Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics

The ‘Translanguaging & Trans-Semiotizing Research Group’ Channel aims at building a Community of Practice (CoP) of both emergent and experienced scholars for academic exchange on Translanguaging and Trans-semiotising research and pedagogies. It serves as a bridge between theory and practice, an interactive platform for intellectual dialogues across different generations and diverse contexts, a space for imagination, criticality and creativity, and an innovative Public Pedagogy forum for 21st Century students, teachers and researchers.

Speaker: Dr. Nelson Flores, University of Pennsylvania (United States)

Abstract
Conceptualizations of competence, which permeate applied linguistics, systematically fail to account for the role of racialization in the language learning process. To interrogate the racialization of competence, we first examine its emergence in conjunction with the ideological construction of linguistic homogeneity as central to the naturalization of race within the context of European colonialism. We then examine how ideas about linguistic competence took shape jointly with a genre of the human that is overrepresented as white and how this same genre of the human informed foundational conceptualizations of communicative competence. After examining relevant examples of how communicative competence has been taken up in ways that reify this racializing ideology, we end with an alternative conceptualization of the goals of language learning that by centering the worldviews of racialized communities no longer relies on universalizing conceptions of competence as the desired outcome.

About the Speaker:
Nelson Flores studies the intersection of language and race in education. This includes tracing the racist roots of contemporary language educational research, policy, and practice, documenting the ways that they continue to harm racialized bilingual students, and conceptualizing anti-racist alternatives. His work has been featured by NPR, Education Week, and the LA Times.
Readings
Flores, N., & Rosa, J. (in press). Undoing Competence: Coloniality, Homogeneity, and the Overrepresentation of Whiteness in Applied Linguistics. Language Learning.
Flores, N. (2020). From Academic language to language architecture: Challenging raciolinguistic ideologies in research and practice. Theory into Practice, 59(1), 22-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2019...
Flores, N., Kleyn, T. & Menken, K. (2015). Looking holistically in a climate of partiality: Identities of students labeled long term English language learners. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 14, 113-132.
Flores, N. & Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and language diversity in education. Harvard Education Review, 85(2), 149-171. https://doi.org/10.17763/0017-8055.85...
Flores, N. & Saldívar García, E. (2020). Power language and bilingual learners. In N. Nasir, C. Lee, R. Pea & M. McKinney de Royston (eds.), Handbook of the Cultural Foundations of Learning (pp. 178-191). New York: Routledge.