Exploring Intercultural Communication Strategies in an Alaska-Kenya Collaboration

Meaning Across Difference: Exploring Intercultural Communication Strategies in an Alaska-Kenya Collaboration

Dissertation

Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University

By David Bwire (Wandera) B.Ed. Hons, M.A., M. Litt. Graduate Program in Education Teaching and Learning

The Ohio State University 2016

Dissertation Committee: Professor Valerie Kinloch (Adviser) Professor Marcia Farr (Co-adviser) Professor Patricia Enciso Professor Beverly Moss

David Bwire (Wandera)

2016

Abstract

Our contemporary world is increasingly characterized by transnational lives and cross-border connections that span various facets of human life. In light of these developments, schooling needs to be cognizant of shifts in sociocultural, political, economic, and other aspects of life. Schools are expected to prepare students for success and life in the future. Such preparation cannot be oblivious of how forces of globalization, such as increased intercultural contact, continue to contour our daily life. One area where diversity is becoming the norm is the classroom. How might a classroom serve as a space that prepares students for life in a changing and diverse world? What are some resources that could enhance classroom-based teaching and learning?

The aim of this study was threefold. Firstly, it sought to respond to calls

(see Agar, 1994; Bauman, 1998; Blommaert, 2010; Blommaert & Rampton,

2011; Canagarajah, 2013; Fairclough, 2006; Morrell, 2008; Scollon & Scollon,

2004; Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013) for investigating literacy in contexts characterized by diversity and mobility by spotlighting stories about selves and places that are often marginalized. Secondly, it sought to explore how students’ out-of-classroom experiences serve as rich resources in class-based intercultural literacy activities across geospatial difference. Thirdly, this study

attempted to investigate how implicit and explicit sociocultural practices intersect with meaning sharing, seen through language use by students who took part in the Alaska-Kenya, asynchronous, classroom-based, online, intercultural collaboration.

This collaboration which was based on a writing exchange between middle school students in two seemingly different contexts (Nairobi, Kenya; and

Aleknagik, Alaska), exemplifies classroom interactions where meaning sharing traverses geospatial and cultural boundaries. Students addressed issues that mattered deeply to them by using digital tools, and tapping into their experiences and cultural epistemologies. They took up various roles; ambassadors of self and place, narrators, inquirers, observers, critics, cultural practitioners, and as authentic audience members for each other. Through the concept of supralocalization, this study accounts for how they engaged in pragmatic, audience-oriented strategies.

Notably, the selves and places represented by the students in their online exchange are variously marginalized. On the one hand, the Aleknagik students are Yup’ik and like other Alaskan Natives, their traditional practices are silenced and abnormalized in an Alaskan context characterized by intruding western practices (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006). On the other hand, the Kenyan students inhabit the cosmopolitan, multiethnic, multicultural city of Nairobi yet, their ways of speaking and out-of-class experiences are peripheralized in classroom spaces. Moreover, Kenyan experiences are peripheralized on a global scale as emanating from a third- iii

world country (McLaren, 1998; Thiong’o, 1986/1991). Further, Alaska-Kenya intercultural interactions were complicated by locally-specific meanings that were not always taken up by a beyond-local interlocutor (that is, frame clashes

(Agar, 1994)), and by presuppositions that students brought to those interactions (Gumperz, 1986). This present study, which relies on Vygotsky’s

(1978) sociocultural learning theories and utilizes ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972), explored these disconnects in communication through a geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) of archival data and post project reflection data.

The study spotlighted the role of education in a pluralistic world by considering complexities of communicating across cultural and geospatial difference, and by making visible communicative strategies. It also exemplified an immersive, student-centered, inclusive-classroom model (Goswami, 1986) that offers opportunities for meaning sharing across difference. It is ironic that in a highly connected world, projects that emphasize connections between people in Kenya and Alaska are rare. Findings from this study have implications for pedagogy, resourcing classrooms, and for extending understandings of transcultural literacy practices in our contemporary globalizing world.

Dedication

Dedicated to educators and stakeholders working towards global understanding.

Acknowledgments

There are many contributors whose priceless support has given crucial impetus to the generative and highly enlightening process that has culminated in this milestone achievement. Whereas the people who helped me in small and big ways are too numerous to mention and given the page-limitations of this acknowledgment, I wish to single out a few people for special mention.

Firstly, my principle dissertation adviser, Dr. Valerie Kinloch, and my co- adviser, Dr. Marcia Farr, provided endless and most welcome advice, suggestions, and encouragement. Thank you for helping me to extend my understanding and for providing a necessary infrastructure of support and guidance. I always felt welcome to consult with you and I will always value your effort, care, and patience as you accompanied me in this study. Above all, I thank you for being my mentors and friends. I have worked with my invaluable committee members, Dr. Beverly Moss and Dr. Patricia Enciso, in various capacities and in different fora and have always felt fortunate to be under their guidance. Thank you for asking me questions, for encouraging me, for applauding me, and for generally helping me to establish a clear compass for my work.

Secondly, I wish to recognize the role of other scholar-supporters in this process. I attribute much of my success to conversations with them, to their timely and welcome contributions, and to their logistical intervention. Thank you

Dr. Judith Green and Dr. Harvey Graff for generously giving me your time, guiding my thinking towards valuable insights as I formulated my study, and for being instrumental in shaping conditions for my success. Thank you Dr. David

Bloome for making possible my field trip to Alaska through a generous grant from the Center for Video Ethnography and Discourse Analysis (CVEDA) and to the Ohio State University Office of International Affairs (OSU-OIA) for the generous dissertation grant that made possible my field trip to Kenya.

Thirdly, I thank my Bread Loaf Teacher Network family for their indispensable role spanning from direct conversations to being role models and offering companionable support. These include:, Emily Bartels, Andrea

Lunsford, Margery Sabin, Damian Baca, John Elder, Django Paris, Michael

Armstrong, Jonathan Freedman, Sara Blair, Courtney Cazden, Jackie Royster,

Lou Bernieri, Rich Gorham, Tom Mackenna, and Ummi Modeste Rogerson. I wish to single out Dixie Goswami for very special mention as a long-time mentor, a friend, and an inspiration. Thank you for your continuing support in helping me to develop my teacher-advocate capacity from when I used to teach in Nairobi, and for your continuing motivation and guidance through the Bread

Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN).

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Fourthly, I am thankful to my former students from Nairobi and the former students from Alaska for their priceless and voluntary contributions in assembling a significant part of the evidence needed to make this study possible. They were more than just participants and our continuing relationships are indicative of some enduring connections in education. To this end, I profusely thank Brendan McGrath for his logistical assistance, unending support, and friendship. I also wish to recognize Carolyn Cruikshank and the

Cruikshank family, who have become my family in the USA, for their support and encouragement. Finally and most importantly, I wish to express my gratitude to my father and mother, Jason and Joyce Wandera, and to my brothers, Tom, Amos, and Vincent for always believing in me.

To all these people and everyone else too numerous to mention, Asante sana!

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Vita August 2013……………….Master of Letters (M Litt) Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) Middlebury, VT August 2008………………. Master of Arts (M.A. in English) Middlebury College (Bread Loaf School of English) Middlebury, VT May 1999………………….. Bachelor of Education Honors (B. Ed) English and Literature, Moi University (School of Education) Eldoret, Kenya

Publications

Articles

Wandera, D. (2016). Teaching Poetry through Collaborative Art: An Analysis of Multimodal Ensembles for transformative Learning. In Journal of Transformative Education. Wandera, D. (2015). Mabeshte Revisited. Beyond the Narrative Barrier: Reclaiming Teaching stories. In Bread Loaf Teacher Network Journal, 5(1), http://sites.middlebury.edu/bltnmag/2015/10/29/2367/

Wandera, D. (2013). What to Do When Teens say “Amka Ukatike”: An Exploration of Agency in Teen Oral Literacy Performed through Kenyan Hip Hop. African Journal of Teacher Education. Vol. 3/1, P. 1 – 14.

Book Reviews Wandera, D. (2015). The Role of Education in a Pluralistic World. In Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 14(1), 50-53.

Wandera, D. (2014). Navigating the Turbulence of Education Reform through Studio Thinking. In Journal of Social Sciences Research, 1, 43-45.

Wandera, D. (2014). The Threat of Obsolescence: Teaching and Learning Responding to Technology. In Journal of Pedagogy, Technology and Education, 24 (2), p. 279 – 281.

Fields of Study

MAJOR FIELD: Education Teaching and Learning

MINOR: Literacy Studies

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. ii

Dedication………………………………………………………………………….v

Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………... vi

Vita………………………………………………………………………………….ix

List of tables………………………………………………………………………. xvi

List of figures……………………………………………………………………… xvii

Chapter 1: Introduction……………………………………………………………1

1.1 Statement of the problem.…………………………………………..2

1.2 Purpose of the study.……………………………………………….. 16

1.3 Research questions.…………………………………………………20

1.4 Theoretical framework.………………………………………………21

1.5 Significance of the study.……………………………………………25

1.6 Limitations of the study.……………………………………………..28

1.7 Description of key terns.……………………………………………. 30

1.8 Summary of the following chapters.………………………………. 35

Chapter 2: Literature Review.………………………….………………………...39

2.1 Introduction.………………………………………………………….. 39

2.2 Literacy as situated.………………………… ……………………… 44

2.3 Literacy and intercultural communication.………………………… 63

2.4 Considering the global context.……………………………………. 85

2.5 Conclusion.……………………………………………………………97

Chapter 3: Methodology.………………………………………………………… 100

3.1 Introduction.………………………………………………………….. 100

3.2 Methodological framework.………………………………………….106

3.3 Selection of participants and site.…………………………………..113

3.4 Role of the researcher.……………………………… ………………122

3.5 Instrumentation and data collection.………………………………. 129

3.6 Data analysis.…………………………………………………………137

3.6.1 Geosemiotic Discourse analysis.………………………….. 140

3.6.2 Frame clashes and languaculture…………………………. 146

3.7 Ensuring credibility.…………………………………………………..150

3.8 Ethical considerations.……………………………………………… 153

3.9 Conclusion.…………………………………………………………... 154

Chapter 4: Description of Sites.………………………………………………… 156

4.1 Introduction.………………………………………………………….. 156

4.2 The Aleknagik context and setting.………………………………… 164

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4.2.1 The general setting.………………………………………….164

4.2.2 A brief historical overview of Alaska………………………. 174

4.2.3 The school.…………………………………………………... 181

4.3 The Nairobi context and setting.……………………………………. 186

4.3.1 The general setting.………………………………………….. 186

4.3.2 A brief historical overview of Kenya………………………... 193

4.3.3 The school.……………………………………………………. 200

4.4 Conclusion.…………………………………………………………….205

Chapter 5: Data Presentation, Analysis and Discussion.……………………. 207

5.1 Introduction.………………………………………………………….. 207

5.2 Jasmyn Tugatuk and Patrick Kalu…………………………………. 216

5.3 Nate Andrews and Shayda Wacu Njenga………………………… 236

5.4 Deanna Nicholai and Fareen Pirani.………………………………. 258

5.5 Discussion of findings.……………………………………………… 275

5.5.1 A backdrop: Students as social actors……………………. 275

5.5.2 Research question 1………………………………………… 281

5.5.3 Research question 2………………………………………… 307

Chapter 6: Significance and Conclusion.……………………………………… 334

6.1 Introduction.………………………………………………………….. 334

6.2 Summary of findings.………………………………………………...335

6.2.1 Research question 1.……………………………………….. 335

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6.2.2 Research question 2.……………………………………….. 345

6.3 Implications.………………………………………………………….. 352

6.3.1 Research question 3.……………………………………..352

6.3.2 Implications for future research.………………………... 369

6.4 Conclusion.……………………………………………………………373

References.……………………………………………………………………….. 376

Appendix A: Vai Script Syllabary……………………………………………….. 417

Appendix B: BreadNet User Interface (screen print)…………………………. 418

Appendix C: Course Description for ‘Writing to Make a Difference’………... 419

Appendix D: Description of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN) from the

webpage……………………………………………………………420

Appendix E: Cover Design of Bates and Oleksa (2008). Water color painting by

Xenia Oleksa. Copy right Bates and Oleksa (2008)…………. 421

Appendix F: Picture of “School Bus” sent from Aleknagik to Nairobi during the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration……………………………………... 422

Appendix G: Window Shopping at Sarit Center Mall, in Nairobi,

Kenya……………………………………………………………… 423

Appendix H: Supermarket Shelves…………………………………………….. 424

Appendix I: Menu from one of the Restaurant in Nairobi……………………. 425

Appendix J: Aleknagik students playing during recess………………………. 426

Appendix K: ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ Poem by Wallace

Stevens…………………………..…………………………………427

Appendix L: ‘Refugee Mother, and Child’ by Chinua xiv

Achebe…………………………………………………….. ……... 428

Appendix M: Aleknagik Scenic picture………………………………………… 429

List of tables

Table 3.1: Demographic descriptors of the main participants………………..119

Table 5.1: Student pairs during the Alaska-Kenya collaboration…………... 210

Table 5.2: Themed writing prompts……………………………………………. 214

Table 5.3: Illustrations of diverse experiences leading to acts of

navigation…………………………………………………………………. 302

Table 6.1: An inventory of the significance of the study on pedagogy………365

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List of figures

Figure 3.1: A time line of the primary and secondary sites………………….. 116

Figure 3.2: Geosemiotic systems in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative

exchange………………………………………………………………….. 143

Figure 4.1: Intersection and circulation within local and supralocal

spaces……………………………………………………………….……. 160

Figure 5.2: Communicative moves in meaning sharing in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration………………………………………………………………………. 319

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Chapter 1: Introduction

Dear, Shayda Wacu Njenga. Hi, my name is Nate Andrews. My Yupik is Ayak’aq and I’m in the 7th grade. I’m 14 years old. I live in Aleknagik, Alaska and I like to play games on the computer. How is it like there? Sincerely, Nate Andrews.

Hallo, Nate Andrews. My name is Shayda Wacu Njenga and I go to Akili Academy. I am aged 13 and am Christian. My favourite instrument is the piano and I am on grade 5 in it. I love R N B and Rap and Hip Hop music. I like to shop at a large shopping mall here in Nairobi called ‘The Village Market.’ I enjoy watching movies at a theatre there and the latest I have watched are ‘Herbie’ and ‘Dark Water’. My favourite American singers are Bow Wow, Beyonce, Ciara, Nelly, Omarion and Amarie. My favourite subjects in school are Maths, Biology, IT and Sports. I swim, play basketball, golf, squash, and table tennis. I love reading fictional novels. I am a noisy social person, never shy. My favourite meals are pizza, chicken and spare ribs. Kenya is a warm sunny country with lots of sun and fun. Teens here mainly go to the mall. I hope to read from you. My friends call me Shishi. (Self-Introductions written in September 2007)

Nate: Now that I reflect on my experience writing to the students in Nairobi, I realize that there might be a good chance that my dialect or word choices could be hard to understand… (Excerpt from interview transcript, July 2014) Shayda: Maybe I was not always very clear. Like when I read my emails I feel I should have described more. I should have given examples. But you know I did not put there the deep Nairobi words I use when I speak to my friends here… (Excerpt from interview transcript, February 2014).

1.1 Statement of the problem Nate and Shayda are from Aleknagik, Alaska, and Nairobi, Kenya, respectively. They met on line during the fall term of the 2007 – 2008 academic year, after their language arts teachers, Mr. Collins (in Alaska) and I (in Kenya) introduced them to each other. In these introductions, we discussed with our classes how, during that school term, they would engage in an online collaborative writing project by writing to peers in another part of the world. Both

Mr. Collins and I introduced the writing project to our classes using a map and a globe to establish the geophysical location of the collaborating class in relation to where we were. Then we commenced, what came to be known as the ‘Alaska-

Kenya collaboration,’ a student-centered, immersive, online based, writing project across cultural and geospatial difference. This writing-based project offered

Aleknagikan and Nairobian students opportunities to exchange text (poems, letters, descriptions etc.) and intreract around meanings on self and place based on these texts. Nate’s reflection in “Now that I reflect on my experience writing…” captures the centrality of writing and establishes that this collaboration is a literacy event. Additionally, Nate and Shayda’s emails to each other illustrate the online exchange they were engaged in.

Shayda and her 19 classmates, and Nate and his 15 classmates were studying under different curricula, the British National Curriculum and the Alaska

Statewide Curriculum respectively. However, both Mr. Collins and I had planned to entrench the approximately two term-long, writing-based, asynchronous,

online collaboration in our respective class curricula by harmonizing some of its activities and goals with our curricula objectives. Therefore, we incorporated this writing exchange project into our course aims while seeking opportunities for students to be exposed to interactions across difference on one hand, and to practice required course skills (letter writing, descriptive writing, writing for an audience, and poetry writing), on the other hand. The self-introductory letters, shown above, derived from the corpus of Alaska-Kenya collaboration emails.

Students employed an e-based interface, called BreadNet, to send each other letters, poems, anecdotal narratives, and images. The collaboration was characterized by several questions from classes such as, “Where is Aleknagik?” or “Where is Nairobi?” or “How do you pronounce that?”

The student exchange that opens this chapter, which is illustrative rather than representative of communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, is a snapshot of the kinds of interactions that occurred in the course of the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. Additionally, Nate and Shayda’s post-project reflections, presented here, are illustrative of their participation after they accepted to be a part of this present study eight years after the actual collaboration. I invited these former students to be participants in this dissertation study and to engage in post-project reflexive examinations of their communication during the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. Nate and Shayda, together with some of their former classmates, had an opportunity to examine document artifacts and to offer reflexive feedback (which generated post project reflection data) regarding the

nature of communication between them and their peers and the project in

general. Some of these contributions were in response to questions about the

communicative choices they made as they presented aspects of self and place

during the collaboration. Mr. Collins and I have also looked at document artifacts

and offered our own reflexive comments based on this collaborative exchange

that our classes engaged in eight years ago. The word, “exchange” captures the reciprocal nature of correspondence between paired students (such as Nate and

Shayda) within the transcultural collaboration.

Nate’s linguistic landscape includes English and Yup’ik whereas Shayda’s

included a multilingual space comprising Swahili, English, and 42 indigenous

languages. However, through a lingua-franca, English, both students construct their sense of self and place within their introductions and in the back and forth correspondence; thus, they engage with each other’s portrayals of self and place.

The content of the communication between them bears some similarities, as they

both are teenagers, school going, and have favorite activities in which they enjoy

engaging. These emails also bear some differences such as, the local languages

entailed, place names, naming practices, and teenage practices. These explicit

differences are a miniscule sample of the universe of differences that can further

complicate communication between students in Aleknagik, Alaska, and students

in Nairobi, Kenya.

While offering reflexive examination of archival data during post project

reflections, Nate and Shayda indicate the passage of time, from when the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration happened to when they became participants in this study. Through these reflections participants identified and examined communicative moves aimed at enhancing meaning making (Twiner et al., 2014) and sharing in an effort to get at the complexities of intercultural communication.

In spite of their vigilance in easing their peer-audience into their locally situated worlds through employing communicative approaches, some visible and invisible disconnects in meaning (due to linguistic and cultural differences) endured. This endurance complicated the meanigns that were being shared and constructed across cultural and geospatial difference. Like the other participants of this study, eight years after the collaboration Nate and Shayda realized that some of these differences, as related to language and culture, had not surfaced in the course of their intercultural interaction.

The snapshot of Nate and Shayda’s self-introductory correspondence and their excerpted reflections, presented at the beginning of this chapter, spotlights some complexities of the intercultural, asynchronous, online, writing exchange between students in Aleknagik, Alaska, and Nairobi, Kenya. More specifically, this snapshot provides a backdrop for this present study which focuses on intercultural communication vis-à-vis classroom literacy practices. The snapshot also hints at connections between this examination and related topics such as the role of education in a pluralistic world, and the resourcefulness of diversity given the mobility of linguistic and other resources (Bauman, 1998; Blommaert,

2010). This mobility across time and space is partially illustrated by the fact that

middle school students from Aleknagik and Nairobi became partners in a collaborative meaning sharing and making project despite being separated by almost 12 time zones. In the course of this collaboration, then, some similarities and differences based on the presentation of self and place became visible while others remained unnoticed. These visible and invisible differences raise questions regarding how meaning sharing and making in intercultural encounters is contoured by various situated influences or shaped by normative and/or emergent practices (Kecskes, 2013)—that is, traditional or adaptive practices that sometimes become visible through considering internalized or reconfigured linguistic forms.

The snapshot of Nate and Shayda also illustrates a need for certain kinds of competencies when participating in intercultural exchanges. Nate and Shayda employ some deliberate maneuvers in their communication with one another in order to enhance clarity. These maneuvers have been broadly categorized as comprising empathetic self-decentering tactics (Anderson & Corbett, 2013; Belz,

2007; Woodin, 2013) whereby students tailor their language use to cater to the informational needs of their interlocutors, whom they consider as outsiders. Dell

Hymes (1974) has made the case for communicative competence—having skills for interaction which go beyond mere linguistic competence—where knowledge of sociocultural contexts becomes prominent in understanding how people perform communicatively. However, over time a lot has changed in terms of intercultural communication, given the increased instances of global mobility that

have led to numerous incidents of cross-cultural interaction. The emergence of new channels of communication, for instance, the internet, together with an

increased pace and intensity in global mobility of people, meanings, and

resources have added layers of complexity to how intercultural communication

can be understood (Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013).

In light of these changes, what understandings of intercultural

communication in the classroom can be obtained from examining the archival

data and post project reflections based on the Alaska-Kenya collaboration? In

what ways does this collaboration and the reflective examination of the

collaboration by former participants, make visible some of the ways meaning is

shared within the Alaska-Kenya collaboration? In this collaboration, Nate,

Shayda, and their classmates name and describe self and place, and eight years

later, as participants of this present study, they reflexively explore the context of

their intercultural online interactions, by examining enduring archival data. This

study, which is informed by ethnography of communication (Gumperz & Hymes,

1972), employs this kind of participant contribution situated within a global,

multisite, context to crystallize how notions such as “the local,” “identity,” and

“intercultural literacy” are shaped by contemporary influences of mobility in a

constantly globalizing world. These influences also shape how the notion of

“context” and the meaning of “intercultural communication” are understood

(Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013).

In a world where diversity is increasingly becoming the norm, increased incidences of intercultural interactions, exemplified here by the interaction between Nate and Shayda, have led some scholars (Anderson & Corbett, 2013;

Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013; Woodin, 2013) to propose that intercultural skills are necessary now more than ever before. Various scholars have, therefore, called for competencies that would be necessary for survival in our contemporary, complex, pluralistic, multilayered world: “intercultural communicative competence” (Byram, 1997; Lovitt & Goswami, 1998), “multicultural competence”

(Canagarajah, 2006), “symbolic competence” (Kramsch, 2006), “metacultural competence” (Sharifian, 2013), and “transcultural competence” (MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages 2007). It is not the focus of this study to define these terms or to explore how, if at all, they harmonize, but to highlight how they point towards a proliferation of competencies and contribute to ongoing scholarly interest in communicative skills needed in our globalizing world. What was it that

Nate and Shayda, among others in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, did to ensure that they were understood by their peers? In what ways can a study that focuses on this kind of online intercultural school-based writing exchange—where communication is characterized by layered similarities and differences— contribute to understandings of intercultural communication vis-à-vis classroom literacy practices in today’s world?

These are some of the broad questions which inspired this study and which have led to the construction of the research questions that guide this

study. My own involvement as a teacher-researcher (Goswami & Stillman, 1987;

Yeager, 2006) is motivated by my interest in examining my teaching experiences

in a multilingual, post-colonial, sub-Saharan, yet cosmopolitan, urban,

increasingly mobile context. Many questions regarding how extant theories of

language, literacy, pedagogy, and intercultural communication apply in such

contexts, have endured over the course of my teaching career, some of which I

engage with through this examination of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

The snapshot of the interaction between Nate and Shayda, which opens

this chapter, illustrates how implicit cultural practices (Tobin et al., 2009) intersect

with language use, the phenomenon of meaning being shared across cultural

and geospatial difference and in some cases failing to be taken up, and

intercultural communicative strategies. The Alaska-Kenya collaboration can be

conceived of as a globalized classroom (Warschauer & Kern, 2002) whereby two

classrooms extend beyond classroom walls to tap into out-of-class resources

emanating from disparately located local contexts. In other words, this

collaboration instantiates how out-of-school experiences from Aleknagik and

Nairobi are resourceful in furthering curricular goals for students in both local

spaces. The world continues to become more and more pluralistic as a result of

increased globalization, online social networking, and prevalent intercultural

forms of communication, not to mention regional and global industrial and

economic centers. However, in spite of this increased pace and the continued emergence of multiple forms of pluralism, multi-ethnicity and multilingualism

continue to be located on the periphery of many traditional school curricula. This peripheralization is in part due to intolerant or hierarchical classroom practices that are inscribed by monoglot normativity (Silverstein 1996, in Blommaert,

2010). What might it mean and how might it look to not only acknowledge various forms of diversity, but to purposefully include intercultural education in mainstream curricula? This dissertation contributes to research on literacy as a mobile resource by examining intercultural communication in classroom literacy events within the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project. This project entailed various forms of writing such as the writing of poetry, descriptions, writing for an audience, persuasive writing, informative writing, and writing of anecdotes and narratives. Collectively, these instances of writing position literacy, in particular writing, at the center of the collaboration. Thus, this collaboration can be conceptualized of as a literacy event (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Heath, 1983;

Moss, 1994; Street, 1984).

A large body of scholarship has named and critiqued context-independent, a priori orientations towards literacy. In this dissertation, I take as my starting point, without claiming that this is the genesis of literacy research, Street’s (1984) critique of autonomous models of literacy. Through highlighting threshold points in the evolution of research on literacy and tracing more recent developments in the study of literacy practices in a globalizing world, I set a backdrop for researching literacy in this study that instantiates transcultural literacy practices through mobile language and cultural resources. Through briefly highlighting this

evolution, below, I make connections among developments in literacy studies, literacy pedagogy, and the focus of this present study, that is, an examination of the intersection of intercultural communication, based on this multisite study of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

A particularly notable point, in the arc of this evolution of research on literacy, was Street’s (1984) criticism of the proponents of autonomous literacy

(Goody, 1977; Goody & Watt, 1963; Hildyard & Olson in Street, 1984; Olson,

1977) who argue that literacy is both objective and decontextualized. Street’s counter claim highlights the situatedness of literacy through his conceptualization of an autonomous-ideological model. This model, which was a cardinal foundation in the birth of New Literacy Studies, has been taken up by various scholars (Brandt, 2001; Brandt & Clinton, 2002; Harris, 2006; Heath, 1983, 2012;

Paris, 2011; Purcell-Gates, 1995; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984) whose inquiry is premised on this situatedness of literacy. Over time, scholars have continued to examine numerous sociocultural contextual factors in relation to literacy including the economy (Brandt, 2001), equity and access (Branch, 2007;

Graff, 1991; Kinloch, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995), and technology (Apkon, 2013;

Thomas & Brown, 2011). Others have proposed conceptual metaphors— the ecology metaphor (Barton, 1994), and the agency of literacy (Brandt & Clinton,

2002)—which complicate the position taken by Street’s (1984) autonomous- ideological model. Currently, scholars continue to employ varied ethnographic

descriptive approaches in examining literacy within constantly-changing sociocultural contexts.

Globalization, migration, digital communication, and transnational economic and social networking continue to re-contour sociocultural and linguistic landscapes leading to emerging questions in relation to literacy, voice

and identity. Some of these questions include how to re-define “literacy”, for

instance, “…what it means to be “literate” in a world dominated by visual

media…” (Apkon, 2013, p. 10). There are questions about some of the oral and

written literacy strategies utilized and communicated by different groups of

people including “translingual” youth (Canagarajah, 2013) within classroom

contexts. The National Council for Teachers of English (NCTE) has proposed

that contemporary literacy amounts to a set of abilities or skills needed for people

to function in 21st century contexts. They identify these abilities as “…fluency with

the tools of technology, designing and sharing information within global networks,

managing, analyzing, and synthesizing multiple streams of simultaneous

information, engagement with multimedia texts, and ethical responsibility” (NCTE

website). One notable skill which they add to this inventory is building cross-

cultural connections and relationships leading to collaborative problem solving.

A plethora of descriptive and analytic concepts, which are cognizant of the

pluralism that is occasioned by prevalent cross-cultural interactions have emerged; Jorgensen (2008) refers to children’s playful toggling between languages as “poly-lingual languaging,” Blommaert (2008) refers to

peripheralized African multilingual literacy practices as “grassroots literacy,”

Pennycook (2010) refers to the adoption of other languages by people navigating their identities as “metrolinguistics,” and the Council of Europe (2000) refers to

functional competence in partial languages as “plurilingualism”. Other scholars

have focused on geophysical contexts and proposed concepts such as

“glocalization” (Robertson, 1995) and “global contact zones” (Canagarajah, 2013)

in an attempt to account for the intricate nature of space (local, translocal,

supralocal, global etc.) in an increasingly fluid and interconnected world. What

then can be made of intercultural classroom-based communication in such

spaces? It is no longer sufficient to merely establish the situatedness of literacy

without also attending to the fast-changing nature of contexts.

Some scholars (Freedman, 1994; Hull et al., 2010; Scollon & Scollon,

2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000) have undertaken multisite studies to explore the nature of classroom-based connections across geospatial and other kinds of difference. Freedman’s (1994) intercultural comparative study of education reform in the United Kingdom and the United States is based on eight classrooms, four in the San Francisco bay area and four in the greater London area. The study examines classroom infrastructure, which scaffolds teaching and learning of writing, in these two countries. Through a lens of cosmopolitanism,

Hull et al. (2010) explore shared understandings which students in India, South

Africa and New York achieve when they engage with each other as they navigate meaning in online writing exchanges based on personal blogs. Scollon and

Scollon (2004) review data from some 20 year old Alaska-based research

projects. They employ nexus analysis and ethnographic discourse analysis to interrogate geospatial classroom-based connections in an on-line collaborative

exchange between students in far flung parts of Alaska. Notably, they explore

wider societal influences which shape communicative practices in these connections. In a second edition of a study undertaken 10 years after the first edition, Tobin et al., (2009) embark on a comparative analysis of pre-school

systems in Japan, China, and the United States to determine how culture shapes

policies and preschool literacy pedagogy. Wood’s (2000) multilocale study

compares espoused theories of teaching and learning as well as theories in

practice implemented by three middleschool teachers, who opt for interclass

online collaborative writing, to enhance literacy pedagogy. Their classes, which

were located in various parts of the USA, joined up with other classes to form

cyberspace learning communities that explored some aspects of culture

including, Navajo stories, disneyland culture, and membership in the reservation.

In and of itself, the multisite nature of these studies (Freedman, 1994; Hull et al.,

2010; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000) illustrates possible interpretive networking across geospatial difference, which complicates how “setting” or “context” can be understood.

This networking across geospatial difference also plays out in language use. Canagarajah (2013) has argued that contrary to monolingual and

monoliteracy ideologies, diversity is in fact normal and meaning within such

diversity can be socially negotiated. He proposes three concepts, among others,

to account for how multilinguals navigate unfamiliar semiotic systems in “global

contact zones” (p. 173). These are, (a) code meshing or the mixing of languages

(p. 1), (b) translingual processes or the common underlying processes and

orientations that motivate communicative moves in cross language relations (p.6)

and (c) performative competence or the strategic procedural knowledge employed by translinguals to enhance interaction (p. 173 – 174). Others

(Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013) have challenged the value of “nativeness” (for

instance being a native speaker of English in an increasingly diverse world) while

other scholars (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Vertovec, 2007) who focus on the global mobility of language varieties and scripts argue that tell-tale signs of

“worldwide migration flows” (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011, p. 2) for example, a

mixing of text styles and character/script types, are discernible in immigrants’

linguistic production.

This linguistic production, which they illustrate through a hand-written

window sign in traditional Chinese alongside manufactured signs in Cantonese at

a commercial establishment located in a neighborhood in Antwerp, Belgium,

breaks away from expected patterns of language production and instantiate

“superdiversity” (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Vertovec, 2007). Michael Agar

(1994) has proposed that language and culture are in fact intertwined as seen in

the concept of languaculture. In what ways do these manifold conceptualizations

capture and account for similarities, differences, tensions and complexities in the

intercultural interactions between Nate and Shayda?

This is one of several questions that emerge when bringing together these

considerations on constant mobility, geospatial positionality, cross-linguistic

interactions, and situated literacy practices. Some of these questions, which form

the centerpiece of this dissertation and from which the research questions are

constructed, include: What choices do people (like Nate and Shayda and their

classmates) make with regard to how they strategize communication across

difference? Can the choices they make, if any, offer evidence of some ways

social relations are constructed interculturally? What kinds of evidence can post-

project reflections offer with regard to enduring communicative strategies?

Perhaps, answers to these questions could offer understandings for how to

entrench (productively) intercultural education in mainstream curriculum leading

to the development of communicative strategies for improved intercultural interactions.

1.2 Purpose of the Study

The work of various scholars on the situatedness of literacy (see Harris,

2006; Heath, 1983, 2012; Paris, 2011; Purcell-Gates, 1995; Street, 1984) has contributed to how classroom-based literacy practices are understood. Taking off from these foundations, some scholars (Barton, 1994; Brandt & Clinton, 2002) have proceeded to propose further modifications to Street’s (1984) autonomous- ideological model. Others (Apkon, 2013; Branch, 2007; Brandt, 2001; Graff,

1991; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Thomas & Brown, 2011) have investigated literacy

vis-à-vis various sociocultural factors and proposed redefinitions and extensions

or modifications of related concepts. In addition, various scholars (Freedman,

1994; Hull et al., 2010; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000)

have highlighted how examining intersections of intercultural communication with

situated influences in multisite locales can inform classroom literacy. However, in

spite of these evolving trajectories of interest, research on classroom literacy and

language use is still wanting with regard to the following areas: a) The constantly globalizing world necessitates that researchers shift from

conceptualizing language as spatially bound towards seeing it as situated and

mobile (Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013; Pennycook, 2010). This shift

implies a re-visioning of linguistic communication and an unsettling of some,

hitherto used, terms in classical scholarship. Globalization continues to alter “the

face of social, cultural and linguistic diversity in societies all over the world”

(Blommaert & Rampton, 2011, p. 1). Thus, these ever-changing contexts also

call for further examples that crystallize how intercultural communication is

realized in different contexts. This is especially true of research that focuses on

contexts that are not typically covered by mainstreamed western scholarship

(Kuo, 2010; Miike, 2009; Smith, 2012; Thiong’o, 1986/1991). It will therefore be

very informative to engage with geospatial and sociocultural positionalities of

intercultural communication in a project such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

b) The mobility of language, people, resources, etc., has spotlighted communication

in contexts that would otherwise have been peripheralized or exoticized. A

significant amount of this communication, when done in English, occurs between

nonnative speakers of English. Some scholars (Crystal, 1997; Sharifian &

Jamarani, 2013) have asserted that the majority of communication in English

(more than 80%) happens in the absence of native speakers of English, i.e.

between nonnative speakers. There is need to understand further how various

sociocultural factors impact meaning-making when the lingua franca is not native

to interlocutors. Situated in colonial legacies, the Alaska-Kenya collaborative

writing project illustrates this kind of usage (Nate is a Yup’ik Native Alaskan and

Shayda is a Native Kenyan). Exploring languacultural differences, based on

English, in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration will extend understandings of how

intercultural interlocutors negotiate meaning across difference. c) A key feature of this present study is the collaborative reflexive examination of

archival data after the actual project, that is, where participants engage in

metalinguistic reflections to examine the communicative infrastructure of the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration. This reflexive contribution, that makes prominent the

emic contribution to data interpretation, enhances both the evidentiary warrant of

this study, and offers a fuller retrospective account of the collaboration. Eight

years after the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, former students joined their former

teachers to reflect on the collaboration. Methodologically, this study both

exemplifies data-cued ethnographic approaches (Tobin et al., 2009), and

instantiates productive uptake of this methodology as a strategy for studying

literacy. d) Several studies on intercultural communication (Dervin, 2013; Kirkpatrick et al.,

2013; Liddicoat & Tudini, 2013; O’Dowd, 2007; O’Rourke, 2007; Pasfield-

Neofitou, 2013; Suarez & Crapotta, 2007) have examined interactions around

language difference or with a focus on language acquisition where students are

communicating online (see, tellecollaboration, by O’Dowd, 2007). However, to

understand intercultural communication in a more holistic sense and to engage

with “cultural rich points” (Agar, 1994), research needs to move beyond focusing

on how speakers learn their interlocutor’s language, and perhaps focus more on

meaning sharing and making where language and culture are entwined, that is,

languaculture (Agar, 1994). When Nate and Shayda, or their classmates,

communicated their aim was not to learn the other’s language but to engage in

meaning sharing and making. These interactional processes implicated

language, culture, social relations (Ahearn, 2012; Duranti, 1997), language

ideologies (Kroskrity, 2000; Phillips, 2015), and artifacts. Thus the Alaska-Kenya

collaborative project offers an opportunity for going beyond the notion of

intercultural communication for language acquisition, and making fuller sense of

how both normative and emergent components of meaning were generated or

treated within resultant “intercultures” (Kecskes, 2013). e) This dissertation is interested in identifying, naming, and examining specific

intercultural communicative strategies (Dervin, 2013) or techniques for “doing

being intercultural” (Axelson, 2007). These include politeness strategies and face

work (Stroinska & Cecchetto, 2013; Goffman, 1959), or components of

metacultural competence (Sharifian, 2013) among others. In this dissertation, I

discuss the concept of self-in-the-world as a pertinent strategy for intercultural communication considering how, in the archival data and in post project reflections, Nate and Shayda demonstrate awareness of self in local spaces and other in beyond-local spaces.

Overall, this study instantiates how research on literacy can respond to some of the ways manifestations of globalization, such as technology, reshape understandings of pedagogy (see Apkon, 2013; Thomas & Brown, 2011). The study also takes up calls for educators to engage in culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2011) through providing

pedagogical scaffolding that fosters students’ translingual competence and

complex pluriliteracies (Canagarajah, 2013; Farr et al., 2010).

1.3 Research Questions

This dissertation is guided by the following research questions:

1. What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration?

2. What understandings of the intersections between intercultural

communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from

analyzing these strategies?

3. Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy?

1.4 Theoretical Frameworks

Theoretically, this dissertation is based on Vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural

learning theories and New Literacies Studies (Street, 1984). Methodologically, it

utilizes ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972). Thus, this dissertation identifies, describes and analyzes intercultural communication strategies within the context of classroom literacy practices employed by students from both

Alaska and Kenya. An important premise is that learning occurs in sociocultural

settings through social interactions (Vygotsky, 1978). These interactions which

students have with their peers and with teachers and others (experts) are

resourceful for learning. Within this learning, language is one of the modalities

that mediates how meaning is shared and made. Students employ various tools

which can include visuals, cultural artifacts, learning materials, and situated

literacy practices.

Taking up a New Literacy Studies paradigm is helpful in understanding

literacy as situated and as contextualized (Street, 1984) because far from being

an objective set of skills, literacy comprises “social practices and conceptions of

reading and writing” (p. 1). Literacy which can be defined as a “social process in

which particular socially constructed technologies are used within particular

institutional frameworks for specific social purposes” (p. 97), is therefore context dependent and subjective.

This study is informed by an ethnography of communication (Gumperz &

Hymes, 1972) approach in considering situated social contexts of language use

whereby language use is conceived of as a situated cultural practice (Duranti,

1997; Pennycook, 2010). I examine how interactional context intersects with the

circulation of discourse within social spaces (Ahearn, 2012; Cazden, 1988;

Duranti, 1997; Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 1980; Hymes, 1972). The notion of communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) is a cardinal consideration in this study whereby I explore pragmatic and communicative strategies employed by

students (in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration) to enhance sharing and making

sense of each other’s meanings. Unlike traditional ethnographies, that consider

specific geospatial locales (Geertz, 1973), my conceptualization of a research

site takes into account the fact that the two local sites, Aleknagik and Nairobi,

interact within a virtual site, BreadNet, the technological interface through which

correspondence between the two groups was undertaken. Thus the internet

interactional environment leads to a re-visioning of the notion of “sites” beyond

physical and geographical spaces (Wittel, 2000).

Generally, this study employs ethnographic tools in the study of

intercultural communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, and is

characterized by the following five features, among others, of ethnography of

communication (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972): (a) I employ “thick description”

(Geertz, 1973; Heath & Street, 2008) to establish a contextual backdrop for

analysis, (b) I explore ways in which language, culture, social relations and

heritage are interconnected (Agar, 1994; Ahearn, 2012; Duranti, 1997; Hymes,

1972), (c) through critical reflection and reflexivity, I attempt to make the familiar strange (Sunstein & Chiseri-Strater, 2002) by taking up a researcher/ethnographer role. As will be described in chapter three, reflexivity

(during data generation, and in the interpretative stage of data analysis) informs the methodological approach and the design of this study. (d) I analyze situated discourse and metadiscourse to determine communicative competence (Hymes,

1972) by Alaska-Kenya collaborators, and (e) I employ etic and emic perspectives (Hymes, 1972) in data analysis. More specifically, this study pursues a data-cued ethnographic inquiry (Tobin et al., 2009) which entails collecting data that is rich in emic perspectives. Subsequent analysis and interpretation is grounded in a geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon,

2003) of the various modalities of data that interrogates visual, spatial and interactional semiotics in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, while taking on a collaborative emic-etic perspective.

My role as an embedded ethnographer (Green et al., 2014), teacher researcher and researcher teacher (Yeager, 2006), and insider outsider (Banks,

2006) shapes my approaches to this study’s methodology. I have taught at the school in Nairobi for over 10 years and been a member of the Bread Loaf

Teacher Network (BLTN) for nearly as long. While this will be elaborated on later in this study, BLTN is a teacher network that fosters collegial collaborative

projects and the Alaska-Kenya collaboration follows a staple BLTN collaboration- type. In this study, various voices of participants in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project and my own as a researcher combine to form a reflexive polyphony as we look back at archival data. These voices, which are crucial for the analysis of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, have their own individual validity and weight in addition to playing a collective role in producing a multifaceted retrospective perspective of the collaboration. The participants examine archival data to make sense of their engagement with and responsiveness to others, and they collectively produce complex, tension-laden, rich reflections that inform my interpretations of these engagements. These reflexive contributions shed light on their strategies in intercultural interactions, and exemplify how they continue to navigate meaning across cultural difference in the present.

Thus, the present study draws on the intersection between sociocultural theory, new literacy studies, intercultural communication and pedagogy to identify and examine intercultural communication strategies employed by participants in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing exchange. The examination of specific instances from this collaborative writing exchange focuses on interactions based on the asynchronous online exchange and the synchronous post-project reflections by participants. Overall, the theoretical framework employed is instrumental in examining the impact of implicit and explicit sociocultural

practices on intercultural class-based communication, as seen through language

use by Aleknagik and Nairobi students.

1.5 Significance of the Study The present study contributes to the fields of Intercultural Communication,

Literacy Studies and to conceptualizations of contemporary classroom pedagogy

in a number of ways. Firstly, this study identifies the deliberate or tactful selection

of communicative and pragmatic resources and preferred literacy practices, by participants in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project. The study then provides insights on these intercultural communication strategies with regards to how meanings are shared across spaces and time. In this way, I demonstrate how communicating locally situated meanings to an audience located beyond- the-local, or in a supralocal space (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore,

2002), entails mobility of cultural and communicative resources in meaning sharing and making. Terminologically, it is becoming imperative to redefine terms such as “the classroom” or “context” etc., in light of globalization, translocalism and transcultural literacies.

Secondly, this study which examines the use of a lingua franca (English) by nonnative speakers in an intercultural context, proposes various concepts for understanding linguistic processes within intercultural communicative acts. For instance, the study explores how participants employ communication strategies to convey their sense of self-in-the-world thereby achieving a conceptual

cartography of self-positioning where one is aware of how they are present in variously contoured geospatial, ideological, sociocultural, and political spaces.

This awareness shapes their production and reception of themselves and the other and of meanings being shared. Participants in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project calibrate their sense-of-self with regard to this self- positioning which in turn impacts shared discourse. This study makes visible some ways that participants in intercultural communication can be adept at mapping connections between translocal discourses and contested spaces and times (Fairclough, 2003). Thus, data show some examples where participants’ engagement with stereotypes impacts meaning sharing and making across cultural and geospatial difference. This study is therefore significant in that it highlights how a broad array of commingling contextual factors intersect, variously, to enhance or impede intercultural interactions.

More specifically, this study examines components of intercultural competence such as awareness of stereotype, reflexivity, accommodation, among others, and interrogates how these components shape preferred communicative choices. The influence of local languages (such as, Yup’ik and

Swahili), cultural ideologies and meanings emerge as important factors which impact intercultural communication. Relatedly, this study is also significant in that it examines how various modalities enhance or impede meaning sharing and making. This examination considers cultural and conceptual worlds inscribed

within language (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) and extant indexical connections

(Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011; Farr & Song, 2011).

Findings gleaned from examining these connections and strategies of communication, among other aspects of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, have a number of implications. First, analysis of data from this study demonstrates that pedagogy can hardly remain stagnant in a constantly changing world and, likewise, research on literacy and pedagogy has to evolve. There is also evidence, from this analysis, to justify calls for policy shifts towards inclusive pedagogies (Freedman, 1994; Goswami, 1998; Kinloch, 2010; Ladson-Billings,

1995; Paris, 2011; Wandera, 2015) that position language arts classrooms as spaces that prepare learners for global, intercultural communication and global citizenship. This dissertation also argues that classroom-based intercultural communication projects will achieve more when intercultural education is anchored in mainstream curricula. This particular finding has implications on how classroom experiences are planned, resourced, and undertaken for example, in the case of the Aleknagik and Nairobi classrooms, setting up boundariless classroom spaces where learning is mobile and contingent upon individual and collaborative constructions of other people’s real and imagined worlds. Overall, this study is significant in its proposals for pedagogy, intercultural communication and literacy studies to tap into the rich interpenetration of local meanings and translocal influences.

1.6 Limitations of the Study

There are some notable limitations in the present study. One visible limitation is the problem of access, a problem that looms large in ethnography

(Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Ethnographers may not have access to everything and everyone in the field, as they would want to. In some cultural spaces the ethnographer does not have free reign to move everywhere he/she may want to move. Sometimes access is determined by factors beyond the researcher’s control. In the case of this study, Mr. Collins (the teacher in Alaska) had access to some of the Alaska students who participated in this project and who are still in touch with him, and he contacted them on my behalf before I could invite them to the study.

Another limitation is that the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project was asynchronous and therefore findings from the analysis of this project will not shed light on some of the considerations that one has to take into account when examining a synchronous project. These considerations include paralanguage, kinesics, and haptics among other aspects of non-verbal communication.

Additionally, this study does not focus on issues of memory loss given that post- project reflections are happening eight years after the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project was undertaken. The methodology, however, follows a data cued ethnographic approach among other approaches taken from the studies where researchers revisited sites, participants, and data 10 years (see Tobin et al.,

2009) to 20 years (see Scollon & Scollon, 2004) after the initial completion of a particular project.

My own involvement as a teacher and a researcher has various implications of subjectivity, and issues of enduring power arise especially when I

am interacting with participants who are my former students. While I

acknowledge that my role as teacher-researcher in this project influences my

perception of the project in addition to issues of power, I have endeavored

(through methodological approaches) to achieve what some scholars (see

Krefting, 1991) argue is productive proximity; that is, reducing distance between a researcher and participants in qualitative research is advantageous and adds to research validity. On the Kenyan side, the students who were invited to participate in this study remained in touch with me even after I left the school in

Nairobi and after they moved onto undergraduate programs. On the Alaskan side, I have tried to maintain an open channel of communication with participants, for instance, via social media. I have attempted to build relationships that reduce the distance between participants and me. Additionally, I undertook member checks and focus group informal interviews to corroborate my findings

(Krefting, 1991) and to carefully note patterns (Leininger, 1985 cited in Krefting,

1991; Lincoln & Guba, 1985 cited in Krefting, 1991) in data and points of tension in order to ensure validity. I also present student voices in the form of data in relatively lengthy uninterrupted chunks in chapter five to enhance a fairly

unmediated emic voice, although the structural presentation is based on my own interpretive frames.

In spite of these limitations, the logic of inquiry and approaches taken in this study make visible some of the enduring experiences and skills that, perhaps, continue to inspire these former students to send emails and other informal communication to Mr. Collins and me, recollecting and recounting moments in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

1.7 Description of key terms

The following is an alphabetized list of definitions of some key terms that I will use in this study:

a) I use the term “built spaces” (Ogone, 2014) to refer to man-made features

and phenomenon that characterize space. These include, streets, shops, a

city’s skyline, malls, and sub-spaces within malls (such as, food courts, and

movie theatres).

b) Communicative competence will be conceptualized as “what a speaker

needs to know to communicate effectively in culturally significant settings”

(Gumperz & Hymes, 1972, p. 7). This entails “cultural values and beliefs,

social institutions and forms, roles and personalities, history and ecology of

a community…in relation to communicative events and patterns” (Hymes,

1974, p. 3).

c) In this study, I conceptualize “culture” in a situated sense (Scollon &

Scollon, 2001; Woodin, 2013) and take up Holland & Cole’s (1995)

definition of culture as a material and ideational artifact in order to account

for the artefactual (tangible) and ideal (intangible) features of culture in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration. d) Culture shock refers to a feeling of disorientation where one is

uncomfortable because they are in an unfamiliar setting and dislocated

from their taken-for-granted epistemologies (Martin & Nakayama, 1997). e) I employ the term “decentering of self” (Anderson & Corbett, 2013; Belz,

2007; Kramsch, 1998/2006; Morgan, 1996 in Woodin 2013; Byram, 1997;

Woodin, 2013) to describe students’ ability to articulate local meanings in a

non-taken-for-granted fashion. That is, these student communicate with

their supralocal peers in a way that addresses the communicative needs of

those peers through reflexively adjusting how they communicate to achieve

clarity. f) Various scholars have defined “discourse” highlighting some of its aspects

for instance, Farr (1986) defines it as “patterns of language organization

which extend over more than one sentence or utterance…rules by which

people unconsciously operate when engaging in conversation” (p. 209).

This study takes up this definition of discourse as involving habitual use of

language. Moreover, the study de-emphasizes the centrality or

preeminence of text in order to spotlight “language in the world” (Scollon &

Scollon, 2003, p. ix) where other modalities are part of communication

(Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2009; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; O’Toole, 1994).

This conceptualization harmonizes with studying situated use of language

(Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Hymes, 1974). I therefore further take up the

broad definition of “discourse” to mean signs, structures, and people within

a social world whose context includes a material and an indexable world

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Thus discourse is “a body of language use and

other factors that form ‘a social language’” (p. 210). g) I employ the term “found spaces” (Borden, 2001) to mean naturally

occurring geophysical features such as ponds, lakes, cliffs, and climactic

conditions. h) I employ the term, “frame” (Agar, 1994) to mean a representational

linguistic form (also see Gee & Green, 1998). i) I take up Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) “geosemiotic discourse analysis”

which means a study of meaning systems “by which language is located in

the material world” (p. x) in ways that are cognizant of how “meanings may

be radically different from place to place in the world” (p. xi). Geosemiotic

discourse analysis constitutes interactional, visual, and place semiotics. j) I adopt the definition of “globalization” from Blommaert’s (2010)

conceptualization that is, “intensified flows of capital, goods, people,

images, and discourses around the globe, driven by technological

innovations mainly in the field of media and information and communication

technology resulting in new patterns of global activity, community

organization and culture“(p. 13).

k) I adopt the term “indigenous-insider” (Banks, 2006) to mean someone who

has familiarity and closeness with participants’ values, perspectives, and

beliefs and is recognized (by the participants) as a part of their community. l) I take up Agar’s (1994) “languaculture,” which I use interchangeably with

linguistic culture (Farr, 2011), to account for how language is entwined with

culture (Agar, 1994), and social relations (Ahearn, 2012). m) The study adopts the definition of “literacy” as a “social process in which

particular socially constructed technologies are used within particular

institutional frameworks for specific social purposes” (Street, 1984, p. 97). I

position my discussion of literacy within Street’s New Literacy Studies

thereby conceptualizing of literacies. n) This study considers the Alaska-Kenya collaboration as an activity where

text was central to the engagement between students in Aleknagik and

Nairobi. I therefore take up the following definition of a “literacy event”: “any

action sequence, involving one or more persons, in which the production

and/or comprehension of print plays a role’ (Heath, 1983: p. 386; also see

Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Moss, 1994; Street, 1984) o) In this study, the term “local” represents places which are not merely

physical but also cultural (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009). Thus, the

spatialized sociocultural relations (Britain, 2010) which are taken for

granted or noticed by local inhabitants due to a shared ideology, world view

and outlook, constitute the “local”.

p) I define the term “online intercultural exchange” as a computer mediated

engagement where students share their languacultures (Agar, 1994). This

definition extends the concept of telecollaboration (O’Dowd, 2007) to mean

more than just the exchange of language in an online interaction. More

specifically, telecollaboration has been compared to “ethnographic,

dialogic, and critical pedagogy where learners engage in ethnographic

processes of cultural interaction and reflection as active participants in a

dynamic process of knowledge construction (Belz, 2007, p. 138). In this

study, I focus on how students are engaged in authentic distant peer-to-

peer learning (Develotte et al., 2007; Little, et al., 1999; White, 2003) about

situated selves. q) I adopt the term “rich points” to mean unarticulated assumptions of one

group which clash with those of another (Anderson & Corbett, 2013) where

such a clash will in some cases lead to new “frames that make a new kind

of discourse possible [where] the new languaculture is a way to change the

world by changing what it is that can be thought, said, and done” (Agar,

1994, p. 209). Further, I employ the term “frame clashes” (Gee & Green,

1998) to represent the same phenomenon as “rich points”. r) In this study, I employ the term “supralocalization” (informed by Moore’s

(2002) conceptualization of connections between spatialized linguistic

systems) as an umbrella term for communicative strategies employed in

intercultural communication. This term encompasses how navigation and

negotiation make local meanings visible, available, and accessible to

interlocutors who are located supralocally.

1.8 Summary of the following chapters

This dissertation is divided into six chapters, inclusive of this first chapter.

In the chapters that follow, I pursue the objectives of this dissertation as follows.

In chapter 2, I review relevant literature as I discuss theories and concepts that are central to this dissertation. This chapter, which is subdivided into three sections—situated literacy, multisite inquiry across cultural and geospatial difference, and intercultural communication within the context of globalization— synthesizes threshold conceptualizations in these areas. The chapter commences with a brief discussion of the autonomous and ideological conceptualizations of literacy (Street, 1984) and traces some signpost concepts in the exploration of situated literacy practices that illustrate some evolving concerns in literacy studies in light of an ever-changing global context. This chapter also highlights some studies that have explored intercultural communication and multisite considerations that exemplify the treatment of cultural and/or geospatial difference. The chapter also highlights scholarship on globalization and mobility.

Chapter 3 contains a description of the logic of inquiry employed in this dissertation’s research methodology. This dissertation is guided by the work of sociolinguists John Gumperz and Dell Hymes (1972) who proposed ethnography of communication as a methodology for studying language within cultural and

social contexts. This chapter examines the research tool, geosemiotic discourse

analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), and three conceptual tools that are

consequential for the analysis of data: indexicality (Bauman & Briggs, 2003;

Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011; Farr & Song, 2011), local and supralocal (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) spatialized use of language, and languaculture

(Agar, 1994) or the entwinement of language and culture. I elaborate on how I

employ “telling cases” (Mitchell, 1984) as a case study approach for participant

selection, from the wider pool, for this dissertation and discuss my own self-

positioning as an embedded ethnographer (Green et al., 2014), teacher researcher and researcher teacher (Yeager, 2006) and an insider-outsider

(Banks, 2006).

In chapter 4, I present a description of the context for the Alaska-Kenya

collaborative writing project. This chapter describes the two primary sites of this

multi-site study. The following is a more comprehensive list of sites entailed in

the Alaska-Kenya collaboration:

(a) The two primary sites are the schools in Aleknagik, Alaska, and Nairobi,

Kenya.

(b) The Bread Loaf School of English, in Middlebury, Vermont (USA) had

significant impact on the content and pedagogical inclinations (pursued by

Mr. Collins and me) leading to the design and execution of the Alaska-

Kenya project. I briefly describe Middlebury (VT) as an important

secondary site from where the teachers who undertook this project

obtained their training and pedagogical influence. A component of this

secondary site includes the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), a

collegial network of teacher activists who are interested in fostering critical

literacy and understanding through innovative pedagogical strategies such

as on-line interclass writing exchanges.

were carried out via the BreadNet electronic interface (the name of the

electronic web-based interface used for this interaction is BreadNet).

Unlike the other physical sites in this multisite study, this e-site instantiates

the expanded notions of what amounts to a research site.

Overall, chapter 4 focuses on the two primary sites and offers general, historical, and even some particularized information based on the specific school sites in the two locales.

In chapter 5, I present my data and discuss findings of this study. Thus, this chapter presents various types of data from the project (transcripts of post- project reflections, images, project artifacts) and describes specific instances from the Alaska-Kenya collaborative writing project. I discuss findings that have emerged from an analysis of data. Based on the logic of inquiry stipulated in chapter 3, in this chapter, I will employ one analytical tool, geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), and three conceptual tools:

a) Indexicality (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011; Farr &

Song, 2011).

b) Local and supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002).

c) Languaculture (Agar, 1994).

