ABSTRACT
The image in Figure 9.1 was produced by Lamar, a 10-year-old male who attends a small junior high school, quietly tucked away in the center of a large Midwestern city. The students in Lamar’s class were part of a research project that we conducted on code-switching pedagogies, particularly the contrastive analysis (CA) approach to language instruction, an approach modeled after the one used in Oakland at the time of the 1996 Ebonics controversy. Before and after receiving CA instruction, the students were asked to respond to instruction by depicting their views of African American Language (AAL) and Academic English (AE). Lamar picked up a smooth-tipped black pen, grabbed a blank sheet of white paper, and began to scribble his view of AAL with rude and insightful magic against the blank white slate. When Lamar was done waving his ink-filled wand, he unveiled his portrait of an older woman, “Big Momma,” conversing with a younger woman who is depicted pushing a stroller:
Big Momma: Oh, chile, this baby ugly. Young Mother: Big momma my baby ain’t ugly. Big Momma: Ain’t ain’t a word. Young Mother: If ain’t ain’t a word why did you use it? Big Momma: I’m from the South that all I know.
