Language Policies and (Dis)Citizenship: Rights, Access, Pedagogies - Paperback

by Vaidehi Ramanathan (Editor)

This volume explores the concept of 'citizenship', and argues that it should be understood both as a process of becoming and the ability to participate fully, rather than as a status that can be inherited, acquired, or achieved. From a courtroom in Bulawayo to a nursery in Birmingham, the authors use local contexts to foreground how the vulnerable, particularly those from minority language backgrounds, continue to be excluded, whilst offering a powerful demonstration of the potential for change offered by individual agency, resistance and struggle. In addressing questions such as 'under what local conditions does "dis-citizenship" happen?'; 'what role do language policies and pedagogic practices play?' and 'what kinds of margins and borders keep humans from fully participating'? The chapters in this volume shift the debate away from visas and passports to more uncertain and contested spaces of interpretation.

Author Biography

Vaidehi Ramanathan is a Professor of Applied Sociolinguistics in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis. Her previous publications include The English-Vernacular Divide: Postcolonial Language Politics and Practice (Multilingual Matters, 2005) and Bodies and Language: Health, Ailments, Disabilities (Multilingual Matters, 2009).