32.898, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Windle, de Jesus, Bartlett (2020)

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-32-898. Thu Mar 11 2021. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 32.898, Review: Applied Linguistics; Sociolinguistics: Windle, de Jesus, Bartlett (2020)

Moderator: Malgorzata E. Cavar (linguist at linguistlist.org)
Student Moderator: Jeremy Coburn, Lauren Perkins
Managing Editor: Becca Morris
Team: Helen Aristar-Dry, Everett Green, Sarah Robinson, Nils Hjortnaes, Joshua Sims, Billy Dickson
Jobs: jobs at linguistlist.org | Conferences: callconf at linguistlist.org | Pubs: pubs at linguistlist.org

Homepage: http://linguistlist.org

Please support the LL editors and operation with a donation at:
           https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/

Editor for this issue: Billy Dickson <billyd at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2021 20:01:14
From: Juan Bueno Holle [jotajotabueno at gmail.com]
Subject: The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36620597


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/31/31-888.html

EDITOR: Joel Austin Windle
EDITOR: Dánie  de Jesus
EDITOR: Lesley  Bartlett
TITLE: The Dynamics of Language and Inequality in Education
SUBTITLE: Social and Symbolic Boundaries in the Global South
SERIES TITLE: New Perspectives on Language and Education
PUBLISHER: Multilingual Matters
YEAR: 2020

REVIEWER: Juan José Bueno Holle, Independent Researcher

SUMMARY
 
The present volume offers a welcome and valuable collection of perspectives
from the Global South to the study of language inequality in education. The
volume contains ten chapters that draw on the concept of 'borderlands'
(Anzaldúa, 1987) to illustrate the realities of schooling as a site of power
and negotiation that both reflects and reproduces political, social, cultural,
and symbolic inequalities. In particular, the chapters show that it is
important for educators, students, theorizers, and policy makers to be
critically aware of the complex dynamics at play throughout all levels of
education and that post-colonial contexts in the Global South can be
especially effective in illustrating.
 
The book is organized in three sections. The first section concentrates on the
ways that communities and groups are subjected to rules of differentiation and
exclusion through historical processes embedded in broad social, political,
and economic contexts. The second section focuses on cases in which language
ideologies play an important role in constructing and maintaining inequalities
along national and transnational scales in schools, universities, and
communities. Finally, the papers in the third section offer a vision for
action with examples of transgression and resistance that challenge oppressive
linguistic and social boundaries.
 
Section 1
 
The chapters that make up the first section each take a historical approach to
identifying boundary shifts. The chapters emphasize how various historical
contexts frame racial, linguistic, and educational boundaries that, over time,
naturalize and universalize fundamental qualities of human societies. In
Chapter 1, ''Across linguistic boundaries: Language as a dimension of power in
the colonization of the Brazilian Amazon'', Dennys Silva-Reis and Marcos Bagno
relate the complex sociolinguistic history of Brazil and the Brazilian Amazon
through several successive stages. A portion of the chapter is devoted to the
establishment of European hegemony throughout Brazil and to the expansion and
decline of the lingua geral in favor of Portuguese, but the bulk of the
chapter focuses on the critical role of interpreters and translation services
in the 16th and early 17th centuries. The chapter shows how the colonization
of Brazil and of the Brazilian Amazon occurred in stages that were each
carried out in qualitatively different ways and through different languages,
in the process constructing not only political and territorial boundaries, but
profound and shifting cultural and symbolic boundaries as well.
 
In Chapter 2, ''Navigating hard and soft boundaries: Race and educational
inequality at the borderlands'', Joel Windle and Kassandra Muniz provide a
critical discussion of theoretical models of language and inequality through
the contrast of 'hard' and 'soft' social boundaries. Using a duoethnographic
approach, the authors demonstrate how new theoretical frameworks are necessary
to recognize and explain racism, racialized social relations, and other
marginalization processes evident in Brazilian schools and society. They argue
that the dynamic relationships between social change, schools, and language
can be effectively studied through a critical evaluation of the
democratization processes of higher education and teacher training programs.
By illustrating the effects of bodies, language, and ideas as they cross
social and institutional 'borderlands', the authors highlight the racialized
social disparities in knowledge creation, language use, and institutions, and
show how politicized teachers from marginalized communities have the potential
to force change in centralized curriculum and testing regimes.
 
