“It’s All Spanish Something”: Normalizing and Promoting Spanish in an English-Only Policy Context

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 8:00 am Four Seasons Ballroom 1
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Identity, and Resistance: English, Spanish, and Spanglish in Bi-/Multilingual Education (Table 1)

Abstract

This paper examines how a K-5 dual language school in Tucson, Arizona created a school-wide language culture that promoted and normalized Spanish and bilingual language practices while situated in a state context that denigrated and othered Spanish and Spanish-speakers and maintained an English-only education policy. Analyses of observation and interview data demonstrated that teachers and students engaged in practices that explicitly and implicitly normalized Spanish use at the school, and did so in direct resistance to the raciolinguistic ideologies that fueled and were fueled by Arizona’s restrictive language policies and sociopolitical climate. This research contributes to scholarship that examines schools as sites of counter-cultural practice and cultural and linguistic reclamation, and showcases the possibilities of navigating a restrictive policy context.

Author

• Neida Basheer Ahmad, Loyola Marymount University