Language Use and Accommodation Among Latina/o/x High School Youth in Santa Ana, California

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: Deconstructing Language Ideologies: Students' and Teachers' Practices and Perspectives

Abstract

The United States is the second-largest Spanish speaking country in the world, with reports of 41 million native speakers and 12 million bilinguals. Despite these staggering numbers, scholars discuss how Spanish continues to serve to racialize Latina/o/x communities and how attitudes about Spanish are often linked to classed and gendered attitudes toward Latina/o/x (e.g., Anzaldúa, 1987; Baugh, 2000, 2003; Rosa, 2019; Zentella, 1997, 2003). Latina/o/x language politics refers to a range of social interactions Latina/o/x experience rooted in language and speech, which includes, but is not limited to, attitudes toward “accents”, translation, bilingualism, code-switching, and linguistic innovation (Flores & Rosa, 2015; Hurtado 1989, 2004; Sánchez, 1978, Urciouli 1996; Zentella, 1997, 2003). Educationally, Latina/o/x high school youth continue to underperform (Flores-Gonzalez, 2005; Pizarro, 2005; Valenzuela, 1999), with language at the forefront of their perceived deficiencies. Teachers and school personnel continue to scrutinize youth for speaking “improper” or “mashed” forms of Spanish and English. Yet, many researchers have argued that youth are in fact sophisticated language users (Alim, 2004; Bucholtz, 2011; Bucholtz, Casillas, Lee; 2016, 2018; Mendoza-Denton, 2008; Paris, 2011; Reyes, 2007; Rosa, 2019; Wyman, McCarty & Nicholas, 2014). Therefore, it is important to analyze the influence of language politics and ideologies on Latina/o/x youth education.

Taken from my larger ethnographic dissertation study, which analyzes how racial and linguistic ideologies of Spanish-language influence the educational experiences and linguistic practices of Latina/o/x high school youth in Santa Ana, CA, this presentation focuses on the way in which the students discuss their engagement with bilingual practices such as codeswitching and Spanglish within educational settings. Specifically, the sociocultural linguistic analysis (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) focuses on how Latina/o/x students explain the ways in which their linguistic practices must shift and accommodate to who they interact with and where on their campus they interact. This discussion adds to the existing literature on English-only ideologies and how related practices can strip students of their native language and remove it from their academic learning. The student participants, who I am referring to as the “Prop 227 generation”, explore the duality of Spanish acceptance and rejection within schooling practices and grapple with when and how their Spanish is valued and of appropriate use. This presentation concludes with recommendations for how the students themselves think that schools and schooling practices can acknowledge their Spanish abilities as key to their communication, education, and identity.

Author

• Adanari Zarate, University of California - Santa Barbara