Thesis Proposal: Joan Walling '98

Becoming Bilingual: Cultural and Linguistic Assimilation in Working Class College Students

Thesis Proposal by Joan Walling, ’98
Advisor: Jean Bacon

Introduction

Americans believe that education is a great equalizer; they believe that with hard work and education, anyone can succeed. “You can do anything you put your mind to.” “Education is the key to success.” “Any child can grow up to be president.. Such sayings reinforce the notion of the American Dream. It is assumed that in the classroom, everyone starts on a level playing field and moves ahead according to talent and hard work. However, research points to a different reality, one where socioeconomic status is passed on from parents to children, and a lack of cultural capital holds some back (Hourdion 1994). Success in the educational system may have little to do with how hard students work or how talented they might be.

While much research has been done on the effects of inadequate preparation of students for success in primary education, and adjustment problems at that level (Heath 1982, Kohn 1963, Metz 1989), less attention has been paid to barriers to success in higher education. Most of the literature on first-generation college students consists of unanalyzed compilations of personal stories and essays. The sociological research that has been done on this subject has been mainly focused on student achievement, not transitio4 so that studies of college students from the working class have primarily set them up as examples of social mobility instead of examining their struggles (Gleeson 1996, Higginbotham 1991, Santaniello 1996, Sautu 1994). The research that has examined adjustment of first-generation college students suggests that this adjustment becomes a kind of assimilation process, much like the process that an immigrant might undergo (Ussher 1996, Stewart 1993). Evidence from both the memoirs and the sociological analyses of college students from the working class point to a difficult adjustment period when students feel they must jump from one world of social class to another.

According to this research, these students often remain between these two worlds, never feeling fully adjusted to the middle-class realm to which their college education has introduced them. However, most students do undergo some sort of an assimilation process in which they learn to at least appear middle-class. Central to this process of assimilation is communication style.

I propose to explore the “linguistic” adjustment of working class students to a college environment. “Language,” can include many types of communication, ranging from traditional issues of vocabulary to students’ body language and appearance, their beliefs and values, or even
the topics they choose to discuss. Thus, in order to fit in, to be accepted and taken seriously in academia, first-generation college students become “bilingual.” They must learn a whole range of communicative behaviors appropriate to a middle-class environment.

The memoirs I have read affirm that while students from the working class go into higher education believing that is their final step toward equality with the middle class, they have fundamental problems of adjustment, often rooted in language and communication, that challenge this belief. For example, students’ writing, speech, or even choice of reading material often reveals something about their blue-collar background. A student might mispronounce words because of a vocabulary primarily built on reading the printed word instead of hearing words used in conversation. Or, difficulties might be less concrete, such as concerns over acquiring middle-class clothes or developing a generally middle-class appearance. College students from the working class must undergo a process of both linguistic and cultural assimilation, and it is this process I propose to study. As an aide to my analysis I plan to explore conceptual tools drawn from parallel processes of adjustment, such as studies of second language acquisition and immigrant adjustment.

The unique features of my study are twofold. First, I will be looking in detail at this process while students are still in the midst of it, instead of asking informants to think in retrospect about their experiences, as previous sociological research has done. The study will explore whether the problem areas previously identified by professional academics and grad students in retrospect are actually at issue for students as they undergo the transition to higher education. Secondly, I will concentrate not only on identifying communicative problems, but I will also look at the strategies people use to cope with these problems. The result of this will be a detailed examination of the process of adjustment, which previous research lacks.

This study, then, will examine first-generation college students from the “working class,”1 and look at their means of communication as it relates to their transition between the worlds of home and school. What are the common difficulties of students from the working class as they enter college? How do students overcome these difficulties? How do students who are in the midst of their assimilation process see themselves as either marginalized or accepted by their peers? The purpose of this study is to determine how these students go about the process of assimilation by examining the ways in which language, literature, and communication styles in general affect the working-class students’ attempt to move between their supposed two worlds.

Research Background

In reading accounts of the experiences of first-generation college students and academics from the working class, there are striking similarities in the communication problems individuals share. In making the transition from their working-class home to the world of academia, students first deal with a difference in upbringing. Because working class parenting styles differ from those of the middle class, the way working class college students understand the world and their place in it can seem incongruous with the college environment, and this is reflected in the way they communicate. Adding to this shaky foundation is a similarity in those who strive for higher education. They are marked as different by their reading, both at home and at school. Finally, working class college students must deal with a difference in verbal communication patterns and the more obvious cultural differences between a decidedly middle class college environment and their communication patterns and cultures at home.

