Name It, Claim It: Adolescents Define Their Black Language Identity While Responding to Black Literature

ABSTRACT Naming the language often spoken by Black Americans has historically been an area of debate within U.S. society. Debates carry over into schooling and result in the linguistic oppression of Black American adolescents. In this single qualitative case study, I examine a group of Black American adolescents as they interact with Black literature during a summer book club program. Black linguistic consciousness and culturally situated reader response theories were used to explore how the language awareness of these adolescents influenced their literary responses. Findings suggest they demonstrated an awareness of the societal positioning of Black language, which was reflected in their homeplace positions and through windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors. Therefore, further discussion is needed surrounding the role of asset‐based perspectives on marginalized languages and the impact it has on how multilingual and multidialectical adolescents engage in meaning‐making.