Shades of Deeper Meaning: A Phenomenological Study of Dialect Variance among 21st Century Rural Midwestern High School Students

In a vastly changing world of fast-paced technology and dynamic forms of communication, dialect variance takes on a significant role within the confines of high school classrooms across the country. As educators are tasked with the job of ensuring that students are capable of putting words together into sentences, both in the written and spoken form, the conflicting ideologies of the familial dialect versus the academic dialect sometimes leads to difficulties in acquiring fluency in the academic dialect. This study is an investigation of the lived experiences that high school students have with those conflicting ideologies and their responses to them. Through students' own voices, struggles with opposing identities and gaining access to variant dialects are explained as they express their ideas about dialectal differentiation in a 21 st century classroom. The research was constructed with these questions in mind: What are the relationships that rural northwest Ohio high school students have with Academic English? How do those relationship affect the acquisition of Academic English as part of their cultural identity? This is a qualitative, hermeneutical phenomenological practitioner research study using the theoretical frameworks of sociolinguistics, social constructivism, and critical language pedagogy. The research settings were two populations of students in two different classes in a rural Midwestern public high school. All participants were 17 or 18 years old and came from lower to middle income homes. Data were triangulated to analyze student perceptions of the academic dialect and its significance in the 21st century world. Data collection included: audio recordings of three separate group discussion sessions, student journal responses, and written responses to an editorial article. Allowing students to have discussions concerning dialectal differences and the way that those differences are perceived in this world give educators the opportunity to see inside the adolescent mind to come to an understanding of why some students struggle with finding their "why" when it comes to obtaining an academic voice. By identifying emergent themes like perception, empowerment, identity, stereotypes, and the future of communication, these students give voice to the continuing concerns of English educators who are tasked with ensuring the acquisition of the academic dialect by their students whose familial dialects may be different from Academic English. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]