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Empirical research on the relationship between language learners' (LLs') multilingual and professional development has remained scant in conversations surrounding LLs' sustained engagement with a target language (TL) beyond higher education. To address this gap, this article examines the co-construction of US collegiate LLs' multilingual--professional identities and trajectories in career advising appointments where language is cast as a measurable, marketable skill on resumes and job postings. Data include six audio-recorded, transcribed career advising appointments and 20-minute post-advising interviews with collegiate LLs of three non-English TLs. Through the theoretical lens of figured worlds, the thematic and narrative analyses jointly demonstrate how resumes and job postings function as cognitive tools that prompt LLs to develop stances toward their willingness and preparedness to use the TL in professional settings. Such stances are associated with various manifestations of linguistic insecurity when language is presented as a technical skill on those artifacts. Yet, the analysis shows how LLs work with career advisors to narratively position themselves in relation to "objective" proficiency descriptors and the ideological bi-monolingual in positions of employment and along professional trajectories. Implications for strengthening LLs' capacity to translate classroom language learning to participation in personally relevant multilingual communities are discussed.

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.

This article extends two conversations in the heritage language (HL) scholarship: 1) the need to strengthen the linguistic self-confidence among receptive bilinguals (who are typically associated with beginning-level HL students); 2) the need for more critical explorations of receptive bilinguals' self-reported, albeit minimal, spoken Spanish in non-educational settings. This study approaches the relationship between linguistic self-confidence and spoken Spanish by examining the metalanguaging small stories of third-generation Mexican-American adults who do not identify as Spanish speakers, although they have studied Spanish formally and do claim strong comprehension skills. This case study of productive Spanish among "receptive" bilinguals specifically addresses the meta-sociolinguistic stances that study consultants take toward their bilingualism in stories that depict their current engagement with Spanish as adults. Findings indicate that the consultants, in navigating the research interview context, view nonparticipation and strong comprehension as the normative characteristics of their Spanish abilities. However, in other narrated contexts, they resource power and agency from their other social roles to position themselves as ideologically authentic Spanish speakers, though these interactions are unpredictable and infrequent in their emergence. Pedagogical implications for accentuating receptive bilinguals' positive experiences speaking Spanish and for scrutinizing moments when they are reluctant to speak are addressed.

A central aim of social studies curriculum is to prepare young people for making "informed and reasoned decisions for the public good" concerning consequential problems like global climate change. By developing students' "vision of a good society" and exploring what actions and policies move our society in this direction, social studies teachers have an important role in preparing students for a world undergoing enormous environmental change. This article discusses elementary curriculum connections between building students' knowledge and understanding about "their community, nation and world" and global climate change. It also suggests ideas for building civic competency and climate literacy while creating opportunities for students to practice high-value skills like "data collection and analysis, collaboration, decision-making and problem-solving." While decisions on what to do about climate change are fundamentally political and economic, a scientific lens is an important component for informing our decisions. The elementary curriculum can provide students with multidisciplinary lenses--scientific, historical, civic, economic, and geographic--to begin forming ideas about the implications of our growing human footprint on the environment and developing the civic competency to ensure a sustainable climate for this and future generations.

The purpose of this article is to examine the use of English discourse markers (EDMs) in medical consultations that were conducted in Spanish. Data are collected from an audio-recorded corpus of Spanish-language consultations that took place in a small community clinic in the United States as well as post-consultation interviews with patients and providers. Through the quantification of the use of discourse makers in the corpus and discourse analysis of transcripts, this article demonstrates that English-dominant medical providers use EDMs more frequently and with a broader range of functions than Spanish-dominant medical providers and patients. Such use of EDMs serves to exacerbate the power relationship between providers and patients even though it does not cause overt miscommunication in the ongoing interaction. The implications for providers who use a second language in their medical consultations are discussed. (Contains 2 notes and 5 tables.)

The discovery of DNA is a classic example of the importance of working across content areas. Conceptually, interdisciplinarity can be fuzzy. Thankfully, scholars like Allen Repko and Julie Thompson Klein offer definitions one can build on. Klein (1990) sees interdisciplinarity as a bridge that links different disciplines while restructuring and integrating knowledge on a grand scale. The interdisciplinary approach is not against disciplinary knowledge. It recognizes the disciplines as enabling great sight, but insists that they do not show the whole picture. In the same way that one does not have stereoscopic vision with a single eye, a single discipline's reliance on a solitary viewpoint restricts one's perception. In interdisciplinarity, multiple points of view are essential to create the "aha" moments. By putting diverse disciplines in conversation with one another, spaces open up for making unexpected connections. These connections across content areas usually yield solutions that most people would label as creativity in action. When teachers start making a practice of pairing unrelated content areas, creative breakthroughs occur that transcend existing disciplinary thinking and boundaries. Interdisciplinarity is not antidiscipline. Working both within and beyond a content area does not need to be a source of conflict. The authors contend that teachers must teach who they are and who they aren't to grow as teachers and to serve a wide range of students. This means teachers must work inside and outside their content-area specializations regularly to improve their practice and grow as professionals.

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the computer in medical consultations in which English- Spanish-bilingual medical providers interact with Spanish-monolingual patients. Following previous studies that have revealed that the presence of the computer in consultations detracts from direct provider- patient communication, we pay specific attention to how the use of the computer in Spanishlanguage medical consultations can complement or adversely affect the co-construction of the patient's health narrative. The data for the present study consist of 36 Spanish-language medical consultations in Southern California. Applying a conversation analytical approach to the health narratives in the corpus, we argue that the computer is essentially a third interactant to which medical providers orient through lowered volume, minimal responses, bureaucratic side talk, and, most importantly, codeswitching to English - all of which strip the patients of control over the co-construction of their health narrative with their medical provider. Because the patient does not have access to the computational task and the language, we posit that this exacerbates the already existing adverse effects that the computer has on provider-patient interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to examine the construction of language normativity as medical providers interact with patients and animate stance within Spanish-language medical consultations. The context of the study is a clinic in which providers use Spanish to communicate with monolingual Spanish-speaking patients. This clinic is in the United States, an English-speaking macro-societal context. Findings indicate that providers who are second-language users of Spanish animate stance and interact with patients in ways such that English is constructed as normative and Spanish as marked. Implications include the need to consider how the construction of language normativity within medical consultations affects health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how politeness and prosody work in the construction of medical provider communicative styles. Data are taken from a corpus of audio-recorded and transcribed bilingual Spanish-English medical consultations in a community clinic in the United States. Through discourse analysis and prosodic analysis, we demonstrate that particular linguistic features contribute to the construction of stances associated with two medical-provider particular communicative styles that we identify as an egalitarian communicative style and an authoritarian communicative style. We also indicate ways in which these communicative styles may impact patient health outcomes in the local clinical context. Implications include the need for further research that engages in fine-grained linguistic analysis to understand provider styles and their relationship to patient health outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine patient-provider narrative co-construction of symptoms, diagnosis and treatment in the medical consultation. Narrative scholarship has demonstrated that conversational narratives, including those that take place in medical consultations, are typically co-constructed by all participants within the conversation. In the context of the medical consultation, this means that patient narratives are co-constructed with providers, and that at times, provider contributions to the patient narrative can hide patient contributions. The inherent power asymmetry that exists between patient and provider facilitates the possibility for provider contributions to obscure those of the patient. Based on audio-recorded data from medical consultations between two different nurse practitioners and one patient, findings from this study demonstrate that such narrative co-construction leads to differential information regarding the patient's symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. Implications include the need for providers to relinquish control over to the patient to allow the patient to fully articulate narrative accounts of their medical issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]