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Mitchell Dean Ingram 2020

The Dissertation Committee for Mitchell Dean Ingram Certifies that this is the approved version of the following:

Entre Broma Y Broma La Verdad Se Asoma: The Mobilization of Third-Grade Emergent Bilinguals’ Cultural Capital Around Sites of Humor

Committee:

______Cynthia Salinas, Supervisor

______Deborah Palmer

______Abril Gonzalez

______Denise Davila

______Tracey Flores

Entre Broma Y Broma La Verdad Se Asoma: The Mobilization of Third-Grade Emergent Bilinguals’ Cultural Capital Around Sites of Humor

by

Mitchell Dean Ingram

Dissertation

Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

The University of Texas at Austin May 2020 Dedication

This dissertation is dedicated to all those in my life with whom I have had the pleasure to share a laugh together. To my colleagues who help me laugh my way through, to the “system” that gives me something to laugh against, to my mentors who give me reasons to laugh, to teachers who expanded my lens to laugh, to my students who give me new things to laugh about, to mis amig@s muchilingües que saben reírse entre idiomas, to my aunts/uncles/grandparents who built me up to laugh, to my in-laws who are always good for a laugh, to my cousins who don’t let me not laugh, to my friends with whom I can always share a laugh; to my parents who taught me how to laugh, to my brothers who taught me how to laugh at myself, to my children who are always ready for a laugh and give me deep joy, to my wife, whose laughter is a melody that reverberates and makes my soul sing, and to GOD who created laughter….much truth and love has been exchanged through it all…¡gracias!:^) Acknowledgements

¿Dónde empezar? Tanta gente me ha echado (y me siguen echando) la mano…In every endeavor that I have been blessed to undertake in my life, after the accolades or reprimands fade, beyond the achievement of the laudable or self-focused objective, what remains and is of upmost priority, are the relationships that were forged through this journey of life. As with any endeavor in life, my experience through the course of obtaining this doctorate was rife with struggle and joy, desperation and hope, valleys and hills. What allowed me to press on, in conjunction with the never-ending love que nunca fallará de nuestro Jesucristo, were the incredible people that crossed my path along the way. I am indebted to the sacrifices they made in their own way to share their time and heart with me; for their guidance, friendship, and love I am deeply grateful. I could write an entire book on just how thankful I am that these people are my life and for each of them individually. Ann Ford-thank you for a great reprieve and our talks about plants and old-school Austin life. You were a breath of fresh air! Stephen Flynn, thanks for keepin’ it real, brother! We shared a lot of good convos along the way! Let me know if you want to storm the tower…I’m still down!;^) Jeffrey Grimes, you’re a genius…thanks for all of your aid along the way! You’re from Texas; you can’t help it!;^). Kelly (Queli) Importa…jaja! Un abrazote y bendiciones para tu familia

(especialmente La Sirenita). Ricardo, what a solid dude! Gracias por todo y no te pongas bien truki-trux!:^) Alicia Zapata, me salvaste un par de veces y te lo agradezco del alma.

Que Dios siempre les guarde a ti y a tu hijo precioso. Gypsy Snow, how cool to get to know you? Much love to you and the fam! Thanks for everything! Janelle Hedstrom, v salt of the Earth meets brilliance…keep on keepin’ on! Jim Maxwell (Big J.R.), your juggling prowess is a metaphor of your keen ability to keep life’s challenges in the air.

Blessings to you, my southern friend!

For those in the academic race who inspired me in some way: Ramón Martínez

(tu humildad como persona y proezas como académico me inspiraron!), Allison Skerrett

(always with a smile and brilliant humanizing insight), Beth Maloch (your commitment to truth and growth, coupled with kindness), Noah DeLissovoy (your willingness to consider what is beyond y siempre de buena onda). Louis Harrison (a man who holds the balance of gentleness and strength…fighting the Good fight!), Denisse Dávila (always with a hearty and friendly dose of warmth and academic insight:^), Tracey Flores (a true encourager with big-picture understanding! ) Elizabeth Keating (a kind individual and true considerer of ideas about language!). ¡Paty! What a wonderful addition you make to

UT. ¡Thank you for humanizing the process con puro cariño! Jacqueline, mi hermana dominicana, gracias por siempre ser tan linda conmigo! Aprecio tu amistad y lo que compartimos de tu queridísima madre patria. ¡Deseándote lo más chévere en esta vida!

Deb, you are a wonderful academic and person. I know you as one who gives the benefit of the doubt and really takes the details/context into consideration. Thanks for taking a chance and reaching out to me…Estoy convencido que Dios me alcanzó a través de ti justo a tiempo para ofrecerme un cambio bastante necesitado. Your advice has been much appreciated, your openness to ideas has been energizing, and your demeanor has always been valued. You create terrific community…no pares nunca! Eres un apoyo tremendo y una amiga nuestra! ¡GRACIAS! C(i)ynthia…¿qué decir? I have told you vi many times and will continue to tell you, you are a Teacher at heart, which transcends any existing schemata that “the academy” (all lower case) will ever be able to offer, acknowledge, or understand. You have been truly selfless as you’ve helped us get through…I might as well have been one of your struggling freshmen in Social Studies. It wouldn’t have mattered, you would have been there to sustain, promote, and encourage.

You are brilliant in ways that academia does not even have the tools to measure (nor even the awareness that they don’t have those tools;^). You, however, get it. Thank you for putting the “cool” back in “school”; without it, it’s just sh...!:^). You embody the adage

(that the academy would do well to learn), “Nobody cares how much one knows until they know how much one cares.” ¡Bendiciones para ti y el querido Hoppy (Dr. Gómez:^) siempre!

Mis colegas, socios, com(p)adres, y familia de BBE. Les agradezco su apoyo y amistad a través de todo. Para l@s que aventuraron antes y que nos dejaron una herencia de primeros (segundos y terceros:^) auxilios a base de lo que aprendieron, redimiendo sus propias luchas y sufrimientos, les doy gracias. Incluyo en este grupo, Blanca Caldas (la académica bacán y de buen corazón:^), Lucía (y la preciosa Analú), Dori Wall (tan linda y generosa), Katy (a.k.a Izzy:^), si no fuera por tu investigación y pursuit tan comprensiva, nunca hubiera yo tenido la oportunidad de haber expreimentado todo esto.

Mil gracias por ser siempre tan generosa con tus consejos, materiales, y tiempo.

Bendiciones para ti y tu linda familia. Dani: Much love to you, man! You’re growing not only to be a solid academic, but an amazing husband and daddy…sigue por ese camino, hermano mío! Idalia, te felicito y agradezco en/por todo! Haydeé-siempre de vii animadora, con su pasión animadora y pura! Inspiras a tod@s en tu alrededor, “Échate pa’lante!” ¡Bendiciones siempre! Lucy, you were one of the first people I met in

BBE…jaja! You had me rollin’ within 30 seconds. ¡Tú eres familia! Nomás que tengas cuidado con los cigarillos sin marca;^)! ¡Que El Señor te bendiga siempre y jamás se te olviden de las píldoras!;^). Katherine…I’m so happy how it all worked out for you! You endured quite a trial, pero Dios te ha bendecido abundantemente! Desi, quien me ha enseñado tantas cosas y quien me sigue inspirando de siempre “coger la vara, ‘om!:^).

Gracias por compartir conmigo tanto amor nica conmigo! Siempre habrá una amistad entrañable contigo y le pido a Dios lo mejor para vos y tu familia! Lizzie, with soooo much pretense around us, you were such a breath of fresh air…thank you for keeping us grounded! María José…¡qué bacán ha sido trabajar con vos! Sos una persona extraordinariamente amable y divertida. ¡Gracias por aguantar mis desahogos y te deseo lo mejor! Nathaly y Mohit! Mil gracias por haber echado tanto esfuerzo en mantener la comunidad en BBE. ¡Se les agradece bastante! ¡Dra. Fránquiz, bienvenida “pa’ trás” y que lleves el programa “pa’lante!;^) ¡Roza! What a crazy ride this has been and what a privilege it’s been getting to know you and the wonderful Mannyón...bendiciones para siempre! Randy (el otro güero guapo en 440:^), te deseo the best, hermano! You are brilliant and God knows it! Keep on shinin’, my Texan brother! ¡¡Dr. Dré!! Bringing some of that Madison love south side and keepin’ the flow real and true. Tenemos a ti y a la fam presentes en el corazón! If this gig don’t work out, let’s start a band with you as lead flow-er! Much love to la querida Caro y el dicharachero Eli! ¡Besos! David..¡Ay

Santo! So much shared…and so much still left to share! Eres un hermano…DIOS nos viii tiene juntos por tantas razones, not the least of which was you sharing about Mariachis y los dichos de tu queridísima ‘buela. Thanks for representin’ Tejas and makin’ it shine en el sur. I’m seriously considering a tattoo that you coined after this experience, “Chale with that already”! Looking forward to that capirotada I’m still waiting to try!:^). Much love to you and the familia…I feel like y’all’re part of my own! Chad and Darsey, you have been faithful and committed to me and my family as I tracked along this dangerous journey… Thank you and may the Lord continue to dwell with y’all richly! Justino, love you, man! Thanks for your friendship and laughter! ¿Libro de chistes bilingüe? Maru, sin saberlo ninguno de los dos, me diste el título de esta tésis doctoral hace muchos años.

De verdad, ¡¡cuántas risas hemos compartido Justin, tú, y yo a lo largo de esa aventurita en Águilalandia!! Duramos mucho más ahí por los chistes, el relajo y el humor! Como solíamos decir, “¡O reírnos o llorar!” Esther, Benita, y Saundra, thank y’all for accommodating me for a year! You are amazing educators that provide a sparkle of hope for public education still. Thank you for your kindness and service to the future. Sondra,

Liza, Linda, Corina, Vero…much eagle love to you and thank you for your open-door policy! Para tod@s mis estudiantes from way back, hasta el porvenir, thank you for the moments of shared laughter and growing together! Please never stop learning despite what the education system looks like!

Mooskers and Shashi. Who would have thought that a social worker-gone-septic- man from South Austin and an erudite speech pathologist who opted to forgo her career as a stay-at-home mom for our benefit, would have engendered the passion in their firstborn son for all things Latino and sociolinguistics? Mooskers, your grammarian ix ways have always kept me thinking and I especially appreciate your steadfast love for me and willingness to call in the hit men on the jerks of my life (#Angelaknowsbikers)...yes,

I know, it wasn’t personally against me….those people really just hate themselves;^).

Shashers, your relentless support, gregarious manner, and fair treatment to all around you have been a constant source of inspiration. You taught me to see and treat people as all the same…human beings. ¡Gracias! Big shout out to Chrysalis, Jiji, Owie, Will, Skinny,

Hailey (Walker, May-may, Hayes), Bub, Jodie, Christi, Joe, Mapache, Granny, Donna,

Nancy, Gary, Luke, Dory, Hunter, Amanda (and big boy Griff!), Dee-Wee, Allyson.

Love y’all! Much love to Big Daddy, Jules, Joyce Ann, and Dick…thanks for the unending support! Rojito y Elotes…ya saben que los quiero tanto, tanto, tanto! Thank you for putting up with Papi’s mess (literal and figurative) for these past years. Y’all have been so supportive and kept me laughing through the good, bad, and ugly! ¡Los quiero muchísimo! Mitz, I could fill a whole dissertation about how you have shown unflagging sustenance. I’m convinced that your wonderful laughter has subconsciously been an inspirational muse as I wrote a dissertation about language and humor. Finding more ways to make you laugh has been and will continue to be an overarching goal in my life. You’ve been there to encourage me in my weakest moments and lovingly forced me to be thankful for every step forward. This experience has been shouldered as much by you as it has by me, and for that I am grateful. We’ve come a long way and learned a lot on the road. Thankfully, our journey continues forward (we just don’t know where yet:^)! Please remember that you’ll always be “el agua de mi sandía”!:^). Love you with all my soul! ¡Gracias y que DIOS me los bendiga a tod@s! x Entre Broma Y Broma La Verdad Se Asoma: The Mobilization of Third-Grade Emergent Bilinguals’ Cultural Capital Around Sites of Humor

Mitchell Dean Ingram, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2020

Supervisor: Cynthia Salinas

To say that humor is a universal form of interactive communication is only partially correct. In this dissertation, I argue that it is actually a site where individuals are able to exchange cultural capital, display shared knowledge, form affiliative bonds and disaffiliative stances, and employ metalinguistic skills. The following presentation shares findings that emerged after spending an academic year observing and participating with 23 emergent bilingual students whose first language was Spanish. In this qualitative case study, I employed ethnographic methods to understand how humor phenomenologically functioned within their 3rd grade school settings. I drew from a panoply of research in bilingual education, humor studies, linguistic anthropology, and sociolinguistics to approach and make sense of the subject matter. I allowed the diverse data to inform how I established and analyzed the categories in order to answer the following research questions: (1) In what ways do minoritized emergent bilinguals mobilize their cultural capitals around spaces of humor? (2) How does humor function as a site for emergent bilinguals’ agentic affordances within structural constraints? To answer these queries, I drew on the theoretical framework of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005), which examines the “array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by xi communities of color” (p. 77). As the students interactional episodes of humor developed throughout one year and I performed situated interpretations and analyses of the events, I found that most cases were able to fit beneath the umbrella of three meta-themes: resilience, resistance, and resonance. This dissertation sought to add to extant research that foregrounds minoritized students’ agency vis-à-vis an education system that historically does not prioritize nor acknowledge the wealth of linguistic ability and cultural knowledge that these students possess. Furthermore, by viewing humor as a locus of engagement, I hope to further a solutions-seeking agenda that is rooted and grounded in the assets of these students. As humor reveals itself as a phenomenon that is multi-pronged enough to accomplish a multiplicity of functions simultaneously, it proves the adage true: Entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma [Many a true word is spoken in jest].

xii Table of Contents

List of Tables ...... xvii

List of Figures ...... xix

Chapter 1: Introduction ...... 1

Purpose of the Study ...... 4

Research Questions ...... 11

Organization of the Dissertation ...... 15

Chapter 2: Relevant Research and Theoretical Frameworks ...... 16

Constructing a Metaphor Through A "Painter's Domain" ...... 18

The Palette: Unseen Sociocultural Resources of Bilingual Students...... 23

Community Cultural Wealth ...... 25

The Paintbrushes: Collaborative and Agentic Application of Resources &

Repertoires ...... 30

Linguistic Capital ...... 31

Translanguaging Amongst Bilinguals...... 33

Transition from Translation to Humor ...... 35

Speech Communities ...... 37

The Canvas: Locus of Humorous Creations ...... 40

Humor Lurking Beneath the Academic Radar...... 44

Puro Relajo: Tearing Down and Building Up ...... 47

Mixing It Altogether: Community Capitals, Translanguaguaging, and Humor...... 49

The Easel: Macrostructural Constraints Surrounding Bilingual Students...... 50

A Synopsis of Bilingual Education Legislation: Sociohistoric Realities...... 53

xiii Increasing Accountability: Macrostructual Entities ...... 55

Federal Policy to District Expectation: Legislation to Interpretation ...... 58

District Policy to Teacher Enactment: Interpretation to Implementation .....60

Chapter 3: Methodology ...... 67

A Qualitative Approach to Humor Study of Bilingual Elementary Students ...... 68

Conceptual Framework ...... 70

Community Cultural Wealth and Humor ...... 71

El Humor Político: A Macrosocial View ...... 73

Translanguaging and Humor...... 79

Overview of the Study ...... 84

Research Questions and Design ...... 85

Methods...... 87

Phases of Data Collection ...... 90

Operationalizing Humor ...... 92

Erwin Elementary School ...... 95

Meet the Teachers ...... 99

AVID 3: L@s Estudiantes ...... 100

Class Time for AVID 3 ...... 104

Data Collection ...... 106

Observations ...... 108

Initial Surveys ...... 111

Interviews ...... 112

Audio and Video Recordings ...... 113

xiv A Brief Introduction To The Focal Students ...... 117

Waldo ...... 118

Leonel ...... 121

Daya ...... 123

Positionality ...... 124

Membership and Reflexivity at Erwin Elementary ...... 126

Data Analysis ...... 131

Coding ...... 132

Chapter 4: Risa as Reslience: Understanding How Humor Enlists Power by the Reimagining of Retos ...... 136

Methods...... 137

Setting and Participants...... 138

Data Collection and Analysis...... 138

Haciéndose el Mexicano: Resilience Through the Humorous Navigation of Identity ...140

Le Importa Un Pito: Resilience Past and Present Through the Humorous Navigation of Relationships ...... 146

¡Ya! ¡Ni Modo!: Reslience Through the Navigation of Overcoming an Institutional Challenge ...... 152

Estamos Hablando Como Bebés: Reslience Through the Humorous (Circum)Navigation of Dilemma ...... 155

Discussion ...... 161

Chapter 5: Relajo As Resistance: How Humor Serves as a Site For Actuation and Empowerment ...... 164

Participation and Setting ...... 167

Data Collection and Analysis...... 168

Relajando El Respeto ...... 170 xv Chano Más ...... 171

The Authorities Had Beto Watch Out ...... 177

Probando, Probando...... 185

Cuidado Con Lo Que Dices ...... 199

Te Boté, Finish the Wall, Y "¡Dije Que No!"...... 200

Discussion and Implications ...... 207

Chapter 6: Risa As Resonance: Flashes of Linguistic Flair and Community Building Around the Site of Humor...... 210

Introduction ...... 210

A Review of the Literature: Wealth Found in Humor ...... 212

¡Juegos De Palabras Mean More! ...... 214

Setting, Participants, Methods ...... 216

Findings: A Family Affair ...... 219

Familias Con Risas ...... 222

Doble Sentido ...... 223

Más Allá Del Chiste: Canned Jokes and Beyond ...... 229

¿Qué Es So Funny? ...... 237

Playing In El Corriente ...... 239

Discussion and Implications ...... 244

Conclusion To Dissertation...... 247

xvi

Appendices ...... 250

Appendix A: Changes to Neighborhood Around Erwin Elementary ...... 250

Appendix B: AVID Student Sheet ...... 251

Appendix C: AVID 3 Song Lyrics...... 252

Appendix D: ¡Pura Risa! Survey ...... 253

Appendix E: Principal Letter To Redistribute Students in AVID 3 ...... 254

Appendix F: Ms. Lectura's Meme Reference ...... 255

Appendix G: Linguistic Landscape at Erwin Elementary ...... 256

Appendix H: El Albur as an Intergender Phenomenon ...... 257

References ...... 258

xvii List of Tables

Table 3.1: Cultural Capitals and Relevant Humor Research ...... 72 Table 3.2: Political Humor in Latin America...... 75 Table 3.3: Meet the Teachers ...... 100

Table 3.4: Student Backgrounds ...... 102 Table 3.5: Data Collection Table ...... 115-116

Table 4.1: Waldo's Humorous Reconfiguration of Language ...... 150

Table 6.1: Answers to ¡Pura Risa! Survey ...... 219-220

Table 6.2: Comparison of Adult and Student Jokes Using the GTVH……...... …...225

Table 6.3: Translanguaging to Create Humor………………………………….240-241

xviii List of Figures

Figure 1.1: A Painter's Domain ...... 19 Figure 1.2: The Common Underlying Proficiency Model ...... 34 Figure 2.1: The Hierarchical Arrangement of A Painter's Domain ...... 52

Figure 3.1: Humor of Teatro Campesino ...... 81 Figure 3.2: "Chistoso" as Important to Students ...... 104 Figure 3.3: Waldo with Researcher's Hat ...... 118

Figure 3.4: "soi estupido" (Soy Estúpido) ...... 120 Figure 3.5: Waldo's Response to District Climate Survey ...... 121 Figure 3.6: Leonel Peaking Around Mask ...... 122 Figure 3.7: Daya Proud of her Honduras Shirt ...... 124

Figure 4.1: Waldo Sporting Nike and USA Brands ...... 141 Figure 5.1: Chano Considering What He Deems Funny ...... 173 Figure 5.2: Beto's Sly Smile ...... 183

Figure 5.3: "Hoy Estoy Alegre Porque No Hay Escuela" ...... 188 Figure 5.4: Waldo Laughing With Horse in Text...... 189 Figure 5.5: Math Está Cabrón ...... 190

Figure A:1: Long-Term Resident in Neighborhood ...... 250 Figure A:2: Remodeled House Next Door ...... 250 Figure B.1: Goals Set By Students In AVID 3 At The Beginning Of The Year ...... 251

Figure C.1: Erwin Elementary's Dedication To AVID Program ...... 252

Figure E.1: Principal Letter Home To Parents/Guardians ...... 254 Figure F.1: Meme To Which Teacher Referenced ...... 255 Figure G.1: Linguistic Landscape Sample Of School ...... 256

xix Chapter 1: Introduction

It’s necessary to laugh with the people because if we don’t do that we cannot learn from the people, and in not learning from the people, we cannot teach them.

—Horton and Freire, 1990, p. 247

Having notched thirteen years on my belt as a teacher in a large urban school district at the time, I had found curious and creative little ways to work around an oppressive curriculum that I felt stifled both my students and myself as a bilingual educator. One of these spaces through which we were able to put the “’cool’ back in school” was a brief time set apart after lunch to share either a joke or a riddle in English, Spanish, or both with the purposes of having fun with words and potentially enhancing our linguistic and cultural repertoires. A student comediante1 would daily read or share a chiste and the rest of the class would attempt to guess the punchline. After a few students would predict the joke’s conclusion, the answer was revealed, the laughter ensued, and then we would discuss what about the joke made us laugh. In a spontaneous moment one afternoon in the middle of the year, and perhaps as a way to vent my frustration of a relentless and broken system, I decided to tell my bilingual third graders a classic joke in Mexican Spanish2 that I indeed knew would get a laugh as well as rouse some incendiary reactions:

1 My usage of italics throughout this dissertation is intentional in that it is meant to distinguish or highlight “a new technical term, key term, or label” (McAdoo, 2015). The reader may notice that the italicization of a word or not has nothing to do with whether it is considered part of the Spanish, English, or language in between. As is discussed in my section on translanguaging, the intentionality behind it is one of communicative purpose, not language designation or value. 2 Kleinknecht, (2013) discusses word güey as the “most characteristic feature of Mexican Spanish since it started to be generalized 30 to 40 years ago” (p. 142). While initially an imprecation meaning “idiot” or “stupid”, the word became a vocative marker of solidarity in the address of adolescents in the 1990s.

1 Teacher: ¿Qué le dijo el mar a la vaca? [What did the ocean say to the cow?]

Class: No sé...¿qué? [I don’t know….what?]

Teacher: ¡Nada, buey (güey)3! [Swim(nothing), ox (idiot)]

Class: Uproarious laughter by others, a few confused looks, several gasps of incredulity and possible embarrassment

After the double entendre of the joke was explained to some and the pena [ embarrassment] to others, the moment passed and we marched laughingly (and perhaps nervously) on with Science.

The following day, a student who was known to be just a touch travieso

[mischievous] from time to time, raised his hand to ask if he could share a joke that he heard from his mom the night before. Knowing it was going to be a crowd pleaser based on prior experiences with him, I happily let him have the spotlight as he followed with another vintage suggestive Mexican pun:

Student: ¿Qué le dijo una nalga a la otra? [What did one butt cheek say to the other?]

[Many students rapidly and incredulously inhaling at the use of the word “nalga” as teacher develops a more serious face looking directly at him and wondering (1) where the joke was headed and (2) if administrators were walking by our doorless classroom]

Student: (Feeling the brunt of the emotional responses caused by his question)

¿Qué, Mr. Ingram? Ud. me dijo que podía compartir un chiste con la

clase…[What, Mr. Ingram, sir? You told me that I could share a joke with

3 This joke is considered funny by some because of its double meaning on two words: 1.) The lexeme "nada" can mean either 'nothing' or the imperative form of nadar, to swim. 2.) The lexeme "buey" (sometimes spelled "güey") in the Mexican variety of Spanish also possesses a dual significance: one is an "ox" and the other is similar to "idiot" in this context. Thus, the diverse reactions.

2 the class…]

Amused by the fact that he was now calling me by Ud. (the formal use of “you” in Spanish) and curious about how this all would end, I told him:

Teacher: Bueno, pues ya lo empezaste…vamos a terminar [Well, you started it, let’s go ahead and finish it.]

Student: ¿No te vas a enojar, verdad, Mr. Ingram? ¿Seguro? (You’re not going to get angry, Mr. Ingram, right?)

Teacher: Seguro, Geovanni. Adelante… (I’m sure, Geovanni. Go ahead…)

Student: ((Hesitant as he looked at me, but completely confident and with a smile that could not have been any wider)): ¡Cuidado, que aquí viene el pedo!4 [Look out! Here comes a fart! (problem)]

Class and teacher: Uproarious laughter by few, many confused looks, several gasps of incredulity and possible embarrassment

As I reflected back on this convivial moment of tension and release in the classroom, I remembered a multitude of things happening simultaneously. To begin, the class was alive with laughter and excited reactions as several students were thrilled while others were shocked that this comediante would use the aforementioned savory words in front of the teacher. Secondly, not everyone in the class seemed to pick up on the double entendre of “pedo”, but which was subsequently explained and discussed in a mini-lesson on its polysemy. Third, I remember that we were all temporarily united in the space created by that student, who I realized much later, most likely took my lead of the arguably transgressive initial joke with the use of the word

“güey”, added a touch of sabor, and then upgraded the suggestive content and lexical choices for

4 This joke is considered funny by some because of its risqué usage of the word “nalgas” (butt cheeks) and the double meaning of the word “pedo”, which can be translated as “fart” or “problem”, and in other contexts, “drunk”.

3 a truly dynamic response. It was this interaction during my final year as a bilingual public- school elementary teacher, in conjunction with my own life experiences, that inspired me to explore further throughout the course of this dissertation.

During that time and for my whole tenure with my mono/bi-lingual Spanish-speaking students, I was intrigued by what made the students laugh, who laughed at what and why, and by the possibilities of learning occurring as we conversed meta-linguistically about the language used to form and explain jokes or humorous verbalities and situate them culturally. I was similarly interested by my student’s astute promptness in following up with a joke that he knew might be considered inappropriate for broadcasting to the classroom. Did he respond with a joke as a way to acknowledge that he too was fatigued with the incessant high-stakes testing (known as STAAR in the Texas context) practices, rigid routines, English hegemony, and little flexibility that our school offered us day after day? Was he drawing in full or partial cognizance upon emotionally-charged, culturally-based lexical items beautifully delivered in order to elicit a quick reaction from the class? Perhaps there was another reason, but in any case, I have been left wondering about the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the possibilities of humor amongst mono/bi-lingual Spanish-speaking students in different contexts.

PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY

At first blush, a dissertation on the humor of Spanish-speaking individuals may appear as nothing more than frivolous cocktail party chatter with no further significant implications. After all, everyone from lively childhood to seasoned seniority has full access to wielding the power of humor and enjoying its meaning when they deem that it is the appropriate or inappropriate time and place to do so. Because of its all-access-pass status, humor may be considered somewhat of

4 a ubiquitous tool to level the proverbial playing field. Hierarchical standing or socioeconomic position are not immune to the hypnotic allure to participate, nor are they impregnable to its manifold consequences. For this reason, we can expect to substantially find it in full force attempting to gain access wherever we cast our gaze. As Banas et al. (2011) submit, humor is not easily defined nor is it a homogenous concept. While this research is not attempting to work towards an obdurate definition of humor, I do hope to describe characteristics of playful verbal interactions as they manifest in the classroom and how that work is accomplished among minoritized5 Spanish-speaking students in a public-school US context.

For the past few decades, social science researchers have been peering through a sociocultural lens so as to understand both the education system and minoritized students within them. Moll et al. (1992) coined funds of knowledge, Gutiérrez, Baquedano‐López, & Tejeda,

(1999) explored language hybridity in third spaces, Ladson-Billings posited a pedagogy that was culturally relevant (1995), Gay (2000) culturally responsive, and Paris (2012) culturally sustaining. These scholars, and many who share the same criticality, seek a redemptive understanding for what has transpired historically in the US as condescending interpretations of non-majoritarian skills and knowledges. Consequently, Valencia, Valenzuela, Sloan, & Foley’s

(2001) call for “treat[ing] the cause, not the symptoms” refute the deficit thinking surrounding the educability of low-income students of color and how these students allegedly create their own academic problems. They ultimately conclude that the cause, not the symptom, is equity or accessibility. Due to the fact that there has historically been a systemic imbalance of power that

5 I follow García & Mason’s (2009) acknowledgment of “minoritized” Latin@s indexing the role of power stripped from Latin@s through the use of their language. In this case, the hegemonic English environment of the school system tacitly represented that power.

5 propagates these injustices, scholars have noted how minoritized students have constructed ways to traverse the precarious waters of their educational journeys. One such scholar, Yosso (2005), describes in her treatise on the wealth of community and culture6, how people of color attempt to overcome marginalization by capitals, which is addressed in detail in Chapter 2. Essentially, these capitals represent the proverbial purchasing power to gain the very accessibility that the aforementioned sociocultural scholars have examined. A query that arises is whether or not humor may or may not be a form of wealth that is utilized to participate in the establishment’s restrictive economy.

This dissertation is an examination of whether or not student agency may be a venture to collaborate with, if not, speak against a system that holds them perpetually in debt. The objective of this investigation speaks to both studying the content and function of humor to understand sociolinguistic and cultural realities of emergent bilingual students, as well as the linguistic repertoires that are employed in order to realize this phenomenon. Humor research and education are not typically found together in the same journals, at the same conferences, or even in the conversations with one another. Going to an academic conference on humor is a tremendously different experience in terms of content, size, diversity and attendees than that of certain education gatherings. While the reasons for their differences are undoubtedly multitudinous, I argue here that they are, in a way and in some instances, inextricably linked.

Rarely can one attend a presentation on education devoid of any humorous interaction and, conversely, unlikely is it that one can find serious humor research lacking a certain degree of erudition, and/or instructive tendencies. While I find neither one more universal nor eminent

6 Which she defines as dynamic and fluid “behaviors and values that are learned, shared, and exhibited by a group of people (p. 75).

6 than the other, I foregrounded topics of education in their current and dire state as I composed this piece with an effort to gain insight, add perspective, and validate lifeways and knowledges to the multitudes of Spanish-speaking students that attend public schools and live in the United

States. One such concept that demonstrated the connection between humor and education research is that of translanguaging. García & Wei (2014) discuss the notion and usage of translanguaging (also elaborated upon in Chapter 2) and touch upon two aspects that have intimate ties with humor:

Two concepts that are fundamental to education, but hitherto under-explored dimensions

of multilingualism, namely creativity and criticality” (p. 226). Li Wei (2011) defines the

creativity as ‘the ability to choose between following and flouting the rules and norms of

behavior, including the use of language.’ Creativity is about pushing and breaking the

boundaries between the old and the new, the conventional and the original, and the

acceptable and the challenging. Criticality refers to the ability to use available evidence

appropriately, systematically, and insightfully to inform considered views of cultural,

social, and linguistic phenomena to question and problematize received wisdom, and to

express views adequately through reasoned responses to situations. These two concepts

are intrinsically linked: one cannot push or break boundaries without being critical; and

the best expression of one’s criticality is one’s creativity. (p. 226, emphasis in original)

One potential form harmonizing creativity and criticality is undoubtedly that of humor.

Nickerson, (1999) states regarding the creative nature of humor:

…we have an innate drive to create and that we get satisfaction from the act of

creating, whether what we are creating is something that fits the stereotype of a creative

7 product—a poem, a painting, a scientific hypothesis— or something more private and

less tangible—an inventive approach to a problem of personal significance, a novel way

of looking at a familiar situation, the perception of humor where it is not easily found.

(p.400)

Martínez & Morales (2014) illuminate the creative ways of bilingual Latin@7 middle schoolers skillfully implement language-based humor and transgressive wordplay to engage in important identity work that involves artful sociolinguistic interactions while simultaneously interrogating established norms. In the same manner, Early, Carpio, & Sollors (2010) discuss the role of sure- but-subtle critical humor by African American slave populations throughout the annals of history. Limón (1996) gives insights into how Mexican men use their verbal creativity and interactional play to cope against oppressive contexts, while Carrillo (2006) describes how

Latina women use everyday humor to linguistically push back and reposition themselves against the oppression of race, class, gender. Chávez (2015) explicates adroit wordplay through the use of doble sentido (double entendre) and the signaling of a jocular tone to make difficult topics speakable, which helps depict fuller and more humanizing representations of a population that is routinely dehumanized. Beyond merely providing a creative way to express themselves, humor may manifest as a form of criticality as well.

What does this have to do with Spanish-speaking third graders in central Texas and what might be gained from research such as this? What made this research unique was that it attempted to join four understudied areas to initiate a bridge between them. The first area looked at an intersection of language and humor in the bilingual classroom. While there is a burgeoning body of research regarding language choices in bilingual classroom environs

7 I follow the authors of the cited article with the usage of Latin@ in lieu of Latina/Latino.

8 (Blackledge & Creese, 2014; García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017; Martínez, 2010), how this played out in humorous interactions is still yet to be understood and particularly understanding this phenomenon through a sociocultural lens. Secondly, while humor studies are replete with research supporting how teachers implement instructional jocularity into their lessons or how certain subjects lend themselves to classroom mirth and the concomitant benefits therein (Aylor

& Opplinger, 2003; Frymier & Weser, 2001), inquiry that directs attention to the students is less robust. By shifting the primary focus from the teacher to the student, I hope to gain insight into what students think is funny, how they express and understand humor, and in what ways it is agentively used throughout the course of a school day. Thirdly, this research focused on children of the elementary age. There abounds a healthy amount of research concerning students in middle and high school, adult ESL students, individuals in foreign language classes, and interactional humor between intercultural university students. Where focus has not been placed is in humor studies of emergent bilinguals in the elementary age group. Third grade is a promotional-gate grade and a seedbed of linguistic activity that includes (but is not limited to):

(a) “a major turning point in a child’s cognitive development because it marks the beginning of logical or operational thought” (Piaget, 1970); (b) the first year of exposure to the stress and pressure of taking the state-mandated high-stakes testing; (c) a time when the “push to English language” begins in the transitional bilingual programs (Palmer and Snodgrass Rangel, 2011). I

9 contend that at younger ages, social conventions such as laughing to cover “benign violations8” or for reasons of saving face are still in development. Because of this, it might be argued that laughter elicited by these youngsters were a truer marker of what they believed was funny in a social interaction. Fourth and finally, the majority of classroom studies on humor spotlight monolingual English-speaking students. As immigration from Spanish-speaking countries of provenance9 continues to be on the rise in the United States (“Modern Immigration Wave Brings

59 Million to U.S.”, López, Passel, & Rohal, 2015), it is vital to understand the perspectives and value the funds of knowledge10 of incoming students while attending to the complexities of socialization and interactions with monolingual-English speakers in our classrooms. This research potentially adds both practical and theoretically grounded advice for teachers committed to implementing culturally sustaining pedagogy in Dual Language/Bilingual programs, pre- service teachers in bilingual/ESL programs, and perhaps contributing to the advancement of a more positive schooling experience for Spanish-speaking students in US schools (Paris, 2012).

8 McGraw & Warren’s (2010) suggest that benign violations are when people tend to laugh when a social norm is broken assuming no real threat is present. This is not to suggest that elementary students are unaware of social norms and do not laugh at benign violations. However, one needn’t look too far when an 8-year old asks an adult about their weight, age, or discuss otherwise “uncomfortable” topics to each other and to adults. Although it cannot be denied that children laugh for other reasons (e.g. anxiety relief; Vagnoli et al., 2005, dyadic synchrony with parents, Bureau et al., 2014,), the fact that some social reasons for laughing might not be in place, could facilitate interpretation and understanding during data analysis. 9 According to statistics found in a Pew Research Center, Spanish-speakers from Latin America (with the exception of Brazilians) comprised of 10% of the total reported immigrant population to the US. As of 2013, the percentages had grown to 52%. See https://www.pewresearch.org/fact- tank/2019/09/16/key-facts-about-u-s-hispanics/ for more details. 10 As Moll et al. (1992) discuss in their seminal ethnographic study, “funds of knowledge” represent “broad and diverse knowledge” that is unearthed within the depths of rich household intelligences in their students’ homes. I argue here that humor, in and of itself is a fund of knowledge that is worthy of our observation. Even in the comprehensive Review of Humor in in Educational Settings (Banas et al., 2011), which considers 40 years of this type of research, there is no mention of anything regarding culturally-based humor that might stem from student’s own funds of knowledge.

10 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

By foregrounding how humor manifests involving Spanish-speaking students investigated within a community cultural wealth and translanguaging education framework, researchers could benefit from a more complex understanding of translanguaging and verbal play in bilingual spaces in the classroom. Practitioners might gain invaluable pedagogical insight by understanding how bilingual students flex their linguistic dexterity as tools to learn and exhibit their communicative competence to build community. Bilingual teacher preparation programs would find great utility by gaining deeper insight into how linguistically-based humor stems from rich backgrounds of student knowledge and how this could conceivably lead to conversations about cultural and classroom identity. As a result of these unique factors (a focus on the engagement of humor by Spanish-speaking students, elementary school environments, student-focused observations all viewed through a sociocultural lens), I believe that this research can contribute to the worthwhile conversation pertaining to understanding more deeply our students and their beliefs; in this case, what they consider humorous and how they use this in different environments throughout their school day. This research project sought to add pieces to a more holistic puzzle of trying to understand primarily the interactions of Spanish-speaking students. However, because the site where I conducted the research unequivocally hosted monolingual English-speaking contexts as well, insight was gained about how Spanish speakers intermingle humorously with both monolingual (Spanish and English) and bilingual individuals.

By comprehending more about these interactions, we are able to interact in more humanizing, and ultimately meaningful ways in the classroom. With that in mind, the research questions of this study are as follows:

11 (1) In what ways do minoritized-emergent bilinguals11 mobilize their cultural capitals

around spaces of humor?

(2) How does humor function as a site for minoritized-emergent bilinguals’ agentic

affordances within structural constraints?

This research seeks to fill a transdisciplinary gap in an effort to understand how Spanish- speaking students take on humor while employing their culturo-linguistic practices. In order to answer my research questions, the participants and context of this study were a group of Spanish- speaking third graders in a public-school classroom in Texas. This dissertation employed a community cultural wealth and translanguaging framework as a lens through which to analyze and interpret the goings-on of the humorous interactions.

On a personal note, part of the impetus behind this research is based on my own childhood experiences in Central Texas. At an early age, I was intrigued by the language and laughter of Spanish-speaking people around me. Raised in a rural working-class town, I was exposed to campesino Mexican nationals who labored alongside my dad in the construction business. Observing laughter at the job sites that he would take me and my brother to, as well as interacting humorously with Latin@ classmates, I wanted to participate in what was considered to be funny. While Latin@ friends at school were able to speak English and teach me some

Spanish, I was given the opportunity to join in on the jocularity. However, the potosinos

[individuals from San Luis Potosí, Mexico] with whom my dad worked were monolingual

11 I employ the term “minoritized-emergent bilinguals” to refer to L1 Spanish-speaking Latin@ population. This is done in order to distinguish the term from merely “emergent bilingual”, which can refer to higher-income (often White and politically liberal) families who seek bilingualism as a form of capital accumulation (Heiman & Murakami, 2019).

12 Spanish-speakers and I was a monolingual English-speaker. The language barrier prevented me from accessing deeper conversations about who these individuals were and what caused such uproarious laughter throughout the workday. However, things changed for me when I was in 8th grade and I began to take Spanish 1A. I fell in love with the subject and took the end-of-the-year test before Winter Break and was promoted to Spanish 1B. Although I noticed even as a 14-year old the significant differences between the language taught in our Voces y Vistas textbook and the colloquial speech of dad’s co-worker Raimundo (pseudonym) (¿Qué fregados es un bolígrafo, anyway?), I began piecing together the language to build relational bridges. Assuming that because I was now taking a Spanish class, I somehow knew all dialects and nuances of the

Spanish language, Dad would often ask me to ride along with him to translate as we drove to job sites and interacted with fellow albañiles (construction workers). The recursive process of growth was intellectually stimulating and relationally rewarding—the more I asked questions about the Spanish language to enter the doorway of understanding what was funny to our compañeros de trabajo, the more questions that would surface about the language itself, and the closer the bonds formed between us as people from different backgrounds. That cyclical process based on the trío of humor, language, and relationship has never ended for me and continues as I type this sentence as a 43-year old white male. Tens of thousands of questions and dozens of solid relationships into it, I still relate to Spanish-speaking friends, co-workers, teachers, and students through the powerful union of language and mirth. Along the way, I have realized a lot of the linguistic lexical items contained the meaning that I needed to fill my own "information gap" in order to be able to participate in the joviality (Doughty & Pica, 1986). Oftentimes, so as to repair that breach in my own understanding and to participate in different forms of humor, a cultural understanding was required. I perceived at the beginning stages of my learning Spanish

13 (around 8 years old), that there was something beyond just the lexical translations of words. For instance, I recall a humorous confusion (with myself being the brunt of the jokes) around the word chorizo. Having “officially” learned in a Spanish class in middle school that chorizo was supposed to be what I understood as “sausage”. After sharing many meals with Spanish- speaking friends where chorizo was deliciously mixed with eggs and pico de gallo, I recall wanting to introduce this delectability to my family; however, my selection of Jimmy Dean breakfast sausage at the store would never quite make the proverbial culinary grade. While the word “chorizo” can be correctly rendered as “sausage” into English, the concept reached beyond mere linguistic knowledge of a generalized cylindrical meat in a casing and stretched to a culturally-defined victual often stuffed with pork, chiles, vinegar, paprika, and garlic (a.k.a. not

Jimmy Dean sausage). While this anecdotal humorous misunderstanding was actually based on my lack of knowledge at that time and not fully grasped until I saw “chorizo” at a grocery store, other interactions between Spanish speakers are actually based on the affluence of knowledge such as this. For understanding to occur, particularly with humor, more than just language is required—some form of shared knowledge is necessary. Humor, moreover, achieves an exhibition of not only how the vehicle of language brings to bear information in a conversational interaction, it displays what is deemed to be prioritized enough to be spoken for significant reasons. Languaging, in other words, must be espoused to some manifestation of culturality in order for the humorous verbal artwork to be depicted.

Based on personal experiences such as these in my own life, I have chosen to foreground the voices of these young Latin@ participants throughout this work. Contrary to the negative stereotype, as a white male my dad instilled into me a humanizing perspective about Latin@ compatriotas that ran against lesser and more deficit versions popular at that time and in that

14 space. That wisdom passed on to me (and I am teaching my children the same, en inglés y español) and through this work I intentionally applied it as a paradigmatic principle both in the interactional phase of collecting data, the analytical phase of data coding, and the interpretive frame of making claims about the data. By centering the spotlight on how these Spanish- speaking 3rd graders interacted humorously and how they made sense of the interplay, we are all given the privilege to momentarily accompany these youngsters as they are awakened to the realities around them—bueno, malo, y feo— and watch them laughingly thrive in concert or in spite of it all.

ORGANIZATION OF THE DISSERTATION

This dissertation is organized into six chapters. This chapter one is an introduction and justification of the study. Chapter 2 is a literature review explained through the confluence of several factors explained by a metaphor. Chapter 3 is an in-depth description of the convergence of two theoretical frameworks and the relevant literature that comprises of the methods implemented in the research. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 are all findings chapters about the mobilization of sociolinguistic resources around the site of humor. Chapter 4 focuses on the findings from observations and audio/video recordings surrounding humorous events of resilience created and participated in by the students in the study. Chapter 5 presents the findings of how relajo, or the sense of comical confusion or disorder (Portilla, 1966), is a site for student empowerment. Finally, Chapter 6 finishes on the positive note of resonance, and how these students cite laughter in family and friends to display their community cultural wealth around humor. The dissertation finishes with a discussion on the findings and describes the implications for stakeholders in bilingual education and potential future research directions.

15

CHAPTER 2: RELEVANT RESEARCH AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS

As long as she can laugh I'm sure everything is going to come out right in the end.

—Mrs. Whatsit referring to Happy Medium in A Wrinkle in Time, pg. 83

In an article that researches the role of latinidad in the formation of identity in a Latin@

Pentecostal church, Arellano (2007) exposes certain attitudes of its congregants regarding the difference between Anglos and what the investigator deems as Hispanics. One of her focal participants, Alex, a monolingual Mexican Spanish speaker states:

The majority is in common [amongst us Hispanics] in that we always look for a way to

be happy, to find an environment, an environment that we are happy. We always look for

alternatives. For example, I, one thing, not because I’m judging or because, but I feel

that we are like, like a little happier. Like we like to move [our bodies], like we always

like being together, enjoying one another’s company. We like to be constantly laughing,

we like to laugh. We like to play a lot. That is, sometimes we try to find ways to not

always be shut out from things. We’re always looking for someone to talk with or to go

out with. And well, then, or this is American culture is, the culture is a little different

because they sometimes, like they focus a little more on work—a lot, on the work. (p. 78)

There indeed is something to the happiness capital that Latin@s often find themselves part of, particularly living in the United States. Perhaps this “play,” as Alex mentions, is a way to keep a positive attitude and resilience under the duress of an indifferent or oppositional education system. Could it be that humor can serve as an indirect form of resistant behavior in spite of this system? Might it function to both foment in-group membership with others and foster identity as

16 an individual of the community? There is burgeoning evidence that humor can redefine preconceived boundaries by its ability to draw from and reach across categorical lines that have been established, while creating territory for new frontiers. In his work on the symbolic boundaries of humor between different cultures, Kuipers (2009) suggests that forms of conversational humor are related to social background and that one’s sense of humor shows what individuals find important in themselves, in others, and in social life. Alex’s point, therefore, is both perceptive and transferable to a school context—in contrast to the “work” that is realized within the institutional walls of American education, Latin@s may find themselves more

“happy”, “enjoying each other’s company”, “constantly laughing” and “playing a lot”. This sentiment is reflected in the recent Gallup 2019 Global Emotions Report, which conducted over

151,000 interview with adults in over 140 countries in 2018, Latin America gained the highest percentages (8 counties out of the top 12) due to the “cultural tendency in the region to focus on life’s positives” (Clifton, 2019, pg. 6). As I reflect on a Mexican euphemism for someone dying told to me long ago by a former chilango (Mexico City) bandmate and friend, “Se puso serio”

(He became serious) gains new meaning. It led me to believe that in my wonderfully jovial and alburero12 friend Pepe’s mind, to be solemn was equated with death, which meant to be playful signifies living life itself.

This dissertation investigated how humor was created by Spanish-speaking third graders as capital, by which they implemented linguistic and navigational wealth to make sense of and to know how to maneuver in a world of education that is not always in favor of sustaining their

12 Cintrón (1997) discusses the Mexican art form of albures, through which speakers trick/insult their interlocutors as they draw upon semantic nuance to engage with sexualized humor through punning, often to display rhetorical prowess and as a vehicle for in-group solidarity.

17 language and culture. Because of the multidisciplinary nature of researching humor in the bilingual classroom, in this chapter I examine what its role is and how it is implemented into the everyday warp and weft of communication between bilingual students. In order to properly orient this undertaking, I elaborate on the literature from four pertinent areas (community wealth, translanguaging, humor theory, and bilingual education) so as to adequately contextualize where this work fits into a larger conversation with implications for not only research on the theory of humor’s intersection with language and culture, but with classroom pedagogy and teacher preparation. As I do so, I conceptualize the notion of the humor that I seek to understand within the aforementioned context. Because of the multitudes of factors involved around such sizeable concepts as “humor”, “language”, “education”, “bilingual”, “culture”, etc., I have chosen a metaphor by which to present how the information fits together in this research for the purpose of making the connections more palatable. This was not only intended to be an organizational tool for this chapter, but also aided in the description of the theoretical framework itself. While I provide functional definitions and meaningful examples based on prior research, my aim was that this metaphor ostensibly brought to bear how these threads that I highlighted fit into the structured fabric of the education system and larger tapestry of sociocultural realities in the

United States.

CONSTRUCTING A METAPHOR THROUGH A “PAINTER’S DOMAIN”

In accordance with Lakoff & Johnson (2008), “The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another” (p. 5). If I may take the liberty to modify the researchers’ quote by pluralizing its predicate, the objective of this research is to “experience several kinds of things in terms of others” (emphasis added). To more readily understand how the concepts that I investigated were systematized, I employed language

18 surrounding an idea that occurred to me as a “Painter’s domain” (Figure 1.1) to describe how elements were not only defined by function, but also how they were inextricably linked with one another as constituent parts and an operational whole. I realized as a teacher-at-heart that in order to to systematize all of the seemingly disparate factors I was purporting to orchestrate together in some meaningful fashion, what I needed was a solid graphic organizer.