In Chapter 3, ''Rural-urban divides and digital literacy in Mongoliam higher
education'', Daariimaa Marav examines how the urban-rural divide in Mongolia
is maintained and consolidated in the context of a shift in the language of
power from Russian to English and the arrival of digital technologies.
Specifically, Marav uses a mixed (quantitative and qualitative) methods
approach to study how Mongolian university students incorporate digital
literacies into their lives and how these are increasingly intertwined with
their language practices, specifically their English language proficiency. The
chapter shows that students' status, prestige, and knowledge are directly
affected by their engagement with digital technologies in ways that create and
reproduce new forms of symbolic capital and that, in turn, reinforce the
historic rural-urban divide in the country. In sum, despite offering the
promise of increased crossing and redefinition of territorial and social
boundaries through digital technology use, long-standing divisions in Mongolia
are in fact being strengthened.
 
Section 2
 
Teresa Speciale, in Chapter 4 ''Knowledge politics, language and inequality in
educational publishing'', addresses the perpetuation of language inequality
through linguistic shaming in a bilingual French-English school in Dakar,
Senegal. Speciale argues that the combination of the school's language
policies-- i.e. the use of French and English and the banning of African
languages-- and the students' relatively privileged backgrounds creates a
cycle of shaming wherein students simultaneously feel shame and shame others.
The chapter shows how the school's language policies both reflect and
reinforce an underlying ideology that frames 'global' as European and 'local'
as African. In doing so, these policies mold a school culture that celebrates
students' global identities and global languages while shaming their African
identities and African languages. Further, these identities are carried over
to their lives outside of school as students seek to differentiate themselves
as 'global' and modern, through claims over who is portrayed as African based
on their ideologies about the relationship of schools to local vs. global
identities and the purpose of schooling more generally.
 
Chapter 5, ''The role of shame in drawing social boundaries by empowerment:
ELT in Kiribati'' by Indika Liyanage and Suresh Canagarajah, also conducts an
analysis of linguistic shaming and its effects on a particular community. In
this case, however, the authors show that for the I-Kiribati (the people of
Kiribati), the identities of English users compete with strongly defined
I-Kiribati identities and community solidarity. The authors consider the
dynamics of teaching and learning English with respect to questions of shame
and shaming practices in the language classroom and their effects on students'
emotions and motivations. They find that the practice of shaming English use
in Kiribati, while creating a tension with respect to ELT (English Language
Teaching) pedagogies in the community, has the potential to affirm community
cohesion, regulate cultural change, and manage multilingual repertoires as
well as to counter the individual and materialistic ideologies that are
introduced by international development agencies (and that promote ELT). The
study provides a strong warning to assumptions of universal desires for
English that ignore the desire of individuals, groups, and communities for
autonomy and cultural affirmation.
 
In Chapter 6, ''Native –speakerism and symbolic violence in constructions of
teacher competence'', Junia C.S. Mattos Zaidan focuses on the symbolic
violence that is enacted on English teachers in Brazil through ideologies of
native speakerism and the closely related myth of 'authenticism'. The chapter
asks: How is the symbolic violence of native speakerism manifested and
reproduced? To answer this, Mattos Zaidan discusses the relationship between
the cultural reproduction of boundaries and notions such as 'real' English,
professional and academic prestige, legitimacy, English-only institutional
practices, and the role of English in the national curriculum. Similar to the
shaming practices reported in the chapter by Speciale (Ch 4), the author shows
through careful analysis of empirical survey data that the overall effect of
native speakerism is to feed a cycle that elevates the West and reinforces the
alienation of post-colonial teachers and students. Rather than ignore these
complex relationships, the author argues that we must work to understand them
by taking stock of native speakerism and authenticism as embedded within the
capitalist logic of oppression and domination.
 
In Chapter 7, ''Knowledge politics, language and inequality in educational
publishing'', Maria do Socorro Alencar Nunes Macedo, Daniele Alves Ribeiro,
Euclides de Freitas Couto, and André Luan Nunes Macedo conducted interviews
and analyzed documents related to academic journals in Brazil to address the
dynamics of English and inequality in educational publishing. The authors
consider the strategies available to journals to achieve a high status by
focusing on the history and development of Educacao em Revista, produced by
the Graduate Program in Education at the Federal University of Minas Gerais.
Through this case study, the authors interrogate the system of evaluation of
journals in Brazil to show that, because articles in English have the
advantage in terms of visibility and legitimacy, measured in terms of national
and international impact, Brazilian journals have been progressively creating
the conditions to publish in English. The main consequences of this are: 1)
delocalization, 2) the reproduction of colonial knowledge politics through the
favoring of certain social networks over others, 3) the privileging of
theoretical references that derive from Europe and the USA, and 4) the
production of materials in 'global' languages like English. These
considerations raise fundamental questions for the Brazilian academy, such as:
What are the expectations for academic research and publishing in Brazil? Who
benefits? What is the purpose?
 
