The current era of globalization has brought with it a significant increase in human mobility and the ways in which communication takes place in different spaces. In the particular case of the United States, a nation "built" on immigration, modern demographics shifts have created unique socioeconomic, political, and linguistic dynamics that have impacted traditionally homogenous communities. With the rise in the number of culturally and linguistically diverse populations in these regions, school communities have looked for educational alternatives, such as dual language immersion (DLI) programs, to address the needs of their multilingual and multicultural students. These programs focus on the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students, while also constructing spaces where students of two different language groups can develop bilingualism, biliteracy, and socio-cultural competence (Howard et al., 2018).
DLI programs are widely acknowledged in the U.S., as an effective model for schooling emergent bilinguals. However, despite the substantial support given to these programs, scholars have also simultaneously criticized this educational model for its restricted views of language use and concomitant linguistic ideologies (Garcia, 2017; Hawkins & Cannon, 2017). With this in mind, this presentation examines the language ideologies underpinning the structures of one DLI program and how these manifest in the linguistic perspectives articulated and embodied by teachers and students in a focal DLI program.
Employing qualitative data, from a year-long ethnographic case study conducted in a DLI program, and drawing from the field of linguistic anthropology, this presentation examines the processes related to the conception and regulation of language use in multilingual spaces. The presentation explores two main questions : 1) How do different dimensions of language ideologies manifest and operate in the focal DLI program ? 2) How do language ideologies influence individuals and linguistic considerations in the focal program ? This work demonstrates how language ideologies function at dissimilar, but sometimes overlapping, levels of significance in DLI programs impacting social agents and linguistic considerations. In addition, the presentation highlights demonstrated implications of the enactment of language ideologies for policy and practice.
Bibliography
García, O. (2017). Translanguaging in Schools- Subiendo y Bajando, Bajando y Subiendo as Afterword, Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 16:4, pp. 256-263.
Howard, E., Lindholm-Leary, K., Rogers, D., Olague, N., Medina, J., Kennedy, B., Christian, D. (2018). Guiding principles for dual language education (3rd ed.). Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.
Hawkins, M. R. & Cannon, A. (2017). Mobility, language & schooling. In Canagarajah, A.S. (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Migration and Language. Routledge Press.
