Abstract:

Recent language policy and planning (LPP) scholarship has begun shifting its focus from policy (macro) to practice-level (micro) analyses (Canagarajah, 2005; Ramanathan & Morgan, 2007). More critical and localized examinations of English language learners’ (ELLs’) experiences with language policies may illuminate the many complexities and constraints that may arise. The higher education context is an important site of language policy making at the micro-social level. A university’s language policies and practices, which oftentimes reflect societal ideologies regarding language, for example can powerfully constitute language relations in the wider society. This presentation will add to and further elaborate the relationship between language policies and ELLs by examining these learners’ experiences of a language policy in a U.S. higher education setting. The presenter will share research collected from four ELLs and several university faculty and administrators through interviews, observations, and participant journals at a major U.S. university. Adopting a multiple-case study and ethnographic design, the research data will focus on ELLs’ experiences with a university language policy and how it affected these students’ academic and social life at the institution. Findings suggest that ELLs perceived university language policy as affecting their full participation at and engagement with the university. Additionally, success at the university largely depended on the assimilation and resistance strategies they developed in response to university language policy. ELLs weighed the benefits of their strategies against the costs of those strategies in terms of attaining their goals at the university. At times, their actions incurred great losses on a social and personal level. Yet, they principally viewed that the gains made by these actions outweighed the losses because it allowed them to achieve their objectives. Although, the coping strategies used by ELLs to navigate the university system can further EL marginalization and alienation, these same strategies can also lead to EL success.Participants will have a better perspective on how to address students’ challenges in relation to language policies in order to enhance academic and social equity in a higher education setting.

Keywords:

English language learners, language policy, agency, language ideology and socialization.