Decoloniality and language scholarship - a critical intervention

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4178955
AutoresHarshana Rambukwella (New York University Abu Dhabi), Virginia Zavala (0000-0003-3774-5922, Humanidades, Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru , Lima , Peru)
Ano2025
Volume2025
Fascículo296
Páginas9-31
Data de publicação2025-04-17
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Journal of the Sociology of Language (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0165-2516 • E-ISSN: 1613-3668
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ijsl-2024-0046
OpenAlexW4409486648
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas64

In this article, we argue that the way decoloniality is invoked in sociolinguistics runs the risk of becoming a buzzword that is sometimes deployed with inadequate attention to how its conceptual and political premises need to be critically contextualized. We propose three interconnected challenges that critical applied/sociolinguists would need to address more seriously in order to avoid the depoliticization of the discussions around language and (de)coloniality: (1) the insistence on an incommensurable non-western alterity outside modernity; (2) the production of new binaries despite trying to undermine them; and (3) the decontextualization of the studied phenomena from on-the-ground situations in highly complex circumstances. We claim, on the one hand, that 'Northern' appropriation of decoloniality can offer self-deluding comfort that one is engaging in a politics of emancipation, yet all that is taking place is a form of withdrawal from the messiness of contemporary politics. On the other hand, this depoliticized decoloniality is also instrumentalized in the Global South to romanticize indigeneity/minorities and exploit them for insidious political purposes, generating recursive internal differentiations and inequality

Colonialism · Decoloniality · Linguistics · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Anthropology · Law · Multilingual Education and Policy · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · Psychology · Second Language Learning and Teaching