Positionality in Education

 Case Study 2: AAVE

Standardization of English influence on AAVE users in the classroom.

            Conventions of standard White English are currently being taught in classrooms across America. As a highly reflective indication of White English-Speaking positionality, it tends to disrupt dialects going against it. 

            Standard White English is also used in scientific research writing. In educational settings, White English is constantly reinforced as the correct way of speaking, when in truth there is no correct way to write or speak a language. Language serves as communicative property of a people. After learning the history of African American Vernacular English, in the video above, to see it continuously thrown out in classrooms begs one to question the effects caused to positionality.  

Iconization: the process of conflating a linguistic feature with the nature of a whole person or a whole group.

• When Language Ideology interact with racial ideology, conflations and projection occur. AAVE and Black English registers are thought of as less than in a country dominated by White standard English.

"Throughout history black speakers have been characterized as using Black English registers and because some words have historically been perceived as missing there were and are frequent accusation that this grammatical pattern was the result of laziness" (Mena 20:47)

 "a linguistic feature becomes linked to the nature of a whole group we end up with a formula that kind of looks like:  

lazy language user= lazy person 

or in a deeply racialized formula 

                     lazy language user = lazy black people so again" (Mena 21:06)

Mena, Mike. “LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY: A Masterclass (Irvine & Gal 2000)

            .” YouTube, 29 Sep. 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHf1cpL6Rjc.

Drawing Connections!

Transcript:

Language, unlike Case study #2 and #3, works to push the more negative aspects of positionality, that isolate through one likeness or prioritize certain positions over another. In the case of African American Vernacular English, we see a clear display of the positionality of a people grasping onto a culture, and through White Standard English, a combative language that works to disrupt other iterations. These language/dialects are separated through race: White Standard English and African American Vernacular English. In this we see the positionality of the conqueror: a will to subject another race into inferiority. Rather than using categorizations like “different”, the dialects are crafted as right and wrong, standardizing one experience over the other. Language is a highly identifiable form of positionality, and as it’s presented in education, identities face erasure and suppression. To standardize English, in both Education and the Academia over all is to position one experience in a more widely acceptable light. As position is expansive, this suppression grows past the language and into their users: race, gender, biases, sense of self. Children, particularly those who face this disruption of their positionality from such a young age, come to lose the impact of culture and face a disruption in the vision of themselves. As we’ve learned from previous videos, educational materials are usually learned as standardized fact; the fact being one race’s way of speaking and their position in society is correct, while the other must be corrected. Is it moral to standardize such things through the position of race?

 

 

 

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