The glotopolítica of English teaching to Latinx students in the US

Abstract

The teaching of English to Latinx students has always been about assimilating a population that was conquered, colonized, and racialized through the imperialist designs of the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This chapter, nourished by the theoretical perspective of glotopolítica, which will be described below, analyses the assumptions behind English language teaching of Latinx students. To do so, it examines the ideologies behind the English language standards that define the teaching of English to Latinx students today. We focus on the way in which English has been disembodied from its history as an imperialist instrument of conquest and colonization and from its role in the neoliberal establishment of global capitalism in the present. English is treated as an autonomous neutral linguistic structure, without taking into account how it has been, and continues to be used, to maintain structures that keep the power in the hands of English monolingual elites. The movement in the United States towards English language “standards” is here shown as a way to restore a social order in which students of colour were educationally segregated prior to the judicial decision of Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). With social measures and judicial and legislative orders that required educational authorities to provide an equitable education to all students after the Civil Rights era, ways had to be found to sort students into categories of those who deserved a rich and challenging education, and those who were seen as not meeting the standards to do so. We use a lens from glotopolítica to show how the standards movement, and the testing and accountability measures that have accompanied it since the 1990s, are being used today to justify excluding Latinx students and other racialized minorities from educational opportunities, as they fail to meet “standards” that are presented as objective measures of linguistic and intellectual capacity.