By employing a “telling cases” (Mitchell, 1984) case study approach, I identify

three pairs of students from the wider data pool: Patrick and Jasmine, Nate and

Shayda, and Deanna and Fareen. The principles of ethnography of

communication (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) are important in contextualizing data

in the study, and geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) is a

useful analytical tool for exploring the semiotics and influences that intersect and

shape the local and beyond-local (or supralocal) contexts within the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. Overall, chapter 5 responds to the first two research

questions in this study

Chapter 6 concludes the dissertation. I begin by summarizing the key

strategies of intercultural communication, employed by students in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration, and the key understandings that emerge from closely

considering these communicative and pragmatic strategies. This summary

captures the response to the first two research questions. Then I respond to the

third research question by laying out specific implications for classroom

pedagogy, literacy studies and intercultural communication. The chapter

concludes with a projection for future research and an afterthought offered in a

concluding remarks subsection.

Chapter 2: Review of Literature

2.1 Introduction

In this chapter I present a review of literature based on scholarship related to key concerns of this dissertation. This review, which focuses on three areas that are central to the following research questions, provides a framework for situating the present study in its related research field:

1. What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration?

2. What understandings of the intersections between intercultural

communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from

analyzing these strategies?

3. Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy?

The following three areas inform the focus of this review of literature:

a) Literacy as a situated practice

b) Multisite inquiry (across cultural and geospatial difference)

c) Intercultural communication within the context of globalization.

The chapter is therefore structured into three main sections based on these three

areas as follows:

1) The first section, which is entitled ‘Literacy as Situated’, is grounded on my

argument that, given some general developments in literacy studies over time it

is not sufficient to merely argue that literacy is situated. This section begins with

a discussion of Brian Street’s (1984) notion of autonomous and ideological

models of literacy. Then, through exemplification of some more current studies

that are grounded in the situatedness of literacy, this chapter considers how

scholarship on literacy extends inquiry on various factors of social contexts in a

way that intersects with literacy. Some of these factors include access, power, and intersections among literacy, race, ideology, and socioeconomic status, among others. Overall, this section pans across time by reviewing literature

(beginning with some seminal work and proceeding to more current literature) from western scholarly perspective that sought to establish literacy as situated in stead of as an objective set of skills. This discussion leads into examination of related interests such as, tensions between school literacy socialization and out- of-school literacy practices, literacy and ethnicity, literacy in youth spaces,

literacy as a human right, as well as literacy and technology. Strategically, this

discussion sets the stage for this dissertation to argue that considering literacy in

a context of globalization, characterized by mobility and intercultural

communication, is anchored in conversations on literacy which have as their

point of interest the analysis of contextual use of language.

2) The second section, entitled ‘Literacy and Intercultural Communication,’ is illustrative of some multisite studies that consider contextual factors within the

sites entailed. These include USA-China-Japan (Tobin et al., 2009), USA-UK

(Freedman, 1994), and places that are distant from one another in Alaska

(Scollon & Scollon, 2004). This present dissertation is based on a collaborative, online, writing exchange that entails multisite: Aleknagik, Alaska; Nairobi, Kenya;

BreadNet; and Middlebury, Vermont. Therefore, this study will benefit from a

discussion of the various structures, lenses and theoretical positions employed

by other scholars who research literacy across disparately located people. Of particular interest here will be how the scholarship in this review engages with specific contextual factors that shape literacy practices in the multilocales under investigation. Given the centrality of the multisite design in this dissertation, I have selected (for review in this section) studies which are largely multisite studies but where disperately-located cultures come into contact around literacy events. Some of these studies will manifest instances of collaboration between groups or pairs of learners across cultural, spatial, and linguistic differences.

Although some of the scholarship comes from the second language acquisition subfield, I am interested in the conceptual terms that have been employed to account for online-based interactions. Thus, the literature review in this section

considers the instrumentality of technology in online-mediated, collaborative

engagements between classrooms that are situated across geospatial and

cultural difference.

3) The third section, entitled ‘Considering the Global Context,’ explores issues of

context that come from considering the globalizing nature of our contemporary

world. The prevalence of intercultural contact is a contextual feature of this kind of contemporary society. This feature continues to increase, in part, due to

affordances of technology, increasing global mobility, among other components

of globalization. This section also focuses on various studies which raise

questions regarding the changing sociocultural landscape, given the prevalence

of globalization. These studies propose an array of terminologies, concepts, and

approaches for understanding language use in a global society characterized by

mobility and constant change. I illustrate some of the tensions within the

scholarship on globalization—by highlighting some areas of disagreement—in

pursuing the argument that globalization is an uncharted path and no one person

has the handle on how to explain globalizing processes. Generally, this section

spotlights the following question: What understandings of intercultural

communication, literacy, and pedagogy can we glean from the multilayered, fluid

contexts of a globalizing world? I argue that globalization is a defining influence

of our contemporary society. This pervasive influence is seen through the need

for concepts, as seen in traditional scholarship, to be redefined in order to

account for the influences of globalization. These concepts include “context” and

“space.” The literature reviewed in this section constructs an essential backdrop

(for my dissertation) where I foreground how various terrain-altering components

of globalization have influenced understandings of “literacy,” “pedagogy,”

“intercultural communication,” and “context.” The literature review in this section is based on the following premises:

a) The rate and intensity of movement of resources, humans, economic,

socio-cultural and political structures, is unprecedented hence the need to

explore ways in which globalization continues to impact on literacy, and

intercultural communication.

b) Globalization is situated, contextual, and non-ending.

Given my positionality as a scholar in Applied Sociolinguistics and Literacy

Education, I am interested in how the concepts of situated literacy, multisite inquiry, and intercultural communication intersect in a learning context such as the classroom. Therefore, pedagogy forms a broad theme which overarches the entire literature review. By reviewing literature in these three sections I make the following interconnected claims: a) Based on the review of literature in section one I argue that, this dissertation

(which is concerned with intercultural communication and pedagogy in a globalizing context) instantiates an exploration of how situated literacy intersects

with other (cultural, geographical contextual, ideological, etc.) features of context.

b) Based on the review of literature in section two I argue that it is, therefore,

important to examine the interconnectedness of different locales. That is, it is

important to examine how various sociocultural factors circulate (within and

between the different local spaces and even beyond them) when undertaking a multilocale study in order to develop a more or less holistic picture of intersecting contextual factors. c) Based on the review of literature in section three, I argue that given that globalization continues to re-constitute the composition and layout of our contemporary global societies, we need more examples of empirical studies which engage with aspects of globalization (such as online communication, mobility of resources and people, and the increased pace and intensity of intercultural contact) in light of literacy pedagogy. There is also need for these studies to focus on contexts that have been hitherto ignored or not sufficiently covered.

This chapter ends by bringing together these three claims to address the research questions.

2.2 Literacy as Situated

Like many other fields that are advancing, re-routing, and re-shaping their inquiry, the field of Literacy Studies is not static. On a whole, contextualizing literacy practices remains a central concern for studies of literacy in society, that is, these studies take up a situated approach in examining literacy. In addition to this concern, scholarship in the field of literacy studies continues to raise questions regarding how different contextual aspects intersect with literacy practices. This review will illustrate this non-static feature of the field of Literacy

Studies through exemplifying how various scholars have combined a contextual

approach to the analysis of literacy in society with explorations of particular

aspects of these contexts. These aspects include (but are not limited to) the co- existence of different literacy systems (used for different purposes) within a community (Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984), the disconnectedness between school literacy practices and out of school literacy practices (Heath,

1983; Purcell-Gates, 1995), the peripheralization and stigmatization of language by teenagers (Harris, 2006; Paris, 2011), and the divide between academic and vocational institutions (Rose, 2012). Race, power, culture, and other aspects also feature in the elongated inventory of contextual aspects.

This inventory also features scholarship concerned with literacy and hip hop (Alim, 2006; Mahiri, 2004; Morell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002; Richardson,

2006; Wandera, 2013), literacy as a civil right (Freire, 1970; Irizarry & Brown,

2014; Kinloch, 2009/2012; Kirkland, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2014; Smith, 1999), literacy and multimodality (Jewitt, 2009; Kress, 2009; Kress & Van Leeuwen,

2001; O’Toole, 1994), and literacy and technology (Apkon, 2013; Thomas &

Brown, 2011). Thus, the universe of aspects one can investigate in relation to literacy, is in fact broad. This present dissertation is situated in this kind of initiative; at the core of this study is the contextualization of literacy practices in the interaction between students in Aleknagik, Alaska; and Nairobi, Kenya. In addition, this study examines how implicit and explicit cultural practices intersect with online mediated intercultural communication as seen through language use by students in Aleknagik and Nairobi as they communicate with each other.

It therefore remains important to situate literacy within its specific context(s) of use. Also, given the increasing ubiquity of literacy in people’s lives and the numerous ways literacy is present in people’s lives, the role of literacy in society continues to draw interest. For a starting point, this review considers debates around the situatedness of literacy through reviewing scholarship on what has been referred to (see Scribner and Cole, 1981) as the great divide theory. The review then fans out to consider some of the contextual aspects which different scholars have taken up in rendering a situated inquiry of literacy in society. This notion of a divide illustrates the dichotomy between two opposites. On one hand there are those who see literacy as an objective, a priori set of skills which contribute to specific habits of mind that set apart preliterate cultures from literate cultures. On the other hand, there are those who take an anthropological approach to analyzing and examining literacy which entails exploring literacy practices for specific purposes within specific contexts of use.

For those in the former group (see Goody, 1977; Olson 1977), literacy is principally objective or neutral, whereby, being literate entails an ability to adapt and be fluent in a particular technology or set of skills. Perceived in this way, one either has such dexterity or one does not. In addition to this concept of neutrality or objectivity, several other questions rage at the epicenter of this debate: what are writing systems or orthographies? Where were they invented? Are there some systems that are superior to others? Is there any relationship between the ability to read and write on one hand, and civilization, intelligence, and societal

order on the other hand? Literacy is considered a necessary feature for

distinguishing between civilized people and barbarians and has been explicitly

linked to human cognitive capacity, through references such as, literacy is the

“technology of the intellect” (Goody, 1977, p. 81).

One consequence of this viewpoint is that, those who do not possess this

“technology” are perceived to be in some way or manner, intellectually deprived.

This is effectively a means of othering practiced by people who (in some way)

benefit from disempowering others, for example, colonizing forces. David Olson

(1977) has famously argued that, “the faculty of language stands at the center of our conception of mankind, speech makes us human and literacy makes us civilized.” (p. 257). To this assertion he adds that, written language has therefore

shaped cultural and psychological processes. These assertions situate literacy at

the heart of what it means to be human and Olson’s use of “our,” and “us,”

insinuates the existence of a different “other,” that is, an illiterate, uncivilized

other who is not fully human. Similar deficit-based othering ideologies are

perpetuated in Goody and Watt’s (1963) assertion that the invention of

orthography is “so stupefying a leap of the imagination that what is remarkable is

not so much that it happened relatively late in human history, but rather that it

ever happened at all” (Goody & Watt, 1963, p. 315). Implicit in this assertion

(which is informed by western-centric, anglicized conceptualizations) is the claim

that communities which are able to make these connections between sounds and

symbols are a part of this genius, hence civilized. Those that had not made such

connections have lagged behind and are on the regressive end of a continuum which stretches from illiteracy and pre-literacy towards literacy.

It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to examine the history of writing systems; Baines et al., (2010) have made visible some of the various perceptions towards transitioning (or shifting) from logographic systems to alphabetic scripts and they present varied historical explanations. These explanations employ terms such as, the “disappearance” of writing systems, the “obsolescence” of writing systems, the “redundancy” of writing systems, the “death” of writing systems, the “evolution” of writing systems, or even “forgotten” writing systems to account for varied perceptions of this shift in orthography. Perceptions of superiority of one community/culture over another, instantiated through the portrayal of relative superiority of cultural systems of writing, obscure an examination of the richness of cultural orthographies. They also obscure linguistic and cultural interconnectedness in intercultural communication especially where the same orthography and language are employed by people of different cultures.

This idea of relative superiority has been unequivocally stated by some scholars, for instance, Brian Street (1984) quotes Angela Hildyard and David

Olson as refuting the universality of the potential of the human mind. Rather, they claim that there has to be a difference between (what they refer to as) savage and modern minds and that literacy is a neutral technology that can serve as a good indicator for visualizing this difference:

“No aspersions are being cast on individual members of cultures which happen

to lack a particular technology and are thus taken to lack certain intellectual

advantages” (Hildyard & Olson, in Street, 1984, p. 29).

Street (1984) counters this proposition (among several others which form the pillar of what he refers to as the autonomous ideology) by arguing that the neutrality of literacy is in fact a masked subjectivity:

“Strip it off the insulation…provided by its appeal to the technology of

literacy, we will expose the same ethnocentric claims and uncritical faith in

the observer’s own ways of thinking” (p. 30).

Street (1984/2001), whose ideas are instrumental in the expanded definitions of

“literacy” as employed in New Literacy Studies, has advanced the autonomous model vs. the ideological model of literacy where he argues that scholars like

Goody, Watt, Hildyard, and Olson conceptualize literacy as being autonomous and therefore independent of context. He prefers the ideological model because:

“[it] offers a more culturally sensitive view of literacy practices as they vary

from one context to another…it posits instead that literacy is a social

practice, not simply a technical and neutral skill” (Street, 2001, p. 7 – 8).

According to Street (1984), to argue that literacy is neutral or objective, is in itself an ideology. The limitations of Goody’s distinction between “literate” and

“non-literate,” become visible when we consider language as an “activity and we will not understand it by trying to put a static model of a complete language- system into the head of an individual user” (p. 85). This argument foregrounds

the contextualization of language and by extension, of literacy. Being cognizant

of context entails that scholars “take into account…inter-subjectivity, addressing

[them] selves to questions [such] as who controls the meaning and the nature of

the reference” (p. 85). Thus, literacy is “not so much a restricted technical skill

but rather a form of political and ideological practice” (p. 110).

Street’s (1984) proposal of the autonomous/ideological models has

received mixed reviews. Some scholars (Barton, 1994; Brandt & Clinton, 2002) take issue with what they perceive as its simplistic dichotomization which fails to account for the literacy environment in a more holistic manner. In place of

Street’s models, Barton (1994) has proposed a metaphor of the ecology of writing systems which he argues, enables scholars to study the rootedness of

literacy in people’s lives:

“The ecological metaphor…is a useful…way of talking about literacy…

[because] an ecological approach aims to understand how literacy is

embedded in other human activity” (p. 32).

Although Barton (1994) is mainly referring to written language here, his argument

clarifies the need to consider closely the ecology of literacy to more fully

understand literacy practices. In addition to Barton (1994), a contemporary

development which complicates Street’s (1984) autonomous/ideological models

is the recent proliferation of various and diverse types of literacies; it is now possible to find and name hundreds of types of literacies including, print literacy,

visual literacy, financial literacy, food and nutritional literacy, cultural literacy,

computer literacy, social etiquette literacy, and proximate literacy, among others.

This proliferation is indicative of pluralization of literacy when focus shifts to

instrumentality and particular competencies as opposed to focusing on cultural

groups.

Additionally, Brandt and Clinton (2002) pose the following questions: What

aspects of literacy are obstructed by considering literacy as a social practice?

Are there elements of the “material dimensions of literacy” (p. 337) that we may

not be able to account for when we conceive of literacy as a situated practice?

Brandt and Clinton (2002) focus on how literacy materializes and is capable of traveling, integrating and even enduring in contexts while remaining invisible in local interactions. That is, sometimes not all forms of literacy show up in local interactions and some of these “silent” literacies could come from other places outside of the setting where they are found. This capacity to delocalize is the

“transcontextualized and transcontextualizing potentials of literacy” (p. 337)

which falls in the blind spot area of the paradigm of literacies are a social

practice. Thus, Street’s (1984) ideological/autonomous literacies model

“exaggerate[s] the power of local contexts to set or reveal the forms and

meanings that literacy takes” (p. 338). Brandt and Clinton argue that, literacy is in

fact not just the result of human actions and interactions and histories. It is a

participant in local practices which are in turn nested within wider literacy

practices.

To exemplify this, they discuss Besnier’s (1995, in Brandt & Clinton, 2002) ethnographic study of a small subsistence Polynesian Atoll community,

Nakulaelae people, who wore tee-shirts bearing risqué words and phrases without appearing to interact with the meanings of the words printed on those tee-shirts. While there was other print on the island, for example, public notices, the tee-shirt print entered the “cultural and historical facts of the island even without the mediating permission of a local literacy event” (p. 343). The presence of these tee-shirt prints signaled the existence of other people’s meanings thereby connecting the Nakulaelae and their local setting to other settings.

According to Brandt and Clinton, (2002), Street (1984) and New Literacy

Studies have overlooked the notion of literacy as an object; the thingness of literacy. While Barton’s (1994) argument is that the ideological paradigm lens fails to take into account the ecology of literacy, Brandt and Clinton (2002) argue that being invested in the ideological paradigm (where one argues the great divide of orality and literacy) can cause one to inadvertently ascribe to another great divide; the one between people and things. This is because in order to more fully account for material dimensions of literacy, scholarship has to incorporate in its theorization, a thingness character of literacy which allows it to be acted on as it acts on context. For Barton (1994) the solution lies in examining literacy through the ecological metaphor and for Brandt and Clinton (2002) the solution lies in taking up the concept of “literacy-in-action” (p. 349). However,

Barton’s (1994) ecological metaphor can be criticized for taking up a biological

frame in explaining language and literacy whose processes may not entirely be

explained through parallel biological processes. Also, while Brandt and Clinton

(2002) make a good point regarding how scripts can implicate interpenetration of

spaces, one key problem of “literacy-in-action” (p. 349) is the resuscitation of an autonomous literacy conceptualization which may retrogress towards negative connotations of orality vs. literacy, civilized vs. uncivilized, us vs. them, from which the field has strived to move.

Such debates notwithstanding, literacy scholars (Brandt, 2001; Brandt &

Clinton, 2002; Harris, 2006; Heath, 1983, 2012; Paris, 2011; Purcell-Gates, 1995;

Street, 1984) have taken up literacy in context and explored the circulation and

situatedness of literacy. While some of the same old questions continue to rage

on—what is literacy? What is illiteracy/pre-literacy? What is reading/writing?

From where did writing systems originate? How do we curb/contain ethnocentric assumptions in literacy studies?—there are additional questions which are based on the dynamics of contemporary societies: How are particular literacy practices realized in various social domains? What is the role of schooling in language socialization and literacy development? What kinds of connections (if any) exist between literacy and the economy? How do individual literacy practices relate to societal literacy practices? How do privileging and stigmatization influence literacy practices? Who decides and who benefits from such stigmatization? In other words, inquiry in literacy studies continues to expand to include an

examination of various contextual aspects as opposed to focusing solely on

debate about literacy as situated.

In line with this expanding inquiry, several scholars have explored and

described locally produced literacy practices and attempted to develop

interpretive categories for understanding literacy. Some seminal studies (Heath,

1983; Scribner and Cole, 1981; Street, 1984) engage with contextualization of forms of literacy. Others (see Harris, 2006; Paris, 2011; Purcell-Gates, 1995)

consider literacy practices and tensions emanating from institutionally-sanctioned

forms of literacy. These seminal works such as Street’s (1984) study of literacy

practices in Cheshmeh, North East Iran, illustrate how various literacies (a

school-based alphabet literacy, a traditional religious literacy practice called

‘maktab’ literacy, and a commercial literacy called Tajer literacy) co-exist within

the same socio-cultural spaces. This co-presence illustrates both the pluralization

of literacy, that is, literacies, and situated uses of literacy skills. Scribner and

Cole’s (1981) study of Vai literacy practices corroborates the situatedness of

literacies. Scribner and Cole (1981) record how a traditional script (see appendix

A) which pre-existed western influence, existed side-by-side with the Roman

alphabet. Like in Street (1984) where the different literacies had specialized

uses, Arab for religious worship, Tajer for commercial use and alphabet for

official uses, Vai literacies are also specialized; Arab syllabary for religious

practice, the Roman alphabet for official matters and Vai script for personal

correspondence and family records.

Heath’s (1983) study, on the other hand, does not discover different

scripts as much as different practices chiefly among two working class

communities (Roadville and Trackton) in the Piedmont Carolinas. Heath (1983)

further demonstrates the separation between pre-school literacy socialization and school literacy practices. Storytelling for Roadville children, is dissimilar from

Trackton storytelling; for Roadville children “tellin’-a-story [is] equated with lying and exaggerating at home” (p. 295). For them, stories of the type that Trackton children tell are lies or untruths, while “for Trackton, Roadville’s stories would not even count as stories” (p. 189) because they lack the rhetorical moves and hyperbole that would make them reportable and tellable. Black Trackton children and white Roadville children upon arriving at school, encounter different expectations of storytelling and must therefore “learn a different taxonomy and new definitions of stories” (p. 294). Thus, “neither community’s ways with the written word prepares it for the school’s ways” (p. 235). To complicate matters further, the teachers in those schools come from a different community,

Townspeople, a middle class black and white community whose literacy socialization practices align more with school expectations. Taken together, these studies (Heath, 1983; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984) are illustrative of how local literacy practices are co-present and functional in the communities.

Additionally, Heath (1983) makes a case for productive engagement between

out-of-school literacy practices and school-based practices.

Like Heath (1983), Purcell-Gates’ (1995) highlights tensions between out-

of-school literacy practices and school-based literacy practices. Purcell-Gates’

(1995) micro study of Jenny, Big Donny, and their two children Donny, and

Timmy spotlights marginalization and stereotyping of urban Appalachians by

mainstream cultures in the USA. Based on a backdrop of a deficit perception

towards Appalachians, Jenny (a self-identifying illiterate) is unable to

communicate her concerns regarding her son’s education with school officials.

Like his mother, Donny was illiterate as “print did not signify; it did not code his

world; it was not linguistically meaningful” (p. 63 – 4). This study finds a disparity

in how some communities (Appalachian in this case) have insufficient access to

literacy leading to enduring frustration and tension due to a schooling system

which fails to engage with and offer adequate personalized interventions for both

Donny and his mother, Jenny.

Various other scholars (Harris, 2006; Paris, 2011; Rose, 2012) have also

examined access to literacy by minoritized communities. Harris (2006), who

proposes the term “Brasian” instead of “British Asian,” argues against an artificial

simplification of student’s complex identities. In his study of thirty 15 and 16 year

old boys and girls of South Asian descent, he examines how multilingual urban

youth in west London construct their identities through navigating between

traditional and contemporary oral traditions and describes their everyday

language practice as a “rich polyphony” (p. 3) of London English, Gujarati,

Panjabi, Jamaican, Swahili, and African American English. The entwinement of

language use such as t-glottaling (a London phonetic feature) based on Gujarati

syntax etc., illustrates how wider influences shape situated oral literacy practices.

Harris (2006) argues that these youth’s complex pattern of speech and identity

amounts to “new, hybrid, diasporic ethnicities” (p. 25).

Likewise, Paris (2011) investigates peripheralized youth literacy practices

“in the face of the vastness of oppression” (p. 1) by school-sanctioned literacy

practices. The study explores language use in and out of school among

multiethnic and multiracial youth in a small city on the West Coast of the United

States, South Vista. Paris (2011) argues for a re-imagination of the school as a

“site of critical language learning that would bolster the pride of…youth about

their linguistic heritage” (p. 116). Through examining varied youth texts (oral,

written, and embodied), and languages (African American Language (AAL),

Samoan, Spanish, and Dominant Standard English), the study notes how diverse

linguistic processes (language crossing, sharing, and borrowing) were employed for a variety of objectives: to build communicative bridges, establish solidarity, maintain heritage, index linguistic and ethnic identity, and for exclusion, etc.

Decrying the absence of a "pedagogy of pluralism" (p. 164) which would include these teen communicative practices in classrooms, Paris concludes that language research should aim to humanize through its methodologies.

This conclusion together with Harris’ (2006) findings on new ethnicities,

both illustrate and underscore how social justice as a contextual aspect

intersects with situated literacies. A focus on othering and access vis-à-vis

literacy (Harris, 2006; Heath, 1983; Paris, 2011; Purcell-Gates, 1995) challenges social disequilibrium and disrupts systemic marginalization of some literacy practices. This kind of othering is not exclusively school-based and can be perpetuated by ideologies that deprioritize, for example, second-chance vocational and adult education programs (Rose, 2012). Like Paris (2011), Rose

(2012) interrogates the role of education in a pluralistic society and highlights ramifications of an academic-vocational divide on individual lives. Rose (2012) argues that policy makers should be cognizant of the benefits of vocational adult literacy programs and consequently rectify the economic under-prioritization of these programs.

Besides access to literacy, some scholars have explored how other contextual factors intersect with literacy and subsequently have ramifications in people’s lives. They have shown for instance that, access to literacy alone (while

necessary) is not sufficient to alleviate the plight of the marginalized (Graff, 1991;

Rose, 2012). Such studies point to wider sociocultural ideologies and systemic

structures of oppression such as racial segregation as impeding achievements in

spite of access to literacy. Additionally, many scholars (see Irizarry & Brown,

2014; Kirkland, 2014; Paris & Winn, 2014; Smith, 1999) have argued for the role

of literacy research in humanizing, that is, scholarship on literacy should aim to

challenge social disproportionalities, injustices, and systemic inequalities.

As seen in Harris (2006) and Paris (2011), the youth employ a variety of

out-of-school literacies to construct their personhood. Thus, another contextual

aspect that has received attention from scholars on literacy is how young people

construct worldviews perpetuated by certain media, for instance, hip hop.

Sociocultural ideologies (of language use and pedagogy) influence perceptions

towards teenage worldviews. In this connection, classrooms remain a commonly

studied battleground for the clash between traditional or canonical literacies and

teenage literacies. Various scholars (Alim, 2006; Mahiri, 2004; Morell & Duncan-

Andrade, 2002; Morrell, 2007; Richardson, 2006; Wandera, 2013) argue for

inclusive pedagogies whereby educators engage with hip hop in pursuit of

generative, and dialogic classroom spaces. Such inclusive engagement or bridging is necessary not just at the pedagogical level but at policy formulation

levels. Bloome (2009, in Scott et al., 2009) has argued that language policies boil

down to how humans are defined and dichotomizing languages into “official and

unofficial ones…can be viewed as a dividing practice…” (p. xi). Other scholars

(Aguilera & Lecompte, 2009; Katz & Champion, 2009; Kinloch, 2009, 2010, 2012;

Royster et al., 2009; Smitherman, 1987), who propose the notion of students’

right to their own language through likening the peripheralization of teenage language practices to a human rights issue, have argued for inclusive

pedagogies in dialogic classroom spaces.

For instance, Kinloch (2009/2012) proposes promoting student’s right to

language via a pedagogy of possibility; ensuring opportunities for students to

participate in and out of the classroom in ways that tap into their oral and written

literacy practices. The youth reclaim their voices through employing literacy as a

tool for engaging with community struggles (Kinloch, 2009). While such engagement and inclusivity may face pushback from “institutional policies and the reality of power dynamics in educational contexts and in the larger society”

(Kinloch, 2009, p 95), another reality which necessitates such inclusivity and engagement is the prevalence of diverse communicative contexts characterized by bi- and multilingualism (Farr et al., 2010). Various literacy scholars (see

Garcia, 2010; Gutierrez et al., 1995; Harris, 2006; Kinloch, 2012; Paris, 2011;

Villanueva, 1993) have challenged traditional monolingual pedagogies which fail to consider complex language practices and skills employed by multilingual learners in such diverse settings. In addition to these contextual factors, various aspects of globalization which characterize contemporary life continue to be explored by different scholars who focus on how such aspects interconnect with literacy practices.

One of these factors is a recognition of the multimodal nature of communication where language is one of several modes (Jewitt, 2009; Kress,

2009; Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; O’Toole, 1994; Wandera, 2016). This recognition allows literacy research to account for communication in a more holistic manner. If it is true that “there is no monomodal culture” (Jewitt, 2009, p.

4), how can an approach that is cognizant of multimodality re-inform understandings of literacy practices especially where different modalities have their own unique affordances? It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to undertake an examination of the affordances of modalities in multimodal

interactions (for such an examination, see Wandera, 2016) except to state that in the analysis of data, this dissertation explores the situated use of literacies through various modes as entailed in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. This collaboration is situated within a globalization context characterized by technology-based interactions. Computer technology provides for “a new culture of learning” (Thomas & Brown, 2011, p. 18) and technology continues to transform how “we think about information, imagination and play” (p. 31). Given these transformations, is it time to ask whether “teaching is necessary for learning to occur” (p. 34 – 5)? Thomas and Brown (2011), who do not offer a definitive definition of teaching, find that gaming and online collaborations instantiate, among other characteristics, a peer-to-peer model that can inform how learning in the 21st century can be undertaken. Additionally, Apkon (2013) has noted the ubiquity of screens in day-to-day life as a key feature of literacy events for many contemporary teenagers, and proposed a redefinition of

“literacy.” He takes up the term “screenagers” (p. 229) to represent these modern-day teenagers whose literacies are actualized through the ubiquity of screen technology. In this regard, he highlights how “the gradual ascendance of the moving image as the primary mode of communication” (p. 24) has necessitated a redefinition of literacy:

“Literacy is the ability to express oneself in an effective way through the

text of the moment, the prevailing mode of expression in a particular

society. Literacy follows language. To be literate, in other words, is to be

conversant in the dominant expressive language and form of the age” (p.

38)

In our contemporary society “language—and hence, literacy—[are not] static” (p.

70).

Taken together, all the studies reviewed in this section demonstrate that

scholarship in literacy studies continues to ask a diverse set of questions,

stepping well beyond (but never abandoning) the position that literacy is situated

in particular spaces, moments and contexts of use. A situated consideration of

literacy necessitates attentiveness to some of the proficiencies users bring to particular contexts; these entail communicative competencies in culturally significant settings (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972). This concept of communicative competence establishes further the embeddedness of literacy practices in interactions (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Hymes, 1974). Questions regarding language use, pedagogy and policy “cannot be solved without information on the

social factors affecting speech” (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972, p. v). It is no wonder

then that scholarship on literacy in society focuses both on contextualizing

literacy practices by situating events and practices within particular contexts, and

also on exploring myriad contextual factors which shape literacy practices and

impact on the circulation of literacy in such spaces.

While there are several other sociocultural factors which have not been

mentioned or discussed here, it is sufficient to say that literacy scholarship is

looking towards various directions, some of which have been occasioned by

components of globalization and other forces in our world of constant change.

The main point of the review in this section is to establish the multidirectional trajectories in literacy-related inquiry. Literacy is situated but within such situatedness there are local and beyond-local influences that challenge notions of static literacy practices, and disrupt conceptualizations of well-bounded cultural and local spaces. Like the studies reviewed here, this present dissertation spirals into one of these trajectories, that is, I seek to contextualize literacy practices in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration while examining how intercultural communication, technology and pedagogy intersect with literacy practices entailed. In the next section I review studies based on intercultural communication beginning with some seminal scholarship on intercultural communication and moving onto scholarship based on multisite collaborations.

2.3 Literacy and Intercultural Communication

One of the outcomes of globalization is the increase in intercultural communication and efforts to communicate across cultural and geospatial difference. Intercultural communication is, however, neither new nor recent as a phenomenon; yet intercultural communication studies in the USA and the West are relatively recent. The beginnings of the study of intercultural communication in formal western spaces occurred in the middle of the 20th century through an

initiative of the Foreign Service Institute, in the USA (Martin & Nakayama, 1997;

Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013) when Edward T. Hall (an anthropologist and cross-

cultural researcher) started work on communication across cultures. His

approach to intercultural communication through employing descriptive linguistics

has been influential in shaping several subsequent theories and scholarship on

intercultural communication. Approximately 60 years after Hall commenced his

seminal work on intercultural communication (see Hall, 1976), there have been numerous studies about this topic as societies continue to intermix, and as

cultures come into contact enabled by affordances of technology and mobility.

These numerous studies fall into two broad groups: the theory-and-

research school, which bases its inquiry on traditional sociological and

communicative perspective methods; and the theory-into-practice school which is

more interdisciplinary in its orientation (Bennet, 1998). Whereas this division or

classification is based on approaches that researchers take as they investigate

intercultural communication, what unifies studies in intercultural communication is

the focus of questions at the core of such investigations. These questions which

may be phrased in various ways, are concerned with meaning making across

cultures, and strategies of communication. In this regard, Bennet’s (1998) two

questions hereunder, which are in concert with the research questions of this

present dissertation, exemplify these concerns:

1. How do people understand one another when they do not share a

common cultural experience?

2. What kind of communication is needed by a pluralistic society to be both

culturally diverse and unified in common goals? (Bennett, 1998, p. 1)

The centerpiece of these questions is meaning sharing and agentive meaning

making across difference. These processes can be depicted metaphorically as

“gaining entrance into the assumptive world of another culture” (Barnlund, 1998, p. 37; also see Scollon & Scollon, 2001). Culture informs and shapes worldviews, and sometimes meaning is obscured not only for the recipient, but also for the producer of meaning (Hall, 1976) such that people’s worlds are “not the same worlds others occupy [because] every communication, interpersonal or intercultural, is a transaction between these private worlds” (Barnlund, 1998, p.

41). How then do people communicate interculturally? I will return to this question

after establishing a working definition of “culture.”

Communication within the same culture can be difficult especially when

we consider that language is ambiguous (Levinson, 2000; Scollon & Scollon,

2001). Depending on how we define culture, any time we are in conversation with others, it could mean that we are “functioning somewhat “interculturally”” (Singer,

1998, p. 103). Some scholars (see Singer, 1998, p. 100) have claimed that for this reason, nobody fully understands the other. In this way, not only do people live in their own worlds, but their perception of other worlds, that is, “the process by which an individual selects, evaluates, and organizes stimuli from the external environment” (p. 97) is in turn dependent on myriad other factors. Overall, culture can be conceived of as that which is concurrently shared, articulated, and un- articulable (Singer, 1998). Such a definition spotlights the complexity of processes that appertain to how people communicate interculturally.

In explaining these processes, Singer (1998) draws a distinction between two levels of intercultural communication; local intercultural communication and international intercultural communication. Singer argues that due to familiar or common ground in meaning, the latter is a more difficult kind of communication

“because we tend to share a higher degree of similarity of perception with more groups in our own society than we do in a foreign environment” (p. 106). Singer’s argument evokes an image where intercultural communication is achieved through finding sufficient similarities of perception with those who may not be in our community. Given that intercultural communication is not easy, Barna (1998, p. 179) has proposed that one has to look out for several impediments including:

1) Assuming similarity instead of difference

2) Language difference

3) Nonverbal misinterpretations

4) Preconceptions and stereotypes

5) Tendency to evaluate

6) High anxiety

Through this lens where intercultural communication is beset by myriad impediments, I can surmise that successful communication would occur when interlocutors surmount one or more of these obstacles. Barna’s definition of intercultural communication coheres with this notion of surmounting obstacles, that is, intercultural communication is:

“the overall internal capability of an individual to manage key challenging features of intercultural communication; namely, cultural difference, and unfamiliarity, intergroup posture, and the accompanying experience of stress.” (p. 187)

Since Edward T. Hall’s contributions to the field, several definitions of culture

(which in turn shape how intercultural communication is defined) have been offered; one seminal definition of culture was proposed by Geertz (1973):

“[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meaning embodied

in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic

forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate and develop their

knowledge about and attitudes towards life.” (p. 89)

In another definition, culture is conceived of as a discourse system (Scollon &

Scollon, 2001). In light of this definition, intercultural communication would be the intersection of various discourse systems. On the other hand, if culture is a mediating artifact (Holland & Cole, 1995), then intercultural communication is the intersection of two or more mediating artifacts. If culture is “a pattern of perceptions, values, attitudes, and behaviors that is accepted and expected by an identity group” (Singer, 1998, p. 99), then intercultural communication would be the coming together of expected and accepted sets of behaviors.

There have been numerous suggestions for what to consider when defining culture; Martin and Nakayama (1997) have proposed that rather than

view culture as a product, it is advisable to view it as a process. Kramsch (2006)

has proposed that any definition of “culture” be expanded to include “the

objective history of historians (discourse on history) and the subjective collective

memories of people who have personally experienced events…historical cultural

meanings as realized in language and other symbolic systems like pictures,

charts, and diagrams...” (in Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013, p. 6). In Kramsch’s

(2006) case, intercultural communication amounts to an intersection of macro and micro histories, and artifacts. Angouri and Miglbauer (2013) have proposed

that “culture” is an abstract and ideological construct that takes on meaning

“depending on the discursive context where it is evoked” (p. 229) thus, culture is a resource from which people draw as they live their lives (Angouri & Miglbauer,

2013). Kecskes’ (2013) conceptualizes intercultural communication as a meeting

point where other situated intercultures are constructed, that is, a point of

endless creation of cultures in intercultural encounters. This meeting point is

characterized by mobility whereby “meaning construction relies both on relatively

definable cultural models and norms as well as situationally evolving features”

(Kecskes, 2013, p. 42). Intercultures are therefore transient, unstable, and non-

permanent.

These varied definitions of culture and intercultural communication

discussed here, depict a search for a robust vocabulary that can account for

language and culture in present-day globalizing contexts characterized by

mobility. Globalization can be conceived of as a “local and localizing phenomenon” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 101) where local influences meet globalized influences through scale-jumping. Each definition of culture highlights some aspect of culture leading to particular understandings, for instance, the social function and interactional nature of cultural systems (Scollon & Scollon, 2001), or foregrounding the visible and invisible nature of culture (Holland & Cole, 1995). In this dissertation I take up Holland and Cole’s definition which enables me to foreground the role of various artifactual and ideational features and influences in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. By applying this definition, this present study is more able to engage with and account for how cultural artifacts, ideologies,

Yuuyaraq lifestyle (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Hensel, 1996;

Oleksa, 2006) and Nairobian youth lifestyle (Clark, 2003; Journo, 2009; Lukalo,

2006; Muthuma, 2013; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone, 2014) intersect with meaning sharing and making in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. These cultural artifacts include snowmobiles, Yup’ik hunting tools, restaurant menus, and passenger service vehicles.

Having established a definition of culture, I now return to the question of how people communicate interculturally, which I begin to answer by reviewing 2 kinds of literature. The first set comprises various multisite studies (Freedman,

1994; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000) which were selected in light of the fact that like this present dissertation, these studies are

multisite studies focusing on literacy across geospatial and cultural difference.

The second set of studies (Belz, 2007; Devellotte et al., 2007; Hauck & Lewis,

2007; Lee, 2007; Little et al., 1999; Markey, 2007; Miguela, 2007; Muller-

Hartman, 2007; O’Dowd, 2007; O’Rourke, 2007; Suarez & Crapotta, 2007;

Torres & Vinagre, 2007; Ware & Canado, 2007; Wilden, 2007) is largely taken

from the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) but these studies are relevant to this present dissertation since like this dissertation, they focus on online intercultural collaboration in classroom settings. They also propose some terminology (“tellecollaboration,” “asynchronous interactions,” and “eTandem”) which I take up in this present study. Thus, a review of these SLA studies on intercultural online collaboration sets the stage for discussing the Alaska-Kenya online collaboration through examining some of the concepts that emerge from this scholarship.

The first multisite study (Freedman, 1994) which focuses on literacy is a writing exchange between four classes in the USA, and four classes in the UK.

Freedman (1994) starts off by highlighting the following student reflections to celebrate cross border exchanges:

[Farah from the UK wrote] “if you’ve got an audience, you don’t want to do

rubbish work you do your best… [and Belle from the US] explained: ‘I think

I’m more concerned about my writing when I send it off to England

because I know that those people over there are going to be looking at my

papers and…you’re like an impression on them from America…you’re

writing to somebody and you don’t want to send your worst piece of junk

over there.” (p. 85)

These students in Freedman (1994) continually re-construct their culturally bound

worlds as they reflect on their cultures and inquire about other people’s worlds.

Pedagogically, these exchanges instantiate learner-centered collaborative and

social dialogues. Freedman’s work is based on Vygotskian (1978)

socioculturalism, and Bakhtinian (1981) dialogism (which also inform the

methodology of this present study). Notably, one of the teachers in Freedman’s study (Ann Powers) received training at the Bread Loaf School of English, which

is also where both teachers in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration (Mr. Collins who

taught in Alaska, and myself as the teacher in Nairobi) received pedagogical

training. Ann Powers (in Freedman, 1994) employs Nancie Atwell’s (1998) individualized workshop approach, a pedagogical technique which both Mr.

Collins and myself are familiar with. There are, however, several differences

between Freedman’s study and this dissertation such as an extra layer of

personnel which this dissertation does not have, that is, researchers who were

working with teachers. Freedman also focuses on 8 schools which employed

regular postal mail to convey their correspondences while this dissertation

focuses on 2 schools which employed an online medium of conveyance called,

BreadNet.

Freedman (1994) identifies several contextual differences between the

USA and UK schools, for example, some USA teachers were members of the

National Writing Project. This is a national professional development network for

educators that focuses on boosting student achievement by improving the

teaching of writing. In Freedman’s study teachers were paired and each pair

decided collaboratively on the writing focus. Successful teachers “considered

writing to be more of a way of gaining deeper understandings than a skill to be

transmitted or a vehicle for learning” (Freedman, 1994, p. 35). Freedman (1994)

found that contextual factors, such as, teacher education, monetary

compensation and official roles, impact the course of the writing collaboration.

For example, UK students had an impending exam which constrained their involvement in the collaboration. Some of them considered the kinds of writing that they did for exams as being hierarchically superior to merely exchanging information with a peer in a collaboration. She also found that, “US teachers emphasize the curriculum, while British teachers emphasize student development” (p. 79). Another finding was, what a “low-tracking class” meant in

the USA was different from what this term meant in the UK. Freedman sums up

the project as a “book of contrasts…between U.S and British culture; between

U.S. and British educational systems, policies, and institutional structures; and

between teachers and students…educational policies and institutional structures”

(p. 204).

The second multisite study (Scollon & Scollon, 2004) which focuses on

literacy, is based on the concept of “nexus analysis” to account for intersecting

influences, that is, the idea of a nexus is a schema that illustrates this intersection. Thus, “nexus” means “the point at which historical trajectories of people, places, discourses, ideas, and objects come together to enable some action” (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, p. viii). Through re-examining 20 year old data

from some research projects in Alaska, Scollon & Scollon (2004) propose to

analyze “the nexus which links socio-cultural communicative practices or events on the one hand and technological media of communication on the other” (p. xii).

The data they examine emanate from when students located in far flung places

in Alaska were connected to one another through online communication (in the

early days of using the internet in classrooms). Scollon & Scollon report how a

student who was hitherto quiet and reserved during face-to-face class

discussions is elated by responses to her electronic class contribution; 12 classmates had responded electronically to her e-contribution which for this student was unusual attention since in face-to-face interactions she never received such peer-engagement.

Consequently, she declares, “I feel like I am speaking for the first time” (p.

1). Scollon and Scollon argue that, the classroom is a “nexus or conjoining of many different trajectories—the life trajectories of that particular [institution] and that particular program, that physical space, and many other trajectories of multiple discourses” (p. 8). They conclude that the classroom is a site of complex

social actions influenced by multiple motives and where multiple participants act

“across cycles of varying timescales” (p. 148). Ultimately they propose the notion of “circumferencing” (p. 9); taking into account wider influences of events, acts, and participants, through which researchers can examine origins of an act, and its future or eventual outcome. This broadened perspective offers a holistic approach that visualizes an aggregation of influences that intersect with particular social actions in a specific setting. Engagements between students are cast as non-isolated and part of a wider system.

A third study which explores collaborative writing across geographical spaces, is a dissertation by Wood (2000) which investigates how Bread Loaf

Teacher Network (BLTN) teachers transform their espoused theories of learning and teaching into actionable theories in their classes. Wood (2000) connects with this present study since the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, like the collaborations in

Wood (2000), is inspired by online interclass collaboration pedagogy and was imparted at the Bread Loaf School of English (BLSE). The projects in both Wood

(2000) and in this present study are based on BLTN and BLSE. These are secondary sites in my dissertation; both teachers (Mr. Collins teaching in Alaska and myself from Kenya) are members of BLTN and alumni of BLSE. Like this present study, Wood (2000) is a “multilocale” (Marcus, 1988 in Wood, 2000) study. Wood investigates how teachers who seek new knowledge through in- service programs or other improvement programs turn it into practice in their classes (Elmore, 1997, in Wood, 2000). The study compares interclass writing

projects in three different classes taught by three BLTN teachers. Focusing on teachers’ pedagogical choices in interclass collaborations, Wood (2000) examines how teachers who have the opportunity to teach innovatively, combine their teaching with mastery of content, pedagogy, and engagement. Wood’s data comprises teacher-reflections based on how they bring to their classes what they learn both at BLSE and through their association with BLTN. In one of these interclass exchanges, Montana and Schadler commence an on line writing collaboration via a computer interface called BreadNet (the same interface employed by the two classes in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration). The exchange is themed, “The language of Power” (Wood, 2000, p. 52) where the two groups

(within the same state) discussed English-only legislation, affirmative action, bilingual education, and immigration, over a one term period. Montana, who is a participant in Wood’s study and a teacher said, “When my kids knew that what they wrote would be read by another class, they started asking me for better ways to say things” (p. 54).

This sentiment coheres with the student reflections presented by

Freedman (1994). Another teacher observed that engaging in collaborative online writing with her students has enabled her to know her students better, and yet another teacher whose class was undertaking an exchange with students in the Navajo Nation said, “the more genuinely Navajo I think the stories are, the more universal they become…they tap into the human core” (p. 82). Generally, teacher-participants reflected on how they found themselves learning to write;

one of the pedagogical strategies recommended by BLTN and BLSE is for

teachers to write with their students. Wood finds that, having the opportunity to

teach innovatively on one hand is not the same thing as being knowledgeable in

content, pedagogy, and in comprehending how to engage with student cognition.

Ultimately, Wood calls for “discipline-specific learning communit[ies]" (p. 175) as

an essential resource for teacher professional development.

A fourth study which explores collaborative writing across geographical

spaces, is Tobin et al. (2009), a comparative study of preschools in three sites;

Komatsudani, Kyoto Japan; Daguan You’eryouan, Kunming China; and St.

Timothy’s Child Center, Honolulu USA. The researchers revisit these sites 20

years after their first visit to find out what has endured or changed in terms of

how pre-schools are run and what the day-to-day life of a pre-school student looks like. Given the intersection between child-rearing and education in preschools, data gathered in the three sites signify broader influences by various interested parties. Tobin et al. (2009) investigate continuity and change across the three pre-school sites, that is, whether or not these school systems in the three sites had become more alike over time. Through employing video-cued-

multivocal ethnography (based on 20 minute video clips that they had recorded

at each of the sites), the researchers evoked reactions from teachers, and administrators in all three sites. Data from this multisite comparison has revealed some contextual links between cultural ideologies about teaching of literacy skills, discipline, and classroom interactions (Twiner et al., 2014).

The study also found that over time some aspects of pre-school education in the three sites had begun looking similar but there were also visible cultural influences in pre-schooling in all three sites. A notable cultural aspect that informed the teaching of literacy in pre-schools is the traditions for what is right and wrong (such as, non-immediate teacher intervention in the event of student- altercations in Japan, or the incessant consideration of individualized instruction for individual success in the USA). Over time, there had been shifts in perspectives, across all three sites, on how to undertake pre schooling based on changing ideologies, for example, with regard to individualist ideologies and single-child policies. Also, students were taught literacy practices in accordance with cultural views. Participants across the three sites tended to see aspects of schooling through their cultural lens; teachers in the US objected to what they considered to be poor disciplining in Japan. Findings from the analysis of data in

Tobin et al. (2009) disrupt notions of an ethnographic timeless present, and instead suggest how forces of globalization are at play in contouring community practices (such as literacy socialization and schooling) in different parts of the world. Overall, Tobin et al. (2009) advise that cultural relativism and historical nostalgia provide limited explanations for change in pre-schooling which can be understood better through taking into account intersections of various situated influences.

Over time, there has been a plethora of studies on intercultural communication such as those discussed above (Freedman, 1994; Scollon &

Scollon, 2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000). Understanding how people

communicate across cultural difference is increasingly important in our

globalizing world where connectivity is enhanced by mobility of people, internet

technology, and common markets, among other factors. Notably, the internet is

increasingly gaining prominence as a medium of communication which continues

to connect multi-sites and disparately situated peoples. The use of BreadNet, an

online interface for BLTN, was crucial for linking up students in Aleknagik and

Nairobi. Several scholars have examined internet-based communication and

have come up with useful terminologies and contributions to unpack the

phenomenon of online communication. The ubiquity of the internet abounds in

different sectors in life, such as, communication, commerce, aviation, agriculture, healthcare, and manufacturing, among others. Not to be left behind, the education sector is increasingly employing online mediated interactions in classrooms among other uses of internet based technology. It is becoming increasingly recognized that online collaboration especially across cultural difference offers opportunities for “authentic and effective way[s] of preparing

learners for the complex yet enriching experience of foreign language and culture

learning” (O’Dowd, 2007, p. 3).

Through analyzing data from the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, this

dissertation engages with the argument that as a site for intercultural peer-to-

peer learning, the internet is not culturally and linguistically neutral. In the

following part of this section, I review some concepts of internet-mediated, class-

based interactions. Although most of these studies come from the field of Second

Language Acquisition (SLA), the concepts hereunder are helpful in when

considering communication in projects such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

This dissertation adopts the definition of “an online intercultural exchange”

as “engaging language learners in interaction and collaborative project work with

partners from other cultures through the use of online communication tools”

(O’Dowd, 2007, p. 4). I also adopt the term “telecollaboration” (p. 17) which I

conceive of as being similar to an “online intercultural exchange”.

Telecollaboration has been compared to:

“ethnographic, dialogic, and critical pedagogy where learners engage in

ethnographic processes of cultural interaction and reflection. This

engagement is critical whereby students take on the role of “active

participants in a dynamic process of knowledge construction based on

juxtaposition of various texts…” (Belz, 2007, p. 138).

This critical approach is beneficial since in an intercultural collaboration,

such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, learners learn more than just language;

they engage in authentic distant peer-to-peer learning (Develotte et al., 2007;

Little, et al., 1999; White, 2003) and sharing about self, place and culture.

Intercultural collaborations are also beneficial in that students get to speak, contribute to a discussion, voice concerns and receive peer responses; these are sites of productive peer engagement. Through online exchanges students can engage with stereotypes (Muller-Hartmann, 2007; Suarez &

Crapotta, 2007) and build their intercultural competence (Ware & Canado, 2007)

while learning social skills such as how to empathize, criticize, form camaraderie,

and respond to others (Villamil & Guerrero, 2006). In addition, intercultural online

exchanges surmount resource constraints by reaching beyond the classroom to

access material, such as, students’ lived experiences for learning (Ware &

Canado, 2007). Thus, telecollaboration extends students’ “communicative

experience beyond the spatial and temporal limitations of the classroom” (Lee,

2007, p. 281).

An additional benefit of class-based online collaboration is, the teacher takes up roles such as organizer, learner, and teacher-as-researcher (Muller-

Hartmann, 2007) instead of being a purveyor of knowledge in a sage-on-the- stage fashion. These various opportunities for learning predispose students to engaging with cultural difference in informed and productive ways because when taken positively as learning opportunities, intercultural moments of discord are in fact cultural rich points (Agar, 1994) where students unravel and explore the language and culture components of languaculture (Agar, 1994). Exploring these rich points is a key feature of telecollaborative exchanges (Belz, 2007) where learners require self-reflexivity and metacultural awareness or “the ability to view the self through the eyes of the other, an act of psychological de-centering which may lead to a critical reassessment of one’s taken-for-granted worldviews

(Byram, 2003). De-centering of oneself entails suspending one’s beliefs and

making the effort to access or respect others’ beliefs (Belz, 2007; Byram, 1997;

Kramsch, 1998).

Rather than foreground language acquisition, this dissertation is

concerned with Languaculture (Agar, 1994) where language and culture are entwined. This entwinement has also been referred to as linguaculture (Friedrich,

1986); Friedrich has defined linguaculture as fusing and intermingling the vocabulary of language and the verbal aspects of culture whereby both language and culture have an underlying grammar in their day-to-day usage (Risager,

2006). Agar (1994) uses “languaculture” to represent this intertwinement, arguing that the adjustment he made to Friedrich’s term brings the concept closer to

“language” in a way that communicates inseparability of the two. Ahearn (2012) has proposed the addition of “social relations” to this interpenetration of language and culture.

Various scholars (in O’Dowd, 2007) have identified three general models of online classroom exchanges: eTandem, Cultura, and eTwinning. Although these models are conceived of in SLA classrooms where the main focus is the acquisition of language, an examination of these models can offer clarity on the structure of other online exchanges such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration where students were sharing meaning across cultural and geospatial difference.

Briefly, eTandem is a paired peer-to-peer learning characterized by “reciprocal support and instruction between two learners, each of whom is a native speaker of the other’s target language” (O’Rourke, 2007, p. 43). The Alaska-Kenya

collaboration relates to this eTandem model in that students are paired up in such a way that each student is an expert and cultural practitioner of the other’s target languaculture (Agar, 1994). Nairobi students’ target languaculture is,

Yup’ik. Aleknagik students’ target languaculture is, Nairobian youth practices.

In concord with the description of eTandem exchanges, the asynchronous

Alaska-Kenya collaboration was founded on reciprocity and learner autonomy

(O’Rourke (2007). Asynchronous eTandem interactions are advantageous in a number of ways including: students get time to draft responses as opposed to the instantaneous nature of synchronous interactions (O’Rourke, 2007), it is always possible to access archived records for further response or analysis (Torres &

Vinagre, 2007), in the course of responding to each other students can give feedback that is as broad or as deep as desired. Students participating in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration were organized in fixed collaborating pairs for the length of the collaboration. In this model, students are positioned as insiders in their languacultures which makes them resourceful, knowledgeable informers, manifesting native practitioner expertise of their implicit cultural practices

(O’Rourke, 2007; Tobin et al., 2009) or folk pedagogy (Brunner, 1996).

The second model of online exchanges is Cultura; this model is based on integrating culture in the classroom (Suarez & Crapotta, 2007); students are expected to understand “embedded cultural concepts, beliefs, attitudes and ways of interacting and looking at the world” (Fustenberg et al., 2001, in Suarez &

Crapotta, 2007, p. 64). More specifically, two groups of students from two

different countries would come together (virtually), and share cultural material

some of which is produced by them. Their interactions would be based on

responding to these cultural materials. The third model is eTwinning; this model

is based on an exclusive network of schools and educators located in the

European Union who are connected through a virtual interface called the eTwinning portal. Similarly, the Alaska-Kenya collaboration employs BreadNet as a virtual interface for online connectivity. Just like BreadNet, eTwinning has a desktop interface for users (see BreadNet interface in appendix B). However

eTwinning collaborations are geared towards the inculcation of a “European identity as well as an awareness of the continent’s linguistic diversity” (Miguela,

2007, p. 87).

In conclusion, I began this section by establishing a definition of culture

and making sense of intercultural communication vis-à-vis various contextual

considerations to be borne as a path towards understanding how people

communicate interculturally. Reviewing examples of multisite exchanges

(Freedman, 1994; Scollon & Scollon, 2004; Tobin et al., 2009; Wood, 2000) sets

up a much-needed backdrop for this understanding. To begin with, it is important

to account for contextual influences that intersect with one another and converge

on the site of action, that is, on the online intercultural collaboration (Scollon &

Scollon, 2004). This approach offers a holistic account of how contextual

phenomena influence meaning sharing and making in an online exchange. The

role of BLTN, as illustrated in Wood (2000), is instrumental in shaping the

pedagogical arc of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Additionally, the teacher plays an important facilitator role in multisite collaborations (Freedman, 1994;

Wood, 2000) such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. When teachers are

predisposed to responding to the needs of diverse individuals, they are better

placed to effectively attend to unforeseen challenges that may crop up in

intercultural writing exchanges. Collegial setups such as BLTN offer essential

support in the way of professional development to support and enhance teachers

so that they can successfully actualize their espoused theories of teaching and

learning (Wood, 2000). Notably, a reflexive examination of data can lead to a rich

understanding of some ways in which language and culture shape meaning

sharing and meaning making (Scollon & Scollon, 2004, Tobin et al., 2009). In this

present study, I take up data-cued ethnography as a methodological approach

that is informed by reflexivity through engaging with participants’ post project

reflections and in the interpretive stage of data analysis. The use of data to cue

participant responses, that is, video-cued-multivocal ethnography as seen in

Tobin et al. (2009), illustrates a potentially generative methodology for

undertaking this reflexivity. Taken together, the four studies reviewed here

highlight four important considerations that underpin examination of the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration: teacher-role, intersecting socio-cultural influences,

reflexivity, and class-based teaching/learning resources.

This review has also presented some terminology which can be used to

describe the nature of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Thus, this collaboration is an eTandem, telecollaborative, asynchronous exchange between students in

Aleknagik, Alaska; and Nairobi, Kenya. This section also identified some key benefits of telecollaborative ventures thereby making a strong case for employing

ICT as a medium for interacting interculturally in the classroom. Given the various benefits detailed in this section, I argue that educators should re-vision pedagogy “so that all students…will acquire the knowledge, skills, and attitudes needed to function effectively in a culturally and ethnically diverse nation and world” (see Adler, 1998; Banks, 1998, p. 70). In our diverse world, the use of technology for instantaneous or rapid mobility (of people, resources, meanings, etc.) is but one component of globalization. In the next section, I review

scholarship on globalization and intercultural communication and establish a basis for taking up and expanding on Agar’s (1994) “languaculture,” and “rich points” to examine communication between students in Aleknagik and in Nairobi.

