Ricardo Otheguy

Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics

Abstract The concept of translanguaging is clarified, establishing it as a particular conception of the mental grammars and linguistic practices of bilinguals. Translanguaging is different from code switching. Under translanguaging, the mental grammars of bilinguals are structured but unitary collections of features, and the practices of bilinguals are acts of feature selection, not of grammar switch. A proper understanding of translanguaging requires a return to the well known but often forgotten idea that named languages are social, not linguistic, objects. Whereas the idiolect of a particular individual is a linguistic object defined in terms of lexical and structural features, the named language of a nation or social group is not; its boundaries and membership cannot be established on the basis of lexical and structural features. The two named languages of the bilingual exist only in the outsider’s view. From the insider’s perspective of the speaker, there is only his or her full idiolect or repertoire, which belongs only to the speaker, not to any named language. Translanguaging is the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages. In schools, the translanguaging of bilinguals tends to be severely restricted. In addition, schools confuse the assessment of general linguistic proficiency, which is best manifested in bilinguals while translanguaging, with the testing of proficiency in a named language, which insists on inhibiting translanguaging. The concept of translanguaging is of special relevance to schools interested in the linguistic and intellectual growth of bilingual students as well as to minoritized communities involved in language maintenance and revitalization efforts.

On so-called Spanglish

The word ‘Spanglish’, used most often to describe the casual oral registers of the speech of Hispanics in the USA, is an unfortunate and misleading term. Speakers of popular varieties of Spanish in the USA would be better served by recognizing that they are already speakers of Spanish. The present article is intended as a technical discussion of the empirical foundations for our position that there is no justification for the use of the term Spanglish. We demonstrate that features that characterize popular varieties of Spanish in the USA are, for the most part, parallel to those of popular forms of the language in Latin America and Spain. Further, we show that Spanish in the USA is not of a hybrid character, that is, not centrally characterized by structural mixing with English. We reject the use of the term Spanglish because there is no objective justification for the term, and because it expresses an ideology of exceptionalism and scorn that actually deprives the North American Latino community of a major resource in this globalized world: mastery of a world language. Thus on strictly objective technical grounds, as well as for reasons of personal and political development, the term Spanglish is to be discarded and replaced by the term Spanish or, if greater specificity is required, Spanish in the United States.

Language distribution issues in bilingual schooling

Part 1 Language distribution issues and ideas: allocating two languages as a key feature of a bilingual methodology, Rodolfo Jacobson language use and new trends in research on effective bilingual/ESL classrooms, Judith Walker de Felix integrating language and content - implications for language distribution in bilingual classrooms, Robert D.Milk new directions in bilingual research design - the study of interactive decision making, Christian Faltis. Part 2 Interactional considerations: classroom talk in English immersion, early-exit and late-exit transitional bilingual education programs, J.David Ramirez and Barbara J.Merino instructional discourse in effective Hispanic classrooms, Eugene E.Garcia. Part 3 Technological advances: bilingual interactive video - let the student switch languages, Raymond V. Padilla second language use within the non-traditional classroom - computers, co-operative learning and bilingualism, Robert DeVillar. Part 4 Special cases: teacher Quechua use in bilingual and non-bilingual classrooms of Puno, Peru, Nancy Hornberger code-switching in beginning foreign language teaching, Gerald S.Giauque and Christopher M.Ely.

The bilingual education of cuban‐american children in dade county's ethnic schools

Abstract. An ethnographic study was conducted in seven private, low‐tuition ethnic schools attended mostly by working‐class Cuban‐American children. Our study was initially guided by questions that frame the discussion about the education of Hispanic children from these same socio‐economic backgrounds in public bilingual programmes. They are the following: — Should schools maintain and develop Spanish? Should all Hispanic children receive instruction in two languages or should Spanish be used only with those not proficient in English? — How does one determine language dominance and is there a difference in the curriculum for Spanish dominant children and English dominant children? — How much instruction in English as a second language should children receive and when should it stop? — Which language should initial reading be in? When should reading in the second language start? The most significant finding of our study was that these four questions were irrelevant in these ethnic community schools. Biling...

Transferring, switching, and modeling in West New York Spanish: an intergenerational study

This paper provides a description of English contact features in the Spanish of Cuban Americans in West New York, placing special emphasis on the phenomenon known as modeling (Weinreich 1974 [1953]: 30-31), and offering a comparison between modeling and other types of contact phenomena, both within and across different generations of speakers. In addition, particular attention is paid to whether the innovations found in the speech of these Cuban Americans can be interpreted as providing internal evidence of stable bilingualism or of language shift.

