Language Ideologies in the Spanish Heritage Language Classroom: (Mis)alignment between Instructor and Students’ Beliefs

Abstract

Research on Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has found that language ideologies have impacted SHL learners in the U.S. There are several ways in which language ideologies have influenced the overall experiences of SHL learners by encompassing power systems that are at play within personal, societal, academic, and professional contexts. Pedagogical proposals rooted in Critical Language Awareness (CLA) have been crucial in dismantling harmful language ideologies in the classroom, though there is still a lack of research focused on both students and their instructors. To investigate this, we conducted semi-structured interviews with four advanced university-level SHL students and their instructor in a CLA-oriented SHL program. We also examined the writing assignments of each student to triangulate our data and gain a better understanding of how the students’ language ideologies were being maintained and how their instructor engaged, or not, with students’ beliefs about language. Through directed content analysis, our findings indicate that students with more experience in the program deviate from relaying harmful language ideologies. Their instructor, while aware of students’ negative beliefs about language, conveyed mixed messages about these ideologies as well.

1. Introduction

Current research in the field of Spanish as a heritage language (SHL) has increasingly focused on how language ideologies impact bilingual Spanish speakers’ linguistic practices and how other Spanish speakers perceive these ideologies. Irvine (1989) defines language ideologies as “the cultural (or subcultural) system of ideas about social and linguistic relationships, together with their loading of moral and political interest” (p. 255) In this view, one’s linguistic production cannot be disentangled from larger social systems that operate beyond the individual. As Lowther Pereira (2010, p. 164) reiterates, language ideologies connect to factors beyond language itself, since they are closely tied to Schiffman’s (1996) linguistic cultures, which are detailed as “behaviors, attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, prejudices” along with “cultural baggage” that intermingle to form one’s relationship with language and culture. This complex relationship between language ideologies and linguistic cultures altogether has an impact on identity, social group, institutions, and other culturally based factors. More recently, Craft et al. (2020) provide an in-depth review of how language ideologies “form the metalinguistic knowledge that speakers rely on to present themselves linguistically as particular kinds of people in particular contexts and that listeners use to assign and evaluate the social characteristics of speakers” (p. 392). Within these ideologies about language is the idea that one can position themselves as using language “correctly” or “incorrectly” based on their linguistic choices. As such, the linguistic practices of minoritized, and often racialized, linguistic communities in the U.S. are openly evaluated as inherently deficient to the point of promoting individual and institutional levels of linguistic discrimination.

The instruction of minoritized languages, such as Spanish in the United States, have raised questions about the pedagogy instructors are employing. In her article, Valdés (1995) details how heritage learners’ needs are different from that of second-language learners, which presents a challenge for instructors given that many of the frequently used pedagogies in the SHL classroom appeared to not effectively address the unique needs of heritage learners. In response, Valdés (1995, 2005) and Aparicio (1997) have outlined pedagogical goals for Spanish language instruction of bilingual students. These goals are summarized in Beaudrie et al. (2014):

• Language maintenance
• Acquisition or development of a prestige language variety
• Expansion of bilingual range
• Transfer of literacy skills
• Acquisition or development of academic skills in the heritage language.
• Positive attitudes towards both the heritage language and various dialects of the language and its cultures
• Acquisition or development of cultural awareness

These seven goals have served as guidelines to better meet the SHL students’ needs in the classroom. Meeting these pedagogical goals becomes increasingly difficult when students bring different needs into the classroom. In a study that compared perceptions of students and instructors towards instructional effectiveness in the SHL, Beaudrie (2015) demonstrates that although students agree with many of their instructors’ instructional practices, not all of what educators believe to be important or effective may coincide with what the students believe they need. In other words, the goals that educators have do not necessarily align with students’ beliefs. Additionally, while dismantling language ideologies is not an explicit goal of SHL instruction, it is crucial to determine whether or not language ideologies are interfering with these goals. Negative language ideologies can have an effect on many if not all of these goals, as demonstrated by researching language ideologies in SHL education.

Previous studies on language ideologies within Spanish pedagogy have demonstrated that negative ideologies can be reproduced by language departments, pedagogues, and students alike. Zentella (1990) described how language departments were still not acknowledging the sociolinguistic realities of their students. This juxtaposition between language departments’ prescription of an ideal Spanish variety and the students’ own diverse varieties points to unrealistic pedagogical practices. These damaging linguistic ideologies towards Spanish in the U.S., or the varieties used by SHL learners, have been normally present in the public sector but have also been deeply entrenched in educational contexts. Villa (2002) explains how English-only movements and language scholars have directly contributed to the sanitization of Spanish in the U.S. Villa found that even individuals formally trained in language studies held negative beliefs about Spanish in the U.S. that, consciously or not, render the rich linguistic and cultural knowledge SHL learners hold as inadequate for the academic setting. These hostile conditions in the field of SHL are troubling, yet they are continuously found in educational contexts.

In another study of Spanish language departments, Valdés et al. (2003) contributes to the understanding of the presence of hegemonic language ideologies by investigating the acquisition and transmission of linguistic culture as well as views on non-English languages at the university level. The results indicate that though these departments offered courses on non-English languages, they were still reproducing problematic language ideologies. They found that whether directly or indirectly, deeply monolinguistic views (superiority of monolingual native speakers over bilinguals), nationalism (one language, one nation), and standardness (linguistic purity and correctness) were present in the discourse of the participants (p. 24). Thus, it became evident that one of the most dominant language ideologies found in the field of SHL education that must be combatted is the standard language ideology. Lippi-Green (2011) defines standard language ideology as

“a bias toward an abstracted, idealized, homogenous spoken language which is imposed and maintained by dominant bloc institutions and which names as its model the written language, but which is drawn primarily from the spoken language of the upper middle class”

(p. 67)

This ideology, normally deeply intertwined with monolingual standards, has drastic consequences for SHL courses given that these bi/multilingual learners arrive in the classroom with their own varieties of Spanish that are often deemed non-adherent to the so-called standard. Leeman (2012) recognized the need for continued research on the standard language ideology in SHL, and other dominant language ideologies, to better understand its impact on learners in varied educational settings.

