The Linguist

@CIOL_Linguists SPRING 2023 The Linguist 17 FEATURES undoubtedly important to overhaul our syllabi and include content that reflects the diversity and complexity of the societies and phenomena we study, and to unpick the complex web of economic, cultural and systemic factors that create and sustain hegemonies. It is vital that we discuss social justice with our students, and interrogate our own position of privilege as academics working in the Global North. Can we decolonise the production of knowledge, including how we assess students, or indeed how we allocate credits (the currency in HE)? In our endeavours to design more inclusive syllabi, are we doing more than just constructing knowledge about 'others'? We talk about epistemologies from the Global South, but the fact remains that, in Western academia, knowledge is produced and legitimised by a specific intellectual tradition which is inevitably partial, despite its purported universality. 7 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak talks about "unlearning" or "learning to learn from below". 8 Is this a realistic proposition in our institutional contexts? How can we ensure that we embody the values that we say we support? When teaching a colonial language, how can I avoid reinforcing its position of power? Within a neoliberal model of Higher Education, in which students pay hefty fees for a degree, how can we shift the employability agenda that has been imposed on our discipline? There is, in some quarters, a utilitarian, poor and fairly entrenched understanding of the use and value of Modern Languages, and Humanities in general. Can it be reversed in a context in which a university degree is sold as the prerequisite to a graduate job? These are some of the questions that we must bring to the centre of our debate if we are to take the project of decolonisation to its ultimate consequences and maximise its potential to bring about change. By addressing them honestly we become aware of what we can realistically do, of the space we have, and the space we can carve out to push for real and systemic change. Notes 1 Hernández-Martín, L (2022) 'Descolonizar el currículum de español en ELEUK: origen, expectativas, organización y primeras reflexiones'. In Soler Montes, C et al (eds) Avances investigadores y pedagógicos sobre la enseñanza del español: aportes desde el contexto universitario británico, Research Publishing,11-25 2 Andreotti, V (2014) 'Soft Versus Critical Global Citizenship Education'. In McCloskey, S (ed) Development Education in Policy and Practice, Palgrave Macmillan, London 3 See e.g. Fuertes Gutiérrez, M et al (2021) 'Sociolingüística aplicada a la enseñanza del español/Applied Sociolinguistics in Spanish Language Teaching (SLT)'. In Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 8(2), 105-113; Rojo, LM (2016) 'Language and Power'. In García, O et al, The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society, OUP, 77-102 4 See e.g. Muñoz-Basols, J and Hernández Muñoz, N (2019) 'El español en la era global: Agentes y voces de la polifonía panhispánica'. In Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 6(2), 79-95; Company Company, C (2019) 'Jerarquías dialectales y conflictos entre teoría y práctica. Perspectivas desde la Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española (ASALE)'. In Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, 6(2) 5 Op. cit. Hernández-Martín 6 ELEUK 2023 Annual Conference, 22-23 June; www.eleuk.org/events/category/conferences 7 See e.g. op. cit. Andreotti; Andreotti, V et al (2011) 'Epistemological Pluralism: Ethical and pedagogical challenges in higher education.' In AlterNative: An international journal of Indigenous peoples, 7(1), 40-50 8 Spivak, GC (2004) 'Righting Wrongs'. In The South Atlantic Quarterly, 103(2), 523-581 When teaching a colonial language how can I avoid reinforcing its position of power? © SHUTTERSTOCK

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