TEACHING TO THE RHYTHM OF ORAL TRADITION: ETHNOPOETIC INQUIRY AND THE QUESTION OF AI FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY
TEACHING TO THE RHYTHM OF ORAL TRADITION: ETHNOPOETIC INQUIRY AND THE QUESTION OF AI FOR CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE PEDAGOGY

Summary/Abstract: In contexts of social instability, language education often fails to recognize the sophisticated linguistic practices of students from oral-based cultures. This paper argues that ethnopoetic recognition—attending to how people speak, not what they say—offers a pathway for culturally responsive teaching that preserves oral epistemologies. Drawing on research in a Colombian Christian community experiencing institutional collapse, the analysis presents an unanticipated discovery: participants organized meaning through repetition, rhythm, parallelism, and narrative structures rooted in oral tradition. Using Dell Hymes' ethnopoetic methodology, three data poems serve as primary evidence, each demonstrating distinct principles: repetition as meaning-making, parallelism as cognitive organization, and narrative as epistemology. The paper further explores a pressing question: whether artificial intelligence, reimagined as a tool for recognizing rather than correcting student language, can assist teachers in honoring ethnopoetic patterns, or whether current AI systems will continue to erase the very forms through which oral cultures carry meaning. Language instruction, reframed through ethnopoetics, becomes an act of cultural preservation and resilience in threatened communities.

• Details
• Contents