Table Of ContentLanguage, Race, and Power
in Schools
Dear reader, let Pierre W. Orelus’s enticing edited collection, Language,
Race, and Power in Schools: A Critical Discourse Analysis, be not just train-
ing for the mind but an invitation for you to collect your thoughts, begin to
build your own theories and coalitions, and prepare yourself for action and
collaboration.
—James Paul Gee, Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor of
Literacy Studies and Regent’s Professor, Arizona State University
This book provides a multi-perspectival account of power, race, and dis-
course in educational contexts. Multilingual and multicultural scholars
bring their lived experiences into dialogue with the conceptual, method-
ological, and interventionist tools of critical discourse analysis. The threads
of continuity across the chapters will provide readers with the ideas, tools,
and hope to intervene for social justice in educational institutions.
—Rebecca Rogers, Professor, University of Missouri-St. Louis
In this edited collection, authors from various academic, cultural, racial,
linguistic, and personal backgrounds use critical discourse analysis as a
conceptual framework and method to examine social inequities, identity
issues, and linguistic discrimination faced by historically oppressed groups
in schools and society. Language, Race, and Power in Schools unravels the
ways and degrees to which these groups have faced and resisted oppression
and draws on critical discourse analysis to examine how multiple forms of
oppression intersect. This volume interrogates areas of discrimination and
injustice and discusses possibilities of developing coalitions and concerted
efforts across the lines of diversity.
Pierre W. Orelus is Associate Professor of Curriculum and Instruction, New
Mexico State University, USA.
Routledge Research in Education
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com
174 The Development of the Mechanics’ Institute Movement
in Britain and Beyond
‘A practical education in reach of the humblest means’
Martyn Walker
175 New Perspectives on Intercultural Language Research and Teaching
Exploring Learners’ Understandings of Texts from Other Cultures
Melina Porto and Michael Byram
176 Multilingual Digital Storytelling
Engaging creatively and critically with literacy
Edited by Jim Anderson and Vicky Macleroy
177 Vocationalism in Further and Higher Education
Policy, programmes and pedagogy
Edited by Sai Loo and Jill Jameson
178 Children’s Creative Music-Making with Reflexive Interactive
Technology
Adventures in improvising and composing
Edited by Victoria Rowe, Angeliki Triantafyllaki and Francois Pachet
179 Community-based Media Pedagogies
Relational Practices of Listening in the Commons
Bronwen Low, Chloe Brushwood Rose, and Paula Salvio
180 Reclaiming Discipline for Education
Knowledge, relationships and the birth of community
James MacAllister
181 The Politics of Differentiation in Schools
Martin Mills, Amanda Keddie, Peter Renshaw, and Sue Monk
182 Language, Race, and Power in Schools
A Critical Discourse Analysis
Edited by Pierre W. Orelus
Language, Race, and Power
in Schools
A Critical Discourse Analysis
Edited by Pierre W. Orelus
First published 2017
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
© 2017 Taylor & Francis
The right of Pierre W. Orelus to be identified as editor of this work
has been asserted by him 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 utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
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or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book has been requested.
