As the director of a master’s program in speech-language pathology, part of my role is to meet with individuals from agencies with which our program would like to partner for community outreach. One agency with which I have connected is an agency that endeavors to achieve healthcare parity for African Americans. At my initial meeting with one of this organization’s directors, I was speaking about the potential to involve speech-language pathology students with their parent groups to discuss language input and literacy. I emphasized that the purpose would not be to promote use of Mainstream American English (MAE), but to value and celebrate African American English (AAE) and to encourage parents to provide language input to their young children by using self-talk and parallel talk during everyday activities and by engaging with books with their young children. I noted that I was unsure of this organization’s preferred term for AAE, but would be consistent with their terminology. To my surprise, the director found what I had said about valuing and celebrating AAE to be “very powerful.” He was an African American man himself, working to advocate for African Americans in the community, and had not heard the term AAE or any similar terms, but had always referred to this dialect as “slang” himself. He was enthralled with the idea of teaching African Americans and healthcare and education professionals that AAE, as he stated, “is not a sign of inferiority, but a communal language system.”

Another aspect to my role as a speech-language pathology master’s program director is meeting with potential students. One of these meetings was with a potential student who was employed as an elementary school teacher, and was considering pursuing a master’s degree in SLP. She happened to notice an article on my desk about AAE, and commented on the importance of teaching these children to “speak correctly.” I acknowledged the role of code-switching in academic and professional success, but also spoke briefly about the importance of valuing children’s home language and recognizing AAE as a rule-governed dialect. I believe and hope that I was gentle and informative in my delivery of this message, but I never did see that potential student again. I don’t know if her decision not to apply for the program was due a different opinion of AAE, but I hope it was not.

When I was a college student, I worked as a health and disabilities services coordinator at a Head Start program for the children of migrant farm workers and their families. All of the families at the center spoke Spanish; some were monolingual Spanish speakers and some were bilingual Spanish-English speakers. Some of the bilingual families spoke Spanish as their dominant language, others spoke English as their dominant language. One day, a reporter from the local newspaper came to interview the director of our center, Teresa, for an article about the program. Teresa was enraged when the reporter asked, “Are the children in the program smart?” Teresa, who had moved to the United States from Argentina, exclaimed, “Get out of my school! You may hear my accent and think I’m not very smart, but if I could talk to you in my own language, I would tell you!” Clearly, the reporter had a notion that the children in the program were likely not smart, or that it would be interesting, and perhaps surprising, if they were smart.

These conversations highlight the fact that we have much work to do in order to ensure that language differences are celebrated. Although the conversation at the Head Start occurred years ago, in 1997, the conversation with the director of the agency advocating for health parity for African Americans happened more recently, in 2020.

It is important for speech-language pathologists to use assessment measures that reliably differentiate language differences due to culture, dialect, or multilingualism from language disorder. Having a language difference does not constitute a disorder. For decades, children with language differences were over-referred for special educations services. When awareness of language differences grew, the pendulum shifted such that children with language differences were under-referred, because SLPs did not want to mistake a difference for a disorder. Clearly, neither situation is acceptable. Over-identification can result in children engaging in unnecessary intervention activities, which could take them away from other learning. Over-identification also stigmatizes the use of non-mainstream American English (NMAE) dialects (Hendricks & Adolf, 2017). Under-identification leads to children not receiving the services they need to achieve academic and social success. Given the underidentification of children with language disorder, Oetting, Gregory, and Riviere (2016) recommended shifting the “professional meme” from “dialect vs disorder” to “disorder within dialect.” This shift highlights the fact that these terms are not conceptually equivalent. Many individuals speak a given dialect, whereas the percentage of individuals with language disorder is small. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) provides a number of resources for working with culturally and linguistically diverse individuals, which can be found here: https://www.asha.org/practice/multicultural/. Table 1 depicts some myths and facts regarding dialects (Goldstein & Iglesias, p. 333).

Table 1 Dialects: Myths and Facts.

In determining whether a disorder is present in a child with a language difference, SLPs need to learn about the child’s native language or dialect in order to ascertain whether observed communication differences are developmental, cultural, or atypical (Arias & Friberg, 2017). When I was employed as an SLP for a public school district in the state of New York, part of my role was working with students enrolled in Orthodox Jewish Yeshivas. I had limited knowledge of the Orthodox Jewish culture when I began my position, but I reached out to colleagues from within the Orthodox Jewish community and those who were from outside that culture, but had years of experience working with Orthodox Jewish children and their families. I found that these colleagues appreciated my willingness to acknowledge my own limited experience in this area and to ask questions in order to better understand the needs of these children and the appropriate topics and materials to use in assessment and intervention.

Although SLPs must educate themselves about the cultural backgrounds of their students, they must not assume that all members of a given group will have exactly the same values, beliefs, or practices. It is essential to use knowledge about a culture as a basis for asking questions to learn more about the individual, rather than making erroneous assumptions based on information about a group. Although some dual language learners (DLLs) are born in other countries, many are born in the United States (Tominey & O’Bryon, 2017), and we must not make assumptions about where a child was born or what language(s) the child speaks based on native country.

It is important that SLPs and other professionals use a strengths-based approach to working with clients. This is particularly important when working with children with language differences. Tominey & O’Bryon suggest several ways to  frame diversity as a strength in the school. One way to use a strengths-based approach is to use the terms dual language learner (DLL) or English language learner (ELL) when describing bilingual students, rather than using the term “limited English proficient student,” (Tominey & O’Bryon, 2017). Selecting school or class themes that celebrate similarities and differences and embed cultural messages throughout the year helps underscore that culture is all around us all the time, and not just during certain times, such as holiday seasons. Children should have opportunities to share and celebrate their strengths and the strengths of their classmates, and should learn phrases they can use to support their classmates who are sharing, such as, “Thank you for sharing.” It is beneficial to teach children how to talk about and ask questions about similarities and differences. Open discussions about stereotypes and biases are crucial during childhood, when individuals are still developing their beliefs, in order to facilitate compassion and understanding in our diverse world.

Summary

As outlined in this section of the book, working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds follows the same principles as working with children from the majority culture. However, a number of additional considerations must be made in order to ensure accurate assessment of disorders within differences, eligibility determinations, and intervention models. The importance of collaborating with families and interprofessional colleagues cannot be overemphasized, especially when working with children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

References

Arias, G., & Friberg, J. (2017). Bilingual language assessment: Contemporary versus recommended practice in American schools. Language, Speech, and Hearing Servicesin Schools, 48(1), 1-15.

Hendricks, A., & Adlof, S. (2017). Language assessment with children who speak nonmainstream dialects: Examining the effects of scoring modifications in norm-referenced assessment.  Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 48, 168-182.

Goldstein, B.A., & Iglesias, A. (2013). Language and dialectal variations. In J. E. Bernthal, N.W. Bankson, & P. Flipsen. (Eds.), Articulation and phonological disorders: Speechsounds disorders in children (International 7 th ed., pp. 326–354). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson

Oetting, J., Gregory, K., & Riviere, A. (2016). Changing how speech-language pathologists think and talk about dialect variation. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups SIG 16, 1, 28-37.