Non-Standardized Englishes in Mainstream Literacy Practice

The field of literacy has addressed nonstandardized Englishes by either focusing on the

nonstandardized varieties in isolation from standardized Englishes or by advancing

literacy instruction in mainstream classrooms that emphasizes dialect-English speakers’

mastery of standardized Englishes. This approach reflects standard monolingual English

ideology and traditional notions of the English language. Operating based on standard

monolingual English perspectives implicitly reinforces the view that standardized

Englishes and their users are privileged and that speakers of nonstandardized Englishes

and their users are inferior. In addition, adhering to traditional notions of English based

on their geographical and nation-based use, as opposed to their function based on school,

offline, or online contexts regardless of geography, reinforces the concept of the English

language as a system and fails to emphasize its communicative and contextual purposes

as demanded by our postmodern era of globalization, transnationalism, and

internationalization. A translingual approach to Englishes can serve as an alternative to

current ways of thinking about literacy instruction because it addresses the needs of both

standardized and nonstandardized English-speaking populations. Literacy instruction

reframed based on this approach is critical for students’ successful interaction across

linguistic and cultural boundaries in the context of the 21st century.