Fig. 1.1: My Painter’s domain-metaphor (i.e. graphic organizer) of this research

easel-macrostructural and sociohistorical constraints

paintbrushes- agentic application of resources and repertoires

canvas-the creative site of humorous interactions among Spanish-speaking students

palette-cultural experiences, backgrounds, worldviews, and schema of Spanish speaking students

19 The purpose of this figure is to help ground the concepts to which I referred in a visual schematic which could be best be described by three of Lakoff and Johnson’s (2008) metaphors: orientational, spatialization, and ontological. The orientational metaphor “organizes a whole system of concepts with respect to one another” (p. 14) and served to see how a concept such as linguistic capital interacts within a larger system of bilingual education, as well as how they manifest through instances of interactional humor by bilingual students. By providing a drawing of a physical environment such as a painter’s domain, the reader may situate these concepts pictorially in relation to one another. Similarly, the spatialization metaphor is “rooted in physical and cultural experience [which] are not randomly assigned” (p. 18). The physical act of painting is one that is tied to the cultural interactions of an individual using a paintbrush to mix and draw from different colors on a palette for the creation of content on a canvas that rests on an easel which restrains the body of artwork. As Lakoff and Johnson suggest “a metaphor can serve as a vehicle for understanding a concept only by virtue of its experiential basis” (p. 19). Lastly, the ontological metaphor is of great utility so as to “deal rationally with our experiences” by treating them as entities (p. 25). When we take concepts into consideration as entities, as in a

Painter’s domain, we are able to systematically refer to, quantify, qualify, identify aspects of, recognize causes of so that we may consequently theorize, speculate, find problems with, and suggest solutions to issues that may arise. In other words, this metaphor allows and provides us language to understand and elaborate meaningfully upon nonphysical things (such as the concept of “cultural experience”).

On a final meta-level note about the why this Painter’s domain-metaphor is a logical illustration, the very research of this project itself mirrors realities of a western, White middle- class male academically studying an interactional aspect of the lifeways of immigrant and

20 minoritized students of color in a classroom environment. While my positionality as a researcher is considered in more detail in Chapter 3, it would be irresponsible not to acknowledge the undeniable and invisible realities that exist within the metaphor of Figure 1.1. As Lakoff and

Johnson (2008) state, “The most fundamental values in a culture will be coherent with the metaphorical structure of the most fundamental concepts in the culture” (p. 22). Borrowing from

Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (2008) portraiture metaphor, “For each portrait the stage is set, the props are arranged, the characters are presented and the plot develops. Individual faces and voices are rendered in order to tell a broader story about the institutional culture” (p. 17). There is an uneasy kinship, so to speak, between the macro-structural entities and the individuals living within their dominions. While the establishments provide the confines (whether affordances or constraints), the people reflect those dimensions as a mirror that does not allow any embellishment or blemish to escape light’s exposure. For this reason, “a Painter’s domain” makes sense as a metaphor of the reciprocity that this very research project itself is hoping to expose. The scene in Figure 1.1 reflects the very realities that I endeavor to exhibit and learn about through the course of this research. As an example, the figurative symbols at play in the drawing are the instruments of the art, represented visually by palettes, which are represented colorfully by their cultural experiences, backgrounds, worldviews, and schema. Paintbrushes characterize the agentic application of resources and repertoires with which bilingual students make use of the paint (ethnolinguistic verbal play and humor) to create artful expressions. These brushstrokes are performed to create the content on the canvas, which is understood here as a site of humor. The easel, which holds the canvas, stands for macro-structural and sociohistorical constraints that exist for bilingual students in the US public-school system. Two final elements of the Painter’s domain are those of invisible characters that are present, but not featured

21 pictorially. First is the viewer of the figure who represents those of us who exist as onlookers outside of the framed Figure 1.1. We are the analyzers of the art, portrayed by myself as an academic researcher and to the readers of this piece. In one sense, “art appreciation” in a

Bourdieuian13 (1993) sense has historically been relegated to privileged persons who have both the time and means to care about admiring such notions as sociohistorical contexts in which the

“art” was created, complex terminology associated with styles, and different interpretations of the art itself, which is strongly akin to practices conducted by those of us in the academic world

(Peterson & Kern14, 1996). Secondly, the painters, or creators of the art (humor), are the

Spanish speaking students themselves, which have been known in many instances to represent the voices of the marginalized and as a way to express subaltern values, frustrations, or calls for change. Collectively, as subsequently described, manifestations of these changes have emerged from the multitudinous artistic social movements such as the “theater of the oppressed” (Boal,

2000), Teatro Campesino15 (Bagby & Valdez, 1967), and the propagation of the Zapatista movement (Olesen, 2007). Nonetheless, within the artist’s domain, there is a reciprocal image from metaphor to reality that is of great utility for organization, frameworking, and analysis to this research project. That being the case, let us review the literature associated with each of the

13 As Bourdieu (1993) states regarding the idea of a museum being a public legacy, he states that the “optional entrance” is “reserved for those who, endowed with the ability to appropriate the works, have the privilege of using this freedom and who find themselves consequently legitimized in their privilege, that is, in the possession on the means of appropriating cultural goods….and of the institutional signs of cultural salvation (awarded by the school)” (p. 237). 14 Although more current sociological research suggests an “omnivorous appropriation” of the “high” and “popular” arts, “appreciation of fine arts became a mark of high status in the late nineteenth century as part of an attempt to distinguished “highbrowed Anglos Saxons from the new “lowbrowed” immigrants, whose popular entertainments were said to corrupt morals and thus were to be shunned” (Peterson & Kern, 1996, p. 900). 15 Founded in 1965 by César Chavez’s United Farmworkers Union, the farmworkers theater created and performed often humorous actos (short skits) to dramatize the cause and plight of oppressed farmworkers.

22 constituent pieces of this metaphor to see what scholarship has been completed prior to this study.

THE PALETTE: UNSEEN RESOURCES OF BILINGUAL STUDENTS

Ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente…[Eyes that do not see, a heart that does not feel]

While this study focused on what was happening inside the bilingual classroom at an elementary school, it would have been shortsighted to not take also into consideration the students’ educational experience outside the schooling context. Although both sites are at once undeniably conscious and subconscious forms of input, it is often the information that is learned at school that leads to a student’s experience of “success”, as opposed to what is acquired elsewhere16 (Jiménez, García, & Pearson, 1996). When painters put their hands to the task on a canvas, the medium from which they draw is a critical means by which they express themselves.

As they employ their resources, types of paint such as acrylics, watercolors, or natural dyes can be available in different sheens, textures, hues, and colors. All of these elements, moreover, may be blended whichever way the painter deems appropriate for the artistic context at hand. The size or dimension of painters’ palettes may come into consideration regarding how many options they have from which to select, while the characteristics of the paint itself allows for an infinite number of possibilities on the canvas. The following section focuses on the student’s palette, or sociocultural resources, and its serviceability for application.

16 In this study the authors discovered that monolingual Anglo readers were successful in reading comprehension due to their accessibility to “well-developed networks of relevant prior knowledge, they were able to devote substantial cognitive resources to the act of comprehension” (p. 91).

23 Over twenty years ago, Ladson-Billings (1995) penned her landmark piece about culturally relevant pedagogies and the difficulties that some non-dominant students have negotiating academic demands of school while keeping up with their cultural competence, which includes examples of dress, music, walk, and language.17 On a similar note, Moll et al. (2005) reveal the concept of funds of knowledge in their seminal ethnographic study, which represent a

“broad and diverse knowledge” that is unearthed within the depths of rich household intelligences in students’ homes such as home language, family values and traditions, caregiving, friends and family networks. These two constructs (cultural competence and funds of knowledge) embody unique ways that minoritized students express their home/heart culture and prior linguistic knowledge through both content (what they say something) and manner (to whom, when, where, why and how they say it). These particular resources, in other words, indeed are existent and at the disposition of these nondominant students, provided there is an environment that allows them to be expressive. However, when the cultural assets of a prevailing group overshadow those of other groups, these funds of knowledge and competences are held in disdain or disregarded altogether. Ovando (2001) suggests that minority children can be perceived in the eyes of the public as barriers to learning.. With respect to how these individuals fit into a larger societal blueprint, Bourdieu (1973) describes how education plays an integral role in the social reproduction that maintains the dominant class on top of the social and economic hierarchy. In his landmark piece on cultural capital, he states, “an institution officially entrusted with the transmission of the instruments of appropriation of the dominant culture…is bound to become the monopoly of those social classes capable of transmitting by their own

17 Ladson-Billings defines this with examples of a non-dominant student population who are not perceived as having the cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1993) to thrive academically.

24 means (Bourdieu, 1973, p. 181). In this case, the “transmission of the instruments of appropriation” he refers to is the educational system that he researched and theorized about in

France at that time. Within this monopolizing and controlling culture, the presence of social and racial inequity preponderates due to a recursive system that unremittingly denies citizens of the non-dominant culture access to three distinct forms of capital: (1) cultural, which translates into education and language (2) social, which reference to networking and connections; (3) economic, which pans out to material possessions and financial assets. (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). In more recent research, the theory is extended and particularized to hone in on the current sociopolitical climate in the US. In order to parse out some researchers’ interpretations of

Bourdieu’s work, as well as to understand the specifics in contemporary environs, Tara Yosso

(2005) puts forth the concept of community cultural wealth.

Community Cultural Wealth

In 1977, the most cited sociologist in the last quarter century, Pierre Bourdieu, authored a seminal book theorizing human actions and interactions systematically. This significant work challenged the boundaries of anthropology and sociology in the 1940s and 1950s by stating that traditional application of structuralism placed too much emphasis on the despotic power of pre- existing structures while phenomenology foregrounded the unrestricted agency of the individual.

In one section of the tome, he discusses the field, where humans compete for the importance of power or influence using their symbolic capital in society. As the Frenchman unraveled his descriptive social critique on the topic of what is considered “official” and “unofficial” in society, he discussed the human struggle to “accumulate symbolic capital in the form of collectively recognized credit “(p. 41). He details the capital further into those of the cultural, social, and economic sort as he explains how the “tangible classifying system continuously

25 inculcates and reinforces the taxonomic principles underlying all the arbitrary provisions of [this] culture” (p. 89). The influence of Bourdieu’s pioneering intellectual efforts has indeed been far reaching, which unavoidably increases the chance of potential misinterpretation. According to

Yosso (2007), the above-mentioned classification hierarchy described by Bourdieu “has often been interpreted as a way to explain why the academic and social outcomes of People of Color are significantly lower than they outcomes of Whites. The assumption follows that People of

Color ‘lack’18 the social and cultural capital required for social mobility”, which effectively stigmatizes individuals deterministically to perpetually fail in a system that is already against them (p. 70). For this reason, Yosso extends the work of Bourdieu based on a critical race theory understanding and moves beyond the acknowledgement of a hierarchy to frame the discussion around a contextualized oppression and marginalization of People of Color in the US. Yosso, therefore, calls for an alternative concept that counters this fatalistic interpretation and offers six forms of capital that are not lacking with these individuals, but often go unacknowledged or unappreciated in the classroom. As an alternative, she offers the theory of community cultural wealth so as to provide new appreciative language for previously discredited knowledge

(Zentella, 2003). Drawing on Solórzano’s (1998) five tenets of critical race theory,19 Yosso proposes aspirational capital, familial capital, linguistic capital, navigational capital, resistant

18 By “lack” here, Yosso refers to the fact that some individuals have misconceived this by thinking that Bourdieu was suggesting that minoritized individuals do not possess their own capital that is valuable. rather than his assertion that they do possess capitals—just not the majoritarian capital that leads to “upward” mobility. 19 Daniel Solórzano (1998) discussed the following ideas that should influence theory, research, policy, curriculum, and pedagogy are: (1) The intercentricity of race and racism with other forms of subordination, (2) the challenge to dominant ideology, (3) the commitment to social justice, (4) the centrality of experiential knowledge, and (5) the transdisciplinary perspective (pp. 122- 123).

26 capital, and social capital; all of which symbolize the affluence of metaphorical paints, colors and resources available on the palettes of these minoritized students.

This caudal20 of student competencies have been taken up in a diverse number of ways pertaining to bilingual education and serve as a functional way to look for the application of their holistic proficiencies. For instance, there is a nascent literature regarding teacher preparation programs that challenges nativist frameworks for Chicana college students by leaning into familial capital (Huber, 2009), channels aspirational capital to respond to the needs of people of color in college through grassroots networking (Liou, Antrop-Gonzalez, & Cooper, 2009; Matos,

2015), and draws from social capital to understand factors that support success for Latin@ college students (Luna & Martinez, 2013). More germane to this study, and scarcer still in the research literature, is how non-dominant elementary students are taking up these capitals as resources for their comprehensive success. What is in existence, however, does reflect how some of Yosso’s capitals are present and of utility to these young minoritized students. For example, in Taylor, Bernhard, Garg, & Cummins’ (2008) piece on multilingual/multicultural students in a school in northern Toronto, a kindergarten classroom of 27 native speakers consisting of Tamil, Urdu, Punjabi, Gujarati, Hindi, and Cantonese were observed along with their family members and home literacies. As students were allowed to author dual language books using their native language, they drew from the family’s linguistic capital, which not only repositioned their parents and grandparents as full partners and educators (familial capital), it allowed them to be successful in an academic context.

20 Caudal is a polysemous Spanish word that can mean: (1) hereditary wealth, family riches (2) flowrate, as in a river, (3) artistic talent (4) political support. I have chosen to implement this term in order to acknowledge the intersection of bilingual students’ familial inheritance, fluency, skill sets, and community advocacy.

27 In other scholarship, this time closer to the heart of this dissertation, 3rd-grade Latin@ students engaged in writing testimonios (personal narratives) are allowed to reflect on their linguistic and cultural lives outside the classroom (DeNicolo, González, Morales, & Romaní,

2015). As they were given the freedom to access their full linguistic repertoire, students accessed aspirational capital, which allowed them to express their plans, hopes, and dreams.

Alongside linguistic capital employed during instances of language brokering for their parents, the researchers found a theme of navigational capital amongst the students as they applied their bilingualism in different places for different reasons. Similarly, some would invoke their parents’ consejos (advice) in Spanish during tough times of school as they tried to stay afloat in a monolingual context. “Con mi frente en alto” [With my head held high], one student remarked about her experience maneuvering through school (p. 239). This instance embodies the intersection of linguistic capital (Spanish), familial capital (parent’s advice), and navigational capital (how to engage with challenging situations). This occurrence of multiple capitals converging to provide the student with power was found present with how humor functions as well.

As a final example, recent research by López-Robertson (2017) examines community cultural wealth through the usage of Latin@ children’s literature and how it has empowered not children, but their mamás (mothers). Realizing that the focus of their study is not on the students, and because there is a dearth of literature on this exceptional topic, I argue that this data is apropos in that the women in this study draw on their own forms of cultural wealth21. By extension, one would expect that familial capital would be both developed by the mothers and

21 As evidenced in Méndez-Morse et al. (2015), Latina women in a variety of professional and paraprofessional roles have enhanced their leadership and navigational abilities by leaning on their cultural and familial capitals.

28 transmitted to their children, who most likely find analogous hurdles as members of the same minority group. In response to the researcher’s invitation to participate in pláticas literarias

(literacy circles conducted in Spanish), four Latina mothers of young bilingual children went through and collectively discussed children’s literature in Spanish to explore points of contact and reflect upon their own caches of community cultural wealth. In the book Viva Frida

(Morales, 2014), for instance, one of the mamás identified with Frida Kahlo in that they both shared the idea of the sueño (dream), which indexes the notion of aspirational capital. As the four moms and researcher read through a section about a character waiting for a bus in My Diary from Here to There/Mi Diario de Aquí Hasta Allá (Pérez, 2002), they made a text-to-life connection as they recalled helping a new mother at a bus stop who was learning to close a stroller while the onlooking bus driver reprimanded her in English to hurry up. Upon reflecting about this incident, they were effectively displaying familial capital in that they “engage[d] in a commitment to community well-being” (Yosso, 2005, p. 79). Connected to the idea of community building, they shared an example of linguistic/social/aspirational capital in that they discussed how their daughters often tire of language brokering, to which some of the moms concurred around the idea of “es nuestro deber de ayudar a los que no pueden”/”it’s our duty to help those who cannot help themselves” (p. 12). In a concluding example of the moms’ wonderful display of community cultural wealth, they exhibit forms of navigational and resistant capital. As one of the mothers recalls the situation when her son was excluded from an after- school program because of his level of English, she states:

Y así fue, al día siguiente, yo con mi poquito de inglés hablé con la directora. Le expliqué todo y quedamos que el niño sí podia estar en el club…ella me pidió perdón por lo que pasó. [And that’s how it went, I went up there up there with the little English that I knew to speak with the principal. I explained the situation to her and we agreed that my son could be part of the club….she apologized for what had happened.] (p. 13)

29 As mentioned, while this focus of López-Robertson’s (2017) work is on adult women, they still represent individuals that are not part of the majoritarian system. This rich panoply of community cultural wealth is displayed through the conversations of these mothers, who possess entire intelligences that go unacknowledged by hegemonic self-reproducing structures found in society and schools. What they know and how they operate in these spheres undoubtedly influences their children and how they navigate the very system that has positioned them as subordinate. Although the mamás have more experience and community cultural wealth from which to draw, their children’s development of these resources is worth our attention as researchers and teacher educators so as to impede injustice and acknowledge the abundance of skills and intelligences that are prevalent, yet often passed over. As Pérez-Huber (2009) states in a related article, “Community cultural wealth not only acknowledges strengths, but can be used to reframe deficit perspectives of Communities of Color…” (p. 711). As we move into our next section, we shall look at how the paint is lifted from the palette in application to the canvas by the paintbrush, or, the linguistic repertoire of these bilingual students.

THE PAINTBRUSHES: COLLABORATIVE AND AGENTIC APPLICATION OF

RESOURCES AND REPERTOIRES

Our communities travel with us as we speak. “So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. Ethnic identity is twin skin to linguistic identity—I am my language (p. 39).

—Gloria Anzaldúa (1987)

The community cultural wealth (CCW) model, as aforementioned, proposes the six forms of capital that are pertinent explicitly to people of color. Although all of these manifestations of

30 capital were considered pertinent to this study based on the multi-functional nature of humor

(and are elaborated upon in the theoretical framework), what was observed with most acuity in this section as the vehicle by which verbal humor travels are those of linguistic capital. Within this, translanguaging undoubtedly was considered as a free form of student style on exposition for the (co)-creation of humor. Additionally, due to the fact that language does not dwell in isolated spaces, and the idea that artists engaging in a shared canvas such as a conversation must implement the use of different paintbrushes, the concept of speech communities was explored to understand the collectivity of this humor through language.

Linguistic capital

Linguistic capital was first theorized by Bourdieu (1977), who posited that there are social advantages such as acceptance to universities or successful academic performance based on an individual’s family background such as language practices. What may be acquired with this capital, he proposes, are dominant society values which are rewarded and reproduced through academic and other symbolic institutions. The collateral damage of this setup, however, is how non-mainstream forms of knowledge are often underappreciated and devalued.

McCollom’s (1999) illustrates an example of this as she investigates how a bilingual dual language teacher consistently dismissed the variety of Spanish voiced by Mexican-background middle schoolers. Snide remarks in exasperated tones such as “Me imagino que la palabra que

Uds. conocen es elevador, pero no es correcta” [I suppose the word that you all use is

“elevador”, but that is wrong], or “Tampoco se usa ‘asina’. La forma educada es ‘así’ [You shouldn’t use ‘asina’ either. The educated way to say it is ‘así’], began to have students question the language that they were taught at home. While some felt doubt, others reacted in rebellion and tried to avoid the teacher’s class by feigning ignorance; either way, there are deleterious

31 effects when language varieties are positioned as “wrong” or “uneducated”. In 2005, as aforementioned, Yosso interrogated the deficit ways in which his notions have been taken up by some individuals who state that “his theory of cultural capital has been used to assert that some communities are culturally wealthy while others are culturally poor” (p. 76). The researcher re- frames the theory to focus on the assets of specific minoritized cultures, as opposed to what tools exist in the dominant society that students should employ to get ahead. While this is essentially two sides of the same coin, by Yosso drawing attention to how marginalized students use everyday communication that occurs between individuals within institutional structures, she highlights the uniqueness and nuance of other forms of communication that may be understood, appreciated, and harnessed by teachers for the success of all classroom participants. As Faulstich

Orellana (2003) suggests, this capital includes both the social and intellectual abilities that have been gained through experiences in more than one language and/or style. Despite the fact that research often suggests that variations of what is not considered the “standard” form of a language are at best disregarded and worst dishonored (Labov, 1972; Lippi-Green,1997;

Mignolo, 2003; Yosso’s 2005), the notion of linguistic capital attempts to rescue these exceptional skills, redeem their merit, and channel their potential.

As Yosso reveals a more additive lens by which to understand this linguistic phenomenon, she describes how bilingual individuals are able to conscientiously navigate different spaces for different purposes in order to meet different needs. Erickson (2004) suggests, “language is a cultural tool for doing the work of speaking and of understanding what others are saying” (p. 14). This “work”, as he designates it, is always local in its production and is “an effort expended toward intended ends, whether those intentions are tactical and intuitive, directed toward the immediate next moment, or are strategic and deliberate, directed toward a

32 more distal temporal horizon” (p. 12). An example of this can comes from Loureiro-Rodríguez

(2008), who demonstrates how non-standard forms of Galician, one of the four main languages on the Spanish peninsula, struggles to gain acceptance into the dominant view of standardized

Galician, which is taught through their educational system. For fear of being labeled a gañán, or country bumpkin, an individual who lives in the northwest Spanish countryside often shifts away from using certain non-standard forms of words that are spoken at home in order to gain acceptance into the job market. At the same time, they use what is considered a non-prestigious form of the same word as a symbol group identity and cohesion, insisting that “O verdadeiro galego é o que só fala nas aldeas” [The real [emphasis added] Galician is what is spoken in the villages] (p. 73). The double nature of this linguistic capital, assuming both the majority and minority “codes” are known, can allow bi- or multilingual or bi- or multidialectal individuals to choose in the moment which may be implemented strategically in order to gain membership into different (and often opposing) groups. By applying this capital agentically, speakers are able to maneuver themselves across spaces in a system that quite probably exerts some amount of subjugation on them. A social group uses capital to find a way to “redefine their marginal location as a place where they can draw strength” (Solórzano & Villalpando, 1998, p. 217), and one way which that can manifest is by translanguaging.

Translanguaging Amongst Bilinguals: Linguistic Capital Unbridled

By using linguistic capital as Yosso (2005) suggests, we can see what bilingual students are able to attain, which is the ability to access not only relational ties, but also learning experiences. Simultaneously, they are able to express their cultural knowledge on their terms in lieu of being limited by institutional constraints. Upon doing so, they are validated both about what and how they bring to bear in the classroom environment. A concept that dovetails nicely

33 with linguistic capital and that is pertinent to this study is translanguaging (Otheguy, García, &

Reid, 2015), by which bilingual individuals are able to draw from the wealth of their communicative repertoire. This can manifest as students employ resources from different dialects, registers and what is traditionally referenced as systems of language. In contrast to what has previously been operationalized as code-switching, in which the bilingual’s options rest within two distinct reservoirs that we commonly refer to as “languages”, translanguaging draws from one source to enact what a speaker believes to be a correct conversational move in the moment. In line with Cummins’ (1981) idea of the common underlying proficiency (CUP, see

Figure 1.2), in which a plurilingual individual’s linguistic competence is fully functional and draws from a common source, translanguaging rejects the notion of a cognitive retrieval apparatus that must select between systems of language. Much like Cummins’ later interrogation of the “two solitudes assumption” (2008), García & Wei suggested that, “Languages are not conceived as separate autonomous systems [as in code-switching], but as language practices tapping all points of the continua that make up a bilingual repertoire” (p. 378, 2013).

Fig. 1.2: The common underlying proficiency (CUP) model developed by Cummins to shed light on bilingual speakers’ linguistic repertoires.

Another key element is the inevitable political nature of translanguaging. Sociocultural perspectives began cross-examining the oft-utilized term (code-switching) as perhaps a way to

34 perpetuate a hegemonic system of dominant language ideology. In other words, as García & Lin

(2017) justify a conscientious departure from the previously used designation, they distinguishes the two by stating “code-switching considers language from an external perspective….while translanguaging refers to the ways that bilinguals use their language repertoires from their own perspective” (p. 20). Otheguy, García, & Reid (2015) point out that translanguaging makes use of the “deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages,” p. 283). Similarly, Gort (2015) develops ideas about translanguaging as it pertains to pushing against traditional linguistic boundaries and the concomitant ideologies that often accompany them. Ultimately, the arrival of translanguaging to the discourse around hybrid practices of bilingual individuals expanded the focus from the lexical, syntactical, pragmatic, morphological, and intonational choices that they make to include more holistic issues of identity, socialization, and resistance to a hegemonic English-speaking educational system. In other words, as Pennycook (2010) recapitulates, the shift away from conceiving language as a structure from which they draw, to translanguaging as something that language users do.

Within the metaphor of the Painter’s domain, the palette has been expanded for bilingual students to apply their proverbial paintbrushes to create the content of their choice on the canvas.

Transition from Translanguaging to Humor

According to humor researchers Bell & Pomerantz (2015), a student’s communicative repertoire22 is not simply an array of multiple, fully formed (national) languages, but rather an ever-changing assembly of various genres, speech styles, pragmatic routines, and other

22 Rymes (2010) define a student’s communicative repertoire is the totality of ways they “use languages and other means of communication (gestures, dress, posture, and other media) to function effectively in the multiple communities in which they participate” (p. 528)

35 reoccurring chunks of language, complemented by an array of resources (e.g., gestures, dress, posture, etc.) for making meaning” (p.107). When students create and interpret verbal activity in their environment based on their own linguistic and cultural systems, they reveal these resources.

How they do so displays their linguistic background and what they articulate brings to light their cultural experiences, backgrounds, worldviews and schema. Humor and verbal play are an ideal manifestation of these phenomena and could serve to shed more light on the aforementioned competencies. In relation to humor, Norrick (1997) discussed “interdiscourse communication” as “any kind of communication characterized by contact between different discourse systems and attempts to overcome their boundaries” (p. 390). As interlocutors engage in forms of verbal humor, what is often necessary to have a “successful” interaction, is not only a shared linguistic comprehension, but common cultural touchpoints as well. One instance of this is found in

Moalla’s study entitled “Intercultural strategies to co-construct and interpret humor” (2015), in which the researcher found that Tunisian learners of English and speakers of American English encountered difficulties creating and understanding humor in conversation. One of the key reasons that these difficulties in intercultural communication existed was that there were not just explicit language knowledges interacting with each other, but implicit cultural ones as well.

Verbal humor can often be seen as the pinnacle of understanding the subtle nuances of either pragmatic markers or lexical subtleties. As Swain (2009) states regarding second language proficiency, “the use and understanding of humour requires high levels of not only linguistic knowledge, but social and cultural knowledge as well” (p.102)

Taking all of this into account in light of what manifested in terms of humor, I believe that the construct of translanguaging lent itself very well to what I observed in this study.

Because of the increasing importance of peers in middle childhood (7-11 years old), children

36 often do what it takes to associate with each other (Rubin, Bukowski, & Laursen, 2011). By finding ways to bond around shared experiences and knowledeges, fully wielding their linguistic and cultural repertoires can serve as a vehicle by which this can be achieved. As aforementioned, humor is something that is closely linked to the cultural and linguistic repertoires of an individual and can be used to develop relationship with others. As Bell &

Pomerantz (2015) suggest, “…humor is risky, as failure is always a possibility, but people are often willing to initiate play because of the payoff in terms of relationship building” (p. 40). Due to the risky social nature of humor, I wondered if L2 users would take full advantage of their language(s) abilities in order to broaden their chances at being successfully humorous for social acceptance. Taking advantage of this resource, they would exercise what Bailey23 (2007) calls flexible bilingualism, which can be representative of social, historical, and political issues; the same issues that are undoubtedly in place as institutional rules of the elementary school (such as only speaking a certain language during the teaching of a certain subject24). Be that as it may, I was curious about the implications of humor in these contexts. Was humor be a tool that students use according to administrative norms that are established, or would they take the risk and work agentically to transcend the rules to pursue relationship? Either way, I knew they would not engage in isolation, but in communities, which is briefly mentioned in the next section.

Speech Communities

23 Bailey argues against the notion of parallel monolingualism, where languages are learned and used while rarely coinciding and he advocates for an approach that embraces monolingual and multilingual forms of speech, which he terms (in a nuanced manner from that of Bahktin) heteroglossia. 24 This was a practice in place at Erwin Elementary, the research site for this dissertation.

37 With this application of capital and understanding that humor is most often intended to be collaborative conversation (one person says something, another laughs, and so on), the intersection of capital-based humor and translanguaging is meant to be realized collectively.

The notion of linguistic capital in scholarship about bilingual individuals is closely linked, if not inextricably joined, to that of what Hymes (1972) might refer to as a speech community, which is when “a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one variety” (p. 54). Linguistic capital, moreover, does not exist in a vacuum and requires a degree of situated participation from other members of said community.

Straubhaar (2013) acknowledged this as he attempts to meld two aspects of Yosso’s capitals

(social and linguistic) by emphasizing the importance of the recursive relationship between the linguistic and social realities in the lives of students who speak a minoritized language. More specifically, the researcher unearthed ways in which 14 Spanish-speaking middle and high school students communally used their linguistic social capital to form a network around cultural, linguistic, and nationality solidarity , which allowed them to navigate socio-academic terrain. Interestingly, and not unlike the above-mentioned case in Galicia, being able to converse in Spanish with each other during class was of dual reciprocal purposes. On one hand the

Spanish speaking students felt a peer pressure to not attempt to speak English for fear of making a mistake or for sounding “too gringo” and consequently being the object of derision (p. 102).

By maintaining this social membership, they were able to be part of in-group interactions. On the other hand, the students felt mutually supported as they discussed class topics and assignments in Spanish in order to further comprehension and maneuver academic environments.

Either way, by leaning into these latent strengths, bilingual students can achieve success even in environments that do not valorize home language or cultures. Other research, such as that

38 conducted by Zentella (2003) discusses this phenomenon as she narrates how children can negotiate situations with their linguistic diversity as they “seamlessly switch” conversationally and display their community “badge of authentic membership in two worlds” (p. 56). Because these students are able to linguistically flow between these distinct domains, they possess the ability to be selective about how to engage (or not) in any given scenario. In another example between Latina middle schoolers, Martínez and Morales (2014) recorded an interview in which the researcher denied the offer for some chips from one of the girls. As she questioned why he refused to partake, he stated that the chips had MSG, and the other students began to discuss what that meant. After some confusion, one of the interlocutors accused the other two by stating,

“Y Uds. que le hacen caso, qué pensativas son”. The play on the word pensativas [thoughtful], which covertly doubles as the word pendejas [dumbasses], marks a lexical shift of word meaning and, by extension, power as she implied that what the researcher said was false. This pushback on authority, or perhaps what might be referred to by Yosso (205) as resistance capital is expressed here linguistically and affiliatively among members of her community. By employing this conversational move, the students inverted the asymmetrical power by clandestinely transgressing the expected rules for speech. By humorously and creatively finessing the words, the linguistic capital utilized in this discourse allowed the speaker to purchase the crossing of a boundary, discount the “authority”, and connect with her co-speakers all in one fell agentic swoop. In conclusion, language can be a resource for interlocutors to construct “involving the invocation of co-membership as a ground for their relationships” as unspoken resistance to the working of social processes at the level of society” are expressed (Erickson, 2004, p. 83). One tool to fully wield that power is having full access to one’s linguistic repertoire. Not coincidentally, humor possesses that same force.

39 THE CANVAS: LOCUS OF HUMOROUS CREATIONS

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people

—Victor Borge

In the contemplation of a blank canvas as it rests before the artist with a well-girded palette of linguistic and cultural resources, the stage is set for a variety of types of paint in different hues, colors, and textures. By allowing the creative space of translanguaging as the paintbrush that draws its colors from the palette of a student’s linguistic and cultural capitals, humor affords an ideal canvas for a synergy to occur and set the verbal artwork on display. In the last section, I discussed this caudal of bilingual student competencies and how they can often fall into institutional shadows, undetected by educators (Zentella, 2003). By the same token, translanguaging, like cultural community wealth, is not bound by rules established or defined by

“majoritarian tales” of normalizing the dominant culture group as a superior entity (DeNicolo et al., 2015). Both of these concepts share two main principles that are felicitous to the direction of this study: (1) both concepts draw on students’ prior experiences as a source of strength, not as something to overcome (2) both concepts defy and/or circumnavigate limitations that have historically been imposed on nondominant groups. Humor, in a similar manner, cooperates with these principles in that it can establish community and manifest as a form of resistance as makes full use of a bilingual student’s linguistic repertoire. In order to understand how linguistic capital and translanguaging can possibly apply to humor in bilingual contexts, we must first seek to understand how they share these parallel principles. In order to describe this canvas on which the students co-construct verbal humor, I employ the notion of third space.

Just as laughter cannot be restrained in the physical places and merrily find its way into any possible space on the spectrum of sound, humor can slide its way into virtually any social

40 arrangement imaginable. In 1994, the postcolonial literature scholar Bhabha’s penned his seminal piece Location of Culture, in which the author investigates the complexities of national identity and culture as entities perpetually involved in the midst of the process of hybridity, under which he develops several constructs, third space being one of his primary ideas. When cultures of different origins come in contact, in-between spaces are created that reveal “hybrid forms of life and art that do not have a prior existence within the discrete world of any single culture or language” and that “initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration…” (p. xiii, p. 2). Five years following, Gutiérrez, Baquedano‐López, & Tejeda (1999) took up the notion in the context of education, which shifted the focus to interactions in liminal spaces that fall outside of “official” sites of education for minoritized students. One theme that manifested as they observed the writing of diverse students in Las Redes, an after-school program in

California, was the playfulness that emerged in a literacy activity that allowed for mixed genres and languages. Over a series of e-mail exchanges with an anonymous and mischievous overseer of the playful activity, “El Maga” and the young students collaborate using an official space of writing and e-mail to interact in unofficial ways—more specifically, by the usage of translanguaging25 between English and Spanish and personalized language between the interlocutors. The researchers unearth how one student, Martha, draws on both her linguistic and cultural repertoires in this third space environment to accomplish three goals: (1) to complete the literacy assignment; (2) to use literacy as a channel for self-expression; and (3) to build a relationship with El Maga. Of specific interest to this study of humor, as discussed further

25 Although the term “translanguaging” had not been taken up by scholars in the field of bilingual education yet, the Gutiérrez, Baquedano‐López, & Tejeda (1999) implement the term “code-switching” that goes beyond what is typically meant by merely switching from one code (language) to another.

41 below, was how Martha was able to use her complete repertoire for more unbridled and comprehensive participation through this playful environment. As Gutiérrez, Baquedano‐López,

& Tejeda (1999) suggested regarding hybrid practices, they symbolize a “systematic, strategic, affiliative, and sense-making process among those who share the code, as they strive to achieve mutual understanding” (p. 88). They also discovered that activities engendered “a playful world and a collaborative culture that brings play and learning together” (p.88). Correspondingly concluded by humor researchers Bell & Pomerantz (2015), verbal play and jokes can be

“affiliative in that they index the shared knowledge and history between [individuals]” (p. 31).

By opening up a third space based on the hybridities of formal/informal, English/Spanish, serious/funny, the structural duress is removed in order for her to shine forth unencumbered.

When compulsory language separation was in place, Hadi-Tabassum (2006) discovered that students in a dual language classroom attempted to “situate themselves in that fluctuating, fluid third space, where they could transgress overt linguistic borders and boundaries” (p. 28).

Coupled with this idea of humor acting similarly, Waring’s (2012) words regarding verbal play in the classroom, I sought to observe and understand students as they “momentarily entered an alternative universe unfettered by the roles and setting of the classroom” (p. 16). It was partially through this understanding that I framed the interactions of the third-grade bilingual students as they communicated in their daily context. This “alternative universe” that was “unfettered by the roles and settings of the classroom” exactly lined up with the spaces outside of dominant discourses. While it was expected that these interactions may happen in the location of third spaces, known here by the metaphor of a canvas, their application was wielding their resources from community cultural wealth. By being unbound by structural constraints, the potential of humor was observed and sought to understand how students used this new territory to exhibit

42 their own agency for making meaning of their surroundings (Vygotsky26, 1978), building group membership (Castro, 1988; Mercado, 2005), or implementing forms of resistance (Carrillo,

2006; Gallo, 2016). In a sense, the students are allowed to reimagine the rules that have been built up around them.

Drawing on the ideas of breaking down spurious barriers between languages furthered by

Hornberger & Link (2012), García & Wei (2014), Faltis & Smith (2016), Gort (2015), and

Palmer et al. (2014), I operated under the assumption that these bilingual students, like monolingual students, would use anything and everything available to them in their linguistic repertoire in order to communicate and comprehend humor. Although it can almost go without mentioning, humor is ubiquitous amongst and easily discoverable by children. In a study of 58 public school children from ages 7-12, the Dowling (2014) concludes that “clearly, children find humor in all that is around them, in school, afterschool, at home, and in books, television shows and movies” (p. 133). Following Martínez’s (2010) study of transgressive bilingual verbal play,

I endeavor to “re-present this wordplay as a potential window into the rich ‘underlife’ of a classroom” (p. 4). In a recently published empirical research paper (Straszer, 2017) regarding a

Finnish speaking pre-school dominated by Swedish monolingual norms and ideology27, the investigator observes that translanguaging28 occurs when “social and safe spaces are created” and

Swedish speaking children and their parents learn some Finnish through play activities” (p. 145).

26 Humor scholars Bell & Pomerantz (2015) suggest that for Vygotsky, “a crucial aspect of play [verbal or otherwise] is that it freed participants from situational constraints by creating an imaginary scenario” (p. 102). 27 The context of this study is not unlike the situation in the US, in which the English language and its native speakers enjoy the status and concomitant privileges of being the de facto” official” language of the nation. 28 While translanguaging is not taken up here as a topic, it also represents a hybrid space where new linguistic boundaries are made possible through communication.

43 Although the word “humor” is not implemented here, the idea of “verbal play”, as first used in

Lantolf’s (1997) work concerning the acquisition of L2 Spanish, can include forms of non- serious language usage such as humor. Much like translanguaging as a third space phenomenon redefines preconceived boundaries of language, humor acts accordingly in its ability to draw from and reach across categorical lines that have been established, while creating territory for new boundaries. In his work on the symbolic boundaries of humor between different cultures,

Kuipers (2009) suggests that forms of conversational humor are related to social background and that one’s sense of humor shows what individuals find important in themselves, in others, and in social life. Both community cultural wealth and translanguaging are ideal for observing instances of humor negotiation within the context of a dual language classroom because it allows a site for language interaction.

Humor Lurking Beneath the Academic Radar

Interestingly, bilingual education scholars have been showing signs of the inchoate detection of the phenomenon that I observed in this study. Almost subconsciously, a conversation about humor undergirds some of the key points in their publications, marked here by my own emphasis. Research from over 40 years ago, which explored the “extra-linguistic factors motivating alternation between Spanish and English” (Timm, 1975, p. 474), revealed functional and stylistic constraints (patterns) were found to be used by interlocutors in interesting ways.

The researcher argued that L1 Spanish speakers would often switch to Spanish to index:

such personal feelings as affection, loyalty, commitment, respect, pride, challenge,

sympathy, or religious devotion”, while switches to English displayed a “speaker’s

feelings of detachment, objectivity, alienation, displeasure, dislike, conflict of interest,

aggression, fear or pain”; switching frequently between the two was “employed by

44 bilinguals as a highly effective rhetorical or stylistic device: most commonly,

perhaps,…to make a parenthetic, often witty aside; to mimic someone; or to depict

aspects of life which are the subject of humorous [emphasis added] and/or satirical

commentary (p. 475)

In another more recent instance, González, Moll, & Amanti (2006) conclude a section towards the end of their book regarding the positive practices and funds of knowledge in households of bilingual students, they state,

The humor and laughter [emphasis added] in the Alegría home are contagious. Ita

Alegría does everything with love and humor [emphasis added]. Her children reflect

what she reflects: a positive attitude toward the world and toward others. Most

importantly, language and literacy practices in the Alegría home serve to sustain and

strengthen relationships between children and parents and connections to valued

members of the community, for example, school personnel, merchants, and those new to

the community (p. 249)

Solórzano & Villalpando (1998) wistfully posits, “Do those at the social margins use family and group stories, proverbs, dichos, oral histories, music, corridos, comedy [emphasis added], and art, as forms of survival, resistance, or transformation?” (p. 215). Similarly, one of the six cultural capitals put forth by Yosso (2006) is a linguistic capital, which is “the idea that Students of

Color arrive at school with multiple language and communication skills” she includes among storytelling, proverbs, and parables, the ability of “comedic [emphasis added] timing” (p. 79).

Furthermore, in de la Luz Reyes piece (2015) on becoming biliterate, she remembers of her childhood “Mixing Spanish and English was often a way of injecting humor [emphasis added] in our conversations” (p.66) as well as the author having “memories of my uncle’s playful and

45 humorous [emphasis added] use of language (p. 40). Gallo (2016) has documented the strategic use of humor/verbal play between a Mexican immigrant father and his daughter as they attempt to make sense of their immigration status while establishing humor as a tool of resistance.

Sprinkled throughout the research literature surrounding culturally sustaining practices, such as those mentioned above, one sees humor as a significant phenomenon present in the lives of these bilingual individuals. Despite humor being accepted as a universal social occurrence that can materialize in all cultures (Moalla, 2015, p. 367), it remains a relativistic event that is defined differently within and across cultures. For that reason, I framed humor as the what, the where, and the how during conversational interactions. By placing it as the locus, this third space opens up a landscape onto which bilingual students’ linguistic repertoires may be practiced. Within these spaces, members (of society, group, etc.) may choose to interact in convergent or divergent ways; either way, they must employ bricoleur29-type decision making to establish and advance new models of exchange.

Puro Relajo: Tearing Down and Building Up

Appropriate to this discussion, and more specifically to the bilingual students’ backgrounds as Latin@s, is the notion of relajo. While this term has a number or different iterations, the two central themes are undoubtedly tearing down and building up30. By this, I mean that there is a dual nature to this form of conversational humor that at once seeks to speak

29 The terms bricoleur and bricolage were coined by the French anthropologist Lévi-Strauss (1966) and have been used in the social sciences as a manner to explain how humans are agents who take hybridity and innovation and “make use” and do work “in real time” (Erickson, 2004, p. 166) 30 Interestingly, from the literature that I reviewed about relajo in the Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Dominican Republic (Lauria, 1964; Barradas, 2003; Herrero, 2006), the notion seemed to lean towards building playful confianza as opposed to the Mexican/Mexican American version, in which it has a strong role in constructing class solidarity (Limón, 1989).

46 back to an oppressive structure (such as a school, church, government) as well as find unity with others who have been positioned similarly. The most renowned treatise of this subject was undoubtedly authored by Jorge Portilla (1966), the Mexican existentialist and member of the philosophical group Hiperión in the late 1940s. La Fenomología del Relajo (Phenomenology of the ‘Relajo’) attempts to capture the Mexican reality at that time as was aimed to disturb the bourgeois complacency and suspend seriousness for the re-transformation of societal hierarchies.

Although the author defines the depth of what relajo signifies to the Mexican psyche through the course of over 200 pages, his introductory commentary is that:

Lo que en México lleva el nombre de ‘relajo’ no es, obviamente, una cosa sino un

comportamiento. Más que un sustantivo puede decirse que es un verbo, pues la

expresión designa el sentido unitario de una conducta compleja, de un acto o de un

conjunto de actos llevados a cabo por un sujeto, a los que él mismo confiere un sentido

no explícito pero preciso. [What is known in Mexico as “relajo”, is obviously not a thing,

but a behavior. More than a noun, it may be referred to as a verb because the expression

is a felt oneness from a behavior, carried as an act or a series of acts by an individual,

which is transmitted by the individual in an implicit yet precise manner.] p. 17).

Portilla goes on to suggest that relajo can also manifest as an act of resistance or defiance before the status quo. Gallegos (2013) comments on Portilla’s work by saying that relajo “as an act of suspension and value inversion[,] is a manifestation of human freedom; it appears in the realm of what the human being can do” (p. 120)

Another scholar that echoes this liberatory act of defiance against the legacy of colonialism is that of De Genova (2005) who states that relajo resembles a “chaotic disorganization supplemented with a sense of creativity and disruptive intentionality” (p. 169).

47 Moreover, in The Cage of Melancholy, Roger Bartra (1992) states that “relajo is that gelatinous slackening of norms which permits a limited insubordination, a measured relaxation of the rules of social behavior” (p. 140). An excellent example of this is mentioned by the folklorist

Américo Paredes, who intervenes in the quarrel between Anglo-American anthropologist’s insensitive misrepresentations about the lives of Chicanos (1979). What is stated here reveals a perfect picture of how the resistance-embedded humor slipped by the academics, which indubitably resulted in group cohesion as interlocutors conversed:

What one usually considers to be fluency in a language other than one's own does not

equip an ethnographer to interpret accurately people's feelings and attitudes in actual

communicative experiences. Unwarranted generalizations may result when an

ethnographer misinterprets a colloquial or a metaphorical expression, especially if that

ethnographer takes the expression in its standard dictionary meaning. According to

Paredes, a skillful jokester can easily mislead an ethnographer, especially if he is an

outsider without full command of the language. (Lomelí & Shirley, 1992, p. 192)

Relajo, moreover, was present as I undertook the endeavor of making observations of student humorous interactions within an environment that restrains their usage of Spanish and often overlooks their lived cultural experiences as Spanish-speaking children in an English-dominant world.

Mixing It Altogether: Community Capitals, Translanguaging, and Humor

Because of the fact that they share such characteristics in common, I posited that on the canvas of humor, translanguaging paintbrushes would paint cuentos, chistes, relajos, which would be rife with community capital. An example of this is how the interlocutors in Limón’s

1996 piece discusses the verbal art and jest between Mexican-American men in south Texas as a

48 form of linguistic convergence (which he terms an “emergent cultural performance”) and mutual identity validation (building up) as they express an “oppositional break in the alienating hegemony of the dominant culture and society” (1996, p. 478). As speakers from the research comedically implemented lexical items from both English and Spanish (e.g. “¡Tiré un beer can y me paró el jurado!”), they embody the confluence of community capital, translanguaging, and humor. Similarly, Carrillo (2006) examines the work that is accomplished by everyday humor in use by a group of Latina women, labeled affectionately the unión de viejas argüenderas, in

Detroit. Findings demonstrate how these women “construct a womanist collective with cultural integrity and homegrown humor [that] involves questioning the existing social order, thereby suggesting alternative sociopolitical configurations and relationships” (p. 193). The author concludes the piece by calling educators to push back on the burlas [mean-spirited jokes] that oppress, “while building diverse communities on the mujerista [Latina womanist] humor that liberates31” (p. 193). The native Spanish speakers in Carrillo’s work showed an abundance of the fluid connotational knowledge and doble sentido [double entendre] of words in Spanish, which also illustrates a linguistic flexibility to the end of eliciting laughter and connecting communicatively with her comadres While both of these examples from the research literature exhibit ways in which bilingual individuals co-create (build up) linguistic forms of resistance

(tear down), they simultaneously show how they pull from their entire linguistic repertoire.

31 Mercado (2005) finds a similar implementation of positive humor in her Reflections on the study of households in New York City and Long Island: A different route, a common destination. In this look at Dominican and Puerto Rican households, the researcher discovers how the usage of jerigonza (a secret code language similar to Pig Latin) served as a wonderful source of playfulness, humor, and love in the Alegría household. These practices served “to sustain relationships between children and parents and connections to valued members of the community, for example, school personnel, merchants, and those new to the community” (p. 249).

49 A final terrific example, illustrates of the intersectionality of linguistic capital, translanguaging, and humor can be found in Gallo’s (2016) piece regarding how a Mexican father and his young daughter humorously co-narrate an incident with a US police officer about their documentation status. As the two collaboratively tell their testimonio of the event, Abi (the daughter) remarks with multilingual voicing, “Él dijo: ‘I’m the police. Open the door.’ ¿Cierto,

Pa? As the storytelling continues, more translanguaging occurs as do creative instances of humor and doble sentido. This illustrates how translanguaging serves as a resource to relate culturally-shared information in nuanced, precise, and comedic ways. By combining these three elements, community capitals, translanguaging, and humor, we may gain a glimpse of how

Spanish-speaking students manifest their lived realities under such macro-structural constraints as history, policy, and governmental mandates over bilingual education, which is the topic of the next section.

THE EASEL: MACROSTRUCTURAL CONSTRAINTS SURROUNDING THE

BILINGUAL STUDENTS

When you laugh, they can’t kill you

—Perry Farrell in Sadness

By finishing the literature review with the entity that is most physically removed from the child, I am neither discrediting the macrostructural constraint’s influence nor undermining its role. While it makes sense from a presentational viewpoint to perhaps start with the most structured32 of the figures (history, policy, government in relation to bilingual education) and subsequently move to an exhibition of the most autonomous of the group (Spanish speakers’

32 By structured here, I mean that there is an organizational design at the institutional level. This is by no means aiming to suggest that an individual’s linguistic repertoire is, therefore, unstructured.

50 interactional humor), I decided to order it in reverse to have the students’ cultural experiences and backgrounds be prioritized. With that in place, I worked from the most inner and grassroots phenomenon to the most abstract and far-removed from the research focus itself (see Figure 2.1).

