Asymmetrical listening practices and hegemonic aurality in a dual‐language kindergarten classroom

Abstract

AbstractListening practices among kindergarteners in a two‐way bilingual elementary school reveal how asymmetries between incoming “English speakers” and “Spanish speakers” shape children's emerging language attitudes. My ethnographic study of a US Midwestern public school (2013–2017) shows that objectifying the two languages was a central project of the school that children embraced. This metapragmatic understanding is most evident in their listening, as opposed to speaking, practices. I argue that a hegemonic aurality privileging English and monolingualism emerges in students' differential attunements to language as sounds or as a communicative code, thereby reinforcing the social dominance of English monolingualism over Spanish bilingualism.