Bilingualism for All?: Raciolinguistic Perspectives on Dual Language Education in the United States

It is common for scholarly and mainstream discourses on dual language education in the US to frame these programs as inherently socially transformative and to see their proliferation in recent years as a natural means of developing more anti-racist spaces in public schools. In contrast, this book adopts a raciolinguistic perspective that points to the contradictory role that these programs play in both reproducing and challenging racial hierarchies. The book includes 11 chapters that adopt a range of methodological techniques (qualitative, quantitative and textual), disciplinary perspectives (linguistics, sociology and anthropology) and language foci (Spanish, Hebrew and Korean) to examine the ways that dual language education programs in the US often reinforce the racial inequities that they purport to challenge.

Nelson Flores is an Associate Professor in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. His research examines the intersection of language, race, and the political economy in shaping U.S. educational policies and practices. He has been the recipient of many academic awards including a 2017 Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship, the 2019 James Alatis Prize for Research on Language Planning and Policy in Educational Contexts and the 2022 AERA Early Career Award.

Amelia Tseng is Assistant Professor of Linguistics and Spanish in World Languages and Cultures at American University, USA and holds a Research Associate appointment at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Her research centers on multilingual repertoires, race and ethnicity, and identity construction in immigrant and diasporic communities.

Nicholas Subtirelu is Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics at Georgetown University, USA. His recent research looks at how bilingualism is constructed as a commodity and the implications this has for racial economic justice in language education.