It is true that working-class students of all ages deal with various processes of adjustment as they progress through the education system. However, students from the working class who find themselves at college are likely from geographically organized schools where there were many other working-class students in attendance. The college experience is often their first encounter with a primarily middle-class peer community. Because college places these students in a peer group that has a completely different background, working class students face an adjustment process there which is different from any they have dealt with before. These differences combine to cause a kind of identity crisis where working class college students ask themselves where they belong and whether they have to choose between their working class roots and their new middle class education.

The Paradigm of Reading: Books as an Early Marker of Difference

Reading in early childhood, being read to by a parent, and the presence of books in the home are major contributors to the socialization of children and a precursor to academic skills and interests (Heath 1982). However, there is an entire group of people who were not socialized in this way, yet have become fixtures in academia. First-generation college students most often say they never saw their parents read a book (though many mention the newspaper) and yet these same students were likely voracious readers in childhood and adolescence. Often left alone with their books, which tend to be good baby-sitters for parents who work long-hours, this is the first indication of separation from their working-class parents, siblings, and peers. There is often suspicion of child-readers, and even disapproval. Reading is sometimes seen as impractical, idealistic, or even lazy. At home, reading means being conspicuous and different. At school, there is a perpetual sense of having read the “wrong” things:

I read ravenously and uncritically; my parents were happy to see me reading but provided no guidance on my choices. I never knew-whether they were allowing me my freedom — Dad wasn’t allowed to have comic books as a child — or whether they were unprepared to judge. As a result, I still wince when people mention childhood classics that were not part of my reading, and I have a deep aversion to the trashy novels that some of my colleagues delight in as a respite from the serious, grad-student load (Charlip, p. 30).

In addition to a feeling of having read the “wrong” things, reading material makes a great contribution to a sense of belonging in academia. Many first-generation and working-class college students admit to feeling like imposters in the academy, and feel the need to prove the right to be there by at least appearing to be academic. The easiest way to do this, they think, is by making sure they are as well-read as their classmates, despite a lack of direction in their early years of exploring literature. In some sense, they are right–almost all accounts from first-generation college students include a memory of references to literature of which they had never heard. Charlip admits that even now, she feels unentitled to her education, compared to her middle-class peers.

They are mostly children of the upper class, and they have a sense of entitlement that I will never know and that I will always envy. They have always known they belong at UCLA. I feel grateful to be allowed in. Despite my accomplishments–awards, fellowships, teaching assistantships–I still have the sneaking suspicion that someone will shout “Fraud!” and send me away… That’s why they can take time out to read a bodice ripper while I feel I must read Dostoyevsky. After all, Dostoyevsky has nothing to do with Latin American history but everything to do with a well-read background; the problem isn’t knowing the material in class but knowing the references made ova cappuccino (Charlip, pp. 37-8).

Another disadvantage of working class students is the attitude they’ve been taught to have about books. The common response to a first visit to the public library is amazement, wonder, and respect. Many working-class academics report never losing that sense of wonder, which can be a disadvantage in a classroom where others were taught to pick literature apart, criticizing and analyzing it. The working class are taught to appreciate and marvel, the upper classes are taught to evaluate and, where appropriate, imitate. One working-class English major puts it bluntly, “I study literature by reading it and saying, hey, that’s pretty good. This . . . is WRONG of me” (Lawler p. 59).

Verbal Communication Patterns: Acting the Part of an Academic

In addition to the language of literature and books, working class students who find themselves suddenly in academia must adjust to a new culture. A foreign language cannot be merely read and understood, but must be spoken out loud and placed in the context of its culture.

It is not enough, in the academy, to be able to read an academic book or even write an academic paper about that book. Academics must also be able to take academic issues to heart, to make the language and culture of the academy their own. For example, it is one thing to read about euthanasia and to know what it means, but it is another thing to hear this in a conversation and know that it is not “youth in Asia,” and to be able to discuss the social and moral implications. It is still another thing altogether to have a personal opinion on the topic.

As students make the transition, becoming bilingual by immersion in this new environment, they must also learn a language culture that contradicts many communication patterns they’ve been taught. First, they must become used to asking questions and discussing ideas, a working-class taboo. Second, they must learn not to apply working-class meanings to words that mean different things in academia, and most of all, they must not mispronounce them. They must learn that their own words are wrong, and that they must use someone else’s words in order to communicate in the academy.

