"But They're Illiterate": Discourses of Illiteracy in Spanish Heritage Language Education

• In Event: 81.013 - Genealogical Perspectives on Bilingual and Heritage Language Education as Sites for Regulating Racial Difference

Abstract

Objective
Literacy development has been identified as one of the goals of heritage language education for bilingual Latinx students in the United States. This paper analyzes the ways in which discussions of heritage language learner proficiency default to arguments of illiteracy, creating and sustaining narratives that marginalize the existing literate abilities of these bilingual Latinx students. The paper reviews empirical and theoretical discussions of proficiency, as well as early and contemporary frameworks for the teaching of heritage learners. In doing so, it considers the historical evolution of literacy discourses and their current role in the consistent ideological framing of bilingual students as illiterate.

Theoretical Framework
Racioliteracies is a framework that centers the role of race in discourses that shape the construct of proficiency, and interrogates the power dynamics that position bilingual Latinx students as illiterate. This framework builds on perspectives in sociocultural literacy, critical race theory, and raciolinguistic ideologies. It encourages critical conversations that are attentive to the power dynamics involved in the racialization of bilingual Latinx students and their language and literacy practices in institutions such as schools. This racioliteracies perspective offers a point of entry for re-reading discussions of proficiency in Spanish heritage language education.

Methods and Data Sources
Using a genealogy approach, this paper reviews empirical and theoretical discussions of proficiency as well as early and contemporary frameworks for the teaching of Spanish heritage language learners. Historic and current discussions of proficiency in these sources contribute to answering the paper’s central questions: How is the proficiency of bilingual Latinx students conceptualized? How might these conceptualizations of proficiency be complicit, or resist, dominant language ideologies?

Conclusions
Early research approaches to Spanish heritage language education in the United States identified literacy as an area in need of remediation for bilingual Latinx students. The supposed illiteracy of these students, however, did not always fit existing definitions of illiteracy. Contemporary discourses, regarding the abilities and needs of these students, continue a similar trend by reducing literacy to sets of specific, discrete, and transferable skills. These definitions contribute to narrow definitions of proficiency that marginalize the multifaceted ways in which bilingual Latinx students enact literacy in their daily lives.

Scholarly Significance
Literacy in second and heritage language education has long been a concern for many researchers and practitioners (Chevalier, 2004; Kern, 2000; Swaffar & Arens, 2005; Villareal, 1981). More recently, publications have explored how different conceptualizations of literacy may be applied to these settings (Kumagai & López-Sánchez, 2016, Parra, 2014; Vinogradova, 2014). This paper makes an important contribution by highlighting conflicting definitions of literacy and their role in the sustenance of illiterate subjectivities for bilingual Latinx students.

Author

• Erica Saldivar Garcia, University of Pennsylvania