Academic Language: A Monolingual Social Construction for Language in Academic Contexts That Has No Place in Academic Contexts

• In Event: Dismantling Language Dichotomies in Teacher Education

Abstract

Objectives
This paper presents a critical review and analysis of academic language as used in the predominately White monolingual (English) educational literature. The review begins with the White British English scholar, Basil Bernstein’s conceptual distinction between restricted code used by children of working class English-speakers and elaborated code used by children of White educated English-speakers. It continues by reviewing Jim Cummins’ ideas about BICS and CALP to show how these early social constructions were developed from monolingual, standard language ideologies (AUTHOR, XXXX). The study argues for the centering of translingual practices in schools and teacher education, by showing that academic language has no place in schools or in teacher education, due to its monolingual, inaccurate presentation of language in academic contexts.

Framework
The study questions how bilingualism, and especially, dynamic translingual spoken and written practices, have been omitted from discussions of academic language, especially in U.S. K-12 schools. I argue that the omission of dynamic concurrent languaging practices is due primarily to the role of monolingual, standard language hegemonic ideologies in schools and in Whitestream teacher education programs. These ideologies position bilingual children’s translingual practices as intellectually incapable of conveying elaborate ideas, and resembling the language of savages. This positioning is based on erroneous beliefs that serious conversations, negotiations of meaning, argumentations, speculations, and other ways of displaying understanding can only occur in one language variety: academic language/standard English. Monolingual standard language ideologies accordingly normalize White monolingual ways of communicating among educated families as the solely acceptable way of learning and using language in academic contexts (Flores, 2020). Most importantly, they fail to see languaging (within and across language varieties), and especially translanguaging (within and across languages) as viable and meaningful communication in academic contexts.

Methods/Data
The study uses a qualitative text analysis (Schreier, 2012) to unpack messages about the value and nature of academic language presented in 10 highly cited books/articles (500+ Google citations) prior to the introduction of translanguaging theory (García & Li, 2014).

Results/Arguments
The analysis shows the extent to which messages about academic language privilege monolingual standard language ideologies, and present a simplified, static view of monolingual language use in classroom contexts. Following this analysis, the paper moves to a presentation of essential dynamic features of translanguaging (García & Wei, 2014; García et al., 2017; Wei, 2018).

Findings indicate the need to center translingual practices in schools and teacher education programs, by showing how simply and erroneously academic language has been defined and promoted in order to sustain English monolingual ideologies of language, which ipso facto serves to invalidate translingual/translanguaging practices used in bilingual communities as appropriate for academic purposes.

Significance
The study has the potential to help novice and more established teachers and teacher educators understand the harm that the continued use of academic language can have on students of color and bilingual/multilingual learners.

Author

• Christian J. Faltis, Texas A&M International University