Just as first-generation college students often enter the academy with no experience discussing literary works, they also have trouble asking questions and discussing ideas. The reason is simple: in working class homes, questions are considered impertinent, and ideas are a waste of time. This goes back to Heath’s assertion that working-class parents teach children to obey for the sake of obedience — “why” is often unimportant. “Neither my mother nor my father felt they had to justify anything they told my sister and me. Backed against a wall verbally, all further discussion would end with, ‘because I said so” (Garger 1995, p. 49). This environment is certainly not atypical of working class families. Most accounts noted one of the most exciting things about school was being rewarded for asking questions. “I really liked going to school. It was a whole new world, one where my questions were answered and where I was praised for asking them” (Martin 1995, p. 80).2

However, as exciting as it is to have curiosity satiated, many academics from the working class express frustration, dismay, or even offense at the academic banter that often accompanies discussion of ideas. Garger (1995) tells the story of a staff meeting where some of his research assertions were challenged by a colleague. Afterward, he felt attacked, until a friend explained that the discussion was meant merely as an exercise, not an actual attack on his theories. “This blew me away. Faculty were not necessarily searching for truth or for the ‘right’ answer. By challenging me . . . John, the questioner, just may have been opening the door for fun. When I did not respond according to protocol he tried again and then again. Undoubtedly he was receiving mixed messages too. It was as if we were engaged in different and separate rituals in which neither of us understood the rules the other was playing by” (Garger 1995, p. 50).

This particular miscommunication occurred due to a difference in cultural understanding, but there are also more practical and noticeable applications with this type of misunderstanding. In reading accounts of students from the working class, I noticed certain words or phrases had been constantly misunderstood by students and their families. The words often mean completely different things depending on one’s social class. Many students tell stories of misunderstandings about the general concept of college, and even the concept of applying to colleges. Additionally, only careers in medicine, law, and engineering tend to be acceptable areas of study for first-generation college students, according to their parents. “Then I told my father what I wanted to study. . . I told him I wanted to write poetry and fiction. ‘I know what poetry is, and that’s no damn good,’ he said, ‘but what’s fiction?’ ‘It’s like storytelling. Like when you make something up.’ ‘That’s a lot like lying, isn’t it? You know, you were raised better than that, ‘he said with what I’m sure he thought was unassailable logic” (Leslie 1995, p. 71).

Debt is another topic that is difficult to bridge with working-class parents. To the middle class, borrowing for college is an investment, but to the working-class, there is no assurance that there will be any means with which to pay back the loans. “One of the biggest personal obstacles I faced in pursuing my education was my deep reluctance to incur debt. The middle and upper classes are accustomed to manipulating debt to their advantage, but for a working-class person debt is a ball and chain” (Pegueros 1995, p. 101). These are just a few of the problematic terms– vocabulary that means one thing in a middle- or upper-class context, and quite another to the working class.

A Question of Identity

It is partially because of this discrepancy in meaning that working-class students learn their words are not good enough for academia. Every student maintains that even after graduating with a PhD and securing a college professorship, they feel like imposters. “In lectures, I took notes furiously, narrative notes, full sentences, trying to get the exact words spoken by the teacher. I knew if I took down just a word here and there I would have to fill in the gaps with my own words, and those words were horribly wrong. I was horribly wrong.” (Black 1995, p. 21). This feeling, common to first-generation college students, most often results in a quiet withdrawal during class, never using the professor’s office hours, and learning to agree with whatever anyone else says. Students learn to borrow words, and surprisingly, more learn to fake it than to actually speak the language of academia.

However, some do become bilingual, able to speak with the working class and those at the academy. Yet even with bilingual competency, the two worlds never intersect. “At home, I could not bring myself to talk about books or ideas that never intersected with the lives of my mother and brother, my cousins and extended family. To talk about my studies seemed ridiculous at best in a context that appeared as mistrustful of academia as academia was condescending to it” (Law 1995, p. 4).

When forced to choose an identity, though most consider themselves on the margins, many will answer that their working-class identity is their true self.

My previous life experience hadn’t framed me for the kind of thinking or knowing I was expected to display, so I relied on the more recently constructed and much less comfortable way of thinking I had reamed in college and graduate school. I was caught between thinking and feeling, knowing and experiencing. Yes, I was being dishonest if I was expected to feel the answers as if they were organic within me. I will never be fluent in the language of the academy. It will always be at best a reluctantly learned second language (Dews 1995, pp. 332-3).

