Critical Applied Linguistics and Language Education
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CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTICS
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CRITICAL APPLIED LINGUISTICS AND LANGUAGE EDUCATION
INTRODUCTION
Critical applied linguistics (CALx) is an emergent approach to language use and education that seeks to connect the local conditions of language to broader social formations, drawing connections between classrooms, conversations, textbooks, tests, or translations and issues of gender, class, sexuality, race, ethnicity, culture, identity, politics, ideology or discourse. In the following sections I provide an overview of this work as the intersection of different critically oriented domains, such as critical discourse analysis, critical literacy and critical pedagogy, before discussing various problems and difficulties faced by this work, including struggles over the meaning of the term critical, the need for work beyond only critique, and the question of its applicability to the majority (non-Western) world. Finally I discuss ways in which CALx opens up many new ways of thinking about applied linguistics, and thus presents to applied linguistics more broadly a fresh array of concerns about language, politics, identity, ethics and difference. E A R LY D E V E L O P M E N T S
Although the term CALx itself is relatively recent (see Pennycook, 2001), and related areas such as critical discourse analysis (CDA) only emerged in the 1980s, critical approaches to applied linguistics nevertheless draw on a critical tradition around language and pedagogy that has earlier origins. As Luke (2002) argues, critical language analysis can be seen as dating back to the work of Volośinov (1895–?), and more recently Foucault (1926–1984). Critical literacy and pedagogy have been greatly influenced by the work of Paulo Freire (1921– 1997), while postcolonial critics such as Frantz Fanon (1925–1961) have been influential for the development of an understanding of language, identity, race and colonialism. CALx in its contemporary forms can best be understood as the intersection of various domains of applied linguistic work that operate under an explicit critical label, including critical discourse analysis, critical literacy, critical pedagogy, or critical language testing (CLT); as well as work that may have a less explicitly defined banner (critical approaches to translation, for S. May and N. H. Hornberger (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education, 2nd Edition, Volume 1: Language Policy and Political Issues in Education, 169–181. #2008 Springer Science+Business Media LLC.
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A L A S TA I R P E N N Y C O O K
example) or that defines its critical work more specifically, such as feminist or antiracist pedagogy. By and large, this work can be characterized as starting with the perspective that language is, as Joseph (2006) puts it, political from top to bottom. CALx therefore deals with applied linguistic concerns (broadly defined) from a perspective that is always mindful of the interrelationships among (adapting Janks, 2000) dominion (the contingent and contextual effects of power), disparity (inequitable access to material and cultu
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