'Language of the Enemy': Foreign Language Education and National Identity

The focus of the present paper is on the relationship between national identities and foreign-language education policies andpractices.The paper examines this relationship through a juxtapositionof three sociohistoric contexts inwhich sociopolitical events led to major changes in foreign-language education: post-World War I United States, post-WorldWar IISovietUnion, andpost-communist EasternEurope.On theexampleof these case studies, it is argued that shifts in national identity images and sociopolitical allegiances have implications for foreign-language policies and practices. It is also argued that foreign-language learnersmay choose to construct oppositional identities in language classrooms: some, for patriotic reasons, may reject the languages imposed on them,while othersmay instead reject the dominant national identity and create an alter-native one through the means of a foreign language.