Behind the scenes: Diversifying reading lists

Decolonising universities has become something of a buzzword, guaranteed to turn Telegraph readers into frothing puddles of outrage. Every other week they publish an article about subjects getting ‘cancelled’ (also known as modules being updated) or lecturers being ordered to use Twitter instead of historical archives (also known as using an expanded range of sources). Well, buckle up, because that’s what my newest publication is about. Strictly speaking, it’s not decolonisation per se. That’s a deeper, longer, more transformative process that in my opinion might not even be possible without deconstructing universities as we know them. But the article is about diversifying the content of what we teach, and teaching it in a different, more inclusive, more culturally aware way, with the goal of creating a learning environment that is less hostile to students of colour.

This new paper, published today in the London Review of Education (https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.20.1.01) is co-authored with 12 other people! The long list of authors is because it was really a collaborative effort and we wanted to recognise that, although the writing itself was done by the first four authors listed. The others contributed to the project design and the data collection and analysis, as well as bringing their insight and knowledge. Some of these people are colleagues in different schools at the University of Kent or from the university library, while others are undergraduate student researchers (some of whom have since graduated).

We report on an ongoing project at the university which reviews reading lists for modules in terms of their ethnic and gender diversity, and then supports teaching staff to increase that diversity if they want to do so. It’s necessarily optional, for several reasons: for example, we need to avoid alienating people who have a lot of freedom in their roles and often resent obligatory policies that they don’t see the purpose of (which is what has happened in the past when originally good ideas were imposed top-down without the rationale filtering through). It’s also got to be on top of an already overburdened workload, a problem we note in the article. Perhaps most importantly, the work is only meaningful if it’s done with care and genuine desire for change; simply bunging a few Black authors on the list is at best missing the point and at worst actively harmful. But for those who want to do the work, and are able to do so within their contractual constraints, the library staff and the Student Success Project team have worked up a whole lot of resources to help with this, so the idea is that small interventions like the one we report on can lead to longer-term change across the institution.

Working with the student researchers was the most rewarding experience. From the recruitment process onwards it was eye-opening to see how much they knew about the topic already, how committed they were, and how important it was to them. We specifically recruited (paid) researchers who themselves identified as from the category known in UK HE as ‘BAME’ (Black, Asian, or minority ethnic) as our methodology meant that it was important that they bring their own experiences and stories to bear on the work. One of the researchers in particular found an especial enjoyment of—and flair for—giving talks and presentations on the work, during which he was able to reflect on the importance of the project to him personally in a way that really helped the largely white audience to understand the purpose. He got rave reviews both in the department and at the conferences where we presented the work.

For me, a really interesting aspect was the interviews with staff. I interviewed 70-something members of the school, at all levels from graduate teaching assistants to the Head of School, and from academic and professional services teams. I approached these interviews in a very loose, informal way and kept them fairly short so as not to burden people and turn them against the project. Still, some conversations ended up being very long as people often had a lot to say! The most valuable of these, for me, were the ones that turned out to be a real conversation between me and the interviewee, both of us learning and discussing the topic, and ending up with action points or ways of proceeding with the goal of diversifying reading lists. Sometimes, this was with someone I’d never really spoken to before, but who then became an ally or a go-to person for further conversations, and someone who I knew was pushing forward the aims in their own departments. It also, unfortunately, revealed to me people who were set in their ways and refused to see any other viewpoint, or who believed that the goal was the obligatory, quota-driven approach dispelled above. You can’t change everyone’s mind, and nor should you necessarily, but I was keen to listen to people’s reasons for disagreeing with the goals of the project and sometimes those reasons showed a lack of understanding about how discrimination works and a lack of willingness to learn and grow.

This was my first truly cross-disciplinary project, working with (primarily) sociologists and library specialists and using theories and methods from their fields. Our primary theoretical tool was Critical Race Theory, also much in the press these days, which holds that racism is baked into our systems (in this case, reading lists, courses, university structures). CRT began as a legal theory but is applicable to fields beyond its origins, and has been used in education research before. It was this that helped us to determine our methods and the way we approached the qualitative data obtained from interviews, and it was the reason for the majority of the authors (and all of the student researchers) being people of colour, as the effect of lived experience is a crucial part of the work which I, as a white person from the Global North, couldn’t contribute. I was, however, happy that some of my linguistic practice did end up in the piece, in that the student focus groups I conducted, which produced some extremely rich data, were run following the methods of a sociolinguistic interview such as ones I’ve done in the past. Learning the theories, methods and conventions of a different field has been hard work, but it’s definitely been worth it.

