Making music, making language
Minoritized bilingual children performing literacies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jmtp.16529Keywords:
Bilingualism, Latinx, literacy education, music education, translanguagingAbstract
This article reframes how the making of music by minoritized bilingual Latinx
children is interrelated to their languaging and their literacies’ performances.
Taking a translanguaging approach, musicking/languaging/performing literacies are described here as holistic critical meaning-making processes. Focusing on the process by which students make meaning of texts, and not simply on the output or product of such meaning-making, this article shows how a music education programme based on El Sistema and designed for social change transforms minoritized children’s critical sense of their positions and subjectivities as producers of language and literacies. Through music education, long considered only an enrichment activity from which language minoritized students are often excluded, bilingual Latinx children are able to crack open a vision for themselves and others as competent, dignified, and valid meaning-makers—as performers of complex acts of language and literacies.
References
Agha, A. (2007) Language and Social Relations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Anzaldúa, G. (1987) Borderlands/La frontera: The New Mestiza. Aunt Lute Books: San Francisco.
Anzaldúa, G. (2015) Light in the Dark/Luz en lo oscuro. Rewriting Identity, Spirituality, Reality. (A. L. Keating, ed.). Durham: Duke University Press.
Aprile, A. (2017) Musicalization: Early childhood music access, discourse and praxis in New York City charter schools. PhD Dissertation. The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Bartolomé, L. (1998) The Misteaching of Academic Discourse: The Politics in the Language Classroom. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Bauman, R. and Briggs, C. L. (2003) Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Becker, A. L. (1995) Beyond Translation: Essays Toward a Modern Philosophy. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010) Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London: Continuum International.
Block, D. (2014) Moving beyond ‘lingualism’: Multilingual embodiment and multimodality in SLA. In S. May (ed.) The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education 54–77. New York: Routledge.
Campbell, P. S. (2010) Songs in their Heads: Music and its Meaning in Children’s Lives. New York: Oxford University Press.
Cappello, L. (2018) Gentrification in Northern Queens? Demographic and Socioeconomic Transformations in Jackson Heights and Corona, 1990–2016. New York, NY: Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center.
Chappell, S. V. and Cahnmann-Taylor, M. (2013) No child left with crayons: The imperative of arts-based education and research with language ‘minority’ and other minoritized communities. Review of Research in Education 37.1: 243–68. https://doi.org/10.3102/0091732X12461615
Creese, A. and Blackledge, A. (2010) Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: A pedagogy for learning and teaching? Modern Language Journal 94.1: 103–15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.2009.00986.x
Crossley, N. (2015) Music worlds and body techniques: On the embodiment of musicking. Cultural Sociology 9.4: 471–92. https://doi.org/10.1177/1749975515576585
Cummins, J. (1981) The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In California State Department of Education (ed.) Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework 3–50. Los Angeles, CA: Evaluation, Dissemination, and Assessment Center.
Cummins, J. (2000) Language, Power and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Edelsky, C., Flores, B., Barking, F., Altwerger, B., and Jilbert, K. (1983) Semilingualism and language deficit. Applied Linguistics 4.1: 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/4.1.1
Elbow, P. (2006) The music of form: Rethinking organization in writing. College Composition and Communication 57.4: 620–66.
Flores, N. (2014) Let’s not forget that translanguaging is a political act. [Online] Educational Linguist. Available at: https://educationallinguist.wordpress.com/2014/07/19/lets-not-forget-that-translanguaging-is-a-political-act/
Flores, N. and Rosa, J. (2015) Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85.2: 149–72. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85.2.149
Freebody, P. and Luke, A. (1990) ‘Literacies’ programs debates and demands in cultural context. Prospect: An Australian Journal of TESOL 5.3: 7–16.
Freire, P. and Macedo, D. (1987) Literacy: Reading the Word and the World. Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey.
García, O., Johnson, S., and Seltzer, K. (2017) The Translanguaging Classroom. Leveraging Student Bilingualism for Learning. Philadelphia: Caslon.
García, O. and Kleyn, T. (eds) (2016) Translanguaging with Multilingual Students: Learning from Classroom Moments. New York: Routledge.
García, O. and Li Wei (2014) Translanguaging: Language, Bilingualism and Education. London: Palgrave Macmillan Pivot.
García, O. and Solorza, C. (forthcoming) Academic Language and the Minoritization of U.S. Bilingual Latinx Students. Language and Education.
Gardner, H. (1997) Keynote address: Is musical intelligence special? In V. Brummett (ed.) Ithaca Conference ’96, Music as intelligence: A Sourcebook 1–12. Ithaca, NY: Ithaca College.