More recently, many SHL researchers have argued for critical approaches that actively counter standard language ideologies. They aim to undo the beliefs that treat non-standard varieties as “inappropriate”, “impure”, and needing “correction” (e.g., Flores and Rosa 2015; Leeman 2005, 2018; Leeman and Serafini 2016; Martínez and Schwartz 2012). Furthermore, critical pedagogues and researchers have called for instructors to discern the political nature of education as well as to delve into how different educational practices lead students to comply with existing class and social divisions (Leeman 2005). Critical Language Awareness (CLA) highlights the importance of critical thinking and how it can serve as a sociopolitical educational tool, which can help engage learners in questioning the nature of their social and historical situation. Critical pedagogues aim to empower learners by creating a curriculum that helps learners question the sociopolitical hierarchies that are present in the typical classroom and society. Furthermore, critical approaches aim to explore language ideologies and power relations related to language and culture, which can help students dismantle certain ideologies that they bring to the classroom. Nonetheless, Beaudrie’s (2015) results also show a general lack of implementation of a CLA-based curriculum by SHL programs, which finds that course instructors are still subscribing to a monolingual standard variety of Spanish. Therefore, Beaudrie and Vergara Wilson (2021) have since proposed reimagining the goals of SHL pedagogy using a CLA framework, since CLA has been shown to be instrumental in combating problematic ideologies and developing critical sociopragmatic competence (see Holguín Mendoza 2018; Beaudrie et al. 2019, 2020).

There have been several pedagogical proposals that have incorporated distinct critical perspectives and practices to combat troublesome language ideologies that are often found in educational contexts (Beaudrie et al. 2014; Correa 2011; Holguín Mendoza 2018; Leeman 2012; Leeman and Serafini 2016; Lorenzen 2006; Villa 2002; among others). Lowther Pereira (2010) focused on both SHL students’ and their teacher’s ideologies in the classroom. She discovered that students are often confronted with conflicting and competing ideologies, though they were able to negotiate ideologies that were aligned with the aforementioned goals for SHL pedagogy. The triangulation of methods used that led to these results indicates a clear connection between what is being presented in the classroom and what the students appear to engage with in their own ideologies. Although these findings are encouraging in terms of the expectations of pedagogical intervention, the author still underscores the need for SHL instructors to be trained in sociolinguistics, particularly focused on SHL pedagogy, to prepare instructors to meet the linguistic and affective needs of their learners.

Loza (2017) investigated the language ideologies of six instructors at a public four-year university in the U.S. Southwest. The objective of his study was to shed light on the instructors’ own language ideologies, particularly towards what is considered standard Spanish and the Spanish varieties spoken by their SHL students. His findings indicated that while the instructors held counter-hegemonic ideologies, they still held an appropriateness-based approach to teaching SHL students (p. 74). Loza underscores the need for increased awareness of how language ideologies are mediated in the classroom as well as for an increase in instructor training. Both studies indicate an important relationship between what the students’ ideologies are and how the instruction and/or instructor of the SHL course impacts their ideologies. In another study, Showstack (2017) observed and recorded classroom interactions in a university in Texas for a period of two years. She observed that students in one specific class indexed language ideologies by having affective stances towards Spanish, by constructing and reframing expert/novice relations between peers and by taking stances towards linguistic features previously produced in the classroom. She found that stancetaking in the SHL classroom indicates that dominant language ideologies can be challenged “in the ways that teachers model interactional practices for their students and respond to their students’ practices” (p. 282).

Nonetheless, Spanish programs in the United States have continued to paradoxically instruct bilingual students via a monolingual lens, which creates a misalignment between Spanish programs and the sociolinguistic realities of Spanish in the U.S (Pascual y Cabo and Prada 2018). In their study, Pascual y Cabo and Prada (2018) propose a variety of pedagogical adjustments that would redefine Spanish teaching in the United States. Their proposal includes incorporating U.S. Spanish varieties and its speakers to the core of Spanish program designs in both second language and SHL contexts. They also note that upon insisting on Spanish-only policies in the classroom, instructors can misguide their students about the realities of bilingualism. The authors posit that the language classroom can prove to be a salient place to dismantle not only ideologies about their language, but broader ideologies that may be affecting students’ learning process, as well as ideologies that students may be struggling with outside of the classroom. Based on the aforementioned studies, it is apparent that the SHL classroom and instructor can have important ramifications for the SHL learner’s engagement with language ideologies.

Although SHL pedagogues aim to enable the formation of positive ideologies through the implementation of proposals provided by scholars in the field, it is difficult to ascertain what language ideologies students bring to the classroom and whether they are engaging with the language ideologies their teachers are presenting them. Fortunately, Fuller and Leeman (2020) have since been able to compile the findings of previous studies in the field of SHL and related fields, such as education and anthropology, to better understand the most widespread ideologies found in SHL education. However, there remains a lack of research on what the students are first bringing to the classroom in conjunction with how it connects or disconnects from the pedagogue’s perceptions. Therefore, it is critical that we examine SHL instructors’ own language ideologies and the ideologies they believe their students bring to the classroom, particularly in an advanced level course as called for by Leeman (2012). The present study aims to provide a snapshot of the language ideologies of advanced SHL students and their instructor in a CLA-oriented program at a public university in the Southwest. We are interested in filling the gap on ideological research in SHL education without solely focusing on the standard language ideology. In addition, we provide insight into the importance of examining the instructor’s perceptions about their students’ beliefs about language. As such, the research questions of the present study are:

• What language ideologies do both students and their instructor maintain?
• Do the language ideologies of advanced level SHL learners align with the language ideologies that are being expressed by the instructor?
• Do the language ideologies of a CLA-trained instructor align with the CLA goals of the course?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Data Collection and Instruments

The present study took place in an established SHL program that offers four courses, two intermediate 200-level courses and two advanced 300-level courses. The program utilizes CLA tenets for its pedagogical goals and approaches (see Loza and Beaudrie 2021) and has a standard syllabus for each of the four courses in the program. In addition, all instructors are required to take an SHL pedagogy course that overviews CLA pedagogies prior to teaching in the program. The SHL instructors are also required to regularly meet with the director, coordinator, and fellow instructors to receive continuous training. The researchers visited all the sections of the most advanced 300-level SHL courses being offered at the time of this study to inform the students about our study in a four-year public university in the Southwest. All participants who were interested in participating were scheduled for semi-structured interviews, which happened to be students from one section of one of the most advanced 300-level courses being offered at that time. The interviews ranged from 20 to 60 min and were conducted during the first weeks of the semester. The questions in these interviews allowed us to gain an understanding of students’ ideologies regarding language, bilingualism, their own Spanish proficiency, and Spanish in the U.S. (see Appendix A). Additionally, a semi-structured interview with the instructor was conducted with the aim of understanding the instructor’s teaching philosophy as well as how she believed ideologies were brought up or dismantled in the classroom.

