“Tongue-Tied”: Innovative Thinking on Second Language Research at the Intersections of Difference

• In Event: Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Making Bodies: Language, Disability, and English Language Teacher Education

Abstract

While there is much critical educational research in language studies that has engaged thoughtfully with how issues of race, ethnicity, and class impact students in oppressive ways in English Language Learning (ELL) classrooms, most of these studies (with very few exceptions) have actively ignored disability and deaf studies. In this conceptual paper I draw on the socio-politics of linguistic theory and deaf studies to demonstrate how language policy research would benefit from this transdisciplinary context where disability as both a metaphoric and materialist construct is deployed in discourses on second language acquisition that promise transformative possibilities for both pedagogy and policy

Author

• Nirmala Erevelles, The University of Alabama