Although language education should be ideally positioned to help students develop a nuanced understanding of languages, cultures, nations/countries, and identities these concepts have often been conflated in practice (see, e.g. Reagan & Osborn, 2021). This can result in othering in depictions of speakers of the language being learned (e.g.…

'Cosmopolitan nationalism' may be employed by international English language schools (IELS) as an ideology to create representations that simultaneously account for local/national agendas and support cosmopolitan understandings and practices. A fundamental factor for IELS' popularity is their ability to mobilize themselves within students' and…

This article examines English language teaching (ELT) policy, textbooks, and pedagogy in the neo-nationalist era that followed 9/11 in Muslim-majority Bangladesh. Informed by the Douglas Fir Group's transdisciplinary framework of second language learning, the examination substantiates the ideologies of "economization,"…

Previous research on neo-nationalism has largely focused on the political arena, analyzing voters, parties, and policies. The scholarship featured in this special issue moves beyond the analysis of neo-nationalism in contemporary politics to show how the ideology is enacted at the micro level. The stage for these dynamic interactions is…

This article uses English as a Foreign Language education as a lens to bring a post-colonial perspective to the conceptualisation and application of global citizenship education in Global South contexts. To achieve this objective, four standardised English as a Foreign Language textbooks that are currently used in public middle schools in Algeria…

Private English education has been expanding rapidly across China during the past three decades. This study investigates the resignification of English through the linguistic landscape of a private English training centre in Datong, a small and less-developed city of China. The findings show that the centre draws from both neoliberal discourse and…

In this paper, we investigate the pressures placed upon English teaching by neo-nationalist politics, particularly as it overlays existing neoliberal constraints. We focus on the experiences and perspectives of Brazilian teachers who are committed to critical language education even as it carries increasing risks to themselves. Interviews with…

Recent geopolitical events have led to a worldwide resurgence in nationalism which entails political togetherness and invokes the spirit of patriotism. In various contexts, language has been a central point of departure for many nationalist movements. In particular, English is increasingly discussed with regards to its sociopolitical and…

Focusing on language education policies in Bangladesh, this article shows how the policies have distracted people's attention from the harms inflicted on the country's Indigenous communities and their languages. I discuss two factors that have contributed to policy distractions in this context: a strong form of Bangla linguistic nationalism and a…

The United States is undergoing a political tug-of-war between globalism and nationalism with world language education caught in the middle of this sociopolitical debate. The current political trend towards nationalism and isolationism is rendering world language education vulnerable to further cuts. This article discusses why it is vital for the…

From January 2017 until January 2020, the Stormont assembly in Northern Ireland was suspended, with the Irish language being cited as the main stumbling block to the restoration of government. The continued debate around the necessity of an Irish Language Act (ILA) for Northern Ireland is bound up with more general divisions in society surrounding…

In January 2012, "Kreol Morisien," the main "lingua franca" of the Republic of Mauritius, was officially introduced within the "National Curriculum Framework" as one of the country's ancestral languages. Since the colonial period, the teaching of ancestral languages has served to preserve the ancestral heritage,…

Concurrent with the rise in U.S. neo-nationalism is the growing influx of im/migrant children in the nation's schools. This article explores how a group of eight K-3 Brazilian bilingual teachers in a Portuguese-English Two-Way Immersion (TWI) program in the United States interact with neo-nationalist discourses pertaining to the theme of…

In the two decades preceding Irish independence the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge, founded 1893), an organisation dedicated to the revival of the Irish language, campaigned to persuade both national and intermediate commissioners of education to reposition the language within the curriculum to reflect what the League believed was both its…

Representations of a nation's history work as a powerful tool to consolidate a collective identity and build trust in the nation. School textbooks are ideological products that disseminate official ideas about a collective past and heritage; their depictions have an impact on shared understandings of a nation's history. However, what is included…