Uneven Critical Pedagogies: Ideological Persistence and Lateral Violence in a Hong Kong Translanguaging Classroom

This study examines how critical language pedagogy operates unevenly in addressing linguistic stigma and linguicism, including their reproduction through lateral violence, in a Hong Kong Cantonese‐English translanguaging classroom. Drawing on critical pedagogy and practitioner inquiry, eight university students participated in a 13‐week sociolinguistics course (with 1‐year follow‐up) focused on stigmatized language practices and ideological hierarchies privileging hegemonic English norms. Data from multimodal reflection tasks, interviews, guided language observation, and social media artifacts trace participants’ evolving language ideologies and evaluative practices. Findings show that critical reflection prompted ideological reorientation for many participants, who questioned linguistic purism and reconceptualized Cantonese‐English translanguaging as legitimate and socially meaningful. However, others exhibited ideological persistence , continuing to reproduce evaluations that reinforced lateral violence by rearticulating linguicist logics of correctness and legitimacy. These divergent trajectories disrupt the prevailing assumption that critical pedagogy offers a uniformly emancipatory solution. Instead, they demonstrate that such interventions operate unevenly as contingent processes constrained by entrenched linguicism.