This study reports how authors use Spanish in award-winning Latinx children's picturebooks in the USA. Teachers, families, and librarians use these books to support heritage language and culture or to broaden children's understanding of cultures other than their own. Thus, how these books use Spanish matters because of the potential of these books…

This study explores how a transient community of Chinese visiting scholars in the US negotiates the language norms and identity in the transnational spaces. Transient communities, being different from diasporic stable communities in terms of flexibility and fluidity of movements, are subject to continuous negotiation of social or language norms.…

This ethnographic study aims to foreground the voices of 34 first through twelfth graders who belong to first-generation immigrant families from Mexico and Central America and attend Nueva Vida Church (fictitious name) in a Midwestern US city. They insightfully reflect upon their language, culture and citizenship during Sunday school class focus…

This study examines how language and culture brokering (translating and interpreting language and culture for others) influences the acculturative experiences and self-perceptions of young adults from immigrant Arab, Asian, and Latino American backgrounds. Semi-structured interviews with 10 participants suggest that mediating information for…

Scholars who work with Latino/as in the USA have long been calling for a more nuanced understanding of the heterogeneity of the US-based Latino population. Two-way Immersion (TWI) bilingual education programmes are an interesting context in which to examine the Latino parent communities in the USA. Overall, the language enrichment nature of TWI…

Seventy-eight native English speakers rated the foreign-accented speech (FAS) of 24 international students enrolled in an Intensive English programme at a public university in Texas on degree of accent, comprehensibility and communicative ability. Variables considered to potentially impact listeners' ratings were the sex of the speaker, the first…

The concept of group "vitality" was developed over 30 years ago to assist in understanding of power relations between language groups. However, vitality has also been an important consideration when attempting to understand intergroup relations more generally. Vitality researchers distinguish "subjective" vitality from "objective" vitality. This…

Drawing on data from 14 communities in California and Texas, this paper examines the variability in language and literacy resources across communities with large numbers of Latino families. Spanish-speaking children live in communities that vary considerably with respect to language use, ethnic composition and education levels. Children's…

Objective/subjective and qualitative/quantitative aspects of vitality in Solvang, a Danish-American community in California, are analyzed by ethnographic-like means. The setting represents a radical transformation from a fulfilling Grundtvigian community life to one that attracts tourists with a Danish facade. (52 references) (Author/LB)

Using vitality theory as a framework, investigates whether support for English-only policies among Anglo-Americans is related to perceptions about growing Latino group vitality and the presence of Spanish in the linguistic landscape. Conducted a telephone survey in Santa Barbara, California. Found Anglo-Americans' perceptions of growing latino…

Explores the methods employed in southern Texas primary and secondary schools to discourage Spanish use, and examines the justifications given for this practice. The data, gathered by interviewing Pan American University students, indicates that Spanish use by students is a social problem largely because of its classification as such by school…

Children of immigrant parents often are asked to language broker, translating documents and face-to-face interactions, for their parents and other adults. Many individuals continue to language broker as adults for their parents and other relatives, despite their adult status and living away from home. Twenty Mexican American college students…

Presents findings from a sociolinguistic study of the language use and language attitudes of Hispanic families in a small community in upstate New York. Sought to identify and describe the familial linguistic patterns that are leading to an emerging population of US-born Spanish speakers by examining the factors that are related to Spanish…

This study, based on ethnographic methods, explores how the professional identities of a group of bilingual (Spanish/English) Latino/a teachers-in-the-making in an urban public school district in the USA are formed and enacted. It illustrates the national and local discourses that influence novice bilingual teachers in their professional…

Bilingual speakers report experiencing stronger emotions when speaking and hearing their first language compared to their second. Does this occur even when a second language is learned early and becomes the dominant language? Spanish-English bilinguals who had grown up in the USA (early learners) or those who were first exposed to English during…