This notion is paralleled in the composition of this dissertation in that, compared to the initial

Figure 1.1 where an artistic representation is expressed to explain the phenomena at hand, Figure

2.1 now demonstrates a more conventionally academic diagram to convey the same relational message. What may be more apparent with this circular schematic, however, is that we can see the relative power of a Spanish-speaking individual in the US in that the smallest circle is the often hidden and unrecognized knowledges that they possess. Conversely, the largest ring represents the macrostructural/sociohistorical constraints that hold the most power in society, such as the government, school district, etc. The circles in between symbolize iterations of the acts of application of what is contained in the smallest circle. To properly understand how this system of power works and what it means for Spanish-speaking students, it is critical to understand bilingual education both longitudinally and organizationally. An easel is often described as a design to hold a canvas in place so that it is unable to move as individuals interact with it. For the purposes of this research, the easel is discussed as the superstructures surrounding the research site itself, which is a combination of federal acts that influence language policy and choice about which language is spoken by individuals and groups in schools. Policies and assessments in the bilingual classroom are constitutive ingredients to expressed verbal humor, as described below, in that their prescription and enforcement (or lack thereof) can greatly influence which language is to be used (Palmer & Lynch, 2008). After giving a brief historical overview of the language policies with regards to bilingualism, I mention how three levels at which these policies affect and provide both affordances and constraints

51 within interactional language in bilingual classrooms: (1) legislation (2) interpretation (3) implementation.

Easel-the macrostructural and sociohistorical constraints

Canvas-the site of

humor, where the

→ paint (ethnolinguistic resources) is applied

Palette-cultural experiences, al exchange between levels between alexchange backgrounds, worldview, and funds of knowledge of the emergent

------bilinguals

The dialectic The 

Fig. 2.1: The hierarchical arrangement of the bottom up focus of this research. While the circles represent the concomitant levels of power, the arrows betoken the dialecticality, or how each level informs and interacts with the other.

A Synopsis of Bilingual Education Legislation: Sociohistorical Realities

When attempting to understand what transpires at a macro-level regarding language in bilingual education, a point of influence that merits touching upon is that of federal legislation.

What is formally sanctioned about the language of the classroom at this level can have far reaching and profound day-to-day influences about a bilingual child’s lexical selection when talking to others in and outside of the classroom. As a point of departure, Wiley & Wright

(2004) state that implementing measures of language policy “is complicated by the decentralized nature of education in the United States, where school districts have considerable authority concerning how they interpret and implement state policies” (p. 151). Notwithstanding, the

52 federal government asserts this authority with broad legislative initiatives. According to Saultz,

Fusarelli, & McEachin (2017), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), is commonly cited as a significant “starting point for the federal government to play a notable role in education policy” (p.427). War on Poverty33 rhetoric at a national level in the 1960s launched the dawn of the Bilingual Education Act” (BEA), or Title VII of the ESEA, into place (Sung,

2017). One year before the passing of the BEA of 1968, a congressman involved in the policy legislation proposed that one of the objectives of bilingual education was using “Spanish instruction as a means of improving English” and later commented that the “cause of this low educational attainment was due to the language problem34 alone.” (Sung, p. 309). According to

August & Hakuta, (1997), the act allowed local education agencies to provide “meaningful and equitable access for English-language learners to the curriculum” (p. 16). Prior to 1968, minority language students were largely ignored and found themselves in English immersion or

“sink-or-swim” programs (Wiley & Wright, 2004). The result of these types of policies, was made manifest through “increasing visibility” of the dropout rates for Latinos, Chicanos, and

Puerto Ricans (Del Valle, 2003). Although Spanish and languages other than English were considered as a means-to-the-dominant-language-end, the Act did “not explicitly require bilingual teaching or the use of the student’s native language” nor were districts given structural

33 According to Silver (1991), President Lyndon Johnson suggested that his War on Poverty reform would harness education as the remedy for poverty (including language minority groups) by having people “learn their way out of poverty” (p. 70). 34 Here, we see an example of Ruíz’s notion of “language as a resource” and “language as a problem”. The resource aspect as a means to an English end can be noted in Congressman Brown’s first quote to “fix” the language “problem”, as he suggests in the second citation. Had Ruíz’s (1984) concept of “language as a resource” been foregrounded as a validated form of communication in and of itself in language policy decisions for ELLs, as Gándara & Rumberger (2009) suggested, the system might have developed differently by using a more asset-based lens to interpret students’ abilities.

53 requisites, it did “encourage innovative programs designed to teach the students English”

(Stewner-Manzanares, 1988, p. 2). Despite the burgeoning focus on bilingual education, as this was the first time that language minority students received federal legislation (Petrzela, 2010), and the fact that nascent research at that time began to push back on the “sink-or-swim” approach to educating English language learners (Chandler & Plakos, 197035; Fishman, 1973;

Schneider, 1976; Saville-Troike, 1976), it would not be long before teachers and parents began asking what this macro-level entity actually was to look like pertaining the language of instruction in the classroom. Although BEA did indeed begin the long-awaited funding for bilingual instruction, its final iteration was silent on the specific issues of teaching in Spanish or any other second language (Petrzela, 2010). The choice of language of instruction, therefore, still lay with mid-level management (state and local educational agencies). Because this federal- level act (BEA) was not a mandate for the inner-layer execution (Del Valle, 2003), it could be argued that this lack of obligatory implementation could most definitely count as an influence (or lack thereof) on language of instruction in the classroom with bilingual students. Youth in the

Spanish-speaking community were dropping out of schools with language accessibility being a pivotal piece to academic success. As Suárez-Orozco, Suárez-Orozco, & Todorova (2009) posited, since school districts went on with business as usual, students would as well. In this section, we briefly see how federal policy having to do with language of instruction can be legislated and still remain ineffectual for English Language Learners (ELLs hereafter) in the classroom. When policies are administered and followed through with, however, we see a different effect with similar results, which is the topic of the next section.

35 An early piece of literature documenting how many Mexican American students early on may have been placed in classes for the mentally retarded based on their scores of a standardized test that was unfit for Spanish-speakers.

54 Increasing Accountability: Macrostructural Entities

Crawford (2004) points out that the aforementioned lack of accountability of language policy implementation at the classroom-level of education (and permissivity at the federal layer) would soon enough find its extremist legislative counterpart as the historical narrative proceeded.

As the Bilingual Education Act was replaced by Title III of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) at a governmental level, the space allotted for bilingual education was suddenly replaced with a move towards English-only instruction (Evans & Hornberger, 2005). This concept of English-heavy focus is articulated by Callahan & Gándara (2004), who maintain that immigrant children were frequently placed in ESL classes with little or no content instruction, which essentially hearkens back to similar issues found surrounding the aforementioned Lau case. Furthermore, Gándara &

Rumberger (2009) flesh out the frustrating concept to students that makes English a priority before allowing ELLs to have access to content, which has either “excluded immigrant students from schools altogether or restricted their education to instruction in a language that they do not yet understand” (p. 753). Similarly, in Crawford’s (2002) piece lamenting the demise of the

BEA, Obituary: The Bilingual Education Act, 1968-2002, the researcher points out that federal finances were used in new ways to determine accountability, which included the percentages of reclassified ELLs a school can produce in a given year. He goes on to say that this was a “180- degree reversal in language policy” in that the 1994 version of the BEA, “developing the English skills…and to the extent possible, the native-language skills” of ELLs (p. 1), which saw the children’s language as a resource. The new push towards English reframes the endeavor once again into a language-as-a-problem issue. According to education policy and politics researchers

Saultz, Fusarelli, & McEachin (2017), since the ESEA enactment in 1968, “a succession of presidential administrations gradually shifted the federal role from offering supplemental funding

55 for at-risk children to requiring greater accountability, oversight and control” (p.427).

Furthermore, Menken (2009) indicates that in the mid-level management of education at this time, “most states…implemented NCLB requirements to measure academic achievement by simply giving ELLs the same set of standardized tests as those already being used to assess native-English speakers” (p. 106). With this new policy in place, the influence on educator’s ability to choose a language of instruction was significant. Indeed, Menken (2006), analyzes how the effects of the national reform NCLB “dramatically impacts” (p. 521) English language learners and their learning based on these English language tests that are used to measure achievement in schools. She argues that in contemporary public education, “tests have become de facto language policy in schools, driving teaching and learning.” (p. 522). Findings from the researcher’s qualitative work demonstrate that across the ten New York high school sites used for this study, high stakes tests have served to establish language policy, curriculum, and teaching, which can be confirmed by the increased English language instruction, extended school schedule, and Saturday school program for ELLs that are caused by the testing mandates.

Menken suggests, “When language proficiency mediates performance on the standardized test that are widely being used…it places ELLs at a serious disadvantage.” (p. 522). Palmer and

Lynch (2008) point out a similar concept as they elaborate on the tension that teachers face when making decisions about language of instruction in that, while the test is given only in one language (with great pressures that push towards English), ELLs should be receiving L1 instruction as well. In subsequent work, Palmer and Snodgrass Rangel (2011) suggest that one of the negative consequences of the pressures of high-stakes testing is the inclination of teachers to “narrow the curriculum” (p. 618) by reducing the instruction of certain untested topics and emphasizing those subjects that are evaluated. This is corroborated by Au’s (2007)

56 metasynthesis of qualitative research pertaining to the relationship between high-stakes testing and classroom practice; although the researcher does not touch on language of instruction directly, pedagogic control manifested as a theme in that a “significant majority of the changes included an increase in teacher-centered instruction associated with lecturing and the direct transmission of test-related facts” (p. 263). De Jong & Harper (2005) and López, Scanlan, &

Gundrum (2013) concur by stating that not only do ELLs respond more effectively to having instruction that is built on their L1 and cultural experiences (the opposite of memorizing test facts), they also benefit greatly by having opportunities for cooperative learning. By investigating the causal link between pressures that stem from the accountability of NCLB and the adoption of these EOPs, they concluded that the subtle forms of coercion effectively use policy to disintegrate bilingual programs. In sum, Ravitch (2016) appropriately remarked, “test- based accountability and data-driven decision making” made it to where “whatever could not be measured did not count (p. 21)”. The research, therefore, illustrates that when measures are designed and standards are accounted for, a specific work pertaining to linguistic (in)flexibility gets done. In the case of the high-stakes testing movement, for example, the unwritten orientation of “language as a problem” becomes visible as what should now “count” for students, teachers, schools, districts, etc. does not place a premium on L1 maintenance, but on the transition to English for content access. The next section moves from legislation at the top to implementation as it trickles down into and in through the minds and mouths of bilingual students.

Federal Policy to District Expectations: From Legislation to Interpretation

57 The second level of analysis to be discussed is that of interpretation, which can loosely coincide with Ruíz’s36 (1984) notion of language-as-a-right. As time moved on, the push back from community began to force the hand of these agencies. In one monumental case in

California, for example, parents of national-origin children called into question both the language of instruction as well as the curricular content. Macías (2014) reports that the Lau v. Nichols

(1974) Supreme Court ruling found unconstitutional the idea of teaching non-native English speaking children first language classes and then content, which consequently made bilingual education the “remedy for this (form of) discrimination” (p.33). Hakuta (2011) articulates that merely providing the same distribution of materials and instruction did not constitute equitability for those who were English language learners. Nonetheless, Title VI as interpreted through Lau v. Nichols cultivated a development of programs and a form of accountability (known as the

“Lau Guidelines”) that utilized and ensured L1 instruction. This represents a noteworthy example of how federal legislation can potentially influence the language of instruction in the classroom for bilingual students. Despite the fact that, according to Del Valle (2003), “Lau did not endorse bilingual education, many lower courts understood the Court’s decision to be a mandate for bilingual education…and the only way for a school district to ‘cure’ language minorities” (p. 241). Although the Lau v. Nichols case most definitely got the native-language- programmatic ball rolling, according to Hakuta (2011), it was the Castañeda v. Pickard (1981), which dealt with “appropriate action”, that helped to organize the” linking of theory to programs, implementation, and outcomes” (p. 165). Ragan & Lesaux (2006) report that an update to this

36 In 1984, Richard Ruíz put forward three orientations toward language and its role in society, which “influence the nature of language planning efforts in any particular context (p.15)”. These dispositions, which reflect distinct attitudes toward language are: (1) language as a problem (2) language as a right (3) language as a resource.

58 policy in 1991 stated that ELLs could be taught English at the same time as content areas after proficiency is gained, but that academic parity must be achieved. Crawford (1997) has long argued that one persistent problem concerning linguistic competence has been that while proficiency in English has been a goal of Title VII, a “coequal priority has been achievement in academic content areas” (p. 12). Nevertheless, García & Torres-Guevara (2009) maintain that

Castañeda v. Pickard did not provide a directive as per a specific program, be it support through bilingual or ESL instruction. Hence, once again a policy is set in place superficially that does not find substantive direction or accountability within the inner workings of the classroom and the language of instruction being used by and to teach students.

Callahan, Wilkinson, & Muller (2010) suggest in a piece regarding the labeling and academic trajectories of ESL students that “while language services are federally mandated, the procedures for identification, placement and program of services vary at the school and district level” (p. 3), which is not only an issue of placement for ELLs, but also for instruction. Drawing from previous research (see Callahan & Gándara, 2004), the investigators go on to articulate that the achievement of language minority children could be affected by placement into less academically rigorous coursework due to some educators’ perceptions of ESL students being “at risk.” As poignantly mentioned, “while Lau mandates that students’ linguistic needs be met so that they may take advantage of the full academic curriculum offered in schools, it is also possible that in practice ESL placement functions to exclude them from those very courses” (p.

6). This is another substantial example of how an ostensibly progressive top-down policy decision with potentially humanizing benefits to ELLs can be disadvantageous in its carrying over to classroom-level policies and language choices of teachers in bilingual education.

Empirical research by Menken & Solorza (2014) validates this claim as they observed how ten

59 city schools in New York replaced their bilingual programs with English-only programs (EOP).

The next section explores how interpretation converts into implementation and ways in which agency attempts to speak back to how structural constraints are put in place by policy.

District Policy to Teacher Enactment: From Interpretation to Implementation

Within the micro-level discussion about language policy, it is virtually impossible not to touch on the topic of educator’s language ideologies, which is the third level of analysis.

Because the aforementioned national policy movements were silent regarding a compulsory language of instruction, as the choice trickled down through the hierarchy of power to the educator in the classroom, teacher language ideology inevitably came into play. As Hornberger

(2002) points out, localized practitioners being center stage of the policymaking process does not really get into full swing until the 1970s and 1980s, where Language Policy and Planning (LPP) scholars were “vigorously critiquing and questioning the descriptive models they had developed thereto, and they called regularly for more theoretically motivated LPP frameworks” (p. 4).

Although the terms implementational and ideological spaces would not be coined until later

(Hornberger, 2005), the idea of teacher-created spaces for student L1 development opening up in bilingual classrooms for language other than English was now emerging as part of the literature.

In contrast to how individuals in the outer and middle layers of Hornberger’s proverbial onion37 (federal government and school district level) “play it safe” by not committing to a specific type of bilingual education program, bilingual educators create, interpret, and

37 Ricento & Hornberger (1996) adopted the idea of an onion to help explain the continuum of language policy and planning approach in US classrooms. The outer layer represents broad federal policy and language objectives which is then operationalized into legislation and standards; middle layers include institutional level entities such as businesses, districts, or government offices which can give rise to curricula and materials; finally, the innermost layer centers on the interpersonal interactions of teachers and students in the classroom.

60 appropriate top-down language policy that is beneficial to their students. Johnson (2010) discovered ways that these practitioners in the inner layer agentively developed bilingual education as he remarked how the educator perspective “illuminated the power of bilingual education educators to work the implementational spaces in federal and state language policy to foster local ideological spaces which multilingualism is championed as a resource” (p. 76).

Although her research took place in a non-US context, Brown (2010) explored the ways that teachers function as policy actors in regional-language classes in Estonia through observations and formal and informal interviews. She found that while some practitioners “unwittingly helped to reproduce [deficit] ideologies of the regional [minoritized] language”, others sought to

“cultivate positive perceptions” and treat the lesser used language as a “regular” subject (p. 311).

At times, even within the same individual, there are contradictions between what is professed and what is carried out, which is what Varghese (2008) argues regarding the inseparability of an educator’s beliefs about language and teaching as well as the constraints that local and global policies impose upon them.

The complexity of these interactions between educator ideology and language policy has been reported by Palmer (2011) through a case study grounded in Bhaktin’s conception of dialogue, in which she discovered how two transitional bilingual educators wrestle with the tension of moving their students towards English while maintaining their native Spanish. Palmer concluded that while many bilingual educators engage in a “discourse of transition38”, some teachers implement an “ethic of caring and cross-cultural understanding” that explicitly value students’ funds of knowledge despite inequitable mandates from district and school level

38 A way in which Palmer suggests that third- through fifth-grade bilingual teachers refer to English skills with a connotation of intelligence while disregarding or negatively perceiving strong Spanish ability in their students.

61 language policies. Henderson (2017) further confirmed this as she conducted two case studies that display how the context of classroom and educator language ideologies “work together in complex ways to mediate teacher decision-making and the construction of classroom language policy”. In “both cases”, Henderson states, “there was a dynamic interplay between agency and structure” (p. 31). Despite this complex echo effect between structure and agency revealed in paradoxical moment-to-moment teacher decisions, Ricento & Hornberger (1996) position classroom educators and their concomitant ideologies “at the heart of language policy” (p. 417), which inevitably affects the achievement of language minority students. The innermost level of this onion, moreover, possesses and at times takes up the agency to speak back to a “language as a problem” orientation by implementing either a “language as a right” or “language as a resource” ideology, which sees ELL’s linguistic repertoires through an appreciative lens, rather than through one that should be cast aside (Ruíz, 1984). Regarding the language-as-a-right stance, humor has been shown to represent this agentive move to resistance against or reimagining of asymmetrical realities (Carpio, 2008; Carrillo, 2006; Cintrón, 1997; Martínez &

Morales, 2014, Chávez, 2011). Employing their language as a resource to create or interact humorously with others, moreover, has been shown to uncover linguistic competence and multi- linguistic awareness (Bell, 2009) as well as to display language and culture socialization through both formal and informal exchanges of verbal play (Schieffelin & Ochs, 1986).

When considering the expression of verbal humor by bilingual students, the linguistic environment was a crucial element to determine which language was allowed for students to use.

The structure, or easel, in this case, possessed a complex history and as a result, a burdensome actuality for many bilingual students. While the treatment of their abilities varied from administration to administration as well as from teacher to teacher, what could be sure was that

62 that the liberty or limitation that the adults in education system allowed in the students’ lives would have attendant results.

Much in the way that a piece of artwork is inseparable from the constituent elements which helped to create it (brushstrokes and styles applied from the paintbrushes, colors from the palette, the texture of the canvas as the backdrop), discussing the humor apart from the aforementioned concepts of the sociopolitical contexts, community cultural wealth, and linguistic capital would be both myopic and inaccurate to the holistic process and entity. References to these procedural components and companion literature have been mentioned in this chapter so as to have an understanding of what was addressed by this research. By way of summary, the figurative symbols at play in a Painter’s domain are as follows: (1) palettes-represented colorfully by their cultural experiences, backgrounds, worldviews, and schema (2) paintbrushes- the agentic application of resources and repertoires with which bilingual students make use of the paint (ethnolinguistic verbal play and humor) to create artful expressions (3) canvas-the site of humor wherein the brushstrokes are performed (4) easel-the macro-structural and sociohistorical constraints that exist for bilingual students in the US public-school system. In the final analysis, these elements are being employed in order to understand the painters (Spanish-speaking students) themselves as they maneuver through a journey of education rife with entanglements, confusion, and hazards. Oftentimes throughout this voyage, they are denied access to the tools that they possess, which puts them in a position of disadvantage in relation to their co-sojourners.

Researchers who suggest the importance of being conscientious and of leveraging a student’s background schema often claim, moreover, that these knowledges are potentially beneficial to the students, teacher, and learning community (Faulstich Orellana, 2003; Ladson-Billings, 1995;

Lee, 2007; Moll et al., 2005; Zentella, 1997).

63 One noteworthy overlapping of studies of humor and language is that they both draw on students’ repertoires of practice, which “attends to individuals’ linguistic and cultural-historical backgrounds as well as to their contributions to practices that connect with other activities in which they commonly engage” (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003, p.22). More specifically regarding bilingual students and their use of humor in the classroom, Bell and Pomerantz (2015) remind us that “L2 users are not deficient communicators; rather their repertoire serves them well in the contexts in which they habitually participate and during the process of learning it will stretch to include the communicative resources necessary for participation in new contexts” (p. 107).

MacSwan (2017) argues that “bilinguals, like monolinguals, have a single linguistic repertoire but a richly diverse mental grammar (p. 167). Ultimately, it “reflects the idea that Students of

Color arrive at school with multiple language and communication skills” which include not only a variety of genres such as “storytelling tradition, parables, stories (cuentos), and proverbs

(dichos)”, but a panoply of capabilities such as “memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme” (Yosso, 2005, pp.

78-79). Much like this display of verbal freedom serves as a phenomenon that redefines preconceived boundaries of language, humor acts accordingly in its ability to draw from and reach across categorical lines that have been established, while creating space for new boundaries. In his work on the symbolic boundaries of humor between different cultures,

Kuipers (2009) suggests that forms of conversational humor are related to social background and that one’s sense of humor shows what individuals find important in themselves, in others, and in social life. Similarly, both the constructs of humor and translanguaging have the potential to serve as spaces for reimagining structural controls. In the findings from her dataset about humor in an adult ESL classroom, for instance, Waring (2012) discovered that language play has an

64 essence that lies in its transformative power of stepping outside institutional roles and constraints” (p. 16). Humor has a tendency to find ways to question the establishment in ways that are at once effective and more subtle than other forms of antagonism. Humor, in other words, gets away with it.

The present dissertation seeks to add pieces to a more holistic puzzle of trying to understand primarily bilingual students in addition to both practical and theoretically grounded advice for teachers committed to implementing culturally sustaining pedagogy in their classrooms, as well as advancing a more positive schooling experience for emergent bilinguals.

The heart of this project intends to support work being done about community cultural wealth by extending its categories to understand how a theoretical “humorous capital” allows students to navigate a difficult system. It also is designed, from a phenomenological point of view, to merely see where the use of comedy and verbal play fit into the already established categories of community wealth that is present, yet often overlooked in the young lives of bilingual students.

One of the challenges that teachers face with student interaction is understanding their prior knowledge enough to validate students’ lived experiences, harness their resources for teaching and learning, and creating community in the classroom. The situation is far more complex when monolingual teachers are in charge of collaborating with Spanish-speaking students, who presumably possess an entire wealth of linguistic and cultural capital with which the educators are unfamiliar. The culturo-linguistic practices of bilingual students are salient features that can point to success both socially and academically. When bilingual individual’s personal experiences are allowed merge with or exist outside of official discourses, humor can be a place that serves to emancipate certain knowledges that the students possess. Both community cultural wealth and translanguaging are ideal for observing and deciphering instances of humor

65 negotiation amongst Spanish-speaking students within different educational contexts. By using these concepts together as a framework for different sets of data, I was able to gain insight into how bilingual students accessed full lexical reach to navigate their surroundings by creating community or circumventing school ordinances through humor. How all of this process transpired methodologically is the topic of the next chapter.

66 Chapter 3: Methodology

La risa es lo que cala (Laughter is what gets through)

—Unicornio Azul, comediante de Monterrey

The following discusses investigative approaches that I implemented for this qualitative research project, which was a case study based on a Spanish-speaking39group of third graders in a public school in Central Texas. The objective was to grasp an understanding of both individual and collective iterations of naturalistic humor and how both language and culture function during this process. Throughout this process, I endeavored to follow Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (2008) lead that captures research as “portraits…defined by aesthetic, as well as empirical and analytic dimensions” (p. 13). For the purposes of this study, humor was analyzed as verbal play40, in which Spanish-speaking students apply non-serious language for a variety of reasons. Humor is a complex form of communication that often embodies a complex manner of presenting multi- level messages simultaneously. Much like with the sociolinguistic phenomenon of convergence/divergence, in which speakers use affiliative/disaffiliative forms of speaking to either build relationships or distance themselves from an interlocutor, humor allows for a re- construction of relationships and situations. Humor was unique to this study for two reasons:

First, the majority of humor studies in education are teacher-focused (Kaplan & Pascoe, 1977;

Edwards & Gibboney, 1992; Kher, Molstad, & Donahue, 1999). Secondly, there is a dearth of research that looks at humor through a sociocultural lens or as community cultural wealth, which

39 By employing the term “Spanish-speaking”, to acknowledge the fact that first and foremost, that is what they spoke. While considering whether or not to employ emergent bilinguals because of the inescapable fact that English imposed itself so readily onto the students, I am opting to stick with an aspect of their identity which is rarely highlighted in positive light. 40Lantolf’s (1997) work concerning the acquisition of L2 Spanish, can include forms of non- serious language usage such as humor.

67 is central to the observations, analyses, interpretations, and implications of this study. In this chapter I justify the need for qualitative research, discuss the main theoretical ideas and describe the conceptual framework that was pertinent to this dissertation. Subsequently, I substantiate the research design in relation to the research questions. Following that, I provide a background to the study and explain the rationale of the selection of the research site. Lastly, I delineate the various data sources, methods of analysis, and intrinsic limitations to the study.

A Qualitative Approach to Humor Study of Bilingual Elementary Students

According to Mertens (2015), case study research is an inquiry-based manner “used to thoroughly describe complex phenomena, such as recent events, important issues, or programs, in ways to unearth new and deeper understandings of how people interact with components of these phenomena" (p. 245). Moreover, it is based on constructivist assumptions that knowledge is a social construction of reality and must provide information about the backgrounds of the participants and the contexts in which they are being studied. This particular investigation employed a case study model41 involving a group of Spanish-speaking students in a dual- language school in Central Texas. Multiple data collection strategies, explained in more detail later, were conducted in order to glean what later resulted in qualitative data.

As aforementioned, this study was a qualitative endeavor. It attempted to capture laughter and humor as psychological and social functions, which lent themselves to the thick description and detailed observation that can be acquired with this form of research. This research was based predominantly on an interpretivist paradigm. I mention “predominantly” because, in a sense, I was making an assumption that there was a “truth” that I was able to

41 I am choosing to align with the case study model as defined by Merriam (1998) that suggests that “reality is constructed by individuals interacting with their social worlds” (p. 6).

68 observe and qualify; namely, the phenomena of humor and laughter found with this group of minoritized students. This quasi-positivist assumption was that I expected humor/laughter to exist collectively, individually, or in the different environments where I observed. That being said, I fell in line with Mishler’s (1979) seminal piece that advocates that “the task (of the researcher) is not to exhaust the singular meaning of an event, but to reveal the multiplicity of meanings, and…it is through the observer’s encounter with the event that these meanings emerge” (p.10). Against this background and in contrast to any deterministic approach that seeks to confirm an a priori hypothesis, the paradigm and epistemology that dominated was that of interpretivism. According to Sipe & Constable (1996), interpretivism discusses reality in a subjective manner and that allows for multiple truths that are uncovered through dialogic discourse. The researchers state, “interpretivists attempt to understand situations from the point of view of those experiencing the situations and are concerned with what will assist them in doing so—what is heuristically powerful. Communication is viewed as a give-and-take, transactive process, where X and Y inform and influence each other” (p. 158).

I approached this research with the understanding of the group of students as a culture.

According to the linguistic anthropologist Alessandro Duranti (1997), one way to define

“culture” is as a system of participation. This definition rests on the assumption that “any action in the world, including verbal communication, has an inherently social, collective, and participatory quality” (p. 46). Consequently, I entered into this investigation committing to the same proposition of how I framed my observations in the classroom. Realizing that within an interpretivist paradigm researchers are susceptible to reading into the data what is sought after, safeguards by way of multiple methods (described below) were set into place to guard against my tacit understandings of the data. As Boas (1942) suggested over 70 years ago, while

69 language is a universal concept, its expression is culturally relative. In a similar manner, humor was prevailingly existent in the elementary classroom, yet contingent upon individuals’ backgrounds as well as the climate therein. With this in mind, through observation and detailed discourse analysis (as explained below), I honed in on both the patterns and particularities of classrooms and individual speakers in this study. In order to do so, I first need to briefly address how I planned to understand the microcosm in light of the macrocosm of this group of students.

Conceptual Framework

The conceptual framework of this study principally drew from three elements of the forenamed Painter’s-domain metaphor. The elements that I used to form the lens through which

I conducted observations, analyze/interpret data, and theorize were: (1) the palette (the students’ ethnolinguistic choices and verbal repertoires); (2) paintbrushes (agentic application of resources and repertoires); (3) the paint (ethnolinguistic verbal play and humor). While the easel

(macrostructural and sociohistorical constraints) and canvas (local context) were indeed weighty constituents in the backdrop of the interactions, the three preceding notions above were those that ultimately helped me gain insight about the painters (Spanish-speaking students themselves). This study was informed by the intersection of the sociocultural aspects of two theories as they pertain to Spanish-speaking EB third graders within a school environment that prioritized the English language and its concomitant culture. The facet of the theory of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) that I foregrounded in this study were the six capitals

(aspirational, linguistic, familial, social, navigational, and resistant) that the researcher delineates as being “an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by

Communities of Color to survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (p. 77). The second theory from which I drew was that of translanguaging. The theoretical definition that

70 made sense for a study about humor originates from a 2015 piece authored by three seasoned scholars in the field, Otheguy, García, & Reid (2015). “Translanguaging”, they propose, “is the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages”

(p. 281). The distinctive characteristics that conjoin these two theories were that they: (1) highlighted tools utilized by non-dominant individuals. In this case, they were Spanish- speaking EB students from Central and North America in the context of a deemed late-exit bilingual model school in central Texas; (2) were able to be instantiated by the students in the immediacy of the moment (3) intersected with humor, which as a social phenomenon also relishes in the agency of navigating across different community settings. By examining humor generated by Spanish-speaking students, I gained insight about cultural knowledge that sought to stay afloat in a sea of hegemony as they were armed with antecedent linguistic skills providing just the buoyancy to do so.

Community Cultural Wealth and Humor

While the literature review above already delved into what we know regarding linguistic and cultural capitals of the community cultural wealth (CCW) framework, this section speaks specifically to how this was employed as a lens to recognize, understand, and interpret humor from

Spanish-speaking third graders. As aforementioned, the six capitals that Yosso (2005) theorizes ways in which communities of color maneuver different contexts in their lives. In order to link the capitals to studies already in existence regarding humor, I created the table below (Table 3.1) to highlight some of the incipient subconscious academic dialogue between the two phenomena.

Although the academic literature is scantily sprinkled amongst diverse disciplines, through different decades, and from distinct countries, there is an acknowledgment of humor as a

71 mechanism used with intentionality in discrete social contexts. Upon arrival to the theorizing chapters of this dissertation, the question arose as to whether or not a hypothetical humorous capital might be added as a color to the palette of Spanish-speaking students as they employed it to persevere in a system that often does not acknowledge what they bring to the proverbial canvas.

Table 3.1: This table shows the relation of Yosso’s (2008) cultural capitals to extant studies that operationalize humor from a sociocultural perspective

Cultural Capitals (Yosso, 2005) Relevant Humor Research aspirational capital DeNicolo, C. P., González, M., Morales, S., & Romaní, L. (2015). Teaching through testimonio: Accessing community cultural wealth in school. Journal of Latinos and Education, 14(4), 228-243.

familial capital Bermudez, J. M., & Mancini, J. A. (2013). Familias fuertes: Family resilience among Latinos. In Handbook of family resilience (pp. 215-227). Springer, New York, NY.

linguistic capital Moalla, A. (2015). Intercultural strategies to co‐construct and interpret humor. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 25(3), 366-385.

navigational capital Gallo, S. (2016). Humor in Father–Daughter Immigration Narratives of Resistance. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 47(3), 279-296.

resistant capital Carrillo, R. (2006). Humor casero mujerista— womanist humor of the home: Laughing all the way to greater cultural understandings and social relations. Chicana/Latina education in everyday life: Feminista perspectives on pedagogy and epistemology, 181-196.

72 Table 3.1: (continued) social capital Fielding, R., & Harbon, L. (2013). Examining bilingual and bicultural identity in young students. Foreign language annals, 46(4), 527-544.

As Yosso (2005) points out, these categories are not exhaustive nor mutually exclusive to each other and, in fact, have varying degrees of overlap when parsed out in analysis and discussion.

For example, a student’s navigational capital might employ familial capital in order for a student to be successful at a particular endeavor. Overcoming challenges in school with navigational capital is described by DeNicolo, González, Morales, & Romaní, (2015) in reference to minoritized Spanish speakers accessing familial consejos (advice). In the same way that Davies

(2017) considered humor’s implications as a mutual understanding of shared social significance, social capital can be built by participating in acts of resistant capital expressed by linguistic capital, such as what we find in the work of Martínez & Morales (2014), who explored Latin@ bilingual teenagers practicing transgressive forms of humor through wordplay.

Much like the ways that the categorical lines of Yosso’s (2005) capitals overlap (i.e. familial capital could be also understood as aspirational capital), I employed humor as a lens through which to understand how Latin@ youth drew on multiple capitals. Because the participants in the study had origins or family residing in Spanish-speaking countries (Mexico,

Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras), it would be fitting to give a brief backdrop to see how humor is wielded as capital in these contexts.

El Humor Político: A Macrosocial View. Community cultural wealth is not difficult to spot when considering how the societal role of humor in the countries of origin of some of these

Spanish speaking third graders. The political theorist and humor scholar Samuel Schmidt (1996)

73 has quipped about the extensive sweep that humor embodies in Mexican society. He states, “el humor es la opinión libre” [humor means free speech, linguistic capital] (p. 12), “el humor está compuesto de significados y símbolos ocultos” [humor is made up of hidden symbols and meanings, social capital] (p. 16), “el humor es un rechazo y resistencia informal” [humor represents an informal rejection and resistance, resistant capital] (p. 17), “es el ingenio social para aliviar la frustración” [humor is a collective form of ingenuity designed to alleviate frustration, navigational capital] (p. 18), “reordena la importancia de los valores, símbolos, y héroes” [humor re-orders the importance of values, symbols, and heroes, familial capital] (p.

21), “representa la visión de los vencidos” (humor represents the vision of a conquered people, aspirational capital) (p. 21), and even with all that, “crea deleite y relajamiento” (humor creates delight and a sense of calm) (p. 23). Yosso’s capitals are well reflected in Schmidt’s’ portraits of humor and can be extended to include politically-driven humor either Latin America or by Latin@s in the United States. This notion is echoed by Celemín (2015) who states that humor, “constituye una herramienta de enorme valor para situar a las figuras de autoridad…en un plano horizontal [constitutes a valuable tool used to establish equilibrium to a power asymmetry] (p. 40).

The following Table 3.2 surveys a compilation of humorists, satirists, theatrical performers, musicians, political commentators, and cartoonists from every Spanish-speaking

Latin American country that artistically utilize(d) comedy as their canvas to paint messages of frustration, angst, liberation, change, and hope. Although my intent is not to essentialize all

Latin@s into a reified description, by exploring what was coined by Padilla (1985) as latinidad42

42 A term that can interchangeably mean “pan-Latin@ identity”, Padilla (1985) and Calderón (1992) discuss how latinidad is situational and useful for establishing political power to obtain political objectives. According to Rodríguez (2003), latinidad represents “a particular

74 (latino-ness), it is worth observing under what circumstances and how individuals from the homes or family-origin countries of the students in this dissertation study employ humor to speak back in resistance or to foment solidarity.

Table 3.2: A sample of national-level political humor in Latin America

Latin American Country Examples of humor used Social Function Politically Nationwide Argentina Mafalda Comic book related to local and international politics Bolivia Tra-La-La Show con Daniel “Los ricos se sonríen, y los Travesí pobres se carcajean” (The rich smile and the poor die laughing) Chile Los Locos del Humor “Nos interesa la política, sólo hacemos el humor que está en la calle” (We are interested in politics and we only perform street comedy. Colombia Jaime Garzón Comedian, journalist, and peace activist murdered by suspected government hitmen in 1999 Cuba Los Pichy Boys A Cuban duo headquartered in Miami with an anti-Castro political stance Dominican Republic Fuáquiti (Alexis Peña, A weekly tabloid format Wilson Díaz, Cristian based in Santo Domingo that Hernández, Rafael Sánchez) humorously criticizes the country’s political situation Ecuador Cartas a Charly A journalist for Correo del Sur publication who comically answers subscribers’ political concerns El Salvador Otto A political cartoonist and considered the first comic to write a series of humorous books in the country

geopolitical experience but it also contains within it the complexities and contradictions of immigration, (post)(neo)colonialism, race, color, legal status, class, nation, language and the politics of location” (p.10).

75 Table 3.2: (cont.)

Guatemala Jimmy Morales A comedian turned president of the country Honduras El Frijol Terrible con Carlos A radio program that socially critiqued the country in Sagado Spanish, English, and Garifuna Mexico Brozo (Víctor Trujillo) An intentionally unkempt, obscene, and aggressive anti- clown who is a political commentator and comedic journalist Nicaragua El Güegüense A folkloric play consisting of indigenous theater/dance which acts as a “symbolic archetype for perceived politicians or unaccountable public institutions” (Martínez, 2006) Panama El Corruptonario, Ornel A satirical-political piece designed to provoke laughter Sánchez and reflection

Paraguay “El Bicho”, Nicodemus A humorist and illustrator that publishes in the daily Espinosa newspaper “La Nación es de Todos” Peru Otra Vez Andrés, Andrés Political cartoonist and satirist who shares humor Edery through the publication Somos Uruguay Plop, Telecataplúm A variety television show under the military dictatorship when humor and music were the few spaces to have freedom of expression Venezuela El Chigüire Popular A satirical website based out of Miami that offers social critiques of national conditions in Venezuela

What seems to be ubiquitous in Latin American humor is that it is often under conditions which free expression is compromised to some degree. In their seminal book Cultural Action for

76 Freedom, Freire & da Veiga (1970) suggest that “there is a fundamental dimension to these societies resulting from their colonial phase: their culture was established and maintained as a

‘culture of silence’…the masses are subjected to the same kind of silence by the power elites” (p.

2). Where there exists a silencing, humor tends to transcend the restraint of imposed verbal shackles. As a reaction to this and as a manner to push back against such forms of oppression, the award-winning Colombian investigative political journalist María Teresa Ronderos, posits that “effective satire can shake power and speak truth to power, and in some countries, humor is one of the remaining avenues through which those things are possible” [emphasis added]

(Knight Center, 2018). Scribed out with an analogous message from the heaviness of a federal prison in California, the Cuban intelligence officer convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1998, Gerardo Hernández, , reflects about the double nature of humor:

Pienso que el humor es algo muy serio, y algunos consideran que no es muy compatible

eso de ser humorista, de enfrentar la vida con cierto sentido de la jarana y, a la vez

mantener una actitud seria y responsable ante la vida. [I think that humor is something

that is very serious, and some believe that the ideas of seeing the lighter side of life and

maintaining a serious and responsible attitude about life are incompatible.] (Hernández

Nordelo, 2002, p. 17)

Humor paradoxically and simultaneously expresses both the gravitas and levity of a situation. This idea is echoed in an interview with Luís Valdez (1967), founder of the 1960s

California-based Teatro Campesino (Farmworkers Theater), as he discusses the perplexing and almost contradictory acquiescence of humor in the face of the mistreatment of migratory

Mexican workers:

I think humor is our major asset and weapon, not only from a satirical point of view, but

77 from the fact that humor can stand up on its own and is a much more healthy child of the

theatre than let’s say tragedy or realism….We use comedy because it stems from a

necessary situation—the necessity of lifting the morale of our strikers, who have been on

strike for seventeen months. When they go to a meeting it’s long and drawn out; so we

do comedy, with the intention of making them laugh—but with a purpose. We try to

make social points, not in spite of the comedy, but through it…. I’ve noticed one thing

about audiences. When they see something they recognize as a reality, they laugh. Here

in the Teatro we sometimes work up imitation—of personalities, animals, or incidents.

Impersonations are funny, why? Just because the impersonation itself comes so close to

the reality. People say, “’Yes, that’s the way it is,’ and they laugh. If it’s a reality they

recognize as their own, they’ll laugh and perhaps tears will come to their eyes. (Bagby,

p. 77)

As Valdez points out, in the face of a toilsome and despotic scenario, Mexican and Mexican-

American workers exude laughter amongst tears and joviality with purpose. Upon closer analysis, one discovers the dual natures of humor before a dichotomous situation. On one hand, there is a structural easel-esque assembly in place, often symbolized by an oppressive government, business, or public institution. On the other, there is an agentic utensil which chooses to artistically and often furtively criticize the structure with a palatable merriment through which Yosso’s notions of community cultural wealth find a channel. Hernández

Nordelo’s book title El amor y el humor todo lo pueden” (Love and humor can do all things) suggests, humor serves as a double-edged sword for mirthfully overcoming senses of injustices, persecution, marginalization, or subjugation. Whereas the Spanish-speaking student-participants

78 of this study are certainly not underpaid and overworked migrant workers, nor are they detained in glum incarceration, the argument can be made that they are facing herculean tasks of productivity expectations in a system that can either invisibilize, exclude, or censure them

(Flores, 2005; Moll, 1992; MacSwan, 2000). While this section surveyed how the palette of humor is sourced by cultural capital both individually and collectively, which can permeate even national Discourse (Gee, 2015), a measure of analysis that is concomitantly germane to this study is that which transpires at a conversational and empirical discourse43 level. In order to see in what ways Spanish-speakers carry out this humor I employed the second part of my conceptual framework—translanguaging.

Translanguaging and Humor

Throughout the undertaking of this dissertation, I sought to understand to what extent and in what ways translanguaging, community cultural capitals, and humor intersect. As mentioned in my Painter’s domain-metaphor, the paintbrush symbolized the agentic application of resources and repertoires of the Spanish-speaking students. Students were able to summon from their background knowledges (palettes) and employ through praxis (paintbrushes) their iterations of ethnolinguistic expressions of humor (paint). By way of capturing the cascading of this movement, I employed García, Johnson, & Seltzer’s (2017) concept and term of the asset-based

“translanguaging corriente”, in which bilingual students “flow” (akin to that of a water current)

43 The educational sociolinguist James Paul Gee draws a line of distinction between “Big” ‘D’ Discourse” and “little ‘d’ discourse”. The former is meant to “capture the ways in which people enact and recognize socially and historically significant identities or “kinds of people” through well-integrated combinations of language, actions, interactions, objects, tools, technologies, beliefs, and values.” (p. 1). The latter (discourse) sets a smaller context and “studies how the flow of language-in-use across time and the patterns and connections across this flow of language make sense and guide in interpretation” (p. 2). “Language”, he states, “is a tool for three things: saying, doing, and being.” (p.1).

79 both linguistically and culturally in order to “create something new [emphasis added] from what seems like a distinct feature” (p. 61). As students were fluid alongside each other, they were able to not only create, but were equipped to “navigate the surges, backflows, whirlpools, and eddies of the larger conversational river” in which they find themselves as minoritized citizens within restrictive environments (Henderson & Author, 2018). It is at this point that humor, which often transcends these boundaries anyway, fit nicely with the corriente. Referring once again to the interview of the founder of Teatro Campesino (Farmworker’s Theater) of the 1960s, Valdez comments on the fluidity of language in order to enact humor with a purpose:

Songs are usually in Spanish and introduced with English explanations, although

Augustin “Augie” Lira, the first Teatro member, recently composed some in English.

Dialogue fluctuates between English and Spanish, but with little loss of meaning—

Spanish and English slang are commonly known anyway, and wherever either language

is not understood, there is little visible doubt as to the significance of an event.” (p. 72)

The undoubtable overlap between social and cultural knowledge and experience coupled with a flowing between languages as humor brings across a meaningful message is a powerful testament to the confluence of the palette, paintbrush, and paint of the Painter’s domain- metaphor. On one hand, there is a collective pushback against the capitalist-coloniality of the domineering overseers of the workers. On the other hand, the release of that tension corporately allows for an emancipatory and even gratifying re-imagining of the hierarchical structure that keeps them subdued. As shown in Figure 3.1, the patroncito (diminutive form of “boss”) is represented as a pig-faced miser as he brags about his holdings in the work “The Two Faces of the Boss”.

80

Fig. 3.1: The patroncito (diminutive form of boss) vaunts about his wealth to the hired esquirol (strike-breaker). Humor was employed in El Teatro Campesino as a way to speak back to power.

Whereas access to a patrón (boss) or maestro (teacher) and their accompanying capitals are typically well gatekept from their subordinates, humor here permits an entrance to a spatiality in which the creators of the mockery can disrupt power and tip the asymmetrical scales. Based on some of the data that I collected for this dissertation, this type of humor was present when monolingual English-speaking teachers held certain expectations that were unattainable to some monolingual/bilingual Spanish-speaking students. Said another way, the mobility of a translanguaging corriente, allowed for the possibilities of students to enact this certain form of psychokinesis44 through humor.

44 From the Greek ψυχή (“psyche”), meaning “mind, soul, spirit, or breath and κίνησις (“kinesis”), meaning literally “motion produced by the mind” (Braude, 2002, p. 21). Together, they refer to an ability to mentally have influence on a system. By this I mean that, the power of the mind and volition of a student can “move” or reorganize the pieces of a puzzle that has historically depicted them as inferior. (Valenzuela & Rubio, 2018)

81 Another salient overlapping between translanguaging and humor was captured in the words of the following study about bilingual Anglo-French humor: “One reason advanced for the popularity of linguistically based humor [was] that language is a rule-based system, and humor thrives on rule violation at a number of different levels: phonology, morphology, semantics, syntax, and pragmatics“(Leeds, 1992, p. 129). Montes Alcalá (2015), moreover, wrote about

Latin@ literature in the US and finds that translanguaging (or “stylistic switching”) [was] a frequently used device to play with the language or to transgress linguistic conventions” (p. 272).

The notions of community cultural wealth and translanguaging worked well in concert as a framework to understand how bilingual students got at humorous interactions in their schooling experiences. The creative translanguaging space operating as a paintbrush that implemented colors and hues from the palette of a student’s cultural experiences and background, humor provided a prototypical canvas for symbiosis to manifest and set the verbal workmanship on exhibition. Zentella (2003) contemplated:

But how do Spanglish, calques, loans, loan translations, puns and dialect jokes constitute

responses to the racializing discourse Latin@s are subjected to by guardians of white

public spaces? After all, the linguistic and cultural prowess that they require and the wit

that they reflect are lost on monolingual speakers of English and cannot be expected to

dislodge their negative attitudes. (p. 61)

As a budding lens was fashioned about how to acknowledge this as well as how to understand the function of what work is getting done through humor (linguistically, ideologically, creatively), a greater appreciation blossomed as a result. The researcher concludes:

82 Spanish wordplay that crosses national and regional boundaries reaffirms the homeland’s

ways of saying things in the very act of sharing them with a wider audience. These

practices are part of the linguistic glue that binds Latin@s from distinct communities to

each other, fostering a pan-Latin@ consciousness that finds strength in differences as

well as similarities. (p. 61)

Both the constructs of humor and translanguaging served as spaces for reimagining structural controls. In the findings from her dataset about humor in an adult ESL classroom, Waring

(2012) discovered that language play has an essence that lies in its transformative power of stepping outside institutional roles and constraints” (p. 16). As I observed Spanish-speaking elementary students in classrooms interacting with other bilingual and monolingual teachers and classmates, power asymmetries such as those reflected in the findings of other researchers were present (Palmer, 2009; Darder, 2015; Palmer & Martínez, 2013). As I advanced through the process of the research, I wondered to myself if there would be elements of, as Sorensen (2008) discusses, humor acting as a strategy of non-violent (or oppositional) resistance to oppression.

Beyond these inequities within the schoolhouse walls, larger narratives of documentation status, deportation, and immigration inevitably weigh down on many of the students who were (or whose parents were) undocumented. Because of these lived realities, I posited, students would resort to humor as they linguistically process all that they were up against. Although the empirical evidence was scant (due to the phenomenon being under-researched), the role of humor in these narratives has been captured. Beyond Gallo’s (2016) report of how a young girl and her father retold the counterstory of a run-in with an immigration officer, Allard (2015) expressed her shock to find out how students were dealing with these imminent threats of la migra through “deportation humor” (p. 492). “While their jokes seem flippant”, she stated about

83 these newcomer ESL adolescents and their continuous implementation of relajo45, “they may have served as a coping mechanism for lives that were in many ways fraught with risk (p. 493).

Overview Of The Study

This dissertation reports the results of the investigation about how emergent-bilingual third graders leveraged and engaged in forms of humor in the contexts of a classroom with two bilingual teachers, a monolingual 3rd grade teacher, and a monolingual art teacher. As I suggested in the Painter’s domain-graphic organizer in Chapter 2, I addressed the intersection of the students’ community cultural wealth (palettes) and full linguistic repertoires as expressed through translanguaging (paintbrushes). Out of this, I examined how they created and interacted in humorous ways (content on the canvas) while being simultaneously constrained by a socio- historical context that prioritized English as the dominant language (easel). The theoretical underpinnings that resonated with this study stem from sociocultural linguistics, which according to Bucholtz & Hall (2008), is “an interdisciplinary field [that] coheres less around a set of theories, methods or topics than a concern with a general question: how does the empirical study of language (and in this case, humor and language) illuminate social and cultural processes?” (p. 405). As far as the type of research that this most closely represented, Moore,

Lapan, & Quartoli (2012) define case study as:

45 When conducting searches for research on Spanish-speaking individuals, I found that the search word “humor” (in Spanish) yielded certain results that were largely European in origin and literary in discipline. Relajo, however, opened up access to what I am getting at in this study. Largely a Latin American based word, relajo carries a wide range of meanings, even contradictory in their usage and interpretation in the Spanish-speaking world. Depending on the region and the context, it can mean, but is not limited to American English equivalents of rest, relaxation, laxity, depravity, bliss, peace, heaven, joke, a loosening up, mess. (“Relajo”, n.d.). While the word etymologically, therefore, portrays an accurate reflection of the abovementioned tension between what humor is and what it does, experientially it is what I anticipate to find with the group of Spanish-speaking students in an environment that is largely English dominant.

