Language has been a site of struggle for long. Philosophers, linguists, politicians, educators, sociologists, and societies at large have something to say about the role of language, and/or languages, in our lives (Adsera & Pytlikova, 2015; Blommaert & Verschueren, 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas & McCarty, 2008). A great deal of these debates emerge and are spread by the thinkers and practitioners of the Global North (for the most part), where monolingualism is the norm. Ideas about “mother language” vs “second” or “foreign” language (Jordão, 2009), or native speakerism exist in those contexts but do not represent other ways of living and experiencing languages in non-white, non-angloeuropean communities, like India or like African countries (to mention two salient examples), where people conduct their daily lives in many languages without the need to name them as “mother tongue,” “second” or “foreign” (Grosjean, 2019; Yildiz, 2012). The terminologies and the ideologies and practices that arise in the Global North have largely and deeply influenced language attitudes, language policies, language teaching, language teacher education, research on language, and so on and so forth.
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Redes Sociales DIE-UD