Language across Difference

Dr Django Paris is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy in the College of Education at Michigan State University. His research focuses on youth language and literacy in changing multiethnic and multilingual schools and communities. He is particularly interested in understanding how pluralism works in multiethnic youth communities and in how we can re-vision language and literacy learning to foster understanding within and across difference. His teaching focuses on youth language and literacy practices, the training of teachers to work in multiethnic and multilingual high schools, and qualitative and social language research methods. Dr Paris' research appears in several journals and book chapters, including the Harvard Educational Review and the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. Language across Difference is his first book and explores the ways youth of color challenge and reinforce ethnic and linguistic difference in demographically changing urban schools. His research has been supported by the Spencer, Ford, and the NCTE Research Foundations. He serves on journal editorial boards and is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English Standing Committee on Research and the American Educational Research Association Social Justice Action Committee. He is also Associate Director of the Bread Loaf School of English, a summer graduate program of Middlebury College.

• 1. Beginnings: shouts of affirmation from 'our culture'; 2. 'Spanish is becoming famous': youth perspectives on Spanish in a changing youth community; 3. 'True Samoan': ethnic solidarity and linguistic reality; 4. 'They're in my culture, they speak the same way': sharing African American language at South Vista; 5. 'You rep what you're from': texting identities in multiethnic youth space; 6. Making school go: revisioning school for pluralism.

'Paris's book is an accessible and engaging read that contributes important and needed insights about language and identity practices among youth of color in changing urban schools. His book is unique in its examination of linguistic plurality among youth of color in the sense that the author does not analyze students' language use in relation to some standardized form of English.' Denise Ives, Anthropology and Education Quarterly