Critical Hip-Hop Language Pedagogies: Combat, Consciousness, and the Cultural Politics of Communication

This article addresses two long-standing tensions in the education of linguistically marginalized youth: (a) the cultural tension, or cultural combat, that such students engage in as they form their linguistic identities, and (b) the tensions between the development of critical language pedagogies and the lack of their broader implementation due to disinterested and discriminatory teachers. This article presents critical Hip-hop language pedagogies (CHHLPs) as a holistic approach aimed at both students and teachers, incorporating theory and practice, so that innovative approaches might be implemented. After situating CHHLPs within critical language studies, the article argues that educators are obligated to present the current sociolinguistic reality to students who are subjugated in mainstream institutions. To this end, several pedagogical approaches are presented and discussed. The article concludes with a vision for critical, reflexive pedagogies and a call to mobilize the full body of language, social, and cultural theory to produce consciousness-raising pedagogies.