Overview
- Challenges common societal and educational assumptions about linguistic legitimacy and non-legitimacy
- Introduces and explains the core theoretical arguments about linguistic legitimacy
- Offers a series of case study examples of languages that have been considered in some sense 'non-legitimate'
- Discusses the social and educational implications of the ideology of linguistic legitimacy
- Argues for a more sophisticated, and nuanced understanding of language, which takes into account the fact that English doesn’t exist, but Englishes do
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About this book
This book examines the nature of human language and the ideology of linguistic legitimacy – the common set of beliefs about language differences that leads to the rejection of some language varieties and the valorization of others. It investigates a broad range of case studies of languages and dialects which have for various reasons been considered 'low-status' including: African American English, Spanglish, American Sign Language, Yiddish, Esperanto and other constructed languages, indigenous languages in post-colonial neo-European societies, and Afrikaans and related language issues in South Africa. Further, it discusses the implications of the ideology of linguistic legitimacy for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the US. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book provides a readable and pedagogically useful tool to help readers comprehend the nature of human language, and the ways in which attitudes about human language can have either positive or negative consequences for communities and their languages. It will be of particular interest to language teachers and teacher educators, as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics, intercultural communication, minority languages and language extinction.
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Keywords
- language ideology
- language legitimacy
- language and power
- language extinction
- language endangerment
- constructed languages
- foreign language education
- African American English
- American Sign Language
- African American Vernacular English (AAVE)
- Deaf studies
- Esperanto
- indigenous languages
- multicultural education
- Spanglish
- Yiddish
- multilingualism
- lingua franca
- Volapük
- Afrikaans
Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Timothy Reagan is the Dean of the College of Education and Human Development and Professor of Linguistics at The University of Maine, USA. His primary areas of research are applied and educational linguistics, education policy and comparative education, and he has published a dozen books and over 150 journal articles and book chapters.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Linguistic Legitimacy and Social Justice
Authors: Timothy Reagan
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10967-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-10966-0Published: 11 March 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-10967-7Published: 28 February 2019
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XX, 434
Number of Illustrations: 49 b/w illustrations
Topics: Applied Linguistics, Minority Languages, Social Justice, Equality and Human Rights, International and Comparative Education, Intercultural Communication, Sign Language