They Don't Talk Very Good: Attending to Raciolinguistic Socialization in Early Childhood

ABSTRACT

In this article, I share experiences from my roles as a teacher, researcher, and parent to show how raciolinguistic ideologies take hold in early childhood. Specifically, I illustrate how children come to uphold English superiority, map language to belonging, and make judgments about whose language counts. In sharing these experiences, I call on educators and caregivers to attend to raciolinguistic socialization and work toward disruption so that all children's languages are valued in literacy learning. I suggest centering multiple languages, cultivating curiosity, and questioning curricular assumptions as ways to work alongside children in challenging hierarchies and creating learning spaces that honor the multilingual world in which we live.