Chapter 3 – Access and Power in Language Learning
Advocating for Linguistic Diversity
Cameron Keaton; Bibi Halima; and Keli Yerian
Similar to Cameron, many of you may have noticed these differing degrees of access to learning different languages across contexts. You may have seen that only one, two, or three languages at most were offered at your high school. In some parts of the world, only majoritized languages are offered or required to pass high school. We hope that after reading this chapter, you have started to understand why only a few languages get this kind of visibility.
Learning majoritized languages and their standardized varieties gives you more access to economic or social power in the world, this is true. This can be a valid motivation for speaking or learning these privileged language varieties. However, what is usually overlooked are the unique benefits of learning languages that are less visible. These benefits may include keeping cultural practices alive in your family, connecting with specific communities in their own places of origin, reviving an endangered language, exploring a very different language family, or advocating for the voices of minoritized communities, among others. No matter what language you learn, the power you hold is immense and should not be underrated. All languages deserve attention and love, and they should all be studied with passion.
A language variety that is considered to be more 'correct' or 'proper' and thus has more power and importance in a community
A shared version of a dialect or a language in a community. This term is used as a neutral term to avoid the distinction between language and dialect
A group of languages that all descent from a common ancestral language. For example, languages like Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Galician, and Romanian all belong to a common language family, commonly known as Romance Languages