ABSTRACT
Let’s imagine, for example, a populist teacher who refuses this right of correction [correcting students’ language] and says “Anyone who wants to speak should just speak; the most beautiful French is street French….” When it comes to defi ning the laws of the specifi c market of his classroom, the teacher’s freedom is limited, because he will never manage to create “an empire within an empire”, a sub-space in which the laws of the dominant market are suspended. (Bourdieu, 1977/1993, p. 63)
I have suggested that teachers should be about the serious business of educating young black minds to deal with (and if necessary, on) a society of power politics and incredible complexity…. As agents of change, teachers can work to help mold American society into a humane and pluralistic social universe. Eff ectuating changes in language attitudes and policies, in the classroom and beyond, is a major step in this direction. What teachers would be doing, then, amounts to a social and political act, which, like charity, begins at home. Can I get a witness? (Smitherman, 1977/1986, p. 241)
Th is chapter has two related goals. Th e fi rst is to address the daily cultural tension, or cultural combat, that linguistically profi led and marginalized students engage in as they form their linguistic identities in creative and oft en unexpected (by teachers) ways through their participation in Hip Hop Culture. And the second goal is to present a critical language pedagogy while speaking broadly to the fi eld of sociolinguistics about its involvement in language pedagogy, policy-making, and politics. By providing a case of sociolinguistic involvement in language pedagogies, I will be simultaneously addressing ways in which we can interrogate
and reverse (rather than merely “suspend” as Bourdieu wrote above) the laws of the dominant linguistic market through the development of critical pedagogies rooted in students’ diverse cultural-linguistic realities, in this case, critical Hip Hop language pedagogies (CHHLPs). Th is particular sociolinguistic approach to education, being overtly political, is as concerned about speech as it is about speakers, and thus functions on multiple levels (pedagogy, policy, politics) and in multiple contexts (wherever learning occurs). Th e rise of Hip Hop Culture at the same time that Smitherman and Bourdieu were addressing sociolinguists and educators is an interesting coincidence, since all three represent movements addressing social crises of and through language. Th is chapter speaks to all of those audiences (the Hip Hop Nation, sociolinguists, and educators) in hopes of improving the educational and social welfare of all students.
