Making Textbook Dhimal: Early Stages in the Curricularization of a Minoritized Language

• In Event: Turning Languages Into Curriculum: Studies of Curricularization Across Contexts

Abstract

Objective

A prerequisite to formal language teaching is curricularization of language: sequencing, chunking, and determining right and wrong forms of a communicative system (Valdés, 2015). By studying the early curricularization of a language only recently allowed into formal schooling, this paper examines stages of this process that are difficult to uncover in languages with a longer history of school instruction.

This paper traces the production of teaching materials and curriculum for the Dhimal language, one of over 100 languages spoken in Nepal. Recent policies give all communities in Nepal the right to education in their mother tongue. This study follows steps toward implementation of rights and policies supporting multilingual education, or, the initial curricularization of the Dhimal language.

This paper seeks to address the following questions:
1. How were decisions about the curricularization of Dhimal made? What issues caused disagreement, and how were they settled?
2. How did the creators of curricularized Dhimal characterize the students who would use these materials?
3. What influence did characterization of students have on the form of the curriculum and the linguistic structures they employed?


Theoretical framework

This study is grounded in the linguistic anthropology of education (Wortham, 2008), which views language as a form of social action (Durranti, 1997) that creates social relations in cultural context. I draw on Agha’s (2005, 2007) concept of enregisterment, or the creation of linkages between speech, behavior, and characterological types, to understand how schooling creates characterizations of students that deeply impact their educational trajectories (McDermott, 1996). I tie these to the developing theorization of curricularization, the transformation of language into a school subject (Valdés, 2015, 2017).

Methods and data sources

This paper draws from a year-long ethnographic study of language policies and social change in Nepal. The core methods were participant-observation, interviews, document collection, and surveys. Participant observation was conducted at three focal schools, in the surrounding communities, and at levels of educational bureaucracy from local administration to the central government as a vertical case study (Vavrus & Bartlett, 2006). Interview and focus group participants included teachers, students, parents language and ethnic activists, and education officials. Data was analyzed using qualitative coding for predetermined and emergent themes (Maxwell, 2012).


Scholarly Significance

I contribute to work on curricularization by illustrating the backstory of classroom language teaching. The products of curricularization, including instructional materials, present a unified voice that may mask disagreement over linguistic forms and characterization of learners. This paper contributes to understanding linguistic negotiations that lead to specific linguistic forms being upheld as standard language. It is important for language educators to understand the contingent and political nature of linguistic forms promoted as correct, a point made by this paper by examining a specific historical moment for this language.

Author

• Miranda Weinberg, Rosetta Stone