“Everyone is a language learner here:” Language ideologies in a

dual-language school

Shanan FittsUniversity of Colorado- Boulder

Purpose of present study

Explore connections between culture, language, and identity in bilingual children enrolled in a Spanish/English dual language program in order to gain a deeper understanding of bilingualism and biculturalism.

Research Questions

What are students’ and adults’ attitudes and beliefs regarding language, language acquisition, and bilingualism in the fifth grade at Escuela Bilingüe Pine Mountain?

What are students’ and adults’ attitudes and beliefs regarding biculturalism, the role of culture in learning, and culturally different people in the fifth grade at Escuela Bilingüe Pine Mountain?

How are these beliefs and theories played out in specific communities of practice?

Importance of the study: why these questions? Why dual-language?

Dual-language programs challenge the “language as a problem” paradigm.

Dual-language programs are an important place for developing bilingualism.

Dual language programs are designed to promote bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism.

So… It’s important to understand how bilingualism and

biculturalism is conceptualized and practiced in these contexts.

Social practice theory(Bourdieu, 1977; Holland, Lachicotte Jr., Skinner, & Cain, 1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Ortner, 1984; Ortner, 1989; Nespor, 1997; Wenger, 1998)

On-the-ground, everyday practices of human beings in specific social situations.

People learn through participation in social practice (Wenger, 1998).

Analysis of students’ and teachers’ bilingual practices using Bucholtz & Hall’s tactics of intersubjectivity.

Research methods: Data collection

Year-long study of the fifth grade class at a public dual-language school in Colorado.

Participant observation, collection of audio recordings, interviews, and the collection of artifacts.

Participant observation lasted from October 2004 through June 2005.

Overview of the program

90:10 dual-language model Language allocated by classroom 52 students in 5th grade Fifth grade has integrated model: “respect the

language of the classroom you are in” (class rules). 50:50 language allocation in 5th grade Explicit curricula to address social goals of the

program: Buddy Packs, Reading to End Racism, Fifth Grade Theater Project, Peace Place in the Classroom

Analytical Framework

Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall (2005): tactics of intersubjectivity

These tactics are: adequation and distinction, authentication and denaturalization, and authorization and illegitimation.

Provides a heuristic for the analysis of identity construction

Adequation and distinction

Adequation: the emphasis of similarities in order to align oneself with a social group to which one may not otherwise be able to claim membership.

Distinction: those discursive moves which serve to create distance between an individual and a specific social group.

Authentication, denaturalization, authorization and illegitimation

Authentication: demonstrating or proving that one is an indigenous member of a particular group.

Denaturalizing practices work to rupture taken-for-granted linkages between one’s assumed social group and one’s linguistic practices.

Authorization: institutional or ideological support for a particular linguistic practice.

Illegitimation: institutional opposition to a particular linguistic practice.

The ideology of equality at Escuela Bilingüe Pine Mountain

Team-based decision making on the school level: “We don’t make independent decisions here”

Practices to = student-teacher relationships Promoting cross-cultural relationships We are all language learners here. Everyone is bilingual.

Ideology of equality: “…everyone has to go to the supermarket…”

‘We’re all the same…I always knew that but I always thought, “Oh they’re different because they do something else and maybe they’re totally different from me.” And now since I’ve gone to this school I’ve noticed that maybe people practice different religions and maybe people do other things. But basically when it comes down to the like, they’re- we just all kind of do the same thing. Everyone has to go to the supermarket to get food.

Interview, 1/29/05

The ideology of equality…

Works through processes of adequation: “sufficient similarity” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005, p. 15) is produced and differences are downplayed.

Emphasizing sameness as more important than difference.

Formal discussions of diversity focus on similarities that all students have as human beings: everyone has feelings; everyone has likes and dislikes.

Authentication, distinction, denaturalization, and the native speaker

Being bilingual equated with speaking Spanish and being Mexican.

Being a fluent speaker in the southwestern U.S. has ethnic implications.

Some children may be under more pressure to use Spanish or be competent Spanish speakers, but may identify as English speakers, or vice versa.

Children who have grown up in a bilingual environment may find it difficult to choose a native language when called upon to do so.

Authentication & the native speaker

Language Partners Dan: (Find a partner who has a different L1 than

you.)Liliana (to me): Shanan, who should I pick? You know how I’m both Spanish and English? Well I was Spanish first… Who do you think I should pick?Me: What do you think Liliana?Liliana asks Dan the same question and he tells her she should find a native English speaker to work with.

FN, 12/01/04, p. 9

Think-pair-share

What are the goals of pairing students up with language partners?

Does your school use this practice? What are some assumptions underlying this

practice? What reactions have your students had to this

practice? What are some of the intended and unintended

outcomes of this practice?

Native speaker: Affiliation or Competence?

The myth of the native speaker (Rampton, 1995).

“a particular language is inherited, either through genetic endowment or through birth into the social group stereotypically associated with it” (p. 337).

