My time to speak: four Jamaican boys’ narratives on Jamaican Creole’s influence on their identities, gendered practices, perceptions and attitudes toward English language learning

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dc.contributor.authorManning-Lewis, Tanya
dc.contributor.supervisorSanford, Kathy
dc.date.accessioned2020-07-13T23:28:45Z
dc.date.available2020-07-13T23:28:45Z
dc.date.copyright2020en_US
dc.date.issued2020-07-13
dc.degree.departmentDepartment of Curriculum and Instructionen_US
dc.degree.levelDoctor of Philosophy Ph.D.en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation presents findings from a 3-month qualitative study that examined Jamaican Creole’s (JC) influence on four adolescent (14-17) working-class Jamaican boys’ identities, gendered practices, and evolving attitudes toward English language learning (ELL). It embraced a social constructivist approach anchored in narrative inquiries and case studies to document the complexities of the boys’ lived language experiences as dominant JC speakers in an inner-city high school. The data collected from the participants’ graphic novels, interviews, video diaries, and my observations revealed that JC significantly influenced the boys’ identities, gendered practices, and attitudes toward Standard Jamaican English (SJE) and ELL. First, the data show that the boys used JC extensively to engage their identities as Jamaicans and strong heterosexual boys, which granted them social and linguistic power among working-class men and boys in their communities. Further, it reveals that the boys exhibited positive attitudes toward SJE and ELL when they engaged with supportive teachers who valued their linguistic resources and the reverse was true when they had teachers who demonstrated Anglo-centric ideologies. Lastly, the boys were agentive in their ELL performance and strongly believed they were accountable for their own success. This dissertation concludes that Jamaican schools need to develop more equitable language classrooms that successfully integrate JC-speaking students’ linguistic resources and engage them in practices that complement rather than oppress their authentic voices. I hope that this research will invite educators and curriculum developers to cultivate more diverse multiliterate and bilingual ELL practices that offer working-class JC-speaking youths more opportunities for success and facilitate a more critical examination of Anglo-centric language ideologies in schools that are suppressing students’ voices.en_US
dc.description.scholarlevelGraduateen_US
dc.identifier.bibliographicCitationTanya Manning-Lewis (2019) I Hate Writing: Making a Case for the Creation of Graphic Novels in the Caribbean English Classroom to Develop Students’ Creative Writing Skills, Changing English, 26:4, 392-404, DOI: 10.1080/1358684X.2019.1643228en_US
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1828/11930
dc.languageEnglisheng
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.rightsAvailable to the World Wide Weben_US
dc.subjectGenderen_US
dc.subjectELLen_US
dc.subjectidentityen_US
dc.subjectworking-classen_US
dc.subjectinner-cityen_US
dc.subjectJamaican schoolsen_US
dc.subjectsuccessen_US
dc.subjectJamaican Creoleen_US
dc.subjectStandard Jamaican Englishen_US
dc.titleMy time to speak: four Jamaican boys’ narratives on Jamaican Creole’s influence on their identities, gendered practices, perceptions and attitudes toward English language learningen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US

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