84 An investigative approach used to thoroughly describe complex phenomena…in ways to

unearth new and deeper understandings of these phenomena. Specifically, this

methodology focuses on the concept of case, the particular example of instance from a

class or group of events, issues, programs, and how people interact with components of

these phenomena” (p. 243-244)

Because the conclusion of this dissertation observed the phenomena of the artist’s domain altogether, and in light of the discoveries of macro-level influence of the education system vis-à- vis the volition of the students, there was an element of critical ethnography that was pertinent.

According to Castagno (2012), critical ethnography “is a form of research that attempts to account for and highlight the complex relationship between structural constraints on human action and autonomous, active agency by individuals and groups” (p. 374). I believe that qualitative research of this nature is important because of the explanatory power it may give to such phenomena that occurs daily and that goes largely unnoticed. Two goals of this investigation were to see not only what cultural capital insights humor from Spanish-speaking students could engender, but also whether or not it was an indicator of systemic issues in which humor itself could serve as a form of micro-resolution therein. The heart of this research was to move the academic conversation beyond a diagnosis of the macrostructural constraints and to understand how student agentic affordances functioned despite the macrostructural constraints.

Research Questions and Design

This dissertation addressed the following research questions.

(1) In what ways do minoritized emergent bilinguals mobilize their cultural capitals

around spaces of humor?

85 (2) How does humor function as a site for emergent bilinguals’ agentic affordances

within structural constraints?

By answering the above questions and following Martínez’s (2010) study of transgressive bilingual verbal play, I endeavored to “re-present this wordplay as a potential window into the rich ‘underlife’ of a classroom” (p. 4). My aspirations were to render visible humorous conversations and interactions of emergent bilinguals and understand how this served as a transformative space. In lieu of providing a testable hypothesis in this study, I sought to exploratively observe how these students utilized and reacted to humor. As mentioned above, although this was primarily a qualitative study, I did not want to dismiss the possibility of having some quantitative aspects of the data gathering which might answer such hypothetical questions as “How many times did the kids laugh or create humor within a given day in art class compared to their homeroom environment?” or “Compared to lessons in Science, are there more or less opportunities taken to be humorous or laugh in Reading or Math?” or "Where did I find the most instances of humor?”. While these types of sub-questions were not the overarching focus of the project and were addressed indirectly in the findings, they served to not only add a more robust account in the initial phase of data collection and also generated leads as to how to progress in the subsequent research. An example of such quantification comes from a prominent researcher of humor in education (Bell, 2007), who followed three young-adult English language learners across a variety of contexts with native English speakers. During this mixed methods study, she discovered that out of the 541 examples of conversational humor, English language learners initiated 204 instances and 337 of them were started by native speakers of English. To reiterate, this this type of number tallying served to bolster arguments and thicken descriptions that surfaced as data was analyzed.

86 Methods

For this descriptive qualitative study of humor employed by 23 Spanish-speaking 3rd graders, the approach that I discussed hailed from ethnography of communication and was strongly supported by the functionalist46 work of Dell Hymes (1972). Having noticed a deficiency regarding language as part of culture in the field of anthropology in the mid-20th century, the researcher began to theorize a number of concepts surrounding the linguistic practices of communities. An observation that illustrates Hymes’ understanding of the complexities of these practices states that, “the way we communicate with each other is constrained by culture…but it also reveals and sustains culture” (Ammon, 2006, p. 598). Within this Spanish-speaking group, (AVID 3, hereafter) birthplaces ranged from distinct countries in

Latin America (Honduras, Guatemala, Colombia, and Mexico) to the very neighborhood school where the research was conducted. Because having some Spanish-speaking background was a supposed prerequisite for being part of this bilingual group47, Hymes’ notion of speech community was a concept of utility. The iteration of “speech community” that I employed in this research is “a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one variety” (Hymes, 1972, p. 54). Due to the fact that students came from different starting points on both the English and Spanish speaking bilingual continua

(Hornberger 2003), a particular speech community was formed as the classroom and its members

46 Hymes’ work is considered functionalist in that it endeavors to make linguistics relevant and contextualized to present day social problems and to get away from the ways of bias (class and race especially). This was a push back on the previous school of thought of structuralism that, according to some, essentialized language in non-holistic ways. 47 One student had a very cursory knowledge of Spanish, which forced several conversations into being concurrently translated. Additionally, a monolingual English student was "placed" in the class as part of an SBS (Social Behavior Disability) inclusion plan, but eventually was moved to another school

87 came together interactionally. Spanish and English were weaved masterfully together with specific interlocutors and communicative competence was high between the students. Ms.

Lectura, who is described below, undoubtedly was able to connect linguistically and relationally with AVID 3 throughout the course of the school year. While Mrs. Suma commanded Spanish very well, she scarcely used it during her classroom interaction or Math instruction. Because of the "snapshot date" in October determined that most of the students would be taking the STAAR test in English, it became the de facto prevailing language during instruction and, to some extent, socially.

The students in AVID 3 needed to know not just the language code, but also what to say to whom and how to say it appropriately (as defined by the school and teachers), which authentically describes Hymes (1972) notion of communicative competence. As Hymes states, regarding the use of two languages:

Bilingualism is not in itself an adequate basis for a model or theory of the interaction of

language and social life. From the standpoint of such a model or theory, bilingualism is

neither a unitary phenomenon nor autonomous. The fact that two languages are present

in a community or are part of a person’s communicative repertoire underlain by a variety

of different relationships may be of meaning and use. (Hymes, 2003, p.30)

Resulting from a background in anthropology48, his methodological approach is one that studies a space, as I attempted to do in this research, through an open-ended linguistic lens, as though it was a “culture” beyond the borders of the US. This contextualized framework looks

48 Anthropology defined here is broadly concerned with “the transmission and reproduction of culture, the relationship between the cultural systems, and different forms of social organization, and the role of the material conditions of existence in a people’s understanding of the world” (Duranti, 1997, p. 4).

88 for observable patterns and offers valuable terminology such as speech situations (social occasions in which speech may occur), speech events (activities within a time frame that are directly governed by rules/norms of speech), and speech acts (genres such as requests, commands, or jokes). For a study on Spanish-speaking students that had a variety of micro-level protocols and classroom-specific linguistic idiosyncrasies, this approach was advantageous to capture the contextualized meanings formed by students and teachers.

Another complementary notion to these was John Gumperz’s (1992) construct of a contextual presupposition, which assumed a background knowledge that allowed for the interpretation of an inferred meaning of an utterance. For example, suppose a child had recently arrived to the US from Mexico and references a famous quote in Spanish from a character of a telenovela (Latin-American soap opera) that was well-known among her classmates in Mexico.

Perhaps, due to the series not having yet arrived to US television networks, her US born Spanish- speaking classmates do not catch the cue nor do they have the cultural schema that indexes a potentially humorous interaction. Because verbal humor is not just linguistically, but culturally linked, its very nature requires it to possess a built-in contextual presupposition, known as a script in humor research. A script has been theorized by humor experts as:

An organized chunk of information about something that is a cognitive structure that is

internalized by the speaker and that provides him/her with information on how things are

organized and further qualified as with their possible links from the semantic network the

speaker has about his/her culture. (Attardo & Raskin, 1991, p. 198)

In a similar scenario, if one of her classmates made a comical observation on a classroom event using lexical items from Spanish or English, which she did not possess in her linguistic repertoire, an opportunity for verbal humor could be missed. Furthermore, the two ideas of

89 contextual presuppositions and scripts dovetailed nicely (albeit from different disciplinary origins) as they both provided explanatory frameworks through which one could observe how socially and culturally constructed meanings were instantiated in humorous bilingual classroom discourse.

Phases of Data Collection

The data collection for this dissertation took place in two phases. The first phase was to gain classroom entry, in which I followed AVID 3 through their three daily rotations to different teachers and the occasional visit to Specials (Art and P.E.). I began data collection in August of

2018 and finished in June of 2019. This entailed making weekly observations, taking fieldnotes, and interacting with the students, teachers, administration, and parents that happened to be in or on the way to these spaces. Audio and video recordings of the students in whole group, small group, and individually during regular school hours and under typical quotidian activities began on October 23, 2018. I often gathered artifacts and took pictures of student work that was either posted or shared with me by them. I also photographed teacher lessons, anchor charts, and later in the year, gathered information from cumulative folders in order to properly contextualize the environment.

The second phase centered around focal students whom I observed trending towards humorous interactions. More focused audio and video recordings as well as informal and formal interviews were part of this phase as former data guided the subsequent steps to gain insight. I conducted and recorded informal interviews with the classroom, Art, and P.E. teachers throughout the course of the school year. Likewise, we casually discussed observations that I made in order to gain more information (previous schooling experiences of students, family

90 situations, daily interactions) so as to optimize data analysis and operationalize subsequent observations.

Although towards the end of the year I conducted a more formal study of humor in community with the students, its scope went beyond the purpose of this dissertation and will be given its own space in the near future. Because I made mention of it in some of the analyses, a brief description of it is given here. The project was based on a survey that I conducted regarding humor (more details under section “Initial Survey”) and what students felt about humor both at home and at school. Because the initial results seemed fairly vague, I decided to take it a step further and submitted a proposal under the name ¡Pura Risa! (Pure Laughter!) to

Donors Choose49 for 23 disposable cameras for the students. After the project was fully funded, the students were given disposable cameras and asked to chronicle what they found to be humorous, or chistoso, gracioso, divertido, que da risa, de relajo. This photo-elicitation task expected them to take the camera with them wherever they went in order to snap a picture of people, places, situations, media, or anything else in their community that they deemed to be humorous. After the cameras were all turned in, I developed the film and conducted and video recorded informal retrospective interviews with all of the students by showing them their mirthful photos. According to Metts, Sprecher, & Cupach (1991), retrospective data, while by no means objective, is appropriate for research questions having to do with interaction or relational phenomena and jointly created relationships. By showing students clips of their interactions and then having them explain the scenes back to me, I was able to glean additional

49 Donors Choose is a nonprofit organization that seeks to connect donors with mostly high- needs learning communities. This civic crowdfunding allows individuals or businesses to donate to projects created by the teachers with the expectation that the students write appreciation letters and the teacher sends photographs of the process.

91 explicit insight from the students that I might have missed in prior forms of analysis. To reiterate, however, although I look forward to taking it up in the near future, the bulk of that data is not included in this dissertation for reasons of time and space. This clarification was written merely to give the reader a general grasp of what I am referring to as I mention excerpts from

¡Pura Risa!

Operationalizing Humor

In order to properly operationalize and define humor, I referred to the research literature to gain insight about how to make sense of different considerations of humor. In alignment with what Bell (2007) has discovered, identifying humor is a “notoriously difficult task”. However, by having access to previous empirical research, I was able to deliberate which aspects of humor that were felicitous to this dissertation. My task during this project was to make these discerning decisions by grounding them in the notions of my frameworks of Yosso’s cultural capitals and

García’s translanguaging. On one hand, there is a focus from scholars such as Norrick (1993), who has provided a list of explicit cues to aid in identification of humor such as laughter, voice, smile, exaggerated paralinguistic features, or marked lexical choices. On the other hand, Davies’

(2003) work focuses on humor and takes a discourse-analytic approach to different manifestations of cross-cultural communication. Indeed, Davies’ treatment of the subject matter was helpful to this project in that the phenomenon was not merely reduced to “reified abstractions such as ‘humor’, ‘wit’, or ‘irony’, but rather with the situated interpretation of joking as a speech activity” (p. 1362). This provided a wonderful point of departure from which to navigate such a sociocultural setting with emergent bilingual 3rd graders. Because this research centered on humor serving as a site of interactional agency for these young students, Davies offered some wonderful analytical “dimensions” used to make sense of her observations. For

92 example, her findings considered the creative usage of sociolinguistic resources of Spanish speakers as well as the notion of interactional roles with speakers of a more dominant50 language.

She additionally illustrated a useful difference between cooperative vs. collaborative interpretive forms51 of interlocutor interactions, which has stumped me in some of my previous understandings of humor; simply put, if a listener was laughing, the question surfaced whether it was done so in agreement, or because they “got” the humor. While these questions stemmed from a cognitive branch of research and would require a psychological treatment of the subject matter, the ways that humor was understood in this research offered me some practical analytical categories that served both in the observation phase (what to look for) and to data analysis (how to code) of video recordings.

Essentially, I utilized perceptible laughter (sight, sound) to point to the site of latent humor (cause, content, and connection) as my sequence of analysis. While laughter was often generated by forms of a verbal stimulus, I realized quickly that nonverbal or accidental humor was a rich reservoir of mirthful communication of AVID 3. Consistently following these types of lively exchanges, students would immediately implement language to explain what caused the source of their mirth. On account of the complexities of what humor actually is, cross checking different forms of data by making use of a variety of methods (discussed below) to strengthen arguments an increase credibility is indispensable. Because of the proverbial dearth of research

50 While the idea of dominant language in bilingual classrooms in the US typically refers to the power asymmetry of English vs. Spanish (or another L2) (Hornberger, 2003), and as is the case with Davies’ piece, there were instances in which Spanish language joking “weighed more” in some classroom or student discourse. By having the covert prestige of being “in the know” of a sociocultural reference, for example, this was a factor involved in who initiates and who “gets” humorous verbal speech. 51 While cooperative responses may elicit laughter in order to maintain politeness (Brown & Levinson, 1987), collaborative interactions would be marked by follow up to the initial utterance with a form of mirroring (p.1366).

93 that intersects humor, language, culture, emergent bilingual children, and education, I currently am “defining” humor in this instance as a where, not a what. As in the Painter’s-domain metaphor described in Chapter 1, the location where students act as agents to assess, relate, transform, enhance, or resist environmental circumstances, often instantiating from of cultural and linguistic capital, is how I made sense of the data that I collected. Hadi-Tabassum (2006) views this type of “fluctuating, fluid third space” for bilinguals as something worthy of our attention as researchers and educators. Humor provides a window not only into itself (about how it functions), but also a window through which to peer into the storehouses of unseen competence. Emergent bilinguals invisibly carry these skills with them throughout their days into hegemonic English-dominant environments, which frequently never even consider that they could exist. The purpose of this study was to seek out how AVID 3 attends these spaces and materialize said skills.

The students were aware that I was in their midst to study something about humor or laughter. While they were not sure exactly what I sought from them, they were in good company. Because my research-topic cover was blown on the first day as Ms. Lectura had already informed them of what I was seeking, the initial conceptualization was that of canned jokes. I would frequently be approached with the sequential organization that Sacks (1974) analyzed as the classic setup and punchline. These ranged from the clever plays on words in

English, Spanish, and both, that would necessitate explanations:

English: -What did the mom tomato say to the baby tomato? -What? - Catch up (Ketchup)!

Spanish: -¿Qué le dijo un pollo policía al otro pollo policía? [What did one chicken cop tell the other chicken cop?]

94 -¿Qué? [What?] - Necesitamos apoyo (a pollo) [We need support, playing off the homophone “pollo”]

Both: -What do we call a snowman in the summer?” -Answer: A puddle -Some kids laugh and then say, “Porque se derrite..” -Margarita: “It melts.”

In some kids’ minds, my investigation on humor was perceived as a problem to be solved, perhaps something like with the scientific method that they were taught in science this same year. On May 8th, 2019, the monolingual-English speaking student Timothy spoke intentionally to the audio recorder that was left on his desk:

Timothy: I'm about to solve Mr. Ingram's problem. Third grade humor (?).....is all about turtles. All about turtles. Ok? Ok. Goodbye, now. Wait. It doesn't turn off when you say goodbye.

While at first glance this appears to be merely a silly commentary made by a 9-year old, there is actually profundity (intentional or not) to this exchange. In this instance, Timothy exhibits his wit by answering my “problem” with a completely random single word answer—turtles. While there were no conspicuous references save a nearby street name and a pet turtle of his classmate, his creative solution to humor was, in fact, humor itself. Timothy was intentionally humorous in his explanation of an amphibious creature solving my issue and unintentionally humorous as he

“tells” the digital voice recorder “Goodbye”, thinking it has Siri-like capabilities but realizing that it is still recording him. This is the type of situational humor that often came across in rich layers such as these for me to later operationalize as “humor.” Other forms of humor are to be discussed in the findings chapters of this dissertation.

Erwin Elementary School

95 This central Texas school district was selected as the research site for this study because of its involvement in bilingual education, affording a unique opportunity to explore Spanish speakers and their participation in humor. The particular school, which I refer to as Erwin

Elementary (pseudonym), and the neighboring area is one of which I had been a long-time community member. Over the course of 14 years I had the privilege to be employed by the school as both an ESL generalist and as a bilingual educator. Despite being a white male in a largely Latin@ population, I became a tight-knit member of the community. Consistently interacting with students and families outside of school hours in a variety of social functions

(Primera comunión, birthday parties, swimming activities, sharing meals together, helping families move, Christmas celebrations, graduation pachangas, etc.), I was blessed to get to know so many amazing families. The buds of these relationships continue to bloom as I remain in contact with students and parents who collaborated in sowing the seeds of fellowship during these significant years in our lives. Three weeks to typing this sentence, I helped one of the long-term community members (whose son I had as a student over a decade prior) to move to more affordable housing, south of the never-ending price escalation of the city. Likewise, in this very moment, I await a Facebook message back from one of my then third graders (now 22 years old!) to let me know if I can take him to lunch today. Suffice it to say that my heartstrings are tethered deeply to this learning community and their families; something wherein once upon a time I helped them as a teacher and throughout the journey they changed me as a person.

The community is, as briefly mentioned, experiencing changes. I serendipitously ran into a few parents who no longer send their children to Erwin while I was field supervising student teachers at a nearby charter school. When asked for what reasons they left Erwin Elementary, responses varied, but a common theme mentioned was “Ya no es igual como era, maestro” (It’s

96 not the same as it was, maestro). Perhaps due to general fatigue of their children not liking school because of the high-stakes environment, increased pressure to perform by the administration and district, the seductive recruitment strategies of the charters, or a combination therein that parents decided to abandon their once-cherished school.

Another driving factor is the rising cost of living in this city and neighborhood. Defined by some as gentrification, the cost prohibitive nature of parts of the surrounding community may also be a factor due to increasing price of real estate. As I began my pilot data collection, the teachers were abuzz about the 1200 sq. ft house across the street for the “crazy” price of $357,

000 (Appendix A). As these realities now confront members of the community, the school if experiencing diminishing numbers in terms of student attendance. The student population has dropped another 100 students from when I left in 2014, which left the total at 414 when this research was conducted (School registrar, personal communication, November 28, 201852).

While a bulk of the student makeup was Mexican immigrant or multi-generational families having lived in the city for years, currently there are more Honduran and Guatemalan families represented at the school. This falls in line with Arias & Wiley’s (2015) assertion that, between 2009-2013, there has been a 432% increase asylum-seekers, particularly minors, from

El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. The majority of the families living in the neighborhood, moreover, are still Latin@. Erwin’s demographic at that time was represented by 88% Hispanic,

5.5% African American, 5.1% White, and 1.4% “Two or more races”. The school had 86% of its students classified as economically disadvantaged and 41.8% as English Language Learners.

(“Erwin Elementary”, 2017). According to the district website at the time of data collection,

Erwin Elementary ostensibly implemented a one-way dual language model of bilingual

52 Or 507 according to 2016-2017 School Report Card

97 education. The district mission statement of their current bilingual model boasted “Dual language helps students excel academically while becoming bilingual, biliterate and bicultural.

The program is committed to educating students in a multicultural learning environment and encouraging learners to celebrate diversity and become responsible citizens of the world.” (“Dual

Language”, 2018). Upon analyzing the actual school website and making observations at the school, however, there was no evidence that this philosophy is officially carried out at the school.

There seemed to be a disparity in what is being publicized at the district level and what actually transpires on the school campus itself, which came into play regarding language choice and usage in the daily classroom experience. In an interview that I conducted with the principal and assistant principal, for example, a conversation ensued about the kind of language program that the school was employing at that time. As I inquired about the title of the bilingual classroom that I would be observing, both individuals agreed that despite the dual language title, the school was still a late-exit program. While a detailed analysis of this conversation could indeed be a stand-alone dissertation, I believe it was relevant to this research as far as what the overall linguistic climate of the school was at that time. What the administrators perceived as doing

“what is best” for the students’ futures, sociolinguistically this meant transitioning them from

Spanish to English as soon as possible. Having worked closely with both of the individuals previously, their philosophy regarding maintenance of L1 Spanish was consistent. With no malintent that I could ever discern, they believed that because English is foregrounded in middle, high school, and beyond, the best we can do as educators for emergent bilinguals was to push them to build a good foundation for that experience. As an unintended consequence and despite the fact that passing administrative instructions and occasional greetings are relayed in Spanish, classroom instruction and conversations ended up being centered in English.

98 Valenzuela & Rubio (1999) substantiates this reality in her research as she conducted a three-year ethnographic study of Mexican youth in Houston, Texas. Based on her findings,

Valenzuela discovered that in lieu of “fully vested bilingualism and biculturalism” (p. 262), the

American public-school system “reproduces Mexican youth as monolingual, English-speaking, ethnic minority, neither identified with Mexico nor equipped to function competently in

America’s mainstream” (p. 3). This idea is also backed by Del Valle (2003), who proposes that maintenance of the minority language is not and has not been one of the objectives of the transitional bilingual program. This was relevant to this study because, based on my experience at the school and my observations throughout the year, monolingual Spanish speakers can be left confused at best and indignant at worst. While this section focused on the surrounding community and administrative ambience, the following section details the more situated context of the classroom.

Meet the Teachers

This study followed a group of 2353 emergent bilinguals, known by the teachers as AVID

3, who participated in three daily rotations throughout the day (Language Arts, Math, Science).

While the majority of my data collection occurred in these three settings, I would occasionally be present with the Specials teachers of Art and P.E. Regarding language, the different environments provided a setting with three bilingual54 teachers and two monolingual teachers.

This attempt at capturing a balance of speakers was chosen in order to observe whether this

53 The number of students varied throughout the year due to transience perhaps caused by rising cost of living in the city. 54 By “bilingual” here I mean a general knowledge and usage of systems of language commonly referred to as English and Spanish. Akin to Hornberger’s (2003) bilingual continua, use Spanish with distinct competence and for different reasons. It is also true that these teachers value and understand the term “Spanish” in diverse ways.

99 would be a factor affecting how humor manifested contingent upon whether the teacher did or did not understand Spanish. The five teachers, whose names are anonymized, are shown here in

Table 3.3. Although I had taught for years with Ms. Lectura, Mrs. Suma, and Ms. Knack, I was less familiar with Ms. Brush and Ms. Juega. Both of them were quite gracious in allowing me to participate in their corresponding classes of Art and P.E.

Table 3.3: These are the 5 teachers whose classes I observed during the 2018-2019 school year

Name (pseudonym) of Subject taught in what Family Background teacher language Ms. Lectura (bilingual) Reading, largely in Spanish, Mother is Honduran, Father is but with frequent Salvadoran translanguaging Mrs. Suma (bilingual) Math, almost completely in Mother and Father are from English with occasional South Texas. Husband is comments in Spanish Anglo from South Dakota Ms. Knack (monolingual) Science, English only Mother and Father are from East Texas Ms. Brush (monolingual) Art, English only Parents are both from Houston Ms. Juega (bilingual) P.E., a balance between Mother is Peruvian and Spanish and English Father is from Texas.

AVID 3: L@s Estudiantes

Subsequent to having collected parental consent and student assent for this project, I began my “official55” data collection on September 26, 2018. The students that I observed were between the ages of 8 and 10 years old and were placed in a “bilingual56” 3rd grade class at Erwin

55 I mention “official” here because I had been scouting the campus for a potential research site from the prior school year (2017-2018). Informal interviews with administrators, teachers, students, and parents pointed to the idea of it being a good fit. It is important to note as well that this pilot study IRB approval began in fall of 2017. 56 I am setting “bilingual” in quotes here because in this group there is one monolingual English-speaking child who has been placed with the others. The child has emotional issues and is a distraction to the students (behaviors include throwing erasers, mocking the teacher as she speaks, ripping pencils out of EB’s hands and biting off the erasers). It is fitting to mention him

100 Elementary. The lively bunch of 23 students (12 girls and 11 boys) in AVID 3 ranged from a host of different backgrounds. Out of twenty-three, one was born in Guatemala, 2 in Florida, 4 in Honduras, and 16 in Texas. Despite the fact that the majority of the students were born in the

US, all but two students had parents that were born in either Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, or

Honduras. As seen in Table 3.4, twenty out of the twenty-three students had parents or guardians who described Spanish as being the language “spoken in [their] home most of the time” on the district’s obligatory Home Language Survey form.

AVID 3 could be described as a group of students who were typically light-hearted, hardworking, and creative. Depending on whose classroom they were in, there were varying levels of expression and playfulness present. For the most part, there was good group cohesion with each other and seemingly with students in AVID 1 and AVID 2 (mostly monolingual

English speakers). While most of them could flawlessly float through the waters of the translanguage corriente (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017), two of the students were monolingual English and three of them (all from Honduras) were almost exclusively Spanish speakers. The coupling of such linguistic flexibility and being such good-natured students provided a number of instances where humor broke through both collectively and individually in their communicative exchanges. By way of summary, the following table exhibits important information about AVID 3 and their backgrounds. This data was gathered from the students’ cumulative folders, which means that the parents or guardians filled out the paperwork accordingly. Regarding the Language Survey, there were times when my observations aligned with what is demonstrated in this table, and other instances where it did not coincide. While

because he only speaks English, so as the teachers redirect him, no Spanish is spoken. Therefore, while this is a de jure bilingual group, it is in fact a de facto heterogeneous grouping.

101 there are a number of possible factors of why this incongruity existed (i.e. parents seeking certain district services, children changing their language practices, different school/classroom expectations), suffice it to say that snapshots of language usage are often elusive due to the fact that we consistently find ourselves in new contexts with different criteria by which to engage.

Table 3.4: Backgrounds of the students in AVID 3

102 From the first 30 seconds that I stepped foot into their classroom, I detected laughter and joy in the classroom. At the beginning of this dissertation I mentioned Hymes’ (1972) notion of speech community as a group like AVID 3 sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech and interpretation. Humor indeed was an undergirding current of how language was spoken and interpreted. As the year progressed, I was able to see that humor was a valued form of capital in its own right, primarily through the latent implementation of it during dialogue. My attempts to bring the notion of humor, lo chistoso, la risa, el relajo, what’s funny to a metacognitive dialogue with them, did not seem to bear fruit at the outset of the year. Students would return to their faithful scripts such as canned or knock-knock jokes. I was caught between two ideas while trying to understand why talking about humor does not necessarily lead to more humor. The first idea can easily be encapsulated by the semi-famous quote by E.B. White

"Humor can be dissected as a frog, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to all but the pure scientific mind” (p. xvii). The idea of talking about humor does not even approximate the participation in humor. The second thought that crossed my mind, which will undoubtedly be a trajectory of future research for me, is the idea that the notion of humor has not been brought up to the students as a cultural capital. In other words, as Yosso

(2005) points out the six capitals of minoritized students and how they are not explicitly taught, humor very well might exist as a form of capital that serves to strengthen their ties with each other, themselves, and their environments. Doubtless in my mind was the idea that they did not appreciate humor and participate in many forms of it. On March 15, 2019, I had passed the video camera to 8-year old Margarita to “buscar lo chistoso” (look for ‘the funny’) in Ms.

Lectura’s reading class. As she was interviewing students by asking them to relate or share something funny, the camera swept across an anchor chart as she was narrating the surroundings

103 in her classroom. When I discovered this during data analysis, I quickly texted Ms. Lectura, who confirmed that it was the students who had generated the information with the her on a day that I was present. The contents of the anchor chart (Fig. 3.2) displayed Rasgos de personajes

(Character Traits). Interestingly, the characteristic that appeared as the second bullet point by

AVID 3 was chistoso (funny), preceded only by amable (friendly). While I did not want to jump to any supercilious or hasty conclusions based on a piece of butcher paper, I did take comfort in knowing that being chistoso was somewhere on the forefront of their minds.

Hymes (1972) might refer to as a speech community, which is when “a community sharing rules for the conduct and interpretation of speech, and rules for the interpretation of at least one variety” (p. 54).

Fig. 3.2: Character traits listed by the students; “funny” being the second only to “kind”

Class time for AVID 3

While a number of schoolwide systems seemed to be in place (Social Emotional

Learning, Mindset, No Place for Hate) and were maintained with differing forms of regularity,

104 the 23 students that I observed for the 2018-2019 academic school year were given the title of

AVID 3 from the first week of school. As the last group (out of 3) of all of the students in third grade, they were participants of the school wide initiative of Advancement Via Individual

Determination (AVID). According to the district's website, the mission of AVID is to "close the achievement gap by preparing all students for college readiness and success in a global society.

This curricular decision, decided on by the administrator volunteering Erwin Elementary to be a district pilot school, was embedded in daily instruction.

At the beginning of the year, students were asked to creatively decorate a pre-fabricated paper copy handout of an AVID student. They subsequently wrote words around the outlined figure of themselves that described them as learners and students. Their identities as AVID students were fortified daily as they were asked to set goals that were presumably achievable throughout the week, in which students would write ideas such as "Dormirme más temprano"

(going to sleep earlier) or "Yo tendré amigas cuando se acabe el año" (making friends by the school year's end) (Appendix B). Although I did not detect or observe it later in the school year, a form of administrative accountability was in place towards the beginning of the year. On

October 9, 2018, for example, Ms. Lectura mentioned to the students in Spanish that the principal would be stopping by in two days to make sure that the students were keeping their

AVID carpetas (binders) up to date. The AVID program also worked its way into the pedagogy of the school day and served as a call to attention. When teachers needed to get their attention, they would often refer to them collectively as AVID 3. The science and writing teacher would frequently exclaim, "AVID Scholars", to which the students would respond, "That's me, all the way!".

105 My final note on the prevalence of the AVID culture was a song that was composed by one of the teachers. The lyrics were in English and the tune is to R. Kelly's "I Believe I Can

Fly". (Appendix C). Interestingly, the lyrics are all in English and the message is commensurate with the AVID vision. While AVID is lifted to almost deity-like status ("leaning on AVID arms"), and success being defined as "running" to the college door, the program served as a consistent framework throughout the course of the school year. The teacher mentioned as countering the hegemony of English in this environment, Ms. Lectura, was asked by the district if she wanted to pursue a one-year grant-funded program which would have her supervising and consulting with other teachers about the implementation of the program in other schools. In the end, for a variety of reasons, she declined the offer and went on to teach again the 2019-2020 school year as a second (non-testing) grade educator.

Data Collection

This section considers the who, what, when, where, why, and how of the present study. It is here that I clarify and justify decisions that I made through the process of data collection as I interacted with the school community (students, parents, teachers, administrators, and staff).

Although the reality of my time at Erwin Elementary did not unfurl exactly how I proposed that it might, I was forced to ground the experience with the very same philosophy in that I lived by as a public-school educator, which is this: In general, as well as in the details, the “F-word” of education is “flexibility”. With that in mind, I stood firm in this principle that I have presented and held loosely to the rigid procedural aspect of how the project actually developed. A slightly more optimistic perspective is that of Babbie (2013) that states, ““one of the special strengths

[emphasis added] of field research is its flexibility” (p. 336). While I assumed that I would be entering the field as a researcher taking ethnographic jottings to later link them to theories of

106 macrostructural inequalities, that was not always the case. From time to time, one of the teachers would spontaneously ask me to facilitate a lesson with the students (about which I was more than happy to comply). This solidified the students’ view that my role was more than just a guy on the periphery writing in his notebook with minimal human contact; I was seen as a teacher. Out of all of the educators whose rooms I was privileged enough to participate in/with, Ms. Lectura would invite me to interact with the students the most. Because she and I share the same paradigm of fostering students’ cultural and linguistic heritage by teaching with culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris, 2012), Ms. Lectura felt comfortable passing the torch over to engage the students in a lesson. There were times were this serendipitously led to robust data about how humorous dialogue revealed student’ perceptions. On one such occasion, October 30, 2018, the students and I were sharing a rich conversation about Día de Los Muertos, which I was simultaneously recording. As I later listened to what the students were saying as I guided the discussion, humor served as a delivery method to bring across notions such as the difference between Mexico and Honduras, what food can be served on the holiday, mariachi music, Aztec backgrounds, and cempasúchiles (marigolds). That being said, I realized early on in the process of data collection that simply because I was not assuming the posture of a researcher did not mean that significant information was not being gathered. In that sense, these events not only yielded usable data to later be analyzed, it was a way to “give back” to the research site and people that allowed me to be present in their classrooms.

The following sections discuss how observations, initial surveys, interviews, audio and video recording constituted the exploratory mechanisms for this research project. Within these categories field notes, running logs, analytical/reflective memos, are mentioned in reference to my activity in the field in order to demonstrate in what ways that I explored the intersection of

107 agency, humor, language, and culture amongst minoritized emergent bilinguals. Although my two primary data sources for this project were undoubtedly through observation and audio/video recordings, I now explain the methods in the order that I performed them through the course of the experience.

Observations

Committing to an approach indeed does imply presumptive reasoning and a lens through which to understand phenomena; however, foregrounding certain occurrences based on other researchers that have laid the groundwork before us can aid to limit a potentially endless measure of contingencies. Stake (1995) discusses how this allows a researcher to sharpen the focus of the objective of the study:

A qualitative case study researcher keeps a good record of events to provide a relatively

incontestable description for further analysis and ultimate reporting. He or she lets the

occasion tell its story, the situation, the problem, resolution or irresolution of the

problem. (p. 62)

In order to capture the surroundings, I described the context, both the uniqueness and ordinariness of the areas around the students with thick description. As discussed by Geertz

(1994), “thick description” is a “detailed description of the complex web of social relations that constitute a culture” (p. 161). By “culture” here, I mean what the students bring to the table as expressed through their words and actions (palette and paintbrushes) as well as the encompassing systems in place such as the school, district, and governmental restraints (the easel).

108 I collected empirical data by taking ethnographic fieldnotes as I followed AVID 357 first from their Language Arts, secondly to Math, and lastly to Science. Intermittently, I made a handful of observations in Art and P.E. The music teacher, although a well-known coworker and friend of mine, decided to decline my entry for reasons of classroom management issues created by a student during the first semester of the year. I acted at times as a complete observer, in which I attempted to be in the backdrop of all typical classroom interactions. Other times, I was an observer-as-participant, in which I hung out with a group of students or worked with them on something that their teacher assigned. I held (and continue to hold) strongly to the idea that a researcher must give back to their research site in ways that are meaningful and beneficial to them, not just to my endeavors as a researcher.

When making these ethnographic observations and fieldnotes, I broadly followed

Patton’s (2002) 8 suggested areas of focus as I was on site at the school. Although these categories were not what I used specifically during the coding process, I did use them as a guide for general things to look for: (1) program setting-physical environment and context (2) human and social environment-ways in which people organized themselves in groups/subgroups, which include communicative patterns, direction and frequency of interactions, and decision-making

(3) program activities and participant behaviors-what the students did in official spaces and how they experienced different programs (classes, activities, interactions) (4) informal interactions and unplanned activities-descriptions of what participants did in unofficial (third) spaces (5) language of the program participants-fieldnotes and recordings (audio and visual) captured students’ language (6) nonverbal communication-dress, expression of affection, proxemics,

57 AVID is a district-wide initiative that stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination) and whose mission according to their website is, “to close the achievement gap by preparing all students for college readiness and success in a global society.”

109 haptics, and paralinguistic features (7) unobtrusive measures-physical clues about program activities such as “wear spots” on the floor and indicators of areas/objects being (un)utilized (8) observing what does not happen-whether expectations were met (relationally, programmatically) or, to keep with the Painter’s-domain metaphor, the negative space58 in the environment.

While gathering environmental data, I often took photographs of student-generated products as well as administrative documents. These included cumulative folders, flyers, school bulletins, and posters that promoted district initiatives that were to later analyzed and used to form the narrative which is this dissertation. As Mertens (2014) suggests, this type of content analysis goes beyond mere quantitative frequency counts and response reporting; the goal of this method should make inferences from content and translate them into social reality. While cumulative folders allowed me to understand the students’ backgrounds, family members, place of birth and language spoken at home, other publications around the school made it possible for me to see what the administrative goals were for them. Keeping with the Painter’s domain metaphor established at the beginning of this dissertation, glimpses of the students’ palettes were readily available to be observed as well as the easel, or, structural complex that surrounded their realities at school.

Another helpful method that occurred during the initial phase of data collection was to keep running logs of phenomena that I observed. This was of great utility due to the fact that it aided in reducing the substantial amount of information at the research site. These running records carried titles that were both descriptive level (i.e. humor with animals) as well as a

58 By negative space, I mean the artistic concept of the areas around the objects that are being painted. The spaces between the objects in a still life, for example, helps to define what is the objects themselves. This could be present in this dissertation in a number of ways: what teachers do not teach or say, what is absent in the curriculum, what the students do not say or do, etc.

110 theoretical level (i.e. humor as a form of resistance). By doing this, I was able to take quantitative tallying and qualitative jottings in order to simultaneously form categories of both particular instantiations mixed with general principles that seemed to be present with AVID 3 in

Erwin Elementary.

Immediately following observation times with AVID 3 and in addition to the methods that are described hereafter, I would often verbally process daily events by voice transcribing analytic memos into my phone’s Notes page as I drove home to later e-mail myself and consider or refine afterwards. This form of sense-making via thoughts, trends, doubts, questions, concepts to look up, specific information to discuss with students/teachers, etc. served me well as I grounded my decision making in order to proceed to the following steps.

Initial surveys

As aforementioned, at the beginning of the school year, I had the students in AVID 3 participate in a survey which consisted of 16 questions (Appendix D) which I walked them through one by one over the span of three visits. Stake (1995) discusses qualitative researchers presenting issue-oriented questions, in which the purpose is “not to get simple yes and no answers but [the] description of an episode, a linkage, or an explanation” (p. 65) The first six questions elicited information regarding humor as it pertains to their lives outside of school, family, and language in which lo chistoso is realized, or not, in their homes. The subsequent nine questions discussed issues of the school climate, such as "¿Se ríen mucho los adultos en tu escuela?" (Do the adults in your school laugh much?" The final question was merely to see if they had anything funny that they wanted to share at the time. The fact that there were sixteen questions guided my decision to break up the answering into three different sessions. Ms.

Lectura insisted that I ask the children the questions instead of her, so I projected the questions,

111 one by one, onto the screen in the front of the room. I read the questions first in Spanish and concurrently in English in order to clarify for the two monolingual English speakers. Students recorded their responses on a sheet of notebook paper that I provided, I picked them up, and then re-distributed them for the following sessions. This process was conducted in order for them to identify their understandings of the notions of risa/laughter, chistes/jokes, personas chistosas/funny people, as well as petitioning their insight into why people might laugh or what makes something funny. As I asked these open-ended questions, I was seeking to establish direction regarding areas for following analysis.

Interviews

Another form of data collection that I employed is that of interviewing my participants.

These face-to face interactions occurred between teachers, students, administrators, parents and myself. As I acknowledge what Hesse-Biber (2014) proposes as a continuum of interview types which range from formal to informal, the majority of my data collection via interviews leaned towards the side of the conversational side of the spectrum. According to Mertens (2015), interviews typically are “done with an unstructured or minimally structured format” (p. 382), which mirrors my experience collecting data at Erwin Elementary. As Spanish-speaking students generate and interact humorously (as marked by laughter and other paralinguistic features, see Annex 1), I often either went directly to them or circled back with them at a more appropriate time to informally ask ¿De qué se ríen? (What is so funny?). As they explained to me what provoked the laughter, I often committed it to short-term memory to subsequently add to my fieldnotes or analytic memos later that day. The problem of having to remember and the beauty of capturing the fine details was remedied and celebrated when I began audio recording on October 23, 2018 and video recording on February 12, 2019, (this is elaborated upon in the

112 next section). As I observed and interacted with the students, they were happy to share with me what caused them laughter.

Something that I considered was to ensure that the participant’s voice was expressed without any unnecessary pressure by me. Mertens (2015) suggests that the interviewer should

“be open to following leads from the respondent to determine the ordering of the questions and the use of probes to further explore relevant points.” (p. 385). Although it took a few hours when I first entered the field, students and I quickly began building confianza59 enough to the point where they would even share or lavatorial humor or transgressive statements that

“somebody else” said such as, “Me dijo, ‘Pinche güey!’” (October 9, 2018). By simply listening and not being punitive [yet reminding them that “Ésas son palabras fuertes” (those are strong words)], a lot of conversations happened that perhaps would have not occurred had I reprimanded them for the use of this language. This follows Reeves, Kuper, & Hodges (2008) notion in ethnographic methods of using conversational interviews as to probe emerging issues which “can be useful in eliciting highly candid accounts from individuals.” (p. 513).

Consequently, the most significant type of interviews came from informal exchanges that the students had, many of which were captured through the usage of audio and video recordings.

Audio and Video Recordings

Another form of descriptive data that helped to substantiate the findings of this dissertation According to the Second Language Acquisition study conducted by Dufon (2002), audio and video recordings are able to provide the researcher with “denser linguistic information than field note taking” as well as permanence, which allows the individual analyzing the data to

59 A cultural concept used among Latin@s that is loosely translated as “trust”, but implies familiarity and a degree of accountability to support and protect the interlocutor.

113 “experience an event repeatedly by playing it back” (p. 44). Perhaps the most useful data collecting method that I implemented during this project was that of using a Zoom H1n digital handheld recorder and a Sanyo Xacti video camcorder. This allowed for purely naturalistic data and registered hundreds of spontaneous interactions of humor. Realizing that “any process of documentation is, by definition, partial [in that] it assumes a point of view and is selective,”

(Duranti, 1997, p. 114), this method enabled me to closely scrutinize the interactions between the students in order to find out what kind of data existed at the site of humor. While the initial introduction of the Zoom audio recorder (a 5” black device around the size of a candy bar) indeed compromised the nature of the recordings, oftentimes the students would forget that it was sitting on their table as they communicated with each other. I know this to be true particularly because there were instances of self-incriminating evidence such as a cuss word or a lavatorial (i.e. “potty”) topic that they would sometimes “repair” on the recording. Other times, students would talk directly into the microphone and break the proverbial “fourth wall” to push back against the institutional connotation that the intrusive device exuded to some students.

Towards the end of the school year, a running theme was disseminated on the lips of a few of the girls who acted as reporters conducting interviews as they let classmates know in no uncertain terms that whatever they said, would be “going to Mr. Ingram’s class at UT.” This hyperawareness to its presence contributed to what I observed to be less naturalistic and more thought-through conversation which I believe caused a reticence in their interactions.

The Sanyo camcorder presented its own set of challenges when it came to collecting data.

While it was obvious that the students were highly performative with “camera behaviors” as I let them run around at recess to “encontrar algo que te parece chistoso (find something that they perceived to be comical)”, Duranti claims that there are redeemable qualities of this type of data:

114 People usually do not invent social behavior, language included, out of the blue.

Rather, their actions are part of a repertoire that is available to them independently of the

presence of the camcorder. One may even argue that the presence of the camera may be

used as an excuse for certain types of social actions that might have been done

anyhow… (p. 118)

Either way, the video recordings were able to maintain some of the temporal and spatial aspects that the Zoom recorder was incapable of retrieving, and was instrumental in gathering another media form of how students participated in, consciously or not, humorous exchanges. To be sure, by giving different students the freedom to use the recording apparatus as an extension of their own emic view on the social organization of what constituted something to be laughed at, this insider’s perspective helped to triangulate the other forms of data that I collected.

In order to summarize the methods used to gather data for this dissertation, the following

Table 3.5: These categories show the theory that informed the data collection.

Data source First Research Question Second Research Question

“Thick descriptions” (Geertz, “Thick descriptions” (Geertz, Observations 1994) 1994)

Eight areas of school focus Eight areas of school focus (Patton, 2002) (Patton, 2002)

Issue-oriented questions for Issue-oriented questions for Student Survey descriptive explanations descriptive explanations (Stake, 1995) (Stake, 1995)

Interviews Mertens (2015) Mertens (2015)

“Eliciting candid accounts” “Eliciting candid accounts” (Reeves, Kuper, & Hudges, (Reeves, Kuper, & Hudges, 2015) 2015)

115 Table 3.5: (continued)

Dense linguistic information Dense linguistic information Audio/video recordings and permanence (Dufon, and permanence (Dufon, 2002) 2002)

Interview recordings Discourse analysis (Gee, “Discourses are inherently ideological…and crucially 2007) involve a set of values and viewpoints about the relationships between people..” (Gee, 2007, p. 158)

Documents (cumulative Content analysis (Merten, Content analysis (Merten, folders, flyers, school 1995) 1995) bulletins, student work)

A Brief Introduction To The Focal Students

Another way that I tried to gain an insider perspective and deeper understanding of the role of humor is to find a group of focal students. In line with Parlett & Hamilton’s (1972) seminal piece Evaluation as Illumination, the notion of progressive focusing, which allowed for

“unique and unpredicted phenomena to be given due weight”, came into play at this stage in data collection. (p.18). During the course of the school year, I interacted with all of the students at different times and in unique ways. As I grounded subsequent steps in my data collection through the process, a pattern of students who were more willing to either create or participate in humor began to emerge. This is not to suggest that other students did not interact in these ways, but these students were who I followed more closely as they exhibited more involvement around spaces of humor. Selection bias was undoubtedly at play during this process because I captured the most instances of mirth from these students due to the fact that I left the Zoom audio recorder in their midst with greater frequency. Below I present a brief narrative description of these

116 students based on my observations, teacher descriptions, Zoom recordings, and informal interviews with them or a parent.

Waldo

Waldo was an amazing nine-year old male who was born in Yoro, Honduras and was the student from which I collected the most data. He is also the student that I knew the best, as I met his father and uncle a few times throughout the year. In my Zoom and Sanyo data, I have 265 different instances of him involved in humor or some form of cultural capital. He had arrived from his home country 5 months prior to the 2018-2019 school year. Both parents were born in

Honduras as well, but they were divorced and Waldo came to the US with his father in January

2018. The journey was gut-wrenching and arduous, as shared with me by his father (ps. Juan) at their apartment on May 2, 2019, as my dad and I went to donate a washer and dryer to them.

No’otros sólo nos tiraron en un cajón ‘e una rastra. Ahí vinimos, no sabíamos si

era de día, de noche, pero…por 4 días y 4 noches. Digamos 5 días y 4 noches.

Había 450 personas dentro de una…tenían dos; una adelante y una atrás.

[Respiramos] con el aire…traían un aire como que venían congelando carne,

algo así…con frío. [They threw us in the back of an 18-wheeler trailer. We didn’t

know if it was day or night…for 4 days and 4 nights. I mean, 5 days and 4 nights.

There were 450 people in each trailer; there were two of them; one in front

connected to one in back. We breathed because of the air…the air was as if they

were freezing meat…it was cold.}

117 Juan went on to confirmed what his son had narrated to me at school. When the cold air stopped functioning in the trailer, Waldo passed out and Juan thought he had died; even to the point where the coyote told him to throw Waldo in the river because he would be unnecessary weight.

This traumatic experience for father and son was still present with them as we discussed the ways they were coping with it. When they finally arrived to where they currently live, they started attending Casa de Dios, a Spanish-speaking Christian Church that supports them emotionally and spiritually. Because of this, he would sometimes refer to cultural entities such as Reggaetón artists as mundano (of the world) as opposed to de Dios (of God).

Fig. 3.3: Waldo smiling after asking to borrow my hat on November 16, 2018.

For all intents and purposes, Waldo could be referred to as a monolingual Spanish speaker. His command of the Spanish language was extensive and he was able to express himself with a lexicon that seemed to know no end. He was engaged in Ms. Lectura’s class the most out of the three teachers due to, I believe, the fact that she spoke more in Spanish. In Mrs.

Suma’s class he was semi-involved because he enjoyed Math. He was least engaged in Ms.

Knack’s Science room, which was a monolingual English environment. The nature of his humor

118 varied greatly and seemed to be of a more transgressive nature when in contexts that were more heavily English-centric. Although he was one of only four Hondurans in AVID 3, he was able to adapt well and was recorded “Mexicanizing” his Central American dialect of Spanish by using such phrases as “Chido” or “Mande”, about which his compatriots would occasionally call out.

At the beginning of the year, Waldo had some trouble adjusting and had a low view of self, which was not helped by being thrown into a scenario where only 2 out of his 6 teachers

(including Specials) spoke Spanish. He would sometimes seek attention, specifically when the class was conducted all in English, by blurting out the few phrases in English that he knew

(“Peppa Pig” and “Jon Cena”) and on one occasion, used his jacket to pretend that he was hanging himself. In Figure 3.4, I happened to come across the schedule that the students carried with them in their daily agendas. Written on the side in pencil were the words, “Soi (soy) estúpido”, meaning “I am stupid”.

119

Fig. 3.4: A photo taken on October 23, 2018 of Waldo’s Daily schedule with his handwritten “Soi estupido” (Soy estúpido, I am stupid) on the side.

