Oral Language: Literacies, Languages, and Chicago

In the article, "Literacies and Ethnolinguistic Diversity: Chicago", a major theme that was discussed was the different ethnolinguistic and literacies that make up, and even define, the city of Chicago. For the majority of Chicago's history, the city has been known as a crossroads of trade and (more importantly) a crossroads of ethnicities and linguistics. From Native Americans to today, Chicago has seemed to always be the place where various people from various ethnicities and/or who speak a different language come together to trade, work, or live. A great statement that accurately sums this up is, "thus both historically and currently, ethnolinguistic practices in Chicago are inextricably linked to events, people, and institutions in their places of origin" (278).

Although this article continues to talk about the difficulties that many ethnicities have had to overcome in order to establish an identity from their original country, I think a bigger "take-away" from the article is thinking about how our students are reacting to this environment. For the most part, not all of our students are going to come from the same ethnolinguistic background, and one of the problems that our adolescent students will face, especially the ones in high school, are establishing an identity for themselves based on their domestic cultural and linguistic upbringing and the culture(s) and linguistic(s) they experience around them. This can be extremely difficult enough for our students, but what can make this even more challenging for them is not allowing them to develop their identities in schools (and I guess in this case it would be high schools) by shoving academic language and literature down their throats for seven to eight hours, five days a week.

There needs to be a balance and a connection between academic ethnolinguistics and the cultural ethnolinguistics for our students during school. Many students dissociate cultural ethnolinguistics from their academic subjects because they do not see how the two worlds connect. I think that it is very important as teachers to connect what we are teaching to our students' ethnolinguistic background so that they can have a better understanding of the importance of the material being taught to them and how it helps them in developing their identities. A simple solution to this is allowing our students to speak in their ethnolinguistic preference to one another in the hallways, before class begins, or to help them think of an answer, and to not have (or show) a negative label on our students for it. By creating this respect, teachers can create a classroom that is open for all students to learn and to not worry about being judged based on who they are.

Another important statement in the article was, "The world's languages and dialects, used alone and mixed with each other or English, create vibrant communities with range of oral and written genres" (278). Because of the way technology has advanced and mixing of ethnolinguistics, our usage of slang has increased and advanced. Instead of trying to completely cut it out of schools though, we should allow our students to speak in their own way to help them understand academic material.