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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 381

Part of Session 131: Latino Social networks and the city (Other abstracts in this session)

Language ideologies at a Latin American school in London

Authors: Kelsall, Sophie J.
Submitted by: Kelsall, Sophie J. (King's College London, United Kingdom)

In London, Latin Americans constitute one of the “new migrant groups” (Kyambi 2005); they have also been described as an “invisible minority” (McIlwaine et al. 2011). The Latin American school ELA (Escuela Latino Americana) is one of the spaces that provide visibility and a meeting place for Latin American Londoners. Located in an inner-city neighbourhood, it offers Spanish lessons and artistic workshops every Saturday. Like many other complementary schools, ELA’s objectives are: language maintenance, cultural learning, heritage celebration, and community building. Funded by the local authority, charity grants, and parental contributions, ELA is primarily directed at young people – aged between 3 and 16 – who are of Latin American descent, but it is also “open to all.” As an institution whose “fundamental purpose is to maintain our language (SPANISH)”, according to its leaflet, ELA constitutes an invaluable site for exploring (a) the functioning of a Latino social network in a global city, (b) the significance of local language ideologies, and (c) the impact of differences between and across generations.

This paper draws on ethnographic data obtained as part of AHRC-funded PhD research, which involved participant-observation and semi-structured interviews carried out at the school over a period of sixteen months. It focuses on the articulation, among teachers and parents, of a dominant ideological discourse according to which ethnic affiliation is realized through language orientation and “parallel bilingualism” (Heller 2006) is favoured over the mixing of languages. It also explores how teachers and parents dealt discursively with the students’ overwhelming preference for English. Overall it finds that (a) there was a disjuncture between purist language ideologies and hybrid, asymmetrical language practices, and (b) perceived language orientation formed the basis of evaluative and stratifying discourses about community members.

Heller, M. (2006). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity. A Sociolinguistic Ethnography. London: Continuum.

Kyambi, S. (2005). Beyond Black and White: Mapping new immigrant communities: IPPR. Retrieved 10/09/10 from http://www.ippr.org/publications/55/1375/beyond-black-and-whitemapping-new-immigrant-communities

McIlwaine, C., Cock, J. C., & Linneker, B. (2011). No Longer Invisible: the Latin American community in London: Queen Mary, University of London.