Shifting Epistemologies Amidst Whitestream Norms: Centering Black Language in an Elementary Literacy Methods Course

The Linguistic Dimension

A major component in propelling a Black epistemological literacy education is understanding how and why Black Language is linguistically legitimate. This requires rudimentary knowledge of the linguistic parts that comprise a language, and how languages come to be defined as such. This linguistic dimension of language is also important for teachers to understand when instructing and assessing children’s reading and writing. Thus, I begin with Kucer and Silva’s (2013) linguistic dimension: pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, morphological, orthographic, and graphophonemic. These systems constitute the parts of languages and incorporate what linguists study to identify the legitimacy of a language (Baugh, 1999; Smitherman, 2000). For example, when the phonology of a language includes patterns that are consistent over time, they become phonological rules/generalizations and follow a systematic order. These language parts, then, are how linguists determine what is a real language (and not just slang, as Black Language is often erroneously assumed to be). Thus, as I transition from an overview of the dimensions of literacy and focus on the linguistic dimension, I pose the following question: What makes a language real? This question sets the stage for understanding how Black Language is linguistically legitimate.

Prior to making this case about Black Language, however, and while I introduce the linguistic systems, I also foreground conversations about what “real” language is by naming the linguistic fact that “standard” English is a myth (Lippi-Green, 2012) and entrenched in whiteness and white monolingual norms (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Baker-Bell, 2020). I utilize PBS (2005), which has a section on “Standard American English” and explains why this dialect is nonexistent. Kucer and Silva’s (2013) text also points out that exceptions to phonological rules exist more than incidents in which the rules are followed, thus, the idea of English as a standard for “correctness” is inaccurate. The work of explicitly showing teacher candidates white linguistic norms and how they are used in hegemonic ways is aligned to the spirit of raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosa, 2015). That is, there is an onus on actors of white supremacy—teacher educators, programs, teacher candidates—to take action and ameliorate the continued oppression of Black students.

The previously mentioned PBS website also has a section entitled, “From sea to shining sea” in which there are a variety of English dialects linked under “American varieties,” among them Appalachian English, California English, Chicano English, and Southern English. I assign teacher candidates into small groups to focus on and discuss one English dialect and ask them to pay particular attention to the dialect’s linguistic parts (e.g., phonology, syntax, semantics). After teacher candidates have had time to read about their assigned dialect and discuss it in groups, I lead the whole class in a discussion about how language in America is much broader than the hegemonic norms and stereotypes often portrayed in movies and media. This foundation of understanding the various linguistic components that constitute a language, as well as the cultural and geographic varieties of English, set the stage for teacher candidates to learn and accept that Black Language is real and should be respected as a legitimate language.

One of the American varieties highlighted on the PBS website is “African American English,” thus teacher candidates already have some exposure to the language at this point. I then begin a lecture that formally introduces Black Language and how it will be a central case as we consider the multiple dimensions of literacy. In my introduction to Black Language, I cover the following teaching points:

Of all the language varieties explored on the PBS website, Black Language has been the most written about, yet continues to be the most marginalized in society writ large.

The linguistic grounding described here offers a rich foundation to explore a plethora of topics salient to early childhood and elementary literacy. For example, given that Black Language is linguistically legitimate, how does this change the age-old practice of Daily Oral Language and others similar to it, in which students are asked to correct “incorrect” sentences that often feature Black Language? How do one-on-one conferences during writing workshop change when we acknowledge Black Language syntax and semantics? What would phonics instruction look like when Black Language phonology and graphophonemics are honored? Within a Black epistemological literacy methods education, we must rethink all our whitestream literacy practices that are normalized in classrooms.

The Sociocultural Dimension

After the linguistic dimension, Kucer and Silva (2013) move to the cognitive dimension of literacy, though I diverge from this order in my course. I choose to segue into the sociocultural dimension after the linguistic one because of the natural transition in discussing how the linguistic inequities towards Black Language also translate into sociocultural ones as well. One key question I pose is: If we know Black Language is real and there is half a century’s worth of research support, why is the language still unrecognized and devalued? Kucer and Silva’s chapter on the sociocultural dimension describes how literacy is not an individual activity, but inherently constructed and practiced with people in groups and cultures. The social nature of how we do literacy, then, varies by our group memberships. Power structures dictate that not all groups’ ways of doing literacy are equally acknowledged or respected, and that those with dominant group statuses are able to practice literacy in ways that are considered “normal.” Kucer and Silva identify various literacy practices, including those related to recreational, spiritual, and social. They draw on literature about initiation-reply-evaluation (Cazden, 2001; Mehan, 1979) discourse structures and from funds of knowledge (González et al., 2005) to discuss the disparate ways of doing literacy in schools and communities.

