Complexifying Internal Linguistic Discrimination: Bilingual Latinx Teachers Navigating Spanish Language Ideologies in Bilingual Programs

Abstract

  • This study explores internal linguistic discrimination by Latinx bilingual teachers towards their Latinx students' Spanish, using a teacher solidarity lens.
  • It involves semi-structured interviews with 15 U.S. and non-U.S. born bilingual Latinx teachers, examining their reactions to sentences with U.S. Spanish features and their opinions on their students’ Spanish.
  • Teachers' responses reflected hegemonic and monoglossic language ideologies.
  • Teachers rationalized their decisions based on:
    • Protecting students from linguistic discrimination.
    • Maintaining Spanish in an English-dominant system.
    • Belief that ‘standard’ Spanish leads to academic and professional success.
  • Teachers’ care for students and knowledge of Latinx experiences influenced their pedagogical decisions.

Introduction

  • U.S. Latinx communities are diverse in race, ethnicity, and national backgrounds.
  • They share histories of systemic neglect and colonial/linguistic pasts.
  • Of the nearly 60 million Latinx individuals in the U.S., 72% speak varieties of Spanish at home.
  • Contact between Spanish and English has led to hybrid language practices and diverse Latinx identities.
  • Bilingual education models often enforce strict language separation policies and focus on teaching standard languages.
  • Latinx communities face schooling that limits their linguistic repertoires and treats their practices as flawed.
  • Research aims to reclaim and affirm U.S. Latinx communities’ linguistic practices, emphasizing the richness of their repertoires.
  • There is limited research on the identity of bilingual Latinx teachers who use Spanish in their instruction and how they grapple with hegemonic ideologies.
  • This research extends a previous study that examined bilingual teachers’ attitudes toward their Latinx students’ Spanish.
  • The original study analyzed responses of 84 Spanish-English bilingual teachers to audio samples containing linguistic features of U.S. Spanish varieties.
  • Teachers were asked if they would correct utterances with codeswitching or overt pronouns in a science class taught in Spanish.
  • The goal was to use teachers’ correction responses as a proxy for ideologies surrounding the constructions in question.
  • Findings revealed that most participant teachers, predominantly U.S.-born Latinxs, negatively evaluated features of U.S. Spanish varieties, which is defined as internal linguistic discrimination.
  • Bilingual teachers could inadvertently contribute to students’ Spanish language loss.
  • The study analyzes the complexities behind bilingual Latinx teachers’ responses in relation to their own linguistic practices and bilingualism, interviewing a subset of fifteen bilingual teachers who self-identified as Latinx.
  • Research questions:
    1. What are the language ideologies reflected in Latinx bilingual teachers’ attitudes toward their students’ Spanish varieties?
    2. How do Latinx bilingual teachers rationalize their attitudes and practices regarding Spanish language instruction in relation to their own multilingual minoritized identities?
  • The study draws from language ideologies and bilingual teachers’ identities.
  • It examines the complex reasoning behind Latinx bilingual teachers’ espousal of monoglossic and hegemonic ideologies, considering their multilingual minoritized identities.
  • Following a teacher solidarity research lens, the work considers the emotional toll on linguistically minoritized teachers in the U.S. educational context.

Language Ideologies

  • Language ideologies are beliefs about language reflected in institutions, products, and practices.
  • Speakers articulate language ideologies by naturalizing particular language uses related to moral and political beliefs.
  • Iconicity: treating linguistic features as symbolic of the essence of speakers.
  • Hegemonic language ideologies: hierarchize languages or language varieties based on perceived value.
  • Monoglossic language ideologies: normalize monolingual language practices and conceptualize bilinguals as two monolinguals in one.
  • Exonormative language ideologies: idealize linguistic norms from external standards (e.g. Real Academia Española) as the target for language learning.
  • Discourses naturalizing monolingualism and linguistic purism permeate bilingual education programs.
  • Standard language ideologies equate language forms imposed by institutions with ‘standard’ language.
  • Academic language ideologies: conceive of language in academic settings as more complex, influencing teachers' pedagogical practices and perpetuating inequities for linguistically minoritized students.
  • Linguistic elitism: Educated groups impose their language practices as the norm through the teaching of ‘standard’ Spanish.
  • Language ideologies are multiple, complex, and competing at individual and community levels.
  • Educators may articulate contradictory language ideologies as they implement language and program policies.

