Conference Agenda

The project focuses on the English language use of first-generation, Spanish-speaking college students in the New York City area. The students are enrolled in an additive bilingual program designed to support academic work in Spanish during the first years of college while developing English for academic purposes.

The bilingual students participated in a daily, check-in survey over several weeks, reporting where they used English (speaking, listening, reading, writing, etc.) across diverse contexts, including home environments, peer interactions, community spaces, digital activities, workplaces, and educational settings. For each context, participants indicate with whom they used English, what communicative activities they engaged in, how long these interactions lasted, and how English was positioned relative to Spanish (English-only, mixed use, Spanglish, or primarily non-English). Throughout the study, students were engaged as co-researchers by regularly reviewing summaries of their own weekly language use (e.g., time spent using English across contexts and activities) and, in follow-up interviews, reflecting on and discussing patterns in their language use.

This ecological methodology maps how English use is distributed across the full range of students’ everyday lives over time. Extending dialogical self research on I-positions and it-positions, the project examines how patterns of English use relate both to students’ embodied, personally meaningful stances in everyday life – e.g., positioning oneself as changing one’s life circumstances, becoming financially stable, building a different future from one’s parents, or striving for independence and self-direction – and to generic institutional and cultural it-positions -- e.g., framing college, work, or mobility as something one simply “has to do” in order to succeed, follow the expected path, or meet expectations. By tracing English use across these positions, the study reveals how English becomes differentially associated with particular existential life projects and socially available narratives about success, social mobility, obligation, belonging, and enjoyment of English use itself.