ISBN: 978-1-138-69049-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-53690-3 (ebk)
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Contents
Foreword vii
JAMES PAUL GEE
Acknowledgments ix
1 Introduction: Language, Race, and Power in Schools 1
PIERRE W. ORELUS
2 From East City Gate to the East of the Pacific:
My Pedagogical Journey Through CDA 15
LIHUA ZHANG
3 Emancipatory Discourses on Ideology, Power,
and the Media: A CDA 29
SUSANA RÍOS
4 Toward Emancipation: Critical Discourse at work
in a Composition Classroom 46
DEBASMITA ROYCHOWDHURY
5 Discourse as a Pilgrimage: The Past of My Memories
and the Future of My Hopes 60
PAULO A. OEMIG
6 Teaching and Learning in the Diaspora: A Transformative
Pedagogy 76
DONNA-MARIE COLE-MALOTT
7 The Learner, the Teacher, and the Classroom Community:
Building Safe Spaces for Emotional Sharing 92
KAREN R. TRUJILLO
vi Contents
8 Teacher, Learner, and Cultural Crosser: A Critical Reflection
on the Construction of My Identity 104
GISELLE MARTINEZ NEGRETTE
9 CDA: Lenses Concerning English Ownership for Africans 116
LORETTA H. WIDEMAN
10 Accentism Exposed: An Anticolonial Analysis of Accent
Discrimination With Some Implications
for Minority Languages 127
PIERRE W. ORELUS
11 We Are the Stories We Share: A CDA and a Transformational
Process 138
NANCY WASSER, ROMINA PACHECO, AND VERONICA GALLEGOS
12 CDA: Dichotomous Reality From a Polish
Immigrant’s Perspective 171
EWA KRAWCZYK
13 Emergent Bilinguals in the Curriculum 182
ADRIANA GOENAGA RUIZ DE ZUAZU
Contributors 195
Index 197
Foreword
We live in perilous times. We are on our way to the highest levels of inequal-
ity we have ever had in the United States and across the world. We have a
new global “casino capitalism,” a form of capitalism based on bets that have
little to do with producing anything of real value to people. Global warm-
ing threatens the very existence of human beings and civilization. Violent
extremism in the name of ideology is spreading across the world. Environ-
mental degradation and violence are leading to massive flows of immigra-
tion and displaced people. The Internet is now so vital to the operations
of our governments, businesses, and infrastructure—and so thoroughly
interconnected—that hackers could bring on a disaster as big as or bigger
than the detonation of a nuclear weapon, leaving whole cities without light,
water, or safety.
The bad news here is this: Business as usual cannot go on. Tinkering at
the edges of school and society in the name of “reform,” without address-
ing these major problems and their interconnections with each other, is like
Nero fiddling while Rome burns.
The good news here is this: Business as usual cannot go on. It was busi-
ness as usual that brought us this mess, so the fact that we will be forced to
end it now is good news, if we can take advantage of this climatic moment
in human history and direct change down positive pathways.
We academics have to begin to think bigger thoughts and seek impact, not
just citations. We have to interrogate racism, classicism, gender discrimina-
tion of all sorts, and all other forms of injustice but without d estroying—
indeed, by creating—possibilities for coalitions and concerted efforts across
the lines of diversity. We have to start offering solutions and not just cri-
tique. And solutions are going to require new categories, new collabora-
tions, and new forms of knowing, being, and activism.
Critical discourse analysis names a variety of different approaches to
research on, and interventions in, the functioning of talk, text, activity, and
identity at work in the world to produce, reproduce, and change society,
culture, institutions, history, our notions of humanness, and our place as
humans in the wider world. Like so much of academics, discourse analysts
have placed themselves in well-protected silos. Such silos are part of business
viii Foreword
as usual and part of what needs to end if we are to move forward and not
meet our fate without having put up any real fight.
Why is discourse analysis crucial? Because it is talk and text in all their
complex relationships with each other and with objects, tools, places and
spaces, ways of acting and interacting, and ways of believing and valu-
ing in and across history that brought us to this tipping point. Unless we
understand how we got here and how we can talk ourselves out of this
mess, we are doomed. Yes, talk our way out—communication, interaction,
and collaboration in the service of a new world, not a utopia surely, but a
place where we can be better people, better to each other, and better to our
mother, the Earth.
We are down to the basics here. It is a portentous time for those of us who
study how people “talk the talk” and “walk the walk” and, so too, how we
humans can talk new talk and walk a new walk, even something of a dance.
It is the worst of times and the best of times to be an academic.
Dear reader, let Pierre W. Orelus’s enticing collection of chapters—
Language, Race, and Power in Schools: A Critical Discourse Analysis—
be not just training for the mind but an invitation for you to collect your
thoughts, begin to build your own theories and coalitions, and prepare
yourself for action and collaboration.
James Paul Gee
Mary Lou Fulton Presidential Professor
of Literacy Studies
Regents’ Professor
Acknowledgments
This book would not have been a reality without the genuine contribution
of all contributors involved in it. I wish to thank them all for their knowl-
edge, experience, expertise, and inspiration. Second, my deepest gratitude
goes to the staff at Routledge, namely Christina Chronister and Katherine
Tsamparlis, who were very understanding, patient, and supportive from the
beginning to the end. Third, I want thank Professor James Gee, who gra-
ciously agreed to write the foreword supporting this book project. Finally,
thank you to my wife and my daughter, who were extremely supportive and
patient throughout the process of writing this book. As always, you two are
my rock and will always be!
