Emancipatory and critical language education: a plea for translingual possible selves and worlds

Abstract

Language is the main resource for meaningful action, including the very formation of selves and psychosocial identities, shaped by practical norms, beliefs, and values. Thus, language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance and utopian innovation. In this paper, we attempt to emphasise the invaluable psychosocial, political, economic, and cultural function of language education in order to propose a critical view of the current transition from the monolingual to a multilingual paradigm. We maintain that multilingual approaches tend to serve the neoliberal framework and reproduce its systemic inequalities. Therefore, we argue in favour of emancipatory multilingual practices that could embody a translingual pedagogy capable of promoting the development of capabilities, the recognition of otherness, and the cultivation of diversity. Rooted in critical theory, namely in Foucault's notion of subjectification and Freire's view of conscientisation, an emancipatory translingual pedagogy would enable and empower every learner to synthesise a contextually creative field of new semantic and pragmatic relationships. Critical language education would enhance the ethos of biophilia that fosters what we term the poetics of communality and selfhood, that is to say, the proactive commitment to expanding symbolic and existential novelty. ARTICLE HISTORY

Critical Chinese as an Additional Language education in Australia: A journey to voices, courage and hope

“…These prompts were also catalysts which, drawing upon students’ prior knowledge, engaged them in further critical discussions in the lessons (hooks, 2014). With the unfamiliar Chinese language dominating the discursive space, students’ existing sociolinguistic knowledge of English was not silenced and their cultural capital underwent a process of symbolic appreciation, instead of suffering from ‘identity stigmatisation, lack of recognition, and deprivation of sociocultural agency’ (Formosinho et al ., 2016, p. 6). Everyone was invited to be an active CAL learner, engaging in a non‐scripted dialogue to construct new knowledge and enact new practical meanings.…”

“…Formosinho et al . (2016, p. 1) contend that ‘language education constitutes one of the most powerful means for both social reproduction and social production and ideological maintenance’; however, the current pedagogy of CAL education in Australia embraces a ‘sage on the stage’ attitude (Orton, 2016), which further reproduces systemic inequalities and does not involve disadvantaged students in the struggle for their liberation. In this article, therefore, we intend to enhance the dialogue between Freire’s critical and dialogic practices and the CAL pedagogy, aiming to envisage an emancipatory pedagogical practice within CAL classrooms that empowers students’ sense of agency towards consciousness and social transformation.…”

Emancipatory Concepts for Newer Understanding – A View from the Periphery

“…The need for emancipation does not apply only to individuals, communities or nations oppressed. Appeals for emancipation concerning education practices, teaching methods, professional practices and research practices across diverse disciplines and curriculums have gotten raised [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12].…”