Linguisitc Imperialism In Education

Traditional linguistics always treats language as a fixed system subject to objective analysis. Newly developed critical linguistics, however, reveals the social, cultural and political dimensions of language, and examines the social consequences of language from its multiple relations with society and culture. As the dominating status of English in the world becomes manifest, traditional linguistics justifies its dominance by ignoring its broad context. While some people are taking this phenomenon for granted, critical linguistics triggers us to think more deeply on its consequences on social stratification within a nation and massive global inequalities.As for English, the most popular language nowadays, its historical expansion paved the way for the present dominating position. However, in neo-colonist times, language education replaced the original overt exploitation to serve the interests of center countries, setting up and maintaining structural and cultural inequalities between English and other languages through construction of dominant discourses. In periphery countries, ELT (English Language Teaching) hegemony creates linguistic imperialism in education.This thesis is part of the critical endeavor to problematize the phenomenon of ELT hegemony in periphery countries, regarding it as a carrier of cultural conventions and ideological values characteristic of Anglo-American culture. After investigating its structure as a profession, as well as its social and cultural dimensions, this thesis analyzed several typical mainstream discourses to reveal how English spreads the western discourses to periphery countries and makes them internalized, and so maintains its superiority in social classes and global value system. The social and cultural dimensions of English provide theoretical foundations for presenting its imperialistic functions. The latter chapter illustrates its imperialistic functions with case studies from some periphery countries, in terms of economic-reproduction, ideological-transformation and linguistic-repression.Rational analysis will help us realize the positive and negative influences of linguistic imperialism, and accordingly adopt unbiased attitudes towards it. And...