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Language in education

Ian Ross Singleton

Lecturer Writing and Critical Inquiry State University of New York-Albany Albany, New York [email protected] I am a teacher of rhetoric and composition as well as critical inquiry, an important distinction of the program for which I work at SUNY-Albany. I have taught First-Year Writing for eight years throughout the New York City and State University…
December 2024: Language, Power, Identity and Schooling

This month’s Spotlight was contributed by Hub member Marguerite Lukes. She works at the intersection of research, policy and practice in language and migration. Based in New York City, Marguerite is Director of Research at the national non-profit Internationals Network for Public Schools and is part-time faculty in New York University’s School of Education, Culture…
July 2024: Access, Asset, Agency, and Advocacy: Four Pillars of Linguistic and Cultural Inclusion in Higher Education

Dr. Shawna Shapiro (Middlebury College) Over the past several years, many higher education institutions have begun to devote more attention to issues of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ)—particularly as it pertains to the experiences of students of color and other groups that been historically marginalized. Although “diversity” has been a focal point for educational…
June 2024: Colonialingualism

This month’s feature comes from critical sociolinguist and Hub member Paul J. Meighan. His text introduces us to the notion of “colonialingualism,” which Paul developed in his 2022 article entitled “Colonialingualism: colonial legacies, imperial mindsets, and inequitable practices in English language education.” The languages implemented in mainstream education predominantly reflect the knowledge and belief systems…
May 2024: The Inequities of English Use in Global Higher Education Must Be Addressed

This month’s Spotlight* was contributed by linguist/lawyer Rosemary Salomone, the Kenneth Wang Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law (Queens, New York, USA). Her latest book is The Rise of English: Global Politics and the Power of Language (Oxford University Press). For more on this topic, view a recording of the Hub’s…
Paul J. Meighan

Critical Sociolinguist Chair (2024-2025), TESOL International Bilingual-Multilingual Interest Section Member, Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity (BILD) Research Group, McGill University [email protected] I am a Scottish Gaelic critical sociolinguist. As a first-generation scholar and speaker of English, French, Italian, Spanish, and the endangered Indigenous language Scottish Gaelic, I advocate for more inclusive and equitable multilingual education,…
Guilherme Fians

Leverhulme Research Fellow University of St Andrews St Andrews, United Kingdom [email protected] I am interested in how languages and global media are used for the (re)production of certain viewpoints on political and epistemological issues. In this regard, I have analyzed the emergence of a form of post-political internationalism in print and digital media in the…
March 2024: Linguistic Labor and Language Access in U.S. Schools

This month’s Spotlight is contributed by Hub member Molly Hamm-Rodríguez, Assistant Professor of Social Foundations of Education at the University of South Florida. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights and U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division issued a “Dear Colleague” letter to address public schools’ responsibilities to ensure the…
Webinar: The Impact of Global English on Higher Education and Beyond: A Conversation with Scholars in the Open Society University Network (Recording available)

This webinar explored the English-language experiences of academics from diverse regions of the world, all of whom work in institutions that are part of the Open Society University Network. Through a facilitated conversation, these scholars addressed questions such as the following: What challenges and opportunities does the increasing pressure to publish academic work in English…
Zubair Torwali

Researcher, Writer and Minority Language Activist Executive Director, Idara Baraye Taleem-o-Taraqi Swat, Pakistan [email protected] Hailing from Bahrain, Swat — the Switzerland of Pakistan — I am a researcher, author, protector of minority languages; social, cultural, civil society and human-rights activist; writer, columnist, blogger, journalist, voice of the unheard; and a powerful voice for the rights…
Shawna Shapiro

Associate Professor Middlebury College Middlebury, Vermont, USA [email protected] Read Shawna’s March 2022 Spotlight on Language, Culture and Justice. I am an associate professor of writing and linguistics at Middlebury College. My research focuses on the transition to higher education for immigrant and refugee students, and on innovative approaches to teaching linguistically diverse groups of writers. Much of my work…
Vijay Ramjattan

