City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 9-2016 Literacies of Bilingual Youth: A Profile of Bilingual Academic, Social, and TXT Literacies Michelle A. McSweeney The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1459 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] Literacies of Bilingual Youth: A profile of bilingual academic, social, and txt literacies by Michelle A. McSweeney A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2016 2016 Michelle A. McSweeney Some rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 ii Literacies of Bilingual Youth: A profile of bilingual academic, social, and txt literacy by Michelle A. McSweeney This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Linguistics to satisfy the dissertation requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy Gita Martohardjono ________________ __________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Gita Martohardjono ________________ __________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Committee Members: Steve Brier . Cecelia Cutler . Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iii Abstract This dissertation reports on a research project to identify the multiple types of language skills that urban emergent bilingual youth possess. The participants in this study are Spanish-dominant bilingual young adults enrolled in a high school completion program in New York City. They are in the process of developing both Spanish and English academic literacy skills, and it is well known that they tend to perform below the grade they are enrolled in. For this reason, they are often referred to as being “language-less” (DeCapua & Marshall, 2011; Freeman, Freeman, & Mercuri, 2002) in an academic setting. Yet, little was previously known about their linguistic skills in other language forms such as social and Txt. This research seeks to understand and document their abilities across language forms and modalities, painting a composite picture of non-traditional bilinguals students’ linguistic skills. The aims of this dissertation are achieved through three different approaches. The first is a quantitative study into participants’ literacy skills through the use of assessments measuring academic literacy and social language awareness across written, aural, and digital modalities. The second is an in-depth analysis of the features participants use when texting. Txt is a relatively new language form, and the analysis presented in this dissertation identifies the features and patterns that illustrate its systematic and constrained nature. The third approach is a case study focused on the texting behavior between two prolific texters. The theories developed based on the texting patterns of all participants (except those two texters) are applied to this one conversation for validation. This conversation constitutes more than half of the text messages that students contributed to the project, highlighting just how important this language form is in the daily life of young adults. A final component of this dissertation is the public availability of the text messages as an anonymized corpus along with the code and methods used to analyze the data. The text message iv corpus is included here as a .csv file as well as an SQL file. The code is included as a zipfile of my GitHub Repository. These files are also available at www.byts.commons.gc.cuny.edu v Acknowledgements It is often said that it takes a village to raise a child, I believe it is the same for a dissertation. This project is the result of an incredibly rich and diverse group of people contributing their thoughts, time, encouragement, and support; I am deeply grateful to everyone who has contributed to this project in all the different ways. First and foremost, thank you Professor Gita Martohardjono. As an advisor, mentor, executive officer, and lab director, I have been incredibly fortunate to work with someone who is brilliant, inspired, and passionate about language and multilingualism, and flexible enough to allow this particular project to be undertaken. I am so grateful to have been a part of such a vibrant, curious, and active department. Likewise, I am incredibly thankful to Professors Steve Brier and Cece Cutler for their contributions to this dissertation, and their perspectives on both youth culture and digital communication. At a very crucial point, Professor Brier’s passion and excitement for digital technology helped shape my ideas about the modern world. Similarly, Professor Cutler’s input at multiple stages of this project, as well as her perspectives on language and dialect have been enormously helpful in shaping this project. A special thank you to Sarah Cacicio; this project would not have existed without your help in connecting me with the schools, teachers, and students on whom this dissertation is based. Connecting me to the schools made this project possible, but breaking down language politics throughout New York City got this project started. Likewise, thank you to Shannon Webb for hours spent helping me form this project and your dedicated work on the LENS. Thank you to Yoshivel Chirinos as well for going with me to the schools to collect the data. Finally, thank you to everyone in the Second Language Acquisition Lab, vi you have all taught me so much about language, culture, and how to create positive change from the inside of the system. Thank you to the students and teachers who donated their time, voices, insights, and text messages. You will always remain anonymous, and I can only hope that I have captured your spirit and voice in the following pages. You are more linguistically adept than you know, and I hope your linguistic creativity and innovation is valued throughout your life. Thank you to Matt Gold, Lisa Rhody, and the GC Digital Fellows for helping me develop the skills I needed to approach this project, the technical awareness to get creative with it, and the professionalization skills to talk about it. Deep and heartfelt thank you to Writing Group, including Joanna Birnbaum, Ignacio Montoya, Emily Olsen, Ian Phillips, and Nadav Sabar. I am honored and humbled to be a member of such an inspiring community of scholars. Our weekly meetings have kept me sane and grounded, and made writing fun. I am incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to share our successes and challenges, and to have grown into academics together. Out of these years came a dissertation, but more importantly, friendships built on trust, mutual support, and a curiosity about language. A very special thank you to Ian Phillips who has spanned so many of these groups and more. I am deeply grateful to have had the opportunity to work together on so many projects, from the early visits to the Bronx to teaching at Hunter, to learning to program, Writing Group, the SLAL, and the Digital Fellows. I couldn’t have asked for a better friend in this journey. Finally, and most importantly, thank you to my wonderful wife, Devon McSweeney, who has stood by me through this entire process both when she thought it was a good idea and when she did not. Thank you for being so patient with the crazy hours, the ambiguity, and all the challenges this project has presented, I could not have done this without you at my side. As you’ve said, “we’ve been working on this for a very long time!” . vii Table of Contents Chapter 1 - Introduction ............................................................................................................ 1 1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 2 2 Research Statement ............................................................................................................ 8 3 Terminology ........................................................................................................................ 8 4 Purpose and Significance ................................................................................................. 10 4.1 Txt as a language form ..................................................................................................................................... 11 4.2 Txt and Education ............................................................................................................................................ 14 4.3 The Corpus ........................................................................................................................................................ 15 5 Previous Work ................................................................................................................... 16 5.1 Previous Documentation of Txt and Corpora ............................................................................................ 17 5.2 Previous Research on Bilingual Computer Mediated Communication ................................................... 20 5.3 Previous Research on the relationship between Education and