Language, identity, and positionality in creole research

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Language, identity, and insider/outsider positionality in Caribbean Creole

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Article in Applied Linguistics Review · September 2015

DOI: 10.1515/applirev-2015-0016
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Applied Linguistics Review 2015; 6(3): 341–368
Shondel Nero*
Language, identity, and insider/outsider
positionality in Caribbean Creole English
research
DOI 10.1515/applirev-2015-0016
Abstract: This article is a critically reflexive interrogation of the researcher’s

identity with respect to qualitative language research in her own community,
illustrated by discourse analysis of three vignettes from a critical ethnographic
study of language education policy in Jamaica. Drawing on her biography as
well as poststructuralist theories and research on identity and positioning, the
author discusses the ways in which the choice, process, and (re)presentation of
her research on Caribbean Creole English speakers in schools are filtered
through the tensions among her ascribed, felt, and evolving insider/outsider
identities and positionings. These tensions are heightened due to the highly
charged and paradoxical nature of creole language politics, particularly with
regard to education. Implications of such tensions for qualitative research in
applied linguistics are also addressed.
Keywords: Caribbean Creole English, Jamaican Creole, researcher identities,

insider/outsider positioning, language education policy
1 Introduction
This article turns the research gaze on myself as a reflexive departure point to
interrogate the notion of language and identity with respect to qualitative
research in applied linguistics, and specifically to language research in one’s
own community. It builds on a growing body of research in applied linguistics
that has taken a critically reflexive approach to examine the complexity of
researcher identities, positions, and intersubjectivities in ethnographic work
(Creese et al. 2009; Giampapa 2011; Hamdan 2009; Hult 2014; Lee and Simon-
Maeda 2006; Mullings 1999; Norton and Early 2011; Pavlenko and Blackledge
2004). Qualitative researchers tend to be more explicit about subjectivity in our
own research, which includes the role of our identities in choosing, designing,
*Corresponding author: Shondel Nero, Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human
Development, New York University, 239 Greene St., Room 312, New York, NY 10003, USA,
E-mail: shondel.nero@nyu.edu
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342 Shondel Nero
and (re)presenting our work. In that vein, drawing on my biography as well as

identity and positioning theories and research, illustrated by discourse analysis
of three vignettes from a critical ethnographic study of language education
policy in Jamaica, this article discusses the ways in which the choice,
approaches to, and (re)presentation of, my research on Caribbean Creole
English speakers in schools are filtered through the tensions among my
ascribed, felt, and evolving insider/outsider identities and positionings. The
vignettes reflect positionality as the discursive enactment of identity – in this
case, the various identities I inhabit and negotiate in the research process.
Furthermore, my identity and positioning tensions are heightened due to the
highly charged and paradoxical nature of creole language politics, particularly
with regard to education. Implications of such tensions for qualitative research
are also addressed.
2 Definition of terms
The discussion of identity herein takes a post-structuralist approach, consistent
with current thinking in the field. Identity, in the view adopted here, does not
suggest a core, essential self, but rather is understood as “different ways of
being in the world at different times and places for different purposes” (Gee
2011: 3). This definition is inclusive of not only researchers in applied linguistics,
but acknowledges that researchers in all fields negotiate their identities with
consequences for the research process and outcomes. Closely tied to identity is
the idea of Discourse with a capital “D” (Gee 2008), as opposed to discourse with
lower case “d,” the latter defined by Gee as “connected stretches of language
that make sense, like conversations, stories … etc.” (p. 154). A Discourse, by
contrast, is:
composed of distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often too writing/reading coupled

with distinctive ways of acting, interacting, valuing, feeling, dressing, thinking, believing,
with other people, and with various objects, tools, technologies, so as to enact specific
socially recognizable identities engaged in specific socially recognizable activities (Gee
2008: 155)
It is important to note that in the Anglophone Caribbean,1 there’s been an

historically pejorative Discourse around the recognition and use of creoles
1 Anglophone Caribbean/West Indies – refers to all of the island nations in the Caribbean (such
as Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, etc.) as well as the mainland countries of Belize in
Central America and Guyana in South America where English is the official language on

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Language, identity, and insider/outsider positionality 343
coupled with a persistent disparaging of its speakers, which will be discussed

later. In this article, I use the term creole (with a lower case “c”) to refer to:
Any one of the family of languages developed in the Caribbean territories as a direct result
of European colonial expansion between 1500 and 1900. They emerged from the language
of African slaves in contact with one or more European languages such as English, French,
Spanish or Portuguese, becoming a native language for succeeding generations, and
surviving today as the mass vernacular in most Caribbean territories. Typically,
Caribbean creoles are characterized by the syntax of West African languages combined
with the lexicon of the European colonizer language. (Bickerton 1981)
On the other hand, I use Creole (with a capital “C”) to refer to a specific language
variety such as Caribbean Creole English or Jamaican Creole spoken by a
particular speech community. Growing up in a creole-speaking environment is
a central factor in my own language attitudes and research and in the telling of
the narratives here.
3 Biography
3.1 Early language socialization2
I was born and raised in Guyana, where English is the official language, but the
mass vernacular is Creolese, an English-based creole similar to others in
Anglophone Caribbean nations like Jamaica or Trinidad and Tobago. In my
household, my language socialization was enriched by the full range of lan-
guage that I was exposed to as a child – the predominantly British colonial
English of my father, and the creolized English of my mother.
My formative education – elementary and secondary school – was based on
a British colonial model, which meant studying a British curriculum, taking
British exams, and being taught to privilege all things British, including British
English, despite growing up as the first generation in the post-independence
(supposedly post-colonial) era. I should note that this was particularly my
experience, as I attended what was generally considered the premier high school
in the country, one modeled after a British colonial grammar school; hence, I
account of a shared history of British colonization. In this article the terms “Anglophone
Caribbean” and “West Indian” are used interchangeably.
2 I borrow the term language socialization from Schieffelin and Ochs (1986), which refers to the
bodies of social knowledge and patterns of language use acquired in the home, as well as the
functions of language in family interactions in various social groups.

