Third border talk: intersubjectivity, power negotiation and the making of race in Spanish language classrooms

Abstract

Relying on narrative analysis, this article examines a case in which largely White, monolingual college students of basic level Spanish position themselves as linguistic subjects in relation to the target language. Further, in consideration of this issue's theme, in tandem with Bucholtz and Hall's (2004) work on intersubjectivity, I submit Davis's (2000) theory of the third border as an organizing tool for understanding how students construct and reaffirm race and linguistic identities within and outside of classroom walls. The application of my empirical data to Davis develops from a recent discussion contrasting students from the US Southwest with that of a private, East coast institution (Pomerantz and Schwartz 2011), of which talk about borders, boundedness and larger dynamics persist as a central theme.