Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US (Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights)

221 Pages·2009·1.05 MB·English

by  M. Rafael Salaberry

Language Allegiances and Bilingualism
in the US
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS
Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University, Denmark
Consulting Advisory Board:
François Grin, Université de Genève, Switzerland
Kathleen Heugh, Human Services Research Council, South Africa
Miklós Kontra, Linguistics Institute, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Masaki Oda, Tamagawa University, Japan
The series seeks to promote multilingualism as a resource, the maintenance of
linguistic diversity, and development of and respect for linguistic human rights
worldwide through the dissemination of theoretical and empirical research. The
series encourages interdisciplinary approaches to language policy, drawing on
sociolinguistics, education, sociology, economics, human rights law, political
science, as well as anthropology, psychology, and applied language studies.
Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be
found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual
Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
LINGUISTIC DIVERSITY AND LANGUAGE RIGHTS
Series Editor: Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, Roskilde University,
Denmark
Language Allegiances and
Bilingualism in the US
Edited by
M. Rafael Salaberry
MULTILINGUAL MATTERS
Bristol • Buffalo • Toronto
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US/Edited by M. Rafael Salaberry.
Linguistic Diversity and Language Rights: 6.
1. Education, Bilingual–United States. 2. English language–Study and teaching–
United States–Foreign speakers. 3. Second language acquisition–United States.
4. Language and languages–United States. I. Salaberry, M. Rafael.
LC3731.L34 2009
370.117’50973–dc22 2009017379
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-178-1 (hbk)
ISBN-13: 978-1-84769-177-4 (pbk)
Multilingual Matters
UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol BS1 2AW, UK.
USA: UTP, 2250 Military Road, Tonawanda, NY 14150, USA.
Canada: UTP, 5201 Dufferin Street, North York, Ontario M3H 5T8, Canada.
Copyright © 2009 M. Rafael Salaberry and the authors of individual chapters.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any
means without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Contents
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. vi
1 Language Allegiances
Rafael Salaberry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Language Attitudes and Linguistic Outcomes
in Reading, Pennsylvania
Almeida Jacqueline Toribio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3 A Sociolinguistic View of Speech Sciences
Nancy Niedzielski . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4 Linguistic Profiling: The Linguistic Point of View
Dennis R. Preston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5 The Bilingual’s Hoarse Voice: Losing Rights in Two
Languages
Sandra Del Valle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
6 Problems with the ‘Language-as-Resource’ Discourse
in the Promotion of Heritage Languages in the US
Thomas Ricento . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
7 English Hegemony and the Politics of Ethno-Linguistic
Justice in the US
Ronald Schmidt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
8 Livin’ and Teachin’ la lengua loca: Glocalizing US
Spanish Ideologies and Practices
Ofelia García . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
9 Bilingual Education: Assimilation, Segregation and
Integration
Rafael Salaberry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
v
Contributors
Sandra Del Valle is a civil rights attorney. She was an Associate Counsel
at the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund for 14 years
where she specialized in language rights, bilingual education, issues in
urban education and the rights of day laborers. She is currently a Senior
Staff Attorney at New York Lawyers for the Public Interest where she
works on behalf of individuals with mental illness and children with
special educational needs. She is the author of several articles on
language rights and a book entitled Language Rights and the Law in the
United States: Finding Our Voices (Multilingual Matters)
Ofelia García is Professor or Urban Education at the Graduate Center of
the City University of New York. She has also been Professor of Bilingual
Education at Columbia University´s Teachers College, Department of
International and Transcultural Studies, and at The City College of New
York, and has been Dean of the School of Education in the Brooklyn
Campus of Long Island University. Her latest books include Bilingual
Education in the 21st century: A Global Perspective (in press); Imagining
Multilingual Schools (with Skutnabb-Kangas & Torres-Guzmán); A
Reader in Bilingual Education (with Colin Baker); and Language Loyalty,
Continuity and Change: Joshua Fishman’s Contributions to International
Sociolinguistics (with Peltz & Schiffman). She is a Fellow of the
Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) in South Africa, and
has been a Fulbright Scholar, and a Spencer Fellow of the US National
Academy of Education.
Nancy Niedzielski worked for several years as a speech scientist for
Panasonic Technologies, Inc., on automated speech recognition and
speech synthesis, and she received three US Patents during her tenure
with that company. Currently she is a faculty member in the department
of Linguistics at Rice University. She is currently a consultant to the
Houston FBI and other agencies on issues pertaining to voice identifica-
tion, and to NASA on the Robonaut project. She is the co-author of
Folk Linguistics with Dennis Preston, and is currently working on
Sociolinguistics and Speech Perception for Erlbaum.
vi