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344 Shondel Nero
was socialized into being a predominantly standardized English speaker,

although with some productive ability in, and receptive knowledge of, Creolese.
3.2 Language and identity in colonial/creole contexts
One of the most palpable legacies of British colonization is the prevailing

Discourse of the stigmatization of creole as “broken English,” marked as the
vernacular of the lower class and uneducated, to be shunned at all cost,
especially in school. Demonstrated knowledge of, and proficiency in, standar-
dized (British) English is upheld as the gold standard of a refined and educated
person. English is framed as the unmarked language, and therefore the
unmarked public linguistic identity of many in former British colonies, aided
by a still existing colonial school structure that enforces the ideology of the
superiority of English vis-à-vis creoles. Still, Creole use, intermingled with
localized varieties of British-influenced English, has always been, and continues
to be, widespread in public discourse in Guyana, as was the case in my child-
hood home. So, when I call myself an English speaker who understands creole,
I’m simultaneously displaying and negotiating the duality of identities, or the
“double consciousness,” to use W.E.B Dubois’s term, of someone raised and
schooled as a colonized subject in a creole/English environment with the
advantages of highly regarded schooling and its attendant social benefits.
These are both felt and ascribed linguistic identities, historically and socially
constructed. Such was the complex linguistic environment in which I was
raised, and which impact my work as discussed here.
3.3 Choosing a research topic or a research topic emerges …
My entire post-high school life has been spent in North America. It was during
my doctoral studies in applied linguistics that I began to research the plight of a
growing number of Caribbean Creole-dominant speakers who were struggling
with literacy in New York City schools and colleges, taught by teachers who were
ill-equipped to address their unique linguistic needs. Many of the students, who
self-identified as native speakers of English (owing to the British colonial
legacy), were (mis)placed in traditional English a Second Language (ESL) classes
on account of their “non-native” English, much to their chagrin. One such
student, Charles,3 a native of Guyana, was in my own college ESL writing
3 All names of participants in this paper are pseudonyms.

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class. As someone who self-identifies as a native speaker of English, I, too, was

puzzled at the placement of other self-identified “English speakers” such as
Charles in ESL classes. In this instance, my role as Charles’ writing instructor
placed me in an awkward position of power. I was charged to teach a class of
students deemed nonnative speakers of English by the university, an identifica-
tion that in my view did not apply to natives of the Anglophone Caribbean. I was
thus confronted with a tug-of-war of positionalities – writing instructor vs.
student advocate – which ultimately led to my research. Therefore, out of an
ordinary ESL writing class, a research topic emerged with a host of questions –
how does someone who self-identifies as a native speaker of English end up in
an ESL class? what does this say about this thing we call English? about
linguistic self-identification vs. language practices? about the elusive concept
of nativeness itself? about who gets to decide who’s a native speaker?
Furthermore, how do we account for the persistence of the native speaker
construct despite ongoing challenges to it?
3.4 Staking out my researcher position(ing)
In taking up these questions and the study of the linguistic and educational
needs of Creole-dominant speakers in schools, I was unwittingly drawn into the
contentious politics of language education policy and language attitudes with
respect to this population in schools. Furthermore, the applied linguistics doc-
toral program in which I was a student took a clear-cut position of recognizing
creoles as languages in their own right, and therefore affirming the language of
Creole-dominant speakers in schools. My early socialization to language in my
home country (where Creolese was denigrated) was thus tested against new
knowledge and intellectual positions as a doctoral student, and called up the
need for me to find a comfortable political and personal position as a researcher
and as a West Indian vis-à-vis my own research. For the past twenty years of my
research on this topic, I have tried to stake out a position somewhere in the
middle – recognizing the validity of creoles, but also recognizing the parallel
reality of the prevalence of what Lippi-Green (1997) calls standard language
ideology4 in schools – a tenuous position at best. As I am simultaneously an
4 Lippi-Green (1997) defines standard language ideology as the pervasive belief in the super-
iority of an abstracted and idealized form of language, based on the spoken language of the
upper middle classes – the “standard language” (p. 64). This bias towards one language variety
is imposed and maintained by the dominant groups in society who speak that variety, but is
often internalized by everyone else as well.

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applied linguist, a teacher educator, a teacher, a Guyanese/West Indian, an

expatriate, now American citizen, and a transnational, I am constantly navigat-
ing the tensions among my linguistic training as a researcher, addressing the
needs of teachers and Creole-dominant speakers who must negotiate the politics
of language education and assessment in schools, and my identification with,
and participation in, the West Indian community who also hold deeply
entrenched and ambivalent views towards creole.
For example, one of the challenges I’ve had researching Caribbean Creole
English, particularly in schools, is the contradictory impulse in the response to
me and my work by many members of the Caribbean community. On the one
hand, whenever I interact formally or informally with other West Indians, there’s
a kind of pride in what they see as my success as an accomplished academic and
fellow Caribbean/West Indian native (hence, wanting to claim me as an “insi-
der”), but then a suspicion of my motives as a researcher seeking “data”, and
even more suspicion of my seemingly absurd ideas of validating creoles, parti-
cularly as an expatriate (then I’m framed as an outsider). This has implications
for my research, as there’s always a kind of discursive dance at play in my
interactions with Caribbean participants with regard to our positions on creole
language politics. This tension was brought into bold relief when I went to
Jamaica as a Fulbright scholar during the 2011–2012 academic year to research
the Jamaican language education policy and practices with respect to Jamaican
Creole speakers from which the data for this article are drawn. In order to
contextualize my research of this linguistically unique population, as someone
who might be considered as an “insider” to the group, some theoretical ground-
ing on identity and positioning is necessary.
4 Poststructuralism and identity

Over the past several years, a significant body of work has emerged in applied
linguistics that takes a post-structural approach to identity ((Block 2007; Gee
2011; Norton 2000; Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004; Riley 2007). Poststructural
thought rejects essentialist notions of identities as fixed or unitary constructs;
rather, identities are seen as sites of struggle (Norton 2000), or as sociocultural
phenomena that emerge and shift in interaction as “social actors claim, contest,
and negotiate power and authority” (Bulcholtz and Hall 2008: 154). Individuals
who share specific attributes or categories do not necessarily share similar views
or behaviors (Mohan and Chambers 2010), and, in the research setting, factors
such as gender, class, race, age, or language may outweigh the identity

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associated with ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ status at different times during interactions

(Merriam et al. 2001: 412). Thus, proximity to the cultures under study is in flux
and researchers (re)negotiate positions with participants.
In light of poststructuralist notions on identity and language, Norton and
Toohey (2011) highlight three methodological understandings on which post-
structuralist identity researchers frequently rely that undergird my research.
First, researchers’ conclusions are inevitably partial and situated, and reﬂexivity
must be exercised to create research narratives that are more sensitive to issues
of power and positionality (Hamdan 2009; Mosselson 2010; Subreenduth and
Rhee 2010). Second, identity researchers must account for how they and their
participants are placed by structures and practices, and how these positions are
negotiated. Third, the ways in which sociohistorical, political and economic
contexts impact human action and processes such as language learning and
research must be considered. In the case of the research context in Jamaica, the
controversial nature of creole language politics there is a key component in my
own positioning as a researcher.
5 Positioning theory
Davies and Harré (1990) define positioning as “the discursive process whereby
selves are located in conversations as observably and subjectively coherent
participants in jointly produced story lines” (p. 48). It serves as a metaphor for
how individuals are situated (interactive positioning) and situate themselves
(reflexive positioning) within and during an interaction (Van Langenhove and
Harré 1994). Each of the participants in an interaction positions the other while
simultaneously positioning herself, and constructs varied ‘possible selves’ by
shifting positions, at times even contradictorily, during discourse (Davies and
Harré 1990; Harré and Van Langenhove 1991; Wortham 2000).
Positioning theory is a dynamic alternative to role theory that focuses “on
the way in which the discursive practices constitute the speakers and hearers in
certain ways and yet at the same time is a resource through which speakers and
hearers can negotiate new positions” (Davies and Harre 1990: 62). Thus, we can
view ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ as roles that should be reconceptualized as
ephemeral positions that “involve shifts in power, access, or blocking of access,
to certain features of claimed or desired identity” (Davies and Harre 1990: 49).
Recent work in applied linguistics has focused on the issue of positionality,
specifically with respect to qualitative interviewing, led by Talmy and his
colleagues in a special issue of Applied Linguistics (2011) on this topic, as well