Later that month, a school climate survey was issued by the district about which the teachers were to set aside time to have the students participate. Because of the fact that many of the students did not understand the survey, and because the teacher whose room I was in did not speak any Spanish, I intervened to read the questions aloud to them. Of special interest to our conversation here are the final two bubbles filled in by Waldo in Figure 3.5. The penultimate statement in Spanish displayed, “Mis compañeros de clase respetan a otros estudiantes que son diferentes” [My classmates respect other students who are different], to which he replied

‘Nunca” [Never]. The following statement elicited the same response on the Likert scale as

Waldo reacted to “Me gusta cómo me tratan mis compañeros” [I like how my classmates treat

120 me]. Perhaps due to the treatment that he received and the fact that throughout most of his school day he had no access to the content because of monolingual English environments, he would act out by drawing even more attention to himself by performing such acts as playing beats on his desk, singing, pretending to hang himself with his jacket (10-16-18), being disruptive in Specials (11-6-18) or saying statements as "Yo me quiero morir. No sirvo para nada en la vida." [I want to die. My life is useless]. (May 8, 2019)

Fig. 3.5: Waldo’s responses to the district issued climate survey

Despite this rough start to the year, Waldo was almost always found to be smiling and laughing, whether with people or at them. As the year progressed, he begin to establish some more substantial friendships, one of which was his laughing-and-joking-around Mexican counterpart, Leonel.

Leonel

121

Fig. 3.6: Leonel hiding behind his cara de conejo (bunny face) that he made in Art on April 2, 2019. Waldo looks on in the background.

Leonel was born in Florida and had been at Erwin Elementary for two years. He was a 9-year- old student that primarily spoke an eloquent and fluid form of central Mexican Spanish. He mentioned that his family owned a store and was rich in their hometown of Pácula, Hidalgo in central eastern Mexico. This young man almost always found a way to smile and laugh, even in the face of his dad’s absence in his life. He occasionally mentioned his cousins in Pácula and was excited to share chistosadas [funny happenings] with them as they visited in April. Leo demonstrated 200 different instances that I was able to gather during the year, being specifically adept at not taking life too seriously. This student demonstrated a true gift of playing with words and could stretch, transform, reverse, translate, and find connections between lexical items in a matter of seconds. Another salient feature about Leonel, which is discussed in more depth

122 throughout Chapter 4, was his uncanny ability to find ways to laugh at himself and not get upset if things did not go how he expected. Along with Waldo, he would also be found in the company of his other Honduran classmate, Daya.

Daya

This ten-year-old vivacious female from Yoro, Honduras had been at Erwin Elementary for 2 years. With the next highest count of humorous interaction (121 occurrences), Daya was also documented as someone who giggled to herself, particularly about small mistakes or mishaps in which she was involved. With a fiery personality that did not back down to anyone, she was proud to be catracha [Honduran] and sometimes poked fun at Waldo for trying to change his accent to sound more Mexican, though she was equally adept at doing so. Much of her humor was grounded in forms of resilience. While speaking Spanish the majority of the time, she would venture into English from time to time with peers and often in the classes where

English was mostly spoken. Although she had a love/hate relationship with her compatriot

Waldo, she, Leonel and Waldo would spend time working in groups together and find many diverse ways to laugh together.

123

Fig. 3.7: Daya proudly sporting a Honduran shirt from her hometown of Yoro on April 17, 2019

Positionality

As I am writing profiles about the environment and the students, I must also mention a few words about myself and my role throughout this entire process. Having worked there for 14 years, I felt that this research site allows me to have more of an emic viewpoint, as well as an ease of accessibility and an accelerated time of the students, teachers, and administration adjusting to my presence. A few of the parents (and grandparents!) still recognize “Mr.

I”/”Mister I”/”Mr. I-Ball” walking down sidewalk or the familiar hallways. Always greeting me with a smile, hug, and vociferous “Maestroooo” [Teacher], they have their remaining young students at Erwin Elementary, in addition to their already older or grown children which I taught many moons ago. While I was a long-term resident of the area and had membership enough to be invited to birthday parties, Catholic confirmations, or simply to come have dinner, my

124 positionality as a white male is still a factor to be considered. Like every individual, being born into a body with a certain phenotype, in a certain location, with a certain language and socio- economic status comes with certain privileges and consequences. The social location where I began this life regarding my race, class, and gender were as follows: I was born as a white male in South Austin, Texas, into a lower-middle class family. Despite the fact that we did not have a great deal of money relative to “normal” middle-class white families in the 1970s when I was born, I recognize that macroscopically speaking, the checkered history of the United States and the infrastructures in place would still set me in a position of privilege. That is to say, that according to Oakes et al. (2015), I entered this society with my “invisible knapsack” of white privilege snugly in place. This being said, on a macro-level and micro-level I was at an indisputable advantage, whether it was being given a benefit of a doubt or an invitation to something because I shared the same phenotype or worldview as somebody’s child. Because my dad worked with undocumented workers in the community as a septic system installer (and still does), I remember even as a young boy having access to exposure of Mexican nationals as I would ride along to different job sites with him. Although our conversations were limited

(something that began the impetus for me becoming passionate about learning Spanish), I still got a “feel” for how Mexican men (mainly from rural outskirts of San Luis Potosí at that time) operated and what my dad thought about them, which was always approval and respect. Words that I often heard growing up and to this day from my dad when talking about fellow Mexican albañiles [construction workers] are “resourceful, hard-working, generous (they would offer him/us food at lunch), artists (particularly skilled at a craft such as rockwork), and always laughing.” That coupled with my intense interest in the Spanish language from elementary

125 school age gave me a slightly different take on what some overarching community beliefs from my childhood were about “the Mexicans” (often pronounced disrespectfully, “Messkins”).

Although my starting point in life as a white male from a middle-class background has given me great advantage throughout my schooling (and beyond), as a strong proponent of "to whom much has been given, much is required", I feel it one of my life's callings to use my position to advocate against the obvious disparities that are in this and every society and that I have ever witnessed and contribute in nano-yet-meaningful ways. It must be mentioned that I do not approach this with any association whatsoever to the “white savior complex” phenomenon

(Cole, 2012). One of my favorite things in this life is to observe negative stereotypes and overly- simplistic reifications transcended, and I feel that my own narrative, though wrought with indisputable concessions, lives in that place of exception, not the rule.

Membership and Reflexivity at Erwin Elementary

Despite where I came from and the privileges that I have enjoyed in my life, my long- term relationship with the school and the people in the community transcended that category as we worked collaboratively in a team with common goals. I had taught with the 3 classroom teachers for years previous to this study, so my presence there was as if we were co-laboring

“back in the day.” The two Specials teachers were relatively new to the school, and displayed a welcoming attitude towards my presence taking notes or audio/video recording the students’ interactions. In order to assuage any nerves that may have surfaced about having another adult in the room, I would consistently remind the teachers that my concentration was not on them, but on the students. The following addresses two crucial elements to ethnographic research: membership and reflexivity.

126 De Cremer & Tyler (2005) posit that group membership is essentially comprised of two components—inclusion and reputation. In the present study, researcher membership surrounding AVID 3 was present from most students throughout the year and in a number of positive ways. Aside from constantly receiving hugs of excitement, getting my own nickname with the students (Mr. iPhone, Mr. Instagram, or simply, Mr. Insta), being invited to a birthday party and a family gathering (April 12, 2019), the chiefly sanguine community would affirm my presence as being viewed favorable by saying such encouraging phrases as:

01 Daya: ¡Ojalá que vinieras todos los días! [I wish you be here every day!]

02 Waldo: A:::::já (affirmative). ¡Eso sería bien chido¡ [Yes! That would

03 be really cool!]. (2018, November 11)

In this example of two students from Honduras try to convince me to return the following day

(and every subsequent day), a degree of membership sought through hope for a continual relationship was illustrated, at least for that moment. In addition to the students being very inclusive and welcoming, parents were very friendly and hospitable to my presence. I would often see them in the morning at drop off or in the afternoon at pick up and we would exchange pleasantries or talk about their families. In one example, the mom of a girl who was having some difficulties staying at school due to a prior sexual-abuse (at another school two years prior) situation in prior years was discussing the trauma and therapy that her daughter had been undergoing. While I was initially worried if I was adding to the problem of Yuse not wanting to come to school, I was relieved that my reputation was intact when her mother spoke of her daughter’s situation, “Por eso tiene sus chilladeras…[pero] habla muy bien de Ud." [So that is why she has her crying fits…(but) she speaks very highly of you] (2019, April 12).

127 An additional way that this membership was expressed outwardly was through instances of confianza, in which the students considered me a trusted source as they would mention something of importance to them. In the following example, Waldo subtly tells me the nature of his relationship with a girl in the classroom, but smilingly asks me to not tell “anyone” in the class:

01 Waldo: No se lo cuentes a nadie...si es amiga mía u otra cosa [Don’t tell anyone, if

02 she’s a friend or something more]

03 Researcher: ¿Quién? ¿Anita? [Who? Anita?]

04 Waldo: Sí...no se lo digas a na::::::die. [Yes, but don’t tell a::::nyone!]

As he stated, “u otra cosa” (or something more) in line one, he slyly smiled at me as his words became more paused while sharing his feelings for Anita. Another instance of confianza occurred when a student felt comfortable enough to humorously jest with me about potentially embarrassing phenomenon:

01 Waldo: Mr. Ingram, acá tienes un montón de pelo pero arriba no hay nada. [Mr. Ingram,

02 on the sides you have a ton of hair, but up top there isn’t anything]

03 Researcher ((riéndonos y jugando)): Waldo, si descubres una manera de tomar este pelo

04 y ponerlo arriba, me dices, eh? [ ((laughing and playing))Waldo, if you find out a way

05 to take this hair down here and put it up here, let me know, ok?] ((We both laugh))

Through the course of my interactions with the students, teachers, and parents, a degree of reflexivity was required for me to gauge how to proceed interactionally with the community.

Reflexivity in this case, as elaborated upon by Reeves, Kuper, & Hodges (2008), is “the relationship [that] a researcher shares with the world as he or she is investigating”, which is a

“central element to ethnographic work”. (p. 513). Another ingredient of good research

128 methodology is to acknowledge the negative cases as pieces of the holistic puzzle. As mentioned, the majority of the experiences were positive in terms of my presence and membership of the AVID 3 community. There were, however, some discrepant cases that contradicted the idea that my entire presence with the students was perceived as positive. For example, while coding audio data according to Saldaña’s (2015) categorization continuum (as described below), I discovered a dialogue between three boys in the class (which occurred on

March 15, 2019) as they were “speaking back” to the Zoom recorder that I had left on their desk to capture moments of unrehearsed humor. Typically, when I placed the recorder on a desk, I would remove myself completely from the situation so that they would speak freely, unencumbered by my presence. In many cases, the students would forget it was even there and continue with their conversations. While many students were either happy to have the recorder on their desks or oblivious to its presence after being distracted by something else, I was able to capture some discrepant cases of these counter narratives, which are discussed further in Chapter

5, about how different students felt having the device imposed on their space.

The typical way that the students reacted can be explained in the following brief anecdote. On a spring day Anita was walking around with the recorder as if to be a reporter catching funny events and a student jokingly tells another, "Juanpi, sit down, you buffoon!".

Anita quickly pounced to exclaim, “¿Sabían que Mr. Ingram está escuchando cada cosita que están diciendo? [Y’all know that Mr. Ingram is listening to every little thing that you’re saying, right?] to which the initial student reacted by grabbing the recorder and defiantly and laughingly screaming into the speaker, “¿Qué pasó?” [Whassup?]. This type of joking resistance, considered in more detail in Chapter 5, was a way that some students pushed back against perceptions of formal institutionalized instruments of power, such as the Zoom recorder. While

129 most of students identified it as a non-threatening extension for “La clase de Mr. Ingram en UT

[Mr. Ingram’s class at UT]”, there were indeed a few instances of students that demonstrated reluctance and even aggression towards it, the both of which were frequently cloaked in humorous comments. One student had a much grander vision about the reach of this research as she stated on April 26, 2019, “¡Todos nos van a ver! Todos del mundo. China. Japón. Es del estado”. [Everyone is going to see us. All over the world! China. Japan. This belongs to the state”]. Comments such as this are seemingly innocuous, but can serve to cast doubt around the audio/visual data collection process due to students thinking there might be a form of possible retribution is all that was said did not follow the rules. Despite my best efforts to convince them that whatever they said would not be used as incriminating evidence against them, hesitation is contagious. Thankfully, this type of scuttlebutt did not transpire at large until the end of the school year, yet surely propagated una falta de confianza [mistrust] in the recording equipment.

From that point on, the devices most likely inspired continued confidence that (as the Mexican proverb goes) “duró menos que un caramelo en la puerta del colegio” [disappeared more quickly than a piece of candy at the entrance of an elementary school].

Even with the students that were discovered opposing the recorder, however, I had fomented an amicable relationship throughout the school year. This made me wonder if these students perceived the Zoom recorder as one entity (about which they felt threatened or spied on) and me as a participant in the classroom as another. For that reason, it was a surprise to find some of the recordings after the class had let out for summer vacation in June 2019. At any rate, one can never quite overcome the well-known Labovian paradox (1972) as a researcher, which speaks to both the membership and reflexivity of my presence in AVID 3’s space. In order to

130 account for how students were making sense of this and everything else in their schooling environment, I began to scrutinize the data to see what emerged.

Data analysis

After collecting the data from AVID 3 in their different school surroundings during the

2018-2019 school year, I reviewed the various forms of information. By applying discourse analysis methods to investigate themes of humor that emerged from the data I sought to gain a contextualized understanding of comedic classroom dynamics. Based on the raw data, or moment-to-moment “divisions of interactional labor” (Erickson, 2004, p.5) from the students, I searched for consistency (or lack thereof) along the different data that I collected.

While I did not have pre-determined analytic units per se, the majority of my analysis stemmed from the recorded sequences of language where humor served as the interactional site.

Still significant to the analysis, however, were other types of data collected that are discussed below. I hoped to reap the benefits of both the granularity of discourse analysis through close scrutiny of recorded student interplay and the aerial perspective of other observations conducted of the surrounding community, school, administration, curricula, expectations, teachers and students. Because I was aware that I would be pursuing events and instances of humor, one could argue that this research had an element of deductive reasoning, in that I drew from this notion to proceed in my collection. However, the corpus of this data collection points to the fact that I was more aligned with inductive methods by giving “priority to developing rather than to verifying analytic propositions” (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 2011, p.143). Part of this process of seeking patterns simultaneously searched for a lack thereof. Some of my codes, for example, were labeled in the negative in order to try and capture these phenomena in and of themselves.

By establishing categories such as “Lack of humor” or “Ms. Knack not connecting with

131 students” in my coding corpus, I was able to intentionally look for disconfirming evidence of what patterns that I may have been seeing. To avoid what Erickson (2005) cites as “premature analytical closure and hypertipification” (p. 1206), considering the aforementioned “negative space” of the research site by committing to a systematic approach that helped me to prevent jumping to conclusions based on a scarcity of evidence. Understanding the space is inevitably accompanied by the notion of time during this process. One of the advantages of being at Erwin

Elementary for a prolonged time to observe and analyze data, is that I was able to course correct if I consciously noted something lacking in my data set. As I moved forward together with

AVID 3 along each step of this research, I was reminded how Erickson speaks to local social ecologies as a lifeworld that “is of the continuously present moment, one next ‘now’ moment at a time” (2004, p. 108).

Coding

According to Saldaña (2015), a code in qualitative inquiry is “most often a word or short phrase that symbolically assigns a summative, salient, essence-capturing, and/or evocative attribute for a portion of language-based or visual data” (p. 3). After assiduously transcribing

43.98 hours of recorded data, I undertook the process of coding the data. By making line-by-line observations of the collected fieldnotes, video/audio recordings, photos, analytical memos, work conducted by students, and documents from the cumulative folders, I ended up with 3,633 bits of coded data coming from 127 distinct categories. While attempting to find, as Charmaz (2011) suggests, the critical link between data collection and the explanation of meaning, I reached the end of my data analysis in July 2019. Within those codes, I began by following Saldaña’s (2015) streamlined code-to-theory model which is as follows:

raw data-→code→category→themes/concepts→assertions/theory

132 After transcribing all of the data and transferring it to the data analysis software

MAXQDA, I commenced coding through two distinct, but intrinsically-linked lenses defined by

Saldaña (2015). The first, known as descriptive coding, was completely phenomenological and merely sought to capture what was observed, such as “Waldo humor”. Oftentimes within these descriptions, I would amplify the phenomena to a more abstract, subjective perspectives, known as value coding. A value code in this research would be something such as

“gentrification/renovation” or “student socially transitioning away from home country”, and begin a category. It must be noted that some instances of data were double or even triple coded so that I was able to capture phenomena and later analyze it as I made sense of the data. Because my data was a guiding factor to move along the code-to-theory model continuum mentioned above, this process was largely inductive, which foregrounded what I was finding to help develop subsequent categories to look for with AVID 3. While assigning labels to data, an inventory of topics for indexing and categorizing emerged. As codes accumulated into categories, and eventually moved beyond, themes were established. According to Saldaña

(2015), a theme is an extended phrase or sentence that identifies what a unit is about and/or what it means, which may be manifest (directly observable) or latent (underlying the phenomenon)”

(p. 267). As one goes through this process, the hope is to reach saturation, which Strauss &

Corbin (1998) defined as, “when no new information seems to emerge during coding, that is, when no new properties, dimensions, conditions, actions/interactions, or consequences are seen in the data (p. 136). While that can be a hopeful endeavor indeed, one can never be completely sure that something new will emerge, as I was studying humans and their near-innumerable amounts of possible choices. That being said, once finished with both the value and descriptive

133 coding, I took a reflective step back to understand how the data related (or did not relate) to itself, which served to push to the next phase of research, namely, data analysis.

In ethnographic data collection, the researcher can never quite gain an emic perspective of a group without being fully part of it. That being said, I do not believe that my etic-outsider presence impeded this research greatly. Because I positioned and re-positioned myself as a teacher and a participant along with AVID 3, relationships were developed that allowed me to see a more profound understanding of language practices, humorous interaction, and ideological values. Through the course of the year, the students became acclimated to “Mr. Instagram” and his means of methodology and interactions. Aside from the end of year rumor circulating that

“Estas (grabaciones) van a la clase de Mr. Ingram en UT” [These (recordings) are going to Mr.

Ingram’s class], the students, which seemed to cause some hesitation around the audio/video recording, students were represented in authentic interactional ways. Regarding accurate representation and interpretation of the students as they participated in linguistically and culturally rich exchanges, I would frequently follow up with informal questions about what caused the humor in which they partook. Because humor requires a script that is designated for membership comprehension (Attardo & Raskin, 1991), this form of retrospective sensemaking is often inherent to attempting to understand what the participants understand to be funny and why they think it is so. This ethnographic methodology instantiated many conversations, which allowed me to guard against my own partial interpretations of their interplay. Accompanying this continual elicitation of information was the idea that Rosaldo (1989) states about the analysis of the ethnographer is always partial and provisional. With this in mind, the following chapters display both the data and concomitant analyses. Through the data analysis experience, I found that best way to make sense of the codes is to subsume them under one of three umbrellas, which

134 guide the topics of the next three chapters. Namely, the interactions with humor as the students agentically mobilized their cultural and linguistic semiotic resources, fell into humor being either resilient, resistant, or resonant. As mentioned, the data points stringed together to from the thread of a larger fabric, about which I heretofore weave for the remainder of this dissertation.

135 CHAPTER 4: RISA AS RESILIENCE: UNDERSTANDING HOW HUMOR ENLISTS

POWER BY THE REIMAGINATION OF RETOS EN LA VIDA

¿A mí quién me va a desenmascarar si yo me vivo desenmascarando solo? Cuando te ríes de ti mismo, ¿quién se va a burlar de ti?

[Who is going to unmask me if I daily take my own mask off? When you laugh at yourself, who can make fun of you?] —Dante Gebel (2019)

This qualitative study investigates the how local verbal play and humor create spaces of resilience for emergent bilingual students in the classroom. In this particular project, I investigated 23 emergent bilingual students in a large urban school district in central Texas, known collectively as AVID 3. Beginning in August of 2018 and finishing in May of 2019, I observed these 3rd grade students in an ostensible60 late-exit bilingual program. By using ethnographic methods grounded in Yosso’s (2005) six capitals, which theorize ways in which communities of color maneuver different contexts in their lives, I address two research questions:

(1) In what ways do minoritized emergent bilinguals mobilize their cultural capitals through humor in order to open up spaces of resilience? (2). How does humor function as a site for emergent bilinguals’ agentic affordances within structural constraints? After data collection that included observations, informal interviews, a class wide survey, audio/visual recording and a detailed discourse analysis of the information, four findings emerged that are related to humor being locally implemented as resilience: (1) resilience through the humorous navigation of identity (2) resilience through the humorous navigation of relationships (3) resilience through the

60 I use “ostensible” here because, while the website and administration claimed that it was late- exit, many of these 3rd grade students who were to take the STAAR test in the spring semester were pushed into English only environments without any language scaffolding, effectively making it an early-exit model.

136 humorous (circum)navigation of an institutional challenge (4) resilience through the humorous navigation of dilemma. In this chapter I discuss what the landscape and content of the canvas looked like as the students used humor in ways that displayed great resilience vis-à-vis the smallest daily challenge or the difficult experiential trauma. In order to demonstrate the ways that humor instantiated these resources, the following addresses the issue of navigational and aspirational capital as they intersect with identity, relationships, overcoming institutional challenges, and bypassing dilemmas.

Methods

The data reported here comes from a larger study of the sociocultural understanding of humor in a third-grade bilingual classroom in an elementary school in central Texas. In particular, the exploratory investigation focused on students’ engagement with humor both linguistically and functionally within the context of their schooling environment. Upon analyzing the entire corpus of data, I found that the students employed mirth for a variety of reasons, in a number of different contexts, and through multitudinous ways. When queried directly about the use of their humor or what they deemed to be comical, many of them were unable to articulate exactly why they resonated with a specific event; rather, they were able to give examples of what they did or participated in that caused them laughter. The present data is depicted here as vignettes of humorous student interaction, which were the focus of my analysis.

Following Davies’(2003) approach grounded in interactional sociolinguistics, I did not start my analysis with “reified abstractions such as ‘humor’, ‘wit’, or ‘irony’, but rather with the situated interpretation of joking as a speech activity” (p. 1362). Below I describe the setting and participants, methods that I used to gather data, and my approach to analyzing the sub-set of data on student’ use of humor.

137 Setting and Participants

Erwin Elementary School (pseudonym) is a public elementary school in central Texas.

At the time of the study, the school enrolled approximately 412 students in grades pre-k through

5th. Of the student population 88.3% were labeled as “Economically Disadvantaged” and received free or reduced-price lunch, 85.7% were “Hispanic”, and 44.2% were “English language learners”. Although I occasionally observed the students during Art, P.E. and their

Science block, I primarily collected data in the two classrooms that contained Ms. Lectura’s

(pseudonym) English Language Arts block (7:45-10:30) and Ms. Suma’s (pseudonym)

Mathematics instructional block (10:30-12:00). Both teachers were bilingual in English and

Spanish and deliberately translanguaged when conversing with each other. Ms. Lectura, of

Mexican and Honduran ancestry, spent the majority of the instructional time in Spanish while

Mrs. Suma conducted her instruction in English with intermittent Spanish scaffolding. The lively bunch of 23 students (12 girls and 11 boys) whom I observed (known collectively as

AVID 3) ranged from a host of different backgrounds. Out of twenty-three, one was born in

Guatemala, 2 in Florida, 4 in Honduras, and 16 in Texas. Despite the fact that the majority of the students were born in the US, all but two students had parents that were born in either Mexico,

Guatemala, Colombia, or Honduras. These students were intelligent, skillful, and creative and were often found to harness the power of sharing a laugh with others.

Data Collection and Analysis

The data was collected using an ethnographic approach, which entailed a student survey, participant observation, the taking of field notes, informal/formal interviews, document analysis

(cumulative folders, flyers, school bulletins, student work), audio-recording, and video-recording to document the student exchanges one to three times per week over the course of the 2017-2018

138 school year. Using Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth as my theoretical lens, I began systematically coding (Saldaña, 2015) line by line as I carefully examined the students involvement with instances of humor, which resulted in 3,723 instances within 99 total code categories. I compared themes across data sources in order to verify my emerging analyses. Out of three broad themes that emerged under close examination, resilience manifested as a function of humor within the social interaction found within the data sources. In order to gain understanding about the meanings of these micro-examples, I situated the analysis within larger structures surrounding the students that I observed during data collection.

The first of these locative phrases touches upon how students found ways to laugh about themselves, almost autonomically, while confronting issues that proved difficult for them. A noteworthy phenomenon that surfaced through the course of data analysis is that of humor reflected of manifest student resilience. Resilience is most often found in the literature of psychology and discusses process by which an adversity, large or small is converted into an opportunity for the betterment of self or community (Briceño et al., 2010). Because I took up and made sense of the concept through a sociocultural lens, Yosso’s (2005) concept of aspirational capital was a complementary fit for the phenomena that I observed through this project. She states that it is:

the ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future, even in the face of real and

perceived barriers. This resiliency is evidenced in those who allow themselves and their

children to dream of possibilities beyond their present circumstances, often without the

objective means to attain those goals...these stories nurture a culture of possibility (p. 77-

78)

Yosso here articulates the idea through a temporal deixis framework, referring to both the present ability to persevere with hope for a future. Akin to the phrase in Latin American Spanish

139 “La esperanza es lo último que se pierde/se muere” ["Hope is the last to thing to be lost/die"], a degree of positive expectancy must be present in order to muster power to push through difficult situations (retos) that are often caused by external powers that be. According to Villenas &

Deyhle (1999), “..for Mexicano and Latino communities the teaching of resilience and resistance…has characterized the lives of all indigenous peoples since 1492” (p. 422) The most internal spatiality starts with humor regarding one’s self. Ruch and McGhee (2014) posit that in order to laugh at oneself, an individual must overcome negative feelings and responses. This requires a degree of another one of Yosso’s capitals—navigational. In order to acquire aspirational capital, one must first understand the road map to get there. The researcher delineates that this navigation refers to “skills of maneuvering through social institutions” (p. 80) and I would add, through social situations as well. Evidence from this project shows how humor was spontaneously created and laughed at around circumstances that gave students the opportunity to either be upset or get in trouble about something, or to buoyantly skitter through.

While Yosso employs the spatio-temporal notion of “beyond their present circumstances”, to index a phenomenon that occurs in a different time or space in which the student currently experiencing. In this research, I am adding a layer to this concept by extending Yosso’s idea to consider humor as an observational site for this to transpire. Because narratives allow us to travel through time and space, and humor falls under such a category, the students are able to temporarily transport to one of the loci that Yosso proposes. The following section investigates what ways I am suggesting that these students cultivated a sense of resilience.

Haciéndose el mexicano: Resilience through the humorous navigation of identity

Yosso cites the following definition Stanton-Salazar & Spina (2000) while defining her argument of resilience and states that it is “a set of inner resources, social competencies and

140 cultural strategies that permit individuals to not only survive, recover, or even thrive after stressful events, but also to draw from the experience to enhance subsequent functioning (p.

229). Waldo, who was a recent Honduran immigrant to the US and to Erwin Elementary, strived to fit into his surrounding social context. Whether it was donning US name brands with patriotic symbols, or quoting songs by artists from the states, a goal that he had with his classmates was one of integration, if not assimilation (Figure 4.1). Although he could not deny his Honduran- ness, chiefly because his catrach@ classmates would remind him how he was different, I observed throughout the year how he distanced himself from associations from his homeland. At the beginning of the year, for instance, he would speak fondly of the Honduran musical artist El

Roble Copaneco. As the year progressed, I inquired more about the artist and he unenthusiastically responded to the point of “not liking” (ya no me gusta [I don’t like him anymore]) the musician.

Fig. 4.1: Waldo proudly sporting his Nike shirt and USA baseball cap

141

Integration for Waldo meant becoming more visually and linguistically like the majority of his class—mexicano or mexicoamericano. In addition to mexicanismos (such as mande or chamarra), I observed him in several instances dropping the Mexican vernacular lexeme chido

(equivalent to English, “cool”, style, not temperature). In the following exchange, I inquisitively and lightheartedly questioned his use of the word.

01 Daya: (to researcher) ¡Ojalá que vinieras todos los días! [I wish you could come here 02 everyday!]

03 Waldo: A-já (affirmative). ¡Eso sería bien chido! [Uh-huh. That would be cool!]

04 Researcher: ¿Bien chido? Estás hablando como mexicano. [Cool? You’re speaking 05 Mexican Spanish] 06 Leonel: Se cree mexicano [He thinks he’s Mexican] 07 Daya (talking to Leonel): ¿Verdad que dice que quiere ser mexicano? [He says he wants 08 to be Mexican, right?] 09 Conversation continues as others corroborate accusation 10 Daya: Yo le digo que "Waldo, tú eres hondureño" y dice (con acento exagerado de 11 norteño), "No, yo soy mexicano." [I tell him, Waldo, you are Honduran and he responds 12 (with a stylized northern Mexican accent), “Nope, I’m Mexican.” 13 Waldo: (cambiando el tema)) Oye, mírame, oye. ¿Sabes qué? Hay una música de "Te 14 boté, te boté, te boté...y cuando estamos allá y yo le digo a Daya, "De mi vida te boté. 15 (Se ríe solito) [(changes the subject) Hey, listen, hey. You know what? There’s this song, “I kicked you out, I kicked you out” and when were there I tell Daya, “I kicked you out of my life.” (begins to laugh at himself) 16 Researcher: Y Daya, entonces tú hablas como hondureña, ¿verdad? [So Daya, you speak 17 like a Honduran then, right?] 18 Daya: Pero antes hablaba como hondureña, pero después ya no...antes sí, pero ya no. 19 Pero a veces se me salen las palabras de Honduras.[But I used to speak like a Honduran, 20 but after a while, not anymore…before I used to, but not anymore. But sometimes words 21 from Honduras slip out when I’m speaking.] 22 Waldo: (de burla): ¡Hondureeeño, uh! [(mockingly) Honduraaaaaan, uh!] 23 Daya to researcher: (a la defensive, pero sonriente) Así no hablan, tú sabes...él sabe. 24 [(defensively, but smiling): That’s not how they talk. You know better. He knows better.]

142 In this extraordinarily robust exchange regarding intragroup identity, my ingenuous query into the Honduran’s usage of the Mexican lexeme chido (line 03) sparked a lively discussion regarding the supposed betrayal of Waldo’s catracho roots. What Waldo’s classmates were ultimately accusing him of is intragroup marginalization, which is “the interpersonal distancing created by individuals from one’s heritage culture group when one develops and displays cultural characteristics of the dominant culture (Castillo, 2009, p. 247). Interspersed within the jovial interactions, values were actively being displayed and propagated. This constitutive act of communication was furthered a few moments later in the conversation as Daya, a Honduran who had been at Erwin for 2 years (as opposed to Waldo’s one year), laughingly told me, “Ayer yo dije una palabra y Leonel dijo, "Habla español, ¡no hondureño!" [Yesterday I said a word and

Leonel told me, “Speak Spanish, not Honduran!” Attitudes towards what was considered the nondominant form of Spanish, in this case, Leonel’s central-eastern Mexican variety, were subtly recategorized as falling outside of even being part of the same language. Interestingly, the same student accused Waldo a few moments earlier of “thinking that he’s Mexican” (line 06) by employing certain intonation and word choice In addition to Leonel’s inadvertent allegation, he recruited a “former Honduran speaker” (lines 17-20) to indict Waldo for being too Mexican. In lines 10-12, interestingly, Daya lightheartedly exposed Waldo as she rebukingly called him out for trying to speak like a Mexican. An intriguing aspect about the way that she corrects him is that she uses a Mexican pronoun and verb conjugation (tú eres, line 10) in lieu of the standard

Honduran (vos sos) form. In essence, she is telling him to remain loyal to who he is (Honduran), as she has Mexicanized her own ontology, even as a catracha herself. This change in her is able to take place due to statements such as the aforementioned denouncement for not speaking

143 Spanish. In a sense, Waldo was linguistically in a space of nepantla61, being too Honduran on one hand (something considered not to be “Spanish-speaking”) and striving to be too Mexican on the other. Humor was also involved as Waldo also reacted to Daya as she disclosed his movement towards the dominant Mexican language. By overriding the entire conversation, he resiliently invoked a musical rebuttal by singing lyrics to Ozuna’s “Te Boté” (I kicked you out) by modifying the lyrics to be about the accuser, Daya. Lines 13-15 demonstrate how he applied humor to reject what was being said about him by lyrically “kicking Daya out of his life”.

Unsuccessful in changing the subject, the conversation about being Honduran continued between

Daya and myself. As Daya blithely related to me how she used to speak like a Honduran, but

“ya no” [not anymore] (line 17), Waldo humorously let out a mocking nasal depiction of a

Honduran accent (line 21). While Daya caught the jocularity and tittered accordingly, her response was quick to defend the speakers of her native land—Así no hablan, tú sabes...él sabe

[That’s not how they speak. You know better, Waldo. He knows better.]. An added layer of lexical analysis reveals that she implemented some forms of unintentional yielding to the

Mexican variety of prestige by saying “they speak” (instead of “we speak”), as well as the

Mexican “tú sabes” (instead of the Honduran “vos sabés”). As I contemplate the picture featured in Fig. 16, I can’t help but wonder whether Waldo’s USA-poster-boy-like outfit might be an attempt to trump the Mexican way, which correspondingly trumped his Honduran way, with the undeniable hegemonic dominance of US cultural symbols. While I am not making this as a claim, it should be worth mentioning that, as I returned the following school year to greet the

61 Originally a word from the indigenous Nahuatl-speaking people group in Mexico, nepantla has been utilized by scholars in Chicano/Latino anthropology as describing the spaces in between idealized, often dichotomized notions. In education literature, the concept is often most closely associated with the work of Gloria Anzaldúa (1987).

144 students and see how they were doing, he was dressed similarly and unequivocally proud to greet me and have a short conversation in English.

Humor, in this instance, served as a tremendous site to operationalize concepts that were deeper than mere language-use while simultaneously allowing Waldo to resiliently maneuver through a difficult situation. This vignette revealed that undergirding the seemingly lighthearted dialogue were issues of power, identity, and ultimately Waldo’s resilience under the shadow of the two. The confluence of humor and language allowed us to glimpse these examples as Leonel confidently commented on what “real” Spanish should be, while Waldo attempted to join forces with the dominant variety, only to be called out by a Honduran-born-Mexican-speaking devotee herself. Without trying to dramatize this convivial conversation between friends during class, my argument is to merely highlight that within the humorous exchange of classmates, deeper realities, such as realities that Waldo was grappling with and attempting to be resilient within, can be gleaned. In a sense, this example gives us a place wherein to witness Yosso’s cultural capitals on display. If, for example, we were to remove the jocularity from the example above, the conversation would not have advanced to reveal Waldo’s navigational capital as he confronted real issues of who he was or who he could be based on the language choices that he was making. To some extent, the interspersal of smiling, mocking, and general cachinnation made the content of the dialogue more congenial and acceptable to the interlocutors. Using humor as a resource, Waldo was able to fluently navigate this conversation about identity. Being able to detect, acknowledge, interpret and tap into this sub-level discourse is a powerful way to attain a more profound understanding of the communicative practices of minoritized children as well as to promote culturally sustaining pedagogy with educators and pre-service teachers.

145 Le Importa un Pito: Resilience Past and Present Through the Humorous Navigation

of Relationships

Resilience cannot exist without a challenge, be it big or small, facing an individual. In the last section, resilience around humor was discussed as a navigational phenomenon designed to allow students from AVID 3 to cordially negotiate phenomena of identity within the intragroup context of which Latin@ group should prevail. Humor is most often fomented by and within a community setting, so Yosso’s (2005) social capital was of utility here. The researcher defines this notion as “networks of people and community resources…[which] can provide both instrumental and emotional support to navigate through society’s institutions (p. 79). While

Yosso gives us a definition of the who (people) and what (community resources), a missing element to the concept is to find examples of the locus (or, where) this proverbial capital disbursal transpires. Essentially, by finding the “where” of these capitals, we are seeing ideas fleshed out in real scenarios. By extending Yosso’s social capital to intersect with humor as a site for the mobilization of this capital, we are able to view these resources. In this section, navigational capital is shown to accompany the Honduran student in the previous example,

Waldo, as he overcomes relational challenges with other people. The findings of this section include both affiliative or solidarity-based humor, as well as emphasize resilience in relationship to disaffiliative or divergent cases, in which humor and language play vital roles in prevailing through skillful navigation.

As I observed Waldo’s resilience through a number of difficult scenarios, I learned that he had prior experience in his home country of Honduras. After enduring what sounded like what he explained to me as the rough marital separation of his parents, his mother subsequently

146 had a boyfriend (pseud. Rogelio) in Honduras who seemed to consistently belittle him. As he recounted to me on one occasion in February 2019, Waldo mentioned to me:

01 Me llamaba ‘cabezón’ porque tenia la cabeza bien grande. Y le decía en

02 Honduras “Yo sé más que tú”, le decía. Porque yo bien respetaba y él que no. Porque él

03 también me decía cosas, eh...y cuando yo iba caminando me sacaba el dedo así...el

04 dedo, este dedo (indicando el dedo medio) y le decía “Métetelo en el culo”, le decía

05 (riéndose) [He used to call me “fathead” because I used to have a real big head. And I

06 would tell him in Honduras “I know more than you do”, I told him. Because I was very

07 respectful and he wasn’t. He would also say things, like…and when I would be walking

08 by, he would stick his finger at me…this finger right here (shows middle finger), and I

09 would tell him, “Shove it up your ass”, that’s what I’d tell him (laughing)

10 Leonel: Uuuuuyyy (shocked)

11 Researcher: (trying to cover for him with Leonel): Esa palabra es muy fuerte aquí. La

12 palabra “culo” es muy fuerte aquí. [That word is very strong here. The word “ass”

13 comes off very strong here.

14 Waldo (laughing to himself): Así (jeje) le decía yo. [That’s exactly what I told him.]

In this instance we see Waldo, no more than 7-years-old when dealing with his mom’s disrespectful boyfriend, finding a way to laugh his way through a challenging situation. As he chronicled the story, the impression that Waldo wanted to convey was that after Rogelio disparaged him as being a “cabezón” (“fathead”), he tried to resolve the issue by saying that “I know more than you”, as if to say, “You do not know what you are talking about.”. As Rogelio continued to pick on him by sticking his middle finger at Waldo, the young and very conscious

Honduran retorted humorously by linguistically flipping the asymmetrical script by upping the

147 discourse to a level of obscenity, effectively “conquering” the salacious boyfriend. Although

Waldo’s telling of the tale ended there and we are not sure how Rogelio responded, after his classmate was startled by the abrupt comment (line 10) and I reminded him about the force of that word, he continued to laugh thinking about how the situation played out in Honduras.

According to Yosso (2005), storytelling tradition describes a minoritized individual’s linguistic capital, which includes the ability to recount historias with “memorization, attention to detail, dramatic pauses, comedic timing, facial affect, vocal tone, volume, rhythm and rhyme (p. 79).

Not unlike a Latin American cuentero,62 Waldo orally narrated how he initially was the laughingstock of Rogelio’s derision, but, by reconstructing the disparagement into a space of humor (perhaps in the actual event and most certainly in the retelling thereof) the object of

Rogelio’s ridicule turned out to get the last laugh on his oppressor. As I shared in the laughter with Waldo, I simultaneously encouraged him that he was not a cabezon and that what Rogelio had done to him was not right. Nodding along as if to understand me and knowing about his arduous journey from Honduras to the US, his laughter continued as a discernible resource under which he had taken shelter under many times before.

While that example was one that he related to me, the following instance is one that I observed to occur in real time. Dealing with a student who was making fun of him, Waldo was able to infuse humor into the situation, which results in a navigational capital that leads him to buoyancy. On October 9, 2018, a Mexican-American student who begin to jokingly, yet mockingly make fun of him by calling him “cochino” (pig). As I witnessed the interaction,

Waldo came over to me and was laughing because Diego called him “cochino”. In order to save

62 Peña Lora (2014) defines the art of storytelling as a[n] “patrimonio cultural inmaterial” (intangible cultural heritage) that maintains a longstanding cultural tradition in Latin America (p. 36).

148 face, Waldo creatively added to “cochino” and attached a rhyming word in order to diffuse the remark by replying “cochino-pingüino” (pig-penguin). Despite his effort to joke the jokester, another student moves in on the dialogue and increased the force of the initial utterance by saying, “cochino, marrano, pingüino, pito” to Waldo. While the first three words are animal words (marrano is a synonym for “pig” such as cochino), the final word pito approximates the

English equivalent to the phallic reference “wiener”, commonly among children in Mexico.

Waldo continued to laugh as he attempted to humorously and creatively disarm the cut-down towards him by providing two synonymous alternatives. “En Honduras, ‘pito’ significa uno de esos” (In Honduras, ‘pito” means one of these) (pointing to the whistle on my lanyard).

“También significa lo que usan en las bicicletas, y también los carros.” (It also means what the use on bicycles and cars). In lieu of bearing the brunt of the joke, Waldo used not a form of disparagement humor, as his interlocutors employed, but actuated a form of neutral wordplay in order to not fall into self-deprecatory humor, nor disaffiliative humor with his classmates. By sidestepping the intended meaning of pito, which Waldo was completely aware of, he maintained and even enhanced his dignity (by demonstrating his knowledge of polysemous words in

Spanish, “whistle” and “horn”). Furthermore, he elected not to resort to a form of retaliatory ridicule, which effectively kept the relationships intact for a boy who sought membership in his classroom community.

In both the past and present illustrations described here, Waldo took challenging situations and was able to “successfully” maneuver through the traps that were laid for him to react. In the first instance with Rogelio, for example, he was forced to violate a principle that is common in Latin@ communities—respeto (Reyes & Elías, 2011). The notion that all members of the community, specifically the elders, merit respectful and honoring treatment was, according

149 to Waldo’s report, transgressive. This contractual infraction on behalf of the elder (Rogelio, line

02), while being held up on behalf of the victim (and storyteller), was the beginning of the breakdown of boundaries. As the young Honduran attempted to reimagine being called a large- headed boy, he correspondingly answered his interlocutor by resourcefully explaining that the reason he had a big head was due to the fact that he was more intelligent than Rogelio. Waldo similarly retorted as the elder man disrespectfully stuck out his middle finger to the boy. By telling the older man to “stick it up his ass”, he reordered the structure as if by saying, “If you aren’t going to play by the rules of respeto, nor will I, and I will get the last laugh.” In the second vignette, Waldo takes a more cautious navigational approach with his classmates that taunt him by calling him cochino. According to humor scholars Bell & Pomerantz (2016), when an individual is “confronted with a tease, the target is likely to deny or correct the content of the jibe.” (p. 36). In Waldo’s case, the sequence in the following chart took place as humor provides the backdrop.

Table 4.1: Waldo’s creatively humorous reconfiguration of language to avoid being insulted

Original cochino---→ cochino cochino, pito utterance pingüino ----→ marrano, pingüino, pito---→ Meaning pig ---→ pig pig, whistle penguin ----→ hog, or penguin bell wiener---→ Function Student calls Waldo diffuses Second student Waldo Waldo a pig insult by making extends the deconstructs the it rhyme with a rhyme to include escalating game word that has no “hog” and by displaying his negative “wiener” (penis), knowledge of connotation the latter being the word’s the most polysemy insulting

150 In contrast to Waldo’s disaffiliative stance with Rogelio, an individual with whom he did not seem to want a relationship, I argue here that the Honduran student playfully sidestepped disaffiliating with his classmates (and future friends) by not firing back with a direct comical act of retaliation; rather, he reimagined the entire conversation by discussing not what the others had called him, but by showing his prowess with the language and literally recasting the meaning of the insult with correct synonymous terms. By rendering his opponents’ weapons powerless through the use of verbal play, he circumnavigated any enduring conflicts with the other students while coming across as quick-witted and sharp.

¡Ya! ¡Ni Modo!: Resilience through the humorous navigation of overcoming an institutional challenge

The previous two sections have exhibited findings of resilience through the navigation of identity and through relationships. The following addresses how this resilience is humorously backdropped as students grapple with how to navigate a class assignment. Grounded in Yosso’s notion of navigational capital, we see how these students constitute what that can mean by recasting a version of reality on their terms. These interactions provide evidence is about how students employed humor get through potential challenges.

The scenario took place one morning in late October. The students in AVID 3 were charged with selecting a vocabulary word in English or Spanish and were now beginning to decorate their word for the upcoming Vocabulary Parade that would be happening in a few days.

Leonel and Daya were talking about finding some supplies for their accompanying outfit at either Goodwill or La Dólar (Dollar General). Words such as “polished”, “loquacious” and

“squirt” were being thrown around by the students and the teachers. Ms. Lectura and Ms. Knack combined classes, so everything was now in all English. While a few students had words in

151 Spanish, such as “feroz” o “gruñir”, the vast majority of Spanish-speaking students had words in

English. As I asked students from AVID 3 how they were feeling about having to go in front of the school to describe their word, answers ranged from “feliz” (happy) to “un poco nerviosa” (a little nervous). Then, the following exchange transpires between Daya and Leonel:

01 Leonel: Tenemos que pasar por el escenario en la cafeteria y decir la palabra que tienes 02 ahí [We have to walk on the stage in the cafeteria and say the word that you have 03 right there.]

04 Daya: Me va a dar pena (smiling building to laughter)…pero ¡Ya!, Ni modo! (I’m going 05 to be embarrassed, but, forget it! Who cares?!)

06 Leonel (laughing): ¿Qué tal si ponemos una palabra en español? ¡Va a ser dificil para

07 todos! [What would happen if we sneak a Spanish word in there? It would

08 be difficult for everybody!]

As the two students interact about having to walk across the stage with their English word in hand, Leonel points out to Daya the obligatory nature of the undertaking (tenemos que, we have to, line 1). The young female Honduran’s initial response was one rooted in pena [shame] (line

4), perhaps because of how people might perceive her pronunciation of her word in her L2.

Either way, she almost immediately follows her statement of fear with the multifunctional

Spanish word ¡Ya!. According to Koike (1996), “the adverbial ya has functions in narrative discourse besides that of simply modifying other constituents…”. Rather, she continues, ya can mean to express “an achievement, activity, accomplishment, or a change of state, which qualifies as an achievement. (p. 273). Right after that, she states humorously (line 4), “Ni modo”, which is a common Mexican (less prevalent in Honduras) way of verbally shrugging her shoulders as if saying anything ranging from “This can’t be helped” to “That’s just the way it is” to “Screw it”!

The successive remark continued on this resilience sequence as Leonel comically reimagined the

152 scenario to where the imagined English-speakers end up not knowing how to pronounce the words in Spanish. This notion is punctuated as he laughed in lines 06-07 and stated, “¡Va a ser difícil para todos! [It’s going to (or, ‘It would be’) for everyone]. The “everyone” implied here are the non-Spanish speaking individuals at the presentation, meaning the other students in 3rd grade outside of AVID 3, the teachers, administrators, and parents.

What is experienced locally here with Daya and Leonel originated far beyond the local reality of the two Spanish speakers that morning. The very real apprehension that Leonel and

Daya shared, and humorously and linguistically overcame before walking across the stage that week, came from a policy level set forth at administrative levels of the school and district. The push into English, particularly in the first year high-stakes-testing grade, as discussed by Palmer and Lynch (2008), is what was most likely driving the force behind the decision to have an advanced English word in preparation to the state mandated STAAR Test in lieu of an advanced word in the Spanish language. As the ruling trickled down to affect the daily goings-on of

Leonel and Daya, they realized that they had no real choice (that would keep them out of trouble) but to acquiesce. I argue that humor, in this case, served as a proverbial safety net that was cast underneath the idea as they enveloped and reframed it with resilience and laughter. While humor has been studied in abundance regarding diverse members of a community, there is next to no research that attempts to understand it through a sociocultural lens. An exception to this, however, is Glenda Carpio, author of Laughing Fit to Kill: Black Humor in the Fictions of

Slavery (2008), who states:

African American humor has been, for centuries, a humor of survival. It has been a

safety valve, a mode of minimizing pain and defeat, as well as a medium capable of

expressing grievance and grief in the most artful and incisive ways. (p. 231)

153 The forethought by the students in their hypothesis of “what might happen” , which caused

Daya’s initial trepidation and the subsequent solidarity-based imaginative subversion was created by the students in light of a deeper ideology as well. Undergirding their conversation and awareness of the need to perform by correctly pronouncing their English words is an idea that in order to be successful in this society, as Nieto (1998) suggests, one must know the “American” norms. In Daya and Leonel’s case, the possibility of embodying a non-prestige phonological articulation of difficult English language excluded them from the imagined (and incarnate) membership of being “American”. With Leonel’s revisualization of the scenario to where he and his classmate possessed the expertise, the “todos” [“everyone”] in his envisioned screenplay located him and Daya as the norm. Reaching this point of summoning both the navigational and aspirational capital to go through with the assignment was grounded in a frame of humor that gave them both the courage and victory over any challenge, real or imagined.