The idea that people can inherit a language presupposes that they are born into discrete and bounded ethnic groups that ‘own’ a specific heritage language.

People are native speakers in only one language Being a native speaker indexes competence.

Questions/ complications with ‘language partner’ practice

After five years in the program, children’s linguistic proficiency, does not always match their designated native language.

Some children are reaching a point where their skills in their second language may be outstripping those in their first.

Some children may have switched their linguistic affiliations.

Some children are truly becoming “balanced” bilinguals. The provision of positive linguistic role models,

particularly in Spanish, has to become a more explicit project.

This is an issue for all of us to consider! Any person’s linguistic background, affiliations

and competence are determined by a number of factors and can change over time.

These are issues and challenges for teachers and researchers to explore.

Researchers in the field of second language acquisition often fail to clearly identify the linguistic profiles of their participants and often over-generalize when describing study participants.

Everybody’s bilingual vs. native speakers They think, ‘Ohhh, white girl. She doesn’t know

how to speak Spanish’… Spanish actually is my first language… some people don’t really believe it and I tell ‘em ‘Go ahead! Ask my mom!’…. I think I learned Spanish first? Really. And then I learned English and I forgot my Spanish since I was so little… and now I’m trying to learn Spanish again…. People make fun of you, they’re like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t speak Spanish with a good, like, she speaks Spanish with a bad accent,’ you know, something like that…

Interview, 4/14/05

Adequation as equality, but authentication for empowerment

Tactics of adequation in tension with the tactics of authentication: Adequation = one big happy group authentication requires more substantial proof of group

membership. The concept of authenticity as a tool of empowerment:

an effective way for minoritized groups to gain power and access to those public spaces that continue to be dominated by white, monolingual English speaking people (Bucholtz 2003; Grande 2000).

Authorization & illegitimation: Bilingualism as parallel monolingualism (Heller, 2001)

Dual-language programs are grounded in a dichotomous view of bilingualism (Hadi-Tabassum) Strict separation of languages attention to language allocation and use

In order to ensure that Spanish is respected, a space in which Spanish and only Spanish is spoken must be created and vigilantly protected against the pervasiveness of English language and culture.

Students in the Spanish classroom frequently have to be reminded to use Spanish even when their first language is Spanish.

Students seem to be aware that “pure” Spanish free of borrowings is expected or preferred.

Borrowings are typically corrected by the teacher or by the students themselves, as occurs in the following exchange.

In the following excerpt a group of kids are working together on a poster for their play, “Problema de Soccer.” The participants in this passage are Martín and Lyle, both L1 Spanish, Mexican-born boys, Jesse, an L1 English, Anglo girl, Roberto, the teaching assistant, and Mike, the classroom teacher.

Linguistic resources and practices in the Spanish environment

Roberto: Allí tenéis escrito todo- You have everything written over there (on the board.)

Martín: Voy a hablar en español. Okay? Hablo bien español.

I’m going to speak in Spanish. OK? I speak Spanish well.

Roberto: Bueno. ¡Qué sorpresa! ¡Te voy a grabar! Great. What a surprise. I’m going to record you!

Lyle: ¿Te voy a graduar? I’m going to graduate you?

Mike ((to class))

¡Español por favor! Spanish please!

(Five lines deleted in which Lyle and Martín are comparing their drawings.)

Martín: Esta es una volleyball. This is a volleyball.

Voleibol. Es un voleibol. Volleyball. It’s a volleyball.

Mike: Gracias. Thanks.

Jesse: Yeah sí, yo no podía hacer soccer ball. I can’t make (a) soccer ball.

Martín: Yo tampoco. Me neither.

Lyle: ¡Pelota de fútbol! ¡Ay, ay, ay niños! Me traen vuelto loco. ¡Hablen español o inglés o si no, no hablen!

Soccer ball! Oh my goodness children! You’re driving me crazy! (Either) speak Spanish or English, or if not, don’t talk at all!

Mike: Sí, sí muy bien señor. Yes, yes, very good.

Discuss…

How does your program incorporate or deal with code-switching, borrowing, and strategic uses of language?

What could be some ways to make spaces for code-switching and also value “standard” codes?

Unintended outcomes of strict separation of languages

Linguistic productions in the Spanish environment are more strictly monitored and controlled. The classroom language rule has to be continually reiterated.

May elevate Spanish as an academic language, but not necessarily as an expressive or socially effective language.

Authorizes a language ideology based on the concepts of parallel monolingualism (Heller, 2001) and a fetishization of the native speaker.

Next steps…

Discussion of issues such as language affiliation versus expertise with teachers and students;

Study of language genres with students and teachers in oral and written forms (code-switching, “standard,” “vernacular”);

How can an authentic need for Spanish be engendered in the program?

Development of projects that necessitate the use of Spanish could raise status of Spanish making its use more than the result of a class rule.

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