Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education: Criticality, Decolonization, and Social Justice: Derek Hird

Abstract

Critical Pedagogies for Modern Languages Education edited by Derek Hird is a timely contribution to the rising calls for decolonizing education that gained global momentum a decade ago. Amongst a growing body of scholarly works following this intellectual movement—which has been cautioned for being the ‘decolonial bandwagon’ (Moosavi 2020)—this volume stands out nevertheless for its firm commitment to a decolonial turn in modern languages. While applied linguistics and sociolinguistics have substantially advanced debates on language-related imperialism, colonialism, and Eurocentrism (e.g. Phillipson 1992; Pennycook 1998; Canagarajah 1999), instilling a paradigm shift to decolonial linguistics (Mufwene 2020), these are largely premised on critiques of English and the way English is taught and circulated in postcolonial processes of globalization. Modern languages have until now barely been involved in such debates despite the problematic nature of ‘modern’ in modern languages (Ford and Santos 2022), which centres around hegemonic European languages and epistemic traditions, thus, risks of continuing as part of the wider colonial project. Hird’s collection bridges exactly this gap and, in this regard, also disturbs the artificial disciplinary and institutional divide that arguably exists between the teaching and research of English in a globalizing world and that of the so-called modern languages. It brings to the fore issues and concerns urgent to our understanding about coloniality, power asymmetry, and resistance across modern language education, inclusive of English.

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