ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how adult members of a Latin American school in London portray language proficiency and language choice in Latino families. It examines how adults construct a mutually constitutive relationship between language practices and ethnicity. The chapter highlights the tensions between school and home ideology, the pressures that Latino families are under, and the problems concomitant with engaging with the 'right' kind of language practices. It also examines data collected over the course of 15 months at the school. The data reported were collected as part of a study, funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), to examine how Latino Londoners construct the idea of 'Latin American community' and latinidad in their discourse and to what ends and outcomes. Indeed, instituting Spanish as the sole language between parents and children from an early age was identified as the reason why some students spoke Spanish fluently and sounded as if they had been brought up in Latin America.
