Many English language and literacy educators share the goal of contesting harmful language ideologies. An important way to deepen this work is to acknowledge that English-only, difference-as-deficit, standard language, and other monolingualist ideologies are inherently racist and colonizing (Watson & Shapiro, 2018). Researchers across fields have made the connections between racism, colonialism, and monolingualist ideologies clear. Such research, we argue, calls for language pedagogies that are intentionally antimonolingualist, antiracist, and decolonial. One strategy we recommend is to invite students into critical investigations and conversations about the systemic racism and colonialism that often undergird our perceptions of and experiences with language.

The teaching of English language and literacy is too often treated only as empowering and advantageous, a move that overlooks the political realities and consequences of language. For instance, efforts to “help” speakers of nonstandardized languages and dialects to “dodge” exclusion and racism, namely in U.S. secondary and higher education, have led to an inaccurate and problematic uptake of the linguistic concept of code-switching. As Young (2013) has argued, rather than understanding, valuing, and including students’ learned abilities to code-switch (across languages, dialects, and registers), the theory of code-switching has been misapplied instead to tell students to just “switch on” their (Standard) English and “switch off” their other language varieties. Through this move, teachers tell students to quiet or eradicate their language differences in order to survive and thrive, as if such language silencing were a possible, beneficial, neutral, and raceless expectation.

Such misperceived code-switching ideology takes the systemic problem of linguistic and racial injustice and burdens students with the responsibility to change their language, to change themselves. But, as Horner and Trimbur (2002) remind us, “language in and of itself provides no guarantee of socioeconomic advancement, operating instead in contingent relation to a host of other factors—such as race, ethnicity, gender, class, and age—in determining one’s economic position” (p. 618). And, as Baker-Bell (2020) puts it, “If y’all actually believe that using ‘standard English’ will dismantle white supremacy, then you not paying attention!” (p. 5). Young and Baker-Bell are both referring to the linguistic and racial oppression of Black people in the United States. However, racial language politics are not confined to the United States, nor to Black communities, nor to higher education. No matter our situated contexts, then, we can and should address with students the ways English’s dominance and harmful language ideologies are used to empower some and oppress others.

We would like to offer a snapshot of pedagogical strategies for critical language inquiry—inspired by critical race theory, scholarship on translingualism and translanguaging, and research on standard language ideology—that may work toward racial and linguistic justice across diverse teaching contexts.

Inviting Critical Language Investigations

For teachers who engage students in research and writing, we suggest designing course materials, assignments, readings, and discussions that invite students to examine racist and colonizing ideologies and histories within particular moments in their own locality or in relevant historical or autobiographical examples. For instance,

• College composition students in the United States might study historical problems, such as the cultural and linguistic genocide carried out at the Carlisle Indian schools or the xenophobic attitudes informing English-only policies like in Arizona’s Proposition 203.
• Graduate students in Hong Kong might consider the politics of publishing in English as multilingual nonnative speakers of English.
• Students of advanced English language in Haiti might explore the cultural and economic impact of English’s dominance over local varieties there.

In addition to research-driven investigations through topics like these, starting with students and their situated experiences through literacy narratives or other such self-examinations is another powerful approach (Canagarajah, 2020). Additional inquiries might be made through analyzing language conflict found in literature, films, newspapers, as well as in public texts, such as memes or viral videos featuring violence or slurs toward nonstandard or non-English speakers. Whatever the inquiry, our investigations can and should be tailored to the specific linguistic, racial, and colonial contexts affecting our localities and students’ learning. Engaging students in such investigations importantly counters the seeming neutrality of language and literacy education, contextualizing students’ critical language awareness within the racist and colonial histories impacting their lives today.

Inviting Critical Language Conversations

In any context, whether or not students are engaging in research and writing in English, we can still take on the hidden curriculum of racist monolingualist ideologies that influence our pedagogies within day-to-day conversations. We suggest engaging students in critical dialogue by posing questions such as

• Where does and doesn’t multilingualism happen in the world, and why? How might this be connected to racism and colonialization?
• Who seems to own the variety of English we’re teaching/learning, and why does that matter?
• What do students hope to gain by learning English language and literacy, and what personal or community costs they might incur?
• What is it like to speak or use English with an “accent,” and how are accents perceived and treated in varied social contexts? How are these perceptions racialized?
• What language attitudes and policies circulate within societies, which (racial) communities are privileged, and which are oppressed by them?
• Do the versions of English we’re teaching originate from Britain, the United States, or elsewhere, and what Englishes are not taught or even not seen as Englishes at all? How have colonial histories shaped the spread and perception of varied Englishes?
• Why don’t we refer to so-called “standard English” as standardized English or, in particular spaces, even as White English?
• How do our language differences in English signal “outsiderness,” and what consequences arise from such moments of identification? How are insiderness and outsiderness racialized, and how do these racializations reflect colonial perspectives?
• How do our linguistic choices in English reflect our anxieties about (typically White) audience expectations and about the social and economic consequences we might face if we break perceived conventions?
• What different linguistic choices in English might we make if we felt freer to express ourselves authentically?

Through site-specific questions like these, rephrased in ways that are relevant and accessible, we invite students to further consider what bearing the variety of English we’re teaching may have for their own identity positions and others’. Engaging in such conversations with students is particularly important in the many regions around the world that, like the United States, are healing from historical or current colonization, where mass migration has created a diverse linguistic and racial landscape or where globalization has had a negative economic impact on local and indigenous peoples. Without explicit efforts, our language pedagogies can too easily work to sustain racist and colonial ideologies. Having critical language conversations like these with students helps combat these harmful legacies that inevitably undergird our practice.

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Though we push for critical language inquiry, we recognize that not all teachers and students should address these ideological concerns in the same ways or to the same extent. Of course, the conditions and opportunities for engaging in critical inquiry in a U.S. college composition course vary significantly as compared to what’s possible or appropriate in an introductory English as a Foreign Language course in Taiwan. We’re also not suggesting that we stop teaching English language and literacy or deny students’ wishes to practice standard varieties. On the contrary, we suggest that we best support students’ language learning when our pedagogies are transparent about the role of racism and colonization in the long history of language development and mobility.

Additionally, our suggestions here will not take down the systemic forces and histories of racism and colonialism. Large-scale changes require more large-scale strategies. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take action in our classrooms. We argue that every teacher, no matter their context, should actively and critically scrutinize their pedagogical practices, their institutions, and their local and global locations, with the explicit aim to uncover the inevitable and multiple influences of monolingualism, racism, and colonialism. These politics are present, whether we acknowledge them or not. We should thus strategically respond to racism and colonialism in and through our teaching. Student-teacher critical inquiry is one small but crucial step we can take toward more antiracist and decolonial approaches in English language and literacy education.

References

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy. Routledge.

Canagarajah, S. (2020) Transnational literacy autobiographies as translingual writing. Routledge.

Horner, B., & Trimbur, J. (2002). English only and U.S. college composition. College Composition and Communication, 53(4), 594–630.

Watson, M., & Shapiro, R. (2018). Clarifying the multiple dimensions of monolingualism: Keeping our sights on language politics. Composition Forum, 38. http://www.compositionforum.com/issue/38/monolingualism.php

Young, V. A. (2013). Keep code-meshing. In A. S. Canagarajah (Ed.), Literacy as translingual practice: Between communities and classrooms (pp. 139–140). Routledge.

Dr. Missy Watson is assistant professor at City College of New York, CUNY. Her research seeks social and racial justice in the teaching of composition to linguistically diverse students.