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UC Santa Barbara UC Santa Barbara Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Here now: Latinx Youth Language Brokers and the Politics and Possibilities of Ultratranslation Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/18c1v5p6 Author Lopez, Audrey Noëlle Publication Date 2020 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara Here Now: Latinx Youth Language Brokers and the Politics and Possibilities of Ultratranslation A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics by Audrey N. Lopez Committee in charge: Professor Mary Bucholtz, Chair Professor D. Inés Casillas Dr. Rick Benjamin, Adjunct Professor Professor Lal Zimman September 2020 The dissertation of Audrey N. Lopez is approved. Professor D. Inés Casillas Dr. Rick Benjamin, Adjunct Professor Professor Lal Zimman Professor Mary Bucholtz, Committee Chair September 2020 Here Now: Latinx Youth Language Brokers and the Politics and Possibilities of Ultratranslation © 2020 A U D R E Y N. L O P E Z All Rights Reserved iii A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S I’m going to keep it simple: I could not have done this without the constant love, support, guidance, and patience of my family, friends, and academic committee. I am incredibly grateful for your ultrapresence each step of the way, and I remain honored and inspired by your generosity and kindness. Thank you. iv V I T A O F A U D R E Y N. L O P E Z September 2020 RESEARCH INTERESTS language, power, race, and identity; racial and social justice; mixed- raced identities; youth interpreters; decolonizing language, research, and the university; participatory community-based research and arts; public art; contemporary socially-engaged art EDUCATION Sept. 2020 PhD, Linguistics, Department of Linguistics, UC Santa Barbara Dissertation: Here Now: Latinx Youth Interpreters and the Politics and Possibilities of Ultratranslation. June 2011 MA, Spanish Linguistics, Dept. of Spanish & Portuguese, UC Santa Barbara Wofsy Departmental Prize for 2011 Best Linguistics Master’s Thesis June 2007 BA, Linguistics & Latin American Lit., University of Maryland, College Park Summa cum laude; Phi Beta Kappa HONORS & AWARDS 2019 UCSB Career Services Graduate Internship Fellow 2016 UC President’s Dissertation Fellowship Recipient 2016 Inaugural UCSB IHC Humanities in the Community Grant Recipient 2016 Chicanx Studies Institute Dissertation Grant Recipient 2013 Honorable Mention for Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship PUBLICATIONS Lopez, Audrey. Forthcoming October 2020. “ ‘How do we fix something that is broken?’ Socially Engaged Art in Times of Pandemic: A Conversation with Artist Yara El-Sherbini.” Lum Art Zine. Lopez, Audrey. July 2020. Tanya Aguiñiga: Contemporary Craft, Collective Care. Lum Art Zine. Lopez, Audrey & Debra Herrick. December 2019. Review of Textural: Verse and Prose at The Santa Barbara Arts Fund. Lum Art Zine. Lopez, Audrey. 2018. “ ‘Without me, that wouldn’t be possible’: Latinx Peer Discussions of Language Brokering.” In Feeling It: Language, Race, and Affect in Latinx Youth Learning, edited by Mary Bucholtz, D. Inés Casillas, and Jin Sook Lee, 187-211. New York: Routledge, 2018. Bucholtz, Mary, Audrey Lopez, Alina Mojarro, Chris Vanderstouwe and Shawn Warner-Garcia. 2014. “Sociolinguistic Justice in the Schools: Student Researchers as Linguistic Experts.” Language and Linguistics Compass 8.4:144–157. SELECTED PRESENTATIONS & WORKSHOPS May 2020. “Artist Listening Session: Vol. 1.” Planned and facilitated an online Zoom workshop and conversation with 25 artists for the Santa Barbara County Office of Arts & Culture. April 2019. “Latinx Youth Interpreters.” Bilingual presentation for MICOP Tequio Youth Group. Nov 2018. “Latinx Youth Language Brokers Challenge a California School District's Raciolinguistic Ideologies.” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association. v October 2017. “TakePart/MakeArt: The Importance of Socially-Engaged Public Art Initiatives.” Invited panel talk given for Community Arts Residency Kickoff at the Santa Barbara Community Arts Workshop. May 2016. “Found in Translation: Latinx Youth Interpreters and Language Access in Santa Barbara.” Talk given at the UCSB Multicultural Center. Mar. 2015. “Affect in Latina Peer Discussions of Language Brokering.” Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL. Dec. 2014. “Engaging a Linguistic Anthropology of Race.” Annual Meeting of the American Anthropology Association, Washington, DC. Organized interdisciplinary panel with UCSB graduate students from Anthropology, Chicanx Studies, and Education Departments. Nov. 2013. “Construction of Latino Youth Masculinities.” Annual Meeting of American Anthropological Association. Chicago, IL. TEACHING EXPERIENCE All courses taught at University of California Santa Barbara unless otherwise noted. Spring 2020 Teaching Assistant, COMP LIT 186WL: Wild Literature Winter 2020 Teaching Assistant, COMP LIT 186SC: Lit. of Social Change Fall 2019 Teaching Assistant, COMP LIT 186PP: Poetry & Community Spring 2019 Teaching Assistant, LING 136: African American Lang. & Culture Winter 2019 Teaching Assistant, LING 132: Language, Gender & Sexuality Fall 2018 Teaching Assistant, LING 20: Intro to Linguistics Spring 2018 Teaching Assistant, LING 15: Linguistics & Life Winter 2018 Teaching Assistant, LING 70: Language & Society Fall 2017 Instructor of Record, LING 50: Language & Power Spring 2015 Teaching Assistant, CHST/LING 187: Language, Power Learning Spring 2015 Instructor of Record, ANTH 104: Language and Society (Dual Enrollment) Santa Barbara City College and Dos Pueblos High School ACADEMIC & COMMUNITY OUTREACH EXPERIENCE 2016 Facilitator, Found in Translation KJUC Radio Show, Goleta CA Worked with 10 high school students to produce a weekly bilingual radio show, including selecting music, doing in-studio and off-site interviews 2015 Instructor, Mixteco Indigena Community Organizing Project, Oxnard, CA Developed and taught 6 multilingual, hands-on computer workshops for women radio programmers with trilingual language access model vi A B S T R A C T Here Now: Latinx Youth Language Brokers and the Possibilities and Politics of Ultratranslation Audrey N. Lopez Begun as the documentation of a student interpreters program at a Southern California high school, this dissertation examines the visionary, disruptive, and everyday contributions of Latinx youth interpreters’ work as language justice activists through a combination of collaborative research, ethnographically-informed reflection, and artistic engagement. In 2011, despite ongoing processes of erasure and exclusion (Irvine & Gal 2000; Flores & Rosa 2015; Rosa 2016), multilingual Latinx youth in Santa Barbara who interpreted for their families started to gain institutional recognition and validation for their linguistic abilities and expertise. Realizing that questions of language access were key to engaging Spanish-speaking Latinx parents in their children’s education, a high school bilingual educator began training groups of Latinx students to interpret for their parents at annual Back to School Night events. By valorizing students’ full range of language practices and linguistic abilities within school settings, this program demonstrated a “radical practice of belief” in young people of color (Decena 2015) that has been historically and chronically absent from US educational contexts (Lippi-Green 1997; Rosa & Flores 2017; Bucholtz, Casillas, & Lee 2018). In 2016, despite the program’s immense popularity with both Latinx vii students and parents, the local school district disbanded the student interpreters program in favor of a model that utilized professional interpreters. This dissertation draws upon the anti- racist, anti-colonial framework of "ultratranslation" (Antena Aire 2013a) to examine the life of the program, its meaning and impact for students and parents who participated in it, its cancellation and students’ subsequent activism, and its role as a catalyst for recent changes in language access policy in the Santa Barbara Unified School District. The data analyzed here were generated collaboratively, with and by Latinx student interpreters and their families, over a 15-month period spanning 2016-2017. Three youth participatory action research projects (Cammarota & Fine 2008; Cammarota 2011) were realized during this time: a collaborative radio show on a local university campus station, video-based activism through student-led interviews with peers and families, and a series of art workshops, studio visits, and interviews with contemporary artists. By analyzing the ways in which students challenged raciolinguistic ideologies of deficit (Flores & Rosa 2015; Rosa & Flores 2017) about their work across these various research contexts, my dissertation etches a larger narrative about the history, impact, and significance of the youth interpreters program that has not been documented before. By contextualizing this narrative within scholarship from the fields of linguistic anthropology, critical applied linguistics, and cultural studies, this project opens new avenues for understanding and supporting the contributions Latinx youth language brokers make to broader efforts of sociolinguistic, educational, and racial justice. This research generates urgent new insights for educators, administrators, and scholar-activists interested in thinking and acting with youth language brokers