MRC Speaker Series: Jennifer Leeman (George Mason)

Beyond the English-medium classroom: Critical scholarship on language ideologies, identities and pedagogy in second and heritage language education

Abstract: Critical scholarship in the fields of English language teaching and bilingual education has analyzed how dominant language ideologies and educational practices participate in the racialization of students who speak (or who are perceived as speaking) ‘non-standard’ varieties of English and/or languages other than English. This research has been accompanied by proposals for culturally and linguistically affirming pedagogies that both celebrate students’ existing linguistic repertoires and seek to resist dominant ideologies. Because such scholarship has focused primarily on English-medium educational contexts, it has emphasized hierarchies among different varieties of English (and their speakers) and the privileged status of English vis-á-vis other languages, rather than linguistic ideologies regarding varieties of other languages. In contrast, linguistic ideologies and hierarchies regarding varieties of languages other than English have become a central concern in heritage language education, particularly Spanish heritage language education. Nonetheless, calls for critical approaches to second and heritage language education have been oriented primarily towards scholars and practitioners working in those languages. In this talk, I present critically oriented research and pedagogy from the fields of second and heritage language education, with the interrelated goals of promoting greater collaboration across disciplinary and departmental lines and highlighting how critical approaches to language education can play a central role in anti-racist, social-justice oriented curricula.

Bio: Jennifer Leeman is Professor in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages at George Mason University. Her research and teaching focus on the sociopolitics of language, with particular attention to multilingualism, Spanish in the US, and the teaching of Spanish as a heritage language. Her work is interdisciplinary and employs the theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches of critical applied linguistics and sociolinguistics while also engaging the fields of education,
Latinx studies, language policy, and linguistic anthropology. Leeman has published extensively on the interplay of ideologies
of language, race and nation in the US, the racialization of Spanish and Latinxs in the US, multilingual language policy and
politics, heritage language education, and critical pedagogical approaches to teaching Spanish.