6

DECOLONIZING FOREIGN,
SECOND, HERITAGE, AND
FIRST LANGUAGES
Implications for Education

Ofelia García
THE GRADUATE CENTER, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK

Introduction
Language has been used as a tool of domination, conquest and colonization
throughout history. This paper argues that the divisions of language into those that
are said to be “foreign,” “second,” “heritage,” and even “first” are constructions
of western powers, and especially their schools, to consolidate power and create
governable subjects. If language was seen not as an autonomous whole, where one
whole can be added to another whole, but as a system of complex and dynamic
language practices in which speakers engage to make meaning, then named lan-
guages, as we know them today, would lose their power.
This paper explores the reasons why in the past, as well as in the present, the
dynamic language practices of most people in the world have been viewed with
suspicion, as powerful elites have imposed a way of using language that is con-
strained by artificial conventions and that reflects their own language practices.
Nation-states have co-opted the human potential of language as a meaning-making
semiotic tool, relegating many speakers to a position of speechlessness.
The conception of autonomous languages constructed by nation-states and
their schools has also co-created the concepts of bilingualism, multilingualism and
plurilingualism prevalent in the world today. The expectation continues to be that
languages could be “added” as separate wholes, without taking into account the
notion that true multilingual speakers never behave in this way.
Because named languages are constructions of nation-states, they are identified,
especially by schools and in education, as first (having been born into it in one
land) or foreign (belonging to another land). And as many nation-states are lured
by the supposed economic benefits of acquiring especially English, and as some
minoritized groups gain recognition in the 21st century, new nomenclatures have
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 153

emerged—second, third, heritage language. This chapter reviews the types of lan-
guage education programs that fit those categories and suggests that they fail to
leverage the actual language practices of learners, called here translanguaging.
Taking up the example of Latinx in the U.S., this paper argues that these lan-
guage divisions are artificial and take up an external nation-state point of view.
Seen from the individual speakers’ perspective, the language practices in which
speakers engage are simply theirs—not first, second, third, heritage or foreign. But
language education programs are implemented as being foreign language, second
language, heritage language, bilingual education or multilingual education pro-
grams. Taking the perspective of speakers, and not of these constructions, we
describe how different Latinx students in U.S. classrooms experience language
education programs in ways that leave out their own language practices. We
describe how these different programs are inadequate for these minoritized bilin-
gual learners, for their language practices go beyond what is billed as “Spanish” or
“English.” The result is the production of an inferior subjectivity that justifies their
academic failure as their inability to use language “correctly.”

Named Languages: Historical Origins

That the named languages of nation-states were constructed is a well-known
fact. Makoni and Pennycook (2007) insist that we refer to this construction as
“inventions,” so as to recognize that the process was not innocent, but that, in
the naming, categorizations of exclusion were created. The naming of Spanish,
English, Portuguese etc. as the only legitimate language practice of nation-states
has always been purposeful, a way of excluding those who were conquered and
colonized. Language standardization has been accompanied by military victories
and successful colonial and imperialistic ventures. A brief history of the historical
construction of Spanish and English, the named languages assigned to US Latinx,
helps contextualize the process.

Construction of Castilian Spanish

What was named Castilian Spanish started to become the standard in the Iberian
Peninsula concomitantly with the Reconquista against the Moors (718–1492)
(Hall, 1974). Its orthography was codified, following the speech of the upper classes
of Toledo, in the compilation of Castile’s legal tradition of Alfonso X the Wise
(1221–1284), known as his Siete Partidas (1265). But it wasn’t until the marriage
of the Catholic monarchs, Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1469
that Castilian Spanish gained more power and authority. In 1492, as the last Moors
were expelled from Granada, Antonio de Nebrija published his Gramática de la Len-
gua Castellana, the first grammar of any Romance language. Nebrija dedicates the
grammar to Queen Isabella by saying: “Siempre la lengua fue compañera del imperio”
[Language always was the companion of empire]. Speaking about Nebrija’s purpose
154 Ofelia García

in writing this grammar, Walter Mignolo (1995) argues: “He knew that the power
of a unified language, via its grammar, lay in teaching it to barbarians, as well as con-
trolling barbarian languages by writing their grammars” (p. 39).
This Castilian Spanish was then used in the catequización of the Indigenous
population to Catholicism (Briceño Perozo, 1987) throughout the 16th century.
In 1596 King Phillip issued an edict that authorized some indigenous languages to
be used in evangelization—lenguas generales studied and named by Jesuit mission-
aries as Náhuatl, Quechua, Chicha, and Tupí-Guaraní. The linguistic practices of
many white Europeans who accompanied the missionaries and conquistadores, as
well as those of the indigenous people, were ignored.
In 1713 the Real Academia Española was founded on the instructions of Philip V,
the first Bourbon ruler of Spain, to guarantee a Spanish norm and to “velar por que
los cambios que experimente [. . . ] no quiebren la esencial unidad que mantiene en todo el
ámbito hispánico.” [“to watch that the changes that it undergoes [. . .] do not dis-
rupt the essential unity that it maintains in the entire Hispanic context”] (http://
noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/rd1109-1993.html#a1). That is, the
Academy’s principal task was to ensure the unity of Spanish throughout what was
constructed as being a “Spanish-speaking world,” although many different ways of
using language were prevalent. Thus the motto of the Academy was “limpia, fija y
da esplendor” [“cleans, fixes and gives splendor”]. A year later, in 1714, Castilian
was declared the language of the state. Castilian Spanish served as the way to sup-
press the rights and laws of people who were not in power, both in the Old and in
the New World. In 1768 King Charles III of Spain decreed that there should be
one language and one currency in his kingdom, including its colonies, and engaged
in a mission to eradicate all other ways of speaking. Today the struggle to control
the language practices of those who speak differently both in Spain and in the
Americas continues (for more on this history, see Del Valle, 2013; García, 2008,
2011; García & Otheguy, 2015).