Bilingual Teacher Identities

  • Identity: Being recognized as a certain kind of person in a given context, and how an individual conceptualizes their relationship to the world across time and space.
  • Contemporary conceptualizations of identity envision it as negotiated, conflicting, and fluid.
  • Language plays a fundamental role in the construction of identity as individuals use their linguistic resources to signify who they are as they participate in various communities of practice.
  • Identities are constantly performed through individuals’ actions in communities.
  • Multilingual individuals use hybrid language practices to signal the complexity and hybridity of their identities.
  • Recent work shifts focus to marginalizing processes enacted by hegemonic perceivers.
  • It investigates the perceptual apparatus that ascribes low social prestige to translingual practices.
  • Hegemonic and monoglossic language ideologies stifle the expression of multilingual teacher identities, deny their linguistic capital, and control who teachers can and cannot be.
  • Multilingual teacher identity is influenced by narrow conceptions of good language teaching, pressures of standardized testing, and centering language learning on market-oriented goals.
  • Multilingual teachers experience cognitive and emotional dissonance when compelled to enact language practices in schools that are contrary to how they express their multilingualism in non-school settings.
  • The study examines how bilingual Latinx teachers’ identities and language practices informed their attitudes toward features of U.S. Spanish, considering their historical experiences with systemic and linguistic racism.

Methods, Data, and Analysis

  • Data was collected at two Spanish-English bilingual elementary schools (Darwin Elementary School and Florence Elementary School) in an urban district in Northeastern Texas.
  • Schools followed a two-way bilingual program.
  • In 2017, both schools served predominantly Latinx students (Darwin Elementary 66% and Florence Elementary 88%).
  • Researchers did not know teacher participants prior to the study.
  • The first author is a bilingual education scholar and first-generation immigrant from Ecuador, who learned English as an additional language later in life. He identifies as Mestizo in Latin America and as Latinx in the U.S.
  • The second author is a researcher of Spanish linguistics from Spain, who has lived in Texas for several years and works on issues related to Spanish syntax, sociolinguistics, and language ideologies.
  • The third author is a researcher of Spanish linguistics who studies Spanish in contact with other languages in school settings. She is a white, English-speaking woman who learned Spanish as an additional language.
  • Fifteen Latinx Spanish-English bilingual teachers who had participated in the previous phase of the research were interviewed (Román, Pastor, and Basaraba 2019).
  • Participating teachers taught students between 1st and 5th grade.
  • All expressed negative reactions toward utterances containing features characteristic of U.S. Spanish.
  • Six teachers were U.S.-born, and the rest had different lengths of residence in the United States.
  • Teachers were either simultaneous (L1–L1) or sequential (L1–L2) Spanish-English or English-Spanish bilinguals, taught multiple subjects, and represented different amounts of teaching experience.
  • Semi-structured interviews were conducted, with participants able to use English, Spanish, or both.
  • Interviews lasted approximately 30 minutes.
  • Interview questions covered their histories of bilingualism, training in U.S. Spanish varieties, the school’s bilingual program, and opinions about their students’ and their own Spanish.
  • Teachers reacted to five sentences reflecting features of Spanish varieties spoken in the United States.
  • The sentences were presented in written format only.
  • Teachers read them by themselves and were asked what their opinions were of each statement and whether they would correct it if one of their students said it in science class.
  • The framing of the question regarding whether teachers would correct the utterances could have influenced teachers’ responses by implying that the utterances were incorrect.
  • Data was analyzed using the constant comparative method.
  • A priori codes were developed from theoretical propositions of language ideologies and bilingual teacher identities.
  • The code ‘monoglossic language ideologies’ was assigned to any instance in which teachers referred to monolingual-type language as the unmarked norm. This code was further divided into child codes ‘linguistic purism’ and ‘standard language ideologies’.
  • A second code ‘hegemonic language ideologies’ was assigned to instances in which teachers appeared to invoke language hierarchies. Based on the work of Briceño, Rodriguez-Mojica, and Muñoz-Muñoz (2018), this code was further divided into the child codes ‘exonormative’, ‘academic’, and ‘elitist language ideologies’.
  • Three codes were generated regarding bilingual teacher identities. The concept of bilingual teachers belonging simultaneously to multiple communities (Canagarajah 2016) was used to develop the code ‘multiple community membership’. Similarly, we developed the code ‘experiences with linguistic discrimination’ to identify instances in which teachers mentioned that they had suffered linguistic discrimination. In addition, we used the code ‘hybrid language practices’ to reflect our participants’ reports on their own usage of hybrid languaging to signal identity, either inside or outside school settings.
  • Subsequent interpretation was based on open coding.
  • An apparent tension was identified between teachers’ negative attitudes toward their students’ Spanish and their own bilingual language practices and identity.
  • An additional round of coding was performed using child codes for rationalizations behind teachers’ negative attitudes toward their students’ language use in relation to their Latinx bilingual identities.
  • The authors recorded memos identifying patterns or new information (Saldaña 2016).
  • Disagreements were discussed until arriving at at least 80% agreement among all three coders concerning the codes generated.

