Raciolinguistics and Spanish language teaching in the USA: from theoretical approaches to teaching practices

ABSTRACT

Raciolinguistic perspectives have moved to the forefront of educational linguistics, examining how the co-construction of race and language (re)produce damaging ideologies from broader societal constructs in the classroom and beyond. Raciolinguistic theory helps us to unravel the white supremacist foundations of language education and policy. In this paper, after outlining the theoretical underpinnings of a raciolinguistic perspective, we offer three examples of applied practice demonstrating the power of denaturalizing the co-construction of race and language in linguistics and language teaching through multidisciplinary approaches. While we resist peripheralizing the role of racialization in our experiences teaching the Spanish language and preparing language teachers, we argue that the incorporation of a raciolinguistic perspective in curricula across disciplines is beneficial to society. Through the examination of raciolinguistic ideologies and decolonial theory, we contend that all students can be empowered to reflect on their positions and experiences to build empathy as a means to reimagine new [linguistic] worlds.

RESUMEN

Las perspectivas raciolingüísticas han llegado a la vanguardia de la educación lingüística, examinando cómo la construcción conjunta de raza y lengua (re)produce, en el aula y más allá, ideologías dañinas que derivan de constructos sociales más amplios. La teoría de la raciolingüística nos ayudan a descubrir los fundamentos supremacistas blancos que subyacen la educación y en la política lingüística. En este artículo, tras delinear los fundamentos teóricos de una perspectiva raciolingüística, ofrecemos tres ejemplos de su aplicación a la enseñanza del español a través de enfoques multidisciplinarios que demuestran el poder de desnaturalizar la coconstrucción de la raza y la lengua en la lingüística y en la enseñanza de lenguas. Si bien nos resistimos a marginar el papel de la racialización en nuestras experiencias en la enseñanza del español y en la preparación de docentes de lenguas, argumentamos que la incorporación de una perspectiva raciolingüística en los currículos beneficia a toda la sociedad. A través del análisis de las ideologías raciolingüísticas y de la teoría decolonial, sostenemos que se puede empoderar a les estudiantes para reflexionar sobre sus propias posiciones y experiencias para generar empatía, como medio para reimaginar nuevos mundos [lingüísticos].

KEYWORDS:

• raciolinguistics
• standard language ideologies
• Spanish Language Teaching (SLT)
• teacher training
• decolonial theory

PALABRAS CLAVES:

• raciolingüística
• ideologías de la lengua estándar
• enseñanza del español
• formación del profesorado
• teoría decolonial

1. Introduction

The events of the past years (e.g., a pandemic, increased visibility of police brutality, and the removal of colonial statues from the public sphere) have centered white supremacy in conversations about what we teach and how we teach it. In United States’ institutions of higher education, this has resulted in an intentional refocusing on consideration to include themes of social justice, discrimination, and decolonization (Cumming et al. 2023). Though decolonial thinking is used to reimagine academic spaces and traditions, lacking from conversations are reflective examinations of how colonial legacies undergird the structural design of language learning and language teacher preparation (Schwartz 2023). Within these arguments are situated a call for culturally sustaining practices that refute the notion that those marginalized due to colonial histories “lack the language, the culture, the family support, the academic skills, even the moral character to succeed and excel” (Paris and Alim 2017). As such, we can connect how standard language ideologies (Lippi-Green 2012), or “the idea that there is a correct form and variety of language that can be gained through increased education” (Clemons and Toribio 2021) in language programs, allow for institutional powers to eschew pathways to liberated languaging practices and ignore their responsibility in perpetuating harmful language ideologies. Without a raciolinguistic perspective—the examination of how race and language are co-constructed (Rosa and Flores 2017)—educators continue to neglect how language serves as a proxy for systemic discrimination within and beyond the classroom (García et al. 2021; Mallinson and Charity Hudley 2010). A raciolinguistic perspective helps us examine how languages become pathologized and aids in our understanding of how racialized individuals [linguistically] navigate and language in these systems of oppression. Furthermore, a raciolinguistic perspective can be used to evaluate language policies and practices that reproduce or challenge social inequalities based on colonial and enduring racial hierarchies. Thus, a decolonial examination of language learning and teaching calls for a raciolinguistic perspective.

For decades, scholars working at the intersection of language, race, and society have fought to unsettle deficit perspectives that use race as a default to pathologize languagers rather than celebrating the dynamic capabilities that multilingualism brings. The use of languager in lieu of speaker encompasses a multimodal and thus inclusive perspective by broadening the scope of communication to include signs and gestures, facial expressions, cultural and pragmatic knowledge, and any type of communicative action (see Henner and Robinson 2023 for the importance of reducing phonocentrism—or defaulting the speaker/hearer—when discussing language users). In an examination of US Spanish languagers’ communicative repertoires, Poplack (1980) presented a typology of Spanish/English codeswitching to demonstrate that crosslinguistic grammatical constraints could be employed simultaneously and effortlessly by those who grew up using both varieties (see Labov 1972 for an account of African American English in Philadelphia). Similarly, in dual language spaces with African American elementary students, Black language learners demonstrated linguistic agency as linguistic activists (Frieson 2022) and architects (Flores 2021) as they drew from Black Englishes to navigate their learning of Spanish. Frieson (2022) describes linguistic activism as the ways in which learners resist linguistic hegemony through language and actions that challenge the exclusive use of dominant language practices. Similarly, Flores (2021) argues that language architects do not simply engage in language haphazardly, but rather make purposeful choices about their language manipulation. An empirical appreciation and linguistic validation of such liberating practices, however, has not dissuaded educators and policy makers from upholding deficit perspectives (Rosa and Flores 2017, 1). These damaging epistemologies, rooted in falsehoods that multilingual languagers are not fully acquiring any one language (Flores et al. 2015), experiencing attrition and languagelessness (or not ‘fully acquiring’ any one named language; Rosa 2016), resulting in the exceptionalization and problematization of multilinguals via the privileging and idealization of the monolingual speaker (read: hearing subject; Henner and Robinson 2023) as the normative model of language production.

