In this dissertation, I present findings from a two-year long ethnographic study of Mandarin world language in two public high schools: primarily, an urban, working-class, ethnically/racially diverse school, and secondarily, an affluent ethnoburban high school. I study how local discourses among school participants, at the primary field site,…

While research on motivation in second language acquisition is copious and the interest in undocumented youth within the education field is growing, there is a need to closely examine the intersection of being both undocumented and an English Learner (EL) and how this intersection often limits ELs, especially those in underserved schools. Using…

This dissertation investigates lexical borrowing in Spanish in New York. English-origin lexical material was extracted from a stratified sample of 146 Spanish-speaking informants of different ages, national origins, classes, etc., living in New York City. ANOVAs and Pearson correlations determined whether lexical borrowing frequency and the type…