Language as Graffiti: Situated Language Discourse and Awareness of a Teenager

This paper examines the language practices of a middle school native-Spanish speaker in various school and out-of-school settings and interview data from the student and some of his teachers. Data was collected through participant observations and semi-structured interviews of this student in different settings. Observations and analyses were made about the complexity of his language practices, the switches that occur and his meta-linguistic awareness of them. Semi-structured interviews with teachers were analyzed to gauge the potential influence of their language ideology in shaping the student's language practices. The purpose of this ethnographic case study was focused on the question of how the intersectionalities of setting, audience, purpose, activities, participants’ discourse(s) and ideology inform the language practices of a middle school native-Spanish speaker in a major metropolitan community in America?