Urban plurilingualism: Language practices, policies, and ideologies in Chicago

Journal of Pragmatics 43 (2011) 1161–1172

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Urban plurilingualism: Language practices, policies, and ideologies in Chicago Marcia Farr * The Ohio State University, 29 W. Woodruff Ave., 200 Ramseyer Hall, Columbus, OH 43210, United States

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 18 February 2009 Received in revised form 4 February 2010 Accepted 5 October 2010 Available online 3 December 2010

Plurilingual language practices in Chicago are examined using the notions of linguistic markets and language ideologies. Plurilingualism encompasses bi/multilingualism and bidialectalism, or both, in dynamic use. Chicago always was and is plurilingual; traders speaking Haitian Creole, French, and English confronted speakers of indigenous Checagou languages in the late 18th century, and the enormous 19th century migration brought German and other European languages. 20th century migration brought Asian and other world languages and, notably, Spanish. Ethnographic research in homes, workplaces, schools, and religious organizations illustrates vibrant contemporary plurilingualism. Both historical and contemporary plurilingualism are embedded in a larger context of competing language ideologies that explain the persistence of plurilingual practices and the ambivalent history of official language policy in Illinois. Although dominant ideologies valorize a monoglot standard English, plurilingual practices evidence a persistent valuing of non-(standard) English language. For example, the official language policy of the Chicago Public Schools promotes (standard) English at the expense of students’ community languages, whereas the grass-roots Multilingual Chicago Initiative promotes Chicago’s plurilingualism. Dominant ideologies that link a codified ‘‘standard’’ with modernity, clarity and rationality and vernacular varieties with lack of education and irrationality explain the former, whereas local linguistic markets explain the latter. ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Plurilingualism Chicago Language ideology Language policy

1. Introduction Chicago, like other major U.S. cities, has both a historical and a contemporary reality of extensive plurilingualism. I use the term plurilingual for the use of more than one language, or variety of a language, by an individual speaker (Clyne, 2003, 2005). This term then includes bi/multilingualism, as well as bi/multidialectalism, or their combination, capturing how speakers actually use multiple languages and dialects of those languages. The term as it is used here realistically acknowledges differing competence across language varieties, potential diglossia, and the social meanings of code-switching (Gumperz, 1982; Myers-Scotton, 1993). Such plurilinguistic practice allows speakers to articulate ‘‘fine shades of identity. . .by delicate and moment-to-moment evolving variation between varieties of language, including accents, registers, styles, and genres’’ (Blommaert, 2006:245) of whatever languages they know. Garcia and Menken (2006) argue that a plurilingual perspective ‘‘acknowledges the dynamism of. . .speech communities, where members of dominant and non-dominant groups, often speakers of nonstandard varieties of both English and. . .[their community language] communicate with each other’’ (Garcia and Menken, 2006:170).

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 614 292 0095; fax: +1 614 292 4260. E-mail address: [email protected]. 0378-2166/$ – see front matter ß 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.008

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Thus plurilingual practices, involving both speech and written, print or electronic media, illustrate some of the evolving choices language users make among the resources in their linguistic repertoires to construct varying social identities. That is, speakers, and writers or electronic texters, construct selves emergently in discourse as they choose among alternative linguistic features (phonological, syntactic, lexical, discursive, orthographic, etc.) to signal particular identities related to ethnicity, gender, social class, religion, politics, etc. (Gumperz, 1982; Collins and Blot, 2003; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003). Such linguistic variation—how one speaks or writes—communicates as much as, and sometimes more than, the semantic content of the words. Whereas the social meanings communicated by such stylistic choices may be shared across contexts, however, the values associated with these social meanings may vary. For example, a pronunciation that carries a social meaning of ‘‘working class’’ may be valued differently within a middle class as opposed to a working class community. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) discuss such different class communities in terms of whether their members identify with global (middle class) or local (working class) institutions and localities. Relying on Bourdieu’s (1977) notion of the linguistic marketplace, which links standard varieties of languages to societal power because of their symbolic value, they argue for opposed linguistic markets: [There are] opposed linguistic markets—the standard or global language market, in which the value of one’s contributions depends on their being uttered in the standard variety, and the vernacular or local language market, in which the value of one’s contributions depends on their being uttered in the local vernacular. . . Depending on the history of the community, vernaculars may be distinct languages from the standard, or they may be alternative varieties of the same language. The social dynamics of language use in either case have a good deal in common. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003:271–272) Thus vernacular language practices have symbolic value in local communities, even when the dominant language ideologies of global institutions such as schools and governments deny or restrict them. Standard languages, in contrast, have symbolic value in public institutions, facilitating access to global rather than local resources. These two opposed linguistic markets, then, produce a ‘‘tension between the local and the global—the vernacular and the standard’’ (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003:273). Since Chicago is a microcosm of the larger U.S. society in terms of populations and languages, it is often called an archetypal U.S. city, making it a useful case study for exploring the more general phenomenon of urban plurilingualism in the United States. This paper explores historical and contemporary plurilingualism in Chicago in order to illustrate how competing language ideologies underlie plurilingual practices on the one hand, and laws and policies that promote a monoglot (standard) English (Silverstein, 1996) on the other hand. First, I briefly review the linguistic history of Chicago from published histories, inferring the use of languages and literacies from the populations and contexts studied. Second, I illustrate contemporary plurilingual practices from recent ethnographic research across a range of societal domains, including homes, workplaces, schools, and religious organizations. As with all examples from ethnographic research, the vignettes presented here are not isolated ‘‘anecdotes,’’ but patterned findings from long-term study of various Chicago communities. In the final sections of this paper, I discuss historical and contemporary language policies in Chicago and then language ideologies. Viewing both language practices and language policies in terms of competing language ideologies explains several phenomena: the documented reality of multiple languages and dialects, the varying official language policies of Chicago and the state of Illinois over time, and the persisting monoglot ideology that attempts to erase the presence of non(standard) English language use. I include a discussion of the historical roots of dominant ideologies that juxtapose processes of language purification promoted by Locke and hybridization of the folk linguistic traditions originally valorized by Herder (Bauman and Briggs, 2003). Considering historical and contemporary plurilingual practices along with wavering and ambivalent official language policies provides a rich, detailed example of the actual effects of conflicting language ideologies within the context of an ongoing plurilingual reality. 2. History of plurilingualism in Chicago 2.1. Checagou and Frontier Chicago Chicago has been plurilingual since its inception. When it was Checagou, before Europeans and Africans arrived, local languages included those of the Miami and Illinois Native American tribes, as well as Ojibway, a trade lingua franca. This indigenous plurilingualism was transformed as the city grew slowly during the late 18th and early 19th century, then increasingly rapidly from the 1830s onward. French and English arrived with the fur traders between 1760 and 1800, while various Native Americans were compressed into a pan-Indian culture. The founder of Chicago, Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, was the first of these non-Indian arrivals. From Haiti, and of French and African descent, du Sable probably spoke not only French, but also Haitian Creole and possibly Potawatomi, the Native American language of his wife, as well (Cameron, 2006). During this early period, ‘‘most white traders. . .blended into the pan-Indian culture developing in the Great Lakes region, learning Ojibway, the lingua franca of the trade, as their Indian counterparts learned a French patois’’ (Peterson, 1995:24). With the arrival, and eventual dominance, of Anglo-Saxon fur traders and businessmen from the Eastern United States (including John Jacob Astor and his American Fur Company) in the first two decades of the 19th century, plurilingual

