Toward language justice: systemic dilemmas in the implementation of interpreting services in a California school district

ABSTRACTThis ethnographic study applies a language justice (LJ) lens to the interpreting services provided to linguistically-minoritized families in a California school district. The LJ approach emerged out of immigrant rights organizing in the U.S. Southeast, and can be defined as systematic fair treatment of people of all linguistic backgrounds. In this paper, we examine how educators and parents envisioned LJ, along with systemic dilemmas highlighted by our ethnographic research on the district’s efforts to improve interpreting services. In our analysis, these efforts have necessarily made visible long-standing systemic inequities in the school district (of race, gender, and social class) which intersect with language, especially the crucial but undervalued role of bilingual staff members. Although we found discrepancies between the district’s LJ discourse and enactment of interpreting services, we note that these unfulfilled potentials provide fruitful space for praxis: reflection, analysis, and further collaborative efforts. AcknowledgementWe thank Harvey Qiu, Zoey Liu, Cari Ito, and Yeji Fitzgerald who assisted with the multilingual interviews.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.Notes1. Interpreting is one component of language services, provided to assist individuals who lack proficiency in dominant societal languages to access information, social assistance, and institutional participation (Bancroft, Citation2015).2. The LJ movement has also supported efforts toward linguistic equity in fields such as bilingual education.3. Author Menard-Warwick had attended the same meeting four years earlier, invited by Spanish-speaking parent activists, and observed the interpreting provided for them.4. The administrator we interviewed primarily oversaw language instruction, and had limited time to work on language services.Additional informationFundingThis study was partially funded by a grant from the Center for Regional Change at University of California Davis.