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This ethnographic case study describes the patterns of language socialization and literacy/biliteracy practices and the patterns of language choice and language use of a Spanish heritage bilingual family of Mexican origin from the participant perspective, the emic view, and the research perspective, an etic view. This analysis attempts to broaden the knowledge of how Mexican origin families use language at home by demonstrating how literacy/biliteracy practices (i.e., reading, writing and talk/conversation), language choice (i.e., Spanish, English, code-switching (CS)) and language use (i.e., domains) contribute to reinforce, develop or hinder the use of Spanish as a heritage language. Using ethnographic methodology, this study analyzes the participants' naturally occurring language interactions. Socialization and language learning are seen as intricately interwoven processes in which language learners participate actively.The analysis and discussion is presented in two sections: 1) language socialization in conjunction with literacy practices, and 2) language socialization in conjunction with language choice and CS. Language choice and CS are analyzed by means of conversation analysis theory (CA): the analysis of language sequences of the participants' conversation. The description of the domains (i.e., what participants do with each language and the way they use language) constitutes the basis for the analysis.The findings of this study show that language shift to English is imminent in an environment of reduced contact with parents, siblings, and the community of the heritage language group. Understanding which literacy practices are part of the everyday life of Hispanic households is relevant to the implementation of classroom literacy practices.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the ways we can help growing populations of L2 writers successfully integrate within academic communities. Much of this interest stems from increasingly diverse local populations and the continued internationalization of higher education. This dissertation explored the implications for curriculum resulting from this growing presence of L2 writers in academic content areas. To achieve this goal, this research reports on an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic case study of five international Japanese undergraduate students at a large Canadian university. Focusing on the central role of writing in university courses as the dominant mode of knowledge construction and dissemination, as well as student assessment, the study documents focal students’ and focal instructors’ perspectives of the various factors affecting their writing in ‘regular’ content courses, with particular attention paid to the impact of feedback practices and their role in both the short-term and long-term development of students’ skills and their investments in different types of writing. Drawing on a language socialization framework, data analysis focused on expectations and practices with respect to feedback, and explored the impact of these practices on conveying both explicit and implicit norms linked to students’ access to, and successful participation in, their chosen content areas. Drawing on both students’ and instructors’ perspectives of this literacy event and discourse analysis of relevant documents, findings offer unique insights into the role of feedback practices not only for students’ writing development but also in indexing complex negotiations of positions, identities, and institutional forces. The dissertation concludes by highlighting the need to play closer attention to the multidimensional functions of feedback practices in order to understand their power to shape the socialization trajectories of L2 writers and universities’ responses to multilingual students who no longer fit traditional profiles.

This thesis will discuss the factors that lead to language shift from Zapotec to Spanish in San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya (SJT), and the challenges faced by language revitalization efforts that have emerged in the home and migrant communities. Today hundreds of Indigenous languages are widely spoken across the Americas; however, in the last century an increasing amount of language shift to the nation-state language has taken place in many Indigenous communities. In the Zapotec community of San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya (SJT), located in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, about 40% of the town’s population currently speaks Zapotec. However, the majority of speakers within this percentage are elders and adults. This means that the transmission of the Zapotec language to children has declined while Spanish language socialization has increased and is now the norm. Due to socioeconomic factors and neoliberal reforms in Mexico, many community members have migrated to other Mexican states and the United States which has furthered removed Zapotec speakers from the home community. The data for this research is based on 28 open-ended interviews with elders, adults, youth, children, and language activists and participant observation in SJT during the summer of 2013. I argue that the public education implemented by the Post-Revolutionary Mexican state in Tlacochahuaya during the 1930s influenced a language shift to Spanish. Many of those who had a negative schooling experience during this era, which prohibited and punished the use of the Zapotec language in the classroom, choose to raise their children with Spanish. In SJT from 2009-2011 Zapotec tutoring lessons for children were offered by a retired teacher, and since March 2013 migrants residing in Los Angeles, CA have been uploading Zapotec language tutorials on YouTube. Although there is awareness of language loss, I argue that these efforts have been hindered by the absence of a healing process regarding negative schooling experiences and dismantling the language ideologies that continue to devalue the Zapotec language. This case study contributes to the literature of languages shift and revitalization by suggesting that both home and migrant communities have crucial roles in Indigenous language maintenance. / text

