Uncovering How Social Cognitive Representations of Bilingualism in the United States Can Result in Psychological Shame and Linguistic Homelessness for Transnational Youth: Reorienting Bilingualism-as-Problem to a Resource and a Right

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This is an outstanding paper that fits so well and brings the special issue together so nicely. I just have a few very small suggestions, and one suggestion about the title of the new metaphor.

 

1) Line 55- Could you just say "a way that teacher educator programs can prepare teachers..."? This avoids framing this as a "problem" here.

2) Around line 269- You might just mention why the definition does not affect people that are not in this subaltern status in society- for example, students from dominant groups considered "White" who are praised for their bilingualism. Perhaps you could just spend a footnote explaining why the problems with the definition do not affect them? Why are they glorified for their bilingualism?

3)Lines 284-288 (title of part 2): I would just shorten this to "Explaining the TRANSNATIONAL YOUTH'S BILINGUALISM IS LINGUISTIC HOMELESSNESS metaphor". Otherwise it just seems too long. Or something similar that you like better and is shorter is also fine.

4) Regarding Figure 3: This reminds me of the way that the gentrification of bilingual education metaphor maps out as well. You might add something about how both of these metaphors use real social issues in the wider society to narrow in on what's happening to bilingual youth.

5) Near line 469- You might connect this shaming to language shaming and No sabo kids somewhere as well.

6) Part 3 title lines 501-504: Again with this one I would shorten to "A reorienting of the TRANSNATIONAL YOUTH'S BILINGUALIS IS LINGUISTIC HOMELESSENESS metaphor"

7) Figure 4: Same thing here with "influences" in the arrows?

8) Pg. 17 when you introduce the metaphor: I am just worried about what you are calling this metaphor since synonyms for mycelium are all quite negative, but also, it is a hard word to define and for people to remember. I wonder if you might use the same description and explain that it comes from the idea of mycelial networks but call the metaphor something like TRANSNATIONAL YOUTH FUNDS OF KNOWLEDGE AS RESILIENT (or BRANCHING) NETWORKS  or something else that might be easier for people to understand and repeat if the idea is to remythify this. I like the concept, just wonder about the name, and I think the whole explanation could stay the same, but just change the overall name. If the authors don't want to do this, I'm still ok with it, that is just my humble opinion.

9) Lines 749-750: I read that they are also an ecosystem's communication and resource-sharing system. I wonder if that could go in there as well.

10) Line 784-785: Even just this language here could be the name for the metaphor '"RESILIENT CONNECTED NETWORKS"

My fun comments: 

Can't wait to read the entire Special Issue! It sounds amazing!

Lines 103-104: Well said here!

Line 299: "LIFE IS A HIGHWAY, I wanna ride it all night long haha...Love Pat Benatar too!

Lines 316-319: I love it so much when someone actually understands how this all works! Linda Waugh would be smiling if she saw this!

Lines 315-316- Nice explanation here. 

Anzaldua's quote is so appropriate there!

I love the ABLE acronym!

I love the ending and that you end with a call for action!

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you for your thoughtful review!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Dear Author/s;

Thank you for asking me to review. I am interested in and publish sociolinguistic work, so I hope to provide you with a fair and professional review.

I’ve tried to be extra precise, because I believe this is an interesting situation of the article leading in as a bridge to the wider special issue, and authors having ties to it, I believe?!

For this reason, I’ve sought to try to ensure that the review is balanced, and perhaps as critical as possible, to avoid any suggestions of bias, and do invite the team to consider the conflict of interest statement, and whether that needs to be updated with a standard disclaimer in the article, for the benefit of the research team and its protection; it is not wrong to have ties to your own special issue, but open statements sometimes help protect researchers in a critical era of HE!!

That said, I do feel the article has a lot of merit.

