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The language of settler colonialism: Adam Schwartz, ‘Language and borders revisited: Colonizing language, deporting voice and seeking discomfort in Spanish class’, Critical Education, 9, 6, 2018

10Apr18

Abstract: Spanish language education in the U.S. historically accommodates students who identify with English monolingualism and unmarked Whiteness as a normative cultural order. This distinctive practice relies on the imagination and maintenance of borders, including those realized as international geo-political divisions and discourse within Spanish classrooms themselves. The present paper offers a theoretical discussion of language ideologies in three parts. Firstly, it reviews literature from diverse disciplinary perspectives that examines intersections between language and borders. Second, Whiteness, White supremacy and White settler colonialism are named explicitly as means by which Spanish language classrooms and curricula are organized in post-secondary educational contexts. Thirdly, in the interest of understanding how students and educators may collectively disrupt traditionally oppressive discourses of foreignness and language pedagogy, an exercise in “critical photography” is examined. Finally, the article considers how we might teach language through “pedagogies of discomfort”.


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