A Case Study of Critical Service Learning in the Latino Community

AAUSC 2017 Volume—Issues in Language Program Direction Engaging the World: Social Pedagogies and Language Learning Sébastien Dubreil, Carnegie Mellon University Steven L. Thorne, Portland State University— Rijksuniversiteit Groningen Editors Stacey Katz Bourns, Northeastern University Series Editor Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States 54497_fm_ptg01_i-xx.indd 1 04/10/17 5:52 PM AAUSC 2017 Volume - Issues in © 2019, 2018 Cengage Learning, Inc. Language Program Direction: Unless otherwise noted, all content is © Cengage Social Pedagogies and Entwin- ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by ing Language with the World the copyright herein may be reproduced or distributed Sébastien Dubreil, Steven L. in any form or by any means, except as permitted by Thorne, Stacey Katz Bourns U.S. copyright law, without the prior written permission Sr. Product Team Manager: of the copyright owner. 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Printed in the United States of America Print Number: 01 Print Year: 2017 54497_fm_ptg01_i-xx.indd 2 04/10/17 5:52 PM Chapter 2 Encuentros con el español: A Case Study of Critical Service Learning in the Latino Community Alberto Bruzos, Princeton University The Social and Critical Turn in Language Education According to Bass & Elmendorf (2012), social pedagogies are “design approaches for teaching and learning that engage students with what we might call an ‘authentic audience’ (other than the teacher).” The notion of “community” is central in two different ways: “Ideally, social pedagogies strive to build a sense of intellectual community within the classroom and frequently connect students to communities outside the classroom.” As applied to language education, social pedagogies are crucial to address the shortcomings of communicative language teaching (Magnan, 2008) by creating opportunities for students to go beyond the classroom and become members of communities of practice where the target language is spoken, thus leaving the role of “learners” and entering into the role of “speakers/social actors” (Kern & Liddicoat, 2008). The notion of speaker/actor moves the focus from a conception of language as a system and toward “a conception of language as a dynamic, semiotic resource that the individual combines with other resources to act within the social world” (Kern & Liddicoat, 2008, p. 20). This social approach to language education echoes the increasing interest in social perspectives in the field of Second Language Acqui- sition (Block, 2003; Firth & Wagner, 1997; Thorne, 2005). It is also aligned with Halliday’s (1978) social semiotics, Dell Hymes’s (1996) critique of Chomskian linguistics, and more recent developments in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, which have brought into focus such concepts as “investment,” “imagined communities/imagined identities” (Norton, 2013; Norton & Toohey, 2011), “subjectivity” (Kramsch, 2010), and the idea of “language as a local practice” (Pennycook, 2010). Moreover, the focus on the social dimension of language and the emphasis placed on particularity, intersubjectivity, and reflection is something that social pedagogies share with the type of critical competences increasingly demanded in language education, such as Claire Kramsch’s “symbolic competence” (Kramsch, 2006, 2011; Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008), the Modern Language Association’s 37 54497_ch02_ptg01_037-063.indd 37 04/10/17 10:51 AM 38 Alberto Bruzos (MLA) “translingual and transcultural competence” (MLA, 2007), and Jennifer Leeman and Ellen Serafini’s “critical translingual competence” (Leeman & Serafini, 2016). Following the working definition proposed by Kimberly Vinall (2016, p. 5), symbolic competence is “the potential to become aware of and critically reflect on and act on the crossing of multiple borders between linguistic codes and cultural meanings, the self and others, various timescales and historical contexts, and power structures.” In order to develop symbolic competence, it is necessary to abandon narrow structuralist approaches to language teaching and engage with language variation, style, discursive practices, and intertextuality (Kramsch, 2011). The MLA’s translingual and transcultural competence shares with symbolic competence a focus on intercultural communication1 and the goal of develop- ing “critical language awareness, interpretation and translation, historical and political consciousness, social sensibility, and aesthetic perception” (MLA, 2007). Whereas symbolic competence and translingual and transcultural competence focus on cultural meanings and discursive practices, critical translingual competence is more clearly informed by issues of social justice, critical language awareness, and language attitudes and ideologies (Leeman & Serafini, 2016). Despite the differences between these three competences,2 they can be regarded as vari- ations of a broader approach that brings the social dimension of language to the foreground, blending language learning with the development of an understanding of the cultural, social, political, and ideological aspects of language, linguistic variation, and discourse. Engaging students in considering how a particular language or variety can be made the object of ideologies, social hierarchies, and political agendas is particularly relevant to the teaching of Spanish in the United States. On the one hand, Spanish is a pluricentric language with numerous regional and national linguistic norms, for the most part mutually intelligible but with different social meanings, levels of acceptability, and degrees of mobility.3 On the other hand, in the United 1 “The idea of translingual and transcultural competence . places value on the ability to operate between languages” (MLA, 2007). 2 While symbolic competence, particularly as portrayed in Kramsch and Whiteside (2008), considers language contact phenomena such as code-switching and translanguaging, the MLA’s definition of translingual and transcultural competence seems to reinforce the boundaries between languages and cultures, portraying students as monolingual English speakers and establishing the goal to acquire a delimitable “target language” (Kramsch, 2014; Leeman & Serafini, 2016). Leeman and Serafini (2016, pp. 64–65) are particularly at odds with this issue; in fact, they propose that the language curriculum must aim to develop the understanding that linguistic variation (including language contact and mul- tilingual practices) is both “a resource for carrying out a wide array of social and political functions and communicating a wide range of symbolic meanings” (p. 65) and a source of language attitudes and ideologies. 3 See Blommaert’s (2010) discussion on the mobility of semiotic resources. 54497_ch02_ptg01_037-063.indd 38 04/10/17 10:51 AM ENCUENTROS CON EL ESPAÑOL 39 States, Spanish is a minoritized language with a complex social and political sig- nificance: it carries the double stigma of being the language of the colonized, the immigrant, the uneducated, and the poor (García & Mason, 2009) and of being an inferior variety of Spanish, deformed and polluted by the influence of English (del Valle, 2011; García, 2011). This is an issue that we should confront if we want our students to become speakers/social actors, to develop a personal voice, and, no less important, to be able to apprehend other voices, understanding voice here as a cultural and political notion (Kramsch, 2008)—that is, “the object of identity and community claims.”4 A pedagogy that blends language learning and critical language awareness5 should address painful but necessary questions6 regarding the value of the target language in the life of our communities: Why is Spanish seen as a resource for foreign language learners and as a detriment to the social mobility of Latino students? What is behind the idea of Spanish as “a major potential threat to the country’s cultural and political integrity” (Huntington, 2004, p. 33)? Do all Latinos speak Spanish? Do they speak “standard” or “proper” Spanish? What varieties of Spanish are promoted as proper or standard Spanish? What varieties are evaluated as inferior? Why? By whom? And how are these evaluations visible? When is it appropriate for a Spanish language learner to use Spanish with Latinos? Such questions have been earlier raised by scholars like Ofelia García (2011, 2014), Jennifer Leeman (2004, 2014), José del Valle (2011, 2014), and

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