Raciolinguistic Ideologies and Second Language Spanish: Case Study of an Interracial Couple

Abstract

The theoretical framework of raciolinguistics examines connections between language ideologies and racialization, but few studies have analyzed the adult learning of languages other than English. This case study is based on life history interviews with a married couple, a Black male journalist and a White female nurse, who learned Spanish as adults. Both grew up as monolingual English speakers, in multilingual US communities where Spanish was widely spoken, and both studied the language in school, but only began using it in US settings as adults in professional contexts. Their Spanish use expanded during three years of volunteer service in Bolivia, where I interviewed them twice, a year apart, as part of a larger interview study on bilingual identities. In this article, I employ a Bakhtinian lens to explore this couple’s perspectives on their encounters with raciolinguistic ideologies; the contexts in which their Spanish use was ratified or not; and their eventual establishment of (somewhat limited) Spanish-speaking voices through the affordances of their intersectional identities.