Results

  • RQ1: Language ideologies reflected in teachers’ language attitudes
    • All 15 teachers reported that they recognized similar features to the sample sentences in their students’ language practices.
    • All teachers said that they would correct sentences (1-3) because these statements included codeswitching or English loans (e.g. puchando).
    • Reasons mentioned for correcting (4-5) included that these sentences showed grammatical errors, did not make sense, or ‘sounded bad’.
    • While the majority of teachers indicated that they would correct such sentences, they mentioned that they use recasting or modeling as strategies for correcting students.
    • Reasons teachers gave for correcting reflected the findings of our prior work (Román, Pastor, and Basaraba 2019).
    • Regarding language ideologies, we identified monoglossic (e.g. linguistic purism, standard ideologies) and hegemonic (e.g. exonormative, academic, elitist ideologies) language ideologies in teachers’ responses to the sample sentences and to the question of their opinion of their students’ Spanish.
    • Monoglossic ideologies were reflected in all of our participant teachers’ attitudes toward their students’ Spanish.
    • Teachers’ descriptions of ‘good’ Spanish reflected ideologies of linguistic purism that idealized Spanish that is free of English influence.
    • Standard language ideologies were evident as teachers described the sample sentences as ‘incorrect’ or deviating from what they understood to be ‘standard’ Spanish.
    • Teachers seemed to imagine a hierarchy of Spanish registers with academic Spanish located at the top and registers used at home at lower levels.
    • Teachers associated the Spanish taught in schools with higher complexity.
    • There were instances of elitist language ideologies, in which teachers perceived certain linguistic varieties as indexing low education and socioeconomic level of students’ families.
  • RQ2: Rationalizations of language attitudes and bilingual teacher identity
    • While Latinx teachers provided negative evaluations of codeswitching, all 15 reported employing hybrid linguistic practices themselves.
    • Teachers, in fact, viewed linguistic hybridity as a natural part of being bilingual.
    • Teachers emphasized a distinction between the appropriateness of using codeswitching in social versus school settings.
    • Teachers also expressed negative feelings when using hybrid language practices in their teaching.
    • Teachers apparently adhered to the monoglossic and hegemonic language ideologies that do not reflect their bilingual identities and language practices.
    • We identified three categories in teachers’ reasonings behind this contradiction.
      • Teachers’ own experiences with linguistic discrimination and not wanting their students to go through that informed their perceptions of what language instruction should be.
      • Teachers discussed their desire for Latinx students not to lose their Spanish language in an English-dominant U.S. social and educational system.
      • Teachers connected Latinx students’ ability to use ‘standard’ Spanish with the potential to succeed academically and professionally.
    • Sharing ethnic identity and linguistic experiences with their students, teachers expressed emotional and cognitive conflict between valuing both students’ Spanish varieties and the Spanish taught in the program.

