Code Meshing As World English

Although linguists have traditionally viewed code-switching as the simultaneous use of two language varieties in a single context, scholars and teachers of English have appropriated the term to argue for teaching minority students to monitor their languages and dialects according to context. For advocates of code-switching, teaching students to distinguish between "home language" and "school language" offers a solution to the tug-of-war between standard and nonstandard Englishes. This volume arises from concerns that this kind of code-switching may actually facilitate the illiteracy and academic failure that educators seek to eliminate and can promote resistance to Standard English rather than encouraging its use. The original essays in this collection offer various perspectives on why code-meshing--blending minoritized dialects and world Englishes with Standard English--is a better pedagogical alternative than code-switching in the teaching of reading, writing, listening, speaking, and visually representing to diverse learners. This collection argues that code-meshing rather than code-switching leads to lucid, often dynamic prose by people whose first language is something other than English, as well as by native English speakers who speak and write with "accents" and those whose home language or neighborhood dialects are deemed "nonstandard." While acknowledging the difficulties in implementing a code-meshing pedagogy, editors Vershawn Ashanti Young and Aja Y. Martinez, along with a range of scholars from international and national literacy studies, English education, writing studies, sociolinguistics, and critical pedagogy, argue that all writers and speakers benefit when we demystify academic language and encourage students to explore the plurality of the English language in both unofficial and official spaces.

With a new Foreword by April Baker-Bell and a new Preface by Vershawn Ashanti Young and Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, Other People’s English: Code-Meshing, Code-Switching, and African American Literacy presents an empirically grounded argument for a new approach to teaching writing to diverse students in the English language arts classroom. Responding to advocates of the “code-switching” approach, four uniquely qualified authors make the case for “code-meshing”—allowing students to use standard English, African American English, and other Englishes in formal academic writing and classroom discussions. This practical resource translates theory into a concrete road map for pre- and inservice teachers who wish to use code-meshing in the classroom to extend students’ abilities as writers and thinkers and to foster inclusiveness and creativity. The text provides activities and examples from middle and high school as well as college and addresses the question of how to advocate for code-meshing with skeptical administrators, parents, and students. Other People’s English provides a rationale for the social and educational value of code-meshing, including answers to frequently asked questions about language variation. It also includes teaching tips and action plans for professional development workshops that address cultural prejudices.

The term translingual highlights the reality that people always shuttle across languages, communicate in hybrid languages and, thus, enjoy multilingual competence. In the context of migration, transnational economic and cultural relations, digital communication, and globalism, increasing contact is taking place between languages and communities. In these contact zones new genres of writing and new textual conventions are emerging that go beyond traditional dichotomies that treat languages as separated from each other, and texts and writers as determined by one language or the other. Pushing forward a translingual orientation to writing—one that is in tune with the new literacies and communicative practices flowing into writing classrooms and demanding new pedagogies and policies— this volume is structured around five concerns: refining the theoretical premises, learning from community practices, debating the role of code meshed products, identifying new research directions, and developing sound pedagogical applications. These themes are explored by leading scholars from L1 and L2 composition, rhetoric and applied linguistics, education theory and classroom practice, and diverse ethnic rhetorics. Timely and much needed, Literacy as Translingual Practice is essential reading for students, researchers, and practitioners across these fields.

Winner of the AAAL Book Award 2015 Winner of the Modern Language Association's Thirty-Third Mina P. Shaughnessy Prize Winner of the BAAL Book Prize 2014 Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations introduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. Challenging traditional approaches in second language acquisition and English language teaching, this book incorporates recent advances in multilingual studies, sociolinguistics, and new literacy studies to articulate a new perspective on this area. Canagarajah argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English, which opens up various negotiation strategies that help them decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms. Incisive and groundbreaking, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in multilingualism, world Englishes and intercultural communication.

Teaching English Language Variation in the Global Classroom offers researchers and teachers methods for instructing students on the diversity of the English language on a global scale. A complement to Devereaux and Palmer’s Teaching Language Variation in the Classroom, this collection provides real-world, classroom-tested strategies for teaching English language variation in a variety of contexts and countries, and with a variety of language learners. Each chapter balances theory with discussions of curriculum and lesson planning to address how to effectively teach in global classrooms with approaches based on English language variation. With lessons and examples from five continents, the volume covers recent debates on many pedagogical topics, including standardization, stereotyping, code-switching, translanguaging, translation, identity, ideology, empathy, and post-colonial and critical theoretical approaches. The array of pedagogical strategies, accessible linguistic research, clear methods, and resources provided makes it an essential volume for pre-service and in-service teachers, graduate students, and scholars in courses on TESOL, EFL, World/Global Englishes, English as a Medium of Instruction, and Applied Linguistics.

Taking Cajuns as a case study, Good God but You Smart! explores the subtle ways language bias is used in classrooms, within families, and in pop culture references to enforce systemic economic inequality. It is the first book in composition studies to examine comprehensively, and from an insider’s perspective, the cultural and linguistic assimilation of Cajuns in Louisiana. The study investigates the complicated motivations and cultural concessions of upwardly mobile Cajuns who “choose” to self-censor—to speak Standardized English over the Cajun English that carries their cultural identity. Drawing on surveys of English teachers in four Louisiana colleges, previously unpublished archival data, and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of the legitimate language, author Nichole Stanford explores how socioeconomic and political pressures rooted in language prejudice make code switching, or self-censoring in public, seem a responsible decision. Yet teaching students to skirt others’ prejudice toward certain dialects only puts off actually dealing with the prejudice. Focusing on what goes on outside classrooms, Stanford critiques code switching and cautions users of code meshing that pedagogical responses within the educational system are limited by the reproductive function of schools. Each theory section includes parallel memoir sections in the Cajun tradition of storytelling to open an experiential window to the study without technical language. Through its explication of language legitimacy and its grounding in lived experience, Good God but You Smart! is an essential addition to the pedagogical canon of language minority studies like those of Villanueva, Gilyard, Smitherman, and Rose.

Makes a case for counterstory as methodology in rhetoric and writing studies through the framework of critical race theory.

While English has become the lingua franca in science, business, and other fields, scholars still grapple with the implications of its adoption in many other settings and cultures. To what extent should English be introduced and taught in schools around the world? Who “owns” the English language and can therefore shape its structure and aims? What are world Englishes and how can teachers demonstrate them to their students? Is English the language of the oppressor, an imperialist tool, or does global English offer an opportunity for greater understanding and cooperation amongst peoples and cultures? This volume of critical essays explores these and other questions surrounding language, education, and culture in the globalized world. Honoring students’ cultures while trying to prepare them for an uncertain and constantly changing future is the resounding theme of this book. The contributors to this volume are as multi-cultural and multi-faceted as such a volume would demand. The essays include authors and studies from Algeria, India, Iran, Ghana, Germany, Poland, Tunisia, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, the United States of America, and Yemen. The perspectives offered in this volume contribute greatly to the ongoing conversations on language, education, and globalization.