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interactions increased; Yankees from New England, southerners from Virginia, French-Indian me´tis (of mixed race) and Indians socialized together in the frontier space, drinking and dancing to French fiddles (Peterson, 1995). Given the trading as well as social relations, we can assume that many people used more than one of these language varieties. Moreover, pluriliteracy must also have been required for the business transactions. 2.2. Incorporated Chicago grows rapidly with (im)migrants After Chicago became an incorporated city in 1833, businessmen originally from the Eastern U.S. promoted the city as a place for self-making and ambition (Spears, 2005:8), and the city attracted migrants from elsewhere in the U.S. and immigrants from Europe. Thousands of people flocked to the city with hopes of social and economic self improvement; they came from the rural and small town Midwest, from the South (especially African Americans), and from Europe. By 1860 Chicago had 100,000 residents, and by 1890, scarcely 30 years later, this figure had grown to 1 million, of whom three quarters were foreign born. All these new Chicagoans provided labor for the city’s ‘‘rapidly expanding industrial sector’’ (Howenstine, 1996:32) and made the city ‘‘an unparalleled Babel of foreign tongues’’ (Buck, 1903:1, as cited in Cameron, 2006). During this period German, which was spoken by about 500,000 people, was by far the most dominant language and population. Polish followed German in number of speakers, and because of continuing immigration from Poland, it remains a viable language in Chicago today, unlike German. Other languages with at least 10,000 speakers in 1900 included Swedish, Bohemian, Norwegian, Yiddish, Dutch, Italian, Danish, Gaelic, Serbo-Croatian, Slovakian, and Lithuanian. Many of these languages were not only spoken, but written and read as well, in newspapers and other print media, for example German (Holli, 1995) and Lithuanian (Markelis, 2004). The Lithuanian press did not cease operating in Chicago until the late 1970 s, in fact, an indication of the tenacity with which Chicagoans maintain ethnic languages and identities, even when they live in multi-ethnic and multilingual neighborhoods. In one such mixed neighborhood, Back-of-the-Yards (located near the Stockyards), people of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds attended their own churches and sometimes schools, although they worked together and joined unions together (Kerr, 1977). Lithuanians, for example, went to Lithuanian churches, where priests urged the use of Lithuanian in the home, and children went to Lithuanian parochial schools: There were Lithuanian stores. We had a Lithuanian dairy. On the corner was a Lithuanian butcher shop. We were able to make a living, knowing only our own language. . .It wasn’t that you sent your children to Lithuanian school to become Lithuanian. You sent your children to Lithuanian school because you were Lithuanian. (Markelis, 2004:278–283) Like most immigrants to Chicago, both Lithuanians and Swedes spoke vernacular (and rural) dialects of their languages. As these dialects blended in the U.S. and added elements from English, standard Lithuanian and Swedish speakers (e.g., in newspapers) ridiculed those who code-mixed, integrating elements from English into their native tongues. Such a mixture, American Swedish, carried working class (and uneducated) connotations, and many Swedish Americans first learned Standard Swedish by reading Chicago newspapers, which were published in Standard Swedish (Isaacson, 2004). 2.3. The 20th century: new immigrants and languages In the 20th century, the ‘‘old’’ immigrant languages were augmented by those of ‘‘new’’ immigrant groups: several varieties of Spanish (Mexican and Puerto Rican, among others), of Chinese (Cantonese and Mandarin, among others), as well as Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and other world languages. Spanish speakers (primarily Mexicans), along with speakers of English varieties associated with African Americans and Appalachians, were recruited to Chicago as labor, especially after World War I diminished the supply of the European immigrants who had previously worked in the steel, meat-packing, and other industries. Thus Mexicans began to arrive in notable numbers in the 1920s, whereas Puerto Ricans arrived in the 1950s and Cubans after Castro’s victory in Cuba in 1957. Mexicans by far outnumbered all other Spanish-speaking (and other immigrant) populations in the late 20th century, making Mexican Spanish the dominant variety of the language in the city. Even Spanish speakers of non-Mexican backgrounds who live in Chicago begin to ‘‘sound Mexican’’ after some years of residence, because of the influence of this dominant variety. By 2000 there were over 1 million Mexicans in Chicago and surrounding counties (Farr, 2006), providing a demographic and linguistic parallel to the dominant Germans a century earlier. Now, however, many more public media exist, giving rise not only to non-English newspapers, but also radio stations and television channels, the most numerous ones, after English, being in Spanish (and primarily Mexican Spanish). The Spanish-speaking audience for these media is diverse. In order of population size, they include Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Guatemalans, Ecuadorians, Cubans, Colombians, Spaniards, Salvadorians, Hondurans, Peruvians, Dominicans, Argentineans, Nicaraguans, Chileans, Panamanians, Costa Ricans, Venezuelans, Bolivians, Uruguayans, and Paraguayans (Farr and Domı´nguez, 2005). Nevertheless, Mexicans comprise about two-thirds of the total number of Spanish speakers, so generally dominate the linguistic and mass media markets. No doubt most immigrant populations are heterogeneous, at least to some degree, in terms of origins and language varieties, but Spanish and Chinese are evident in published research. The first notable number of Chinese speakers in Chicago arrived during the 1950s, after the 1947 communist victory in China. This group was fairly homogeneous culturally and linguistically, being primarily Cantonese speakers from southern China. After the end of the U.S.-Vietnamese War in 1975,

