CRITICAL INQUIRY IN LANGUAGE STUDIES, 4(1), 35--65

Copyright © 2007, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

FROM IDENTITY TO COMMODITY: IDEOLOGIES OF

SPANISH IN HERITAGE LANGUAGE TEXTBOOKS

JENNIFER LEEMAN
George Mason University, Fairax, Virginia

GLENN MARTÍNEZ
The University of Texas Pan American, Edinburg, Texas

This article presents a critical analysis of language ideologies in the instruc-

tional discourse of Spanish for heritage speakers in the United States. We focus
on the discourse present in prefaces and introductions to Spanish for heritage
speakers textbooks published between 1970 and 2000. Whereas previous re-
search on language ideologies in heritage language instruction has tended to
focus on standard language ideologies, in our analysis we broaden the perspec-
tive to examine a wider range of ideologies that are part of an institutionally
entrenched and socially pervasive politics of knowledge. Our analysis revealed
that the intertextual discourse emerging in Spanish Heritage Language (SHL)
textbooks correlates with broader ideologies regarding the societal role of the uni-
versity, the positioning of ethnic studies programs, and the portrayal of cultural
and linguistic diversity within academia and society at large. Further, mirror-
ing the evolution of these ideologies, we found that discourses of textbooks from
the 1970s and 1980s tend to underscore access, inclusion, and representation
for minority Spanish language students while textbooks published in the 1990s
emphasize economic competitiveness and globalization. In our discussion of this
move from the portrayal of Spanish as linked to student identity to the com-
modification of linguistic and cultural diversity, we underscore the multifaceted
and often contradictory implications of these two ideological constructions.

Introduction

Since the 1970s, when specialized courses for heritage speakers

of Spanish began to gain scholarly attention among language
teaching specialists (Valdés, 1981), the number of US universi-
ties offering such courses has vastly increased. As a result of this
enhanced interest in Spanish Heritage Language (SHL) instruc-
tion, as well as predictions of continued growth in the percent-

Address correspondence to Jennifer Leeman, Dept. of Modern and Clas-

sical Languages, Mail Stop 3E5, Fairfax, VA 22030. E-mail: jleeman@gmu.edu

35
36 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

age of the US populace that identifies as Latino and/or reports

speaking Spanish at home, SHL textbooks are one of the fastest
growing sectors of the language teaching materials market in the
United States. The growth patterns in program and material de-
velopment demand that scholars and educators undertake critical
examinations of the ideologies of language embodied in SHL in-
structional practices and materials, as well of the relationships of
these ideologies to the wider sociopolitical context.
Previous research in the area of language ideologies in SHL
has focused largely on standard language ideologies and the
role of SHL instruction in the subordination of local or non-
prestige varieties of Spanish. For example, Valdés’ (1981) semi-
nal work critiqued the dominant pedagogical approaches of the
time, which were designed to eradicate speakers’ home language
varieties by replacing them with a more prestigious ‘standard’
variety. Valdés proposed an alternative curriculum based on a
language arts model, one designed to expand speakers’ linguis-
tic repertoires through the acquisition of additional varieties and
registers. Since that time, researchers have discussed and debated
the linguistic and sociolinguistic components that an expansion-
oriented SHL curriculum might entail (e.g., Carreira, 2000; Bernal-
Enríquez & Hernández Chávez, 2003; Martínez, 2003; Villa, 1996)
and they have critically interrogated the ideological underpin-
nings of expansion-oriented approaches (Leeman, 2005; Villa,
2002). This line of critical research has suggested that although
the shift from eradication-oriented to expansion-oriented peda-
gogies on the surface appears to assign greater value to speakers’
home varieties, in many cases the subordination of such varieties
to ‘standard’ Spanish has not been eliminated, but rather, it has
simply been made less explicit. The present study builds on the
previous research on ideologies in SHL instruction, but here we
emphasize that pedagogical materials and practices are ideologi-
cally multifaceted, and that standard language ideologies coexist
and interact with other kinds of ideologies, such as ideologies of
national, racial, and ethnic identity, as well as ideologies about
the meaning and value of diversity and the role of education
(Bonfiglio, 2002; Fairclough, 1995; Joseph, 2004; Lippi-Green,
1997). Further, language ideologies are embedded within larger
social management systems that buttress fundamental assump-
tions about the source and the substance of legitimate knowl-
 From Identity to Commodity 37

edge, and are thus closely tied to a more overarching politics of

knowledge (Canagarajah, 2002; Mignolo, 2000). Thus, a critical
analysis of language ideologies in SHL curricula and materials
must also take these larger issues into account.
In this article, we investigate ideologies of Spanish in SHL
instruction and the interrelationship of these ideologies to the
politics of knowledge, paying special attention to the portrayal of
the connection between Spanish and Latino identity, and to the
reasons given for valuing and/or studying Spanish. We are partic-
ularly interested in the evolution of the valorization of Spanish
from the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century, as well as
the interaction between ideologies about Spanish and changing
ideologies regarding the societal role of the university, the posi-
tioning of ethnic studies programs both inside and outside the
university, and the portrayal of cultural and linguistic diversity
within academia and society at large. Because critical educators
have long recognized the status of textbooks as cultural artifacts
that both embody particular ideologies of knowledge and at the
same time reify specific types of knowledge (Apple, 1985; Apple
& Christian-Smith, 1991; De Castell, Luke, & Luke, 1989), we an-
alyze constructions of Spanish instantiated in college level SHL
textbooks. We focus our analysis on textbook titles and prefaces,
as these elements constitute a particular kind of discourse, one
that frames the entire teaching and learning endeavor.
As we will show, there has been a shift in SHL from the con-
struction of Spanish as rooted in the local community and linked
to students’ identity, towards its construction as a commodity for
economic competitiveness in a globalized world. In addition, we
argue that there has been a shift in the construction of latinidad
from something that heritage speakers carry within, to something
acquired from without, and an evolution away from the repre-
sentation of Latin America as a source of student identity, and
towards a portrayal of the Spanish-speaking world as a site where
students can deploy their commodified language skills.