Construction of English
The economic and military might of the Kingdom of England did not require the
language named English to be protected by a prescriptive grammar or a language
academy. It was the ways of speaking of the Germanic invaders to the British Isles
that originally gained ground, pushing the ways of speaking of the Celts north and
west. The multilingual origins of modern English have been well documented
(Baugh & Cable, 2002); especially important was the influence of the speech of
the Norman kings that ruled the Kingdom of England after William the Con-
queror defeated King Harold at Hastings in 1066. But as the Kingdom of England
started to project itself as a powerful state within the British Isles and then beyond
its borders, the construction of English as an entity (Park & Wee, 2012) became
paramount. Publishers started preferring the dialect of the dominant class in Lon-
don, where the king resided.
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 155

In 1588 England defeated the Spanish armada, consolidating the might of Brit-
ish maritime power. The plan of the growing power was to acquire the many
people and their riches in a territory over which the sun never set. To do so, Eng-
lish as constituted by the ruling class was seen as the only legitimate way of
speaking.
The British Empire grew in the next three centuries, and the constructed Eng-
lish language was used to categorize people so as to produce the “governable
subjects” (Foucault, 2008; Flores, 2013) that the empire needed. Only white people
of means, born in England, were considered native English-speakers. Other whites
were said to speak “dialects.” The Welsh, Scots and Irish were branded as “bilin-
gual,” and therefore their speech was delegitimized. When the British Empire
expanded to the New World, enslaved blacks and Native Americans were not
given access to the language named English, thus they were rendered “speechless.”
This was the same treatment offered to the brown and black people of Asia,
Africa, and the Pacific. Only those who were at the top of the colonial social class
were given the privilege of learning English and participating as second-class citi-
zens in the life of the colony. The others were not recognized as legitimate
speakers. The imposition of the language named and recognized as English was an
important tool for the colonization and oppression of many (for more on this his-
tory, see García & Lin, forthcoming).

More constructions
As the powerful class of both the Spanish and British empires came into contact
with Others who spoke differently, they legitimated only their own language prac-
tices, which were named Spanish in one case and English in the other, and these
were carefully restricted. The powerless Others, most often brown and black, were
rendered without language, and their linguistic practices described as “jumbled.”
The ideologies about the superiority of named languages were used as racist tools
to exclude and oppress.
But named languages were not sufficient to exert the racist policies that were
needed to continue colonizing people as the colonies gained independence. Also
involved in this process was the construction of bilingualism and multilingualism.
As we will see in the next section, the “parallel monolingualism” (Heller, 1999)
that was expected had little to do with the multilingual practices of the colonized
populations, delegitimizing once again the practices of minoritized multilingual
speakers.

Bilingualism and Multilingualism: Other Constructions

It was precisely around the time that many Asian, African and Pacific countries
were achieving their independence that the scholarly pursuit of what we call today
bilingualism/multilingualism became prevalent. Multilingual learning had always
156 Ofelia García

