Sociolinguistic Foundations to African Centered Pedagogy: A Literature Review

PERIOD I: INDIGENOUS VOICES PERIOD II: COLONIZATION OF THE LITERATURE OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE BEHAVIORS PERIOD III: POST COLONIAL STUDIES: TOWARD AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF AFRICAN AMERICAN LANGUAGE BEHAVIORS PREFACE To the contemporary investigator of African centered pedagogies, merely looking within the broad background of educational research would miss a substantial portion of the entire ethnographic range of investigations. An integral body of literature reposes in two other significant areas: first, within the indigenous voices of African American writers, pioneer ethnographers and scholars; and secondly, within the ethnographic investigations of the field of sociolinguistics. This literature review will focus upon the sociolinguistic foundations of the ethnographies which have formed a substantial part, both in conceptual and applied contexts, of the discussion and development of African centered pedagogies in more recent years. The core issue in the relationship between sociolinguistics and African centered pedagogies is the study of the culture-specific behavior of the African American speech community; the pedagogical corollary of that relationship is the applied strategies of using those patterned and valued ways of speaking for teaching and learning effectiveness in formal classroom settings. The point of departure in my own readings is with the writings of Carol Lee. This author touches upon the concept of "signifying" as a valued form of oral discourse in the African American speech community. Signifying can be characterized as the verbal art of using dual meanings, innuendo and the play upon the sound and meanings of words. As a form of discourse, signifying has been the focus of much investigation. Carol Lee briefly discusses some of the background literature and touches lightly upon many other researchers' work within the field of sociolinguistics. Her article is replete with references on the topic. Since this is such a rich and important focus of research, it is important to delve more deeply into this valuable body of literature. The scope of the review of this body of literature might be delineated in the following historically based outline: Period I: Indigenous Voices To ignore the indigenous voices in the critical history of African American education, or to bypass those perspectives in the earliest of ethnographies, is to deny African Americans that recognition of self-knowledge that would be factually and grossly incorrect. The earliest recorded voices have commented on the processes of education (or schooling, might be more accurate) in relation to the cognitive abilities and language behaviors of African Americans. Maya Angelou, in her poignant autobiography entitled I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969) has described eighth grade graduation day in her native Stamps, Arkansas. The graduation speaker was unequivocal about the visiting artists and the microscopes going to the white schools, while how proud the town was that the athletes (Black students graduating) would be going on to the agricultural and mechanical college. Angelou states: "The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises" (p. 151). Although Angelou's memoir was not published until 1969, the period of recollection for this dubious kind of graduation ceremony is set in the 1930's and 40's--at the time when African American cultural and artistic contributions were making a mark in the rest of the country (and world). The indigenous voices, contemporary to this period, were indeed recorded, although not published widely at the time. Ironically, while Maya Angelou was listening disappointedly at a biased graduation drama in Arkansas, across the country in Washington, DC, the Black intellectual and philosopher, Carter Woodson was graphically portraying her and many others' plight in the pivotal The MisEducation of the Negro (1933). …