Raciolinguistic Borderlands: Reimagining the Linguistic Repertoires of Dual Language Learners

• In Event: 43.077 - MTCC Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 43.077-4 - Woven out of a Thousand Details: Approaching Affective, Racial, and Sociopolitical Boundaries in Educational Research

Abstract

Assimilationist language ideologies that privilege the development of English guide the educational policies and practices for dual language learners (DLLs) (Gandara et al. 2003). These inequities stem in large part from raciolinguistic ideologies (Flores & Rosas, 2015), the ideological construction and value of standardized language practices that conflate racialized bodies with linguistic deficiency. Understanding raciolinguistic ideologies through the lens of Anzaldua’s (2007) concept of borderlands, the in-between space that transgresses dominant and oppressive forces, I offer the concept of raciolinguistic borderlands as a necessary space for dual language learners to be their authentic racial, cultural, ethnic, linguistic selves. This paper emphasizes the importance of understanding raciolinguistic ideologies to historicize the structural inequalities facing dual language learners and argues that educators should privilege the linguistic toolkits of these students.

Within monoglossic language ideologies, culture is based on its relation to a deficit understanding of the practices of nondominant communities as homogeneous, unchanging, and deviant from dominant practices while positioning monolingualism as the norm (Flores, 2013). Monoglossic language ideologies can be understood as part of what Silverstein (1998) describes as “a culture of monoglot standardization” (p. 284), where deep rooted allegiances to imagined linguistic norms persist regardless of whether or not these norms are adhered to in practice. People tend to embrace boundaries of “standard English” even though they cannot locate its perceived importance empirically. Anzaldua (2007) explains, “...for a people who cannot entirely identify with either standard (formal, Castillian) Spanish nor standard English, what recourse is left to them but to create their own language? A language which they can connect their identity to, one capable of communicating the realities and values true to themselves–a language with terms that are neither español ni inglés, but both” (p.55). By embracing these realities, the focus shifts to understand how dominant groups use their power to place value on standard English as a cultural emblem and how nondominant groups resist this processes.

Despite work on language ideologies, the asymmetrical relations between language and language speakers have not been explored intersectionality with class and race differences (Urciuoli, 1995). This paper intervenes in this gap by bringing together raciolinguistic ideologies and borderlands to foreground an approach that understands the experiences of dual language learners. It is important to theorize race to understand how the practices of language are tied to linguistic and racial inequality (Alim, 2005).

Educators need to move beyond the raciolinguisic ideologies that hold back meaningful curricular change. Classroom practice tends to focus on language, language use and practice away from context which essentializes and dehistoricizes students’ “linguistic repertoires of practice” (Gutiérrez and Rogoff 2003,p. 22). Thus, educators, researchers, and policymakers should focus less on linguistic “deficiencies” and instead strive to learn more about students’ history of involvement with language and literacy practices, their existence in the raciolinguistic borderlands (Gutiérrez, 2008). By understanding these dynamics, researchers can work to take on a more robust view of students’ practices as they cross borders and boundaries and make moves to privilege their linguistic toolkits.

Author

• Karen Villegas, University of California - Berkeley