Abstract
Minority groups in the U.S. typically internalize language ideologies that associate English to social and upward mobility at the expense of learning their home language, let alone other languages. This chapter examines the role that the language ideologies of Syrian refugees in Southern Texas play in a dynamic of navigating a community where English and Spanish compete in different domains and are both necessary. This paper draws from a six-month ethnographic case study that included observations of and interviews with five Syrian refugees. Applying notions of language ideology and theories of indexicalities (Silverstein M. Lang and Commun 23:193–229, 2003) during data analysis, findings show how language ideologies inform Syrian speaker practices and their need to deal with English and Spanish in a multilingual city. Based on such findings, we argue that the extent to which Syrian refugees acquire English and Spanish and maintain their heritage Arabic language depends on their specific beliefs about language and language use in a multicultural, bilingual city.
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Christiansen, M.S., Albadawi, E. (2021). More than Maintaining Arabic: Language Ideologies of Syrian Refugees in a Bilingual City in Southern Texas. In: Warriner, D.S. (eds) Refugee Education across the Lifespan. Educational Linguistics, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79470-5_12
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