Raciolinguistic chronotopes and the education of Latinx students: Resistance and anxiety in a bilingual school

A major assumption of critical applied linguistics has been that changing the language attitudes of individual teachers will lead to the development of more linguistically responsive classrooms. Yet, despite decades of such efforts, linguistically responsive classrooms remain the exception rather than the norm. As an explanation for this lack of progress, we propose a raciolinguistic chronotope perspective that brings attention to the broader socio-historical processes that shape the institutional listening subject position teachers inhabit in relation to their students. We apply this raciolinguistic chronotope perspective to classroom interactions collected as part of a multi-year ethnographic study of a bilingual charter school. We end with implications of this raciolinguistic chronotope perspective for re-conceptualizing interventions focused on developing linguistically responsive classrooms. •Efforts to develop linguistically responsive classrooms typically focus on changing the language attitudes of individual teachers.•A raciolinguistic chronotope perspective focuses on the institutional listening subject positions teachers are able to inhabit in classrooms.•A raciolinguistic chronotope of resistance produces institutional listening subject positions that normalize bilingualism in classrooms.•A raciolinguistic chronotope of anxiety produces institutional listening subject positions that enact raciolinguistic policing in classrooms.•Efforts to develop linguistically responsive classrooms must work to change institutional listening subject positions teachers are able to inhabit.