Contribution to Book
Migrating while Multilingual and Black: Literate Experiences of Invisible Youth
Enhancing Bilingual Education: A Transdisciplinary Lens for Improving Learning in Bilingual Contexts
(2021)
Abstract
Bidialectalism, the systematic use of two different dialects (i.e., standardized and non-
standardized variations) of the same language, is an underrecognized and unappreciated
phenomenon in education across the globe. An extensive body of research has explored
bidialectalism, yet there remains a deeply entrenched resistance to speakers of non-standardized
languages and to the dialects that they speak in and beyond the educational arena. Despite the
extensive body of research regarding standardized and non-standardized languages, racialized
speakers of non-standardized languages (i.e., often perceived as dialects and as inferior) are often
regarded as illegitimate. The prescribed illegitimacy ascribed by the White subject and the equally
and inadvertently accepted inferiority on the part of the racialized object in dialectal production
largely fails to be associated with White speakers, many of whom are applauded for their
simultaneous leveraging of standardized and non-standardized languages alike. Meanwhile, the
personhood of racialized speakers who leverage non-standardized languages (i.e., dialects)
remains delegitimized. In the conceptual essay that constitutes this chapter, we challenge the use
of terms such as dialect, bidialectal, bidialectalism in the labelling of non-standardized and other
languages that has persisted in delegitimizing individuals as racialized objects. We argue that
such speakers be allowed to enjoy the privilege afforded to bilingualism, multilingualism,
trilingualism as natural language categories, all of which are associated with, and ascribed
privilege when deployed by the supposedly adept White subject. To make this argument, we
draw from positioning theory, (trans)languaging and (trans)raciolinguistics, all illustrating how a
Black Caribbean English-speaking immigrant youth described his own use of English dialects as
languages. We then explain how ascribing the label dialectal to the Englishes leveraged by this
youth reifies raciolinguistic ideologies at both the individual and contextual (i.e., societal or
global) levels. We invite the field to instead use the label, translanguaging with Englishes (TWE)
as a term for specifying how languaging functions for speakers of multiple Englishes, and TWE
while Black to reflect the agency embedded in the language practices of (racialized) youth who
speak these Englishes. Implications for research, theory, policy and practice are provided.
Keywords
- Black immigrant literacy,
- immigration,
- language,
- race,
- literacy,
- transraciolinguistics,
- positioning,
- translanguaging,
- dialect,
- bidialectal,
- Caribbean,
- Bahamas,
- language ideologies,
- multilingualism,
- bilingualism
Disciplines
Publication Date
2021
Editor
Eurydice Bauer
Publisher
Routledge
Citation Information
Smith, P. (Invited, ). Migrating while multilingual and Black: Literate experiences of invisible youth. In E. Bauer (Ed.), Enhancing bilingual education: A transdisciplinary lens for improving learning in bilingual contexts. New York, NY: Routledge.