“Keeping words in context”: Language policy and social identification in an immigrant job training program

This ethnography examines how teachers interpret and enact language-in-education policies in an adult ESL classroom in the United States, where students simultaneously received job training as Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). We draw on postmodern and interpretive lenses from the ethnography of communication, considering how workforce-oriented language policies impact teachers’ agency during speech events when classroom participants discuss the meanings of unknown words. We assert that during talk about word meanings (semantics), models of social identity formed, sometimes in conflict with the sociocognitive complexities of second language acquisition. Findings indicate that the meanings of polysemous words were narrowed solely to the immediate healthcare context, and that instructional time often focused on teaching lexis common on multiple-choice tests, preparing students for their final CNA examination. Implications for teachers and policy makers are discussed, including the potentially equalizing applications of polysemic research within workforce language instructional models.