ABSTRACT
In this chapter we connect the ideological and pedagogical dimensions in establishing linguistic democracy in bilingual learning spaces in which educators recognize lower-class, multilingual Latino/students as potential linguistic geniuses who possess the cognitive and linguistic skills to effectively communicate in a variety of sociolinguistic academic contexts. More specifically, we discuss the need for bilingual educators (and teacher educators) to interrupt deficit, linguicist views and reactions to codeswitching and other translanguaging strategies employed by multilingual students. We must prepare bilingual educators to develop the necessary ideological clarity so they continually develop an elevated critical consciousness of their students’ linguistic capital in order to honor and build on their strengths. We must teach lower-class, multilingual students by using “cultural wealth” pedagogical approaches to appropriate new language varieties in an additive and self-empowering fashion. Without honoring the richness of students’ language varieties and linguistic skills, students cannot fully and additively attain standard academic discourses in both English and Spanish.
