Critical Perspectives on the Family and the Couple
As Sites of Language Socialization and Cultural Identity:
A First Look at the Literature
Kara Figueredo
December 2005
EDUC 882: Seminar in Bilingualism and SLA Research and Theory
Dr. Marjorie Hall Haley
Background
Within my personal life, there has been an abundance of opportunity for me to
ponder language socialization. My family is what might be considered a ‘hybrid’
immigrant family. My husband immigrated to the U.S. from Colombian 10 years ago
and I was born and raised here. His native language is Spanish and mine is English. We
are both bilingual in Spanish and English, but we communicate primarily in English. We
have a one year-old daughter, and we are attempting to raise her bilingually and
biculturally. I speak to our daughter in English and my husband speaks to her in Spanish
and English. Many questions about language socialization, as well as cultural identity,
come to mind when I consider my family. I think about our experiences on several
different levels: as individuals, as a couple, and as a family unit.
To begin, how has my husband, as an individual, been socialized since his arrival
in the U.S.? What have been his experiences coming to this country, learning English,
and settling here as an ethnic minority? How have these processes affected his cultural
identity and how he defines himself? How do these processes influence his feelings and
decisions about how our daughter is socialized through language?
As a bilingual, bicultural couple, what has it meant for us to be in a relationship in
which we have different first languages and cultural backgrounds? How did we come to
choose the language in which we communicate and what are the reasons behind our
choices? How have the cultural identities that we constructed for ourselves as a bilingual
couple evolved since we have been together?
And lastly, how will our own language socialization and cultural identities
influence that of our family? Will our young daughter become bilingual equally in
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English and Spanish, or will one language prevail? How will she define herself
culturally? In which language will she communicate with her future sibling(s)?
The aforementioned questions that have arisen with regards to my family are
examples of the types of questions that I would like to consider critically and
problematize. Thus, I have begun to explore the literature on language socialization and
cultural identity in families and couples. I came upon an abundance of literature
addressing language use in ethnic minority families, but much less on language use in
bilingual couples. What follows is a review of the literature that I found relevant to the
questions I have posed.
Language Socialization in Mexican-American Homes
To begin, what is socialization? Garrett and Baquedano-Lopez (2002) define
socialization as:
the process through which a child or other novice acquires the
knowledge, orientations, and practices that enable him or her to
participate effectively and appropriately in the social life of a
particular community. This process – really a dense set of
interrelated processes – is realized to a great extent through the use
of language, the primary symbolic medium through which cultural
knowledge is communicated and instantiated, negotiated and
contested, reproduced and transformed (p. 339).
They contend that language socialization is the way in which we are socialized through
the use of language and also how we are socialized to utilize language (2002). Language
socialization, they explain, is a process that occurs across the lifespan: through early
childhood, middle childhood, and adolescence, to early, middle, and late adulthood.
Furthermore, bilingual/multilingual language socialization brings with it a vast, complex
array of issues including cultural identity negotiation and language maintenance and
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language shift. These are the issues that I have chosen to focus on as I review three
studies on language socialization in ethnic-minority families and one study on language
and identity in bilingual couples.
The first study that I reviewed investigates the interaction between language and
cultural identity as exhibited in the language socialization practices of four families of
Mexican-descent (Schecter and Bayley, 1997). In their study, Schecter and Bayley
explore the meanings found in the use of oral and written Spanish and English in four
focal children within the families and the frameworks that form the basis of the children’s
linguistic choices: the family and dominant societal beliefs about the emblematic
importance of the two languages; the means by which language learning takes place; and
the significance of schooling.
Schecter and Bayley (1997) performed case studies on two families in California
and two families in Texas. The parents in the families living in California were
immigrants from Mexico, while the parents in the families living in Texas were born in
the U.S. and of Mexican descent. The researchers employed a variety of methods to
collect data on home language practices within each family. These included audiotaped
observations, videotaped observations, interviews with at least one parent, interviews
with the focal child, samples of the focal child’s writing in English and in Spanish as well
(for those with biliteracy), and narratives in English and Spanish from picture books.
In their analysis of the data, Schecter and Bayley (1997) discuss three common
themes that emerged from the four case studies: self-definition, language use, and
differing sociocultural ecologies. First, they found that all of the families felt strongly
about their Mexican heritage, regardless of the amount of time they had lived in the U.S.
