Language teaching and learning has many different cultural dimensions, and over the years more and more of these have been the subject of research. The first dimension to be explored was that of content: the images of target language countries and the world that were offered in textbooks and presented in class. The next dimension was that of the learner: the (inter)cultural learning, competence and identity of the learner or subject. The next dimension was context: the situation and role of language teaching and learning in society and in the world.
This article presents a framework for the analysis of language hierarchies at the international university. Taking into consideration that more than 50 different languages may be present among the language resources of students and staff, the article approaches the problem of how one can analyze practices of hierarchization, inclusion and exclusion of languages in a de facto multilingual setting such as a university. The major analytical categories are those of language hierarchization in practice and in representations, as well as distinctions of language hierarchies at different levels: the global, the regional, the state and the institutional levels. The article positions universities in this complex linguistic landscape and presents a case in which a multilingual policy has been implemented: Cultural Encounters at Roskilde University, an educational program that deals with issues of multicultural and multilingual society in a global and postcolonial perspective.
Language textbooks: windows to the worldWhat images of the world do we find in language textbooks? What countries and continents are favoured, what key problems of the world are mentioned and taken up, what segments of the world's populations are represented and how, what role is given to the understanding of world history, colonialism and imperialism, what role is given to the understanding of transnational processes? Are there blind spots in the representation of the world? This article challenges the tradition of focusing on the representation of 'countries' in language teaching -target language countries and the country of the learners. It takes an explicit global perspective, drawing on a range of critical approaches to the study of culture, society and the world: National studies, citizenship education studies, Cultural studies, postcolonial studies and transnational studies. The article argues that the approaches imply different sets of analytical questions regarding the cultural content of language textbooks. Examples of questions and analyses are taken from textbooks for a number of languages taught in Denmark: English, German and French in lower secondary school and Spanish in upper secondary school.
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