This reflects how coloniality of power (Quijano 2000), a concept that refers to the enduring legacy of colonialism in present-day societies, highlights the ongoing domination and exploitation of marginalized groups via the assignment of difference perpetuated through various forms of institutionalized power relations. Also known as neocolonialism, examinations of coloniality of power in societies who have decolonized to varying extents aim to reveal how structures and systems created during colonial domination continue to affect said societies. The persistence of neocolonialism in Spanish language education has played out in violent ways, including the corporal punishment of Spanish languagers in schools if communicating in Spanish (MacGregor-Mendoza 2000). Spanish languagers have a history of being subjugated to ‘norming practices’, including processes of assimilation that feign service to those who are unjustly categorized as possessing differences that make their language expression inadequate for so-called mainstream society. However distant this categorization seems from eugenics, it continues to rely on marking those who cannot fit into the idealized mold, while ‘unmarking’ (Mena and García 2021) those who ostensibly do not display such differences (read: deficits). Language deficits and differences are heavily reliant on the social bordering of languages (Urciuoli 1995), that is, English is distinct from Spanish. Consequently, linguistic practices due to extended language contact (i.e., US Spanish or Spanglish) do not pertain to any named language, and thus languagers are subordinated to descriptors such as ‘broken’, as Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria describes it in an opinion piece in the New York Times (1997; see also Gaudio 2011 for an examination of the Blackness of “Broken English”). These misconceptions of multilinguals’ language capabilities result in pressure to have them achieve double monolingualism (Grosjean 1989; Heller 2010). Relatedly, when examining how the generalizability of latinidad and hispanidad are rooted in whiteness (Chávez-Moreno 2021), we call into question how Indigenous, Black, and African languagers (and intersections among the three) are conceptualized and erased from efforts for linguistic social justice and representation (De los Heros 2009; Anya 2021; Austin and Hsieh 2021; Padilla and Vana 2022). This is especially true for Spanish language programs and curricula, which, when institutionally upheld, produce ideologies that become seemingly natural aspects of our society, to the point where they are seen as social facts of life (Otheguy et al. 2015) and needlessly create disordered identities (Namboodiripad and Henner 2022).

In this paper, we give a brief overview of the colonial histories of Spanish language and language learning. We then summarize theoretical and empirical accounts that explore deficit perspectives derived from language separateness that pathologize US Spanish languagers, and how a raciolinguistic perspective can help unsettle these damaging ideologies. Broadly, raciolinguistics refers to “language and/as race” (Smitherman 2017) and the study thereof in global settings (see Alim et al. 2016; Ennser-Kananen et al. 2017; Khan 2022; Pak and Hiramoto 2023). Importantly, a theory of raciolinguistics operationalizes notions of linguistic enregisterment, defined as the process “whereby distinct forms of speech come to be socially recognized (or enregistered) as indexical of speaker attributes by a population of language users” (Agha 2005, 38), and indexicality, how linguistic resources point to social traits, characteristics, and qualities (Silverstein 2003), in order to center the mechanisms by which our ideas about language are linked to our ideas about the people who produce that language and vice versa. Our use of the term and, more specifically, Rosa and Flores’ (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, highlights the ubiquity of how race and language are socially and politically entangled in ways that perpetuate the colonial order through racial inequity.

We then highlight the importance of a raciolinguistic perspective as a tool for teaching, learning, and metalinguistic awareness among students and teachers alike and explore the possibilities of incorporating raciolinguistic theory and practice into various language learning environments. In an upper division Spanish course entitled “Introduction to Raciolinguistics: Theory into Practice”, students develop a strong understanding of decolonial theory and systems of oppression prior to diving into raciolinguistics. Subsequently, students put theory into action, critiquing institutions and deconstructing raciolinguistic ideologies using a variety of multimodal activities. Next, in a course entitled “Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics”, students first explore raciolinguistic theory and language variation to develop a social awareness of the range of Spanishes across the globe. This theoretical foregrounding prepares students to examine Spanishes in other subfields of linguistics. Lastly, we turn to an exploration of a raciolinguistic perspective in language education in the preparation of world language teachers assuming teaching positions in United States primary and secondary schools. The “Teaching World Languages” course supports teacher candidates in defining colonialism and imperialism while mapping historical language contact and change globally. They then use this knowledge to interrogate the implications for resisting anti-Black linguistic racism in language pedagogy. With these examples, we aim to demonstrate how the incorporation of a raciolinguistic perspective as a guiding framework for teachers and students can increase metalinguistic awareness and antiracist practices, creating ‘a safe space for all of us to be vulnerable’ (Carruba-Rogel 2018, 151) and engaging learning environments that are geared towards centering language as social justice.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Coloniality and the Spanish language