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however, a second group of Chinese immigrants arrived who were mainly entrepreneurial ethnic Chinese from Vietnam. They spoke Cantonese and Mandarin, as well as Fukien, the Chinese province from which most of them had originated. The contemporary resulting mix of Chinese people in Chicago thus includes Cantonese, Indo-Chinese, Taiwanese, mainland immigrants, American-born Chinese, and racially mixed Chinese (Moy, 1995:408). They speak a range of languages and dialects, including English, and, interestingly, use two different writing systems. The traditional writing system, with thousands of complex characters, is favored by earlier immigrants and people from Taiwan, whereas the modern simplified writing system developed in the People’s Republic of China is favored by more recent immigrants from mainland China. Each writing system has its adherents, because of familiarity, but more importantly, because of political identity. In fact, those who adhere to the traditional writing system claim that the simplified system was developed by the Communist government to deliberately ‘‘cut off China’s people from thousands of years of traditional Chinese culture and values’’ (Rohsenow, 2004:338). Thus Chicago is a site of conflicted plurilingualism (actually pluriliteracy), even within what outsiders might misperceive as one population and language. 3. Contemporary plurilingualism in Chicago The 2006 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that the city of Chicago with its close-in suburbs in the surrounding Cook County was comprised of 4,899,072 persons who were five years of age and older. Twothirds of this population reported speaking only English, and the remaining third reported speaking a language other than English. Of those who speak a language other than English, however, just over half reported that they speak English ‘‘very well’’ (53%). The remaining 47% who reported that they speak English ‘‘less than very well’’ includes those who do not speak English at all, but it also includes those who do in fact speak some English, but they believe that the way they speak it is ‘‘incorrect.’’ Given prevailing language ideologies of purism (see the last section of this paper), in which only one version of a language is considered the ‘‘correct’’ version, we can infer from these statistics that, for many of these people, their English is functional, though it does not match the English of native speakers. Thus English is quite dominant in Chicago, despite the many other languages used there. Almost 60% of the non-English language users speak a variety of Spanish, and Spanish speakers comprise 20% of the total population five and older. According to the 2004 American Community Survey by the U.S. Census Bureau, of all the nonEnglish languages (from all the continents of the world), Spanish was spoken by 71%, followed distantly but significantly by Polish (6.3%), Chinese languages (3.8%), other Asian languages (3.1%), Tagalog (2.3%), languages of India – primarily Gujarati and Hindi – (2.1%), French – including Haitian Creole – (1.7%), and Arabic (1.5%). Although the percentage of people who reported speaking Asian languages was relatively small (3.1%), immigration from Asia has increased rapidly in recent decades, bringing a variety of languages, including Gujarati and Hindi, Filipino, Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Thai (Ahne, 1995:483). In spite of all this linguistic diversity, however, many immigrant Chicagoans do not interact much with other non-English speakers, especially if they belong to a demographically large and concentrated population. When such groups become bilingual, it is usually with English, rather than with other languages in Chicago. English is learned as a second language primarily over the generations as children attend school in Chicago. The strong immigrant ambience of Chicago, historically and currently, favors ethnic language and cultural maintenance (along with English), as do the ethnically based residential patterns of the city. Mexicans, for example, live largely on the South, Southwest, and far West sides of Chicago, whereas Puerto Ricans live primarily on the near Northwest side, and a mix of other Latin Americans generally live even further north (see map in Fig. 1). My own long-term ethnography of Mexicans in Chicago (Farr, 2006) showed these families, especially the adults, interacting primarily with other Mexicans, usually those from the same region in (western) Mexico. Chicago is a highly divided city: a positive aspect of this is that its neighborhoods comprise an interesting ethnic mosaic, which is promoted by the city to encourage tourism. For example, each summer the city provides a Culture Bus to take people through different ethnic neighborhoods, and various neighborhood-based ethnic events are publicized on the city’s web page. From one city block to the next, populations, languages, and public signs can change abruptly, e.g., from Spanish to Chinese. A negative aspect of the ethnic mosaic is that it segregates populations, and languages, from each other. Whereas each ethnolinguistic community is characterized by some degree of plurilingualism (for immigrants, their language/dialect of origin and English; for white and black working class communities, their vernacular and a more standard variety of English), few people are multilingual in two or more non-English languages. Thus people communicating across ethnic cultures and languages generally do so in English. Markelis notes that Lithuanians who lived in a multi-ethnic neighborhood, Back-of-the-Yards, in the early 1900s, were motivated to learn English because it would allow them to communicate with their fellow workers (and co-labor union members), who included Poles, Irish, Czechs, Russians, Mexicans, and African Americans (Markelis, 2004:284). Mixing of ethnic languages with English is a common phenomenon, even though it does not always means people who mixed their community language with English actually knew much English. Like the American Swedish and American Lithuanian of earlier immigrants, however, language use in Mexican neighborhoods mixes Spanish and English, e.g., a public sign over a bar boasts, Tenemos Via Satellite (We Have Satellite TV). Other examples of plurilingual mixing appear when Mexicans say Llámame para atras (literally Call me back), which is not the standard Spanish expression for this). This kind of literal translation from one language to another, called a calque, is common in plurilingual communities (Torres, 1997; Garcia and Menken, 2006) even when the individuals using the calque are not bilingual.

[()TD$FIG]

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Fig. 1. Chicago community areas showing Latino percentages.

The concentration of ethnic groups in Chicago within particular neighborhoods facilitates research that focuses on one ethnic group. In fact, research on language is made easier by a series of Chicago Fact Books published by a local consortium of sociologists after each U.S. Census. Each Fact Book provides basic demographic and historical information on particular neighborhoods (and often ethnic populations). These publications and others are organized by Community Areas (see map in Fig. 1) originally determined by sociologists at the University of Chicago in the 1920s and 1930s. Even the city’s web page provides a similar map of Chicago Neighborhoods. Whereas the descendants of the ‘‘old’’ immigrant populations from a century ago are now scattered in different neighborhoods and suburbs, the ‘‘new’’ immigrant groups generally live together in concentrated areas (often in the same neighborhoods vacated by the old immigrants). For example, the traditional port-ofentry neighborhood for Mexicans has been Pilsen on the near Southwest side, the name Pilsen indicating that its previous residents were Bohemian.

