Overview of Research Interests

My research encompasses ideological, interactional and policy perspectives on second language learning and bilingualism, with particular attention to educational practices impacting language use among minority populations in Latin America. Overall, this work addresses two broad questions. First, which practices, policies, and programs best facilitate the maintenance of minority or endangered languages? And second, which pedagogical, policy and interactional approaches best serve minority language students (Hornberger, 1995)?

Over the last decade, my work has attempted to strengthen our understanding of the changes in language form and language function that take place when communities undertake to revitalize their native or heritage languages. As more than 80% of the earth’s languages will become endangered in the next 100 years, better understanding of language loss and language revitalization processes is important for practical as well as academic reasons. As part of this work I have attempted to shed light on the critical role of language ideology (people’s beliefs about language) in the shift from one language to another, as well as to identify the most effective practices for schools and communities to fascilitate the transmission of heritage languages to the youngest generations.

My (1997) Ph.D. dissertation, which was based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in the Ecuadorian Andes, investigated the processes of language loss and language revitalization in two communities whose heritage language is Quechua, an indigenous South American language. This project, which was one of the earlier large-scale studies to directly investigate language renewal efforts, examined the cultural, linguistic and social processes accompanying language loss and language revitalization. An overview of the central research findings first appeared in the international, peer-reviewed journal Language and Education in 1999, and then as a book, Language Revitalization Processes and Prospects (2001).

This initial research in the Ecuadorian Andes demonstrated both the complex and the shared nature of the many challenges faced by endangered language communities and language revitalization efforts. It also pointed to further issues in need of investigation. For instance, how do national-level policies interact with community language politics and local language use patterns, and what is the combined impact on the current and future status of Quechua? What roles might schools play in influencing community language use patterns and what are the most effective pedagogical approaches for minority language students? How do issues of individual and group identity and ideology shape language use patterns in endangered language communities, and in particular, how do they influence parent-child interactions? My research program since then addresses these and closely related questions in greater detail. This research loosely can be divided into five areas, each corresponding to one of the questions above: (a) language policy and politics, (b) Quechua (macro) sociolinguistics, (c) the role of school in language shift and the most effective pedagogical approaches for minority language students, (d) identity, ideology and language use among bilinguals, and (e) language socialization and parent-child interactions in minority language communities. Each of these areas is briefly described below.

Language policy and politics
The field of language policy investigates the development and impact of policies related to language forms and functions. My work in this area has documented the relationship between national language policy and community language use patterns, and in particular, the ways in which national language policy is interpreted, implemented, and contested among speakers of indigenous languages such as Quechua. For instance, early work with my mentor Nancy Hornberger (1998, 1999) analyzed the tensions between variously defined notions of ‘authenticity’ and the language planning efforts to unify Quechua’s orthographic and lexical systems. In a single-authored early paper in Language Problems and Language Planning (1999), I illustrated and explained the unexpected shifts in language form and function that developed in Ecuador and elsewhere as the result of language revitalization and standardization efforts.

Other publications in this area include a major review of language planning in Ecuador with Marleen Haboud (Universidad Católica, Ecuador) in Current Issues in Language Planning (2002); an invited chapter with Carol Benson (Stockholm University, Sweden) on indigenous language planning in Andean nations (2004) in a well received edited volume by Tollefson and Tsui; as well as single-authored pieces on language policy and local planning in South America for the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (2004, reprinted in 2005) and the Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (in press).

Quechua sociolinguistics
Quechua, a family of dialects spread across six Andean nations, has traditionally been considered a ‘safe’ language due to its relatively large number of speakers (roughly 10 million, making it by far the largest indigenous language in South America). In an invited chapter for Joshua Fishman’s seminal book, Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? (2000), Nancy Hornberger and I presented evidence and argument that Quechua be classified as endangered and is in need of international support. Quechua provides excellent ground for exploring relationships between language ideology, ethnic identity, and language planning, as well as the implications of such relationships for language shift. In addition, Quechua allows for the investigation of how such relationships play out in different rural and urban contexts. In 2004, I co-edited a special issue on Quechua sociolinguistics for the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. In this bilingual issue, Nancy Hornberger and I bring together research by indigenous and non-indigenous scholars from Europe, the U.S., and Latin America to analyze Quechua language ideology, language contact, and linguistic variation. One of the themes represented in this issue is the role of Quechua as a lingua franca, which we recently developed for an invited contribution to the Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.