Contributors vii
Dennis R. Preston (Professor of English, Oklahoma State University and
University Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Linguistics and English,
Michigan State University) was President of the American Dialect
Society (2001-2) and served on the Executive Boards of that society, the
International Conference on Methods in Dialectology, New Ways of
Analyzing Variation, and the Linguistic Society of America, as well as
the editorial boards of Language, Impact, International Journal of Applied
Linguistics, Kwartalkik Filologiczny, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Compass.
His work focuses on sociolinguistics, dialectology, ethnography, and
minority language and variety education. His most recent book-length
publications are, with Nancy Niedzielski, Folk Linguistics (2000), with
Daniel Long, A Handbook of Perceptual Dialectology, Volume II (2002),
Needed Research in American Dialects (2003) and, with Brian Joseph and
Carol G. Preston, Linguistic Diversity in Michigan and Ohio (2005).
Thomas Ricento is Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of
Calgary. He has published widely in the field of language policy, politics
and ideology. His most recent publication is An Introduction to Language
Policy: Theory and Method (Blackwell, 2006). Other books include Language
and Politics in the United States and Canada: Myths and Realities (co-edited
with Barbara Burnaby) and Ideology, Politics, and Language Policies: Focus
on English (editor). He is founding co-editor (with Terrence G. Wiley) of
the Journal of Language, Identity, and Education (Lawrence Erlbaum).
Rafael Salaberry is Professor of Spanish Linguistics and Second
Language Acquisition at University of Texas–Austin. He is Associate
Chair and Director of the Language Program in the Department of
Spanish and Portuguese. His research and teaching are focused on a
variety of topics centered on the acquisition of second languages among
adults. His most recent publications are: Marking Past Tense in Second
Language: A theoretical model (2008, Continuum Press); The Art of Teaching
Spanish: Second Language Acquisition from Research to Praxis (with Barbara
Lafford, 2006, Georgetown University Press); and Tense and Aspect in the
Romance Languages (with Dalila Ayoun, 2005, John Benjamins). Professor
Salaberry has also produced a one-hour documentary on bilingual
education entitled The Choosers.
Ronald Schmidt, Sr is author of Language Policy and Identity Politics
in the United States (Temple University Press, 2000), and professor of
political science at California State University, Long Beach. He has
published numerous articles on the politics of language and language
policy in the US and Canada and his current work centers on the
viii Language Allegiances and Bilingualism in the US
incorporation of immigrants in the US and Canada. Schmidt has held a
Fulbright Research Chair at the University of Montreal (Quebec), and
he has been president of the Western Political Science Association and
co-president of the American Political Science Association’s Organized
Section on Race, Ethnicity and Politics.
Almeida Jacqueline Toribio is Professor of Linguistics in the Depart-
ment of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas–Austin. Her
major fields of inquiry are linguistic theory, Spanish syntax and contact
linguistics, with specializations in language variation and change, bilin-
gualism and attrition. Her publications appear in Bilingualism: Language
& Cognition; International Journal of Bilingualism; International Journal of
the Sociology of Language; Lingua; Linguistic Inquiry; Linguistics; Spanish
in Context and Probus, among others. She has co-edited, with Barbara
Bullock, the Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Code-switching.
Chapter 1
Language Allegiances
RAFAEL SALABERRY
Introduction
Is the competence to speak a language (for example, Spanish) an
essential or important feature of identity (for example, Hispanic or
Latino)? To what extent is self-perceived identity based on language
abilities in one or more languages? What effect does bilingualism have
on specific identities? Does bilingualism lead to ‘fractured’ identities?
Does a state need a ‘national’ language to become a nation separate from
other nations? Are multilingual states less united than the ones that pro-
mote a single national language? These questions, among others, focus
our attention on the relationship between language and identity. Indeed,
identity seems to be associated, at least to some extent, with our compe-
tency in one or more languages. For instance, the rapid shift in language
competency in, or usage of, the language(s) used by the children and
grandchildren of immigrants is typically linked with the severing of ties
with the specific culture associated with that language (e.g. Brodie et al.,
2002; García-Bedolla, 2005; Kymlicka, 1995; Kymlicka & Patten, 2003;
May, 2001; Sears et al., 1999).1
This very close association between use of a language and the sense
of affiliation with the culture associated with it may be regarded as a
form of language allegiance in that language affiliation seems to garner
a type of loyalty and support that few other identities command (e.g.
Ricento, 1998, 2000; Schmid, 2001). For instance, Cornell and Bratton
(1999: 635) point out that ‘for many Latino/as their ‘visibility’ stems
more from their lack of acculturation than from their skin color.’ In this
respect, language seems to be one of the main components of accultura-
tion mentioned by Cornell and Bratton in opposition to race. Thus, given
the importance of language in defining cultural identities, this book will
address a number of questions associated with the concept of language
allegiances: are language allegiances rational; is allegiance to more than
one language possible; how do we define language; are allegiances to
1