What Am I Exploring?

In her TED talk, “The Danger of a Single Story,” Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie addresses the dangers of monoliths. She informs listeners that generalizations and stereotypes are counterproductive because they limit our ability to truly understand one another. If we do not look past appearances and labels, we do each other a disservice and fail to give voices to individual’s stories. Adichie shares anecdotes of instances when others have assumed her story and ignored opportunities to learn about who she is. Within the talk, there is a clear difference in the way she describes herself and the way others describe her. She notes that “it’s impossible to talk about the single story without talking about power” and points to the Igbo word nkali which means to be greater than another. She explains, “power is the ability not just to tell a single story of a person, but to make it the definitive story about that person.”

Adichie’s talk has guided my inquiry project because language can also be interpreted through the principle of nkali. If the power of a story is determined by who tells it, how it’s told, or when it’s told, then the power of a language may also be determined by who uses it, how it’s used, and when it’s used. It’s easy to assume that we know everything about a person based on the language they speak or the accent they have, but the reality is that their identity is far more complex than either of these details. For example, someone outside of the U.S. could hear American English and associate it with wealth and privilege, but this would be an instance of a single story. Not every American is wealthy, and there are varying degrees of privilege in America based on a host of factors. I’m interested in learning about the single stories attributed to certain languages/accents/dialects and the ways we can be more accepting of many stories.

In chapter one of Rethinking bilingual education: Welcoming home languages in our classrooms, Elizabeth Barbian, Grace Gonzales, and Pilar Mejia compile a collection of language stories that demonstrate the effects of welcoming and prohibiting students’ home languages in schools. The quote above from chapter one uses the words honor, value, and erode to describe schools’ treatments of language, and I was intrigued by the authors’ choice to include the word erode. The first two terms are positive and uplifting, while the third provides insight into the ways that schools may work against bi/multilingual students. We’d hope that schools are in line with the first two terms, but this reading informs us that this is not always the case. There were two stories from this chapter that helped guide my exploration with this inquiry project: “Colonizing Wild Tongues” by Camila Arze Torres Goitia, and “The Death of My Mexican Name” by Edith Treviño.

In “Colonizing Wild Tongues,” the main character notes how colonization has forced her to lose touch with her mother tongue, Spanish, in order to secure a favorable spot on her school’s social totem pole. As a Latina student, she thought sounding like her white counterparts would guarantee her the same opportunities that they had, but she learned that this was not the case. Instead, she explained, colonization had tricked her into believing this was true. “The Death of My Mexican Name” shares another story of assimilation in which the main character was forced to Americanize her name. Proud of her unique name, Maria Edith Espinoza Yepez was told that her name was too much of a mouthful. She’d have to choose between her first and last names to please others because “we don’t go by two names [in America] and we don’t go by two last names.” So, Maria Edith Espinoza Yepez became Edith Espinoza from that day on. These stories reveal the way schools can act to minimize languages other than English and their linked identities—schools represent the dominant culture and seem to devalue other cultures. With my inquiry project, I’m interested in exploring ways to ensure that there is a more widespread acceptance of a range of cultures and languages and that one isn’t viewed as superior to the rest.

A team of five educators from South Africa’s Wit’s University (Hilary Janks, Kerryn Dixon, Ana Ferreira, Stella Granville, and Denise Newfield) discusses language and language varieties in section three of their book titled Doing critical literacy: Texts and activities for students and teachers. After examining how people acquire languages, the contexts in which they use languages, and how language is intertwined with identity, they’ve produced the quote featured above. The findings in these three categories reveal that language hierarchies exist in our society, and they’re directly linked to the users of various languages. The writing of these five women makes readers consider the implications of geographical location, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status on language attitudes.

After reading this section, I’ve thought about the following questions which have helped guide my exploration:

· Given that there are existing language hierarchies, is someone automatically at a disadvantage if they’re born in a place where dominant languages aren’t commonly spoken?

· If someone speaks many non-dominant languages compared to another person’s single dominant language, who holds more social power? Why?

· If someone’s speech is inconsistent with common perceptions or stereotypes associated with their social group(s), how might this affect their sense of belonging within that group?

· Is it possible to remove the biases linked to language use? Is this wishful thinking, or is it practical? What might go into removing these biases?