Dual‐Language Books as a Red Herring: Exposing Language Use and Ideologies

Abstract

AbstractDual‐language books (DLBs) are often seen as positive resources for biliteracy development, but most contain implicit messages about the status of the languages used. Through a large content analysis of 100 dual‐language children’s books (DLCBs), across 10 publishing companies, the authors developed a linguistic typology of DLBs in order to expose messages of linguistic hierarchy. In this article, educators are provided a lens for understanding the hegemony of English in DLBs, provided with exemplars of community‐based biliteracy development via holistic language use and translanguaging in DLCBs, and invited into a discussion on the vulnerability and compassion that would be required for creating more equity and effectiveness in biliteracy development.