Speech, whistleblowing/leaking, and silence: languaging as a political force

Today's news in many ways is not remarkable, in the sense that we've been submerged in a swampy mess of falsehoods and fictions that choke off our view of the world around us (see my recent post about Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulation, which asserts that our definition of reality is served up to us, hot and …

What immigrants are good for

It's an interesting question. A crude parallel can be made between this question and the question of bilingualism. Both enrich the host country (the former, the U.S. or any other literal receiving nation; the latter, the "host" of the speaker's brain/cognitive function), both contribute various forms of diversity, benefitting the economy in the former case and …

Silence in education and ed research: taking off the crusader’s cape

I'm reading a book entitled "Perspectives on Silence," an oldie-but-goodie text on the various constructions, interpretations, and meanings of silence from various disciplinary perspectives. I'm very interested in this topic as it relates to my work on how research involving asymmetries of power influence the construction of knowledge, particularly in interviewing and survey-based data collection. Explorations of …

Relying on “experts” and the problem of expertise

I teach a class about emergent bilinguals and bilingual education in the United States. This week, we're talking about what constitutes a "successful" program, a highly polemical topic stemming from Civil Rights Era-challenges to the status quo, though the debate about the official language of America and what language to school our children in has origins …

Immersion and the bilingual “every-child-USA” narrative

Students who are first-language speakers of a language other than English are, in America, categorized as English Language Learners, or ELLs, and our country's history of working with these learners has been complicated and politically fraught. Oftentimes, references to federal decisions such the landmark Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols in 1974 or state-level legislation such as …

The eye in the sky and “low-status” domestic workers

Not long ago, I watched a PBS Frontline video called "Rape on the Night Shift," an expose delving into the abuse of and violence, often by their own supervisors, against female immigrants who work as janitors for poor wages in buildings that I would wager the majority of Americans have frequented for one reason or another. One …

Discourse, voice, and rightness in an animal rights activist talk

Tonight I attended a talk at the Blue Stockings Bookstore on Allen Street in lower Manhattan with a friend, where we partook in a conversation about animal rights called Animal Rights Campaigning and Racism. Interesting questions framed the talk: How can we campaign for animal liberation while being self-aware of privilege, xenophobia, imperialism, and the …

Transculturation: a new culture of signs, new signs of culture

Cultural transformation and the movement of immigrants into, among, within, and across cultural repertoires is an idiom, un modismo, which requires a shift in thinking. Those of us whose realities are nested, in earlier contexts if not the current one, in mainstream thinking, being, and knowing must challenge our assumptions about what is true, what is valid, and, …

Islamophobia and a call to action for ESL teachers

On the recommendation of a committed and insightful professor at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, where I am now in my second year of study, I am resuming my blog. Thank you, Steve Brier! This came from the NY Times the other day, regarding the Islamophobia that many Muslims across the …

Does language represent freedom or limitation?

I’m an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher, which means I teach people who speak other languages how to speak English. Just as the acronym implies, my students already speak a first language, as they are nearly always immigrants or visiting students from other countries. I’ve taught everywhere from false beginners – meaning that …