The aim of the study was to check whether minorities such as LEP/ZEP (limited/zero English proficiency) speakers can expect the same access to justice as competent English speakers in a majority language (US English) justice system. The main hypothesis is that, due to linguistic and cultural factors, the instances of miscommunication in the…

The robust relation between maternal education and child language that is observed in monolingual populations has not been reliably replicated among bilingual children from immigrant families in the United States. We hypothesized that a variable that operates in immigrant populations--the language in which mothers achieved their highest level of…

This article extends two conversations in the heritage language (HL) scholarship: 1) the need to strengthen the linguistic self-confidence among receptive bilinguals (who are typically associated with beginning-level HL students); 2) the need for more critical explorations of receptive bilinguals' self-reported, albeit minimal, spoken Spanish in…

This article examines Facebook conversations between members of a transnational social network of US- and Mexico-born English/Spanish bilinguals. Extending Bourdieu's theory of language and symbolic power, the article uses the framework of language ideologies to explore how members establish identity and membership differently depending on whether…

This paper explores the sociolinguistic practices of a group of young bilingual rappers in the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico. Against the background of ongoing language shift to Spanish in the region, the language choices of a group of Maya youths involved in Hip Hop culture and their agency as policy-makers at the grassroots level is analysed.…

Researchers have argued for an orientation to language as a resource that values bilingualism in mathematics classrooms. However, little is known about what mathematics teachers can do to translate a language-as-resource orientation into productive classroom practice. In this study, I analyze video data from two language immersion classrooms to…

The use of English-origin spontaneous loanwords (e.g., "la babysitter," "el counter," etc.) in otherwise Spanish discourse is criticized by many as a strategy that bilinguals use to compensate for a lack of lexical knowledge in Spanish. The purpose of the current research is to examine the question of lexical proficiency as a…

The authors present three distinct cases of English-Spanish bilinguals on the U.S.-Mexico border to illustrate how legitimate and authentic language use functions as forms of symbolic capital (P. Bourdieu, 1991). Language practices in the occupational domain exemplify how varieties of English and Spanish come into contact, are negotiated, and…

The increase of Spanish-speaking populations in the U.S. has resulted in an increased demand for culturally competent, Spanish-speaking mental health providers. Yet, little is known about the methods in which academic programs and clinical training sites are preparing their bilingual students to deliver services in Spanish to the Latino…

This study investigates the plasticity of phonological boundaries during discourse in a "lingua franca." We tracked the production of 34 Spanish learners of English conversing with two Dutch confederates in English across two speech styles, focusing on incremental changes in two key English vowel contrasts with differential effects of…

Immigrant integration in nation states increasingly focuses on the importance of learning the national state language. This is evidenced by increased emphasis on rigorous language testing and tighter citizenship regulations. This paper analyses immigrant integration in two sub-state contexts, Galicia and Wales, where presence of a national…

In this paper, we utilize the theory of "translanguaging" to make sense of the biliterate activities of young emergent bilinguals in a before-school program for Latinx students at an elementary school. Our findings show that even early writers are able to draw from their full linguistic repertoire, utilizing orthographic and syntactic…

This qualitative sociolinguistic research study examines Latino/a students' use of language in a science classroom and laboratory. This study was conducted in a school in the southwestern United States that serves an economically depressed, predominantly Latino population. The object of study was a 5th-grade bilingual (Spanish/English) class. The…

This article explores the strategies that three Latino families in the U.S. employed in raising their children bilingually in Spanish and English. It also looks at their rationale for bilingualism as well as the challenges the parents failed to anticipate in implementing their strategies. The data were gleaned from comparative case studies over a…

A growing number of bilingual and multilingual national and international students are enrolling in graduate programs in the United States, creating an urgent need to understand how these writers build knowledge of unfamiliar academic genres and become part of their disciplinary academic communities (Selony, 2014). Such students struggle with…