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In addition, all four families had positive feelings about bilingualism and they all valued
the role of Spanish in shaping their cultural identity. They differed, however, in how they
viewed Spanish language use as a means to affirm their cultural identity (Schecter and
Bayley, 1997).
Second, Schecter and Bayley (1997) found that language use in the families in
Texas was not only different from that of the families in California, but also from each
other. The Texas family that lived in an affluent, ethnically diverse neighborhood
primarily used English in the home while the other Texas family, who lived in a less
affluent neighborhood with a high percentage of Latinos, put more emphasis on Spanish
maintenance with their children. Meanwhile, the California families used Spanish as the
principal language of communication in the home, even though for one family the
decision to do so was retroactive.
Furthermore, the Texas families and the California families differed in how they
viewed schooling in their children’s language maintenance and cultural identity. The
Texas families felt that it was the responsibility of the public schools to support them in
their efforts to maintain their families’ Spanish language and Mexican cultural identity.
The California families, however, believed that this responsibility for linguistic and
cultural maintenance was their own and that the role of the school was to provide
education in the “dominant societal language” (p. 537).
Third, Schecter and Bayley (1997) looked at the dissimilar sociocultural ecologies
of the four families and they found that the differences in the language maintenance or
shift and cultural identity of the families could be attributed to these differences. All of
the parents were of Mexican descent, however, the four Texas parents were born in the
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U.S. and spoke English fluently while the four California parents were born in Mexico
and came to the U.S. as Spanish-speaking immigrants. Schecter and Bayley (1997) also
point out that:
unlike the California families, the Texas families had their important relations
close at hand… In contrast, the California parents frequently used diaspora
metaphors in representing their social condition: Removed from a natural
community of Spanish speakers, living in a metropolitan area in which
Mexican culture was devalued, and perceiving the constraints on sustaining
their sense of roots to be numerous and oppressive, they felt they could not “let
up,” as on parent put it. The home being the arena over which they exercised
significant control, cultural identification was best achieved, they believed,
through an aggressive Spanish maintenance strategy (p. 537-538).
From their findings, Schecter and Bayley (1997) concluded that even among
families of a similar national origin, and who all express strong beliefs about the
importance of their heritage language and culture, there are significant differences in how
those families define language maintenance and in the practices they employ to maintain
language and culture.
Moreover, they found that the relationships among language, culture, and identity
are not static, but dynamic. This was evident, for example, in the California parents who,
through a private school’s denial of their son for admission to kindergarten and their
declaration that his performance was abnormally low, experienced a transformation from
feeling “frightened” and “guilt-ridden” to “anger at an elite who sought to consolidate its
position of privilege by defining their son as marginal” (p. 521). This transformation led
them to a greater awareness of their status as minorities in a dominant culture and
eventually they came to embrace and support the public school system that they had
initially denounced.
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Another example of this dynamism is evident in the initiative taken by one of the
focal children to identify with her cultural background. Schecter and Bayley (1997)
recount that this 10-year old:
…reported liking to speak Spanish more frequently, especially with her
grandmother, and she had plans to take more Spanish language classes in
school. Her main motivation was to be able to communicate more easily with
her maternal grandparents and help them translate important documents from
English. But there was something else. Making the link between minority
language maintenance and cultural continuity more explicit than her parents
perceived it, she stated categorically, “Yo quiero talk more en espanol po’que
ese es mi background y that’s it” (p. 536).
In the second study that I looked at, Pease-Alvarez (2003) studied native language
maintenance and shift toward English among Mexican-descent children and their families
living in California. Her study, which took place from 1991 to 1998, goes beyond a mere
snapshot of bilingual language socialization because it looks at how parents’ views shift
over time. Like Schecter and Bayley’s 1997 study, Pease-Alvarez (2003) grounds her
research in a sociocultural framework as she investigates how Mexican-descent parents’
views of language, bilingualism, and learning transform over time in the context of their
own experiences “including their histories, cultural practices, and social positioning” (p.
10).
To study parents’ changing attitudes and perspectives over the course of seven
years, Pease-Alvarez (2003) interviewed Mexican-descent families living in a California
city whose largest ethnic group is made up of working-class persons of Mexican-descent.
