Pedagogical processes and standard dialect use: Implications for creative multilingual interaction from a Yorùbá-language classroom in southwestern Nigeria

Abstract

In many language classrooms in multilingual nations, standard dialects are associated with and promoted in formal domains. Through classroom pedagogical processes that reify standard language use, other dialects are relegated to informal domains and therefore devalued in classroom settings. Informed by critical pedagogy, this article challenges the reification of standard dialects and examines their relationship with learners’ language use through an analysis of a Yorùbá-language classroom in southwestern Nigeria. Findings from ethnographic data—classroom observations, instructor interviews, educational language policy, and curricular documents—show that learners’ social, linguistic, and cultural experiences interacted with and sometimes contradicted classroom expectations. I argue that the expectation of standard dialect use stifles fluid interaction in the classroom but, paradoxically, triggers learners’ linguistic creativity. To bridge the gap between classroom expectations and learners’ experiences, I call for an alternative pedagogy that privileges language users’ multilingual realities for optimizing standard language use in the classroom context. The article also contributes to ongoing conversations in applied linguistics about standard dialect use and the lack of affirmation of learners’ linguistic creativity in educational contexts.