By drawing on autobiographical accounts of academics from the working class as well as the discoveries of other researchers, we have established some fundamental elements of the difficult transition from a working-class family to the life and language of academics. We know that because of their working-class backgrounds, they face issues of communication that involve reading, general communication, and identity. These issues make academia a completely new world for working-class students, and necessitate a process of assimilation to their new middle class academic environment.

Research Proposal

Purpose

I propose to examine college students from the working class to better understand the social processes through which these differences in communication and culture are or are not resolved. Most of the accounts I have read are by adults already working in academia, or graduate students preparing for a career at the academy. In examining the issues of language and adjustment in transition from a working-class home to undergraduate studenthood, I plan to study these issues while students are still emotionally close to home. I plan to first isolate the problems that these students face. Once the problems are clear, I will then be able to delineate the process that students go through in order to deal with these problems. Talking with undergraduate students who have probably not yet learned to be “bilingual” will enable me to examine their process of adjustment while in process, rather than in retrospect. This not only gives a fresh and more accurate portrayal in the adjustment of first-generation college students, but also provides a firm foundation for developing programs and policies that may ease the difficulties these students face.

Procedure and Format

I plan to conduct interviews with first-generation college students attending undergraduate institutions on both coasts, at Williams College and Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, both in western Massachusetts, and at Pacific Lutheran University and the University of Washington, both in Washington State. While focusing on the working class at Williams College, interviews at other institutions will provide points for comparison. Comparing an elite institution to less selective schools will highlight the importance of social class, as there is likely a greater class disparity at a school like Williams. Additionally, this comparison will help to examine whether higher education itself is by definition a middle-class institution. The institutions I have chosen represent diversity in size, specialty, and endowment. Williams College and Pacific Lutheran University are of similar size—both enrolling between 2,000 and 3,000 undergraduate students.

They are both private, coed schools, but Williams has no religious affiliation, while Pacific Lutheran is affiliated with the Lutheran Church even though its actual religious influence over students is minimal. Williams is considered an elite institution, and boasts admission of students from all fifty states. Pacific Lutheran is considered by students to be better than state schools, but their student body is made up mainly of students from the Pacific Northwest. The University of Washington is a state sponsored school, as is Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. The University of Washington has an enrollment of around 20,000 undergraduates, and though only a state school, has nationally known graduate and medical school programs that give enrollment preferences to in-state students. Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts serves a similar purpose as a community college might, although it does offer four-year degrees. The age range of students there tends to be more diverse than the other three schools, and those in attendance are primarily from the surrounding community.

The students chosen will be of diverse ethnicity and gender, and should come from many locations. I plan to interview at least five students from each institution. My entry point will be with students that I already know at these institutions, and from there I will be able to contact others. I will inquire about students’ families, their backgrounds, hometowns, and college experience thus far. They will be encouraged to speak freely, and questions will be open-ended to encourage freedom in telling their stories. I plan to experiment with interviewing styles to find out what works best. Life-history interviews, where students would simply tell their stories, would be useful in that they would allow students to tell what is important to them, without being prompted by questions. Semi-structured interviews, on the other hand, would give more uniformity to responses so they could be easily compared, and would prompt more hesitant students to share details. I will also ask for personal documents, if they are willing to share them, such as journals or letters from home, and investigate any programs established at the universities that target first-generation college students.

Evaluating the Information

The task of an ethnographer is to present information about a particular group of people faithfully and accurately. I will transcribe the experiences these students relate, and after doing so, evaluate the findings. In determining the problems students face, I expect to find many of the components mentioned in other research, particularly the linguistic components. However, there will most likely be other elements that the graduate students and professionals did not remember, or deemed unimportant. In evaluating these problems, I hope to elucidate the process of how students from the working class adjust to college life and learn to speak the language of academia. One component of the evaluation will involve a comparison of this process to the processes undertaken by those learning a second language, or immigrants reaming a second culture. By using these conceptual tools to evaluate the interviews, I will be able to delineate the process of becoming literally and culturally “bilingual” for working class college students.

Bibliography

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Birenbaum, William M. 1969. Overlive: Power. Poverty, and the University. New York, NY: Delacorte Press.