2.4 Considering the Global Context.

The world is networked like a web and oftentimes the strands (of historical, social

economic, political and cultural links etc.) that connect places such as, villages,

towns, counties, cities, and countries, are fluid and unpredictable. In such a

world, the study of intercultural communication is important given the incidence of

changes in technology, the ever-increasing global migrations, calamitous ethnic

strife, (Martin & Nakayama, 1997) and more recently, the boundariless looming threat of the deadly Ebola virus. The constant fluidity and the complexity of the multifaceted, multilayered processes of globalization have led to scholarly interest in accounting for how culture, language, and context intersect in our contemporary world.

This interest has led to an explosion of concepts and terminologies on language and society, including: Jorgensen’s (2008) “poly-lingual languaging,”

Blommaert’s (2008) “grassroots literacy,” Pennycook’s (2010) “metrolinguistics,”

The Council of Europe’s (2000) “plurilingualism,” Maher’s (2005) “metroethnicity,”

Robertson’s (1995) “glocalization,” Canagarajah’s (2013) “global contact zones,”

Blommaert and Rampton’s (2011) “superdiversity,” Dervin’s (2013) “international sociodigital interaction,” Coutant & Stenger’s (2011) “sociodigital,” Hannerz’

(1999) “culturespeak,” Farr’s (2011) “ethnolinguistic diversity,” Prensky’s (2001)

“digital natives” and “digital immigrants,” Paris’ (2011) “multiethnic youth spaces,”

Harris’ (2006) “new ethnicities,” and Street’s (2003) “complexity”.

Martin and Nakayama (1997) have come up with six imperatives or reasons for studying intercultural communication: technological, demographic, economic, peace, self-awareness, and ethical imperatives. (p. 18). Whether we wish to communicate interculturally or not, the increasing pace and intensity of global mobility means that, “we can no longer be culturally illiterate” (p. 4) and given that classrooms are hotbeds for language and cultural socialization, it is

important for students to engage in school-based curricular experiences which afford them intercultural competence.

Yet intercultural communication is not easy. In fact, Martin and Nakayama

(1997) have argued that perhaps not everyone wishes to communicate

interculturally, and it may perhaps be presumptive to imagine that everyone

wishes to communicate interculturally. To complicate matters, culture is a

contested site and cultural homogeneity does not exist; no two people from the

same culture are identical, which means that coming from the same culture in no

way guarantees smooth communication. There is also no definitive list of

solutions for apprehending potential challenges during intercultural contact

(Martin & Nakayama, 1997). This is in spite of the fact that, one will encounter

lists with stipulations for how to achieve intergroup understandings (see

examples in Stephan & Stephan, 1985). There are several factors that shape

intercultural communication, including antecedents of contact (Martin &

Nakayama, 1997), or our personal histories. Intercultural interactions are

characterized by differences in a number of sociocultural, relational, and

psychological, among other, characteristics.

People who are participating in intercultural communication may have

different worldviews, different interpretations for communication styles, different

values for good or bad or for what is acceptable and what is not, what is funny or

not funny, and different general perceptions and aspirations. What if they speak

the same language? Michael Agar (1994) has posed the following question: Why do people of different ethnic backgrounds talk in the “same” language but fail to understand each other?” (p. 225). Considering the notion of “frames” (Agar,

1994), it is possible that when people of different cultural orientations speak the same language, only a part of the “frame” travels or is understood. Put another way, “surface forms” of the frame (Gumperz cited in Agar, 1994, p. 225), which lack the intercontextual base that connects to the taken-for-granted meanings in a local setting, are the ones that get conveyed resulting in a missed opportunity to engage with meaning across difference.

Thus, people use surface forms which “might be hooked up to different frames” (p. 225) leading to disconnected communication or “rich points” (Agar,

1994). Agar’s notion of “languaculture” illustrates the entwinement of language and culture. Disconnects or disruptions in communication (between different languacultures) cause “rich points or [signal] frame differences” (p. 256) as people navigate each other’s languacultural meanings “from outside” (p. 205).

Language and culture, or Agar’s “languaculture,” and social relations (Ahearn,

2012) mediate the world. During intercultural encounters, people are likely to miscommunicate when these rich points emerge. Sometimes rich points can be overt and sometimes they are covert. I take up the concept of “languacultural differences” (Agar, 1994, p. 252) as I examine possible frame disconnects in the

Alaska-Kenya languacultural encounters within the collaboration.

The term “Global Englishes” (Crystal, 1997/2003) is an attempt to account for varieties of language that emanate from the global spread of English. A significant amount of communication in English is actually undertaken by so- called nonnative speakers of the language. Given the fact that multilingual speakers are more common than monolingual speakers, it may make more sense to study “pragmatic norms and values of multilingual speakers” (Kirkpatrick et al., 2013, p. 263) rather than study native speaker norms (Crystal, 1997). It is becoming increasingly difficult to justify a focus on monolingual, native-speaker orientation or nativeness especially when majority of English speakers are nonnative (Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013). Agar (1994) offers the following explanation, focusing on Indian English, for how “languaculture” intersects with this notion of

Englishes:

“Indian English is its own languaculture, with its own speech acts, its own

ties to Indian history and society, its own literature and media. Indian

English is a sign that in spite of all the distinct and strong national forces in

India, India the state is a languaculture too” (p. 219)

Languaculture is therefore tied to social identity, history, heritage and geospatial ideologies. Different communities (for instance the Indians in Agar’s explanation above or the Aleknagik-based and Nairobi-based students in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration) may use the same surface forms when they talk “but those forms might be hooked up to different frames” (p. 225). In the case of the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration students from both sides employed English as a lingua franca but the emergence of implicit and explicit rich points (or disconnected communication) in their communication signals this notion of Global Englishes.

Both implicit and explicit rich points are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in a world where mobility of people and their meanings continue to be the norm; this mobility is supported by an ever advancing transport and communication technology base. Given this ubiquity, rich points should not be interpreted as obstacles but as opportunities for learning. Such learning is realized through recontextualizing one’s frames. Upon becoming visible, rich points “inspire new frames, frames that make a new kind of discourse possible” (p. 209). Agar elaborates on this transformative advantage of richpoints by saying:

“Richpoints come into consciousness and inspire new frames, frames that

make a new kind of discourse possible…the new languaculture is a way to

change the world by changing what it is that can be thought, said, and

done” (p. 209)

Rich points are synonymous with unarticulated assumptions of one group which clash with those of another (Anderson & Corbett, 2013) where these clashes become visible as opportunities for frame reconceptualization.

Languacultural encounters can unsettle assumptions (or even disrupt stereotypes) of culturally held commonsensical “facts” about others. People deal

with new cultures in various ways, including, assimilation, separation, integration, and marginalization (Martin and Nakayama, 1997). Culture shock has been described as a feeling of disorientation, where one is uncomfortable because they are in an unfamiliar setting (Martin & Nakayama, 1997). Using Agar’s (1994) conceptualization, this lack of familiarity is caused by rich points which manifest themselves through frame disconnects that necessitate “frame building” (p. 215) in order for one to position oneself as being capable of engaging with the particular rich point.

Such an engagement can be understood as accessing different worlds, or coming to grips with multiple realities (Adler, 1998). The following is a list of some competencies that have been proposed in some scholarship on intercultural communication: “intercultural communicative competence” (Byram, 1997; Martin

& Nakayama, 1997; Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013, Scollon & Scollon, 2001),

“multicultural competence,” “multidialectal competence” (Canagarajah, 2006),

“symbolic competence” (Kramsch, 2006), “metacultural competence”

(Canagarajah, 2006; Sharifian, 2013), “transcultural competence” (MLA ad hoc committee on foreign languages, 2007), “communicative competence” (Hymes,

1974), “performative competence” (Canagarajah, 2013), and “strategic competence” (Canale & Swain, 1980 in Canagarajah, 2013).

Competence in language and culture predominate in this list of competencies. Canagarajah (2013) proposes “code meshing” as a conceptual

term for seamless mixing of linguistic resources in use arguing that the term de-

emphasizes boundaries between languages people in multilingual settings

speak. Such a de-emphasis is important since these languages are then presented as forming a linguistic repertoire that is available to a multilingual speaker. While making a case for multilingual normativity, Canagarajah (2013) argues that most communication occurs across language difference, a phenomenon which is discernible in non-formal spaces such as contact zones

(Pratt, 1991) outside the classroom. The sites for linguistic intersection in these multilingual interactions can be understood as global contact zones

(Canagarajah, 2013). Within these zones pluralism is the norm and interpretation, negotiation, and communication are framed by linguistic, cultural, and ethnic diversity. Pragmatic strategies realized through translingual competence and performative competence (Canagarajah, 2013) are among a host of competencies that speakers require. These competencies are based on the intersection of languages in use; a phenomena which Canagarajah (2013) refers to as language meshing.

Another way of looking at how ways of speaking intersect is through

considering the circulation of language while foregrounding the features of a

global setting that characterize this circulation. Fairclough (2006) explores the

subjectivity and ideological nature of the prevalent western-centric global

language, globalspeak (Kramsch, 2006). Some examples of this subjectivity are

visible in statements such as, global markets work best when oriented to western

traditions, and western democracy can be equated to prosperity. According to

Fairclough (2006), globalization is a change in “the scales on which social activity

and interaction take place, and in relationships between scales” (p. 21). The local and global are at different scales such that “‘re-scaling’ of particular spatial entities” (p. 22) would visualize spaces where people’s lived experiences are put at the center of global meaning making rather than peripheralize local lived experiences and perpetuate global ideological narratives. Re-scaling, which is

synonymous to relocalization (Pennycook, 2010), foregrounds lived experiences

and social practices thereby how societies and institutions can be understood.

Relocalization which emerges from the idea of language as practice (Pennycook,

2010) coheres with “languaging” (Swain, 2006) and makes the case of language

as action.

Blommaert (2010) who stresses the scalar metaphor as a heuristic for understanding contexts from different viewpoints, has criticized Fairclough (2006) for claiming to “talk about geopolitical globalization, yet he is talking about geocultural globalization” (p. 16). Fairclough (2006) proposes the inside/outside metaphor to illustrate how local spaces are impacted by globalization:

“…when processes of globalization affect a particular society such as a

nation state, a relationship is set up between the ‘outside’ and the ‘inside’

of that entity. This includes practices, network of practices, orders of

discourse, discourses, genres and/or styles which already exist ‘outside’

the entity…coming into contact with the ‘inside’.” (p. 34)

In order to account for mobility within globalizing contexts, the inside-outside

divide (Fairclough, 2006) and the scalar metaphor (Blommaert, 2010) should not

be interpreted as a simplistic dichotomy. Blommaert’s (2010) sociolinguistics of

mobile resources attempts to explain how this mobility impacts local, national,

and transnational scales. Seen through this lens of scales, globalization is

concurrently local and localizing (p. 101) and intersections occur through scale- jumping or moving from local scales to regional or global scales. Jessop

(1999/2002 in Fairclough, 2006) defines globalization as a “supercomplex series

of multicentric, multiscalar, multitemporal, multiform, and multicausal processes”

(p. 20). In this study, I take up the definition of globalization as a shorthand for

“intensified flows of capital, goods, people, images, and discourses around the

globe” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 13) fueled by advances in technology, political

systems, economic systems, electronic and print media…[resulting

in]…“geoculture” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 13).

Through globalization, people and resources constantly cross multiple,

multilevel, borders (see Blommaert’s (2010) scalar metaphor or Fairclough’s

(2006) inside/outside metaphor). These include various forms of cultural borders,

thereby creating increasingly complex notions of interculturality, multiculturality,

and transculturality (Sharifian, 2013). Also, the internet, which is a channel of

intercultural communication, has led to the emergence of socio-digital interactions (Dervin, 2013; Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013). Given the prevalence of these socio-digital encounters, it has become fairly commonplace to conceive of widespread intercultural encounters as a feature of globalization.

Due to constant mobility and change—coupled with the fact that globalization is an uncharted path—some scholars push for shifts in how research on language and/in society is conducted. The urgency of this push is epitomized in the imperative tones employed by scholars and educators as they advocate for methodological, conceptual, or framing shifts that would lead to, for example, re-thinking definitions of terms such as “context,” “culture,” and

“intercultural” (Dervin, 2013). The following excerpts are illustrative of some of these calls (to which this present dissertation responds):

“We need to shift “from a view in which language is narrowly tied to a

community, a time and a place…and in which language is primarily seen

as having local functions, to a view in which language exists in and for

mobility across space and time.” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 181)

“We need a more complex and dynamic orientation to context in order to

understand the spatiotemporal mobility of English.” (Canagarajah, 2013, p.

153)

What is the role of education in a pluralistic world? (Paris, 2011; Rose,

2012)

“As the world becomes increasingly interconnected…educators need to

find ways to help their students understand the…myriad experiences of

variously situated peoples…” (Morrell, 2008, p. 63)

“…globalization has altered the face of social, cultural and linguistic

diversity in societies all over the world…the multiculturalism of an earlier

era has been gradually replaced by what Vertovec (2007) calls ‘super-

diversity’...the predictability of the category of ‘migrant’ and of his/her

sociocultural features has disappeared.” (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011, p.

“…we need to consider what language users do with English…we need to

move beyond an image only of spread and adaptation, to include not only

pluralization (global Englishes and global hip-hops) but also an

understanding of the already local.” (Pennycook, 2010, p. 74)

Taken together, these scholars push scholarship in literacy studies and stakeholders to re-understand the dynamic, pluralistic nature of contemporary contexts which continues to re-contour the predictability of traditional categories.

Notably, within such dynamic contexts language is a robust and mobile resource

thus education experiences should afford students opportunities to engage

(through language and other means) with the disparate worldviews of others.

Importantly, the review of literature in this section culminates in the following

question which illustrates how this present study takes up the calls here: How does our appreciation of the constant mobility and change wrought by globalization influence the ways we understand cultural and linguistic diversity or how language is employed locally and beyond the local? Contemporary life is

“more loaded with rich points than it ever has been before” (Agar, 1994, p. 231), and the pursuit of mutual understanding is increasingly becoming important across cultural and other difference. This pursuit gives this dissertation impetus to explore and describe the strategies of intercultural communication as seen through language use by students in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

2.5 Conclusion

In this chapter I have reviewed literature in three sections, that is, considering the situatedness of literacy, considering literacy and intercultural communication, and considering the ramifications of the global context. In this brief conclusion I bring together the three sections to lay a scholarly backdrop for this dissertation.

Many studies have been undertaken to corroborate Street’s (1984) conceptualization of situated literacies. While this focus on contextualization continues to be important, scholars increasingly strive to move beyond contextualization towards examining how pertinent societal aspects intersect with

literacy. This dissertation instantiates such a pursuit by focusing how implicit and

explicit cultural practices intersect with intercultural communication as seen

through language use in a class-based literacy project. Additionally, the review of multilocale studies demonstrates some ways that scholarship considers how various influences circulate and intersect with one another and then converge on the site of social action (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). In the avoidance of the dichotomy created by the terms “local” and “global,” I employ the terms “local”

and “beyond-the-local” in exploring the interpenetration of various influences in

the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. By highlighting the pervasive (local and beyond-

local) influences of globalization and their terrain-altering capacity I examine how

mobility and change shape the languacultural landscape for students in both

Aleknagik and Nairobi.

Several questions were raised in this literature review especially in the 3rd

section whereby traditional conceptualizations of literacy, language, space,

communication, among others were challenged due to their inadequacy in

apprehending the realities of the globalizing world. In the following chapter, I

discuss, further, how these two spaces are concurrently local and beyond-the- local. Also, the review of SLA-based literature, offers some terminologies and

understandings that are helpful in the analysis of the computer-mediated Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. Likewise, Agar’s (1994) “languaculture,” “frames,”

“disconnects,” and “rich points,” are useful in visualizing and analyzing processes that characterize language use in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

Overall, Literacy Studies is an evolving field as scholarship engages with globalization processes that characterize contemporary life. This dissertation

(which is based on an online intercultural interaction between students in

Aleknagik, Alaska; and Nairobi, Kenya) seeks to illustrate—through analyzing an intercultural, multisite, online exchange between students in Alaska, and students in Kenya—how an intersection of intercultural communication and spatialized use of language, can respond to the pedagogical needs of literacy education in our globalizing society. The next chapter lays out a methodological framework for this dissertation.

Chapter 3: Methodology

3.1 Introduction

This chapter elaborates on the logic of inquiry employed in this

dissertation by describing the methodological approach that I employ in this

study. This approach entails using geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon &

Scollon, 2003) as an analytic tool, and three conceptual tools: Indexicality

(Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr & Song, 2011), languaculture (Agar,

1994), and local vs. supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002), to establish how situated cultural practices intersect with intercultural communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. In other words, in this chapter

I detail the inquiry approaches employed in this study in the examination of how implicit and explicit cultural practices intersect with intercultural communication as seen through the analysis of shared discourse by students in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration.

Geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) affords this study the capacity to examine interactional, visual, and place semiotics entailed

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in this collaboration. Indexicality (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr &

Song, 2011) is a useful conceptual tool for visualizing connections between language use and connections to contextual aspects. That is, indexical relations account for how language use is informed by linguistic, cultural, ideological and other aspects of context. As discussed in the previous chapter, languaculture

(Agar, 1994) conceptualizes the entwinement between language and culture based on the position that language is situated in a cultural context. Additionally, as hinted at in chapter 2 the concept of local and supralocal (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002), which I elaborate on in chapter four, accounts for the concurrently local and beyond-local nature of the two primary locales in this study: Aleknagik, and Nairobi.

This concept sidesteps the sense of a dichotomy that is sometimes evoked through terms such as “local vs. global.” Additionally, this concept is important when accounting for spatialized use of language through foregrounding how language use intersects with (among other situated factors) the geophysical location of interlocutors. That is, the ways people use language and their presumptions for communication intersect with sociocultural, political, and ideological positionality that comes from their geophysical locations, Indexicality is another concept that is essential in accounting for language use, more specifically, text-to-world connections in the ways that Aleknagikan and Nairobian students use language. In this study I establish how specific instances of

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language (taken from students’ general language use) demonstrate links

between language and cultural/ideological/conceptual etc., aspects of context.

Taken together, these two concepts (indexicality and local/supralocal) are

consequential in visualizing ideological, cultural, conceptual, etc., worlds

inscribed within language. These inscribed worlds have a bearing on meaning

sharing and meaning making. Overall, the conceptual and analytical tools

highlighted here form the centerpiece of my methodological approach.

This chapter enumerates on these and on other hallmarks of methodology

employed by this study in response to the following research questions:

1 What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration?

2 What understandings of the intersections between intercultural

communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from

analyzing these strategies?

3 Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy?

This chapter is divided into nine sections. This introductory part is the first section. In section two, I explore how this dissertation takes up ethnography of communication (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) in the study of culturally and socially situated language use. The fundamental features of ethnography of communication include “having a comparative frame, long term participation and observation, multiple methods [and] generation of theory” (Athanases & Heath,

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1995, p. 267). This section explains how these features characterize this

dissertation. In this study, I adopt an ethnographic perspective as opposed to

doing ethnography and using ethnographic tools (Bloome & Green, 1996).

Therefore, this section explains how this present study is rooted in scholarship on

interactional sociolinguistics (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2012) and ethnography of communication (Hymes & Gumperz, 1972). The section highlights how understandings of culturally and socially situated inquiry on language (Ahearn,

2012; Duranti, 1997; Heath & Street, 2008) inform this present study. Hymes’

(1972) conceptualization of communicative competence is at the heart of my examination of language use by students in the Alaska-Kenya intercultural collaboration. Additionally, to make sense of situatedness of language use, I will consider how local and supra local (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore,

2002) epistemologies impact meaning-making. Overall, this section will highlight some key aspects of ethnography of communication including multiplicity, indexicality, language as practice, and language ideology (Ahearn, 2012) among others which underpin this dissertation’s logic of inquiry.

Section three examines the selection of focal participants for this

dissertation. The section discusses Mitchell’s (1984) notion of telling cases as a

preferable way of identifying participants for this dissertation from amongst those

in the wider pool of participants in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, that is, the basis for focusing on a subset of 6 students (3 from Alaska and 3 from Kenya)

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out of the 36 students who participated in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Also covered in this section is a discussion of how I arrived at site selection in this multi-locale Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

Section four comprises a reflexive enumeration of my positionality and engagement as teacher researcher and researcher teacher (Yeager, 2006), and as an embedded ethnographer (Green et al., 2014) in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. I therefore consider the impact of my participation in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration through examining how my position as a teacher within the collaboration influences my data gathering, analysis, and interpretation. This consideration requires that I reflect on my role in student-teacher interactions

(during the Alaska-Kenya exchange and during the post-project reflection stage).

It is important to note how “culture, context, and the positionality of researchers influence their assumptions, questions, findings and interpretations” (Banks,

2006, p. 780). Reflecting on such influence is particularly crucial in social sciences where researchers’ impact can crystalize aspects of social, cultural, economic or even political contexts and situatedness (Banks, 2006).

In section five, I detail instrumentation and data collection procedures employed in this study. These include collection of archival data and cultural artifacts such as, photos, maps, and the globe; conducting semi-formal individual, and group interviews; using post-project online synchronous chat, video conferencing, instant messaging; using asynchronous email interviewing;

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and observation. This section also makes a case for the goodness of fit between instrumentation methods and research questions.

In section six, I explore data analysis methodology in two subsections as follows: a. Analytic tool: In this part I examine geosemiotic discourse analysis

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003) as an appropriate tool for analyzing the various forms of data, interactional, visual, and place semiotics, in the study. In other words, this analytic tool makes it possible to examine aspects of the material world that include intersecting social interactions, the design and layout of visual signs, and the natural and man-made geophysical environment. The section discusses the three main components of geosemiotic discourse analysis: interaction order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 8). b. Conceptual framework: In this part I discuss three conceptual frameworks that I employ to make sense of the data analysis in this study. These are Frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998) and languaculture (Agar, 1994), indexicality

(Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011; Farr & Song, 2011) and local- supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002). These frameworks facilitate an understanding of the entwinement of language and culture, the indexical connections between language and context, and the spatialized nature of language use in the analysis of meaning sharing and making in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration.

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Section seven makes a case for the validity and reliability of this present study by discussing some features of the study. These include triangulation and etic-emic collaborative data analysis as a corroborating mechanism. I identify some important verification procedures including prolonged engagement, authenticity of participants, persistent observation (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), and discuss the benefits of a multi-site design in relation to validity and reliability. I argue that findings from the interpretation of data analysis in this study are consistent and dependable given that several instrumentation procedures complemented each other. Section eight presents ethical considerations in undertaking this dissertation: I briefly describe the use of informed consent and IRB procedures, and other pertinent issues including, the fear of memory loss (given that the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration happened eight years prior to this present study), data de-identification, and confidentiality. Section nine concludes this chapter by reiterating key points in terms of methodology while bridging this chapter with chapter 4 (description of primary sites).

3.2 Methodological Framework

This study is informed by ethnography of communication (Gumperz &

Hymes, 1972) which holds that one has to consider situated social contexts in which language is produced when studying language in use. One of the traditional hallmarks of ethnography of communication is the investigation of communicative habits of an identified group or community (Hymes, 1964). The

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primary community which I focus on is the students who took part in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. In this dissertation I approach language use and

communication by this group “as [being] integral to social context and function”

(Hymes, 1964, p. 8). It is for this reason that I employ languaculture (Agar, 1994) among other conceptual tools to crystallize this integral connection. Put another

way, in this study I investigate language use as a culturally situated practice

(Duranti, 1997) while recognizing that rather than being tied to a community, a

time and a place, language is a mobile resource (Blommaert, 2010).

Several scholars (Ahearn, 2012; Cazden, 1988; Duranti, 1997; Gumperz &

Cook-Gumperz, 1980; Hymes, 1972) have proposed that knowledge of

interactional contexts is important in understanding how discourse circulates

within social spaces. Based on an interactional approach to language behavior

(Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2012), this dissertation examines discourse structures entailed in meaning-making across cultural difference in the Alaska-

Kenya online collaboration. Within this collaboration, there are two primary local spaces characterized by diverse communicative repertoires which are regularly employed in the course of interaction (Duranti, 1997; Gumperz, 1964). Thus, interpreting communicative acts between students in these two spaces necessitates among other processes an exploration of the language user’s background (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972).

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For this reason, I have put in place three strategies which collectively illuminate on students’ backgrounds. Firstly, in addition to the archival data

produced by the collaboration, I pursue post project reflexive interactions

(together with study participants who are former students and who took part in

the collaboration eight years ago). Secondly, I employ Agar’s (1994) concept of

languaculture and indexicality (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011;

Farr & Song, 2011) to contextualize cultural meanings and social relations

entailed in language use by the students. Even though the Aleknagik and Nairobi

students communicated using the same language (English), through acts of

communication “language is constituted, challenged and changed” (Duranti,

1997). Thus within social acts of communication, culture and social relations are

contingent upon interaction. This contingency is evidenced by the emergence of

different meanings and understandings by students from the two sides even

though they were using English as a lingua franca. By further implication, these

emergent differences in meanings and understandings disrupt the hegemony of a

homogenous conceptualization of English by supporting the conceptualization of

Englishes (Crystal, 2003).

Through these strategies and considerations, I attempt to unravel the

“multiple relations between linguistic means and social meaning” (Hymes, 1972,

p. 39) because language is “socially embedded and culturally influenced”

(Ahearn, 2012, p. 11). One of these relations is between place and language;

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place can be filtered through language thereby influencing meaning-making

(Basso, 1996 cited in Ahearn, 2012). Another relation can be discerned in the multifunctional nature of language (Ahearn, 2012; Jakobson, 1960) which is complicated further by intercultural interactions. This additional complexity occurs

because “cultures have their own organizing principles that emerge through the

linguistic and social interactions of individuals who…embody and enact social

structures and cultural patterns” (Ahearn, 2012, p. 25; see also Bauman &

Sherzer, 1975).

In Hymesian nomenclature, the Alaska-Kenya intercultural collaboration amounts to an interactional situation, which is an approximation of “speech situation” (Hymes, 1972), which constructed a social context for students from

both Aleknagik and Nairobi to communicate with each other. In some cases,

cultural difference emerged through the use of culturally-situated terms thereby

generating peer-to-peer questions. On several occasions, the two teachers (Mr.

Collins and me) did not know the answers to questions that their students were

asking regarding meanings that their peers had shared (for example, when

students in Nairobi asked me how a seal is prepared in Alaska; when students in

Aleknagik asked Mr. Collins about the kinds of food students eat in Kenya). The

teachers referred students to their exchange partners for answers. Referring

students to their peers for answers is instrumental in unravelling situated cultural

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meanings within language (Hymes, 1972). This pedagogical move also confirms

that students are competent practitioners or experts of their cultures.

This idea of “students as experts” is supported further by Hymes’

(1964/1972) notion of “communicative competence” which accounts for how students had knowledge of linguistic, cultural and social functioning of their groups in ways that were appropriate and effective for communication (Bauman

& Sherzer, 1975, p. 108). Given that competence is dependent upon both tacit knowledge and ability for use (Hymes, 1972), students arguably displayed this

knowledge and ability while participating as social actors (Duranti, 1997) who

shared local meanings with their beyond-local peers. Also, when students used

some words from their native language or local versions of English in their

correspondence with their peers, this usage constructed a native or local identity

(Blom & Gumperz, 1972).

Overall, this present study is grounded in ethnography of communication

(Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) as its methodological framing. This study is

characterized by the following four principles:

1. In both chapter 4 (description of primary sites) and chapter 5 (presentation

of data), I offer an extended description of context, events, and processes

in line with Geertz’ (1973) notion of “thick description” as I bring out

patterns of intercultural communication and sociocultural life within specific

contexts (Ahearn, 2012; Bauman & Sherzer, 1975; Heath & Street, 2008).

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In this regard, I employ the concept of local and supralocal (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) to account for spatialized use of

language.

2. Through presentation and analysis of data in chapter 5, I explore

connections of language, culture and social relations (Agar, 1994; Ahearn,

2012; Duranti, 1997; Hymes, 1972) based on the premise that culture

“never just “is,” but instead “does”” (Heath & Street, 2008, p. 7). This

exploration enables me to account for robust ways in which students, in

this study, employed language to share descriptions of a local sense of

self and place.

3. Given my role as researcher and having taught students in this exchange,

I reflexively engage in positioning myself as teacher-researcher and

researcher-teacher (Yeager, 2006), and insider-outsider (Banks, 2006). I

am concurrently an insider and outsider (that is, I am a participant in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration and teacher of the Kenyan students hence

insider, and I am non-Native to Alaska, non Yup’ik, and generationally not

in the same age bracket as student participants thus outsider). A

significant reflexive approach that I employ is by making the familiar

strange (Sunstein & Chiseri-Strater, 2002) through various strategies of

self-distancing and questioning.

4. I examine the communicative competence (Hymes, 1972) of the Alaska-

Kenya collaborators through analyzing the shared discourse produced

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within the collaboration and the metadiscourse produced during post

project reflection eight years after the actual exchange. To do this, I

employ geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) as an

analytic tool, and some conceptual tools: indexicality (Eckert, 2008),

Languaculture (Agar, 1994), and local vs. supralocal (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002). The term “exchange” aptly captures

the reciprocal and social aspects of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration

whereby students shared situated meanings of self and place with others

who were outside their locale. Meaning making in the collaboration was

contingent upon engagement with the other’s culturally and spatially

rooted meanings. Describing the collaboration as “an exchange” is

instrumental in accounting for the back-and-forth meaning sharing and

meaning making processes within the Alaska-Kenya intercultural

communication.

Finally, the basic unit of analysis in this study is not the language or the individual but the group (Hymes, 1972). That is, student participants of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration form the primary group in this study. In the following section I discuss how I selected a sample from the pool of participants and describe the sites entailed.

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3.3 Selection of Participants and Site

My selection of the primary research sites (Aleknagik, Alaska and Nairobi,

Kenya) was predetermined by the geographical locations of the two schools engaged in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. This predetermination is synonymous to a “follow the thing” approach (Marcus, 1995, p. 106) where an aspect of the study determines the sites. A follow-the-thing approach is essential in investigating social phenomena in a “world system” (p. 96) or global system because it is responsive towards “transformed locations of cultural production” (p.

97). It therefore offers a shift from the traditional notion of the subaltern towards the prevalent reality of interconnectedness and global mobility. This shift is helpful for this present study which is interested in spatialized use of language in a contemporary globalizing world. Thus, in this multisite study (Marcus, 1995) I undertake an inquiry that “follows the thing” based on the premise that “the global is an emergent dimension of arguing about the connection among sites in a multisited ethnography” (p. 99).

More specifically, this multilocale or multisite study has two primary sites and three secondary sites. Middlebury College; where Mr. Collins and I learned online classroom exchange pedagogy, is a secondary site. This is also the seat of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), a network of teachers who are currently students or alumni of Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English

(BLSE) and who engage in year-round collegial networking and interclass

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collaborations around literacy. Mr. Collins and I (together with some BLSE faculty) were members of BLTN. Unlike some traditional ethnographies which have been based upon the idea that sites are synonymous with physical localities

(Geertz, 1973), I argue that given the impact of globalization (in particular the role of the internet in mediating and housing communicative events) researchers on language in society have to expand the notion of “sites” beyond geophysical spaces to include virtual ethnography (Wittel, 2000).

Such a shift points to ethnography on the move (Wittel, 2000) and depends on “thick description” (Geertz, 1973) to crystallize context(s) entailed.

Such a shift also entails considering social connections, roles and participation of various actors in production, mobilization and transportation of information

(Wittel, 2000). In this regard, this study of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration combines a consideration of cyber space (i.e. BreadNet) and physical spaces.

“BreadNet” is the name of the electronic interface which connected the two groups of students via email exchanges. This study considers the various sites entailed and foregrounds the two primary sites to allow for a more thorough consideration of situated use of language. Additionally, rather than discuss the technical aspects of BreadNet, or the uptake of online intercultural pedagogy as taught at Middlebury College (see Wood, 2000 for a dissertation on this), I examine the shared discourse in the collaboration. This study is interested in this shared discourse to unpack the impact of culture on uptake through exploring the

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situated nature of meanings that were proposed, recognized, acknowledged, and

interactionally accomplished (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993; Castanheira et

al., 2001). Briefly, the multisites entailed in this study are:

1. Primary sites, the geophysical locations of the 2 schools involved in the

online collaboration, that is, a suburb in Nairobi, Kenya; and Aleknagik, a

village in the Yukon Kuskokwim delta on the south western part of Alaska.

2. Secondary sites: these included BreadNet (a virtual site), which is the

online interface that housed the Alaska-Kenya electronic exchange; and

BLSE, Middlebury College, Vermont, where Mr. Collins and I learned

about electronic exchange pedagogy. This is also the epicenter of the

Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLSE).

The multisite nature of this study is instrumental in illustrating mobility of

resources, people and meanings, which are features of globalization (Blommaert

& Rampton, 2011). Figure 3.1 below illustrates a time line of the primary and secondary sites.

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Fig 3.1: A Time line of the Primary and Secondary Sites

Moving from left to right in figure 3.1, the time line depicts a stage when the two groups were not interacting with each other, a stage when the two teachers met at BLSE and BLTN and devised the collaboration, a stage of the collaboration

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itself, and the eventual dispersal by everyone after the collaboration ended after

which former students were invited to participate in this present study.

With regard to selection of participants, the primary participants derived

from a pool of 20 middle school students in Nairobi, 16 middle school students in

Aleknagik, and the two teachers (Mr. Collins and me). Secondary participants

include instructors at Middlebury College and resource people (in some cases family and friends of the primary participants). Thirty six students participated in

the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. The authenticity of participants and their

identities are, therefore, verifiable to guard against inauthentic participants or

self-misrepresentation which is a challenge of online research (Clandinin &

Connelly, 2000; Lee, 2006).

Initially I was in touch (electronically) with five of my former students (from

Kenya) who took part in the collaboration. When I contacted them and requested

their participation, as per institutional review board (IRB) consenting process,

they all responded in the affirmative and unbeknown to me, some of them got in

touch with their former classmates narrating how I had invited them to take part

in a study. Before long, I started receiving communication from other former

students asking to join and subsequently, 12 out of the 20 students on the

Kenyan side consented to participate in this study. I also got in touch with

participants on the Aleknagik, Alaska side and one expressed willingness to

participate. After further mediation by Mr. Collins the number rose to two and

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during my field trip to Alaska I connected with three others bringing the number of participants from Alaska to five. Overall, my membership in the collaboration, as a teacher on the Nairobi side of the exchange, was helpful in negotiating entry and building rapport with participants (Athanases & Heath, 1995).

The specific case-study approach which I have employed in selecting a subset of participants to focus on in this particular study represents “telling cases” (Mitchell, 1984). While there are other case study designs that have been proposed, such as Stake’s (2003) “collective case study,” or Patton’s (1990)

“purposeful sampling,” I prefer to employ Mitchell’s (1984) “telling cases approach.” According to Patton (1990), a purposeful sample is a subset that is information-rich in ways that address the purpose of the study. Selecting “telling cases” from the overall sample is based on the notion that such cases contain prominent themes or features that are relatable across the rest of the participant pool (Mitchell, 1984).

Mitchell (1984) defines telling cases as strategically selected cases (from an available pool) whereby their context and characteristics “serve to make previously obscure theoretical relationships suddenly apparent” (p. 239). While there were secondary participants in this study, for example, faculty at BLSE,

BreadNet staff, Yup’ik elders, and family friends, the telling cases sample comprises three former students from Aleknagik and three from Nairobi

(presented in table 3.1 below). Based on analysis of shared discourse by these

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telling cases, I examine how communicative strategies intersect with mobility of languages, meanings, and other communicative resources. This analysis also makes visible ways in which opportunities for intercultural class-based communication shapes pedagogy. Thus, other than me—as observer-participant- teacher-ethnographer—my primary participants in this study are as follows:

From Aleknagik, Alaska.

Name* Racial or Current Current Other name or ethnic Location status identity identity*** Jasmyn Yup’ik. Human Yup’ik name is Tugatuk Aleknagik resource Iquarta AK recruiting Nickname is intern Spirit Nate Yup’ik. San Yup’ik name is Andrews Self Francisco employed Ayak’aq identifies as CA “a worldly person” Yup’ik. Yup’ik name is Deanna Anchorage Married. Nemak Nicholai AK (stay at Nickname is home Cha-cha mother)

Mr. Collins White/ Boston, MA Teacher (teacher) caucasian.

Continued

Table 3.1: Demographic descriptors of the main participants

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Table 3.1 continued

From Nairobi, Kenya. Shayda Ethnicity Student Wacu =Kikuyu. Nairobi Bachelor of Nickname is Njenga Self Kenya Business Shishi identifies as Admininstrati “Nairobian” on

Patrick Kalu Ethnicity = Undergradu Miji Kenda Dubai UAE ate in Nickname is Self Journalism PK identifies as “Nairobian” Fareen 3rd Pirani generation Jo’burg Modelling Nickname is Pakistani. South and fashion Funny P Ethnicity = Africa design. Urdu Self identifies as “Nairobian” In Kenya she is identified as “asian” David Ethnicity = Columbus Doctoral Wandera Luhya OH candidate (teacher)

*All names in this dissertation other than my own are pseudonyms. **The demographic descriptors for sex are taken from school admission records *** On the Alaskan side, they do not self-identify using the racial labels, “black” or “white” etc. On the Kenyan side, these labels are not prominent as demographic descriptors.

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At the beginning of the colaboration, Mr. Collins and I paired up students

for the entire duration of the Alaska-Kenya exchange. Due to the incommensurate numbers (20 students in Nairobi and 16 in Aleknagik), four

students from Aleknagik had two exchange partners from Nairobi. Additionally,

upon being invited to participate in this present study, Nate and Jasmyn, from

Aleknagik, and Patrick, Shayda and Fareen from Nairobi expressed strong

interest in beign a part of the study. Over the duration of data collection they

offered copious reflections. These students therefore became anchor cases

(Mitchell, 1984). Deanna was then sought and recruited to complete the fixed

pairs as per the online exchange. Thus, during the online exchange the telling

case group of six had been paired up as follows:

(pair 1) Jasmyn Tugatuk (Aleknagik)…….. Patrick Kalu (Nairobi) (pair 2) Nate Andrews (Aleknagik)……….. Shayda Wacu Njenga (Nairobi) (pair 3) Deanna Nicholai (Aleknagik)…….. Fareen Pirani (Nairobi) I present these students as telling cases cautiously recognizing that culture is

situated, dynamic, and contingent. They are not representative cases. An

analysis of data based on these focal participants throws into relief some

overarching concepts which this study explores. Where need be, I will highlight

any disconnections or disparities, for example, where data from these telling

cases departs from general patterns or tendencies observed in the rest of the

data. In the following section I consider my role as researcher in this study.

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3.4 Role of the Researcher

Every social sciences researcher brings to their study a “constellation of cultural meaning making” (Anderson-Levitt, 2006, p. 281) as they attempt to establish and negotiate rapport with insiders (Anderson-Levitt, 2006). The following description of my philosophical basis and my involvement attempts to make visible some aspects of this constellation of cultural meanings that I bring

to this study. To begin, in this project I take up the role of an embedded ethnographer (Green et al., 2014), functioning concurrently as teacher

researcher and as a researcher teacher (Yeager, 2006). This study also

instantiates practitioner inquiry (Cochran-Smith & Donnell, 2006) where I function

as practitioner and researcher and where the professional context (classroom

space and interactions) is the site for study. Central to this study is the

conceptualization of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration as a literacy event (Barton &

Hamilton, 1998; Heath, 1983; Moss, 1994; Street, 1984) mediated through online

communication.

By the time I undertook the Alaska-Kenya collaboration project with Mr.

Collins (the teacher in Aleknagik), I had engaged in at least five similar projects between different classes I had taught and classes in other parts of the world.

Therefore, I am an insider (Banks, 2006; Hymes, 1972) and participant in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration with experience in online collaborations. Guided by

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an ethnographic perspective (Bloome & Green, 1996), I attempt to step back from ethnocentrism by building into this present study a reflexive collaborative analysis of archival data. This reflexive analysis, which is based on interviewing

participants eight years after the collaboration, is informed by Tobin et al.’s

(2009) notion of ethnographic data-cued approaches, specifically, video-cued

multivocal ethnography (as explained in the section on instrumentation and data

collection) where participants were interviewed 20 years after an initial study.

Thus, past participants (formerly students in Alaska and in Kenya) reflexively

examine archival data or comment on the collaboration in general.

At the time we were engaging in the actual exchange, there was no plan

or intention to revisit the collaboration for purposes of a future analysis. Years

later, I returned to this project as a sociolinguist interested in the intersection

between language, education and society seeking to examine the intercultural

nature of classroom-based interactions. I became interested in language use

within the Alaska-Kenya collaboration in light of globalization and mobility, I myself living a transnational life. I therefore returned to a classroom project which resonated with many of my questions on globalization, language, and literacy to examine meaning sharing and making in curricular-based online collaborations.

While the curriculum which we were using at the private school in Kenya

(the British National Curriculum stage (BNC) had explicit goals and objectives, there was some latitude for the teacher to determine experiences to include to

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supplement curricular content. Students in grades 7, 8, and 9 were considered to

be in BNC. I therefore included the Alaska-Kenya collaboration to supplement the teaching of integrated English for my grade 9 students. Broadly speaking, (and as evidenced by lesson plans, schemes of work, and field notes) we intended for the Alaska-Kenya collaboration to become a site for students to practice and explore previously learned content thereby making it a writing-based exchange.

This writing included (also see fig 3.1 above):

a) Letter writing (formal and informal)

b) Descriptive writing

c) Writing for an audience (and implementing various tones in writing)

d) Poetry writing (employing various features of style, content and structure)

e) Analytical writing.

Mr. Collins and I envisaged that the collaboration would give our students various opportunities to experiment with and practise language use. Digital images, pictures, textual compositions, etc., from the Alaska-Kenya collaboration were archived electronically on the secure BreadNet system.

At the time I undertook the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, I had been appointed as an advanced skills teacher in charge of staff professional development. My role was to guide other teachers in pedagogical improvement by modelling innovative teaching, assisting in documentation of teaching initiatives, and reflecting on pedagogy. One pedagogical approach which I

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employed in several of my classes is the online exchange whereby I planned collaboration experiences for my classes and other classes in different parts of the world. Besides Alaska, my other classes collaborated with students in

Mumbai, India; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Johannesburg, South Africa; Junno,

Alaska. At that time, I was undertaking a summer Master’s program at Bread

Loaf School of English (BLSE) Middlebury College, Vermont, where I had taken seminars on classroom exchange pedagogy (see appendix C for the course description of the graduate seminar which Mr. Collins and I took where we learned about online pedagogy). Mr. Collins and I were also members of the

Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), a network connecting educators (faculty,

Bread Loaf students who were teachers during the year) and their students (see appendix D for information from the BLTN website regarding its aims and objectives).

Given my exposure to Middlebury College Bread Loaf School of English

(BLSE) and the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN), my teaching philosophy was constructed around the pursuit of exploratory, democratic, student-centered learning spaces. I planned experiences to expose my students to peers in other parts of the world so that they could benefit from rich conversations across geographical and cultural difference. I had taught the 20 students who took part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration since they were in grade seven. This

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collaboration, which took the format of the BLTN signature online class exchange format, was anchored in the mainstream curriculum, Integrated English syllabus.

The Bread Loaf Teacher network (BLTN) is a learning community connected via an online communication interface called BreadNet. It is a national and international network of teachers whose home base is the Bread Loaf School of English (BLSE), at the Ripton, Vermont campus of Middlebury College, and who plan classroom exchanges and other collaborative projects during the summer. Then, they complete these projects during the school year while staying in touch with each other via BreadNet. Being members of BLTN meant that Mr.

Collins and I attended weekly gatherings (in addition to the graduate seminar) where we were a part of collegial discussions on advocacy literacy projects.

Philosophically, Mr. Collins and I were predisposed towards democratic, participatory, emancipatory education through agentive use of literacy (Freire,

1970). We both uphold the notion that students are resources in the classroom and celebrate the benefits of sociocultural (Vygotsky, 1978) teaching and learning. Given this ideological positioning and our membership in BLTN and

BLSE, Mr. Collins and I were not only highly motivated to undertake the Alaska-

Kenya exchange, we had a collegial resource network to count on for support and guidance.

A couple of years after the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, I left the school in

Nairobi to pursue a doctoral program but maintained contact with several of my

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former students, including some students in the class which had undertaken the

Alaska-Kenya exchange. These students would occasionally write me emails mentioning some of the experiences we used to have in class and among several projects and moments, they recalled the Alaska-Kenya collaboration with some fair degree of frequency. I continued to immerse myself in Anthropological

Sociolinguistics and became interested in some of the recollections (based on this project) by my former students. At least three of them continued to ask questions regarding some of the Yup’ik phenomenon they had experienced in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration. I maintained a comparatively greater contact with former students on the Kenyan side of the exchange (whom I had taught from grade 7 through to 11) than on the Alaskan side.

In her study of writing exchanges among four schools in the USA and four in the UK, Freedman (1994) found that teachers in the UK who taught a cohort group and moved with them from one grade to the next appeared to have an enduring personal connection with their students in comparison to teachers in the

US where students would be taught by several teachers. The “U.S. teachers in the writing exchange were particularly envious of these structures that helped the

British teachers get to know their students and build strong intellectual communities” (p. 208). It is, perhaps, these kinds of structures alluded to by

Freedman (1994) that connected me to my former students whom I had taught for five years.

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Given my extensive engagement with the Alaska-Kenya project, I consider myself an indigenous-insider (Banks, 2006); someone who endorses the values, perspectives, and beliefs of the former students from Kenya and is considered by them as an authentic and authoritative participant in the community. However with regard to the former students from Alaska, given that I have only been to

Alaska once during field work for this study, and also given my awareness and close involvement in the formulation of the Alaska-Kenya exchange, I straddle the insider-outsider (Banks, 2006) line. My knowledge of the pedagogical basis of interclass collaborations, my awareness of the structuring of online exchanges, my membership in BLTN, and my participation as a BLSE graduate student make me an insider. This insider status is enforced by my numerous experiences

I have had with online classroom collaboration initiatives. However my disparate generational (age) bracket from students in both settings, my lack of experience with or intuitive awareness of various intersecting influences that impact sociopolitical and ecological life in the Alaskan tundra, and my lack of a comprehensive insider indigenous knowledge of Alaskan (more specifically

Yup’ik) ways of being and doing, are among factors that render me an outsider.

Straddling Bank’s (2006) various typologies (indigenous-insider and indigenous-outsider) is indicative of the increasingly complex roles and positions that researchers have to take since being indigenous (or not) is complicated by the messiness of community set-ups in a globalizing world. Given various forces

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of globalization, such as, mobility of people and systems, ethnographers may find that they are insiders to some degree when studying formal schooling (among other aspects of lifestyle) which have become relatively uniform and ubiquitous around the globe (Anderson-Levitt, 2006, p. 286). They may however be concurrently positioned as outsiders in spaces characterized by diverse or unfamiliar cultures. In the course of collecting data during the post-project reflection phase, I made field records in written, audio and photographic form.

During my field work in Alaska, it became clear from the very many questions which the Yup’ik participants asked me, that being from Africa I made them very curious (Are you sure you are from Africa? How far is it to Africa? What animals do you eat? How do you hunt in Africa?). I too was curious about my participants and this mutual curiosity led to longer interviews than was originally intended.

3.5 Instrumentation and Data Collection Procedures

As stated in the introduction, there are two types of data in this dissertation; archival data most of which was electronically produced in the course of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, and post project reflections which are data-cued reflexive examinations of the archived data (generated eight years after the actual collaboration). Thus, the archived data was generated when the students were approximately 14 years of age and while they were at school, in

Aleknagik and Nairobi, whereas post project reflections were solicited and gathered when the collaboration participants were former students and were

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approximately 21 years old. At the time of post project reflections, all students had moved onwards from the two schools; some had moved on to tertiary institutions of learning, some to different jobs and professions, marriage and so forth. Some had moved to different parts of their country and others lived abroad.

The following data collection instruments were employed in this dissertation:

a) Assembling archived data: this entailed retrieval of all emails between the

two groups, lesson preparation documents (lesson plans and schemes of

work) and various artifacts that were prominent in the collaboration (such

as the maps and globes employed by both Aleknagik and Nairobi classes

as orienting devices to establish relative geographical position between

the two groups).

b) Retrieved observation: I retrieved Mr. Collins’ and my own notes based

on observations we made as the collaboration was on-going. These were

in the form of descriptions of the collaboration which we presented at

BLTN meetings. They also included observations of video recordings of

Aleknagik students at the Smithsonian in Washington DC and notes from

Nairobi students’ presentations of the project at a school open house

forum.

c) Interview: This is a crucial method of data collection in ethnography of

communication (Duranti, 1997; Heath & Street, 2008; Gumperz & Hymes,

1972) especially because interviews provide an interactional site where

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etic and emic perspectives intersect and lead to collaboratively constructed understandings of folk culture (Hymes, 1972), implicit cultural practices (O’Rourke, 2007; Tobin et al., 2009) or folk pedagogy (Brunner,

1996).

I employed open ended questions in semi-structured interviews, in some cases using technology to mediate the distance between me and participants; I used face-to-face interviews, video-conferencing on Skype and Google Hangout, instant message interviewing on Facebook, Skype instant messaging, MSN chat, and in one case an asynchronous email based interview. Interviews were recorded in text and/or audio-recorded and later transcribed for analysis. I adopted data-cued ethnography as employed by Tobin et al., (2009) to elicit perspectives of participants.

Tobin et al. (2009) presented selected video clips (produced from data taken from Japan, China, and USA) to participants and asked them to comment on whether what they saw in the videos was typical or atypical of preschools in their country. Their comments then led to classroom- based dialogue (Twiner et al., 2014) that highlighted cultural similarities and/or differences between preschools in the three countries. Tobin et al. also surveyed several other people in these countries to triangulate data.

For this present study, I started interviewing participants by placing some of the archived data in front of participants and asking them to first of all remind themselves about the collaboration and then make any

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comment regarding anything that stood out or that they wished to comment on. Their initial comments then led to an organic dialogue

(Twiner et al., 2014) about various aspects of the collaboration. When I was in Alaska, I however found myself asking an additional opening question; who talks about Africa in Aleknagik or in Alaska? The reason for this question was to open the floor for conversation about any kinds of exposure to Africa which students in Aleknagik may have had before participating in the writing collaboration with students in Africa. My analysis of data from these interviews is based on the assumption that going back and looking at the eight year old data from the collaboration entailed reconstructing meaning through collaborative reflexivity because interviews amount to an interactional relationship where participants and researchers engage in ongoing meaning-making (Brenner, 2006; Kvale,

1996). I employed open-ended questions to allow various participants to highlight a wide range of aspects which struck them as significant.

I contacted participants and arranged meetings for face-to-face interviews; in some cases more than one of these to supplement prior instant chat message interviews and asynchronous email interviews. I visited all sites (both primary and secondary). I also surfed BreadNet for data. During my data collection visit to Alaska, some secondary participants were instrumental in helping me to arrange meetings between me and some of the former students from Aleknagik (whom I

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had never physically met). Listening and being mindful of the participants’

needs is an important aspect of the ethnographic process (Ahearn, 2012;

Anderson-Levitt, 2006; Heath & Street, 2008; Duranti, 1997). I therefore

tried to respond to questions participants in Alaska had about me and

being from Africa. There were some other people (family and friends)

present at the several meetings I had with Yup’ik participants and who

also had questions for me. I also realized that my Yup’ik participants were

not receptive to interviews during meals. Over the course of several

meetings I was able to undertake semi formal and informal interviews in

naturalistic conversations.

Post project reflection interviewing was undertaken over a period of 9

months since in several cases there were follow-up interviews where I

sought further clarification and elaboration. Participants live in different

parts of the world necessitating a robust interview-strategy which

employed several media; face-to-face, online chat, video conferencing,

and asynchronous emailing. Oral interviews were audio recorded and

transcribed. d) Field notes: while interacting with participants during the post project

reflexive phase of data gathering, I wrote field notes to capture my

immediate thoughts. Field notes from my Alaskan field work also included

some Yup’ik words that my participants taught me, for example, “waqaa,”

“kass’aq,” and “quyana”.

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e) Video recording and photographic data: during my visit to Alaska, Nairobi

and Middlebury VT, I took several pictures and documented some data in

the form of motion and still imaging. These included scenic and place

pictures and pictures of cultural artifacts (for example, books, hunting

tools, menus, and four wheelers). There is also archival data in the form

of video and still imaging.

f) Document collection: I collected lesson plans, schemes of work, picture

books of stories about Africa, a DVD of a documentary based on Alaska

which a participant highlighted as being consequential. I also collected

photos of cultural objects mentioned by students in their exchanges (x

box and play station, a hunting gun, four wheeler etc.), photos of menus,

music DVDs, images of malls, etc.

From these instrumentation procedures, I collected various types of data, such as, text, artifacts, images and transcripts of post-project reflections. There are two main categories of data in this study: a) Archival data. These data were produced by middle school students engaged in the Alaska-Kenya online intercultural collaboration eight years ago. They mainly take the form of email correspondence, but comprise poems, descriptions, letters, self and place narratives, questions and analyses. Archival data also include lesson plans, schemes of work, and online correspondence between the two teachers (Mr. Collins who taught in Alaska, and myself as the teacher in

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Kenya). While most of these data are rendered in textual form (through

asynchronous online communication), some of the archival data is in visual form

(images exchanged by the students) and in 3-dimension form (cultural artifacts

which were used or which became prominent during the collaboration).

b) Post-project reflections. These are data-cued ethnographic interactions which

happened eight years after the Alaska-Kenya collaboration when I invited former

students in the Alaska-Kenya exchange, Mr. Collins, and some instructors at

Middlebury College to participate in this study. During data-cued ethnographic interactions, the participants and I collaboratively and reflexively revisited archival data to make sense of communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Our reflexive analysis is guided by the research questions of this study. This data- cued methodology is informed by video-cued multivocal ethnography undertaken by Tobin et al. (2009). They employed this data-cued ethnographic approach to evoke after-the-fact responses and reflections from myriad participants twenty years after an initial study. That is, they used video recorded data of selected video clips to evoke video-cued reflections (from parents, teachers, school administrators, and faculty) in an ethnographic inquiry of pre-school literacy practices in Komatsudani in Kyoto, Japan; Daguan, You’eryouan in Kunming,

China; and St. Timothy’s Child Center in Honolulu, USA. Likewise, in this present study eight years after the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, I employ a reflexive data- cued inquiry of multimodal data through evoking after-the-fact responses and

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reflections (from study participants), focusing on intercultural communication and classroom-based literacy. The archival data is concurrently a mnemonic cue and material for reflexive meaning-making. Like Tobin et al. (2009), I started off by asking participants to comment on the archival data which I had presented them, and engaged in subsequent, organic, semi-formal, examination of these and other data.

Notably, data gathered here are important because:

1. They are instrumental in cuing participants as they reflexively construct

their understandings and reactions regarding the intercultural online

collaboration. In some cases archival data reminded some participants

about some particular anecdotal events. Interviewing created opportunities

for reading and interpreting archival data in order to make visible the

nature of intercultural communication in the BreadNet intersecting space.

Semi formal and informal interviews and (in few cases) group interviews

(of two or three participants and myself) created a more relaxed space for

participants to collaboratively recall and construct meaning.

2. Gathering various artifacts, visual documents and some video data helps

visualize some features of local spaces in which the collaboration

occurred. This focus on local contexts was important in unpacking local

and beyond-local meanings conveyed within intercultural communication.

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3. Data are instrumental as material for analysis and as assembled evidence

for claims made in this study.

Generally, in this dissertation I examine both archival data and post-project reflections to investigate the impact of implicit sociocultural practices on intercultural language use in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

3.6 Data Analysis

The process of archival data analysis ran concurrently with post-project reflexive data collection because participant feedback was central to reflexive meaning construction in analyzing shared discourse in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. As soon as data collection and analysis commenced, I started looking for patterns and relationships and explored these with participants to get a fuller sense of the socially shared meanings (Erickson, 1996; Spradley, 1980).

This approach was necessary in order to address the first research question regarding the communicative strategies employed by students from Aleknagik and Nairobi as they communicated with one another. In analyzing the data, I sought ways of making visible communicative strategies which students from both Aleknagik and Nairobi employed in order to begin to build a basis for some understandings which could be arrived at based on studying emergent patterns of language use (Ahearn, 2012; Bauman & Sherzer, 1975). As an ethnographer,

I am interested in how these patterns of language use signal “the socioexpressive meanings inherent in the use of linguistic features” (Bauman &

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Sherzer, 1975, p. 103) within local and beyond-local interactions. A close

examination of these interactions and the intersecting influences reveals tensions

among other characteristics of the shared discourse in this collaboration.