Methodology

Our goal was to identify ideologies about Spanish embedded in

SHL texts, as well as the relationship of these ideologies to the
38 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

sociopolitical and ideological context surrounding Spanish and

Spanish speakers in the United States. In addition to providing
an introduction to the format of the textbook, prefaces outline
and motivate the particular learning goals of the textbook, and
they justify the value of the subject matter covered. It is impor-
tant to recognize that the pedagogical content of a given text-
book may not match what is set forth in the preface; instead, the
preface serves to highlight what the author or publisher wants to
foreground, or what she thinks will make the book attractive to
instructors and students. In this way, prefaces transmit subtle mes-
sages to students (and instructors) about the value of Spanish, as
well as about language and education more generally. Titles and
prefaces thus embody a particular kind of discourse that not only
reflects ideologies of Spanish but that also help constitute them.
The analysis of textbook prefaces can thus provide insights into
ideologies about Spanish and language, as well as about educa-
tion more generally, and a historical analysis can shed light on
the ways that such discourses unfold over time.
In this study, because we are interested in examining dis-
courses about Spanish, rather than pedagogical methods or ac-
tivities, we limit our analysis to the titles and prefaces. We want
to stress that our goal is not to assess the teaching methodologies
of the texts nor to critique the ideological positioning of individ-
ual textbooks. Instead, our goal is to explore the discourse about
Spanish being produced across SHL texts and to analyze the dif-
ferent ideological orientations towards Spanish, heritage speak-
ers, and latinidad. In order to investigate the relationship of this
discourse to constructions of ethnicity, diversity, and education,
as well as the broader politics of knowledge, we ground our anal-
ysis of SHL textbooks in the critical examination of funding pat-
terns in academia (Rhoades & Slaughter, 1997; Yúdice, 2003b),
genealogies of knowledge in area and ethnic studies (Mignolo,
2000, 2003; Poblete, 2003), the construction of diversity in corpo-
rate and academic arenas (Dávila, 2001; Heller, 2003; Urciuoli,
2003), and the effects of globalization on ideologies of language
and language teaching (Block & Cameron, 2002; Canagarajah,
2005; Mar-Molinero, 2006).
For our analysis, we collected a corpus of SHL university-level
textbooks published in the US between 1970 and 2000. Because
a preliminary analysis revealed that revised editions did not vary
 From Identity to Commodity 39

TABLE 1 Title and Year of First Edition

Español para el bilingüe: A reading/writing/speaking text (1972)

Español escrito: Curso para hispanohablantes bilingües (1977)
Español: Lo esencial para el bilingüe (1977)
Mejora tu español (1979)
Nuestro Español: Curso para estudiantes bilingües (1981)
La lengua que heredamos: Curso de español para bilingües (1986)
Español para el hispanohablante en los Estados Unidos (1987)
Jauja: Método integral de español para bilingües (1987)
¡Ahora sí! Expresión comunicativa para hispanohablantes (1995)
Mundo 21 (1995)1
Entre mundos: An integrated approach for the native speaker (1996)
Nuevos mundos: Curso de español para estudiantes bilingües (1999)

greatly from one edition to the next, and because titles are not
generally changed, we decided that in order to maintain unifor-
mity in our analysis, we would include only first editions.
After eliminating revised editions, we analyzed the titles and
prefaces of the remaining 12 textbooks (see Table 1). These in-
cluded general prefaces, as well as prefaces directed specifically
to instructors and/or students.

From Area to Ethnic Studies

Given that the creation of SHL courses and programs was closely
tied to student civil rights movements and the development of
Chicano and Puerto Rican studies programs, it is worthwhile to
discuss the sociopolitical context of these movements. In particu-
lar, we examine the ideological orientation of these Chicano and
Puerto Rican studies, highlighting the contrast between such pro-
grams and the existing area studies programs which had begun
to appear on US campuses shortly after WWII.
The appearance of area studies programs can be seen as a
response to the political, technological, and military rise of the
Soviet Bloc. In that period, the US government was increasingly

1 The preface of Mundo 21 states that it is designed for both heritage and L2

students.
40 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

interested in developing and leveraging university resources in

order to contain Soviet expansion and to safeguard US inter-
ests, both by preparing personnel with necessary language skills
and area knowledge to curtail the spread of communism, and
by bolstering the US in scientific competition with the USSR
(Rhoades & Slaughter, 1997). In the 1960s, in the wake of the
Cuban missile crisis, Latin America became an important focus
of government initiatives (US Department of Education, a). The
flow of federal dollars into scientific and medical research and
development both strengthened US industry and consolidated
the ideological construction of the US as a primary producer of
scientific knowledge, while Title VI funding to Latin American
studies programs tended to privilege US-based expertise about
Latin America, rather than localized knowledge produced within
Latin America (Mignolo, 2003).
As the result of the perception of a growing communist
threat to US national and business interests emanating from
south of the US-Mexico border, and of a need for US personnel
with expertise in Latin American history, culture, and language,
policymakers and funding organizations increasingly stressed the
importance of university-level foreign language education. Span-
ish departments were able to cash in on some of this increased
emphasis on Latin America by way of new graduate student fel-
lowships provided for by the Foreign Language and Area Studies
(FLAS) program, as well as university dollars targeted towards
research on Latin America. However, although there was also
increased government funding targeted towards improving lan-
guage pedagogy, and an increased university emphasis on lan-
guage learning, this emphasis was primarily on foreign language
learning by native English speakers, and on the learning of En-
glish by speakers of other languages, rather than on developing
the non-English language skills of multilingual members of the
US populace.
Ethnic studies programs emerged at the height of, and in
response to, the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
Chicanos in the Southwest and Puerto Ricans in New York and
Chicago, among others, called for economic, legal, and social jus-
tice for marginalized groups. The movements that had initiated
among field laborers and factory workers quickly extended to stu-
 From Identity to Commodity 41

dents who demanded equal educational opportunity and access

in the face of exclusionary school policies. These demands cul-
minated in events such as the Los Angeles walkouts in 1968 and
the City University of New York (CUNY) student strike in 1969.
Activists contended that equal educational access and opportu-
nity required the creation of curricular spaces in which to rec-
ognize and explore the cultural and historical roots of Chicanos,
Puerto Ricans, and other marginalized groups. The inextricable
connection between civil rights, social justice, educational access,
and curricular inclusion was made explicit in El Plan de Santa
Barbara of 1969 (Rosales, 1996), which calls on the university to
be more representative of, and more responsive to, all segments
of society. The demands of student civil rights activists led to the
establishment of Chicano and Puerto Rican studies programs, as
well as African American and Women’s studies programs, within
US universities.
These ethnic studies programs represented significant ideo-
logical challenges to the earlier area studies paradigm which, as
a result of their ability to channel both economic as well as ideo-
logical resources, had played a pivotal role in shaping the value
assigned to knowledge produced in Latin America, in Spanish,
and by Latinos. In stark contrast to the area studies focus on for-
eign policy and quelling the perceived communist threat, the new
ethnic studies programs focused on inclusion and representation,
and saw the struggle for social justice, as well as the forging of re-
lationships between the university and the community, as crucial
elements of their mandate. Further, they highlighted alternative
epistemologies by stressing the historical and cultural links be-
tween US Latinos and Latin America, and calling for the incor-
poration of a broader knowledge base within academia. For ex-
ample, Chicano students recentered their civil rights movement
along the central axis of the Chicano indigenous heritage and its
claim to the mythic province of Aztlán, adopting the very term
in its own nomenclature: El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de
Aztlán, or MEChA. Thus, the demands for, and the creation of,
ethnic studies programs linked the broader goal of political or-
ganization and activism of Latinos to greater Latino access to the
university as well as to a reconfiguration of the curriculum to
include the knowledge and experience of Latinos. The inclusion
42 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