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Leslie, Naton. 1995 . “You were Raised Better than that.” This Fine Place So Far From Home. Ed. C.L. Barney & Carolyn Leste Law. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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Pegueros, Rosa Maria. 1995. “Todos Vuelven: From Potrero Hill to UCLA.” This Fine Place So Far From Home. Ed. C.L. Barney & Carolyn Leste Law. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

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Journal Articles:

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Note: My sources on second-language acquisition, bilingualism, and immigrant culture adjustment are not yet represented in this bibliography.

1. There are many definitions of class. To go strictly by a Marxist definition, there would only be two classes, those who own the means of production and exploit laborers, and those who sell their labor for exploitation (Marx 1948). Weber s philosophy complicates it a little more, preferring to call what we refer to as “class,” “status groups” instead (Weber 1960). Status groups consist of communities of people linked together on the basis of wealth, status (social prestige), and power (political influence.). (Status being social prestige, and power being political influence.) For the purposes of this study, class will probably be considered a combination of the above, with perhaps extra emphasis on status and wealth. In his book Class, Paul Fussell determines nine different levels of social class in America, naming them: top out-of- sight, upper, upper middle, middle, high proletarian, mid-proletarian, low proletarian, destitute, and bottom out-of-sight. When I refer to the “working class” in this paper, I refer to everything from the low proleterian, up to a few middles. For our purposes, most judgements are based on education, so that if one is a first-generation college student (the first in his or her direct lineage to strive for higher education) one’s background is likely considered working-class, because often influence-of parents’ social status in raising children.

2. Studies of parenting styles, and the difference between the early socialization of children from blue-collar and white-collar families, are helpful in understanding how the transition from home to school is merely the next step for the middle class, but a whole new world for working-class students. The way parents instill in their children particular values, behaviors, and ways of thinking teaches children the skills they need to survive within the social class in which they were raised. Children learn a communication style in a working-class home that is fundamentally different from that of a middle-class child. Among the middle class and elite, parents are most concerned with the developmental aspect of their children. They are often very conscious of current studies on child rearing, and by reading and educating themselves, they keep up with the latest techniques. Everything about middle class parents’ lives and occupations involves looking for new ways to achieve their goals, and they communicate this lifestyle to their children. As they instill this quality in their children, they teach the children to obey an internal locus of control, to govern themselves rather than to submit unquestioningly to outside authority. Thus, the middle class parent punishes a child because of wrong motives rather than wrong actions, being most sensitive to the child’s feelings (Kohn 1963). Children of the elite are most likely to be taught to “follow their heart,” to be an entrepreneur (there is enough money to back them), or to take a year off from work or school to travel or “find themselves” (Kohn 1963).

All of these characteristics are supported in a college environment. Students are encouraged to find their own major interests, to find their own thoughts and feelings about issues, and to look for their own voice. For students raised in a middle-class home, this is an old message, but for those from the working class it is often very new.

The working class differ from the elite and the middle class in that they teach an external locus of control for their children. “…working-class parents value obedience, neatness, and cleanliness more highly than do middle-class parents…. there are characteristic clusters of value choice in the two social classes: working-class parental values center on conformity to external proscriptions. . . To working-class parents, it is the overt act that matters: the child should not transgress externally imposed rules” (Kohn p. 475). The life of the working class is more conducive to retaining familiar methods; however, in college students are expected to be creative and come up with new ideas and thoughts.

Because of these differing parenting styles, working class children and middle class children relate in very different ways to authority. At the college level, this can result in working class students finding it difficult to read literature with a critical eye or to ask questions of their instructors — both the literature and the professor are authority figures that are not to be questioned. While an instructor-student relationship under middle class values might be seen as providing a guide for inquisitiveness, the parenting styles of the working class set the instructor up as both unapproachable and unimpeachable.

In the upper and the middle classes parents read to their young children, thus preparing them for success in the typical structure of school, which involves taking information from books and then somehow using or reiterating what they have taken. A middle class parent reading to even a very young child will likely read a page and then ask the child a question about the story or the illustrations. Reading not only teaches children language skills, but the question-and-answer model for learning that will be required of them throughout their educational career. Working class and poor parents, because of time constraints and a generally more oral than literary culture, are less likely to read to their children. Therefore, the children are not as well-equipped for the structure of formal schooling as those of the elite and middle class (Heath 1982). This puts the poor and working class a little behind the-rest from the beginning.