ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of how the participants understood their linguistic repertoires and how they gave meaning to their experiences with language. It sets out to answer the following questions: Do participants see themselves as bilingual? How do they define bilingualism, and what has shaped this? How do participants’ ideologies about bilingualism influence their language practices? What are participants’ relationships with Spanish and English? In short, what accounts involving language and identity do participants give? What life experiences do participants see as contributing to their present-day language practices? How do they narrate those experiences? Does sexuality or gender identity come into these accounts at all? The chapter briefly reviews some of the thinking about linguistic repertoires, translanguaging, named languages, and language ideologies. It touches on relevant research on the maintenance of Spanish in the US.
