Working Papers in Educational Linguistics

Working Papers in Educational Linguistics (WPEL) is a student managed journal that presents work primarily by students and faculty within the University of Pennsylvania community. WPEL's focus is on research specifically related to areas of educational linguistics. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, second language acquisition, sociolinguistics, interlanguage pragmatics, language planning and policy, literacy, TESOL methods and materials, bilingual education, classroom research on language and literacy, discourse analysis, computer assisted language learning, language and gender, language and the professions, and language related curriculum design. WPEL is abstracted in LLBA and ERIC databases. WPEL also maintains an exchange with other working papers.

To view Working Papers in Educational Linguistics by volume and issue, visit the journal homepage here on ScholarlyCommons.

 

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  • Publication
    Reimagining Literature Circles Using a Critical Translingual Approach in the English Language Arts Classroom
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Kelsey Trudo
    This paper explores the practice of literature circles in secondary literacy classrooms as spaces that are rooted in student choice and inquiry. Student-led literature circles promote students’ voice and choice, and are rich environments for students to bring their full linguistic and cultural repertoires. By applying new theoretical frameworks to the practice of literature circles and the roles that students traditionally hold, like “connector” and “questioner,” this paper provides a conceptual renovation of the traditional literature circle roles (Daniels, 2002, p.13). I reimagine my own experience as a literacy teacher had they applied these renovated roles to their own practice. Putting these roles into action, I hope that teachers, literacy specialists, and any educator who is looking to use literacy practices in their classroom to help students understand content (novels, informational texts across content, historical documents, etc.) can apply these roles in ways that value and draw on students’ full funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992).
  • Publication
    Negotiating Identities in Language Education: A Study of my English Learning and Teaching Journey
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Heying Zhang
    In this article, I investigate the dynamic relationship between language ideologies and identity construction within English education in China. Reflecting on my journey as both an English learner and teacher, this study explores the ways in which standard language ideology and native-speakerism have influenced my self-perception and professional role. It narrates a journey from feeling linguistically inferior due to a Chinese accent to confronting professional biases in teaching. Furthermore, it shows a shift from internalizing standard English norms to embracing linguistic diversity. This study highlights the impact of language ideologies on my self-perception and professional identity in English language teaching, advocating for a more inclusive understanding of linguistic diversity and professional competence, beyond the native speaker paradigm.
  • Publication
    A Collaborative Citizen Sociolinguistic Reading of Eight Popular English Language Novels
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) The New Philadelphia Group
    In the fall of 2023, we, the authors of this paper, took a class with Dr. Betsy Rymes on the topic of Citizen Sociolinguistics. Dr. Rymes describes Citizen Sociolinguistics as “This everyday talk about language” (2020, p. xi), which as a methodology allows for purposeful exploration of the mundane. Inspiration for data to analyze can come from any source, and in this paper, we look to the world of fiction in novels that we read in groups from a Citizen Sociolinguistic perspective. In this paper, we will discuss the ways that characters, authors, and readers enact the principles of Citizen Sociolinguistics in the following novels: Americanah;The House on Mango Street; The Night Watchman; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; Girl, Woman, Other; Pachinko; Deacon King Kong; and True Biz. The eight novels were initially chosen by Dr. Rymes based on their diverse representations of language and culture, and the reading groups were formed based on student interest.
  • Publication
    The Power of Language Ideologies: Creating Heteroglossic Implementational Spaces in a Practical English Class
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Gengqi Xiao
    The multilingual turn in second language acquisition (SLA) has propelled a critical stance on monoglossic language ideologies, advocating for a heteroglossic approach that values the dynamic language practices of multilingual learners (MLs) (May, 2013; Flores & Schissel, 2014). This article shifts the focus from a general exploration of language ideologies to a detailed examination of the nuanced interplay between monoglossic language ideologies, prioritizing an idealized linguistic norm, and heteroglossic language ideologies, validating linguistic diversity. By analyzing the enactment of a heteroglossic approach in an online practical English class, the study explores the complexities where monoglossic and heteroglossic language ideologies are not opposed but rather coexist in complex and potentially deceptive ways. Through semi-structured interviews that probe MLs’ beliefs about race and language, complemented by critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2013), this research investigates how MLs and their teacher articulate and navigate their language ideologies, revealing how monoglossic language ideologies, often aligned with ‘white’ norms, shape instructional choices and classroom dynamics. The findings reveal the nuanced interrelations between monoglossic and heteroglossic language ideologies, advocating for educational frameworks that proactively engage with and critically transform the hegemonic language ideologies for more equitable language education.
  • Publication
    Enregistering Guoyu in Chinese Social Media: Indexicality, Stance, and Mediatization
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Xinyi Wu
    This article examines the semiotically mediatized formation of Guoyu, a newly emergent Chinese internet phonolexical style. Originating in grassroots livestreaming, Guoyu underwent the process of enregisterment, through which it gained metapragmatically formulated indexical meanings. Analyzing social media posts, I show how, based on Guoyu’s stereotypically labeled vulgarity, young users further reflexively construct its laminated orders of indexicality, such as gayness, humor, and authenticity, and deploy its tokens to manipulate their identity projections and interactive agendas. Analyzing how a group of young friends employed fragments of Guoyu style in offline interactions through stance-taking, I show how they dynamically mediate their social relations based on the tokens’ interior and exterior indexical meanings. Despite the inevitable indexical bleaching during the circulation of this style, especially after the style’s iconic speaker was banned by the Chinese government, Guoyu’s internet-charged indexical lifespan has extended along the mediatized speech chain at different social locales.