The examination of language systems through decolonial lenses permits a deep understanding of how language teaching and learning are structured to reflect and reinforce power dynamics between hegemonic and subordinated cultures and peoples. In relation to language learning, the concept of coloniality of power (Quijano 2000) encompasses how systems of communication are named (e.g.,Spanish), codified (e.g., what is considered standard or not), and categorized (e.g., language, dialect, or vernacular). These neocolonial (wa Thiong'o 1986) qualities—evidenced as seemingly natural components of Western society—were intrinsic to the creation of the nation-state as extensions of imperial power. Language, religion and other factors have since been naturalized as racial distinctions in current educational discourse (Robinson 2020). The ways in which language as a racializing project took form both in the US and globally is reflected in how colonial displacement of local languages is often framed as a means to help Indigenous communities (wa Thiong’o 1986; Phillipson 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas et al. 1995). The assumption is that native populations who are being subjugated militarily will somehow benefit from language planning (Baker-Bell 2020) that brings them closer to being considered fully human (Wynter 2003) by the white listening (or perceiving) subject (Rosa and Flores 2017). Where discourses of biological inferiority (Flores 2013) or cultural poverty (Sung and Allen-Handy 2019; Austin 2022b) failed, distance from a hegemonic linguistic norm (Flores 2021) succeeded.

Spanish, as we know it today, made its debut as “a world language” at the very end of the 15th century in a highly heterogeneous language scape—the newly constructed nation-state of Spain and the newly founded Americas (García 2014, 58). Spain as a national entity relied on the codification of a prestige variety—Castilian—that would facilitate domestic homogenization through the eventual subordination of other autochthonous Romance varieties (see Amorós-Negre 2016). Spanish colonists and missionaries also sought to diminish Indigenous peoples and obliterate their practices in the Americas (García 2014), dehumanizing them as useful only for labor (Speed 2017) and labeling entire civilizations “barbaric” (Mignolo 1995; Vitar 1996). The process of colonial bifurcation—essentializing who is civilized and human (i.e., colonists) and who is uncivilized and non- or subhuman (i.e., colonized)— is carried out through both overt and covert violence (see Fanon 1968). Colonists and their campaigns were violent, resulting in displacement and genocide. They also forced Indigenous populations to assimilate to systems that they are forced to rely on in the present day, a result of cultural erasure and epistemicide (Pertierra 1988), or the destruction of ways of conceptualizing life and being, that precede or are distinct from Eurocentric thoughts and beliefs.

With mass genocide came the extinction and endangerment of Indigenous languages (Vitar 1996). Spanish became associated with latinidad and as a linguistic identity was used in independence movements in the early 19th century, the colonizers’ language turned into a nationalistic tool to symbolize the emerging emancipated identities of the newly bordered nations in Latin America (Amorós-Negre 2016, 66). This process of Spanish dissemination and (re)standardization in the Americas was supported through the work of philologists and literary figures such as Andrés Bello, Rufino José Cuervo and Miguel Antonio Caro (Tapias and Farfán 2009). Spanish became even more characteristic of these sovereign nations as they established their regional and global presence, particularly in relation to the United States. With the Mexican Cession in 1848, long-established Spanish-languaging communities—in addition to the native peoples and languages that long preceded the arrival of the Spanish variety—found themselves subjected to English-language hegemonies (see Lozano 2018). These Spanish languagers in large part descended from the various Indigenous populations who, once oppressed during Spanish colonialism, continued to be marginalized in US imperialist ventures (Anzaldúa 1987; Klor de Alva 1994; Loomba 2015). They also represented various Africanized Spanishes (Sánchez-Martin and Gonzales 2022) as a result of the trafficking of continental Africans during the colonial era. The shifting borders and power structures legitimized some languages and delegitimized others, a dynamic strengthened by the codification of languages and enforcement of standard language ideologies (Lippi-Green, 2012).

2.2. Deficit perspectives and raciolinguistic ideologies

The maintenance of language distinction is seen as a necessary step towards achieving double monolingualism (Heller 2006; Rosa and Flores 2017; Clemons and Toribio 2021), or the ability to proficiently use multiple named languages in accordance with purist and standard language use principles. These principles rely on standard language ideologies (Lippi-Green 2012), which promote a homogeneous, idealized form of spoken and written language that is enforced by hegemonic institutions, such as governmental bodies and schools. This ideology is rooted in the politicization and commodification of language (Heller 2010) and is a tool of colonialism that reinforces language barriers by intentionally subordinating so-called non-standardized and non-hegemonic languages. As a result, these constructs obscure linguistic and cultural diversity, resulting in diminished categories that sort languages and people into specific demographic groups. Double monolingualism paves the way for deficit perspectives, as it relies on fictions of incomplete acquisition that examine bilingual languagers by what they can produce within the purported bounds of each language.

