Navigating the everydayness of raciolinguistic ideologies as a minoritized language teacher

Abstract

Minoritized language teachers are known to face challenges in relation to their social identities from studying to become a language teacher to entering and remaining in the profession. Thus, a focus on minoritized teachers’ experiences is necessary to help teacher educators and scholars identify emergent and persistent issues, and in doing so, move towards reforming teacher education and teaching as a profession. In this paper, we explore the experiences of a minoritized, transnational teacher of Icelandic as a second language from a perspective of raciolinguistics, which expands our conceptual tools to better understand how race and language intersect and manifest in minoritized teachers’ personal and professional lives. There is a lack of research relating to these concerns in Iceland. We draw on discourse analysis to make sense of the teacher’s experiences and find that raciolinguistic ideologies permeate the teacher’s everyday experiences through subtle and explicit discrimination, despite the liberal orientation of Iceland. An analysis of the experiences also reveals moments of resistance, although raciolinguistic ideologies end up maintaining a strong sense of vulnerability for the teacher.