I build on Kucer and Silva’s chapter by making explicit what these power structures are, as well as explain how sociocultural theory in literacy evolved from a variety of language acquisition theories. From a Critical Race Theory perspective, race is the central organizing feature in American power structures (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), and can be doubly oppressive when racial membership intersects with other social marginalization (Crenshaw, 2017). When a Critical Race lens is paired with raciolinguistics, we begin to understand why Black Language continues to be considered “incorrect” English in schools, is used in degrading ways to question the abilities of Black students, and when stolen by whitestream society, is considered “cool” enough to profit financially (Baker-Bell, 2020). Black Language speakers, like all bilingual students, are institutionally gaslit to think they do not have as much language as their white monolingual peers when, in fact, the exact opposite is true. If schools truly tracked students by the “amount” of linguistic ability they had when entering kindergarten, Black Language speakers should actually be placed in all of the accelerated/gifted programming. But because schools only consider knowledge to be real when it is communicated in White Mainstream English, young Black Language speakers are confronted with a system already set out to linguistically gaslight them.

Teacher candidates must also understand how a sociocultural theory of literacy evolved from other language acquisition theories. This knowledge is significant because for too long the approach towards educating Black Language speakers has been to “correct” their language and instill code-switching tactics when learning (Young, 2014). However, if we are interested in enacting pedagogies that culturally sustain students’ languages while also growing their linguistic repertoires, teachers must have an idea about how people acquire new language. To accomplish this, I synthesize major language acquisition theories since the mid-20th century. Beginning with behaviorist approaches, I describe Pavlovian experiments in which dogs were trained to salivate when they heard a bell. Similarly, a behaviorist approach in literacy focuses on external factors and environment to shape a student’s language learning. The literacy practices of “skill and drill” flashcards for learning new vocabulary words and spelling tests that require students to rewrite misspelled words multiple times all employ behaviorist notions of learning language.

Chomsky (1959), however, refuted these notions with an innatist view, which contends that children are born with an internal grammar system that allows them to naturally acquire language without explicit instruction. He reasoned that children, over time, become competent language users without caregivers’ explicit instruction, which is unlike the process of learning other content. Mathematical concepts, for example, require some explicit instruction, and cannot be mastered by merely socially engaging with others. Constructivist and interactionist theories postulate that there is a dance between one’s environment and internal self that fosters the learning of new language. Studies observed children interacting with caregivers, and how the languages of both child and adult are constructed from and shape each other (Brown & Bellugi, 1964/2001; Halliday, 1980). These theories underscore the necessity for language acquisition to occur with others, and not simply something to be mastered through repetition. These theories also explain why when teachers talk at students or only use repetition strategies, students often do not learn the vocabulary or spelling of new words.

Finally, sociocultural theory came to literacy in the post-Civil Rights era when some language scholars became aware of the (mis)education of Black students. Building on constructivist notions of language, sociocultural theorists argued for the language practices of historically marginalized students to be honored in schools (Hymes, 1972). At the time, these notions countered widely accepted deficit views of Black Language speakers, and instead, encouraged teachers to draw on students’ broad communicative competence in a variety of settings. Some (Wheeler & Swords, 2006) have taken this to mean Black Language speakers need to code-switch for learning, but many Black Language scholars have always and continue to underscore how anti-Blackness is at the root of myriad deficit language practices, attitudes, and ideologies (Alim & Smitherman, 2012; Baker-Bell, 2020; Kynard, 2013; Smitherman, 1977; Young, 2014).

Understanding language acquisition is significant in teaching Black Language speakers (and all students) for a variety of reasons. First, learning any new language, whether it is another language, vocabulary, or content-based words, requires interaction and social engagement with others. The pedagogical implications of this are endless but can be conceived of in two broad ways: (1) practices that rely on repetition and correction will not foster language growth, and (2) social interaction must be an integral component to any learning activities. Black Language speakers are all too often “corrected” because teachers often believe that this will help them learn White Mainstream English when, in fact, it is counterproductive towards this endeavor (Lee, 2017).

