What does transformation for social and linguistic justice look like in the language teaching classroom?: Reflexivity for Antiracist Critical Literacy in Language Education

• Claudia Holguín Mendoza, Ph.D., University of California, Riverside

This presentation focuses on how the outcomes of language curricularization as a process construct and perpetuate a system of whiteness. Since these mechanisms have rarely been analyzed, we have not yet scratched the surface of the consequences of the experiences of racialization that curricularization as part of a whiteness framework has brought to language students and practitioners. I present an analytical framework that suggests a way in which transforming language curriculum is possible through critical literacy, including antiracist approaches that focus on critical historicity and reflexivity through a model of Critical Sociocultural Linguistic Literacy (CriSoLL). CriSoLL involves developing a type of knowledge and personal reflection that allows us to better understand hierarchical relations within and outside the classroom to promote antiracist and anti-discriminatory practices.

On the Sociopolitical Implications of Language Reclamation: The Case of Xinka

• Rodrigo Ranero, Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles

The Xinka people of Guatemala are reclaiming their language. In this talk, I begin by highlighting the challenges and opportunities that derive from indigenous communities’ efforts to learn, teach, and use their heritage language in contexts where the typical transmission process is no longer feasible. I then discuss my decade-long collaboration with the community and how the reclamation process itself has resulted in significant socio-political gains that go beyond the narrow goal of speaking Xinka again.

Advancing social justice through language teaching: from theory and praxis to meaning

• Noelia Sánchez Walker, Ph.D., Yale University

Schools and colleges are expected to provide students with the knowledge and experiences needed to develop a sense of belonging in society. While developing their own identity and a sense of their own purpose and values, students figure out their individual careers and their life as engaged members in their communities. As educated people, they are expected to do things that society needs and value. Historically, in the U.S. they are also expected to protect society’s rights and privileges (Thelin, 2019). Thus, school and colleges train young people to not only run, but also protect society, maintaining hierarchies of power and systems of oppression that prevent social transformation.

Unfortunately, these systems of oppression do not trust women, immigrants, black people, other people of color, and many other marginalized groups, to be valuable contributors to society. Ideally a radical democracy is not a place for groups of people to systematically overpower other groups of people (Hooks, 1994). Neither is it a place for systemic oppression and inequalities based on social class, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and ability (Murillo Torrecilla and Hernández Castilla, 2011). This ideal of justice and freedom for all leads us to seek social justice. Social justice is about social change, social transformation. Without social transformation education loses meaning and meaning is what gets students to think of the purpose of their actions in society. Meaning is what gets students to think if their studies are worth the effort. This presentation discusses how meaning can be (de)constructed and co-constructed in a language classroom that fosters social transformation (Holguin Mendoza & Sánchez Walker, 2024) with two different lessons addressing Afro-descendants in Latin America. While one lesson discusses Afro-descendants and their contributions to society, the other fosters critical awareness of the sociocultural and linguistic context that perpetuates invisibilization of this population and its contributions to society.