González, N., Moll, L., and Amanti, C. (eds) (2005) Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households, Communities, and Classrooms. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gromko, J. E. and Russell, C. (2002) Relationships among young children’s aural perception, listening condition, and accurate reading of graphic listening maps. Journal of Research in Music Education 50.4: 333–42. https://doi.org/10.2307/3345359
Gutiérrez, K. (2008) Developing a sociocultural literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly 43.2: 148–64. https://doi.org/10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3
Holpuch, A. (2020) Corona in Corona: Deadly toll in a New York neighborhood tells a story of race, poverty and inequality. Guardian (June 15, 2020). Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/coronavirus-corona-queens-ny-virus-shook-neighborhood
Kennedy, L. (2007) The challenge of equitable access to arts and museum experiences for low-income New York City schoolchildren. In J. Kincheloe and S. Shirley (eds) Cutting Class: Socioeconomic Status and Education 199–210. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.
Lin, A. and Wei, L. (2019) Translanguaging classroom discourse: Pushing limits and breaking boundaries. Classroom Discourse 10.3–4: 209–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2019.1635032
Li Wei (2017) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 39.1: 9–30. https://doi:10.1093/applin/amx039
Lobo, A. P. and Salvo, J. J. (2013) The Newest New Yorkers: Characteristics of the City’s Foreign-born Population. Population Division of the New York City Department of City Planning. Office of Immigrant Affairs.
López, F. (2017) Altering the trajectory of the self-fulfilling prophesy: Asset-based pedagogy and classroom dynamics. Journal of Teacher Education 68.2: 193–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487116685751
MacSwan, J. and Rolstad, K. (2003) Linguistic diversity, schooling, and social class. Rethinking our conception of language proficiency in language minority education. In C. B. Paulston and R. Tucker (eds) Sociolinguistics: The Essential Readings 329–40. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Maturana, H. and Varela, F. (1984) El Árbol del Conocimiento. Las bases biológicas del entendimiento humano. Santiago de Chile: Lumen, Editorial Universitaria.
Mignolo, W. J. (2000) Local Histories/Global Designs: Essays on the Coloniality of Power, Subaltern Knowledges and Border Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Moore, E., Bradley, J., and Simpson, J. (eds) (2020) Translation as Translanguaging: The Collaborative Construction of New Linguistic Realities. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Ortega, A. (2018) Musicking and literacy connections in the third space: Leveraging the strengths of a Latinx immigrant community. PhD Dissertation. The Graduate Center, City University of New York.
Otheguy, R., García, O., and Reid, W. (2015) Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6.3: 281–307. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2015-0014
Otheguy, R., García, O., and Reid, W. (2019) A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review 10.4: 625–51. https://doi.org/10.1515/applirev-2018-0020
Paris, D. and Alim, H. S. (2014) What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review 84.1: 85–100. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.84.1.982l873k2ht16m77
Paris, D. and Alim, H. S. (eds) (2017) Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies: Teaching and Learning for Justice in a Changing World. New York: Teachers College Press.
Park, J.S-Y and Wee, L. (2012) Markets of English. Linguistic Capital and Language Policy in a Globalizing World. New York: Routledge.
Pennycook, A. (2017) Translanguaging and semiotic assemblages. International Journal of Multilingualism 14.3: 269–82. https://doi.org/10.1080/14790718.2017.1315810
Quijano, A. (2000) Coloniality of power, ethnocentrism, and Latin America. International Sociological Association 15.2: 215–32. https://doi.org/10.1177/0268580900015002005
Rosa, J. and Flores, N. (2017) Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46.5: 621–47. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404517000562
Salmon, A. (2010) Using music to promote children’s thinking and enhance their literacy development. Early Childhood Development and Care 180.10: 937–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/03004430802550755
Santos, B. de S. (2007) Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledges. Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 30.1: 45–89.
Sloboda, J. A. (2005) Exploring the Musical Mind: Cognition, Emotion, Ability, Function. Oxford: Oxford University.
Small, C. (1997) Musicking: A ritual in social space. In R. Rideout (ed.) On the Sociology of Music Education 1–12. Norman Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma School of Music.
Tunstall, T. (2012) Changing Lives: Gustavo Dudamel, El Sistema and the Transformative Power of Music. New York: Norton Kamp; Norton Company.
Vogel, S. and García, O. (2017) Translanguaging. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. New York: Oxford University Press. http://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.181
Webster, P. (1987) Conceptual bases for creative thinking in music. In J. Peery, I. Peery, and T. Draper (eds) Music and Child Development 158–74. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Zhu, H., Li Wei, and Jankowicz-Pytel, D. (2019) Translanguaging and embodied teaching and learning: Lessons from a multilingual karate club in London. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 23.1: 65–80. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2019.1599811
