“Yeah, But I Don’t Speak English”: Critical Language Portrait Dialogues with Adult Multilingual Language Learners

This study seeks to understand how adult Emergent Multilingual Language Learners (EMLLs) constructed their linguistic identities during the COVID-19 pandemic in response to English-only ideologies that view white bilingualism as an asset and racialized bilingualism as a deficit. To answer this question, adult EMLLs created online language portraits to represent their past, present, and future linguistic identities and then engaged in dialogue with one another about them. The results revealed that the participants have experienced the raciolinguistic chronotopes of anxiety, resistance, and deferral. These findings suggest a need for implementing transformative strategies like translanguaging pedagogy in adult education as well as a greater emphasis on multilingual and transnational experiences in policy reform.