Announcing
PhD in Second Language Studies Dissertation Defense
Prem Phyak
‘For our Cho:tlung’: Decolonizing Language Ideologies and
(Re)Imagining Multilingual Education Policies and Practices in Nepal
Chair: Kathryn A. Davis
12 October 2016, 2:00–5:00 p.m.
Moore Hall, Room 258
Recent studies on ‘the multilingual turn’ (Conteh & Meier, 2014; May, 2014) reveal both the theoretical and pedagogical inadequacy of monolingual ideologies and instructional practices in language education. Yet, dominant language policies and pedagogical practices, including multilingual ones, are deeply influenced by monolingual habitus and biases (Benson, 2013; Gogolin, 1997; May, 2014) and monoglossic ideologies (García & Kleyn, 2016) which both solidify ‘inequalities of multilingualism’ (Tupas, 2015) and delegitimize the use of minoritized languages and language practices in education. By putting ‘language ideology’ (Kroskrity, 2009; Makihara & Schieffelin, 2007; Pennycook, 2013; Woolard, 1998) at the center, this engaged ethnographic study analyzes decolonizing efforts (Maldonado-Torres, 2010; Quijano, 2007; Smith, 2012) with one group of indigenous people, Limbu, towards denaturalizing and transforming hegemonic language ideologies represented in Nepal’s language education policies and practices. More specifically, this study emphasizes ideological analyses with indigenous villagers, teachers, and youth towards building critical ideological awareness, advocacy, and activism in (re)imagining equitable multilingual policies and pedagogical practices in Nepal.
Building on engaged language policy (Davis, 2014; Davis & Phyak, forthcoming; Shohamy, 2015), this study adopts a multi-sited and multi-method approach (McCarty, 2011) to engage Limbu bi/multilingual villagers, teachers, and youth in ethnographically grounded dialogue on language ideological issues. Informed by ‘indigenous critical praxis’ and ‘indigenous epistemology’ (Gegeo & Watson-Gegeo, 2002, 2013), dialogic engagement (Bakhtin, 1981; Freire, 1970) with the participants is grounded in collaborative ethnography, counter-narratives, critical language awareness workshops, and focus-group discussions. This study reveals that ethnographically grounded dialogue builds the participants’ critical consciousness (Freire, 1970) of multiple language ideologies and further engages them in reclaiming their identities as a knower and transformative agent for creating multilingual school space. In particular, dialogic engagement contributes to ‘ideological becoming’ (Bakhtin, 1984; Ball & Freedman, 2004) which represents the participants’ critical awareness about the hegemony of dominant nation-state and neoliberal ideologies and identities as social critics, advocates, and activists. This process further involves participants’ ‘ideological clarification’ (Fishman, 2000; Kroskrity, 2009) about the hegemony of the nation-state and neoliberal ideologies in both dominant and resistance language policy discourses and practices.
This study implies that dialogic engagement is necessary to denaturalize the colonial invention of language as a fixed, bounded, and monoglossic entity and to empower language minoritized people to take an activist position towards transforming monolingual language ideologies and educational practices. While indigenous villagers denaturalize the monolingual nation-state and hierarchical neoliberal ideologies, teachers can construct translanguaging pedagogies (García & Li, 2014) towards supporting ‘epistemic access’ (Heugh, 2015; Kerfoot & Simon-Vandenbergen, 2015) of bi/multilingual indigenous children. Similarly, indigenous youth can reclaim their multilingual identities and position themselves as counterpublics through dialogic engagement. This study further theorizes ‘engaged language policy’ (Davis, 2014; Shohamy, 2015) and contributes to knowledge in ‘the multilingual turn’, by integrating decolonizing efforts towards transforming monolingual ideologies in language education.