of marginalized students’ knowledge and experience in the cur-

riculum was deemed essential, not just as a step towards equal
representation in the institution, but also as a means of ensuring
Latino students’ academic success.2 In turn, inclusion and aca-
demic success were seen as steps towards the greater objective of
the advancement of Latino communities outside of academia. In
sum, the civil rights movements and Latino student movements
shared a commitment to social justice and called for both greater
access to universities for Latino students and greater aperture for
Latino issues within the curriculum.
The development and expansion of ethnic studies programs,
and the ideological importance of Spanish in Latino student
movements, had a direct impact on Spanish departments.
Whereas MeChA defined Aztlán as the focal point of an emerg-
ing cultural nationalism and adopted Spanish as the symbolic
language that would substantiate and ratify membership in this
new imagined community (Limón, 1982), for Puerto Rican na-
tionalists, Spanish was symbolic of resistance to US colonialism.
The adoption of Spanish as the emblematic language of solidar-
ity resulted in greater numbers of Latino students seeking aca-
demic coursework in the language of the movimiento. Although
US Latino cultural production generally was not integrated into
upper division and graduate level Spanish Department curricula
(Poblete, 2003; Yúdice, 2003a), it was in the context of these new
Chicano and Puerto Rican studies programs, the general trend
towards a more inclusive university and the democratization of
learning and knowledge production, that some of the first SHL
programs were created (Valdés, 1981). Given the general ‘‘purg-
ing [of] politics from American curriculum design’’ (Herman,
2002, p. 3), the political grounding of early SHL programs is
particularly noteworthy. We now turn to the analysis of the text-
books from this period, and to the illustration of how they reflect
the discourses of access, inclusion, and the link between Spanish
language and Latino identity.

2 Students and educators who argued for the inclusion of marginalized groups’

points of view also sought to broaden the canon more generally. They called for all
students, not just minorities, to be exposed to a wider range of viewpoints in both survey
courses and general education requirements.
 From Identity to Commodity 43

Access, Inclusion, and Identity: SHL 1970–1990

Despite the simultaneity of Puerto Rican and Chicano student

movements and civil rights struggles, early SHL textbooks were
clearly targeted towards the latter group. In fact, many textbooks
explicitly identified the Chicano student as the primary bene-
ficiary of the teaching materials presented, and the Southwest
as the primary educational context in which they would be uti-
lized. For example, the introduction to Nuestro Español states that:
‘‘Universities in the south-western United States seen from the
point of view of the linguistic characteristics of their students are
unique to say the least. In most, a significant portion are bilingual
speakers of Spanish and English’’ (1981, p. xv). The usefulness
of some of these texts to students outside of the Southwest, when
mentioned, is represented as secondary. For example, the intro-
duction to Jauja states: ‘‘queremos añadir que cuando hablamos
de integración, nos referimos al binomio cultural y lingüístico
chicano. Sin embargo, creemos que esto incluye también las re-
alidades culturales y lingüísticas de otros sectores hispanos de los
Estados Unidos como variantes de una metacultura’’ [‘‘: : : we
would add that when we say integration, we are referring to the
cultural and linguistic binomial of the Chicano. However, we be-
lieve that this also includes the cultural and linguistic realities of
other Hispanic groups in the US as a variant of a meta-culture’’]
(1987, p. xvi).
Despite the imagining of a meta-culture uniting various La-
tino groups, the textbooks of this early period stress the impor-
tance of integrating students’ particular experiences and knowl-
edges within the curriculum, coalescing with the emphasis on
access and inclusion emerging from the student and civil rights
movements. There is a focus on, and an elevation of, local com-
munity knowledge with Spanish both discursively located in the
students’ community and portrayed as a crucial to a community
membership. This emphasis on the local community can be seen
in Examples 1–4.

1. ‘‘Localización de las lecturas en la realidad histórica de los

alumnos’’ [‘‘Readings situated in the historical reality of stu-
dents’’] (Jauja, 1987, p. xv).
44 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

2. ‘‘el método integral : : : integra al hablante en su comunidad,

intensificando su pertenencia al grupo’’ [‘‘the whole method
: : : integrates the speaker in her community, intensifying the
sense of group belonging’’] (Jauja, 1987, p. xvi).
3. ‘‘se han incluido tambien selecciones cubanas, puertorri-
queñas e hispanoamericanas de autores que han tenido ex-
periencias vitales en los Estados Unidos. Estas selecciones
pueden ser usadas de acuerdo con las características cultur-
ales específicas del alumnado’’ [‘‘[Reading] selections from
Cubans, Puerto Ricans and other Latin American who have
had lived experiences in the US have also been included.
These selections may be used according to the specific cul-
tural characteristics of students’’] (Jauja, 1987, p. xvi).
4. ‘‘the Mexican American, the Puerto Rican, or the Cuban
American whose mother tongue, Spanish, is preserved in
family and community contacts’’ (Nuestro Español, 1981,
p. xv).

By situating the reading selections in the historical realities

of students (Example 1), Jauja not only recognizes local knowl-
edge as valuable to the curricular objectives of the classroom, but
also constitutes it as the foundation of effective pedagogy. Fur-
thermore, in Example 2, we see that this pedagogy is premised
on the concept not only that Spanish is key for integration in
the community, but that the promotion of students’ sense of be-
longing in the community is an important pedagogical goal. The
matching of pedagogical materials to students’ culture is stressed
in Example 3. Example 4, by proclaiming Spanish as the students’
(singular) mother tongue, and by locating Spanish in the family
and the community, firmly links Spanish to Latino identity and
forefronts the local. Thus, in these examples, we see students’
life experience and knowledge brought from the margins to the
center of the SHL curriculum.
The centering of local knowledge in the SHL textbooks also
has implications for the view of language presented to students.
Spanish is discursively connected to inheritance, linking it not
only to local community knowledge but specifically to the family.
We see this tendency in several textbook titles such as La lengua
que heredamos and Nuestro Español, which highlight an ancestral
link to the Spanish language. In Example 5, from Español para el
 From Identity to Commodity 45

bilingüe, we see the family connection to Spanish explicitly iden-

tified:

5. ‘‘La gran comunidad hispana de nuestro país goza del don

de ser bilingüe y de llevar la valiosa herencia de la raza y de
la lengua que nos ligan fraternalmente a la América Latina’’
[‘‘The great Hispanic community of our nation has the gift of
being bilingual and of carrying the rich inheritance/heritage
of ethnicity and language that fraternally binds us to Latin
America’’] (Español para el bilingüe, 1972, p. iii).

