Dr. Stephanie Power-Carter, Ohio State University
“I’m a firm believer that language and how we use language determines how we act, and how we act then determines our lives and other people’s lives.” – Ntozake Shange
In 2017, in a CDAVE blog post entitled What’s your context’s context? Green helped us ponder the various ways that contexts can be realized in and across the field of literacy, and how contexts can have implications for our scholarship. I continue to consider Green’s (2017) discussion on contexts. Particularly, how literacy scholars can capture context(s) through “the social construction of everyday life: people and their actions (2017).” Comparably, in another CDAVE Blog post, On Languaging, Bloome (2017) also asks us to consider the “particularities of everyday life.” He writes:
It also strikes me that these locations of languaging challenge definitions of personhood that are limiting and hierarchically structured around language, culture, and history. Yet, it strikes me that there is something more to all of this ‘languaging.’ Perhaps there is an opportunity here to use the construct of languaging to foreground and value the particularities of the everyday lives of “ordinary” people (p. 2).
I concur with Bloome, that perhaps there is an opportunity here. As a discourse analysis scholar with an intersectional and interdisciplinary background, lately, I find myself reeling as I come to terms with the particularities of everyday life, the evolving and shifting contexts around me, and the ontological shifts that I feel occurring between language and languaging. These shifts are inundated with meaning and have tremendous implications for my scholarly contributions, the lived experiences and personhood of the people with whom I collaborate and care, as well as my own lived experiences.
I realize that these tectonic, contextual, macro, and micro shifts are attempting to shape and reshape not only how I engage in research, but also how I see, who I see, how I see we, and ultimately how I, as an intersectional scholar, can be in relationship with and to the worlds around me. Morrison (1993) warns in her Nobel Prize Speech of how the systematic looting of language and that if we are not careful, how our languaging can obscure everyday people and perpetuate violence. Similarly, Angelou (2011) shared during an appearance in a Masterclass that she was convinced words are things and that our language has power. Likewise, Baldwin (1979), another prolific scholar, in his New York Times Essay, If Black English Isn’t a Language, Then Tell Me, what is suggested that our language reveals [our] private identity, and connects one with, or divorces one from, the larger, public, or communal identity.
While I realize that current contextual shifts might be more painful for some (Tuck, 2009 Patel, 2015; Blackburn et al., 2024), I am also mindful that there is still an opportunity for scholars and researchers to center languaging and be more conscientious about how we use language in our scholarship, as well as grapple with how our languaging can impact the lived experiences of everyday people. Particularly, how we use language to construct and capture the particularities of people’s lived experiences in various communities and contexts. There is also an opportunity for us to expand our lenses and “link” in different theoretical and philosophical lenses in an effort to see those whom we research as well as each other more fully (Bloome et al., 2022, p. 23). For example, more recently, a theoretical lens that I often ground my discourse analysis scholarship in is Ubuntu. Ubuntu places people—existing together — as central to our survival as a human family. Simply put, it translates. “I am because we are.” Unbuntu asserts that I am a person, as you are a person, that we are inextricably tied to each other and the world around us (Gade, 2011; Garmon, 2012; Nabudere, 2005; Venter, 2004). Linking in Ubuntu as part of my theoretical framing has been instrumental in helping me complicate and see more fully the unique ways that the youth with whom I engage navigate layers of contexts.
While as discourse analysis scholars and educational researchers, our languaging work often examines and captures power over, which is notably important in our current contexts, we must also persevere to capture everyday people languaging “power with” and the resilient ways we—people– language ourselves together across various contexts as well as our heterogeneity and intersections. There is great innovation and ingenuity in the “we” ness of languaging. It is in the “we” ness of languaging that we can collectively better understand contexts, develop a deeper awareness of languaging that illuminates how everyday people navigate contexts through in between spaces, spaces that are constantly evolving around social interactions (Beratau, 2014); Garett spaces, spaces that speak to the resistance and resiliency of people as they navigate their everyday lives across various intersections, (Igeleke-Penn, 2020); or moments of double consciousness (DuBois, 1903) and intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989) where two or more areas of consciousness or identity intersections bump up against each other or collide across communal and dominant contexts in consequential ways. All these navigations can inform a person’s/people’s social and emotional wellness and sense of belonging, as well as create internal tensions.
In closing, similar to the sentiment in Walker’s poem (1973), Women, as discourse analysis scholars and educational researchers, we may never experience the fruits of our “we” ness or languaging work, but we must challenge ourselves to continue to ponder and consider:
How can we use languaging to capture and better understand space(s) (e.g., in between and Garrett spaces) that everyday people use to build community and navigate their worlds together in agentive ways?
How can we center languaging in ways that challenge us to engage in more thoughtful research and scholarly interactions that allow us to see each other more fully?
How can we engage our scholarship in ways that capture the complexities and nuance of our humanness but also our “we” ness?
Works Cited
Angelou, M. (2011). Dr. Maya Angelou on the power of words-Oprah’s Master Class [Video]. You-Tube. https://youtu.be/BKv65MdlV-c?feature=shared
Baldwin, J. (1979, July 29). If Black English isn’t a language, then tell me, what is? The New York Times. https://www.sweetstudy.com/files/baldwin.pdf
Battle, M. (2009). Ubuntu: I in you and you in me. Seabury Books.
Bertau, M.-C. (2014). Introduction: The self within the space-time of language performance. Theory & Psychology, 24(4), 433-441.
Blackburn et. al. (2024). Editors’ introduction: Epistemic (in)Justice and the search for ways to language research in the teaching and learning of literacies, literatures, and the language arts. Research in the Teaching of English. https://publicationsncte.org/content/journals/10.58680/rte20245911?crawler=true
Bloome, D. (2017). On languaging. [Blog post]. CDAVE@ OSU. https://cdave.edhe.osu.edu/2022/04/18/on-languaging
Bloome, D., Power-Carter, S., Baker, W. D., Castanheira, M. L., Kim, M., & Rowe, L. W. (2022). Discourse analysis of languaging and literacy events in educational settings: A microethnographic perspective. Routledge.
Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the Intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.
Du Bois, W. B. (1903). The souls of Black folks. A. C. McClurg.
Gade, C. B. N.(2011). The historical development of the written discourses on ubuntu. South African Journal of Philosophy [Suid-Afrikaanse Tydskrif vir Wysbegeerte], 30(3), 303-329.
Garmon, C. W., & Mgijima, M. (2012). Using ubuntu: A new research trend for developing effective communication across cultural barriers. Communication Faculty Publications. https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1000&context=comm_fac_pub
Green (April 2, 2017). What’s your context’s context? [Blog post]. CDAVE@ OSU. https://cdave.ehe.osu.edu/2022/04/18/whats-your-contexts-context/
Nabudere, D. W. (2005). Ubuntu philosophy: Memory and reconciliation. Texas Scholar Works, 1-20.
Morrison (1993). Toni Morrison’s Nobel Prize lecture.[Speech transcript]. NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture
Patel, L. (2015). Decolonizing educational research: From ownership to answerability. Routledge.
Penn, J. I. (2020). In this space, we rock hard: Garret (ed) spaces for the literacies of Black. preservice teachers (Master’s thesis). The Ohio State University.
Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending damage: A letter to communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409-428.
Venter, E. (2004). The notion of ubuntu and communalism in African educational discourse. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 23(2-3), 149–160.
Walker (1973). Women. [Poem]. Genius. https://genius.com/Alice-walker-women-annotated
September 30, 2025