Sociolinguistics and Language Education.pdf

Critical Language Awareness 227
women and gays. Is the linguistic coercion of racial and ethnic ‘minorities’
somehow more acceptable?
Most readers would agree that gay and lesbian youth should not need
to learn how to not ‘sound gay’ in order to have a chance in life. After all,
it is it not true that, according to linguists, a particular language variety or
way of speaking bears no relation to intelligence? The goal of CLA, and
my research in this particular context, is ‘to make the invisible visible’ – or
in the case of language, to make the inaudible audible (Bucholtz & Hall,
2004) – by examining the ways in which well-meaning people attempt to
silence speakers of marginalized varieties by inculcating speakers into
what are, at their core, White ways of speaking and seeing the word/world,
that is, the norms of White, middle-class, heterosexist males. This approach
helps us better understand why the well-meaning teacher’s comments are
problematic. It encourages us to think about difference and discrimination
across race, gender, sexuality and all socially marginalized identities.
Arriving at this critical awareness is seen as the fi rst step in challenging
a given social order, a ‘wake-up call’ that encourages students and teachers
to interrogate received discourses and ideologies of language, which
are always connected to issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and power.
As Fairclough (1989 in Reagan, 2006: 14) has pointed out, critical language
pedagogies have a ‘substantial “shock” potential’ and ‘can help people
overcome their sense of impotence by showing them that existing orders
of discourse are not immutable’. Training in critical language issues can
help teachers be not only well-meaning but also well-informed enough to
address student questions about the imposition of dominant language
norms. With such an approach, teachers can stop apologizing for ‘the way
things are’, and begin helping their students imagine the way things
can be. As sociolinguists and scholars of language, we can help teachers
become ‘agents of change’ (Ball, 2006; Smitherman, 1986), armed with a
particular set of knowledges and pedagogies. Teachers can create a space
where dominant ideologies are interrogated and, over time, dismantled
with the goal of providing equal language rights for all.
Following Pennycook (2001: 176), we must recognize that language
teaching and learning, as well as the study of these practices, is ‘always
already political and, moreover, an instrument and a resource for change,
for challenging and changing the wor(l)d’. Change begins with one student,
one teacher, one classroom, one school, one district, at a time, and
this cannot be overemphasized. Countless social changes have been initiated
and bolstered through the active work of educational institutions.
Understandings of gender, racial and sexual identifi cation and orientation,
for example, have benefi ted greatly through changes in the offi cial
discourses of schools. CLA has the potential to help students and teachers
abandon old, restrictive and repressive ways of thinking about language
and to resocialize them into new, expansive and emancipatory ways of