The metaphorical use of the verb ‘‘llevar’’ (‘to carry’) repre-

sents culture and (Spanish) language as natural to, and insepa-
rable from, ‘‘la gran comunidad hispana’’ (the greater Hispanic
community), while the use of the word ‘‘herencia’’ (‘heritage/
inheritance’), anchors this relationship in the past. Within the
student civil rights movement, the connection to historical claims
substantiated the demands for social justice. The adverb ‘‘frater-
nalmente’’ (‘fraternally’), furthermore, imagines familial bonds
that unite US Latinos to Latin America. Importantly, this family
connection between US Latino community and Latin America is
not hierarchical, in that it does not subordinate the former to
the latter, but instead positions the two as equal ‘siblings’ who
share a common inheritance.
Identity and belonging, signaled in part via reference to com-
munity and family, are recurrent themes in the textbooks of the
1970s and 1980s. The use of the first-person plural, such as in the
textbook titles Nuestro Español and La lengua que heredamos, and
the phrase ‘‘nuestro país’’ (‘our country’) (Example 5), serve
as a discursive strategy that includes the student within an imag-
ined Spanish-speaking community. Example 6 also highlights this
progressive sense of belonging meant to emerge throughout the
instructional program.

6. ‘‘El estudiante bilingüe llega a la clase con el bagaje linguís-

tico contemporáneo que, al presentárselo de una manera
formal, le hace entrar progresivamente en su rica tradición
literaria y adentrarse en su tradición linguística’’ [‘‘The stu-
dent comes to the classroom with a contemporary linguistic
46 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

baggage which, when presented formally, allows her to pro-

gressively enter her rich literary tradition and go deeper in
her linguistic tradition’’] (Jauja, 1987, p. xvi).

It is possible to interpret these first person plurals as reflec-

tions of burgeoning Chicano and Latino nationalisms or as a re-
action to the common portrayal of peninsular varieties of Spanish
as superior to the varieties spoken in the Americas. We did not
find explicit references to the privileging of Spain in the Spanish
curriculum, and thus cannot make strong claims in this regard.
Nonetheless, we do know that Spanish departments of the period
did tend to emphasize Spanish cultural production, and linguistic
varieties spoken in Spain (García, 1993). Thus ‘‘nuestro español’’
may also be alluding to the variety of Spanish being taught: an
American, rather than a peninsular one.
The inclusion of students via the use of first person plu-
rals shows interesting parallels to what Dávila (2001) has docu-
mented in Spanish language advertisements directed to US Lati-
nos. Specifically, she interprets the use of these forms as a way
of both indexing cultural pride and signaling membership in
an imagined Latino community. However, Dávila also points out
that phrases such as ‘‘nuestra cocina’’ (‘our cooking’) and ‘‘nue-
stros valores’’ (‘our values’) tend to represent Latino identity as
‘‘a finished identity and an inclusive whole,’’ one often based
on nostalgic linkages to Latin America (Dávila 2001, p. 101). So
too, the use of first person plurals in SHL textbooks indexes
community knowledge, Latino identity, and cultural belonging
while simultaneously imagining a unitary sociocultural context
and highlighting the historical and the traditional. Because Span-
ish is ideologically linked to Latino identity, the explicit defini-
tion of the target student audience as Latino (or Chicano), con-
tributes to the ratification of students as legitimate speakers of
Spanish. We see this recognition of students as Spanish-speakers
in the numerous references to student ‘ownership’ of language,
for example, in 6 above, where the ownership of literary and lin-
guistic traditions precedes instructional content and in SHL text-
book titles such as Nuestro Español and La lengua que heredamos,
where ownership is linked to community membership and inher-
itance. The metaphor of language ownership can also be seen in
Examples 7–9.
 From Identity to Commodity 47

7. ‘‘: : : interesar a tales estudiantes en un adentramiento más

profundo en su idioma’’ [‘‘: : : to interest such students in
a deeper penetration of their own language’’] (Jauja, 1987,
p. xv).
8. ‘‘[: : : ] how to write and use correctly their own language’’
(Español para el hispanohablante en los Estados Unidos, 1987,
p. xiii).
9. ‘‘: : : una de las lenguas más bellas y musicales del mundo,
que pronto será aún más suya’’ [‘‘: : : one of the most beau-
tiful and musical languages of the world, which will soon
be even more yours’’] (Español: Lo esencial para el bilingüe,
1977, p. IV).
10. ‘‘[: : : ] su personalidad se enriquecerá con una nueva dimen-
sión: la de dominar, totalmente, el propio idioma’’ [‘‘: : :
your personality will be enriched by a new dimension: that
of totally knowing your own language’’] (Español: Lo esencial
para el bilingüe, 1977, p. IV).

Although all of these examples construct Spanish as ‘belong-

ing’ to the students, several of them also reflect a belief in a sin-
gle ‘correct’ form of expression. Indeed, the fact that SHL text-
books of this period echo the discourses of inclusion of the civil
rights and student movements does not mean that all students’
language varieties are embraced. The recognition of students as
legitimate native speakers of Spanish is not accompanied by a re-
jection of the linguistic hierarchies of standard language ideolo-
gies, nor of the sociopolitical hierarchies they mirror (cf. Milroy
& Milroy, 1999). On the contrary, ownership only becomes val-
ued and validated when students adhere to monolingual Spanish
norms. Many of these texts explicitly seek to eradicate the ‘sub-
standard’ Spanish spoken by students and to replace it with a
‘superior’ ‘standard’ variety, and thus direct students not to use
specific linguistic forms that they may have learned at home or
in their communities (Valdés, 1981). The presumed inferiority
of the Spanish spoken by students is abundantly clear in the title
Mejora tu español.
With the uneasy cooccurrence of the devaluation of ‘non-
standard’ language and the recognition of students’ ownership of
Spanish, SHL students are portrayed as speaking an impoverished
version of their own language. In the ‘deficit model’ of linguistic
48 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

variation that this portrayal reflects, the goal is not to improve

attitudes regarding the Spanish that students speak, and certainly
not to critically examine its subordination, but rather, to take
students’ particular circumstances into account in order to better
teach them an ideologically elevated variety of Spanish. We see
this conception of students’ Spanish as deficient, for example, in
Example 11:

11. The native speaker of Spanish has heretofore been denied

the opportunity [of standardizing his language], or it has
been much diminished. The most important years of his ed-
ucation—the first six years of his life—have been ignored,
and he has been forced to begin again. Rather than stan-
dardizing, expanding, and refining his native language, his
teachers seem bent on destroying it (Español para el bilingüe,
1972, p. v).

Here, there is a condemnation of the failure of educational

policy-makers to afford Spanish-speaking students’ the opportu-
nity to learn a ‘standard’ or ‘refined’ variety of Spanish. Nonethe-
less, despite the perceived underdeveloped nature of their lin-
guistic ability, SHL students, and by extension, US Latinos more
generally, are constructed as owners of Spanish, and they are thus
afforded certain legitimacy and authority.
As we have shown, the intertextual discourse emerging from
SHL textbooks published in the 1970s and 1980s emphasizes lo-
calized knowledge, inheritance, and student ownership of lan-
guage. These emphases converge on an ideology of heritage
language teaching informed by the fundamental notions of ac-
cess, inclusion, and social justice that were central parameters of
the student and civil rights movements. Because all discourses
are multifaceted, however, it is important to point out the subtle
nuances and ideological implications of these foci. Even while
these early textbooks foreground the local through a revaloriza-
tion of community and family knowledge, inheritance, and own-
ership, they also may contribute to what Aparicio (2000) calls
‘‘linguistic dispossession,’’ or the ideological and material con-
ditions that lead to the subordination of Spanish to English and
that promote language shift among speakers of Spanish. Citing
Bourdieu’s (1991, p. 12) definition of linguistic habitus as ‘‘ ‘a
 From Identity to Commodity 49

set of dispositions’ that ‘generate practices, perceptions, and at-

titudes’ and that are inculcated, structured, durable, generative,
and transposable,’ ’’ Aparicio maintains that school systems ‘‘do-
mesticate Spanish and displace it onto the boundaries of family
life’’ (Aparicio, 2000, p. 254), thus denying its validity as a public
language.
We argue, then, that even as early SHL texts attempt to cre-
ate a more inclusive educational space where the voices of minor-
ity language students can be heard, and where their experiences
can be brought in from the margins, the emphasis on family, in-
heritance, and identity bound Spanish within the confines of the
home. Rather than challenging the hegemonic status of English
as the only legitimate public language, these textbooks construct
Spanish as a private language associated with ethnic identity and
reaffirm its erasure from the public sphere. As Schmidt (2000,
2002) has shown, the negation of a public role for minority lan-
guages serves to discursively depoliticize language struggles at the
same time that it racializes speakers. Thus, these texts seem to em-
body conflicting ideologies and contradictory political positions:
on one hand they echo political demands for greater inclusion
and representation of Latinos within and outside academia, while
on the other hand they are complicit in the denial of the public
and political nature of Latino language.

Economic Competitiveness, Globalization, and

Commodified Diversity

In the 1980s and 1990s, globalization, seismic shifts in the in-

ternational geopolitical arena, and the changing sociopolitical
landscape of the US had important consequences for academia.
Whether or not globalization should be considered a new phe-
nomenon is still hotly debated, but a consensus does exist that
recent decades have seen an increase in, and an intensification of,
international exchange and management of goods, information,
finance, communication, and culture, as well as in the interna-
tional migration of people (Block & Cameron, 2002). Globaliza-
tion is often portrayed as permitting unrestricted relationships
and movement among autonomous communities (Canagarajah,
2005). However, as Canagarajah points out, with globalization,
50 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

information does not flow equally in all directions. Instead, a

few communities are dominant in the spread and imposition of
knowledges. Moreover, the local is frequently ‘‘short-changed’’
in favor of the global (Canagarajah, 2005, p. xiv).
Regardless of whether globalization is seen in a positive or a
negative light, there is a growing sense that individuals, and stu-
dents in particular, need to ‘be prepared’ for life, and particularly
for professional life, in what is often referred to as ‘‘the global
era.’’ University administrators and students alike increasingly
see undergraduate education as a type of job-training, or at mini-
mum, a means to improve job prospects. Part of this preparation
is linguistic, as the post-industrial economy, as well as the rou-
tinization and regulation of workplace interaction and service
encounters, place a premium on ‘‘communication skills’’ and fa-
vor more uniform language, language practices, and interactional
styles (Block & Cameron, 2002; Cameron, 2000a, 2000b). Thus,
in the linguistic ideologies of globalization and the ‘‘new capital-
ism,’’ the spread and imposition of ‘‘world languages’’ such as
English and Spanish is accompanied by an increased emphasis
on uniformity within languages. At the same time, the upsurge
in global commerce may increase the ‘value’ of second language
knowledge (at least of some languages, in some contexts), which
in turn can lead to the reconfiguration of languages from iden-
tity markers to job skills or economic commodities (Heller, 1999,
2003). In the case of Spanish, the Instituto Cervantes has at-
tempted to capitalize on this commodification of Spanish in its
promotion of Spanish language study (Mar-Molinero, in press).
Along with globalization, the end of the Cold War led to a
rearticulation of US national interest as primarily consisting of
the promotion of economic competitiveness in an increasingly
interdependent world economy. This concern for the ability of
the US, or more precisely, of US corporations, to compete inter-
nationally is reflected in the development of federal programs
designed specifically to foster international business education.
Thus, in 1980, the US Department of Education added the Busi-
ness and International Education Program, which was designed
‘‘to improve the academic teaching of the business curriculum
and to conduct outreach activities that expand the capacity of
the business community to engage in international economic ac-
tivities’’ (US Department of Education, b). In 1988, shortly after
 From Identity to Commodity 51

the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new Title VI program was launched,
providing funding for Centers for International Business Educa-
tion.3 In the same period, universities formed new research and
economic partnerships with US corporations, thus strengthening
academia’s link to business interests, a trend which continued in
the 1990s (Yúdice, 2003b).
Despite the popularly accepted construction of the US as a
multicultural and multiracial nation (Wolfe, 1998), the 1990s saw
a growing hostility towards affirmative action (Yúdice, 2003b). As
a result, the legitimating discourses of diversity in the univer-
sity began to shed the earlier emphases on access and inclusion,
which conceived of diversity as an issue of social and political
justice, and moved towards a commodified portrayal of cultural
and linguistic diversity within academia, one in which diversity
is constructed as beneficial for the majority as well as the mi-
nority. On the one hand, the presence of minority students, and
of minority knowledge, was seen as providing majority students
valuable preparation for life in an increasingly diverse nation and
an increasingly globalized economy. On the other hand, diversity
was seen as offering a culturally vibrant university environment
for all. Indeed, as Urciuoli (2003) has shown in her analysis of
university mission statements and public relations materials, di-
versity has become a key commodity in the marketing of uni-
versities to potential students, faculty, and administrators. In this
context, academic administrators can point to the existence of
Latino studies programs as evidence of their universities’ com-
mitment to diversity (Aparicio, 2003).
Further, universities increasingly see their role as produc-
ers of qualified employees for US business, and academic dis-
courses of diversity often echo corporate rhetoric. The forces
of globalization—including interdependent economies, transna-
tional production and service networks, the large scale move-
ment of peoples, particularly from the Third World to the First—
have led to the construction of diversity as a potentially lucrative

