Code-Meshing and African American Literacy

If you are looking for a definitive answer to questions surrounding African American literacy, code-meshing, or code-switching, then this is not the book for you. Other People’s English unsettles many of the commonplace ideas about African American English and the use of multiple languages in the classrooms. The book explores ideas and assumptions about language, provides a blueprint for incorporating critical pedagogy, and suggests new areas for further research. As Vershawn Ashanti Young explains in the introduction, the book is designed to help “advocate that African American English speakers be allowed to blend African American language styles together with Standard English at school and at work” (1). In this sense, Other People’s English investigates questions and concerns crossing disciplinary boundaries of language, education, rhetoric, and composition.

Moreover, while scholars working in these fields are familiar with the concepts of code-switching—switching between two or more languages within particular contexts—the term code-meshing is the combination of multiple languages and identities. For coauthors Young, Rusty Barrett, Y’Shanda Young-Rivera, and Kim Brian Lovejoy, code-meshing offers fresh insights into language practices and pedagogical dynamics, including student-teacher dialogue, and useful lesson plans that incorporate code-meshing and code-switching. The book clarifies ambiguities surrounding code-switching and code-meshing, including basic definitions, language structure, and how to implement these language practices in the classroom. Other People’s English also contextualizes lesson plans through debates about language, such as the 1974 National Council of Teachers of English position statement, “Students’ Right to Their Own Language” (SRTOL), reasserting the SRTOL position statement as a guiding perspective of language that remains useful for preservice teachers, tenure-track and retired teachers, and graduate students.

A particular strength of Other People’s English is its emphasis on both theory and practice. Each of the contributors contributes four chapters connecting his or her area of concentration to the theoretical and pragmatic perspective of current language debates about African American English. The grounding theme across all four sections is a common awareness that “African American English has consistently been and remains a powerfully important topic in national conversations about literacy” (8). The contributors explain that “our book is informed by the same motivations that [some] linguists” take on: to uncover general (and even academic) misconceptions of linguistic myths (9). Other People’s English effectively works to articulate equality in language politics for diverse language speakers, particularly speakers of African American English.

Another unique feature of these chapters is the coauthors’ different areas of expertise: African American studies, English, linguistics, and education. In spite of these differences, however, the contributors share a commitment to supporting linguistic variation in conversations about African American language practices. Barrett, the author of part 1, “African American English and the Promise of Code-Meshing,” is an associate professor in the linguistics program in the English department at the University of Kentucky. His chapter “Rewarding Language: Language Ideology and Prescriptive Grammar” offers a discussion of syntax variation and error. All of his contributions to the book emphasize the effect of sociolinguistic impacts on African American English and code-switching, and he advocates a broad and global outlook on language.

Barrett’s critique of the misperceived notion of a “standard” English offers a useful deconstruction of “good” writing and “errors” within standard English. In linking grammar(s) and good writing to social and cultural influences, he makes the case that bilingualism and code-switching are beneficial. “This [type of code-switching] distinction is useful in studying grammar, but it doesn’t tell us much about the social aspects of alternating between languages” (29). What can we learn about the Mayan culture and language, to use Barrett’s example, when trying to understanding the transactions of languages between Mayan, Spanish, and English? What is lost? If such dynamic linguistic exchanges are occurring outside of the classroom, what is the classroom potentially...