2020; Makoni & Pennycook, 2006). And just like any meaning-making practices, multimodality is also subject to these dominant ideologies about language and literacy (Gonzales, 2019; Horner et al, 2015).…”