Schooling, language shift and effective pedagogy
Language revitalization movements frequently emphasize schools as a major channel for teaching and transmitting the language; yet this is not always the most effective avenue for promoting the language and indeed can potentially undermine community revitalization efforts. My research has contributed to our understanding of the role of schools in facilitating or counteracting language shift. In two early joint-authored papers (1996, 1997), I discuss the effectiveness of schools in language revitalization, and illustrate the importance of pedagogically, culturally and linguistically appropriate instruction. This theme and related issues are developed in a book, Transcending Monolingualism: Linguistic Revitalisation in Education, which I co-edited with colleagues Leena Huss (Uppsala University, Sweden) and Antoinette Camilleri Grima (University of Malta) in 2003. The pedagogical challenges in teaching minority languages and practical means of overcoming these obstacles are discussed in my own chapter in this book. Two other recent papers address similar issues in U.S. contexts: one documents effective practices for English language teaching in New York City public schools as part of a Brown University research project (2003); the other (co-authored with Nancy Hornberger) paper examines effective policies and strategies for bridging the gaps between home and school literacy practices (for the Handbook on Educational Policy).

Language, identity, and ideology
Language ideology is a crucial and mediating link between social structures and individual forms of talk. One paper within this line of research examined the contradictions between individuals’ metalinguistic discourse and their observed linguistic behavior. This paper, which appeared in the International Journal of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education (2000),illustrates the role of language ideologies in undermining even carefully planned education and community efforts. Further contributions to this area include a 2005 paper with former Ph.D. student Natalia Ganuza (Stockholm University, Sweden) in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education that explored the role of language ideology among adolescent, Chilean-Swedish transmigrants. Our findings illustrate how these adolescents construct identities that are both Swedish and Chilean, and point to the importance of both individual factors and contextual factors in shaping their discourse on identity. Most recently, Ana Zilles (Universidade Federal do Rio, Brazil) and I examined the link between identity and language variation in sociolinguistic interviews among German-Portuguese bilinguals in a (2005) Journal of Sociolinguistics article. Integrating quantitative and qualitative analysis, we illustrate the ways in which two Brazilian women use their linguistic resources to express varied, and at times conflicting, aspects of their identities.

Mother-child interaction and language learning
In recent years I have given more attention to mother-child language socialization practices and the links between these interactional patterns and language learning. This gradual shift in focus extends from my previous work, which has highlighted the importance of factors outside the school in shaping what happens in both classroom and community. In one series of studies, Gigliana Melzi (New York University) and I examine how Spanish-speaking Peruvian mothers and children use diminutives (e.g., perrito [‘doggie’] for perro [‘dog’]) in everyday conversations. These studies have led to insightful findings on a variety of issues, including the possible importance of imitation in children’s language development beyond infancy (in sharp contrast to prior research on imitation); the role of diminutives in facilitating conversational interaction and language learning; and significant gender differences in how mothers socialize their children to use diminutives. These findings have appeared in publications such as the Journal of Child Language and First Language.

I am also actively engaged in a study of parent-child discourse among indigenous Quichua-Spanish bilingual families in highland Ecuador. The project data, collected in July and August of 2004 with two Georgetown doctoral students (Colleen Gallagher and Amy Pogoriler), informs our understanding of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural differences in language socialization patterns, as well as how these patterns are expressed in contexts of rapid social change. My interest in multilingual language socialization practices likewise motivates a current project, based in Washington D.C., which examines the language ideologies and linguistic strategies of parents who aim to raise their children bilingually in Spanish and English. Together with my Ph.D. student, Lyn Fogle (Georgetown University), I am currently collecting monthly in-home audio-recordings of family interactions. This two-year, longitudinal study aims to uncover how parents’ ideologies and bilingual parenting strategies change over time, and to investigate the links between these ideologies, interactional patterns, and children’s bilingual development.

Public service and outreach
One theme across much of this research is an attempt to understand how parents arrive at decisions about which languages to use in what ways with their children, and how these decisions play out in family interactions over time. Several publications have attempted to make these findings accessible to the public and help inform the language decisions of parents, teachers and other professionals. Examples include an invited ERIC Digest with former Ph.D. student, Eunjin Park (New York University), which describes how cross-cultural differences in language socialization impact students’ school experiences, and short pieces on the importance of bilingual education for minority language students in the National Head Start Association Dialog and the New York Times. Most recently, I completed a book with Georgetown colleague Alison Mackey entitled The bilingual edge: The ultimate guide to why, when and how to teach your child a second language with the aim of making current research on language learning widely accessible (HarperCollins, July 2007).