How are marginalized language varieties treated in foreign and heritage language programs? Drawing on discourse analysis data from pedagogical materials and instructor focus group transcripts, this presentation reports on a case study of a large U.S. university Spanish program’s language policy toward marginalized varieties of Spanish, in particular U.S. varieties.
There have been calls in the literature on heritage languages for a more inclusive approach to marginalized language varieties, in particular home varieties of students. However, there has been less discussion about how these marginalized varieties are treated in “mainstream” foreign language programs. Drawing on discourse analysis data from pedagogical materials and instructor focus group transcripts, this presentation reports on a case study of a large U.S. university Spanish program’s language policy toward marginalized varieties of Spanish. Particular focus is given to U.S. varieties of Spanish, and the case study examines both Spanish as a Foreign Language and Spanish as a Heritage Language programs. Results indicate that there are systematic discourses that de-legitimize U.S. varieties of Spanish present in both programs. Suggestions are made for new language policies that might better reflect the sociolinguistic characteristics of spoken Spanish in the United States and beyond.
