Language ideology and pedagogy: Cry for help

[Mark A Peterson]

Here is a query for all you teachers of foreign language:

My Arabic tutor is a graduate student in the American University in Cairo Teaching Arabic as a Foreign Language program.

She wants to do her MA thesis on the relationship of language ideology to pedagogical style. That is, she is assuming that people’s understandings about Arabic affect (or at least may predict) the speed and quality of their learning of Arabic.

Her thesis advisor is apparently not sure that this is a legitimate project, nor that it will reveal anything worthwhile. Nonetheless, her own experiences teaching Arabic to foreigners in England, the US and Egypt, and to members of the Arab diaspora in England and the US for whom Arabic is a second language, have convinced her that language ideology frames practices of pedagogy.

I may end up as outside reader on her thesis committee, even though this is a bit outside my expertise, if only to try to convince other members that the concept is plausible. At any rate, I am looking for two things:

    1.. literature on this subject, that is, the relation of language ideology to pedagogy; and
    2.. teachers of Arabic anywhere in the world who would be willing to administer a short survey of attitudes to their students as part of such a project.
Any suggestions or recommendations as to how to measure language ideology in an appropriate way toward this end or other advice appreciated. My expertise (such as it is) is in semiotics and the ethnography of communication and although I’ve done a bit of work with language ideology (in India) I’m feeling a bit out of my depth here.



Mark Allen Peterson
Asst. Professor of Anthropology
The American University in Cairo
PO Box 2511, Cairo 11511 EGYPT
peterson at aucegypt.edu

"Laughter overcomes fear, for it knows no inhibitions, no limitations. Its idiom is never used by violence and authority."
          -- Mikhail Bakhtin
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