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Raciolinguistics and the Education of Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled

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Abstract

In the primary grades, decisions regarding the language/s of instruction for emergent bilinguals labeled as disabled (EBLADs) are often made entirely by school representatives with little to no input from the child or the family. These decisions, which often result in a monolingual placement, not only impact the linguistic practices of EBLADs in school but also at home—often leading to a decline in home language use for the child. While monolingual placements for EBLADs are often the result of teachers’, administrators’ and monolingual service providers’ erroneous perceptions and misunderstandings regarding language function for students with disabilities, these decisions can also be reflective of bias grounded in the student’s racial, ethnic, linguistic and dis/abled identity. Using a raciolinguistic stance and qualitative data from an ethnographic study of Spanish-speaking Latinx mothers and their EBLAD children, this paper presents the ways in which mothers of EBLADs understand/view school-based language decisions as racially motivated as well as the ways in which those decisions impact language practices in the home. This paper will also present the understanding that EBLADs themselves have regarding the impact that their monolingual English educations have on their linguistic development and on their mother’s ability to support their academic development. Lastly, possibilities for how these understandings can be explored at the classroom and policy level, as a way to destigmatize bilingualism for students labeled as disabled as well as to empower EBLADs and their families, will be shared.

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Notes

  1. While not labeled as disabled themselves, as primary caretakers many of the mothers are susceptible not only to their own marginalization as immigrant women of color but also to their children’s disability labels by proxy.

  2. Based on the United Nations Genocide Convention (Articles IIb and IIe and its Final Draft Article III1), linguistic genocide refers to active (short and long-term) practices that lead to the eradication of a language from an individual’s or community’s repertoire thus contributing not only to a loss of a language but also cultural identity (Skutnabb-Kangas 2001, 2002).

  3. The disability labels assigned to these students are not discussed in this paper for two reasons: 1. discussing the labels would validate the categorization of individuals, thus promoting ableism by reifying the ideal that “normal” people are at the top of the hierarchy and that the position of people with disabilities within social hierarchy is dependent on the type of disability they have positioning those with intellectual disability as least desirable and valuable (for more see Annamma et al. 2013; Baglieri et al. 2011; Hehir 2007) 2. The disability categories of these children are irrelevant to their linguistic exposure. That is to say that regardless of the classification that the school has applied, these children are still living multilingual lives—they still need to be able to communicate in both English and Spanish depending on the setting and audience not on the function of their disability.

  4. In using the term Transitional-monolingual program, I aim to draw attention to those programs that start with a home language—target language breakdown of 90/10 and end the school year with a home language—target language breakdown of 10/90. Ultimately, erasing the home language in the interest of English language acquisition. As opposed to “Transitional bilingual education program”, which give the false sense that, all transitional programs conclude with a 50/50 home language—target language ratio.

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Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Sarah Hesson, whose invitation to a panel in 2018 helped spark the idea for this paper, the editors and reviewers, whose feedback refined that idea, and Rebecca Linares, who ensured that every comma and semicolon in the manuscript had a purpose.

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  1. Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, USA

    María Cioè-Peña

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Cioè-Peña, M. Raciolinguistics and the Education of Emergent Bilinguals Labeled as Disabled. Urban Rev 53, 443–469 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00581-z

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