Epistemologies of language and epistemic injustice in adult basic education for immigrants

Abstract Many adults who immigrate from the Global South to Western countries experience devaluation of their knowledge and expertise. Such epistemic injustice may be exacerbated by Eurocentric epistemologies of language as fixed and codified, rather than as a dynamic, relational practice. This study explores how these dynamics unfold in adult basic education by examining intersections of language and epistemic injustice, including hermeneutical, contributory, and testimonial injustice. Drawing on ethnographic data from a collaborative translanguaging project in Norway, we show how (1) dominant institutional conceptions of language created interpretive gaps obscuring students’ epistemic resources (hermeneutical injustice); (2) teachers often misrecognized students’ linguistic expertise, both form-focused and practice-oriented, based on legibility problems in their classroom practices (contributory injustice); and (3) institutional placement procedures underestimated students’ educational qualifications and language skills through a monolanguaging mode of listening (testimonial injustice). We call for interlinked first-, second-, and third-order change to institutional practices, modes of perception, and forms of relationality, underscoring that multilingual pedagogies must explicitly commit to epistemic equality if they are to counter, rather than reproduce, entrenched inequalities.