In Aleknagik, systemic peripheralization of Alaskan Native practices such

as the legislation regulating fishing, and the gradual erosion of the Yup'ik language (through systems that center dominant American cultural practices positioning English as the preferred language over Alaskan Native languages) create a tension-laden context for intercultural communication. Although this is

discussed further in the next chapter, it is sufficient to say here that a history of domination by outsiders (Russia and the USA government) coupled with vestiges

of colonial roles seen in institutions (schools, churches, and the judiciary), have

led to a complex day-to-day navigation between traditional economic structures

and dominant western culture. In a symbolic sense, subsistence life is at odds

with western capitalism.

Kenya too has a history of colonial domination where indigenous cultures

and languages were peripheralized by colonial systems (discussed in the next

chapter). Unlike Aleknagik, the linguistic space in Nairobi is very diverse

(linguistic, cultural, ethnic) owing to migration from within and outside the country.

It is also cosmopolitan and is increasingly characterized by consumerism.

Continuous immigration and unceasing construction of built spaces (highways,

malls, restaurants, and other recreational venues) have contributed to a

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constantly shifting physical space. Informal teenage language use is

peripheralized (especially in formal places such as schools). Additionally, Nairobi

teenagers construct their identities around their peripheralized ways of speaking, and the activities which they engage in within the fast-changing, popular spaces they frequent. The constant flux that characterizes both of these features introduces instability within the linguistic and sociocultural contexts for Nairobi teenagers.

While a more detailed description of the historical, linguistic, ideological, and cultural landscapes of the two primary sites will be offered in chapter four,

the tensions highlighted here illustrate how various local and beyond-local

(Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) influences intersect and

converge within the Alaska-Kenya intercultural communication. This convergence

situates the collaboration in a shifting sociocultural and political landscape

inhabited by teenagers who are peripheralized by dominant postcolonial

structures through economic, linguistic and cultural othering.

As a scholar of language, education and society, I seek to describe the

students’ situated use of language (Hymes, 1972) to crystallize ways in which

students from both sides engaged with meaning across cultural difference. As a

researcher, I am interested in how patterns of language use (which emerge from

such descriptions) may illuminate on the role of intercultural pedagogy in our

pluralistic and globalizing world. As I explain in the next sub-section, the main

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analytic tool which I employ here is an approach which analyses a combination of interactional, visual and geospatial signs. This holistic approach which comprises

“interaction order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics” (Scollon & Scollon,

2003, p. 8) is referred to as geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon,

2003).

3.6.1 Geosemiotic Discourse Analysis

In order to analyze the various intersecting influences (in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration) which emerged during post-project reflexive interactions, I sought a robust analytical tool to account for more than just the textual features of the collaboration. Geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) presents the required versatility because this approach generally considers the social and material world in which language is produced. Such a consideration enables me to engage with context, that is, mobility of meanings circulating within local and beyond-local spaces and whose ideological, sociocultural, and political infrastructures are fraught with post-colonial tensions (further discussed in chapter 4). One important hallmark of geosemiotic discourse analysis (which serves the purposes of this dissertation) is the recognition of different geospatial meanings. Scollon and Scollon (2003) have defined geosemiotic discourse analysis as “the study of meaning system by which language is located in the material world” (p. x) in ways that are cognizant of how “meanings may be radically different from place to place in the world” (p. xi).

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To illustrate this interconnection between place, sign and materiality,

Scollon and Scollon (2003) offer several examples including how a sign that says

“nude bathing allowed” whilst on the back of a pickup truck on its way to being installed lacks the “in place meaning” (p. 2) it would have as soon as it is posted firmly on a beach. Scollon and Scollon also suggest that through indexicality (a key feature of geosemiotic discourse analysis) one has to consider a world outside language since “language indexes the world in many ways” (p. 3). Signs in interaction point to the world for their meaning necessitating that researchers look beyond texts in analyzing interactions. Thus, based on Scollon and Scollon’s lens of the indexable world, the Alaska-Kenya collaboration amounts to a site of social action where different discourses intersect, and whose language use visualizes the world (or sociocultural contexts entailed). In the next section I describe how I take up indexicality as a conceptual tool which complements the analysis of shared discourse through geosemiotic discourse analysis.

There are “three broad systems of social semiotics…interconnected at any site of social action – the interaction order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics”

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 7). The term “interaction order” was influenced by the work of Erving Goffman (cited in Scollon & Scollon, 2003) and highlights how people produce social arrangements and interactions. “Visual semiotics” was influenced by the work of Kress and van Leeuwen (cited in Scollon & Scollon,

2003) and highlights meaning making through visual and material artifacts. Place

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semiotics is “an aggregation of semiotic systems not located in…social actors or in the framed artifacts of visual semiotics” (p. 8) such as the built environment and geographical settings etc. Semiotic aggregates should be understood as

“intersections of multiple discourses and the interaction order” (Scollon & Scollon,

2003, p. 167).

Overall, geosemiotic discourse analysis entails an examination of discourses in place. Through applying “frame clashes” (Gee & Green, 1998), defined earlier as disconnects in communication due to discordant understandings of what representational frames mean, to discourse in use I argue that “place” is a complex concept comprising the interpenetration of local spaces and beyond-local spaces. Scollon and Scollon (2003) argue that human action arises “largely unconsciously, out of prior experience, habits, and prior actions within the particular spaces we inhabit” (p. 197). Based on this premise, during post project reflections participants of this study and I examined archival data to unpack some of these presuppositions and to explore the nature of communicative social action by the two groups of students.

The following schema is adopted from Scollon and Scollon (2003) and situates the Alaska-Kenya collaboration as a “nexus of action” (p. 198):

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Figure 3.2: Geosemiotic systems in the Alaska-Kenya collaborative exchange

In figure 3.2 above, the interactional order, visual semiotics, and place semiotics converge at the site of social action (which is the Alaska-Kenya collaboration). Students who are participating in this collaboration are positioned as agentive social actors situated in place and time and engaged in complex proceses of meaning sharing and meaning making. This complexity can be

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understood through considering two main features of intercultural communication in the collaboration: a heritage of inequality characterizes the places and people involved in this collaboration, and disconnects in communication emanating from differently situated language use.

To elaborate further, a heritage of inequality characterizes the local spaces inhabited by both groups, and typifies descriptions of self and place produced by students in Aleknagik and in Nairobi. As a starting point, based on broader and pervasive global structures of power and significance the selves and places described by students in Aleknagik and in Nairobi are peripheralized, exoticized, and labeled as minority. Such structures of othering are configured around race (white vs. other), economic influence (first world economies vs. third world economies), and geopolitical might (super powers vs. militarily inferior countries) among other organizing principles. The two groups, namely Yup’ik teenagers from Aleknagik, and multiethnic teenagers from Nairobi, are considered non-mainstream. That is, the Yup’ik are a minoritized, subjugated

Alaskan Native community in the USA whose language and culture are increasingly considered as endangered (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006), whereas students from Kenya are writing about their life in a third-world, struggling economy, situated in sub-Saharan Africa. Thus, the Aleknagikans and

Nairobians communicated about peripheralized, exoticized, minoritized selves and places. That is, the Alaska-Kenya collaboration is a site of social action

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(Scollon & Scollon, 2003) where students share and construct meaning about their non-mainstreamed voices, peripheralized places, and marginalized activities and interactions. Within this sharing and construction, students on both sides of the collaboration navigated disconnected meanings or “frame clashes” (Gee &

Green, 1998) as they negotiated cultural representations.

Post project reflections served as an important approach for making sense of these negotiations amonbg other communicative strategies. In maing these reflections, participants engaged with archival data to better understand strategies of communication in the collaboration. In this regard, geosemiotic discourse analysis presents a viable tool for analyzing archival data. As shown in figure 3.2 above, through this analytic approach this study situates the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration within a nexus of converging semiotics and is, as a result, better placed to engage with this convergence of visual semiotics, place semiotics and interactional order on the site of social action. Put differently, through employing a geosemiotic discourse analysis of shared discourse in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration, this study is better placed to attend to “influences in play but set aside for disattention” (Scollon & Scollon, 2003, p. 12). These include taken-for-granted, covert, extant, geospatial and sociocultural influences

(which I have elaborated on further in chapter 5) that shaped interactions between the Aleknagikan and Nairobian students.

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Some of these covert influences are constructed within the language-

cultural landscape that characterizes the two local spaces. Broadly, these include influences of Yup’ik heritage on Aleknagik-produced texts, and influences of

Nairobian youth lifestyle on Nairobi-produced texts. In the next section I discuss this landscape using the conceptual framework of languaculture (Agar, 1994), as applied in the methodology of this study.

3.6.2 Frame clashes and Languaculture

The question, “why people of different ethnic backgrounds talk in the

“same” language but fail to understand each other” (Agar, 1994, p. 225) has led

researchers (see Gumperz cited in Agar, 1994) to consider how “surface forms”

(p. 225) in language can evoke different understandings in communication. Agar

explains that when people speak in the “same” language, they use surface forms

which “might be hooked up to different frames” (p. 225) and these different

frames may lead to disconnected communication or “rich points” (Agar, 1994).

Agar’s concept of “languaculture” indicates an inseparable bond between

language and culture where disconnects or disruptions in meaning (between

different languacultures) cause “rich points or [signal] frame differences” (p. 256).

This connection between language and culture becomes visible during

interactions given that people bring linguistic, cultural and social presuppositions

to their interpretation of the other (Gumperz, 1982). In addition to language and

culture in Agar’s (1994) “languaculture,” this entwinement also entails social

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relations (Ahearn, 2012). Overall, languaculture (Agar, 1994) or linguistic culture

(Farr, 2011) remain important concepts for crystallizing the impact of cultural situatedness of language use.

Additionally, during intercultural interactions people encounter disconnects as they navigate the other’s languacultural meanings “from outside” (Agar, 1994, p. 205). Some of these disconnects are overt whereas others are covert. Where they are overt, the interlocutors know immediately that they may not be meaning the same thing. In some cases these disconnects or rich points are covert; that is, they do not presence themselves in obvious or discernible ways. In such cases, people may be using the same language (in the case of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration students were communicating in English) and fail to realize that they mean differently. Thus, the frame in question elicits different normative images which each interlocutor takes up oblivious of the other’s different normative image. Agar (1994) conceptualizes a frame as a representational linguistic form (also see Gee & Green, 1998).

In such a case where the disconnect or rich point is implicit, an opportunity for learning across cultural difference is missed since the deep structure of the word fails to come into the intersecting space (or the point of social action

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003)). This is because such frames are common to both participants who are communicating, but such frames do not become part of a dialogue to learn about the other’s meaning. The result is a missed opportunity

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for engaging with each other’s meanings across difference. As will be exemplified in chapter 5, the data show various occurrences of both implicit and explicit disconnections in communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Thus the concept of “languacultural differences” (Agar, 1994, p. 252) is useful in accounting for such disconnects whenever they come up, and for examining whether languacultural interactions are resourceful for frame-reconceptualization.

Given the impact of globalization, Agar (1994) has argued that rich points

are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and that they can also be resourceful and transformative:

“Rich points come into consciousness and inspire new frames, frames that

make a new kind of discourse possible…the new languaculture is a way to

change the world by changing what it is that can be thought, said, and

done” (p. 209)

In this study I am interested in determining whether frames were reconstituted

once it was discovered that there were surprises in how local meanings failed to

fit into expected frames in beyond-local interactions. In what ways did students

construct meanings using locally-situated frames? What strategies did students employ to engage with the other’s proposed meanings once it became clear that there were rich points? In chapter 5 where I present and analyze data, I examine the treatment of frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998) in the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration and interrogate how students interacted with each other through the

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lens of their different languacultures. In some of the instances, students engaged

in some strategies to make meaning available to their exchange partner. For

instance, when a student from Aleknagik used a Yup’ik word in their email to their

partner in Nairobi, they translated the word or included an explanation in

parenthesis. Likewise, when a student in Kenya used a word that was common among Nairobian teenagers and whose meanings they wanted to make available to their exchange partner in Aleknagik, they also translated or explained the same.

There were, however, some other representational frames which were

employed in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration and which are present in the

archival data, but which did not emerge as different frames and were not a part of

the interactions between the students. Some of these disconnects or rich points

emerged eight years after the collaboration during the post-project reflection

stage. That is, as the participants of this study were reflexively looking at the archival data, they realized now and again that they may not have meant the same thing as their peer, or they may have said something that signaled that they misunderstood what their exchange partner had shared. In this dissertation,

I consider some of the “rich points” (Agar, 1994) that re-emerged in the metadiscourse.

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3.7 Ensuring Credibility

Oftentimes, in online research one may be unable to vouch for the identity of participants given that they may be unknown to the researcher who is depending on them to actually be whom they say that they are (Clandinin &

Connelly, 2000; Lee, 2006). This present study did not face this problem since all participants were from a known group of people who took part in a specific collaboration. Additionally, a key criticism against practitioner inquiry such as this one is whether the researcher can step away from the study to offer an effective investigation given ties to the professional setting. The word “effective” in this case does not mean ‘total objectivity’ since this is unattainable (Banks, 2006;

Duranti, 1997). Instead, I undertook the following measures to try and achieve

“strong objectivity” (Harding, 1991 in Banks 2006):

1. Triangulation of data (Denzin, 1978, Patton, 1999/2001).

2. Employing etic-emic collaboration through a reflexive component of the

data-cued ethnography approach (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Hymes,

1972; Tobin et al., 2009). Reflexivity is a necessary part of contemporary

ethnography (Belz, 2007; Heath & Street, 2008; Kvale, 2007). This

present study employs reflexivity at the emic level during data generation,

and at the etic level during interpretation and analysis of data. More

specifically, at the emic level (during post project data gathering),

participants reviewed archived data eight years after the actual Alaska-

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Kenya collaboration and offered post project reflections of the same. This review necessitated looking back and carefully scrutinizing archived data

(through examining e.g., representations of artifacts that were implicated in the correspondence, shared text in the form of poems, stories, descriptions) to explore how they had communicated about their situated selves and locales with their interlocutors. Data show that during post project reflections, participants in this study also explored some contextual features of their locales to understand their experiences, and evaluate aspects of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Two features of this reflexive approach stand out: the language that was produced during post project reflections can, therefore, be characterized as talk about talk or language about language. Secondly, I collaborated with participants in an exploration of archival data (Tobin, et al., 2009) eight years after the actual project. At the etic level, I reflexively examined and analyzed participants’ contributions (post project reflections) and archival data leading to interpretative understandings of meaning sharing and meaning making strategies employed in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Post-project reflections were a site where my researcher-interpretations intersected with participant-recollections leading to etic-emic perspectives (Hymes,

1972). Overall, reflexivity (as described here) is a cardinal feature of this study and it plays a crucial role in my methodological design.

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3. Taking on the insider-outsider and teacher researcher stance (Banks,

2006; Yeager, 2006), and making my data presentation and discussion

polyvocalic through including lengthy transcript sections (Hensel, 1996).

Even though the analysis is mainly etic, “like uncropped photographs,

larger chunks of speech provide assurance that the words are not taken

out of context” (p. 6). Relatedly, these lengthy transcripts amplify

participant voices by lessening focus on the researcher and teachers

(Cochran-Smith & Donnell, 2006; Huberman, 1996).

Collectively, these strategies enhance this study’s credibility and can be summed

up as being synonymous with changing the familiar into the strange and the

strange into the familiar (Duranti, 1997; Spiro, 1990).

Another feature that enhances credibility, is the passage of time; as shown

in figure 3.1 (above), eight years have passed since my dissertation participants

and I were involved in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Participants from the

Kenyan side were my students. Eight years later after the study, we had all

dispersed from the school in Nairobi and were living elsewhere. In this manner,

the passage of time has played a role in creating conditions for the analysis of

data with the eye of a stranger (Heath, 1982). This also means that participants of this study are not in a teacher-student relationship with me. In this connection,

I do not assume that as a researcher I have the power to impose my agenda on participants since this would be an overestimation of the influence of the

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researcher on participants (Harvey, 1992 cited in Duranti, 1997). Data make

explicit the fact that eight years have gone by and we are all at different stages in

our lives. Physically, we all moved from the schools which we were in during the

collaboration. Finally, the claims made in this study are not intended to be

representative but speak to the experiences of the group of students who took

part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

3.8 Ethical Considerations

In this section I explore ethical issues entailed in undertaking this study.

An institutional review board (IRB) was sought for this study thereby subjecting

data-gathering procedures to IRB protocol and research standards (Strike, 2006).

For instance, I obtained participant consent and participants obliged (of their volition) to participate in the project. No incentive or coercion was used to secure participation. Participating in this dissertation was considered to be of minimum or no risk to the participants. All names used in this dissertation other than my own are pseudonyms and care was taken to de-identify all data.

Also, presenting both etic and emic contributions is central to an ethnography of communication (Hymes, 1972) framework. In this dissertation, participant voices are amplified through relatively lengthy quotations (in chapter five) to give a faithful representation of participant perspectives and perceptions

(Hensel, 1996). I collaborated with participants (during the post project reflection phase) in examining archival data in order to get sufficient emic contribution in

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the interpretation of data. I also returned to participants to confirm with them

some findings thereby undertaking member checks (Duranti, 1997; Hymes,

1972). Through this approach, I endeavored to follow emerging patterns in the

data (in some cases in consultation with participants for purposes of

corroboration or verification) rather than to determine findings a priori. Finally,

there was no conflict of interest between the funding that this research received

and the interpretations or findings.

3.9 Conclusion

In this chapter I discussed how this study is framed by ethnography of

communication (Hymes, 1972) as a research methodological approach, and explored some main features of this approach. I then explained how I employ

Mitchell’s (1984) notion of “telling cases” to select participants for this dissertation from the wider pool of participants. The primary sites were predetermined by the geophysical locations of the schools involved in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. I reflected on my role as an embedded ethnographer (Green et al., 2014), teacher researcher and researcher teacher (Yeager, 2006), and insider-outsider (Banks,

2006). I identified the various instrumentation procedures which enabled me to

triangulate the data. I identified geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon &

Scollon, 2003) as a useful analytic approach in considering the social and

material world in which language is produced. This approach is also instrumental

in situating interactions (in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration) and in accounting for

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the converging influences (interaction order, visual and place semiotics) that intersect with meaning sharing and meaning making. Languaculture (Agar, 1994) is a useful framework for accounting more clearly for this situatedness.

Languaculture visualizes how language use is entwined within local and supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) sociocultural practices, while indexicality (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011;

Farr & Song, 2011) visualizes connections between concrete bits of language use and wider influences.

Overall, through this methodology I seek to crystallize contextual, sociocultural practices that intersect with intercultural communication as seen within the discourse by students from Aleknagik and Nairobi. In the next chapter I describe the two primary sites; Aleknagik and Nairobi before presenting data findings and discussing the same.

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Chapter 4: Description of Primary Sites

4.1 Introduction

This chapter focuses on the two primary sites in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, Aleknagik, Alaska; and Nairobi, Kenya. The chapter consists of four sections. This introductory section briefly outlines some similarities and differences between these two sites and elaborates on “local and supralocal”

(Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) as a conceptual framework for understanding geophysical location while visualizing spatialized use of language.

The second and third sections describe Aleknagik and Nairobi, respectively.

Each of these sections is further subdivided into three subsections as follows: a) the first subsection highlights general contextual information regarding the primary sites, b) the second subsection offers a brief overview of historical signposts in the evolution and development of the local contexts within the primary sites, c) the third subsection highlights specific pertinent information regarding the two schools (which took part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration), that is, this subsection describes the school set-up, the curricular context, and some significant features of these two learning institutions. Collectively, these

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three subsections crystallize some historical, cultural, political and social underpinnings that intersect with language in use in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. The last section in this chapter, is a conclusion that brings together descriptions of the primary sites, and links this chapter to the next chapter.

While not comprehensive, scholarly sources employed in describing the two primary contexts highlight some colonial and postcolonial historical elements of these settings. In addition, these sources foreground some contextual sociocultural, ideological, and political tensions, while concurrently depicting specific information to visualize lives of local inhabitants in the two places. In order to amplify local voices about local spaces, a significant portion of the scholarship employed in this chapter was written by locals or scholars with a deep familiarity of the two local spaces. Collectively, these scholarly works spotlight information about the two contexts to situate language use and interactions in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. This situatedness is important for contextualizing (through descriptions) the intersecting interactional spaces in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

These descriptions of the primary sites are invaluable to this inquiry which is framed within ethnography of communications (Hymes, 1972), an approach that necessitates a study of the situatedness of interactions. Principally, this present chapter serves two key purposes:

a) The chapter visualizes the contexts of key influences that are at play in the

two primary sites entailed in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

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b) The chapter offers a backdrop for the following chapter (that is, chapter

five which covers data presentation, analysis and discussion of findings)

by making visible some significant contextual features of the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration.

I undertake this description of the two primary settings through the lens of local and supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009) spaces. I use the term

“local” to represent places which are not merely physical but also cultural

(Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009). I therefore conceptualize the spatialized sociocultural relations (Britain, 2010) which are immediate to inhabitants who share ideological resources for meaning-making as constituting the “local”. Some places (such as, geographical places with a generally coherent ethnolinguistic community, or places demarcated by physical boundaries such as an island or a mountain ridge, or political border demarcations) can be construed as being intact local spaces but even in these cases, they are, in fact, not “pre-given bounded spaces” (Allen, Massey & Cochrane, 1998, p. 137; see also Britain,

2010).

This unbounded nature of local spaces means that such geographical places and sociocultural political spaces are neither static nor impervious to influences from outside. As shown in figure 4.1 below, local spaces manifest robust connections with one another and with beyond-local spaces in a dynamic network that can be understood as local-supralocal connections (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009). I therefore adopt the term “supralocalization” as used in

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Moore (2002) to account for communicative processes where locally situated ideologies, culture, language, among other contextual features, intersect with those from outside of the local space. In this way, supralocalization includes communicative strategies through which local meanings connect to alternative or other systems (Moore, 2002). Further, I argue that spatialized sociocultural relations (Britain, 2010) are concurrently local and supralocal; in this dissertation,

Aleknagik is local to the 16 Aleknagikan students while from their situated point of view Nairobi is supralocal (and vice versa). Local-supralocal relations can be conceived of as being on a continuum, for instance, whereas Nairobi is local to the 20 students who live there, Kenya is local to them too, and so is sub-Saharan

Africa, and the African continent. But Nairobi is “more local” to this group than

Africa is. This layered sense of local also applies to the 16 students in Aleknagik, that is, Alaska is local to them, USA is also local, and so is North America.

The term “supralocal” just like the term “glocal” (Robertson, 1995) emphasizes entwinement through visualizing connections between local spaces and other spaces beyond the local. The concept of “glocal” has however been criticized for its failure to account for local processes (Agnew, 1997; also see

Soja, 2000). There have been proposals to replace it, for example, with other concepts such as “glurbanization” (Jessop & Sum, 2000). I prefer “local- supralocal” because this concept captures the circulation of various influences within and beyond local spaces while paying attention to spatialized use of

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communicative resources. Figure 4.1 depicts a robust dynamism of local- supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) intersectionality:

Figure 4.1: Intersection and circulation within local and supralocal spaces.

The dotted shape in figure 4.1 is a porous boundary that emphasizes the unboundedness of local spaces, such as, Aleknagik or Nairobi. The multidirectional arrows further illustrate dynamism through depicting circulation from both within and without which produces local-supralocal interconnections.

These circulations represent the mobility of resources, people and meanings

(Agar, 1994; Blommaert 2010; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013;

Fairclough, 2006; Sharifian & Jamarani, 2013; Scollon & Scollon, 2004). The local space in figure 4.1 can represent Nairobi or Aleknagik; showing that they

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are robust and dynamic spaces because language, heritage, social relations and

various sociocultural and political influences circulate and intersect with each

other and with physical and man-made phenomenon.

Additionally, both Aleknagik and Nairobi are physical and cultural places

where spatialized relations are produced (Britain, 2010; Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002). The descriptions in this chapter are therefore

not just about physical features but a mélange of influences that characterize

local-supralocal connections. Given the intercultural nature of the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration, an understanding of some features of the primary sites can

generate insights which make it possible to respond (with some fair degree of

contextualized knowledge) to the following research questions which guide this

dissertation:

1 What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration?

2 What understandings of the intersections between intercultural

communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from

analyzing these strategies?

3 Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy?

What are some of the influences in both Aleknagik, and Nairobi which need to be considered to yield an understanding of how context intersects with intercultural communication between the two groups of students? As discussed

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in the next chapter, data show several instances where some aspects of the sociocultural and physical settings emerge. For instance, students mentioned names of local places, included various locally-spoken languages, and described local activities and engagements. They also included, within their shared discourse (in both explicit and non-explicit ways), some features of their local settings (the close relationship and symbiotic interaction between man and nature and the ideologies that surround this interaction in Aleknagik, or ideologies informing the general peripheralization of heritage languages and teenage ways of speaking, Sheng, in favor of formal varieties of English or

Swahili in multiethnic and multilingual Nairobi).

The two sites manifest some similarities and differences. As seen in the history of both places, formal education was introduced in both places by colonial powers and the locals were compelled through various means of coercion or enticement to enroll in schools that had been set up for them. In both places the church and the government insisted that the locals learn English (which to date continues to be a language of power, access and prestige) for colonial control.

As a result, schools became institutions of assimilating locals into lower rungs of colonial hierarchical structures. The language of instruction in both Kenya and

Alaska is English. In Kenya, it is Standard Kenyan English (SKE), and in Alaska, it is Standard American English. The hegemony of English is however challenged in both places, for example, when locals continue to employ heritage or native

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languages through an inverted sense of prestige (Stenstrom & Jorgensen, 2000).

Thus, both places have a legacy of cultural and colonial hegemony (more details

on this in the relevant sections below) with some site-specific differences, such

as, Kenya is a sovereign nation and native Kenyans have a greater sense of self-

determination than Native Alaskans (for instance, the Yup’ik) who are minoritized

within Alaska and in the U.S.A.

The geophysical features of both sites (natural and man-made features)

bear some differences. On one hand, Nairobi is a regional economic hub and an

urban space characterized by multilingualism, multi-ethnicity and

multiculturalism. Aleknagik, on the other hand, is a small fishing village in the

southwestern part of Alaska and a majority of its inhabitants are Native Alaskan

(belonging to the Yup’ik community). Additionally, nature, that is, seasons, the

climate (snow, rain, flora and fauna), physical terrain (such as, lakes, hills, the

tundra), have a pervasive and ubiquitous presence in rural Alaska. The built environment (such as, malls, shops, multinational organizational headquarters,

government installations, the largest international airport in east and central

Africa) is a key feature of Nairobi. These combine with various forms of diversity such as multilingualism, multi ethnicity and multiculturalism to characterize life in

Nairobi.

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4.2 The Aleknagik Context and Setting

4.2.1 The General Setting

Eight years ago, 16 students (six girls and ten boys) who took part in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration, together with Mr. Collins (their language arts teacher) lived in Aleknagik Alaska; a fishing village located at the head of Wood

River on the southeast end of Lake Aleknagik, northwest of Dillingham on the south western part of Alaska. The general area where Aleknagik is located is known as the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta; a region whose main physical features

(other than tundra vegetation) are the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers which empty into the Bering Sea. This is one of the largest deltas in the world. Aleknagik village which is located in this delta is named after Lake Aleknagik; one of the two main bodies of water that runs near the village (Lake Aleknagik, and Wood

River). These two water bodies are popular for fishing. In the Yukon-Kuskokwim

Delta, one can find few moose, caribou, musk oxen, brown and black bears, wolves, and wolverines. It is more common to find smaller animals such as arctic red foxes, beavers, mink, otter, tundra hares, snowshoe hares, and muskrat

(Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). Sea mammals which are often seasonally abundant include beluga whales, walrus, bearded ringed and spotted seals, and sea lions. Fish is the mainstay of most local diets. Commonly harvested fish include “saltwater species such as herring, saffron cod, and halibut, and

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anadromous and freshwater species such as salmon, trout, pike, whitefish, blackfish, loche (burbot), sheerfish, grayling, smelt, and needlefish” (Hensel,

1996, p. 22).

Like many parts of Alaska and in spite of its rural setting, Aleknagik has had a long history of encounters with people from other places. Some of these encounters remain etched in the history of the colonization of Alaska by non-

Natives. Currently many non-Natives continue to visit Alaska for various reasons including hunting and fishing. The church and the state are the main institutions that have impacted life in Aleknagik. Prior religious influence came from the

Moravian church, the Seventh Day Adventists, and the Russian Orthodox Church

(Bates & Oleksa, 2008). Whereas currently Alaska is not considered a colonized state, tensions persist between pursuing traditional Alaskan Native lifestyle and pursuing western lifestyle. Oleksa (2006) has noted that unlike immigrants who may want to be assimilated into a dominant culture, Alaskan Natives are wary of such assimilation since the survival of their ancestral culture depends on their resistance of western culture leading to a persistent adherence to Yup’ik traditional ways. He argues that Alaskan Natives’ assimilation into Western culture is tantamount to their participation in the demise of their Yup’ik culture.

The location of traditional native settlements in Alaska has been determined by accessibility of resources, that is, Alaskan Natives construct villages where they can harvest most effectively from the sea and the land, and when resources dry out they perform seasonal migration (Oleksa, 2006).

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However, in the current situation where there are fixed locations for towns and state-sponsored amenities, villages end up being situated in a “compromise position, between where the logic of subsistence usage would put them and where an agency or institution was willing to put a church or school, or where a trader set up shop” (Hensel, 1996, p. 26). Alaskan natives tend to live interdependent lifestyles where social networks are crucial for survival, a practical aspect given the inclement environment they live in (Hensel, 1996).

Thus, Aleknagik Natives live in family groups which gradually congregated in the area due to plentiful fishing, game, timber, and the establishment of several amenities (a post office, the village airstrip, a village school, a health clinic, some churches). According to the U.S. Census Bureau (2010), approximately 82% of

Aleknagik inhabitants are Native American (Yup’ik), 14% are white, and the remaining 4% are from other communities such as Hispanics (United States

Census Bureau, 2010). By the time this exchange was being undertaken, the total population in Aleknagik was around 210 (United States Census Bureau,

2010).

The Yup'ik in Aleknagik speak Central Alaskan Yup’ik Eskimo, an indigenous language whose spread extends from Norton Sound to the Alaskan

Peninsula (Hensel, 1996). The Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is included within the larger region where Central Alaskan Yup'ik Eskimo is spoken. There are other kinds of Yup'ik in Alaska, such as, St. Lawrence Island Yup’ik (Bates & Oleksa,

2008). The older generation is more fluent in Central Alaskan Yup’ik than the

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younger generation. Some participants in my study reported how their own parents and community elders do not consider them as authentic Yup’ik, due to this reduced proficiency in Yup’ik, and instead refer to them as “Yup’ik

Americans” (interview notes, September, 2014). According to the older generation, the younger generation manifests fewer authentic Yup'ik characteristics thereby casting doubt on their Yuuyaraq (Ayunerak et al., 2014) or

Yup’ikness. They do not speak their native Yup’ik language fluently, they do not engage in subsistence lifestyle year round, and they have a tendency to be attracted by the conveniences of western urban lifestyle (Oleksa, 2006).

The inhabitants of Aleknagik employ road transport to Dillingham and air transport in order to connect the village to the outside world. However, the road transport network is generally poor and inhabitants get around by air transport or on land by using skiffs, boats, three-wheeler and four-wheeler all-terrain vehicles

(ATVs), and snow machines (Hensel, 1996). The most common vehicle of choice for the rugged tundra terrain or on snow, ice, village roads, and beaches is the

ATV; locally known as “snuuukuuq” (interview notes, September, 2014). These multipurpose utility vehicles are employed for conveyance of both passengers and freight. During the winter when the ground conditions are too icy or impassable even by ATVs, the inhabitants tend to use dog-drawn sleds.

One important way in which the Yup’ik (generally and not just the Yup'ik youth) index cultural identity is through discourse, that is, “talk about ethnicity and subsistence, as well as doing of subsistence activities, are all interlinked forms of

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practice” (Hensel, 1996, p. v). So pervasive is talk about subsistence in the

Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta that it is “the focus of people’s interactions regardless of their ascriptive ethnicity” (p. vi) and through such discourse “personal, ethnic, and gender identities are constructed, negotiated, and publicly validated” (p. 3). The highest honor one can pay a Yup’ik person is to refer to them as a provider of the community; the Yup’ik term for this is “nukalpiaq” meaning, a great hunter and provider whose hunting skills serve the community (Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). In fact, “angun” which is the Yup’ik word for “man” literally means “an instrument for hunting” (field notes, September, 2014). While both boys and girls in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration narrated how they went hunting (the girls with their fathers), many Yup'ik youth and especially the males

(given traditional gender roles where men procure and women process foodstuff) aspire to be nukalpiaq.

Traditional practices which underpin subsistence discourse include harvesting from the land and the sea through hunting, fishing, gathering, and processing of foodstuff. Some Yup'ik foods include, Akutaq or ice cream made with salmonberries and crowberries; Giviak, a frozen bird aged in seal poke;

Tepa, fish heads buried in winter to cure and be eaten in the summer; and

Qassayaaq, frozen raw whitefish aged before freezing and served frozen

(Oleksa, 2006). Given the preeminence of subsistence activities in Yup’ik life, the

Yup’ik, like other Alaskan Natives, pride themselves in being harmonious with the natural environment. They also name seasons after seasonal subsistence

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activities, for example, the month of “June” is referred to as “Kaugun” which means “king salmon clubbing time” because it is a time for clubbing king salmon while fishing (Hensel, 1996).

In addition to these deviations from Yuuyaraq ways of life, the Yup’ik younger generation’s world views are not informed by traditional Yup'ik values since they continue to internalize western values around which they construct their self-identities (Ayunerak et al., 2014). The word “Yup’ik” translates into “the real people” (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006) and being Yup’ik—which is signaled by practices such as speaking the language, embodying and practicing the culture, engaging in traditional subsistence activities, engaging in subsistence discourse, self-positioning within traditional gender roles (Hensel, 1996)—carries a local sense of pride (I will offer more details on Yup’ik sense of identity in the next sub-section). Michael Oleksa (2006) refers to western ideologies which give prominence to alphabetic literacy as the “global literate tradition” and Scollon and

Scollon (2001) use the term “utilitarian discourse system” to refer to the same.

Although lifestyle in rural Alaska can still be described as subsistence lifestyle, western lifestyle is gaining ground in rural areas such as Aleknagik.

Whereas traditionally the Yup’ik way of life, or Yuuyaraq, entailed, among other practices, subsistence lifestyle (Ayunerak et al., 2014), the day-to-day realities of contemporary life in rural Alaska mean that Alaskan Natives engage in dominant American cultural practices in addition to their traditional Yup’ik cultural practices (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006). To signal this dual cultural

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engagement, data show that students from Aleknagik introduced themselves to their Nairobi peers as having two names, a name for official purposes (their school-registered names) and a Yup’ik name. As data will illustrate in the next chapter, the school continues to be a space of tension where Yup’ik traditional beliefs clash with Western social values.

Notwithstanding these clashes, day-to-day activities illustrate how some people navigate these seemingly antithetical lifestyles: fetching water from traditional individual family wells or using spring water catchment but employing western-type plumbing systems; undertaking traditional subsistence activities such as hunting, fishing, and gathering but using guns, ATVs and needing gas for their vehicles; and participating in commercial fishing activities on Bristol Bay.

In other words, for one to afford equipment for hunting and fishing, or fuel for transport, one needs money. This need has necessitated that Alaskan Natives find ways of navigating traditional and western practices. Given the resultant tension between these two practices, identifying with Yup'ik culture and showing pride in it amount to deliberate acts of identity. Put another way, embracing one’s

Yup’ik heritage is an act of deliberate choice; some Alaskan Native participants in this present study reported that they signal pride in their culture through actions such as choosing to belong to a dance group, deciding to speak in Yup'ik, engaging in Alaskan sewing, participating in ceremonies such as the potlach, and telling Raven stories, among other traditional practices.

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Whereas there are some year-round employment opportunities in the village, it is not unlikely to find that a majority of the people who take up teaching jobs are non-Yup’ik inhabitants. Teachers in rural Alaska vary in age and experience; however, there is less variation when it comes to their ethnicity and socioeconomic class. That is, most teachers are from middleclass or lower middle-class and of Euro-American ethnic descent (Hensel, 1996). Most Natives are normally busy engaging in subsistence activities during particular times of the year (around March and around November) therefore, the conflicting schedules between full-time employment (requirements for one to be sedentary or positioned in particular spaces) and the migratory demands of seasonal Native subsistence calendars (leading to long absences) have caused many Natives to shy away from year-round jobs (Hensel, 1996).

Also, given the gendered roles in traditional subsistence lifestyle it is mostly the men who tend to shun year-round positions. In the traditional subsistence system, men are obligated to be Nuqalpiaq, a Yup’ik word that means “providers for the community” (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006).

Even though some non-Natives take up teaching positions, there is a high teacher turnover because many non-Native teachers will stay in villages, such as

Aleknagik, for one or two years. Teachers also vary in the ways they associate with the Natives: some forge close relations and are more understanding and respectful of Native practices, others are impatient, confused, and even aloof and distant (Oleksa, 2006). In villages like Aleknagik, there are few year-round jobs

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that Alaskan Natives can opt for: health aides, janitors, school maintenance staff, generator technicians, clerks, or teachers’ aides (Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006).

One unfortunate manifestation of continued tensions between traditional

Alaskan lifestyles and western cash-economy-based lifestyle is the high incidence of fatalities which have been linked to alcohol abuse (Bates & Oleksa,

2008; Oleksa, 2006). Although some people in the older generation are victims of alcohol abuse, this malady has mainly afflicted the younger generation. Bates and Oleksa (2008) and Oleksa (2006) explain that the younger generation is not always well grounded in Yup’ik ways and traditions therefore finding themselves at a loss if they do not succeed in western settings. Their sense of loss is increased when they return to their villages unable to immediately salvage themselves from despondency and unable to fit into traditional lifestyles. The resultant dire circumstances have driven many young people to nihilism, abuse of alcohol, domestic violence, vandalism and other forms of self-destructive behavior. Oleksa (2006) argues that the high rate of suicide and reckless accidents among the Alaskan Natives is an epidemic. Government intervention through alcohol prohibitions have led to some places being designated as “wet”

(one can buy, sell and consume alcohol), “damp” (one can bring in alcohol that they have bought elsewhere for their own personal consumption, but cannot sell it), and “dry” (alcohol is prohibited). At the time of the Alaska-Kenya exchange,

Aleknagik was a “damp” village.

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The school has continued to be a ground zero for tensions between traditional and western lifestyle. From the time they were set up in Alaska, schools have imparted western-based values that are in conflict with traditional practices such as subsistence life. This conflict has exacerbated confusion by the younger generation regarding identity and self-worth (Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

Napoleon, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). Bates and Oleksa (2008) illustrate some of the questions that some in the younger generation ask themselves and which are indicative of this confusion: “Where do I fit? Which way is “right”? Who am I?

What does it mean to be Native today?”(p. 61) Cultural discontinuity is one among many concerns facing young Alaskans today and it is aggravated by a discourse of contempt (Dorian, 1998 cited in Farr & Song, 2011) which plays out through institutionalized stereotyping of Natives who drop out of school (Grant &

Gillispie, 1993).

Whereas there are many non-Native activities that have percolated into life in Aleknagik,(driving and racing all-terrain vehicles (ATV) for work and fun, hanging out with friends at the school gym, and playing basketball), in some cases there has been a deliberate attempt to reclaim traditional Yup’ik culture.

Some participants in this dissertation from Aleknagik report how they were taught traditional practices that appertain to using the land; harvesting from the land and the sea and the obligations that come with living off the land such as how to relate to plants and to animals. These experiences, which signal a traditional identity and pride, were present in correspondence from Aleknagik to Nairobi.

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4.2.2 A Brief Historical Overview of Alaska

According to western historical records, Dane Vitrius Bering discovered

Alaska in 1741 when he led an expedition on board a Russian ship (Ford, 1966).

Eventually significant settlement by the Russians commenced in 1784. According to Ford (1966) the name “Alaska” is a probable “abbreviation of Unalaska derived from the original Aleut word agunalaksh, which means ‘the shores where the sea breaks its back’” (p. 10). Thus, the first outsiders to arrive in the Yukon-

Kuskokwim Delta and by extension in Aleknagik were Russian Orthodox followed by Moravians and then Catholics (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006). Over time other religions have also made incursions and have taken root leading to the establishment of various arms of government, commercial enterprises, schools and other installations. The United States of America became aware of the resourcefulness of Alaska in the 1840s after whalers from New England stumbled upon the place whilst out in the Bering Sea (Naske & Slotnick, 1987).

Years later, through a buyer’s agreement the US government gave Russia 7.2 million dollars on March 30 1867 for the purchase of Alaska (Naske & Slotnick,

1987). This change of guard remains a signpost moment in the rapidly changing

Alaskan economic sociocultural and political context. During the time when

Russia was in control of Alaska and in the present time when the US government is in control of Alaska, the church, the government and other social institutions continue to exert influence on the Natives to change their way of life. Oleksa

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(2006) has described this assimilationist policy as requiring Native Alaskans to be “real” Americans through speaking English, cutting their hair, putting on a coat and tie, getting a job and ideally never returning to their villages.

The institution for colonial assimilation was the public school (Oleksa,

2006). Some historians (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Naske & Slotnick, 1987; Oleksa,

2006) narrate how the construction of schools in Alaskan villages was a baffling phenomenon to the Natives. Oleksa (2006) has illustrated the confusion that characterized Native-Outsider contact in the early days when schooling was being introduced. Oleksa (2006) explains how construction of the first schools in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta was preceded by the arrival of piles of lumber on barges, and how this arrival presented a spectacle for bewildered Alaskan

Natives because on the “treeless tundra in Southwest Alaska or the Aleutian archipelago, this [the presence of so much timber] in itself was an amazing event…” (Bates & Oleksa, 2008, p. 55). Their bewilderment must have been intensified further by the presence of non-local builders, the eventual construction of the school, and the strange architectural structure which was constructed. This difference in architectural design that is symbolic of cultural difference has been captured by Bates & Oleksa (2008) through their cover design (see appendix E).

From its inception (evidenced by this bewilderment, the stark architectural contrast, and the non-native builders and staffing of the school), the onset of western education, in Alaska, was not seamless.

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In the early days of establishing schools, most people who worked as teachers were volunteer missionaries from outside Alaska (Bates & Oleksa,

2008). Nowadays, teachers in Alaska continue to be predominantly non-Native; many people who take up teaching positions are attracted by wilderness adventure, hunting, fishing, hardship allowances and possibilities for getting tenure amongst a host of other inducements (Bates & Oleksa, 2008). Like other

Alaskan Natives, when Yup'ik children went to school, they already knew their local language but were punished whenever they spoke it at school. Thus to them, school represented a place where they were “attacked and humiliated for being who they are, for speaking the only language that they knew” (Bates &

Oleksa, 2008, p. 56; see Loon, 1998; MacLean, 1992). Tensions between

Natives’ expectations and non-Natives’ expectations regarding education led to mutual confusion (Oleksa, 2006; Loon, 1998).

The church and the state which spearheaded colonialization in Alaska, have designed a system over time whereby they make it beneficial for Natives to speak English and to live a Christian life. Continuous enforcement of legislation which made it compulsory for Natives to get high school education (which they could only get when they traveled to distant boarding schools) have combined with other sociocultural tensions between the dominant western culture and

Alaskan Native culture and continue to take a toll on Natives’ sense of traditional identity. Alaskan Natives had to fly to distant boarding schools (Oklahoma and

Oregon). Although such policies were changed in more recent years, the

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consequences of language policies (whose aim was to eradicate indigenous languages) continue to be felt; present-day educational policies and practices are failing to adequately provide for the use and development of Alaska Native language in schools, communities, and homes (MacLean, 1992).

As a result of feeling estranged in school (among other factors), young

Natives opt to drop out. Many of these young people resort to destructive nihilistic behavior such as reckless use of machinery, extreme alcoholism, emotional and sexual abuse, and suicide (Bates & Oleksa, 2008). A close look at the Native sociocultural fabric in Alaska reveals a generational rift whereby older people are grounded in traditional culture and practices, the middle generation which was shunted off to high schools in the 1960s is fairly disconnected from cultural practices, and the younger generation manifests the greatest disconnect from traditional Yup'ik epistemologies and practices (Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

MacLean, 1992). In spite of such grim and crippling conditions, the resilience of

Alaskan Native ways of speaking endures and continues to gain momentum.

Despite at least one hundred years of diligent efforts to eradicate Alaska's indigenous languages and cultures, these remain alive and in varying degrees of use by children and adults (MacLean, 1992). The main native language that is spoken across the broadest generational range with a fair degree of fluency is

Alaska Yup’ik and Siberia Yup’ik (p. 4). Currently many Native children have greater receptive competence than productive competence in their native languages. There have been some significant initiatives which have led to

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improvements in the language and cultural tensions in Alaska. One example of these initiatives is, in 1976 the Alaskan Natives’ quest for the establishment of village high schools was realized in a landmark case, popularly known as the

“Molly Hooch Case,” whose official name was “Tobeluk v. Lind” (Cotton, 1984).

Prior to this case, getting high school education entailed traveling long distances, and being away from home and family for 9 months of the year. The court case settlement led to immediate lifestyle changes in the villages as described by Cotton (1984):

“[The] lawsuit has revolutionized the delivery of secondary education in

rural Alaska. No longer does the entire village turn out each fall on the

gravel airstrip to see off teenagers bound for boarding school for the next

nine months. That scene has yielded to a more joyous celebration each

spring, graduation ceremonies in the village’s high school gym.” (p. 2)

Another initiative which contributes to improvements in the language and cultural tensions in Alaska, is the increasingly widespread move by schools in the Yukon-

Kuskokwim Delta to adopt a dual language policy, Yup'ik and English (field notes,

September, 2014).

In spite of these initiatives for improvement, some challenges persist. One of these challenges is, teachers, who are mainly non-native (from “the lower 48”), tend to conceive of deeply-rooted Alaskan cultural practices as an impediment to academic success. One evidence of this perception is in how silence and orality are construed in classroom spaces. Many Native Alaskan traditions value silence

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and learning through modeling yet the western model is based on oral participation (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Napoleon, 1996). Native Alaskans have primarily engaged in learning through “watching, observing, listening, imitating, and repeating” (Bates & Oleksa, 2008, p. 75). They therefore do not emphasize verbal profusion. Non-Native teachers (whose upbringing and training uphold the primacy of talk) will clash with students whose cultural ideologies prefer silence.

Xenia Oleksa (in Bates & Oleksa, 2008) underscores the importance of silence to the Yup’ik way of life saying “silence in this culture is golden. It is better to be quiet than to talk”

Another challenge is the differing attitudes, between Alaskan Natives and non-Native teachers, over a particular way of speaking, Village English, employed by Alaskan Natives. This is “a common way of speaking in Alaska villages…a variety of nonstandard English, which educators call a “local English” spoken in most of the communities” (Loon, 1998, p. 104). Although Loon’s (1998) article refers to the Inupiaq community, this phenomenon of “village English” exists even among the Yup’ik in southwestern Alaska. Yup’ik participants in my study did not make a distinction between “English” and “Village English” but their teacher, Mr. Collins, reported being able to identify when they used it. He gave an example when his students would say something funny and then say “I jokes”

(interview notes, July 2014) to indicate that the utterance was in jest. Loon (1998, p. 105) offers the following examples of “Village English” with their “proper”

English equivalents in parentheses:

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a) When you come? (When will you come?)

b) I never eat yet (I have not eaten yet)

c) Just try taste it (this is indirect instead of the direct command “taste it”)

The pushback against village English replays the history of language

rejection in Alaska (Loon, 1998; MacLean, 1992).

In light of the high potential for misunderstanding between Yup'ik and non-

Native teachers, there continues to be an urgent need to prepare teachers to teach in rural Alaska through taking up methodical and deliberate culturally responsive pedagogies that are informed by the resourcefulness of Alaskan

Native traditions (Bates & Oleksa, 2008. The resultant kind of teaching would entail, for instance, recognizing the pervasive, ubiquitous presence of “found spaces” (Borden, 2001) i.e., naturally occurring geophysical features. These include the seasonal terrain, the seasons, and elements of the weather, flora and fauna. Nature has a significant influence on traditional practices and places.

However, education content and pedagogy do not always create opportunities to venture out of classes to situate learning in locally familiar natural settings or to invite local experts to come into school and display a traditional skill. Another way of being cognizant of local practices is through exercising curricular flexibility to allow students attend traditional events, such as, moose hunting or pike jigging seasons (Hensel, 1996; Napoleon, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). When students’ lives are spent snow-machining, subsistence hunting, gathering and processing, these

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practices are bound to enter the classroom whether the teachers deliberately make such connections or not (Bates & Oleksa, 2008).

4.2.3 The School

This description of the school was mainly constructed from field notes and interviews with Mr. Collins (the teacher of the Yup’ik students). Each village in rural Alaska has a different type of school depending on the needs of the population and the local context. Some villages, such as Aleknagik, have K-8 schools whereas other villages have K-12 schools. Places with a bigger population and a more vibrant economy than Aleknagik (such as, Dillingham) have high schools where students from smaller surrounding villages travel to and board at. The school in Aleknagik, a co-educational school, is popularly referred to as “the Aleknagik Lakers” since they are located by a lake. Although the overall student population in the school fluctuates yearly, the population during the year of the collaboration was approximately 50 students. 100% of the student population at the school was Yup'ik. These students lived in Aleknagik village and the surrounding areas. Given that the village is small, there are not many options for where students could attend school.

Some students at the school were considered special needs. Mr. Collins reported that one of his students had cerebral palsy, another had “fetal alcohol syndrome” and another had “severe intellectual disabilities”. The faculty body on the other hand consisted of non-native teachers (that is, from “the lower forty eight”). The average age of the teachers was in the thirties range but Mr. Collins

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was in his late twenties. The school adheres to the Alaska public school system and the Alaska state standards, and is headed by a principal but given that it is such a small school, the principal takes on both administrative and teaching duties.

The school runs for four quarters each year and the main break from school is between the second and third quarters; they get two weeks off. The school has a total of four classrooms, including one that is designated for special education. The cafeteria also doubles as the gym. When school is not in session, this gym area is a meeting point for local teenagers who congregate for physical activities and various amusements and to “hang out with friends” (interview data,

Jasmyn Tugatuk September, 2014). The buildings at the Aleknagik Lakers school are constructed much like the school house in appendix E. There are no offices for faculty, and teachers use their classroom spaces where they teach as their office-cum-classroom. The school has a library in the main lobby of the school building. That is, there is no separate space or building that functions as a library but the lobby area which has in-built book shelves also doubles as the library space. There are wide open spaces outside the school where students play different games depending on the seasons. For example, during the winter, it is common to find students sledding around the school during recess.

The general layout of the classroom comprises large tables with chairs placed around them. Class walls have display boards, a ledge for placing books, some shelves and book and file cabinets. Class membership at Aleknagik Lakers

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School is always in mixed-grade groups. This means that the students who took part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration were not all of the same age. They ranged from 11years to14 years of age. Whereas over time the installation of a fiber optics internet cable between Russia and the USA (which passes through some of rural Alaska) has benefited the villages with high speed internet, during the time of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration the school did not have such internet capacity and relied on a low data-capacity internet. During the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, 16 students used six computers which were located in a corner of their classroom (this corner served as their computer corner).

Some non-Native teachers at the school reported that they felt untrusted upon entering the local communities in the role of teacher. This mistrust emanates from suspicion by some Natives that non-local teachers do not really care about Native children and Native cultural practices and may have been lured to Alaska by the pursuit of adventure in the wilderness and the prospects of exploiting natural resources (Baker, 1993; Oleksa, 2006). Yup'ik Natives sometimes use the term “Kass’aq” which means “white person” to suggest that the non-Native person (usually Caucasian) is aloof and distant from local practices and people (Baker, 1993; Oleksa, 2006). This term is widely understood as a derogatory term indicating exclusion. Whereas continued stay by non-Natives can, in some cases, build bridges and engender trust thereby easing the divide, the high turnover of teachers in rural Alaska continues to exacerbate this situation. This turnover is so high in some places that it has been

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labeled as the village syndrome of a revolving door (Bates & Oleksa, 2008). Mr.

Collins, who stayed in Alaska for 5 years, reports that he too used to be referred to as “Kass’aq” when he moved to Aleknagik. Over time, he took up invitations by

Natives to eat their food, attend some of their events and even participate in their traditional steam bath, Maqiq. An invitation of a non-Native to a Maqiq is a strong indicator of acceptance and trust (Hensel, 1996; Nibeck et al., 2013; Oleksa,

2006).

The curricular content at Aleknagik Lakers is set up in departments; most departments have a single teacher. For instance, Mr. Collins was the lead teacher and the only faculty in the Language Arts Department. Thus, with regard to departmental matters he answered to himself and did not undertake intra- departmental collaborations. Although teachers are expected to teach to exams

(specifically to the state test) as per the Alaska public school system, Mr. Collins did not rigidly teach to the exam and instead undertook a more holistic integrative approach which was cognizant of students’ lived cultural experiences. He expected his 16 students to employ material from their own lives and experiences in achieving curricular goals. By the time that his students were engaging in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, they had already covered several writing genres including poetry, letter writing, descriptive writing, and play writing.

Mr. Collins had taught at the school for 3 years but since the class ran on a multi- grade system, older students would move on and graduate and seek entry to grade 9 in high school in a different village. The students who were left in the

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class would be joined by others thus class membership continuously changed each year.

This change was also accelerated by absenteeism and other causes of failed school attendance. Mr. Collins’ classes varied in size from 10 to 16 students per class. Sometimes he would have a teaching aide working with him in the class but this was not consistent. Teacher load was determined in terms of days per week when one had to be present at school and to teach; Mr. Collins taught five days a week all day. Like at any school, there are explicit school rules against lateness, truancy, and alcohol consumption among other institutional regulations. While there is no explicit school rule stating that English is compulsory or required, it is understood that students need to build proficiency in

English especially if they are to excel at the sciences or math or other school related work (verified through interviews with students and Mr. Collins). Also, since the teachers are non-Native (Alaskan Natives occasionally got jobs as teaching aides), English is the language of communication between students and teachers. Some students spoke Yup'ik and English at home while others employed Yup'ik as a home language and with friends out of class. Additionally, many students spoke “village English” while out of class and during informal interactions.

Some village English and Yup’ik subsistence discourse made its way into the classroom and into the correspondence between Aleknagik students and

Nairobi students. There was a significant amount of out-of-class talk (between

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students, students and friends, students and their relatives) about the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration. Much of this talk (in English, Village English and Yup’ik) was characterized by excitement and curiosity regarding the students in Nairobi.

4.3 The Nairobi Context and Setting

4.3.1 The General Setting

Eight years ago, 20 students (12 girls and eight boys) who participated in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration (together with me as their teacher) lived in

Nairobi; a sub Saharan African city situated 12 time zones away from Aleknagik,

Alaska. Nairobi, which is 88 miles south of the equator and lies at an elevation of almost 6000 feet above the sea level, is the economic capital and the seat of the

Government of Kenya. It is also the site for regional office headquarters belonging to over 55 major multinational companies, such as, Coca Cola,

General Electric, Google, Standard Chartered Bank, and Xinhua News Agency

(27 of these have a regional coverage of the entire African continent). The Kenya

National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS, 2009) report puts the human population in

Nairobi at over 3.3 million at the time of the Alaska-Kenya exchange. This population is very diverse, a phenomenon caused by various migratory processes. For instance, due to rural-urban migration people from several indigenous Kenyan communities move into Nairobi in search of economic opportunities. The inhabitants of Nairobi (or “Nairobians” as they are popularly known) hail from the 42 indigenous ethnic communities, such as, Maasai, Kisii,

Kamba, Meru, Taita and Turkana. Multilingualism, multi-ethnicity and

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multiracialism are experienced more intensely in Nairobi than in the rural and pastoral parts of Kenya where it is the norm that one ethnolinguistic community is dominant in a geospatial location.

Thus, “Nairobians” does not stand for an ethnically homogenous group but is a collection of inhabitants, some of whom live in poor slum settlements

(characterized by deprivation, insecurity, poor amenities and congestion), such as, Mathare and Kawangware slums, while others live in fairly comfortable middleclass apartments and homes in places like Westlands and Parklands, and yet others live in more lavish suburbs, such as, Runda, Muthaiga, and Karen.

Geospatially, Nairobi is divided into two economic-class areas; the eastern side is characterized by low-economic dwellings while the western side is characterized by up-scale housing and upmarket establishments. According to the KNBS (2009), more than 90 percent of Nairobians (who mainly live on the eastern side of the city) work in formal and informal sectors in Nairobi. Many people from the economically depressed areas work in menial jobs in the city, are self-employed itinerant traders, hawkers, cleaners, home and institutional security guards, chauffeurs, office messengers and street-side cobblers. Also, since Nairobi is a regional economic hub, there has been significant regional and international migration into the city from countries in Africa and around the world.

More specifically, Nairobi being the seventh largest city in Africa

(http://www.worldlistmania.com/largest-cities-africa/) has attracted several multinationals, regional and local business concerns. Nairobi is also the seat of

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the Kenya government and has a number of important administrative and historical buildings, such as, the Parliament building, High Court and Court of

Appeal buildings, and the Official residence of the president (known as “State

House”). Nairobi also has some key infrastructural installations which serve East and Central Africa, including the world headquarters of the United Nations

Environmental Programs (UNEP), the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport,

Wilson Airport, Coca Cola bottling plant, the Kenyatta International Conference

Center, and the International Sports Center at Kasarani among others. Some of the countries sharing a border with Kenya (Uganda, Somalia, and South Sudan) and others which are in the same region (Eritrea, Rwanda, and the Democratic

Republic of Congo) have experienced large-scale political strife and turmoil.

