Dissonance Between Translingual Practices and Monolingual Ideologies: A Critical Ethnographic Case Study of a Heritage Language Program
[Thesis]
Voegler, Emily
Boyd, Maureen
State University of New York at Buffalo
2021
240 p.
Ph.D.
State University of New York at Buffalo
2021
With an increase in multilingual learners in U.S. public schools, there is an imperative to understand the language practices, ideologies, and pedagogies within culturally and linguistically sustaining heritage language programs inside schools. Building on principles of translanguaging as a theory of practical language (García, 2009; Li, 2018), this critical ethnographic case study focuses on the voices of eight teachers, nine students, and six parents in three focal classes of a heritage language development program within an English-dominant urban district. Data collection included classroom observations, artifacts, interviews, and policy analysis to determine language practices, examine participants' perspectives, and reflect on the intersection of language practice, ideology, and policy within and across micro to macro levels of this socially-constructed context. Analysis was qualitative and rooted in sociocultural and critical discourse analysis. The findings suggest that language practices in this program could be characterized by translingual events, in which one or more participants used resources from multiple named languages to construct or co-construct meaning, and were observed to different degrees within and across the Spanish, Somali, and Arabic heritage language classes. Participants largely described language practices through the autonomous monolingual systems model, a monolingual perspective of separate named languages. Participants reported on students' eroded heritage language resources and reinforced English resources, their perceived advantages of multilingualism, and concern about heritage language loss. Policies across the federal, state, and local levels largely normed monolingualism and pushed for student academic development in English only. Participants reshaped these policies to fit their local classroom communities. Across findings, a central tension appeared between translingual practices and monolingual ideologies that led to questions about what a more critical translanguaging could look like in practice, pedagogy, and theory in order to elevate translingual voices and norm translingual ideologies in English-dominant U.S. public schools.