been a sign of enrichment for the wealthy. For example, from the second cen-
tury onwards Greek-Latin bilingual education was the way to educate boys from
Roman aristocratic homes (Lewis, 1977). Bilingualism and multilingualism were
understood as simply the learning of an additional named language that was stan-
dardized, written, and that was the language of another “foreign” power. Through
most of the 20th century “foreign language education” provided the impetus for
this type of bilingualism. This was the understanding of bilingualism/multilin-
gualism with which scholars faced the growing voices and sounds of multilingual
people in many of the newly formed nation-states.
In the 1950s Uriel Weinreich (1953), a Yiddish-English speaker, and Einar
Haugen (1956), a Norwegian-English speaker, published their now famous mono-
graphs on bilingualism, comparing the bilingual speech to the monolingual
constructed norm. Despite their interest in bilingualism, both Weinreich and
Haugen identified what they termed “interferences” in the speech of bilinguals,
and spoke about borrowings, loan shifts and code-switching, phenomena in the
speech of bilinguals that differentiated them from the monolinguals who were
considered the norm.
Also around this time, the study of sociolinguistics was formalized. What
became known as the field of language planning and language policy came into being,
proposing ways of solving what was seen as the linguistic problems of the newly
constituted multilingual states. The thinking was that the ways people spoke in
these new states could also be controlled; their corpus and status planned (Fish-
man, 1972; Rubin & Jernudd, 1971). Monolingualism in one named language was
not going to work in the new social order, and so another system of governmen-
tality had to emerge. An elite version of bilingualism/multilingualism, a simple
addition of western languages always used separately, was seen as the answer. This
ensured that this type of multilingualism would continue to expand among white
elites, whereas the multilingual practices of black and brown people would be
further stigmatized.
Working in Canada, Wallace Lambert (1974) called for schools to develop
what he termed “additive bilingualism”—an addition of a second language (L2)
to the first language of the child (L1). In the U.S., Joshua Fishman (1967) refor-
mulated Charles Ferguson’s definition of diglossia, claiming that, for bilingualism
to be maintained, speakers had to use the two languages for different functions or
in different territories. The focus on nation-states and social groups prevented
Fishman from describing what was common knowledge in the eastern world—
that the linguistic practices of multilingual speakers are not constrained by the
boundaries of named languages and that these had existed for centuries (Canaga-
rajah & Liyanage, 2012; Khubchandani, 1997).
As the 20th century came to a close, the world was experiencing the hold of a
neoliberal economy that supported privatization and the free flow of capitalism in
ways that benefited transnational corporations and economic elites (Flores, 2013).
One named language was no longer sufficient in this globalized world, and so our
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 157

understandings of multilingualism took yet another turn in order to establish itself

as a linguistic regime that consolidated power among white Europeans of means.
One obvious product of the push toward a globalized neoliberal economy
was the formation of the European Union. In a united Europe one European
language was not going to be sufficient, so the Council of Europe coined the
concept of “plurilingualism.” Plurilingualism was defined as the ability of Euro-
pean citizens to “use several languages to varying degrees and for distinct
purposes” (2000). The term multilingualism was reserved for social groups; for
example, classrooms were said to be multilingual. The concept of plurilingual-
ism extended the conventional vision of multilingual individuals as being those
who are “two monolinguals in one,” a notion that had been debunked by Gros-
jean (1982). But as a concept coined to assure the unity of the countries of the
European Union, plurilingualism does not question the construction of named
European languages, reifying them even when “partial competence” in a second
or third language is promoted.
It is these named languages and these visions of bilingualism/multilingualism
that schools, the instruments of nation-states, have promoted. Languages are
branded as “first,” “foreign,” “second or third,” “heritage.” Language education
programs build bilingualism/multilingualism as additive with a goal of bilingual/
multilingual development, meaning two or more western named languages, and
usually including English. For minoritized people, language education programs,
even those that use two languages as medium of instruction, often cultivate what
Lambert (1974) called “subtractive bilingualism;” that is, transition to a dominant
named language(s) other than what is considered the learner’s “first” language.
And even when the schools’ expectation for minoritized multilingual speakers is
that of “additive bilingualism,” the enforcement of named languages as wholes to
be used separately stigmatizes even further their more dynamic and fluid multilin-
gual practices. The linguistic reality of most learners is a lot more complex than
all of these categories suggest.
In the next section we suggest that language education programs often fail
because they’re operating in concert with the category assigned to the named
language, instead of adjusting their practices to the linguistic reality of students.
We first review different types of language education programs as we reflect on
why these boundaries between programs do not work.

The Construction of Language Education Programs

Language education programs in schools today respond to the nomenclature that
we have created for named languages, languages that are seen as belonging to
nation-states or social groups, and not to people. We briefly describe the most
prevalent language education programs today, focusing only on mainstream edu-
cation financed by nation-states. These programs all have a monoglossic ideology
even when they promote bilingualism; that is, they protect the named dominant
158 Ofelia García

language of the nation-state, and they “add” other languages that are also stan-
dardized and named.

Native Language Arts

Native language arts refers to the teaching of reading, writing and composition,
speaking and the analysis of literature. It is assumed that all students are “native-
speakers” of the language that is the subject of instruction, and thus only the
standardized version of that language is validated.

Foreign Language Education

These programs, common throughout the world, focus on the learning of a lan-
guage that is not in any way associated to the nation-state in which the subject is
taught, usually at secondary and tertiary levels. All students are considered to have
the same “first” language of the dominant society and to engage in the learning
of this “foreign” language as speakers of that dominant language. The focus is on
the “foreign” language as a subject—its structure, as well as how it can be used
either in the “native” land or when traveling or during sojourns in another land.

Heritage Language Education

The realization that increasingly students who are required to take a “foreign lan-
guage” as a subject are either speakers of that language, live in homes where that
language is spoken, or have an ancestral relationship to that language has led to the
development of “heritage language programs.” Students who are categorized as
“heritage-language speakers” are grouped for instruction in the language, usually
taught as a subject. The focus is on the development of that language for academic
purposes.

