Despite critical literacy being identified as a desired outcome of South Africa's new curriculum statement, in reality this does not seem to be occurring (DoE 2002, pp. 5, 11). Critical literacy is one way in which spaces of contestation and resistance can be opened up. In order to do so it is necessary to provide students with basic literacy…

The purpose of this paper is to describe an original active learning exercise that incorporates both referential and constructivist perspectives on the role of language in the social world. The exercise encourages students to view language as both a vehicle for transmitting sociologically-relevant content (e.g., attitudes, perspectives,…

Native American languages, contemporary youth identity, and powerful messages from mainstream society and Native communities create complex interactions that require deconstruction for the benefit of Native-language revitalization. This study showed how Native youth negotiate mixed messages such as the necessity of Indigenous languages for…

This paper sets out to review 14 years of developments in language policy and practice in South Africa under its new, democratic Constitution. The paper begins with an overview of language policy developments since 1994, with particular reference to the role of English, of indigenous African languages and the learner in the classroom. It examines…

It is widely acknowledged that globalization has made a considerable impact on multidimensional aspects of human life including the language policies of many countries. This article examines the adjustment of Turkey's language policy in response to the global influence of English at different levels of Turkish national education, including its…

Rooted in feminist philosophy, critical race theory, and participatory action research (PAR), I partnered with four faculty and four students at an elite, private, college preparatory day school for boys in order to examine bullying. In this article I closely examine the role of language and discourse when conducting counter hegemonic research…

Miller Singleton, a high school student, recently produced a video that shared her vision of a program in which learners could use materials from the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative to obtain a college degree. She calls the program the Open Content Educational Program (OCEP), a program that is offered to high school seniors that gives them the…

In an online class, it's not unusual to never see a teacher or classmates face-to-face. It's not unusual to interact with an instructor and classmates through discussion boards or e-mail and to get information through online documents and presentations rather than live lectures. In the spring of 2009 students in the online class "Warcraft:…

To construct a new ideal to define what it means to be literate, Benjamin Endres turns to Jurgen Habermas's "discourse" to offer an ethic for literacy and to examine the conditions that must be met to be in communion with the other. The acceptance of language as "the specific medium of understanding" and Habermas's choice to…

This article presents an adaptation of a position paper written by Da Pidgin Coup, a group of concerned faculty and students in the Department of Second Language Studies (SLS). In fall 1999, the group became concerned about a statement made by the chairman of the Board of Education implicating Pidgin in the poor results of the students of Hawai'i…

Every multicultural society has a language of power--the language spoken by members of the dominant group or groups--as well as languages that lack power because they are spoken by members of the subordinate group or groups. The ascension of one language over another has long been a source of controversy in Hawai'i, as it has in many parts of the…

This article reviews eighteenth- and nineteenth-century proceedings of the London Central Criminal Court (Old Bailey) that involved deaf people. The use, role, and status of sign language and interpreters in these settings are described. These proceedings provide important information about deaf people's experiences within the court system of the…

Last spring, the author distributed a survey to majors and minors in Hispanic studies at Connecticut College and at other schools to informally gather student attitudes toward the nature of Hispanic-studies courses as it pertained to their interests and goals. Although results were somewhat predictable, an unexpected finding was that of 148…

This study presents a profile of Spanish as an international language and offers the most recent information on its demographics. The countries in which Spanish is the official language as well as the territories where it is not the official language are considered. The work compares the number of Spanish speakers with the number of other…

The five papers in this issue cover a range of perspectives on the acquisition and use of the Spanish copulas "ser" and "estar" in a variety of contexts, including language contact, bilingual language acquisition, and classroom second language learning. The fact that these papers cite work in this area as far back as the early part of the 20th…