#Blacklanguagematters: A case study of black identities in an L2 isiXhosa classroom

Abstract

This paper explores the development of Black identity in a critical and culturally relevant beginner L2 isiXhosa course. While Black students have been a major focus in American education, little attention has gone to their identities in L2 classrooms. In African language courses specifically, Lee (2005) found that Black university students largely enrolled to connect with their African heritage. Van Deusen-Scholl (2003) classified these types of students as learners with heritage motivation. However, there has been little research on how Black students negotiate their historical-cultural heritage in a contemporary L2 classroom. In a case study conducted at the University of Hawaiʻi, four students participated in three twohour isiXhosa lessons designed to be culturally relevant and to critically examine their identities in relation to South African Xhosa culture. Along with survey and lesson discussion data, I interviewed students before and after the course to measure the development of their intersectional identities and perspectives. Drawing on a negotiated syllabus discussion, survey responses, and interviews, I used Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective as a framework to analyze student perceptions of race, gender, and language to understand how the goals of these learners with heritage motivation converged with their intersectional identities and African heritage in an isiXhosa classroom. My findings show that the students developed awareness of their African heritage by shifting their perspectives away from negative outsider perceptions of Black and African communities. Their positive responses to the course relied both on the critical/cultural and linguistic content. This suggests that Black learners with heritage motivation value linguistic acquisition, and benefit from curriculum focused on the connections between Black and African cultures, exclusive of their historically linked oppressions.