Second, the group memberships students hold matters. Students’ ways of doing language are baked within their families, communities, and ways of communicating in their lives outside school, and thus, must be leveraged when learning new language in classrooms. This means inviting Black Language in student writing and writing instruction (Hartman & Machado, 2019; Lee & Handsfield, 2018), accounting for the language during reading assessments (Compton-Lilly, 2005), and creating space for Black Language speakers’ linguistic dexterity in multilingual settings (Frieson & Scalise, 2021). Third, the sociocultural nature of Black Language also includes verbal strategies and rhetorical devices, such as call and response, signification, tonal semantics, and narrative sequencing, which are explained in detail in Smitherman (1977). Narrative sequencing, for example, refers to when Black Language speakers narrate stories through various episodes rather than focusing on just one topic. Teachers employing whitestream norms can perceive their stories to be “off topic” or “unfocused” in literacy practices, such as show and tell or in narrative writing (Michaels, 1981), but instead should leverage Black Language practices in literacy instruction by inviting their discursive and rhetorical practices (Lee, 2007).

The Cognitive Dimension

The cognitive dimension of literacy in Kucer and Silva (2013) is described as the “mental processes, strategies, or procedures that the individual engages so as to construct meaning through the linguistic and other sign systems” (p. 95). This dimension focuses on what is occurring between the mind and a particular text, and thus focuses on the meaning-making process at the individual level. They explain how readers use their tacit knowledge of various linguistic systems (e.g., morphemes, syntax) to make sense of texts. They contend that the reading process is dynamic, and thus, the practice of leveling readers and writers is not beneficial to students in the meaning-making process. Instead, they offer several factors that influence the transaction processes of reading and writing, which include students’ systems of languages, availability and flexibility to use strategies, background knowledge, purpose of reading/writing, and assimilating and accommodating one’s cognitive strategy to be congruent to the text.

As I center Black Language into this dimension, I help teacher candidates consider how Black Language speakers’ linguistic and cultural assets are invited and utilized in the meaning-making process. For example, if we understand that students deploy their tacit knowledge of language systems as they read and write, then we must interrogate the ways we only allow students to use White Mainstream English language systems to make sense of these processes. In the introduction of this paper, I share an activity in which teacher candidates are asked to use Black linguistic systems (e.g., phonetics, syntax) in a text written in Black Language. Given that most of the teacher candidates I previously taught only had tacit knowledge of White Mainstream English language systems, there was an incongruence between the language systems with which they had mastery and the ones they were asked (and being assessed) to produce. This incongruence explains the overwhelming response about how difficult the activity is—not only to read the text but also in comprehension. Though decoding texts and comprehension are different processes, there is a relationship between being able to read and being able to understand a text.

This activity with teacher candidates offers a learning opportunity for them to empathize when students’ knowledge of language systems differs from the only language system used and counted in schools. As mentioned in the introduction, this activity illuminates issues of student agency and identity beyond the reading processes, but it also underscores how these seemingly individual cognitive processes are still embedded within racial power structures, anti-Blackness, and white monolingual norms. Employing a lens of raciolinguistic ideologies requires reflexivity on the actors and mechanisms of white supremacy, and my activity in the introduction opens up space to critically consider how one reading assessment can potentially reverberate into educational damage for years to come. For example, timed oral fluency tests often serve as universal screeners within a Response to Intervention model for all kindergarten students. These scores, and other tests conducted similarly within classrooms, then level students and can determine the reading groups within which they are placed as well as how they might be referred for special education or speech interventions (Willis, 2019). While it is imperative for students to receive the support services they need, we must critically consider if and how Black linguistic systems are accounted for in these assessments and interventions. Is Black Language use associated with risks used for special education and speech support referrals? Do interventions leverage Black linguistic systems within the services rendered? We must interrogate the ways early childhood literacy assessments are white supremacist in nature and position Black Language as a risk rather than an asset to be leveraged (Lee, 2022).

Another important factor in accessing students’ cognitive dimension of literacy is their tacit knowledge of a text. There is an onus on educators to select texts that leverage Black Language speakers’ tacit knowledge in literacy activities. Conduct an inventory of how often Black linguistic systems are represented in the following texts that comprise students’ everyday literary worlds: oral fluency and comprehension assessments, reading group materials, classroom library, mentor texts, student writing, content-based texts, teachers’ oral instruction. While the list of everyday texts students encounter surpass the items identified here, this list elucidates the gross underrepresentation of Black linguistic systems in student learning, and conversely, the inordinate overrepresentation of White Mainstream English language systems.

Muiru (2021) offers children’s and young adult literature booklists on The Black Language Syllabus, and Meier’s (2008) book, Black Communications and Learning to Read: Building on Children’s Linguistic and Cultural Strengths, provides in-depth explanations of how to use African American literature in various comprehension strategies. Along with published books, we need to also consider how family/community members can be leveraged in classrooms to access students’ funds of knowledge and increase the amount of Black linguistic resources we offer them.