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348 Shondel Nero
as a similar special issue of Language in Society (2011) on narratives and inter-

views. Specifically, Talmy and Richards (2011) take a discursive view of the
qualitative research interview conceptualizing it not merely as a data collection
method, but as a socially situated speech event in which interviewer and inter-
viewee co-construct meaning and participate in social practices.
Bamberg (1997), and Wortham (2000) offer insightful theoretical perspec-
tives on positioning with respect to narratives, which are relevant to this study,
as the vignettes show various positionings of both the research participants and
me. Bamberg (1997) takes the view that a narrative is an “act of telling or
“representing” at a particular occasion in the form of a particular story”
(p. 335) and thus takes a performance-based approach to narrative analysis,
where the impact on the audience is an important factor. He proposed three
levels of what he calls narrative positioning – Level 1: How are the characters
positioned in relation to one another within the reported events? Level 2: How
does the speaker position him- or herself to the audience? Level 3: How do
narrators position themselves to themselves? Analysis of the vignettes in this
study relate primarily to level 2 positioning. Wortham (2000) argues that auto-
biographical narrators enact a characteristic type of self through a representa-
tional function by describing themselves in a particular way, and an interactional
function by positioning themselves interactionally through various cues in the
telling of the narrative. Cues include how characters are denoted, the choice of
verbs, and quoted speech, among others. Researchers’ identities are co-con-
structed through these very cues.
5.1 Positioning researcher identities

Researchers who have explored their roles as ‘insiders’ or ‘outsiders’ have
delved into the effect of proximity to the research context on research questions,
access, and quality of data collection and analysis. Traditionally speaking, a so-
called “insider” position, which involves commonalities with the researched
culture and language, and a nuanced understanding of the participants studied
(Martin et al. 1997), has often been deemed advantageous for simplifying access
to the research site and for affording richer descriptions, due to an intimate
understanding of the participants studied (Hamdan 2009; Merriam et al. 2001;
Paechter 2013). On the other hand, “outsider” researchers, unfamiliar with the
research context, have generally been deemed more objective, curious and likely
to pose more profound, provocative research questions. However, the insider/
outsider distinction has been questioned in light of the tendency to reduce these
positions to the simplistic subjectivity-objectivity dichotomy. Mullings (1999)

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contends that insider/outsider boundaries are difficult to defend or sustain.

McCorkel and Myers (2003) assert that the insider/outsider dichotomy is con-
stantly developing and shifting during fieldwork. Other scholars have argued
that the research process itself challenges the insider position and renders all
researchers outsiders (Obasi 2012; Paechter 2013). Furthermore, Subreenduth
and Rhee (2010) aptly pose the question “How do we find the dividing lines
for insider and outsider?” (p. 334). The terms are clearly more scalar and
complex than dichotomous. Positioning theory has helped me to unpack the
insider/outsider conundrum in a more nuanced way, and several studies on
insider/outsider interrogation have drawn on positionality to show the complex
ways in which researchers negotiate their identities.
6 Insider/outsider studies
Over the past thirty years, a large body of work has examined the extent to
which insider/outsider researcher identities and positioning have affected the
process and outcomes of ethnographic research. These studies collectively point
to three recurring themes: (1) The complex discursive work done by qualitative
researchers to shape the research context and to report their stories through
their narrative positioning; (2) The tensions or discomfort experienced in doing/
being different identities, and in the process of reflexivity; (3) The ethical and
interactional dilemmas caused by the research process itself. These themes are
not mutually exclusive. A few of these studies are discussed here:
In Mullings’s (1999) interview study of managers and workers in information
processing companies in Jamaica, she draws upon her own experiences as a
Black woman of British Jamaican heritage working at an American university to
examine the ways in which intercultural perceptions and interactions influenced
both the data collection and interpretation processes. Specifically, she describes
how relationships of power and positionality played out through the interview
process. Mullings worked at creating what she called positional spaces, i.e.,
areas where she could engender a level of trust (albeit temporary) by drawing
on the situated knowledge of both parties in the interview encounter. However,
she found that working on what she wanted to appear to be to her interlocutors
often involved selectively drawing upon (and even hiding) parts of her identity,
which raised ethical issues. Moreover, her feminist perspective did not always
align harmoniously with the female workers and managers she interviewed,
thereby creating tensions in her doing/being various identities. Other research-
ers have shown how multiple researcher identities (with varying degrees of

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350 Shondel Nero
“insiderness” or “outsiderness”) are discursively constructed in the course of

their work and in the retelling of their experiences (e.g., Norton and Early’s
(2011) work as international researchers in Uganda, and Giampapa’s (2011) study
of the LGBT Italian Canadian community).
Jacobs-Huey (2002) study as an African American anthropologist research-
ing the controversial topic of “hair” in her own community highlights the
tensions felt by native scholars doing ethnographic work. Her cultural authen-
ticity as an African American was tested by a research participant’s asking her
how she wore her hair. She also felt compelled to use African American
Vernacular English (AAVE) with her participants to prove her “communicative
competence,” in the community, while simultaneously feeling the pressure to
“translate” the African American culture for the academic community. In a
sense, Jacobs-Huey’s tension was between being a ‘good African American’
and a ‘good academic,’ echoing the identity tensions expressed by Mullings.
Similarly, in Creese, Bhatt, and Martin’s (2009) study in multilingual comple-
mentary schools in the UK, Bhatt expressed the ethical and interactional dilem-
mas he felt as a Gujurati speaker between representing and researching his
community.
Hamdan (2009), in her study of the discourses around, and experiences of,
Arab Muslim Canadian women, poignantly describes what she calls the “reflex-
ivity of discomfort.” She characterizes reflexivity as “situating oneself in the
social space from which one comes and considering the lenses through which
one views one’s position as well as considering how the research topic relates to
one’s self” (p. 379). Hamdan admits that reflexivity exposed aspects of her
identity as an Arab Muslim woman researcher affiliated with a Western
University that she did not reveal in her research (hence, discomfort), but argues
that only by stepping out of one’s (insider) comfort zone, and persevering in the
face of discomfort can one get a complete view of the insider perspective.
Relatedly, Lee and Simon-Maeda (2006) through critical reflexivity revealed
how their respective racial identities were brought to bear in researching their
“own” or “the other” with respect to Asian women.
Similar to the researchers above, Hult (2014) described the ways in which he
navigated tensions inherent in his insider/outsider researcher identities. As a
fluently bilingual Swedish-American researcher who grew up in the United
States but spent extended periods throughout his youth in Sweden, Hult found
that he had to engage in what he called acts of “covert bilingualism”5 when
5 Hult (citing Baetens Beardsmore (1986), and Sawyer (1978)), defines covert bilingualism as “a
socially imposed attitudinal disposition to conceal one’s knowledge of a language, often with
the purpose of appearing to be monolingual” (p. 66).