Some of these countries continue to deal with instability to date and this turmoil has led to an influx of refugees some of whom have flocked into Nairobi from these strife-torn nations leading to further diversity within Nairobi.

The language landscape in Nairobi can, therefore, be best described as multilingual and the peoples as multiethnic and multicultural. This linguistic diversity is a prevalent and ubiquitous feature of everyday life in Nairobi and has a bearing on education which strives to impart Standard Kenyan English (SKE) and Standard Kenyan Swahili (SKS). However, young people in urban settings

(including Nairobi, Mombasa, Nakuru, and Kisumu) continue to speak in a unique way known as Sheng. What started in the 60s and 70s as a mixture of Swahili, some local languages (for example, Kikuyu, Luo) and English has over the years

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developed its own lexical compositions and syntactic constructions (Kang’ethe-

Iraki, 2004). Speakers of Sheng employ various processes such as syllable reversal, truncation, Bantuization of borrowed words, coinage, structural manipulation, semantic manipulation, and extension of morphology (Bosire,

2009; Ogechi, 2005). This constantly evolving way of speaking morphs from time to time for several reasons: to evade surveillance, to regulate inclusion and to index inverted prestige (Stenstrom & Jorgensen, 2000). Sheng, an important resource for teenage social capital (Bourdieu, 1990), is instrumental for youth who have immigrated to the city from formerly isolated monolingual ethnic communities (Bosire, 2006). Like many out-of-school teenage practices, Sheng is peripheralized in formal settings (Wandera, 2013) where it is thought to have injurious effects on the acquisition of proper literacy in both SKE and SKS

(Githinji, 2008; Momanyi, 2009).

In spite of this peripheralization, urban teenagers continue to speak Sheng which has over the years gained prominence; it is becoming more common to see advertisements on billboards written in Sheng to appeal to the younger generation (Mutonya, 2008). Sheng is also gaining visibility in the Kenyan political landscape; songs whose lyrics are sung in Sheng are used for political campaigns. For instance, in 2002 Gidi Gidi Maji Maji released a song called

“Unbwogable” which epitomized the political opposition party’s clarion call of being unbeatable thereby galvanizing youthful supporters to vote in presidential elections. Music sang in Sheng has the potential of a traveling text which crosses

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“the threshold of entertainment to become a conduit of political expression and...a symbol of resistance and determination” (Nyairo & Ogidi, 2005, p. 227).

The peripheralization of Sheng also continues to drive a wedge between

Sheng-speaking youth and authority figures. Formal western education was introduced in Kenya by the British colonial establishment and indigenous

Kenyans were compelled through various means to attend schools set up for them. Historically, the school served as an institution of assimilation meant to prepare native Africans to take up positions of subservience in the lower rungs of colonial hierarchy (Mazrui, 1995; Nabea, 2009). Both the church and the state have championed the spread of basic reading, writing and numeracy skills and the eradication of some traditional Kenyan practices which they thought were unchristian or uncivilized (Mazrui, 1995; Nabea, 2009). Whereas debates about using the language of the colonizer and therefore signaling colonial brainwashing

(see Thion’go, 1986) have somewhat eased out, language use is still a contested topic and Sheng continues to find itself at the center of such debates.

Many youth in Nairobi are multilingual and consumerist discourse

(partying, going to malls, restaurants, movies) is a feature of their conversations.

These youth are popularly known as “Nairobian youth”. The construction of a

Nairobian youth identity entails navigating across various spaces; the city is generally made up of some “found spaces” (Borden, 2001) i.e., naturally occurring geophysical features such as Nairobi River, and predominantly “built spaces” (Ogone, 2014), that is, man-made spaces such as malls, hotels, shops,

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and streets. Other not-so-tangible but prevalent features of Nairobi urban youth lifestyle (or “Nairobian youth lifestyle”) include social interactions across diversity, multilingual language use, participation in cosmopolitan consumerism through partaking of various styles and tastes in food, music, clothing, dancing, and leisure-time activities. Given Nairobi’s cosmopolitan nature, consumption patterns are generally not limited to a particular cultural or ethnic practice but are multiethnic, multicultural and even global. It is not unusual to find some people who eat Italian food for dinner, dress in sagging jeans akin to the Brooklyn New

York hip hop culture, and whose favorite beverage is English tea, but who appreciate Kikuyu music and speak Sheng together with other languages (field notes, June, 2013).

The consumerist discourse that characterizes Nairobian youth language use emanates from the presence of several entertainment and recreational venues that are a feature of Nairobi. In a bid to position itself as a tourist destination, the city continues to add developments such as 5 star hotels, high- end shopping malls (Village Market, Westgate, Sarit Centre, Yaya Centre,

Nakumatt Junction, and ABC Place) and the largest ice-skating rink in East and

Central Africa (Panare Sky Centre), among other attractions. The city also features a wide selection of cuisines from different parts of the country and the world; one can go to high end establishments such as “Tamarind” or “Carnivore” or “La Prugna D’oro” to enjoy both Kenyan meals and cuisines from Japan,

Thailand, China, India, Italy, the Middle East, Mexico and Hungary. Game meat

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is not very common and one can partake of this kind of meat (ostrich, crocodile, zebra, impala, and buffalo) at establshments that specialize in providing game meat such as, Carnivore Restaurant, and Safari Park Hotel.

In spite of its bustling urban life with busy streets, significant vehicular traffic and a skyline, the city of Nairobi also comprises a national park; the

Nairobi National Park is literally four miles south of downtown Nairobi (there is an electric fence separating the park from the city). This park is a game reserve for elephants, rhinos, zebras, buffaloes, lions, leopards, among several other wild animals. Unlike in Alaska where people go to hunt game, in Nairobi, it is more common for people to go to a park to see animals.

Similar to the constantly shifting, multifaceted Nairobian youth identity, being a youth is also transitional and non-homogenous (Lukalo, 2006). In the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration evidence of this shifting Nairobian youth identity emerges. For example, on several occasions students from Nairobi detail their activities in built spaces with constantly emerging new constructions (the most ubiquitous one being excursions to the latest malls and restaurants). Through these situated portrayals of self, these students position themselves as agentively navigating urban contexts (Clark, 2003; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone,

2014). Part of this navigation includes engaging with challenges such as insecurity, urban congestion, and poor road planning. Positioning oneself as living the Nairobian youth lifestyle (Lukalo, 2006) entails navigating “complex and shifting terrain[s]” (Muthuma, 2013, p. 5) of the city’s spatial, sociocultural and

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historical structure. The intersection of languages, navigation of social relations, traffic and vehicular transportation, consumerism, westernization, local audiovisual and textual media, and inter-ethnic contact are some key experiences that characterize the lives of Nairobian youth (Journo, 2009).

Several of these experiences come up in emails written by students in Nairobi addressed to their peers in Aleknagik.

4.3.2 A Brief Historical Overview of Kenya

Nairobi is locally referred to as “the Green City in the Sun” although the city has acquired the nickname “Nai”, a clipping of the name “Nairobi” popular with speakers of Sheng (who are predominantly the youth and people under 35 years of age). The name “Nairobi” originates from the Maasai (one of the indigenous communities in Kenya) language since locals from this community referred to the area as “enkare Nairobe” meaning “place of cold water” (Pavitt,

1992). In 1899, British colonizers named the place Nairobi when they established it as a rail depot for the Uganda railway. This place was originally a swampy area and the colonial authorities felt that the place could sufficiently supply water to camps which they set up as they constructed a railway from Mombasa to

Kampala (Pavitt, 1992). It was intended as a resting point between Mombasa on the Kenyan coast, and Kampala, the capital city of Uganda. Over time more people settled there and the main street (Government road) became more populated with people, vehicles and building construction (Pavitt, 1992). In the colonial times, Nairobi provided colonial farmers infrastructure to transport their

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produce to Europe. Mombasa is an older town than Nairobi and was the key city in Kenya till 1905 when Nairobi replaced Mombasa as the capital of the British

Protectorate (Pavitt, 1992).

Kenya has 42 ethnic languages whose peoples are located in different parts of the country (for example, the Luo and Luhya are on the western part, the

Kikuyu are in the central part, the Kamba are on the eastern part). Kenya, which is situated in sub Saharan Africa, is linguistically diverse and this diversity is recognized by the Kenyan constitution. Many Kenyans speak English which is ideologically norm-referenced towards received British pronunciation (Buregeya,

2006). Other languages include Swahili (also spoken regionally, in Congo,

Tanzania, parts of Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi) and a native language (such as, Maasai, Kisii, Luo, Luhya, Kikuyu and Kalenjin) from among the 42 heritage languages in the country. While it used to be that English was the official language and Swahili was the national Language, the amended Kenyan

Constitution (2010) stipulates that both English and Swahili are official languages, and recognizes the heritage role of the 42 indigenous languages thus:

(1) The national language of the Republic is Kiswahili.

(2) The official languages of the Republic are Kiswahili and English.

(3) The State shall––

(a) Promote and protect the diversity of language of the people of

Kenya; and

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(b) Promote the development and use of indigenous languages,

Kenyan Sign language, Braille and other communication formats

and technologies accessible to persons with disabilities.

(Kenyan Constitution, 2010, p. 7)

Although this constitution emphasizes the importance of English, Swahili and indigenous languages, it has some provisions (for instance the following caveat) which convey an imbalance in the status of English and Swahili relative to each other and to other languages: “if there is a conflict between different language versions of this Constitution, the English language version prevails” (The Kenya

Constitution, 2010, p. 159). Such an imbalance signals implicit language ideologies prevalent in Nairobi, in particular, and in Kenya as a whole. In both explicit legislation and through implicit ideologies, English is conceived of as a language which grants one access to power, opportunities, and resources and is, therefore, a means for upward socio-economic mobility (King’ei, 2001).

The reality of life in Nairobi however manifests a greater linguistic diversity than just English, Swahili and indigenous Kenyan languages. Right from colonial contact and to date, there continues to be a steady increase in migration from outside Kenya. The first large group that came to Kenya was Indian coolies brought from the Indian sub-continent by the British who employed them as cheap labor to work on the construction of the Mombasa-Kampala railway (Ogot

& Ochieng’, 1995; Pavitt, 1992). Indian merchants soon established posts in

Nairobi to cater to railway workers and other people (missionaries and travelers).

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This importation of railway builders from the Indian subcontinent (then known as

British India) happened between 1896 and 1901 and has led to the presence of some 3rd and 4th generation Kenyans of Indian descent who speak Gujarati,

Punjabi, Pashtun, Hindi and Urdu (Pavitt, 1992). Other more recent immigrants who have been attracted by Nairobi’s infrastructural and economic opportunities have also settled in the city (some temporarily others permanently) leading to the presence of other languages such as German, Italian, Chinese, French, Arabic,

Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. This influx into the city by people of various linguistic backgrounds makes Nairobi the most linguistically diverse place in

Kenya. For most inhabitants of Nairobi, English and Swahili serve as the lingua franca in addition to Sheng. Some institutions within Nairobi offer opportunities for people to learn some of these foreign languages. At the school in which the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration was being undertaken, the administration had introduced optional subjects where one could learn German or French and plans were underway to commence Chinese classes.

Language use in Kenyan schools has a history of regulation through policy formulation which is informed by (covert and overt) ideologies of language use.

Like in many places with a colonial legacy, colonial rule in Kenya entailed an influx of westernization and capitalism (Ogot & Ochieng’, 1995). Both schooling and religious conversion in colonial Kenya played a role in perpetrating this imposition through explicit and implicit punitive practices, which compelled locals to take up what was perceived as more civilized ways and to abandon their

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culture (Ogot & Ochieng’, 1995). For descriptions of some horrors of colonial coercion in Kenya see Atieno-Odhiambo (1995). Formal education was introduced in colonized Kenya through collaboration of the state and the church.

This introduction led to the use of the Roman alphabet in writing in local languages. The church and the colonial government employed this orthography for official records, and administration. Colonial administrators intended for locals to take up low-level administrative positions and to render service to the colonizing forces (Nabea, 2009; Ogot & Ochieng’, 1995). Access to advanced numeracy and literacy was denied to indigenous Kenyans whom it was felt would become rebellious and begin making demands for their rights and freedoms if they were too well educated (Mazrui, 1995). Thiong’o (1965) has described incidences of colonial contact and post-colonial life through accounts that explore the role of the church, school, and government in the colonial process.

Since Kenya declared its independence from British colonial rule in 1963, and when the country became a republic in 1964, there have been several initiatives at repurposing the education system in line with the country's needs and identity. Muricho and Chang’ach (2013) have provided an inventory of these main initiatives:

“Since independence we have reformed education system as follows; in

1964 Africanization and National goals of education (GOK, 1964), in 1976

national objectives of education and policies in Kenya (GOK, 1976); in

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1981 the establishment of the Second University (GOK, 1981), in1988

working party on education and training for the next decade and beyond

(GOK, 1988), in 1999 Koech Report (GOK, 1999), Totally Integrated

Quality Education and Training (TIQET)” (p. 123)

In spite of these initiatives dissatisfaction with how education is serving or failing to serve Kenyans persists. This dissatisfaction is caused by the failure of education to produce “accelerated economic growth, more wealth and income distribution, greater quality of opportunity, availability of skilled manpower, decline in population growth, long life, better health outcomes, reduced crime, national unity and political stability” (p. 123).

The very first of these big initiatives intended to repurpose education is the

Education Commission Report of 1964 (popularly known as the ‘Ominde report of

1964’ after the name of the chair of the commission Prof. S. H. Ominde). This was the first report on education in independent Kenya (there have been others in pre-independence Kenya such as, the Committee on African Education report of 1949). This commission recommended that, the government must provide universal primary education to all Kenyans. This report also recommended the abolishment of race-tiered education (during colonial times Europeans, Asians from India, and indigenous Kenyans attended segregated schools). With regard to language use this report proposed that English becomes “the universal medium of instruction from Primary 1, but Kiswahili should become a compulsory subject from Primary 1” (Ominde Report, 1964, p. 11)

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Another major initiative is the “Gachathi Report of 1976, the third reform commission in Kenya, formally known as ‘the National Committee on Education

Objectives and Policies (NCEOP)’. This committee focused on ways in which educational goals and the educational system would meet the demands of the post-independent country. Yet another notable initiative which aimed at repurposing education in Kenya, is the 1981 Mackay Commission (in Muricho &

Chang’ach, 2013) spearheaded by Kenya’s 2nd president, Daniel arap Moi. The main objective of this commission was to investigate and report to the government of Kenya on possibilities and strategies for setting up a university that would offer vocation-oriented courses. This is also the commission that proposed the abolition of the 7-4-2-3 system of education (seven years in primary school, four years in secondary school, two years in high school, and three years in university) to be replaced by the 8-4-4 Education System (eight schooling years spent at primary level, and four at secondary and bachelors/undergraduate levels) (Eshiwani, 1993). The 8-4-4 system is in operation to date although there have been alterations to the content and structure of the curricula.

A very recent initiative by the government of Kenya is the implementation of “Kenya’s Vision 2030” launched in 2008, by Kenya’s 3rd president Mwai

Kibaki, to propel the country into middle income economy status by the year

2030. This initiative which has three components to it (economic improvement, societal advancement, and political maturity) is a holistic approach geared toward impacting a broader spectrum of the country's life. The latest initiative by the

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current government under the 4th president, Uhuru Kenyatta, is a push to implement computer-based education in all primary schools. Various scholars

(Eshiwani, 1993; Muricho & Chang’ach, 2013) argue that there is need to salvage Kenya’s education through means such as ensuring non-interference in education reform by the political class (Muricho & Chang’ach, 2013). Further,

Eshiwani (1993) proposes the need for implementing education initiatives which enhance international awareness. This proposal is closely related to the key argument in this dissertation which explores an online intercultural collaboration between students in Nairobi and Aleknagik. Whereas the initiatives above are concerned with education in public schools, these pursuits have created a context where private school education in Kenya has taken up some of the aspirations in these proposals.

4.3.3 The School

This description of the school was mainly constructed from field notes and document artifacts. Generally speaking (in Kenya and in particular in Nairobi), there are 2 kinds of schools; public and private schools. The former are government-run schools which follow the government-sponsored national curriculum popularly known as the 8-4-4 curriculum. The latter are privately run institutions some which follow the 8-4-4 curriculum while others follow various international curricula such as International General Certificate of Education

(IGCSE), and the International Baccalaureate (IB). The students in Kenya who took part in the Alaska-Kenya exchange went to a medium-cost, co-ed, private,

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day school that offers IGCSE, and IB. This school was founded in 1970 and is located in one of the economically well-off suburbs (a place called Westlands) on the western side of Nairobi. The physical school campus is divided into two separate sections; the junior section comprising grades one to six with a student population of 250, and the senior section comprising grades seven to 13 with a student population of 460 (40% had a Middle Eastern and Indian heritage, 50% were native Kenyan and 10% were foreigners). The junior and senior sections have their own separate administration officials each headed by a school head teacher. Both head teachers are administrators and do not teach.

At the time of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration both head teachers were expatriates; the head of the senior section was a male United Kingdom citizen and the head of the junior section was a female Canadian citizen of Pakistani heritage. Unlike the school in Alaska, the senior school ran single-grade classes.

The faculty at the senior section comprised 46 teachers, six in part-time positions. 85% of the faculty were local (Kenyan citizens) and 15% were expatriates teaching in various departments within the school. The average age of the teachers was 37. The school which stands on almost 12 acres is gated and has 24-hour manned guard-surveillance. There are eight buildings each with two floors. The school has 18 classrooms each with a capacity of 25 students, and several special-use rooms, such as, a wood workshop, a computer lab, four science labs (for general science, physics, chemistry, and biology), a music room, a dance studio, a domestic science room, a library, and an

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acquisitions/storage room. The school also has a cafeteria with outdoor seating under shaded structures, a swimming pool area, basketball and football courts, a school flower garden and a parking space. Although different departmental offices are scattered within the different buildings around the school, there is a general faculty lounge known as “the staff room.” The school has a career and guidance counselor and lacks specialized personnel to diagnose learning disabilities. However, being in a city, children with severe cases of learning disabilities could be sent to other more specialized facilities.

As is common in most schools in Kenya, the school has a motto (pithy statement meant to encapsulate the spirit of the school); education for service.

Students at the school (both sections) wear regulation mandated uniform to school; gray skirts or pants for girls, gray pants for boys and white shirts for all students. Every student is required to wear a tie which has the school insignia on it. When students participate in other co-curricular activities (dance, drama, athletic events, swimming) they dress appropriately for these activities. Teachers are required to dress formally unless they are teaching or participating in physical education, dance, cooking class, drama, and woodwork. Unlike public schools which run on a January to December calendar, this school runs on a 3-term calendar where the academic year begins in September. Each term is about 13 weeks.

By the time my class was participating in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, I was the head of the English Department. In support of one of the school policies,

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to expose students to global education, it had become an English department policy that there would always be one expatriate teacher in the department whose native language was English thus there was 1 UK citizen who was an

English Department faculty. The department consisted of five full time teachers

(including me) and a part time teacher. The teaching load was measured in number of lessons per week; as head of department I had 20 lessons while regular teachers had up to 30. Some minor tensions continue to exist between some local teachers and expatriate teachers (who were mainly non-Kenyans) over different pay scales (expatriates were paid more). See Mbuthi and Orodho

(2014) for details on pay-scale and other tensions between expatriates and local teachers. In spite of this point of tension, the overall mood at the school was convivial. The parent community appreciated both expatriate and local teachers especially those whose classes performed well in externally moderated terminal exams at grades 11 and 13.

Given that grades 11 and 13 were exam-classes (O-level and IB exams), it was easier to anchor the Alaska-Kenya collaboration in the less restrictive grade 9 curriculum, which was not time-pressured towards an impending terminal exam. There are explicit school rules against offenses such as lateness, truancy, and alcohol consumption among other institutional regulations. In the school staff manual, there is a requirement which states that unless otherwise stated, classes are to be conducted in Standard English (SKE) except when the subject itself is another language, such as, Swahili, French, and German or during activities

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such as drama, sporting, or dance. Also, unless they are communicating about subject content related to other languages which are taught at school, it is required that all interactions between students and faculty should be undertaken in SKE (paraphrase from the staff manual of the school). Students are therefore required to build a proficiency in English in order to excel in their variously selected disciplines and for their day-to-day communication at school. While they are out of class in the playground or during recess or even when they are not under teacher-surveillance, it is not unusual to hear some students speaking in

Swahili, Sheng, or even some heritage languages.

Many students commonly engage in recreational and entertainment activities within the city which signal their middle-class, Nairobian youth identity.

These include visiting malls for recreation such as movie watching, shooting pool, playing table football, and browsing the many shops; enjoying cuisines from different parts of the world such as Italian, Japanese, Indian, Hungarian,

Mexican; spending time with friends; navigating the city’s transport through getting chauffeured, driving, or taking taxis; wearing and enjoying trendy clothes, and music. The 20 students who took part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration were from middle-class families and could afford to engage in consumerist practices. These practices, which demonstrate a Nairobian identity, were present in almost all emails sent from Nairobi to Aleknagik. Also, during the collaboration, there was a significant amount of out-of-classroom talk about the Alaska-Kenya collaboration (between students, students and friends, students and their

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relatives). Based on recollections by some of the students, this talk was mainly characterized by excitement and/or curiosity regarding life in Alaska.

4.4 Conclusion

This chapter is based on the premise that it is important to look beyond language when examining interactions between people (Agar, 1994; Ahearn,

2012; Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Scollon & Scollon, 2003). The chapter describes local contexts entailed within the two primary sites of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration and illustrates situated characteristics in these two sites as follows:

a) In Alaska, Yup’ik youth live in a village community where their life is

shaped by traditional Yup’ik lifestyles and practices (Ayunerak et al., 2014;

Nibeck et al., 2013). These include engaging in subsistence practices and

participating in talk about subsistence (Baker, 1993; Bates & Oleksa,

2008; Ford, 1966; Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006), participation in culture-

sensitive education (Cotton, 1984), and being a participant of rural

Alaskan ways of speaking (Loon, 1998). The chapter also situates the

school within Alaskan flora and fauna or found spaces (Borden, 2001),

and highlights key features that characterize being a student there.

b) With regard to Kenya, the chapter illustrates how life for the youth living in

Nairobi is characterized by: linguistic diversity and teenage communicative

practices (Abdulaziz & Osinde, 1997; Bosire, 2006/2009; Buregeya, 2006;

Githiora, 2002; Kang’ethe-Iraki, 2004; Mazrui, 1995; Mutonya, 2008;

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Ogechi, 2005), recreational practices and lifestyle in and around built

spaces (Lukalo, 2006; Muthuma, 2013; Mutonya, 2007), teenage agency

(Nabea, 2009; Wandera, 2013) especially in navigating the intricacies of

city life (Ogone, 2014). The chapter situates the school and the students’

experiences within man-made constructions or built spaces (Ogone, 2014)

in Nairobi, and highlights key features that characterize being a student

there.

These features of Yup’ik and Nairobian teenage lifestyle together with the post-colonial heritage, the linguistic landscape, and attendant ideologies, instantiate local and supralocal influences (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009;

Moore, 2002) which converge on the site of action (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), or the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, and characterize meaning-sharing between the two groups of students. How then do students communicate interculturally in these local and supralocal contexts?

In the next chapter, I present data and discuss findings in response to the research questions.

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Chapter 5: Data Presentation Analysis and Discussion

5.1 INTRODUCTION

In this chapter I present, analyze, and discuss findings based on a “telling cases” (Mitchell, 1984) case study approach whereby I focus on three pairs of students from the wider pool. This chapter responds to the following two (out of the three) research questions that guide this study:

1 What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration?

2 What understandings of the intersections between intercultural

communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from

analyzing these strategies?

The third research question (below) is the subject of chapter six (which is the final chapter of this dissertation):

3 Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on

pedagogy?

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This chapter is divided into five sections including this introductory section.

In this first section, I briefly recap some key aspects of the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration and some features of methodology. The second, third, and fourth

sections each focus on one of the three pairs of students (see table 5.1) who

participated in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. These three sections examine archival data and post project reflections by Jasmyn and Patrick, Nate and

Shayda, and Deanna and Fareen.

The fifth section contains the analysis and discussion of data from these three pairs of telling cases. This section is subdivided into two subsections; the first subsection directly responds to the first research question and the second

subsection directly responds to the second research question. In response to the

first question, I discuss three key strategies of intercultural communication under

the banner of supralocalization: 1) negotiation, 2) acts of navigation, and 3)

reconstitutionalization or re-dimensionalization. In response to the second

question, I discuss three findings under the following headings: 1) indexicality

and geosemiotics, 2) communicative moves as studenets engage with meanings,

and 3) a critical perspective of the interactional context. The discussion under

this last heading positions this study as a site of resistance against

peripheralization and silencing of Yup’ik and Nairobian lifestyles. This fifth section

makes sense of data through applying a geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon

& Scollon, 2003) of shared discourse between students in Aleknagik and Nairobi.

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This analysis takes the form of a close examination of intersections between

interactional, place, and visual semiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). In this

section, I also employ languaculture (Agar, 1994), or linguistic culture (Farr &

Song, 2011; Schiffman, 1996) as a lens through which I engage with the

enmeshed nature of language and culture. In addition, I frame connections

between language and sociocultural context within the concept of indexicality

(Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr & Song, 2011), and employ local vs.

supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) as a lens through

which I engage with spatialized use of language. Overall, in the fifth section I respond directly to the first two research questions and draw from relevant

literature to make sense of interactional strategies in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

As a backdrop to this chapter, I wish to reiterate some aspects of the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration and some features of methodology. These include, a brief summary of participant demographics, an inventory of the ten thematic prompts that students were writing about in the online collaboration, and a brief recap of the fit between geosemiotic discourse analysis (Scollon & Scollon,

2003), the analytic tool, and the two research questions.

Whereas table 3.1, in chapter three, offers a more detailed description of

demographic features, the following table, 5.1, highlights some demographic

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features of the three pairs of students who comprise the telling cases for this dissertation.

Pairs or “telling cases” (Mitchell, 1984) From Aleknagik, AK From Nairobi, Kenya

Telling case 1 Jasmyn Tugatuk Patrick Kalu

(Pair 1) (Female, Yup’ik (Male, Miji Kenda ethnicity) ethnicity)

Telling case 2 Nate Andrews Shayda Wacu Njenga (Pair 2) (Male, Yup’ik ethnicity) (Female, Kikuyu ethnicity)

Telling case 3 Deanna Nicholai Fareen Pirani

(Pair 3) (Female, Yup’ik (Female, Pakistani- ethnicity) Kenyan ethnicity)

Table 5.1: Student-Pairs during the Alaska-Kenya collaboration

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Like the rest of their classmates who took part in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration,

Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna, who lived in Aleknagik, Alaska, collaborated in fixed pairs with Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen, who lived in Nairobi, Kenya. The principle employed in selecting these students from the wider pool of study participants is Mitchell’s (1984) notion of “telling cases”. As explained in chapter

3, “telling cases” are preferable to “typical cases” because an analysis of telling cases yields the most understandings of the nature and workings of the wider data set (Mitchell, 1984). This is because, rather than exemplify typicality or representativeness, telling cases involve analytical induction.

There are some notable differences between the group in Nairobi and the group in Aleknagik. The first is urban-rural, that is, the students in Aleknagik inhabit a rural space whereas their peers in Nairobi live in a bustling sub-Saharan city. The second difference is, the Aleknagik class is a coherent group of Alaskan

Native students from the Yup’ik community whereas the Nairobi class is multiethnic and multilingual. A third difference is, based on socioeconomic descriptors; average family income, education level, and size of housing, among other descriptors of socioeconomic status (SES), as proposed by organizations such as the U.S. Public Census Bureau. The students in Nairobi can be conceived of as being in a middle class band. More specifically, if this band were split into three groups: lower middle-class, middle class, and upper middle-class,

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then the students in Nairobi would be in the middle class. However, based on

such a scale, Aleknagik students, who live a subsistence traditional lifestyle in a

village located in a rural tundra, would be conceived of as being

socioeconomically underprivileged or working class. This conceptualization is

however at odds with how the Yup’ik self-identify since they do not consider themselves as being economically underprivileged. Notably, such a conceptualization is informed by economic hierarchical descriptors with colonial underpinnings of a deculturation project (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa,

2008; Oleksa, 2006).

However, the Yup’ik have been living a subsistence Yuuyaraq lifestyle for over two thousand years and they continue to have some access to natural resources that their ancestors had (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa,

2008). To refer to them as “working class” or “socioeconomically underprivileged” is to impose upon them SES measures that are based on a western-centric economic hierarchy. Such imposition pathologizes and abnormalizes Yup’ik traditional lifestyle by applying an orientation that is normed towards western lifestyle. Resistance to this kind of abnormalization emerges through discourse

(for instance, by the Aleknagik students). Based on emic accounts, as confirmed by field notes and participant interviews, I have elected to not engage with the analysis of data in this study by imposing western-centric SES labels. Such imposition of a western-centric hierarchy would obscure the cultural pride that is

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prevalent in discourse shared by Aleknagik students when they communicate with their peers, in Nairobi, about self and place. Importantly, this imposition would undermine my efforts, together with my participants’, to account for how implicit and explicit cultural practices influence intercultural communication, as seen through shared discourse in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

For students from Aleknagik, these implicit and explicit practices are based on a construction of self within a local context of Yuuyaraq traditions

(Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). For students from Nairobi, these implicit and explicit practices are based on a construction of self within a local context of Nairobian youth lifestyle (Clark, 2003;

Journo, 2009; Lukalo, 2006; Muthuma, 2013; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone, 2014). As observed in chapter 4, the selves and places which the two groups of students construct fall on margins of global geopolitics. That is, Yup’ik experiences are silenced and marginalized in Alaska (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa,

2008; Oleksa, 2006), while Kenyan experiences are peripheralized since they emanate from, and are about an economically and culturally underdeveloped, third-world country (McLaren, 1998; Thiong’o, 1986/1991).

The main objective of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration (which occurred eight years ago) was for students to write to their exchange partner(s) describing a situated sense of self. We (Mr. Collins and myself) advised our students to have fun with their exchange partner(s) during their peer-to-peer

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correspondence. This correspondence was based on ten themed writing prompts shown in table 5.2 below:

Themes Estimated duration (These themes were not pre-planned but emerged from considering the (2007-8 academic topics that the two groups agreed to year) write about)

1 Self-introduction September week 1 & 2

2 A day in my life September week 3

3 Question time October

4 Connection self and community October

5 Describing our favorite place November

6 Picture exchange November

7 Writing about food December

8 Having fun in your favorite place December

9 How you spend your holidays January

10 Poem-based exchange February

Table 5.2: Themed writing prompts

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These writing prompts, which structured the correspondence between

Aleknagikan and Nairobian students, further highlight the primacy of writing in the intercultural interactions and underscores that the Alaska-Kenya collaboration is

a literacy event. In the following three sections (focusing on the pairs of students), I present archival data from across these 10 thematic prompts in

various forms: email correspondence, pictures exchanged, and images of cultural

artifacts implicated in the collaboration. I also present post-project reflections in

the form of transcripts of interviews and conversations with study participants

eight years after the collaboration. These reflections are based on a data-cued

ethnography approach (Tobin et al., 2009).

Overall, this chapter illustrates student’s pragmatic intercultural

communication strategies, and highlights how the Alaska-Kenya collaboration is

a site for articulating spatially and culturally situated discourse based on

peripheralized Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness. The collaboration between the two

groups exemplifies a student-centered pedagogy where, through their various pragmatic engagements with one another, students became each other’s authentic audience. I examine communicative acts by the students on both sides of the collaboration as they engage in agentive meaning sharing and meaning

making across sociocultural and geospatial difference. This following section,

which focuses on Jasmyn Tugatuk and Patrick Kalu, is the first of three sections

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based on data from the student pairs. All names in this study (other than my own) are pseudonyms.

5.2 Jasmyn Tugatuk and Patrick Kalu. Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness:

Spotlighting Names, the Environment and the Question of the Bus.

Eight years ago, Jasmyn and Patrick, together with their classmates, sent each other self-introductory emails; the first in a series of themed correspondence between Aleknagik and Nairobi. After their teachers (Mr. Collins and I respectively), had introduced to them the idea of an online collaborative exchange with peers from Africa and Alaska, they were placed in fixed corresponding pairs, given their pair-mate’s name, and they commenced correspondence. However, before the collaboration began, both classes used a map of the world and a globe as geospatial locating instruments to pinpoint the other group and visualize themselves relative to these peers. Maps and globes serve as orienting devices and are cultural artifacts for situating self and place relative to the other. Both classes engaged in exploratory discussions meant to prepare them for the collaboration. Roughly a week before the collaboration ensued, they brainstormed pre-collaboration questions to ignite interest and develop some clarity about things they would want to know from each other.

Some of these questions included:

a. What is your population? b. What types of food do you eat?

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c. How much rainfall do you get a year? d. What is your school like? e. How many people are in your school? f. Do you like your teachers? (Field notes from document artifacts, December, 2013)

There were also some site-specific questions. For instance, students in

Aleknagik asked:

a. What kind of traditional crafts do you make? b. Is your country very hot and dry?

(Field notes from document artifacts, December, 2013)

Students in Nairobi asked:

a. How do you manage to live in such a cold place? b. Can any food grow with all that snow?

(Field notes from document artifacts, December, 2013)

These pre-project questions were also intended to serve as initial steps in a

process of creating interactional pairs of students, and to help students visualize

that they were going to communicate with peers who lived in communities that

were culturally and geospatially different from their own local contexts.

As a way to collect post project reflections, I traveled to Alaska to interview

Jasmyn, and I also traveled to Kenya to interview Patrick. In addition to these face-to-face interviews, I solicited clarifications and elaborations from them via other means (email communication, video conferencing, instant messaging).

When Jasmyn saw the pre-project questions, she said, “These were general

questions and not directly meant for Patrick. They were just questions to get us

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thinking, I guess” (interview transcript, September, 2014). On the other hand,

Patrick reported that he wished he had included in his emails to Jasmyn more

questions about different languages found in Alaska (interview notes, May,

2014).

The first online assignment by Jasmyn and Patrick was to compose self- introductions. In his reflections, Mr. Collins observed that the exchange was intended to give an opportunity for students to “practice descriptions using sensory imagery and writing for an audience” (interview notes, July, 2014).

During post project reflections, Mr. Collins reported that he had taught his

students about descriptive and letter writing skills. Therefore, asking students to

write self-introductions would give them an opportunity to practice these learned

skills. In her self-introductory email (below), Jasmyn begins by identifying her

school-registered name, Jasmyn Tugatuk, and indicating her Yup’ik name,

Iquarta. Toward the end of her email, she recursively returns to her name-identity

by revealing yet another name, her nickname, Spirit.

Dear, Patrick Kalu. Hi my name is Jasmyn Tugatuk and my Yup'ik name is Iquarta. I am 12 ½ years old and in the 6th grade. I live in Aleknagik, AK. I love to sing and dance. I have 4 sisters and 2 brothers. One of my sisters is my twin. She is one of the girls who will be sending one of your classmates a letter. My friends call me Jasmine like the jasmine flower but my other friends I know call me Spirit. I like that better than Jasmine. Sincerely, Jasmyn Tugatuk

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Jasmyn’s email contains varied information which Patrick can relate to, such as, her age, grade, location, hobbies, and her siblings. The double identity where

“Iquarta” is separate from “Jasmyn Tugatuk” signals a divide between Yup’ik cultural practices (in homes and the community) and dominant western practices

(in the school and other official regulated spaces) in Aleknagik. This separation, of Yup’ik and school-registered names, is illustrative of a cultural dichotomy in

Aleknagik where official systems are founded on dominant western traditions and positioned as being at loggerheads with Yup’ik practices. Her teacher, Mr.

Collins, referred to her as “Jasmyn” and not as “Iquarta”. In fact, all names of

Aleknagik students that were submitted to the students and me in Nairobi were school-registered names. In other words, Patrick initially received the name

“Jasmyn Tugatuk” as his correspondence partner and not “Iquarta”. However, in their correspondence with students in Nairobi, 12 of the 16 students from

Aleknagik revealed this distinction between their school-registered name and their Yup’ik name. The remaining four simply did not indicate these two separate identities in their initial emails but did so in subsequent correspondence. In addition to this aspect on naming, Jasmyn adds that her friends call her

“Jasmine” and “Spirit,” perhaps intending to build further camaraderie with

Patrick.

Patrick’s self-introduction (below) begins with a consideration of how his name might sound “weird” to someone unfamiliar with it, and ends with an

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apology for his having delayed to send Jasmyn this email. His email also contains some aspects, such as, age, schooling, social engagements, and

location, which Jasmyn might relate to:

To Jasmyn Tugatuk, Hello, My name is Patrick Kalu. It might sound like a weird name but believe me, I have heard weirder names. I am 14 and in grade 9 since I skipped 2 classes. I love playing soccer and hanging out with friends. You can call me PK. I live in Nairobi. It is the capital city of Kenya. Sorry for my delayed letter. Yours PK (Patrick Kalu)

By referring to his name as “weird” and by explaining that he has “heard weirder names,” Patrick, who lives in Nairobi, a multiethnic and pluralistic cosmopolitan space, demonstrates his exposure to people’s names from other places and a history where his own name has been referred to as being “weird.” This reference to his name as being “weird” inscribes his experiences in that, somewhere in his world he may have been told that his name is strange or sounds strange. He also appears to focus on providing information that Jasmyn, an outsider to his local space, would not know, for example, “I live in Nairobi. It is the capital city of Kenya.” In this way, he decenters himself and centers Jasmyn.

Like Jasmyn, he mentions various aspects of his life (age, grade, hobbies) and

he recursively returns to his name towards the end of his email and invites her to

refer to him as “PK.” Taken together, the two introductory emails present similarities and differences between Patrick and Jasmyn: both are young, they

are students, have siblings and/or friends, and have nicknames. They both

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employ learned skills, such as letter writing conventions and their emails show an

awareness of pragmatic features such as salutation, appropriate tone, and sign-

off. Patrick and Jasmyn employ knowledge from their in- and out-of-school experiences in their email exchanges.

During post-project reflections, Jasmyn and Patrick offered several reflexive remarks based on their introductory emails. Jasmyn said that she remembered looking for information about Africa, especially after reading

Patrick’s introductory email. She explained:

Back then I had no idea that Africa had such big cities let alone a city with 4 million people. Before writing to Patrick I had seen pictures from a friend of a family friend when he had travelled to Africa many years ago. All I saw was animals like zebras, a lion, elephants and buffaloes. Also, my uncle had some old National Geographic magazines which featured animals, forests and desserts in Africa. I'm not sure how to pronounce Patrick’s other name. Maybe it is like kale? [pause] I think it is normal. I like PK better. Maybe he thought my name was weird. I think anyone can say “Jasmyn” if they can’t say Iquarta (interview transcript, September, 2014).

Patrick made the following comment:

I don't remember whether I tried to pronounce Jasmyn’s Yup'ik name. It is ok to have a Yup’ik name because she comes from traditional Alaska. I know that people tend to find unfamiliar names hard to pronounce. That's why I told her my name could be weird. I don't really think that it is weird [laughs] I think before writing to Jasmyn, I only thought of Alaska the cold place full of snow. That is what I saw in movies! I did not think anyone would be happy in such a cold place but in her other emails she wrote about playing and all the things that she did for fun with friends. Also she has a bigger family than mine (interview transcript, May, 2014).

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Jasmyn’s and Patrick’s interest in Africa and Alaska (respectively), increased

after they read from each other. Before their exchange, they had incomplete

pictures and superficial understandings of each other’s contexts. Jasmyn’s prior

exposure to Africa was mediated by print media, which only displayed animals.

Patrick’s prior exposure to Alaska was mediated by movies that featured

abundant snow and wilderness. For both students prior to the exchange, Alaska

and Kenya, which are many time zones apart, were not crystallized through the

kind of information that they were receiving from various sources.

Another theme that Jasmyn and Patrick exchanged on, was the theme, ‘a day in the life’. In the salutation of her email, Jasmyn takes up Patrick’s previous invitation to use his nickname and begins with, “Hey what’s up, Patrick Kalu

(PK). My day here is pretty normal like yours.” She then proceeds to describe her day, which begins when she wakes up at 6am and ends when she goes to bed at 11pm. Jasmyn compares her day to Patrick’s day and characterizes it as

“normal”. The accumulating information that they have shared reveals similarities with regards to age range, shared status as students, among other descriptors.

Perhaps these similarities encouraged Jasmyn to compare her day to what she imagines to be Patrick’s day and characterize the same as “normal”. Jasmyn then launches into a sensory-based description (employing sights, sounds, and tactile senses) of her daily school-ward trip. In a post project reflexive comment based on this email, she recalled that Mr. Collins had taught them various

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description techniques such as using the senses. She added, “I think I wanted

PK to see what I see, hear what I hear, feel what I feel” (interview transcript,

September, 2014). In her email to Patrick she writes:

I don’t eat breakfast but sometimes if I do eat breakfast I would make eggs, bacon, toast, juice, and have a piece of cake. After eating I watch TV then head to school. I walk to school but others take the school bus. While I’m walking to school I see dogs running around, trees, mountains, a lake, and tundra, and its cold out so my skin feels like ice is on my arms and it is quiet. Our road is dirt, not paved like cement. It’s just dirt. Sometimes I stay after school so I can work on a project.

In Aleknagik, like in many places in Alaska, daily life is characterized by encounters with flora, fauna, topography and climatic factors. Jasmyn’s email situates her life and activities in the physical Aleknagik landscape. Her description of her walk to school captures sensory stimuli during her interaction with the Aleknagik natural environment. She “see[s] dogs running around, trees, mountains, a lake, and tundra,” she feels “cold out [her] skin feels like ice is on

[her] arms,” and she describes the silence saying, “it is quiet.”

During post project reflections, Patrick said that he liked the way she had described the cold—“it’s cold out so my skin feels like ice.” Jasmyn’s description animates the typicality of interactions between human beings and the Alaskan natural environment. There is commonality between Jasmyn and Patrick’s morning routines which includes having breakfast, watching TV, and going to school. There are some differences for instance, the different geophysical and climatic conditions. Later in this email, Jasmyn adds several after-school

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activities many of which she has in common with Patrick (such as, playing with

her pet dog, checking email, online chatting with friends, and watching DVD movies). In his post project reflections, based on Jasmyn’s email, Patrick said:

Actually I remember this email! Do you remember I asked you about dirt roads? We thought the roads there were dirty [laughs] but you said she means like murram roads. Also, when I read it now I think her life was just like any teenager in Nairobi without the snow and the tundra. I used to have a dog although it was my sister’s because she played with it more but our parents gave it to both of us (interview transcript, May 2014).

This recollection by Patrick was cued by the phrase, “dirt roads,” an uncommon

phrase in Kenya when referring to unpaved roads. Jasmyn’s intended meaning in

using this phrase was not taken up by Patrick (and his classmates) who instead

use the phrase, “murram roads,” to represent the same phenomenon Jasmyn

was referring to. Instead of understanding “dirt roads” to mean unpaved roads,

Patrick recalled how the term triggered the phrase “dirty roads” for him and his

peers.

Another significant misunderstanding between Patrick and Jasmyn which

reemerged during post project reflection, occurred over her use of the concept of

“school bus”. This reemergence was cued by two items from archival data:

Jasmyn’s email above where she writes, “others take the school bus”; and a

picture of the said “bus” which she had sent Patrick in a subsequent email, a four

wheeler drawing an aluminum trailer (see Appendix F). Eight years ago when

Patrick received this picture, he thought that Jasmyn was making fun of him. As a

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native of sub Saharan Africa, Patrick has experienced (and heard from others who have also experienced) stereotyping regarding “poor exposure to civilization” or to the conveniences of modern life. Such stereotyping is based on the assumption that, since one lives “in a jungle” they would generally be unexposed to technology or various forms of innovation that may be commonplace elsewhere. Such stereotyping would manifest itself in the form of questions such as, “do you have electricity where you live?” or “do you know what fries are?”

Such stereotyping would also manifest itself in instances where one assumes that someone like Patrick would not know what a “bus” is and they present a picture of something different thinking that Patrick would not know any better.

However, like many in his class, through print and electronic media Patrick has been exposed to conventional yellow school buses in the USA. The vehicular assemblage (in appendix F) that Jasmyn referred to as “our school bus” did not comport with any image of a bus in Patrick’s local space or in his lived experience. Thus, when he received the picture from Jasmyn, he assumed that what was at play was a perception by her that he was too ignorant to know what a “real bus” was.

During post project reflections, we spoke about how he had reacted to this picture from Jasmyn and how it eventually turned out that the four-wheeler pulling the aluminum trailer was in fact what they used in Aleknagik as “a school bus”. He responded saying:

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I know [pause] I think I overreacted when she sent it. Before we found out from them, I would have never thought that this is a school bus anywhere! (interview transcript, July, 2014).

For Patrick, the surface meaning for what “school bus” represents in the local

Nairobi space was constructed around local buses and other buses that he had experienced. His phrase, “I would have never thought that this is a school bus anywhere,” indexes this normative image of a bus that is prevalent in his local space, and which was evoked by the phrase “school bus”. It also signals the different understandings over what amounts to “a school bus” in the two local spaces. His initial understanding of what Jasmyn meant was at odds with the local materialization of “school bus” in Aleknagik. Jasmyn, on her part, had no recollection of this misunderstanding although she added that when Aleknagik weather conditions become too inclement for this “school bus” to operate, they use a dog-drawn sledge as a “school bus” (interview transcript, September,

2014).

Unlike Jasmyn’s email above, Patrick’s ‘day in the life’ piece was not about a typical school day but about his family’s weekly outings to a local sports club in Nairobi. Almost all students on the Kenyan side of the collaborations wrote ‘day in the life’ emails about outings to recreational venues in the city. Their tendency to not write about a regular school day coheres with Nairobi teenage discourse which is characterized by descriptions of time spent at recreational

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establishments and which, oftentimes, positions the school space as oppositional to teenage engagements. Patrick offered the following post project reflection:

I think we may have taken the day in the life as a day when we have fun. That is more interesting to write about than to say I woke up, went to school. Ate. Played. Came back. Slept. I'm not saying Jasmyn’s email was boring but I was able to write about going to the sports club (interview transcript, May, 2014).

Jasmyn, on the other hand, said that she enjoyed going to school and that she wanted to share that experience with Patrick. The Aleknagik village school functions as a hang-out place (after official hours and on weekends) for local

Aleknagik teenagers. Patrick’s ‘day in the life’ piece was much longer than

Jasmyn’s and in it he detailed how his family always went to the sports club where his parents were members. Because of this membership, he and his siblings got access to some places (the gym, running track, and TV room) at no charge. Jasmyn found herself struggling to understand a few meanings in

Patrick’s email. She singled out the following part of Patrick’s ‘day in the life’ email for comment:

[The club] is far away from my home in Karen. However, every time I go there with my family, I have lots of fun. I first go for a good swim for on average 4 hours…then I change, have lunch and go to play badminton with my father, brother or sister or with them all (My mum doesn’t like to play).

During the reflections we discussed how when Jasmyn would say “going out” she meant going into the outdoors whereas Patrick meant going to clubs, restaurants and other built recreational establishments. Jasmyn had imagined

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that Patrick was going outdoors to a designated club camp site where he played and swam in a lake. She added:

I would go fishing with my family and sometimes we would stay there for a few days. Sometimes I would go hunting with my father. So I thought it was this kind of outing. I don’t know what I thought when we did this, but when I look at this now, I think of Patrick swimming in a lake (interview transcript, September, 2014).

Jasmyn conceives of “going out” as literally going outdoors. Also, when Patrick mentions that he goes swimming, he does not specify whether he is swimming in a pool or lake on the assumption that Jasmyn would understand that he was swimming in a pool, a taken-for-granted understanding in Nairobi (which is a landlocked city) where people would swim in man-made pools as opposed to swimming in natural lakes. Like the case above (based on the ambiguity in the meaning of “school bus”), Patrick’s email elides specifications and he depends on his reader to construct an understanding (based on experience or some kind of exposure to recreational clubs in Nairobi) of his swimming. Notably, this kind of understanding is not as obvious to Jasmyn who eight years after the project wonders whether Patrick was swimming in a lake.

Another notable exchange between Jasmyn and Patrick (as seen in the archival data), occurred under the theme of ‘describing favorite places.’ Jasmyn’s favorite place was a cliff near Aleknagik village whereas Patrick did not have one favorite place but a plethora of malls and restaurants that he frequented around

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Nairobi. Using sensory imagery in her email, she proceeds to describe the cliff and its scenic surroundings:

One of my most favorite places is a cliff where you can see the scenery of the lake and mountains, it is very beautiful. I like going up there because it’s where I can be alone if I’m sad and other things or to think of people and things that are going on in my life. When I’m up on the cliff the wind goes through my hair, and it is pretty cool when you’re on top of the cliff. Sometimes during the summer time I like to watch my brother take jumps off the cliff, also during the summer I go on the cliff at 6 o'clock and watch the sun set. And that is my favorite place to go.

Eight years later, Jasmyn remembers this cliff fondly and, although infrequently, she sometimes still goes there “to feel peaceful because the sound of birds and the view there reminds me of my childhood” (interview transcript, September,

2014). Patrick reflected that he may have imagined this cliff as looking like one of the faces of a local mountain (Mt. Longonot) he once climbed during a school excursion adding, “maybe the difference is that Jasmyn’s cliff has a lot of snow”

(interview transcript, December, 2014). Patrick’s use of “Jasmyn’s cliff has a lot of snow” in his post project reflection here indexes the popular belief that Alaska is a cold snow-covered place. He is aware of the different physical and climatic terrains in Nairobi and in Aleknagik. He attempts to visualize the cliff which

Jasmyn is referring to by employing his experiences of local cliffs. This conceptual movement from the known to the unknown illustrates a strategy of intercultural communication employed by Patrick for sense-making.

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On his part, Patrick wrote about many favorite malls that he loves going to, and described how his favorite place was not a specific physical place but it was the spaces within malls that function as food courts. Before Jasmyn had visited

Anchorage, she had never seen several restaurants in one place comprising a

“food court” or a “fast food place” so during post project reflections she spoke of how it was not easy for her to imagine the mall spaces in Patrick’s emails even though he had sent her some pictures. Patrick’s email reads:

Here in Kenya, especially in Nairobi, there are very many restaurants and fast food places. They flourish everywhere, in the city center, in malls, in supermarkets. There are very few places you can go without smelling wonderful cooking. Smells of chicken frying and sizzling at Kenchic and Southern Fried Chicken, smells of luxurious burgers on the fire at Steers and Wimpy, smells of the most delicious, mouthwatering pizzas at Pizza Garden, smells of traditional but amazingly incredible Chinese at Chinese Corner and The Wok. Smells of splendid Indian food at Haandi, Bombay, Chowparty and Hashmi. Smells of amazing, splendid, mouthwatering, indescribable Brazilian and many, many more… the list never ending. People just have to get used to the exquisite aroma and pray they could just have a bit of money to buy themselves everything.

The list of foods and names of restaurants, “fried chicken at Kenchic,” “Southern

Fried Chicken,” “burgers at Steers,” “burgers at Wimpy,” “pizzas at Pizza

Garden,” “Chinese [food] at Chinese Corner,” “The Wok,” and “Indian food at

Haandi, Bombay, Chowparty and Hashmi,” index a middle-class teenage practice of going out to different establishments for food. It also signals the ubiquity of these establishments in Patrick’s local space. As the list indicates, the food comes from many different places (Kenya, USA, South Africa, Italy, India, China and Brazil). This diverse cuisine is illustrative of the city’s pluralistic context

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characterized by local and global migration on one hand, and consumerism on

the other. Nairobi youth, who are able to afford eating out in these

establishments, frequent the many malls in the city. Patrick characterizes the list

as “never ending” due to constant architectural construction in Nairobi. Having “a

bit of money to buy” oneself something indexes the money-based consumerist

practices in Patrick’s local space, which are a feature of Nairobian youth lifestyle.

During post project reflections, Jasmyn reported that it was not common for people in Aleknagik to eat at restaurants and places where food is sold. She ate at her own home and in the homes of friends and relatives. She said,

“Sometimes it seems like Patrick and I lived similar lives going to school, and playing with our friends. But when I read an email like this one from him, I think we lived different lives” (interview transcript, September, 2014). Living different

lives yet having similarities points to some complexities entailed in comparing

selves and places across geospatial and cultural difference.

These complexities also became visible during another thematic writing

prompt on food; “What is your favorite food?” Archival data show that, Jasmyn's

email about blackberry pie opens with a description of herself outdoors gathering

black berries. She also identifies various necessary apparatus for this berry

procurement; a four-wheeler, bucket, berry picker, and “bug dope”. The email is

characterized by sensory descriptions of how she engages with the environment:

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This is a recipe about me gathering some blackberries and making blackberry pie. My four-wheeler is digging into the dirt, rocks are spitting out from behind. The wind is blowing through my hair. I am trying to find a nice place to pick black berries. All of a sudden I stop. I see a big patch of black berries. I get off my four-wheeler, and snatch my bucket, berry picker and start walking on the soft squishy tundra. Bugs are surrounding me and biting my face, legs, and arms. I return to my four-wheeler to put bug dope on to keep the bugs away. I look down and berry stains are on my knees from kneeling on them. “I think I will have to wash them,” I say to myself. I have been picking for 3-4 hours and my bucket is full. I start my four-wheeler up and get my stuff and head home.

The rest of her email describes how she cleans the berries, makes dough, mixes it with the berries, bakes, adds ice cream when the pie has cooled down, and then eats it with her family.

During post project reflections, she noted that she still makes blackberry pies, and she reiterated that blackberry-picking paraphernalia together with the process of “looking for berries, being bitten by bugs [while gathering berries], walking on the squishy tundra, getting berry stains on the knees” while gathering berries, were integral to the blackberry pie (field notes, September, 2014).

Jasmyn’s description, here, indexes her Yup’ik tradition whereby subsistence activities entail interacting in some kind of harmony with nature as opposed to just harvesting (food) from nature. When she writes that “[I] get my stuff and head home and give my mother the berries,” this account (of gathering and taking berries home for her family’s consumption) indexes the Yup’ik traditional role of

“Nuqalpiaq” or “provider,” that is, young able bodied Yup’ik are socialized into subsistence life to provide for the family (interview notes, September, 2014). This

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holistic approach to food whereby its acquisition process is a part of the

consumption, differs from Patrick’s approach. He starts off by describing how he

and his family got seated at a restaurant, browsed the menu and then ordered

food. Jasmyn hunts and gathers in the wild tundra whilst Patrick “hunts and

gathers” from menus in restaurants. In his email response to Jasmyn, Patrick’

wrote that he had never eaten blackberry pie and would love to try it someday.

Unlike Jasmyn, Patrick reported, during the post project reflections, feeling

that berry picking, preparation, and eating were separate and distinct processes.

He conceived of berry picking as “what farmers do” (interview transcript,

December, 2014) and the eating as what he would do at home or in a restaurant.

Patrick’s email, based on the same theme, was preoccupied with his description of how his parents had planned to take their annual vacation to Mombasa without him and his siblings. He briefly commented on Jasmyn’s blackberry pie, then

mentioned some of his favorite Kenyan foods:

It is amazing how you make your blackberry pies. Some very famous tasty Kenyan foods are Ugali and Chapatti, but I will not go into the details about them…you have to try them one day.

During post project reflections he regretted that he had not dedicated his email to

describing Kenyan food saying, “I should have been a better Kenyan

ambassador. I think I was too focused on my parents going to Mombasa for the

December holidays” (interview transcript, December. 2014). Patrick, who is

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currently a student in the Middle East, reported seeing himself as a Kenyan cultural ambassador (interview notes, December 2014).

At the end of the collaboration, the two classes wrote each other a special piece; the students in Aleknagik employed Wallace Steven’s (1954) ‘Thirteen

Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ as a template for poems about their environment, and students in Nairobi wrote a response to Chinua Achebe’s

(1954) poem, ‘Refugee Mother and Child’. During post project reflections Jasmyn commented that her poem, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Wolf,’ was about the danger of human encroachment on a wolf’s habitat. Cued by the prospect of a wolf in one’s neighborhood, Patrick recalled that, “my friends and I used to talk about how dangerous it was to live in Aleknagik. But if Jasmyn lives there then it can't be that dangerous” (interview transcript, August 2013). The use of “used to talk about…” and the connector of contrast, “but,” index a shift in perception that

Patrick and his peers in Nairobi had regarding life in Alaska. These comments also instantiate, one among many moments, when the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration produced evidence to the contrary of hitherto held perceptions, by the students, thereby recalibrating prior understandings about the other or disrupting stereotypes. Whereas Jasmyn wrote about the wolf, Patrick’s final piece was a descriptive commentary about refugees and hunger in Africa:

Africa is not full of hunger and starvation. Although there are some dry places, one can still get good food for example in Nairobi there are many

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good restaurants. The problem of refugees is caused by fighting such as in Somalia and Eritrea.