¡Estamos Hablando Como Bebés!: Resilience Through the Humorous

(Circum)Navigation of Dilemma

Maneuvering through institutional settings such as customs offices or even the daunting reality of public entities such as schools or medical facilities requires students of color to sharpen their navigational skills for survival. With terms floating through societal ether such as “I.C.E.” or “centro de detención” on the hearts and minds of immigrant children, knowing how to be resilient during conflict can be a challenge. Moreover, how to confront positions of authority with levity, even when one is guilty of a behavior, is a skill set that allows for navigational resilience of an individual. One afternoon in the fall of 2018, the students at Erwin Elementary were all in the gymnasium for dismissal. During this time, I was still in a very exploratory phase of my data collection, so I tried many methods to gather information. Hoping to capture some

154 last-minute insight, I passed the Zoom recorder to students in AVID 3 to “compartir or encontrar cosas chistosas” [to share or find instances of humor] as they sat patiently for their names to be called over the distorted loudspeaker and subsequently by their teacher. The audio recorder ended up with a group of boys in AVID 3 as they were intentionally and unintentionally being funny and clamorously interacting with the device. Comedic noises erupted as references to the popular youth John Cena Vine63 were blurted out, accompanied by a brusque remark of

“¡Tu mamá!” (Your momma!) trumpeting through the air, followed by laughter, as it all piped directly into the recording microphone of the Zoom recorder. Waldo decided to take the laughing up a notch by mocking the teachers as they called the students to be dismissed. As he was caught making fun of his unsuspecting audience, the recent Honduran arrival displayed just such a tactful bit of the aforementioned successful navigation. Ms. Lectura began to call a student, and Waldo began:

01 Ms. Lectura: Devin!

02 Waldo: (directly mimicking intonation and word of Ms. Lectura): Devin!

03: Researcher: (talking to a group of students who were leaving) Bye, guys!

04: Waldo (directly mimicking intonation and words of researcher): Bai, gai!

05: Researcher (to Waldo and boys): ¿Están hablando? [Are y’all talking?]

06: Waldo (using same mimicking voice): ¡Sí! Estamos hablando como bebés! [Yes! We

07 are talking like babies!] (begins to laugh with

63 A 7-second humorous internet vine that shows how a young male compares the fact that he can play a melody with two musical recorders (one in each nostril) to the skills of the professional wrestler/actor/rapper. As he exclaims the name “John Cena” (just as Waldo did in this example), he performs the “feat” on the instrument. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ddv7Ru2Pwys

155 08 researcher and then moves into a more “maniacal”

09 sounding laughter as researcher “buys it”.)

10: Researcher: ¿Dito también? [Is Dito laughing as well?]

11: Dito (defensively and divergently): ¡No!

In this example, I (the researcher) picked up on something suspicious taking place with the group of students. In line 05, I gently inquired from Waldo as to the nature of their interaction, a move to merely gain insight without being accusative. The Honduran student, while laughing, is quick to react as he responded to me, flowing seamlessly as he implemented the same comical nasal- effect voice that he used to mock me. “Sí, estamos hablando como bebés” [Yes, we are talking like babies]. It is unclear whether or not it dawned on him that the Zoom recorder was picking up every sound he made; however, the evidence seems to point to the fact that he did because he ostensibly would not have covered the offense by continuing to use the “baby voice”.

Interestingly, and hilariously, there was a distinct change in his contrived pretend-innocent laughter with me as he could not seem to contain his real laughter of having made fun of me and was now successfully getting away with it. To confirm my suspicion of being “played”, I checked in with his classmate (who was sitting right next to Waldo), to which the young

Colombian-American dissociatively and quickly emoted, “No!!!”

Before discussing the sociocultural matter in which Waldo humorously interacted with terrific navigational resilience through real and pretend humor, let us first look at a few possible causes of the initial raillery from the literature of humor scholarship. Generally speaking, there are three preponderant theories, each with their multitudes of variant sub-groups and iterations.

The first and most apparent was how Waldo’s mimicry exemplified the superiority theory

(associated with disparagement humor), in which a target or perceived source of opposition (in

156 this case, me) is framed as the “bad guy”, about which humans like to laugh or mock (Zillmann,

2000). The authority of Ms. Lectura and myself as stand-ins for a remote governance structure that was nonnative to Waldo’s environment. By using humor to flip the script, as Daya and

Leonel did above, he became the creator of a different “law”.

The second possible cause, which is admittedly infused with a healthy dose of speculation, is that of relief theory. Although there are remarkably few research pieces that take a serious look at Latin@ humor (Limón, 1982; Carrilo, 2006; Cintrón, 1997; Martínez &

Morales 2014), a theme regarding humor of relief is discussed as a “break from the weight of racism and discrimination and a way to critique the dominant culture ‘under the radar’”

(Dickinson, 2008, p. 6). It is possible that Waldo, not only being minoritized as an undocumented immigrant to the US, but also having experienced intragroup exclusion for being

Honduran among a predominant Mexican/Mexican-American majority, employed a humor as a safety valve or being at the bottom of the bottom of the socially constructed hierarchies.

The third theory is that of incongruity, which points out the humor based on the paradox, if not contradiction, of what is said and what is done. Researchers of American humor, such as

Louis D. Rubin, Jr., have written about humor’s tendency to “use incongruities to point out the difference between democratic ideals of equality and justice and the realities of discrimination and inequity…” (Dickinson, 2008, p. 12). The notion of “smiling through one’s teeth” (Boskin

& Dorinson, 1985, p. 83) as Waldo sits within the possible judgment seat for mocking authority, acknowledges an incongruity. Whether this incongruity is based on him escaping being called out for transgressive behavior when he could have been caught, or because the shift of control to his favor as he unseated me from my role of power, could not be ascertained empirically.

Although not overtly foregrounding race in his humorous endeavor, me being a white male in a

157 position of authority might have been just enough for the Honduran immigrant who had recently been through traumatizing experiences to risibly parrot me as a representative of being gringo.

That being said, he also mimicked his Latina teacher in this section (line 02), which does not discount the possibility of race being a factor. In any case, Waldo might have triggered this jocularity to engender covert prestige with his nearby classmates through his mirthful acts of subversion. As indicated earlier, Waldo had a challenging start to the school year and perhaps wanted to entertain those around him to gain friends. Managing peer relationships at the expense of distant authority figures may have been at the heart of his ludic impressions. As I called out

Dito, who was sitting next to Waldo (line 10), he expediently disaffiliated with the guilty student, thus rendering Waldo’s effort potentially ineffective by nearly getting a classmate in trouble.

Whatever the case may be, his masterful piece de resilience (and arguably de resistance) demonstrated how he avoided as it pertains to this section is how he masterfully attempted to assuage any of my suspicion by harnessing the very act in question, using it as a continuation of his mockery, and “surviving” the moment by implementing the actual subject that he knew that I was investigating. This interactional work orchestrated by Waldo speaks of Goffman’s (2005) notion of changing footing, through which social relationships are discursively constructed within shared activities. More specifically, the manner through which Waldo picked up on contextualization clues (Gumperz, 1982), when I subtly interrogated his speech activity in line

05, seemed to determine his shift of footing to a more innocent form of communication (“talking like babies”, line 06). This seamlessly astute transition exhibits a phenomenal sense of resilience by avoiding correction through humorous navigation.

Later in the year, Waldo displayed this same type of resilience during Art class as he was

“caught” being subversive on the audio recorder. His classmate Leonel, and I were discussing a

158 well-known humorous ditty sung by schoolchildren in Mexico to practice their vowels. As I playfully sang the lyrics to the boys for a second time, “A, E, I, O, U, el burro sabe más que tú..”

[A, E, I, O, U, The donkey [idiot] knows more than you], Waldo seemed to think that Leonel and

I were singing it about him and became upset. The student quickly and passionately countered the message “the donkey [idiot] knows more than you” under his breath, “¡Tu mamá!” [Your mom!]. Knowing that burro [donkey] had a double meaning equivalent to “idiot” in English, his visceral reaction demonstrated that he was upset, perhaps due to consistent ridicule both in

Honduras and in class, as mentioned above. After about ten seconds, and realizing that he was being recorded, Waldo slyly and cheerily followed up, “Mr. Ingram, y tu mamá, ¿dónde vive?

¿En qué país vive?”. [Mr. Ingram, your mom…where does she live? In what country does she live?]. By brightening up the tone while incorporating the very word (mamá) that could have gotten him in trouble, as well as personalizing the conversation by asking about my family member, Waldo ingeniously mitigated any form of future consequence (I did not discover him saying this until I was analyzing data months later) for having retorted “Your momma!” to the song Leo and I were singing. As Waldo and I discussed the location of my mother’s residence, he took advantage of our jovial conversation to redirect the content of our dialogue further away from the issue keyed by the operative mamá. Knowing that I was conducting a study around humor, Waldo transitioned into reminding me and being extra helpful. "Oh, (acordándose de repente cómo se nombra un comediante) se llama Cocolito el payaso. Escríbelo para que lo busques. El otro se llama "Moñuña.. Mi papá me lo enseñó ayer....Sí estábamos risa y risa y ya....ayer en la noche.”[“Oh, (suddenly remembering the name of a comedian), his name is

Cocolito El Payaso. The other one is Moñuña. My dad showed me him yesterday. We were laughing our heads off last night.”]. By coaxing the conversation from offensive to the inclusive,

159 the resourceful and creative young man used the very notion of humor, which he knew was my interest, to captivate my attention in an effort to cover up an affront.

Discussion

When I first took up this data, Yosso was the lens through which I intended to understand the interactional events with AVID 3. The notions of aspirational capital as a way to endure an unsympathetic educational system and navigational capital as a way to prevail. Knowing that these students were under tremendous pressure to transition quickly to English due to administrative decisions based on high-stakes testing arrangements, I conjectured about how students would use both navigational capital and aspirational capital to maneuver through and maintain hope. As I intersected the additional layer of humor with these capitals, moreover, I empirically witnessed in what ways students coupled mirth with significant and visceral realities that confronted them. The first of these was being resilient through the navigation of identity.

According to Cano et al. (2014), intragroup marginalization, such as that experienced by Waldo being accused of embodiment that was too Honduran or too Mexican, has been found to have negative consequences on students. “Perceived lack of cultural fit between [student] and academic institution (cultural incongruity) had statistically significant direct and indirect effects on depressive symptoms via acculturative stress.” (p. 136). As Latin@ students already walk into a system that typically lacks the support needed for a successful schooling experience, being aware of these types of intergroup social hierarchies is key to providing a culturally sustaining environment helping the minoritized of the minoritized. Knowing that Waldo was able to navigate this by himself as he converged the complexities of his relationships is a significant start to understand how we as researchers can understand how cultural capital plays out, and we as teachers can foment a culturally aware classroom that frames these differences (i.e. Honduran

160 and Mexican varieties of Spanish) as assets and not deficits. This dovetailed nicely with the second idea of how humor served as the locus for resilience through relationships. In the examples above, we saw how Waldo employed humor to disaffiliate with his mother’s boyfriend in Honduras as well as how he adroitly circumnavigated through verbal play the damaging of relationships with peers that were mocking him. By flipping the proverbial script and essentially telling the mockers, “You can learn from me”, he worked around having to strike back or acquiesce to their taunting. The linguistic dexterity offered him a creative alternative approach to both. These phenomena are also worth our attention as we seek to deepen our understandings of how humor can allow students who are being marginalized (for whatever reason), to invest a capital of humor into a difficult situation. The resilience through this form of navigation also showed us the third way, which is how students overcame an institutional challenge of having to pronounce unfamiliar words in front of an audience. The last way that resilience manifested through a sense of humor was through an instance of dilemma avoidance, also a highly functional skill that could be cultivated for minoritized students to know how to maneuver through the opposition that often awaits them in the educational system.

Southwick & Charney (2018) discuss how humor has been substantively effective as a coping mechanism among combat veterans and cancer patients, as it “reduce[es] the threatening nature of stressful situations…, [it] is associated with resilience and the capacity to tolerate stress. (p. 241). The war waged on L1 Spanish speakers and immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries is typically not as acute as being in physical battle nor as piercing as the impact of oncological stress on the body. However, the long game of acculturative stress, particularly when documentation status and fear of deportation weighs so heavily on an individual, can

“likely have a negative impact on an individual’s thoughts, emotions, and social functioning.”

161 (Arbona et al. 2010, p. 379). Beyond just a mere coping mechanism for staying afloat, students in AVID 3 created and participated in different forms of resilience humor that allowed them to confront challenges head-on and walk away laughing. The data in this chapter illustrated how these students brilliantly drew color from their palettes of language and social understandings of opposition to agentively mobilize their resources in order to demonstrate how resilience was achieved through navigational intelligence and aspirational capital; both of which converged and were displayed masterfully in resplendent precision upon the canvas of humor.

162

CHAPTER 5: RELAJO AS RESISTANCE HOW HUMOR SERVES AS A SITE FOR ACTUATION AND EMPOWERMENT

Cuando pasa el gran señor, el sabio campesino se inclina profundamente ante él, y en silencio se tira un pedo. Proverbio etíope

[As the great lord passes, the wise peasant bows deeply before him and silently farts]

Ethiopian proverb

In contrast to resilience, which is how the students in AVID 3 developed skills or strategies to overcome, resistance foregrounds the idea of one force pushing back against another. This study investigates the linguistic and pedagogical contributions of how verbal play and humor localize and put on display emergent bilingual students’ cultural forms of knowledge.

The research question addressed in this chapter is: How does humor function as a site for emergent bilinguals’ agentic affordances within structural constraints? Beginning in August

2018, I observed in what ways 23 minoritized Latin@ students initiated, engaged in, and reacted to humor, asserted in relation to some form of adversity in their lives. The data for this research question is derived from a comprehensive discourse analysis of fieldnotes, audio/video recordings, formal/informal survey and introspective/retrospective interview data, as well as documents collected at the school such as student work and cumulative folder analysis, which began in August 2018 and lasted until mid-May 2019.

In this chapter I extend Yosso’s (2005) notion of resistance capital by intersecting it with the student-generated linguistic humor as they reimagined scenarios about which they were in opposition. Akin to Delgado’s research on counterstorytelling (1989), which served minoritized individuals as both an interactional technique and analytical tool to challenge dominant

163 structures, relajo gracefully64 dismantles elements of a majoritarian discourse only to quickly abscond behind the cadence of laughter. Relajo, as defined by Bartra (1992) is “that gelatinous slackening of norms which permits a limited insubordination [and] a measured relaxation of the rules of social behavior” (p. 140). This phenomenon is widely implemented and known about in

Latin America and was written about formally by Mexican philosopher Jorge Portilla (1966) as he described it its litany of iterations as “the suspension of seriousness”, “the deviation of something” or a “provoking of the ‘state of things’ among people” (Sánchez and Portilla, 2012, p. 30-32). Because of relajo’s permeability, it is both transitory and incidental, its function to be accessed at virtually any time and anywhere.

Beyond striking back, using silence, or other alternatives, humor is perhaps one of the last options that one considers as an effective strategy against subordination. However, humor and verbal play have long been acknowledged as tools in Latin America to construct solidarity while simultaneously countering oppression. (Portilla,1966; Lauria,1964; Barradas, 2002;

Herrero, 2006). More germane to education in the US, noted scholars in Spanish/English biliteracy (de la Luz Reyes, 2015), sociocultural studies (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2006), and critical race theory (Solórzano & Villalpando,1998; Yosso, 2005) have all made significant statements about the centrality of humor in the lives of Spanish-speaking and bilingual students.

One may reify the humor of 3rd grade students to being merely “child’s play”, without much else of significance; however, I am arguing that beyond the façade and cursory glimpse of merrymaking by young minoritized individuals, there is the potential to discover how the

64 I intentionally employ the word “graceful” here as a semi-cognate of the modern-day usage of the Spanish equivalent gracia, which can be interpreted into the English “charm”, “style”, “know-how”, “joke”, “witty”, “amusing”, “funny”, or “effectiveness”. The linguistic polysemy here is analogous to the manifold functions of humor.

164 sprouting ideologies that harness “chuckles and wit to become subversive”, as Rosaldo (1987) explained regarding politics of laughter ( p. 67). Beyond mere subversion, which no teacher wants to consciously cultivate in their classroom, I hope to articulate transformative discourse that can allow a more grounded and culturally sustaining form of communication between teachers and students.

In the following sections I explain where and how students from AVID 3 marshaled resistant humor towards a variety of social entities and players in different contexts within their schooling environment by answering the research question, “In what ways do minoritized emergent bilinguals enact resistance around spaces of humor?” Three predominant themes emerged from almost 500 coded sequences originating with extensive preliminary lists with such titles as pushback, mocking, transgressive/cussing, vulgar/sexual, lavatorial, superiority, travesura, resistance/reimagining and navigational humor. First, the participants engaged in humor to implicitly and explicitly push back against social players of authority. This finding is particularly relevant with regards to the idea that traditional Latin@ families teach the idea of respeto as a protective factor against issues such as acculturative stress (Reyes & Elias, 2011).

Secondly, students in AVID 3 exhibited resistance to systemic pressures such as rules mandated by their school (Erwin Elementary) or expectations governed by a rigorous testing environment.

This finding is important because it gives a glimpse into the values of students and how they employ agentic affordances in response to structural constraints. The final theme that surfaced through data analysis is that of a pushback using language. The study of language in bilingual contexts remains an issue in terms of language choice and accessibility for students on different points of the bilingual continua (Hornberger, 2003). There exists a salient crossover between scholarship of language and humor that regards an individual’s repertoire of practice (Gutiérrez

165 & Rogoff, 2003 ), which takes into consideration the sociolinguistic-cultural-historical background in addition to their participation and involvement in daily activities. Though seemingly small, quotidian humorous interactions of resistance amongst the students in AVID 3 allow us to see their world from their point of view. This emic perspective is crucial to understand how the adults of this world are coming across to the next generation, and in particular, how the schooling system in the United States is understood through the eyes of minoritized Latin@ students. As Caldwell suggests, “Resistance can take the form of momentous acts of organized, planned, and disciplined protests, or it may consist of small, everyday actions, seeming insignificant that can nevertheless validate the actor’s sense of dignity and worth.” (1995, p. 276). For each of the aforementioned themes and successive sub-themes, I examine the humorous interaction by giving a thick description of the context described through vignettes, explaining how the information was brought across, and finish with what this means to us as educators and researchers in bilingual education.

Participants and Setting

The participants in this study were an exuberant group of 23 (12 girls and 11 boys)

Spanish-speaking students whom I observed, known collectively by their teachers as “AVID 3”.

The children ranged from a multitude of different backgrounds. Out of twenty-three, one was born in Guatemala, 2 in Florida, 4 in Honduras, and 16 in Texas. Although the bulk of the students were born in the US, all except two students had parents that were born in either

Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, or Honduras. These students were smart, adept, and imaginative.

They were often found to be sharing a laugh with someone nearby. The data was predominantly collected throughout the English Language Arts and Math blocks of the school day. The two classrooms were those of Ms. Lectura’s (English/LA) from 7:45-10:30 and Mrs. Suma’s (Math),

166 which occurred from 10:30-12:00. Both of the educators were bilingual in English and Spanish and freely mixed the two when conversing with each other. Ms. Lectura, of Mexican and

Honduran ancestry, conducted the larger part of her instructional time in Spanish, while Mrs.

Suma taught Math in English with intermittent Spanish scaffolding.

Erwin Elementary School is a public elementary school in a large urban area in Central

Texas. At the time of the study, the school enrolled approximately 412 students in grades pre-k through 5th. Of the entire student population 88.3% were labeled as “Economically

Disadvantaged” and received free or reduced-price lunch, 85.7% were “Hispanic”, and 44.2% were “English language learners”. The surrounding neighborhood was changing rapidly as houses were being remodeled and sold for twice the original price. Because of this and the rising cost of taxes in the city, the enrollment had been steadily dropping for five years. The school was scored as a C- (“acceptable performance”) on the Texas Education Agency’s report card rating system, which implied a committed concentration on raising the school’s grade in order to prevent TEA intervention.

Data Collection and Analysis

This qualitative design of this study included multiple methods of data collection including participant observation, surveys, interviews, audio and video recording. The focus was to understand the form and function of how minoritized Spanish-speaking 3rd graders engaged in and took up humor as an act of direct or indirect resistance. The approach that I took about how to “operationalize” the notion of humor follows Davies’ (2003) understanding in that I did not begin the investigation with “reified abstractions such as ‘humor’, ‘wit’, or ‘irony’, but rather with the situated interpretation of joking as a speech activity.” (p. 1362). The data described here is portrayed as vignettes of humorous student interaction, which is the unit of my analysis.

167 I used ethnographic methods to collect data including a student survey, participant observation, the taking of field notes, informal/formal interviews, document analysis (cumulative folders, flyers, school bulletins, student work), audio-recording, and video-recording to document the student exchanges one to three times per week over the course of the 2018-2019 school year. Using Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth as my incipient theoretical lens, I carefully examined the students involvement with instances of humor, systematically coding

(Saldaña, 2015) line by line. As I compared themes across data sources in order to verify my emerging analyses, one of the three meta-themes was that of resistance, which manifested as a function of humor within the social interaction found within the data sources. In order to deepen my understanding about the meanings of these micro-examples, I grounded the analysis within larger structures surrounding the students that I observed during data collection. Due to the fact that I am taking up and making sense of the concept through a sociocultural lens, Yosso’s (2005) concept of resistant capital is a complementary fit for the phenomena that I observed through this project. The researcher states that this capital refers to “those knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges inequality…and is grounded in the legacy of resistance to subordination exhibited by communities of color.” (p. 80)

Yosso articulates here that resistance is as much as an epistemological function as it is an application. It is important to point out that the Yosso’s aforementioned “inequality” is often not an explicit interaction. True to the data in this research, it was frequently an implied inequality such as administrative decisions to limit instruction in Spanish for the sake of the test or the subtle disdain for the linguistic or cultural background of the nondominant students in a Latin@ intragroup setting. An inevitable travel companion of resistant capital is that of navigational capital. In order to enact forms of resistance wisely, one must know how, to whom, when, and where. Humor makes total sense as a backdrop to help answer these questions because of its

168 breadth of permeability. Evidence from this project demonstrates how humor served as an overt vehicle to bring across an oft-covert message. While Yosso has described the diverse community cultural wealth, I am extending this idea to suggest that humor allows spaces for the access of those capitals. In other words, I am adding a layer to this concept by extending Yosso’s idea to consider humor as an observational locus for this to take place. This particular presentation addresses how humor is a navigational capital that helped students in AVID 3 negotiate instances of resistance.

Relajando El Respeto

In literature of school psychology, respeto in Latin@ families is considered a protective factor against such trials as poverty, ethnic or racial discrimination, and acculturative stress.

According to Reyes & Elías (2011), respeto in Latin@ communities refers to the belief that

“every person deserves to be treated with respect and courtesy, particularly elders.” The researchers continue, “ One result of respeto is that great social worth and ultimate decision- making power is vested in authority figures, such as parents, elders, civic leaders, teachers, and law enforcement and other government officials.” (p. 729). For the majority of the time I spent at Erwin Elementary, I primarily witnessed nothing but courtesy and respect from the students in

AVID 3. While I never experienced it directly, there were some instances where I either observed or discovered later by listening to audio recordings subtle forms of pushback often couched in forms of humor. These instances were either undetected or unacknowledged by the intended recipients, but intentional nonetheless In the following instances, I explain how respeto gives way to relajo (or anti-respeto) which signifies forms of resistencia. As mentioned earlier in this dissertation, Gallegos (2013) depicts relajo “as an act of suspension and value inversion

[and] is a manifestation of human freedom; it appears in the realm of what the human being can

169 do” (p. 120). De Genova (2005) resonates with this representation by poetically sketching relajo as a “chaotic disorganization supplemented with a sense of creativity and disruptive intentionality” (p. 169).

Chano Más

Perhaps one of the most vocal students in terms of overtly interrogating forms of authority directly was a nine-year-old Texan student whose parents were both born in Mexico. .

Chano (see Fig. 12) was known to employ funny voices in class at both appropriate and inappropriate times. From early October through the rest of the year, I would often overhear him speaking of Momo, a grotesque and threatening internet sculpture that was popular with some youth in the US. Chano’s laughter and voices would often mimic diabolical voices with low tones that were intentionally pointed at the people that he perceived to be in his opposition (i.e. everybody). In addition to this form of dark and disparagement humor that he displayed, Chano would also find lighter ways to laugh heartily with or boldly at someone.

On a few occasions throughout the school year, I was able to observe or learn about times when he would subtly and overtly push back particularly against the teachers that spoke only

English to the class. Although he navigated school mainly in English (which was the de facto policy at school), Chano was completely capable of expressing himself in Spanish, even through the emotions of a heated argument. I was able to learn this in late October when Ms. Lectura, the students’ Reading teacher, solicited my help to resolve a conflict between him and Waldo as she continued to teach the rest of the students in the class. We walked out into the hallway in order to minimize both incoming and outgoing distractions. According to Waldo, fairly new arrival from Honduras, Chano was “Diciendo cosas feas, escribiendo cosas feas, hablando mal de [su] mamá” [Saying and writing mean things and talking about his mom]. While working through

170 why Chano was throwing spit wads at Waldo in class, I told him, “Sí, pero tú lo empezaste...¿Ves? Tú crees que es algo chistoso, pero la gente no se está riendo, se está enojando..[But you started it, see? You think it’s funny, but people aren’t laughing, they’re getting angry]. As the two classmates asked each other for forgiveness under my duress, they were staring at each other and Chano made a funny face, to which Waldo stated laughingly, “Y quiere darme una risa él.."[and now he wants to make me laugh]. It is at this point where Chano recruited Waldo, the same student with which he was vehemently arguing only moments prior, to turn and resist my efforts to fulfill Waldo’s request of having them sign a written acuerdo

(agreement) with each other:

01 Researcher: No vamos a empezar con chistes ni bromas porque se malinterpretan. [Let’s 02 not start with jokes or pranks because you could misinterpret each other]. 03 ((Waldo laughing)) 04 Researcher (while writing out the contract I speak): Vamos a hacer el esfuerzo para ser 05 amigos. Cuando algo malo pasa..[We are going to make an 06 effort to be friends. When something bad happens…] 07 Chano (interrupts researcher): Nos peleamos [We’ll fight] 08 ((Waldo laughing)) 09 Researcher continues without acknowledging sidetrack:...entre nosotros, [between us,] 10 Chano (interrupts again): Nos peleamos [We’ll fight] 11 ((Waldo laughing harder)) 12 Researcher continues: nos vamos a…[we are going to] 13 Chano: ¡Pelear! [Fight!] 14 ((Waldo laughing hysterically)) 15 Researcher: a pedir perdón uno al otro. Firmado.[apologize to each other. Signed]

After this I recommended to them that they should postpone the jokes because they had been misinterpreting each other and then I asked them if they really wanted to be friends. While

Waldo was willing to sign, Chano resisted and decided that, after all, he would not commit to signing the acuerdo. Despite the fact that this was quite challenging and vexing as a teacher in

171 this situation, I can step back as a researcher and appreciate what was transpiring through this interaction. As apparent in line 01 where I asked Chano not to engage in any form of humor

(indeed a rare request made by me as an educator or researcher), there had been humorous attempts to defy or deconstruct my attempt to help in reconciliation of their rocky relationship.

In lieu of heeding my request, Chano strategically dismantled it by proposing a contrary declaration—one, in fact, that aligns with the very reason that we are having to stand in the hallway in the first place. Like a scene out of Chavo del 865, when Profesor Jirafales is undermined by his students twisting his very words against him, Chano’s insertion of nos peleamos (we’ll fight) was brilliantly and disruptively placed three times intersententially as I ineffectively endeavored to set a tone of gravity to the situation. His final triumph over my efforts was solidified as he rejects the invitation to sign the friend agreement between him and

Waldo. The finality of this extraordinarily complex work (a.k.a relajo) was realized, incidentally, as I stood deterred in my efforts while both students walked back to class laughing vociferously. By brandishing humor, Chano managed to affiliate with the classmate who had accused him of being rude while concurrently disaffiliating with the power that could potentially verify the accusation. While this does not fully embody the transformational resistance category discussed in Solórzano & Delgado-Bernal’s (2001), which suggests oppositional behavior accompanied by a critique of oppression and desire for social justice, it at least overtly touches on Yosso’s (2000) earlier construct of resilient resistance, which are the strategies students use

65 A wildly popular Mexican sitcom that started in the early 1970s, Chavo del 8 relates the misadventures of a poor orphan living in a low-income housing complex in Mexico. His impatient school teacher, Profesor Jirafales, was often mocked by the children and would get into inescapable and comical conversations with them as he would self-incriminatingly ask two paradoxical questions as the children would reply, “Las dos cosas” [Both of them (the questions) were correct]. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFd9ALHruQs

172 that “leave the structures of domination in-tact, yet help the students survive and/or succeed” (p.

181). In this same vein, McLaren (1993) concluded, “resistance among working-class students…are often tacit, informal, unwitting, and unconscious” (p. 47).

Fig. 5.1: Chano stares across the table as I interview him regarding what he considers humorous in life.

Thankfully for Mr. Wormyman (his nickname for me at the beginning of the year), I was not the sole recipient of Chano’s verbal craftmanship as he crossed humor with resistance. Whether he was gibingly correcting his math teacher’s pronunciation of the word “lamp” or amusingly telling her that she smelled “like his abuela’s car”, Chano was well aware of the power that he wielded behind his form of disaffiliative humor. For instance, Ms. Knack, Chano’s monolingual

English-speaking science teacher, would occasionally try and implement a few Spanish words from her communicative repertoire to connect with students. Even from as early as October in the school year, Chano would refute her attempts at connecting under the guise of joking around.

In one instance he responded slyly to her insertion of Spanish lexemes with, “It’s kind of like you don’t know Spanish.” On another occasion, Ms. Knack wrote the word "adjectives" on the

173 board and turned around to find Chano not in his seat. “¡Siéntate!” (Sit down!), she snapped, to which the student humorously responded as he walked to his seat, “"What? I don't understand your language?" (observation, Oct. 16, 2018). By feigning the inability to understand the teacher while simultaneously fulfilling her request so as not to get into trouble, Chano turned the tables and seemingly re-architected the rules on his terms. This relajo-driven interaction resembled what Luykx states in his treatise on resistance entitled, From Indios to Profesionales (1996):

…jokes about oppression, though often seen as trivial or passive responses, may highlight

social contradictions in highly significant ways. A joke can be a knifeblade (sic) slipped

into the interstices of an oppressive discourse; with a humorous twist, the discourse is

(albeit momentarily) disarticulated, and possibly rearticulated toward other, more

subversive ends. (p. 256)

The humorous tone which Chano actuates in his exchange with the monolingual English- speaking teacher provided the perfect canvas for him to mobilize his agency both navigationally

(by avoiding negative consequences) and resistantly (by disassembling her authority. Because it was handled within a humorous frame, his multi-pronged message came off lightly, but with a thermostatic undertone that momentarily tipped the scales of power. In a sense, Chano capitalized on the fact that the teacher had a limited command of the Spanish language to shrewdly resist her abrupt request. By pushing back on the English hegemony that was dominant in that classroom, he stated in essence, ‘As it pertains to you and your attempt to speak to me in my L1, I am now the authority in Spanish, and you are rendered practically powerless’, which was likely spoken to him directly and indirectly countless times before by speakers of English.

In a case like this, as Shannon (1995) posits, when “the hegemony of English is resisted…, the status of Spanish approximates the status of English.” (p. 175). Chano’s sardonic response to the

174 teacher conveyed much more than a flippant comment about the incomprehensibility of her command (which he indeed did understand); I argue that humor provided the terrain on which to plant the flag of resistance in an attempt to restore balance to the asymmetrical environment.

This is corroborated by Ritchie (2005), as the researcher states that subversive forms of humor can “represent a combination of the ‘flash of recognition’, when a punch line elevates a suppressed but well-known reality to full awareness, with the relief that comes from being allowed, if only for a moment to relax the pretense.” (p. 12).

We know that humor is part and parcel of children’s discourse and that it is used very purposeful ways. Kids also wield humor by employing deliberate strategies that are linked to forms of navigational push-back. In these examples, Chano was able to display his linguistic capital to nurture different forms of opposition. In the first example, the student inserted the syntactically and semantically “correct” lexeme to amply discredit my authority as the teacher while mutually levying a recruitment of the very person whom he slighted. While it may be argued that he could have committed this act to find eventual solidarity with his fellow Latino classmate against my very whiteness as an embodiment of an inequitable macro-institutional power structure, it is difficult to say what his motives (plural) were. Yosso (2005) posits that resistant capital as a form of cultural wealth is “grounded in the legacy of resistance to subordination exhibited by Communities of Color”. (p. 81). Functionally, he adequately dethroned me as an authority while simultaneously recruiting and reconciling with his classmate.

The second example exhibited this more unequivocally, yet similarly, as the authoritative teacher’s strident request intersected language and power. His outright feigning of her exclamation to him in a language with which he was intimately familiar seems to align and extend Yosso’s “knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behavior that challenges

175 inequality” (p. 80) with the additional layer of humor. “Inequality” here, I submit, is not only the standard power asymmetry of the teacher/student dynamic, but also the school’s overarching usage of the prestige variety of English, and the educator’s attempt to access the student’s linguistic capital to get him to sit down. Chano’s cognizant comical performance of pretending not to understand served as a proverbial canvas upon which to display this work. In this second case the student does fit the Solórzano & Delgado-Bernal’s (2001) definition of transformational resistance in that he is both obliquely oppositional as well as willfully determined to send the clear message that he would not acquiesce and that two could play at the game of language dominance. Akin to Yosso’s (2000) work on critical media literacy, in which Chican@ students used the process of “proving others wrong” to combat negative portrayals about Chican@s in general, Chano employed a form of humor to navigate through a scenario while deliberately speaking back to power in its own language, which in this case, was not in Spanish.

The Authorities Had Beto Watch Out

Born in Texas and raised near a large urban district, Beto was a 9-year old male whose parents were both born in Mexico. According to his Home Language Survey “Español” was the answer to the three questions, “..the language most spoken at home?”, “..the language most spoken by student?”, and “first language that he learned to speak?” as he entered the district as a pre-kindergartener in 2014. Two school years prior (when he was in 1st grade) to that of my observations, the charter school that he attended for one year labeled him “limited” in terms of his English proficiency. “Limited”, however, was not an accurate descriptor of how I witnessed this student interact in his schooling environment. The student spoke primarily English, presumably because it was the prestige language considered to be more important and functional both academically and socially in the context of the school. Beto was able to fluidly apply

176 intentional lexical, phonological, and pragmatic resources (irrespective of politically-determined language boundaries), or, translanguage with adults and children alike. Apart from linguistically weaving in and out of the translanguaging corriente, (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017), he was also able to maneuver similarly in and out of frames of humor. Adding a sociocultural lens to the cognitive linguist Coulson’s (2001) understanding of humor as more than simply linguistic input,

I employ frames of humor to represent the notion that meaning-construction is an active process that draws from both linguistic and non-linguistic cues, such as contextual and background knowledge, in addition to structural realities faced by these minoritized students. As Beto and other students entered into these frames, particular work was getting accomplished in a particular way for a particular reason. For example, he was a relajo master who deftly braided humor with clandestine barbs towards those whom he regarded to be in his opposition. As the class returned from lunch one afternoon, a student inquired about the contents within a small door in the hallway that was a few feet off of the ground, used to house the air conditioning unit. While the class began to collectively speculate, a student began by suggesting that behind the door resided

La Llorona, a well-known folkloric character that is known for spookily wandering the land in search of her dead children’s bodies. As Alexa communicated this cultural knowledge to the class, Beto offers his conjecture joined in the

01 Alexa: Tal vez la Llorona [Maybe it’s La Llorona].

02 Daya: He oído que hay un niño de 4rto grado ahí adentro. ((se ríen tod@s) [I’ve heard 03 that there’s a 4th grader in there.] ((everyone begins laughing))

04 Ms. Lectura: (laughing) ¿Uds. piensan que hay unos niños ahí adentro con La Llorona?' 05 [Do you all think that there are any children in there with La 06 Llorona?]

05 Beto: Pues las maestras tienen que estar ahí adentro [Well the teachers have to be in 06 there then.]

177 07 Teacher and researcher laugh out loud

In this sequence, Beto takes advantage of the momentum of the conversation about the sociohistorical reference, La Llorona, to take a quick verbal jab about teachers. Knowing full well that the lexeme “llorona” can refer both to the cultural schema described above and to the

Spanish equivalent of the English “whiner”, or “crybaby”, the shrewd student gave the initial deadpan comeback to his teacher’s suggestion that students are in there with the ghostly figure, followed with a surreptitious smile. What remains unclear is whether or not he meant that teachers are the lloronas (whiners), or that La Llorona was going to victimize the teachers just as well as the students, as Ms. Lectura had posited (line 04). When I followed up with him, he covered his tracks by saying that "he was just saying that the teachers are in that door planning for the next day". This concept of being clandestinely pushing back and then knowing how to cover for one’s self speaks to Yosso’s (2005) navigational intelligence, which highlights the use of an individual’s agency to maneuver through potentially antagonistic situations. Though his exact meaning will never be discerned, what can be sure is that he was using a subtle form of humorous resistance against either all teachers or against the particular bantering offered by Ms.

Lectura as he substituted the idea of teachers being with La Llorona in place of the children.

Not all of Beto’s resistance was this subtle, however. On the recordings that I gathered throughout my observation time, it became very clear that he was not comfortable with being audio or video recorded. Related to Foucault’s (2012) notion of the panopticon, which describes how nondominant citizens must self-monitor their choices in accordance with the standards of those in power, Beto indeed felt threatened by the Zoom recorder being left on his desk. To further entangle the potential narrative of what Beto might have construed as a “cultural pattern of surveillance” between Mexico/US. (Lugo, 2008), my positionality as living within the body of

178 a white male who was decades older than this young Latino could most certainly have been a factor in his pushback. Núnez (2018) extends the idea of surveillance as pertaining to “children who not only deal with the expectation of knowing two languages, two cultures, countries, and government agencies, but who also have to develop the necessary knowledge and practices to navigate the surveillance and culture of criminalization…” (p. 10).

An example of this occurred as classmate Juanpi and Beto began to correctively rib

Leonel about mispronouncing the phrase “Under Armor”, which the students begin to verbally stretch the phrase to frame it more towards the lexeme/semanteme “underarm”. The boys affiliatively joked amongst each other and Juanpi suggested that “Everybody attack Palomo”:

01 Palomo: I’m gonna beat your ass!

02 Students whispering and someone says, “It recorded that”. ((Several seconds of silence))

03 Palomo: ¿Qué hace ese button? [What does that button do?]

04 Beto: It records...It's recording right now! ((voice raises)) Please stop creepin' on 05 us! Stop creepin' on us, dude, ((quietly)) please. Where is Mr. Ingram anyways? 06 ((Nine seconds pass and Beto makes the sound of a gun being cocked and then 07 shooting))

08 There, stop recording Juanpi, there, it stopped recording.

07 Juanpi: It’s still recording.

08: Beto: Lemme block the cameras

09: Juanpi: It doesn’t have cameras, it only records.

The beginning of this sequence displays Palomo’s use of transgressive language (line 01), followed by his friends immediately reminding him that he was being recorded. As Palomo found sudden interest in the recording device, presumably either to cover his previous usage of the word “ass”, or to inquire about potentially erasing what was said, Beto answered his question but transitioned immediately into his antipathy of being surveilled. He subsequently demanded

179 that I (the originator of the recording device) stop “creepin’ on them” (invading their space), as I served as a proverbial stick in their interactive mud. This first interaction is reminiscent of

Limón’s (1996) research of mutual identity validation through verbal art and Carrillo’s (2006) mujerista collective through everyday humor in that all of the interlocutors took care of one another in the face of “alienating hegemony of the dominant culture and society” (Limón, p.

478). In this case, due to my positionality and the institutional backing that allowed me to place the recorder where I did, I unintentionally was a representative of this very “hegemony of the dominant” school culture. As the compañerismo is curtailed in light of the discovery of feasible problems with the panoptical recording of transgressive language, laughter ceased and silence fell (line 02). Palomo, the culpable participant was the first to muster up the words to break the noiselessness dialogue which was almost undoubtedly accompanied by busy gestures and glances inaccessible to the recorder’s microphone. His inquiry broke down the artificial barriers between Spanish/English as he changed the direction of the conversation to one of inquisitivity.

Perhaps motivated by the wondering about if there was a way to expunge what had been spoken or trying to sound interested in the “official” business of school by being a curious student, his question of “¿Qué hace ese button? [What does this button do?] triggered in Beto a lively response that well embodied a form of 3rd grade resistance. In line 04 the frustrated student spoke directly back to authority by measuredly telling me, via the recording, to “Stop creepin’” on them and “stop recording us”. Although he was fully able to speak Spanish, he used the language of power (in this case, English) to speak back to power through the very device that he perceived to be against him. It is difficult to know whether the subsequent sound of the gun loading and firing was being aimed at an abstract version of myself or at the recording device.

However, Beto and I were getting along well at this point of the year, so I would like to assume

180 that his aim was at the Zoom recorder, but one cannot be sure. Noteworthy to this sequence as well was to his muted request of “please” in lines 04 and 05, which displays how both the relajo and respeto can coexist and even occur intrasententially. It is as if the student was displaying two opposing facets of his cultural wealth by raising his voice to tell an elder to back off while simultaneously tagging on a demonstration of politeness by saying “please”. Initially these comments were not delivered with any discernible form of overt humor, but a short 3 seconds afterwards Beto is told by Juanpi that the Zoom uniquely recorded audio (not video).

10 Beto: Let me scream on it. What's up?!!

11 Someone in the background: What's up, brah?

12 Beto: (begins rapping) I like chicken nuggets (x2). But I don't like crispy chicken

13 nuggets ‘cause they taste like worms!

14 Student at table: True

15 Beto: Palomo put it in his weird....butt, on his..thing...If you're reading this (directed to 16 listener) Palomo over here, Palomo over here is doing something real weird. It looks 17 like he, um...(trails off)

18 Palomo: It’s my jelly pencil. (Beto gasps for air after suppressing his furtive laughter).

After screaming directly into the Zoom recorder and hearing someone echo back his statement,

Beto began to transition his pointed resistant approach from challenging with the microphone to rapping (a musical genre strongly associated with resistance66) about his particular taste for chicken nuggets. He distanced the content focus from himself by then directing attention to something happening with Palomo, perhaps a sexual connotation (assumed as Palomo defends

66 In his treatment of Hip-Hop Culture (2016), researcher Daniel White Hodge explains that rap music is one of many vehicles to send and fund its message of social, cultural, and political resistance to dominant structures and norms.

181 against any misinterpretation of the possible phallic reference “jelly pencil”). It again is uncertain whether Beto was enlisting Palomo into the picture as a recruitment strategy to join him in his resistant critique, trying to deviate the listener (or “reader’s”, line 15) attention from what he had said, or both. In any case, the scenario displayed some noteworthy phenomena for us to consider. (1) The students were engaged in a collective exchange of humorous interaction when a structural constraint (audio recorder) truncated the interplay. I am arguing that the recorder’s presence is a stand-in for a dominant symbol of power. Beto, in this instance, is resisting the fact that he was remotely being monitored. The reason that I believe that it fits this description is because the students’ conversation becomes controlled by the fact that it is on their desk, which forces them to either change the direction of their conversation or face unforeseen consequences for the content of their dialogue. (2) Transgressive language (as discussed more thoroughly by Martínez & Morales, 2014) was the catalyst to actuate this process. Had Palomo not mentioned the operative word “ass”, the heightened awareness, often present amongst a culture of people who are commonly surveilled (Núnez, 2018), would not have domineered the conversation to a different topic; namely, alerting the interlocutors of its presence. (3) The focus of conversation is pulled from the local linguistic phenomenon of word pronunciation to the distal notion of authority, which implied where the recording would end up and what consequences may await the speakers. (4) After Beto’s direct affront to said authority, humor returns to the scenario as he persevered despite any potential trouble he may face, which included (5) humor with possible transgressive innuendo continued in a surreptitious manner.

Humor, therefore, undergirded the entire interaction as Beto dexterously maneuvered the situation. This form of communicative competence (Hymes, 1974) on display not only highlights the linguistic creativity of Latin@ wordplay, it serves a social function of convergence

182 with peers, divergence from perceived subjugation, and agentic micro-level sabotage of macro- level representatives, allowing relajo to supersede respeto. In the world of bilingual education, it is incumbent upon us to understand the tension present as these two very real concepts (relajo and respeto) can manifest, co-exist, and what it may mean if relajo begins to disrupt respeto in the classroom. In this example I am positing that the Zoom audio recorder was a representational form of power, which means in a bilingual setting, that issues of language, culture, documentation status, race, surveillance, and stereotypes are at stake. What is interesting is how Beto created a direct speaking-back to the device and then for the device as an audience as he boldly re-approached transgressive content matter through anatomical humor

(line 15), corroborated by Palomo in line 18.

Fig. 5.2: Beto begins smiling as he begins to explain what he finds to be humorous

183 Probando, Probando…

Beyond finding comedic manners to express resistance to individuals that represented systemic opposition, students also found imaginative ways to confront the systems themselves.

This phenomenon of reimagining reality for marginalized groups has been well studied for several decades. On the theoretical level, Apple (1996) discusses unique ways that individuals interrogate and transform mechanisms of ideological domination. Twenty years prior, Mexican existentialist philosopher Jorge Portilla (1966) penned his landmark piece to discuss how relajo in Mexican culture specifically was aimed to disrupt the middle-class passivity and suspend seriousness for the re-transformation of societal hierarchies. More germane to minoritized students dialectic with humor, there has also been scant scholarship about how different groups mobilize humor to resist asymmetrical realities. In a recent study, Núñez (2018) discovered how one of her young Latino participants agentically transformed the function of a textbook, described by the researcher as “for the purpose of academic surveillance”, to a “tool for initiating peer conversations in Spanish and laughter.” (p. 201). This work contributes to deepening the understanding of how humor was an added layer of complexity on top of the confluence of language and power.

Because AVID 3 was comprised of third-graders, unfortunate and incessant test preparation abounded in Reading and Math class. From the time that the students entered the room at 7:45 in the morning, the majority of activities were tied to formal assessments by way of review, practice, or talking about strategies to be successful. The constraints which saddled both the teachers and the students proved to be frustrating in terms of limiting freedom from other more profound activities, discussions, or interaction. In mid-April, for example, the state assessment test (STAAR) was less than a month away. Administration decided to rework the

184 three groups of students (AVID 1, AVID 2, and AVID 3) based on previous benchmark scores earned earlier that year. The idea was to group together students that needed help with specific state-tested skills in order to hone in and scaffold specific lessons, ultimately giving them more practice for the state test (Appendix E for Principal’s note home to parents). What this meant on a daily level was that students were to be separated from each other as they were re-mixed with others in their grade. For the students in AVID 3, this had more of an impact because the majority of them were bilingual and often took full advantage of their entire linguistic repertoires collectively. Being placed with monolingual English speakers was to amputate their communicative practices, in some cases, drastically. Due to the fact that AVID 3 was now going to be reordered based on their need to sharpen up certain skills (determined by previous weekly assessment instruments), the de facto language in all groups would fall to English because of the

English monolinguals now interspersed in the groups (Henderson & Palmer, 2015; Shannon,

1995). In an informal interview I conducted while the students were at Specials the Friday they were going to announce the shift to the students, two of the three teachers conversed about how they also were against the change. When the students returned to class, Ms. Lectura initially tiptoed and then quickly broke the news to the students in AVID 3, “Algunos de Uds. ya no van a ser parte de AVID 3, van a ser parte de AVID 3, 2, or 1” [Some of you will no longer be part of

AVID 3, you’re going to be part of AVID 3, 2, or 1]. As the majority of the students collectively wailed, “Noooooooooo!”, the teacher retorted:

01 Ms. Lectura: ¡Chicos, chicos! (tronando los dedos para callarlos). Recuerden que parte 02 de ser esudiantes AVID es ser flex— [Children, children! (snapping her fingers to calm 03 them down). Remember that part of being an AVID student is to be flex—

04 Students in chorus with defeated tone:—ibles...—(ible)

05 Ms. Lectura: We have to be flexible. (quickly) Alright, so in AVID 3 ahora van a

185 06 estar…[we will now have…]

07 Timothy (interrupting teacher with deadpan delivery): I'm never being flexible ever 08 again

09 Beto: I'm going home.

10 "Sweetheart, you're still going to have all of us!" ((The teacher begins to sidestep the 11 conversation and tells them to pull their AVID binders out))

12 ((Students continued to verbally express their displeasure with the new setup))

13 Ms. Lectura "Yo puedo esperar todo el día como ese meme de calavera..'Hasta que todos 14 mis estudiantes pongan atención” (se echa a reír) [I can wait here all day like that 15 skeleton meme, “Until my student pay attention”] ((starts to laugh)).“Siempre van a 16 haber cambios en la vida.” [There will always be changes in life]. As the bilingual teacher did her best in this sequence to soft sell the students the idea about which she herself was not in agreement, there was an instant pushback with a rising dramatic unison of “No!” The teacher slipped in and out of Spanish and English phrases as she attempted to mollify the news of group division. In lines 02-05 she urges students to be flexible by citing principles of the very system that is partially responsible for the redistribution beyond the students’ control (AVID 3). The children’s disappointment was apparent in their deflated tone of finishing her word of “flexible” (line 04). Two students, however, chose to speak up against the change and humorously deliver a dispassionate response about abandoning principle and place altogether. Timothy in line 07 stated his disappointment with being flexible, indirectly saying that he was acquiescing to the decision, but that he would “never be flexible ever again.”, effectively rejecting one of the core principles of what it meant to be an “AVID student”. Beto, moreover, simply relayed in a humorously serious tone that his escape was to merely depart, to which the sympathetic Ms. Lectura assuaged any fear involved with the change by telling him things would be ok. As the students shared several moments of collective disquiet, even to the point of disobeying the teacher’s request to pull out their AVID binders (line 11), she, as the two

186 students described above, resorted to a form of humor to process her lament of the group division. By attempting to meet the students, now completely speaking in all Spanish, at a media of their level (memes), she referenced a meme that ended up being lost on most of the students

(Appendix F) due to the fact that its target audience was for teachers. At any rate, both the teacher and some students employed some form of humor to attend to the change in schedule.

