`Ni a Pocha Va a Llegar': Minority Language Loss and Dual Language Schooling in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands

Abstract

ABSTRACT. This article considers effects of dual language schooling on the vitality of Spanish in a Mexican-American barrio in Tucson, Arizona, where diminishing Spanish language resources are concentrated in bilingual elders and recent immigrants from Mexico. I examine interactions between Spanish speakers and a bilingual magnet school located in the neighborhood to ask how proximity of a vital Spanish-speaking community influences Spanish learning and instruction. Data include responses to language questions on the U.S. Census, interviews, and participant observation in classrooms and the community. The term LINGUISTIC FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE is proposed as a theoretical and pedagogical tool for integrating school and community efforts to maintain minority languages. * INTRODUCTION. For many Latino families in the southwestern United States, bilingualism is a transitory state, as child speakers move from Spanish dominance/ monolingualism to dominance/monolingualism in English. With public education structured to encourage rapid acquisition of English, generally accompanied by minority language loss, maintenance of Spanish in the borderlands has historically depended on continued immigration from Mexico and on private social networks rooted in extended families and Mexican-American barrios (Villa 2000). Unlike other forms of bilingual education that typically isolate language minority children, thereby depriving them of access to target linguistic and cultural models (Sanchez 1997), DUAL LANGUAGE (DL) programs join language majority and language minority children in classrooms where both languages are used for content instruction and literacy development (Freeman 1998). In the first part of this article, I consider effects of DL schooling on the vitality of Spanish in a Mexican-American barrio in Tucson, Arizona. The second part of the article examines interactions between minority language speakers in the barrio and DL education at a bilingual magnet school historically identified with this neighborhood. Specifically, I ask if and how the proximity of a vital Spanish-speaking community influences Spanish language learning and instruction at the school. The motivation for the study was derived from theoretical developments in the areas of language planning, language revitalization, and FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE. Following Kloss (1969), it is customary to distinguish between STATUS PLANNING, the attempt to manipulate the status of a language and its speakers, and CORPUS PLANNING, concerning the linguistic content of a language. Cooper (1989) offers a third type, LANGUAGE ACQUISITION PLANNING (LAP), to describe efforts to help people acquire or learn languages. Because they attempt to create within schools a new balance between majority and minority languages and speakers, DL programs are ideal sites for exploring the nexus of LAP and status planning perspectives. Ruiz' (1984) notion of orientations in language planning is especially useful for understanding the role played by two languages in DL programs. In this framework, LAP efforts may be characterized as having one or more of three orientations: (a) language as problem, (b) language as right, and (c) language as resource. DL programs are examples of education policy that regards minority languages as resources (Craig 1996, Ruiz 1998). Following Edelsky (1996), the present study examines the ways in which participants in DL programs employ minority languages, by asking `resource for whom?' and `resource for what purpose?' DL programs are language islands in which the functions served by the minority language are increased, temporarily altering and potentially inverting the power relationship between the majority and minority language speakers. In contrast to a closed system approach, in which schools intentionally minimize contact with the wider community to keep out the majority language (cf. Swain 1971:86, Freeman 1998), I am concerned here with how language use within minority language communities is influenced by instruction in minority languages (Kjolseth 1972). …

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