Multilingual Talk: One Student's Evolving Identity

• In Event: 41.084 - Roundtable Session 16
  In Roundtable Session: 41.084-13 - Youth's Identity Work in Diverse Multilingual and Multicultural Contexts

Abstract

Racial and linguistic diversity is sometimes interpreted and acted upon in a polarizing manner in the United States. The “prestigious domains and functions” of English and the “popularity of Anglo-American culture has given the English language associations of status, power and wealth” (Baker, 2011, p. 85). Studies addressing linguistic diversity and identity development in the United States are often focused on speakers of native languages other than English (Early & Norton, 2012; Zentella, 1997). Thus, I was curious to explore the talk of one native English speaker to determine how she came to develop a more fluid definition of identity based on agentive moves and diverse linguistic and cultural contexts in which she participated, despite her ascribed (birth) membership in the dominant Anglo-American culture.

Esteban-Guitart & Moll’s (2014) Vygotskian sociocultural perspective of Funds of Identity is the conceptual framework that guided my qualitative analysis of the idea units present in the interview data collected on my single subject. This lens purports the agentive nature of identity development as “funds of knowledge are (become) funds of identity when people use them to define themselves” (p. 37). Through this lens, a person engages with the social, cultural, and (in our case) linguistic stimuli around her and assumes pieces of those experiences and ways of being in order to compose her identity. McCarthey & Moje (2002) offer “identities as clusters of stories that we tell about ourselves and others tell about us… (that) allows for the sense of hybridity, complexity, and contradiction… without diminishing identity to incoherence” (p. 231). Analyzing the talk of my participant reveals the ways in which she engaged in the diverse linguistic and cultural experiences that comprised her K-10 years and assimilated various aspects of those experiences in order to develop a multilingual, multiliterate, and multicultural identity.

This paper focuses on the talk of one native English-speaking teen – my daughter – who has had diverse cultural and linguistic experiences first in a dual language elementary and 6th grade middle school (Spanish-English) and later in 7th-10th through traditional Spanish and French studies in schools that enjoy a diverse Caucasian-African-American population. Analysis of four interviews – each with a unique focus – reveals evidence that the participant actively developed a hybrid identity that manifested in: code-switching; a sense of enriched identity (relating to both ‘uniqueness’ and ‘power’); distancing from monolingual ideologies and aligning with multilingual ideologies; multilingual positioning; and multilingual identity (explicitly assuming membership). The discussion will consider how to nurture multilingual, multiliterate, and multicultural identities that allow and encourage youth to be fluid in their views of themselves, as well as those around them.

 

Author

• Rebecca Schwerdtfeger, University of Missouri - Columbia