A raciolinguistic perspective helps us draw a clear line that connects the abyssal thinking of colonial projects to the ways language is conceptualized by institutional powers, in particular schools (see García et al. 2021). A reliance on standardized language ideologies to define what constitutes ‘adequate academic expression’ results in the marginalization of dynamic languagers via an institutional rejection of their full linguistic—and by extension intellectual—capabilities (García et al. 2021, 151), despite the reality that ‘academic’ does not have a universal meaning (Valdés 2004; Flores 2020; Martínez and Mejía 2020; Austin 2022b).

2.3. Status quo of Spanish language education in the USA

In the US context, traditional Spanish language teaching and learning programs uphold appropriateness in heritage and second language (hereby L2) classes alike. Heritage language learning encompasses classes for languagers who are raised in a home where a non-hegemonic language is used, and who can use or comprehend the home language to some degree, and who are, to any degree, bilingual in that language and in the hegemonic variety (Valdés et al. 1999). Second language (L2) learning refers to courses in which languagers are learning or have learned an additional language in school, generally in ‘foreign’ or ‘world’ language programs.

The very label of Spanish as a ‘foreign’ language invisibilizes its longstanding history in the Americas (Train 2007; Lozano 2018). Spanish language education is designed with an idealized and “competent” white speaker in mind (Flores and Rosa 2022). However, when conceptualizing latinidad in language and culture study, Blackness and Indigeneity are often viewed as exceptional and colonial histories are erased (Chávez-Moreno 2021). This creates problems with representation in course materials (De los Heros 2009; Anya 2021; Padilla and Vana 2022), student retention (Anya 2011), and teacher representation (Austin 2022a). As a result, Spanish language teaching has become homogenized and prioritizes a linguistic variety that cannot be localized in the United States (Train 2003; Mena 2022). This linguistically displaces Latinxs in the US, as they are not considered to belong to any culture or place (Anzaldúa 1987), forcing them into languagelessness, or the inability to generate a ‘valid’ language as per dominant standards and viewing their own linguistic skills as inadequate for academic settings (Rosa 2019). While this may seem like a uniquely US-based issue, in European contexts, processes of racialization that require the silencing of, or distancing from colonial legacies to promote a sense of innocence result in the simultaneous commodification of ‘foreign’ language education, while ensuring learners acquire the ‘standard’ variety (Wekker 2016).

Curricula for the teaching of ‘foreign’ languages like Spanish are commodified to ensure uniformity across environments and institutions. Train (2003) describes the goals of ‘foreign’ language teaching in dissemination of the (non)native standard language. L2 learners attempt to master a pseudo-native, hyperstandardized language variety that ignores variation and innovation. ‘Native’ approximation is the driving force of learning, as the idealized (non)native and standardized Spanish variety taught in L2 classes are remnants of colonial motivation to homogenize linguistic production. As a result, language programs generally endeavor to have students master an ‘academic’ variety often through a tourist gaze (Urry 2002; Vinall 2015), which supports linguistic and cultural learning through the privileged and narrow lens of the traveler, who can exoticize and other a community local to their travels (Vinall 2015, 68). In language learning, this gaze has often privileged the learning of Peninsular Spanish forms—a common study abroad destination—as nearly all textbooks provide the conjugations for vosotros/as/es (2^nd person plural; informal), despite the variant being in widespread use [mostly] only in Spain. Hardly any textbooks offer conjugations for vos (2^nd person singular; varies), which is employed internationally across language communities (see Potvin 2022). As a result, Spanish sociolinguistic competence develops in elitist contexts, like study abroad, which is inaccessible to many language learners, ignoring local varieties and the development of communicative ability with local communities (Van Compernolle and Williams 2012, 184).

Beyond curricula designed for L2 learners, Spanish heritage language programs are designed to provide heritage languagers with ‘appropriate’ and ‘academic’ language to ‘complete their language acquisition’ (Rosa and Flores 2017). While this additive approach of language study (Bartlett and García 2011) does not aim to replace the home language with an ‘academic’ or ‘formal’ variety, it does emphasize the latter as a register that students must learn to become ‘fully bilingual’ (Clemons and Toribio 2021; Licata 2023). As such, a deficit model is typically mapped onto heritage languagers, with the presumption that the employment of their linguistic repertoire in an ‘academic’ or ‘formal’ setting is insufficient (Valdés et al. 2003; Martínez and Schwartz 2012; Valencia 2012). Pascual y Cabo and Prada (2018), who work with heritage Spanish users in the United States whose repertoires are culturally linked to the Dominican Republic, Mexico and Puerto Rico, affirm that the use of Spanish as a fluid practice in the community is highly valued prior to the introduction of hierarchical linguistic restraints introduced in the classroom. The critical service-learning component of the 42 participants with whom they worked, solidified participants’ pride in their languaging, but did not uproot the dichotomy of ‘home” versus “professional’ Spanish language usage. This ‘academic’ misinterpretation can result in heritage languagers harboring a deep insecurity that is also reiterated by some systemic monoglossic ideologies outside of the school environment. This vicious cycle can perpetuate an approach that places the onus on students to increase their confidence and improve their communication skills in lieu of dismantling systems of linguistic oppression that trickle down from hegemonic language hierarchies that have deemed these students deficient in the first place.

