Mid-aged Latin@s in the U.S. Midwest narrating sustained bilingualism through figured worlds of bilingualism research, professionalization, and advocacy

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing on research interviews conducted as part of a larger study of bilingualism, we investigated how mid-aged Latin@ migrants—a group that has received little empirical attention in applied linguistics—interpret their ongoing cultivation of their own Spanish-English bilingualism at this stage of their personal and professional lives. We viewed our participants as visitors to a figured world of bilingualism research, a reflexive framing that considers how the interplay of emic and etic perspectives shapes our understanding of sustained bilingualism. We examined narratives of study participants’ lived experiences as bilinguals in the Midwestern United States and the contradictions that emerged in their stories, particularly those concerning home language use and leveraging bilingualism in professional settings. We found that contradictions emerged when participants ‘broke away’ from the research frame and agentively pivoted to more personally meaningful interpretative frames where they could authoritatively narrate their experiences without metalanguage or overt discussion of language choices and attitudes. We argue that considering the multiple perspectives from which narratives are constructed and interpreted—including our own values and assumptions as bilingualism researchers—offers a more nuanced view of our participants’ bilingual trajectories.