Other People's English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy

193 Pages·2013·1.14 MB·English

by  Vershawn Ashanti Young

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Other People's English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, Teaching Vocabulary to English Language Learners
and African American Literacy MICHAEL F. GRAVES, DIANE AUGUST,
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Other People’s English
Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and
African American Literacy
Vershawn Ashanti Young
Rusty Barrett
Y’Shanda Young-Rivera
Kim Brian Lovejoy
foreword by
Victor Villanueva
Teachers College
Columbia University
New York and London
Published by Teachers College Press, 1234 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, NY 10027
Copyright © 2014 by Teachers College, Columbia University
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any
form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, or any information
storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.
Chapter 6 was adapted from V. A. Young (2010, Spring & Fall), “Should Writers Use They
Own English?” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 12/13. Used with permission.
Parts of Chapters 4 and 6 were adapted from V. A. Young (2009), “ ‘Nah, We Straight’: An
Argument Against Code Switching.” JAC, 29 (1/2), 49–76. Used with permission
Chapter 12 was adapted from K. B. Lovejoy (2009), “Self-Directed Writing: Giving Voice
to Student Writers,” English Journal, 98(6), 79–86. Copyright 2009 by the National Council
of Teachers of English. Used with permission.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Young, Vershawn Ashanti.
Other people’s English : code-meshing, code-switching, and African American
literacy / Vershawn Ashanti Young, Rusty Barrett, Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, Kim Brian
Lovejoy.
pages cm. — (Language and literacy series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8077-5555-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8077-5503-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8077-7253-9 (ebook)
1. Code switching (Linguistics) 2. English language—Study and teaching—African
American students. 3. African Americans—Education—Language arts. 4. African
Americans—Languages. 5. Black English—Social aspects. 6. Literacy—Social aspects.
7. Education, Bilingual. 8. Language and education. I. Title.
P115.3.Y68 2014
428.0071—dc23 2013033161
ISBN 978-0-8077-5555-6 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-8077-5503-7 (hardcover)
eISBN 978-0-8077-7253-9 (eBook)
Printed on acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my lovely daughter, Ari Zhah Young. May you
never, ever give up your African American English,
even for a short time, whether you’re at school,
work, or play. It’s your language, your heritage, and
you have a right to always, always use it.
Love, papa.
Tellin kids they lingo is cool but it ain cool enough for where it really
counts (i.e., in the economic world) is just like tellin them it ain cool
at all. If the problem is not the kid’s dialect but attitudes toward that
dialect, then why not work to change those attitudes?
—Geneva Smitherman, “Response to Hunt, Meyers, et al.”
To make two statements: I acknowledge that my home language is
viable and adequate and I acknowledge that my home language
will never be accepted is to set up an irresolvable conflict. . . . One
of these positions must be challenged or amended if the conflict is
to be resolved.
—Rosina Lippi-Green, English with an Accent
Contents
Foreword by Victor Villanueva ix
Acknowledgements xiii
Introduction: Are You a Part of the Conversation? 1
Vershawn Ashanti Young
Part I: afrIcan amerIcan englIsh and the
PromIse of code-meshIng
Rusty Barrett
1. Rewarding Language:
Language Ideology and Prescriptive Grammar 15
2. You Are What You Speak:
Language Variation, Identity, and Education 24
3. Be Yourself Somewhere Else: What’s Wrong with
Keeping Undervalued English out of the Classroom? 33
Part II: code-meshIng or code-swItchIng?
Vershawn Ashanti Young
4. Linguistic Double Consciousness 55
5. The Costs of Code-Switching 66
6. Code-Meshing: The New Way to Do English 76
vii
viii Contents
Part III: code-meshIng and resPonsIble educatIon
In two mIddle school classrooms
Y’Shanda Young-Rivera
7. Code-Meshing and Responsible Education 87
8. Reimagining the Classroom:
Code-Meshing and the 21st-Century Student 94
9. Making Sense of It All: Code-Meshing and Educational Reform 113
Part IV: code-meshIng and culturally releVant
Pedagogy for college wrItIng InstructIon
Kim Brian Lovejoy
10. Code-Meshing: Teachers and Students Creating Community 121
11. Code-Meshing Through Self-Directed Writing 130
12. Composing Code-Meshing:
Thoughts on What to Do and How to Do It 141
Coda: The Power of Language 153
Vershawn Ashanti Young
References 157
Index 165
About the Authors 175
Foreword
This is a book that clarifies misconceptions and sows seeds for solutions. It con-
cerns the long discussions of Black English, Black English Vernacular, African
American English Vernacular, African American Language, Ebonics, and African
American English. It’s a subject that’s been around for a discouragingly long time,
discouraging in that there has been so much scholarship on the matter for so many
decades, yet the misconceptions remain. The four authors of this book breathe
new life into the discussion, not assuming readers really know anything about the
subject—except that it is, in fact, a subject.
And it really is okay if you enter the conversation the authors provide as a skep-
tic. One of the authors herself admits she had been. I was too. To me, code-meshing
was just code-switching in new garb. What’s new? I never did not mesh codes, lan-
guages, dialects in both English and in Spanish, registers of formality and infor-
mality. In my publications, I would write of tía Margarita, not Aunt Margarita; she
never was “aunt”—pronounced as the bug or as ah-nt, as the African American
kids of my neighborhood would say it. Aunt or Aunt just didn’t seem right. Wasn’t
right. She was—is—mi tía Margarita. Or I could write this in an essay:
Exile. Alienation. What does one do when one becomes fully conscious of the alien-
ation that arises from the exile of being racialized, of knowing something ain’t right
and there ain’t no puttin’ it right but can’t be no ignoring the wrong? (Villanueva,
2008, p. 84)
But as this book will make clear, I was meshing more than switching. There
is a difference, and it’s an important one. I write as I write not to imitate a dia-
lect of my childhood nor because I haven’t a repertoire within the standard, but
to take rhetorical advantage of the rhythm, to try to be compelling in blending
the oral with the literate. I blend, not always consciously, not switch. I don’t play
with dialect in writing because I know that what one linguist calls Puerto Rican
Black English (Ana Celia Zentella) is a living language, that no less than African
American English, no less than Standard English changes with time. Consider
The Wizard of Oz. The Tin Man is getting his metal buffed in preparing to visit
the Wizard. The workers sing “A rrub, rrub heah/A rrub, rrub theyah.” Standard
American English, 1939, with trilled r’s and what linguists call non-rhotic endings,
meaning not pronouncing the final r. That was standard then; it’s not standard
ix