  • Publication
    An Autoethnographic Illustration of an Indian American’s Negotiation of Ethnic and Linguistic Identity
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Niharika Baghel
    In this autoethnography, I explore and question the strong link that has been suggested between heritage language and ethnic identity as an Indian American passive bilingual who has had a global experience growing up. This research paper examines my experiences related to language and identity through the lens of three themes identified; how my ethnic and linguistic identities have been questioned by others, how others perceive my NRI cousins and me differently, and how I, myself, have come to view my identity in order to add a new perspective and address a gap in the research studies on the link between heritage language and ethnic identity of Indian Americans as research is limited. Findings reveal that the relationship between language and identity is more complex than once thought as the attitudes of others might be a factor behind why those who are unable to speak the heritage language question their ethnic identity. Moreover, findings reveal that other ways of expressing ethnic identity are varied and just as legitimate as speaking one’s heritage language.
  • Publication
    Applying Affective Reader Response to Richard Wright’s Native Son: An Invitation to Racializing White Discomfort
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2024-10-31) Mary Elizabeth (Emmy) Talian
    This paper proposes an approach to teaching about race in literature in the secondary English language arts (ELA) classroom using an affective reader response framework. Drawing from Coleman’s (2021) application of affective reader response for surfacing the “ordinary affects” of ELA educators, I combine this framework with Borsheim-Black and Sarigianides’ (2019) antiracist literature instruction to consider how providing space for white students to attend to their racialized, embodied, and affective reader responses can allow for the naming of white discomfort in the reading of a text centered around Blackness. I illustrate how I would apply this literary lens in my own positionality as a former white educator in a majority-white suburban school using Richard Wright’s Native Son, a text that elicited white discomfort from my students in the past. I conclude with a proposed lesson plan for teaching the opening of the text, incorporating both spaces for the teacher’s own modeled affective reader response and for white students to engage in this framework communally.
  • Publication
    Learning and Meaning Making in Online Tutoring with “Japanese Third Culture Kids”
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2022-01-01) Oyamada, Mami
    This study explores learning and meaning-making processes of transnationally mobile youth with ties to Japan (“Japanese third culture kids”) in online tutoring. Based on 2.5-month research from June to August 2020, I utilize a multidimensional, repertoire approach to classroom discourse analysis to investigate how four focal tutee-tutor pairs engage with one another and their learning. Informed by research on after-school educational spaces involving transnationally mobile youth and critical pedagogy, I argue that the tutoring sessions are co-constructed spaces in which interlocutors utilize their communicative repertoires, with emerging themes including mutual acknowledgement of “not knowing” in the L1/L2 and the potential of connection building between learning content and lived experiences. Findings lead to a discussion on the importance of self-reflexive practices, particularly for for-profit educational spaces.
  • Publication
    East and Southeast Asian Nations’ Preference for Native English Speakers: A Genealogical Investigation Through the English Language Teachers’ Job Market
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2022-01-01) Nguyen, Thao Phan Thu
    Although English is widely considered to be a global lingua franca, controversies about whether native English speakers should remain as the standard of English persist. These controversies maintain a potentially problematic hegemonic dominance of native English speakers established by inner circle English nations that affects outer circle ones in English language education. Using Critical Discourse Analysis and the raciolinguistic perspective, this research explores how East and Southeast Asia’s English teaching job market views and restructures the conceptualization of white native English speakers through English teaching job hiring websites and advertisements. The findings hope to expose evidence of East and Southeast Asia nations’ preference for native English speakers and marginalization of nonnative English speakers as a consequence of white settler colonialism and self-Orientalism’s constructed and institutionalized racial hierarchy.
  • Publication
    Under Biopolitics: The Discursive Construction of Homo Sacer as Refugees’ Identity
    (University of Pennsylvania, 2022-01-01) Jiang, Shiyu
    This paper aims at investigating the hidden rationale behind anti-refugee discourses through the lens of biopolitics and the notion of homo sacer. While homo sacer was previously linked with camps, whether it is concentration camps or refugee camps, I argue that in the current world, we need to extend homo sacer beyond the traditional definition of camps to fit in a broader context. I extend the argument by incorporating homo sacer with biopolitics/biopower to examine how these two terms interact to discursively co-construct refugees’ identity. Since refugee and anti-refugee discourses are not new terms or phenomena, but can be traced back in time, I adopted genealogy as my method to examine two sets of data. I first present data collected from newspaper archives on Jewish refugees during WWII. In particular, I focus on news reports on the ship St. Louis that was turned away by the Cuban and U.S. governments. I analyze how such action was backed by biopolitics and led to the establishment of homo sacer as the major makeup of Jewish refugee identity at that time. I then analyze data from Twitter posts between 2015 to 2020 to cover the time period after the Syrian refugee crisis and examine how these discourses are similarly informed by biopolitics. By comparing the two data sets, I argue that, as a special migrant population, refugees bear the identity of homo sacer which is discursively constructed by the public. While world governments have claimed refugee acceptance as a humanitarian act, refugees’ identity will remain unchanged from where it was decades ago as long as biopolitics still plays a role in refugee-related discourses.