Linguistic Legitimacy and Social Justice, 1st ed. 2019

This book examines the nature of human language and the ideology of linguistic legitimacy ? the common set of beliefs about language differences that leads to the rejection of some language varieties and the valorization of others. It investigates a broad range of case studies of languages and dialects which have for various reasons been considered 'low-status' including: African American English, Spanglish, American Sign Language, Yiddish, Esperanto and other constructed languages, indigenous languages in post-colonial neo-European societies, and Afrikaans and related language issues in South Africa. Further, it discusses the implications of the ideology of linguistic legitimacy for the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the US. Written in a clear and accessible style, this book provides a readable and pedagogically useful tool to help readers comprehend the nature of human language, and the ways in which attitudes about human language can have either positive or negative consequences for communities and their languages. It will be of particular interest to language teachers and teacher educators, as well as students and scholars of applied linguistics, intercultural communication, minority languages and language extinction.

Chapter 1: Language and Other Myths: ‘Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt’.- Chapter 2: Conceptualizing the Ideology of Linguistic Legitimacy: ‘Primitive people have primitive languages and other nonsense’.- Chapter 3: African American English, Race and Language: ‘You don’t believe fat meat is greasy’.- Chapter 4: Spanglish in the United States: ‘We speak Spanglish to the dogs, to the grandchildren, to the kids’.- Chapter 5: Sign Language and the DEAF-WORLD: ‘Listening without hearing’.- Chapter 6: Yiddish, the Mame-Loshn: ‘Mensch tracht, Gott lacht’.- Chapter 7: Created and Constructed Languages: ‘I can speak Esperanto like a native’.- Chapter 8: Afrikaans, Language of Oppression to Language of Freedom: ‘Dit is ons erns’.- Chapter 9: Why Language Endangerment and Language Death Matter: ‘Took away our native tongue … And taught their English to our young’.- Chapter 10: Foreign Language Education in the US: ‘But French isn’t a real class!’.- Chapter 11: Linguistic Legitimacy, Language Rights and Social Justice: ‘No one is free when others are oppressed’.

Timothy Reagan is the Dean of the College of Education and Human Development and Professor of Linguistics at The University of Maine, USA. His primary areas of research are applied and educational linguistics, education policy and comparative education, and he has published a dozen books and over 150 journal articles and book chapters.

Challenges common societal and educational assumptions about linguistic legitimacy and non-legitimacy Introduces and explains the core theoretical arguments about linguistic legitimacy Offers a series of case study examples of languages that have been considered in some sense 'non-legitimate' Discusses the social and educational implications of the ideology of linguistic legitimacy Argues for a more sophisticated, and nuanced understanding of language, which takes into account the fact that English doesn’t exist, but Englishes do