To be able to gain a better understanding of what ideologies the students were demonstrating in the course activities, with help from the instructor and students’ permission, we gathered writing samples from each student participant. We collected and analyzed a total of five discussion posts and three reflections. The writing assignments that were coded for ideologies focused on the goals the students had at various points during their participation in the SHL course as well as students’ reflections on different writing assignments they had in their course. The reflections focused on the goals the students had for their essays as well as how they believed they were progressing in the course.

2.2. Participants

Four 300-level students enrolled in the most advanced section of an SHL program and their instructor participated in this study. A summary of all the participants’ information is provided in

Table 1. Participants’ number of SHL courses and background information.

Participant	Number of SHL Courses Taken out of 4	Background
Isabel (P1)	4	Mexican American born and raised in AZ
Virginia (P4)	2	Mexican American born in Mexico, moved to AZ at age 7
Sandra (P5)	2	Mexican American born and raised in AZ
Gabriela (P6)	1	Ecuadorian American born in Ecuador, moved to U.S. at age 12
Lorena (P7, instructor)	6 sections of the most advanced SHL course	Born in Mexico, living in AZ for past five years, Spanish literature Ph.D. candidate, took SHL pedagogy course.

. The first participant is an undergraduate student, whom we will refer to as Isabel. This participant was born and raised in Yuma, Arizona; one of her parents is of Mexican descent, while the other is of Korean descent. She reports speaking Spanish at home when she was young; however, this mainly occurred with her grandmother. She had taken Spanish courses all four years of high school and was the only participant who enrolled in all four of the classes in the SHL program at this university. Isabel is currently pursuing a degree in psychology with a minor in Spanish. The second participant, whom we will be referring to as Virginia, is also an undergraduate student studying education with an emphasis in Spanish. Virginia and her parents are from Guanajuato, Mexico and moved to the U.S. seven years prior to this study. She did not take Spanish courses in high school, except for in her last year. In addition, at the university level, she enrolled in two 300-level Spanish heritage courses. The third participant, whom we will call Sandra, is a Mexican American that was born and raised in Yuma, Arizona. At the university, she is pursuing a major in marketing with a minor in Spanish. She took two Spanish courses in high school and at the university level, and similarly to Virginia, she enrolled in two 300-level Spanish heritage courses. The fourth and last student participant will be referred to as Gabriela. She is originally from Ecuador and moved to the U.S. at the age of 12. Like Sandra, she only took two Spanish courses while in high school. However, at the university, the only Spanish course she enrolled in was the last, and most advanced, 300-level Spanish heritage course. She is pursuing a psychology degree with a minor in Spanish.

The fifth and last participant is the course instructor, whom we will call Lorena. At the time of this study, she was a Ph.D. candidate and graduate teaching associate in the SHL program at a public university in the Southwest. She is from Mexico City, and at the time of the study, had been living in Arizona for the past five years. Her specialization is Mexican and Latinx literature. She had received SHL pedagogical training and had taught six sections of the most advanced 300-level course in the SHL program prior to participating in this study. The pedagogical training consists of a graduate seminar where graduate teaching associates are introduced to sociolinguistic and pedagogical issues regarding SHL education in the US through a CLA lens. In addition, the instructors were presented with various opportunities to receive additional training through program meetings, workshops, conferences focused on SHL, and more. Finally, none of the student participants had previously had Lorena as an instructor since Lorena normally only taught the most advanced course in the program.

2.3. Analysis

To analyze and highlight the individual beliefs held by the students and instructor in these data, we employed a directed content analysis (Hsieh and Shannon 2005) to utilize previously established ideologies that intertwine with being a Spanish speaker in the U.S. These ideologies were gathered from Fuller and Leeman (2020) and are presented in

Table 2. Coding categories.

Language Ideologies Outlined in Fuller and Leeman (2020)
1. Standard language ideology
2. One nation, one language ideology
3. Normative monolingualism and the zero-sum ideology
4. Monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies
5. Language commodification and instrumentality
6. Differential bilingualism
7. The relative worth of English and Spanish
8. Spanish as essential to Latinx identity versus language as a choice

below, since they provide an overview of the most common language ideologies found in previous SHL scholarship. Each ideology was documented as a coding category, though the researchers also made sure to highlight any additional ideologies not outlined in Fuller and Leeman (2020) if they were found in the data. Each of the interviews and writing assignments were coded according to these categories by the researchers individually, and then the two coders met following the initial coding to come to a 100% agreement. The researchers did not find instances of language ideologies beyond the eight original codes.

3. Results

The findings from the individual interviews with the four participants and their instructor are presented in this section, along with all the relevant excerpts from the students’ writing samples that confirmed the beliefs they shared in the interviews. We present the instructor’s results first in order to better highlight the alignments and misalignments that may be present between the instructor and her students. We also present the student participants in order from most experience in this SHL program to least experience to demonstrate the differences in the types of language ideologies they held based on their time in the program.

3.1. Lorena

As the instructor of the four advanced SHL students and as someone who had taught this course at least six times, Lorena was asked what types of ideologies SHL students bring to the classroom. The first ideology she highlighted was the standard language ideology.

Excerpt 1.

“Yo pienso que el mayor problema que tienen es que.. se sienten inseguros y creen que su español es malo.”

[p. 7644]

[‘I think the biggest problem they have is that… they feel insecure and they think their Spanish is bad.’]

Lorena was asked to elaborate more on what were some of the causes of students’ linguistic insecurities and this commonly reported sentiment that their Spanish is “bad”. Most examples she gave focused on the notion that the students did not arrive in the classroom using a variety of Spanish that is “appropriate” for professional contexts.

Excerpt 2.

“Pues uno de los principales es la motivación para que sigan eh utilizando su español, este y la profesionalización de su español. Entonces se defiende la idea de… nuestro bilingüismo y de la variedad lingüística del español de los Estados Unidos pero tratamos también de profesionalizarlo y limpiar eh de algunos este digamos de algunas eh… de su variedad digamos para profesionalizarlo y utilizar el español estándar a un nivel profesional en no importa en que parte del mundo no? Entonces eh, muchas veces el tono a la hora de escribir o un email por ejemplo que aprendan a hacerlo de una manera profesional. A que puedan expresar y expandir su vocabulario a ese mismo nivel.”

[p. 7854]

[‘Well one of my main motivations is for them to continue to use their Spanish, and the professionalization of their Spanish. So the idea that is defended is… our bilingualism and the linguistic variety of the U.S. Spanish but we try to also professionalize and clean some of the, let’s say some… of their variety let’s say to professionalize it and utilize standard Spanish at a professional level in no matter what part of the world, no? So many times the tone upon writing or in an email for example, that they learn to do it in a professional manner. For them to learn to express themselves and expand their vocabulary at that same level.’]

