Rupturing the Yoke of Colonialism in Foreign Language Education

Abstract

Applied linguistics is a catch-all term that includes linguistics studies, language acquisition studies, foreign language teaching, heritage language education, English as a foreign language, discourse analysis, English as a second language, and bilingual education, including the multiplicity of approaches that fall under the rubric of bilingual education, including dual language instruction. Although both foreign language programs and bilingual programs may be dealing with the same colonial language, the foreign language programs usually reap prestige from the mere fact that they serve mostly white, middle-class students even when they produce colossal failures. Most literature professors who make decisions about the curriculum know little about the very complex grammar nature of the foreign language they have learned to read and write primarily to gain access to literary texts in the target language. By and large, the asymmetrical power relations that inform the co-existence between foreign language studies and the corresponding literatures result in the marginalization of foreign language education.