Construction of Language Ideologies in a Multilingual Second-Grade Classroom

• In Event: 61.047 - Language Ideologies and Positioning: Countering Deficit Discourses Surrounding Immigrant and Emergent Bilingual Learners

Abstract

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend schools with English-only language ideologies. This paper draws from qualitative data collected in one multilingual, second-grade classroom to explore how students co-constructed language ideologies across a schoolyear. Drawing from the notion of language and literacy as ideological practices, this article illustrates the multiple, situated, and dynamic language ideologies that students agentively displayed as they engaged in a daily literacy practice designed to value multiple languages. Using data from two students with different heritage language backgrounds as illustrative cases, it is argued that students negotiated language ideologies about their own and peers’ heritage languages, and that these ideologies were connected to students’ school and peer worlds and influenced by their heritage language backgrounds.

Author

• Lindsey Rowe, The Ohio State University - Columbus