It is important to note that at the beginning of the excerpt, Lorena mentions that the main goals of her pedagogy focus on Spanish maintenance and defending bilingualism, and in particular U.S. Spanish. However, she continues to use descriptors that clearly indicate that the Spanish of her students is not “professional”, “clean”, and not seemingly universal. These competing discourses of celebrating their Spanish while also wanting to fix, or at the very least improve on, their ostensibly deficient Spanish were noted by the interviewer. As such, she was asked to elaborate more on these ideologies and how she addresses these competing ideas in her pedagogy.

Excerpt 3.

“O sea siempre cambiamos el tipo de español y lo formalizamos más en algunos espacios que en otros, entonces ese es la idea de que ellos practiquen supuestamente en ambientes para que cuando tengan que hacerlo y se presenten como intérpretes, por ejemplo, o traductores o algo, tengan eh, el nivel, digamos formal y serio, no? del español. Entonces este, sí hago un poco la diferenciación pero tampoco soy tan ruda para como apachurrar y decirles no lo lograste o sea, entonces, al final creo que sí se esfuerzan mucho por hacerlo lo más limpio posible…”

[p. 71521]

[‘In other words, we always change the type of Spanish and we formalize it more in some spaces than in others, so that is the idea that they supposedly practice in environments so that when they have to do it and present themselves as interpreters, for example, or translators or something, have uh, the level, let’s say formal and serious, right? of Spanish. So, I do make a little differentiation but I’m not so rude as to apply pressure and tell them you didn’t make it, so, then, in the end I think they do make a lot of effort to make it as clean as possible…’]

As evidenced in Excerpt 3, Lorena maintains that while she encourages the use of “formal” and “serious” Spanish, she does not try to crush the students’ spirits when they are unable to reach this goal since she does feel that students try to use the “cleanest” Spanish possible. This concept of “clean” Spanish unsurprisingly coincides with the subscription to monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies. The idea that Spanish and English are separate linguistic codes and systems within a bilingual person’s linguistic repertoire would be considered a monoglossic ideology (see Fuller and Leeman 2020; García et al. 2021), which is displayed in Excerpt 4 and Excerpt 5 below.

Excerpt 4.

“… a veces cuando el tema es muy difícil no encuentran las palabras les dejo que, intervenga el inglés, para que puedan terminar de decir sus ideas. Y eso es lo que hago siempre en clase, solo cuando hay trabajos como la presentación oral o el discurso en el debate como la idea es formalizar ese español y profesionalizarlo, pues sí, trato que traten de practicarlo la manera más formal posible, no? Entonces, pero nunca apagando su espíritu y motivación de expresarse.”

[p. 71342]

[‘…sometimes when the topic is very difficult they do not find the words, I let them, that English intervene, so that they can finish saying their ideas. And that is what I always do in class, only when there are assignments like the oral presentation or the speech or the debate like the idea is to formalize that Spanish and professionalize it, well yea, I try to have them practice it in the most formal manner possible, no? So, but I never crush their spirit and motivation to express themselves.’]

Excerpt 5.

“yo solo lo uso como salvavidas. Para cuando en algún momento sienten que no tienen el vocabulario de plano si no lo saben, este, lo utilicen para poder terminar la idea, pero sí, no me gusta que lo usen nunca.”

[p. 73159]

[‘I only use it as a lifesaver. For when at some point they feel that they don’t have the vocabulary outright if they don’t know it, they use it to be able to finish the idea, but yes, I don’t like for them to ever use it.’]

These excerpts show that Lorena believes that English is an impediment her students face when it comes to achieving the goal of using a standardized variety of Spanish. The idea that this instructor “allows” English to be used to finish ideas as a “life saver” for emergency purposes, demonstrates the adherence to at least two important beliefs. One is the belief that Spanish and English are distinct linguistic systems that can be delineated, and the second would be that bilinguals should aim to perform like a monolingual Spanish speaker that would not resort to incorporating English. While Lorena reiterates that she aims to motivate and encourage her students to express themselves by perceiving English and Spanish as distinct named languages and explicitly denouncing the natural bilingual phenomena SHL learners employ from their full linguistic repertoires in the classroom, she is maintaining an idealized monolingual lens. Since these competing discourses of bilingual celebration and monolingual and monoglossic norms repeatedly came up in the interview, she was asked what she would like to change about her students’ Spanish, which she responds to in Excerpt 6.

Excerpt 6.

“Pues yo no quiero que cambien nada, o sea yo quiero que mantengan su variedad como es porque es parte de su identidad. Lo que busco es más bien que extiendan, el uso del español a diferentes espacios sociales donde, desafortunadamente hay ideologías y hay juicios y hay estereotipos donde tenemos que aprender a movernos mejor para explotar esos espacios y poder conseguir un trabajo, o defender tu postura o tu identidad. Entonces no cambiar sino expandir nuestro uso.”

[p. 71721]

[‘Well I don’t want them to change anything, I mean I want them to maintain their variety how it is because it’s part of their identity. What I look for is more so that they extend themselves, the use of Spanish in different social spaces where, unfortunately, there are ideologies and judgements and there are stereotypes where we have to learn to make better moves to exploit those spaces and be able to get a job, or to defend your perspective or identity. So not change anything but to expand our use.’]

In her response, Lorena asserts that she does not want students to change anything but to instead expand their use of Spanish, though she presents the ideologies of Spanish as essential to Latinx identity vs language as choice, and language commodification and instrumentality as reasons why these students should maintain their heritage language. Following these notions, the maintenance of Spanish is most important then, for the sake of fulfilling the obligations of being part of an identity group and/or to get a job.

Since this instructor had formal training in SHL pedagogy and had engaged with the problematic concept of the standard language ideology, she was explicitly asked to clarify her conceptualizations of a standard versus formal versus academic Spanish. We were most interested in understanding whether there was a difference between these terms for Lorena. In Excerpt 7, she explains that although to her they mean the same thing, she uses different terms to soften the political weight of using the word “standard”.

Excerpt 7.

“Pues depende, pero yo pienso que son lo mismo. O sea, formal o estándar académico, todos son sinónimos. Algunos para… tratar de suavizar, políticamente lo que significa el español estándar, tal vez? Este, o el que domina? Este, entonces para mí es exactamente lo mismo, entonces, eh obviamente, me gusta usar más formal porque.. siento que con la formalidad, con cualquier variedad del español o cualquier variedad lingüística se puede formalizar tu lengua la forma en que tu.. te diriges hacia otra persona y quitando, por ejemplo groserías, hablando de usted, o sea, entonces me gusta más la idea de formal porque siento que le quitas un poquito el peso político del estándar o lo académico y esa idealización.”