If you click through to the open-access article, you can see the results of the reading list review of the departments in our study, the findings of the interviews with staff and students, and the outcome of the project in the form of the resources for shifting the balance to better reflect the population of our university.

Supporting black students in(to) linguistics

The Linguistic Society of America (LSA) annual meeting has been happening, so loads of linguists I know are in New Orleans and I've got FOMO. Some of them are tweeting a lot and those people are heroes.

There seems to be a really strong theme this year focussing on race. At least, that's what I'm seeing on twitter - I don't know if it feels like a strong theme if you're sitting in the sessions on syntax or whatever. And that's actually part of the issue (as noted by Kirby Conrod here): talks on race and linguistics (and other 'social' stuff) are likely programmed as a special session, so you're either in 'proper' linguistics or you're in the talks on race, which is not going to bring those talks to the attention of people who aren't already interested in them, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, lots of really important and interesting stuff has been said at this conference, which I have been able to hear about because of the wonders of twitter and the free labour of the live tweeters (thank you again). For instance, Kendra Calhoun talked about how to encourage Black students to take up linguistics by having a Black-centred intro linguistics class. This is in the US, where linguistics is often a 'discovery major', and where there are Historically Black Colleges, as opposed to the UK where there are no such things and where you pick your subject before you start, but the principles of the talk seem to be pretty universal: ground the subject in things the students will be interested in.

For us, at my university, we have around a quarter to a third of students who are BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic - this is the term standardly used in the UK, and yes it is not ideal but it's the classification we use). The majority of these (in linguistics, at least) are Black British students.

Now, I'm going to try to articulate something and hopefully not make a mess of it. In the UK, people do not like to hear that systems and structures are racist. Stormzy highlighted that one quite nicely recently (more on that another day, maybe, as there are things to say about intensifiers). But they also don't think about race as being an issue here. I don't know if that's just a UK thing, but the default is always to say 'but gender!' or 'but working class!' and highlight gender or class as the relevant issue to whatever has been mentioned. Now, this in itself is a product of a racist society: to position gender or class in opposition to race means that you're talking about white women or the white working class. Including all working class people would include a lot of Black people too. I don't know the statistics nationwide, but among our students, Black students are disproportionately the first in their family to attend university or from a lower socioeconomic background, i.e. the proxy for working class.

So this tweet from Juan Luna Díaz-Durán seemed kind of relevant. He says (possibly quoting a conference speaker?) that when departments say they 'don't do sociolinguistics', they mean they 'don't do Black people'. Most linguistics departments in the UK do do sociolinguistics, I think, but that doesn't necessarily mean they talk about race at all. Traditionally, sociolinguistics focussed on dialect by looking at what are called NORMs, Non-mobile Older Rural Men, who have the most preserved older dialect forms. They're white, of course. Nowadays, there are lots of people who are looking at race/ethnicity and language, but because it's newer as a field, it's slow to find its way into our modules. Many of the best scholars are still doing their PhDs or not yet in full-time teaching jobs. Compounding this problem is the lack of confidence that most people have in talking about race, because it is such a taboo subject - we've been trained 'not to see colour'. So sociolinguistics classes can talk about classic studies of language variation and class and gender all term, and never once mention the literal language that many of our students speak, Multicultural London English, a variety that is absolutely linked to class, region, age, gender and ethnicity (despite the name).

This would be an ideal 'way in' to linguistics for students - their own language is new and emerging and interesting. Our inbuilt racism tells us that this is a minority subject, so it's best to stick to something universal like class - forgetting that just as we all have a 'class' (that doesn't mean much any more) we all have a racialised identity. Not to include discussion of race is to erase that part of our identity and perpetuate the whiteness and racism that exists in the field.

Coloured people and People of Colour

Might as well join in with the Cumberbashing, as I've got nowt else better to do.

So today Benedict Cumberbatch is all over the news for a relatively innocuous slip up. I say innocuous, because it wasn't as bad as various other much worse things people have been saying recently (and say in real life every day), but it is of course still important to point out when people in the public eye use terminology that is offensive or inappropriate.