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The primary domain for the use of community languages is within people’s homes. Other domains include religious congregations, community organizations, and local stores. Viewing variation, and plurilingualism, not simply from one language to another, but also within such languages, allows us to realize the rich range of language varieties, in English as well as in other languages, which exist and always have existed in Chicago. Recent research on such plurilingual speech communities in Chicago (Farr, 2004) provides both historical and contemporary case studies of immigrant communities that include Greek, African (Ibo), Arabic (Palestinian), Italian, Chinese, and Japanese, as well as those already discussed here (Swedish and Lithuanian). Case studies of contemporary ethnic and class-based varieties of English in Chicago include African American Vernacular, White Vernacular, and White Middle Class (see chapters by Morgan, Moss, Lindquist, and Cho and Miller in Farr, 2004). Farr (2005) provides case studies of Mexican and Puerto Rican plurilingual language use in different societal domains, including homes, religious organizations, workplaces, and schools. 3.1. Plurilingualism among Spanish Speakers Because Spanish is now the most dominant non-English language in Chicago, I provide here research vignettes that focus on Spanish speaking populations. In the first three vignettes (Herrick, Farr, and Cohen) within-language variation (between vernacular and standard Mexican Spanish) highlights plurilingual language practices at work, in religious activities, and on the internet. Two other vignettes (Gelb and Olmedo) show plurilingual language practices using English and Spanish (and in Gelb’s study also Yoruba). The final vignette (Potowski) shows the difficulty of promoting bilingualism in a dual immersion school when the larger public linguistic market favors English. Herrick (2005) explores class-based variation within Mexican Spanish in a Chicago workplace, a plastics factory owned by Italian Americans that employs primarily Mexican workers on the plant floor. Expecting to study intercultural (mis) communication, Herrick was surprised to find no instances of misunderstanding between English and Spanish speakers in her six months of participant-observation. She did, however, document a lengthy argument between two Mexicans over appropriate word choices in Spanish for a brochure that presented the inventory control procedures of the plant. A team of four Mexicans had been chosen by management to translate the procedures written in English by the inventory control teams so that the plant’s Mexican workers could understand and use them. The continuing argument among the four workers can be traced to their different backgrounds in Mexico, and to the varieties of Mexican Spanish associated with those backgrounds. Although all four team members were from the plant floor (and not from management), two of them were college graduates from urban backgrounds in Mexico (Guadalajara and Veracruz), and two of them had limited education and were from rural backgrounds. That is, all of them were factory workers in Chicago, but in Mexico they had come from different class backgrounds. According to the man from Guadalajara, ‘‘We have hillbillies in Mexico. Rancheros. They are ignorant, uneducated. It is not their fault. They are poor. They do not have the money for education.’’ (Herrick, 2005:372). He and the other college graduate on the team kept arguing for ‘‘correct’’ Spanish in the brochure, whereas the two rural (and ranchero) Mexicans on the team argued for word choices from the language ‘‘of the people’’ on the shop floor, most of whom also were from ranchero backgrounds. Farr (2006) provides a description of the ranchero dialect of many Mexican immigrants to the U.S. This dialect emerged among rural peasants after the Spanish Conquest of Mexico, and today it retains a number of archaisms. These archaic features in word choices, verb conjugations, and some pronunciations can be heard in Mexican ranchera music, where the dialect is accepted nostalgically. When people use this dialect in daily life, however, they are denigrated by more educated Mexicans for speaking an uneducated ‘‘ranch’’ Spanish. In Chicago, when the children of immigrant rancheros go to school, they are castigated by their Spanish teachers for speaking a poor Spanish, un español ranchereado (a ‘‘ranchified’’ Spanish). As with other denigrated dialects, however, this one continues to be meaningful to its speakers, and it is alive and well not only in rural Mexico, but also in Chicago, among the hundreds of thousands of Mexicans there. It can be heard in music that flows from stores and in conversations on the streets in Mexican neighborhoods, and it can be seen in the written prayers that comprise one activity of the Charismatic prayer circle in particular Catholic parishes that some Mexican women participate in (Guerra and Farr, 2002). In the following prayer, for example, one woman writes:

Original Spanish

English translation

Padre Yave´

Father Yahweh

Te pido que redames [derrames]

I ask that you pour

Tus gracias el dia del

your grace the day of the

Vautismo en el Espiritu

baptism in the Holy

Santo en tus hijos

Spirit over your children

Que estamos en las

who are in the

Claces de Evangelisacio´n

classes of Evangelization

In the second line, the ranchero dialect word redames is used instead of its Standard Spanish counterpart, derrames (pour out). In the fourth line, a v is written instead of b for the word bautismo (baptism), reflecting its pronunciation rather than the