These dichotomous and dehumanizing ideologies are perpetuated by the marginalization and erasure (see Gal and Irvine 2019) of those language practices that are not considered ‘academic’ (Rosa and Flores 2017) or ‘financial assets’ (Heller 2010). As such, L1 English languagers learning Spanish in school are often framed as the idealized bilingual in several environments (in bilingual programs, see Cioè-Peña 2021, and Flores and García 2017; in the job market, see Subtirelu 2017) because they are learning an ‘academic’ variety. L2 learners reproduce this ideology in their future job roles as well as in conversation with others, as do heritage learners (Clemons 2022), who are told that their home variety is not sufficient enough for public domains. The latter group also experiences public shaming, as their linguistic identities are invalidated via the reduction of their communicative abilities to whether they can access an ‘academic’ register. This limiting perspective of communicative competence cultivates linguistic insecurity that may result in diminished language maintenance (Zentella 1996). This ‘academic’ misinterpretation can result in heritage languagers harboring a deep insecurity that is also reiterated by some systemic monoglossic ideologies outside of the school environment (see Hiramoto and Park 2014 and Hall 2014 for theoretical mappings of language anxiety in a globalizing world), so much so that feelings of insecurity become so deeply manifested in heritage languagers that they may reject their home and community language (Bustamante and Novella 2019).

As a result, the homogenization of language learning and teaching facilitated in an increasingly neoliberal learning environment fosters standard language enforcement in a globalized world (Flores 2013). In this article, we present scenarios in which teachers and students can use raciolinguistics both as a conceptual framework and a praxis for self-reflection to more effectively dissolve boundaries that perpetuate the co-racialization of language practices and people.

Many scholars and practitioners are already reimagining new linguistic worlds that center an appreciation for language variation and metalinguistic awareness in the classroom. Seltzer (2019) investigated student-created role-play in the classroom as a vehicle for students to demonstrate and process linguistic gatekeeping they have experienced. Prada (2019), Flores (2020), and Seltzer and Wassell (2022) illustrate how translanguaging can transform and reimagine oppressive structures in the classroom, placing emphasis on students’ natural language expression. De los Ríos et al. (2021) investigate the link between cultural practices (e.g., music) and translingualism, fostering language exploration and the expression of identity. Train (2020) advocates for the teaching of linguistic variation as a means to achieve social justice. Holguín Mendoza (2018) prioritizes the integration of home and community repertoires in the development of heritage language programs. Anya (2021) showcases the advantages of implementing critical race pedagogy to promote a more inclusive world language education. Lastly, Bucholtz et al. (2018) explore how community language work and participatory action research empower Latinx youth. In this article, we hope to fill the gap of literature that examines the direct teaching of raciolinguistics through theory and practice. We present scenarios in which teachers and students can use raciolinguistics both as a conceptual framework and a praxis for self-reflection to more effectively dissolve boundaries that perpetuate the co-racialization of language practices and people. In focusing on co-racialization, we prioritize a focus on racialization processes explored both in the study of language as well as in the study of society writ large.

3. Applied practice

3.1. Centering a raciolinguistic perspective in an elective course in a Hispanic linguistics program

In the Spring of 2022, Gabriella took part in a research fellowship in the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California Berkeley to develop an upper division course for a Spanish department, entitled “Introduction to Raciolinguistics: Theory into Practice.” This elective course was designed for Spanish majors and minors, though it can easily be adapted to a semester course in any language or in a linguistics department through its comparative approach. The learning goals that broadly benefit language and linguistics learning in language departments and beyond prepare students to engage with raciolinguistic theory as a means to unpack them to reimagine new linguistic worlds. These include:

1. Identify, explore, and critique how the [neo]colonial underpinnings of [Spanish] language ideologies in the United States and beyond pave the way for raciolinguistic ideologies.

2. Use a social constructivist approach to unsettle and denaturalize seemingly fixed concepts like ‘standard’, ‘academic’, ‘pure’, ‘native’, ‘(in)appropriate’, etc.

3. Recognize covert and overt instances of language discrimination and synthesize them with other forms of discrimination to reimagine oppressive systems.

4. Develop empathy and a compassionate respect for those whose identity and language expression is different from our own.

This course began with an introduction to Spanish colonization of the Americas through decolonial theory (Mignolo 2007; Quijano 2000), preparing students to understand the elevation of language standardization as a [neo]colonial tool of domination. This sets students up to best grasp the impacts of linguistic subordination (Lippi-Green 2012) and raciolinguistic ideologies (Rosa and Flores 2017). With this theoretical groundwork, students began to examine raciolinguistic ideologies in Spanish language communities conversion with other areas of study, including language education (Flores and García 2017; Padilla and Vana 2022), disability (Cioè-Peña 2021; Henner and Robinson 2023), and Blackness and Indigeneity (Perez et al., 2016; Anya 2021), among others. We ended with a focus on imagining new linguistic worlds and how language can be used to make social justice a reality.

