The good English
The ideological construction of the target language in adult Esol
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2891903 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Karen Swift (0000-0003-3508-6089), Kelsey Swift (The Graduate Center, CUNY, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 51 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 309-331 |
| Publication date | 2022-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Language in Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-4045 • E-ISSN: 1469-8013 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0047404521000427 |
| OpenAlex | W3176280069 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 35 |
This project problematizes hegemonic conceptions of language by looking at the construction of 'English' in a nonprofit, community-based adult ESOL program in New York. I use ethnographic observation and interviews to uncover the discursive and pedagogical practices that uphold these hegemonic conceptions in this context. I find that the structural conditions of the program perpetuate a conception of 'English' shaped by linguistic racism and classism, despite the program's progressive ideals. Linguistic authority is centralized through the presentation of a closed linguistic system and a focus on replication of templatic language. This allows for the drawing of linguistic borders by pathologizing forms traditionally associated with racialized varieties of English, pointing to the persistence of raciolinguistic ideologies. Nevertheless, students destabilize these dominant ideas, revealing a disconnect between mainstream understandings of language and the way adult immigrant learners actually use language, and pointing to possibilities for alternate conceptions and pedagogies. (Language ideology, raciolinguistics, Standard English, adult ESOL
Context (archaeology) · Ethnography · Hegemony · Ideology · Language ideology · Linguistics · Mainstream · Pedagogy · Political science · Politics · Racism · Sociology · Anthropology · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Gender Studies · History · Multilingual Education and Policy · Second Language Learning and Teaching
Black linguistics
The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society
The Everyday Language of White Racism
Linguistic Justice
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-Competence
Looking like a Language, Sounding like a Race
African American English
Authority in Language
Chicano English in Context
Premises of multi-competence
Language in Late Modernity
Language and Materiality
Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life
Fostering translingual dispositions against Unequal Englishes
Latin@s and the Intergenerational Continuity of Spanish
Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages
Language plurality of South Asia
We Thought They Had Forgotten Us”
Racist!’
We have room for but one language here
English-Only and Standard English Ideologies in the U.S
Disinventing and (Re)Constituting Languages
Undoing Appropriateness
The Object Called "Language" and the Subject of Linguistics
Voices of America
Towards an analysis of discourse
Language and linguistics on trial
Unsettling race and language
The good English
Voice, Footing, Enregisterment
| Citations per year | 1.5 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2022 - 2025 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |