Language is a source of power that preserves the status quo in its relationships with learners and mathematics. However, there is a dearth of research that examines how multiple systems of power (e.g., racism, cisheteropatriarchy, colonialism) shape variation in structural inequality and experiences of oppression for language learners. This…

Drawing on the perspective of decolonizing methodology, this paper problematises the conventional interview technique of avoiding yes-or-no questions introduced by handbooks of research methods in applied linguistics. By demonstrating how this interview technique was found unsuitable in the first author's ethnographic study of multilingualism with…

This paper discusses symbolic violence in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism. It revisits an archived recording of a group discussion between four boys about their chances of having sex with a female researcher. The data is rife with symbolic violence. Most obviously, the conversation enacted a heterosexist form of symbolic violence. This…

This work utilizes Foucault's articulations on the power strategies of our contemporary society. To him the subject's constitution is never a purely passive effect of power on the subject but requires the subject's own activity. This necessitates the existence of a dynamic, mutually affecting relationship, implying that one can be both dominated…

The objective of this response article is to think through some of what I see as the far-reaching implications of a recent paper by Eric Hauser (2005) entitled "Coding 'corrective recasts': the maintenance of meaning and more fundamental problems". Hauser makes a compelling, empirically-backed case for his contention that, contrary to widespread…

Noting that societies are inherently elitist in their structuring, this paper argues that a greater understanding of society and the communication process can be gained by comprehending the nature of communication among the elite and from the elite to the nonelite. It attempts to provide a theoretical foundation for the investigation of elite…

Stereotypes about the way women talk grow out of knowledge of nonlinguistic, societally assigned sex role traits and of linguistic correlates of those traits. Among the findings of research on male/female speech differences are that, contrary to the stereotype, men talk more than women; men's conversation is task-oriented, while that of women is…

This study investigated the ways in which a bilingual's choice between the minority first language (L1) and the dominant second language (L2), in this case English, suggests the value the language has for the social and in-group identity of the bilingual. Adult bilinguals (n=38) of widely varying L1 backgrounds were surveyed concerning their…