Box 5.1 Lead-in

In her book, Where we stand: Class matters, bell hooks (2000) mentions that:

To what extent do you talk about poverty, universal basic income, and universal health care with your friends, families, colleagues, or students? Do you think social class is an unpopular subject in comparison to race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? What factors contribute to the erasure of class while other issues of inequality, oppression, and discrimination have come to the fore?

Introduction

This chapter aims to introduce the role of political economy in language education and applied linguistics. Regardless of Gal's (1989) and Irvine's (1989) initial calls for applied linguistics research to situate itself within political economy in order to underline the interplay of linguistic and economic phenomena, language education scholars and applied linguists have engaged more widely with issues around race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality than with class, and in ways that often ignore the role of political economy in these issues themselves. It is only very recently that language education scholars have started to discuss neoliberalism, capitalism, and social class with the aim of understanding the distribution of linguistic and economic resources, as well as the material and symbolic value of languages, particularly of English (Badwan, 2021; Block, 2012a, 2014, 2018; Block et al., 2012; Heller, 2010b; Rampton et al., 2007; O’Regan, 2021; Ricento, 2015a). This chapter therefore aims to help language educators – who may have had less exposure to issues around social class, especially as opposed to issues relating to race, ethnicity, gender and sexuality – understand the concept and its relevance to their professional and personal lives, as well as its intersections with other forms of oppression.