[p. 73642]

[‘Well, it depends, but I think they are the same. That is, formal or academic standard, they are all synonyms. Some to… try to soften, politically what standard Spanish means, maybe? This one, or the one that masters it? So, then, for me it’s exactly the same, so, uh obviously, I like to use formal more because… I feel that with formality, with any variety of Spanish or any linguistic variety, you can formalize your language the way you… you address another person and remove, for example, profanities, talking in the “usted”1, that is, then I like the idea of formal more because I feel that you remove a little of the political weight of the standard or the academic and that idealization.’]

In her interview, Lorena shared ideologies she believed her students brought to the classroom, as well as her own conflicting ideologies. The ideologies displayed throughout her interview were: standard language ideology, monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies, Spanish as essential to Latinx identity vs language as choice and language commodification and instrumentality. The most prominent language ideology Lorena displayed was the standard language ideology, which aligns with some of the students’ most exhibited language ideologies detailed below. As evidenced by these examples and the ideologies presented within them, there are mixed messages being relayed by Lorena despite her training and being in a CLA-oriented program.

3.2. Isabel

The analysis of our data demonstrates that Isabel, the student who has taken all four of the SHL courses within this CLA-oriented program, was the least willing to accept harmful language ideologies that are regularly found among SHL students. In other words, Isabel, the student with the most time in this SHL program, was the most resistant to negative language ideologies. Nonetheless, the one and only ideology that Isabel did express still having trouble with is Spanish as essential to Latinx identity versus language as choice as evidenced by Excerpt 8 during the individual interview. She did not express belief in any of the other seven ideologies from Fuller and Leeman (2020), nor did she demonstrate adherence to any other harmful ideologies outside of the eight codes.

Excerpt 8.

“Um, you know, I think that’s still something I’m figuring out. Because, like, if I’m being honest, sometimes I find it really hard to, like, I find it hard to connect directly with Spanish. If that makes sense. Cuz like, I like I’m Mexican. I’m Korean. Uhm you know, I’m like two of these, but yet, also not because I’m very Americanized. So like, you know, sometimes I feel like an outsider speaking the language, not always an insider.”

[p. 1637]

Isabel describes how her racial and ethnic backgrounds are in this case seemingly competing with each other, which in turn has impacted her connection with Spanish. Her identity as a Korean Mexican woman born and raised in the U.S. has not allowed her to feel like a fully accepted Spanish speaker yet, even after taking several Spanish classes and growing up among Spanish speakers. Additionally, the ideology of Spanish being essential to Latinx identity was in fact an ideology her instructor Lorena subscribed to as well, as shown in Excerpt 6 above. Aside from this moment, Isabel expressed resistance to other linguistic ideologies, such as language commodification and instrumentality. In Excerpt 9 during her interview, Isabel explains how the SHL courses have impacted her views towards Spanish and its function in her life.

Excerpt 9.

“I would say really just during, like coming out of this, like during class and like, kind of reflecting about it afterwards. being proud because like, it’s just again, cool, because you can like understand other people. Cuz like, I know, like people, because like, my parents tried, like, you should learn Spanish to like, get better pay. But like, for me, that just goes over my head. But like, just seeing the result of like, the like, again, I can, like, understand that other people communicate, like listen and read stuff that like I wouldn’t have been able to. I didn’t know Spanish. Like, that’s what makes me feel proud or like, feel excited.”

[p. 11754]

While Isabel’s parents encouraged her to take Spanish classes in order to commodify her skills for monetary interests, Isabel dismisses these notions and says that for her, the ability to understand others and improve her linguistic competency as a whole is more meaningful than capitalizing on the language for employment purposes. In this way, Isabel is outright rejecting the commonly perpetuated ideology that Spanish is most useful for economic reasons. Interestingly, language commodification is an ideology expressed by her SHL instructor Lorena at the time of this study (see Section 3.1 above). However, by the time Isabel was enrolled in this final SHL course, she had already had at least two other SHL instructors while completing the three previous courses in this SHL program. In sum, Isabel was able to resist aligning with her parents’ ideologies and even some of her current instructor’s ideologies about Spanish as well.

3.3. Virginia

During the individual interview, Virginia was enrolled in her second SHL course and the most advanced course within the program. Virginia was born in Mexico and moved to Arizona at the age of seven. While she was quite confident in her linguistic competency in Spanish, she still maintained that her abilities were not yet where she wanted them to be, as she still subscribed to the standard language ideology as shown in Excerpt 10.

Excerpt 10.

“Pues creo que no se me ha hecho tan difícil el español por el hecho que ya tenía un bas-bastante conocimiento y lo único que se me hace un poco más difícil. Bueno, no tan difícil. Pero donde hago struggle the most es en el ¿cómo escribirlo? Porque ya tengo mucho tiempo que no lo escribía correctamente, como debe de ser. Sí lo escribo pero hay faltas de ortografía y ese tipo de cosas.”

[p. 4310]

[‘Well I think Spanish has not been so difficult for me due to the fact that I already had plenty of knowledge and the only thing that is a bit more difficult. Well, not so difficult. But where I struggle the most is in the, how to write it? Because it has been a long time since I’ve written it correctly, how it should be. I write it but there are spelling mistakes and those types of things.’]

While most students express an interest in further developing their skills, Virginia utilizes words during her interview such as “correct” and “how it should be” to explain how her own Spanish skills are ostensibly insufficient when compared to standardized Spanish. These same beliefs were also expressed later in the semester in one of her writing assignments, as evidenced in Excerpt 11.

Excerpt 11.

“Me he dado cuenta que aunque soy fluente en el idioma del español, tengo cosas por mejorar para hablar y escribir mi idioma más correctamente.”

[‘I have realized that although I am fluent in the Spanish language, I have things to improve to speak and write my language more correctly.’]

It is evident that even though Virginia had already taken a course that aimed to disrupt the prevalence of the standard language ideology, she still held onto the idea that her Spanish was “incorrect” and needed to be improved to eventually use “correct” Spanish. However, this adherence to the standard language ideology is not entirely unexpected given that her current instructor Lorena also sends mixed messages about this ideology as well. The idea that there is a correct way to use Spanish is evident in Lorena’s messaging throughout the semester. On the other hand, Virginia was the only participant that commented during her interview on conflicting views on bilingualism in the U.S. by noting the overlap of the one nation, one language ideology and normative monolingualism and the zero-sum ideology.

