This book offers an ethnographic account of language socialization practices within Mexican-background families residing in California and Texas. It illustrates cases where language is used by speakers to choose between alternative self-definitions and where language interacts differentially with other defining categories (ethnicity, gender, and class). It shows that language socialization is a dynamic and fluid process. The study emphasizes the links between familial patterns of language use and language socialization practices on one hand, and children's development of bilingual and biliterate identities on the other. Using a framework emerging from two geographically distinct localities with differing demographic features, the book compares patterns of meaning suggested by the use of Spanish and English in speech and literacy activities and by the symbolic importance ascribed by families and societal institutions (such as schools) to the maintenance and use of the two languages. Eight chapters discuss the following: (1) "Framing Our Agenda"; (2) "Mexicanos in California and Texas"; (3) "Language as Cultural Identification"; (4) "Enacting Spanish Maintenance"; (5) "Narrative Production across the Bilingual Continuum"; (6) "Doing School at Home"; (7) "Language Socialization in Theory and Practice"; and (8) "Bilingualism in Time and Space." (Contains approximately 230 references.) (SM)