| This dissertation investigates how bilingualism and biculturalism are understood and practiced in the fifth grade at a dual-language elementary school. Dual-language programs offer children from a variety of linguistic backgrounds the promise of becoming bilingual, biliterate, and bicultural. I was particularly interested in unpacking the concept of biculturalism in this context because there is little research that focuses on the cultural goals of dual-language programs. I found that the program was underpinned by a liberal orientation towards biculturalism which highlighted sameness and downplayed, or even undervalued, difference. I investigated students' attitudes towards bilingualism and biculturalism by examining participants' uses of discursive tactics of intersubjectivity (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). I used this framework to understand how children used their two languages to ally themselves with and distance themselves from particular people, groups, and linguistic varieties.; Children and adults develop discourses, relationships, meaning, and knowledge through their active engagement in communities of practice (Wenger, 1998). In this study, I studied the way that fifth graders constructed and participated in bilingual and bicultural communities of practice by analyzing students' access to participation, their use of discourse, and the creation of third spaces. I found that English and English speakers enjoyed privileged status in the fifth grade communities of practice despite the predominant ideology of equality that circulated throughout the school. I suggest that a greater effort is needed to incorporate curricula and spaces in which Spanish speakers and Hispanocentric cultural forms can be central to the creation of discourses, interactional norms, meanings, and knowledge production. As such, I conclude that while the school was bilingual, the development of more spaces which engender the development of bicultural practices would be beneficial.; Additionally, I suggest that the separation of languages necessitated by the dual-language model worked to support theories about bilingualism which were not reflective of the teachers' professional knowledge and beliefs. While the program model was fundamentally based on the idea of the separation of languages, teachers believed that bilinguals' languages were interdependent. The explicit cross-linguistic examination of the two languages would enrich the students' bilingual and bicultural development. |