I weighed between major and minor revisions, but as Behavioural Sciences does not differentiate (it's RR or Minor). So, I’ve elected minor, with the understanding that the team consider that, as publicly linked researchers and institutions to the special issue, their paper probably needs one more  good polish to bring to the forefront the key narrative and focuses; I believe this is a fair point, and on reading on got the sense of a passionate interesting idea brought quickly forward perhaps for deadlines.

To quote my own supervisor, long ago, conceptual papers are hard to sell for publishing. Fortunately, I enjoy them and consider them as robust, but do require the rationale and logic to be really refined, clear and conceptually robust - I think we can agree that many peer reviewers desk reject ‘our’ kind of work simply for lacking hard data! Therefore, I would ask the author/s to consider my points and respond appropriately to the minor revisions I recommend.

Article Strengths:

1. This manuscript offers a strong and original conceptual intervention into debates about transnational youth, bilingualism, and deficit-based language ideologies. Its central argument is clear and important: the way bilingualism is socially defined and talked about in the United States helps produce cognitive and institutional framings that position transnational youth as linguistically deficient, socially out of place, and even shameful. I think this is timely, relevant to the broader politic of the status quo in the HE system there, and interesting in concept. The proposed alternative metaphor, in which transnational youth’s funds of knowledge are imagined as mycelial networks, is especially compelling. Perhaps the author/s are fans of Star Trek, as there is a similar narrative in it. Or, they just really like fungi. Either way, I thought it was a nice idea, original and novel, because it shifts the discussion away from lack and repair toward connection, adaptability, and generative multilingual practice. Well done, I can see the idea being cited and used in discourse.
2. The article is intellectually ambitious, theoretically rich, and well aligned with contemporary work in translanguaging, raciolinguistic ideology, and critical bilingual education. The roots of the colonial history of HE are touched upon, and I thought the way the authors engaged with the topic was good.
3. The manuscript’s greatest strength is its originality. The use of ethnosemantics, conceptual metaphor, and metonymy gives the paper a distinctive analytical frame, and the move from bilingualism-as-problem to bilingualism-as-resource and bilingualism-as-right is timely and persuasive. The manuscript is also well aligned with contemporary work in translanguaging, raciolinguistic ideology, and critical bilingual education. I do feel that perhaps we can signpost that whole landscape better, or clearer and earlier on? Like in the introduction? Situate your work as a response to a need in the literature and then lead into expanding and unpacking that? This would set up clearer that the proposed mycelial metaphor is memorable and generative, and it offers a constructive way to rethink how transnational youth are understood in education and society.
4. Another important strength is the paper’s moral and political clarity. It does not simply describe deficit discourse; it actively contests it. The manuscript makes a serious effort to show how language ideologies shape subjectivity, schooling, and identity, and I do think only misses the mark slightly but not framing the longer term impacts and consequences of these issues: e.g. access, awarding gaps in HE, lifelong careers and earning, or whatever they feel is relevant. This can be a sentence or two added in, so it does so in a way that is both theoretically informed and ethically engaged to the setting. Anyway, the combination of sociolinguistics and philosophical gives the paper weight and relevance. It also means the manuscript has strong potential to speak to readers across applied linguistics, education, bilingual studies, and critical sociology.
5. In short, then, I liked the paper.

