Voices of Authority

This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education.

This collection of case studies from around the world examines how struggles for equality unfold in policies, programs, and practices in educational settings in multilingual contexts. Using sociolinguistic, interactional and discourse analysis, Heller and Martin-Jones examine the complex ways in which dominant ideologies of education, pedagogy, language, and identity intersect in a wide variety of educational settings. They focus in particular on how those ideologies are reproduced or challenged, and on the consequences of such processes for changing or maintaining social relations of difference and inequality. Written for policy-makers, educators, and anyone else interested in education and multilingualism, the book places questions of power at the center of thinking about language and education. It invites us to link questions about minority language maintenance, individual multilingualism, immigrant language education, and the use of former colonial languages in post-colonial settings to the politics and economics of our globalizing age, and to look locally for the spaces for change and action that always present themselves.

Monica Heller is Professor in the Department of Sociology and Equity Studies and the Centre de recherches en éducation franco-ontarienne of the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto./e Her most recent publications include a book, Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A Sociolinguistic Ethnography, and articles in such journals as the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society, and Discurso y Sociedad.

Marilyn Martin-Jones is Professor of Bilingualism and Education at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. She taught for 15 years in the Department of Linguistics at Lancaster University. Her most recent publication is a book (coedited with Kathryn Jones) entitled: Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different Worlds (2000). She has also published articles in a number of journals such as Applied Linguistics, Linguistics and Education, and The International Journal of the Sociology of Language.