Bilingual/Multilingual Education
Bilingual/multilingual education programs have proliferated in the last half-
century. The difference with first, core, foreign and heritage language education
programs is that the additional language is used as a medium of instruction, instead
of being taught as a subject. These programs are of different types. Regardless of
the type of students in the programs, or the linguistic goal of a program, languages
in these programs are also taught as natural entities, their construction or invention
never questioned (for more on these programs, see García, 2009):

• Immersion bilingual education, where speakers of a named majority language are

taught initially only through the medium of what is considered a “second”
language, although there is also “first” language instruction. This type of pro-
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 159

gram originated in Québec in the 1960s. Some minoritized groups, who want
to revitalize what are seen as their “heritage languages” after achieving some
measure of power, have modeled their educational programs after immersion.
This is the case, for example, in the language nest programs among the Māoris
and other indigenous groups.
• Developmental bilingual/multilingual education, where two or more named
languages—one considered “first,” the other(s) considered “second” or
“third”—are used as medium of instruction, generally in a 50/50 allocation,
although the proportions of language used may vary and the languages may
be introduced simultaneously or sequentially. Both majority and minority
groups who want their children to be bilingual have developed programs
of this type. Recently in the United States, because of the push back against
the term “bilingual,” developmental bilingual programs are known as “dual
language.” Most often these programs are “two-way,” meaning that half of the
students are speakers of the majority language, whereas the other half is not.
• Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) has increasingly taken the
place of core “foreign language” programs deemed insufficient to make stu-
dents bilingual, especially in Europe. In CLIL programs the learner’s “second”
language is used as a medium of instruction, generally for one to two periods
of instruction.
• Transitional bilingual education, used with minoritized populations, where the
students’ “first language” or “mother-tongue” is used only initially and where
students are expected to transition to the dominant language of society.
• Mother-tongue-based multilingual education, used with minoritized populations,
especially in Asia and Africa, where the students’ “mother-tongue” is used
only initially, with the goal of developing two dominant named languages in
society.

It is clear from the description of the language education programs given above
that different types of languages have been assigned to school learners in an effort
to control access to opportunities. And it is also evident that both elite and minori-
tized populations have participated in legitimizing these constructions. The reason
for the acquiescence of minoritized people in this educational pretense has to do
with what Quijano (2007) has called the “coloniality of power” (see also Mignolo,
2007). The only system of knowledge accepted today continues to be a Eurocen-
tric one, circulated precisely through standardized named languages, and thus even
minoritized speakers desire to “have” the powerful codes of society. Named lan-
guages are not in any way revealed as a most important tool in the racialization of
those whose labor had to continue to be exploited for the economic profit of the
elite after political “independence.” Minoritized black and brown speakers had to
be created in order to protect the hierarchical structure of white European supe-
riority. Standardized named western European languages, and especially English,
have been the key to the continuation of this “coloniality of power.”
160 Ofelia García

Bilingualism/multilingualism have certainly entered the scholarly discourse

today, identified as a multilingual turn (May, 2013). And yet multilingualism con-
tinues to be interpreted through a European lens that ignores the multilingual
practices of the many black and brown people of the world. Today the commodi-
fication of multilingualism has become a fundamental ingredient in a neoliberal
economy with deregulated markets. But this multilingualism excludes the fluid
multilingual practices of brown and black bodies, especially in language education
programs that purport to develop multilingualism. To show how this categoriza-
tion of languages and language education programs works against minoritized
students, we describe some of the practices we have observed in schools serving
Latinx populations.

Latinx and Language Education: Decolonizing

Understandings
Latinx students are a very complex group—some are new to what schools call
English, some are new to what schools call Spanish, others have had lots of expe-
rience with what schools call English and/or Spanish, others have less, and this
varies according to whether they are listening, speaking, reading or writing. Some
Latinx students are born in Latin American countries, although Spanish may, or
may not be, their “first” acquired language. Some are born in the U.S. and, again,
English may or may not be their “first” acquired language. To describe the great
diversity that there is among Latinx students, we introduce four Latinx students
in a middle school.
Alexis, Yahaira, Alejandra and Kabil are categorized as “English language
learners” and are in the same “English as a second language classroom,” although
they are extremely different. Even though Alejandra and Kabil have recently
arrived from Argentina and Mexico respectively, Alejandra had gone to a private
school in Argentina where she studied English, whereas Kabil, from an indige-
nous Tsotsil-speaking family in Chiapas, had never had any contact with English
and spoke Spanish only when he accompanied his mother outside of the com-
munity. Although Alejandra and Kabil are considered “newcomer English
language learners,” they are differently situated in the same “English as a second
language” class. The other two students, Alexix and Yahaira, were born in the
United States. There is nothing “second” about English for Alexis and Yahaira.
Both grew up in homes where English was spoken from birth, and it is English
that they most frequently use in their communities and homes. The four very
different students sit in the same English as a second language classroom. The
teacher, Ms. Heston, is a white, middle-class monolingual-speaker of English,
and views these four students through the lens of the “English language subject”
she is teaching. She follows the official “ESL curriculum,” ignoring the actual
varied language experiences and practices of the students and the ways in which
they “do” language.
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 161