Revisions

1. I only have options of minor or resubmit; hence, I will suggest minor but I do ask the author/s to consider the following in detail.
2. The analytical framework is one of the manuscript’s strongest features, but some of the conceptual transitions are highly interpretive and would benefit from clearer signposting. At several points, however, the argument moves quickly from dictionary definitions that are sort of dropped in (and I feel aren’t really needed, you could just define in a statement sentence) and discourse patterns to claims about social cognition, educational practice, and youth identity without always distinguishing clearly between textual analysis, theoretical inference, and empirical consequence. The paper would be more persuasive if it made those levels of analysis more explicit. An easy way around this is with more acute and well defined subheadings. Readers need to be able to see exactly where the evidence ends and where interpretation begins.
3. The discussion of ‘shame’ is powerful and well thought out, but in my view it needs a more restrained and structured presentation. The manuscript convincingly shows how deficit language can become internalized and how transnational youth may experience this as humiliation, dislocation, or uncertainty. However, because the paper moves between rhetorical, theoretical, and psychological registers, some passages feel overcompressed and repetitive. Indeed, some are circular; shorter paragraphs, fewer stacked abstractions, and more careful transitions between sections would make the paper much easier to read without weakening the argument. Again, subheadings to help the reader move forward and through the narrative is important: not everyone has your specialist understanding!
4. There are also places where the manuscript would benefit from greater conceptual discipline. Terms such as “transnational youth,” “transnational students,” and “bilinguals” are sometimes used in ways that appear interchangeable, but these categories are not identical. Do we define these key terms? What kind of students? They are not all one type! For example, university students vs. K-12 and so on. If the paper wishes to keep all three, it should define them clearly and explain when each term is most appropriate. Doing so would help prevent conceptual slippage and sharpen the manuscript’s analytical precision. It would also make the argument more coherent for readers who are not already deeply familiar with the specific field.
5. The writing is often powerful, but it can also become dense to the point of obscuring the argument. Theoretical intensity is a strength here, but it should not come at the expense of readability. Some sentences contain several abstract terms and multiple argumentative moves at once, which makes it hard for the reader to track the logic. In a manuscript like this, the case for publication will be stronger if the prose is slightly more economical and if each paragraph advances one clearly identifiable idea. I would suggest taking a look at the subheadings and the content within them, looking for the point and the conclusion link in each, and ensuring it is forefront at the start/end of each section.
6. The abstract and introduction in particular would benefit from condensation. It is admittedly a bit rushed (respectfully) to include citations in the abstract, and that abstract currently performs too many tasks at once: establishing context, surveying related work, critiquing existing approaches, and introducing the paper’s own framework. Those are all necessary functions, for the paper, but in the abstract and introduction but they need to be sequenced more efficiently. A more direct introduction could quickly establish the problem of deficit-oriented bilingualism, identify the gap in the literature, and then preview the paper’s contribution. That would give the reader a clearer path into the detailed analysis that follows.
7. The conclusion also needs more focus. At present, it is rhetorically effective, but it mostly reiterates the central metaphorical framework. The paper would end more strongly if the conclusion translated the conceptual argument into practical implications. Readers should come away with a sense of what changes in pedagogy, teacher education, assessment, or policy might follow from the analysis. Without that, the manuscript risks feeling more like a brilliant conceptual essay than a piece that also offers actionable scholarly intervention.
8. I am not sure your METAPHOR NEEDS TO BE IN CAPITAL LETTERS. Perhaps Your Metaphor in Style Case Like This might achieve the same impact.
9. The paper’s use of sources is broad and generally appropriate, but the manuscript appears to contain unfinished citation placeholders and formatting irregularities that will need careful editorial attention. These issues matter because they can distract readers and undermine confidence in the manuscript’s final polish. A thorough reference check would be worthwhile before the paper is submitted in a final version. Even strong conceptual work needs a clean scholarly apparatus, especially when it is entering peer review.
10. Part 1/Part 2 and so on I do not feel is working for you. I might suggest using standard academic form: e.g. literature review/methodological frame. The absence of these things is a bit notable, and likely confusing to a reader. If the overall ‘parts’ are the methodological change process, then a clarification of this should be put into play early to explain the absence of the traditional.