3 To some extent, the Federal Government continued to view language as important

for defense needs, as evidenced by the creation of the National Security Education Pro-
gram in 1991 (National Foreign Language Center). The federal interest in languages for
security, rather than business, concerns, was primarily in languages spoken in the former
Soviet Union. More recently, and especially since September 11, 2001, the US government
has prioritized the study of Arabic and other languages spoken in the Middle East.
52 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

resource useful for niche marketing within the US, for creating
links between US business and international markets, and for the
management of diverse workers both domestically and abroad
(Yúdice, 2003b). As the back cover of a recent book on multi-
cultural marketing counsels US businesses: ‘‘Embrace workforce
diversity and maintain it through effective retention strategies.
To become successful in the new, diverse America, your com-
pany must become the new America’’ (Schreiber, 2000). With
corporations seeking a diverse trained workforce, and universi-
ties seeking to meet that demand, the justification for academic
diversity changed. It is for this reason that Yúdice argues that ef-
forts to increase the enrollment and graduation rates of Spanish-
speaking students at a particular Miami university should be in-
terpreted not so much as ‘‘an expression of concern for Latinos
as an underprivileged minority but [as] a strategy for reinforcing
the business and high tech sectors of the city’’ (2003b, p. 204).
The linking of US minorities and international markets—
in this case Latinos and Latin America—for US corporations
is nowhere more apparent than in the programming and mar-
keting campaigns of US Spanish-language media outlets (Dávila,
2001). As the number of Spanish-speaking people in the US in-
creased and diversified with the arrival of ‘‘new Latinos,’’ and
with Spanish-speaking populations living in what a few decades
earlier were monolingual English-speaking areas, US business be-
gan to recognize the economic potential of a new national mar-
ket. Spurred by the desire to constitute new consumers and cap-
ture their purchasing power, Spanish-language advertising quickly
became one of the fastest growing segments of the US market.
Although Spanish language media offer institutional support for
a more public role for Spanish, the role of market factors in shap-
ing this support inevitably contributes to the commodification of
Spanish and speakers of Spanish (Cervantes-Rodriguez & Lutz,
2003, p. 539).
United States universities were also eager to capitalize on
what they perceived as an ‘exciting’ market and marketing tool.
Spanish departments saw the new attention paid to Spanish, and
to Latino-oriented topics, as a chance to enhance visibility among
administrators and students. In particular, by promoting the con-
struction of Spanish as a world language and a valuable job skill,
Spanish departments have significantly increased enrollments.
 From Identity to Commodity 53

This trend has its roots in the early twentieth century, when pro-
ponents of the study of Spanish argued that US commercial in-
terests in Latin America made Spanish particularly ‘‘practical’’
for students in the US, despite the historical lack of prestige
accorded to Spanish language cultural production (Leeman, in
press). With the reconceptualization of a university education in
recent years as career preparation, any non-Latino undergradu-
ates have come to see Spanish as an important type of economic
and social capital which can enhance their professional oppor-
tunities in a broad range of fields (Pomerantz, 2002). Since the
late 1980s, Spanish departments have also expanded their curric-
ula to include heritage language classes and tracks, and in many
cases these new offerings are both ideologically and bureaucrat-
ically separated from Chicano, Puerto Rican, or Latino studies
programs.
The growth of the Spanish-speaking population across the
US, together with the trend towards media consolidation, brought
a shift in Spanish-language advertising dollars from local radio
and television stations to consolidated national and transnational
networks (Dávila, 2001). Dávila shows that whereas local media
outlets had tended to target a specific Latino subgroup (such
as Mexicans and Chicanos in the Southwest, and Puerto Ricans
and Nuyoricans in New York), national networks and advertis-
ing executives now sought to reach the entire US Latino mar-
ket with unitary programming and advertising campaigns, thus
contributing to the ideological construction of a homogenized
pan-Latino identity. Further, because many programs and adver-
tisements were produced for consumption in both Latin Amer-
ica and the US, and because advertising executives felt the need
to justify Latino-oriented marketing campaigns by highlighting
the cultural and linguistic Otherness of US Latinos, Spanish lan-
guage media in the US located the essence of pan-Latino identity
outside of US borders. As Dávila shows, this transnational con-
struction and displacement of latinidad has the effect of privileg-
ing Latin Americans, and delegitimizing US Latinos, as the most
‘authentic’ bearers of Latino identity. In addition to negatively
affecting the employment possibilities of US Latinos within the
media and broadcasting industries, this hierarchy also has impor-
tant linguistic consequences in Spanish language media: varieties
perceived as geographically neutral (such as ‘‘Walter Cronkite
54 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

Spanish’’) have been preferred (Dávila, 2001; Perissinotto, 2003).

When regional varieties are allowed, they tend to be monolingual
Latin American varieties, rather than US varieties influenced by
English.
Mirroring what happens in the media, US varieties of Span-
ish, as well as varieties spoken by less powerful social, ethnic and
economic groups, are also disfavored in academia (García, 1993;
Villa, 2002). In particular, US-born Latinos are often marginal-
ized in (or excluded from) Spanish departments because they are
considered to speak ‘bad’ Spanish or to come from the ‘wrong’
social class (Train, 2002; Valdés, 1998). The implicit or explicit
goal generally is for students—both non-native speakers and her-
itage speakers alike—to become like monolingual speakers of an
imagined standard variety of Spanish (Train, 2003). Whereas the
formulation of Spanish as a ‘world language’ may have reduced
the emphasis on specific national varieties, and Peninsular Span-
ish in particular, in US universities ‘standardness’ is still held up
as the pedagogical objective. Although ‘standard’ Spanish is not
(and cannot be) explicitly defined, standard language ideolo-
gies reify monolingual varieties and language practices. In this
‘‘ideologized monolingualism,’’ the promise of ‘standard’ Span-
ish is ‘‘to bestow membership in a global community organized
around communicative efficiency’’ (Train, 2002, p. 9). In the
next section, we discuss how these new tropes of diversity and
globalization resonate in SHL textbooks of the 1990s.

