Exploring the role of translanguaging in linguistic ideological and attitudinal reconfigurations in the Spanish classroom for heritage speakers

ABSTRACT

The present study explores how translanguaging serves as vehicle to (help) re-configure linguistic attitudinal and ideological structures in a university Spanish course for heritage speakers. Specifically, it focuses on the links between exposure to (and engagement in) classroom translanguaging and the participants’ challenging of traditional monoglossic ideologies governing folk imaginary regarding language purity, standard, and appropriate academic discourse. Three class meetings worth of classroom ethnographic observations (among 17 students), and eight semi-structured individual interviews were transcribed and analysed via directed qualitative analysis. Departing from four predetermined categories (i.e. language attitudes, language ideologies, belief change, and translanguaging instances) the linguistic attitudinal and ideological dynamics among the participants were investigated. Results are weaved into a narrative which evolves around three main categories: (1) language attitudes and ideologies prior to entering the classroom, (2) attitudinal and ideological changes and their link to translanguaging, and (3) considerations about translanguaging in academic settings and academic discourse. Findings unveil a double-action whereby translanguaging creates a sociolinguistic frame that challenges widely held linguistic attitudes and ideologies about the nature of flexible linguistic practices, as it stimulates their normalization and inclusion in a context that has traditionally been closed to such practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Translanguaging
• heritage speakers
• heritage language education
• attitudes
• ideologies
• Spanish in the US

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Drawing on the work of Hornberger (2003), the notion of minoritized language refers to how in some contexts, minority languages are not those used by a numerical minority. By talking about minoritized languages, systemic oppression and marginalization is included in the definition.

2. In the 2000s, the term Latinx emerged to extend beyond a dichotomic view of gender (as opposed to Latino/Latina. Current conceptualizations (e.g. Morales, 2018) lay out the groundwork for pushing the term past gender reformulations, to include non-binary ways of being. I use the term Latinx(s) to challenge views that oppose self-expression and self-conceptualization through purposeful and conscientious linguistic innovations, as is the case with the Real Academia de la Lengua Española.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Josh Prada

Josh Prada is Assistant Professor of Spanish Applied Linguistics in the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts at IUPUI where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in bilingualism and multilingualism and applied language studies.