Despite recognition accorded to the fluid meaning-making nature of languaging and the hegemonies of global-North framings in the scholarship, language scholarship itself continues to be marked by divisions and essentialist practices. This research continues to be organized within bounded areas of expertise that have become naturalized through universalist divisions and labels. Here one or more of the following tends to constitute an organizing principle: language modalities (oral/written/signed languages, multimodality), spatiality (digital-analogue/national/regional/home/institutional languages.), relationality (mother tongue, foreign/native/indigenous languages.), numericity (first/second languages, bi/multi/plurilingual), etc. Specializations in the language scholarship also include demarcated domains, language subject areas and identity positions. Such research, it is argued, is complicit in the creation of bounded areas of expertise that furthermore shape language conceptualizations, including the organization of institutional teaching and learning. The “Epistemic Justice and Languaging” invited colloquium has key relevance for democratic agendas in the contemporary world, not least since applied language scholarship shapes children, youth and adults lives inside and outside institutional settings. This dialogical space brings together senior-junior presenters and discussants from across the globe. Four papers will be “pitched” on the colloquium theme with space for discussant and audience engagement. Each pitch interrogates knowledge regimes with the intent to offer newer (less recognized) ways of understanding language and language learning from epistemic justice alignments.
Invited colloquium convenor.