Spanish as a Commodity for Global Commerce:

SHL 1990–2000

In the SHL textbooks of the 1990s, Spanish is represented as

a language of the future, one that is valuable for professional
success. Moreover, the ideological relationship of Spanish to the
heritage language community has undergone significant modi-
fication: Spanish is no longer portrayed as grounded in the lo-
cal community, but is instead represented as a world language.
In this way, these texts participate in the ideological ‘‘disembed-
ding’’ and ‘‘re-embedding’’ of linguistic and cultural forms which
Coupland (2003) describes as typical of globalization. In the late
twentieth century, we no longer find texts oriented towards a
 From Identity to Commodity 55

specific Latino subgroup or region of the US. Instead, the target

audience is ‘‘hispanohablantes’’ (‘Spanish speakers’) (Ahora sí,
1995, p. xxi), ‘‘home speakers of Spanish’’ (Entre mundos, 1996,
p. xi), and ‘‘Hispanic bilingual students who home language is
Spanish but whose dominant and school language is English’’
(Nuevos mundos, 1999, p. v). This attempt to appeal to a broad
swath of the US Latino population echoes the trend Dávila has
documented in other Spanish language media in the US, which is
not surprising, given the desire of textbook publishers (like other
media companies) to market their products to the widest possi-
ble demographic. While these textbooks do acknowledge the ex-
istence of Latino subgroups, the commonalities of a pan-Latino
identity overshadow the cultural particulars with the assumption
that one SHL textbook fits all.
The global emphasis of more recent SHL texts is immedi-
ately apparent in many of the titles, such as Entre mundos (‘be-
tween worlds’), Nuevos mundos (‘new worlds’), and Mundo 21
(‘twenty first world’). The theme of international travel also arises
frequently. For example, in Example 12, travel serves as a metaphor
for the acquisition of new knowledge and Spanish language lit-
eracy.

12. ‘‘Welcome to Nuevos Mundos where to read is to enter new

worlds and where Spanish is your visa’’ (Nuevos mundos, 1999,
p. ix).

In Example 13, there is an implicit acknowledgement of

Spanish as a global language, as well as of the compression of
time and space associated with globalization (Coupland, 2003),
which increases the likelihood of interaction with people from a
variety of places.

13. ‘‘The purpose of expanding your bilingual repertoire and

cultural horizons is to help you communicate more effec-
tively, and with more confidence with others—be they from
Spain, Latin America, or the United States’’ (Nuevos mundos,
1999, p. x).

Example 13 also illustrates that the pedagogical goal of these

textbooks is to facilitate participation in a global society and,
56 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

among other things, help students to ‘‘develop the broadest pos-

sible world view’’ (Entre mundos, 1996, p. xi). Although there are
occasional mentions of Spanish being used in students’ commu-
nities, these references are overshadowed by talk of Spanish as a
language of ‘‘importancia mundial’’ (‘world importance’) (Ahora
sí, 1995, p. xxiv). With this foregrounding, the global becomes
a ‘‘stand in’’ (García Canclini, 2001, pp. 3–5) for the local, and
the locus of enunciation of linguistic and cultural authority is
placed outside US borders. As a result, students’ own local and
family-centered experiences run the risk of again being pushed
from the center to the margin.
Among other possible foci, the international emphasis and
the construction of globalization in these texts center almost ex-
clusively on business concerns. The privileging of economic and
professional domains can be seen in Examples 14 through 16.

14. ‘‘The presentation of real-world tasks similar to those re-

quired in various professions encourages students to imagine
themselves in professional roles and provides realistic stimu-
lating contexts for using their Spanish skills’’ (Entre mundos,
1996, p. xi).
15. ‘‘This exposure to and practice with more formal registers of
Spanish will give you new abilities and confidence with the
language, honing a very marketable skill which may come in
handy in your chosen career or profession’’ (Nuevos mundos,
1999, p. x).
16. ‘‘[The] linguistic and communication skills they are devel-
oping through their study of Spanish will enhance their pro-
fessional opportunities in the increasingly interdependent
world community’’ (Entre Mundos, 1996, p. xi).

Here, heritage speakers are encouraged to improve their

Spanish and to expand their repertoires to include language ‘ap-
propriate’ for professional domains in order to improve their
job prospects. Such approaches tend to delegitimize local lan-
guage practices by favoring monolingual non-US varieties as the
most ‘appropriate,’ and by naturalizing this hierarchy and con-
structing it as a universal commonsense norm (Leeman, 2005).
Further, the emphasis on ‘‘communicat[ing] more effectively’’
 From Identity to Commodity 57

(Example 13) and developing communication and job ‘‘skills’’

(Examples 15 and 16), reinforces the ideology of language as
commodity (cf. Cameron, 2000a), and stresses economic rewards
as the primary motivation for language study.
This commodification of Spanish as a marketable skill is
consonant with Heller’s research on ideological constructions of
French in Canada. Like the shift from the notion of French as
a symbolic marker of Francophone ethnic identity to its con-
struction as a skill that offers a competitive edge (Heller, 1999,
2003), these textbooks move away from representing Spanish as a
community-based index of latinidad, portraying it instead as com-
modity. Crucially, Heller shows that once French is decoupled
from Francophone identity, the benefits of French ability need
not accrue exclusively to Francophones, but can be acquired by
other ethnic groups. Pomerantz (2002) observed an analogous
trend regarding Spanish among the undergraduates she inter-
viewed at a prestigious US university: non-Latino students sought
to gain a ‘competitive edge’ by learning Spanish and by con-
structing themselves as legitimate members of a Spanish-speaking
community. Pomerantz highlights the contrast between this com-
modified view of Spanish knowledge for non-Latinos, and the
broader societal construction of Spanish as a personal and ed-
ucational liability for Latinos (cf. Leeman, 2004; May, 2001). In
the SHL textbooks of the 1990s, we find a radical departure from
the earlier constructions of students’ language ownership, a rep-
resentation that afforded them linguistic legitimacy and author-
ity. While SHL textbooks from the 1990s do not portray Spanish
as an obstacle to Latino success, nor do they represent Spanish
as ‘belonging’ to heritage students. With the deemphasizing of
Spanish as a marker of ethnic identity linked to students’ ances-
tral past, Spanish is portrayed as a market skill up for grabs to all
ethnic groups, rather than a cultural and linguistic birthright of
Latinos per se.
A noteworthy aspect of the ‘Spanish as commodity’ discourse
in these textbooks is related to who the beneficiaries are of stu-
dents’ commodified language skills. Together with the argument
that knowledge of Spanish can contribute to students’ profes-
sional success, there also seems to be a desire to meet the needs
of employers, as can be seen in Example 17:
58 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

17. ‘‘Cada vez hay mas trabajos que necesitan a personas bil-
ingües que sepan hablar, leer y escribir correctamente el in-
glés y el español formal’’ [‘‘Everyday, there are more jobs
that need bilingual personnel who can correctly speak, read,
and write in English and in formal Spanish’’] (Entre mundos,
1996, p. xvi).

This emphasis on the needs of employers resonates with the

reconfiguration of the university mission to become a producer
of employees for US businesses discussed in the previous section.
The Spanish skills of the populace are portrayed not only as
benefiting the individual, but also business interests, and even
the nation as a whole, as is seen in Example 18:

18. ‘‘Clases y materiales especiales para hispanohablantes son

necesari[os] no sólo para que los hispanohablantes se sien-
tan suficientemente motivados para continuar sus estudios
de la lengua, sino también para apoyar y desarollar uno de
los recursos lingüísticos más importantes de los E.E.U.U.’’
[‘‘[SHL classes and materials are] necessary not only for
Spanish speakers to feel sufficiently motivated to continue
their studies of the language, but also to support and de-
velop one of the most important linguistic resources of the
US’’] (Ahora sí, 1995, p. xxi).