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conducting research in Sweden. He argues that such acts are about managing
one’s subject position through language choices, a discursive strategy helpfully
available to bilinguals. Hult (2014: 65) notes that navigating identity tensions
requires “adeptness in the ability to discursively shape the context of interaction
as well as one’s position within it, what Kramsch (2006) terms ‘symbolic com-
petence’.” Thus, through narrative vignettes of his daily interactions in his
fieldwork, he analyzed his own language choices in the moment of action as
“social actions of symbolic competence with respect to dual insider/outsider
positionality” (p. 69), comparable to Jacobs-Huey’s use of AAVE. Hult’s actions
of symbolic competence are similar to Mullings’s efforts to create positional
spaces in her ethnographic work. Overall, the nuanced identity and positioning
work of the researchers in these studies provide a useful frame for my research
in Jamaica.
7 My identity tensions
My Fulbright experience in Jamaica for a nine-month long stay (August 2011–May
2012) was my first time returning to the West Indies, not as a visitor, but as a
researcher, for an extended period or time. Like Hult (2014), I was an expatriate
researcher – two subject positions that scholars like Paechter (2013), and Obasi
(2012) would argue rendered me very much an “outsider” to the Jamaican context.
I’ve also lived for more than three decades in North America, and although I had
previously visited Jamaica twice for brief periods, I had neither lived nor studied
there before. Yet, my self-identification as a West Indian, although not Jamaican,
gave me a felt sense of being an “insider” as described by Paechter (2013) – i.e.,
having commonalities with the researched culture. Very similar to my own coun-
try of birth, I could relate to Jamaica’s tropical climate, the culture writ large, the
joie de vivre and warmth of the people, the food, and the legacy of plantation
slavery and British colonization, manifested in a rigidly socially stratified society,
in a British education system, and indexed in the same kind of linguistic marked-
ness tied to social identities, as obtains in Guyana. With respect to being an
insider/outsider, then, I was at once both and neither.
8 Language and education in Jamaica

In Jamaica, like Guyana, two dominant forms of language, Jamaican Creole (JC)
(aka “Patois”) and Standard Jamaican English (SJE), have co-existed, with the

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352 Shondel Nero
latter variety being the official language and carrying more prestige (Alleyne
1980; Carrington 2001; Christie 2001) and JC being stigmatized. In everyday
language use in Jamaica, “pure” forms of JC or SJE are rare. Rather, there is a
seamless mixing of both forms along a continuum of speech varieties ranging
bidirectionally from the basilect (most conservative creole) to the mesolect
(mid-range mix of Creole and English) to the acrolect (a local standardized
form of English) (DeCamp 1971). Still, most of the population is JC dominant,
but often engage in what is currently termed translanguaging (García and Wei
2014).
Attitudes towards JC, however, are complicated and often ambivalent, char-
acterized by Kachru and Nelson (2001) as schizophrenic. For example, although
there has been greater tolerance for the use of JC in the public sphere over the
last 20 years as a marker of true Jamaican identity, especially among the young
(Jamaican Language Unit and UWI 2005), the role and treatment of JC in school
are still fiercely contested. Also, it is not unusual to hear Jamaicans denigrating
JC in Jamaican Creole! Still, despite the complex linguistic landscape in Jamaica,
SJE remains the primary medium of instruction, and developing proficiency in
SJE as a basis for success in school and beyond is taken as a given. The question
then becomes how best to accomplish this goal in a Creole-dominant environ-
ment where (a) most people speak a language they don’t write, and write a
language they don’t speak; and (b) a significant disparity in academic perfor-
mance among different types of schools continues to be cause for concern
among Jamaican educators and the public at large (Ministry of Education
(MOE) 2011).
9 The study
I arrived in Jamaica with the intention of conducting a critical ethnographic
study of the interpretation and implementation of a Language Education Policy
(LEP) drafted by the Jamaican MOE in 2001 in response to the persistently poor
performance in school-based language and literacy among many Jamaican
children. The goal of the draft LEP is to “provide direction for the treatment of
language issues in the Jamaican educational context, in order to improve
language and literacy competencies” (LEP, p. 6). The draft LEP proposes an
approach of transitional bilingualism to address the language situation in
Jamaican schools. It takes as its premise that Jamaica is a bilingual country

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with SJE and JC being the two languages in operation, with a fluidity of usage
between the two varieties. Specifically, the key principles of the draft LEP are:
(1) acknowledge that Jamaica is a bilingual country and maintain SJE as the official
language; (2) promote oral use of the home language in the early primary and secondary
years, using bilingual teaching strategies, while facilitating the development of literacy in
SJE; (3) employ strategies of immersion in SJE through wide use of literature, content-
based language teaching, and modeling the target language in the classroom; (4) ensure
that children are competent in the use of SJE and reading at grade level by the end of grade
four (LEP, pp. 23–25).
My goal was to investigate teachers’ awareness of the LEP; the interpretation

and implementation of the policy in different types of schools; and the possible
relationship among teachers’ instructional practices, students’ language prac-
tices, and academic achievement in different types of schools.
However, upon my arrival, I learned that the draft LEP was not formally
ratified owing to a refusal by the Jamaican Parliament to accept its central
premise that Jamaica is a bilingual country. This means giving JC the status of
a language like SJE, a position that was (a) not accepted by many in Parliament;
(b) politically contentious; and (c) likely to spark public outrage, all of which
reflect the colonial history, attitudes towards, and controversial place of, JC in
schools. The draft LEP was therefore never officially disseminated to schools,
but remains on the website of the MOE, with little to no knowledge of its
existence among classroom teachers. This is a very concrete example of
Norton and Toohey’s (2011) point that sociohistorical and political contexts
impact the research process. Despite this setback, I chose to use the LEP as a
tool to help uncover teachers’ ideologies with regard to language teaching and
learning in a Creole-speaking environment.
9.1 Data collection

I collected data over a nine-month period through weekly classroom observa-
tions, interviews with teachers and students, questionnaires, and curricular
documents in three Jamaican schools – one inner city, low SES primary school
in Kingston, the capital city; one primary junior high school in a semirural area
just outside of Kingston; and one high performing traditional academic second-
ary school in Kingston. These represent the range of schools Jamaican students
typically attend. In each school, I observed two English Language Arts (ELA)
teachers and six focal students (three in each class) for the entire nine months.

