News

Next Lang visiting professor to focus on bilingualism

In print | March 5, 2009

Ana Celia Zentella, Professor Emeritus of Ethnic Studies at U.C. San Diego, was named next year’s Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change. A distinguished linguist, Zentella specializes in bilingualism and is one of the foremost scholars of what she has named “anthro-political linguistics,” an area of linguistics that studies the issues people are confronted with when making choices about language.

Zentella will be teaching a class in the fall of 2009 that, she said in an e-mail, will be about language, race and ethnic identity, “highlight[ing] the issues raised by the linguistic heritage of the USA, and its increasing linguistic diversity.” In the spring she will be teaching a seminar either on how Spanish and English interact, delving into recent debates about Spanglish, or possibly on “loss and revitalization in bilingual communities” because of her recent book about San Diego multilingualism.

Zentella acknowledges that the move won’t be easy. She will have to finish her sociolinguistic ethnography research at a high school on the border with Mexico, take a leave from some committees and boards, and communicate long-distance with students who are finishing M.A. theses and Ph.D. dissertations.

Leaving San Diego won’t be easy, either.

“It took a lot to get me to leave the warm beaches and good Mexican food in my San Diego neighborhood,” she said. “But Swarthmore’s history of commitment to issues of social justice is important.”

She mentioned how her friend’s father was accepted to Swarthmore when he fled Germany during WWII and also how her friends in the Peacemakers “always spoke highly of [Swarthmore’s] archives.”

“When I was approached about the Lang professorship, my first question concerned the diversity of the student body, and I was happy to learn that Swarthmore has been very successful attracting African-American students and students of working-class backgrounds—much more so than UCSD,” she said. “It is always a personal joy to teach students who remind me of me when I was young.”

In realizing that students here are also interested in her anthro-political linguistics, Zentella said that she’s “anxious to find students who will help me with several research projects.”
Linguistics Professor Donna Jo Napoli said that she “would love to see a volume of work by Swarthmore students edited by Ana Celia … I would urge anyone interested to take advantage of the fact she’ll be here.”

Napoli was the Swarthmore faculty member who nominated Zentella for the position.

“Ana Celia is one of the most energetic scholars I know, with a passionate commitment to the communities she studies,” said Napoli. “She recognizes the moral and ethical responsibilities that studying an oppressed minority brings — and accepts those responsibilities eagerly. She is herself Puerto Rican, from a borough of New York City, and she knows the journey personally.”

Although Napoli nominated Zentella, the sociology/anthropology and education departments also
endorsed it.

“She asks what the social issues are facing such people because of their language choices/inheritance,” Napoli said in an e-mail. “Some of these choices involve education, medical care, access to housing and civil rights in general. She has pointed out the existence and dangers of linguistic profiling.”

Zentella is also one of the leading voices on bilingual education in America, arguing strongly against English-only movements. Her book “Growing Up Bilingual: Puerto Rican children in New York” won the Book Prize of the British Association of Applied Linguistics, and the Book Award of the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists of the American Anthropology Association.

Napoli’s current class, Oral and Written Language, which is cross-listed with education, has focused on some of Zentella’s ideas while studying bilingual texts for early readers. While studying Spanglish, Associate Professor K. David Harrison’s first-year-seminar Linguistic Underpinnings of Racism and Bias read a chapter from her aforementioned book. In it, Zentella explores why bilingual children in New York City intricately switch between Spanish and English. Harrison said in an e-mail that Zentella has “done probably the most thorough study of New York Spanglish and has demonstrated that it is a complex, unique language that also constructs a unique identity for its speakers.”

Zentella’s knowledge of Harrison’s seminar played a part in accepting the professorship, she said. “When I see that linguistics is offering a course on the linguistic underpinnings of racism, I figure that’s the place for me.”

Aurin Agramonte ’12, who is from the Bronx, New York, said that she was unsure how she felt about her own use of Spanglish — speaking just Spanish to her parents but often English to other people in the community — before reading Zentella in Harrison’s seminar.

“I was at a point where I felt bad that I only spoke Spanglish,” she said. “I never really understood how I used it … I felt like I was betraying my heritage.” But after reading Zentella’s analysis of Spanglish’s complexity, Agramonte said that she has become “less self-conscious,” realizing that Spanglish is both complex and inclusive. “[Zentella’s work] validated the fact that Spanglish is in a sense a language,” said Agramonte. “We’ve established a new way of speaking to each other … We are able to include the whole community.”

Agramonte said that she is definitely interested in meeting with Zentella to further discuss her research. Agramonte added that she looks forward to possibly enrolling in one of Zentella’s classes.