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standard spelling. In the last line, claces is written instead of the standard clases (both are pronounced as /s/) and Evangelisacio´n is written instead of the standard Evangelizacio´n (again both are pronounced as /s/). Since this was written for a prayer circle, however, and not in school, the writer was not admonished for these (oral) vernacular language features. In fact, the limited education she received (only two years of primary school in Mexico), which did not teach her to ‘‘correct’’ these features, also provided a sufficient base for her to write fluently and thus participate fully in these religious (and literacy) activities. Cohen (2005) studied the language and literacy practices of Mexican high school girls at a South side high school that was comprised of roughly half Mexicans and half African Americans. The enduring influence of a perceived black-white racial dichotomy in the United States is evidenced in a comment by an African American teacher at this high school, who referred to the Mexican students as ‘‘the white kids.’’ In fact, the two populations of students did not interact much, and the Mexican girls in particular were constrained by their families in terms of mobility outside of their homes. One way in which these girls were able to ‘‘get out of the house’’ without leaving home was to spend time on the Internet, especially in chat rooms that used Spanish, where they played with their age and regional identities. One girl developed a three-year relationship with an out-of-town boyfriend in a rockero chat room that progressed from online to telephone to in-person communication. Her attempt to join another chat room, one based in Mexico City, was less successful, however. Although she carefully researched residential neighborhoods in Mexico City online so that she could write about landmarks in the area in order to pass as someone local, she ultimately was denied access to the chat room because of her Spanish use. The girls did not know Mexico City slang terms and instead used Chicago Spanish lexical items. Although the girls ‘‘strongly identified as Mexicans, knowledgeable about Mexican culture and the Spanish language. . .the Internet brought them into contact with different aspects of Mexican culture than they encountered through their family connections alone, which tended to limit them to the ranchos’’ from which their parents had immigrated (Cohen, 2005:202). As in Herrick’s study, identities and language use within Mexican Spanish distinguishes urban educated Mexicans from rural rancheros. Gelb (2005) explores plurilingualism with multiple languages in a workplace that is also a religious site—a botánica, a store that sells religious items for spiritual assistance. This particular botánica is associated with the Santeria religion, which originated in Nigeria and was transported to Cuba via the slave trade, where it blended with elements of Catholicism. Today this syncretic religion is practiced by some Cubans and Puerto Ricans in Chicago (and elsewhere in the U.S.). The owner of this particular store is a santera (priestess) who helps people heal spiritually through rituals and divination that utilize both Yoruba, a Nigerian language, and Spanish. In Gelb’s study, English was added to this mix, as part of his becoming a santero (priest) under the guidance of this santera, his madrina (godmother). The syncretic blend of Catholicism and the original Yoruba religion is paralleled by the syncretic language use in religious rituals and training. For example, ocha is a Hispanicized Yoruba term for orisha (saint), and ‘‘making the ocha’’ is synonymous with ‘‘making the saint,’’ or becoming a santero or santera (Gelb, 2005:348, n. 13). Both Olmedo (2005) and Potowski (2005) explored children’s developing bilingualism in a dual-language immersion elementary school. Whereas Olmedo’s study shows plurilingual language practices among the children, Potowski’s shows an unexpected favoring of English by the children even during class periods when Spanish is mandated (and even among native speakers of Spanish). Dual immersion has become a favored model of bilingual education, since studies show that students in dual immersion not only develop bilingual proficiency, but they also reach levels of academic achievement higher than local norms (Potowski, 2005:157–158). This particular dual immersion school is a public magnet school (enrollment is voluntary) that was founded by parents in 1975, and it is one of the oldest dual immersion schools in the United States. Curriculum begins in Kindergarten with instructional time 80% in Spanish and 20% in English, with increasing percentages of English until both languages reach 50% by grades 7 and 8. Ideally, the student population would be 50% native English speakers and 50% native Spanish speakers, but at the time of these studies 65% of the children were Hispanic, 19% were European American, and 14% were African American. All of these children were integrated in the classrooms, since a goal of dual immersion is for children to learn each other’s languages not only through formal instruction, but also through informal interaction with each other across languages. Such second language learning ideally develops both metalinguistic and metacommunicative awareness, qualities that facilitate education and learning more generally. Olmedo documented increasing levels of both metalinguistic and meta-communicative awareness in the kindergartners at this school, especially as they became language mediators who assessed their peers’ comprehension as well as contextual cues and then facilitated communication. That is, these children became quite proficient at translating for each other when they perceived a classmate did not understand a particular utterance in one of the languages. Olmedo termed this ‘‘the bilingual echo,’’ since a literal echo would be an exact repetition of an utterance, whereas these children wereTranslating or paraphrasing the message, sometimes using code-switching.Scaffolding the message in one of both languages by giving both linguistic and paralinguistic cues.Modeling the appropriate behavior or providing a response to the request (Olmedo, 2005:144).It is interesting to note the plurilingual practices the children used in their bilingual echoes, including codeswitching, as they demonstrated metalinguistic and meta-communicative abilities. Potowski’s (2005) study provides a cautionary note about schooling dedicated to developing bilingualism. Dual language immersion schools are designed so that students have much opportunity to 1) learn academic content in two languages, and 2) interact with native speakers of both languages, thus becoming fluent bilinguals both academically and socially. The school curriculum provides the structure for learning academic content in two languages and integrates native speakers of both languages in each classroom to encourage informal second language learning. Yet the former goal is more easily met than the latter. Potowski’s study of the fifth grade at this school, taught by a fluent bilingual Mexican-origin teacher who kept

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a brisk pace, showed that most informal interaction among the students was in English. Moreover, due to the influence of standardized tests in English, classroom instruction was in Spanish only 40–50% of the week. Potowski’s audio and video recordings of Spanish instruction (in Language Arts and Social Studies) over a period of five months showed that students managed to use Spanish only 56% of the time, and this was during instruction in which they should have used it 100% of the time. This was true even though the majority of the students in this classroom, as in the school, were monolingual or bilingual native Spanish speakers. This finding was particularly discouraging, since one goal of the school was for native Spanish speakers to maintain their heritage language and to develop literacy in it. Nevertheless, such students became dominant in English by the upper grades of the school. Students did develop oral and written fluency in both languages, but English clearly prevailed, even in informal interaction. Potowski concludes that This preference for English suggests that there was ‘leakage’ (Freeman, 1998) into the classroom of the dominant language patterns in the wider community. That is, in spite of the school’s goals of using and valuing Spanish and English equally within the building, practices of English dominance outside the building found their way into the school. (Potowski, 2005:179) Thus even a powerful institution such as school is not immune to larger societal pressures and prevailing language ideologies. In this model dual immersion school, Spanish was indeed treated as important and of high value by teachers and administrators, according to the official goals and policy of the school. Yet ultimately the children made language choices that invested more heavily in English than in Spanish. 4. Language policies Partly because of its plurilingual reality, both historically and currently, language policies in Chicago and the state of Illinois are more tolerant of (or perhaps are simply more pragmatic about) ethnolinguistic diversity than some other areas of the U.S. For example, as part of recent U.S.-wide anti-immigrant fervor, both California and Arizona enacted laws against bilingual education, whereas Illinois, in 1998, only limited it to three years. This tolerance, or perhaps ambivalence, is reflected in the history of language policy in Illinois, which has alternated between acceptance of plurilingualism and attempts to restrict non-English language use. Illinois, and Chicago, always have had non-English-speaking populations with which the government has had to contend, and even now voter registration notices, sent through the mail, contain multiple languages (my own included English, Spanish, Russian, and Chinese). Yet English is clearly dominant in public schools and governmental institutions (Judd, 2004). In early Illinois history, French and English vied for dominance. French courts and schools were established in some towns during the 1790s, but by the time Illinois was part of the U.S. Northwest Territory, English was dominant. The first constitution of Illinois in 1818 does not specify an official language, but an 1845 School Law mandated English as the medium of instruction, indicating that other languages were probably being used in public schools. Certainly, in other states in the Great Lakes region (e.g., Ohio and Wisconsin), public education was conducted in German in some heavily German areas (Kloss, 1998[1977]). A new Illinois constitution in 1848 did designate English for all ‘‘official writings’’ and for conducting, preserving, and publishing ‘‘Executive, Legislative, and Judicial proceedings,’’ and yet, at the same time, the legislature decreed that this new constitution be published and disseminated in German, but not in ‘‘Irish’’ or French (Judd, 2004:36). The 1870 Constitution reaffirmed the dominance of English, but allowed oral testimony and documentary evidence to be presented in other languages. In addition, this new Constitution was printed in English, German, French, and ‘‘Scandinavian,’’ but not (by decision) in Italian (Baron, 1990:16). Chicago, with proportionately more non-English speakers than the rest of Illinois, passed laws that were even more favorable to non-English speakers—and then passed laws against them. The City Council allowed the publication of laws, proceedings, and public notices in both English and German newspapers in 1863, and even required such publication in 1867. By the 1880s, however, anti-German (and anti-Catholic) laws, judicial decisions, and school policies thrived, only to be reversed in the 1890s (Judd, 2004). As has been welldocumented, this history of ambivalence toward linguistic diversity, and in particular toward German, in Chicago, in Illinois, and in the wider U.S., came to an abrupt end with World War I, as the U.S. joined the Allies in the war against Germany. Linguistic tolerance disappeared not only in official government language policies, but also in people’s daily lives. Speaking German made one’s citizenship and loyalty suspect, and some German immigrants in Cincinnati, Ohio were interned (but many fewer than the Japanese in California). No one wanted to be or speak German, so families shifted to English and even anglicized their names to obscure their German origins (Loebke, 1974). The map in Fig. 2 shows nevertheless how much of the U.S. population claims German origins (15% in the 2000 Census). These percentages are probably underestimated, since over the generations many families who anglicized their names and shed German ethnic identities either through intermarriage or assimilation are now unaware of these origins. This historical experience no doubt contributes heavily to the maintenance of language ideologies that favor English monolingualism today. Thus in spite of abundant plurilingualism in the history, and in the contemporary reality, of Chicago, dominant language ideologies valorize monolingualism. Although the city government publicizes its cultural diversity to promote tourism, linguistic diversity is not a prominent aspect of this multiculturalism. Similarly, the Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual publicly states its commitment to multicultural education, yet mentions only once the role of language in cultural identity. Thus while a multicultural ideology is promoted explicitly in public policy, a multilingual ideology is not. The Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual, Section 102.2 (Multicultural Education and Diversity) states:

[()TD$FIG]

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Fig. 2. German-American heritage map.

The Board of Education of the City of Chicago is committed to educational excellence and equity for all students. This commitment is for all, but it is especially directed toward educational equity for students of every race, creed, color, national origin, gender, and including students with disabilities. The Board believes that this commitment requires the establishment of a policy on multicultural education and diversity. (Board Report 91-1023-PO1) After this the manual continues by defining what multicultural education is and what it involves as an approach to teaching and learning. It also notes that the Board supports each school’s right to ‘‘an African-centered or other ethnicallycentered curriculum as an approach which reflects this policy.’’ Yet in the next section of this report, which lists five specific aspects of multicultural education to which the Board is committed, language is mentioned only once (although it is first of the five): The Board of Education of the City of Chicago–acknowledges that cultural identity is inseparable from language and encourages all staff to affirm the importance of respecting the language of each student, with second language proficiency being a desirable goal and a reflection of a precious cultural heritage;Clearly, although non-English languages (and no mention is made of African American or other vernacular English varieties) are to be respected, they are also relegated to ‘‘second language’’ status. That is, English is presumed to be, or become, students’ ‘‘first’’ language, and non-English languages are expected to be, or become, second languages. In reality, of course, non-English community languages are many students’ first languages, and English, which they learn in school, their second language. Thus students are expected to gain English proficiency in school, but their ‘‘second language proficiency’’ functions only as an emblem of ‘‘a precious cultural heritage’’ (and will not be developed in school). There is no mention of a commitment to bilingualism and biliteracy, or of the advantages this might bring to the students and to Chicago, as the city continues to transform itself from a primarily industrial economy to a primarily service economy in an increasingly globalized world. A recent grass-roots initiative in Chicago, in fact, has proposed a language policy that supports rather than ignores or restricts non-English languages in Chicago: MULTILINGUAL CHICAGO is a grassroots initiative launched in 2005 to embrace and value the more than one hundred languages, along with English, spoken by more than a half a million citizens that make Chicago a multilingual city. Our mission is to recognize and promote the many languages spoken in our city. In Chicago, multilingualism equips our citizens with confidence and better inter-personal and social communication skills. In addition, the ability to speak two or more languages is a gift through which individuals in Chicago demonstrate tolerance and service to others. Our goal is to celebrate the people who possess this invaluable resource: LANGUAGES.