Patrick’s use of specific examples of fighting in Africa, “fighting such as in

Somalia and Eritrea,” exemplify his awareness of some of the lingering crises in

Africa. His use of opposition in, “Although there are some dry places, one can still get good food for example in Nairobi,” is indicative of the complex African context where scarcity sits side by side with abundance.

The last question that I posed to both Jasmyn and Patrick, during my separate post project reflection interview meetings with each of them was, “It is now [eight] years after the collaboration. If you were to write to your exchange partner today, what would you say?” (Interview question). Jasmyn said that she would try to find out where Patrick was, and maybe ask him about his life adding that it had been long since she had been in touch with him (interview notes,

September, 2014). Patrick responded by actually typing and sending me an email to convey to Jasmyn:

Dear, Jasmyn. Although it has been [eight] years I hope you are alright. I study in Dubai where I am doing an undergraduate degree in Journalism. This December I will go back to Kenya to visit my parents. I enjoyed the class project many years ago. Patrick.

After Jasmyn read this email, she indicated that perhaps one reason why she did not keep in touch with Patrick has to do with the conditions under which they met:

“If we had met at a friend’s party or something we would be friends maybe even on Facebook but this was a class assignment” (interview transcript, November,

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2014). Jasmyn’s comment is a likely indicator of the potential for bonds of familiarity to develop within how young people exercise autonomy and agency over non-classroom-based activities as opposed to classroom-based activities.

5.3 Nate Andrews and Shayda Wacu Njenga. Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness:

Spotlighting Language, Communication, and Stereotyping.

Like Jasmyn and Patrick, Nate and Shayda’s correspondence featured several questions, points of disjuncture, and descriptions. They too had been given each other's names by their teachers, after which they commenced correspondence with one another. Nate’s self-introductory email was brief:

Dear Shayda Wacu Njenga, Hi, my name is Nate Andrews. My Yupik is Ayak’aq and I’m in the 7th grade. I’m 14 years old. I live in Aleknagik, Alaska and I like to play games on the computer. How is it like there? Sincerely, Nate Andrews.

Nate’s question in this email, “How is it like there?” signals his recognition that

Shayda is in another local space that is different from his own. The question positions him as an outsider of Shayda’s local space, and Shayda as an outsider of his local space. This question (which instantiates a pragmatic strategy) is non- specific and can therefore be interpreted differently. During post project reflections, Nate could not remember why he had phrased his question this way but he reported that he remembers being “very curious” about Shayda’s life in

Alaska. He added that:

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Reading this exchange again has opened up some good memories of my past. I just want to start off and say writing to other students around the world has been and always will be a fun experience” (interview transcript, July 2014).

Additionally, during post project reflections, Shayda was cued by this email as she reflected on the morning her class received printouts of their first emails from

Alaska:

I did not think they would actually write to us! I don’t know why but I did not think it was going to happen [pause] until you brought their emails to class. My friends and I were surprised and happy. I mean we were in Nairobi and other kids in Alaska had written to us. I was excited that someone in Alaska knew my name and wanted me to write to him. I don't know what [pause] what is Ayak’ak? Oh! His traditional name! I had forgotten that! (interview transcript, February, 2014).

Archival data show that in a subsequent email, Shayda asked Nate what he

meant by “my Yup'ik is Ayak’ak” to which he responded that this was his Yup'ik

name. Notably, Nate’s school-registered name (just like Jasmyn) is presented

separately from his Yup’ik name thereby indexing the opposition between Yup’ik

traditional practices and dominant western practices in Aleknagik. Nate and other

peers form Aleknagik included Yup’ik phrases in emails. However, during the

post project reflections he reported:

“I'm afraid I don't speak Yup'ik anymore but I have started learning Japanese. I'm also learning programming which is like a language but rather for IT. Of course I still know how to say hi in Yup'ik and also in many other languages. I'm very interested in languages” (interview transcript, July, 2014).

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Although he says he no longer speaks Yup’ik, Nate still introduces himself by

saying, “my name is Nate Andrews. My Yupik name is Ayak’aq” (interview notes,

July, 2014).

During post project reflections,

Shayda praised Nate’s use of Yup'ik and added that she wished she had used

some Kikuyu, Sheng or Swahili in her emails. She however asked me, “But you

were giving us grades for the project, so if I used other languages wouldn't I

score a low grade?” (interview transcript, February, 2014). Shayda’s question,

regarding whether using Swahili and other languages would lead to a low course grade, indicates her awareness of the fact that the Alaska-Kenya collaboration was undertaken in a Kenyan post-colonial, school space with traditions of mediating practices that regulate language use. These practices include language ideologies which promote standardized English (SKE) and Swahili

(SKS) varieties, shape expectations of language use, and articulate education

policies. Students on the Kenyan side of the collaboration avoided using their

heritage languages, Sheng and Swahili in their emails since they were aware of the surveillance over language use in school spaces. They were also aware that they were undertaking the collaboration within a Language Arts classroom, in a

school that had an explicit language policy promoting SKE in the classroom.

However, adherence to SKE did not always endure as evidenced in data where students employ informal language or Sheng.

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Shayda’s introductory email, below,

was longer than Nate’s.

Hallo Nate Andrews. My name is Shayda Wacu Njenga and I go to Akili Academy. I am aged 13 and am Christian. My favourite instrument is the piano and I am on grade 5 in it. I love R N B and Rap and Hip Hop music. I like to shop at a large shopping mall here in Nairobi called ‘The Village Market.’ I enjoy watching movies at a theatre there and the latest I have watched are ‘Herbie’ and ‘Dark Water’. My favourite American singers are Bow Wow, Beyonce, Ciara, Nelly, Omarion and Amarie. My favourite subjects in school are Maths, Biology, IT and Sports. I swim, play basketball, golf, squash, and table tennis. I love reading fictional novels. I am a noisy social person, never shy. My favourite meals are pizza, chicken and spare ribs. Kenya is a warm sunny country with lots of sun and fun. Teens here mainly go to the mall. I hope to read from you. My friends call me Shishi.

Her email is laden with indexicals which situate her as a Nairobi teenager—

music, shopping, malls, watching movies, multiethnic cuisines, and place

references such as, “here in Nairobi,” and “Kenya is a warm sunny country”. She

explicitly mentions that “Teens here mainly go to the mall” after writing “I like to

shop at a large shopping mall.” These declarations index key aspects of middle

class, Nairobian, youth culture, namely, shopping, and mall culture which amount

to consumerism. Further evidence of her recognition that Nate is from a different

local space is seen in, “Kenya is a warm sunny country with lots of sun and fun”

which serves as some kind of introduction of Kenya to Nate. She provides further

information about her lifestyle and identity; she is a student, her age, and her

interest in piano. By adding “My friends call me Shishi,” Shayda implicitly invites

Nate to use her nickname and become one of her friends.

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Another notable inclusion in this email, is the various instances of

American cultural forms one can experience within the diverse, cosmopolitan

social spaces in Nairobi. Her naming of these cultural forms, “R N B and Rap and

Hip Hop music…‘Herbie’ and ‘Dark Water’…Bow Wow, Beyonce, Ciara, Nelly,

Omarion and Amarie,” indexes the multiculturalism and globalizing aspects of

cosmopolitan Nairobi. Her decision to include these forms indicates her

recognition of Nate being in the USA hence her attempt to bridge the gap

between them by including American music and movies, which she thought he

would be familiar with. Whereas Shayda confirmed, during post project

reflections, that this could have been her intention when she wrote the email,

Nate said that he had, in fact, never heard of R N B, Hip Hop, or these artists

when he was living in Aleknagik. His exposure to these cultural forms occurred

when he moved from Alaska to his current location, San Francisco.

During post project reflection, Nate acknowledged that at that time he may not have understood some of the things she referred to, such as, being in grade

5 in piano, and going to malls. He added:

It is surprising to know that Nairobi is buzzing with a lot of pop culture similar to the US. As a matter of fact, the closest I have ever been to US popular culture was behind a television screen watching. That was before I went to college outside of Alaska or moved here (interview transcript, July, 2014).

Nate added that Shayda’s descriptions helped him to “understand the daily life in

Nairobi as though [he] was there in the hot sun” (interview transcript, July, 2014).

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Both students’ correspondence contain context-based references such as, “My

Yupik is Ayak’aq...I live in Aleknagik,” and “I like to shop at a large shopping mall here in Nairobi”. These references signal a situated sense of self within wider contextual influences (such as culture, language practices, normative representational frames) that converge on, and shape meanings being shared.

Relatedly, Nate and Shayda’s emails (just like Jasmyn and Patrick’s) evidence pragmatic strategies where one recognizes the other as being both familiar and unfamiliar with some of the aspects they are including in the meanings that they are sharing. As confirmed in post project reflections, if Nate were writing to one of his peers in Aleknagik, he would not need to add, “My

Yupik is Ayak’aq” and Shayda, too, would not need to write “I like to shop at a large shopping mall here in Nairobi called ‘The Village Market’” or, “Teens here mainly go to the mall” if she were communicating with her peer in Nairobi. They both add elaborations and inserts in recognition that their audience are outsiders to their local and cultural spaces. Further, Nate’s question, “How is it like there?” and Shayda’s expression of interest in knowing more about Nate’s local space in,

“I hope to read from you”, signal an attempt to extend their awareness beyond their local spaces in order to know more about the other in a space that is beyond-the-local.

Their emails, based on the ‘day in the life’ thematic prompt, further illustrate navigations between being in local spaces and communicating with

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others beyond-the-local. The following are two excerpts from Nate’s email to

Shayda:

Waqaa (Hey), I must have been writing too fast last time, I meant my Yup’ik (language) name is Ayak’aq (A-ya-kak), sorry. My day usually starts off with my mom waking me up in our igloo, just kidding, we live in normal houses. So how do you get up?

After inventorying his school-day activities, he highlights his after school duties

which include baby-sitting:

After school I do my homework while babysitting (It’s very boring) my brother because my mom is at work. After my homework I watch a movie until my mom comes back. We eat dinner then I play outside with my friends (my whole village is related, it makes things easier because with things we need to do, they’ll help).

Nate’s email, starts off with a Yup'ik greeting, “Waqaa,” followed by a translation,

“hey,” in parenthesis. He also includes parenthetical information to clarify that

“Yup’ik” is a language, and to provide a phonetic cue for how to pronounce his

name, Ayak’aq. These instances of parenthetical information indicate his

recognition that Shayda is an “outsider” to his local meanings. Including

parenthetical information is a communicative strategy on his part. Additionally,

Nate includes a joke about the stereotype that Alaskan Natives live in igloos, “My

day usually starts off with my mom waking me up in our igloo, just kidding, we

live in normal houses,” which indexes his awareness of extant stereotypical

perceptions of Alaskan Natives.

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Eight years later, Shayda still found Nate’s comment on igloos funny.

Bringing up the igloo-joke in the email, indicates Nate’s attempt to correct misinformation regarding Alaskan Natives and igloos through framing his correction as a joke. This comment on the igloo-stereotype also shows Nate’s awareness of self-in-the-world, and is demonstrative of his agentive push-back against stereotypes. Nate positions himself as having the agency to disrupt this stereotype. The concept of “normal houses” is debatable and situated, but Nate’s description of houses, in which the Yup’ik live as being “normal,” signals some kind of sameness with Shayda, that is, they both live in houses that they can characterize as “normal”. Additionally, in an effort to make his worldview accessible to Shayda, Nate employs parenthetical inserts where he offers a running commentary on aspects of his day, such as babysitting being “boring” and the interrelated village social networks.

Like Patrick, whose archival email based on the day-in-the-life theme is about a non-school day, Shayda’s email offered descriptions of places where she would engage in leisure activities with her friends:

My friends and I love to hang out at the Village Market which is a mall because, there are lots of boutiques where we can window shop for clothes and probably buy. We can buy food from lots of fast food restaurants e.g. steers (burgers, fries & chicken), Debonairs (pizza) and Chinese. We can then go to candy shops e.g. a chocolate one that sells loads of them from dark to white chocolate. We then go for bowling at the Super Bowl or pool and Table Football. The mall also has a Water World where we can swim and go for lots of fun slides. My best place at the Village Market is the Cinema Area. Their popcorn is to die for and the

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cinema itself is wonderful. It has 4 screens and the sound effects are “4 real”. I love going there to hang out especially with my best of friends Elaine, Steph, Helen, and Pen.

During post project reflections, Shayda clarified that she may have had to explain that “the Village Market…is a mall” because she did not want Nate to think that it is an actual market located in some village (interview notes, September, 2014).

One notable activity in this email, window shopping, is a staple engagement for

Nairobian youth who socialize in commercial spaces where the pressure to

spend money is always present.

The window pane (Appendix G), which is a ubiquitous commercial artifact

in many malls and shopping centers, is designed to attract the attention of

potential shoppers. Colors, lighting, lay-out, transparent glass, discount and sale

signs, and the appeal of the products being sold, harmonize to make the

experience enjoyable. Shayda writes, “we can window shop for clothes and

probably buy” demonstrating window shopping as an activity in its own right, and

also illustrating a common pastime for Nairobi teenagers like herself. During post

project reflections, Shayda reported that, “window shopping is fun because it

costs nothing and we still get to see the latest fashion” (interview transcript,

February, 2014). There are, therefore, implicit financial implications in Shayda’s

recreational activities; movies, food, games, and other amusements all require

spending money. Spending capacity is, therefore, a prerequisite feature of

consumerism, which is a characteristic of life in Nairobi.

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Another crucial feature of teenage lifestyle is expressed in Shayda’s email

through, “teenagers always dress to impress when going there,” that is, the

importance of fashion and appearance. Nate’s experience with malls and

restaurants began after high school when he moved to San Francisco. In his post

project reflections, he reported that the place depicted in Appendix G looks like

many places he sees in downtown San Francisco (interview notes; July, 2014).

Additionally, Shayda’s email mentions foods from different places: South Africa,

Italy, and China. When she writes, “We can buy food from lots of fast food restaurants e.g. steers (burgers, fries & chicken), Debonairs (pizza) and

Chinese,” this enumeration of various multiethnic cuisines indexes the multicultural, multiracial diversity in Nairobi on one hand, and the eating of multiethnic cuisines as a commonplace feature of middle-class Nairobi teenage lifestyle, on the other.

Her use of informal language such as, “loads of” chocolate, popcorn that is

“to die for,” and sound effects that are “4 real,” go against the tradition of surveillance of language use in canonical classrooms. During post project reflection, she remarked that perhaps these expressions just “slipped out” adding that she was probably trying to sound more relaxed and friendly (interview notes,

February, 2014). When Shayda asks Nate, “I hope that you can tell me of a place that you go to have fun at,” there is a high probability that she meant for Nate to

tell her of malls, restaurants, shops and similar establishments in Aleknagik.

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Another set of correspondence from the archival data, was emails between Nate and Shayda based on the thematic prompt of ‘favorite food’. Nate begins his email, much like Jasmyn, with an account of how he harvests cranberries for his cranberry pancake. Once again, he starts with the Yup’ik greeting, “Waqaa,” followed by the translation, “hi,” in parenthesis. The following is an excerpt from this email:

Wind slips through my face and hands as I ride my four-wheeler to look for high bush cranberries. Bugs hide in their nests to make a less pestilent day out. I stop my four-wheeler on a grassy area and walk out into the plain. I search but find nothing except...well, grass. Hopping on my four- wheeler I search another grassy plain but come up empty again. Grumbling, I give up and head for home. I’m by my house and at the far end of my yard I see the little patch of treasure. I run with my ice cream bucket towards the berries and transport them into my bucket. My bucket is half full and I walk to my house and show my mom.

Nate highlights a procurement process that entails riding a four-wheeler, looking for high bush cranberries, dealing with pestilent bugs, searching in grassy areas, and initial disappointment before finding “the little patch of treasure.” He gathers the berries, and gives them to his mother who makes pancakes, which he eats with the berries and syrup for breakfast. During post project reflections Nate said that interacting with nature to get food is an important part of the food. By the time he sits down to eat, as shown in this excerpt from the last part of his email, a lot has happened by way of procurement and preparation:

I sit down at the table and whirl syrup onto my pancake and at that moment my mouth waters. I take a bite and the flavor whooshes in my

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mouth! My face squints because of the sour flavor. I like sour things. It was a good breakfast for me.

Nate, who is guided by his Yup’ik culture, believes that interaction with the environment is an important part of harvesting because the environment is a provider of livelihood. His elaborate description of the procurement process,

“wind slips through my face and hands as I ride my four-wheeler to look for high bush cranberries. Bugs hide in their nests to make a less pestilent day out. I stop my four-wheeler on a grassy area and walk out into the plain,” indexes this belief.

Additionally, procuring cranberries and supplying these to his family, situates

Nate as a Yup’ik provider or Nuqalpiaq, an important role in Yup’ik subsistence culture (interview notes; July, 2014).

When Shayda read this email, during the post project reflections, she commented that one advantage which she now sees, and may not have seen eight years ago with respect to Nate’s lifestyle, is that it seems as if he always eats fresh food as opposed to taking food out of a refrigerator or finding it on a supermarket shelf. Supermarket shelves (see appendix H) are consumerist cultural artifacts that are ubiquitous in shopping establishments, designed to entice spending. Shayda spoke of how she enjoyed browsing through an array of products on shelves and finally settling on one. She however added that it sounded like Nate’s life was adventurous since he had to deal with the wind, insects, and the four-wheeler when he went to get berries (interview notes,

February 2014). When I asked her if she had ever gone out gathering berries she

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joked, “Yes of course. From supermarket shelves and fruit market stalls

[laughter]” (interview transcript, February, 2014). In her reflection, Shayda tried to guess the sour taste which Nate referred to in his email by comparing it to unsweetened lemon-ginger. She added, “I don't think I thought about the taste back when I was in school” (interview transcript, February, 2014).

Shayda’s email to Nate on the same theme, excerpted below, focused on her favorite restaurant and described a night when her family went out:

The venue is at the Village Market. It is an Italian restaurant called La Resortia. The service is excellent but all at a high cost. I mostly go there with my family on Saturday nights. When we go there, a waiter ushers us politely to our table…we always book in advance. He then asks what we shall drink and brings a variety of freshly baked warm buns with butter to go. He then asks us the type of soup that we would like to have. I always pick their cream of tomato soup. Yuuum!!

Shayda (whose ethnicity is Kikuyu) enjoys having dinner at La Resortia. In her email she lists the foods on the appetizer menu: chicken, tossed salad and different Italian pastries. She then identifies her favorite food; chicken drumsticks, baked fries and a side of salad with mousse, tarts, and Italian ice cream for dessert. The menu, (Appendix I), a cultural artifact, is central to this experience since it serves as a browsing site from where Shayda can assemble her favorite foods. Her email also includes some practices which characterize eating at a restaurant such as waiter-service and tipping. Shayda’s email bears evidence of her context, she identifies the venue as “the Village Market,” a famous mall, and more specifically that her favorite food is from “an Italian restaurant called La

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Resortia,” and these place names index her participation in Nairobian youth culture. Notably, Shayda can be categorized as middle class, thus, these

restaurant practices are a staple of middle class Nairobian youth culture.

Nate, who now works at a Subway fast food in San Francisco,

commented, during post project reflections, that his exposure to recreational

establishments and life in that city, helps him understand Shayda’s email far

better than he did when he was living in Aleknagik (interview notes, July, 2014).

Similarly, Shayda compared the taste of Nate’s sour cranberry to unsweetened

lemon-ginger in an attempt to make sense of it. Both Nate and Shayda employ

current experiences to help them understand, further, some of the meanings they

were sharing (as presented in the archival data).

Their engagement with emails based on the theme, ‘having fun in your

favorite place’ exemplifies this notion of gaining further understandings of each

other as cued by archival data. After looking at pictures and emails, they both

had a lot to say. Nate started his data-cued reflection by:

I am giving feedback of a 21 year old person and not a 7th grader. There is so much to learn about the world. I have come to realize that time is the enemy…Nairobi sounds about as modern as the rest of the U.S. My friends and I always wondered what it would be like to live in a city outside of Alaska. The descriptions given to me about Nairobi and its unique activities portrayed a similar picture of US culture, but in a hotter climate: big buildings, corporate skyscrapers, cars driving on highways and over massive bridges. Before leaving the village I could only refer ‘city life’ from movies and TV shows” (interview transcript, July 2014).

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Nate’s reflections are indicative of a rereading of the archival data with a different

set of experiences. On her part, Shayda reflected that she remembers how

surprised she was when she received several pictures (see appendix J), from

Nate and his classmates, depicting students in Aleknagik playing outdoors during recess. The smiles on their faces disrupted stereotypes Shayda and her peers in

Nairobi had about life in Alaska being unbearable because of the cold. She said:

I think we all thought that they were miserable in the cold Alaskan climate. In the pictures I saw snow everywhere but they were smiling and playing! I think they are used to the snow and cold. Here we play our games like skipping, running. But Nate was saying he likes the cold. I still think that's strange. Who wouldn't love the sun? But I know it is his home and he is used to it. I think it was interesting that he was saying he loves cold and my other email is the opposite (interview transcript, February, 2014).

Shayda’s comment, “but they were smiling and playing,” demonstrates how the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration provided evidence (in this case pictorial evidence) to

the contrary thereby disrupting a stereotype of coldness leading misery in Alaska.

The pictures cued her recollection of this disruption which had led her and her

Nairobi peers to revise their thinking about life in Alaska.

Relatedly, Nate’s email, from the archival data, under this theme of ‘having

fun in your favorite place,’ featured a popular Aleknagikan youth activity, playing

in the snow. He starts his email by informing Shayda that the weather had

cooled, and he translates the temperature from Fahrenheit to Celsius. Mr. Collins

later confirmed that he had advised his class that Kenya did not use Fahrenheit

to measure temperature. Nate revisits the igloo-stereotype, from an earlier email

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he had sent Shayda, describes the general feeling of cold, and outlines some fun activities:

Dear, Shayda. I’ve been fine. It has gotten a little colder lately here. It is about 16 degrees F. or -8 degrees C. and ice is filling all the ponds here, but to let you know, we don’t live in igloos. I love winter because it’s like living in a freezer with tons of freezing cold snow. If you have ever seen snow it is like sand that melts in your hand. Some fun things we do in the snow are snowboard, sledding, riding snow machines, having snowball fights, or make snowmen. Jumps are the most fun. We create new paths down a hill, then we create a jump out of snow, we pack the snow to make it hard, and we ride down and take the jump. I’m sure you would like snow, it’s soft but it’s cold. Sincerely,

Nate.

In a reflection about the students’ writing, Mr. Collins suggested that his students might have been trying to use sensory-based descriptions, a part of the curricular content he was covering at the time of the collaboration, and noted that in this instance perhaps Nate was attempting tactile and visual imagery (interview notes, December, 2014). Nate’s email offered Shayda a lot of new information: snow games, snowboard, sledding, riding snow machines, having snowball fights, or making snowmen.

However, receiving this new information was not entirely seamless for

Shayda. Eight years ago, Shayda and some of her classmates interpreted Nate’s description of snow, “If you have ever seen snow it is like sand that melts in your hand,” as instantiating a stereotype of ignorant Africans who have no idea what

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snow is. This stereotype, which stems from a colonial past based on contempt by the colonizer for colonized subjects, can ignite disquiet as it did among Shayda and some of her friends. During post project reflections, we recalled this disquiet and Shayda said, “He was not being rude. I think he was just trying to make things clear.” This comments indicates a revision of her position from eight years ago and is comparable to Patrick’s reaction towards Jasmyn’s picture of the

“school bus”. Thus, unbeknown to Nate, who constantly pushed back against stereotyping Alaskan Natives as living in igloos, he had inadvertently waded into another stereotype whereby he was suspected of portraying Africans as ignorant and poorly exposed. Shayda’s reaction to Nate’s comment about snow being

“like sand that melts in your hand,” was influenced by this stereotypic discourse, which she was aware of possibly from previous experience. Nate who was unaware of this reaction, by Shayda and her peers, from eight years ago, expressed surprise during post project reflections. Upon my intervention as their teacher, it appears, based on a scrutiny of archival data, that Shayda and her peers had given Nate the benefit of doubt over the supposedly stereotypic gaffe since subsequent correspondence does not show further disquiet over this matter.

Like Nate’s email on the theme of ‘having fun in your favorite place,’

Shayda's email featured a local recreational place, her family’s favorite vacation spot and the coastal port city of Mombasa:

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Last holiday I went to the coast of Kenya, which is called Mombasa. It is a very hot and humid area but the lovely beaches there are full of white smooth sand with no rocks. The sea is very warm because it is in the equatorial region. The seawater is very warm and I got a nice skin tan. The hotel we stayed at was called Sun And Sands Beach Resort. The food there was finger licking and the rooms were luxurious each with a TV. We really enjoyed our stay.

Shayda’s description of her experience in Mombasa, using phrases such as, “a very hot and humid area…lovely beaches...the sea is very warm…I got a nice skin tan…the food there was finger licking and the rooms were luxurious…” and her evaluative comment, “We really enjoyed our stay,” index the popular Kenyan ideology of Mombasa as a preferred holiday destination. This ideology manifests itself in the popular Swahili phrase; “Mombasa raha” (Mombasa a place for pleasure). In addition, descriptions such as, “The sea is very warm because it is in the equatorial region” signal her constant recognition that Nate is an outsider to her geographical space and he would need this clarification to understand her shared meanings.

During post project reflections, in separate meetings with Nate and

Shayda, I asked them whether they felt that they had been understood by the other during the collaboration or if there were some aspects of their shared meanings that may not have been understood.

Nate: Now that I reflect on my experience writing to the students in Nairobi, I realize that there might be a good chance that my dialect or word choices could be hard to understand for example by using the word “jump” I think I had meant “incline”. I think my culture has oversimplified many terms (interview transcript, July, 2014).

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Shayda: Maybe I was not always very clear. Like when I read my emails I feel I should have described more. I should have given examples. But you know I did not put there the deep Nairobi words I use when I speak to my friends here [pause] Nate translated Yup'ik for me to understand so that was helpful. I know that I am looking at these emails as an older person who understands more than I did. So perhaps now I see more about Nate’s life (interview transcript, February, 2014).

Both Nate and Shayda are returning to the collaboration data eight years later and their understandings continue to evolve, as signaled by Nate’s “Now that I reflect on my experience writing to the students in Nairobi I realize that…” and

Shayda’s “I know that I am looking at these emails as an older person who understands more than I did”. They continue to draw from the resourcefulness of their cumulative experiences during and after the collaboration as they reflect on archival data. As confirmed by follow-up interviews, Nate’s statement, “my culture has oversimplified many terms,” is a lamentation of how he found himself ill- prepared for the hustle and bustle of San Francisco after moving there from

Aleknagik. At one point, he was homeless in San Francisco depending on soup kitchens for food. Shayda and Nate’s reflections highlight some deliberate communicative moves within intercultural meaning sharing and making. These include giving descriptions, offering elaborations and examples, translation from

Yup’ik to English, and the avoidance of “deep Nairobi words.” Data show that both are continuously cognizant of each other’s outsider-status.

The last exchange between Nate and Shayda was based on two different poems which the two classes were responding to: Nate's class focused on,

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‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Bird’ by Wallace Stevens (appendix K) as a template for their poems, whereas Shayda’s class focused on Achebe’s ‘Refugee

Mother and Child’ (appendix L). Nate’s response was a poetic adaptation entitled, ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Mosquito.’ He wrote about a mosquito buzzing over 20 villages ready to bite. In his poem, a persona in whose ear the mosquito buzzes declares, “The mosquito and I/ Are one. / The mosquito and I and my blood/ Are one.” The persona walks upon grassy plains, encounters a wall of mosquitoes, and bemoans how people abhor mosquitoes:

VII O Alaskans Why do you not think of the mosquito Don’t you notice how the mosquito Keeps the cycle Of life going?

The poem ends with the persona paying homage to mosquitoes as their death is a contribution to winter life. During post project reflections Nate said that the poem was his attempt to capture “an image of Aleknagik life” and to stress on the cycle of life. This approach is informed by Nate’s Yup’ik heritage which inculcates in the community the importance of the cycle of life. Shayda, who hails from a geographical region where malaria (caused by mosquitoes) is a leading killer disease, found it strange that someone would be sympathetic to mosquitoes.

On her part, she wrote a piece entitled ‘War and Famine,’ a rhetorical criticism of bad government policies that have led to war and famine in Africa.

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Her piece highlights the irony of a refugee mother, who fled from the terror of war with her child but is unable to save the child from the terror of starvation. Her last stanza is an indictment of corrupt political leadership:

We hold up our empty bowls Hoping that you will see us, pity us, feed us. So thank you for infecting our society with famine And war. If we don't die from one, We die from the other.

Shayda’s post project reflections, which are cued by her sentiments from eight years ago as presented in this archival data, bemoaned corruption and poor governance, vices that continue to bedevil sub Saharan Africa among other places. Shayda comes from sub Saharan Africa known for the prevalence of death, disease, despair, destruction and despondency (or what is referred to in some circles as “the five Ds”). Her piece could be read as a resistance against these infamous “Ds”. Nate, who has once been homeless in San Francisco, said that he understood what it means to lack basic needs.

The last question I posed to Nate and Shayda was, whether they had any overall comment regarding the nature of communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration:

Shayda: We used to call them Alaska besties as in they are our best friends from Alaska. You get? I wish I had taught him Swahili. If I write to Nate I would say come visit Kenya. It would have been nice if they came or if we went. Maybe we would have known each other better. Maybe we would have understood each other better as well. If he were here he would have been very unique. You know? My Yup'ik friend from Alaska.

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People would say what! I guess if I went they would say the same in Alaska. Your friend from Africa! (interview transcript, September, 2014).

Nate: I have enjoyed the foreign student exchange and will vouch for it any day. I think revisiting these pieces will never end. I didn't quite think up a creative term like “besties” but rather the students in Kenya were known to my family as “my friends in Africa” or “my African friends.” There are other activities I was a part of which I did not include [pause] there is more out in the world than my community has to offer though I do carry on the traditional life’s lessons, I like it here. We did not believe we were ever going to meet them. So this was an educational experience and not a personal one. [By traditional life's lessons] I mean obey parents, obey elders, respect elders, don't get lost etc. I'm sure many others live by a similar life style (interview transcript, September, 2014).

The word “bestie,” a Sheng word for “friend,” indexes Shayda’s membership in the Nairobian youth culture. This word is employed by youth in Nairobi to signal camaraderie and groupness. Shayda employs some phrases that index the importance of belonging to a group and the importance of group-perception when she says that if Nate were in Nairobi “he would have been very unique” leading others to exclaim “what!” when she introduces him as “My Yup'ik friend from

Alaska.” On the other hand, Nate’s term, “friends in Africa,” indicates identity through association to place. This associative identification, which is corroborated by my field work in Alaska, points to how seldom one hears about

Kenya when one is in Alaska. Overall, the strategies highlighted in Nate and

Shayda’s collaboration, shown by both by archival data and data-cued reflexive comments, are a treasure trove of information (such as, comments on tactful use

of language and on disrupting stereotypes) for understanding their approaches to

sharing and making meaning across cultural and geospatial difference.

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5.4 Deanna Nicholai and Fareen Pirani. Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness:

Spotlighting Food, Alcohol, and Marginalization.

Deanna Nicholai who lived in Aleknagik corresponded with Fareen Pirani who lived in Nairobi. These two, who are former students and current participants in this study, form the third pair of telling cases under consideration. Like the previous two pairs, their correspondence featured several descriptions, questions, and observations of self and places, and their post project reflections included reflexive commentaries, and observations. One noteworthy aspect of

Fareen’s life is, much more than Jasmyn and Patrick’s families, her family participates in traditional migration to hunt, gather, and fish and have therefore moved around a number of times. This adherence to traditional migration led to

Deanna missing several days at school. Yup’ik subsistence life, characterized by seasonal migration among other practices, is often at loggerheads with western practices in Alaska, for instance the school schedule conflicts with salmon- clubbing season. Deanna’s observance of Yup’ik migration, coupled with

Fareen’s initial delayed response to Deanna’s introductory email at the start of the collaboration, affected the flow of correspondence between her and Fareen.

Also, unlike Jasmyn and Nate, who stated their Yup’ik names from the outset,

Deanna’s self-introductory email does not include her Yup’ik name, Nemak, which she makes available to Fareen in a subsequent email.

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In her self-introductory email, which is part of the archival data, Deanna highlights several aspects of her life that are relatable to Fareen: her nickname, her siblings, and family, and her social relations. She also states her connection to her home space:

Dear Fareen, Hello, my name is Deanna Nicholai. My nickname is Cha-cha. I am eleven years old and a fifth grader. I used to live in Dillingham, Alaska when I was a baby. I don’t remember anything there because I was a baby. I moved to Aleknagik, Alaska and now live here. We have a beautiful view from our house. I have nine brothers and sisters. Two are boys and seven are girls. My mom just had another one last year. I have lots of friends and never want to leave here. Sincerely, Deanna Nicholai.

During post project reflections, Deanna said that she is proud of her Yup’ik name,

Nemak, and added that she could not remember why she had not included it in this email. She also reported that having nine siblings is not unusual in Aleknagik

(interview notes, September, 2014). Fareen, who is an only-child, reported, during post project reflections, how back then she had thought that Deanna’s family was quite large (interview notes, December, 2014).

Fareen’s email response to Deanna opens with an informal salutation, congratulates Deanna on her new sibling, and then focuses on her favorite activities and engagements (music, a book, and skateboarding):

Dear Deanna, Hey what’s’ up? Hey congratulations on your new sibling. I like having fun. I do not have any brothers or sisters. It is only me. Boring huh. It is kind of fun. I like the colour purple. I like music so much. I sing too and I enjoy it. My birthday is on November 7th. Soon. I will be turning 13 this year. I like

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skate boarding. It is fun. Basketball, I love it. Nairobi is nice and I know it is different from Alaska. I would like to know you more. Fareen.

Fareen was late in sending her email to Deanna and received Deanna’s email then responded to it. Unlike in the case of the previous pairs where students had not read introductory emails from each other, by the time they wrote their first emails, it is possible that Fareen’s email is comparatively more conversational

(featuring a relaxed tone evidenced by, “Hey what’s’ up? Hey congratulations…it is only me…Boring huh…It is kind of fun”) because she had already read from

Deanna.

In another email, based on ‘the day-in-the-life’ thematic prompt, Deanna writes about a school day including information on wake-up time, her elder sisters being away at boarding school, her breakfast routine, etc.:

Here in Aleknagik I wake up at 8:00a.m. My dad or mom wakes me up. I share a room with my two little sisters. But I’m staying in my older sisters’ room until they come back from their school in Sitka, AK. When I get up I get ready, eat, then grab my backpack and go out the door. My mom or dad brings me down with our truck. Sometimes it’s really boring in this village, but it’s really beautiful. When new people come here they say it is the most beautiful out of all the other places they have been to. After school I go home and do my homework and do some chores. During post project reflections, Deanna, who is now married and lives in

Anchorage, reiterated that Aleknagik is very beautiful adding that she often returns to the village (interview notes, September, 2014). During post project reflections, she singled out one of the pictures her class had sent to their Nairobi collaborators (appendix M) and said “Aleknagik is the most beautiful place. Look

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at this. I can’t describe it!” (interview notes, September, 2014). Upon seeing this

same picture, Fareen agreed that the scenic picture was beautiful and compared

it to some scenery she had seen while on a school-trip to the Mt. Kenya region. It is noteworthy that the picture in appendix M (a landscape view of a lake, trees, mountains and the sky) does not have any human in it. This omission of people and man-made structures gives prominence to the natural environment which is held in reverence in Yup’ik traditions. Deanna’s description of the view from her family house, “We have a beautiful view from our house,” and her reiteration of this beauty in, “When new people come here they say it is the most beautiful out of all the other places they have been to” index a Yup’ik epistemic system which upholds nature in special reverence (interview notes, September, 2014). This

ideological position informs her incessant depiction of Aleknagik as a beautiful

place.

Fareen’s day-in-the-life email differs from Deanna’s and takes up a similar

pattern to Patrick and Shayda’s emails, that is, she did not describe a day at

school but instead presented a depiction of a typical outing to malls with friends:

In village market, where as we people in Nairobi call it in short V.M. there are many stuff to do, such as: bowling, pool, swimming, mini golf, fun exciting funfair rides. Then you can do the other things like going to the movies…Or you could have something to eat when there – village has such a big food court with all kinds of variety of foods including: Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, and many more. The food court offers you a coffee store (Dorman’s) where they serve coffee, tea’s milkshake, and many more beverages- with bitings such as: cakes, pastries and much more. And they have their wicked cool stores which sell stuff and accessories

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such as: jewelry, clothes, shoes, and many more things. Then they also have their candy shops serving you with all kinds of candy, sweets and ice cream!!!!! Also at V.M. they have a huge supermarket called Nakumatt which offers you all accessories inside it. Mostly on Saturdays V.M. is packed with teenagers that come there to link up with their friends…

The use of a non-specific you,” in Fareen’s email, lays out activities that one can engage in within the various recreational spaces in “VM.” Her use of listing also emphasizes the numerous activities available, and the exclamation marks,

“sweets and ice cream!!!!!,” show Fareen’s excitement in recounting these events from her prior experiences. During post project reflections, Fareen, who lives in

Johannesburg, South Africa, reported that she frequently visits Village Market whenever she is back in Kenya, and added that it is still thronged by teenage crowds on weekends. In her email, she employs “we people in Nairobi” to locate her in Nairobi and to position herself as part of a group that frequents “VM.” This elaboration marks her recognition that her addressee, Deanna, is an outsider to this local and social space.

There is an abundance of information in Fareen’s email that indexes her membership, as a middle class person, in the Nairobian youth cultural group, she uses phrases like, “we people in Nairobi call it in short V.M.”; she singles out different activities to engage in within the mall built-space in, “there are many stuff to do, such as: bowling, pool, swimming, mini golf, fun exciting funfair rides…other things like going to the movies…have something to eat”; she lists multiethnic cuisines available at VM, “a big food court with all kinds of variety of

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foods including: Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, and many more”; and she presents herself as being drawn to the consumerist culture in Nairobi in, “they have their

wicked cool stores which sell stuff and accessories such as: jewelry, clothes,

shoes, and many more things.”

Thus, through description, punctuation, naming, and other pragmatic

moves, Fareen makes visible to Deanna some key features of what life looks like

for teenagers living in Nairobi. In a similar manner to Patrick and Shayda’s

emails, Fareen’s statement, “a big food court with all kinds of variety of foods

including: Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, and many more,” indexes both Nairobian

ethnic diversity and the Nairobian youth practice of partaking in multiethnic

cuisines. This is one among other practices, such as, the use of informal

language, and engaging in consumerist practices, that signals Fareen’s

positionality as a Nairobian youth. Thus, the use of informal expressions, “there

are many stuff,” bitings,” “V.M. is packed,” and “teenagers that come…to link up,”

exemplify evidence of widespread informal language use, in Nairobi, seeping into

monitored classroom spaces. Additionally, consumerism is a conspicuous but

underlying factor in Fareen’s email. Having money to spend is a prerequisite for

engaging in the activities that Fareen and her fellow teens engage in. During post

project reflections, Deanna commented that it was only after she had traveled out

of Aleknagik, to Anchorage, that she saw malls and recreational establishments

like the ones being referred to in archived emails by Fareen. She added that

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although many people seemed to be enjoying themselves there, she still preferred her village and the outdoors (interview notes, September, 2014). Eight years ago, Deanna was unable to respond to Fareen’s day-in-the-life email because around that time her family had gone on a fishing trip. Subsistence migration for fishing are an important Yup’ik tradition which her family still observes. During post project reflections Deanna said:

I grew up near the Nushagak River and my family did seasonal migration when I was very young. We eventually came to a place by Lake Aleknagik. I grew up in the Yup’ik way. We followed the fish and game. I still go berry picking. I remember how beautiful it always was in spring when I heard the birds when they returned. It was beautiful. My brothers, sisters and I, we would wake up early in the morning just to listen to the birds. There were so many birds! It was really beautiful (interview transcript, September, 2014).

Deanna was not the only one in her class (or school) who would miss school because her family had gone fishing or hunting. Her account here, “my family did seasonal migration,” and “I grew up in the Yup’ik way,” indexes her observance of Yup’ik cultural practices that often conflict with school schedules. During the collaboration, Mr. Collins sent me an email about Deanna’s absence where he wrote: “Deanna and Tommy missed about a week and a half of school on a trip and were not around when we did that writing so I am not going to require them to make that up now”. Teachers in rural Alaska have to contend with these absences, caused by traditional obligations which conflict with the school calendar. During post project reflections, Fareen commented that Deanna should

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not be blamed for practicing her culture even though that meant that they did not correspond for some time (interview notes, December, 2014).

Emails between Deanna and Fareen based on the theme of ‘favorite food’ took up an almost similar pattern to the previous two pairs. Deanna’s favorite food is pike with Uquq (seal oil). Her descriptive email launches immediately into the moment when she and her dad were out fishing:

Dear Fareen, My dad throws me a slimy pike to put in the container. Its slime soaks through my gloves as I turn over to throw the fish into the container. He throws me another and another until the net is cleaned out. The bugs keep biting me all over I’m slapping myself like my hand is an electric fly swatter. When the net is clean we wash our hands in the lake to get most of the slime off. The bucket looks like dead fish. The fish are flapping all around throwing blood everywhere. After that we bring the bucket of fish up to our house and bring it down below our hill. My mom and I get ready to cut them. We go down there and grab a fish then put it on the table. We start from cutting off the head and we cut the back. Then we can hear the back bone crackle and snap. Then we take out the guts. After we’re done we rinse them in a bucket to take all the slime and blood off. Then we soak them in salt water for about 20 minutes. After that we hang them up for a week or until they dry perfectly. Once they are dry we cut them into pieces and then we put them in a zip lock back and freeze them to eat during the winter. We eat them with uquq, which is seal oil. When we eat it we peel the skin off with our hand and teeth. The taste is very sweet and juicy.

Like Jasmyn and Nate, she too described the procurement and preparation processes, fishing, cutting and drying, as being integral to her enjoyment of her favorite food. Swatting bugs when they bite is not because they are a nuisance but it part of the engagement with the natural environment. By writing, “The bugs

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keep biting me all over I’m slapping myself like my hand is an electric fly swatter,”

Deanna was recounting interactions between herself and the environment

(interview notes, September 2014). Preparation and curing of fish are traditionally

gendered roles, done by girls and women among the Yup’ik, while hunting is

predominantly done by men, although girls can go hunting with their fathers and

family. Over time, these gendered roles are slowly becoming cross-gendered

(interview notes, September, 2014). Harvesting of fish (like other major

subsistence activities) is a collaborative event requiring different people to

participate in procurement and preparation. Deanna’s explanation of ‘uquq’ in,

“We eat them with uquq, which is seal oil,” employs a strategic communicative

move through recognizing that Fareen is an outsider to her cultural and

geographical space and would therefore not know what “uquq” is. She also

employs sensory imagery (tactile, visual, audio imagery) to crystallize the pike-

procuring and eating experience for Fareen. Zip lock bags, that Deanna

mentions, are among several non-traditional artifacts that have been incorporated in Alaskan Native cultural life as a result of sustained cross-cultural influence.

During post project reflections, Deanna said that she enjoyed reading email from archived data, after such a long time, and added she still loves cured pike with Uquq. She felt that she had been successful in communicating to

Fareen Yup’ik aspects of subsistence life and argued that the fishing net, the

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bucket, and smoke houses for preparing pike, are all important for survival.

These cultural artifacts, together with newly-adopted ones such as the zip lock

bag and four wheelers, are a cardinal feature of subsistence lifestyle, and are

widely considered as being crucial for authentic Yup’ik cultural practices

(interview notes, September, 2014). The four-wheeler and zip lock bags are

among many non-Native artifacts that have been adopted by the Yup’ik for

subsistence activities due to infusion of other cultures and economic systems.

During post project reflections, Fareen, who had re-read Deanna’s description of

the pike experience, noted that she found it interesting that Deanna and her

family procure their own food:

I really like how she describes fishing here and the way they prepare fish. I have never tasted uquq so I can’t say much but it must be good if she likes it that much. I don’t think I noticed how they have to get their food. Here we buy grocery and we eat out. Deanna’s life is very interesting” (interview transcript, December, 2014).

When I asked her to pick out one artifact that was very important in her favorite-

food-process, she identified the menu (appendix I is an example of a menu at

one of the places Fareen and her friends frequented):

Obviously the menu! If you don’t have a menu you are like a blind person. What will you eat? How will you order it? Will they even understand you? When I go into a restaurant I want to look at the menu first before I decide I will even eat there. What food are they serving and how much? (interview notes, December, 2014).

There are several features of menus (see appendix I) which give them the

significance Fareen refers to here. They generally take on an attractive

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presentation using conspicuous color, layout, and images. They convey the

variety of foods/drinks through providing names and in some cases descriptions.

They also communicate food prices. Some menus announce the special food

item(s) of the day. One can either access a displayed menu or interact with

restaurant staff to get one. Fareen uses hyperbole, “If you don’t have a menu you are like a blind person,” to amplify this significance of menus in the restaurant experience. Underpinning this experience is the expectation to spend money for goods and services. This experience is a centerpiece of Nairobian youth activities (meaning activities that youth in Nairobi engage in) which have intersections with urban middle class activities and practices.

In Fareen’s email on, ‘your favorite food,’ she employs an informal

salutation, “Hey what’s up?” names the restaurant, and offers a general

description of available drinks, foods and deserts:

Dear Deanna, Hey what’s up? Ok so I’m writing to you about a restaurant in Nairobi called ‘Pomodoro’. It serves Italian food! Things like pizzas, pastas, salads and many other things! It has a large variety of Italian food which is very filling!!! My best food is actually Italian!!! But still I don’t like eating much!!! It also offers you Italian wine- not that I have ever tasted it!! But other people say it’s good. If I’m not mistaken this is one of the Italian specialties!! Yeah…so anyway on their menu they offer large varieties of each food you like e.g., on their pizzas they have so many choices- margarita, Pomodoro, bolognaise!! Yes all of them!!! They do the same with their pasta’s!! All their food is really good!! And their deserts also- with their Italian special deserts- like their popular ice creams!!!! Which are really delicious!! Do tell me if there are any restaurants in Alaska? Ok!! And write more about it to me ok? Please! Thanks!! Ok so I guess I’ll hear from you later!!!

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Bye!! Take care!!! Fareen!

Notably, Fareen identifies her favorite food using a generic term, “Italian,” rather

than identifying a specific name of a food. Later in the email she asks whether

there are restaurants in Alaska adding “And write more about it to me ok?

Please! Thanks!!” In asking this question she visualizes herself translocated into

Deanna’s local space, but extending her Nairobian identity of a frequent patron of

restaurants into this new space.

This translocation fails to notice that Aleknagik teenagers do not frequent

restaurants as part of their shared recreation. In post project reflections Fareen

responded to a question on this disparity saying:

Yes. I don’t think doing restaurants was a thing there. We used to do it here all the time. I still go to Pomodoro when I am in Kenya although there are new restaurants now. (interview notes, December 2014).

Another notable comment in Fareen’s email is her clarification that she had never

tasted Italian wine and that “other people say it’s good” which reiterates that she

was reporting what others have told her as opposed to her being the one who

partook of the wine. This comment was necessitated by an incident which

occurred earlier on, during the Alaska-Kenya exchange, where two of her

classmates had taken advantage of the one time I did not read through emails

before conveying them to Mr. Collins. The two students sent emails boasting of

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various exploits, including underage drinking. These emails were intercepted and

rejected by Mr. Collins who emailed me saying:

I am having an issue with one of the…pieces though. One of the students wrote about going to a bar and the alcohol he drinks there. Alcohol here is a touchy situation with these students and I think the writing shows that the student is trying to break rules and get away with things…David here is another piece of writing I am not giving out. I am a little disturbed over the discussion of drinking in these…Honestly, if my kids read this and I did not censor it I would be in deep trouble and an awkward situation in class when they read these out loud.

Unbeknown to us in Nairobi at the time, what was playing out in Aleknagik was the issue of the ravages of alcoholism on the sociocultural fabric of Alaskan

Native communities (Yup’ik included) leading to legislation to declare some areas

“dry” (total prohibition of sale and consumption of alcohol), others “damp”

(regulated sale and consumption of alcoholic beverages allowed), and others

“wet” (sale and consumption allowed). This concern over the effect of alcohol on

Alaska Natives intersected with the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, in this case, to compel Mr. Collin to reject the two emails from Nairobi. This concern necessitated censoring of emails from Nairobi and generally illustrates how wider influences in local spaces can shape communication by determining what counts as appropriate. Eight years ago, I had thought that a concern about underage drinking had motivated this censoring. I have since learned (through fieldwork that includes interviewing Mr. Collins and site visits in Aleknagik) that the primary reason which fueled this reaction was the local perception that alcohol dependency has led to violence, crime, suicides, and misery in Alaskan Native

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communities. Mr. Collins did not wish for the exchange to venture into this sensitive topic or to appear to be condoning alcohol use.

The horrors and tension emanating from this situation are indexed by Mr.

Collin’s statements, “Alcohol here is a touchy situation,” and “if my kids read this and I did not censor it I would be in deep trouble”. His use of “here” locates the concerns about alcohol as being local, that is, in Aleknagik and in Alaska.

Fareen’s email to Deanna was sent after this incident whereby her two classmates had had to re-write their emails and take out all reference to alcohol consumption. At the school in Nairobi, there was an explicit code of conduct that prohibited underage drinking. Back then, my discussion requiring that the two students re-write their emails was based on this code of conduct. The sensitivity with which the topic of alcoholism is treated in Aleknagik is illustrated by Mr.

Collin’s use of the phrase, “a touchy situation,” which indexes tensions emanating from a wider problem, that is, drunkenness and alcohol abuse

(exacerbated by violence and crime) have decimated native Alaskan communities. During the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, Aleknagik had been designated “damp” but like several other places in Alaska, it swung from “damp” to “dry” and back depending on the severity of the alcohol problem (field notes,

September, 2014). This gravity of the malaise of alcoholism in Alaska was unknown by us on the Kenyan side but it shaped language use and interactions around alcohol consumption in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. This influence is

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seen when Fareen writes, “[the restaurant] also offers you Italian wine,” and adds, “not that I have ever tasted it!!” as a self-exculpatory move before adding,

“But other people say it’s good” to ascertain, further, that she did not drink the wine.

Fareen and Deanna were unable to exchange pieces under the thematic prompt of ‘your favorite place’ because Deanna had to be away from school on a family fishing trip. The last correspondence between the two was on the poem exchange. Deanna sent a poem modelled from Wallace Stevens’ poem ‘Thirteen

Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,’ and Fareen reciprocated with a poem modelled on Achebe's ‘Refugee Mother and Child.’ Deanna’s poem entitled ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Swallow’ takes a pro-environment stance and applauds the beautiful swallow. She poses questions about environment preservation:

VII Why don’t you care For the environment You live in? And for the homes of the Swallows that live there too?

The poem ends as the persona goes out one foggy morning to listen to swallows chirping. During post project reflections, Fareen said that she is not surprised that

Deanna wrote this poem since she had on a number of occasions written about the beauty of the natural surroundings in Aleknagik which included the sound of birds. She added that Deanna was lucky to live in a place where she interacted

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so closely with nature, and if Nairobians wanted “fresh air” they either went to a park on the outskirts of the city or traveled out of the city to scenic places

(interview notes, December, 2014). While Fareen’s argument, that the beauty of the land motivated Deanna’s poem, is accurate, the understanding of this motivation is only at a surface level. Deanna’s reverence for the swallow is metaphorical of her reverence for the land. Her reference to the land as “the homes of the Swallows,” indexes the Yup’ik traditional philosophy of “Nuna qantaqaput” (meaning “the land is our bowl”) which emphasizes human reverence for the land (and sea) which are a source of sustenance and life (field notes, September, 2014).

In reciprocity, Fareen sent an untitled piece, a parody of a speech by a government minister held in an up-market hotel during a luncheon meeting on strategies to end famine in northern Kenya. The minister is presented as having difficulties speaking because of overindulgence, he stumbles over his words as he belches into the microphone. At the end of the speech he declares, “No stone will be left unturned until the government provides food for all,” followed by a standing ovation, and an early adjournment for a snack break. During post project reflections, Deanna commented on how unfortunate it was for the minister whom she equated to an elder of the community to be so greedy and to fail to provide for his starving population. Deanna, whose understanding of how an elder should behave is structured by her Yup’ik cultural norms, felt that the social roles and responsibilities of an elder are antithetical to the greed and

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overindulgence exhibited by the character presented in Fareen’s piece. Fareen’s

parody of inept leadership is informed by widespread public perception, in Kenya,

that government anti-corruption rhetoric is not accompanied by commensurate

tangible action and that people in positions of power are more interested in their own benefit than in alleviating the suffering of the masses. In these two pieces,

both students construct a critical commentary to address prevalent concerns

present in their local settings (environmental protection in Aleknagik and

corruption in Nairobi), and they both engage in communicative moves to share

their meanings.

To wrap both post project reflection interviews, I invited Deanna and

Fareen to offer any comments they wished:

Deanna: I speak Yup'ik although my mother says I speak American Yup'ik but I think I am getting better at speaking it. I enjoyed this project with Fareen. Quyana [thank you] (interview transcript, September, 2014).

Fareen: I learned a lot about Alaska. I remember the day you came to class with a map. If you look at a world map you see Alaska is in the top left corner. Maybe I can say this project helped me write to Deanna who lives in the corner. So we were learning about life in their corner and life in our corner. Maybe they also have a map where Kenya is in the corner [laughs] (interview transcript, December, 2014).

Deanna’s comment about her mother referring to her Yup’ik competence as

“American Yup'ik” highlights generational change in a culture that is under attack

from constant encroachment of a dominant western culture. Being adept at

spoken Yup’ik is one among several important indicators of membership in Yup’ik

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traditions. The younger Alaskan Native generation appears to be losing their

Yup’ik proficiency when compared to older community members. Thus there

continue to be several language revitalization programs in rural Alaska to

address this need. Deanna ends her interview with, “quyana,” a Yup’ik word

whose closest equivalent in English is, “thank you” (she said that it is a

combination of gratitude and prayerful well-wishes for the other). Fareen’s

comment regarding finding out what is “in the corner,” highlights how Yup’ik

experiences are marginal in Alaska, USA, and in the world and how Nairobian

youth experiences are marginal in Nairobi, Kenya, and on the world-stage. She

rightly observes that a map is a maneuverable artifact and that perhaps there are

other maps where Kenya is in the corner. Fareen’s comment, “we were learning

about life in their corner and life in our corner,” highlights a key aim of the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration, for students to learn about the lives of disparately situated

peoples and places. It also highlights a key aim of this present study, to make

visible and to amplify experiences and voices of people who are marginalized

therefore perceived as living in “the corner”.

5.5 Discussion of findings

5.5.1 A Backdrop: Students as Social Actors

Through the concept of language in place (Scollon & Scollon, 2003),

intercultural interactions in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration can be conceived of

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as having three components: language as a social practice, a site for social action, and social actors. Seen through this lens, Jasmyn, Patrick, Nate, Shayda,

Deanna and Fareen are social actors, and they employ language as a social practice within the infrastructure of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, which is a site for social action (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Their communicative actions intersect with broader influences in local and beyond-local, or supralocal, spaces

(Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009). Archival and post project data, from the three telling cases (Mitchell, 1984), show how acting in the world entails, in part, inscribing cultural and experiential worlds within language (Lakoff & Johnson,

1980; Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Such inscription is evidenced by indexical relations between language use and wider aspects of sociocultural and geophysical context. Additionally, during the collaboration these students drew on prior in and out of class experiences as they engaged in meaning sharing and making. These included cultural, political, ideological, and social experiences which inform various presuppositions (Gumperz, 1982) the students brought to their interactions with others.

This study employs the notion of languaculture (Agar, 1994) or linguistic culture (Farr & Song, 2011; Schiffman, 1996), to account for the entwinement between language and culture that characterizes these presuppositions. Through this approach, communicative actions are infused with language ideologies

(Kroskrity, 2000; Phillips, 2015) and therefore amount to more than just the

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sharing of language; they involve language, culture, social relations and heritage

(Agar, 1994; Ahearn, 2012; Duranti, 1997; Hymes, 1972). This approach is useful

in visualizing how sociocultural life is infused within interactional strategies

(Ahearn, 2012; Bauman & Sherzer, 1975; Heath & Street, 2008) for meaning

sharing and making. Archival data comprises constructions of self and place situated in two different local spaces, Aleknagik and Nairobi. Sociocultural life

includes in- and out-of-class histories which are evidenced through considering

how these students apply previously taught skills, such as letter writing, use of

tone and writing for an audience, among other skills (identified in fig 3.1 in

chapter 3), in their communication with their peers. Students employed these

previously taught skills together with their out-of-class experiences in the shared

discourse, based on their own and others’ depictions of self and place.

In producing this shared discourse, students took up various social roles

such as, representing themselves and their local space thus they were

ambassadors. This role is explicitly mentioned by Patrick who said, “I should

have been a better Kenyan ambassador” (interview transcript, December 2014).

Through questioning, students took an exploratory role as they sought to

understand their beyond-local peers. At the outset they brainstormed potential

questions to ask the other group. During the collaboration, they asked one

another questions as they explained, recounted, described and even contested

different phenomena. As social actors (Scollon & Scollon, 2003), students were

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therefore narrators, inquirers, observers, and (in a general sense) they

documented their experiences for themselves and for one another in the

interaction. Through such documentation and collaborative interactional

strategies, they functioned as mediators of their meanings for their peers.