They both realized that the new configuration meant for both the students and teacher that

Spanish was no longer going to be a possibility for a primary form of communication due the fact that monolingual students were now to be intermixed with AVID 3. Ms. Lectura shared a form of aspirational capital in lines 15-16 by saying that “siempre van a haber cambios en la vida” [there will always be changes in life]. As she provided for them consolation in their L1, she followed up her attempt at humor with a deeper truth of the transitory nature of life, particularly in light of some of the fixed realities such as the implied notion of English will be the lingua franca when placed with languages considered to have less prestige.

This type of reaction as it pertained to students’ attitudes towards school were far from discrepant. In Figure 5.3 we witness the aforementioned Honduran-immigrant Waldo’s stance on his feelings in relation to not being present at school.

187

Fig. 5.3: Waldo writes, “Oy estoi aleger porque hoy no ay escuela.” [Today I’m happy because there is no school]

As the students were prompted to write about whether they were angry or happy

(enojado/alegre) in a journal entry, Waldo sketched himself clad in black, with an “X” over his eye and a large smile as he listened to music represented by orderly drawings of quarter, eight, and sixteenth notes on his sound system. Above the depiction of himself with a raised clenched fist and plausible downward peace sign, accompanied by his anti-school-accoutrements he wrote,

“Today I am happy because there is no school.” On one hand, this was partially due to the fact that there was intragroup tension as he was a minority within the students of AVID 3. Being a

Honduran amidst Mexican nationals and Mexican-Americans, his linguistic prowess, cultural references, and traumatic border crossing experience were largely unacknowledged, not understood or not appreciated, which made him feel as an outcast. His personality and use of

188 humor, however, did open doors for him to eventually secure friendships and break down what

Ferguson (1959) spoke of as the “diglossic” phenomena, which were communities where 2 varieties of language (typically asymmetrical), served different functions. The Honduran variety of Spanish was plainly not considered prestige amongst the Mexican/Mexican-American students, which eventually bled into an internalized linguistic inferiority among the catrachos themselves. On one occasion, for instance, a student from Pácula, Mexico suggested to one of the Honduran students to “speak Spanish, not Honduran.”.

On the other hand, most of his frustrations seemed to stem from systemic issues such as not having access to culturally and linguistically relevant curriculum. Him not wanting to learn or having an overarching bad attitude about school was simply not the case. His exuberance about engaging in conversations and making life connections through dialogue in Spanish was enthusiastic and contagious. Waldo had a desire to learn. Even when he was unable to access the English text, he would look for connections and often find humorous ways to engage. (See

Figure 5.4).

Fig. 5.4: When Waldo was not able to gain entry to the written text of a book in English, he would still look for ways to engage. Here he laughingly mimics the horse in the book.

189 As time progressed throughout the school year, however, his demeanor towards school had changed. When I asked him what he thought about the abovementioned reconfiguration of classes in March (having gone through the majority of the school year), for example, he simply concluded, “…para mi es aburrido. Sólo que quiero estar con mis amigos.” […to me it’s (all) boring. I just want to be with my friends.]. Although curricular access was not always available to Waldo because the language used during lessons and assessments were primarily in English, he would sometimes transcend the issue by engaging in what Janet Holmes (2000) designates as

“contestive humor”, or humor that is “used by the subordinate in an unequal power relationship to subvert the overt power structure” (p. 165). During one Math class, I walked over to him as he was answering questions by himself in his “Countdown to STAAR” workbook, a mathematics practice book that reviewed state standards to prepare students for the high-stakes test. Waldo solved the following word problem (Figure 5.5) correctly and employed the strategies that his

Math teacher had instructed the students in AVID 3 to use. However, as he addressed the subject in the sentence of the word problem, cabras [goats], Waldo humorously scratched out the noun and replaced it with cabrones [≃bastards]. Interestingly, he did not just stop at recasting the word problem, he went on to accurately unravel the solution.

Fig. 5.5: Waldo wittingly inserted his voice into the standardized test practice problem by replacing cabras (goats) with cabrones (≃bastards).

190 Luykx (1996) suggests that cultural forms which center on humor stand in contrast to the reified notions of knowledge of the classroom because they are controlled by the students” (p.

259). Waldo’s example demonstrates this form of agency in two particular ways. The first is that he took the liberty to scratch out the “official” language from word problem to add his own.

While the deletion and replacement of unknown words in formal testing situations can be a practice that some teachers implement, I did not observe the teaching of this strategy from Mrs.

Suma nor by any of the other students. The second bit of agency is that Waldo chose a transgressive word67 to replace the functional word in this standardized test training manual. Out of all of the lexemes in his expansive linguistic repertoire, cabrón made the final cut. Knowing that the teacher might possibly catch a glimpse of the expletive was not enough of a deterrent for him to eschew its jotting. Zentella’s (2003) work on bilingual individuals discussed the prevalence of multiple codes, which is perhaps pertinent to this case with Waldo, who employed linguistic innovativeness by drawing from a non-schooling register to step back into the math register and successfully solve the problem. This is not to suggest that the student was unable to calculate the answer without substituting the word. The question simply arises, “Why did he scratch out cabras (goats) and replace it with a transgressive word that is not that dissimilar?”

This could indeed be what Lee (2007) meant as we witness a way to “reposition what might be historically viewed as vernacular practices as intellectually rich” ( p. 26-27) or perhaps it is an overt expression of resistance towards the entire enterprise. At any rate, as Waldo dialogically

67 Unsure if Waldo was aware of the gravitas of the word cabrón, a week or so later we were in a discussion about a character in a book who thought he was better than others. As I offered the Mexican lexical phrase “Muy muy”, Waldo responded, “Es que...tengo una palabra, pero viene siendo algo...” [I have a word…but it’s a little…] and then, “Es que no sé cómo decírtela” [It’s just I don’t know how to tell it to you]. We finally agreed that he could tell me, so he whispered cabrón into my ear and then concluded, “Es que se cree más mejor” [He just thinks he’s better than everyone.”

191 draws proverbial paint from his cultural palette (one that is not fully acknowledged or appreciated in his schooling experience), and canvases it humorously upon a structural document

(locked in place by the metaphorical sociohistorical easel), the exchange left him the victor as he not only proved that he had mastered the schooling register, he mocked it as well. This represents an excellent example of how the student transformed the monologia (Bakhtin, 2010), or single-voiced monologue of the educational system represented by the math test, into the dialogic speech, which gives him a voice to speak back to the instrument.

Waldo was far from the only one who exhibited resistance via humor to the testing culture that was pandemic to Erwin Elementary. I was fortunate to capture some moments of humorous one-liners about standardized testing as acts of resistance. On one occasion Timothy sardonically asked Mrs. Suma, ”What if we forget everything we learned on the STAAR test?”, to which the educator responded, “If you learned it, you won't forget it.” On another occasion

Chano threw his notebook on the desk and irreverently and rhetorically queried, “Are we going to have a test every week? Every year?”, to which he reacted by laughing satisfied with his comment while bobbing his head up and down. Towards the end of the year and after the dreaded STAAR test was over, I asked a student in Spanish, “¿Qué tal estuvo el examen

STAAR?” [How was the STAAR test?], and he quickly and boldly replied to me in English, “It felt like barf”, as he chuckled to himself. This simile compares the standardized test to the byproduct of being digestively ill and overtly demonstrates his disgust for the institutionalized instrument. Because it is embedded within a humorous statement, the student was able to bring across a real truth in a socially acceptable (yet perhaps not fully institutionally acceptable )way.

Glimpses of this ideological pushback on the schooling system continued in reference to

Erwin Elementary itself. Throughout the school year I would often allow the students to carry

192 the video recorder around with them in order to see what their focus might be. Because the students knew early on that I was interested in humor, the camera operator would often attempt to create humor by interviewing others around the room and playground by asking them “¿Algo chistoso para la cámara?” [Do you have something funny for the camera?]. On other occasions they would ask unsuspecting participants (their classmates) questions about a variety of topics.

One early morning in mid-February, Anita began to interview Chispas as the students in AVID 3 began putting their library books in their basket for the library helper to turn them in.

01 Anita: ((narrating to her invisible audience)) Chispas already put her books in the basket. 02 ((directing question to Chispas)) What kind of books were they?

03 Chispas: A Dog Diary and a dragon thing-a-majiggaring…((quickly and quietly))..that sucked.

04 Anita: You know that this is going to his, uh, his…the...Mr. Ingram's class

05 Chispas: ((brings the recording device close to her mouth and states in a sassy 06 tone)) Yeah, I know that! ((followed by sarcastic laughter)) Hmm, hmm, hmm

Anita continued to circulate throughout the room interviewing other students, most of which did not want to respond. She returned to Anita and asked a hypothetical question about life on the last day of school. Some students began to narrate in Spanish, but quickly switched to English.

07 Anita: ((eagerly)) So, si la úlitma...if it was the last day of school, what would you do?

08 Chispas: ((unenthusiastically)) Read

09 Anita: Read? That's lying, but ((in an upbeat interviewer’s voice)) OK! ((walks away))

10 Anita arrives and queries Timothy, to which he responds, “I would chant, 'No more 11 pencils, no more books, no more teacher's dirty looks.'" and then dabs68.

68 A gesture faddish among American youth meant to punctuate the action, in this case the chant that Timothy recited, prior to the movement. This gesture signifies a form of both success (done when football players score a touchdown) and resistance (realized when an individual finishes reprimanding another person).

193 As Anita attempted to chronicle her classmates’ responses to the idea of school being over, she found a couple of interesting responses. After Chispas tagged on her criticism regarding what she perhaps thought to be culturally and linguistically irrelevant (line 03), Anita reminded her about the institutional rules of engagement in school, which would not allow for the semi-transgressive “That sucks” comment about a book. When queried whether or not she remembered that her statements were to be heard in “Mr. Ingram’s class” (line 04), Chispas built up her confidence, took the recording device from the interviewer and audaciously stated, “Yeah,

I know that!”, which was accompanied by a sneering false laughter. This interaction is reminiscent of Ward’s (1996) finding about how female students of color are raised as “resistors” and “in-your-face truth tellers” (p. 94) to larger societal structures. In the researcher’s work on

African-American female youth, she discusses the difference between resistance for survival vs. resistance for liberation. While the former is a strategy that is a “quick fix” of speaking back to power that ends up with “jaded and ill-fated attitudes”, the latter is one that “replaces negative critique with positive recognition”. (p. 95). Asserting herself as intelligent with her content and strong with her tone, Chispas confronted the “power” of the voice recorder, demonstrating that she was worthy of respect. By “knowing” the function of the recorder and answering with such flippant confidence, Chispas had spoken both humorously and seriously.

Seemingly satisfied Chispa’s response, Anita walked around the room to conduct more interviews. When she approached students, some would initially begin in Spanish only to promptly to answer in the prestige variety of the school—English. Even the interviewer herself

(line 07) began her questioning in Spanish and “caught herself” in ‘interviewer mode’, via the formal use of the Zoom audio recorder. In light of her previously bold statement and now perhaps reorienting her strategy to give the “listeners” what they wanted under this form of

194 linguistic surveillance, Chispas kept her monosyllabic answer (line 8) within the constraints of an expected student answer with an indifferent tone. Picking up on these three contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1976), Anita interrogated her response (line 09), called her out for not being authentic, and then facetiously condoned the action as she walked away. Her following interviewee, Timothy, perhaps provided the more genuine answer that Anita was soliciting in her process. Through his anti-establishment nursery-like-rhyme he comedically chanted his resistance against school and intensified it with a popularly known gesture at the end. His creative placement of the timeworn anti-schooling ditty citing “Pencils, books, and teachers’ dirty looks” seems to serve as metonymic device that represents, in Timothy’s estimation at that moment, the schooling experience. In a separate conversation a few minutes prior to this interaction, Timothy had conceivably primed the proverbial pump of resistant answers as Anita asked him with the audio recorded what he had done over the weekend. His expressionless response was, “I killed some people”, to which Anita retorted instructively, “You know that this is going to Mr. Ingram's class, right? Where he works.” Very self-satisfied and unshaken,

Timothy replied with an unimpressed, “Cool.” Despite the probability that the student was giving “shockingly” humorous answers for mere effect, he still ran a risk of potential retribution by answering outside of the schooling genre. Timothy was well aware that the recording was

“official” school business as there were times where he spoke directly into the device regarding my study of humor, Based on this, we can assume that he knew that his words would eventually be heard. In lieu of telling Anita what should have been the “right” answers in the schooling context, he decided to humorously deconstruct the process by his anti-school anthem coupled with his amusingly egregious remark of having killed somebody. Anita, on the other hand, warned him both in word and in tone of his remarks, implying that he ought to tread carefully.

195 She, in essence, was reminding him of the very system against which he was pushing back. It is difficult to discern whether or not Timothy really did despise school in general. He appeared to be happy interacting with his classmates as I observed him throughout out the year, so I argue that socially, he was a student who enjoyed being at school. Systemically, however, he would take similar deadpan jabs at the school as an educational process, as mentioned above when Ms.

Lectura broke the news that AVID 3 would have to be separated in order to align to STAAR test ability grouping.

Conceivably, the students viewed school as culturally and linguistically irrelevant

Irrespective of the threat of power overshadowing both Anita and Timothy, the young minoritized students handled the situations differently. As Chispas initially resisted and subsequently did not provide the exciting answer the young enterprising interviewer Anita seemed to hope, she employed humor to expose her classmate’s artificial response by calling it out as a lie. Timothy’s approach was more transparent as he “displayed knowledges and skills fostered through oppositional behavior” (Yosso, 2005, p. 80) in his critical reification of school and unflinching attitude vis-à-vis the possibility of getting into trouble for what he stated. This type of system deconstruction was also witnessed one morning in November as the students were returning to their homeroom from Music and saw a motivational school sign that read, “Never

Give Up”. Pedro, a student who ended up leaving later that year, looked up at one of the motivational school signs that read, “Never Give Up”. As he spoke laughingly to his classmate

Leonel, "I will never give up", he continued, "Si le quitas el "never" dice, 'I will give up'" [If you take away the ‘never’ it says, “I will give up.”] When I asked him "Y eso, ¿qué significa?" [And what does that mean?], he answered, "Me rindo" [I give up] about which he and Leonel laugh

196 uproariously. This, again, is an affront to the institutional message that the students mock by craftily removing the key term, “never”.

In another example of verbal play being serious regarding a recent immigrant’s perceptions of the schooling process. Early in November, the students and I were verbally playing around and reimagining the world based on what we wanted as the Honduran began to speak “seriously.”

01 Pedro: Yo quiero infinito dólares [I want an infinite amount of dollars] 02 Researcher: Yo quiero una cebra [I want a zebra] 03 Leonel: Yo quiero un caballo [I want a horse] 04 Pedro: Yo quiero una espada. No, yo quiero the master sword [I want a sword, no I want 05 the master sword]. 06 Waldo: Yo quiero un Lamborghini [I want a Lamborghini] 07 Pedro: Yo quiero matar un Lineman [I want to kill a Lineman (character in Minecraft)] 08 Researcher: Yo quiero músculos grandes [I want big muscles] 09 Waldo: Oye, en serio, yo quiero meterme en mayo. ¿Cuándo voy a poder meterme en 10 mayo? [Hey, seriously, I want it to already be May. When am I going to be able to get to 11 May?]

As our interactions occurred within a frame of humor, students were vigorously engaged in the dialogue. Everything from money, animals, abilities and cars surfaced as our wishes in the conversation. In an interesting twist, Waldo interjected something “serious” (line 9) in the middle of our humorous banter. By wanting it to “already be May”, the student was implying, of course, that he no longer wanted to be part of the institution that did not acknowledge the

Honduran immigrant’s cultural capital; cultural references that he would mention were undetected and linguistic capital was ridiculed. Early on in the year he wanted to fast forward in time to exit a place that he found to be linguistically and culturally irrelevant to his past, present, and possible future. According to Ira Shor and Paulo Freire (1987), humor such as the one exhibited by Waldo helps make the environment “…’real,’ a quality that can reverse the artificial school experience.” (p. 163). This form of truthful humor serves as an indicator light for us as

197 researchers and educators, pointing to the fact that there is a system ineffective in reaching some students in significant ways. By being humorous in this manner, Waldo substantiated Chaucer’s claim that “many a true word is spoken in jest.”

Cuidado Con Lo Que Dices

In Stevenson’s (2015) study about how Spanish is spoken more in Science labs where children are exploring new concepts coupled with experiments, the researcher discusses a term called implicit institutionalized bias against Spanish. This self-evident construct discusses the well-researched area of standardized testing forcing English to be the de facto language policy, which inevitably drives teaching and learning to the dominant language (Menken, 2006). True to the educational mainstream form, English was considered the prestige variety of language at

Erwin Elementary. Walking through the hallways or library, one could witness that the majority of both the visual administrative print (motivational or informational, see Appendix G), and aural conversations were present primarily in English. While there were occasional signs with English on top and Spanish below, messages like the ones in these photos reveal that the majority of the language that “official” business was conducted in was English. Similarly, during an informal interview with both administrators of the school, the two indicated indifference about language as they told me that they wanted “what was best for the kids.” Maintenance of Spanish or bilingualism did not seem to be a salient priority at the level of governance, and as a result, it was not part of the counselor’s, librarian’s, specialists’, or some teachers’ repertoire either. The end result of this was that the Spanish language was limited, in most cases that I observed, to perfunctory interactions or quickly and concisely re-emphasize a point told to the students during class.

198 Despite this reality that was readily apparent at Erwin Elementary, students in AVID 3 were not quite as easily boxed into the categories that perhaps the system would have preferred them be. As students were largely tracked into the English mainstream and “bilingual” minority, students did not adhere only to the labels that were imposed upon them. A more accurate framework with which to view their discursive interaction is that of the translanguaging corriente, (García, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017), in which bilingual students fluidly cross linguistic boundary markers in order “to create something new” (p. 61). On a theoretical level, this corriente seemed to find humor as a medium through which to travel across more than just the artifice of political languages. Findings indicate that humor is an exemplary accomplice to language as they both serve as spaces for blurring lines and reimagining structural controls. In this final section we witness this border-crossing between systems of political language (namely,

Spanish and English), registers (academic and conversational), and convention (compliant and transgressive).

Te Boté, “Finish The Wall” Y Dije Que, “¡No”!

These administrative decisions of foregrounding English in the school’s learning environment, however, did not fully impede students in AVID 3 from the use of translanguaging, using English and Spanish as their touchpoints flowed through conversational interaction. In their mid-November writing class taught by monolingual English-speaking Ms. Knack, AVID 3 was being asked about different digraphs. While the teacher would say syllables to the class, the students were expected to form words in English by calling them back to her. While students ranged throughout the group regarding how many English words they could produce, the majority communicated with each other in Spanish, particularly at the beginning of the year. As the teacher offered /ba/ and extended it waiting for the children to respond, someone blurted out

199 “¡Vaca!” [Cow!], which was a humorous way to bring the conversation back to Spanish, yet correctly answer the question. As Ms. Knack continued to go through this process, she queried,

“"Now we have /te/. What sound? With those two letters together, what sound?” Beyond her ability to hear their response, two students who were almost exclusively Spanish-speaking quickly whispered to each other comically:

Pedro: ¡Te boté, te boté, de mi vida te boté! (quoting a popular reggaetón song, “I dumped you, I dumped you, I dumped you from my life”)

Waldo: (laughs): Teta (English equivalent of “titty”)

Quick on their linguistic feet, both students generated witty alternatives to the possible “tell” or

“tempt” that perhaps the teacher was looking for. On one hand, Pedro uninterruptedly intoned a song with transgressive language and, on the other, Waldo follows up with a similar and singular

“titty”. These instances of relajo countered the implicit teacher request of appropriate English words using the digraph /te/, and retorted by using inappropriate Spanish words, marked explicitly by whispering them to each other.

In another example, this time with a target larger than just a teacher’s expectations, four students were casually talking when one of them mentioned “Jirafa Troll”, based on a book that he had read the previous year about a giraffe that, I surmised to the best of my ability, looked like a troll doll. At any rate, the conversation glided between languages, starting with a dexterous play on words:

01 Paloma: …jirafa troll [Giraffe Troll}

02 Chano: Jirafa Trump [Giraffe Trump] (laughs)

03 Nitas: ¡Como él es malo! Que agarraba una sign "Finish the Wall" y dije que '¡No!" [He

04 is so evil! He picked up a sign that says, “Finish the wall” and I’m like, ‘No’!!](laughter)

200 In this brief interaction, Chano took a section from Paloma’s mention of a character in a book and turned it into a subtly derisive statement against the President of the United States, Donald

Trump, known widely for his anti-immigration policies and racial scorn. Nitas, an 8-year-old female whose mother is Mexican and father is Honduran, wasted no time in pushing back against even the thought of the man. She began adeptly in Spanish (line 03) as she boldly expressed her opinion about him being malicious, and then mocked the discourse around one of his prominent policies (building a wall between the US and Mexico) as she seamlessly transitioned into his

English (“Finish the Wall”), only to finish by punctuating her antipathy with Spanish and laughter (line 04). Whether or not she was conscious of this complexly articulated utterance will never be known, but Nitas demonstrated both a form of linguistic and ideological resistance as she transgressed syntactic rules by intrasententially switching between the two languages, while simultaneously and passionately opposing the leader of the entire country. These forms of resistance are part and parcel to what Yosso (2005) discussed as opposition to subordination. In this particular case, feeling unwelcome by the leader of a country in which they live as children from immigrant families as well as witnessing the replacement of their home language to the asymmetrical prestige variety. This is an instance where the confluence (thus translanguaging corriente) of language, ideology, and humor burst through the mouth of a minoritized student in a fit of verbal skill one day in late October 2018.

Another variety of resistance surrounding language happened with some of the students that were almost exclusively monolingual Spanish speakers. This section refers to a group of

Honduran students that I worked with throughout the spring semester, called Grupo Catracho69,

69 Catracho is a demonym that colloquially describes an individual as being from Honduras, equivalent, but often more affectionate than hondureña/o.

201 and requires a bit of backstory. One of the college students in an ESL course that I was instructing the same semester that I was collecting data was finishing her student teaching at an elementary school in the general area. During our class conversations at the university, we would often discuss the importance of acknowledging the cultural and linguistic differences and decided that it would be a neat experience to start a group in our corresponding elementary school classes (hers in the north of the city and my research site at Erwin Elementary) that focused on communication between Honduran students in our respective classes. The Latin@ population in the area of Texas where we were working was overwhelmingly Mexican or

Mexican-American. Because of this, the slowly growing population of Central American students that were moving into the area were often the minority, in which case their unique registers of Spanish and their sociocultural references were at best ignored and at worst, made fun of. Evidence of this can be seen by data collected about Waldo, a recently arrived catracho as his confidence appeared to be low particularly towards the beginning of the year.

At any rate, I coordinated video recording of both groups so that we could serve together as virtual pen pals, in which the Hondurans from Erwin Elementary would ask the catrachos from the other group questions and vice versa. During these interactions, my college student,

Ms. Hertz (pseudonym) would conduct interview questions with her budding Spanish capabilities. The catrachos, whose dialect of Spanish and Central American culture were least represented in AVID 3 and at Erwin Elementary, found Ms. Hertz’s errors humorous to the point of mocking the recording of her:

01 Ms. Hertz (with fairly heavy gringa accent): Hay cosas que quieres los estudiantes para

02 conocer o saber sobre ti? Sobre tú? [Are there things that you want students

03 know about your (sic)? You?] ((Vela quietly began to laugh to herself as she

202 04 puts her head into her arms. Daya grabs her smiling and says, "No,Vela, no!" and pulls

05 her back to the table.

06 Ms. Hertz: ¿Qué es tu calor…, (Honduran student on camera corrects her and is

07 laughing as well) …color favorito? (Vela and Daya pull together laughing as the others

08 giggle as well.) [What is your favorite heat…color?]

09 Student on camera: Me gusta verde, también azul [I like green, and also blue.]

10 Ms. Hertz: ((enthusiastically)) ¡A mí también! (I do too!)

11 Waldo: “A mí también” (mocking her as the students at the table laugh)

12 Researcher: (with corrective tone) Oye… [Hey…]

13 Serafín: (giggling as well, but trying to conceal it): No es gracioso [It’s not funny]

In this speech event that transpired in the spring semester, the Hondurans were provided with an opportunity to watch a speaker of the dominant language slightly fumble with her wording in

Spanish—something with which they are quite familiar as they were immersed in a prevailing

English environment. The first utterance occurred when Ms. Hertz vacillated between implementing either a prepositional or subject pronoun (ti or tú, line 02), which triggered a visceral response in Vela, who had arrived from Honduras a few months prior and consequently, was indeed the quietest student in AVID 3. Her compatriot Daya, who was more experienced in navigating the US educational system, pulls her back in from retreating (line 04), as she herself was smiling at the entire scenario. Just when the two classmates gain composure, however, the teacher unwittingly mistakes calor (lit. “heat”, but can have a sexual connotation) for color

(color) in line 06, which began a perpetual chain of risas (laughter). As the Honduran student with whom Ms. Hertz filmed the video answered that he liked both green and blue, the teacher responded emphatically, “A mi también” [I do also], to which Waldo began to actively mock her

203 attempt at Spanish phonology by copying her utterance with a stylized Anglo pronunciation of the words. Fulfilling both the role of a researcher and a teacher in that moment (line 12), I intervened to caution the students to be respectful as Serafín correspondingly reiterated that “No es gracioso” [That’s not funny] as he tried to bury his laughter. This tension that Serafín experienced between laughing at someone with perceived power and avoiding getting in trouble for being disrespectful was beautifully portrayed on the canvas of bilingual/bicultural humor as he told everyone (including himself) that it was not funny while he was simultaneously laughing.

In a recent article that addresses developmental origins of schadenfreude70 in social justice, Wang et al. (2019) discuss that “advantageous status may spontaneously elicit schadenfreude without being preceded by an initial disadvantage” (p. 52). This, they posit, provides “intriguing evidence” from research on the development of fairness in children in which inequity plays a strong role between in-group and out-group members. Whether or not the

Honduran students were consciously aware of the structural incongruities between themselves and the white female college student from the US is hard to say; however, some members of

Grupo Catracho were indeed aware of privileges that people like myself enjoy. A few weeks before school ended, the following light-hearted exchange transpired between two students from

Honduras, a student from Mexico, and myself:

01 Waldo: (playfully towards researcher) Ms. Lectura...es un gringo y habla español. ((Vela 02 starts to laugh)).

03 [Ms. Lectura, he’s a gringo and he speaks Spanish.]

04 Researcher: ¿Quién, yo? [Who me?]

05 Waldo: Sí, porque tienes los ojos azules, tienes el pelo amarillo. Y eres gringo. (Vela

70 A compound word derived from the German “Schaden” [damage/harm] and “Freude” (joy), this phenomenon transpires when an individual derives pleasure from another person’s errors or misfortune.

204 06 laughs harder) [Yes, because you have blue eyes and yellow hair. And you’re a 07 gringo.]

08 Yuse: (defensively) ¡No!

09 Researcher: Sí, es cierto…soy gringo. Pero, tengo corazón latino [Yes, it’s true..I’m a 10 gringo. But I have a Latino’s heart]

11 Waldo: Porque Mr. Ingram tiene papeles para ir pa’ cualquier la'o [Because Mr. Ingram 12 has documentation to go wherever he wants].

The awareness of the advantages of this privilege (being able to travel wherever, line 10), implies that Waldo, in this case, understood where he stood on a low rung of this hierarchical structure. By not having the freedom nor funds to “ir pa’ cualquier la’o” [travel freely to wherever], one might consider that there could be what Leach & Spears (2008) elaborated upon in “Vengefulness of the Impotent”. The authors discuss how this inequity led in-group inferioritized71 individuals to “feel schadenfreude when an otherwise successful third-party out- group failed in the domain of the in-group’s “inferiority”” [emphasis mine] (p. 1383). That is to say that the domain which the above example with Ms. Hertz illustrates is that of language. The students in Grupo Catracho possessed a superior ability to speak the Spanish language relative to the novice student teacher who had little experience outside of her obligatory high school

Spanish class. The humor that was undeniably exuded around the table as the group of

Honduran students, was a form of linguistic superiority, which allowed the students to no longer remain on the lowest rung of both the language and dialect ladder; rather, the experience elevated them to a status where they were the experts and she was the novice. They were the fluent

71 Here I am implementing “inferioritized” in lieu of “inferiority” so as to avoid any confusion. There are not inherent differences between the human groups in question, but due to sociopolitical realities, one group (Latin@s, in this case) has historically been made to experience life and feel as if there were. Following the sociolinguistic terminology “minoritized” (vs minority), this choice of word implies a causative phenomenon based on political asymmetries.

205 teachers and she was the unlearned student. They possessed the status and knowledge while she remained impotent and nescient. That, I contend, gave them something to laugh about.

Discussion And Implications

The initial inquiry that I proposed during this undertaking was as follows: “In what ways do minoritized emergent bilinguals enact resistance around spaces of humor?” To answer this research question and in effort to comprehend more about how this manifested daily with AVID

3 in school, I drew on the theoretical framework of community cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005).

The researcher argues that “an array of knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed and utilized by communities of color [are used in order to] survive and resist macro and micro-forms of oppression” (p. 77). Yosso proposes that these resources enable minoritized speakers to persist through hegemonic spaces, such as schools with dominant language ideologies.

Similarly, she maintains that over 45 years of bilingual education research shows that minoritized students arrive at school “with multiple language and communication skills”, including “storytelling tradition, parables, stories (cuentos) and proverbs (dichos)” (p. 78). Out of the six forms of cultural capital (aspirational, familial, linguistic, navigational, social, and resistant), this section focused on the latter—resistance. I am arguing based on the prior evidence presented here that this form of capital can be expressed in the locus of humor. By analyzing the meaning exchanges realized in situ, humor as a site allowed dialogue to be made relevant by the participants themselves. That is to say, that by mapping the cultural capital of resistance onto the notion of humor, we are able to gain a more robust understanding of what pushing back sounds like through the eyes of third grade minoritized emergent bilinguals.

In the first session I briefly discussed the notion of anti-respeto, which is a term that that

I am employing to describe the opposite of respeto, which is a generally accepted concept in

206 Latin@ communities defined by Reyes & Elías (2011) as the belief that “every person deserves to be treated with respect and courtesy, particularly elders.” (p. 729). Luykx (1996) has stated that “expressions of humor often indicate points of social conflict; like turbulent eddies in the flow of discourse, they reveal the rocks and breaks under the surface.” ( p. 255). The above findings of how AVID 3 summoned humor to converge on a multitude of phenomena through sociolinguistic skills is worthy of our attention as scholars, teachers, and teacher educators. To begin, analyzing children’s discursive practices has merit for understanding how minoritized students establish, participate within and restructure the interactional order through instances of relajo, which De Genova (2005) delineated as “chaotic disorganization supplemented with a sense of creativity and disruptive intentionality” (p. 169). In a sense, respeto was transformed to resistance through the vehicle of relajo (respeto---→relajo--→ resistance). True to what Willis and Willis & Corrigan (1983) penned over thirty years ago, “forms of discourse, patterns of control over others….can be unlocked or reinterpreted by the joke.” (p. 96). As we gain empirical insight from the students’ emic perspectives about what structural constraints need to be disrupted and how they could be redefined, ways to foment community and tap into funds of knowledge have great potential to inform writing curriculum, building lessons, or cultivating community in the bilingual classroom.

Secondly, the evidence presented here can help inform us about how students as agentive social actors embody “doing being bilingual” (Auer, 1984). As evidenced in these findings, students in AVID 3 transcend both monolingual learning environments and monoglossic language ideologies by building on their discursive practices surrounding instances of humor.

Because both translanguaging and iterations of relajo are often found in tandem, as Martínez and

Morales (2014) aptly demonstrated, they are a phenomenal force to be harnessed by teachers. As

207 both push boundaries with the express purpose of interactional connection through communication, understanding how to properly integrate the two has great potential to serve as a pedagogical tool in the bilingual classroom. Henderson & Author (2018), for example, discuss how a bilingual teacher adeptly implemented humor and jokes to increase both metalinguistic awareness and classroom community. I submit that the use of humor is, for all intents and purposes, a culturally-sustaining practice. Understanding how students can unofficially implement these skills of creativity to respond to the schooling world around them is vital in order to connect with them pedagogically and build with them communally. By finding ways in which minoritized students serve as a microcosm to a larger social order, we are allowed insight about this process. It is the students’ elaborate linguistic and cultural work that bears witness to the importance of participation in their discursive community.

What resources are revealed in regards to resistance through humor? If indeed “Smilet er den korteste afstand mellem to mennesker” [laughter is the closest distance between two people], as the Danish comedian Victor Borge quipped in his autobiography (1999), is there a way that teachers can be faithful interlocutors in this conversation to validate students’ concerns (overt or covert, conscious or subconscious) while finding channels to co-employ humor in order to strengthen relationships at the classroom level? Relajo destroys as it simultaneously strengthens.

Deconstruction of structural constraints posed against students can lead to the reconstruction of community through genuine communication. Understanding in what ways humor serves emergent bilingual students as a culturally sustaining practice can aid educators and researchers by allowing us to be part of conversation that are already taking place. By inviting them into our dialogues and becoming part of their discursive community, we can smile together as we intentionally lessen the distance between us.

208 CHAPTER 6: RISA AS RESONANCE

COMMUNITY BUILDING AND FLASHES OF LINGUISTIC FLAIR AROUND THE SITE OF HUMOR

La tristeza compartida se divide; la alegría compartida se multiplica.

[Shared sadness is divided; shared happiness is multiplied].

INTRODUCTION

When one thinks of community from a child’s perspective, two significant places that come to mind are home and school. The people that surround them in both of these domains wield great influence over how to navigate their world in light of encompassing factors. By helping form these lenses through which the children make sense of their environs, pessimism or optimism, apprehension or joviality, fear or courage can be transmitted as ways of seeing and doing life. With children who have historically been shown at a societal level that their status has been categorized as lesser than those around them, such as the minoritized Latin@ elementary students in this study, the intensity of the aforementioned dichotomies is substantially heightened. With society-wide conversations rooted in the fear of family deportation, family- wide conversations of the potential loss of language/culture through assimilation, school system- wide conversations of more skewed high-stakes testing defining “success”, and academia-wide research publications to recapitulate all of this adversity, it is not a stretch to submit that there is not much to laugh about in the lives of these youngsters. However, because I intend to finish this dissertation on a note grounded in hope, the focus of this chapter is to discuss ways in which I found the students to be resonant in the school community with those around them. By analyzing these elementary students’ perceptions of humor in their families and observing their interactions with their peers, I was able gain perspective about how humor was a consistent element present in their community. Moreover, I was able to find instances of student’s richly

209 creative linguistic abilities (translanguaging, doble sentido, albures) that deserve display and recognition here, if nowhere else in the education system. Through this research, I argue that in addition to home and school being significant places in a child’s life, humor can function as a meaningful locus that draws from both, through which multicompetencies can be mobilized and community can be strengthened.

This study investigates how 3rd grade emergent bilingual students whose first language was Spanish (AVID 3 hereafter) conceptualized their families’ use of humor through a teacher- led survey. Additionally, focus is given to how students formed bonds around this use of humor at school using different manners of linguistic dexterity. Based on analysis of their responses to a survey about humor at home and observations situated in throughout an academic year of their school days, I aspire to render visible the practices of these students as they display linguistic adeptness and are involved in community. Because this study is sociolinguistic in its approach, it has implications that lean towards a stance that positions the investigation and praxis of humor as a promising point of focus in the ongoing discourse of culturally sustaining pedagogies, praxis, and research. The following questions guided this type of inquiry: What are the perceptions that emergent bilingual youth’ have about their families’ use of humor? What are ways that emergent bilingual youth display verbal humor at school? How does humor function as a site to display the communicative competence of emergent bilingual 3rd graders? In what ways can humor serve a locus of relational significance for emergent bilingual elementary students? Starting with these questions centers attention on what can be discovered at the site of everyday language practices of emergent bilingual youth around humorous discourse. Part of this article draws from interview data and builds upon Yosso’s (2005) notions of linguistic and familial capital, exploring three facets of humor used by the families of these 3rd graders: (1) the

210 perceived presence of humor at home (2) joke-telling and who is considered to be funny in their families (3) language of humor. Based on the final facet regarding language, subsequent analysis was conducted to understand how humor might intersect with the framework of translanguaging.

By sharing the results of part of the humor survey coupled with vignettes analyzed through close discourse analysis, I explored how humor was a present and functional phenomenon, used to exhibit skills and build community in the lives of these emergent bilinguals. The end goal to this, then, was to understand through an asset-based lens how humor works and in what ways it might be leveraged by the students and teachers as well as theorized by researchers.

A REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

Wealth Found In Humor

In order for verbal humor to transpire, two phenomena must be present: language and some form of shared knowledge. Akin to Freire’s well-known dyad of the word and world, the participation and generation of humor might also be categorized as an act of knowing (Freire,

1985). As Yosso (2005) discusses the “total extent of an individual’s accumulated assets and resources”, the researcher lists six capitals (aspirational, familial, linguistic, navigational, resistant, social) that aid children of color on their way while maneuvering through societal institutions (p.

78). For the present work, I concentrate on two of these capitals (familial and linguistic) as they intersect situationally in humorous interactions of the emergent bilinguals in AVID 3. Although for over two decades a great deal of scholarship has been dedicated to understanding the strengths of minoritized students in the US school system (Valenzuela & Rubio,1999; Ladson-Billings,

1995), little attention has been given to how interactions between emergent bilinguals regarding humor can reflect asset-based strategies rooted in the funds of knowledge/pedagogies of the home (Molls et al., 2005, Delgado Bernal, 2001). Interestingly, leading researchers that have developed well-renowned concepts in sociocultural fields mention the presence of humor through passing anecdotal comments (see below). Despite this, there has yet to be a substantive focus on how the

211 humor’s presence and function plays out fully in the lives of Latin@ students. The following examples were incidentally articulated by some of these researchers, made in regards to the presence of humor and framed as an integral piece to Latin@ family culture:

The humor and laughter [emphasis added] in the Alegría home are contagious. Ita Alegría does everything with love and humor [emphasis added]. González, Moll, & Amanti (2006) p.249

Do those at the social margins use family and group stories, proverbs, dichos, oral histories, music, corridos, comedy [emphasis added], and art, as forms of survival, resistance, or transformation? (Solórzano & Villalpando, 1998, p. 215).

the idea that Students of Color arrive at school with multiple language and communication skills” she includes among storytelling, proverbs, and parables, the ability of “comedic [emphasis added] timing” (Yosso, 2005, p. 79).

Mixing Spanish and English was often a way of injecting humor [emphasis added] in our conversations” (p.66) as well as the author having “memories of my uncle’s playful and humorous [emphasis added] use of language (de la Luz Reyes piece (2015) p. 40).

Findings illustrate how the form and content of fathers’ pedagogies of the home, including the strategic use of humor [emphasis added], prepare children to combat discrimination based on documentation status (Gallo, 2016, p. 279)

These excerpts conceptualize humor in substantive ways. “Love and humor”, “comedy” and

“comedic timing” associated in the same categories as important as “oral histories”, “music”,

“proverbs”, “communication skills”, and as a tool to “combat discrimination”, all point to how humor’s occurrence can find its way into the deepest of these Latin@ individuals’ life experiences. Similarly, these instances demonstrate how humor can sociolinguistically participate in larger conversations about how a minoritized population can navigate through a system that is often adversarial. To understand how young Latin@ students begin to develop and rehearse these skills of thriving is at the very heart of this research. Admittedly, just having a concept mentioned in the work of other researchers is far from justifying a new direction in exploring different phenomena. However, the primary justification came from my observations

212 and recordings of the students themselves using humor meaningfully in significant-to-them scenarios. AVID 3’s mention of their family’s interlinkages with payasos [clowns], canned jokes, memes, and humor based on doble sentido [double entendre] all gave sufficient evidence to warrant a deeper look at humor. The citations from other researchers in the field were merely confirmation of the phenomenon being a noteworthy occurrence. As the findings indicate, issues such as who in the family is considered the joke teller vs who is funny amongst family members, gender, and how students mimic forms of humor such as doble sentido [double meaning] surfaced during analysis. For these reasons, this work uses Yosso’s proposition of familial capital and extends it to help make sense of what students’ perceptions were of who and in what ways family members engage in humorous interactions. As the researcher suggests, humor may be a form of “cultural knowledge nurtured among by familia [kin] that carries a sense of community, history, memory, and cultural intuition” (p. 79). This coupled with her notion of linguistic capital serve as the framework to explicate the sociolinguistic use of humor by these individuals.

¡Juegos De Palabras Mean More!

The second part of this framework is linguistic capital, mentioned by Yosso as “the intellectual and social skills attained through communication experiences in more than one language and/or style” (p. 78). In order to make further sense of the variety of these abilities through language, I employ the notion of translanguaging, which has been previously defined as a “dynamic process whereby multilingual language users mediate complex social and cognitive activities through the strategic employment of multiple semiotic resources to act, to know, and to be “(García & Wei, 2014, p. 22). Interactions that were grounded in humor allowed for these proficiencies to be rendered visible as AVID 3 participated in and spoke of their families’

213 employment of humor through “different language with different people, for different purposes, and in different domains” (Grosjean, 1989, p. 4). As these students came together around such interactive mirthful sites, any and every semiotic resource available was up for linguistic grabs as they engaged a full repertoire of skills in order to connect through what they considered funny.

This is what Gort (2015) investigated (albeit through the possibilities of literacy learning through translanguaging) as she discussed the expansion of linguistic boundaries in order to prioritize communication. Similarly, under the umbrella of translanguaging I am also placing the fluidity of not just politically formed languages (Spanish/English), but also as register (“academic” talk/lavatorial humor) as a factor that I observed with the students. When students are speaking in an “academic” register, for instance, and then slip into a covert form of transgressive speak with classmates, that is classified as translanguaging. To be sure, I am using as a premise that the manner in which translanguaging and the children’s participation in humor intersect is that both employ a full linguistic repertoire to get the communicative work done.

More than just unmitigated communication, however, the use of humor and translanguaging synergistically created bonds between the children. It is here where translanguaging departs from just being a linguistic phenomenon and points to a broader goal beyond itself—that of being a member of a community. More than just seeing the lighter side of life, I watched as students connected around bouts of laughter (they brilliantly displayed their linguistic prowess in doing so. In the same way that Chappell & Faltis (2013) discuss visual arts as a “tool or resource produced as part of a community of practice”, so the verbal art of playful language with bilingual youth can serve to foster bonds and strengthen alliances with each other

( p. 13). As with virtually all children, the students in AVID 3 were no different in that laughter was undoubtedly a form of communicative currency, a way to achieve social status, or a way to

214 connect with others. Research from as far back as the 1950s has investigated these phenomena to be true (Wolfenstein, 1951). However, a unique host of factors exist that makes this research substantially different. For example, many of the studies of humor as generated by children is often in a English-speaking environment, thus removing any variation of the hegemonic force as an influencer in the schooling environment. Secondly, the methodological approach is one stemming from a cognitive or psychological approach, which does not take into account other sociocultural factors at play. Thus Cromdal’s (2000) concept of “negotiating play entry” as a metric of social competence gains an entirely new dimension when AVID 3 has a minority

Honduran of the minoritized Mexican vying for humorous collaboration as a form of social status. Lastly, the participants in many of the humor studies would be considered mainstream or dominant, so no hierarchies of prestige-variety status vs. documentation status, for instance, were taken into account. The data presented here, therefore, provides contextual support for prior research. Similar to those mentioned above, this research seeks to understand how these young

Latin@ students drew from examples at home to navigate within the confines of a schools that did not adhere to culturally sustaining practices. In this article, I describe how students in AVID

3 used humor in ways that not only displayed dexterous feats of linguistic mobilization, but also how this led to conversations of its strong presence within their families as well as compañerismo [fellowship] with their peers.

Setting, Participants, And Methods

The data reported here originates from a year-long study of the sociocultural understanding of humor of a group of 23 emergent bilingual students as they conducted everyday life in an elementary school in central Texas. Beginning in August of 2018 and finishing in May of 2019, I observed these 3rd grade students anywhere from one to four days per week over the

215 course of the 2017-2018 school year as they maneuvered through three academic classrooms,

Specials, and Recess in their late-exit bilingual program. The vivacious group of students (12 girls and 11 boys) came from a diversity of backgrounds. One was born in Guatemala, 2 in

Florida, 4 in Honduras, and 16 in Texas. The fact that the students were largely born in Texas, notwithstanding all but two of them had parents that were born in Colombia, Guatemala,

Honduras, or Mexico. The observation site of this study, Erwin Elementary School, is a public elementary school in Central Texas with a total of 412 students (PK-5) at the time of data collection. The school was labeled as “Title 1”, which ensured that the majority of the students

(88.3%) received free or reduced-price lunch and 44.2% were “English Language Learners”. On occasion I observed AVID 3 during Art, P.E., and Science, but the majority of my interactions with the students occurred during their English/Language Arts block (7:45-10:30) and their Math instruction (10:30-12:00). While both teachers were Spanish-English bilingual and would flow freely between the two, only Ms. Lectura (E/LA teacher) spent a substantial amount of time using Spanish in the classroom. Mrs. Suma conducted the majority of her Math instruction in

English with intermittent scaffolding in Spanish.

Data collection followed an ethnographic approach that consisted of a class-wide researcher-led survey called ¡Pura Risa! [Pure Laughter!, Appendix D], observations, informal/formal conversational interviews with the students, and audio/visual recordings with and without the presence of the researcher. Though less of a substantive data collection method,

I would perform document analyses such as going through students’ cumulative folders, reading school bulletins/flyers, and scrutinizing student work to triangulate profiles created on students and the school. The four most substantial ways that I was able to get at the presence, practice, and function of humor in this study were through a teacher-led class-wide survey, informal

216 conversations, a formal interview, and through leaving a recording device in the middle of a group of students and walk away. By using a multiplicity of methods to gather data, I was able to gather a more robust picture of what was going on in terms of student perceptions of humor at home as well as how it functioned at school. Because the study was highly phenomenological and exploratory, I formed 99 total coding categories based on the 3,723 instances of humor that was captured. The present data is portrayed here as vignettes of interactive humor, which requires an explanation as to what was considered significant in the voluminous set of data.

Instead of defining humor with “reified abstractions such as ‘wit’ or ‘irony’”, as Davies (2003) discusses, I chose to understand humor as “the situated interpretation of joking as a speech activity” (p. 1362). Often marked by laughter, I flagged instances where participants were deliberately attempting to cause mirth. This might be considered as a generative form of humor that was instigated by an individual acting with purpose. On the receptive side of humor, I also coded instances (whether caused by others or incidental situations) that provoked laughter or that was commented on as being humorous by one or more students. This was done to understand both what the students found funny and how they achieved mirthful connections with peers. There was no question that humor was a part of AVID 3’s quotidian experience and that it was something that they valued. On one occasion, for instance, I was observing anchor charts around the room and discovered that the students had generated a list of Rasgos de personajes

[Character Traits] based on stories they had read. As I reviewed the litany of attributes, listed only behind amable [nice] was chistoso [funny] as a quality that was valued by the students.

Double checking with the teacher to see if it was the students who actually created the inventory,

Ms. Lectura confirmed that “funny” took second place out of 15 characteristics. (Fig. 3.2).

217 The presence of humor and the importance that seemed to be placed on humor was enough to begin an analysis as I transcribed 44 hours of recorded conversations into a qualitative data analysis software. Following Saldaña’s systematic coding method to look for trends, I began by forming themes based on 99 coding categories. Throughout the entire process, constant comparison of information from different data sources, interactions, and students served to create or disconfirm substantive categories from my analyses.

The major themes analyzed and interpreted in this paper emerged from the close scrutiny of the entire corpus of data, but primarily from the information gathered in the teacher-led survey, informal conversations and audio/video recordings that were later transcribed, and from a formal interview in May of the AVID 3 students. Initial discoveries reveal that the majority of the students perceived members of their families to engage in humor at some level at home, which would extend Yosso’s (2005) notion of familial and linguistic capital. Similarly, I found that students employed a similar style to the humor that they mentioned experiencing with their families; namely the use of doble sentido, as is explicated with an example using Attardo’s

(2017) General Theory of Verbal Humor. Lastly, the boundaries of political languages Spanish and English did not fetter the creation of quick-witted humor by the students in AVID 3; in fact, in some cases, the limits of the lexical groupings were the very phenomenon that was targeted as mirthful interactions transpired throughout the year.

