The belief in “correct” and “incorrect” language production and use (and subsequent associations with education level, socioeconomic class, racial or ethnic background, etc.) based on rules explicitly and implicitly normed and enforced by the educated, ruling elite. This enforcement is systematically maintained and reproduced by institutions, such as the rigid language parameters for different forms of writing, oral presentation, etc. taught in schools and used as gatekeeping mechanisms to elite academic spaces and subsequent power.
Published in Chapter:
Flipping the Script on the Language Teacher/Researcher: Language Learning as a Vital Tool to Decolonize Our Practice
Analee Scott (University of California, Berkeley, USA)
Copyright: © 2022
|Pages: 24
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-8093-6.ch009
Abstract
Standard language ideologies, hierarchical language structures and resulting ethnic and racial inequalities have long been reinforced within and by means of the TESOL (teaching English to speakers of other languages) field. These standards and structures echo the colonial history of forced language assimilation and indigenous erasure, a history that in many ways continues today. This chapter proposes language learning and ongoing reflection on the language learning process as a critical framework that English language teachers and researchers should adopt and apply to their work. When teachers and researchers take on the language learner identity inside and outside of classroom/research spaces, they equip themselves to dismantle rigid power structures in TESOL, transforming the colonizer narrative into one of decolonization, collaboration, and equity.