Social class has been underresearched in the field of applied linguistics. The central goal of this forum was to stimulate more conversation about social class as it impacts language learning and teaching. In this article, I comment on 3 salient themes that have emerged in the 5 articles: (1) agency and structure in language learning and teaching,…

In this article, the author explores an East-West epistemological convergence of humanism illuminated in three main themes in the works of Confucius (551-479 BC), Makiguchi Tsunesaburo (1871-1944), and John Dewey (1859-1952): "human-nature interconnection," "associated self-cultivation," and "value creation." She contends that these thinkers'…

In this article, the author applies Makiguchi Tsunesaburo's (1871-1944) perspectives to language policy and planning (LPP). One theoretical question in LPP theory is why individuals opt to use particular languages and varieties of languages in certain contexts. The author contends that Makiguchi's theory of value can be used to systematically…

Literacy education is always a potentially problematic undertaking, one that shifts people's relationships among themselves, with bodies of transmitted knowledge and with structures of political control (Collins & Blot, 2003; Lee, 2004; Mazrui, 1990). The teaching of writing and composition in early 20th-century Japan presented a number of unique…

Based on a four-year ethnography and informed by poststructuralist theories of identity and language, this article examines how, through lived settlement experiences in Canada, a young man from Mainland China gradually became an immigrant in the folk sense of the term. Though he was considered a success in terms of the diaspora community, he was…

I interrogate my personal diaries documenting my life in New York, Beijing, Tokyo, and Sydney over a 20-year period. Taking bearings from Bakhtinian thoughts, I explore the emergence of my post-diasporic identity as a second generation Korean American through watching South Korean dramas. By conversing with journals kept over a 20-year period, I…

Language-in-education policy in Africa is replete with debate regarding the use of standard African languages as part of mother-tongue education. An issue inadequately addressed within this debate is the role and function of urban vernaculars which have become "the" mother tongue of the greater part of Africa's population. Using data from the…

In this introduction, we situate the theme issue within a growing body of research on Indigenous youth language practices, communicative repertoires, and ideologies, articulating points of intersection in scholarship on Indigenous and immigrant youth bilingualism. Our geographic focus is North America. Ethnographic studies from the Far North to…

Hawai'i's massive language shift began a century ago. In the late 1800s, everyone spoke Hawaiian, but being monolingual in Hawaiian marked one as unsophisticated. Then Hawaiian medium schools were banned, resulting in young people speaking Hawaiian with adults and Hawai'i Creole English with peers. The next generation could understand, but not…

The growing distance between heritage languages and youth has become a constant point of discourse between Elders in Indigenous communities and those who could listen. Since Western contact, the pursuit for a "better life" through formal schooling has institutionalized Indigenous youth, separating them from their homelands and broadening a space…

This article surmises the "position" and "ambition" of a nonnative speaker/teacher of a European language and literature as an ostensible facilitator of cultural difference in the U.S. foreign-language classroom. The paper opens a space to think through pedagogical conceptuality and the practice of assisting and guiding students in their…

This article builds on Norton and Toohey's (2001) critique of good language learner (GLL) research to illustrate how college students in an advanced Spanish conversation course drew on particular ideologies of language and foreign language learning to construct and negotiate their classroom identities. I argue that these ideologies were implicated…

This article addresses two long-standing tensions in the education of linguistically marginalized youth: (a) the cultural tension, or cultural combat, that such students engage in as they form their linguistic identities, and (b) the tensions between the development of critical language pedagogies and the lack of their broader implementation due…

This article addresses the relationship between the call for authenticity, its relocalization in other contexts, and the use of English. Hip-hop forces us to confront some of the conflictual discourses of authenticity and locality, from those that insist that African American hip-hop is the only real variety and that all other forms are…

Respect for persons has been widely acknowledged and discussed as a key moral dimension in education and teaching English to speakers of other languages. Christians believe in this value, particularly as it is articulated within scripture and tradition. Recent critics, however, seem to perceive a basic incompatibility between a Christian religious…