In this case, it can't be that offensive because all the newspapers have repeated the word he used: 'coloured', to refer to black actors who aren't getting the jobs they ought to. For context, this was until relatively recently the correct term to use, and grandparents are still apt to use it thinking it's the right word. However, either it was never right and now we know better, or else language has changed, because now it sounds really inappropriate and not at all the right word to use.

But ANYWAY even though clearly Cumberbatch was being a good person and pointing out racial inequality and calling for change, the media has stirred up a great big fuss over it (which I'm now contributing to, sorry) and people have got their knickers in a twist over 'political correctness gone mad'.

Sigh.

Firstly, this is not PC language. Or rather, it is, but only in the sense that PC means 'not being a dick'. It's really basic courtesy to not offend people more than you absolutely have to. If it's a simple matter of using a different word, that's not such a hardship. Secondly, it's not about deliberately finding new PC terms to use to deliberately make bigots' life harder. Language changes. Deal with it.

But I was wondering about the people complaining about overly-sensitive people getting offended by what they perceive as such a little thing. Probably some people were offended, but most do not appear to have been. There are not lots of people on the internet talking about boycotting his films, or even criticising him beyond a gentle reprimand. These people who are whinging about sensitive souls are saying we should consider his intentions, which were clearly good. This is true, we should do, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't also politely point out that he should not use that language. After all, no matter that the word is not as offensive as 'the n-word'; the unnoticed undermining of a person's identity by the almost unnoticed use of language by lots of generally right-thinking people is as important as the idiots using obviously offensive slurs. If it goes under the radar, it's more likely to go unchallenged and become part of the way we think about things.

Anyway I don't know what my point was, really, beyond a general moan that PC language ought to be a good thing but is only ever used in a negative way.

Gwynne, and racism, classism, sexism and all the isms

A couple of weeks ago (because I am slow to get round to blogging), that Neville Gwynne person was on the BBC again talking his usual nonsense. In case you've forgotten, he's a retired teacher who wrote a grammar book and occasionally pops up in the media with odd opinions and crazy thoughts (he is a big fan of Michael Gove, which really tells you all you need to know). I wrote about Michael Rosen's response to him and his antics back in March.

This time, I wanted to talk about correcting people's grammar, and whether it's a good thing or not.

First, let's clear something up. Rosen says (in the article cited in the previous post I linked to)

In fact, we would neither be able to speak nor understand if we didn't know [grammar].

Gwynne says (in his book, on page 5)

For genuine thinking we need words... If we do not use words rightly, we shall not think rightly.

(Note his use of the hideous adverb 'rightly' because of his obsession with not using adjectives as adverbs!)

These are two very different positions, and I agree wholeheartedly with Rosen and disagree wholeheartedly with Gwynne. Rosen is right because language is, basically, grammar. 'Grammar', when not used in the school sense, is simply the way language works. Without it, you just have a bunch of sounds and maybe not even that. But you cannot go from that to saying that thinking requires words. This is a complex philosophical issue and one that I'm not going to get into here. It is possible that thinking does require language (definitely not just words), and if it does, OK, fine, we need to know grammar (not just words) to think, or at least think clearly and in some sophisticated manner which goes beyond what all animals do. But it is absolute fact that we do not need 'correct' grammar to think, and that is the dangerous message that Gwynne peddles.

I can see his argument, but he's got it wrong. He sees well-argued, cogent writing with correct grammar and poorly-argued, badly-written writing and thinks that one leads to the other. No. The two may well be related, but one is not a cause of the other. I see it myself: the most able students are often those who can also write well. The students less able to put together a clear, logical argument also tend to write less well. But this is far more likely to be due to general ability level, which affects both variables independently.

Furthermore, take this video of Boris Johnson and Russell Brand on Question Time (it's a BBC thing on YouTube so if it disappears, just look for any other footage of these two people):



Russell Brand has a persona, and part of that persona is his dialect, which includes many non-standard forms that Gwynne would consider to be wrong. However, Brand is also intelligent and is often booked for these things because people love to see him in opposition to the posh morons in power. He is highly articulate (he also writes well, and has a newspaper column). He sometimes says stupid things, but he says them all quite well and certainly makes a good, insightful argument. Boris, on the other hand, is educated, probably got taught all this 'proper grammar' stuff, but can barely string a sentence together. His spoken grammar is not 'correct' because he never utters one single 'grammatically correct' sentence. Ever. (I haven't checked everything he's ever said, but his hit rate is a lot lower than Brand's, for sure. Scripted speeches don't count.)

