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Critical Sociocultural Lens

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Radicalizing Literacies and Languaging

Abstract

In this chapter, we describe how an interconnected critical and sociocultural lens may uniquely capture the dynamic impact of the literacies and languaging research explored in the previous chapters. Then, we consider how raciolinguistic perspectives on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology may be one critical sociocultural approach to elucidate the robust, beautiful, and complicated lived experiences of our four testamonalistas. In particular, we describe how racialized bi/multilinguals are positioned as linguistic others through the white listening subject and then apply this understanding to Bourdieu’s thinking tools of capital, habitus, fields, doxa, and extraordinary discourse. Finally, we describe how we transition from tracing the roots of the literacy and language fields to approach potentially transformative research through testimonios as a process and a product.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Testimonilista” is the Spanish word we use to describe our participants who give their testimonios, or testimonies, of their expert experiences in their sociopolitical milieu.

  2. 2.

    All names and places related to the testimonialistas are pseudonyms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Curriculum and Instruction, Texas A&M University-Commerce, Commerce, TX, USA

    Alexandra Babino

  2. Department of Literacy and Learning, Texas Woman’s University, Denton, TX, USA

    Mary Amanda Stewart

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  1. Alexandra Babino
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Babino, A., Stewart, M.A. (2020). Critical Sociocultural Lens. In: Radicalizing Literacies and Languaging. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56138-3_4

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