These four students also sit in the same “Spanish as a heritage language” class
taught by a bilingual Spanish-English teacher, Ms. Medina. But Spanish is not
Kabil’s “heritage” language—Tsotsil is. Ms. Medina is baffled by what she consid-
ers Kabil’s “poor” “native-language” abilities. She recommends him for evaluation,
believing that he has a learning disability. Ms. Medina also knows that Alexis and
Yahaira have been born in the United States, so she expects and looks for “English
influences and interferences.” She constantly compares their use of “Spanish” with
that of Alejandra, who has been schooled in Spanish in Argentina. Knowing that
Alexis and Yahaira are categorized as English language learners, she complains that
they do not have language, for, compared to Alejandra, they cannot use Spanish
either. Ms. Medina is particularly worried about Alexis. She notices that Alexis’
use of Spanish in oral argumentation is much weaker than that of Yahaira’s. But
Ms. Medina fails to take into consideration that, whereas Yahaira is the oldest sib-
ling in the family and her mother doesn’t speak English, Alexis is the youngest
sibling and is growing up in a bilingual family. Ms. Medina assumes that because
both Alexis and Yahaira are “English language learners,” their “first language,”
spoken at home, must be Spanish. However, Alexis understands Spanish but he
almost always uses English at home. Ms. Medina decides to send Alexis to the
“Spanish as a foreign language” classroom because he is getting lost in her class.
After a week the teacher of the “Spanish as a foreign language” classroom,
Ms. Maconi, objects strenuously to this placement for Alexis. She claims Alexis
gets bored in this classroom because he understands Spanish, whereas the other
white, Asian or African American students in the class do not. But there is more
going on to fuel Ms. Maconi’s objection. Ms. Maconi, who learned Spanish in
college, doesn’t understand anything when Alexis rambles on and speaks! Alexis
uses Spanish not according to some textbook norm, but to the ways of using lan-
guage in his community. This puts Ms. Maconi in an uncomfortable position, for
she is threatened as a speaker of Spanish. To maintain the superiority of the struc-
tural forms of Spanish she has learned in books over the “Spanish” as done in a
bilingual community, Ms. Maconi excludes Alexis from her classroom.
Alexis’ mother becomes fed up with the treatment that Alexis is getting in
school, for she has been told that he is not making progress in standardized tests in
English and she has become aware that her son doesn’t fit the Spanish language
program either. She has heard that there is a good developmental bilingual educa-
tion program in the school, so she insists that they transfer Alexis there. In the
“dual language” bilingual program, Alexis also becomes a “problem.” The pro-
gram is two-way, meaning that half of the students are monolingual English
speakers and have started learning Spanish that year, whereas the other half are
categorized as English language learners, which Alexis is. The teacher, Ms. Gutiér-
rez, has been taught to insist that the two languages be always used separately. After
all, the program is “dual language” and requires “dual” proficiency in two separate
languages. But Alexis’ language practices in what is said to be “Spanish” are very
different from those of the Spanish-speaking newcomers in the program. And
162 Ofelia García

although Alexis speaks English, his English literacy, as measured in standardized

tests and performed in school, is very different from that of the mostly white,
monolingual students. Alexis is between two worlds—an English world and a
Spanish one—that do not represent his life in the borderlands, in the interstices
and spaces in which language practices are fluid and always available, and in which
all bilingual minoritized students live. The school’s insistence that Alexis “have”
English and use it exclusively in the English part of the “dual language” program,
and “have” Spanish and use it only in the Spanish part of the program, violates his
bilingualism, his fluid language practices that are the norm in bilingual communi-
ties. Only “dual languages” are used and expected, as if these were entities that
could be “had,” instead of promoting bilingual children’s ability to “do” language
for the learning of math, science, social studies, art, music, theater, etc. Success in
academic tasks should not require standardized language conventions; they should
instead require thinking, criticality and creativity. Alexis and his mother are left
helpless. There are no educational programs that recognize her son’s fluid
multilingualism.
Latinx students’ language practices go beyond those of named English and
named Spanish, and thus, no matter who they are, whether immigrant newcomer
or native-born in the United States, their language practices do not fit the artificial
boundaries created by different educational programs. Because their language
practices are not in any way recognized and legitimized, Latinx students are made
to fail in schools, whether in foreign language, heritage language, second language
or bilingual education programs. The knowledge-power (Foucault, 2008) of
invented named languages and elite bilingualism continues to marginalize many
multilingual communities of brown and black bodies. To disrupt this cycle of
failure, the ways in which named languages have been used in society and schools,
and their relationship to racism and governmentality, need to be unmasked. If we
were truly interested in the academic success of Latinx students we would be
accepting of what we call here their translanguaging, and not insist on monolingual
performances, especially in English, in order to give them access to educational
and economic opportunities. In the next section we explore translanguaging, one
of many terms used today that have the potential to decolonize our conception of
language and, especially, language education.