Excerpt 12.

“Pues hay… creo que dos perspectivas unas personas pueden pensar que es muy bueno porque dicen “oh tiene más oportunidades, es muy inteligente” porque habla dos idiomas, pero otros pueden decir “oh no está como no está haciendo tanto fit in en la comunidad”, porque habla dos idiomas y no todos hablan dos idiomas.”

[p. 4751]

[‘Well there’s… I think two perspectives, some people can think that it’s very good because they say “Oh they have more opportunities, they’re very intelligent” because they speak two languages, but others might say “Oh they’re not like, fitting into the community”, because they speak two languages and not everybody speaks two languages.’]

In the first part of Excerpt 12, Virginia expresses how some people seemingly share positive points of being bilingual though it is rooted in language commodification and instrumentality, while others view bilingualism as a problem for the sake of belonging in this nation. This view of bilingualism based on language commodification and instrumentality is also a point her instructor Lorena asserts in her own interview. Given that the one and only language of the U.S. must be English and being monolingual is the expectation, Virginia understands that there are people in U.S society who believe that being bilingual in a minoritized language is problematic rather than advantageous. In conclusion, she continues to subscribe to the standard language ideology like her instructor. In addition, Virginia is clearly aware of other dominant ideologies in society, though she neither accepts nor combats such ideologies herself, at least not in a way that was evident in the data analyzed in this study.

3.4. Sandra

Sandra was the other student who at the time of the interview was enrolled in her second SHL course, the most advanced course in the SHL program at this university. She demonstrated standard language ideologies in both her one-on-one interview and writing assignment for the course. In Excerpt 13, Sandra makes a distinction between the Spanish she knows and what she believes professional Spanish sounds like. She uses words such as “quieter”, “proper”, and “respectful” to define “professional” Spanish and that “unprofessional” Spanish uses a lot of slang. Similarly, her beliefs towards a standard language ideology are displayed in Excerpt 14 where she again refers to her Spanish variety as a variety that contains slang and even utilizes the word “pocho” to describe it. In addition to demonstrating awareness of society’s negative beliefs towards her variety, Sandra mentions the problematic idea of language being formed only by words that are found in a dictionary. Conversely, when referring to her supervisor’s variety of Spanish, she describes it as a Spanish that is “up there” as if almost idolizing her supervisor’s variety.

Excerpt 13.

“There’s a lot of slang, I think in Spanish, or there’s just words that like, aren’t actually in the dictionary, which I can’t think of right now. But it’s um, I think professional Spanish is more of a… I don’t want to say like, quieter type of Spanish, but just like a more like, proper. I don’t know, I can’t actually, like, explain it. But I know that when I’m in a setting, and I’m talking to a certain person, there’s certain things that I can’t say it’s mostly just being like, respectful, which I can do, like speaking in Spanish and English, but it just, it’s a little harder for me.”

[p. 5504]

Excerpt 14.

“Like I said, like, at my house, I just speak like, kind of slang or like, pocho or whatever. But like, when I’m exposed to Spanish, for example, my supervisor, she’s Hispanic, so she’s sometimes speaks to me in Spanish. And like, her Spanish is like up there.”

[p. 51553]

In one of her writing assignments, Sandra reiterates her beliefs regarding her own Spanish being solely useful for informal and unprofessional situations and that she aims to be able to speak a “professional” Spanish. This perceived need to professionalize her Spanish was also repeatedly highlighted by her instructor Lorena, though in a general manner towards all her SHL students. As shown in Excerpt 15, she also asserts that the switch to English while speaking Spanish is unprofessional, and she only switches as a last resort.

Excerpt 15.

“Otro obstáculo que enfrento cuando trato de hablar solo español es que a veces me quedo atascado y no puedo pensar en la palabra correcta, así que inmediatamente cambio al inglés como último recurso. Finalmente, un gran objetivo que tengo en esta clase es poder practicar mi español de manera profesional. Para mí, hablar español es fácil cuando estoy en una situación informal con amigos o familiares. Sin embargo, ese no es siempre el caso. Entiendo que al crecer, terminar mi carrera y entrar al mundo real me enfrentaré a situaciones más profesionales.”

[‘Another obstacle I face when trying to speak only Spanish is that sometimes I get stuck and can’t think of the right word, so I immediately switch to English as a last resort. Finally, a big goal that I have in this class is to be able to practice my Spanish in a professional way. For me, speaking Spanish is easy when I am in an informal situation with friends or family. However, that is not always the case. I understand that as I grow up, finish my degree, and enter the real world, I will face more professional situations.’]

Another ideology Sandra presented in her interview was Spanish as essential to Latinx identity versus language as choice. This is an ideology that was previously mentioned by the instructor and her peer Isabel as well. As Excerpt 16 shows, Sandra utilizes Spanish to index her Mexican identity. Like Isabel, she believes that sometimes the way she looks portrays a non-Latinx identity, and by speaking Spanish, she is not only able to express and defend her identity but also believes she gets along better with people when speaking Spanish.

Excerpt 16.

“I feel like it’s kind of helped me defend, like, hey, like, I really am Mexican. Because a lot of the times like, I speak Spanish to somebody and because I look güerita [‘white’] that like, they just assume that I’m American, or that I just don’t speak Spanish at all, but I feel like when I speak Spanish, like it’s helped me, um, be myself, like I said, en español me llevo más [‘in Spanish I get along better’] and I have más carácter en español pero al mismo tiempo [‘more character in Spanish but at the same time’], it helps me defend like how I’m actually Mexican.”

[p. 5732]

Lastly, another noteworthy ideology found in one of Sandra’s writing assignments is the monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies. Excerpt 17 demonstrates her monoglossic ideology of trying to solely speak Spanish in the classroom, which goes against heteroglossic approaches that understand linguistic repertoires, especially those by bilingual or multilingual speakers, as being linguistically rich and difficult to delineate into separate codes (see García et al. 2021). As previously demonstrated, her current instructor Lorena also strongly believes that English should only be utilized as a last resort in the classroom. As demonstrated in this section, Sandra and Lorena’s linguistic ideologies align in terms of the adherence to the standard language ideology, Spanish as essential to Latinx identity, and monoglossic and heteroglossic ideologies.

Excerpt 17.

“Otro objetivo que me he puesto es solo hablar el español cuando entro al salón. Esto es una lucha porque muchas veces, si uno de mis compañeros de clase me habla en inglés, me da por responder en el mismo idioma.”

[‘Another objective that I’ve set for myself is to only speak in Spanish when I’m in the classroom. This is a struggle because many times, if one of my classmates speaks to me in English, it makes me respond in the same language.’]