She divided the parents into three groups: those born in the U.S., those born in Mexico
and who immigrated to the U.S. when they were 10 or younger, and those born in Mexico
and who immigrated to the U.S. when they were 15 or older. These groupings enabled
Pease-Alvarez to look at how generation and time in the U.S. influence bilingualism. She
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interviewed the parents between 1991 and 1992 and then again from 1996 to 1998, and
most of the parents she interviewed were mothers.
The results of the interviews showed that while parents had very positive attitudes
towards bilingualism that were consistent over the course of the seven-year study, their
opinions about children’s bilingual language socialization changed over time (2003).
Pease-Alvarez focuses the rest of her analysis on these transformations in their thinking.
She examines parents’ conflicting orientations and tensions in language socialization and
identity, how parents feel about their roles and responsibilities in the home language
socialization process, and parents’ changing expectations about the role of school in
language socialization.
First, Pease-Alvarez (2003) reported that through the interviews, the majority of
the parents from all of the groups expressed that they saw a connection between Spanish
and Mexican/Chicano identity. Many of them believed that the loss of a child’s Spanish
language abilities represented a loss of the child’s Mexican identity as well.
Furthermore, parents also identified themselves in the context of the “various structural
forces and conditions affecting their lives in the United States” (p. 13). In the second set
of interviews, many of the parents viewed the recent passage of Propositions 187 and 209
as discriminatory against Latinos, and discussed how forces of discrimination and
differing perspectives of language status are linked to Spanish language socialization in
Mexican-descent children.
There were opposing views, however, between Mexican-born and Mexicandescent parents on home language use. Mexican-born parents strongly disapproved of
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Mexican-descent parents who decided to use English as the primary language with their
children. They argued that this was:
the leading cause of language loss in their community, claiming that these
decisions emanated from parents’ desires to adopt English monolingual norms
and Anglo values in an effort to improve their social status in this country (p.
13).
While some of the Mexican-descent parents agreed with this viewpoint, others did not
necessarily view the shift to English in their homes as a sign that they were rejecting their
cultural identity. For some of the Mexican-descent parents, Spanish was important, but
not necessarily crucial to their Mexican identity. These parents’ feelings and decisions
were based on their own experiences growing up in the U.S., and for some, living in
households where they were forced to use Spanish.
Second, Pease-Alvarez (2003) analyzed how parents view their roles and
responsibilities in the home language socialization process. As mentioned earlier, most
of the parents interviewed were mothers and the majority of them reported that they felt
that it was ultimately their responsibility to ensure that their children learn Spanish. This
was especially true for single mothers and mothers who were the only adults in the home
who spoke Spanish. Although most of the mothers felt strongly about their role in their
children’s Spanish language socialization, several expressed the difficulties they faced in
fulfilling this role. Some of the mothers reported that they simply did not have the power
to force their children to use Spanish in the home, and others reported that they
abandoned their efforts to enforce Spanish use because it created unhealthy tensions in
the family. Other mothers discussed how economic difficulties forced them to work long
hours and they simply did not have the time to help or encourage their children to use
Spanish in the home.
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Lastly, Pease-Alvarez (2003) examined parents’ changing expectations about the
role of schooling in language socialization. Although most of the parents reported that
they had the primary responsibility for their children’s Spanish language socialization,
they also said they believed schools should play some kind of role. Many of the parents
expressed that they thought it was best for young monolingual Spanish-speaking children
to be placed in classrooms in which they could communicate with the instructor and be
taught at least some content in Spanish. Over the course of the study, however, many of
the parents changed their views about bilingual education and the role that Spanish
should play in their children’s schooling. In the later interviews, some parents explained
that they thought the teachers in the bilingual classes were not proficient enough in
Spanish, while other parents felt that the education their children were receiving was not
rigorous enough and that their children’s teachers did not expect them to achieve at a
high level. Furthermore, in the second cycle of interviews, several parents expressed that
it was no longer necessary for their children to receive any instruction in Spanish because
they were now capable of learning in an English-only program, but other parents reported
that they wanted their children to have the opportunity to take Spanish classes (PeaseAlvarez, 2003).
