The Paradox of Diversity: The Ideology of Linguistic Homogeneity in a Multilingual and Multicultural Spoken English Program

• In Event: 46.085 - Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: 46.085-10 - Embedded Talk: Navigating Unwritten Rules About Race and Language in Higher Education

Abstract

Informed by Critical Discourse Studies, this paper examines what language ideologies are embedded in a Spoken English program for international teaching assistants in a Midwestern university in U.S. This paper analyzes how those language ideologies are practiced and how they influence the students’ identity negotiation. The analysis reveals that the language ideologies of homogeneity, such as monolingualism, standardized language, and native speaker superiority, are predominant in the class, and that the power relations are reproduced through the discursive strategies concealing and mitigating the dominant power and through the engineering of students’ ways of speaking towards specific academic conventions. The analysis suggests that students deploy various identity negotiation strategies, sometimes accommodating, assimilating to, or otherwise navigating the dominant ideologies.

Author

• Jungsook Kim, The Ohio State University - Columbus