This landmark volume engages the lived realities of linguistic discrimination by naming and countering colonialingualism, an operating system that marginalizes Indigenous and minoritized communities in language education.
This landmark volume engages the lived realities of linguistic discrimination by naming and countering colonialingualism, an operating system that marginalizes Indigenous and minoritized communities in language education.
The book defines colonialingualism as the privileging of dominant colonial languages, knowledges, and neoliberal valorizations of diversity, operating from ideology and policy to practice and outcomes. Spanning the epistemic and geographic Global South, chapters present case studies, narratives, pedagogical interventions, and curriculum and policy analyses. Together, they show how the system operates, informing a practical counter-practice toolkit for curriculum and assessment design, institutional change, and policy routes. The book recenters Global South and Indigenous epistemologies as sources of theory and method, advancing raciolinguistic perspectives and multilingual frameworks such as translanguaging and plurilingualism. Contributors mobilize Sumud and Ubuntu pedagogies, heteroglossic space-making, life-story and autoethnographic methods, place-based inquiry, and AI literacies to expose and counter the colonialingual ideologies sustaining native-speakerism, accentism, and linguistic racism within English language education and beyond.
Ultimately, the volume demonstrates how minoritized communities resist, reclaim, and revitalize their languages and knowledge systems, and how programs and policies can be redesigned in accountable, pluriversal ways. It will appeal to scholars, researchers, practitioners, and postgraduate students in applied linguistics, TESOL, and language education engaged with urgent issues of linguistic and epistemic justice and decolonization.
Global South resistance to colonialingualism: An introduction
Paul Meighan and Leonardo Veliz
PART I Countering colonialingualism: Theoretical foundations, methodological
shifts, and pedagogical reimaginings
1 Charting actionable pedagogical directions for decolonizing the languages
curriculum
Adriana Diaz and Macarena Ortiz-Jimenez
2 Is that allowed?: Raciolinguistic entanglements and transraciolinguistic
transgressions in EL(T) spaces
Rashi Jain
3 Toward a transepistemic academe: A critical autoethnography of lived
coloniality in Pakistani ELT and academic specialization in (applied)
linguistics
Waqar Ali Shah
4 Dialogic autoethnography as a duet performance of countering
colonialingualism
Ufuk Kele and Bedrettin Yazan
PART II Countering colonialingualism: Indigenous knowledges, language
revitalization, and educational reworlding
5 Illuminating African epistemologies: Reclaiming literacy through Indigenous
knowledge systems in higher education
Leketi Makalela and Gaokgakala Daniel Lemmenyane
6 Tackling neo-colonialingualism: Revitalizing Australian Aboriginal
languages in the classrooms
Sender Dovchin, Nakarra/Nagada Michelle Martin, and Rhonda Oliver
7 Life stories of Indigenous peoples: Challenging coloniality and
colonialingualism
Yesenia Bautista Ortiz, Mario Lopez-Gopar, Jamie L. Schissel, and Jose Julio
Morales Chavez
8 Countering colonialingualism and promoting Indigenous language
revitalization in higher education
Stephen May, Peter Keegan, and Mi Yung Park
9 Decolonial struggles for Indigenous multilingual education
Prem Phyak and Tsewang Chuskit
PART III Countering colonialingualism: Transformative practices, policy
routes, and transnational community praxis
10 Countering colonialingualism with intellectual sovereignty of the Global
South: English language education and social justice and equity in
Bangladesh
Shaila Sultana
11 Entanglements, Englishes, and transraciolinguistic becoming: Navigating
colonialingualism across borders
Patriann Smith, Dianne Wellington, Yetunde S. Alabede, Andrew Hunte, and
Taiwo Ogundapo
12 Decolonizing bilingual education in Brazil for countering
colonialingualism
Luciana C. de Oliveira, Fernanda C. Liberali, Michele Salles El Kadri, and
Antonieta Megale
13 Moving beyond the coloniality of English: Building spaces of otherwise
Muzna Awayed-Bishara
14 From marginalization to inclusion: Refugee learners struggles with
English dominance and future aspirations
Leonardo Veliz, Paul Meighan, and Julian Chen
Toward a transformative framework for decolonizing language education: An
afterword
Paul Meighan and Leonardo Veliz
Paul Meighan is a Gael sociolinguist and ESL professor at Sheridan College, Canada. He is the originator of the term colonialingualism.
Leonardo Veliz is an associate professor of language and literacy education at the University of New England, Australia.