Additionally, in some cases, they offered a critical social commentary as seen in

Shayda’s piece entitled ‘War and Famine,’ a parody of bad governance, or in the

centerpiece of Deanna’s poem, based on the swallow, where she asked, “Why

don’t you care/For the environment/You live in?” Whereas students took up

multifaceted roles, as social actors, perhaps their most important roles were as

cultural practitioners, with expertise in their local epistemologies, while

concurrently being an authentic audience for their peers. Data show that students

shared meanings while indexing influences from their cultural worlds.

While engaging in these multifaceted roles, these students tap into their

experiences in order to produce discourses in place (Scollon & Scollon, 2003).

Their presentation of self and place took into account input from their peers, for

instance, they constantly recognized that their peers were outsiders to their

cultural and social worlds and they engaged in strategic communicative acts to

make these meanings visible, available and accessible to their peers. Jasmyn,

Patrick, Nate, Shayda, Deanna and Fareen came into their interactions with

linguistic, social and cultural presuppositions (Gumperz, 1982) which shaped

how they understood one another and how they saw themselves and the other.

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Data show evidence of some stereotypic presuppositions that are present in students’ processes of meaning sharing and meaning making. In his email to

Shayda, Nate writes, “My day usually starts off with my mom waking me up in our igloo,” and immediately adds, “just kidding, we live in normal houses.” In yet another email he writes, “But to let you know, we don’t live in igloos.” The first reference to “igloos” is framed within a joke signaled by, “just kidding,” whereas the second is a more direct advisory, “but to let you know.”

Another specific instance where a stereotypic presupposition emerges is when Shayda, in a post project reflection, said, “I think we all thought that they were miserable in the cold Alaskan climate. In the pictures I saw snow everywhere but they were smiling and playing” (interview transcript, February,

2014). At this point, she is referring to appendix J, which presented situated concrete evidence of Nate and his peers having fun. This reference visualizes how her presupposition, “they were miserable in the cold Alaskan climate,” was recalibrated by pictorial evidence. Another example of such recalibration occurred around Patrick engaging with what Jasmyn meant by “a school bus”

(see appendix F). The progression from Patrick’s initial reaction, where he felt that Jasmyn was being condescending, to his post project reflection where he says, “I think I overreacted when she sent it. Before we found out from them, I would have never thought that this is a school bus anywhere!” (interview transcript, July, 2014), show this recalibration of perception. Collectively, the

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specific expressions quoted here index stereotypic assumptions held by these

students, which were present in their wider contexts, as they engage each other

interactionally.

Additionally, whereas there are three pairs here, the project I refer to in

this study as “the Alaska-Kenya collaboration” comprised collective

correspondence between 16 students in Aleknagik, and twenty students in

Nairobi (including the teachers). This means that the discourses in place (or

situated discourses) produced by Nate and Shayda are part of the situated discourses produced by Patrick and Jasmyn, and Deanna and Fareen and their

other peers in this collaboration. This collective production of discourses in place

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003) is an essential feature of the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration and consequential in understanding the nature of language use in

the intercultural communication between the two groups. Put differently,

language use in this collaboration, which was characterized by indexical references to the students’ inscribed worlds, was situated within the context of the collective engagement by the two groups across geospatial and cultural difference.

The following two sections offer a direct discussion of the first two research questions, based on data presentation and analysis.

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5.5.2 Research question 1: What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration?

Supralocalization: An umbrella term for communicative strategies in

intercultural communication. The Alaska-Kenya collaboration can be

understood as a program of participation which “immerses students in

intercultural relationships and extends the repertoires of teaching and learning”

(Goswami, 1998, p. 305). The main objective of this collaboration was for

students to communicate a situated sense of self with each other across

geospatial and cultural difference. Jasmyn, Patrick, Nate, Shayda, Deanna and

Fareen concurrently positioned themselves within their local spaces while

sharing meanings, with others who are supralocally positioned (Maciocco &

Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002). In this way, they employed local

epistemologies in interactions with supralocal interlocutors. That is, for Jasmyn,

Nate, and Deanna, Aleknagik was their local space, and Patrick, Shayda, and

Fareen were in a supralocal space, and vice versa. This concurrent positioning is

comparable to a global world whose center is everywhere and whose

circumference is nowhere (Bauman, 1998). The subject of the students’ emails

(which were sent to a supralocal audience) is local experiences situated within

spaces that are concurrently local and supralocal. In other words, to

communicate interculturally, students had to supralocalize their local meanings.

This process is more complex than merely interacting beyond a certain

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boundary. As discussed in chapter, 4, the concept of local and supralocal

(Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002) considers geospatial locations in a non-dichotomous manner unlike local-global or even “glocal” (Robertson,

1995). There appears to be a sliding scale for what amounts to local. For

example, Africa which incorporates Kenya and Nairobi is local to Patrick, Shayda

and Fareen. Kenya is “more local” to them given that it is more immediate to their

experiences than the African continental space. Nairobi whose geophysical

space is most immediate to these students (in relation to Africa and Kenya) is, in

this regard, the “most local.” The same conceptualization can be made of

Aleknagik, Alaska, and USA in the case of Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna.

Data show that supralocalization (between the two student groups)

entailed communicative moves to make visible, available, and accessible (to supralocal interlocutors) meanings that would otherwise be exclusively understood locally. Supralocalization on the Aleknagikan side is evident in instances where students employed translations in parentheses where Yup’ik (a local sign system) had been used, described local activities (using sensory

imagery), elaborated, and explicated for their Nairobi exchange-peers.

Supralocalization moves emerged right from the outset whereby Aleknagikan

students introduced themselves as having two names (a Yup’ik heritage name

and identity on one hand, and a school registered name and identity on the

other). This double introduction indexes tension between Yup’ik and western

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cultural systems in day-to-day life in Aleknagik. This double introduction visualized this conflict in cultural identities for the outsider-peers in Nairobi by illustrating that Aleknagik students toggle between a traditional Yup'ik identity and a dominant western identity:

“my name is Jasmyn Tugatuk and my Yup'ik name is Iquarta,” “my name is Nate Andrews and my Yup'ik name is Ayak'ak,”

The conjunction, “and,” signals this potential boundary between the two cultural identities. All three Aleknagik participants in this dissertation made this distinction between their school-registered names and their Yup'ik names (Deanna

Nicholai’s Yup’ik name is, Nemak).

Similarly, during the collaboration 12 out of the 16 Aleknagik students presented themselves as having these dual identities in their self-introductory emails, and the remaining four offered this information in subsequent emails.

Notably, Mr. Collins referred to all his students using their school registered names, for instance he used “Deanna Nicholai” not “Nemak”. At the beginning of the collaboration, the list of names that was received in Nairobi, which was composed by Mr. Collins, bore school registered names of the Aleknagik students. Thus, Patrick was going to write to “Jasmyn Tugatuk” not “Iquarta,” and

Shayda was going to write to “Nate Andrews” not “Ayak'ak”. The self-introduction using Yup’ik names, is a transgressive act by Aleknagik students indicating their resistance and agency whereby, they reject a singular ascribed identity which

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conforms to a dominant western cultural system and which was in turn

perpetuated by the school. In their emails to their pair mates, Aleknagik students

re-name themselves by making visible their Yup’ik identities, which had been

silenced in the list of school registered names that had been sent by Mr. Collins

to Nairobi.

Thus, through communicative strategies entailed within the banner of

supralocalization Aleknagik students produced counter-scripts or a counter discourse (Gutiérrez et al., 1995) to disrupt the idea of being named by a dominant western cultural system in a way that erases their Yup’ik identities.

Imagine how the list of names would have looked had Aleknagik students been the ones who had composed it themselves! Yup’ik names, which are acquired through traditional name-giving, have connections to ancestral heritage and the reincarnation of spirits (Krupnik & Vakhtin, 1997; Also corroborated through field notes, September, 2014). In spite of the enforcement of names by Russian and

American colonizing forces over time, “Yupik name giving continues on an unofficial and undocumented level” (Krupnik & Vakhtin, 1997, p. 239). Field note

data confirm that the general ideology towards heritage names is, one’s Yup’ik

name is more than a mere name, it is a continuation of tradition, a symbol of

membership, a banner that signals one’s identity (some names mean that one

has a particular type of personality or predisposition), a conduit of the interaction

between humans, animals and spirits, and a means of ensuring the longevity of

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kith and kin (see Krupnik & Vakhtin, 1997). A school-naming system that ignores all these aspects of Yup’ik worldview is not only culturally violent, but is also a manifestation of the deculturation agenda in Alaska (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates

& Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006).

On the Nairobi side, students did not present such a distinction between cultural identities and school registered identities:

“my name is Patrick Kalu…my friends call me PK” “my name is Shayda Wacu Njenga…you can call me Shishi” “my name is Fareen Pirani”

All students with an indigenous heritage (meaning they hail from one of the 42

traditional Kenyan communities), presented an amalgam of their traditional

names and their anglicized names, for instance, Patrick Kalu. Additionally,

Kenyan students of Indian or Pakistani origin presented their cultural names,

Fareen Pirani. Notably, the data show that even though students in Nairobi come

from different races and ethnicities, they self-identify as being part of a “we”

thereby participating in activities within a multiethnic, multilingual collective:

“I love playing soccer and hanging out with friends” (Patrick Kalu) “Teens here mainly go to the mall” (Shayda Wacu Njenga) “In short we call the Village Market the V.M.” (Fareen Pirani)

The words, “friends,” “teens,” and “we,” supralocalize the collectiveness of the

Nairobian youth group even though this group is heterogenous (that is,

multiethnic, multilingual, and multicultural). This diversity instantiates a

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cosmopolitan ethnic plurality similar to “new ethnicities” (see, Harris, 2006; Paris,

2011).

Data also indicate that both student groups are aware of their collaborators’ non-local status or otherness (outsiders) relative to their local

discourse systems (Scollon & Scollon, 2001). Besides the fact that the students

are writing to others who are in a disparate geophysical location, there are

several features of language use which signal this awareness. For example, the

pre-project questions which students composed (including, “What kind of

traditional crafts do you make?” and “How do you manage to live in such a cold

place?”) indicate that students are prospecting information about others and

other places beyond the local.

Through these questions, these students position themselves as insiders

seeking information about a space that is outside their local space. To do this,

they had to imagine the existence of others in a world beyond their local spaces.

This recognition, of a world beyond local spaces, was aided by maps and globes,

which served as geo-positioning navigational artifacts, which both teachers

brought into class when introducing the collaboration. Recognition of otherness

also happened when students were given their partner’s name and told to write

to them, that is, they were writing to someone who was in a different part of the

world. Additionally, students explained to their collaborating peers some

practices, activities, and aspects of their local spaces, in an effort to make these

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meanings accessible to their interlocutors. For example, Nate wrote to Shayda, “I love winter because it’s like living in a freezer with tons of freezing cold snow.”

This explanation employs a comparison of being inside a freezer, which aids

Shayda in imagining the cold temperatures in Aleknagik in that, if she can access a freezer and compare temperatures, this will help her imagine an aspect of

Nate’s world.

Shayda also engaged in a similar trope; in her email, to Nate, she wrote,

“the sea is very warm because it is in the equatorial region.” Both students employ comparisons, and explanations to mediate, for one another, information about their local worlds thereby making this world accessible to the other. In other words they supralocalize information about their situated selves and experiences for their supralocal audience. I use this umbrella term, supralocalization, to imply a host of strategies of intercultural communication.

Fareen's email, to Deanna, utilizes a communicative strategy when she writes:

“in short we call the village market the V.M….my friends and I hang out at the

V.M. to do our homework.” Embedded within this explanation, is a recognition that the other is not familiar with “V.M.,” a local space, hence she employs an explanation that she would not otherwise use if she were communicating with someone familiar with her geophysical and cultural space. Recognition that the other is an outsider to one’s geophysical and cultural space occurred at the beginning of the collaboration, it recurred during the collaboration, and even

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occurred eight years later when participants were engaging in post project

reflections. For instance, during post project reflections Shayda said: “I was

excited that someone in Alaska knew my name and wanted me to write to him,”

and Jasmyn said, “Back then I had no idea that Africa had such big cities let

alone a city with 4 million people.” These reflexive comments indicate an on-

going recognition of an “other” and another space.

Overall, the intention of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration was to get

students to exchange, with each other, their descriptions of self and place. The

data show that students’ theme-based descriptions comprise shared discourse about situated selves. In summary, language use by students in Aleknagik, where they offer their Yup’ik names, describe subsistence activities, express traditionally-informed attitudes towards nature and the land, and recount their activities that are consistent with Yuuyaraq, index a Yup’ik sense of self. This discourse, about Yupikness, is shared with others beyond the Aleknagik local space (in Nairobi). On the other side of the collaboration, language use by students in Nairobi, where they describe their engagement in activities such as shopping, eating multiethnic cuisine, navigating built spaces such as malls and the sub-spaces within these built spaces such as going to movies or bowling, listening to music of different genres and origins, and expressing consumerist tendencies, among others, index a middleclass flavor of a Nairobian youth sense of self.

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This discourse, about Nairobianness, is shared with others beyond the

Nairobi local space (in Aleknagik). For both groups, descriptions of activities,

attitudes, some intersecting local tensions, and cultural practices, aggregate into

a sense-of-self in that, Aleknagik youth position themselves as Yuuyaraq youth

and Nairobi youth position themselves as Nairobian youth. Through employing

various communicative strategies in their shared discourse, these students

supralocalized meanings about their Yuuyaraq and Nairobian youth selves in

order to communicate with their outsider interlocutors.

Negotiation as an interactional strategy. Under the banner of

supralocalization, students engaged one another in negotiated meaning sharing

and meaning making. This negotiation entailed pragmatic strategies, such as

questioning or even push-back). That is, their shared discourse was a site for

negotiating access to and interpretation of each other’s meanings. In his self-

introductory email, Nate writes, “my Yup’ik is Ayak’aq,” and in a subsequent

email Shayda asks him to clarify this statement. Nate responds by, “I must have been writing too fast last time, I meant my Yup’ik (language) name is Ayak’aq (A- ya-kak), sorry.” There are several strategic, and pragmatic moves in these responses by Nate. He starts off with an explanation for his failure to achieve supralocalization of, “my Yup’ik is Ayak’aq,” followed by the clarification Shayda is seeking. Notably, he uses two parenthetical inserts. In the first one he explains that “Yup’ik” is a language, and in the second one he offers Shayda a phonetic

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cue for how to pronounce his traditional name. He then apologizes. Given this

feedback, Shayda is now able to access and make meaning of “my Yup’ik is

Ayak’aq.” This information (by Nate) also situates him in a particular cultural and

geophysical space that is, “Yup’ik” means both a language and culture thereby

marking him as having connections with Aleknagik.

Another instance which illustrates tensions that emerge within negotiated meaning sharing and making, is the incident involving alcohol where two

students, from Nairobi, wrote emails to their counterparts in Aleknagik relaying

their drinking exploits. These emails were rejected by Mr. Collins, primarily

because of contextual concerns about alcohol consumption. These include the

ravages of alcohol abuse and subsequent regulations within the Alaskan Native

communities. On the Kenyan side, due to the prevalence of recreational

establishments in Nairobi, where alcohol is available for adult patrons, there are

laws on underage drinking that govern admission and service to these

establishments. Additionally, there are explicit school rules that forbid alcohol

consumption by students thus the alcohol problem in Nairobi is ‘underage

drinking’ rather than the destruction of a community fiber by alcoholism. That is,

some Nairobi teenagers resist school regulations by finding clandestine ways to

acquire and consume alcohol. Under these circumstances, and informed by Mr.

Collin’s rejection of the two emails where her peers had to re-write their emails to

omit information on alcohol consumption, Fareen negotiates her telling of the

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Pomodoro restaurant story. As evidenced in Mr. Collin’s rejection email where he says, “Alcohol here is a touchy situation with these students…Honestly, if my kids read this and I did not censor it I would be in deep trouble and an awkward situation in class,” alcohol is a sensitive topic in Aleknagik. In this case, Fareen’s negotiated use of language is seen when she does not suppress alcohol consumption in her story in spite of its sensitivity, and when she includes self- exculpatory language, “not that I have ever tasted it!!...But other people say it’s good.”

Negotiated use of language also involves engaging in communicative moves that are informed by local contextual influences. These influences can complicate interactions due to the incidence of implicit and explicit languacultural rich points (Agar, 1994). In other words, some obvious and some not-so-obvious frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998) could lead to disconnects in communication, for instance, when world views inscribed within the texts, images and artifacts

(Lakoff & Johnson, 1980), fail to elicit shared understandings. Put another way, local meanings and actualizations do not always yield supralocal understandings.

The data show explicit instances of frame clashes, for instance, through the incidents involving the meaning of “school bus,” and “dirt roads.” In these instances, a common label evokes different understandings of representational frames leading to explicit frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998). More specifically, in the example of “the school bus”, after seeing appendix F, which re-situated the

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representational frame, school bus, in the Aleknagik local space thereby leading

to a meaning that was at odds with Patrick’s conceptualizations of “school bus,”

Patrick had to re-constitute his understanding of what constitutes a “school bus”

in Jasmyn’s world as well as in his world. In his local space, the vehicle in

appendix F would not count as “a bus” let alone a “school bus.” However, interactions with Jasmyn led to the construction of a shared category of “school bus.” Patrick’s reconstituted understanding is evidenced by his post project reflection, “…I think I overreacted when she sent it. Before we found out from them, I would have never thought that this is a school bus anywhere! (interview transcript, July, 2014).

Data also show implicit frame clashes such that disconnected meanings

were not evident to students during the collaboration. The result of implicit frame

clashes is lost opportunities to access meaning across difference. Examples of

implicit frame clashes include, when Shayda took offence after Nate described

snow in, “If you have ever seen snow it is like sand that melts in your hand.” Nate

was unaware of Shayda’s interpretation of his description as a stereotypic affront

on her. Nate who had incessantly pushed back against the stereotype that the

Yup’ik live in igloos, was unaware of his faux pas and therefore missed the

opportunity to learn about the perception of stereotype that formed Shayda’s

presupposition about his communication. This incident was not discussed across

the two sites when it emerged. Another instance of an implicit frame clash is

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evident in Fareen’s post project reflection, when she is commenting about

Deanna’s subsistence lifestyle characterized by hunting, fishing and gathering.

She says, “I really like how she describes fishing here……Here we buy grocery and we eat out. Deanna’s life is very interesting” (interview transcript, December,

2014). Characterizing Deanna’s subsistence lifestyle as “interesting” misses the deeper cultural underpinnings whereby Deanna is living a Yup’ik life and she, like her ancestors did 2000 years before her, is acquiring food from the land. More specifically, the cultural station of providing sustenance through, subsistence activities seen through the cultural pride of being a “Nuqalpiaq,” or provider, in the Yup'ik community (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006) inspired both

Deanna’s subsistence activities and her subsistence discourse. Fareen’s use of

“interesting,” which echoes the sentiments of her peers in Nairobi where they thought that hunting is done for adventure and fun, is therefore a mischaracterization of Deanna’s lifestyle.

Acts of Navigation as interactional strategies. Students in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration shared information about their situated lives as they constructed common spaces of meaning sharing and meaning making. The data show that these common spaces comprise of:

a) Visual semiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) such as cultural artifacts

entailed in the shared discourse, and photos exchanged. These were

central to the communicative activities and therefore helpful in

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complementing text. They contributed to the conveyance of information

about self and place. For example, they were instrumental in

recalibrating understandings and in challenging stereotypic notions of

the other. Such recalibrations are exemplified through pictures of built

spaces in Nairobi (see appendix G and H) which disrupted perceptions

of Africa being a vast desert or jungle, and the picture of students

playing in the snow in Aleknagik (see appendix J) which disrupted

perceptions of Aleknagik being too cold and therefore a miserable

place to live in. b) Correspondence entailed in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. That is,

students’ email interactions through letter writing conventions. Data

show that students were engaging in asynchronous dialogue with one

another and the toing-and-froing shows reciprocity. c) Participation. Within the spaces of meaning sharing and making,

students took up the role of an authentic audience for one another

(among other interactional roles). d) Supralocalization. Through various interactional approaches (broadly

categorized as navigation, negotiation, and recontextualization),

students employed description, elaboration, questioning, narration, use

of parentheses, and comparisons to make their local meanings visible,

available and accessible to their supralocal interlocutors.

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e) Recognition of otherness. Students constantly recognized the

otherness of those with whom they were interacting. This recognition,

which is evident at the very beginning of the collaboration, continues

through out the interaction. Data show this recognition for instance

whenever students explained phenomenon which they would not

normally explain to peers who share their sociocultural and

geophysical spaces.

Overall, interactions between Jasmyn, Patrick, Nate, Shayda, Deanna and

Fareen, are situated in spaces of meaning sharing and meaning making, characterized by intersections of Nairobian and Aleknagikan worldviews.

The data exemplify how both local and supralocal linguistic features characterize language used by these students as they navigate between local and supralocal influences. For instance, when Deanna writes about fishing pike with her father, “My dad throws me a slimy pike to put in the container…When the net is clean we wash our hands in the lake…My mom and I get ready to cut

[pike],” and when Nate writes about gathering cranberries, “as I ride my four- wheeler to look for high bush cranberries…at the far end of my yard I see the little patch…My bucket is half full and I walk to my house and show my mom,” these narrations index a traditional Yup’ik subsistence and cultural lifestyle or

Yuuyaraq ideologies and practices (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). In these descriptions, Deanna and Nate are

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interacting with found spaces (Borden, 2001), or non-man made environment, which is a characteristic of Yup’ik identity (Hensel, 1996) and a feature of life in

Aleknagik.

In a similar manner, cosmopolitan consumerism, navigation within built spaces (Ogone, 2014), multi ethnicity, and multiculturalism, and to some extent plurilingualism (Clyne, 2005; Farr, 2011) characterize the content of emails by

Patrick, Shayda and Fareen. When Patrick writes, “Here in Kenya, especially in

Nairobi, there are very many restaurants and fast food places…Kenchic and

Southern Fried Chicken…burgers on the fire at Steers and Wimpy…pizzas at

Pizza Garden…Chinese at Chinese Corner and The Wok… Indian food at

Haandi, Bombay, Chowparty and Hashmi,” and when Shayda writes, “I love R N

B and Rap and Hip Hop music…My favourite American singers are Bow Wow,

Beyonce, Ciara, Nelly, Omarion and Amarie,” these two students are indexing their Nairobian youth lifestyle (Clark, 2003; Journo, 2009; Lukalo, 2006;

Muthuma, 2013; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone, 2014), characterized by practices such as window shopping, eating at restaurants, engaging in mall culture, partaking in movies and music menu from the USA (among other places) and consumerism.

Admittedly, this version of Nairobian youth lifestyle is contoured by their middle- class socioeconomic status.

The data also show how supralocal influences shape communication as students engage with some representational frames within the intercultural

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interactions. These frames include words such as, “family,” “school,” “teacher,”

“food,” and “having fun.” In some cases, local actualizations for these representational frames differed, for instance, when the picture in appendix F

resituated the frame, “school bus,” in the Aleknagikan local space this difference led to a reconstitution of the meaning of “school bus” by Patrick and his peers.

That is, recognition of the Aleknagikan (beyond-local) meaning of “school bus” recalibrated for Patrick and his peers in Nairobi possible meanigns evoked by the representational frame, “school bus.” Another instance of supralocal influence can be seen in the way Nate describes snow to Shayda, “If you have ever seen snow it is like sand that melts in your hand.” This description is occasioned by

Nate’s presupposition that Shayda lives in Africa and may not have seen or experienced snow (interview notes, September, 2014). His understanding of the

general climatic conditions in Africa also inform his assumptions about Shayda’s

experiences with snow.

The goal of intercultural communication can be understood as “gaining

entrance into the assumptive world of another culture” (Barnlund, 1998, p. 37)

while making visible one’s own assumptive cultural world to the other person.

Conceptualized in this way, intercultural communication entails reciprocity. To

achieve this reciprocity, students had to navigate intersecting interactional

spaces which, in some cases, were characterized by tensions. Data show some

of these navigations where students operate based on their knowledge of local

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meanings as they communicate with others beyond their local spaces. There are some notable influences that converge on communication between these students on a local scale. Some of these influences take the form of institutional systems and structures which impact students’ learning processes (Moje &

Lewis, 2007) and shape the interactional context.

In Aleknagik, these influences manifest themselves through the dichotomy of Alaskan Native traditional culture vs. dominant western tradition, a dichotomy which spans from colonial heritage. The institutions for assimilation continue to be public schools and churches. Government administrative structures support such assimilation (Oleksa, 2006) as well. Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna navigate tension between traditional practices (whose locus is the home), and dominant western practices as actualized by systemic school structures. These structures are informed by ideologies where native Alaskan languages are associated with a lack of modern education, reduced sociocultural status and even irrationality

(Farr, 2011). Some (Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Napoleon, 1996; Oleksa, 2006) argue that a systemic postcolonial deculturation project is alive and well in Alaska, which makes it difficult for Alaskan Natives to practice traditional subsistence culture and achieve socioeconomic and academic success. The activities and discourse (as presented in the students’ emails) reflect a mix of traditional subsistence (such as, hunting, gathering, fishing, harvesting) and non-traditional activities (such as, driving snow mobiles for fun and for harvesting and engaging

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in non-traditional games such as basketball for recreation). Linguistically,

Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna had to navigate between Yup’ik, at home and for heritage purposes, and English, the de facto language of the school.

On the Nairobi side, Patrick, Shayda and Fareen are faced with the instability of a Nairobian youth tradition among other factors that shape their meaning sharing and meaning making. In this regard, they are confronted with a constantly shifting sociocultural terrain whereby practices that amount to being a

Nairobian youth, which are dependent on trends and the fluidity of infrastructural development and migration, are constantly changing. Such changes have the potential to re-contour activities that characterize youth practices. These include where to shop, what kinds of restaurants to eat at, what kinds of music to listen to, and movies to watch. Overal, this instability manifests itself in ever-changing teenage language, music (Journo, 2009; Mutonya, 2007), infrastructural and structural modifications to the city’s built spaces (Muthuma, 2013). In his email to

Jasmyn, Patrick wrote:

Here in Kenya, especially in Nairobi, there are very many restaurants and fast food places. They flourish everywhere, in the city center, in malls, in supermarkets…the list is never ending.

Patrick’s comment, regarding the ubiquity of restaurants, more specifically, his observation that “[restaurants and fast food places] flourish everywhere…the list is never ending” illustrates the constantly changing terrain of the city’s infrastructure. In this regard, Nairobi’s infrastructure has been described as “a

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complex and shifting terrain…a continuous social change” (Muthuma, 2013, p.

5). Fareen’s project reflections produce further evidence of this shifting infrastructure:

We used to [go to restaurants] all the time. I still go to Pomodoro when I am in Kenya although there are new restaurants now (interview notes, December, 2014).

Her observation that, “there are new restaurants now,” illustrates this ever- changing face of the city and is indicative of different places that teenagers go to, places which were not in existence in Fareen’s teen years when she was engaging in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Nairobian youth culture, which is dependent on activities within built spaces (Ogone, 2014), is in flux as the city expands due to constant construction that continues to alter its infrastructural visage. This fluidity creates a non-static youth culture within which teenagers navigate as they make sense of their identities based on self and place.

Another contextual characteristic of the Kenyan context, is the several institutional developments intended to transform post-colonial education to address the country’s needs. As explained in chapter 4, some of these developments (Education Commission Report, 1964) led to the institutionalization of Swahili and English as languages of instruction while others

(Eshiwani, 1993) pushed for the enrichment of education through infusing international experiences in the existing curriculum. At the same time, various forms of migration continue to diversify Nairobian linguistic and sociocultural

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context. The students in this collaboration exemplify this diversity: Patrick whose ethnicity is Miji Kenda is originally from the Kenyan coastal area, Shayda, whose ethnicity is Kikuyu is originally from central Kenya, and Fareen, who is a third generation Kenyan of Pakistani-Urdu decent was born in Nairobi. Besides speaking their heritage language, Swahili, and English, these teenagers also speak Sheng, a teenage way of speaking that is peripheralized in formal spaces such as the classroom.

Data show Shayda praising Nate’s use of Yup'ik while posing the question of whether she would have scored a low grade if she had used other languages in the collaboration. This concern about the consequences of the use of nonstandard ways of speaking in a class project is expressed through, “But you were giving us grades for the project, so if I used other languages wouldn't I score a low grade?” (interview transcript, February, 2014). This question indexes her awareness of the peripheralization of nonstandard language varieties in the

Kenyan classroom. Additionally, she says, “But you know I did not put there the deep Nairobi words I use when I speak to my friends here [pause]”. Her avoidance of “deep Nairobi words” signals her awareness of communicative strategies to maximize conveyance of meaning in intercultural encounters.

However, instances of informal expressions in Fareen’s email to Deanna, such as, “there are many stuff,” bitings,” and “V.M. is packed,” exemplify how in spite of regulations, informal teenage language still seeps into the classroom. Fareen’s

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use of these informal phrases, in spite of classroom regulations to the contrary, index tensions in the contested Kenyan linguistic landscape. In the wider data corpus there are some few instances of plurilingual (Clyne, 2005; Farr, 2011) use of language.

As reflected in their activities and discourse, these students engage with various local influences in their day-to-day life as they communicate with others in beyond-the-local spaces. The following snapshots, in table 5.3, visualize the complexity of experiences by Aleknagik and Nairobi teens:

Aleknagik Nairobi

 Aleknagik teenagers gather  Nairobi teenagers eat at black berries from bushes in Southern Fried Chicken, the the tundra, the ancestral Chinese Corner, and Bombay source of berries, whereas Chowparty restaurants even they enjoy R&B, pop, rap though some of them have an and country music indigenous Miji Kenda ethnicity (Jasmyn). (Patrick).

 Aleknagik teenagers pick  Nairobi teenagers live in Nairobi high bush cranberries in the even though the American tundra, the ancestral source artists: Beyonce, Ciara, Bow of berries, whereas they Wow, Omarion and Amarie, are enjoy playing computer their favorite music artists games (Nate). (Shayda).

 Aleknagik teenagers go on  Nairobi teenagers can be of traditional pike fishing trips Pakistani descent; speak Urdu, and prefer to use non- Swahili and English, even though traditional zip lock bags for their favorite food is margarita, storing fish (Deanna). Pomodoro, bolognaise pizza (Fareen).

Table 5.3: Illustrations of diverse experiences leading to acts of navigation

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The complexity of experiences, as shown in figure 5.3, above, illustrates the necessity of acts of navigation (by Aleknagik and Nairobi teens) as they stake their identities through meaning sharing and meaning making (Garcia & Menken,

2006).

Reconstitution and re-dimensionalization as interactional strategies in intercultural communication. With increasing interconnectivity in the world today, it is becoming crucial for students to “understand the…myriad experiences of variously situated peoples” (Morrell, 2008, p. 63). The students in this study attempted to forge these understandings by interacting with a supralocal audience. They came to the interaction with a facility for using local frames of representation (Agar, 1994), which encapsulate local ideologies and epistemologies. For instance, Jasmyn, Nate, and Deanna talk about their

Aleknagik “school bus” (shown in appendix F) and narrate how they participate in harvesting from the land and the sea (hunting, fishing and gathering). As exemplified already, there are concrete bits of language which they use that index subsistence practices and the role of “Nuqalpiaq” or provider (Bates &

Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006) among other aspects of Yup'ik lifestyle.

On the Nairobi side, Patrick, Shayda and Fareen, refer to the “village market” as “VM”. They know that this is not literally a market in some village but it

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is an ultra-modern mall in one of the suburbs of Nairobi. They narrate several instances where they spend time in malls navigating various built spaces (such as movie theaters, ice cream parlors in food courts, and pool tables) while using concrete bits of language that indexe their participation in mall culture. Mall culture is one among various hallmarks of middle class Nairobian youth lifestyle.

Language use by these six youth is characterized by descriptions of these culturally situated activities. Emails from Nairobi contain talk about mall culture, consumerism, holiday travel, and names of local places. Emails from Aleknagik contain talk about subsistence livelihood, Yup'ik cultural practices, and knowledge of various flora and fauna.

In addition to coming to the interaction with a facility for using local representational frames (Agar, 1994), the students needed to share their meanings with their supralocal interlocutors and to receive their meanings. This positioning entailed, as seen in the case with the “school bus,” being able to destabilize some prior understandings of representational frames and to then re- dimensionalize these in order to account for other people’s disparate meanings.

In turn, this destabilization entails engaging with rich points (Agar, 1994), some of which are explicit and others are implicit. These students need to be open to reconstituting local representational frames in order to communicate across difference. Although the lingua Franca was English, the data show that in the case of explicit rich points (Green et al., 2008), the representational frame,

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“school bus,” existed for both groups of students. However, the image and the intertextual base behind it and what the word referenced were different (for the two groups). This complexity of the meaning that can be conveyed through a representational frame is captured in Fairclough’s (2003) claim that every word is a text, a discourse process and a social practice. In this way, words re-invoke cultural understanding whereby cultural expectations are encapsulated within the representational frame such as, “school bus”. The frame, “school bus,” is a general category or a surface frame (Agar, 1994) which signaled to Patrick school buses from his experience. Given the cultural expectations that are attendant to the frame, “school bus,” Patrick’s prior frames turned out to be different from the local actualization depicted in Jasmyn’s picture.

When Jasmyn produced the visual representation of “school bus”

(appendix F), this picture situated this representational category (or frame) within the Aleknagikan local space making its local materialization visible to Patrick and other students in Nairobi. This materialization did not comport with the cultural expectations by students in Nairobi. Patrick’s comment, which was made during post project reflections, captures this disharmony, “I would have never thought that this is a school bus anywhere!” (interview transcript, July, 2014). He had to re-dimensionalize his understanding of this frame in light of Jasmyn’s situated actualization of “school bus,” in order to make sense of the meaning that she was sharing. This meaning is compounded further by Jasmyn’s post project reflection

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comment that when Aleknagik weather conditions deteriorate, they use a dog- drawn sledge as a “school bus” (interview transcript, September, 2014). This interaction shows how the general category of “school bus” was reconstituted thereby signaling meaning making.

On the whole, students in Aleknagik and Nairobi dealt with such misunderstandings by employing locally situated representational frames while taking up a flexible stance on what these frames represent. Representational frames are not fixed and finalized and can, therefore, be negotiated in interactions. These negotiations can be compared to the concept of “transcultural repositioning” (Guerra, 2007, p. 138). Through agentive meaning making, these students engaged with the variant perceptions evoked by representational frames in meaning sharing and making. The data show this engagement in navigations where Patrick’s representational frame, “murram roads,” corresponds with Jasmyn’s representational frame, “dirt road”. Flexibility is required in recognizing connections between these frames. Another example of flexibility in meaning making can be seen in situations when intercultural interactions provide evidence that contradicts a perception and leads to new understandings. For instance, Shayda’s perception of life in Alaska being miserable due to an inhospitably cold climate was reconstituted by the picture in appendix J. This is evident in the use of “but” and the contrast between “miserable” and “smiling and playing” in, “I think we all thought that they were miserable in the cold Alaskan

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climate. In the pictures I saw snow everywhere but they were smiling and playing!” (interview transcript, February, 2014).

The flexible stance that these students take up offer an avenue for engaging with seemingly inharmonious meanings. Data showing reconstitutions or re-dimensionalizations of frames offer concrete evidence of attempts to access each other’s disperate worlds (Barnlund, 1998; Morrell, 2008; Scollon & Scollon,

2001).

5.5.3 Research question 2. What understandings of the intersections between intercultural communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from analyzing these strategies?

Indexicality and Geosemiotics: Comprehending the complexities of meaning across difference in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration necessitates taking into account indexical connections between language use and cultural/conceptual/ideological, and so forth, worlds that are inscribed within language (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr & Song, 2011; Lakoff &

Johnson, 1980). Cultural worlds (outside the shared discourse) are consequential in the interactions between students in the two local spaces. More specifically, data show numerous occasions where language indexes social practice situated within cultural worlds. For instance, when Jasmyn wrote “Hi my name is Jasmyn

Tugatuk and my Yup'ik name is Iquarta,” her self-introduction featuring a double

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identity indexes tensions between Yup’ik cultural practices and dominant

Western practices. More specifically, this indexicality points to Alaskan post-

colonial ideologies of control and domination of Yup’ik traditional practices by dominant western practices. Control and domination are enacted (in part) through linguistic and cultural systemic tensions that characterize day-to-day life for Jasmyn and her peers. Making a distinction between her Yup’ik and her school-registered names illustrates how Jasmyn navigates spaces characterized by opposing cultures.

On the Nairobi side, listing of foods from different countries, such as in

Fareen’s email, “village has such a big food court with all kinds of variety of foods including: Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, and many more”, indexes the multiethnic cosmopolitan city culture. This multiethnic and cosmopolitan feature of Nairobi can be attributed to Kenya’s post-colonial history, Nairobi’s role as a leading

economic hub in East and Central Africa, and migrations from within and outside

Kenya. Fareen’s food-list also positions her as a consumer of multiethnic cuisine

which further indexes her membership in the Nairobian youth group. Relatedly,

Nairobi life is characterized by consumerism where a capacity to spend money

determines one’s recreational activities. Given their middle class status, Patrick,

Shayda, and Fareen have the ability to spend time and money at the several

malls and recreational establishments in Nairobi. In an email to Jasmyn, Patrick

writes “People just have to get used to the exquisite aroma and pray they could

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just have a bit of money to buy…”. The expression “pray they could just have a

bit of money” indexes consumerist pressures to spend money. Going beyond

shared discourse and the text is, therefore, an important move when accounting

for discourses in place (Scollon & Scollon, 2003). It is also an important approach for understanding worldviews inscribed in the various semiotics that characterize this discourse.

A geosemiotic analysis of discourse presents three kinds of semiotics that comprise an interaction. These are, visual, place and interactional semiotics

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003). Visual semiotics (such as, cultural artifacts) play a significant role in populating the context with meaning. The menu (see appendix

I) exemplifies a cultural artifact that is prominent in Patrick, Shayda and Fareen’s outings to restaurants and food courts. Fareen says, “If you don’t have a menu you are like a blind person. What will you eat? How will you order it? Will they even understand you?” (interview notes, December, 2014). Fareen’s comment highlights a modus operandi for Nairobi teenagers in their interactions in restaurants and food courts. She reads the menu as a text and graphic, to be

understood when she orders, and to obtain an understanding of what to order.

This capacity to use the menu signals her familiarity with how ordering

works in such spaces, and positions her as a participant and practitioner of

middle-class Nairobian youth culture. Thus, the menu is a consequential artifact

in Nairobian youth interactions within commercial food-spaces. The visual

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features of a menu (see appendix I), which enable it to play this vital role, include its materiality, its capacity to display or portability, its composition including lay-

out, color, text, and imaging. These three students are interactive participants

(Scollon & Scollon, 2003) with the menu, a practice that when considered with

other practices (such as, shopping, eating multiethnic cuisines, plurilingualism,

navigating built city spaces, preference for trendy music/movies/clothes/) marks

them as participants in middle class Nairobian youth practices.

Another visual semiotic, that influenced communication in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration, is the picture presented in appendix J. This picture was able

to disrupt the stereotype in Nairobi that life is miserable in Alaska because it is

too cold. The social actors (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) in the world outside of this

space (Patrick, Shayda and Fareen) took up this picture as credible evidence to

disrupt this stereotype. Overall, artifacts that were both mentioned, and whose

pictures were exchanged (such as, fishing nets, fish buckets, hunting tools,

menus, supermarket shelves, four wheelers, and pictures of people and places)

form the visual semiotics in this collaboration.

Place semiotics are also significant for comprehending intercultural

interaction in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. One discernible difference between

Aleknagik and Nairobi, is that the former is characterized by an abundance of

naturally occurring scenes, found spaces (Borden, 2001), whereas the latter is

characterized by an abundance of man-made constructed spaces, built spaces

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(Ogone, 2014). On one hand, built spaces (Ogone, 2014), for instance, malls, paved roads (or “tarmac roads”), restaurants, movie theatres, supermarkets, bowling alleys, food courts, and swimming pools, feature prominently in

discourse shared by Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen. There are also built spaces

within spaces, for example, a mall is a built space that constitutes other spaces

such as, a food court, clothes shops, restaurants, ice cream parlors, and a movie

theatre. On the other hand, found spaces (Borden, 2001), such as, cliffs, bushes,

flora and fauna, lakes, ponds and rivers, feature in discourse shared by Jasmyn,

Patrick, and Deanna.

Another understanding of place semiotics that I apply to this study, is the

notion of conceptual and ideological spaces through establishing situatedness of cultural practices in Aleknagik and in Nairobi. For instance, students in Aleknagik, use language to index situated cultural practices, as seen in the data where concrete bits of students’ language point to Yup’ik traditions or Yuuyaraq lifestyle

(Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006). In these cases, indexicality makes visible the connections between specific instances of language use and contextual influences. For instance, the question posed by Deanna, and the parallelism of the swallow and people living in a shared environment function indexically. More specifically, when she wrote “Why

don’t you care/For the environment/You live in?/And for the homes of

the/Swallows that live there too?” the question and parallelism indexe the Yup’ik

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traditional philosophy of “Nuna qantaqaput” (“the land is our bowl”) (field notes,

September, 2014), a belief that is drawn from Yup’ik conceptualizations of reverence to nature. These indexical relations tie the meanigns conveyed through language use in Deanna’s poem to traditional beliefs of the Yup’ik people who are located in a specific locale.

Such situated indexical relations between language use and sociocultural context are also evidenced in language use by students in Nairobi. For instance,

Fareen, a Pakistani-Kenyan, wrote, “My best food is actually Italian!!! …on their menu they offer large varieties of each food you like e.g., on their pizzas they have so many choices- margarita, Pomodoro, bolognaise!! Yes all of them!!!” Her words such as, “my best food is actually Italian,” “on their menu,” and “on their pizzas they have so many choices- margarita, Pomodoro, bolognaise” indexed her participation in Nairobian practices. That is, eating multiethnic cuisines and navigating the menu (which are a part of these practices) intersect to signal membership in middle class Nairobian youth lifestyle (Clark, 2003; Journo, 2009;

Lukalo, 2006; Muthuma, 2013; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone, 2014). Other instances where language use indexed Nairobian youth lifestyle occurred when Patrick,

Shayda and Fareen used particular words or phrases in writing about shopping, window shopping, and going to malls. Indexing Yuuyaraq or Nairobianness carry layers of sociohistorical significance. Yup’ikness and Nairobianness point to geophysical location as well as sociocultural/ideological positionality thereby

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signaling the local/supralocal rootedness of language used by Deanna and

Fareen. In this way, considering indexicality and local/supralocal (Britain, 2010;

Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009) yields comprehensive information on place semiotics (Scollon & Scollon, 2004).

A further example of this comprehensive information is evident in the alcohol incident where two students wrote emails about their drinking escapades, which were rejected by Mr. Collins. Language use in this incident illustrates how students navigate language use within spatialized sociocultural relations (Britain,

2010) that may, in some cases, emanate from outside their own spaces.

Regulations around alcohol abuse at the Aleknagik local level influenced supralocal communication between Fareen and Deanna whereby she had to tactfully write her email about Pomodoro restaurant and wine drinking. She strategically included a caveat clarifying her non-participation in alcohol consumption to avoid being censored.

Overall, the relationship between visual, place, and interaction semiotics in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration can be visualized as a nexus of action (Scollon &

Scollon, 2003). This nexus of social action (as illustrated in figure 3.2, in chapter

3) is a contact zone (Pratt, 1991) for languacultural (Agar, 1994) engagement where local spaces are not bound but can be shaped by influences from supralocal spaces (also see figure 4.1 in chapter 4).

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Communicative interactional moves. The purpose of this study is to

investigate how implicit and explicit sociocultural practices intersect with

intercultural communication, as seen through language use, in the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration, and to identify the significance of this intersection on pedagogy.

The study considers intercultural communication in a context characterized by

globalization, where circulations of people, languages, goods, and ideas have

contoured the realities of day-to-day life in many ways (Blommaert, 2010;

Canagarajah, 2005/2013; Fairclough, 2006; Pennycook, 2010). Given this constant diversification of communities around the world due to these circulations, students should continue to sharpen their skills on intercultural communication (Banks, 1998). This study examines strategies of intercultural communication employed by students in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, and highlights some understandings of the intersections between intercultural communication and mobile communicative resources. These resources become visible when considering how students’ language use indexes their cultural and spatial practices and ideologies. They also become visible when considering that students bring, to an interaction, their linguistic, social and cultural presuppositions and their cultural expectations (Gumperz, 1982). As discussed already, students brought skills in letter writing, writing for an audience, poetry writing, and descriptive writing to the collaboration. Also, the subject matter of the collaboration (the content of the emails, pictures, and artifacts involved in the on

line exchange) drew from students’ out-of-class experiences.

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Notably, within the Alaska-Kenya collaboration literacies were situated in

intersections between Aleknagikan and Nairobian worldviews. In other words,

meaning sharing and making (which occurred within interactional spaces) was

rooted in conceptions of knowledge, identity and being within Aleknagikan and

Nairobian social practices. The written texts produced by these students (in the

form of emails) gives literacy (evidenced by the various writing tasks that

students accomplished) an integral role in the correspondence and in the

reflexive post-project activities. This centrality of writing and literacy both during

the project and in this present study makes the Alaska-Kenya collaboration to qualify as a literacy event (Heath, 1983; also see Moss, 1994).

Within this collaboration, students shared local meanings with their supralocal exchange-peers while taking on the stance of a knowledgeable cultural practitioner in their own cultures. Data exemplify evidence of this expertise as follows: Deanna’s email on the thematic prompt of ‘favorite food’

which contained descriptions of how she went fishing, demonstrates expertise in

the Yup’ik process of preparing pike after fishing. She lays out for Fareen a step-

by-step procedure of fish preparation detailing how she and her mother grab the

fish, put them on a table, cut off the head, cut the back which “crackle[s] and

snap[s],” take out the guts, and rinse the fish. On her part, Fareen demonstrates expertise in navigating mall spaces. She masterfully offers an inventory of possible activities in the various spaces employing a non-specific “you” saying,

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“you can do the other things like going to the movies…Or you could have something to eat…then they also have their candy shops serving you with all kinds of candy…a huge supermarket called Nakumatt which offers you all accessories inside it.”

This expertise demonstrated by Deanna and Fareen illustrates the main objective of the dialogic Alaska-Kenya collaboration: students in Nairobi and

Aleknagik were supposed to exchange information with each other about self and place. Data show that meaning sharing and making was dialogic and contingent upon interaction. Also as discussed here, language use in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration evidenced indexical connections (Bauman & Briggs, 2003; Eckert,

2008; Farr & Song, 2011) situated in local spaces that are characterized by various competing cultural practices. The context of both local sites is further contoured by a post-colonial heritage whose influences are reproduced and enacted through systemic, ideological, and regulatory mechanisms that converge upon the interaction between the two groups of students.

Overall, two main categories of communicative strategies emerged under the banner of supralocalization:

1. Negotiation. In their interpersonal interactions, students engaged with

languacultural rich points (Agar, 1994) leading to frame clashes (Gee &

Green, 1998) and possibilities for reconstitution of representational

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frames. These reconstitutions are indicative of the intuitive and self-

conscious regulatory abilities that form the habits of mind in

transcultural repositioning (Guerra, 2007).

2. Navigation. In their engagement with contextual infliuences and

features, students’ language instantiated indexical connections with

sociocultural and experiential worlds. Notably, students’ intercultural

sense-making entailed maneuvering the various contextual influences

that intersect within situated worlds inscribed within language (Lakoff &

Johnson, 1980).

Navigation and negotiation entail pragmatic strategies such as, translation, the use of parenthesis to add information, the use of anecdotes, questioning, repetition, description, elaboration, explication, the use of appropriate tone, the use of images, and the use of comparisons and imagery. Through these pragmatic strategies, students positioned their peers as being unfamiliar with their local spaces and selves thereby decentering themselves while centering the other (Anderson & Corbett, 2013; Belz, 2007; Kramsch, 1998/2006; Morgan,

1996 in Woodin 2013; Byram, 1997; Woodin, 2013).

Decentering from one’s viewpoint can be compared to a competence where one articulates local meanings to “outsiders” in a way that meets their communicative needs by spotlighting what they might need to know. This is a hallmark of some key strategies of intercultural communication (Anderson &

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Corbett, 2013; Belz, 2007; Kramsch, 1998/2006; Morgan, 1996 in Woodin 2013;

Byram, 1997; Woodin, 2013). In this regard, students from both Aleknagik and

Nairobi employed reader-oriented strategies, such as using prior knowledge to

understand new information, asking questions about unclear meanings, and using contextualization cues (Gumperz, 1982). They also had to imagine the existence of each other in another space outside their local space. Their recognition of a world beyond local spaces was initially aided by artifacts (such as maps and globes). This recognition also occurred when they got their pair

mate’s name to commence the collaboration, and it recurred as they shared

meaning during the collaboration. Recognition of one’s interlocutor as an “other,”

is signaled by how these students employed pragmatic strategies to

supralocalize their meanings. Importantly, this recognition did not just occur at

the beginning of the collaboration but it recurred during the collaboration and

even when participants were engaging in post project reflections eight years

later.

I, therefore, propose the following illustration, in figure 5.2, to visualize the

dynamism of intercultural communication within the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

This schema makes a case for language use in the Alaska-Kenya intercultural

collaboration project, as being dynamic and negotiated. It highlights key moves

by Jasmyn, Nate, Deanna, Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen as they engage in

meaning sharing and meaning making:

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Figure 5.2: Communicative interactional moves in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration

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This figure, above, presents a schema for some key moves in intercultural communication and visualizes communicative moves in the collaboration. The schema is useful in answering the question, how did the Alaska-Kenya collaborators communicate interculturally?

To begin with, this schema represents movement in a generally non-linear flow as shown through the arrows. This non-linearity accounts for the robust strategies that student-collaborators from Aleknagik and Nairobi engaged in. The parts labelled “text or visual semiotics,” and “recognizing the other” can be starting points for reading this diagram. The “textual or visual semiotics,” point marks where the two classes employed text and visuals (globe, map and list of names) to establish the existence of the other and then commence correspondence. Data show that both teachers introduced the other groups to their classes (that is, Mr. Collins informed his students about the class in Nairobi and vice versa). The teachers employed a globe and map as orienting devices to set off this recognition of the existence of the other (marked in the schema as

“recognizing the other”). In this way, the two classes were able to locate themselves relative to the “other.” Thus, at the start of their intercultural encounter students recognized that there is an “other” with whom they were interacting or engaging. This “other” was not situated in their local space and was not rooted in their sociocultural, linguistic landscape. This recognition means that they would, therefore, appreciate the need to make their meanings available,

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visible and accessible to this “other” through various communicative strategies that culminate in supralocalization.

Additionally, during correspondence they continued to receive texts and visuals from their peers. They also engaged in constant recognition of the otherness of their interlocutors as they sent emails back and forth.

Communication with each other (via BreadNet) constructed a common interactional space. This is represented in the schema in figure 5.2 by the part labelled “intersecting interactional spaces” which represents how the intercultural communication is a site for various meaning sharing and meaning making processes. Within this site, students undertook negotiation and navigation to make sense of theirs and others local meanings. These intersecting spaces are synonymous with Canagarajah’s (2013) conceptualization of global contact zones.

Data show that students start off their emails with a salutation, a pragmatic convention in letter writing which indicates transference of letter writing skills from prior class work to the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. These skills include, the ability to address a reader and tailor information to others, letter writing (formal and informal), descriptive writing, writing for an audience (and implementing various tones in writing), poetry writing (employing various features of style, content and structure), and analytical skills. Further, Aleknagik and Nairobi students exchanged texts, visuals, and artefactual representations within the

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collabroation. Data show that as they exchanged, they continued to recognize the otherness of their interlocutors.

This recognition is recurrent and does not just happen at the start of the interactional engagement. The reciprocal nature of the email genre and of the project (a collaborative exchange between peers) further confirmed this existence of the other. Additionally, as discussed in this chapter, data show that students constantly employ communicative strategies (for example, the use of translation, parenthesis, anecdotes, questioning, repetition, description, elaboration, and explication) to supralocalize their meanings. The Alaska-Kenya collaborators came to these interactions with presuppositions (Gumperz, 1982) and cultural expectations. These presuppositions shaped how they saw the

“other” and how they saw themselves in the interaction. As the communication proceeds, students continue to encounter explicit frame clashes (Agar, 1994;

Green et al., 2008) which they engage with leading to learning across difference.

For instance, data show students from both sides grappling with stereotypes.

Also, in the course of these interactions students realized through engaging with explicit frame clashes that they had different local actualizations and understandings for some shared representational frames (Agar, 1994). A case in point is the contested meaning of “school bus.” The part labelled “engaging with rich points” in the schema, in figure 5.2, represents instances where students

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encountered aspects of each other’s meanings that caused these disfluencies in

communication.

Students dealt with these disfluencies (within intersecting interactional

spaces) through applying strategies of negotiation and navigation. Data show

instances where students engaged with each other upon realizing that they had

different meanings evoked by some shared representational frames. For example, “dirt roads,” or “school bus” did not mean the same for the students involved. After these local meanings were shared and upon this realization, students opened up their existing frames in order to re-dimensionalize or reconstitute the representational frames under consideration. This, generally, is

what amounts to meaning making and is represented in the schema as “re-

dimensionalizing and reconstituting frames”. This re-dimensionalization of explicit

rich points occurs during social interaction. Meaning-making is a social practice

in processes which entail co-production of meaning (Adami & Kress, 2014). I,

therefore, argue that Aleknagikan and Nairobian students engaged (with one

another) in meaning making from and with the communicative resources they

shared.

However, some intercultural differences do not become visible during

interactions. These are implicit frame clashes which students failed to register,

that is, they did not realize that they had different interpretations of some frames

hence they did not realize that they miscommunicated. During post project

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reflections eight years after the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, participants of this

study and I discovered some incidents of miscommunication where shared meanings had not been understood. These lapses in communication had not emerged in the communication during the collaboration leading to missed opportunities for learning about difference.

A case in point is all the instances where students were describing activities to signal their membership in Yuuyaraq and Nairobian youth culture.

Their supralocal peers did not pick up these descriptions of actions and attitudes

(as reflected in the emails they shared) as signals identifying them as Yuuyaraq

or Nairobian youth. Both sides were unaware of the deeper intertextual base behind some representational frames that were being used. A specific example

is, students in Nairobi (including the teacher) were unaware of the Yup’ik tradition

of ‘Nuqalpiac” which informed Yup’ik students’ shared discourse about subsistence lifestyle. Similarly, the Aleknagik group was unaware of features of

Nairobian youth lifestyle that informed descriptions of how students in Nairobi were interacting with various features of built spaces. That is, when students in

Nairobi included, in their emails, some instances of Sheng (seen in wider sample of data), described city traffic and how they maneuver within it, elaborated on consumerist practices, identified some features of the western world present in

Nairobi (such as western movies and music), and described some of the

multiethnic cuisines that they partook, their Aleknagik peers did not see these as

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signaling middle class lives of Nairobian youth (Journo, 2009). Data from post project reflections show that after revisiting the study and reflexively examining communicative moves, participants made new realizations about meanings that had been communicated in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

The ever-present potential for miscommunication in intercultural interactions, such as in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, is captured in the schema by the arrows that shoot off from the flow of communication. These arrows account for implicit frame clashes that is, meanings that were not communicated in the interaction. One cannot be aware of every nuance and instance of miscommunication. Thus, although these implicit frame clashes signal disconnects in communication, they go unnoticed by interlocutors. That they are implicit means, it is not easy to communicate accurately across cultural and geospatial difference. The meaning of the frame “school bus” was implicit when Jasmyn wrote “I walk to school but others take the school bus,” given that unbeknown to each other, the frame “school bus” evoked different normative images for Patrick and for Jasmyn. This implicit clash in meaning means that the intertextual base or material actualization of “school bus” seeped out of the intersecting interactional spaces.

Consequently, the two students lost the opportunity to understand each other through the interpretation of a common word. However, an explicit frame clash emerged when Patrick saw the picture of the “school bus” (appendix F).

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Based on figure 5.2, the implicit frame clash became explicit when the picture,

which was introduced into the communication, caused the implicit frame clash to

re-enter the intersecting interactional space labelled as “Engaging with rich

points.” This movement (from an implicit to an explicit frame clash) would

account for how Patrick and Jasmyn’s interaction started off with no questions

asked regarding the meaning of “school bus” but upon introduction of the picture,

they negotiated the representation evoked by the general category “school bus” in an act of meaning making. No questions asked signales a surface-level response that is devoid of deeper understandings of the local materialization of

“school bus” in Aleknagik.

Negotiation entails reconstitution or re-dimensionalization of representational frames while concurrently recognizing the otherness of the interlocutor. Overall, although this depiction in figure 5.2 is limited by its two- dimensional nature whereby it cannot account for real-time and multidirectional flow of meanings in intercultural communication, this depiction is helpful in:

1) generally showing some key moves (or communicative strategies)

entailed in the general phenomenon of supralocalizing meaning across

cultural and geospatial difference.

2) illustrating how implicit frame clashes complicate meaning making and

sharing in the Alaska-Kenya intercultural communication.

