Bilanguaging Love: Uncovering Latina/o/x Bilingual Students' Ways of Knowing in the Epistemic Borderlands of Dual-Language Immersion

• In Event: Humanizing Subaltern Voices, Knowledges, and Language Practices in Dual-Language Bilingual Education

Abstract

Objective
This paper draws on a larger qualitative study of language practices during language arts instruction in two second-grade two-way Dual Language Immersion (DLI) classrooms that include roughly equal numbers of Spanish- and English-dominant speakers (Christian, 1996). We examine how Latina/o/x bilingual students embodied their borderlands sensing, awareness, and sensitivity in DLI classrooms.

Theoretical Framework
Conceptually, we draw on Mignolo’s (2012) notions of bilanguaging and bilanguaging love, which build on Anzaldúa’s (1987) notion of “new mestiza consciousness” and DuBois’ (2014) notion of “double consciousness” to highlight the epistemologies and knowledges persevering in the borderlands. In particular, bilanguaging love explores love as “the necessary corrective to the violence of systems of control and oppression” (p. 273). Love for the translingual, transcultural, and transnational practices and experiences of Latina/o/x bilinguals broadens possibilities for addressing their social, political, and educational plight.

Methods
The present analysis was guided by the following: (1) What knowledge about living and learning between languages, cultures, and social worlds do bilingual students make visible during language arts instruction? (2) How do students embody their bilanguaging and bilingual subjectivities?

We undertook this yearlong study in a district located in a mid-sized midwestern community that recently experienced increased numbers of Spanish-speaking Latina/o/x (im)migrants. Participant observations included fieldnotes and audio recordings during structured and unstructured time, informal interviews, and language and literacy artifacts through photographs (Creswell, 2009; Maxwell, 1998). Ongoing analytic memos consisted of accumulated details, impressions, and insights.

Data Sources
By triangulating our observations with informal interviews, classroom artifacts, and memos, we deepened our understanding of student experiences, practices, reasonings, and relationships that illuminated their sensitivity to and thinking about these borderlands. Table 1 details the data corpus.
Table 1: (please see PDF)

Results
First, we analyze an example of bilanguaging in which Latina students demonstrated their awareness of linguistic, cultural, and racial/ethnic borders and at the same time, their sensing about how Spanish, English, and bilingualism intersected in their lives, relative to White students. That is, these Latinas reified and reproduced these borders to proclaim that Spanish reflected their Mexicana and Latina identities as they simultaneously embodied Spanish and bilingualism in ways that White students did not. Second, we analyze Latina/o/x bilingual students’ participation in classroom interaction and academic tasks that revealed the relationships, ways of being, and knowledges they employed as they supported their peers. These examples made visible these students’ acute sensibilities and sensitivities.

Significance
As an equity-oriented guiding principle, bilanguaging love can serve counterhegemonic ends by elevating the epistemologies and knowledges suppressed by Western modern/colonial projects but evidenced in DLI contexts.

Authors

• Mariana Pacheco, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Colleen Hamilton, National Louis University