Somali immigrant youths and the power of print literacy

Abstract

This article examines some of the ways in which the politics of a written script are enacted among Somali refugees and immigrants in present-day schools and classrooms. Analysis focuses on data gathered with Somali youths in one all-immigrant high school classroom in the US. Data are examined to illustrate how global processes, some of which have developed across timescales of multiple decades, including the decision about a Somali script, the Somali civil war(s) and the rise of Somali Diaspora, play out in everyday classroom interactions. Here we extend the academic conversation about the cognitive and educational benefit of home language literacy and schooling when learning a new language by exploring the dynamic relationship between the symbolic power of Somali print literacy on the one hand, and current classroom practices and informal policies on the other. These findings illustrate how the history of the Somali script, differential access to formal schooling along gender lines and the benefit of having print literacy in Somali play out in everyday interactions at school. We document ways in which Somali print literacy is integral to how Somali adolescents see themselves and others as learners and individuals.

Keywords:

• Literacy
• Somali
• Refugee
• ELL
• Adolescent
• Diaspora
• ESL
• Limited formal schooling (LFS)

Notes

¹ Mr. Said Salahi is a well-known expert of the Somali language who participated in the Romanisation of Somali script. Bigelow interviewed him to gain deeper understanding of how this language policy was communicated and implemented in the 1970s. Mr. Salahi reportedly wrote texts and materials for the subsequent literacy campaign as well as songs and the first four books in Somali. Mr. Salahi is still an active Somali scholar; for instance, he led an event in Minneapolis on 8 June 2012, with hundreds of Somalis in attendance, including international scholars, poets and singers, to commemorate the 1972 decision to Romanise the Somali script.