Several of the activities aim to develop students’ metalinguistic awareness through self-reflection and antiracist practices through the identification of overt and covert discrimination. In a task adapted from an assignment created by Dr. Robert Train (Sonoma State University), students [pre]recorded an audiovisual linguistic autobiography shared with others, exploring their families’ histories and their schooling. They sketched what a typical dinner conversation might look like with friends in terms of language(s) and registers use. Inspired by an activity with Uju Anya in a workshop, students examined colorism and erasure in Spanish language textbooks and the ‘cosplay’ of Blackness by white artists in Reggaeton music. In groups, students deconstructed and unsettled real-world examples of raciolinguistic ideologies in advertisements and provided ‘critical consultation’ to the company/organization. In writing assignments called demonstrations of critical analytical skills, students were provided with or looked for primary sources with which they drew out the colonial and raciolinguistic ideologies that undergirded the discrimination at play. Examples included the Spanish Royal Academy’s rejections of inclusive/nonbinary morphemes -x and -e and applying the language subordination model (Lippi-Green, 2012) to California’s Proposition 227 as well as accent reduction programs to understand the xenophobic undertones of these contexts. Students applied translanguaging theory (see Creese and Blackledge 2015) to their original dinner conversation sketches to challenge the rigidness of language borders and monolingualism in their own lives. Students ended the course by bridging raciolinguistic theory to their futures by identifying a possible career and reformulating a relevant company/organization’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Belonging, and Justice (DEIBJ) statement to include language equity and create actionable [language] goals to assure that the DEIBJ manifesto did not serve as a mere symbolic gesture. The final project was adapted from an assignment created by Dr. Catherine Anderson (McMaster University) and Dr. Lex Konnelly (University of Toronto). It consisted in the production of a short podcast episode wherein students chose a theme that centered raciolinguistics intersecting with a sub theme of the course (e.g., disability, gender, education, speech therapy, translation/interpretation, etc.). In this project, students examined and explored gender inclusive language, language access in schools, the use of mock Spanish as humor in television programs, and the racist undertones of speech and language therapy. Students used a myriad of resources to make their podcasts accessible (e.g., via transcription) and interesting to a broad audience, including inviting interviewees for conversations, inserting clips from television and radio, and quoting policy.

This course trains students to examine the everyday, naturalized occurrences of [language] discrimination that are often minimalized in comparison with other forms. A designated course devoted to the examination of raciolinguistic ideologies is key to the growth and development of decolonial thinking and praxis in language and linguistics departments, as it facilitates reflexivity as teachers and researchers challenge and modify their practices. As such, we attempted to apply raciolinguistic theory into our own practice. We examined our own biases towards language and people to develop our linguistic awareness; for example, we examined our first reactions to stereotypically stigmatized variants/varieties and unpacked this experience through a historical view. Classroom policy also promoted the use of teachers’ and students’ entire linguistic repertoires in conversation and assignments.

3.2. Shifting from structural to raciolinguistic perspectives in an introductory Hispanic linguistics course

While not every language program can offer (nor can every student take) an entire course in raciolinguistics, linguistics programs can implement a raciolinguistic perspective in their existing classes. For example, Aris explored how incorporating a raciolinguistic perspective (Rosa and Flores, 2017) into an Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics course could change the ways that students engaged structural linguistic theory in context. The shift from a structural to a raciolinguistic framing was inspired by a quick investigation of the experiences of three professors of linguistics (including Aris), the syllabi from their departments, and syllabi requested from colleagues across different departments. It was found that generally in introductory courses, the majority of the time is spent discussing and reviewing structural branches of linguistics with (sometimes) one to two weeks on sociolinguistics (often with a focus on variation) from the perspective of other structural branches of linguistics. Three overarching goals guided the course design and implementation:

1. Interrogate the local linguistic conditions of potential interest for students in preparation for their investigation into the structure of the course’s focal varieties.

2. Ensure that courses with multilingual students are conducted in and/or draw on multilingual strategies and multilingualism.

3. Recognize the difficulty that students often have with reading journal articles that apply linguistic theory to natural language data. (The course built in a significant amount of time training students to read academic papers, while simultaneously integrating pop texts and multimodal materials that could serve as local data for conversations about language ideologies pertaining to focal language communities).

Raciolinguistic scaffolding occurred through the completion of a sequence of exercises aimed at making the students aware of their own linguistic positionalities in relation to the language varieties and forms that they were in contact with and that they would study during the semester. This allowed us as instructors to design the course around four main activities:

Linguistic Autobiographies

To heighten student interest, the first class project was intended to make them focus on their own linguistic practices – which are rarely considered beyond the surface of consciousness. Students had to complete a linguistic autobiography, adapted from an assignment created by creolist scholar Michel Degraff at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where they write about their language socialization indicating where they come from, evaluations they have heard about regarding their own language practices and those of their families.

Exploring raciolinguistic ideologies

Alongside their self-exploration, students were directed to attend to “words,” “sounds,” and “structures,” which were gradually revealed as morphology, phonology and syntax over the course of the semester. Importantly, they spent the first few weeks exploring how language lives on the body (i.e., how linguistic and nonlinguistic signs are co-constructed in the process of meaning making) and is inextricably tied to our social understandings of the world through constructed demographic categories (e.g., this person is Hispanic), which can erase the complexities of identity through monolithic interpretation. Herein, students focused on ideologies and perceptions of people as social beings alongside the attitudes and perceptions about language as connected to these bodies. Students also completed listening tasks where they were asked to distinguish between accents and make value judgements about the speakers. Centering linguistic anti-racism, the teacher then walked them through readings about how it is natural to hear differences, but that the value judgments are linked to social ideologies that have already been named in linguistics literature and in their social realities. One way Aris did this in her class was by collectively dismantling myths about communicative characteristics of southern U.S. languagers (e.g., are all southern people slow, kind, or conservative?) with her students.