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We, as representatives of ethnic organizations, members of community groups and educators, strongly believe that using other languages in addition to English brings many benefits to the City of Chicago, such as:  Advancing local and international commerce;  Increasing scientific and cultural creativity  Contributing to global collaboration and understanding  Reinforcing family and community values;  Fostering communication among our diverse neighborhoods;  Insuring effective services in the areas of national security, social services, schools, medical facilities, and other professional venues. We feel proud to be a part of a multilingual city CHICAGO. (http://multilingualchicago.org/About) This group recently achieved a legislative success: on March 14, 2007, the Chicago City Council unanimously approved the Multilingual Chicago resolution presented by Alderman Ray Suarez, who represents the 31st Ward, a heavily Mexican community area (http://multilingualchicago.org/resolution). Currently, the website provides news, information, resources, and a forum for discussion of multilingual issues for interested users. These two examples, from the Chicago Board of Education and from the Multilingual Chicago Initiative, illustrate the ongoing tension between plurilingualism and monoglot standard English. They are only the most recent examples of the back-and-forth movement in the history of Illinois language policy that, on the one hand, recognizes the existence of other languages, and, on the other hand, establishes English as the official language of schools, government and other public institutions (Judd, 2004). Although government institutions continue to print materials and grant licensure in other languages, as well as provide bilingual education, these are pragmatic policies that tolerate but do not promote linguistic diversity. Bilingual education, for example, is limited and transitional, with the goal of moving students into entirely English instruction, without any concomitant effort to develop oral or literate competence in Chicago’s many community languages. Although the Board of Education policy acknowledges community languages as ‘‘a reflection of a precious cultural heritage,’’ it views them as ‘‘second’’ languages and does not promote the development of oral and literate competence in these languages among their speakers. 5. Language ideologies English, then, is the unquestioned official and dominant language in Chicago and Illinois. Yet if this is so, then why are there repeated efforts over time to restrict the use of non-English languages, as though they threatened the status of English? And, similarly, why are vernacular varieties (of English, Spanish, etc.) intensely repudiated and denied, rather than simply being acknowledged as linguistically different in accord with research findings? In other words, why are there persisting efforts to promote a monoglot standard English? Milroy and Milroy (1991) suggest that standard English is not an actual variety of English; rather, it is an abstract idea, an ideology that can be traced primarily to the 18th century. Certainly extant regional and social variation in spoken English belies the reality of an empirically verifiable, codified standard, and even written English, to which a standard can be said to apply more appropriately, shows much variation (Biber, 1988). Why then does a belief in a standard persist, and why is it so widespread among speakers, even among those who admittedly do not speak according to its ‘‘rules?’’ Bauman and Briggs (2003) argue persuasively that such thinking is deeply embedded in our social, cultural, political, and linguistic history and that it is not due to a single language ideology. Instead they identify ‘‘a shifting and dynamic juxtaposition of contradictory but widely accepted practices of purification and hybridization that has proven very powerful’’ (Bauman and Briggs, 2003:303). They trace these ideological processes to Locke and Herder respectively: On the one hand, purification practices cast language as a referential, bounded, stable, and homogeneous code whose job is to permit the exchange of information and the achievement of mutual comprehension. The echo of Locke’s voice looms large here in the notion that the lack of a fixed, stable code makes it impossible for people to think clearly or understand one another, thereby precluding the achievement of consensus and rationality in political processes and raising the specter of civil war. . .On the other hand, Herder’s legacy lies at the heart of the one-nation-equals-one-language argument, the notion that a common language is the social glue that binds a nation together, engenders a unique and shared culture, and is also requisite to a viable democratic state. (Bauman and Briggs, 2003:302) A purified language code, then, could be viewed as autonomous and decontextualized, ‘‘plain English’’ stripped of indirect allusions (Farr, 1993) that is suitable for public use in global institutions, in contrast to the traditional, local languages of ‘‘the folk’’ romanticized by Herder a century after Locke. Herder’s notion was taken up as the basis for national identity, and although it seems contradictory to Locke’s purist notions of a stable and rational code, together these ideologies provided the dichotomous contrast between modernity and tradition (or pre-modernity) that persists today. Thus ‘‘standard English’’ becomes an emblem of national identity necessary for democracy, whereas vernacular varieties, e.g. African American Vernacular English or the rural ranchero Spanish of Mexican immigrants, are seen as non-modern, irrational language that blocks full participation in democratic processes.

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Key here were hybridizing processes between language and society that linked standard speech with education, rationality and higher social class, and vernacular speech with lack of modern education, lower social class and irrationality that threatened the economic and political order. This historical analysis of the ideological processes that have formed deeply held attitudes toward language and society certainly explain the intensity of public controversies that erupted around Ebonics and the Oakland Board of Education in 1996 and the English-only movement of recent decades in the U.S. (Bauman and Briggs, 2003:303–305). Linguists’ claims of the patterned nature (the ‘‘purism’’) of vernacular language varieties confront deeply held beliefs that only standard languages are systematically organized, ‘‘pure,’’ effectively communicative, and appropriate for the public sphere. As Silverstein (1996) notes, since monoglot standard English is a cultural emblem, these issues are not simply linguistic ones. If ‘‘standard’’ ways of speaking can be learned through education and lead to fuller citizenship and upward mobility, why then do we all not speak a monoglot standard of the global market? ‘‘Folk’’ ways of speaking persist, formal education notwithstanding, because local markets provide sites in which these ways of speaking are valued. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet explain: The right linguistic variety can transform an otherwise ‘‘worthless’’ utterance into one that may command attention in powerful circles. Like the right friends, clothes, manners, haircuts and automobiles, the ‘‘right’’ linguistic variety can facilitate access to positions and situations of societal power and the ‘‘wrong’’ variety can block such access. At the same time, although people who speak like Queen Elizabeth or like a U.S. network newscaster may be helped thereby to gain access to the hall of global power, they will have trouble gaining access and trust in a poor community, or participating in a group of hip-hoppers or valley girls. And while each of these communities may not command global power, prestige or wealth, they command a variety of social and material resources that may be of great value to many. Every linguistic variety, in other words, has positive symbolic value in its own community. (Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003:271, emphasis added) 6. Conclusion The persistence of plurilingual language practices in the context of deeply held, often dominant language ideologies that valorize a monoglot standard English can be explained with the concept of opposed linguistic markets. Whereas vernacular ways of speaking comprise the symbolic capital of local linguistic markets, (standard) English is the symbolic capital of global, public institutions and is promoted by public policy. As Clyne (2005) argues for Australia, extant linguistic diversity in the U.S. can provide a foundation for developing the social, cultural, cognitive, economic, and political benefits of knowing more than one language. Unfortunately, such benefits are forestalled by the ‘‘monolingual mindset’’ (Clyne, 2005:xi) that has resulted from complex historical and ideological processes impinging on language. Examining Chicago’s deep plurilingual ambience, however, shows that such linguistic hegemony is not totalistic, that in fact there are ‘‘arenas of power and authority that lie outside the hegemony and that may serve as both images of and points of leverage for alternative arrangements’’ (Ortner, 1996:172). References Ahne, Joseph, 1995. Koreans of Chicago: the new entrepreneurial immigrants. In: Holli, Melvin G., Jones, Peter d’A. (Eds.), Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, pp. 463–500. Baron, Dennis, 1990. The legal status of English in Illinois: case study of a multilingual state. In: Harvey, A., Daniels, (Eds.), Not Only English: Affirming America’s Multilingual Heritage. National Council of Teachers of English, Urbana, Illinois, pp. 13–26. Bauman, Richard, Briggs, L. Charles, 2003. Voices of Modernity: Language Ideologies and the Politics of Inequality. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Biber, Douglas, 1988. Variation across Speech and Writing. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Blommaert, Jan, 2006. Language policy and national identity. In: Ricento, Thomas (Ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 238–254. Bourdieu, Pierre, 1977. The economics of linguistic exchanges. Social Science Information 16 (6), 645–668. Buck, Carl Darling, 1903. A sketch of the linguistic conditions of Chicago. Cameron, Richard, 2006. Words of the windy city (Chicago, IL). In: Wolfram, Walt, Ward, Ben (Eds.), American Voices: How Dialects Differ from Coast to Coast. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 113–117. Chicago Fact Book Consortium, 1995. Local community fact book: Chicago metropolitan area 1990. University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago. Chicago Public Schools Policy Manual, 1991. Multicultural education and diversity, Section 102.2, Board Report 91-1023-PO1, adopted October 23, 1991. Clyne, Michael, 2003. Dynamics of Language Contact: English and Immigrant Languages. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Clyne, Michael, 2005. Australia’s Language Potential. University of New South Wales Press, Sydney. Cohen, Jennifer, 2005. Global links from the post-industrial heartland: language, internet use, and identity development among U.S.-born Mexican high school girls. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 187–215. Collins, James, Blot, Richard K., 2003. Literacy and Literacies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Eckert, Penelope, McConnell-Ginet, Sally, 2003. Language and Gender. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Farr, Marcia (Ed.), 2004. Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Farr, Marcia (Ed.), 2005. Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. Farr, Marcia, 2006. Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Community. University of Texas Press, Austin. Farr, Marcia, Domı´nguez Barajas, Elias, 2005. Latinos and diversity in a global city: language and identity at home, school, church, and work. In: Farr, M. (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 3–32. Freeman, Rebecca D., 1998. Bilingual Education and Social Change. Multilingual Matters, Clevedon, England. Garcia, Ofelia, Menken, Kate, 2006. The English of Latinos from a plurilingual transcultural angle: implications for assessment and schools. In: Nero, Shondel (Ed.), Dialects, Englishes, Creoles, and Education. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 167–184. Gelb, Richard G., 2005. The magic of verbal art: Juanita’s Santerı´a Initiation. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 323–349.

