Language Policy in Puerto Rico's Higher Education: Opening the Door for Translanguaging Practices

Abstract

This paper investigates the relationship between meso university language policies in Puerto Rico and their micro instantiations in an undergraduate psychology classroom. We describe a typology of language policies used by 38 universities and campuses in Puerto Rico where their openness allows for flexible implementation of everyday micro policy. We then focus our attention on a linguistic ethnography of a psychology course where translanguaging practices reify and disrupt accepted classroom language ideologies in Puerto Rico. [translanguaging, language policy, higher education, bilingualism, Puerto Rico]