In recent years, learner identity has emerged as a central concern in SLA research conducted from sociocultural and poststructural perspectives (e.g., Norton, Reference Norton2000; Pavlenko & Lantolf, Reference Pavlenko, Lantolf and Lantolf2000). This volume, although not expressly concerned with SLA, has much to offer those interested in exploring the complex interrelationship between language and identity and its impact on acquisition, maintenance, or loss of second and heritage languages. Taking a social approach to the phenomenon of bilingualism, the studies collected here illuminate the processes through which associations between language use and ethnolinguistic identity are constructed in multilingual societies.
The thread that unifies an otherwise eclectic collection is the focus on Spanish in contact with other languages in Spain (where it exists alongside Basque, Galician, and Catalan), Latin America (where it is the dominant language), and the United States (where it is subordinate to English). Utilizing a variety of methodologies (e.g., surveys, interviews, elicitation of oral and written data, life-history narratives, and recordings of naturally occurring talk), these studies explore topics ranging from shifting attitudes toward language and citizenship in the Basque Country (Azurmendi, Larrañaga, and Apalategi) and Catalonia (Boix-Fuster and Sanz) to the Spanish spoken by so-called MexiRicans (individuals with a Mexican mother and a Puerto Rican father) in Chicago. Among the contributions, several stand out as relevant for SLA scholars. Two studies that draw on interviews with high school students in Galicia (Loureiro-Rodriguez) and Spanish heritage university students in the United States (Urciuoli) explore how tensions between standard language varieties promoted in schools and the varieties spoken by students at home impact evaluations of language use, with potential implications for language maintenance. The effect of nonnative varieties on identity is taken up in Sánchez’s study of the written Spanish of Quechua-speaking children and Boix-Fuster and Sanz’s analysis of the Catalan of Spanish-speaking immigrants to Catalonia, both of which consider how nonnative features may mark users as outsiders. Shenk’s study of Spanish heritage children in a dual-immersion program in Iowa reveals the children’s tendency to speak English even during Spanish activities and identifies family language ideologies that promote Spanish cultural and linguistic identity as a factor in increasing children’s Spanish use in the classroom. Finally, Rothman and Niño-Murcia’s account of three boys growing up in a trilingual (Spanish, Italian, and English) household in California provides an intriguing account of how linguistic choices are shaped by children’s developing multilingual and multicultural identities.
A potential source of confusion is the vague and inconsistent uses of the term identity both within and across these studies. Some researchers use the term to refer to how individuals identify themselves and how this self-identification shapes or is shaped by language choice (e.g., Bustamante-López), whereas others use it to refer to how certain linguistic features serve as a means for others to identify the users as, for example, so-called Haitianized (i.e., black and poor) speakers of Dominican Spanish (Bullock and Toribio). Moreover, although the introductory chapters (Zentella; Niño-Murcia and Rothman) emphasize the dynamic and performative nature of identity, this theme is taken up directly in only a handful of studies, and, with a few exceptions (e.g., Zavala and Bariola; Rothman and Niño-Murcia), transcripts of naturally occurring talk are not included. This absence is particularly felt in studies such as Shenk’s, in which the children’s use of Spanish in the classroom is noted but never actually shown. The interviews that constitute the primary data source for many studies are usually analyzed in terms of expressed attitudes toward a language or explicit self-identification rather than as performances of identity in and of themselves. In other words, the focus is more on how bilinguals perceive and talk about identity rather than on performance of identity as such.
Despite that caveat, this volume can be commended for its wide-ranging and thoughtful examination of crucial issues such as attitudes toward nonnative, nonstandard, or contact language varieties that have relevance beyond the Spanish-speaking world. As such, it makes a worthy contribution to the growing body of literature on bilingualism, language learning, and identity.
