Doris S. Warriner

Transnationalism and Literacy: Investigating the Mobility of People, Languages, Texts, and Practices in Contexts of Migration

ABSTRA C T This review of research offers a synthesis and analysis of research studies that address issues of language and literacy practices and learning in transnational contexts of migration. We consider how theoretical concepts from transnational migration studies, including particular Boudieusian-inspired concepts such as transnational social field, capital, and habitus, as well as sociolinguistic studies of language and transnational space, might inform and extend the field of literacy research. We mobilize these concepts in relation to each other as interpretive frames for discussing an emerging body of empirical studies that address various aspects of language and literacy practices as they are intertwined with issues of cross-border relations and mobility. Studies reviewed examine practices in families and communities, practices among youth and within educational settings, and practices with transnational media (broadcast and digital communications). We argue that as a whole these studies show the important role of language and literacy practices in constructing and maintaining social relations across borders, and in how migrants navigate and position themselves in various social fields within and across national boundaries. We consider the intergenerational process in the family in mediating participation in these social practices, how language ideologies at multiple scale levels influence family and youth practices, and the variable ways in which institutional structures of schooling position the transnational affiliations and linguistic resources of migrant students.

Experiences of Simultaneity in Complex Linguistic Ecologies: Implications for Theory, Method, and Practice

Sociolinguists have made considerable headway in identifying and describing the relationship between mobility, linguistic resources, and forms of inequality. Despite such advances, however, we argue that it is as important as ever to continue to rethink what kinds of phenomena are analyzed, the distinctions and categories that might be imposed on the data collected, and the theoretical and methodological approaches used to pursue that inquiry. This special issue investigates how movement across borders (and over time) influences ideologies of language, experiences of language learning, and the linguistic repertoires that emerge in specific local contexts.

‘Here, without English, you are dead’: ideologies of language and discourses of neoliberalism in adult English language learning

ABSTRACT Ideologies of language (and language learning) – in concert with discourses of individualism and meritocracy that characterize neoliberalism – shape pedagogical policies and practices in ways that are consequential for multilingual students all over the developing and developed world. To investigate how such intersections and influences work in adult language teaching/learning settings, this paper critically examines written documents produced by an adult ESL programme, comments made by some of the teachers, and the everyday talk of advanced students in the programme. Understanding neoliberalism as ‘a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade’ [Harvey, D. 2005. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 3], I examine ‘the local political economy of linguistic and cultural resources’ [Heller, M. 2003. “Globalization, the New Economy, and the Commodification of Language and Identity.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 7 (4): 473–492, 476] in an adult ESL programme. Findings show that texts and talk alike limit the identities (and trajectories) that are imagined for adult refugee learners of English. In some cases, even well-intended and seemingly ‘neutral’ descriptions of pedagogical goals and priorities might become a subtle but powerful way to further the neoliberal agenda of preparing workers for minimum-wage, entry-level employment across sectors of the economy.

Heteroglossic Practices in the Online Publishing Process: Complexities in Digital and Geographical Borderlands

This chapter explores the multilingual, multidialectal, and multimodal interaction of adult immigrants in the context of digital media composition in the US Southwest. The analysis draws on the notions of heteroglossia, multimodality, and translanguaging, to examine interactions between adult learners of English and the values they attach to different languages, varieties of language, and semiotic systems. With a focus on talk about the challenges and possibilities of creating websites in Spanish (and certain varieties of Spanish), the analysis illuminates the productive coexistence of multiple meaning-making resources; the ways that social, historical, and ideological forces shape available resources and interactional negotiations; and the varied ways that individuals take up or manipulate such influences.

Communicative Competence Revisited: An Ethnopoetic Analysis of Narrative Performances of Identity

This chapter explores how definitions of communicative competence might be expanded, refined, and investigated by analyzing the roles of creativity, regimentation, and poetic structure in autobiographical narrative. Assuming that the “creative manipulations of cultural rules” that English Language Learners accomplish often go unrecognized in practice, the analysis demonstrates the need for teachers of English language learners to recognize and build on the multiple aesthetic resources that adult learners of English bring with them to the language learning endeavor. The analysis reveals dynamic connections between language in use, social identity, teaching practices, and learning processes. It also contributes to our understanding of how a narrator’s choices facilitate her/his emergent and growing competencies as a language learner, contributing citizen, and engaged participant in local communities of practice. The chapter thus illustrates how Educational Linguistics as an intellectual endeavor is not only grounded in history with a constant set of questions and concerns but, also, responsive to recent developments in theory, method, and practice.