This representation of Spanish as a national resource stands

in stark contrast with the earlier student ownership metaphors. In
an era in which US national interest is portrayed as depending
on global economic competitiveness, and in which language is
commodified as a tool for achieving this end, the language skills
of the populace can be seen as a resource of the nation, one
which the nation can deploy for economic advantage.
As we have shown, the discourses emerging across SHL text-
books from the 1990s disembed Spanish and shortchange the
local in favor of the global (cf. Canagarajah, 2005). The empha-
sis on Spanish as a world language, rather than a community-
based language, has the potential to contribute to the discursive
foreignness of Spanish. This is particularly striking, given that it
coincides with a period in which the number of US residents who
report speaking Spanish at home grew dramatically. This discur-
 From Identity to Commodity 59

sive construction, combined with the loss of ownership discussed

earlier, are implicated in the subordination of US varieties of
Spanish to monolingual varieties spoken abroad. Because non-
US varieties are portrayed as more ‘‘appropriate’’ in professional
contexts, the fact that SHL textbooks of the 1990s foreground
business domains while constructing Spanish as a world language
and stressing international communication further contributes to
the privileging of a perceived ‘universal’ variety of Spanish at the
expense of US varieties.
Like the language ideologies of SHL textbooks of the 1970s
and 1980s, those of the textbooks of the 1990s are also mul-
tifaceted. At the same time that the ties between Spanish and
students’ families and communities are loosened, Spanish is re-
envisioned as a public language. This is significant in a nation
in which dominant ideologies have linked national identity to
monolingualism in English and where concrete language policies
have sometimes legally banished other languages from the public
sphere (Pavlenko, 2002; Ricento, 2000; Schmidt, 2000). This imag-
ining of a public role for Spanish may eventually contribute to
its prestige and longevity in the US, although it is not clear that
greater visibility correlates with, or leads to, greater acceptance
(Dávila, 2001). Nonetheless, the positioning of Spanish in the
public sphere can be seen as a positive development by those of
us committed to greater recognition of multilingualism.
Some might see the new value assigned to Spanish as another
positive development, even if it goes hand in hand with commod-
ification. Indeed, if commodification leads to greater status being
assigned to Spanish, one might ask what the objection could be.
Our concern is that this language ideology equates the value of
learning or speaking any given language or language variety to
its economic potential. As we have seen, this has potentially detri-
mental effects for US varieties of Spanish. Further, while Spanish
currently might be in vogue, this may not always be the case.
Indeed, the current government and academic emphasis on lan-
guages deemed crucial for national security has led to increased
financial and institutional support for the study of Arabic and
other ‘critical’ languages. Moreover, the presumed economic ad-
vantages of knowledge of Spanish may prove to be illusory; at
least one study has found that English-Spanish bilingualism did
not correlate positively with professional employment, compen-
60 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

sation, or advancement (García, 1995). If knowledge of Spanish

is tied to the monetary advantages that such knowledge might
entail, and these advantages turn out to be minimal, students
(and others) are left with little reason to learn or speak Span-
ish. But equally important among our reasons for rejecting a
unitary focus on either the dollar or military value of languages
are the consequences for other languages and their speakers. If
one were to accept these models for assessing language worth,
it would mean that there was no reason to study or speak lan-
guages not favored by economic or ‘security’ factors. For us, even
if these models continue to define Spanish as important for na-
tional interests, it is unconscionable to attempt to elevate the sta-
tus and prestige of Spanish by positioning it at a high point on
a language hierarchy that subordinates other languages. Instead,
we resist hierarchical models of language worth, and we believe
that educators should strive to help students’ question linguis-
tic hierarchies and the ideologies that support them, regardless
of whether these ideologies place them on the top or the bottom
of the hierarchy (cf. Leeman, 2005; Martínez, 2003).

Conclusion

In this paper we have shown how the intertextual discourse of

SHL textbooks evolved over a roughly thirty-year period, and
we have analyzed the relationship between this discourse and a
more overarching politics of knowledge that shapes perceptions
of Spanish and speakers of Spanish both at the university and in
society-at-large. Specifically, we substantiated the change in uni-
versity and corporate discourses of diversity from an emphasis on
inclusion and access to a concern for US global competition, un-
derscoring the ideological shift from the conception of diversity
as a question of social justice to its construction as a resource for
marketing and management. Although the repackaging of diver-
sity as a commodity has yielded wider acceptance for SHL pro-
grams in Spanish departments, this wider acceptance and main-
streaming of SHL has been accompanied by a depoliticization
and a decoupling of Spanish from Latino identity. Whereas the
discourses of early SHL textbooks were in many ways linked to the
Student Civil Rights movement and a move to bring Chicano ex-
 From Identity to Commodity 61

perience in from the margin, the more recent emphasis on glob-

alization portrayed Spanish as a world language and commodity
available to all, rather than an entitlement of Latinos. Despite the
apparent recognition and valuing of diversity, the discourses of
the 1990s have the potential to contribute to a re-marginalization
of heritage speakers, which may also have negative consequences
for the maintenance of Spanish. The same period also witnessed
an evolution in standard language ideologies; although the priv-
ileging of ‘standard’ Spanish remained constant, the specifics
changed somewhat. Early textbooks emphasized the importance
of overcoming linguistic ‘deficits’ via the acquisition of literary
language tied to a cultural past, whereas later textbooks em-
phasized the communicative efficiency afforded by knowledge
of ‘world’ Spanish.
Our goal in this article is not to suggest that it is wrong
to prepare students for the future or to be successful on the
job market. Indeed, an important objective of a more inclusive
university is to allow all segments of society access to the social
and economic benefits that a university education can provide,
including future employment opportunities. However, given the
importance of education as a site where linguistic and other ide-
ologies are produced and transmitted, we believe that it is cru-
cial for educators and students to critically examine the implicit
messages embodied in textbooks, teaching practices, university
administration, and government policy. We are particularly con-
cerned with how students and educators can reinforce or chal-
lenge particular ideologies of knowledge, particular reasons for
learning Spanish, and particular ways of assessing the ‘value’ of
languages, cultures, and peoples. We believe, furthermore, that
critical awareness and questioning of these ideologies can en-
hance both teaching practices among SHL educators and learn-
ing outcomes for SHL students.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge the valuable comments and

observations provided by Robert Train, Lisa Rabin, Galey Modan,
and Michelle Ramos-Pellicia, as well as the anonymous reviewers
for Critical Inquiry in Language Studies.
62 J. Leeman and G. Martínez

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