Special Issue Call- English: Decolonising the university and the role of linguistic diversity (Odeniyi and Lazar) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Decolonial Subversions, 2021
Over the last few decades there have been movements to decolonise universities, which encourage university communities to challenge traditional ways of knowing and representation in order to reverse unequal access and educational outcomes. This Special Issue seeks to interrogate the role of linguistic diversity within universities across different geo-political contexts with the aim of refining current understandings of how multilingual practices can be deployed as a tool for decolonial praxis. We are seeking contributions that draw on a range of different languages, modes, formats and contexts in order to offer new and under-represented perspectives, which are linked to the role of linguistic diversity in universities.
Decolonial Subversions, 2021
En las últimas décadas, se han desarollado varios movimientos para descolonizar las universidades, alientando a las comunidades universitarias a desafiar las formas tradicionales de conocimiento y representación para revertir el acceso desigual a la educación y los resultados educativos. Este número especial de la revista busca interrogar el papel de la diversidad lingüística dentro de las universidades en diferentes contextos geopolíticos con el objetivo de clarificar la comprensión actual de cómo las prácticas multilingües pueden implementarse como una herramienta para la praxis descolonial. Buscamos contribuciones que se basen en una variedad de lenguajes, modos, formatos y contextos diferentes para ofrecer perspectivas nuevas y subrepresentadas que estén vinculadas al papel de la diversidad lingüística en las universidades. Traducido por Ileana L. Selejan, Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL.
Universities in the Anglophone centre: sites of multilingualism
Applied Linguistics Review, 2011
This article sets out to examine the increasingly complex linguistic ecology of universities in countries in the Anglophone centre. As universities in these set- tings have responded to operating in a globalised world, recruitment of students and staff who are multilingual and/ or bi-dialects has significantly increased. However, the diverse and rich linguistic resources that have been brought into the sector are largely ignored or treated as problematic. My intention is to raise linguistic diversity as an issue that needs greater debate and research in these universities, to problematise the monolingual ethos and practices of much of the sector, and to make the case for imagining universities in these settings as sites of multilingualism. This is in the interests of maintaining discourses that represent higher education as in the public good, in which universities have a vital role to play in contributing to the development of pluralistic, multicultural and multilingual societies at national, regional and global levels, in educating “critical citizens of the world” (Giroux 2004: 17), and in promoting an “ethos of personal growth that better represents what humanity might become” (Gibbs et al. 2004: 191).
Guest editorial: imagining higher education as a multilingual space
Language and Education, 2010
. The colloquium aimed to promote debate on issues related to language and identity among bi/multilingual 'home' or 'domestic' 1 students in English-medium universities, with a particular focus on minority ethnic students from non-traditional backgrounds. Our concern in the colloquium was the lack of understanding regarding the linguistic diversity that these students bring into higher education and the ways in which this is contributing to their exclusion and marginalisation in English-medium institutions.
Decolonizing Higher Education. Multilingualism, Linguistic Citizenship and Epistemic Justice
Language and Decoloniality in Higher Education: Reclaiming Voices from the South , 2021
This chapter explores in what ways language-and multilingualism in particular-can be rethought in order to further epistemic justice. In order to situate the question of language in a broader decolonial project, it starts by critically reviewing three main strategies proposed for epistemic injustice in South African Higher Education over the last thirty years: scaffolding into colonial metropolitan languages, intellectualization and/or endogenization, and the use of translanguaging. It argues that the role of language/multilingualism in such strategies is compromised by the 'coloniality of language' (Veronelli 2015), that is, understandings of language inherited from the colonial project. It further advances the notion of Linguistic Citizenship (LC) (Stroud 2001, 2017) as a way of disengaging from coloniality. LC informs epistemic justice by focusing on the potential carried by language(s) for ontological refashioning of selves, socialities, and concomitant knowledges, thereby offering a way to rethink multilingualism as a transformative epistemology and methodology of difference.
Towards Rethinking Multilingualism and Language Policy for Academic Literacies
2013
The language policy of the University of the Western Cape (2003) reflects the tempered traces of historically and politically charged negotiations. We argue that a reinterpretation of ‘policy failure’ as responsive engagement with complex new forms of linguistic and social diversity can lead to a critical rethinking of the nature of multilingualism and language policy in a South African tertiary education sector in transformation. We submit that university language policies need to consider (a) how the complex linguistic and non-linguistic repertoires of students can be mobilised for transformative discipline-specific curricula and pedagogies, and (b) the concept of multilingualism both as a resource and a transformative epistemology and methodology of diversity. We suggest a policy development process that moves from micro-interaction to macro-structure, tracing processes of resemiotisation, interrogating legitimised representational conventions, and reshaping institutional practices and perceptions. We discuss the implications for register formation and for broader epistemological access and ownership.
Undoing (B)Orders in Academia: Language, Diversity and Cultural Studies
Jungbluth, K./ Vallentin, R. / Savedra, M. (Hrsg.) Language. Belonging. Politics. Impacts for a Future of Complex Diversities, Nomos, 2022
This chapter examines communication practices and politics of knowledge in academia by intertwining the perspective of diversity studies with the self-reflexive criticism of cultural studies. It refers in particular, though not exclusively, to contradictory ways in which linguistic diversity in particular and diversity in general, are handled in academia, with a specific, though not exclusive focus on the field of the foreign (in particular Romance) philologies in Germany. It argues that, while research in the social sciences and in the humanities has deconstructed epistemological categories such as "language" and "culture", emphasizing the need for more dynamic approaches, a structuralistic, national paradigm still dominates the institutional framework in which scholars teach and research. The chapter reviews forms of "methodological nationalism" which hinders long-term access to hegemonic spaces and resources for both academics and knowledge traditions who do not comply with national "standards". The perspective of (B)Order Studies appears particularly suitable, in this context, to conceptualize the relationship between diversity and institutions in spatial terms, that is, by emphasizing processes of in-and exclusion. Against this background the chapter examines the emergence of alternative spaces of negotiation and the concrete chances for the practice of diversity in academia, a process to which Cultural Studies (in all their "translated" contexts of practice) can offer a substantial contribution. 1. Diversity in Academia: a (B)Order Approach By speaking of the process of (b)ordering language and culture in academia I refer to language ideologies and politics of knowledge which organize and hierarchize cultural capitals and regulate access to institutional spaces accordingly. In this context, and in light of a future, of complex diversity, which is already present, I raise the question of both chances and limits to open up emancipatory spaces for diversity in academia. How diverse are academic environments themselves? Which ideas of diversity inspire curricula? What role does multilingualism play in education and is this the role it deserves in a world of complex diversities? How can scholars of multilingualism and cultural studies contribute to negotiating spaces devoted to diversity in teaching-learning activities? These are questions which cannot be answered in general terms, of course. Nor is the aim of this chapter to suggest clear answers to these questions. Rather, what I suggest here, is to reconsider politics of knowledge and the negotiation of cultural capitals in academia in order to open up spaces in
Building a multilingual university in institutional policies and everyday practices
In this chapter, we contrast official policies at a Catalan university with two types of ‘internationalizing’ practices: official ceremonies and service encounters. The first are heavily ritualized, while the latter are less formal; however, ‘local’ and ‘international’ are articulated in both through plurilingualism. We especially explore how participants use their available resources to resolve the practical problem of managing both local and national agendas in concrete interactions, thus finding a balance between the national ideologies surrounding languages and internationalization.