3 - Language, education, and social justice
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 March 2025
Summary
Box 3.1 Lead-in
In his 1979 article entitled, ‘If Black English isn't a language, then tell me, what is?’, James Baldwin states:
People evolve a language in order to describe and thus control their circumstances, or in order not to be submerged by a reality that they cannot articulate. (And, if they cannot articulate it, they are submerged.) A Frenchman living in Paris speaks a subtly and crucially different language from that of the man living in Marseilles; neither sounds very much like a man living in Quebec; and they would all have great difficulty in apprehending what the man from Guadeloupe, or Martinique, is saying, to say nothing of the man from Senegal – although the “common” language of all these areas is French. But each has paid, and is paying, a different price for this “common” language, in which, as it turns out, they are not saying, and cannot be saying, the same things: They each have very different realities to articulate, or control.
It goes without saying, then, that language is a political instrument, means, and proof of power.
What are your thoughts and reflections on this quotation? What does James Baldwin mean by it? What is the role of language in defining and denying ‘the other’?
Introduction
It is now widely accepted that there is an internal, bi-directional relationship between language and society, and that linguistic and social phenomena co-constitute each other (Fairclough, 2015; Holborow, 1999). According to Gramsci (1971), “even in the slightest manifestation of any intellectual activity whatever, in ‘language,’ there is contained a specific conception of the world” (p. 323). Language takes meaning in historical, cultural, and political contexts, and “as we speak, in all the different contexts of social life, we are saying something about social life” (Holborow, 1999, p. 31). Standing at the nexus of language, power, and ideology, language education thus contributes to the existing economic, cultural, social, and political power relations across societies (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1991; Cummins, 2000; Fairclough, 2015; Holborow, 1999; Norton and Pavlenko, 2004; Reagan, 2019; Ricento, 2000; Wodak and Forchtner, 2018). This chapter will discuss the historical role of language as an ideological tool by drawing on various language ideologies, policies, and practices within English language education, foreign language education, and bi/multilingual education programs.
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- Information
- Social Justice and the Language ClassroomReflection, Action, and Transformation, pp. 38 - 51Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2023