Spanish and English Language Attitudes and Values of Latino Adolescents (original) (raw)

In his influential book, Imagined Communities (1982), Benedict Anderson proposes that language is more than a marker of identity and has much more than a semiotic sense. Language, Anderson says, has a rhetorical meaning, and thus is capable of generating imagined communities and of constructing particular identities. This volume, imagined and produced by graduate students in the Department of International and Transcultural Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University, draws from the work of students across the college--bilingual education, international educational development, comparative education, curriculum and teaching, teaching of English, teaching English to speakers of other languages, applied linguistics, reading and language arts, speech and language pathology--and the larger university. In so doing, it reflects the multiple perspectives in which the study of languages in society is negotiated across Columbia University, particularly at Teachers College. The volume thus reveals the academic breadth and diversity of a scholarly community interested in the role of languages in communities and in education, across academic departments and disciplines. It is our hope this collection of papers will contribute towards creating a central place for the study of multiple languages and literacies in communities and schools, highlighting the important role that non-dominant languages and discourses play in the lives of many.