Critical language awareness part I: A critical review of three current approaches to language awareness

Abstract. We assume that the development of a critical awareness of the world ought to be the main objective of all education, including language education. Language awareness programmes ought therefore to help children develop not only operational and descriptive knowledge of the linguistic practices of their world, but also a critical awareness of how these practices are shaped by, and shape, social relationships and relationships of power. In this, the first of a two‐part paper, we show that a range of existing language awareness proposals and materials are not 'critical' in this sense. On the contrary, with a few exceptions, they present the naturalised domain of linguistic practices as a natural domain, a given and common sense reality whose social origins are out of sight. This is true for bilingual, dialectal and diatypic variation. Most current approaches to language awareness present the domain of linguistic practices as a pluralistically harmonious domain; no attention is given to ideological differences or ideological struggles in language, and, in fact, the nexus of language‐power‐ideology is ignored. Despite their admirable attempts to heighten cross‐cultural undertanding and harmony, they appear to underscore the legitimacy of the already legitimated set of existing linguistic practices, and therefore indirectly of the existing power relations which underpin these practices. We end with a detailed critical evaluation of an extract from currently available language awareness teaching materials. Notes 1. This paper arose out of the work of the Language, Ideology and Power research group in the Centre for Language in Social Life at Lancaster University. Other members of the group helped to shape it, including Luciano Celes, Stef Slembrouck and Mary Talbot. Parts I and II of the paper were originally presented as a single paper at the BAAL Annual Meeting entitled 'Applied Linguistics in Society' in Nottingham, September 1987. It first appeared as Working Paper No. 1, Centre for Social Life, Lancaster University. We are grateful to the following for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper: David Barton, John Broadbent, Michael Byram, Anna Jordanidou, Ben Rampton and Mary Talbot.