“We speak English in here and English only!”: Teacher and ELL youth perspectives on restrictive language education

ABSTRACT This study operationalizes Ruiz’s language orientations framework (1984) and builds on his later work (e.g., 1997, 2008) by examining the ways in which local language policies influence the learning experiences of 12 multilingual youth and the teaching experiences of four of their classroom teachers. Using ethnographic and qualitative research approaches (i.e., observations, participant observation, interviews, a focus group, and artifact collection), over 150 hours of audio-recorded classroom interactions were collected, indexed, transcribed, and thematically analyzed. The analysis focuses on how restrictive language ideologies and policies mediate the everyday talk and classroom practices of both classroom teachers and ELL youth. Findings demonstrate that ideologies of language that privilege English monolingualism influenced restrictive language policies and practices and helped to shape the teachers’ and students’ beliefs about language and their own language use. Findings show that ideologies of language contributed to a linguistic hierarchy that positioned English at the top, followed by Spanish, then additional languages of students in the classroom. However, the analysis also illuminates how teachers and youth might resist ideologies, policies, and practices that devalue multilingualism by engaging in practices that allow and promote language-as-a-resource orientations.

“It's Better Life Here Than There”: Elasticity and Ambivalence in Narratives of Personal Experience

This article investigates when and how narratives of personal experience and displacement reference and characterize dimensions of time and space, with a focus on how temporal elasticity might serve as an interactional resource. Examining the dynamic, situated, and intertwined nature of such narratives, the analysis looks at how past–present–future/there–here experiences are described and characterized in the qualitative research interview. By illuminating the ways in which temporal elasticity and temporal border crossing are dynamic, emergent, and dialogic resources for the narrator, the analysis demonstrates a powerful way to investigate the experiences of simultaneity (Levitt & Glick Schiller, 2008) that accompany movement (of people, ideas, and practices) across spatial and temporal borders.

Theorizing the spatial dimensions and pedagogical implications of transnationalism

ABSTRACT The construct of transnationalism has been used to describe and examine how people maintain connections with their homeland while learning about and participating in the practices of the receiving context. This notion has influenced a great deal of research that seeks to capture how transnational connections are created and sustained – and also how participation in an adopted societys practices might coexist with continued engagement with the people and practices in another space. In recent years, social scientists across disciplines are bringing increasingly nuanced perspectives to the study of transnationalism and globalization – for instance by distinguishing the society from the nation-state (Glick Schiller, 2005) and culture from territory (Appadurai, 1996/2003), and by taking into account the dangers of what has been named “methodological nationalism” (Wimmer & Glick Schiller, 2002). Yet, widely circulating discourses of how movement and mobility influence teaching and learning often lack such nuance, complexity and texture, with consequences for educational policy and practice. Here, I describe the key tenets of transnationalism, interrogate what we mean by the “social contexts” of teaching and learning, and argue for rethinking the spatial dimensions of teaching and learning in a time of transnationalism and globalization.

Language in late modernity: interaction in an urban school

that it is not surprising that Halliday would choose to study texts and Vygotsky mental and other social activity. It appears that a similar distinction in analytic choices is exhibited by the authors in this volume depending on their primary theoretical orientations although these (and other) distinctions are rarely addressed. Unfortunately, the editor too refrains from integrating discussion of these individual chapters in her exploration of the ‘nexus between SFL, SCT, and advanced L2 learning’ (3). She suggests that the ‘colocation’ of these chapters in a single volume can ‘evolve in the readers’ mind into collocations that (can) enliven . . . their own thinking about advanced learning’ (3) as well as the broader field of language-learning research. However, if this book is to succeed in advancing the complementary roles of SCT and SFL in advanced language pedagogy, it seems more deliberate attention must be paid to their intersections and divergences in theory, in analysis and in pedagogical and curricular application.

English Language Learners: Education, Assessment, and Clinical Intervention

Creating Access: Language and Academic Programs for Secondary School Newcomers. Deborah J. Short, Beverly A. Boyson. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. 2004. Pp. x+173. ISBN 1-887744-87-8 (pbk).