3.5. Gabriela

Gabriela was the only student who at the time of the interview was in her first SHL course. She was born in Ecuador and moved to the US when she was 12 years old and was the student who displayed the most instances of the standard language ideology. Like Sandra, she presents the desire to speak a “professional” Spanish. She mentions that “professional” Spanish would benefit her in her career, which also indexes the language commodification and instrumentality ideology in Excerpt 18. Gabriela is clearly not the first participant to refer to “professional” Spanish as a one-size-fits-all variety or to allude to the idea that the variety she speaks would not be enough to help her in her future endeavors. These ideas are ones Lorena repeatedly brought up and that her classmate Sandra also believed. Another instance of Gabriela subscribing to standard language ideologies can be seen in Excerpt 19 where she says another one of her goals is to be able to speak a “universal” Spanish that from her perspective would be understood by all Spanish speakers.

Excerpt 18.

“I wanna… be able to use the language in a more professional manner and how to speak it more professionally and also because I, I use slang words when I speak Spanish and I kind of have my own Ecuadorian accent, and I have my slang words from where I’m from, and then with my friends, we don’t talk professionally. So I won’t- because we are going to write like an argumentative like essay and we’re going to present in class and all these things I think I’m going to acquire… a more professional level with the language and because I don’t think- I I know I can speak it fluently and I know that I can manage to communicate it but maybe I need more skills in order to use it in my career as much as I want it. So I want it to help me for my career.”

[p. 6322]

Excerpt 19.

“Um, just, avoid using slang words. I know that, Spanish can be very, general and I know that someone from Mexico can understand someone from Ecuador or Peru or wherever. But I just want to be able to speak it so it’s univ-, like universal to any Hispanic person that is listening to me and it’s, it’s professional. So I want to be able to, acquire those speech skills, grammar skills. I don’t have right now because I haven’t really study it that much. And I stopped when I was very young. So I just want to make it better.”

[p. 6429]

Gabriela continued to demonstrate her adherence to the standard language ideology in her writing assignments. In Excerpt 20, she mentions that her goal is to perfeccionar or perfect her Spanish, insinuating that there is a “perfect” or “standard” Spanish. She also continues to assert that meeting this goal would be beneficial to her career, which again demonstrates language commodification and instrumentality ideologies. Like some of the other participants, Gabriela maintains this clear belief that only a “standard” or “professional” Spanish would be beneficial in their careers. She continues to uphold the standard language ideology as shown in Excerpt 21, by saying that her main challenge is being able to speak the language in a formal way that goes against her “informal ways”. This common misconception about register present throughout the data shows that these SHL speakers believe their Spanish varieties are not appropriate in a “formal” context.

Excerpt 20.

“Siento que me he enfocado mucho en mis estudios aquí, lo que es muy bueno, pero deje de enfocarme en practicar el español a diario. No me refiero a solo hablándolo, pero también escribiéndolo a menudo para no perder esa habilidad. Después de tomar esta clase, quiero poder hablar cómodamente y perfeccionar el idioma para poder aplicarlo a mi carrera. He notado que ya no soy tan segura al hablar español, ha habido veces que dudo en lo que voy a decir o tengo que pensarlo dos veces por pérdida de práctica.”

[‘I feel that I have focused a lot on my studies here, which is very good, but I stopped focusing on practicing Spanish on a daily basis. I don’t mean just speaking it, but also writing it often so I don’t lose that skill. After taking this class, I want to be able to speak comfortably and perfect the language so I can apply it to my career. I have noticed that I am no longer as confident when speaking Spanish, there have been times that I doubt what I am going to say or I have to think twice due to lack of practice.’]

Excerpt 21.

“Durante estos últimos años, he perdido la oportunidad de poder practicarlo en una forma profesional y mantener en alto mis rutas latinas. Mi mayor desafío es poder formalizarlo, tratar de poner a un lado mis costumbres informales al hablarlo con amigos, y establecer un reto fuera de mi zona de confort.”

[‘During these last years, I have lost the opportunity to be able to practice it in a professional manner and upholding my Latina roots. My biggest challenge is being able to formalize it [my Spanish], try to set aside my informal habits while speaking it with my friends, and establish a goal outside of my comfort zone.’]

Additionally, her instructor’s expectations of focusing on formal, monolingual standards of Spanish were most seemingly internalized by Gabriela, given that the wording of their ideas was nearly identical. Interestingly, Gabriela was also the only student who explicitly commented on her teacher (Lorena’s) expectations. In Excerpts 22 and 23 below, Gabriela explains during her interview how Lorena set expectations for her students that include never using English/Spanglish, especially not for official assignments.

Excerpt 22.

“Yeah, so, only in the classroom cus I, I’ve kind of like mentalized myself with her expectations, the teachers expectations, so if I’m trying to practice it if I’m trying to become better at it and make it more professional then only Spanish, but I feel like I have more freedom when I’m outside of the classroom so then I can, maybe use like a mixture of both, and it’ll be fine. So it’s just kind of a mentalizing yourself and yeah, cus it’s definitely it’s gotten a little hard to- sometimes, like I said, talking to my mom, it’s kind of a little hard to, like, avoid saying any English words at all. Because that’s become like, I’ve become so used to, so used to it because of because of school, and work and having to speak it all the time.”

[p. 62443]

Excerpt 23.

“I think it was the teacher, maybe a student, that made a joke about it, in one of our first sessions together, but we were talking about presenting one of our speeches, and I think a student said like, “Oh, is it okay if I use Spanglish” and teacher was like, “Come on”, like we, like we we just try to make it professional in that sense. But we haven’t really talked about how it’s really perceived, like outside of the classroom and how it’s used in the US.”

[p. 64733]

4. Discussion

In this study, we continued the conversation and research on language ideologies in the field of SHL by examining the ideologies advanced SHL students and their instructor hold and bring to the classroom. Our data, based on individual interviews and students’ written assignments, allowed us to answer our three research questions. The first research question asked, “What language ideologies do both the students and their instructor maintain?” Following the directed content analysis, the data presented all ideologies mentioned by Fuller and Leeman (2020) except for differential bilingualism. While our data show that language ideologies were more present during the interviews rather than the writing samples, our findings corroborate previous research on language ideologies, especially the unsurprisingly prominent presence of the standard language ideology (Leeman 2012; Leeman and Serafini 2016; Lippi-Green 2011; Loza 2017, among others). The participants at times made it explicitly clear that they are aware of their beliefs and that there were moments where they held “conflicting and competing ideologies,” as was found in Lowther Pereira (2010, p. 248). This implies that while these students are able to align with the goals of SHL pedagogy, they can also have instances where they may continue to perpetuate damaging language ideologies that can be difficult to dismantle in just one or two courses.

