Dual‐Language Books as a Red Herring: Exposing Language Use and Ideologies

Abstract

Dual‐language books (DLBs) are often seen as positive resources for biliteracy development, but most contain implicit messages about the status of the languages used. Through a large content analysis of 100 dual‐language children’s books (DLCBs), across 10 publishing companies, the authors developed a linguistic typology of DLBs in order to expose messages of linguistic hierarchy. In this article, educators are provided a lens for understanding the hegemony of English in DLBs, provided with exemplars of community‐based biliteracy development via holistic language use and translanguaging in DLCBs, and invited into a discussion on the vulnerability and compassion that would be required for creating more equity and effectiveness in biliteracy development.

Language is Identity: Telling and Reading the Right Kinds of Stories

“…This section asks educators to critically analyze schoolscapes (Brown, 2012), or the school ground's message boards, hallways, classroom walls, etc. and bilingual books used in the classroom, for hierarchical language use that positions some languages (and by default the speakers of those languages) as more or less important (Przymus & Huddleston, 2021; Przymus & Lindo, 2021). Only after this critical reflection of the “school world” takes place, can we co‐engage with students in the “ writing it or rewriting it, that is, of transforming it by means of conscious, practical work” (Freire & Macedo, 2005, p. 23).…”

“…The majority of dual‐language books may use two languages, but promote one message; English is the most valued language. Przymus and Lindo (2021) developed a linguistic typology of dual‐language children's books (DLCBs) that categorizes these books by named language organization, throughout the books' pages (e.g., A: separation of named language by page, with language a on the left, language b on the right; B: separation of named language within the same page, language a on top of language b , etc.). Using this typology can lead to critical LiIA discussions between teachers and students around how language/identities are positioned in books that privilege English and to choosing books that better represent the holistic linguistic practices of ABLE youth.…”

“…3 November/December 2022 literacyworldwide.org also contained some kind of font style metonymy, reifying the greater importance of English over Spanish, through English with larger font (N = 27), Spanish text in italics (N = 16), English with capital letters, Spanish with lowercase letters (N = 6), books with just English titles, although both languages were used within (N = 4), and two books which put all Spanish text in parenthesis. Przymus and Lindo (2021) provide a linguistic typology to document the diverse language organization in DLBs to bring awareness to implicit messages of language hierarchy and to advocate for a more holistic approach to biliteracy development through DLBs that are co-created between students, family/community members, and teachers.…”

“…However, while reading the world of DLBs, many ABLE students may again be implicitly told where their place is at school and in society. In analyzing the linguistic organization of 100 dual‐language children's books (DLCBs) from 10 small, mid‐sized, and large publishing companies, Przymus and Lindo (2021) again found that English was overwhelmingly privileged as the most important language. Similar to the bilingual signage in the school hallways above, “English first” messages were conveyed on 87% ( N = 87) of the books by directionally privileging English text (on top, first, on the left) over the Spanish text.…”

“…The purpose of this article is to highlight how the current movement toward equity in literacy and biliteracy development for bi/multilingual learners, who we will define below as active bilingual learners/users of English (ABLE) students (Przymus et al, 2022), might not actually be equitable. Most biliteracy pedagogy is still influenced by a monolingual paradigm and monolingual (one language at a time) resources/practices that can act to erase multilingual, ancestral, indigenous, holistic ways of knowing (Przymus, 2016; Przymus & Lindo, 2021). This can result in dividing the identities of ABLE students by named languages and can severely limit what these students can learn and demonstrate, when instructed/assessed one language at a time.…”