Section 3
 
Carolyn McKinney, in Chapter 8 ''Decoloniality and language in education:
Transgressing language boundaries in South Africa'', examines educational
policymaking in South Africa and, specifically, the ways in which the colonial
ideologies of language inform and construct language policies. McKinney shows
that these colonial language ideologies are monoglossic and Anglonormative and
fail to recognize the depth and breadth of (mostly Black) children's
linguistic resources. In response to this situation, the author presents a
case study in an elementary classroom that takes a dynamic bilingual approach
to disrupt monolingual language ideologies and socially constructed language
boundaries by repositioning multilingualism as a norm and a resource. Through
this alternative framing of heteroglossic practices and African languages, the
approach recontextualizes the children's linguistic resources as advantageous
rather than as problematic and deficient. The main strengths of the approach
are shown to derive from two main orientations: 1) a Critical Language
Awareness that explicitly addresses relationships between language and power,
and 2) a translanguaging perspective in which students are able to draw freely
and creatively on their full linguistic repertoires.
 
Dánie de Jesus, in Chapter 9 ''Queering literacy in Brazil's higher education:
Questioning the boundaries of the normalized body'', innovatively approaches
the topic of inequality in education through the theme of the discursively
constructed body. The chapter focuses on the preparation of English language
teachers and the unique insights and potential created by engaging with
gendered and sexual identities in the language classroom. The chapter examines
a specific set of teaching strategies used to tackle physical and symbolic
violence with respect to gender in the higher education classroom. With this,
the author argues in favor of a critical literacy approach to language
teaching by demonstrating that this work positively affects teacher education
through the inspiration of new understandings and debate on gender-related
issues which, in turn, can potentially foster resistance against gender
inequality.
 
In the final chapter, '''Saudi women are finally allowed to sit behind the
wheel': Initial responses from TESOL classrooms'', Osman Z. Barnawi and Phan
Le Ha also address the relationships between language, language teaching, and
gendered inequality. They show how, in the case of Saudi Arabia, English has
been positioned as central to a new economy and to a series of social
transformations, including gender role transformations. These macro-level
changes are the context in which Saudi, female, Western-trained TESOL teachers
consider their new freedoms (including, for example, the freedom to drive) as
well as the role that English might play in their own empowerment. The authors
demonstrate how these teachers draw on these experiences in their own TESOL
classrooms and conclude that the different strategies and pedagogies the
teachers explore are motivated and made especially relevant through the
effects of the historic systems of oppression that they experience.
 
EVALUATION

This volume adds important voices, connections, and perspectives to our
understanding of the relationships between language, inequality, and education
and does so at a moment of renewed focus on systemic racism and the legacies
of colonialism (cf. Motha, 2020). Taken as a whole, the collection of 10
chapters provides a strong glimpse of the wealth of experience, authority, and
insight that scholars working in the Global South bring to these issues. 

One particularly strong contribution of the volume is the breadth and depth of
connections it offers to the literature in a variety of disciplines,
particularly education, applied linguistics, sociology, and anthropology. It
provides much needed insight into central topics of interest to a range of
scholars, including: native-speakerism (Chapter 6) (cf. Gerald, 2019;
Zacharias, 2019), language shaming (Chapters 4 and 5), bilingual education
(Chapter 4), English Language Teaching (Chapters 5 and 10), digital technology
and digital literacy (Chapter 3), translanguaging (Chapter 8) (cf. Garcia,
2009), raciolinguistics (Chapter 2) (cf. Flores and Rosa, 2015), gender
inequality (Chapter 9), and linguistic and socio-political dimensions of
academic publishing (Chapter 7). 

This diversity of topics is complemented well by the attention that is given
to a diversity of perspectives Because of the way the volume is organized,
approximately half of the chapters are written with the context of Brazil in
mind and the remaining works represent a combination of contexts from across
the Global South: Asia (Mongolia), Polynesia (Kiribati), Middle East (Saudi
Arabia), West Africa (Senegal), and South Africa. In addition, the chapters
address a range of educational levels, from elementary to post-secondary,
though more attention is given to higher education levels.
 
