Research Findings: Shared book reading is important for children's early literacy development. Although there is an increasing number of dual language learners, few studies have examined families' shared book reading practices in their two languages. The current study examined Hispanic parents' beliefs and practices during shared reading in…

Today, about 350 languages are spoken and signed in the United States, many of which are heritage languages (HL). A HL is a language to which a speaker has an ethnic, historical, or sentimental connection. This dissertation reports on an ethnographic case study on the language and literacy socialization practices of one trilingual family (English,…

The border, as defined by Gloria Anzaldúa, is conceptually marked by an ideological site called "nepantla"--a Nahuatl word that refers to a space existing in-between worlds. Nepantla is a performative site for visual art and writing. Making borderlands foods is an active space that exists in-between worlds. Using a performative approach…

This chapter employs findings from 6 months of ethnographic observations with four Salvadoran first-generation immigrant women living in a suburban neighborhood in the western United States. We document these women's authentic experiences with navigating everyday linguistic interactions in Spanish and English, showing how the women's participation…

Our reflexive study responds to the need for learning about translanguaging and multimodality as entangled pedagogies in non-English-dominant contexts from teachers' perspectives. This conceptual-empirical article re-examines a yearlong ethnographic study which traced how a community of seven in-service English language teachers in Colombia and…

Languages in the Mesoamerican linguistic area have been reported to lack a dedicated means of expressing the privative meaning that encodes the absence of a participant in a situation. This micro-typological study identifies alternative strategies that the languages in this area employ to function without dedicated privative markers, namely…

This article explores gaming manifestations of the US-centric Mexican threat narrative in the context of the so-called drug war, by analyzing Manichean representations of characters, settings, and language (English and Spanish). It argues that videogames construct the concept of the Mexican subject in direct opposition to the US subject--in a…

Countries are seeing a rise in the number of families and schoolchildren who do not speak English as a first language. This study focuses on how two White monolingual English-speaking elementary teachers positioned language as it related to their Spanish-speaking students within a graduate teacher education program in the United States. Our work…

For many minoritized communities, sustaining or at least holding on to their home language and cultural identity has been a constant uphill battle. Nevertheless, Latina/o/x who speak Spanish, for example, have demonstrated to be linguistically and culturally resilient against hegemonic societal, institutional, political, and monolithic national…

In recent years, the number of Mexican youth moving (back) to Mexico from the US has been steadily growing (Sanchez Garcia & Hamann, 2016; Jensen & Jacobo-Suarez, 2019). The Pew Research Center for Hispanic Studies estimates that between 2009 and 2014, roughly 1 million Mexicans and their families moved from the US to Mexico…

This study presents the case of a multilingual refugee (Maji) of Kirundi, Swahili, French, and English, from Burundi living in the U.S., and examines the language ideologies and identities embedded in his transnational narratives. We analyze our focal participant's multi-layered transnational experiences using Darvin and Norton's (2015) model of…

Why learners return from study abroad (SA) with varying degrees of second language (L2) gains or differing attitudes towards the target language and culture remains an open question. This study employs theories of identity (Kinginger, 2013) and investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton Peirce, 1995) to examine the case of three learners of…

This study investigates the interaction of native speaker--non-native speaker (NS-NNS) dyads engaged in conversational interaction as part of a video-based synchronous computer mediated communication (VidSCMC) eTandem language program. Previous work has indicated certain advantages of NNS-NS conversational interaction for language learning (e.g.,…

This study explores how preschool educators could assess dual language learners' (DLLs) English language abilities using formative instruments in school settings. It specifically examines (1) DLLs' receptive and expressive language proficiencies measured using the instruments and (2) educators' perceived usefulness of them for informing…

This article investigates how engaging students to discuss topics that reflect their ideologies in lingua franca (LF) virtual exchanges can help facilitate global citizenship development. A six-week virtual exchange is explored with students from universities in Mexico, Poland, Spain, and the USA. This study utilizes five key elements of…