A qualitative study of language attitudes toward Spanish in contact with English in San Diego county reveals that while Spanish-English bilingualism is highly valued, Spanish-English codeswitching is disfavored. While studies in other border communities along the U.S.-Mexico border have found similar general results, the present study contributes…

Linguistic heterogeneity and fluidity--prominently captured in the notion of 'translanguaging'-- are starting to be seen as normative and natural. In turn, homogeneity and fixity, instantiated for example in standard languages, are becoming the 'odd-ones-out.' I challenge the dichotomy between linguistic fluidity (languaging) and fixity (named…

Unmooring language is a proposal for a language-based social justice concept that aims to go beyond national and local epistemologies of language in place. This article contributes to current discussions in critical sociolinguistics about how to conceptualize language bearing in mind the primacy of mobility and fluidity. Drawing on folk…

The authors present three distinct cases of English-Spanish bilinguals on the U.S.-Mexico border to illustrate how legitimate and authentic language use functions as forms of symbolic capital (P. Bourdieu, 1991). Language practices in the occupational domain exemplify how varieties of English and Spanish come into contact, are negotiated, and…

bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4-6) classroom, with its two teachers--English…