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Guerra, Juan, Farr, Marcia, 2002. Writing on the margins: the spiritual and autobiographical discourse of two mexicanas in Chicago. In: Hull, Glenda A.,Schultz, Katherine (Eds.), School’s Out! Bridging Out-of-school Literacies with Classroom Practices Teachers College Press, New York, pp. 96–123. Gumperz, John J., 1982. Discourse Strategies. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Herrick, Jeanne W., 2005. What it means to speak the same language: an ethnolinguistic study of workplace communication. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 351–377. Howenstine, Erick, 1996. Ethnic change and segregation in Chicago. In: Roseman, Curtis C., Laux, Hans-Dieter, Thieme, Gunter (Eds.), EthniCity: Geographic Perspectives on Ethnic Change in Modern Cities. Rowman & Littlefield, New York, pp. 31–49. Holli, Melvin G., 1995. German Chicago. In: Holli, Melvin G., Jones, Peter D’A. (Eds.), Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. fourth edition. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, pp. 93–109. Isaacson, Carl, 2004. They did not forget their Swedish: class markers in the Swedish American community. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 223–249. Judd, Elliot, 2004. Language policy in Illinois. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 223–249. Kloss, Heinz, 1998 [1977]. The American Bilingual Tradition. Center for Applied Linguistics and Delta Systems, Washington, D.C. and McHenry, IL. Markelis, Daiva, 2004. Lithuanian and English language use among early twentieth century Lithuanian immigrants in Chicago. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 275–293. Milroy, James, Milroy, Lesley, 1991. Authority in Language: Investigating Standard English, third edition. Routledge, London. Moy, Susan, 1995. The Chinese in Chicago. In: Holli, Melvin G., Jones, Peter D’A. (Eds.), Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, pp. 378–408. Multilingual Chicago Initiative. About Us. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from http://multilingualchicago.org/About. Multilingual Chicago Initiative. Resolution. Retrieved February 2, 2010 from http://multilingualchicago.org/resolution. Myers-Scotton, Carol, 1993. Social Motivations for Codeswitching: Evidence from Africa. Clarendon Press, Oxford. Olmedo, Irma, 2005. The bilingual echo: children as language mediators in a dual-language school. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 135–155. Ortner, B. Sherry, 1996. Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Beacon Press, Boston. Peterson, Jacqueline, 1995. The founding fathers: the absorption of French-Indian Chicago, 1816–1837. In: Holli, Melvin G., Jones, Peter D’A. (Eds.), Ethnic Chicago: A Multicultural Portrait. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, pp. 17–56. Potowski, Kim, 2005. Latino children’s Spanish use in a Chicago dual-immersion classroom. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 157–185. Rohsenow, John S., 2004. Chinese language use in Chicagoland. In: Farr, Marcia (Ed.), Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ, pp. 223–249. Silverstein, Michael, 1996. Monoglot ‘‘standard’’ in America: Standardization and metaphors of linguistic hegemony. In: Brennais, Donald, Macauley, Ronald K.S. (Eds.), The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology. Westview Press, Boulder, CO, pp. 284–306. Spears, Timothy B., 2005. Chicago Dreaming: Midwesterners and the City, 1871–1919. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Torres, Lourdes, 1997. Puerto Rican Discourse. Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. U.S. Census Bureau, 2004. Non-English languages in Cook County, Illinois, American Community Survey 2004. Retrieved January 24, 2006 from http:// factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau, 2006. Selected characteristics of the native and foreign-born populations, American Community Survey 2006. Retrieved February 22, 2008, from http://factfinder.census.gov. U.S. Census Bureau, 2006. Characteristics of people by language spoken at home, American Community Survey 2006. Retrieved February 22, 2008, from http://factfinder.census.gov/. Marcia Farr is a linguistic anthropologist who studies language and literacy practices in their social, cultural, and transnational contexts. Her long-term study of Mexican transnational families showed how they construct ranchero Mexican personhood and identity in daily speech (Rancheros in Chicagoacán: Language and Identity in a Transnational Community, University of Texas Press, 2006). Three edited books also represent her work, along with that of her graduate students and colleagues (Ethnolinguistic Chicago: Language and Literacy in the City’s Neighborhoods, Erlbaum, 2004; Latino Language and Literacy in Ethnolinguistic Chicago, Erlbaum, 2005; and Ethnolinguistic Diversity and Education: Language, Literacy, and Culture, Routledge/Taylor-Francis, 2009).