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A Critical perspective. The Alaska-Kenya collaboration is an example of inclusive pedagogy. This is because, students’ out-of-class situated experiences

(Kinloch, 2010) are included within the infrastructure of an intercultural communication exchange thereby extending classroom communication and literacy resources. This collaboration also illustrates how a language arts classroom can offer educational experiences that are cognizant of the resourcefulness of diversity in a pluralistic world (Paris, 2011). This resourcefulness was achieved through enriching curricular resources with opportunities for intercultural engagement.

One notable aspect of this resourcefulness is language use. Even though

English was the language of communication in this collaboration, interactions were not always seamless. Based on the data (showing the emergence of frame clashes), it is possible to argue that the two groups of students were speaking two “languages” which share a common form, English, and whose local actualization and materialization tended to differ across cultural and geospatial contexts. Put another way, the incidence of implicit and explicit rich points

(leading to frame clashes) disrupts the hegemony of English as a lingua franca and affirms the pluralization of “English,” that is, World Englishes (Crystal, 2003).

Another notable aspect that comes with increased opportunities for intercultural engagement, is the amplification of oft-peripheralized voices.

Students agentively employed deliberate moves to make accessible to their

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exchange peers their shared discourse. Such agency is seen in students’ dissent against peripheralization and their resistance of ascribed identities (Canagarajah,

2005). Appreciating the extent of this peripheralization requires a consideration of

existing tensions on the local scale in both local sites. These tensions play out

through language ideologies that manifest as overt and covert policies (Kroskrity,

2000; Phillips, 2015). The tensions also manifest themselves through perceptions

of inferiority (on a global sociocultural, political, and economic hierarchy) that are

oftentimes ascribed to indigenous people and their homelands. Under normative

global structures, of cultural, political, and economic power and significance, the

selves and places represented in this study are peripheralized, exoticized, and

labeled as minority. These global structures are primarily organized around race

(white vs. other), economic influence (first world economies vs. third world

economies), and geopolitical might (super powers vs. militarily inferior countries)

among other organizing principles. The pervasiveness of these super structures

broadly casts the two groups, their locales (and by extension their experiences)

as non-mainstream.

To begin with, Yup’ik cultural practices are considered non-mainstream

and generally silenced in Alaska (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

Oleksa, 2006). Jasmyn, Nate, and Deanna who hail from the Yup'ik community

are confronted by linguistic, cultural, and political inequalities which emerge both

explicitly and implicitly in Alaska. As explained above and in chapter 4, in

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Aleknagik English is the de facto language of communication at school. With no

specific or explicit rules requiring students to communicate in English, Jasmyn,

Nate, and Deanna find that the realities of day-to-day life at their school are such that all teachers (including Mr. Collins) are from the “lower forty eight states,” that is, they are non-Native to Alaska. Additionally, the Alaskan State curriculum, which is taught at the Aleknagik village school, is conducted in English. In order to be considered as successful in the education and career track, Yup’ik

students, such as these three, have to recognize that there are more economic

and status dividends to be reaped through communicating in English and through

taking up dominant western cultural practices. Unfortunately for them, the further

along they advance, the greater the need to improve on their English skills and

the greater the pressure to abandon their subsistence and cultural practices and

Yup’ik language skills. This status quo is detrimental for cultural preservation in a

community for whom talk and practice of ethnicity and subsistence are central to

their sense of identity (Hensel, 1996; Napoleon, 1996). Indeed, this talk and

practice is reflected in shared discourse by Jasmyn, Nate, and Deanna.

On the Kenyan side, Sheng, which holds inverted prestige (Stenstrom &

Jorgensen, 2000) among teenagers and young people in Kenya, is marginalized in official settings (Wandera, 2013) and is perceived as an impediment to the acquisition of Standard English and Swahili literacy (Githinji, 2008; Momanyi,

2009). Additionally, Kenya’s global influence is diminished because it is ranked

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as a third-world country (McLaren, 1998; Thiong’o, 1986/1991). Patrick, Shayda,

and Fareen, who hail from various Kenyan ethnic groups (Miji Kenda, Kikuyu,

and 3rd generation Pakistani Urdu respectively), live in Nairobi, which is

characterized by urban plurilingualism (Farr, 2011), ethnic diversity, and

consumerism. Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen study at a school in Nairobi where

there is an explicit school rule stating that all class communications must be in

Standard English (SKE) or Standard Swahili (SKS). Their heritage languages are

considered home languages. Given this regulation and surveillance on language

use and general conduct found at school, it should come as no surprise that all

students on the Kenyan side elected to write and send to their peers in Alaska

pieces based on the ‘day in the life’ theme that focused on out-of-school

experiences.

In staking out their identities as “Nairobian youth,” they speak Sheng, participate in mall culture, and navigate the street’s built spaces, among other features of middle class Nairobian youth lifestyle. Post project reflection data confirm that these students felt “more free” in the mall spaces, outside of school and away from the surveillance and restrictions of school rules. Archival and post

project data show that in both Aleknagik and Nairobi, “students’ multilingual

realities challenge the notion of a monolingual standard” (Farr & Song, 2011, p.

659). In Nairobi, teenagers’ communicative landscape is characterized by a

“contemporary reality of extensive plurilingualism” (Farr, 2011, p. 1161) which is

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at odds with the marginalization of their ways of speaking. Stifling teenage

language use at the local level and rendering experiences by these teenagers

(situated in a third world space) as non-mainstream obscures the

resourcefulness and richness of selves and places that they can bring to the

classroom. In post-colonial spaces such as Aleknagik and Nairobi, the effects of

a heritage of linguistic colonialism that is informed by assimilationist policies

continue to be felt particularly in classrooms and other monitored spaces.

In other words, language use by teenagers like Patrick, Jasmyn, Nate,

Shayda, Fareen, and Deanna continues to be shaped by enduring practices from

a history of linguistic colonialism characterized by systemic deculturation and

acculturation (Farr & Song, 2011; Wiley, 2000). This linguistic colonialism, which

is active both locally and supralocally, is blind to the value of local and

peripheralized languages for marginalized people (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet,

2003; Farr, 2011).

Based on global sociocultural, economic, and geopolitical hierarchies,

these six students (together with their peers) were communicating about

peripheralized, exoticized, minoritized selves and places. Thus this study of the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration (as a site of intercultural interaction) amplifies these

non-mainstream voices, visualizes these marginalized places, and celebrates the agency of the selves entailed. In a post project reflection, one of the participants

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(Fareen) referred to Aleknagik and Kenya as being in “the corner”, a phrase that

indexes this marginalization, when she said:

I conclude this chapter by adopting Fareen’s metaphor of “the corner” to argue

that the analysis in this chapter is a sustained spotlighting of stories, experiences

and places in Aleknagik and Nairobi, places that are located “in the corner”

relative to mainstreamed, western-centric experiences, peoples, and places.

Intercultural communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration was therefore

undertaken in a wider context of disequilibrium at the global and even local

levels. This disequilibrium muffles contributions from these students’

communicative actions and obscures the resourcefulness of their linguistic

diversities (Kinloch, 2005). This dissertation and the Alaska-Kenya collaboration

instantiate a site of resistance against silencing, peripheralization, and

essentialization, which characterize the sociocultural and political status quo in

Yup’ik and Kenyan contexts and on a global scale. Through this inquiry that is

based on these oft-ignored corners, voices of selves become audible, places

become visible, and lives become animated.

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In chapter six I respond to research question three where I discuss pedagogical implications through making a case for how the findings here are significant for modern day educators, for research in the field of literacy studies, and for further understanding intercultural communication in our globalizing world.

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Chapter 6: Implications and Conclusion

6.1 INTRODUCTION The purpose of this multisite, multiple-case study is to interrogate how

implicit and explicit sociocultural practices shape intercultural communication,

based on data analysis from the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. The wider context

of this study, which can be understood as a space of intensified worldwide social

relations (Giddens, 1990), comprises pervasive features of globalization. These

features include increased transcultural contact, technological affordances for

connectivity, and mobility of people, languages, goods, and ideas (Appadurai,

1990; Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2005/2013;

Fairclough, 2006; Pennycook, 2010). This mobility has led to increasing intercultural contact which underscores the importance of intercultural competence (Jackson, 2014). By employing interactive and transactive communicative moves (Gumperz & Cook-Gumperz, 2012; Jackson, 2014) in their discourse, students in Aleknagik and Nairobi shared and co-constructed, with each other, meaning within interctional spaces.

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In the previous chapter, I analyzed and discussed this shared discourse to

visualize the situated use of strategies of intercultural communication, and to

highlight some understandings that emanate from analyzing how intercultural

communication intersects with mobility. The previous chapter responded to the first two research questions that guide this study. Therefore, this chapter opens with this introductory section followed by a summary of the findings regarding the first two research questions. This is then followed by a response to the third research question: Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy? This chapter then concludes with a brief discussion of implications for future research through drawing attention to globalized localities and the changing nature of identity practices among Nairobian and Yuuyaraq youth.

6.2 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

6.2.1 Research Question 1: What communicative strategies did students employ in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration?

In the previous chapter, an analysis and discussion of data revealed three key categories of interactional strategies that were employed by students in the

Alaska-Kenya intercultural collaboration:

a) Negotiation (between interlocutors)

b) Navigation (with regard to contextual features)

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c) Reconstitution or re-dimensionalization (through agentive acts of

meaning making and sharing).

These three fall under the general concept of “Supralocalization” that is, communicative strategies where interlocutors (in an intercultural interaction such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration) make their situated meanings visible, available, and accessible to their outsider interlocutors through a host of communicative strategies.

Supralocalization: To begin, this collaboration was based on communication between two local spaces, Aleknagik, and Nairobi. This dissertation employs the conceptual tool, local-supralocal (Maciocco & Tagliagambe, 2009; Moore, 2002), to make sense of spatialized use of language in the collaboration among

Jasmyn, Patrick, Nate, Shayda, Deanna and Fareen. These students exchanged

locally situated meanings with peers who were supralocally located, that is, the

peers were located beyond their local space. Through this conceptualization,

Aleknagik and Nairobi are concurrently local and supralocal. As stated in chapter five, in order to communicate across cultural and geospatial difference, these students had to supralocalize their local meanings by employing communicative moves that decentered them while centering their exchange partners (Anderson

& Corbett, 2013; Belz, 2007; Kramsch, 1998/2006; Morgan, 1996 in Woodin

2013; Byram, 1997; Woodin, 2013).

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At a basic level, supralocalization (as an umbrella term for strategies of intercultural communication) implies strategic use of communicative and pragmatic moves to ensure that one’s interlocutor understands what one is communicating. This involves strategically making one’s locally situated meanings available, accessible, and visible to supralocal interlocutors. These moves include translation, use of parenthetical inserts, descriptions, elaboration, and, among other moves, explication. These students constantly recognized their collaborating peers’ outsider-status relative to their local discourse systems

(Scollon & Scollon, 2001). In other words, both groups of students had to imagine the existence of others outside of their discourse system by recognizing their sociocultural and geospatial otherness. This recognition is signaled in the students’ correspondence, for instance, in their introductions and in their naming of places. Further, students explained phenomena that they would not have needed to explain to their local peers.

Recognition of the otherness of their corresponding peers made it necessary for students to make meanings about their identities and lifestyles accessible to these peers. On the one hand, shared discourse by Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna is characterized by talk about Yup’ik lifestyle, thereby indexing a

Yuuyaraq identity. On the other hand, shared discourse by Patrick, Shayda and

Fareen is characterized by talk about Nairobi lifestyle that indexes a Nairobian youth identity. Communicative strategies entailed within supralocalization

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enabled both sets of peers to strategically present and make sense of aspects of these lifestyles. For instance, students constructed complex identities through

agentive counter discourse (Gutiérrez et al., 1995) to complicate ascribed

identities. As explained in chapter 5, by employing double identity, Aleknagikan

students resisted the obscuring of their Yup’ik identities through imposition of

western naming practices at school. Similarly, by choosing to situate themselves

outside the school space when writing on the theme of ‘a day-in-the-life,’ Nairobi

students resisted school surveillance and associated themselves with out-of-

school Nairobian youth spaces. Overall, through supralocalizing moves in

negotiation and navigation, Nairobian and Yuuyaraq student’ writing became

accessible to “outsider” peers.

Negotiation: One category of communicative moves entailed within

supralocalization is peer negotiation. Students on both sides of the collaboration

read emails, interpreted images and artifacts, and employed pragmatic clarifying

moves such as questioning or push-back. The example discussed in chapter 5,

featuring divergent normative understandings when “school bus” became an

explicit frame clash (Gee & Green, 1998), instantiates a moment when

negotiation was necessary to clarify meaning. Students in Nairobi had to shift

their presuppositions from an orientation informed by stereotyping in order to

engage with Aleknagik peers over this usage. Data show other occasions where

students posed questions and sought clarification or elaboration from their

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interlocutors in various acts of negotiation. Data also show instances where a shared discourse exemplified some kind of negotiation in light of different supralocal or external ideologies. The example of Fareen’s email about alcohol at

Pomodoro restaurant in Nairobi, where she effusively positions herself as a non- alcohol drinker, is a negotiated rendering of her restaurant experience in light of sanctions faced, prior to this, by her classmates who had written emails about their alcohol escapades.

Notably, the occurrence of implicit and explicit languacultural rich points

(Agar, 1994), necessitated negotiation of meanings. Explicit instances of rich points were marked and therefore stood out, for example, when a student from

Alaska used a Yup’ik word such usage stood out and needed further communicative work for clarity. Implicit rich points were not as easy to detect and, in some cases, communication disconnects went unmarked. Such tacit frame clashes (Green et al., 2008) did not emerge in the moment of interaction even though the students had different normative understandings of some representational frames being used. Some implicit frame clashes emerged (much later) after the actual interaction. That is, in the course of this study when students were reflecting on the collaboration eight years after the actual interaction (between the two schools in Alaska and Kenya), they frequently realized instances in which they may not have understood one another. As discussed in chapter 5, both Alaskan and Kenyan students used specific

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language to describe practices and activities, thereby indexing their Yuuyaraq, and Nairobian identities respectively. Some of these acts of identity were not explicit. For example, during post project reflections, Fareen characterizes

Deanna’s subsistence lifestyle as being “interesting,” a characterization that is typical of how her peers from Kenya conceptualized hunting, fishing, and gathering. Years after the project, we continue to discover both missed opportunities for understanding other people’s meanings as well as instances in which students engaged one another to seek clarification and/or to offer push- back by negotiating meanings with their peers.

Navigation: Another category of communicative strategies that falls under supralocalization of meanings is the strategic use of acts of navigation. These include pragmatic communicative and letter-writing strategies where Patrick,

Jasmyn, Nate, Shayda, Deanna, and Fareen attempted to access each other's meanings and worlds. Their interactions around these meanings and worlds formed an intersecting interactional space characterized by engagement with text, images, and artifacts. Students brought their presuppositions (Ahearn, 2012;

Duranti, 1997; Gumperz, 1982) and prior in- and out-of-class experiences to these interactional spaces. Within the context of their interactions, these students navigated local epistemologies, ideologies, and practices, among other intersecting influences in their locales. These intersecting influences converged on Nairobian and Aleknagikan interactions, especially at the local level. Data

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show how local lifestyle and ideologies impact meanings being conveyed through their shared discourse.

Students in Aleknagik navigated a context characterized by Yup’ik traditional activities, ideologies, and practices situated within found spaces

(Borden, 2001) that comprise the topography, flora, and fauna of the Aleknagikan tundra. They also navigated the bilingual Aleknagikan linguistic landscape. The meanings that they shared with their Nairobi peers evidenced navigations that were informed by the Yup’ik traditional philosophy of “Nuna qantaqaput” (the land is our bowl), and the Yup’ik traditional role of “Nuqalpiaq” (provider). The construction of opposition between Alaskan Native traditional culture and dominant western traditions is a systemic, structural, and institutional influence that converged on communication by these students. Given Alaska’s colonial heritage, Jasmyn, Nate and Deanna are located in historical spaces of opposing cultural hierarchies of complex and extant systemic domination of Alaskan

Natives by external forces. Therefore, they navigated a context of Yup’ik identity marginalization, for instance, at their school this marginalization is evidenced by the de facto language practices that privilege English over Yup’ik. Within these navigations, they employed narration, description, and elaboration that index a traditional Yup’ik subsistence and cultural lifestyle and a Yuuyaraq personhood

(Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Hensel, 1996; Oleksa, 2006).

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The Nairobi based students navigated a context characterized by

multiethnicity, multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and consumerism, situated

within built spaces (Ogone, 2014). In other words, their Nairobian urban context

was characterized by predominantly man-made spaces featuring malls, traffic

and city roads, restaurants, movie theatres, supermarkets, and shops. They also

navigated multilingual and plurilingual (Clyne, 2005; Farr, 2011) linguistic

landscapes. The meanings that they shared with their Alaskan peers evidenced

navigations that were informed by ideologies and activities, such as, window

shopping, eating at restaurants, engaging in mall culture (or habitually opting for

shopping malls for recreation and peer-socialization), watching movies, and listening to music from various parts of the world. The opposition between canonical language policies which favor Standard Kenyan English (SKE) and

Standard Kenyan Swahili (SKS) on one hand, and plurilingual (Clyne, 2005; Farr,

2011) and multilingual teenage language practices on the other hand, stem from

ideological and institutional influences that converged on and shaped

communication by these students.

Additionally, being an economic, political, and cultural hub within the

country and region, Nairobi’s architectural infrastructure is constantly changing

thereby re-contouring, literally, the landscape on which these students stake their

sense of identity. Moreover, changes in Kenya’s post-colonial education sector,

from a colonial-era education syllabus towards a syllabus that addresses national

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needs, form another layer of background for these navigations. Within these navigations, Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen employed specific language within their narratives, descriptions and elaborations of Nairobian life and activities that index a Nairobian youth lifestyle (Clark, 2003; Journo, 2009; Lukalo, 2006; Muthuma,

2013; Mutonya, 2007; Ogone, 2014).

Overall, in the reciprocal processes of accessing each other’s assumptive worlds (Barnlund, 1998), students navigated various contextual influences to supralocalize meanings.

Reconstitution and re-dimensionalization of representational frames:

Reconstitutions of representational frames which are premised upon new understandings of other people’s worlds (Morrell, 2008), offer evidence of one’s having recalibrated their conceptualizations after exposure to alternative meanings. Through agentive and robust meaning making, interlocutors co- construct meaning socially and recalibrate representational frames based on exposure to other people’s meanings. Whereas such recalibrations are not always the outcome in every instance of intercultural communication, such shifts are indicative of some of the ways that access to other people’s meanings can re-orient understandings. Various examples from the data illustrate these recalibrations. The “school bus” example, more specifically pictorial evidence offered in appendix F resituated the general representational frame, “school bus,”

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in a specific Aleknagikan conceptualization. As a result, what was otherwise an implicit frame clash became both explicit and communicatively disruptive.

Chapter 5 offers further examples of recalibrations whereby two worldviews, Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness, come in contact with one another leading to a re-understanding of some representational frame. This site of contact for Yuuyaraq and Nairobianness can be conceived of as a site of social action (Scollon & Scollon, 2003) or an intersecting interactional space. The reconceptualization of representational frames that happens within this space enhances meaning across cultural and geospatial difference. In the case of the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration, English played a key role whereby representational frames that were shared between the two groups formed general categories. At the surface level, these evoked different normative images for the students on both sides. As seen in the case of “school bus,” adding an image or providing further explanation resituated the general frame in a particular local space leading to explicit frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998). This emergence of frame clashes disrupts the notion of English as a lingua franca or a homogenous means of communication, and confirms scholarship (see Canagarajah, 2013;

Crystal, 2003) that argues for the pluralization of “English.” This emergence also makes the case that representational frames are not fixed such that, through interactional strategies such as navigation and negotiation students were able to arrive at some new understandings of each other’s worlds (Guerra, 2007).

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Overall, reconstitution and redimensionalization offer scrutinizable

evidence of some outcomes of supralocalization.

6.2.2 Research Question 2: What understandings of the intersections between

intercultural communication and mobile communicative resources emerged from analyzing these strategies?

Three key understandings emerged from analyzing the four strategies described above:

a) Situated worlds are inscribed within language. Participants in the

Alaska-Kenya intercultural interactions bring cultural expectations and

other presuppositions, and inscribe their worlds within their shared

discourse. These inscribed worlds can enable and/or constrain

communication.

b) Students co-construct intersecting interactional spaces. Participants in

the Alaska-Kenya collaboration employ various strategies to co-

construct intersecting spaces of meaning sharing and meaning

making. Within these spaces, as visualized in figure 5.2 in chapter 5,

they engage in a robust process of recognizing the other, sharing local

meanings with supralocal recipients, engaging with explicit frame

clashes and some implicit ones that eventually become explicit, and

agentive making meaning through reconstituting how they understand

other people’s meanings.

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c) A critical perspective: from a critical angle, this study shows instances

where students resist Yuuyaraq and Nairobian youth marginalization.

That is, through their shared discourse of a situated sense of self and

place, participants resist pervasive narratives that marginalize their

languacultures (Agar, 1994). Additionally, research on these

languacultures visualizes experiences and amplifies voices entailed in

this resistance.

Situated worlds inscribed within language: In the first place, a close

examination of specific concrete bits of language used by students in this study

reveals indexical relations of worlds inscribed within language (Bauman & Briggs,

2003; Eckert, 2008; Farr, 2011; Farr & Song, 2011; Lakoff & Johnson, 1980).

Cultural, political, ideological, and economic worlds intersect with topographic,

infrastructural, and relational worlds and, altogether, converge on shared

discourse in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Some of these worlds, being

indexed, include post-colonial dichotomies such as, traditional practices beign at loggerheads with western systems, or teenage worldviews being in conflict with

canonical traditions in school. Emails, cultural artifacts, images sent back and

forth, and cultural and geophysical features in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration are

consequential for meaning sharing and meaning making. Through their language

use, students index specific aspects of the cultural and geophysical spaces

which they inhabit. Cultural artifacts that were implicated also form a significant

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component of the inscribed worlds. Conceptually, the students were not only in

their village or in their city, but they moved in and out as they navigated their

local positionality vis-à-vis a supralocal corresponding peer. This corresponding

peer is present in the interactional spaces and their presence is signaled in the

discourse through markers of recognition of their otherness (or outsider status).

Co-construction of interactional spaces: A second understanding that emerged from engaging with strategies of intercultural communication in the

Alaska-Kenya collaboration focuses on students’ participatory roles. Through

tactful and agentive use of pragmatic and communicative strategies, students co-

constructed intersecting spaces of meaning sharing and meaning making.

Strategies such as navigation, negotiation, and re-dimensionalizing and

reconstituting frame clashes, led to the co-construction of these intersecting

spaces in which students engaged with their and others’ situated meanings. They

took up some social roles such as, ambassadors of self and place, mediators of

lives and experiences, cultural practitioners and experts, and as an authentic

audience for the other. These communications (in the Alaska-Kenya

collaboration) were characterized by student-centered, immersive, and

collaborative interactions (Goswami, 1998).

Whereas this collaboration was anchored in curricular goals in both sites,

students were responsible for furthering communication with their peers. This

responsibility is echoed, in part, in the open-ended nature of the themes that

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motivated correspondence topics. They developed their individualized responses

and tactfully supralocalized meanings through navigation and negotiation

strategies that made these meanings accessible to an audience located

supralocally. Students brought their previously-learned writing experiences

(among other experiences) to these interactions. Their capacity to position

collaborating peers as outsiders, through reader-oriented strategies such as

decentering themselves while centering the other, as explained above, together

with reciprocity and student-centered collaboration, enabled students to co- construct these intersecting interactional spaces. The proposed schema in the previous chapter, shown in Figure 5.2, visualizes dynamics of intercultural communication, in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, through capturing the following key communicative moves:

a) Recurrent recognition of the otherness of the other

b) Engagement with explicit frame clashes

c) Reconstitution/re-dimensionalization of frames

The schema shows that whereas their recognition of their peers’ otherness commenced from the outset of the collaboration, this recognition was recurrent within the course of communication. The schema also shows (through off-shoot arrowheads that capture seepage of meanings) how intercultural communication is messy since students cannot be aware of every nuanced meaning or every intersecting influence within the interactional spaces. They

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therefore engaged with some, but not all, frame clashes. Communication within these spaces is further made complex by the linguistic, social, and cultural presuppositions that students bring to the interactions (Gumperz, 1982), as well as by their cultural expectations for how language functions. Based on these presuppositions, students presume meaningfulness and assume a willingness to communicate especially when they see a representational frame that looks

“normal,” in terms of their own linguistic experience. As a result, they miss out on opportunities to learn about difference. Overall, intersecting spaces of meaning sharing and making are dynamic and complex, as depicted through the generally non-linear design and the messiness of the schema in figure 5.2.

A critical perspective: The third understanding produced by data analysis and discussion of strategies of intercultural communication is a critical perspective which positions this study as a site for spotlighting voices and lives of peripheralized people, spaces, and experiences. Informed by this perspective, this study takes the position that a sustained and close examination of shared discourse (that is cognizant of students’ Aleknagikan Yuuyaraq lifestyle and

Nairobian youth experiences) contributes to understanding intercultural communication strategies for meaning making and sharing across geospatial difference. These strategies have a bearing on pedagogy as evidenced by the inclusive nature of pedagogy in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration that took up culturally relevant and sustaining teaching (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2011),

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and positioned out-of-school experiences as curricular resources. To this end, this present study highlighted some challenges in relation to equality and access which characterized the two local contexts.

One such challenge has to do with ideologies of language use (Kroskrity,

2000; Phillips, 2015) in which systemic structures have led to language erasure

(Irvin & Gal, 2000), de-culturation (Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008;

Oleksa, 2006) and peripehralization. As explained in chapter 5, tensions emanating from day-to-day realities of language use were evidenced in both local spaces, that is, the de facto use of English as the language of communication in

Aleknagik, and the surveillance over language use that marginalizes teen ways of speaking in Nairobi.

On one side of the collaboration, Jasmyn, Nate, and Deanna embody

Alaskan Natives whose heritage and traditions, including their Yup’ik language, are marginalized and silenced in their school space. Although Alaska is a post- colonial space, Alaskan Natives continue to experience suppression by a pervasive western culture whose de-culturation agenda continues to be propagated by institutions (such as schools) which take on an assimilatory role

(Ayunerak et al., 2014; Bates & Oleksa, 2008; Oleksa, 2006). Tension between

Yup’ik and western cultural practices is exacerbated by the positioning of Yup’ik cultural practices as being antithetical to economic development and academic success. On the other side of the collaboration, Patrick, Shayda, and Fareen’s

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demographics are illustrative of Nairobi’s multi-ethnicity and multilingualism. In

Nairobi, tensions between teenage worldviews and canonical schooling traditions are exacerbated by a tendency to separate school and out-of-school experiences thereby creating an unnecessary dichotomy (Wandera, 2013). Faced by these systemic pressures, students on both sides of the collaboration inscribed their identities through strategic acts of resistance that were conveyed via counter- discourses of dissent (Gutiérrez, et al., 1995; Morell, 2008).

Another equity-related challenge that focuses specifically on Aleknagikan lifestyle, is a determination of economic status. This present study resists the uptake of economic labels (such as “working class,” or “economically underprivileged”), which are informed by colonial hierarchical underpinnings, when referring to Jasmyn, Nate, Deanna and their peers just because they practice a subsistence lifestyle in a rustic village setting. As explained in chapter

5, this label, which is based on western-normed descriptors, is a misrepresentation of the cultural pride that one finds among Yup’ik peoples. It, therefore, obscures emic acts of identity, seen through discourse produced by a community who value talk and practice of Yup’ikness (Hensel, 1996; Napoleon,

1996). Another label that this study resists, which focuses on the Kenyan side, is,

“third world country”. Referring to the country as an impoverished, third-world country (McLaren, 1998; Thiong’o, 1986/1991) serves to marginalize people and experiences from such a space.

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Overall, I take up the incisive metaphor of “living in the corner,” which was employed by Fareen, one of the participants in this study, to reject a pervasive and dominant narrative that is based on a colonizing agenda. Such an agenda is organized around ethnicity, economic, and military prowess. This narrative others and relegates some people and some places to obscurity. As discussed in chapter 5, intercultural communication in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration occurred within a wider context of inequality and disequilibrium. In a world characterized by transcultural mobility and pluralism, the need to spotlight and engage with the lives and experiences of those who live in the so-called “corners” has never been greater. Such spotlighting and engagement offer a vital bridge across difference that leads to learning more about oneself through discovering respectful ways to nurture intercultural relationships (Jackson, 2014). In this regard, this dissertation contributes a more comprehensive understanding of the human experience in a way that is humanizing and inclusive of othered people’s meanings.

6.3 IMPLICATIONS

6.3.1 Research question 3: Overall, what is the significance of these understandings on pedagogy?

This dissertation, which studies language in relation to its culturally situated positionality (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972), responds to various calls and challenges from an interdisciplinary body of research. These calls encourage

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more scholarship to engage with contemporary social complexities wrought by globalization when examining language, pedagogy, culture, communication, intercultural interactions, literacy practices, pluralism, agency and voice (Lewis et al., 2007). In the following discussion, I highlight specific ways in which this present study takes up these calls. I examine how the notions of “inscribed worlds within language,” and “intersecting spaces of meaning sharing and meaning making” impact understandings of intercultural communication pedagogy. Doing so allows me to also examine the significance of taking a critical approach to contextual factors that affect intercultural communication pedagogy.

Calls : To begin with, over time, some scholars (see Blommaert, 2010/2015;

Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Canagarajah, 2013; Fairclough, 2006; Pennycook,

2010; Vertovec, 2007) have called on scholarship to shift from conceptualizing language as static and spatially bound, towards conceptualizing it as a situated albeit mobile resource. More specifically, scholars and stakeholders should

“rethink linguistic communication in a world that has become increasingly interconnected…markedly [mobile and characterized by] inequities, and is undeniably polycentric” (Blommaert, 2010, p. xi). The terrain-altering impact of globalization “forces sociolinguistics to unthink its classic distinctions and biases and to rethink itself as a sociolinguistics of mobile resources, framed in terms of trans-contextual networks, flows and movements” (Blommaert, 2010, p. 1).

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This is a call to consider how contemporary contexts, characterized by

globalization, have necessitated a re-understanding of traditional terms and

labels that have been employed in classical scholarship, and which are now

complicated by pluralism and transcultural flows. One example of a traditional

term that the field of sociolinguistics has been encouraged to re-understand is

“culture.” Some scholars (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Blommaert, 2015;

Vertovec, 2007) have proposed the concept of “superdiversity” to account for the

“extraordinary complexity of contemporary social configurations” (Vertovec, 2007

cited in Blommaert, 2015). They recommend (see Blommaert, 2015) that

scholars who are engaged in studies of globalization continue to find ways of

amplifying complexities of meaning and voice that have been overlooked by

traditional scholarship. Further, scholars should look beyond some of the

overused labels that fail to account for actual phenomena in complex plural contexts in our contemporary globalizing world.

The field of literacy studies is also being challenged to respond to how

manifestations of globalization, such as technology, impact both the meanings of

traditionally employed concepts and the nature of pedagogy. In this regard,

scholars (see Apkon, 2013) have asked for a redefinition of the term, “literacy,” in

light of the ubiquity of electronic screens, or for a formulation of new technology-

informed pedagogies for teaching a new generation of learners (Apkon, 2013;

Thomas & Brown, 2011).

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There have been further calls (see Canagarajah, 2013) for educators to

provide pedagogical scaffolding to enhance students’ translingual competence,

since ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversities continue to be prevalent in many

modern-day classrooms. Such scaffolding would foster culturally responsive

(Ladson-Billings, 1995) and sustaining (Paris, 2011) spaces for complex

pluriliteracies (Farr et al., 2010) that students bring to the classroom.

Researchers are being urged to focus on transcultural flows through re-imagining

engagements with “discourse, ways of representing, construing and imagining

aspects of social processes” (Fairclough, 2006, p. 163) that are a part of these

flows. This focus entails considering linguistic and cultural processes in spaces of

intercultural contact whivh I refer to as intersecting interactional spaces, also

known as global contact zones (Canagarajah, 2013), or intercultures (Kecskes,

2013).

Relatedly, others (Alim, 2006; Farr, 2011; Freire, 1970; hooks, 1994;

Irizarry & Brown, 2014; Kinloch, 2009/2010/2012; Kirkland, 2014; Ladson-

Billings, 1995; Mahiri, 2004; Morell & Duncan-Andrade, 2002; Richardson, 2006;

Paris, 2011; Paris & Winn, 2014; Smith, 1999; Thomas & Brown, 2011; Wandera,

2013/2015) have called for a re-visioning of what it means to teach and learn in ways that are cognizant of pluralism and diversity. This call for re-visioning

education is echoed through questions such as; what is the role of education in a pluralistic world? (Paris, 2011; Rose, 2012), and “how can institutions provide

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students with a transformative international education?” (Jackson, 2014, p. 9).

Thus, educators should provide students with experiences which enhance

intercultural competence for their interconnected contemporary day-to-day lives

(Deardoff, 2006; Jackson, 2014; Morrell, 2008). In chapter 2, I highlighted a proliferation of terms denoting varied competencies required in translingual classrooms. A common thread running through these terms is interpersonal interactions across difference. Through the illustrative case of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, I argue for pedagogy that affords students opportunities for authentic intercultural interactions whereby students benefit by extending their knowledge of self and other while developing intercultural communication skills

(Rothman, 2008). Such classroom-based, immersive, sustained, authentic experiences are becoming increasingly necessary for interpersonal interactions in the world today.

As discussed in chapter 5, engaging in intercultural communication comes with a potential to shift understandings of the meanings of frames of representation, and to recalibrate conceptualizations for how language is used in relation to geospatial and cultural positionality. Various scholars (Dervin, 2012;

Samovar et al., 2010) have explored how internalizing stereotypes can impede intercultural communication. Some scholars (Chen & Starosta, 1998; Hall, 2005) have made suggestions about appropriate communicative approaches for successful intercultural interactions. Such approaches should include experiential

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and exploratory learning, hands-on collaborations, and discussions about language, identity, and location. Such was the case in the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Moreover, some scholars (see Kuo, 2010; Miike, 2009; Smith,

2012; Thiong’o, 1986/1991) have encouraged the production of indigenous research about indigenous people in order to complicate overarching narratives that gloss over or obscure historically marginalized lives. Such research would not only challenge Eurocentric biases that characterize some western conceptualizations of intercultural communication, but would also validate indigenous epistemologies.

In this regard, it is therefore necessary to re-vision concepts related to literacy, culture, communication, pedagogy, pluralism, agency, and voice that have been used in classical disciplinary traditions to understand contemporary intersections of language, education and society. Globalization and its key features such as diversity, mobility, technology, and interconnectivity have necessitated shifts in teaching and learning in our contemporary society. Overall, classrooms need to provide students with interactional opportunities that can enhance intercultural competencies which in turn boosts the quality of life in globalizing contexts. Through examining data from the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, and based on findings in response to the first two research questions, this study responds to these calls as follows:

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a) This study contributes towards developing pedagogy that is suited for

our globalizing and pluralistic world. The Alaska Kenya collaboration can

be characterized as affording students with an immersive, authentic, and

sustained exposure to opportunities for meaning sharing and making

across cultural and geospatial difference. Findings show that students

engaged in various supralocalizing moves in their interactional strategies.

One implication here is that, pedagogical approaches should offer

opportunities for students to negotiate and navigate intercultural meanings

with a potential for recalibrating their understandings of self and others.

b) This study joins various scholarly conversations in Sociolinguistics,

Literacy Studies, Intercultural Communication, and in research

methodology to extend some ways in which some concepts and

approaches can be understood.

What, then, is the significance of these understandings, discussed above, on pedagogy? The following sub sections are based on the three points established in response to research question two. These three points are: 1)

Situated worlds are inscribed within language, 2) Students co-construct intersecting interactional spaces, and 3) A critical understanding of the context of intercultural communication is necessary. These sub sections, which focus on pedagogy, highlight specific contributions made by this study and, in addition, offer extended implications that findings have on the important work being done

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by researchers, educators and other stakeholders in understanding literacy studies, intercultural communication, teaching and learning, and culture in our contemporary globalizing world.

Situated worlds inscribed within language: To begin with, this dissertation contributes to pedagogy by offering an exemplar of a pedagogical initiative that is cognizant of pluralism and intercultural contact. This initiative, the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, is characterized by immersive, student-centered teaching. The collaboration instantiates enduring social relations between the former students and myself as their former teacher, and also in the strategies for intercultural interaction that the students carry with them over the eight years since being a part of the collaboration. One pedagogical implication is for teachers to construct opportunities for generative intercultural contact “especially around literature and literacy, and to encourage young people to engage in exploratory, speculative, interactive writing across cultural and geospatial differences” (Wandera, 2015).

Another pedagogical implication is for teachers to employ resources that enhance students’ intercultural competence through giving them opportunities to develop supralocalization strategies.

To this end, educators should invest time and resources in exposing students to communicative contexts in which they can learn to make their local meanings visible, available and therefore accessible to supralocal others.

Reflexivity is a key feature of these communicative contexts. Students should be

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in a position to examine their own and others’ presuppositions in order to identify

some implicit frame clashes that are not easily discernible in intercultural

interactions. Pedagogy that imparts reflexivity can create a conducive

atmosphere to facilitate awareness of self and awareness of the “otherness” of

others. A reflexive atmosphere will be enhanced, in part, by setting up authentic

languacultural engagements (that is, engagements across language and culture)

whereby students negotiate with each other about their taken-for-granted notions. Data shows that such negotiations will be enhanced by reflexive examinations of own and others’ presuppositions and stereotypes.

Additionally, this study demonstrates how inability to access inscribed

meanings complicates communication thereby making a case for pedagogy that offers opportunities for engagement with language and cultural connections in text. As established in chapter 5, when students were unable to access cultural significance of actions such as Aleknagikan subsistence lifestyle and Nairobian consumerism they were not able to engage with deeper intertextual references present in the language that was employed in describing these actions. To this

end, one implication of these findings on pedagogy is that when students find a

text too difficult to understand, sometimes it may not be because they have a

limited understanding of syntax or that they suffer from a stunted vocabulary.

Instead, it may just be that they are unable to access the cultural worlds inscribed

360

within the language in the text. Such a lack of access might impede incisive

reading comprehension.

Students co-construct intersecting interactional spaces: Within these

spaces, understandings of the other and of self can be complicated and

reconstituted. This finding calls for teaching approaches that complicate

conversations about dichotomies (rich/poor, black/white) that dominate prevalent

narratives about people, places and experiences. As a result, educators might

consider various ways in which otherness is constructed, based on organizing

principles that emerge from supralocal intersecting spaces. Including these

notions of otherness can be achieved through tapping into the resourcefulness of

students’ languages and their out-of-class experiences. Such pedagogical

approaches would position students as cultural practitioners, experts,

ambassadors, inquirers, listeners, interpreters, mediators, makers and sharers of meaning.

It is therefore important to pursue strategies that connect classrooms to

the community in order to gain a more nuanced understanding of the community.

In the case of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, this was evident through cross-

border cross cultural connections between students who would otherwise not be

connected to one another. It was also evident in out-of-class resources that

include cultural wisdom and other oft-neglected community-based

epistemologies (Wandera, 2015). When pedagogy taps into these

361

epistemologies and experiences, classrooms will be more inclusive and will offer students opportunities to employ their experiential resources in meaning sharing and making. Further, the resourcefulness of this kind of teaching endures beyond the shelf-life of projects such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. Post project reflection data show that returning reflexively to the collaboration yielded fresh understandings about intercultural interactions.

Additionally, this study makes a case for teaching and learning experiences that offer students opportunities for international awareness and concrete engagement through direct interaction. Pedagogical practices that offer opportunities for immersive, authentic, and sustained global interactions can tap into the resourcefulness of languacultural interactions within intersecting spaces of meaning sharing and making. In this case, they can tap into language and cultural resources employed by Alaska-Kenya students. Such pedagogy imparts necessary competencies and skills for supralocalization of meaning. A key example here is for students to learn to decenter themselves and center their supralocal interlocutors. Lastly, this study offers scholars interested in transcultural interaction, literacy and education a schema for visualizing dynamic communicative and strategic moves entailed within the Alaska-Kenya intercultural spaces of meaning sharing and meaning making. This schema provides researchers with illustrations that account for complexities in intercultural interaction.

362

A critical examination of context: This study affirms culturally relevant,

responsive, and sustaining pedagogies (Ladson-Billings, 1995; Paris, 2011).

Scholarship continues to yield evidence of areas in which students improve given

exposure to opportunities for immersive projects in intercultural interaction.

These areas include, the development of keener abilities in critical thinking,

hypothesizing, and speculating (Freedman, 1994; Goswami, 1998; Kinloch,

2010; Paris, 2011; Wandera, 2015; Wood, 2000). Such exposure also leads to

an awareness of self-in-the-world where students engage with their own and

other people’s stereotypes. Such pedagogy is grounded in a Freirean (1970)

foundation of consciencization, informed by critical literacy in which students

learn to become agents of their own change (Kinloch, 2010). The creativity,

curiosity, and pleasure that students bring to and find in immersive experiences,

such as the Alaska-Kenya collaboration, can lead to their intellectual

development which is itself a form of social transformation (Wandera, 2015).

The case of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration shows concrete evidence of transformations in students’ understanding of representational frames. Data

show reconstitution and redimensionalization of frames as evidence of this

transformation. Data also show further evidence through ways in which students

disrupt and contest some of their own and other people’s assumptive meanings

(Kumashiro, 2009). In a more general sense, this study affirms that when

students tap into their out-of-class experiences or into their traditional or local

363

epistemologies to tell their stories, these acts have a potential to complicate overarching narratives of marginalization, misrepresentation and mischaracterization through providing competing narratives and counterpoint worldviews thereby spotlighting hitherto marginalized, silenced and abnormalized selves and places.

In this regard, this study participates in complicating conceptualizations

presented by some traditional scholarly terms for instance through resisting

refrence to Aleknagik students as “socioeconomically underprivileged,” a term

that is based on western notions of socioeconomic classes. I also employ some

demographic descriptors from Aleknagik and Nairobi that are grounded in

indigenous ethnic identities (for example, Yup’ik and Miji Kenda ethnicities) that

are not prevalent in western scholarly conversations on race and ethnicity. In

addition, I spotlight heritage and traditional practices, which are otherwise marginalized, through a sustained inquiry and analysis of the project under focus.

This study, therefore, participates in attempts to infuse Nairobian and

Aleknagikan experiences into conversations on teaching/learning that are from a

normative western-centric positionality. Nairobi and Aleknagik are seldom spoken

of as being in contact and people and experiences from these two places are

rarely mainstreamed in western scholarship. Further, my own positionality as a

non-mainstreamed scholar responds to calls for scholarship from marginalized

spaces and people about marginalized selves and places.

364

Table 6.1 (below) summarizes these main findings for the three questions and provides an inventory of the significance of these findings for pedagogy.

These findings aggregate into a push for educators to offer immersive, authentic and sustained interculturally interactive experiences for their students:

Strategies Three concepts on Implications of employed in the how intercultural findings on Alaska-Kenya communication pedagogy. intercultural intersects with communication. mobility. Cultural expectations - Teaching students to Supralocalization: and presuppositions are recognize and then inscribed in language. question This is a major presuppositions they umbrella term for intercultural bring to interactions. communicative That is, pedagogy strategies: should be informed by reflexivity.

Continued

Table 6.1: An inventory of the significance of this study on pedagogy.

365

Table 6.1 continued

- Pedagogical practice a) Negotiation: should be aware of A category of challenges for students intercultural to access sociocultural communicative worlds inscribed within strategies language as they between struggle with other interlocutors. people’s meanings for example, in reading.

- Pedagogy should give students opportunities b) Navigation: to learn supralocalization skills A category of for instance, through communicative strategies in exposure to immersive, response to student-centered, contextual factors. exploratory teaching.  Pedagogy should facilitate an awareness

of self and the c) Reconstitution otherness of others. and re-

dimensionalizati

on: - Pedagogy should

complicate traditional Intercultural interlocutors A category of western-centric co-construct intersecting communicative interactional spaces (for conversations by strategies that meaning sharing and introducing tensions or illustrate meaning making). concepts from global transformation in understanding of intersecting representational interactional spaces. frames.

366 Continued

Table 6.1 continued

 Pedagogy should take advantage of the affordances of technology to achieve global connections.

- Pedagogy should enhance students’ ability to decenter self and center others.

- Pedagogy should position students as resources to be tapped into.  Inclusive pedagogy that bridges out-of- class experiences with class experiences.

- Pedagogy should provide learning experiences where students are exposed to immersive, sustained and authentic intercultural interactions.

Continued 367

Table 6.1 continued

 Students get hands-on exposure to communicating local meanings to a supralocal audience.

- The resourcefulness of class-based intercultural interactions endures beyond the shelf-life of the project.

- The formulation of a schema to visualize intercultural meaning for scholars interested in intercultural communication.

These intersecting - Pedagogy should be spaces can be a site of grounded in Freirean resistance to amplify consciencization voices and visualize among other activist experiences of marginalized people. literacy practices.  This study affirms the need for culturally relevant, responsive and sustaining pedagogies.  Learning literacy skills to resist narratives of misrepresentation and mischaracterization of marginalized groups.

368 Continued

Table 6.1 continued

 Pedagogy should extend and complicate classical conversations in the scholarship.  Pedagogy should seek concrete transformative experiences for students. - Pedagogy should be rooted on awareness of self-in-the-world.

6.3.2 Implications for Future Research

This research sought to address some calls by various scholars to extend understandings of literacy, language, pedagogy, communication, and culture in a globalizing world. This study offers the following suggestions for future research on this topic.

This present study is an asynchronous study. There is a need for similar studies to be conducted in which data are synchronous. This would introduce a host of other considerations and data that are missing from this current study.These include embodied language and multimodality that characterize

369

face-to-face interactions. Additionally, a study that can explore languacultural

aspects of paralanguage (for example, intonation, pitch, pace of speaking, and

hesitation), kinesics (for instance body movement for communication), and haptics (for instance touch), among other aspects of non-verbal communication, would extend knowledge of non-linguistic ways that language and culture entwine. Such a study would further destabilize the primacy of text in

investigating communication.

This present study has discussed how some cultural artifacts and some

visuals are implicated in meaning being shared. Future studies that focus on

artifacts as a materialization of cultural worldviews would extend this notion of

language use and offer a fuller understanding of other people’s cultures based on

a multimodal approach. Such multimodality, when combined with face-to-face interactions, will spotlight some dynamics of non-verbal and synchronous communication. A synchronous study would effectively exploit present-day affordances of technology (video conferencing and instantaneous synchronous messaging) that were not prevalent when the Alaska-Kenya collaboration occurred. It is also possible to mount a project between more than two corresponding groups and to explore languaculture and acts of negotiation and navigation in a multilocale communication.

Future studies could also shift focus on teachers or combine focus and include family and other stake holders. This present study principally focuses on

370

students and their communicative acts across cultural and geospatial difference.

There is need for studies that focus on teachers and their pedagogical approaches in such projects. Shifting focus in this way provides a multifaceted aspect to inquiry on language and can yield important understandings. Relatedly, another possibility for future research would entail altering researcher positionality. In this present study, I was one of the two participating teachers.

Future directions of similar studies could involve examining contexts in which the insider-outsider balance is tipped differently, in which the researcher is more of an outsider (has not been involved in projects directly). Findings from such a study may extend understandings of the general nature of the project through taking up a different researcher positionality.

Additionally, there is always a need for more studies that are based on peripheralized peoples, spaces, and places in the world. Not only would these studies continue to offer evidence that complicates some western-centric concepts, such scholarship would also add to the diverse voices in scholarship on intercultural literacy. It is not easy for one to find a book about teenagers in

Alaska sharing their lives and stories with teenagers in Kenya. Given that we live in a world of constant mobility and increased intercultural contact, these kinds of connections should not be so uncommon but increasingly explored. Studies that explore such unexpected or uncommon connections will add fresh perspectives and approaches, not to mention content, to overrepresented spaces and view-

371

points that one often finds in classical scholarship. Such studies will extend understandings on context, methodology, literacy conceptualizations, communication, and culture by broadening the scholarly narrative of human experience. Relatedly, whereas there are some studies (see Canagarajah, 2013;

Hull et al., 2010; Lam, 2010) that examine identity and power in relation to linguistic practices of minoritized people in multisite and/or multicultural spaces, there is need for more studies that engage participants in reflections on implications of past and present communication across geospatial and cultural difference while exploring understandings of self and other that are evoked through online exchanges. More studies are also needed whereby students reflexively examine intercultural interactions years after the fact.

Finally, a general direction that a future study could take is to theorize the concept of supralocalization as an umbrella term for communicative pragmatic strategies of meaning sharing and meaning making in intercultural communication. Such theorization would provide further understanding of spatialized language use in communication within co-constructed intersecting interactional spaces. Such theorization would also shift the focus from pedagogy

(as seen in this present study) to an examination of theoretical underpinnings of situated language use.

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6.4 CONCLUSION

As a result of processes of globalization, the complexity and intensity of

intercultural contact in our contemporary world continues to increase. Also on the

increase are incidents of intercultural strife and animosity. It is becoming clearer

that as we strive to curb ethnocentrism and enhance ethnorelativism (Bennett,

1993; Jackson, 2014), the ability to communicate interculturally is a crucial

competence for our pluralistic and globalizing world. Over the course of my

teaching, I have endeavored to shift from prescriptive, direct, routinized teaching

of writing, towards interculturally interactive, sustained, dialogic and exploratory

experiences (Wandera, 2015) as illustrated by the Alaska-Kenya collaboration.

The hidden curriculum entailed also plays a vital inclusive role through tapping into the resourcefulness of out-of-class experiences for curricular ends. In addition, such pedagogy ensures that learning is relevant in addressing pressing needs such as intercultural cooperation. Thus, a hallmark of this kind of pedagogy is a commitment towards creating supportive and engaging spaces through employing inclusive pedagogies (Kinloch, 2010). Informed by a linguistic anthropological perspective, this study harnesses various conceptual frames taken from scholarship in literacy studies, applied sociolinguistics, intercultural and global discourse studies. Located within the field of transnational literacy

studies, this present study is characterized by participant-reflexive examination of

communication across cultural and geospatial difference.

373

The study points to some ways in which communication across cultural and geospatial difference offer a site for social action (Scollon & Scollon, 2003).

Participants share and agentively construct meanings which have indexical connections (Farr, 2006) as they communicate with an audience that is located supralocally. Notably, this communication is characterized by some disconnects or ‘rich points’ (Agar, 1994) in meaning. The students’ recurrent recognition of their interlocutors’ otherness crystallizes their emergent sense of self-in-the- world. Knowing that frame clashes (Gee & Green, 1998) are shaped by both mismatched expectations about how language functions (Green et al., 2008), and presuppositions that students bring to the interaction (Gumperz, 1982) is a step towards fostering productive intercultural engagement. Additionally, knowing that online literacy practices, cultural meanings, and situated influences in the Alaska-

Kenya collaboration amount to mobile, enmeshed, communicative resources

(Blommaert, 2010; Canagarajah, 2013) foregrounds some tensions in sssituated language use and meaning in intercultural communication.

Methodologically this study which is informed by intersecting disciplinary concepts from intercultural classroom discourse, online mediated communication, and enduring interpersonal relationships, contributes to the field of literacy studies and English Education. Using insider-outsider ethnographic

(Banks, 1998; Gumperz & Hymes, 1972) and languacultural (Agar, 1994) approaches produces a situated description of some communicative and

374

pragmatic strategies employed by participants as they co-construct intersecting interactional spaces.

Overall, this study of the Alaska-Kenya collaboration takes a vital step towards exploring questions about the changing nature of language and identity practices among Nairobian and Yuuyaraq youth as they inhabit globalized localities. Pursuing these questions through studying language use within the

Alaska-Kenya online collaboration gives a situated illustrative account of the intersections between intercultural communication and online mediated classroom-based literacy. Importantly, this study extends scholarly conversations to include peripheralized selves, places, and experiences, and ultimately contributes to understanding interactional dynamics of meaning sharing and meaning making across difference.

375

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Appendices

Appendix A: Vai Script syllabaryImage from http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Vai.gif (accessed on 3/4/13)

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Appendix B: BreadNet user interface (screen print).

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Appendix C: Course Description for ‘Writing to Make a Difference’

7100 Writing to Make a Difference/ Instructor XXXXXX /M-F 11:15-12:15

Class members will examine several writing and publishing projects (some designed and carried out by Bread Loaf teachers and their students) that promote cross-cultural and cross-generational work, with young people writing

for different audiences and purposes in the context of public service. We will work toward understanding and then applying theories about language learning and democratic education, asking ourselves how best to engage children and young adults in the kinds of action research, writing, and publishing (electronic and print) that make a difference locally and beyond. Class members will contribute to a class journal, report and reflect on readings and discussion, and plan a community writing project that they might develop further and carry out. We will consider the role of collaborative, community-based writing within and

outside of schools, given the current emphasis on standardized assessment. CM and TE will assist us individually and in small groups to integrate Web design, Internet resources, and BreadNet into the course and projects. Creating an electronic portfolio will be an option. No prior technology experience is required.

Texts:

L.S.Vygotsky, Mind in Society, trans. and ed. M. Cole et al. (Harvard); Writing to Make a Difference, ed. Chris Benson and Scott Christian (Teachers College); The Best for Our Children: Critical Perspectives on Literacy for Latino Students, ed. Maria de la Luz Reyes and John J. Halcón (Teachers College); Reclaiming the Classroom:Teacher Research as an Agency for Change, ed. Dixie Goswami and

Peter Stillman (Boynton Cook Heinemann); Jacqueline Jones Royster, Traces of a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women (Pittsburgh); Between Sacred Mountains: Navajo Stories and Lessons from the Land, ed. Claudine Arthur et al. (Arizona; on library reserve at Bread Loaf).

A course packet will be available for purchase at Bread Loaf.

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Appendix D: Description of the Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN) from the webpage.

(Taken from http://www.middlebury.edu/blse/bltn)

The Bread Loaf Teacher Network (BLTN) is a network of teachers

educated at Bread Loaf and supported during the academic year by Bread Loaf staff and faculty. Its primary goal is to encourage year- round collaboration among Bread Loaf teachers, faculty, and their students on innovative online projects designed to promote culturally sensitive and transformative literacy. All Bread Loaf students, whether they come for just one summer in continuing graduate education or are working on an MA in English, are welcome and encouraged to join BLTN.

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Appendix E: Cover design of Bates & Oleksa, (2008). Water color painting by Xenia Oleksa. Copyright Bates & Oleksa, (2008)

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Appendix F: Picture of “school bus” sent from Aleknagik to Nairobi during the Alaska-Kenya collaboration. (Photo credits to Mr. Collins)

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Appendix G: Window shopping at Sarit Center Mall, in Nairobi, Kenya.

Image from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4azPHvI- 9URWVlVbHpHbVVFWm8/edit (accessed on 3/4/13)

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Appendix H: Supermarket Shelves Image from https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4azPHvI- 9URSUdhUzRtajNSWDg/edit (accessed on 3/4/13)

Appendix I

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Appendix I: Menu from one of the Restaurants in Nairobi.

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Appendix J: Aleknagik students playing during recess (from BreadNet archives)

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Appendix K: ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ Poem by Wallace Stevens http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174503 (accessed on 4/4/13)

I VIII Among twenty snowy mountains, I know noble accents The only moving thing And lucid, inescapable rhythms; Was the eye of the blackbird. But I know, too, II That the blackbird is involved I was of three minds, In what I know. Like a tree IX In which there are three blackbirds. When the blackbird flew out of sight, III It marked the edge The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. Of one of many circles. It was a small part of the pantomime. IV A man and a woman X Are one. At the sight of blackbirds A man and a woman and a blackbird Flying in a green light, Are one. Even the bawds of euphony V AppendixWould cryL out sharply. I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections XI Or the beauty of innuendoes, He rode over Connecticut The blackbird whistling In a glass coach. Or just after. Once, a fear pierced him, VI In that he mistook Icicles filled the long window The shadow of his equipage With barbaric glass. For blackbirds. The shadow of the blackbird Crossed it, to and fro. XII The mood The river is moving. Traced in the shadow The blackbird must be flying. An indecipherable cause. VII XIII O thin men of Haddam, It was evening all afternoon.

Why do you imagine golden birds? It was snowing Do you not see how the blackbird And it was going to snow. Walks around the feet The blackbird sat Of the women about you? In the cedar-limbs.

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Appendix L: ‘Refugee Mother, and Child’ by Chinua Achebe (https://sueddie.wordpress.com/2014/02/02/refugee-mother-and-child-a-poem-by-chinua-achebe/) (accessed on 4/4/13)

No Madonna and Child could touch that picture of a mother’s tenderness for a son she soon would have to forget. The air was heavy with odours

of diarrhoea of unwashed children with washed-out ribs and dried-up bottoms struggling in laboured steps behind blown empty bellies. Most mothers there had long ceased

to care but not this one; she held a ghost smile between her teeth and in her eyes the ghost of a mother’s pride as she combed the rust-coloured hair left on his skull and then –

singing in her eyes – began carefully to part it… In ano ther life this would have been a little daily act of no consequence before his breakfast and school; now she did it like putting flowers on a tiny grave.

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Appendix M: Aleknagik Scenic Picture (from BreadNet archives)

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