Language and Identity Amongst

Spanish Heritage Language Learners

Cristina A. Velzquez
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
New knowledge of language rights has impelled leaders
in education to acknowledge the significance of heritage
and ethnic languages.
Spanish has traditionally been taught as a foreign
language and the need to teach Spanish to native
speakers has traditionally been ignored.
Bilingual education, the role of minority languages, and
the development of Hispanic bilingual population, in
schools and universities, has caused the Spanish
teaching profession to reexamine its practices.
As a fairly new field of language study, research has
aspired to understand SHL learners, different standards,
and varieties.
Rationale for the Study
According to the U.S. Census records, the Hispanic and
Latino population increased to 38.2% in California and
43.3 % speak a language other than English at home,
while Spanish is the largest minority language being
spoken in the U.S. (U.S. Census Bureau).
Guadalupe Valdes, a HL is one who is raised in a home
where a non-English language is spoken and who
speaks or at least understands the language and who is
to some degree bilingual in that language and in English
(Valdes, 2001, p.280).
These students have a wide range of academic
education in Spanish and also have different levels of
proficiency and literacy.
Exploration
Heritage learners struggle with the process of
exploration where one has to find out more about
his or her ethnic group, and come to a resolution
with that identity.
Latinos and Hispanics in heritage language
classrooms create a conscious effort of uniting two
different worlds in search of a new self. This new
self might encounter a clash between cultural
values, language, and customs.
Disempowerment, de-valor
When heritage language learners have the
connection of studying their home language
(Spanish) as a foreign language at school, this
dominant monolingual ideology may de-valorize
practices and experiences.
This can also lead to a sense of disempowerment.
Thus, an important challenge is to promote student
agency in language issues
Development of SHL Classrooms
The findings will contribute to the development of
theories for Heritage language and Latino
preservation. By examining the attitudes, feelings,
values, and ideologies of SHL learners, the study
will better understand the sociolinguistic profile and
needs of SHL learners.
This study illuminates the connection between
identity and language use and the mosaic of
learning and language use.

Negotiation of Identity
As a fairly new field of language study, research has
aspired to better understand Spanish Heritage Language
(SHL). This study pursues a construction of identity and
investigates language ideologies amongst SHL.
This study examines the negotiation of identity and
language construction amongst SHL learners in the
Coachella Valley, in Southern California.
Data will be collected from varied sources including
ethnographic observation, questionnaires, interviews, as
well as the SHL learner course and textbook. This
research strives to answer these broad questions:

Research Questions:
1. How do Spanish Heritage Language Learners perceive
and construct identity?
2. What language ideologies and language discourses
articulate SHL learners student voice?
3. What language ideologies are evident in the SHL learner
interactions?
4. How do students and teachers select which language
(Spanish, English or both) to use with other in the
classroom? How does language choice reflect and reify
perceptions of identity?
Ethnographic Participant Observation
Classroom observations will be recorded through video and will function as the
initial method of data collection. The participation observation method will
provide vital information about student interaction and instructor standard or
non-standard forms.
This will form as a fundamental piece of the ethnographic approach. The analysis
of daily interactions in this study cannot be performed without being able to
grasp the natives point of view, his relations to life, to realize his vision of his
world (Malinowski, 1922:25).
Franz Boa, a German anthropologist, assessed ethnography as a method of
analyzing the relationship between language and culture (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2005).
Boa confirms that one must have direct access to the language of the culture in
order to study that culture.
Johnson (1992) says ethnography is to discover the insiders view of realitythe
emic view (p. 142). As an ethnographer, a participant-observer and listener, the
goal will be to explain SHL learners, what they say, and how they act.
Theoretical Framework
Language and Identity
Language Ideology
Discourse
Agency
Student Voice
Chapter 2 Methodology
Research Setting
The Coachella Valley
The SHL Program at PSHS
Spanish 2R
Student Participants
Instructor Participant
Data Collection Methods
Ethnographic Participant Observation
Field Note Taking and Journaling
Questionnaires
Student Interviews
Instructor Interview

CHAPTER 3: LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY
AMONGST SHL LEARNERS
Chapter 3 will analyze how SHL learners perceive the relationship between
language and identity, the labels and positions of these students, and the
linguistic practices in which SHL learners perform multiple identities.
Previous Studies on Language and Identity amongst Bilinguals and Language
Learners.
Language and Ethnicity
Enacting Identity amongst SHL Learners
Language and Identity: SHL Learner Perspectives
Enacting Bilingual Identity through Code-switching and Loanwords
Enacting Bilingual Identity through Use of Bilingual Discourse Markers
Enacting Ethnic Identity
Who They Are and Who They Are Not
SHL Practices of Acceptance and Resistance