In addition to the thorough considerations of the complex social and
linguistic dynamics in diverse settings, another notable contribution is the
attention given to critical literacy and to specific case studies and
classroom strategies. For example, in Chapter 2 Kassandra Muniz, to illustrate
the concept of borderlands and the power of a transnational perspective,
discusses the potential impacts that visiting scholars can have on students
and reports the visit of Phanel Georges, a Black Haitian scholar and educator,
to university students in Brazil. She states, “The fact that they met a Black
man who spoke four languages already caused a surprise that only racism can
explain” (p. 36). As Muniz emphasizes, this reaction contrasted sharply with
how his Blackness was read in Haiti. In Chapter 8, Carolyn McKinney details
the rationale behind a biliteracy program among 10-12 year olds in rural South
Africa and the many successes it has found. In Chapter 9, Dánie de Jesus
describes a series of tasks and activities for working with higher education
students that are aimed at confronting the symbolic violence towards
gay/lesbian/transgender students. Lastly, Osman Z. Barnawi and Phan Le Ha, in
Chapter 10, demonstrate the effectiveness of a series of pedagogical tasks in
TESOL classrooms aimed at achieving the demands of women’s struggles in Saudi
Arabia. In sum, scholars, educators, and policy makers are able to draw on
these and other examples in the volume as resources and inspiration for
concrete actions to both recognize and transgress boundaries across
educational settings.

While the contributions of the volume are numerable, it is worth pointing to
one area where additional insight and analysis could be especially beneficial
in the future, with respect to perspectives from the Global South. In tackling
issues of inequality, language ideologies, and language use, the chapters in
this volume primarily address the tensions reflected in and produced by the
presence and use of categorically distinct languages. The volume explores
tensions between, for example, English, French, and Wolof in Senegal (Chapter
4), English and African languages in South Africa (Chapter 8), English and
Portuguese in Brazil (Chapters 2, 7, and 9) English, Portuguese, and Amazonian
languages in Brazil (Chapter 1), and English and Russian in Mongolia (Chapter
3), as well as tensions inherent to English language teaching (Chapters 5, 6,
and 10). Meanwhile, the status and tensions around minoritized language
varieties and dialects or is rarely interrogated. A few of the chapters that
deal with issues of native speakerism, raciolinguistics, and translanguaging
(Chapters 2, 6, and 8) touch briefly on related issues and give a sense of the
complexity involved once the maintenance and transgression of boundaries
around standardized language and minoritized language varieties are
considered. 

Overall, through a strong theoretical and applied lens, the diverse array of
experiences that this book draws upon makes it a valuable resource for
advanced undergraduate or graduate courses in education, language teaching,
and applied linguistics. The volume has the potential to inspire additional
scholarship from diverse perspectives that will enrich our understanding of
the dynamics of language boundaries and the complex connections to pressing
social issues such as social inequality, colonialism, and racism.

REFERENCES
 
Anzaldúa, G. 1987. Borderlands: La frontera. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books.

Flores, N. and Rosa, J. 2015. Undoing Appropriateness: Raciolinguistic
Ideologies and Language Diversity in Education. Harvard Educational Review
85(2). 149-171.

García, Ofelia. 2009. Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global
Perspective. Malden, MA and Oxford: Basil/Blackwell.

Gerald, J.P.B., 2020. Worth the Risk: Towards Decentering Whiteness in English
Language Teaching. BC TEAL Journal 5(1). 44-54.

Motha, S., 2020. Is an Antiracist and Decolonizing Applied Linguistics
Possible?. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 40. 128-133.

Zacharias, N.T., 2019. The ghost of nativespeakerism: The case of teacher
classroom introductions in transnational contexts. TESOL Journal, 10(4). e499.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Juan José Bueno Holle holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from the National
Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and a PhD in Linguistics from the
University of Chicago. His research interests include language documentation,
Mesoamerican languages, and discourse pragmatics. His work has received
support from the Endangered Languages Development Programme (ELDP), the
National Science Foundation's Documenting Endangered Languages program
(NSF-DEL), and the Smithsonian Institution. He is currently a lecturer in the
College of Education at California State University, Sacramento.





------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2020 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-32-898	
----------------------------------------------------------