Using a perspective of the periphery, this paper argues that the phrase ‘multilingual turn’ in Applied Linguistics is a form of current intellectual movement that denies the existence of multilingual practices which were and have been highly vibrant not only in Western countries, but also in most post‐colonial countries worldwide. Taking a specific case of a periphery country (Indonesia), one of the world's most multilingual and multiethnic countries, I show that the catchphrase ‘multilingual turn’ is a vacuous concept which stands in stark contrast to the multilingual reality of the country. The construct grassroot performativity is proposed to illustrate the complexity of linguistic practices that people in the multilingual country engage in to display ‘mundane identity work’ (Blommaert 2013)
This forum article is an attempt to engage in a recent exchange between Figueiredo and Martinez and Kubota whose articles were published in this journal. Bearing out the tenets of the latter author’s claims regarding how to confront the dominance of white Euro-American hegemonic knowledge, Figueiredo and Martinez proposed an additional insightful way of challenging the dominance of this knowledge, namely by unmasking and exposing one’s own loci of enunciation. I take up the notion of the locus of enunciation further by not just simply conceiving it as a way, but rather as a resistant tactic. Construed in the latter sense, the article argues that scholars from the Global South do not passively and uncritically accept Eurocentric epistemologies as the sole universal and legitimate knowledge. Instead, they are capable of not only negotiating and appropriating the established knowledge, but also performing their agentive capacity from their specific geo-political and body-political positionalities to resist the dominion of Eurocentric epistemological practices, as well as to elevate and legitimate their own ecology of knowledges.
This article discusses the critiques of critical multiculturalism of the well-established notion of liberal multiculturalism. Drawing insights from a critical theory, critical multiculturalism attempts to challenge and deconstruct the basic constructs such as culture and knowledge from the perspective of liberal multiculturalism. From this line of inquiry, I proceed to argue that English language education in the Indonesian context still clings to the spirit of liberal multicultural orthodoxy, which is evident from the English pedagogy policy, teaching and research. I then suggest that by adopting a critical perspective of multiculturalism, and hence critical multiculturalism as a framework of thinking, we can help raise teachers" awareness to adopt critical teaching and research practices that not only value the multiplicity of students" cultures but also resist linguistic and cultural determinism prevalent especially in academic writing practice. To demonstrate the possibility of resistance against the hegemonic forces of linguistic and cultural determinism, I present case studies of multilingual student writers in their search of the politics of identity in academic writing.
Contemporary perspectives of English as a lingua franca (ELF) vis‐à‐vis its traditional conceptualization have yet to be informed, and made aware to the Indonesian teachers who teach English as a foreign language in Indonesia. While burgeoning current literature on ELF has cast crucial insights into how English needs to be taught in multilingual contexts, the teaching of the language in the country still succumbs to the traditional ELF practices, which view English as a mere monolithic, standard, and international language of global interaction. This article argues that local language teachers need not only be informed about ELF, but also be made ELF‐aware through ELF‐aware teacher education program. This program can assist them in shifting their orientation and conviction to a more dynamic, inclusive, plurilithic and situated perspective of ELF communication. The article then proceeds by envisaging how this ELF awareness can also be raised through teachers' continuous efforts to negotiate the imposed language policy, to create their own spaces for engaging with this policy, and finally to venture into the art of articulation.
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