“They’re in My Culture, They Speak the Same Way”:

In this article, Paris explores the deep linguistic and cultural ways in which youth in a multiethnic urban high school employ linguistic features of African American Language (AAL) across ethnic lines. The author also discusses how knowledge about the use of AAL in multiethnic contexts might be applied to language and literacy education and how such linguistic and cultural sharing can help us forge interethnic understanding in our changing urban schools. The article not only fosters an understanding of how AAL works in such multiethnic urban schools, but also sheds light on opportunities for a pedagogy of pluralism—a stance toward teaching both within and across differences.

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Django Paris is an assistant professor in the English education program at Arizona State University. His research focuses on understanding how pluralism works in multiethnic youth communities and how we can re-vision language and literacy learning to foster understanding within and across difference. Paris spent six years as an English language arts teacher in California, Arizona, and the Dominican Republic. His work appears or is forthcoming in the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education and the journal English Education. He is currently working on his first book, Language Across Difference (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press), which explores the ways the everyday oral and written language of youth of color challenges and reinforces ethnic difference and division in multiethnic high schools. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Spencer, Ford, and NCTE foundations.