Decolonizing Foreign, Second, Heritage, and First Languages

Abstract

Language has been used as a tool of domination, conquest and colonization throughout history. This chapter reviews the types of language education programs that fit those categories and suggests that they fail to leverage the actual language practices of learners, called here translanguaging. The economic and military might of the Kingdom of England did not require the language named English to be protected by a prescriptive grammar or a language academy. In 1588 England defeated the Spanish armada, consolidating the might of British maritime power. The plan of the growing power was to acquire the many people and their riches in a territory over which the sun never set. As the powerful class of both the Spanish and British empires came into contact with Others who spoke differently, they legitimated only their own language practices, which were named Spanish in one case and English in the other, and these were carefully restricted.

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