The master's tools will never dismantle the master's school: Interrogating settler colonial logics in language education

Abstract

Racialized students are overrepresented in special- and English-learner education programs in the United States. Researchers have pointed to implicit bias in evaluation tools and evaluators as a cause resulting in calls for more culturally competent/relevant practices/assessments. However, this paper argues that racial overrepresentation is reflective of larger settler colonial frameworks embedded in linguistic standards that continue to drive education and language ideologies/practices globally but especially in U.S. schools. First, through an analysis of an orthoepic test used during the Parsley Massacre of 1937 on the island of Hispaniola, I present how the evaluation of accented language has been used to racialize and pathologize people. Secondly, through a comparative analysis of bilingualism in the U.S. and Canada, I show how linguistic variation is only devalued when it emerges from marginalized communities, affirming the white normative gaze as a mechanism for maintaining inequitable power structures. Finally, the paper presents how these logics are present in current manifestations of bilingual education. By indicating how racially, physically, and/or neurodivergent people are othered, this paper calls on the decolonization of applied linguistics in order to effectively address the over- and disproportionate representation of Black, Indigenous, and/or Latinx students within special- and English-learner programs.

Transformative justice as a method in applied linguistics

“…The result of this is that academics' own interests are served, rewarded, and applauded while reproducing language-as-accommodation logics which suggest that marginalized children are best helped when they shift toward dominant societal language practices in school. But as scholars aligning with the goals of transformative justice have long told us, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house (Lorde, 1984(Lorde, /2003; see also Baker-Bell, 2020 andCioè-Peña, 2022). Furthermore, impact and knowledge exchange projects too often rely on transmissive modes of knowledge dissemination, which reproduce power imbalances in which academic linguists are positioned as all-knowing and authoritative.…”

Linguistic Variation and Linguistic Inclusion in the US Educational Context

“…Educational institutions-intentionally and unintentionally, implicitly and explicitly-often fail to acknowledge, value, and include the abundant linguistic resources and abilities that linguistically minoritized students bring with them to school, thereby limiting these students' full access to and participation in education. The social movement for equity in education thus requires transforming longstanding educational ideologies that tacitly or overtly advocate for linguistic assimilation and homogeneity (see, e.g., Braithwaite 2019, Cioè-Peña 2022, Henner & Robinson 2021. Grounded in this perspective, four key sociolinguistic principles frame the discussion of language variation and education in this article.…”

“…A second key principle is that the standard language ideology influences how language is taught, and is taught about, in schools and education-related institutions (Lippi-Green 1997, Cioè-Peña 2022, Cushing 2021, UNESCO 2016, Zentella 2017. It intersects with societal-level factors, including systemic racism, xenophobia, classism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of bias and discrimination to perpetuate educational and social disparities that limit full access to education and to positions of power and privilege for students from historically and systemically marginalized groups.…”

“…In another example, pervasive contemporary discourse about so-called "language gaps" or "word gaps"-the notion that the language of children from low-income families is inherently underdevelopedpathologizes the linguistic experiences of those with less social and cultural capital and is sustained by white supremacy, settler-colonial violence, and anti-Blackness (Figueroa in press; see also Adair et al 2017, Sperry et al 2019). Thus, there persists "a widespread and inaccurate societal belief that a monolithic, unchanging standard variety of English objectively exists [and] belongs to whiteness"-a belief that originated in and continues to reinforce white supremacist, colonial models of education (Charity Hudley et al 2022, p. 26; see also Cioè-Peña 2022, Errington 2001, 2008Makoni et al 2022, McKinney 2017Motha 2014;Pennycook 2007, Rajendram 2022.…”

Toward a raciolinguistic perspective on translation and interpretation

“…This insight helps me to better understand the tensions I was feeling when writing and presenting on the report focused on best practices for translation and interpretation mentioned above. The entire institutional apparatus of special education has roots in the same colonial logics that framed Black populations as nonhuman and entitled to no legal rights and Indigenous populations as subhuman and in need of white salvation (Cioè-Peña 2022). This means that what is even translatable within the context of an IEP meeting is already premised on the dehumanization of entire populations and the only way for families from these populations to be heard within these institutional registers is to accept their dehumanization as a point of entry into the conversation.…”