Negotiating Identities of Bilingual Expertise Through Translingual Talk in a Spanish-English Dual-Language Classroom

• In Event: Developing Multi/Translingual Competencies and Expertise Through Peer Interactions: Affordances, Constraints, and Complexities

Abstract

Objectives
This paper explores how bilingual identities were constructed and contested among first grade students in a Spanish-English dual language classroom. In particular, the paper examines how two bilingual Latinx students modeled Spanish-English bilingualism for two of their non-Latinx classmates who were learning Spanish as a third language, as well as how these two Spanish learners asserted their own bilingual expertise. Drawing on ethnographic and interactional data from a longitudinal study at this site, the paper focuses on a series of translingual interactions involving these four students over the course of a single academic year.

Theoretical framework
The paper draws on the notion of translanguaging (García, 2009) to frame these students’ dynamic and flexible use of their linguistic repertoires as a reflection of bilingual expertise. In addition, an analytic framework articulated by Bucholtz and Hall (2005) is utilized to examine how these students’ identities were constituted in social interaction.

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 with these four students and their teacher. Analysis involved examining the sequential organization of talk within single interactions, while also looking beyond these individual speech events (Wortham & Reyes, 2015) to identify “pathways of linked events that together accomplish social actions” (p. 109).

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 showcase the interactional mechanisms by which students’ identities were variously asserted, contested, and negotiated in particular episodes of everyday classroom talk, while also highlighting how patterns related to student identity developed over time. The two bilingual Latinx speakers modeled what it meant to be Spanish-English bilinguals for their Spanish-learning peers by translanguaging within and across multiple interactions, essentially positioning translingual expertise as bilingual expertise. For their part, the two Spanish learners appropriated and asserted this same kind of bilingual expertise by translanguaging frequently themselves. However, they each seemed to follow a different itinerary of identity (Bucholtz et al., 2012), with one successfully asserting bilingual expertise and the other meeting with significant contestation. These findings illustrate both the inter-subjective nature of identity formation among students, and the central role that students’ language plays in this process.

Scholarly significance
As racial and linguistic diversity continue to increase, and as dual language education continues to grow in popularity, learning contexts such as this classroom, in which non-Latinx children learn both Spanish and English alongside their bilingual Latinx classmates, will become increasingly common. Analyses of peer interactions in such classrooms offer valuable practical implications for the implementation of dual language education in multilingual and Latinx-majority contexts.

Authors

• Ramon Antonio Martinez, Stanford University

• Leah Durán, The University of Arizona

• Michiko Hikida, The Ohio State University - Columbus