Exploring Identity Through Literature and Language: Adolescents’ Identity Positioning in Rural Appalachia

ABSTRACT

This article centers on the discursive moves that two adolescent girls in rural Appalachia use to negotiate dominant discourses regarding Appalachian identity and language. The data is drawn from a year-long critical ethnographic teacher-researcher study in a senior English class located within a rural high school in the Appalachian region of the United States. Data analysis indicates that the adolescents in this study constructed local definitions and identity positions regarding language usage that complicated the dominant discourses of Appalachian identities. This study suggests that attending to local relations of power regarding language reveals both the implications and the disruptions in the dominance of mainstream speech patterns for Appalachian adolescents’ social positioning.

KEYWORDS:

• Adolescent
• classroom discourse
• cultural identities
• dialect
• English Language Arts
• language use and identity

Notes

1. All names are pseudonyms.

2. Tracy maintained usage of the Northern City Vowel shift.