Portrait of an Emergent Bilingual: Bilingualism or Language Loss?

• In Event: Literacy, Identity, and Learning: A Three-Year Longitudinal Study With Immigrant Families

Abstract

Theoretical Framework: This paper explores language shifts that occur for a Mexican American “emergent bilingual” (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010) child from a New Literacy Studies (NLS) perspective (Gee, 2008; Gregory, Long & Volk, 2004; Heath, 1983; Scribner & Cole, 1981; Street, 1984). The NLS perspective views literacy as a set of social practices situated within the local lives of individuals. Literacy practices include “observable behaviors around literacy [such as the acts of reading and writing] … but also the concepts and meanings brought to those events and which give them meaning” (Street, 2003, p. 81). Gee (2004) and Ferdman (1990) argue that children construct literate identities as they attach different meanings to the acts of reading and writing in different contexts. For example, Marsh (2005) identifies the centrality of pop culture in children’s literacy practices and identity construction. Marsh defines pop culture as “cultural texts, artifacts and practices which are attractive to large numbers of children and which are often mass produced on a global scale” (2005, p. 2).
For “emergent bilinguals”, the power differentials embedded in languages cause some students to prefer English over their mother tongue languages (Shin, 2005; Sridhar, 1988; Young & Tran, 1988). Further, literacy education is often used as a vehicle for social agendas that foster language loyalty (Kadar-Fulop, 1988). The current study identifies the influence of pop culture in an emergent bilingual’s literate identity construction and explores how her choices of literacy practices shape her loyalty to English.
Findings: Lili is a second grader, born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from Mexico. Sara, Lili’s mother, has two social agendas: (a) to maintain Lili’s Spanish language proficiency and her Mexican roots; and (b) to support Lili’s school success, which predicates on Lili’s English language proficiency.
Lili’s identity performance is rooted in pop culture where her favorite media characters and texts include Dora, Hello Kitty, Hannah Montana, Selena Gomez, the Cheetah Girls, the Harry Potter series and the Twilight series. Her book choice has shifted from only reading “easy books” in grade 1 to reading Harry Potter books in grade 2. She cross-referenced Nickelodeon magazines while she watched the Harry Potter movies to match actors to the characters. She read the books to revisit the plots and copied biographical data about her favorite idols from magazines into her notebooks. These home literacy practices reflected school literacy practices used to complete a school project about dolphins. In grade 2, Lili identified herself as a good reader and writer in English.
Through home literacy practices steeped in pop culture, English infiltrates Lili’s home-space where only Spanish is sanctioned in conversation. Through the lens of literacy practices, Lili sees herself as a good English speaker, reader and writer in juxtaposition to her lack of confidence in reading and writing in Spanish. This case study illustrates the pivotal role of literacy in developing an emergent bilingual’s linguistic repertoire.

Author

• Yvonne Pek, University of Wisconsin - Madison