Findings

A Family Affair

The time that I spent with students in AVID 3 demonstrated to me that humor was a priority in their lives not just at school, but also at home. Early on in my observation period, I conducted a class survey called ¡Pura Risa! [Pure Laughter!], in which I read aloud questions

218 about how humor intersected with their lives in and outside of school. Over the course of two weeks, I read them 4 to 5 questions so as not to overwhelm them with the quantity nor to occupy too much of their class time. In order to account for any issues that the students may have had about reading or comprehending the inquiries, I read them out loud, first in Spanish, and then in

English, translanguaging along the way in order to clarify any misconceptions. Out of the 16 total questions about humor in the students’ lives, the first three were “yes” or “no” responses with room for students comments which asked the children about laughter and humor at home.

(Table 6.1). The following data analysis of the students’ conceptualization of humor at home is coupled with vignettes that I captured throughout the school year that are pertinent to the discussion.

Table 6.1: Answers to the questions generated from a live survey called ¡Pura Risa! (Appendix D)

Pregunta/Question Sí/Yes A veces/Sometimes No Comments

“Se ríen de ¿Se ríe mucho tu cada cosa” familia?/Does your 12 6 2 [They laugh at family laugh a lot? every little thing]

“Cuando yo estaba con ellos se reían. Ahora no se ríen ellos.”[When I lived with them, they laughed. Now they don’t.]

“Yes, my family laughs a lot in the house everywhere.”

219 Table 6.1 (continued)

¿Dicen muchos “Mi hermano chistes?/ Do they 10 4 6 es el que hace tell jokes? chistes.” [My brother is the one who makes jokes.]

“Mi familia no, sólo mi papa” [Not my family, just my dad]

“Sí, mi primo dice muchos chistes” [Yes, my cousin tells a lot of jokes.] Pregunta/Question Español/Spanish Inglés/English Los Dos/Both Comments

¿Dicen cosas “Mi hermana en chistosas en inglés, 8 2 7 español y mis español, o los dos?/ primos en Do they tell funny inglés” [My sister says funny things in English, things in Spanish Spanish, or both? and my cousins do in English.]

“Both we are a bilingual famaliy [sic].”

“Lo disen [sic] en ingles [sic] [They say it in English.]

“Mi familia y yo nada más disimos [sic] cosas chistosas en español.” [My family and I only say funny things in Spanish.]

220

Based on the answers (in Spanish, English, and mixed) that students wrote to these three questions, substantive remarks can be submitted regarding the presence of family humor, who tells the jokes and who is considered funny, and what language practices are used in order to participate in the verbal jocularity. While I was not able to conduct observations of humor in the students’ homes, the following three sections comment on the results of this survey of the students’ perceptions of humor at home while adding descriptive layers of empirical data of humor at school to triangulate a more holistic understanding of the presence of humor in their lives. In order to avoid speculative conclusions, this qualitative data is interwoven within the analyses of the survey results.

Familias Con Risas

The first consideration is that 18 out of 20 students (90%) described their families as

“laughing a lot”. Throughout the school year, students would inadvertently share examples with their peers about how humor served as a form of communication or interaction in their families.

Notably, many of the students made a distinction between “lo que hacen y lo que dicen [doing being funny and saying being funny]” to cause laughter. Not surprisingly for a group of 8-10- year old children, several of the students discussed anecdotally how younger members of their families would do something that caused laughter. Calling a younger brother a nickname (Pato

[Duck]) and him running away, caras chistosas como ‘ojitos de caballo’ [funny faces like

“horse-eyes”], tickling, use of funny voices are a few of the ways that unexpected behaviors or incongruous actions were considered to be humorous. “Mis sobrinos pequeños” [My younger nephews and nieces], “Mi hermanita Nani”[My little sister Nani], and “Mis hermanos pequeños”

[My younger siblings] were among a few of the documented younger family members who

221 would do something to cause laughter in the lives of AVID 3. Conversely, the majority of the findings in terms of what family members would say to generate jollity were relegated to individuals that were older than the students in AVID 3. Playing with language or mispronouncing something on purpose were a common theme shared by some of the students.

Mayra, for example, talked about her father playing with the English lexeme “beach”, but making it sound like “una mala palabra” [a bad word], “bitch” or how he would sometimes feign ignorance about the orthography of a simple word such as gris [gray], as he would intentionally spell it wrong to make her laugh.

Doble Sentido Aside from jocularity based on phonological aspects of discourse, implementing equivocal language to play with meaning was cited as another wellspring of humor. In one instance, Margarita explained to the class how her father played a hilarious joke on the whole family by tricking them into thinking that they were spontaneously going to the beach. She narrated to the class laughingly, “Dijo mi papá que íbamos a ir a la playa pero en vez fuimos a un restaurante que se llama La Playa”[My dad told us that we were going to the beach, but instead we went to a restaurant that was called “The Beach” (La Playa)]. This playful use of her father’s double entendre was brought to fruition as the joke was played out theatrically by allowing the discovery of the punchline to occur by pulling up to the restaurant and seeing the business’s sign. As language crossed with his family’s relationships, they coincided in a felicitous bout of laughter. This interaction is indicative of what Eisenberg (1986) observed as teasing sequences in Mexican families that served different functions such as having fun, emphasizing the relationships between the parents and children, and teaching children how to navigate themselves verbally through similar situations.

222 Although Margarita’s father was sure to relish his family’s joy upon experiencing the culmination of his “La Playa” joke, this form of playfulness was not uniquely led by the adults of the family. One day in April, Leonel shared a different, yet similar comical anecdote regarding the name of a Mexican beer and his aunt. I captured this narrative unintentionally while a few of the third-graders and I were working on a project and we were speaking freely about whatever came to mind. After discussing the possibility of whether or not the protagonist of an action survival horror video game Bendy was actually a demon, the conversation changed abruptly to beer.

01 Leonel: En México hay una que se llama Corona [In Mexico there is one called 02 Corona] 03 Waldo: Acá también. Yo la conozco. Es la que venden en…[It’s here also. I know it. They 04 sell it at…] 05 Leonel: Mira, agarro una y se la pongo así ((señalando a la cabeza)) a mi tía 06 ((pausa dramática)).. le digo una reina" ((muriéndose de la risa con nostros)) [So I get a 07 beer and put it right here on my aunt ((pointing to head while pausing 08 dramatically))…and I call her a queen! ((Cracks up laughing as the rest of us follow))

Leonel introduced the name of the Mexican beer Corona (Spanish for “crown”) as he began sharing a family joke about his tía [aunt] with those of us at his table. In line 14, he narrated the anecdote about how he comedically took a Corona beer bottle and set it atop his aunt’s head to reveal the doble sentido (double meaning) of the word “crown” as he completed the joke with the “Coronation”. By understanding both meanings of the word (beer/crown) and having a strong enough relationship with his tía, he revealed to us how familial relationship, language, and humor converged in example of cooperative interplay.

In order to show to properly appreciate and show a connection of both the adult-initiated joke (La Playa) and the student-initiated humor (Corona), I would like to dig in a little deeper of

223 all that had to take place in order for the humor to make sense as it did. Both snippets of the data were examples that I found during the school year and helped to flesh out the 90% of student families who were perceived to be humorous by showing in what ways this communicative form manifested at home and at school. In order to understand these interactions as both familial and linguistic capital, we shall turn to a heuristic that is widely employed in humor research. Attardo

& Raskin’s (1991) General Theory of Verbal Humor (GTVH), which is a framework through which to understand verbal humor based on 6 separate knowledge resources (script opposition, logical mechanism, situation, target, narrative strategy, and language). In both the La

Playa/restaurant and Corona/crown examples, the speakers exhibited keen metalinguistic capabilities by craftily using what humor scholars discuss as the knowledge resources required to successfully pull off humor based on spoken language. In order to more fully in order to appreciate the distinct knowledges, I have listed in Table 6.2 about how both of the examples above fulfilled the requirements of the framework

224 Table 6.2: Comparison of adult and student jokes using General Theory of Verbal Humor

Knowledge resource Definition Playa/Restaurant Corona/Crown Example Example Script opposition Texts that share La playa meaning Corona as the brand linguistic/conceptual “the beach” and La name of a beer and overlap in some Playa, the restaurant corona as “crown” incongruous form Logical mechanism Resolution phase of Margarita and her The placing of the the incongruity, family arriving at a beer bottle on where the opposition local eatery in lieu of Leonel’s aunt’s head is playfully explained a distant beach as a corona (crown) away Situation The textual “props” The context of the The context of the of the joke narrative and the narrative and the arrival at the bottle of Corona beer restaurant Target The audience or The children of the The people around at receiver of the humor parents the time of the “coronation” Narrative strategy The genre of the Narration coupled Narration coupled humor (riddle, with “acting out” the with “acting out” the question-answer punchline punchline types, etc.) Language Actual lexical, Linguistic choices of Linguistic choices of syntactic, the text, in this case the text, in this case phonological, etc. hinging on Spanish hinging on Spanish choices that polysemous lexeme polysemous lexeme instantiate all the La Playa Corona other choices in the humorous account

In Zentella’s (2003) piece about the mischaracterization, misunderstandings, and unappreciation of multilingual/multicultural children of immigrants and their language practices, she posits that

“knowledges often go untapped or discredited” (p. 57). By using a framework such as the

GTVH, I intend to display just how much of the knowledge can be either harnessed or lost as bilingual/bicultural students walk through our classroom doors. As these sequences are parsed

225 out, we can glean a number of insights based on the knowledge resources of the speakers. The script opposition demonstrates how Margarita’s father and Leonel were metalinguistically aware of the polysemy of the words “playa” and “corona”. Understanding the double meaning and incongruity of these words in their context and being able to mastermind them into a humorous frame demonstrates what Hymes (1972) coined as communicative competence. By analyzing the engagement with their interlocutors, we see how humor allows a space to joyfully broadcast their knowledges of language on display. The logical mechanism exhibits how the outworking of the joke was creatively orchestrated by the speakers. By leveraging this trigger, the jokesters were able to humorously reconcile the incongruity of the words. In both the cases of the Playa and the

Corona , the manifestation of humor was brought to light accompanied by a physical action used to punctuate the meaning of the verbal utterances. The situation indexes time positive spent with family (immediate and extended) around language play, while the target speaks to the nature of the relationships of the family, as being convivial, clever, and close enough to lightheartedly tease one another. The narrative strategy supports Faulstich Orellana’s (2003) work on the social tools of vocabulary and audience awareness as well as the patrimonio cultural inmaterial

(intangible cultural heritage) of Latin@ storytelling described by a handful of researchers

(Arizpe, 2009; Delgado Bernal, 2001; Yosso, 2005). Leonel evidenced with his aunt’s coronation that he was able to engineer the joke originally with his aunt in addition to being able to retell the story to us as listeners. Lastly, the language of interaction in these familial interactions hinged on the understanding of multiple-meaning Spanish words, a skill that went unnoticed by most of the teachers in the English-dominant school environment in which AVID 3 worked.

226 Fortuitously, during the same classroom conversation with Leonel and Waldo, I was able to witness how Leonel actually used this linguistic dexterity to create a humorous space around a

Spanish word used in a context that he had never heard before. In the following dialogue, Waldo introduced to Leonel and me the unfamiliar name of a Honduran brand of beer.

01 Waldo: ¿Conocés a la cerveza Dos Equis? [Do you know the beer brand Dos Equis?] 02 Leonel ((risa)) [laughter] 03 Researcher: Sí [Yes] 04 ¿Conoces72 a la que se llama Salvavidas? [Do you know one called Salvavidas?] 05 Leonel: No 06 Waldo: En Honduras la venden [They sell it in Honduras]. 07 Leo: ((echándose a reír)): ¡No es Salvavidas..sino que es Muerevidas" porque…[(starting to laugh) It’s not Lifesaver, it’s Lifekiller!] 08 Researcher: ((risas)) Porque te quita la vida más que todo, ¿verdad? ((laughter)) 09 [Because it takes your life more than gives it, right?]

In this example, Waldo queried whether or not we were aware of a beer called Salvavidas, which is roughly equivalent to the English word “lifesaver”. The young student from Pácula, Mexico,

Leonel, acknowledged that he was not familiar with the company name, but swiftly and artistically created a joke by changing the “salva” (save) in the brand name to “muere” to form the neologism Muerevidas (lit. “lives that die”, line 07). By changing the lexeme from “life” to

“death”, he was commenting on the negative effects that Leonel associated with drinking alcohol. This quick wittedness demonstrated not only a lightning-fast ability to recognize the

72 The Honduran Waldo initially asked me using the standard form of vos by saying “¿Conocés?” in line 01, but then sharply shifts to the dominant Mexican form of “¿Conoces?” in line 04, perhaps precipitated by the laughter of his Mexican classmate in line 02. Despite the fact that his classmate was laughing at the fact that he was bringing up the topic of beer, seemingly out of nowhere, the Honduran student might have mid-course “corrected” by avoiding ridicule and using a mainstream conjugation of the verb “conocer” (to know or be acquainted with).

227 polysemy and modify a new word, it displayed his aptitude for connecting the connotational semantics (i.e. beer as not being a “lifesaver”, but a “life-taker”) as he extemporaneously redefined a word in a humorous manner intended to build camaraderie with classmates.

This section highlights the idea of humor used in the families of Latin@ children.

Zentella (2005) has argued that children in a social network learn how to speak in the socially approved ways of the adults that surround them. She describes one family’s symbiotic relationship as mutually beneficial to youth and elder: “Younger children who spoke English socialized their parents into English, whereas older members of the family engaged in traditional linguistic practices such as teasing and the use of irony and humor in their speech.” (p. 65).

Seeing one example of how a father used this form of teasing/irony/humor in his La Playa example, we can see how a Latino youth in a different family applies the same in his example of

La Corona. This type of humor not only implies a metalinguistic awareness by understanding the multiple possibilities of meanings of words, it also captures a community-building discursive practice that can be shared from elder to youth, youth to elder, youth to youth, and elder to elder.

This multigenerational project extends Yosso’s (2005) notion of both linguistic and familial

(Yosso, 2005) to include humor as a family affair that manifests through verbal play.

Más Allá del Chiste: Canned Jokes and Beyond

The second consideration of the student survey was that 14 out of 20 (70%) students wrote that their families told jokes. When I orally administered the survey questions to the students in AVID 3 in Spanish and English (translanguagingly scaffolding both), I deliberately left space on their response sheet for them to fill in extra information, should they choose. As I analyzed the comments specific to the question, “¿Dicen muchos chistes?” [Do the family members tell a lot of canned jokes?], the responses written were those that seemed to indicate

228 gender as a factor of joke-telling as perceived by the children. In the comment section of Table

6.2, the students perceived that male members of the family (brother, father, grandfather, male cousin) were those who told jokes. In one of the cases in the table, the student highlighted this notion by excluding her family and saying that only her father was the joke-teller: “Mi familia no, sólo mi papá” [Not my family, just my dad]. On another occasion during a ¡Pura Risa! interview, I asked Juanpi “¿Quiénes son los cómicos de tu familia?” [Who are the funny members of your family], to which he responded, “Mi papa…y mi tío” [My dad…and my uncle”]. As I probed further to ask what about them was funny, he stated that they said chistes

[canned jokes]. This information seems to be mirrored in Reese’s (2012) comments regarding her research about the genres of storytelling with parents and children of 30 families in

Guadalajara, Mexico. In addition to showing the prevalence of humor in these Mexican families which closely matched the percentage of AVID 3s’ responses (83% compared to 90%), the researcher’s referents to joke-telling were all male.

…chistes [jokes] were the next most common narrative that children had the opportunity to hear, experienced by 83% of the children and occurring on average several times a month as well. As with the family anecdotes, jokes were often told during family events. Parents often described family members who were particularly good at jokes, tíos muy bromistas [joking uncles] or a father who was the payaso de la famila [family clown]. Even children who were reported to be not particularly interested in family anecdotes paid attention to the jokes.” (p. 285)

In both Reese’s description here and AVID 3 students’ responses to the second question on the survey, we can see that male members of the family (“father”, “uncles”, “payaso” [male clown]) are often associated with chistes [jokes] at home. Taking the liberty to interpret Reese’s word

“chiste” to mean a canned-joke, I was curious to search my own data set, which had 31 coded instances labeled “canned joke/speech act”, to look for any significant differences in gender. Out of the thirty-one examples, four (12.9%) were unidentifiable on the audio recording, 17 tellers of

229 canned jokes were male (54.8%) and 10 tellers of canned jokes were female (32.24%).

Qualitatively, the statistic of Latino joke-tellers being male was confirmed in AVID 3 as Dito surfaced as the primary student that had mastered the genre. Born in Florida, this 8-year-old was the son of Colombian parents and had been attending Erwin Elementary for 4 years and presented himself early on as a joke-teller. From October on he was eager to share jokes that narrated about borrachos/drunks, La Última Cena/The Last Supper, ovejas subiendo y bajando en ascensor/sheep riding escalators, and moscas que bebían cerveza/ beer-drinking flies amongst a host of other topics. His form of humor fell under the canonical canned-joke categories of one- liners, riddles, witticisms in monolingual Spanish, monolingual English, and intrasentential switching between the two. As the year progressed, however, I most definitely observed more female students engaging in canned jokes.

While my initial data did not convince me of humor being a male-dominated domain, the follow-up question on the ¡Pura Risa! survey brought even further clarity. By asking the students “¿Quiénes son las personas chistosas en tu familia?”[Who are some funny people in your family?]), students cited more female members of their families as being comical. Out of

48 total family members written down on the survey sheets, excluding the answers “yo/myself”

(9), “cousin”(nongender-specific, 3), “hermanos” (nongender-specific, 1), “my whole family”

(1), 52.9% of the responses were those of “mamá/mom” (3), “tía/aunt” (1), “prima/female cousin” (2), “hermana/sister” (4), “grandma” (1), and non-specific female family members listed by name (7). Compared to the 47% of the male members cited by students, the scales tipped towards female family members being perceived by their children as funny. It was at this point the distinction between “chistes” and “chistos@” becomes important in understanding who was considered funny by the students of AVID 3. It appeared that the students ascribed to their

230 fathers the role of the joke-teller, which has historically been the case in Mexico73, the origin country of the majority of these students. Mothers, moreover, were categorized as being funny in other ways. Dynel (2009) aptly points out, there are many ways that verbal humor can manifest beyond a canned joke. “Units of conversational humor [italics mine] range from single-word lexemes, phrasemes to whole sentences and even multi-turn exchanges interwoven into non-humorous discourse” (p. 1286) and do not follow the prototypical form of the canned joke. There is a situational quality that is required of the context in the conversational humor of the students in AVID 3. While at first blush of preliminary survey data analysis, one might erroneously conclude that humor in the Latin@ families represented by AVID 3 is purely a male- dominated domain. Nevertheless, both further analysis of the survey answers and observations conducted throughout the year proved humor to be an egalitarian form of communicative competence. Two examples of this emerged in a ¡Pura Risa! interview with Yuse as she described how her grandmother and mother consistently made her laugh.

No me acuerdo, pero dijo algo que…me caí de la risa que ya no pude más y casi me

orino en los pantalones. [I don’t remember, but she (grandmother) said something that

made me fall down laughing! I couldn’t hold it anymore and I almost peed on myself.]

73 For over half a century in Mexican cinema, humorous protagonist roles were portrayed by males. Some of the more renowned that have been recognized worldwide are Cantinflas, Tin Tan, Luís de Alba, Polo Polo, Adal Ramones, and Chespirito (Chavo del 8). The tides are changing by such female humoristas as Mara Escalante, Andrea Ortega-Lee, and the famous Lourdes Ruíz Baltazar, known colloquially as La Reina del Albur [The Queen of the Albur], in which she was the first woman winner of the comedic exchange of piquant and witty wordplay in 1997.

231 Y también mi mamá...en el lonche me lo cuenta y se lo digo a [otros estudiantes]. Y era,

“Señorita, su pañuelo; Ay, Señor se me cayó, Señorita, se echó un pedo; Ay, Señor, se me

salió.” Mi mamá me lo enseñó y siempre me anda ríe y ríe.[And also my mom at lunch

comes and tells me funny things and I tell the other students. One was, “Excuse me,

young lady, your handkerchief fell; Oh, thank you, kind sir; Young lady, you farted; Kind

sir, it just slipped out. My mom told me that and she is always laughing away on me.

While Yuse was not able to recall what her grandmother said to make her laugh to the point of urination, she was able to quote the rhyming dialogue where young woman has to excuse herself as a man points out her flatulence as she leans over to pick up her handkerchief. While no

English translation can phonologically do the verses justice, the use of the audacious word pedo

[fart] coupled with the bold message of a woman passing gas and eloquently apologizing was enough to have Yuse commit it to memory and freely share with me on that day. Because of some past trauma in Yuse’s schooling experience, it was commonplace to have her mother eat lunch with her every day. What may be inferred from the fact that Yuse’s mother would tell her comical expressions to then communicate to her friends is that humor itself is a form of relational capital. By having her daughter be the presenter of such funny quips, she may well have been empowering Yuse to establish strong affiliation her classmates, not unlike those formed in

Carrillo’s (2006) research on viejas argüenderas [women banterers], as the notion of humor mujerista [womanist humor] was mobilized to transcend difficulties and to form bonds with each other.

In the most notable and definitely longest sequence of wordplay between an all-female group at school that I was able to capture on the audio recording device, a group of 5 or 6 classmates from AVID 3 were working on a project in Ms. Lectura’s reading class. In a

232 conversation based on lavatorial humor that lasted over sixteen minutes, Mayra, a student born in Texas whose parents were both from Mexico, entertained her compañeras around the table as others were recruited to the clandestine conversation about some taboo specifics of using the bathroom. The following excerpt displays how she and others negotiated language through double meaning to account for the fact that her time in the bathroom was more extended than her friends expected.

01 Student 1: Niñas, están grabando...[Girls, they’re recording us…] 02 Student 2: ((contestona)) Holaaaaa [((sassy)) What’s u::::::pppp?] 03 Student 3: chorro [diarrhea] ((laughter ensues))

04 Someone whispers, "chorros" and Vela continues to laugh hysterically

05 Mayra: ((disimulando que se refiere a la tarea)) ¿Qué es el número 2? ((pretending to 06 ask a question about her school work)) [What’s number 2?]

07 conversation continues and Mayra begins hinting at the color of diarrhea by “asking for a 08 color” 09 Mayra: Tú no traes rojo [Yours isn’t red] 10 Nitas: ¿En tus calzones? ((risas fuertes)) [In your underwear] ((strong laughter))

11 Mayra: ((aclarando la idea de que no está haciendo referencia escatológica)) No que hay 12 de esto es del número dos como dice Alexa que "Ewww". Eso es bien feo. Es número 13 dos como 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10...Es como que cuando vas a un lugar y entonces 14 luego...[((clarifying the idea that she is not making scatological references)) There is 15 nothing to do with number two like Alexa is saying, ‘Oooo.’ That’s just gross. It’s 16 number two like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10…it’s like when you go somewhere and 17 then….]

18 Student 1: ((fingiendo tener dolor)) Ay, comí mucho...[Oh, I ate a lot…] 19 Student 2: Y haces agüita…[and you make a little water (~tinkle)]

20 Vela and Chapina hysterically laughing This excerpt only represents three minutes of the conversation that continued on and off for another thirteen. As can be evidenced in these well-placed utterances, these compañeras de clase [female classmates] were able to innovatively co-construct a cryptic conversation on caca

[poop]. After the initial scatological reference was seeded in line 03 with one of the girls

233 mentioning chorro [fig. diarrhea, lit. stream], known in linguistic humor as lexical priming

(Goatly, 2017), the surreptitious repartee around which the girls found connection was underway. As Mayra feigned interest in wanting to know “Number 2” on their classwork (line

05), she upped the verbal banter by introducing the characteristic of color (rojo [red]) into the conversation. Nitas is quick to identify the banter and outs the unspoken reference (while perpetuating the theme) by directly asking if it was in somebody’s underwear. Mayra ingeniously deflected any possible interpretation of being associated with such potty humor, which she casted off in line 12 as being “bien feo [very gross]”. By overtly stating that what she really meant by saying “#2” (knowing fully that she is being recorded by the audio device, of course) was merely the number two itself, she perfunctorily counted from 1-10 to confirm her innocence. She immediately followed this sentence by leaving her utterance open-ended so that her classmates would finish the phrase (line 18). “It’s like when you go somewhere and then…” initiated the follow-up phrases by one student stating “I ate so much” as she made a groaning sound, while another discussed “making a little water”. By feigning disgust about the idea of talking about such a bawdy topic, the normally quiet Mayra pretends to close the conversation down and leaves just enough space for her compañeras to punctuate their connection through humorous covert affiliation that resulted in strong bonds and uproarious laughter.

This type of humorous doublespeak, in which an individual deliberately obscures, contorts, camouflages, or reverses the meaning of words served as a form of affiliative compañerismo [fellowship] in which the girls supported each other while showcasing their linguistic proficiency as they spoke of the taboo-to-the-classroom subject of fecal variation. The genre with which the girls were playing around was closely associated, yet distinct, with the

Mexican notion of the albur, or suggestive verbal jesting based on double entendre. Thought by

234 some to be the descendant of forbidden pre-Hispanic ritual of the canto travieso [mischievous verse] (Johansson, 2002), Díaz described this sociolinguistic phenomenon of the albur as:

una contienda de esgrima verbal, suscitada de improviso en circunstancias…tradicionalmente dado entre dos varones, que crea una pausa de esparcimiento hilarante, dada al margen de los valores impuestos por la autoridad; diálogo enmascarado que posee dos niveles de sentido…que transcurre conforme a convenciones implícitas, que es simbóloca…La materia verbal con que se tejen los parlamentos de tal diálogo, constituye un arsenal de lugares comunes retóricos para configurar un lenguaje secreto y lúdico….sugerir las funciones corporales…. [a verbal fencing match, raised improvisationally in circumstances...traditionally as a rivalry between two males, which creates a hilarious break to the mundane, found on the fringe of values imposed by authority; masked dialogue that expresses two levels of meaning...that takes place through the use of implicit conventions, which is symbolic…The verbal material with which the discourse of such a dialogue are woven constitutes an arsenal of common rhetorical places to create a secret and playful language....suggesting the bodily functions…] (2001, p. 53)

The distinctions from the stereotypical albur were twofold. The first difference is that this interactional scene was comprised of and conducted by solely females. In most cases, albures and transgressive language play has been historically a male undertaking. (Beristáin, 2015). By conducting conversations rooted in transgressive language, Mayra, Nitas, Chapina, and Vela were not only breaching the rules of the school, they were also infracting upon a well-established cultural normal in Mexican discourse. Secondly, the students were not negotiating this conversation as a “verbal fencing match”, as stated in the quote above; rather, their interaction was more of a co-constructed project that developed their ideas with each other in lieu of against each other. While the end result of the albur is the same, social cohesion and camaraderie, the manner by which the exchange was carried out was unique74.

74 See Appendix H for a visual of Houser’s albur continuum including the intergender phenomena.

235 Despite the differences of gender and manner, the students displayed a form of sisterly unity around the laughter created by their own variety of coded language, which falls in line with one of the social functions of the albur. According to Houser (2007), although the albur has multiple tasks, solidarity stands as one of its strongest. Comically using in-group language to strengthen bonds is at the heart of what the students in AVID 3 were performing. The euphemistic use of language is not unlike a more nascent and clandestine form of Carrillo’s

(2009) notion of rasquache language, in which bawdy forms of communication “serves as a technology for defying the ‘judgment of taste’ and rules of behavior set by the dominant class”, the young participants seemed to “welcome what was not a sign of approved taste and decorum”

(p. 122). Interestingly, the emboldening power of their humorous camaraderie was evident after their teacher, Ms. Lectura, discovered the topic of their jovial conversation and responded,

“Uuuuu….eso no me gustó [Oooo…I did not like that]. Yuse, who I observed to typically demonstrate very compliant and unassertive tendencies, immediately countered the teacher’s disapproval with, “Eso me hizo llorar de la risa [That made my cry I was laughing so hard].

This section started out with the preliminary review of the survey data collected from the students in AVID 3 which seemed to indicate that students ascribed joke-telling (chistes) to the male members of their families. However, upon analyzing further results, more female members of families were catalogued as being chistosa as the students listed mothers, aunts, a grandmother and female cousins as their evidence of family mirth. In order to see an instance of the female students being humorous in school, I presented an excerpt of a conversation around their usage of a cryptolect, or secret language that indexed an affiliative way of connecting with each other, as they imaginatively co-created jocular equivocations around a dubious matter.

Humor functioned as a site for the student to develop, as Woods (2005) described in his research

236 about how young people cope with schools, “‘in-jokes’ in their own argot, which further strengthened their bonds, helped to define boundaries of the group, and excluded the uninitiated.” (p. 198). How they articulate this communicative competence that serves to strengthen solidarity beneath the radar of the authority is a terrific way to see an embodiment of

Yosso’s notion of linguistic capital in action.

¿Qué Es So Funny?

The third item answered on the student survey concerns the language practices employed by members of the students’ families around sites of humor. While there were many similar comments made by AVID 3, I selected four cases to show a sample of the variety of responses.

In the first case, Alexa stated that her sister participates humorously in Spanish while her cousins do so in English. Margarita expressed her pride in her family knowing how to operate within two language systems, “Both we are a bilingual famaliy [sic].”. Meni, whose parents were both born in Mexico, ironically wrote in Spanish that “Lo disen [sic] en ingles [sic] [They say it in

English.]. Finally, Yuse described her family as only verbalizing funny happenings in Spanish.

With such a diverse assortment of answers and taking into account the accuracy of the children’s answers, it is easy to see that humor can but does not have to obey the language separation rules of a given situation. It is at this point that the notion of verbal humor and translanguaging intersect. Not only do both concepts rely on the language practices of individuals, but they are consistently grounded in and defined by the context around them. If we understand humor to be a form of creativity with specific purposes, a number of scholars have already laid the preliminary foundation for constructing a relationship between humor and translanguaging.

García, Johnson, & Seltzer’s (2017) concept of the “translanguaging corriente”, in which bilingual students “flow” (as does a water current) both linguistically and culturally in order to

237 “create something new [emphasis added] from what seems like a distinct feature” (p. 61). In a similar way, Montes Alcalá (2015) researches Latin@ literature in the US and finds that translanguaging (or “stylistic switching”) is a common “device to play with the language or to transgress linguistic conventions” (p. 272) while Li Wei (2011) also acknowledges the translanguaging spaces as possessing creative possibilities. For families mentioned above that adhere to monolingual family humor, as reported by the students, there are reasons that fit completely within the translanguaging concept (as will be discussed in forthcoming article by

Author & Palmer) as they are situated and characterized by the ambient context. With this in mind, the focus of this section is how this notion of translanguaging played out upon the site of humor among the student of AVID 3 during their time at school.

Playing In El Corriente This section looks at how students modified the language around them in order to create an instance of public or private humor. The multiple examples in Table 6.3 originated from both teachers and students in AVID 3, but were re-articulated by the students into another meaningful lexeme or phrase. García, Johnson, & Seltzer’s (2017) frame the notion “translanguaging corriente” as an additive concept in which bilingual students “flow” both linguistically and culturally in order to “create something new [emphasis added] from what seems like a distinct feature” (p. 61). The flow of language is significant in that it demonstrates the boundary-less nature of language play. Out of 117 coded instances of wordplay (not all of them are featured here), it is interesting to note that boundary crossing is a fairly common phenomenon and that it can transpire in any direction within and across “official” languages. One observation to be made from this data is that the comedic instances of doble sentido [double meaning] occurred in from greatest to least in the following order: Spanish to Spanish dialogue, English to English,

238 English to Spanish, and Spanish to English. I now consider these phenomena separately, beginning with the homogeneous doble sentido (Spanish to Spanish and English to English) and then comment on the heterogenous doble sentido (English to Spanish and Spanish to English). I am arguing here that even within the homogenous interplay of the children’s discourse, it is still a form of translanguaging. In lieu of drawing from lexical items between “official” languages of

Spanish or English, students flow continuously through registers as they communicate upon sites of humor. Formal to informal, mundane to silly, information from the school context to information from the home country, students in AVID 3 weaved seamlessly as they bonded around community-based forms of discourse.

239 Table 6.3: Translanguaging for humorous purposes by students in AVID 3

Flow of language Original utterance Doble sentido [double meaning] Spanish to Spanish café [brown] café o capuccino [coffee] aeropuerto [airport] aeropuerco [airpig] cerdote [large pig] sacerdote [priest] parecido [similar to] fallecido [deceased] vaso [cup/glass] balazo [gunshot] burro a burra? [male donkey hasta que se aburra [until it to female donkey] gets bored] rica silla a la pobre silla pobrecilla [poor little thing] [rich chair to the poor chair] salió del show [what came chorro [diarrhea] out of the show] la playa [beach] La Playa [restaurant] “Sorbe todo lo que quieras” “Sorbe todo lo que [“Slurp all you want, text quierassss” [Slurp all you from book] want, sexual undertone] pico [beak] pico [euphemism for penis] …colita de rana [frog’s tail] …culito de rana [frog’s ass] pachorra [slovenliness] pancha-→panza dura [hard stomach] Moñuña (Salvadora clown) Moñiña (niña) [girl] salsero [player of Salsa sincero [sincere] music] Puerto Rico (country) Un puerto y está rico [rich port] Salvavidas (Honduran beer) Muerevidas [life killer] Corona (Mexican beer) corona [crown] Yo quisiera [I would like] que hiciera [that it may be] cobra [snake] cobra [charges money] mariquita [ladybug] marica [derogatory: gay male] ven, gansa [come, swan] venganza [revenge] gato + popó [cat + poop] gatopó [cat-poo] cuerpo [body] puerco [pig]

Spanish to English moco, loco, y foco [booger, loquacious crazy, and light bulb]

240 Table 6.3: (continued)

English to Spanish tempt tiempo [time] blend from teacher “/te/” Te van a mater [They’re going to kill you] blend from teacher “/te/” teta [titty]

Pennsylvania lápiz [pencil] Zachary masacre [massacre] Ouch! ¡Auxilio! ¡Me desmayo! [Help, I’m fainting!] Ms. Quiroz mosquitos USA Usa y bota [Use and throw it away] blend from teacher “/tch/” Te echo, papá [I kick you out of here, dude] Bruce Lee Bronce [bronze] Lee perimeter pu-rimeter (poo-rimeter] magic Manchaca (street name) Landon Lamborghini

English to English cirrus cereal kidding me killing me DiMaggio Di-meow-ggio Mr. Ingram Mr. Instagram Kentucky Turkey exercise explode The Milky Way The Monkey Way mom to baby cow Moooove! What are y’all making? Making a mess! catch up ketchup What did the instrument say? Play me! focus f*ck us

The prominence of Spanish to Spanish humorous dialogue has a few angles for consideration. First, just as with English to English, the phonological system that is being used by a speaker could easily trigger a word that sounds similar within the same sound, known by humor scholars as phonetic distance (Attardo, 2017). Simply put, the closer the sounds are on a surface structure level, the less cognitive distance an individual has to travel to achieve

241 paranomasia, or punning. Secondly, regarding the preponderance of incidences from Spanish to

Spanish, it stands to reason that because of the prevalence of Mexican wordplay, as shown in research by Carrillo (2006), Limón (1996), Martínez & Morales (2014), the students in AVID 3 had experienced more practice in the language of the home. According to Eisenberg’s (1986) study of two Mexican households, children were reared from early on to be well-versed in how to understand and in how to take a joke. In addition, this collective construction of such in-group discourse might be a way in which membership and/or identity was sought and found intentionally in the nondominant language. Because English was foregrounded at Erwin

Elementary, perhaps speaking in the non-official language served as a verbal shibboleth, or custom or tradition that is used as an identity marker that can signal loyalty or affinity.

Collaborating around such language play centered on phonetic ambiguity leading to semantic shifts is a way to jovially connect around a what seemed to be, according to answers on the surveys, a widespread family practice. Regarding the content matter of the doble sentido, there were indeed some occurrences of transgressive wordplay (colita-→culito, pico, chorro [ass, penis, diarrhea]) which lends itself to the probability of seeing this data as a precursor to fully fledged albur-discourse, similar to the example of girls cited above. This linguistic ingenuity was transferred in the students’ usage of English doble sentido as well. Taking new vocabulary such as “cirrus” during their unit on clouds and converting it to “cereal” or changing my name from Mr. Ingram to Mr. Instagram (and later to Mr. Insta) serve as simple expressions that engendered laughter while displaying lexical aptitude not likely to be noticed on the battery of testing instruments that was imposed on them weekly. A full-scale analysis of how the utterances were transformed by the students and what their relationships were with the lexical items (i.e. vaso to balazo) is an endeavor for another time and space; however, the fact that the

242 speakers altered words addresses perhaps a larger question of why they reconfigured the sense of the occasion by using language in the first place.

Although there was a less frequent implementation of heterogenous doble sentido humor that the students of AVID 3 shared jointly, speakers did apply the phonological or written rules of one language in order to springboard into another. As Canagarajah (2012) has posited that language should be understood as “mobile semiotic resources”, this full usage of their linguistic repertoire has been termed by the researcher as “translingual practices” (p. 79). More specifically, whether students found reasons to pun semantically (Pennsylvania to lápiz), phonologically (Zachary to massacre), or homographically (USA to usa y bota), this phenomenon can be categorized as interlingual ambiguity (Delabastita, 2001). On the only occasion that I was able to capture in the entire data set, Leonel and Juanpi were conversing about how moco [booger], loco [crazy], and foco [light bulb] rhyme. Leonel attempted to add his new English vocabulary word “loquacious” into the mix, as Juanpi quickly rejected the idea by emphatically responding, “Noooo!”. Going from English to Spanish, however, there was more data present to witness how students would hear or see a word in English and then humorously share an alternative version in Spanish. In one example, Waldo heard a classmate exclaim,

“Ouch!” while working on a comic during Language Arts. Waldo, who did not seem to know what the word meant, latched onto the word as he began comically singing the chorus of the meant-to-be-humorous viral video (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVxctSJl38A),

“Auxilio, me desmayo. Cállese viejo lesbiano” [Help, I’m fainting. Shut up, old lesbian man].

Despite the fact that “Ouch” was unfamiliar to the recent arrival, he was still able to seize the lexical moment to be part of the conversation, display his knowledge of the popular YouTube video, as well as make those listening laugh. This exhibition of linguistic capital takes on a new

243 dimension as the young Honduran harnesses his nescience of what was exclaimed to lead to a comical moment created by him. While he easily could have remained silent about not knowing what “Ouch!” meant, he creatively reformulated the word on a humorous platform to connect with his classmates. Wordplay such as this reflected verbal aptitude and creativity as it simultaneously served worthwhile communicative functions in the classroom.

Discussion And Implications

In this article, I have delineated some of the ways that humor was present and functional within the families of the students of AVID 3, as well as how they themselves employed language to achieve similar mirth. The data above has given us a glimpse of how that knowledge often originated at home, but also demonstrated how it was displayed in the classroom through the skillful implementation of familial and linguistic capitals. As a result of the ¡Pura Risa! survey, audio/video recordings, classroom observations and (in)formal interviews, the data unveiled three main points. First, the students in AVID 3 perceived that their families engaged in humor. The percentage (83%) of what Reese (2012) found in terms of how Mexican children experienced humor in their homes was comparable to the percentage that the students in AVID 3 responded to regarding the presence of laughter in their families (90%). If these numbers were found to be consistent in future research75, this finding would have substantive consequences for taking up humor as a legitimate form of community cultural wealth as well as curricular and pedagogical implications. Known by some practitioners and researchers as “the great untapped resource” (Reyes & Elias, 2011, p. 729), families represent a protective factor for Latin@ youth

75 According to the 2018 Gallup Global Emotions survey which assessed positive emotions from over 151,000 interviews with adults in over 140 countries, 8 out of the top 12 were Latin American countries (Compton & Hoffman, 2019).

244 and I argue that their operationalization of different types of humor, such as doble sentido, might very well be an empowering tool that parents pass on to their children as they experience life inside the school system. Examples of students participation in doble sentido-style humor confirm the utilization of such specific styles of humor in the classroom. Secondly, after drawing the distinction between chistes [canned jokes] and chistoso as unique forms of humor

(one decontextualized and one situational, respectively), data announced that while students in

AVID 3 considered male members of their families to be more closely associated with the telling of canned jokes, more of them named female members as being more funny. A classroom example that supported the claim of “females being funny” was a conversation of all girls in

AVID 3 employing equivocal language and lexical ambiguity, much like the Mexican notion of the albur, to comically interact during their English/Language Arts class. This transgressive doublespeak functioned discursively as an affiliative mechanism as more of them joined the surreptitiously scatological dialogue. The final point is that the data empirically exhibited specific language practices conjoined with humorous forms of communication at home.

Students listed an array of different family members that interacted risibly in only Spanish, in only English, and in both. In the school context, I discovered cases of students using doble sentido in all directions and with their full linguistic repertoires engaged. While the majority of them stemmed from homogenous doble sentido, which went from English to English and

Spanish to Spanish, there were instances that displayed heterogenous doble sentido, which played with words in Spanish to English and vice versa. Speculatively, the fact that Spanish to

Spanish wordplay had the most examples could perhaps be a function of the use of ludic equivocal language in phenomena such as the albur or doble sentido, common in Mexican and

Latin@ families (Pérez Yglesias, 2015). English to English might be a sociolinguistic transfer of

245 this very concept into the L2 of AVID 3. English lexical items humorously imported to similar

Spanish words based on analogous phonology was the next most frequent, used in some cases as an associative meaning-making device to try and understand an English word spoken by a monolingual teacher. Spanish to English had the fewest occurrences, perhaps pointing to their preference to connect humorously in their home language, as with members in their family.

Whatever the case may be, the examples demonstrated remarkable linguistic proficiency as language intersected with the social endeavor of humor. This phenomenon indeed represents an example of what Zentella (2003) would categorize as “knowledge that goes untapped or discredited” (p. 57) and that would fly far above (not below) the radar of the standardized- testing metrics.

Yosso’s (2005) framework of community cultural wealth has been utilized to view the many capitals, such as linguistic and familial of minoritized students. García, Johnson, &

Seltzer’s (2017) concept of the “translanguaging corriente” provides a lens through which multilingual individuals fluidly maneuver linguistically and culturally to “create something new”

(p. 61). Drawing on both frameworks, I argue here that humor is a veritable locus for us to witness how both Yosso’s capitals and García, Johnson, and Seltzer’s translanguaging corriente are rendered visible in order to gain a greater appreciation of their splendor. As has been often ascribed to language, humor is rarely just about humor. This research project is significant because it offers a nuanced perspective of the humor participated in and talked about amongst emergent bilingual elementary students. Humor itself is a very powerful phenomenon. It can get us through difficult times, allow us to connect meaningfully with others, push back on the absurd, and display forms of linguistic and cultural intelligence to others. In order to know how to harness the power of something, it is first necessary to apprehend how it functions. I have

246 never proposed that this work would be capable of knocking down the walls of oppression one laugh at a time. I have never believed that the results of this research would yield arcane secrets to destroy systemic hegemony. What I am interested in knowing is how the students in these subjugated positions were enduring, and in many cases thriving in, such an oppositional and detached educational system. What did these students do to make school tolerable in a data- driven climate that often did not allow for the acknowledgment of skills, abilities, or cultural/familial/linguistic expressions outside of the numerical system of “success” indicators?

Although one may erroneously dismiss data on humor of emergent bilinguals as being mere

“child’s play”, I submit that this research is worth our attention. The fact that children laugh is virtually universal. There is nothing that sets this work apart from the common observations that we make as researchers and teachers on a daily basis. What is unique about this are the ways in which the emergent bilingual students participate within a humorous frame. From what knowledge sources and/or schema do they draw their “material” to create something novel or

(dis)affiliative? How is the entirety of their linguistic repertoire fully operational in the endeavor? In what circumstances are particular forms of this verbal and relational artistry mobilized? It is for this reason that I extend Yosso’s idea to include humor as a potential catalyst to release concepts of community cultural wealth. By the same token, humor depicts a legitimate space to survey García et al.’s concept of boundary-less articulation of linguistic finesse through translanguaging. Akin to Palmer & Martínez’s (2016) interpretation of translanguaging, an examination of humor used by emergent bilinguals possesses “the potential for drawing on bilingual students’ hybrid language practices as resources for teaching and learning.” (p. 383).

Conclusion To Dissertation

247 I argue that humor, like a child, is a small vehicle with great significance and favorable potential. With its use and function, I submit that although it is ostensibly unmeasurable and seemingly prosaic, it is consistent enough to have great possibility as a locally produced resource that is strong enough to withstand, resist, flourish, and propagate. It is as an overlooked third- spaced-shelter in the tempestuous and dehumanizing gales of a massive hurricane of policies, pedagogies, personalities that give minor attention to the landscape’s inhabitants. It is a complex form of communication that often presents itself pleasantly, while getting serious work accomplished. It possesses an ability to permeate that can scarcely be detained by any scenario, no matter how solemn (i.e. the measurement of “success” through decontextualized testing instruments) an environment may be. Although it can be wielded nefariously, I discovered humor more often than not served as both a harmonizing and humanizing form of communication, proving true Borge’s (1999) maxim “Laughter is the closest distance between two people.” Humor is a site to display multicompetence (Cook, 2012) amongst emergent bilinguals as it allows for metalinguistic awareness (Bell & Pomerantz, 2014), lexical dexterity

(Paris, 2009), and communicative/rhetorical competence (Hymes, 1972; Farr, 1993). It is a social place to belong by being an insider (Muehlmann, 2008) or a tool to delineate in- and out- group boundaries (Haugh, 2010). Humor “can figure prominently into an individual’s ability to negotiate various social roles and identities” (Bell, Skalicky, & Salsbury, 2014, p. 73). “The production of humorous ‘moves’ in conversation is far from trivial and has important implications and consequences in the work of building relationships and social life.” (Egbert &

Keating, 2011, p. 175). Because it is such an under-researched area in the field of bilingual education, the first step was to justify an evidential and theoretical warrant to continue with this project. Furthermore, I sought (and seek) to understand how humor can meaningfully contribute

248 to theoretical/pedagogical conversations around culturally sustaining plans of study, community building, home-school connections, classroom culture, and student ascendancy. As more prospective data is gathered, analyzed, and operationalized, I foresee robust scholarly conversations, professional development opportunities for teachers, curricular additions for pre- service teacher programs, and units of study and activities designed for students. In alignment with Cuero and Kaylor (2010), “By proactively advancing towards a resource-oriented paradigm, we can co-construct knowledge along with the children we purportedly serve, as opposed to approaching education as a uni-directional, top-down transmission of knowledge” (p. 13).

If nothing else, my hope is that this dissertation has illuminated the resilient, navigational, resistant, relational, and linguistic versatility of emergent bilinguals as they were (and perpetually will be) confronted with a multitude of challenges beyond what young people who were born into families of the dominant culture and language must face. Humor is an incredible canvas upon which to properly view these cultural forms displayed in a vibrancy of colors, amidst a diverse range of styles—all exhibited for those gallery walkers who have the lens (or the heart) to appreciate what the painters are trying to tell the world. In consonant fellowship with its English counterpart, “Many a true word is spoken in jest”, ¡entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma!

El comienzo….

Appendices

249 Appendix A

Neighborhood In Transition Around Erwin Elementary

Fig. A.1: Long-term resident of neighborhood around school

Fig. A.2: The house next door which was remodeled to accommodate a new demographic to the neighborhood

Appendix B

250 Advancement Via Individual Determination (AVID)

Fig. B: Goals Set By Students In AVID 3 At The Beginning Of The Year

Appendix C:

251 Fig. C: Erwin Elementary’s Dedication To The AVID Program As Evidenced Through The Lyrics Of The Song Composed By Teacher

Appendix D

252 ¡Pura Risa!/ Pure Laughter!

1. ¿Se ríe mucho tu familia? Does your family laugh a lot?

2. ¿Dicen muchos chistes? Do they tell jokes?

3. ¿Cuáles son algunas cosas chistosas que ha dicho tu familia? What are some funny things that your family has said?

4. ¿Quiénes son personas chistosas en tu familia? Who are some funny people in your family?

5. ¿Por qué son chistosos? Why are they funny?

6. ¿Dicen cosas chistosas en inglés, español, o los dos? Do they tell jokes in English, Spanish, or both?

7. ¿Te ríes mucho en la escuela? ¿De qué? Do you laugh a lot at school? At what?

8. ¿Los niños se ríen mucho en tu escuela? ¿De qué? Do kids laugh a lot at school? Why?

9. ¿Cuáles son las cosas que te dan risa? What are some things that you laugh at?

10. ¿Se ríen mucho los adultos en tu escuela? Do the adults at your school laugh a lot?

11. ¿Hay maestros chistosos en tu escuela? Are there teachers that are funny at your school?

12. ¿Quiénes son y por qué son chistosos? Who are they and why are they funny?

13. ¿Se ríen mucho los maestros de la escuela? Do the teachers who laugh a lot?

14. ¿Hay maestros que no se ríen mucho? Are there teachers who don’t laugh a lot also?

15. ¿Por qué piensas que no se ríen? Why do you think they don’t laugh very much?

16. ¿Sabes algún chiste que me puedes contar? Do you know any good jokes that you could share? Appendix E

253 Fig. E: English Letter Home To Parents To Explain The Redistribution Of Students

Appendix F

254 Fig. F: Meme To Which Ms. Lectura References To Assuage Students’ Anxiety

Appendix G:

255 Linguistic Landscape Of Erwin Elementary

Fig. G: A Display Of Some Of The English Language Signs Throughout The School

Appendix H

256

Houser’s (2007) Albur Continuum

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