The Racialized Nature of Academic Language: Disentangling the Raciolinguistic Power Structures

This book explores the implicit and explicit marginalization that English as additional language (EAL) learners, immigrant or language-minoritized children and adults confront at schools when learning to socialize into using the language of schooling. The chapters examine how the notion and practice of academic language has become racialized. In examining racialized academic language, the authors are not being dismissive of it completely; rather, they scrutinize its presence and impact on individuals' lives as their reality.

The first section explores connections between eugenics, intelligence, whiteness, and language, as well as monolingualism and bilingualism. The chapters in the second section review current practices, documenting the perpetual cycle of deficit perspectives reproduced through hegemonic structures as expressed through the construction of academic language in various schooling and non-schooling contexts. The final section presents chapters that envision what could help dismantle the power knots that academic language holds in systemic structures.

This book is relevant for teachers, teacher educators, and policy makers who care enough to not only refuse the deficiency orientations placed on non-standardized use of language at schools, but also want to deconstruct the perpetuated power academic standardized language holds in the lives of language-minoritized students.