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354 Shondel Nero
I also interviewed the principal of each of the three schools, as well as three
language and literacy educators who were involved in developing the LEP.
9.2 Shifting goals … or goals forcibly shifted
My first adjustment as a qualitative researcher was to shift my goals (or rather,

my goals were forcibly shifted). Instead of looking to examine language educa-
tion policy implementation (no longer possible without a formal policy in place),
I decided to observe teachers’ instructional and language practices and attitudes
towards JC and SJE, in the three schools. I began by making a photocopy of the
draft LEP for each of the six teachers to read, after which I interviewed them to
ask their opinions on it. My interviews with research participants along with my
observation of teachers’ instructional practices over the course of the school year
created a number of interactions that discursively constructed and tested my
identities and positionings as a researcher, three of which are discussed in the
following sections, employing discourse analysis. My telling and analysis of
these vignettes draws on Bamberg’s (1997) notion of narrative positioning, spe-
cifically Level 2 positioning; Wortham’s (2000) interactive positioning; and
Bucholtz and Hall’s (2004) tactics of intersubjectivity.
10 Vignette 1: Testing my beliefs

It was early in the school year – late September 2011. I was sitting in the staff
room at the traditional academic high school chatting with Mr. J., a ninth grade
teacher whom I had just interviewed about his views of the draft LEP and about
JC generally. Mr. J. is a bespectacled, neatly dressed, “proper,” middle class
West Indian man, who took pride in speaking British English and made no
bones about stating his disdain for JC in our taperecorded interview, consistent
with the prevailing Discourse on JC. With the taperecorder now turned off,
signaling the end of our formal interview, Mr. J. turned to me and asked in a
somewhat serious tone, “Dr. Nero, what do you really6 think about Creole? I
want your opinion not as a researcher but your honest feeling. And you are one
of us, so I’m just curious.” (fieldnotes excerpt 9-28-11). I felt trapped by the
question. Mr. J. discursively positioned me in a bifurcated manner – at once the
outsider (the researcher) and “one of us,” an interactive cue that I took to mean
6 Bolded words are Mr. J.’s emphasis.

Authenticated
an insider – a fellow, “properly educated” West Indian.7 By invoking the use of

“us,” Mr. J was employing what Bucholz and Hall (2004) call a tactic of inter-
subjectivity termed adequation, i.e., a strategic pursuit of socially recognized
sameness within an interaction. In the moment, I felt his interactive positioning
of me (Wortham 2000) was loaded, the bifurcation unsettling. It seemed to me
as if my researcher identity was being pitted against my cultural (West Indian)
identity, and I had to choose one. Mr. J. discounted my researcher role during
our taperecorded interview as a fake performance of sorts,8 one that did not
illustrate my real or honest feeling. “What did I do or say in my interactions with
Mr. J up to that point that would have made him question my honesty?” I
wondered. Did he assume that I had a scripted, somewhat ivory tower view of
creole as a linguistic researcher, which I was taught to perform, but that my
“true” feeling (i.e., one that he probably believed subscribed to the common
“insider” view of disparaging JC use in school) was lurking somewhere beneath
the surface? These were the questions that instinctively occurred to me. But what
was the “right” answer to his politically loaded question? I wasn’t sure. I felt
that if I gave an outright defense of JC, given Mr. J.’s stated disdain for it, I would
be potentially setting up an adversarial relationship with him – an unhelpful
scenario for me as a researcher given that I was at the beginning of my research
study, and expected to be an observer in his classroom for the rest of the
academic year. At the same time, I needed to unpack his assumptions. So, I
tried to reposition myself reflexively as the nuanced interlocutor, a narrative
positioning that allowed me to push back against what I perceived as a mono-
lithic assumption of us while acknowledging widely held views about JC, and at
the same time respond to the implied charge against my being a less-than-
honest researcher. So I fumbled for an answer that went something like this,
“Well, I know that many people feel strongly about Creole use in school, and I
understand that; it’s the same here like back home.9 But, you know, attitudes
are changing, especially with young people, so I try to deal with all of these
issues in my research.” Somewhat inartfully, I was trying to acknowledge Mr. J.’s
and many others’ negative views of Creole, and even accept my ascribed insider
identity (at least temporarily) to show understanding of how those views came
about (“it’s the same here like back home”). At the same time, I wanted to point
7 When I first met Mr. J, we had a long unrecorded conversation about my West Indian
background, my upbringing and British colonial education in Guyana.
8 Another tactic of intersubjectivity known as – illegitimation (Bucholtz and Hall 2004) – i.e.,
the process of removing or denying power.
9 Here I find myself, ironically, employing the tactic of adequation as well, a strategic decision
to build alignment with Mr. J. for reasons cited above.

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356 Shondel Nero
out to him that those views are not static (“attitudes are changing”), and that I
wrestle with the complexity of these issues in my research. So, my positions as
insider and researcher are intricately intertwined. I deliberately avoided telling
Mr. J. that attitude change was documented in a 2005 study by the Jamaican
Language Unit at the host university because I was trying to avoid reference to
academic research on creoles towards which he had expressed skepticism dur-
ing our interview. Ironically, I played into the very bifurcation that I found
troubling. Mr. J’s response to me was simply, “I see,” which left me with little
to say. Was he politely disagreeing or agreeing with me? I’m still unsure. His
response ended that particular exchange from which I sensed that I would be
engaged in many more discursive dances throughout the course of my research
study, and that I had to be prepared to negotiate them.
10.1 Evolving views and positionings – participants’ and mine

As my research continued throughout the course of the academic year, my
interviews and informal conversations with teachers, students, principals, and
LEP developers yielded a range of views on the language education policy, and
on JC and English more generally. Teachers’ views, for example, ranged from
rejecting, to tolerating, to accepting, to embracing JC. These views, however,
were not absolute. With each interview (there were three for each teacher) the
discussions about JC and English, particularly their use in school, became more
nuanced, often times showing teachers’ own ambivalence towards the issue,
reflecting what Kachru and Nelson (2001) call “attitudinal schizophrenia”
(p. 14). It was as if as they became more comfortable with me, they felt safe to
express a wider and more complex range of views on a highly controversial
subject. Among the six teacher participants, only Mr. J. consistently held to the
view of rejecting JC use in all domains.10 Thus, I saw how time is a critical
variable in trust building and positioning in ethnographic research. For my part,
as I spent more time in the research context, I became simultaneously more
understanding of the participants’ range of language attitudes, and more fru-
strated by the sociohistorical context that created it. Such is the paradox of
research in a creole environment.
10 These diverse and paradoxical views on JC can be traced to its strong links to a dual identity
constructed in former colonial contexts; the persistent pejorative Discourse on JC in polite social
circles; the social class, education, and training of individual teachers; and the changing
attitudes towards more acceptance of JC use in the public sphere.

