Identifying and Being Identified: Peer Language Policing and Cries of Racism in Middle School
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This article examines how students’ ascribed and claimed identities can converge and diverge over the course of a single interaction in a linguistically and culturally diverse Italian middle school, as well as solidify over time. Based on one school year of observations in the classroom, as well as reflection sessions with teachers, this article presents an analysis of classroom discourse which focuses on keying and explicit metapragmatic commentary. The peer language policing and accusations of racism in this analysis show how students draw on pervasive ideologies about race, language, education, and belonging in making sense of themselves and others. Monitoring peer language policing provides a means of monitoring the ways in which students’ notions of institutionalized categories and lived practice co-constitute each other, as well as how this can be redirected and guided. This article proposes methodological possibilities for including pre- and in-service teachers in reflection about the impact of language policing and racial ostracism on students’ trajectories.
Author: Andrea Renee Leone-Pizzighella
Institution: Eurac Research
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4416911327