Our second research question asked, “Do the language ideologies of advanced level SHL learners align with the language ideologies that are being expressed by the instructor?” While most of the SHL students demonstrated a mix of positive and negative language ideologies, Isabel was the most resistant to the ideologies expressed by her family, instructor, and classmates, apart from the Spanish as essential to Latinx identity versus language as a choice ideology. As Beaudrie et al. (2020) and Holguín Mendoza (2018) assert, it is difficult to fully measure the effects of CLA-centered instruction on SHL learners. Nonetheless, based on our findings, we remain optimistic that Isabel’s involvement in the SHL program for the past three semesters played a part in her rejection of the negative ideologies upheld by her instructor and peers at the time of the study. Conversely, Gabriela, the student who maintained the most instances of negative ideologies, was also part of the same SHL program but for the shortest amount of time compared to the other participants. As such, based on these findings, we can conclude that the student with the most experience in this CLA-oriented SHL program was the most resistant to problematic beliefs about language, while the student with the least experience was the one most adherent to such beliefs. In addition, their instructor relayed mixed messages, such as at times supporting bilingualism while also maintaining Spanish-only policies in the classroom, which Pascual y Cabo and Prada (2018) note can misguide students.

Our third and final research question asked, “Do the language ideologies of a CLA-trained instructor align with the CLA goals of the course?” Overall, the instructor’s comments showed mixed messages that mainly did not align with the CLA goals of the course. In addition, these ideologies aligned with some of the ideologies the four students presented, as noted at the end of Lorena’s Section 3.1 above. However, it is not clear which ones of these ideologies are initially brought to the classroom versus ones that are part of a (un)intentional cyclical ideological practice between the instructor and the students. We mention this due to finding similarities in the way the instructor and some students mention specific negative language ideologies. For example, there were moments where Gabriela and Lorena were espousing standard language ideologies in nearly the same way, by both explicitly mentioning the necessity of learning a “universal”, “professional”, and “perfect” Spanish. While the interviews were conducted towards the beginning of the semester, Gabriela’s ideologies were most likely already present before enrolling in her first SHL course. However, these ideologies continued to be present throughout the semester as demonstrated in her writing samples. Furthermore, our findings support previous research by demonstrating that the language ideologies the instructor acknowledges as her students bringing to the classroom are some of the same ideologies that keep these SHL students from valuing their bilingualism and their own varieties of Spanish (Lowther Pereira 2010; Valdés et al. 2003).

Given these results, we find it necessary to outline pedagogical implications. First, we want to highlight the necessity of investigating the effects of SHL goals and practices based on CLA approaches. One of the most prominent issues that we must continue to question within these approaches is what is deemed a standard variety in the SHL classroom. As we saw in the results, there are many words utilized by the students and instructor as synonyms when referring to a “correct” variety although not all of these words have been traditionally regarded as meaning the same thing by researchers/pedagogues in the field of SHL education. A representation of this overlap is shown in Figure 1.

We suggest that when referring to a “standard” variety in the classroom, we should make the clear distinction between standard and standardized. By doing so, we are highlighting that this mythical variety has been standardized due to societal powers rather than just what should be believed to be correct or appropriate (see also Craft et al. 2020; Flores and Rosa 2015). We believe that by utilizing the term standardized versus standard in the SHL classroom, we can help our students to start critically considering and discussing why certain linguistic forms and/or varieties are given more power than others. Additionally, fostering this conversation will hopefully lead students to the understanding that referring to a standardized variety is an act of awareness and resistance rather than just conforming to an ostensibly “correct” way of speaking. While it is important for students to deconstruct the negative language ideologies that can lead them to thinking their varieties fall somewhere outside of this figure, it is also pertinent for instructors to be mindful of how their wording represents their beliefs. In this case, instructors should no longer attempt to avoid using the word “standard” by alternatively employing any one of the words highlighted in Figure 1. While it may seem to some that by utilizing these seemingly less harmful terms one can “soften the political weight” of using the word “standard”, these terms are still conveying similar meanings to students, which enable negative language ideologies to continue to exist in the classroom. While the SHL program might be deemed critical and the instructor may receive training, it is important to continue to fine-tune what constitutes sufficient training that would result in instructors no longer presenting conflicting ideologies. As this study demonstrates, even within what might be considered a progressive CLA program with instructors who receive training and have significant experience teaching SHL courses, there can still be room for improvement. However, we want to be clear in this assertion that the onus is not necessarily solely on the instructor, but on our field to find ways to better prepare our educators to uncover and mitigate negative beliefs about language. As such, it is not at all our intention to blame individual instructors for their beliefs. Instead, we align our work with previous scholarship (Craft et al. 2020; Fuller and Leeman 2020; Irvine 1989; Lowther Pereira 2010; Schiffman 1996) by recognizing that dominant ideologies are ideas and/or representations being purposefully upheld by larger social, cultural, and institutional systems that extend far beyond individual people.

5. Conclusions

The present study found that these four students and their instructor perpetuated many of the language ideologies found in Fuller and Leeman (2020), but to varying degrees. These findings coincide with previous studies on language ideologies in SHL education (Lowther Pereira 2010; Loza 2017; Showstack 2017), with the standard language ideology and language commodification and instrumentality being the two most prevalent ideologies. As previous authors have noted (Leeman 2012; Villa 2002) and the present study corroborates, the idea of a standardized language variety is often lumped with other terms such as “professional”, “formal”, and “correct”. Future studies should continue to investigate intersecting sociopolitical and historical factors that contribute to sustaining harmful language ideologies, such as race, settler colonialism, and globalization (Flores and Rosa 2015; Macedo 2019; Kramsch 2019). It would also be pertinent to collect ethnographic data through classroom observations to gain a better sense of the student–instructor dynamics. Nonetheless, the findings of the present study are crucial for better understanding the language ideologies of students and their instructor even within a CLA-oriented program. While the student with the most experience in the program appeared to be willing to dismantle commonly embraced language ideologies, her instructor with SHL training was still conveying mixed messages about bilingualism and Spanish. This mixed messaging added to the complexity of the dynamic between these students and their instructor, as the instructor was seemingly aware of students’ negative ideologies, yet at times helped maintain those same negative ideologies. We must continue to interrogate the factors that helped Isabel combat the negative ideologies expressed around her, so that we may calibrate our goals and practices to be able to support more students such as her in our SHL programs and beyond.