Sociolinguistic Justice in the Schools: Student Researchers as Linguistic Experts

The commitment of sociocultural linguistics to the cause of social justice has been central to the discipline since its foundation. This commitment is nowhere more evident than in the educational domain and particularly in the development of sociolinguistically informed curricula and teacher preparation programs. Such programs help ensure that students who speak politically subordinated linguistic varieties have the same opportunities in classrooms, college, and careers as their standard English-speaking peers. Informed by previous and current efforts to forge linguistic partnerships with communities, a set of potential goals for those who work toward sociolinguistic justice is proposed. The goals of sociolinguistic justice are then exemplified using a California-based research and academic outreach program that guides youth of diverse linguistic, ethnoracial, and economic backgrounds to carry out original sociocultural linguistic research in their peer groups, families, and local communities. Introduction: Sociolinguistic Justice Since its beginnings, sociocultural linguistics has been committed to using the insights of research to address pressing social justice issues. As scholars have long emphasized (Cameron et al. 1992, 1993; Charity 2008; Labov 1982; Rickford 1997; Wolfram 1998; Zentella 1996), such efforts are an ethical obligation for the field. In some cases, researchers draw on their scholarly expertise to raise public awareness and understanding of politically subordinated communities, such as racialized, immigrant, and/or indigenous groups, whose language is often devalued or pathologized. In other instances, scholars make direct interventions in educational, political, and legal arenas in order to challenge inequities on the basis of language. In addition, a number of commentators have highlighted the need for sociocultural linguists to recognize community members as agents of social change in their own right. For example, Rickford’s (1997) influential concept of “service in return” challenges researchers to engage in meaningful partnerships with the communities they study in order to solve problems of central concern to those communities. Similarly, Cameron and her colleagues argue that scholars should not simply speak out as expert advocates on behalf of marginalized groups, as important as this responsibility is, but they must also help empower their research participants to take action themselves (Cameron et al. 1992, 1993). Many of the social justice efforts of sociocultural linguists have focused on the education of schoolchildren who speak subordinated dialects and languages. Beginning with Labov’s (1969) groundbreaking work on the education of African American English-speaking children, sociocultural linguistic research has played a vitally important role in challenging language-deficit perspectives. A wealth of programs promoting language awareness in classrooms and teacher preparation have helped change attitudes and outcomes in local communities throughout the United States (Alim 2007; Denham and Lobeck 2005, 2010;