Stylisations as teacher practice

Abstract

A B S T R A C TStudies on stylised language use have tended to focus on the creative exploitation of linguistic heteroglossia among urban multi-ethnic youth. This article argues that there are good reasons for exploring how such practices can also be initiated by norm-enforcing white adults such as teachers. I report on linguistic ethnographic fieldwork in one mixed-ethnicity class at a Brussels Dutch-medium school and describe how one teacher often produced the creative, stylised language use one usually associates with younger speakers. The analysis emphasizes that while teacher stylisations provided alleviation from the friction between linguistic expectations and the reality of the classroom floor, they were also functional in maintaining the school linguistic policy inasmuch as they typified nonstylised, nonaccented, and standard language use as normal and expected. These findings suggest that stylisations can be closely tuned to linguistic normativity and reproductive of wider patterns of sociolinguistic stratification. (Stylisations, urban heteroglossia, crossing, classroom interaction, Brussels, Dutch, enregisterment)*

Sociolinguistics in a languagised world: Introduction

“…Thus, aside from the inherent problems with the Pygmalion effect study (see Wineburg 1987), other studies caution as to its automatic occurrence by pointing at student success under less than favourable linguistic conditions, that is, when teachers are unaware of, hold negative linguistic attitudes or are indifferent towards their pupils' linguistic backgrounds (D'Amato 1993;Erickson 1987;Gibson 1987;Moore 1996;Ogbu 1978). There is some evidence too that the occurrence of negative attitudes and a variation-unfriendly school language policy do not impede the construction of a positive working climate nor the production of unofficial teacher translanguaging (Jaspers 2014a). Naturally this does not mean that negative expectations or biased curricula are acceptable, but that to the extent that they are negative or biased, they may not prevent high pupil performance or congenial classroom relations, and may be less responsible for school failure than is usually suggested (see Moore 2007: 10).…”

The reflexive imperative among high-achieving adolescents

“…They recall the official rule that pupils and teachers should use Standard Dutch in all school contexts (explicitly in line 7, but also indirectly by means of a correction in line 6 and 9), which makes it hard for Ms. De Vos to sanction these playful utterances. In fact, using school rules seems to be a "legal" way to brighten up the lessons (as has been observed by -among others -D'Amato 1993; Jaspers 2011Jaspers , 2014, and therefore, the boys do not only use it in this lesson, but in several lessons where the relationship between them and the teacher is quite good.…”

Linguistic dilemmas and chronic ambivalence in the classroom

“…On a more implicit level the linguistic construction of conviviality can itself be investigated for its orientation to the authoritative relations and plans that they make more acceptable, for example when the interactional location of a teacher's convivial multilingual talk in off-task activity signals implicitly where such multilingual behaviour is acceptable, in contrast to the more serious, ontask activity in the curricular language (Jaspers 2014(Jaspers , 2015. In fact, the demand for conviviality in class can obtain its own dilemmatic aspects: being too friendly may invite pupils to make light of what must be done or learnt, whereas not being friendly enough risks evoking doubts about a teacher's modern professionalism (cf.…”