Social class and gender impacting change in bilingual settings: Spanish subject pronoun use in New York

This study examines the role of social class and gender in an ongoing change in Spanish spoken in New York City (NYC). The change, which has to do with increasing use of Spanish subject pronouns, is correlated with increased exposure to life in NYC and to English. Our investigation of six different national-origin groups shows a connection between affluence and change: the most affluent Latino groups undergo the most increase in pronoun use, while the least affluent undergo no change. This pattern is explained as further indication that resistance to linguistic change is more pronounced in poorer communities as a result of denser social networks. In addition we find a women effect: immigrant women lead men in the increasing use of pronouns. We argue that the women effect in bilingual settings warrants a reevaluation of existing explanations of women as leaders of linguistic change. (Language change, social class, gender, bilingualism, Spanish in the US, pronouns) *

Being polite in Ecuador: Strategy reversal under language contact

Abstract A semantic rather than syntactic analysis of the Case opposition between the Spanish clitics le and lo/la leads to a number of predictions concerning 1. (a) plausible correlations with extra-linguistic factors; 2. (b) expected skewings in distribution. These predictions have been tested by means of a questionnaire administered to native speakers of six Latin American countries. The predicted skewings fail to be observed only in Ecuador. Local conditions of language contact (Quechua substratum) suggest a re-evaluation of the gender system as a potential sociolinguistic class marker, whereby Gender, rather than Case, becomes the relevant semantic dimension for the politeness strategy. (Semantics, syntax, Spanish dialectology, ethnolinguistics, studies of variation.)

Emergent literacy skills in bilingual children: evidence for the role of L1 syntactic comprehension

Abstract The study examines emergent literacy skills in a group of young English Language Learners who are dominant in their native language, Spanish. We investigate the relative contribution of syntactic comprehension in the L1 and L2 to the development of emergent reading skills in English. Participants were bilingual kindergarteners from two public schools in New York City. Two main tests were administered: a test of syntactic comprehension, given in both Spanish and English, and a test of literacy skills, specifically listening comprehension in both the L1 and L2 are significant predictors of performance on L2 listening comprehension, with L1 syntactic comprehension shown to be the stronger predictor. These findings provide support for the position that L1 knowledge may be accessible to facilitate comprehension in the L2, particularly in cases in which the learners are dominant in the L1 (cf. Riches & Genesee, 2006). We interpret our results as evidence that there are benefits to supporting the development of the native language in the homes and classrooms of ELLs.

Single-Language and Code-Switching Strategies in Immigrant and Heritage Varieties: Spanish Subject Personal Pronouns in Toribio's Cross-Modal Hypothesis.

In an important theoretical contribution to our understanding of language contact, Toribio elaborates on the familiar generalization, best known from the work of Silva-Corvalan, that contact varieties resemble monolingual lects of the same language in overall grammar, but differ with regard to (a) the selection of structures and (b) the semantic-pragmatic constraints on the use of structures. In Toribios valuable elaboration of this basic idea, these peculiar patterns of selection and constraint in the contact variety are not the same in all contexts of use, but differ depending on whether the bilingual is in the single-language mode, or in the codeswitching mode where stretches of speech in the contact variety alternate, rapidly and relatively seamlessly, with stretches in the acrolect. The insight is that the same type of process that distinguishes the contact variety from its monolingual reference lects also distinguishes, within the contact variety, the codeswitching mode from its single-language reference mode.

The Value of Speaking a LOTE in U.S. Business

How much value do foreign languages really have in a country like the United States, where the most proficient speakers of languages other than English (LOTEs) tend to be immigrants with little influence or power and where the rich and powerful tend to have little knowledge of LOTEs? This article first discusses the role of English and LOTEs in the history of the United States and in our current position within a global community. It then presents empirical evidence of the value of LOTEs in both domestic and international business. Our findings in the business world reflect the relationship between power and LOTEs in U.S. society, with LOTEs being more valuable in ethnic and small businesses and for clerical positions than in large corporations and for managers and executives. The article concludes by suggesting that in our increasingly multilingual world, our ability to speak LOTEs would give us a greater degree of control over business decisions at all levels. But LOTEs would then have to become more widely spoken among the majority population, would have to be preserved and developed among minorities, and would have to become associated with power and profit among both Anglo-phones and ethnolinguistic minorities.