Mi lengua: Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States, Research and Practice

Chapter 13: Spanish Print Environments: Implications for Heritage Language Development

Introduction 13 Spanish Print Environments Implications for Heritage Language Development Sandra Liliana Pucci University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee This essay examines the Spanish print environments in predominantly Latino neighborhoods in two different cities: one located in Southern California and one in the Midwest. The purpose of the study is to "print map" the general print environments in the respective communities, investigating the range of reading materials available in Spanish. More specifically, it examines the availability of reading materials for adolescents and young adults in heritage language Spanish for Native Speakers classes and high school developmental bilingual settings. Although some attention has been given to access and availability of print in neighborhoods of differing socioeconomic status (Neuman and Celano 200l), to date no studies investigating Spanish print environments appear in the literature. Language IIMinorityll Students and the Politics of Language Historically speaking, schools have responded to "language minority" students in a variety of ways (Crawford 2000,1999; Cummins 2000; Kloss 1998; Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). Present-day instructional programs, whether using the primary language or not, are situated within an overtly "compensatory" framework. Hernandez Chavez (1993) is correct in his assessment of such programs as inadequate for the purposes of language revitalization. He states that "the principal (and irremediable) difficulty with these programs is that they follow an openly assimilationist philosophy that is codified into law by 270 Sondra Uliano Pucci all the relevant federal and state statutes" (p. 68). The case of transitional bilingual education is a prime example of both an assimilationist and a compensatory agenda. The stated goals of these programs are subject-area learning and the acquisition of English. Students are "transitioned" to Englishbased instruction when their "reading levels" in Spanish are adequate and when they have demonstrated a determined level of oral proficiency in English . At this point, instruction in Spanish is generally discontinued. Even socalled developmental programs, those which aim to continue supporting the student's first language, usually fall short ofdeveloping a "fuller" variety ofbilingualism /biliteracy. In reality, in both programs, the student's home language and culture are used as a bridge to those of the mainstream, and not seen as something having their own intrinsic value. Perhaps unwittingly, even the discourse of academics and sociolinguists has at times centered around justifying the use of the first language as an instructional vehicle for second language acquisition. Many discuss cognitive advantages of bilingualism , and the necessity of a firm languagelliteracy foundation in the first language in order to foster academic achievement in the second language, English (Cummins 2000; Fishman 1989; RamIrez 1992). While these are very important points, they do not contribute to the advancement or status of the Spanish language in the U.S. as a political and cultural right, independent of its relationship with the acquisition of English. Many students in Spanish for Native Speakers (SNS) classes at the secondary and college levels are graduates of these transitional bilingual education programs, or have never had the opportunity to study in Spanish during their U.S. school experiences. Roca (1992) notes that the underdevelopment of Spanish literacy skills in U.S. Latino bilinguals is due to lack of exposure and training. An informal survey of students in SNS classes at a community college in Los Angeles (Pucci 1993) revealed that while in general the students do not feel inadequate in oral communication skills, they lack the foundations of Spanish literacy, and do not feel confident in using Spanish as a tool for written communication. This may simply indicate the lack of exposure to an academic register or style. Valdes and Geoffrion-Vinci (1998) have discussed the exposure to the various domains of English and Spanish that Chicano bilingual students, and possibly other U.S. Latinos, come into contact with throughout their lives. They maintain that the average Chicano student , descending from what the authors characterize as "ordinary Mexicans," and having grown up in an English-dominant society, has probably not acquired the registers and stylistic variations of Mexican Spanish monolinguals from similar socioeconomic class backgrounds (p. 477). Chicano students in this study produced oral texts comparable to their Mexican-born counter- Spanish Print Environments 277 parts, although these were judged by researchers to have less lexical richness. Therefore, it could be feasibly argued that their situation may not be a question of overall "language competence" as such, and we should reject, as many others have, narrow notions of"restricted" and "elaborated" codes (Labov...