Translanguaging
It is a well-known fact that linguists have never been able to make decisions on
structural or lexical grounds about the boundaries of named languages. Decisions on
what constitutes a language, a dialect, a creole, etc. are always social and political,
having to do with power and will. Once the boundaries of a named language
have been set, then linguists can, of course, describe its structure, phonology, mor-
phology, syntax, etc. (Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015), but not before. The dictum
of Max Weinreich about language being a dialect with an army and a navy is
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 163

instructive in this regard. For example, Afrikaans could be identified as a creole, or

as a dialect of Dutch, but the authoritative demands of a racist apartheid regime
required that it be named as one of two official languages of South Africa in 1961.
And Luxembourgish, formerly considered a dialect of German, was named the
national language of Luxembourg in 1984, in part a reaction against the occu-
pation of the country by Germany from 1940 to 1944. So if named languages
are indeed social and political constructions, what is left? What is it that people
engage in as they communicate?
In the recent past the fluid language practices of speakers have been increasingly
recognized in western sociolinguistic scholarship, stimulated especially by the het-
eroglossic conceptualizations of language that the translation of Bakhtin’s work
(1981) brought to our attention. Multilingual speakers are today said to have
mobile resources (Blommaert, 2010) or flexible bilingual practices (Blackledge &
Creese, 2010). And many terms have been coined to refer to speakers’ fluid mul-
tilingual practices—polylanguaging/polylingual languaging (Jørgensen, 2008),
metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010; Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015), trans-
lingual practices (Canagarajah, 2013) and translanguaging (Blackledge & Creese,
2010; García, 2009; García and Li Wei, 2014; Otheguy, García & Reid, 2015).
I prefer the term translanguaging for two reasons. One, translanguaging has been
used both to refer to the fluid language practices of multilingual communities, and
to the pedagogical practices that leverage those practices (Flores & Schissel, 2014;
García, 2009; García & Li Wei, 2014). Without education, the more heteroglossic
scholarly conceptions of language will have little impact in the lives of people.
Two, and even more important, translanguaging was coined in bilingual border-
lands, in Welsh (see Baker, 2011), and its use has been extended in work with other
language-minoritized groups (García & Li Wei, 2014). Thus the use of the term
translanguaging is political, disrupting the hierarchies of named languages that
were installed by colonial expansion and nation-building (see Mignolo, 2000).
The goal of translanguaging pedagogical practices is to liberate sign systems that
have been constrained by socio-political domination, attempting to give voice to
all and redress power differentials among speakers.
If named languages are external societal constructions, translanguaging refers to
the internal mental grammar of speakers shaped in social interaction, and the ways
in which features in their complex linguistic repertoire are deployed. As Otheguy,
García and Reid (2015) have said, translanguaging refers to “the deployment of a
speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the
socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and
state) languages” (p. 283). Rather than possessing two or multiple autonomous
language systems, speakers viewed as bilingual/multilingual select and deploy par-
ticular features to make meaning and to negotiate particular communicative
contexts from a unitary linguistic repertoire. For example, just earlier as I wrote this I
heard my daughter say: “Dónde está el tray? If we don’t hurry up, vamos a eat frío,
frío.” And I replied: “Está somewhere. Mira en el drawer.” Now, my daughter
164 Ofelia García

would have known to say “Where is the tray?” if she had been in her monolingual
friend’s house, and “¿Dónde está la bandeja?” if she had been in her grandmother’s
house in Puerto Rico. Likewise, I certainly would have known how to say “It’s
somewhere,” or “Está en algún lugar.” But there is no need to adhere to the
boundaries of standardized English and standardized Spanish in my bilingual
home. My daughter and I are simply communicating, and these are our words, our
own words, and not those of a nation-state or of a school. They are simply ours,
used effectively to communicate in our bilingual context. Seen from an internal
perspective, my daughter and I are not code-switching, as the external viewpoint
would have us say. Instead, we are simply deploying all the features of our reper-
toire; we are translanguaging.
When speakers said to be bilingual or multilingual are not exhibiting what are
interpreted as “fluid” language practices (that is, emitting features that are said to
be from one language or another because the receptor of the message is monolin-
gual), they are suppressing some linguistic features and selecting others. Speakers
said to be bilingual/multilingual learn to do this suppression and selection very early
in life, but they do not do it always. In unmonitored or less monitored settings, the
unsuppressed flow of the bilingual’s entire unpartioned linguistic inventory will
often be unleashed because all of it is “their” language, not one named and legiti-
mized by a political state.
As agents of political states, schools are the monitored settings par excellence. In
them, children whom the society calls bilingual or multilingual are asked to engage
in severe acts of suppression of about half the contents of their linguistic reper-
toire, whereas white, monolingual students are asked to suppress just a little.
Bilingual and multilingual students are then assessed with instruments that forbid
the use of the full content of their linguistic system, whereas monolingual students
are allowed to enlist almost its full content. Not only is the instruction and assess-
ment of students said to be bilingual or multilingual deeply biased, it is then given
as the reason for their academic failure, their achievement gap, and even their
poverty!
Rather than starting with students to whom a named language is assigned, a
translanguaging pedagogy starts with the language practices of multilingual learners.
By leveraging the multilingual learners’ entire language repertoire, translanguaging
returns the power of language to speakers and engages their communicative
potential, rather than authorizing only the conventions of named languages that
have been codified by the nation-state to develop governable subjects. Teachers
who engage with translanguaging pedagogical practices see students who have
been linguistically minoritized for their language potential, that is, their ability “to
do” language—to make arguments orally and in writing, to find text-based evi-
dence, to explain a theorem, to describe the rain forest, to historicize facts, to create
art and music, to imagine myths and fictions, to conceptualize problems and solu-
tions for today, to express compassion and tolerance, to have deep understandings
of scientific, mathematic, historical, artistic and social phenomena. This is the
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 165