Sociolinguistic Interviews

In continuing to bust ideological myths through empirical dialogue, students then focus on what is really happening in language production versus the impact of language ideologies. To this end, one methodology we introduced to students was the sociolinguistic interview. Having them first practice with someone in the class, students then learned about the history and changes of this methodology over time (Mallinson, Childs and Van Herk 2018). Afterwards, they contemplated the kinds of questions they could ask about their interviewee’s language practices. What could be measured and what could not? What makes a good research question? And how do we determine what are dependent and independent variables? They finally considered what people had already said about their research questions and suggested a hypothesis. After, students completed an interview with a Spanish speaker outside of the class (either a first or second language learner) and submitted a full analysis of their interview data, complete with the empirical questions they developed, a background section, and possible limitations to their studies.

Structural Linguistics

Using the data already collected, students learned how to transcribe orthographically and phonetically, then moved on to morpho-syntactic analyses of the language produced in their interviews. For example, one student explored the usage of overt subject pronouns, comparing a first language and second language user of Spanish. They then spoke about how the second language user could be interpreted as more “incorrect” based on the grammar rule that was taught in their elementary Spanish class. Thereafter, we explored raciolinguistic ideologies found in varying dialects of Spanish alongside a variationist analysis of phonetic and morphosyntactic features produced in the language. One student, who was tasked with finding examples of Miami Spanish, transcribed and analyzed a YouTube video of “if Belle was a Miami girl” (yazterrr XD 2017), connecting the phonological patterns of velar nasal sounds produced in Miami English to the Cuban dialect found in the region. They also wrote about the ideologies of a ‘Miami girl” linked to the language used in the video.

Reflection

For the final project, students were encouraged to bring it back to themselves, providing a recording of their linguistic autobiography, posing a particular question about their own language, and then providing an analysis of their linguistic production in Spanish. Students were able to choose whether they wanted to focus on an individual variable, a grammatical feature, or a phonological comparison with another speaker. Activities aided in the development of their metalinguistic awareness, often leaving them surprised about the ways their own Spanish developed over the course of the semester. Students commented on how much they were able to notice the change by applying the linguistic knowledge of phonology, morphology, and syntax to their analyses. Each unit ended by asking what other professions might benefit from an understanding of language in the way that we had been analyzing it in class. Students were asked, “How can you use Hispanic Linguistics in your major or future career?” Importantly, students became researchers in practice throughout the semester.

3.3. From theory to practice: incorporating a raciolinguistic perspective into Spanish Language Teaching

The integrations of raciolinguistics into Spanish linguistics courses rely on the instructor having training in raciolinguistics and to some degree, decolonial theory. Similarly, in the preparation of world language (WL) educators to instruct in U.S. classrooms in languages other than English, Tasha endeavored to develop pre-service teachers (PSTs) in planning, instruction and assessment across a variety of languages while debunking hierarchical notions of languaging. Certification for WL teachers is localized in nature, and in her context, the learning of the language content was expected to be completed by the time the PSTs entered the one-semester (16 weeks) virtual graduate-level pedagogy course. The challenge that Tasha noticed was that the understanding of language with which these graduate students came was bounded and indeed hierarchical – a flattened imperial standard that erased, tokenized or exoticized the complex languaging in which specifically racially minoritized users partook.

In order to draw attention to the ways in which stigmatization of particular language varieties has been naturalized (Rosa and Flores 2017), Tasha designed a multimodal assignment on linguistic imperialism to trace the evolution of the languages PSTs intended to teach across space and time globally. The digital map through the Padlet application allows for users to drop pins anywhere in the world, then to upload their responses through a variety of modalities (drawing, voice, typing, gifs, videos, Google suite applications etc.). An extended narrative of the course in its entirety is outlined in Austin (2022a).

For the purposes of highlighting the foundational raciolinguistic perspective in the design of this work, the three questions around which the activity was framed are below:

1. Where are three places the language you are teaching is spoken (used)?

2. What is colonialism/imperialism and how does it affect world languages?

3. How does that impact the way you teach for interculturality?

In focusing on the Spanish language submissions, two PSTs, Juliette and María (not their real names), chose to work together to address the questions on the Padlet. Spanish was María’s L1, but despite having missed our first course meeting as she was in transition moving from El Salvador to the U.S., she often shared that everyone in her country was the same and so learning about power dynamics in language instruction was new to her as a (white) Salvadorean. Juliette’s L1 was English, on the other hand, and as Indian and white, and American-born, she derived her understandings of the language largely through U.S. public schooling. In this way, despite their distinct backgrounds, they both understood Spanish singularly as the Castilian variety despite the various languages in Spain like gallego and euskera, and the fact that, “[l]inguists, for example, cannot resolve, based solely on lexical and structural criteria, whether Catalan and Valencian […] are the same or different languages [in that] [t]he distinction between them can only be drawn, if it is to be drawn, by taking into account cultural, historical, and political considerations” (García et al. 2021, 6).

