Found in Translation: Latinx High School Students on College Radio

• In Event: 58.034 - Putting Policy Into Perspective: Exposing Racializing Discourses Through Explorations of Minoritized Students' Perceptions and Practices

Abstract

Latinx youth language brokers and their work occupy a triply invisible space. First, dominant discourses about English in the US have led to English-only education policies in California (Proposition 227), Arizona (Proposition 203), and other states, which marginalize Spanish and other languages. Practices involving these languages (e.g., interpretation and translation), are pushed to social, spatial, and temporal peripheries of public spaces, events, and activities. Second, historically, translation theory has rendered the agency of the interpreter invisible (Venuti, 1995), idealizing the interpreter or translator as a “voiceless,” neutral conduit for others’ voices. Finally, in the US and elsewhere, youth themselves, particularly youth of color, are not usually viewed as agents, actors, or experts (Bucholtz et al. in preparation). Despite these processes of erasure (Irvine & Gal, 2000), bilingual youth workers in Santa Barbara have begun to be recognized for their linguistic expertise. Realizing that questions of language access are key to engaging Spanish-speaking parents in their children’s education, a local high school’s Office of Bilingual Education began training groups of bilingual Latinx students to interpret for Spanish-speaking parents at important school events in local elementary, middle, and high schools. While this program takes a funds of knowledge (Moll et al., 1992) approach that valorizes students’ home languages within school settings, students have little opportunity to reflect upon or share their understandings of what it means to language broker.

Working from the theoretical frameworks of critical language awareness and pedagogy (Alim, 2010), accompaniment (Tomlinson & Lipsitz, 2013), and sociolinguistic justice (Bucholtz et al., 2014), I address this need through a collaborative educational ethnography with Latinx youth language brokers by creating a bilingual radio show called “Found in Translation.” Airing in Summer 2016 on a university-operated radio station, the show featured students investigating, writing, and recording original audio content on issues of bilingual experiences and youth language brokering. This study analyzes 40 hours of ethnographic video data and fieldnotes I collected as a participant-observer in this show, and includes interviews students conducted and interactional data from our weekly pitch meetings. Specifically, I examine students’ identities as educators through their processes for identifying and shaping stories to share with Santa Barbara’s publics about bilingual lived experiences.

By utilizing youth participatory action research methodologies (Cammarota & Fine, 2008), this study stands in stark contrast to much existing educational scholarship on Latino youth language brokers, which tends to rely on surveys that privilege researchers’ views of youths’ brokering experiences (Weisskirch, 2008). This study calls attention to the multidimensionality of youth’s understandings of their role as language and cultural brokers by focusing on language use in interaction, and providing multimedia opportunities for students to engage in meaning-making about their experiences on their own terms. Working with youth as educators and co-producers of public culture and knowledge, this study is part of a growing body of scholarship that sees educational ethnographic research as part of a broader social field of action underpinning civic life in healthy, thriving democracies (Brookes & Jewett, 2014; Tomlinson & Lipsitz 2013; Sommer, 2014).

Author

• Audrey Noelle Lopez, University of California - Santa Barbara