11. The relation between evidence and interpretation could also be tightened. Some claims about society, schooling, and cognition are compelling, but they would be stronger if linked more explicitly to the specific discourse examples under analysis. Right now, the paper sometimes moves from textual observation to broad social conclusion in a way that feels slightly too swift. If the author slows down those transitions and makes the analytical steps more visible, the argument will become more convincing. The reader should be able to follow not only what the author believes, but how each conclusion is reached.
12. One of the manuscript’s most valuable contributions is its effort to recast bilingualism as something other than a problem to be fixed. That move matters because it challenges a deeply entrenched deficit logic that affects how multilingual youth are judged, positioned, and treated. The proposed shift toward a mycelial understanding of funds of knowledge is especially promising because it offers a language of interconnection rather than deficiency. It invites readers to imagine multilingualism as ecological, adaptive, relational, and distributed rather than bounded, broken, or incomplete. To maximise that contribution, the manuscript should make the practical and scholarly implications more explicit at the end; pick a group. For educators, this might mean rethinking how language difference is framed in classrooms and how students’ repertoires are recognised. For researchers, it might mean developing methodologies that better capture multilingual practice as dynamic and relational rather than as deviation from a norm. For policymakers, it might mean rejecting monolingual assumptions embedded in curriculum, assessment, and language policy. Making these implications explicit would help the manuscript move from compelling critique to sustained intervention.
13. Literature Review/Methods. I do feel that a direct and clear presence of both, may help to ‘frame’ your narrative more. Could sections be reworked slightly to signpost? I can offer some examples of why this works, but you are welcome to rebuttal the idea in favour of making clearer what “part 1/2/3” and so forth means to the paper and process – I suspect it’s the change process around your metaphor/theory and following it as a logic chain works best? Sure, that’s a method though so I would suggest it as a postmodern conceptual heuristic in the introduction?
14. I add there are well established (e.g. cited) papers that do what you are trying to do, in aligned sociolinguistic fields. These are not framed as mandatory expectations I require for you to include as part of your review to secure acceptance. Rather, I have chosen works that have direct thematic alignment with your paper and therefore might be useful to you to consider. Low, D. (2022). "Endangered Languages: A Sociocognitive Approach to Language Death, Identity Loss, and Preservation in the Age of Artificial Intelligence." Sustainable Multilingualism, vol. 21, no. 1, Vytautas Magnus University, Institute of Foreign Languages, 2022, pp. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.2478/sm-2022-0011 offers a similar sociolinguistic approach to the narrative that you are structuring, in the sense of a robust conceptual essay; what is key to this that I might advise your paper to echo is the layered use of argument built up through the structured subheadings. Equally, Day & Zhang. (2026). Third Culture Universities: Hybrid Sociolinguistic Fields, Hidden Language Hierarchies, and Artificial Intelligence in Transnational Higher Education. Journal of Linguistics and Literature Studies, 1(1), 42-54. https://doi.org/10.69739/jlls.v1i1.1536 offers a specifically aligned paper echoing similar narrative points to your own about the culture of violence around language assimilation of transnational youth in TNE student settings, but this one provides a clearer introduction, literature review and methodology for a conceptual paper that strengthens how the overall theory is implemented. Both are directly aligned thematic examples of similar research asserting aligned points. I offer them as examples, you are of course free to use and incorporate them, or utterly disregard them entirely as potential points of literature or paper models - it will not influence or impact any judgement I make with respect to decisions related to the paper, should I be asked to look at minor revisions, which is consistent with MDPI policy about recommending literature or exemplars.

Recommendation: Minor Revisions

Whilst I have given 10+ revisions, most are easily adjusted, and the broader structural ones I am open to simply having clearer guides in the introduction of why this way (e.g. why part 1 as opposed to literature review). The other points are minor clarifications and subheading work. Overall, this is a promising and thought-provoking article with real publication potential. My recommendation would be minor revisions, but I do suggest most of the points above need to be at least considered, not least due to the special issue/editor connection.

I personally liked that the piece has a distinctive voice and an important argument, but I can see (and have felt myself) peer review not liking this kind of work. Therefore, to keep it strong it may need a minor set of review of the economical structure, methodological framing, stronger editorial polish, and more explicit implications before it is ready for final publication.

I believe the paper could become a very strong and influential contribution, and I believe the points raised above are fair, suitably situate my understanding of your paper, and provide a decent quality review that enables the authors to make progress quickly and efficiently towards publication, after a round of minor revisions.

Thank you for letting me review it. I hope you feel I did so constructively and fairly. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment. Thank you for your thoughtful review!

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf