The notion of language proficiency in English Language Teaching (ELT), as an internationalized educational enterprise, has tended to be operationalized in terms of stable lexicogrammar and enduring normative patterns of social use. It will be argued that this 'established' stability has been challenged by the scholarship in several fields of…

During the last 20 years, "Critical Inquiry in Language Studies" has played an important role in advancing research on critical applied linguistics. Although the level of scholarly interest in critical research and its visibility have increased, issues that critical research has attempted to problematize, such as normative ideologies of…

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of place-consciousness in teaching through critical literacies pedagogies and how place-consciousness shapes a teacher's decision-making in critical literacy practices. This classroom-based ethnographic study was carried out at a school in the Northeastern United States. One language teacher was…

The author explores how current scholarship has investigated diversified identities and identification practices using a variable-by-variable approach. This kind of approach focuses on developing in-depth understandings of particular variables of identity, such as race and gender. However, this kind of approach has also limited language studies…

The authors explore the theoretical and pedagogical premises of their critical systemic functional linguistics approach, which they developed to challenge the deficit positioning of bilingual students in the Southeast of the United States. As multilingual educators from postcolonial Ireland and India, the theoretical framework has helped the…

bell hooks's (1994) advocacy for teaching to transgress invites educators and students alike to transgress boundaries to strive for ways to know and live fully and deeply as whole human beings. The authors aim to showcase a transgressive attempt in bringing French and English into one multiage (Grades 4-6) classroom, with its two teachers--English…

This article introduces the concept of "nation-state/colonial governmentality" as a framework for analyzing the ways current language ideologies marginalize the language practices of subaltern populations. Specifically, the article focuses on the innate limitations of re-appropriating nation-state/colonial governmentality in an attempt…

Using a critical perspective as its framework, this article reports on a case study that explored language practices and perceptions of six South African teachers who participated in a professional development workshop entitled "Language Across the Curriculum." The study reveals the conflicting attitudes of the teachers toward the role…

Educational interventions designed to serve the needs of English language learners (ELLs) in U.S. public schools are developed within a fractured social context. Recent language and immigration policy debates in the U.S. have focused on the importance of English in attaining socio-economic success. On the other hand, research in applied…

The challenge posed to foreign language (FL) education by globalization and by the multilingual multicultural speech communities it has spawned is showcased by the current crisis in the teaching of German at American colleges and universities. It is not clear why American learners of German should be learning German: for business purposes, for…

Based on a long-term, evolving exploration regarding English language teaching and learning in English-and vernacular-medium settings in Gujarat, India, this paper offers a discussion of two key points: 1) the degree to which English is vernacularized in multilingual postcolonial contexts, and 2) ways in which vernacular pedagogic practices are…