Discussion and Implications: Complexifying Internal Linguistic Discrimination

  • This work shows some of the nuances behind attitudes that could be interpreted as internal linguistic discrimination by Latinx bilingual teachers toward their students’ Spanish.
  • All participant teachers’ ideas of the Spanish that should be used in classrooms reflected monoglossic and hegemonic language ideologies.
  • Latinx teachers’ espousal of such language ideologies taken alone does not provide a complete picture of the motivations behind their pedagogical decision-making.
  • Participant teachers enacted their pedagogical agency in ways that reflected their being bilingual Latinxs themselves, promoting language separation and ‘correct’ Spanish in terms of protecting their students from the linguistic discrimination they had experienced themselves when using non-standard Spanish.
  • Teachers wanted students to maintain their Spanish in an English-dominant medium.
  • Teachers discussed that hybrid language practices are acceptable in informal settings and acknowledged that they also use them in their own speech.
  • Teachers expressed their awareness of how mastering standard Spanish can impact students’ future success in society characterized by hegemonic and monoglossic norms.
  • Teachers’ deep caring for their bilingual Latinx students and embodied knowledge of Latinx experiences influenced their pedagogical decisions regarding teaching of and in Spanish.
  • This study points to the reasons behind linguistically minoritized teachers articulating and embodying contradictory language ideologies as they enact classroom language policies.
  • Bilingual teachers’ membership in multiple communities with specific language norms, bilingualism, and experiences of linguistic discrimination generated emotional and cognitive dissonance as they enacted their roles in teaching in Spanish in a bilingual program.
  • The contradictions between espousing hegemonic and monoglossic language ideologies and deeply caring for bilingual Latinx students shows the difficult work by teachers of color who want their students to succeed but are aware of the discrimination faced by their communities.
  • Existing in such pluralities represents teachers’ thinking and feeling in a liminal space or borderland characterized by a tolerance for contradictions and ambiguity developed as a result of their lived experience as bilingual Latinxs.
  • Such multiple consciousness is not an undesirable state but rather a position of power, unique to minoritized communities, allowing one to see an understand positions of inclusion and exclusion—margins and mainstreams.
  • The teachers in our study hold the advantage of recognizing the richness of bilingual Latinx identities while also being aware of how a hegemonic system works.
  • The concepts such as codeswitching rely on perspectives of named languages that have been critiqued by raciolinguistics and translanguaging scholars.
  • Connect discussions of language practices with broader social contexts in order to produce social change.
  • Teacher preparation and professional development programs should include training around the Spanish varieties and the history of the Spanish language in the United States.
  • Work done in systemic functional linguistics could illuminate discussions among teachers and students around Spanish language variation and provide a meta-language to talk about Spanish language choices.
  • Critical language awareness and critical multilingual language awareness have become the focal point of research on teaching of Spanish as a heritage language over the past decade as a useful way for teachers, students, and program administrators to challenge linguistic hierarchies among varieties of Spanish.
  • Teacher trainings that build on translanguaging pedagogy would allow teachers to counteract exonormative Spanish standards and adopt an asset-based stance toward hybrid language practices in the classroom.
  • Educational researchers, U.S. Latinx communities, and teachers should engage with policy makers in imagining endonormative standards for testing, program design, and classroom materials that include linguistic features of U.S. Spanish.
  • Future research should continue to examine whether and why Latinx bilingual teachers—some born in the United States and some who are not—are willing to teach features of U.S. Spanish.
  • These conversations should build on teachers’ own experiences, bilingual practices in formal and informal settings, and their deep caring for their students as they navigate a system that defines bilingualism narrowly.