"They Still Have Very Thick Accents": A Raciolinguistic Analysis of the "Long-Term English Learner" Classification

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Challenging Normalized Conceptions of Bilingual Identity in Multilingual U.S. K–12 Education

Abstract

In recent years, increasing attention has been given to the growing number of emergent bilinguals who are also labeled “Long-Term English Learners” (LTEL) (Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002; Menken, Kleyn, & Chae, 2012). This label generally refers to students who have been enrolled in U.S. public schools for six or more years but have not tested out of English Language support services. While still developing, the literature examining this population has argued that despite possessing oral proficiency in English, LTELs lack academic skills in English and their home language to explain poor academic performance, high course failure rates, and difficulty testing out of English support services (Menken & Kleyn, 2009; Ruiz de Velasco & Fix, 2000). Researchers have also characterized LTELs as students with inconsistent U.S. schooling who often transfer schools, shift language support programs, and/or experience transnational migration (Menken et al., 2012). However, more recent scholarship exploring LTEL experiences has begun critically examining the role of racial, ethnic, and linguistic bias in the continuing classification of multilingual students of color with this label (Brooks, 2015; Flores, Kleyn, & Menken, 2015; Kibler et al., 2018).

In line with this emerging critique, this paper draws on raciolinguistics (Alim, Rickford, & Ball, 2016; Rosa & Flores, 2017) and data from a one-year school ethnography to analyze the diverse backgrounds and experiences of four Latinx LTELs in a rural Wisconsin high school. Raciolinguistics is a theoretical construct developed by language and education researchers to understand the “co-naturalization of language and race” (Rosa & Flores, 2017, p. 621) as a means to better interrogate the experiences of multilingual populations. This perspective utilizes the literature critiquing linguistic prescriptivism (Cummins, 2000), encouraging additive educational practices (Valenzuela, 1999), and analyzing race and language through sociolinguistic and anthropological approaches (Alim et. al, 2016).

My findings counter much of the literature on LTELs in that none of my participants had any significant school-to-school movement or transnational migration after starting U.S. schooling. Instead, my findings demonstrate how participants were positioned as deviant or deficient, and that this positioning could be deeply linked to race and language, as well as gender and indigenous background. Despite consistent observations of participants’ sophisticated linguistic repertoires in English and their home language(s), as well as participants reporting numerous situations where they felt most comfortable using English, teachers consistently critiqued their language practices for being colored by an “accent,” used their bilingualism/multilingualism as an excuse for academic “failure,” and made inaccurate assumptions about their home language and cultural background (e.g. not knowing an indigenous student from Mexico spoke an indigenous language at home).

By exploring my participants’ experiences through a raciolinguistic lens, I advocate for a more nuanced, intersectional, and dynamic understanding of the multilingual identities of Latinx emergent bilinguals. This work adds to our understanding of the educational experiences of Latinx LTELs in U.S. schools, examines the intersection of race, language, gender, and indigeneity in Latinx education, and questions the ways school spaces can be (re)imagined from an asset-oriented framework.

Author

• Bailey B. Smolarek, University of Wisconsin - Madison