Complexifying Notions of Heritage Language Learning: Investigating Learners' Social Identities and Opportunities for Academic Learning

• In Event: 49.088 - Roundtable Session 17
  In Roundtable Session: 49.088-8 - Learner Language, Identity, and Agency

Abstract

The discourse analytic study reported here about a Spanish classroom in a bilingual school lends support for the claim that classroom discourse can reveal important information about how students’ self-identification evolves over time and how self-identification shapes opportunities for learning, mostly because such analysis shines light on ideologies and assumptions about language and language users in play. Various ideologies and assumptions embedded in the school categorization system are examined in detail. In practice, the focal school’s attempts to categorize their diverse student body using the labels “Spanish dominant” and “English dominant” created a rigid hierarchical structure that students were unable to traverse. These labels engendered serious tensions in the classroom as students negotiated social identities through discourse and interaction.

Author

• Elizabeth Suzanne Goulette, Georgia State University