| This dissertation is a two-year ethnographic case study of the literacy practices of an urban African American family living below the poverty line. Using participant-observation, ethnographic interviewing, photography, and document collection, I document the complexity of the literacy work that June Treader and her daughter Vicky, the two focal participants, engage with in their daily life. Both June and Vicky negotiate language and literacy in their home and community proficiently, critically and strategically. Despite these proficiencies, neither June nor Vicky see themselves as literate. June was defined as having “low literacy skills”, reading at a “mid-fourth grade level” in her adult literacy classroom. Vicky, at the end of her sixth grade year was labeled as “speech impaired” and “multiply disabled”.; In order to understand these and other complex contradictions I use Fairclough's (1989, 1997) critical discourse analysis (CDA). The ethnographic data within which I use CDA make it possible to extend Fairclough's theory of critical language study by demonstrating how power in language operates over time and across generations, from mother to daughter. Calling on social theories of learning (Gee, 1996, Rogoff, 1995, Wenger, 1998), I also argue that apprenticeship serves as a useful metaphor through which to examine family literacy as the space in which the ideological work of literacy is done. In the process of learning about literacy, Vicky and June learn relationships with their social world and contradictory literate subjectivities. These subjectivities are internalizations of ideologies and can be selectively invoked by discursive contexts, preventing June and Vicky from transforming their literate capital into social profit.; Methodologically, the study demonstrates the importance of embedding critical discourse analysis in ethnographic description. It also shows the reflexive value of turning the analytic tool (CDA) on the researcher as well as the other “subjects” of study. This practice allows clearer analysis of the ethical, moral, and theoretical implications in conducting ethnographic research concerned with issues of power. Through critical language awareness, educators working toward a critical social democracy may be better armed to recognize sources of inequity. |
