Language across Difference: Ethnicity, Communication, and Youth Identities in Changing Urban Schools

by Django Paris

Once a predominantly African-American city, South Vista opened the twenty-first century with a large Latino/a majority and a significant population of Pacific Islanders. Using an innovative blend of critical ethnography and social language methodologies, Paris offers the voices and experiences of South Vista youth as a window into how today's young people challenge and reinforce ethnic and linguistic difference in demographically changing urban schools and communities. The ways African-American language, Spanish and Samoan are used within and across ethnicity in social and academic interactions, text messages and youth authored rap lyrics show urban young people enacting both new and old visions of pluralist cultural spaces. Paris illustrates how understanding youth communication, ethnicity and identities in changing urban landscapes like South Vista offers crucial avenues for researchers and educators to push for more equitable schools and a more equitable society.

Genres: Linguistics, Education

228 pages, Hardcover

First published June 27, 2011

About the author

Django Paris is the James A. and Cherry A. Banks Professor of Multicultural Education and director of the Banks Center for Educational Justice at the University of Washington. His research and teaching focus on understanding and sustaining languages, literacies, and lifeways among youth of color in the context of demographic and social change. Along with H. Samy Alim, he is the coeditor of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World.

Reviews

[Erin H · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s so interesting to read a book whose information came from students who were my age in 2007 and comparing it to the conversations and experiments we were doing in our own school on the other side of the country. Definitely a proper mirror to consider how Paris’ calls to actions have manifested or not almost a decade later.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you’re interested in language, diversity, and identity of marginalized student populations, this is a good read.

[India Williams-Rakestraw · Rating 2 out of 5]

overly explanatory and inaccessible