Vernaculars in the Classroom ─ Paradoxes, Pedagogy, Possibilities

This book draws on applied linguistics and literary studies to offer concrete means of engaging with vernacular language and literature in secondary and college classrooms. The authors embrace a language-as-resource orientation, countering the popular narrative of vernaculars as problems in schools. The book is divided into two parts, with the first half of the book providing linguistic and pedagogical background, and the second half offering literary case studies for teaching. Part I examines the historical and continued devaluing of vernaculars in schools, incorporating clear, usable explanations of relevant theories. This section also outlines the central myths and paradoxes surrounding vernacular languages and literatures, includes productive ways for teachers to address those myths and paradoxes, and explores challenges and possibilities for vernacular language pedagogy. In Part II, the authors provide pedagogical case studies using literary texts written in vernacular Englishes from around the world.

Each chapter examines a vernacular-related topic, and concludes with discussion questions and writing assignments; an appendix contains the poems and short stories discussed, and other teaching resources. The book provides a model of interdisciplinary inquiry that can be beneficial to scholars and practitioners in composition, literature, and applied linguistics, as well as students of all linguistic backgrounds.

Shondel Nero is Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning at New York University, USA. She is the author of Englishes in Contact: Anglophone Caribbean Students in an Urban College and editor of Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education (Routledge). Her research has appeared in TESOL Quarterly, World Englishes, Language and Education, and other journals.

Dohra Ahmad is Associate Professor of English at St. John’s University, USA. She is the author of Landscapes of Hope: Anti-Colonial Utopianism in America and editor of Rotten English: A Literary Anthology. Her essays have appeared in ELH, the Yale Journal of Criticism, Social Text, and the Journal of Commonwealth Literature.