Talking College: A Community Based Language and Racial Identity Development Model for Black College Student Justice

Speaker: 
Anne H. Charity Hudley
Event time: 
Monday, November 2, 2020 - 4:00pm to 5:30pm
Event description: 

Critical knowledge about language and culture is an integral part of the quest for educational equity and empowerment, not only in PreK-12 but also in higher education. As Black students transition from high school to college, they seek to add their voices and perspectives to academic discourse and to the scholarly community in a way that is both advantageous and authentic.

The Talking College Project is a Black student and Black studies centered way to learn more about the particular linguistic choices of Black students, while empowering them to be proud of their cultural and linguistic heritage. The Talking College Project is funded by the University of California-Historically Black College and University (UC-HBCU) Initiative and the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program. Students take introductory educational linguistics courses that examine the role of language in the Black college experience and collect information from college students through both interviews and ethnography. We value the perspectives of undergraduates from a range of disciplinary backgrounds as researchers and we have a special focus how our findings can immediately improve their own educational and linguistic experiences.

One key question of The Talking College Project is: how does the acquisition of different varieties of Black language and culture overlap with identity development, particularly intersectional racial identity development?  To answer this question, we used a community based participatory research methodology to conduct over 100 interviews with Black students at several Minority-Serving Institutions, Historically Black College, and Predominantly White Universities. We also conducted ethnographies on over 10 college campuses. Based on information collected from the interviews and our ethnographies, it is evident that Black students often face linguistic bias and may need additional support and guidance as they navigate the linguistic terrain of higher education. We present themes and examples from the interviews that illustrate the linguistic pathways that students choose, largely without sociolinguistic knowledge that could help guide their decisions.

To address the greater need to share information about Black language with students, we highlight our findings from interviews with Black students who have taken courses in educational linguistics to demonstrate the impact of education about Black language and culture on Black students’ academic opportunities and social lives. We have a focus on how this information particularly influenced those who went on to be educators. These findings serve to help us create an equity-based model of assessment for what educational linguistic information Black students need in order to be successful in higher education and how faculty can help to establish opportunities for students to access content about language, culture, and education within the college curriculum. We address the work we need to do as educators and linguists to provide more Black college students with information that both empowers them raciolinguistically AND respects their developing identity choices.

Link to Zoom Event: https://yale.zoom.us/j/92191622671?from=msft

https://annecharityhudley.com/  

203.432.2450
Event Type: 
Colloquia