Pease-Alvarez (2003) concludes the analysis of her study by discussing how the
complexities and dynamism of parental views can be understood using a sociocultural
perspective. The results of Pease-Alvarez’s 2003 study demonstrate that parental views
on bilingual language socialization change over generation and time in the U.S. and they
are influenced by parents’ personal experiences and by the sociocultural context in the
day-to-day lives of these families.
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Pease-Alvarez (2003) explains:
Conversations with parents revealed how changes in their everyday experiences,
personal and collective histories, and structural forces and conditions converge
and combine to define and shape their perspectives on their children’s
bilingualism and bilingual language socialization, thereby providing a better
understanding of how changes in cultural practice and perspectives emerge (p.
21).
From the findings of the 1997 Schecter and Bayley study and the 2003 PeaseAlvarez study, several common patterns emerge. First, both studies demonstrate that
Mexican-born and Mexican-descent parents have strong feelings about the link between
Spanish language socialization and Mexican cultural identity. For many parents,
instilling a deep sense of Mexican heritage in their children is very important, regardless
of time in the U.S. and the extent to which Spanish is used in the home. How individual
families, however, go about this process varies widely, as do the results of their efforts.
It has been demonstrated in both studies that parents’ views on bilingual language
socialization and cultural identity are dynamic and subject to change over time. Their
views may change as a result of personal and historical experiences, socioeconomic
status and needs, their particular sociocultural ecology, structural and institutional forces
that position them in society, and the schooling experiences of their children.
Language and Identity in Bilingual Couples
Language socialization and identity construction in bilingual couples, and in
families in which each parent has a different first language, is an area of research that
begs for further investigation. I selected Piller’s 2001 study on language and identity in
bilingual couples because I consider the “couple” to be an important site for language
socialization and cultural identity – important in and of itself and also as it relates to
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issues of language socialization and cultural identity within the family unit. Linguistic
and cultural intermarriage has become more common and widely accepted, at least in
certain areas, and this merits study. Piller (2001) argues that:
the focus on bilingual children and simultaneous widespread disinterest in adults
who have to learn to negotiate their lives with two languages reflects general
assumptions that socialization and language learning in childhood are somehow
more relevant than socialization and language learning in adulthood” (p. 200).
In her 2001 study, Piller explored the relationship between linguistic
intermarriage and language maintenance or shift. She researched couples for whom one
claims English as a first language and the other German and addressed the question of
how couples from different linguistic backgrounds choose the language or languages in
which they communicate and how these choices influence their identities. Furthermore,
Piller concerns herself with whether minority partners in an interlinguistic relationship
maintain their language or whether they shift to the majority language. In other words, is
the minority partner’s first language passed on to their children?
This is an area that has not been widely researched and one in which I would like
to investigate further. I question why is it that more emphasis has been given to language
socialization in children than language socialization in adults. Adults experience these
processes as well and given the central role of parents in the language socialization and
development of cultural identity in their children, why has the research community not
focused more of its studies on adult language socialization? It seems that there is a
significant gap in language socialization research and what is needed is greater study into
the experiences of adults in their language socialization processes. Furthermore, research
that provides insights into the connection between parents’ language socialization
experiences (as both a child and an adult) and children’s language socialization is called
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for. By studying the individual family members’ experiences, this research could bring
greater understanding to language socialization and cultural identity in the family as a
whole. The findings and implications of these studies could prove useful for the
understanding of the experiences of ethnic-minority families, as well as that of “hybrid”
immigrant families in which the parents have different language and cultural
backgrounds.
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References:
Garrett, P. & Baquedano-Lopez, P. (2002). Language socialization: Reproduction and
continuity, transformation, and change. Annual Review of Anthropology, 31, 339361.
Pease-Alvarez, L. (2003). Transforming perspectives on bilingual language socialization.
In R. Bayley & S. R. Schecter (Eds.), Language socialization in bilingual and
multilingual societies (pp. 9-24). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Piller, I. (2001). Linguistic intermarriage: language choice and negotiation of identity. In
A. Pavlenko, A. Blackledge, I. Piller, and M. Teutsch-Dwyer (Eds.),
Multilingualism, second language learning, and gender (pp. 199-230). New York:
Mouton.
Schecter, S. R. & Bayley, R. (1997). Language socialization practices and cultural
identity: Case studies of Mexican-descent families in California and Texas. TESOL
Quarterly, 31(3), 513-541.
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