Toward a Decolonizing Framework for Equity-Oriented English Language Teacher Education

In this article I critically review the current literature on English language teaching (elt), (neo)colonialism, and empire to advance a decolonizing framework for equity-oriented English language teacher education (elte). This framework first argues that teachers should be supported to understand and confront linguistic imperialism of the English empire to promote plurilingual approaches to elt while developing students’ critical awareness of power. Second, it contends that instead of asking elt professionals to apply Western centered pedagogies that are often ill-suited to their local instructional realities, they should be supported to develop their own praxis. Third, it calls for disrupting epistemological racism to reclaim local knowledge. Lastly, it emphasizes the need to unsettle colonial ontology of white supremacy and native-speakerism that render teachers of color and nonnative English speakers (nnes) as perpetual Others. The article concludes with a call for action to prepare language teachers to disrupt racism, (neo)colonialism, and inequality through their praxis.

Exit English? Reflections on Linguistic Imperialism in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West

This paper considers the questions of universalism and the use of English as a global language in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West in two parts: The first part examines the role of language in creating the world of the novel, and the second takes into account the function of naming/un-naming in mapping this world. In so doing, we attempt to reflect upon the linguistic vision that is presented in Exit West and how that vision informs the cartography of its world. We thus explore the distribution and valuation of English as a universal language and Englishes as varieties of it in the narrative and their intersection with nationalism, Hamid’s alternatives to such distribution and valuation, and the overlap between his linguistic alternatives and territorial expansion and sanction are investigated. While Hamid’s linguistic vision in the novel, we argue, proffers spaces for defying and resisting linguistic imperialism, it at times remains reinscribed within the hegemony of the English language. Keywords: World Literature, Lingua Franca, Global English, Linguistic Imperialism, Mohsin Hamid, Exit West.

The visual vernacular: embracing photographs in research

The increasing use of digital images for communication and interaction in everyday life can give a new lease of life to photographs in research. In contexts where smartphones are ubiquitous and many people are “digital natives”, asking participants to share and engage with photographs aligns with their everyday activities and norms more than textual or analogue approaches to data collection. Thus, it is time to consider fully the opportunities afforded by digital images and photographs for research purposes. This paper joins a long-standing conversation in the social science literature to move beyond the “linguistic imperialism” of text and embrace visual methodologies. Our aim is to explain the photograph as qualitative data and introduce different ways of using still images/photographs for qualitative research purposes in health professions education (HPE) research: photo-documentation, photo-elicitation and photovoice, as well as use of existing images. We discuss the strengths of photographs in research, particularly in participatory research inquiry. We consider ethical and philosophical challenges associated with photography research, specifically issues of power, informed consent, confidentiality, dignity, ambiguity and censorship. We outline approaches to analysing photographs. We propose some applications and opportunities for photographs in HPE, before concluding that using photographs opens up new vistas of research possibilities.

POSTCOLONIAL TRANSLATION STUDIES: FOREIGNIZATION AND DOMESTICATION OF CULTURE-SPECIFIC ITEMS IN OF MICE AND MEN’S INDONESIAN TRANSLATED VERSIONS

Resistance to Western Culture can be seen through translator’s strategy of translating novels. This research aims to analyze the translation of culture-specific items in Indonesian translated versions of Of Mice and Men, originally written by John Steinbeck. The selected translated versions belong to the work of Pramoedya Ananta Toer (2003) and Ariyantri E. Tarman (2017). The translations of culture-specific items are analyzed under Transnational American Studies paradigm to find out the dominant translation principle applied in both translated versions and the results are discussed from the perspective of postcolonial translation studies. From the data, it is found out that the domestication principle is more dominant than foreignization strategy. Analyzed from postcolonial translation studies, the tendency to use the domestication principle in translated novels show the efforts of the target culture to fight against Western culture as the source culture. Although both Indonesian versions of Of Mice and Men mostly apply the domestication principle, the recent translated version (T2) shows an increase in the use of foreignization principle in which English loanwords are frequently used. From a postcolonial translation studies’ perspective, it can be concluded that target culture is against Western culture; however, the signs of cultural imperialism, especially linguistic imperialism, have grown in the recent years.

Towards Critique: The Place of Culture in English Language Teaching

This study explores in a descriptive way the overlapping relation between culture and English-language teaching. It lays out the different points of view and interpretations of linguistic researchers about the hot debate of the importance of introducing culture into ESL/EFL classrooms. While some believe that the current age of globalization needs us to expose our ESL/EFL learners to foreign cultures in their ESL/EFL learning, others disagree and deny the importance of doing so. Some go more radical and consider it as linguistic imperialism that should be excluded. The current study also discusses the opinions and views of researchers on the integration of language teaching and culture with some empirical studies.

A Historical Account of Linguistic Imperialism and Educational Policy in Tunisia: From the independence to the ‘Jasmine Revolution’

This article is about foreign languages hegemony in Tunisia. It describes the linguistic situation at the macro and micro levels, the Tunisian and the international linguistic communities, the status of English and French languages throughout the world, and their effects on the Tunisian educational policy. The prevalence of French in Tunisia as the language of science and technology between 1956 and 1987, the way the value of English is promoted in the Tunisian educational system between 1987 and 2011 though Tunisia is a French colonized country, and the tendency to linguistic isolationism since 2011, prove the intrinsic link between language and politics. Political changes at international and local levels shape the local linguistic communities.

The signifying voice

Drawing on a social semiotic framework, this paper sets out to examine two different semiotic systems whose default mode of expression is the human voice – language and music. Through comparing how each system differentially employs the human voice, we can identify both their commonalities and differences, and go some way to treating both equally within de Saussure’s envisaged broader field of “semiology”, avoiding the common trap of “linguistic imperialism”, i.e. taking language as the model for all semiotic systems. Starting by conceptualising the key relationship between the text, or unified instance of meaning-making, and the social contexts in which it functions, the paper then examines the material affordances utilised by each system, and the kinds of social meanings they express.

Global Language Politics: Eurasia versus the Rest

Globalization in the early 21st century can be considered as the age of inequality that splits the world into the rich North and the poor South. From the perspective of language politics, only very few discussed the division across the globe, especially, between Eurasia and the “Rest of the world.” In Eurasia, indigenous languages and scripts are used in official capacity, while the same function is fulfilled almost exclusively by non-indigenous (post/colonial) European languages in the Rest of the world. In the countries where they are spoken, non-Eurasian languages have limited presence in the mass media, education, or in cyberspace. This linguistic imperialism par excellence is a long-lasting and pernicious legacy of European (western) colonialism. The aforementioned divide is strongly associated to the use of ethnolinguistic nationalism in state building across many areas of Eurasia, while this ideology is not employed for this purpose outside the region.