Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Chapter 8
Critical Language Awareness
H. SAMY ALIM
This chapter focuses on critical language awareness (CLA), a growing area of
specialization in sociolinguistics with direct implications for language
education. In this chapter, I briefl y outline the theoretical underpinnings
of CLA and focus more concretely on the educational applications of the
fi eld. I begin with a commentary about the political and media discourse
around Barack Obama’s language as a means to illustrate the perspective
of CLA, or what it means to be ‘critical’. I will further illustrate the critical
approach with an in-depth examination of a dialogue with a well-meaning
teacher in an effort to highlight the centrality of ideology in CLA. I will
then focus my attention on some classroom applications of CLA as well as
the implications for sociolinguists and educators. Finally, we will revisit
the conversation with the well-meaning teacher in order to take a critical,
refl exive look at sociolinguistics by making connections between race,
gender, sexuality and language use. The chapter concludes by envisioning
a new approach to language education and social transformation.
‘I Love Barack Obama – He’s Just So Articulate!’: What It
Means to be ‘Critical’
Critical language study, according to Fairclough (1992: 7), ‘highlights
how language conventions and language practices are invested with
power relations and ideological processes which people are often unaware
of’. Throughout the chapter, this central point will be highlighted, as it is
a core component of CLA. This section illustrates what it means to adopt
a ‘critical’ view, or as Freire (1985) once put it, the perspective of someone
‘who questions, who doubts, who investigates, and who wants to illuminate
the very life we live’, by examining some widely taken-for-granted
linguistic conventions and beliefs in the discourse about the US President
Barack Obama.
The historic 2008 US presidential election generated and continues to
generate an incredible amount of discourse on race and race relations in
205