Linguistic expertise, mockery, and appropriateness in the construction of identities: A case study from 9th grade physics

ABSTRACT

This linguistic anthropological case study demonstrates the ways in which a heterogeneous lab group of adolescents in a ninth-grade physics classroom constructed raciolinguistic ideologies that intersected with their locally constructed notions of science expertise. Using ethnography and discourse analysis this study unpacks how students in one lab group, guided by their teacher’s instruction, constructed a model of personhood for science expertise that largely excluded female and Latinx students. Mock Spanish emerged as a central practice through which this marginalization was achieved. Implications for promoting equity for multilingual youth in heterogeneous classrooms are discussed.

Notes

1. All place and personal names are pseudonyms.

2. By disciplinary identity development I am referring to processes by which students come to see themselves and behave in ways that reflect and construct some type of science related identity.

3. As labeled by the school.

4. Though I use the term monolingual throughout this paper, I view monolingualism as more of an ideological position than an objective fact. The students listed as “monolingual” are Spanish learners, as such under different ideological conditions one might call them bilingual or emergent bilingual students. Similarly, the teacher knew some words in Spanish but he did not describe himself as a Spanish-speaker.

5. For an expanded definition of identity using this lens readers are recommended to explore in sociolinguistics (Eckert, 2012), in sociocultural linguistics (Bucholtz & Hall, 2004, 2008), in the linguistic anthropology of education (Wortham, 2006), and in language education (Norton & Toohey, 2011). Each of these scholars define identity in a similar way.

6. The larger study specifically sought to examine the socialization pathways of bilingual Latina learners, thus the three bilingual Latina learners in the class became focal participants.

7. Each transcription was either transcribed and translated by the researcher and then checked by a bilingual research assistant, or the reverse, meaning, at least two people, one of whom was highly proficient in Spanish, listened to and checked transcriptions and translations for each transcript. Bilingual research assistants also aided in cultural interpretation when necessary.

8. I include the terms students use to label themselves in this table while using externally imposed terms such as “Latinx” throughout this manuscript. I choose to use the term Latinx to connect the experiences of students in this study to the wider socio-historical context. My intention is not to erase students’ self-described identities.

9. In prior research (Braden, 2017) I documented three local models of personhood (science expert, good student, good assistant) and the communicative practices that constituted them in this classroom community. By participation here I refer to how the students embodied these three identity positions.

10. Lucila’s father was also in the US but he lived in another state. I do not know if the family came the US together or if her father’s move preceded or followed hers.

11. Students were first asked if they considered themselves a “science person” and were also asked to describe what that meant to them. Students struggled to explicitly label the characteristics or qualities of “science people,” with interest in science being the most commonly cited reason for considering someone to be a science person in addition to being good at science (Braden, 2017).

12. The practice of racializing Latinx people through the label of “Mexican” is an example of what Zentella (1995) describes as chiquitification. While I have not found a full analysis of this practice in the research literature, and the use of Mexican as an identity label could easily merit its own analyses, online magazines (http://www.pocho.com/dont-call-me-mexican-america-also-im-not-a-latino/) and discussion forums (https://www.spanishdict.com/answers/138728/spanish-hispanic-mexican-latino…-are-you-culturally-sensitive) show examples of how recipients of the label of “Mexican” react to this labeling, which align with the stereotype I argue is invoked by Lucila and embodied by Henry in this interaction.

13. Hill (2005) traces the history of the semantic pejoration of “mañana” from the earliest documented instances in 1845, to Peggy Lee’s hit song titled “mañana” in 1949, through to various forms circulating in the present day. Hill claims these instances form links in an intertextual chain or intertextual series (Hanks, 1986; Hill, 2005) that constructs Spanish-speakers in pejorative ways. Though it goes beyond the scope of this paper to offer a full argument, I contend that “no hablo” exemplifies a similar series through which White speakers characterize Spanish-speakers as lazy, uninterested in speaking English, and perpetrators of deviant behavior.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The International Research Foundation for English Language Education through the Doctoral Dissertation Grant Program.