A Decolonial Approach in English Language Teaching as a Lingua Franca: Problematizations and Implications (original) (raw)

Language is a social practice and, therefore, is embedded within social, cultural, political, and economic relations. According to Benesch (2001), language is a site of struggle, a range of discourses competing for legitimacy in specific social contexts where power is unevenly distributed. Due to its transnational and transcultural scope, English is increasingly understood as a Lingua Franca that challenges the ideology of the supposed superiority of the native speaker, as well as the concept of the nation-state and the interrelations between language, territory, and culture. Furthermore, since the establishment of the Modernity/Coloniality group (Castro-Gómez; Grosfoguel, 2007), theories of decoloniality have been widely discussed in various academic fields, including Applied Linguistics and English teaching and learning. For this reason, Souza and Duboc (2021) argue in favor of a more performative decolonial praxis in order to identify, interrogate, and disrupt coloniality in different spheres of contemporary social relations, including language teaching and learning. In this sense, this article aims to reflect upon the role of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in teacher education as a key concept for promoting a decolonial approach to English language teaching from the Global South.