ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Pluralism, Communication, and Resistance at the Center for Applied Linguistics

• In Event: Pluralism and the Human Sciences in Imperial and Postcolonial Contexts

English Abstract

It is no secret that the United States has a language problem. After decades of anti-pluralist programs and policies, linguistic diversity had been successfully undermined in the U.S. by World War II. But the strategic perils of a monolingual population began to draw national attention and concern in the second half of the 1950s. Through the National Defense Education Act (1958), among other forms of public and private investment, new paradigms of applied linguistics addressed a twofold demand. They sought, first of all, to learn more about the languages of the decolonizing world while, second, promoting English-language proficiency abroad. The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), established in 1959, was a key player. Paid for by a grant from the Ford Foundation, the CAL professionalized English as a Second Language (ESL) instruction, sponsored the World Language Survey, and housed the ERIC Clearinghouse on Languages and Linguistics for some thirty years.
This talk will focus on the latter two of these activities. Through its survey and collection work, the CAL helped to make the rest of the world intelligible to, and profitable for, U.S. actors. However, the materials it amassed formed the basis of new knowledge that celebrated pluralism. From Charles Ferguson’s conception of diglossia to commensuration through open-ended information systems, from friendships forged through improved communication to individual acts of linguistic resistance, stories from the CAL show how language-learners have pushed back against dehumanizing military and economic imperatives over time.

Author

• Judith Kaplan, Science History Institute