ABSTRACT
Many people considers the study of foreign or nonnative languages to be a discipline that is especially well positioned to address issues of social and cultural differences. For students whose native language is English, it teaches how to communicate with different cultural and linguistic groups in the United States and throughout the world. Kevin Kumashiro first realizes the importance of understanding the cultural context of language usage a few years earlier when living in Nepal and teaching English-as-a-second-language to elementary and middle schoolers. Learning about how people in Nepal tend to talk and the cultural assumptions and norms behind their language can raise questions about the often unspoken cultural assumptions and norms behind his own language and ideas. Teaching Zora Neale Hurston's widely celebrated novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, has helped to push his students and him towards critically identifying and analyzing differing English language-dialects as well as their relationships to power and powerlessness.