Instructor International Foundation Program University of Toronto Toronto, Canada [email protected] I recently received my PhD in adult education and community development, with a specialization in workplace learning and social change, from the University of Toronto. My research interests revolve around the intersection of language and race in the workplace. These interests particularly concern the everyday…
Marguerite Lukes

Director of Research and Innovation Internationals Network of Public Schools Affiliated Faculty, International Education and Development Department of Applied Statistics, Social Science and Humanities Steinhardt School of Education, Culture and Human Development New York University New York City [email protected] I am a researcher / practitioner with my academic roots in applied linguistics and education. My…
Mingyi Li

PhD student, Language and Literacies Education Fellow Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto Toronto, Ontario, Canada [email protected] Read Mingyi’s November 2022 Spotlight on Language, Culture and Justice. I am a first-year PhD student in the Language and Literacies Education program at OISE/UofT. During my MA degree at OISE, I explored how Western influence…
Molly Hamm-Rodríguez

Assistant Professor, Social Foundations of Education University of South Florida [email protected] I am a linguistic anthropologist of education broadly interested in the relationships between language, race, migration, labor, and schooling as they shape the social futures of youth and young adults in global school-to-work, college and career readiness, and workforce development programs. I use ethnography,…
April 2023: “Multilingual Life on a Monolingual Campus: Findings and Recommendations”

This month’s Spotlight focuses on a project of the Language, Culture and Justice Hub, “Multilingual Life on a Monolingual Campus,” whose final report is now available. Six Brandeis University student researchers collaborated with Hub director Leigh Swigart, seeking to shed light on how international students live their linguistic lives on our campus. A central question for the study…
Release of findings: Multilingual Life on a Monolingual Campus (report available)

During the 2022-23 academic year, the Language, Culture and Justice Hub explored linguistic bias, the dominance of standard language ideologies, and strategies that can be used to counter these realities in the sphere of higher education. This focus built on the previous year’s project which involved research teams from two other universities in English-dominant countries: Macquarie…
March 2023: ‘#GLAD23 offers diverse perspectives on the importance of language rights’

This month’s Spotlight provides a brief overview of the recently concluded Global Language Advocacy Day 2023 (#GLAD23), organized by the Global Coalition for Language Rights. This year’s GLAD theme was Language Rights Save Lives. The Coalition works at the intersection of language, digital and human rights. Its aims are: · To support global efforts towards increasing access to critical…
February 2023: ‘Combating Negative Views of the Irish Language’

This month’s post comes from Alexandra Philbin, a Language Revitalization Mentor with the Endangered Languages Project (ELP). The project aims to support Indigenous, minoritized and endangered languages around the world by connecting language communities with resources, information and ideas to strengthen their languages. ELP is active on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn and you can also subscribe to the project’s newsletter for more information.…
November 2022: “Decolonizing Accent in English-Language Teaching”

This month’s Spotlight comes from Language, Culture and Hub member Mingyi Li. Mingyi is a Ph.D. student at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. For her Master’s degree, she explored how Western influence has affected Chinese doctoral students’ understanding of the West before they came to Canada, as…
Webinar: Toward Language Justice in Higher Education (recording available)

October 12, 2022 Link to Recording The goal of this webinar was to explore ways in which linguistic bias, standard language ideologies and monolingual assumptions affect various aspects of higher education. One of the challenges with pursuing linguistic justice at the university level is to balance multilingual ideologies and a linguistically additive approach with the…
December 2020: “Language, Culture and Justice Hub celebrates inaugural event”

Thanks to the 120 persons who recently participated in Rights, Rules and Rhetoric: Exploring Language for and about Migrants in Australia, Europe and North America. This was the first public program sponsored by Brandeis University’s Language, Culture and Justice Hub, with conveners hailing from the three continents. Participants logged on from 19 countries across the globe, including several…
December 2019: ‘Race, Language and Belonging: How Just is our Listening?’

A recent talk by University of Toronto scholar Vijay Ramjattan delves into the field of raciolinguistics, which examines how language is used to construct race and how ideas of race influence language and language use, especially in relation to racialized subjects. Scholars Nelson Flores (University of Pennsylvania) and Jonathan Rosa (Stanford University) coined the term “raciolinguistic ideologies”…