language potential that we will need in the future, shared by all and not just by
white, powerful speakers who have the “appropriate” features of language. Human
language gives us the capacity to imagine abstractions and to be critical and cre-
ative human beings, and we are wasting that capacity in schools by insisting that
language can only be used, and students can only be successful, if they can express
their knowledge with conventions of standard named languages, whether one or
the other.
García, Johnson and Seltzer (2017) have identified three components of a
translanguaging pedagogy—stance, design and shifts. Teachers who leverage stu-
dents’ translanguaging have a stance, a deep belief that their students’ language
practices are a resource that transcends the standardized named language(s) of
schools and can be used to make meaning of academic tasks and learn. Besides a
stance, these teachers also design units, lessons, instructions and assessments that
integrate home and school languaging practices. But beyond the translanguaging
design, a translanguaging pedagogy also relies on shifts, the appropriate moment-
by-moment decisions teachers make to respond to learners’ languaging.
If the four teachers mentioned above—Ms. Heston, the “ESL” teacher; Ms.
Medina, the “Spanish as a Heritage Language” teacher; Ms. Maconi, the “Spanish
as a Foreign Language” teacher; and Ms. Gutiérrez, the bilingual teacher—had
taken up translanguaging pedagogical practices, Alexis, Yahaira, Alejandra and
Kabil would have been taught as human beings with linguistic potential, and not
simply as speakers or not of English, and as speakers or not of Spanish. For exam-
ple, Alexis would be recognized for his engineering potential, for he is great at
applying science and math to solve problems; and Kabil would be celebrated for
his ability to imagine fictional stories and create poetic images. Instead of not giv-
ing Alexis and Kabil access to rich instruction because they do not fit the language
education paradigm installed in schools, they would be educated for success as
scientists, mathematicians, writers, poets, etc. It would then be their meaningful
participation and engagement in these real and interesting pursuits that would
drive the extension of their language practices, as they engaged with others in
activities significant for them.
Translanguaging pedagogy is a tool for social justice, disrupting the linguistic
hierarchizations of named languages and people that nation-states and their
schools have created. Only by leveraging the real language practices that make up
the linguistic repertoire of students who are linguistically minoritized, and build-
ing their critical understandings of how the invention of named languages has
worked to produce governable subjects, will multilingual youth be able to engage
in their education and become agentive learners.

Conclusion
We have described the construction of named languages by the powerful elite
of nation-states. We have also analyzed how the construction of a version of
166 Ofelia García

bilingualism and multilingualism ensures that only the use of two or more named
languages separately is legitimated. This has also contributed to consolidated
power among white majorities while stigmatizing the practices of multilingual
speakers. We have also seen that it is these conceptions of named languages and
bilingualism/multilingualism that are used in the many language education pro-
grams that exist in society today.
Using the example of Latinx students, we have shown how categories of lan-
guage and educational programs based on those categories do not fit their needs.
Attempting to fit them into these categories then excludes them from successful
schooling experiences. We have proposed that taking up translanguaging, an epis-
temology that takes the point of view that language is what speakers do, rather
than what nation-states legitimate and schools teach, could transform the present
reality of language and education.
The road ahead is difficult, for the transformation of language education pro-
grams will not happen without a political struggle for structural change that has
the potential to push white, monolingual speakers from their present position of
power. As I write this it seems unlikely that the neoliberal climate in which we
educate would be transformed. For Latinx students, the election of Donald Trump
in the United States has unleashed a racism that may, more than ever, divide us,
even without building a physical wall. The walls of named languages and catego-
ries of students are more solid today than ever. The raciolinguistic ideologies
(Flores & Rosa, 2015) that have been at play since language was made a proxy for
race and oppression are very much present.
And yet we must continue to denounce the coloniality of power that keeps
named languages as walls and barriers to opportunities. We must poke at the
cracks that are evident in the walls. Decolonizing languages might not be feasible
in the present climate, but decolonizing our knowledge about languages and the
language education programs that exist might destabilize the support that many lan-
guage education programs enjoy today, exposing them for their role in restricting
opportunity for minoritized learners instead of expanding it.