Authenticated
11 Vignette 2: Interview with Dr. Z: Defending the

profession
It’s late November 2011, and I am in midst of an interview with Dr. Z., one of
three developers of the LEP. Dr. Z. is also a professor at the host university,
where I was a visiting lecturer. So, by the time of this interview he and I had
come to know and trust each other as colleagues over a three-month period and
this was evident in his forthrightness in expressing his views with me. In this
part of the interview, we’re discussing the sociolinguistic and political climate at
the time the LEP was being developed. Dr. Z. noted that there were dichotomous
views of English – formal society saying that it is a language that needs to be
learned to be globally competitive, and another section of society saying the
language is colonial and oppressive. At the same time, support for JC was found
in popular culture (dancehall music lyrics and tourism) and in academia where
the Jamaican Language Unit,11 housed in the host university’s linguistics depart-
ment, created a standardized orthography for JC. The following excerpt is from
the part of our interview where Dr. Z. was questioning the creation of that
orthographic system by linguists at the university:
1. Z: Let me give you an example, I had a student quoting her Creole

speakers in her Ph.D. dissertation …
2. Me: Right
3. Z: … and it was suggested that she standardize the orthography by taking
it to the language unit, and when she did that and took it back, you
could not recognize the language because it was – it was actually a
deep, a really deep version of Jamaican Creole; it did not capture
exactly what that person, what the person said. I speak Jamaican
Creole in a different way than someone maybe from another area …
4. Me: Sure, there is variation within Creole
5. Z: Right, and personally I don’t think that orthography caters to that kind
of variation.
6. Me: Right, but that’s the inherent paradox of standardization, like once you
standardize something in an orthography then you, to some degree,
remove variation, right?
7. Z: Absolutely.
11 The Jamaican Language Unit, housed within the linguistics department at the host univer-
sity, specializes in research on “Jamaican” – the term they use for Creole.

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358 Shondel Nero
8. Me: That’s the dilemma, once something becomes standard or printed

literacy, um, it sort of homogenizes it in a way.
9. Z: But not only homogenizes it; I consider it as a hegemony,12 too, a kind
of control; who is participating in this decision making process?
10. Me: mm hmm
11. Z: It’s the academics, the persons from the academy.
12. Me: Right, right
13. Z: Can’t we create something that, that might cater more to the masses of
Jamaicans. …
14. Me: Right, right
15. Z: … than the Cassidy model, which is the colonial structure? (0.5) and so
it could be viewed as one structure of control replacing another. I’m
not sure about the processes they went through to decide that this is
the orthography we are selecting….
16. Me: right
17. Z: … but I have no evidence that there was consultation among the
masses of Jamaican Creole speakers as to how to proceed with this..
18. Me: and then on the other hand, on their side, they would argue, well you
need a linguist to do this – people who are trained in language
structure and syntax and all that, so that would probably be the
defense.
19. Z: It’s a defense but, it is also a control mechanism.
20. Me: Right exactly, exactly. So, talk a little bit about your involvement in the
LEP; you already began to say that you were commissioned as part of a
literacy initiative being a literacy educator …
In this exchange, Dr. Z. positions himself as a critic (Bamberg’s (1997) Level 2

positioning), not of English or Creole, but of academics, including a department
within his own institution, which he accuses of “hegemony” (line 9) for creating
a Jamaican Creole orthography without the input of the masses. By extension,
he positions himself as someone with authority and power, aligning himself
with, and giving voice to, the ostensibly disempowered and disregarded Creole-
speaking masses who were not consulted on the issue (line 17 – “I have no
evidence that there was consultation among the masses of Jamaican Creole
speakers as to how to proceed with this”). He also injects a counter-Discourse
to the normal devaluing of JC speakers by arguing for their input in academic
research.
12 Bolded words were stressed by Dr. Z.

Authenticated
For most of this exchange (lines 1–17), I listened to Dr. Z.’s argument, not
wanting to inject my view too forcefully into what appeared as an intramural
fight between him and another department within the university; hence, most of
my responses, except for my comment on the paradox of standardizing Creole
orthography, were short, polite cues of agreement (“right,” “sure,” etc.) in order
to give him space to develop his storyline. But I perceived his broad swipe of
academics in the context of this exchange as implicating all linguists engaged in
creole language research, even if not intentionally. I could have positioned
myself as excepted from the charge, in the same way that Dr. Z. excepted or
distanced himself from academics by speaking of them in the third person (line
13 – “it’s the academics”).13 But in the moment, I felt compelled to defend the
profession. Thus, I mounted a defense of linguists (line 18) by invoking their
expertise in language structure as the basis for creating a JC orthography. At
least temporarily, then, I reassigned authority to linguists by challenging Dr. Z.’s
criticism of them. Notice, though, that I, too, speak of linguists in the third
person (line 18 – on “their” side, “they” would argue, etc.) as if I’m not part of
the group, so that I appear to not be taking the charge personally. This gives me
the discursive space to assert a position of authority without implicating myself.
Dr. Z.’s retort “It’s a defense, but it is also a control mechanism” (line 19)
suggested his rejection of my defense. I was left with two choices – offer a
rebuttal to his rejection, or accept it and move on. Given that the focus of this
interview was on Dr. Z.’s role in developing the LEP, I chose the latter option,
and therefore redirected the conversation to the LEP (line 20) in order to advance
the research agenda. In the end, my researcher identity prevailed.
12 Vignette 3: (Re)presenting my research

It was early May 2012. I was almost at the end of my Fulbright tenure in Jamaica
when I was asked by the Ministry of Education (MOE) to meet with a high level
Ministry official (Ms. G.) to discuss my findings and later to write a report to the
MOE. I should not have been surprised by the request. After all, the MOE did grant
me permission to conduct research in Jamaican schools, and stated that they
expected a final report of my findings, as most institutions would. Still, as a
language researcher focused on JC speakers, the request to meet a high level
official from the Ministry made me somewhat nervous. I was fully aware of the
contentious politics of JC in schools. Recall that the LEP that I went to Jamaica to
13 Bucholz and Hall (2004) call this a tactic of distinction – a mechanism where salient
difference is produced.

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360 Shondel Nero
research was never ratified by the government, due to its acknowledgment of JC as

a language, and still remains a relatively unknown document to most stakeholders
in education. How, then, as a researcher, do I present my findings on language
practices in Jamaican schools to a government that did not ratify the very LEP on
account of its unwillingness to recognize Creole? Moreover, I had never written a
report to a foreign government Ministry before, so I had to be sure that I struck the
“right” tone politically for an audience who held power while staying true to my
findings. There was also the question of my impending face-to-face meeting with
Ms. G. – someone in a high level position of power in the government. How do I
prepare for the possibility of another question about my real feelings on JC, along
the lines of Mr. J’s question? These were my concerns prior to meeting Ms. G.
However, my concerns were mitigated by a sense of confidence and comfort
that I had developed as a researcher over nine months in the research environ-
ment. Having met a few MOE officials and other educators at informal gather-
ings in the course of the year, I had begun to develop professional relationships
with some of them, albeit temporary. Those informal interactions allowed a
trusting space to develop an inclusive discourse through which I could share
my work. I had also come to accept the situated positionings of me by research
participants, educators, and the local population more generally – I was at once
the Fulbright researcher from the U.S. (the outsider), welcomed and politely
accommodated to various degrees in schools and other formal domains; the
Guyanese/West Indian authenticated by my place of birth, and relative levels of
cultural and linguistic “insider” knowledge; and the newest “family member” to
a vibrant expatriate Guyanese community living in Jamaica.
When I met Ms. G. at the MOE, I sought to leverage those multiple identities
to my advantage. Dressed in a business suit, speaking standardized English, and
evoking a no-nonsense manner, Ms. G. welcomed me into the MOE’s conference
room, along with a small group of teachers and administrators. Her opening line
set the tone, “Welcome, Dr. Nero, we are very anxious to hear about your
research here in our schools.” Ms. G. positioned me as the researcher, granting
me, at least in that moment, the authority to share my findings with an audience
that was there to listen. Before exercising that authority, though, I began by first
creating a positive frame for the conversation, stating how much I had enjoyed
my stay in Jamaica, and how much the country and people reminded me of
“back home,” the kind of gracious statement one would be expected to make as
one is about to leave a research site. In that moment, I was attempting to create
what Mullings (1999) calls a positional space of comfort, and I did so by drawing
upon my Guyanese/West Indian identity (comparing Jamaica to “back home”) to
lighten the mood and firmly position myself as already part of the group as
culturally defined, a tactic of strategic essentialism (Bucholtz and Hall 2004).

Authenticated
Still, the formality of the context reminded me that I was a guest (an outsider to
the group) being welcomed for my linguistic expertise and the information I was
about to share, not for my cultural self-identification. This is a good example of
De Fina’s (2011) notion of how situational roles (in this case “guest” or “language
education expert”) and macro roles (here, my ethnic self-identification as a West
Indian) shape an interaction.
I began by explaining to the group that my research questions had changed
on account of the LEP not being disseminated to schools. I deliberately avoided
the politically charged reason(s) for why this was the case, although one of the
teachers in the group interjected, “Well, we all know why.” I politely acknowl-
edged the comment, but moved on to explain that my research became an
ethnography of what actually transpired in different types of Jamaican schools
in terms of language use (English and Creole) by teachers and students and
teachers’ instructional practices. I told the group that I observed several instruc-
tional practices that created what Shohamy (2006) calls a de facto LEP, while
others unwittingly aligned with some of the key principles of the LEP.
Accordingly, I recommended to the MOE that the LEP be updated to address
current language education needs, maintaining a stance of transitional bilingual-
ism, and be disseminated in schools, with appropriate teacher training for its
implementation. Rather than directly respond to my findings and recommenda-
tions, Ms. G. mostly lamented the ongoing literacy problems among many
Jamaican students and stated that, in the end, students must learn to read and
write in SJE regardless of whether or not they speak JC. My response to her
statement was that the goal of literacy in SJE was consistent with the goal of
the policy. Thus, I positioned myself as aligned with her in wanting the same
literacy outcomes for students while subtly pushing back against a perceived
dismissiveness in the Discourse around the LEP. Our meeting ended on a cordial
note by her asking me to send a final written report to the MOE upon my return to
New York, which I promised to do. I left the meeting feeling partially assured that
my researcher identity was not compromised, as I presented my findings truth-
fully and carefully, but partially wondering how much of what I said was “heard.”
13 Discussion
13.1 Negotiating identities/positions in language research
First, the foregoing vignettes illustrate how researcher identities and position-
ings are implicated in every step of the research process from choosing a topic to

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362 Shondel Nero
crafting research questions, to collecting and analyzing data, to interacting with

participants, to presenting one’s findings. Dryden (2013) notes correctly that the
qualitative researcher “constructs an identity that arises from the nature of the
research itself and the process of doing it” (p. 43). This is clearly my case, as
my researcher identity emerged from a starting point of advocacy for Creole-
speaking students in schools, and has proceeded against a backdrop of a
stubbornly colonial Discourse that runs counter to such advocacy, necessitating
various nuanced positionings to accomplish my goals.
In the case of ethnographic work, identities and positionings are tested and
evolve in ongoing interactions with participants over time, as seen in my inter-
actions with various research participants in Jamaica. Where research involves
the researcher’s own community, negotiating identities is particularly tricky if,
as Obasi (2012) and Paechter (2013) suggest, the research process itself renders
all researchers as outsiders, even if the researcher self-identifies as a member of
the community. The researcher who hails from the researched community,
especially Creole-speaking ones that are linguistically marked, must simulta-
neously negotiate the politics of: (a) linguistic identification (e.g., how to navi-
gate her own and the community’s ambivalence of dual Creole/English
identities); (b) representation (i.e., representing the group – the heightened
tendency towards an ascribed essentialism that is often attributed to so-called
“insider” researchers by the community). I certainly felt the pressure to conform
to the prevailing negative “insider” Discourse on JC in my interactions with Mr. J.
even as I tried to maintain some researcher distance. Like Bhatt in Creese et al.’s
(2009) study, I was caught between researching and representing the commu-
nity; (c) interrogation (critically examining the group, and dealing with the
reflexivity of discomfort (Hamdan 2009)).
Second, insider/outsider identity tensions must be managed by the
researcher both reflexively and discursively. For example, I was constantly
aware of my own privilege as a Fulbright scholar (an American “outsider”
identity) in the Jamaican research context, which gave me, at least for the
duration of the scholarship, a degree of power and access to participants that
could be selectively engaged. At the same time, that power and access are not
absolute; they have to be discursively managed at different points in time
through fluid positionings in order to cope with the situation at hand (Harré
and Van Langenhove 1999). For instance, when Mr. J. questioned my honesty as
a researcher, while reminding me that I was an insider (“you’re one of us”), my
power in that moment was diminished, and my continued access to him as a
participant was contingent upon how well I could discursively manage to
reposition myself as a trustworthy researcher from the community who recog-
nizes both sides of a contentious issue.

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Language and identity researchers must not only discursively manage their
own identities and positionings but also those of their participants, as it might
affect their research. When Dr. Z positioned himself as a critic of his peers’
creation of a Creole orthography, and of academics in general, I reflexively
positioned myself as a linguist and mounted a defense of the work that we are
trained to do, but quickly redirected the conversation to his role as an LEP
developer, a politically safer footing for my research.
13.2 Researching politically charged topics
Although one can argue that no research is politically neutral, language and
identity research is highly politically charged, precisely because language is a
major signifier of identity. Creole language politics, emanating as it does from
linguistically contested colonial contexts, is particularly highly charged, espe-
cially given the sharp socioeconomic stratification, indexed through language,
that obtains in many creole/colonial contexts. In Jamaica and other Anglophone
Caribbean islands, similar to what Sandhu (2014) describes in India (another
postcolonial context), societal Discourses construct English, not the mass ver-
nacular, JC, as the language of power, education, opportunity, and economic
advancement. English is, in fact, cultural capital, and has strong material value
in these contexts. Thus, everyone has a strong investment in it, especially those
from the lower socioeconomic classes who see their only hope out of poverty
through English education. It is unsurprising, then, that a LEP that gives validity
to JC is suspect, and so are researchers of such policies. Therefore it behooves
researchers of and/or from these contexts to be prepared for such politics. Here
are a few suggestions:
– Acknowledge one’s own subjectivity and multiple, often conflicting, iden-
tities, especially if raised in a creole environment, consistent with Norton
and Toohey’s (2011) point that identity work is inherently partial and
situated.
– Be prepared to do a high level of discursive work to manage identity
tensions.
– Recognize that creole language politics is inherently contradictory – there’s
a simultaneous celebration and denigration of Creole, especially by the
speakers themselves, even as they self-identify as English speakers. This
contradictory attitude must be addressed in the research narrative, as it
permeates participants’ positionings.
– Creole English research, and all language education research that seeks to
validate stigmatized languages, and promote equity for linguistically