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the ways we can help growing populations of L2 writers successfully integrate within academic communities. Much of this interest stems from increasingly diverse local populations and the continued internationalization of higher education. This dissertation explored the implications for curriculum resulting from this growing presence of L2 writers in academic content areas. To achieve this goal, this research reports on an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic case study of five international Japanese undergraduate students at a large Canadian university. Focusing on the central role of writing in university courses as the dominant mode of knowledge construction and dissemination, as well as student assessment, the study documents focal students’ and focal instructors’ perspectives of the various factors affecting their writing in ‘regular’ content courses, with particular attention paid to the impact of feedback practices and their role in both the short-term and long-term development of students’ skills and their investments in different types of writing. Drawing on a language socialization framework, data analysis focused on expectations and practices with respect to feedback, and explored the impact of these practices on conveying both explicit and implicit norms linked to students’ access to, and successful participation in, their chosen content areas. Drawing on both students’ and instructors’ perspectives of this literacy event and discourse analysis of relevant documents, findings offer unique insights into the role of feedback practices not only for students’ writing development but also in indexing complex negotiations of positions, identities, and institutional forces. The dissertation concludes by highlighting the need to play closer attention to the multidimensional functions of feedback practices in order to understand their power to shape the socialization trajectories of L2 writers and universities’ responses to multilingual students who no longer fit traditional profiles.

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the relationship between second language (L2) writing development and the ways we can help growing populations of L2 writers successfully integrate within academic communities. Much of this interest stems from increasingly diverse local populations and the continued internationalization of higher education. This dissertation explored the implications for curriculum resulting from this growing presence of L2 writers in academic content areas. To achieve this goal, this research reports on an eight-month longitudinal ethnographic case study of five international Japanese undergraduate students at a large Canadian university. Focusing on the central role of writing in university courses as the dominant mode of knowledge construction and dissemination, as well as student assessment, the study documents focal students’ and focal instructors’ perspectives of the various factors affecting their writing in ‘regular’ content courses, with particular attention paid to the impact of feedback practices and their role in both the short-term and long-term development of students’ skills and their investments in different types of writing. Drawing on a language socialization framework, data analysis focused on expectations and practices with respect to feedback, and explored the impact of these practices on conveying both explicit and implicit norms linked to students’ access to, and successful participation in, their chosen content areas. Drawing on both students’ and instructors’ perspectives of this literacy event and discourse analysis of relevant documents, findings offer unique insights into the role of feedback practices not only for students’ writing development but also in indexing complex negotiations of positions, identities, and institutional forces. The dissertation concludes by highlighting the need to play closer attention to the multidimensional functions of feedback practices in order to understand their power to shape the socialization trajectories of L2 writers and universities’ responses to multilingual students who no longer fit traditional profiles. / Education, Faculty of / Language and Literacy Education (LLED), Department of / Graduate

This dissertation is comprised of three articles that discuss the linguistic choices made by six Mormon missionaries who had been assigned to work with the Spanish speaking population of southern Arizona. Data was collected through interviews, reflective journals, and participate observations. The first article chronicles the missionaries' feelings about a temporary language use rule that required them to speak Spanish from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm for one week. The missionaries experienced elevated confidence as they increased their Spanish use, but also found it to be tiring. The rule provided sufficient motivation for them to significantly alter their linguistic behavior, but once the week was over they reverted back to mostly speaking English. The second article examines how their behavior changed during that week. The missionaries explained their temporary goal to the Spanish-English bilinguals they worked with who were happy to also alter their language use and accommodate the missionaries' Spanish speaking objective. However, other language learning missionaries outside of the group of six were less accommodating and often continued speaking to the missionaries in the study in English even when spoken to in Spanish. The third article discusses the factors that influence which language missionaries choose to use. They often felt uneasy in initial encounters when speaking to someone who might be a native Spanish speaker. Many of their linguistic choices were made based on phenotype, but they preferred to speak to a new person in whichever language they overheard them speaking. The missionaries also felt that native Spanish speakers rejected their invitations to speak Spanish simply because they were white. While race played a large role in language choice, both the missionaries and their interlocutors were invested in conversing in the language that made the other most comfortable. This paper shows that Spanish language learning missionaries in the United States are eager to improve their linguistic abilities, but often require external motivation and community support to use the target language.

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