Chapter 4 Language Ideologies &
Discourses
Language Ideologies
Ideology as a Bridge between Linguistic and Social Theory
Power and the Role of Institutions
The Standard: Critical Issues
Implications of the Standard for the Teaching of Spanish to
Heritage Learners
Ideological Underpinnings of the Standard: A Historical
Perspective
Language Ideologies in the Intermediate SHL Class (textbook,
program, instructor, student, teacher)

EDUC 714
Methodology
2 interviews
In the analysis of SHL learner identity and
ideologies in the SHL classroom, the learners own
views of their linguistic behavior and language is of
critical value in interpreting what identities SHL
learners construct.
For the main source of data, interviews were
chosen for the ethnographic observation study.
Interviews
Interviews were conducted with the two focal student participants during
lunch time.
The interviews lasted approximately 35 min, notes were written during obs.
Information was obtained about students language attitudes and ideologies.
Students were asked questions regarding language behaviors observed at
school, and how they felt as a result of particular type of Spanish.
Both students generally felt very comfortable with me and felt at ease to
open up and talk freely, yet due to the lunch time hour, the interviews were
very short. However, the interviews provided critical data regarding
students attitudes toward the practices of Spanish and how they viewed
their relationship to Spanish in general.
Topics discussed during the interviews provided an understanding of how
students viewed the relationship between language and their heritage and
culture, and who they are.
Validity
The researcher being the teacher (me) has huge
influence on responses, climate, and openness.
Observation notes were done during the observation.
Notes were shown to the student to double check
responses.
Quotes were direct quotes in Spanish.
The interview was way too short, and focal students
were only 2, which will not allow for large conclusions to
happen.
Different discourses
The interview questions were created to view how discourses about
language may be implicated in students perceptions of language,
identity negotiation, and the acceptance and/or resistance of
language ideologies.
The framework adopted for the analysis accommodates multiple
dimensions of identity and ideology.
The main linguistic performances of identity in the interviews were in
evidence in the use of bilingual discourse markers, lexical choice and
code- switching among the participants at the micro level. The
linguistic performance of identity lies within the use of discourse
markers, loanwords, and code-switching. This will help shape a
students bilingual and ethnic identity.
Direct Qutotes: Multidimensional Space
Mi espaol es mas o menos. Puedo tener una conversacin
con alguien y contestar preguntas en espaol como con mi
mama o en la carnicera. A veces cuando hablo en espaol hago
studder por que me confundo en ingles, pero cuando estoy en
la escuela hablo puro ingls con mis amigos
In navigating through a multidimensional space, students
engage in linguistic practices, constructing multiple identities by
accommodating their speech to different situations,
interlocutors and topics of conversation according to their
needs for different identities.

Direct Quotes: Negotiation
Mi espaol es messy. Mi espaol no es perfecto y a veces yo pienso una
sentence en espaol y lo termino en ingles.
(Code-Switching, loan-words)
As seen in the interviews, both students continually shifted through
identities to fit their personal and cultural identities. Identity construction is
a complex constant negotiation of self internally and externally.
Students play around with language in order to fit their own personal needs
and as a result of this agency, students become active agents of their own
linguistic behavior.
Identity performance is, therefore, characterized by speakers continual
shifting of identities to the degrees needed in the construction.


Student Voice: Direct Quotes
Yo prefiero hablar ingls porque hablo mas fluente y
correcto.
In order for students to negotiate through different identities
in language settings, one must talk about voice, within the
school setting.
Girouxs (1992) concept of voice is a notion concerned with
speakers agency and how speakers are rendered voiceless in
certain contexts, silenced by intimidation.


Identity, Agency, Voice
In navigating through a multidimensional space, students
engage in linguistic practices, constructing multiple identities by
accommodating their speech to different situations,
interlocutors and topics of conversation according to their
needs for different identities.
In order for students to negotiate through different identities in
language settings, one must talk about voice, within the school
setting.
Girouxs (1992) concept of voice is a notion concerned with
speakers agency and how speakers are rendered voiceless in
certain contexts, silenced by intimidation.
Why language & Identity?