Be-ing Bilingual: Navigating Linguistic Binaries and Power

• In Event: The Elementary Years: A Longitudinal Look at Literacy and Language Practices of Immigrant Children

Abstract

Objective: This paper explores the dynamic nature of bilingualism from children from immigrant families and how these children enact and develop identities across space and time. The focal families, and many of the focal children, studied are multilingual, speaking many languages across and within social spaces. In order to understand the children’s complex developmental bilingualism, we explore how they are positioned and position themselves in different cultural and linguistic contexts and examine how children’s perceptions and practices attest to be-ing versus becoming bilingual.

Theoretical framework: We approach our study using a holistic framing of bilingualism through which we view “linguistic repertoires as integrated and an interconnected whole” (de Jong, 2011, p.49), as “multicompetence” (Canagarajah, 2011). This framework allows us to understand the dynamic multilingual be-ing of our focal children, to “appreciate their competence in their own terms” (Canagarajah, 2011, p.3), and to uncover tensions within social spaces that approach bilingualism as fractional, or “two monolinguals in one person” (Grosjean, 1989, p. 3).

Methods & Data: Drawing from the corpus of five years of longitudinal qualitative data as described in the introduction above, this paper concentrates on participants’ perceptions and experiences of linguistic practices and identities across time and space. Analysis involved a priori and grounded coding across parallel data sets and within-/across-case comparisons revealed nuances and commonalities of be-ing bilingual within American social and educational contexts.

Results: Preliminary analysis of the data revealed the following three themes:
1. Bilingualism as be-ing: Children expressed holistic experiences of being speakers of different languages. Within the context of our study, many of the children expressed confusion when asked how speaking two languages impacted their literacy and learning, often redirecting the conversation to highlight tensions between bilingualism as lived experience rather than a process of formal acquisition. In doing so, they reframed bilingualism as be-ing rather than becoming.
2. Bilingualism as a binary: Although children expressed an integrated bilingual existence, they often encountered practices that attempted to fracture their linguistic repertoire as they moved across spaces. Exemplified by differences in how children’s bilingualism was labeled or recognized in schools, those who entered school with ‘proficient’ English oral language skills were often not seen as bilingual while others, predominately native Spanish-speakers, were identified as ‘bilingual’ with much attention given to the impact their bilingualism held on reading and writing.
3. Bilingualism and power: Children’s participation in, and access to, linguistic practices shifted and changed over time as facets of their bilingualism were recognized, ignored or diminished by institutional structures. In school contexts, the limited attention given to many of the children’s bilingualism impacted how they drew upon linguistic repertoires and identities. Although community contexts, such as churches, provided opportunities to engage native languages, bilingualism was often fractured in these spaces as well, leading to further tensions in children’s be-ing.

Significance: This paper contributes a longitudinal perspective of the lived experiences of bilingual children. As schools become more linguistically diverse, exploring tensions, experiences and perceptions of bilingual learners provides possibilities for more democratic, inclusive educational spaces.

Authors

• Erin Quast, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Jieun Kim, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Brooke Ward, University of Wisconsin - Madison