Spanglish in White Public Space: Constructing an Oppositional Spatial Frame in an “English-Only” Classroom

• In Event: Multivocal, Multilingual, Multimodal, and Multicultural Literacies in Contested Spaces

Abstract

Purposes
This paper highlights the affordances of spatial theory (Harvey, 2006; Lefebvre, 2005) for research on language and literacy in English Only instructional contexts. Drawing on data from a study of language and ideology among Chican@ and Latin@ students in a sixth-grade English Language Arts classroom in East Los Angeles, the paper explores the spatial dimensions of Spanish-English code-switching, a hybrid language practice that many of these students referred to as Spanglish. The study took place ten years after California’s passage of Proposition 227, which outlawed bilingual education statewide and ushered in an era of restrictive language policy and reductive literacy practices.
Theoretical framework(s)
The paper builds on the notions of representational space (Lefebvre, 2005) and spatial frame (Harvey, 2006) in order to examine how the English Only space of this sixth-grade classroom mediated students’ use of language, and how, conversely, students’ use of language mediated the social production of this “English Only” space. Spatial theory is presented as a useful framework for exploring how students understood, experienced, and constructed this social space.
Methods
This paper draws on empirical data collected using ethnographic methods. The study relied on participant observation, video-recording, and audio-recording to document the verbal interactions that took place across multiple social and instructional contexts in this classroom. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted as a means of engaging students in what Rampton (2003) calls participant retrospection. During these interviews, students were presented with data on their use of Spanglish (excerpts from field notes and audio/video recordings) and then asked to reflect on their use of language therein.
Data sources
Data sources include ethnographic field notes, as well as excerpts of transcribed speech from audio/video recordings and semi-structured interviews.
Results
The findings presented in this paper highlight the complexity and nuance that emerge when “socio-political contradictions are realized spatially” (Lefebvre, 2005, p. 365). To be sure, racist and xenophobic language ideologies were inscribed in the space of this public school classroom through their instantiation in English Only instructional policy. Moreover, students sometimes articulated and embodied ideologies that normalized notions of monoglot purism. However, through their continued everyday use of Spanglish within—and in spite of—this English Only context, students constructed a social space in which bilingualism and hybridity were normative, implicitly and explicitly challenging notions of linguistic purism. To borrow Harvey’s (2006) words, students produced an oppositional spatial frame. Because students’ use of Spanglish did not completely erase the hegemonic influence of English Only ideology and policy, however, the classroom is more productively described as a contested space, in which both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic influences co-existed in constant dialectical tension.
Significance
Spatial theory is presented as a productive lens for capturing the complexity and nuance in this space of ideological contestation. The paper concludes with a discussion of how a spatial theoretical framework might complement cultural historical activity theory and related frameworks as a combined lens through which to make sense of everyday language and literacy practices in today’s complex urban schools.

Author

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, The University of Texas - Austin