Gwynne teaches mostly non-native speakers of English, as far as I can tell, via the internet. This is admirable. I should think that his students, many of them in developing countries, will benefit greatly from having a good standard of written and spoken English. It is important to teach the standard, because that is what learners will be expected to learn by those who test them and those who judge them for entry to university courses and employment, and it's what they themselves will expect to learn. Some people can go too far with their linguist-centred descriptivist outlook and claim that it's oppressive to do this, but in fact we are failing language students if we don't teach them the standard. Similarly, when I mark essays, I correct them if they don't use standard English. I do think, though, that students should be taught what people really say and what the acceptable alternatives are, alongside what is 'correct'. Sometimes this is beyond the time constraints of the course or the abilities of the student.

Likewise, children should be taught how to use the standard dialect of their language (in their country, as standard US is different from standard British and so on). This will help them to get on in life. But they should not be told that any other way they speak is wrong: if you are a normally developing human, you speak your own language perfectly. There simply isn't any other way to do it. It's like telling a person they walk wrong. Maybe they walk in a way that displeases some people (dragging their heels, or too slowly) but they still walk perfectly fine.

It might not seem that important, but there are serious consequences of views like Gwynne's. In the recent Trayvon Martin case, Rachel Jeantel's testimony given largely in AAVE (African American Vernacular English) caused a lot of debate. A common example used in sociolinguistics classes is the Oakland school board case from the 1990s: in a county in California, it was decided that something needed to be done to help the black children, who were systematically performing worse than the white children, even when all else was equal. It was suggested that they might be at a disadvantage because they spoke AAVE at home, which is significantly different from standard English, and needed to be taught how to 'translate' it into standard English. This stirred up an enormous amount of racism and eventually the scheme came to nothing. People would rather black children continue to underperform and start their academic life at a significant disadvantage than risk their own children coming into contact with this dialect in the classroom. But the point is, there is no inherent reason why AAVE is not the standard dialect: it's simply an accident of history. What is now the standard is the variety spoken by the people in charge. A good education should teach children how to use the standard as well as their native dialect, but you can't judge a person's intelligence by the dialect they speak.

In the UK, there is no equivalent to AAVE. We have Multicultural London English, which is similarly stigmatised, but the two are very different. We do have a lot of regional dialects, though, and these are generally looked down upon and their speakers thought to be stupid, lazy or simply wrong. This means that working-class people, who are more likely to use regional dialect features, have to make a far greater effort than those who grew up with the standard as their native dialect. They may therefore do less well at school, and they may get less good jobs. Given that they are already at a societal disadvantage simply by being working class rather than middle or upper class, this only serves to compound the problem.

Gwynne no doubt considers people who use non-standard forms to be either stupid or lazy (because why else wouldn't they have learnt the correct forms?). Some of them are. But some people who use standard English are also stupid and lazy, and their language doesn't give you an easy way to judge them. Meanwhile, the dialect-users who are intelligent and hard-working are unfairly discriminated against. Young women are routinely judged to be less intelligent, because they tend to use linguistic features that often become mainstream later on. All of this perpetuates an unequal society in which rich white men have greater advantages and poor people, women and ethnic minorities have to work harder to achieve equal or lesser status.

Language trumps race

Young children see language as a more salient factor than race in determining identity, it seems.

A study from the University of Chicago asked groups of children aged 5-6 and 9-10 to do a matching task. They were shown images like the one below and asked which adult the child would grow up to be.

I think you and I would pick the man on the left, as we know that it's fairly likely that a white child will grow up to be a white man, and skin colour changes in later life are relatively rare. OK, he's speaking a different language, but maybe he moved to France or whatever. The 9-10-year-old kids agreed with us and matched the same pair.

But the younger children matched the boy with the black man, who speaks the same language as the child. How odd. Katherine Kinzler, the lead author of the study, says:

From a child’s perspective, language offers many of the characteristics of a biologically determined or inherited category. Children usually speak the same language as their families, and they likely do not remember the time as infants that they spent learning a native language.

They've found that accent and language are really important to kids (which I guess we knew) and this shows that a person's language is even more important than their race to a young child. So, would this be different for black Americans, to whom race is important because they early on have to learn that lots of people are racist bastards? Yes, it would. When groups of black children were given the same test, the younger ones matched according to race, not language, just like the older children. How sad.