Dual-Language Bilingual Students and the Raciolinguistic Stigmatization of Dominicans   (Poster 31)

• In Event: Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research

Abstract

This ethnographic case study examines how fourth grade students in a Spanish/English dual language bilingual public school navigate raciolinguistic ideologies about Spanish varieties. A focus is placed on the raciolinguistic stigmatization of Dominicans- a Latinx group widely perceived as more Black than other Spanish-speaking Latinxs, and a group that is the demographic majority in the school’s New York City neighborhood. This study looks at classroom observations, student classwork, and one-to-one interviews with students of Dominican descent across three dual language bilingual classrooms. Findings from this project indicate that students embody and reproduce oppressive raciolinguistic ideologies at a young age, even in a dual language bilingual program that aims to foster pride in their home language. Although students exhibited critical consciousness about multilingualism and outwardly critiqued hegemonic language ideologies, they also expressed an internalization of ideologies that deem their language varieties as inferior to others. Students have learned to assess their language practices from a hegemonic lens, and many of the students recursively reproduced raciolinguistic ideologies within multiple levels of “Dominican Spanish”. Ideologies of linguistic purism were also evident in the ways students held themselves to monoglossic expectations of what it means to be fluent in Spanish. These findings offer important contributions to scholarship committed to challenging deficit framings of Latinx children and improving schooling experiences for racially and linguistically marginalized students.  

Author

• Gladys Aponte, Graduate Center - CUNY
  Presenting Author