Tag: language ideologies in the wild
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Bedtime podcasts
It’s time for another post in the language ideologies in the wild series! This time, I’m excited to report on an instance of a podcast actually questioning dominant language ideologies. The podcast is Be Calm on Ahway Island, which I usually play for my daughter to put her to sleep. The episode is “Articulate Airplanes”.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Language Learning as a Hobby
Following up on my recent language ideologies in the wild series, in this post I’m back with a collection of examples focused on the ideology of language learning as a fun hobby. As these unrelated examples demonstrate, this is a fairly common language ideology, and while I am all for hobbies, it’s worth highlighting the role of this ideology in marginalizing language learning in the U.S. (and probably most anglophone countries).
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Braiding Sweetgrass
This post continues the Language Ideologies in the Wild series, where I discuss language ideologies I encounter in my everyday life, usually in books or podcasts. Today, I’m looking at selections from a book I read recently: Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I enjoyed and thoroughly recommend this book, which focuses on recognizing Indigenous knowledge about plants, humans, and ecosystems and integrating it with western scientific approaches (while also showing the limitations of the latter). So, my discussion of language ideologies in this book is not a critique of the author, or the book, but just a way of highlighting the unrecognized role of language ideologies in our everyday lives.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Street Parking
It’s time for another language ideologies in the wild post! In this series, I describe the underlying (and generally) unrealized language ideologies in material I encounter in my everyday life. Today’s discussion comes courtesy of the Street Parking podcast. Street Parking is a fitness program I participate in (and love!) so as usual, the point of this post isn’t to be critical of this program or the podcast host, but just to raise awareness of how language ideologies show up unquestioned in our everyday lives.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Duolingo
In this latest post on language ideologies in the wild, I’ll be discussing the popular app Duolingo, which describes itself as “The world’s best way to learn a language”. As usual, I’ll be discussing the language ideologies behind the assumptions this app makes about languages and language learning, and the ways these ideologies contribute to social inequities. To be clear, as with the rest of the posts in this series, I do not think this is intentional on Duolingo’s part, but it is the natural consequence of not being aware of language ideologies. It’s also true that you could level many of the critiques I’m making of Duolingo at introductory language classes, but Duolingo is the app I’ve heard uncritically recommended on multiple podcasts recently (and I’m not sure I’ve ever heard a language class recommended!).
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: The Middle Aged Brain
It’s time for another language ideologies in the wild post, this time focusing on middle-aged life. Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife, by Barbara Bradley Hagerty, interweaves stories and research focused on life in middle age. As with the other books discussed in this series, the book overall is interesting, so this is not meant to be a post bashing this book. However, there is a section on language learning in middle age that could use more awareness of language ideologies, specifically the ways in which they shape how Hagerty researched and wrote about this topic.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Entrepreneurs
Last year, I wrote a post on Language Ideologies in the Wild: The Science of Learning, where I described some of the underlying ideologies that frustrated me in an otherwise interesting book. Since this is a fairly common occurrence, and I read a lot of books, I’ve decided to make it into a series, where I analyze the language ideologies embedded in books on decidedly different topics. As I’ve noted before on my posts on teaching, I think being aware of our language ideologies is essential. We can choose different language ideologies and disagree–after all there is no non-ideological, neutral perspective! Yet what I observe all too often is simply a complete lack of awareness of these ideologies, and as a result the perpetuation of social inequities.
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Language Ideologies in the Wild: Science of Learning
As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I think it is really important for language teachers to be aware of our language ideologies as there are major implications for our classrooms. The funny thing is, once you start noticing your own language ideologies, you also see language ideologies, and even more so the lack of awareness of them, everywhere!