In addition to María and Juliette working through the Padlet application and discussing the questions verbally, their text chat responses to the aforementioned questions are reflected below:

[Three places where Spanish is spoken are] Texas, New Mexico, Bosnia

1. Texas: Spain first took control over Texas, and then Mexico did. Thus, the Spanish spoken in Texas is a Spanish/Mexican mix, and some words have even transferred over into English. The Spanish/Mexican influence is seen culturally and linguistically.

2. New Mexico: the Spanish spoken here is called ‘neomexicano’ due to the mixing of Mexican Spanish with that of Spain.

3. Bosnia: the Judeo-Spaniards who were exiled from Spain during the Inquisition fled to various places, one being Bosnia.When we teach Spanish for interculturality, it will be important to expose students to diverse regional dialects and even allow for translanguaging within the Spanish language. There is no one true Spanish; one country does not speak better than another, simply differently.

The identification of distinct locations wherein what María and Juliette understood to be a singular ‘Spanish’ was used—Texas (U.S.) New Mexico (U.S.), Bosnia—disrupted the misconception that nation-state borders determine bounded language practices by showcasing diverse geographical contexts of hispanophones. Thereafter, perceptions of racial and linguistic difference are unsettled through the evolving colonial power formations whereby “Spain first took control over Texas” and “Judeo-Spaniards […] were exiled from Spain” resulting in varieties impacted by ethnic and cultural influence as well as the shifting geopolitical dominance that resulted in “neomexicano.” Interculturality as a required component of WL teacher development in the U.S., centers on critical cultural awareness and the situated nature of language use (Byram 2020). Thus, throughout the pair’s discussion and shared reflection, the Spanish PSTs resolved that “it is important to expose students to diverse regional dialects” as “[t]here is no one true Spanish.”

Through virtual instruction centered on the historical and political development of Spanishes, and more WLs broadly, PSTs foundationally shifted their understandings of what language is and how it is informed by the co-naturalization of race and language through colonial and imperial histories in ways that invisibilized how ‘common-sense’ hierarchies of language came to be. Through an educational lens, teacher preparation as informed by a raciolinguistic perspective has the potential to humanize the approaches of future Spanish teachers by contesting assumed inferiority of racially minoritized hispanophones based on the distinctions in their languaging, real or perceived, as the result of colonial and imperial violence.

4. Discussion and conclusion

We have presented three models for the inclusion of raciolinguistics in Spanish language education and teaching: a course dedicated to the teaching of raciolinguistic theory and practice, the incorporation of raciolinguistics into an introductory course in Hispanic linguistics, and for teacher education programs preparing educators in world language instruction. We have provided concrete examples of how raciolinguistics can be incorporated into curricula to strengthen both students’ and teachers’ metalinguistic awareness and [linguistic] antiracism.

What is more, students themselves have expressed the benefits of learning about raciolinguistics and increasing metalinguistic awareness. All the students in Gabriella’s class were multilingual and of varying cultural and ethnic backgrounds. Many stated that learning about raciolinguistics was “life-changing”, as they now pay far more attention to discriminatory language practices, even slight ones, in public places. Relatedly, a Spanish/English bilingual student in her class learned that the ‘speech impediment’ with which he was diagnosed as a child wasn’t an impediment at all, but rather an attribute to his bilingualism, giving him the opportunity to reflect on how his linguistic insecurity as a child and adult is linked to standard language and raciolinguistic ideologies. Perhaps the most heartfelt reaction was the compassion that students felt for themselves and their families for the discrimination they have faced through cultural and linguistic othering, past and present.

In Aris’s class, students expressed disillusionment with the lack of information about Black/African Spanish varieties in earlier Spanish classes. While her Afro-descended students noted her class as the first experience of “seeing themselves” in the course curriculum, others simply noted an broadened vision of Spanish language communities that made them feel more connected with the music and social media content that they had been consuming prior to entering the class.

In Tasha’s class, students made connections between the disinterest and/or assumption of deficit on behalf of veteran teachers when engaging with racially minoritized K-12 language learners, and committed to disrupting such an approach in their own teaching. For example, one pre-service teacher noted that students in her Spanish clinical placement were never asked about their linguistic repertoires and that although one student from Togo was multilingual, she was never asked to draw upon her indigenous, English and French language expertise to support her language learning. Another pre-service student extended the implications of raciolinguistic perspectives in teaching Mandarin through resisting its portrayal as homogenous and encouraging K-12 students to investigate experiences of minoritized languagers in the Chinese mainland as compared to those their local contexts.

While we have not presented an exhaustive list of actionable goals in the teaching of raciolinguistics, we hope that our shared expertise and experiences inspire others to incorporate raciolinguistics into their curricula and develop new ways of prioritizing antiracism in language teaching. Relatedly, as raciolinguistics continues to expand as a conceptual framework, we note its theoretical importance outside of or adjacent to language education and linguistic study (see Brea-Spahn and Bauler 2023, for relevance in speech language therapy). While our proposed curricula are specific to Spanish language departments in the US, the frameworks, components, and goals are widely applicable to a variety of fields, subjects, and language community study in and beyond the U.S. to encourage [language] decolonization as anti-discriminatory practice.