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364 Shondel Nero
marginalized communities, is often conducted against a backdrop of stan-

dard language ideology (SLI) in schools. The researcher must attend to her
power and privileged position that allows her to challenge SLI while the
researched community is often heavily invested in it.
13.3 Reflexivity and insider/outsider researchers

Jacobs-Huey (2002) argues, “being reflexive enables researchers to critically
consider their own cultural biases and negotiate various ways of seeing while
investigating and translating cultures” (p. 791). For insider/outsider researchers
like myself, this is a delicate process, as we face the authenticity trap (or trope)
of being expected to maintain a cultural connection to the community that
appears genuine, indexed through a host of dispositions including language,
while keeping enough distance to examine cultural biases. One’s “insiderness”
is never a given. It is always subject to negotiation. In my case as an English-
dominant speaker researching the language education of Creole-dominant
speakers, I’m acutely aware of the ways in which my proficiency in standardized
English has given me relative privilege as an insider in the Anglophone
Caribbean community. But English plays paradoxical roles in creole contexts –
it is the language most “insider” researchers use to investigate and “translate”
creole language politics to the outside world even as the language itself is
implicated in Discourses that render it both an oppressive and liberating force
in that very politics.
Insider/outsider researchers’ reflexivity is also strongly tested in qualitative
interviews where the researcher’s language and identity are central in
co-constructing those speech events. If as Sandhu (2014) notes, “Discourses and
positions regarding languages are constructed in talk” (p. 44), then nowhere is this
more evident than in interviews on creole language issues, where both researchers
and participants are gauging each other’s ideologies and attitudes towards
creoles and their speakers, a central component of creole language research.
Still, analysis of this process is healthy for reflexivity in qualitative research.
14 Conclusion
The critically reflexive examination of my researcher identities and positionings
in this study, as illustrated by the vignettes discussed above, reflects the extent
to which my research has been shaped by my own biography and the politics of

Authenticated
the research topic itself (the place of Caribbean Creole English in schools), which
has heightened the insider/outsider tension. Jamaica offers a fresh context for
examining insider/outsider positionality, as creole contexts are relatively under-
researched on this subject. Positionality tensions have necessitated strategic
discursive work on my part as an applied linguistic qualitative researcher in
order to maximize the richness of data in my ethnographic research. The three
vignettes emanating from research on the Jamaican LEP reveal the perils and
possibilities of critical reflexivity and researching politically charged topics,
especially when they directly implicate the researcher’s language and identity.
Still, the situated, partial, and discursive nature of qualitative research gives
ample room for productive language and identity work, and bodes well for those
of us who are looking to expand the theoretical and methodological under-
standings of such work through critically reflexive interrogation.
Acknowledgments: Thanks to the Fulbright Scholarship Board for funding this

research study in Jamaica. My gratitude to colleagues at the host university in
Jamaica, to the teachers, students, and principals at the three participating
schools, as well as to the developers of the LEP without whom this study
would not have been possible. My appreciation to NYU doctoral student,
Jacqueline Aiello, for sharing experiences of being an insider/outsider
researcher. Finally, thanks to Creole English speakers everywhere and to the
West Indian community for providing me with language practices to research.
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368 Shondel Nero
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Note: A version of this article was presented as a plenary speech at the AAAL 2015 Conference
in Toronto, Canada.
Bionote
Shondel Nero
Shondel Nero is Associate Professor and Program Director of Multilingual Multicultural Studies
at New York University. She has authored three books and several articles on the education of
speakers of Caribbean Creole English, and other World Englishes. Her most recent book
(co-authored with Dohra Ahmad) is Vernaculars in the classroom: Paradoxes, pedagogy,
possibilities (Routledge 2014).

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Language, identity, and insider/outsider positionality in Caribbean Creole

Article in Applied Linguistics Review · September 2015

Students' writing in creole-speaking communities View project

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Abstract: This article is a critically reflexive interrogation of the researcher’s

Keywords: Caribbean Creole English, Jamaican Creole, researcher identities,

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and (re)presenting our work. In that vein, drawing on my biography as well as

composed of distinctive ways of speaking/listening and often too writing/reading coupled

It is important to note that in the Anglophone Caribbean,1 there’s been an

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coupled with a persistent disparaging of its speakers, which will be discussed

3.1 Early language socialization2

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was socialized into being a predominantly standardized English speaker,

3.2 Language and identity in colonial/creole contexts

One of the most palpable legacies of British colonization is the prevailing

3.3 Choosing a research topic or a research topic emerges …

3 All names of participants in this paper are pseudonyms.

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class. As someone who self-identifies as a native speaker of English, I, too, was

3.4 Staking out my researcher position(ing)

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applied linguist, a teacher educator, a teacher, a Guyanese/West Indian, an

4 Poststructuralism and identity

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associated with ‘insider’ or ‘outsider’ status at different times during interactions

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as a similar special issue of Language in Society (2011) on narratives and inter-

5.1 Positioning researcher identities

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contends that insider/outsider boundaries are difficult to defend or sustain.

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“insiderness” or “outsiderness”) are discursively constructed in the course of

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8 Language and education in Jamaica

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My goal was to investigate teachers’ awareness of the LEP; the interpretation

9.1 Data collection

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9.2 Shifting goals … or goals forcibly shifted

My first adjustment as a qualitative researcher was to shift my goals (or rather,

10 Vignette 1: Testing my beliefs

6 Bolded words are Mr. J.’s emphasis.

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an insider – a fellow, “properly educated” West Indian.7 By invoking the use of

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10.1 Evolving views and positionings – participants’ and mine

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11 Vignette 2: Interview with Dr. Z: Defending the

1. Z: Let me give you an example, I had a student quoting her Creole

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8. Me: That’s the dilemma, once something becomes standard or printed

In this exchange, Dr. Z. positions himself as a critic (Bamberg’s (1997) Level 2

12 Bolded words were stressed by Dr. Z.

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12 Vignette 3: (Re)presenting my research

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research was never ratified by the government, due to its acknowledgment of JC as

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13.1 Negotiating identities/positions in language research