References
Baker, C. (2011). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (5th edition). Bristol, UK:
Multilingual Matters.
Bakhtin, M. (1981). Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Baugh, A. and Cable. T. (2002). The History of the English Language. Upper Saddle River,
NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Blackledge, A. and Creese, A. (2010). Multilingualism: A Critical Perspective. London:
Continuum.
Blommaert, J. (2010). The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Briceño Perozo, M. (1987). La obligación de enseñar el castellano a los aborígenes de América,
Colección Logos, Caracas.
 Decolonizing Implications for Education 167

Canagarajah, S. (2013). Translingual practice: Global Englishes and cosmopolitan relations. Lon-
don: Routledge.
Canagarajah, S. and Liyanage, I. (2012). Lessons from pre-colonial multilingualism. In
M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge & A. Creese (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Multilin-
gualism. London & New York: Routledge.
Council of Europe. (2000). Common European framework of reference for languages:
Learning, teaching, assessment. Language Policy Division. Strasbourg. Retrieved from
http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/source/framework_en.pdf.
del Valle, J. (Ed.) (2013). A Political History of Spanish. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Fishman, J. A. (1967). Bilingualism with and without diglossia; Diglossia with and without
bilingualism. Journal of Social Science 23(2): 29–38.
Fishman, J. A. (1972). Language and Nationalism. Two integrative essays. Rowley, MA: New-
bury House.
Flores, N. (2013). The unexamined relationship between neoliberalism and plurilingualism:
A cautionary tale. TESOL Quarterly, 47, 500–520.
Flores, N. and Schissel, J. L. (2014). Dynamic bilingualism as the norm: Envisioning a
heteroglossic approach to standards-based reform. TESOL Quarterly 48(3): 454– 479.
Doi:10.1002/tesq.182.
Flores, N. and Rosa, J. (2015). Undoing appropriateness: Raciolinguistic ideologies and
language diversity in education. Harvard Educational Review 85 (2): 149–171.
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978–
1979. New York: Picador.
García, O. (Ed.) (2008). Spanish as a global language. The International Multilingual Research
Journal 2, Issue 1. Routledge.
García, O. (2009). Bilingual education in the 21st century: A global perspective. Malden, MA/
Oxford, UK: Wiley/Blackwell.
García, O. (2011). Planning Spanish: Nationalizing, minoritizing and globalizing perfor-
mances. In M. Díaz-Campos (Ed.), The Handbook of Hispanic Sociolinguistics (pp. 665–
685). Malden, MA/Oxford, UK: Wiley/Blackwell.
García, O. and Kleyn, T. (Eds.) (2016). Translanguaging with multilingual students: Learning from
classroom moments. New York and London: Routledge.
García, O. and Lin, A. (2018). English and Multilingualism. In P. Seargeant, A. Hewings &
S. Pihlaja (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies (pp. 77–92). New York:
Routledge.
García, O. and Li Wei. (2014). Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education. London/
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
García, O. and Otheguy, R. (2015). Spanish and Hispanic bilingualism. In M. Lacorte
(Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Hispanic Applied Linguistics (pp. 639–658). New York:
Routledge.
García, O., Johnson, S. and Seltzer, K. (2017). The translanguaging classroom. Leveraging student
bilingualism for learning. Philadelphia, PA : Caslon.
Grosjean, F. (1982). Life with two languages. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Hall,
R. (1974). External history of the Romance languages. New York: Elsevier.
Haugen, E. (1956). Bilingualism in the Americas: A bibliography and research guide. New York:
American Dialect Society.
Heller, M. (1999). Linguistic Minorities and Modernity: A sociolinguistic ethnography. London:
Longman.
168 Ofelia García

Jørgensen, J. N. (2008). Polylingual languaging around and among children and adoles-
cents. International Journal of Multilingualism, 5(3), 161–176.
Khubchandani, L. M. (1997). Revisualizing boundaries: A plurilingual ethos. New Delhi: Sage.
Lambert, W. E. (1974). Culture and language as factors in learning and education. In
F. E. Aboud & R. D. Meade (Eds.), Cultural Factors in Learning and Education (pp. 91–122).
Bellingham, WA: 5th Western Washington Symposium on Learning.
Lewis, E. G. (1977). Bilingualism and bilingual education – The ancient world to the
Renaissance. In B. Spolsky & R. L. Cooper (Eds.), Frontiers of Bilingual Education (pp.22–
93). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007). Disinventing and Reconstituting Language. Clevedon,
UK: Multilingual Matters.
May, S. (Ed.) (2013). The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Educa-
tion. New York: Routledge.
Mignolo, W. D. (1995). The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality and Coloniza-
tion. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Mignolo, W. (2000). Local Histories/Global Designs. Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Bor-
der Thinking. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mignolo, W. (2007). Delinking: The rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the
grammar of de-coloniality,’ Cultural Studies, 21 (2): 449–514.
Otheguy, R., García, O. and Reid, W. (2015). Clarifying translanguaging and deconstruct-
ing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6(3):
281–307.
Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2010). Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux.
International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(3), 240–254.
Park, J. S-Y and Wee, L. (2012). Markets of English. Linguistic capital and language policy in a
globalizing world. New York and Oxford: Routledge.
Pennycook, A. and Otsjui, E. (2015). Metrolingualism. Language in the city. Oxford and New
York: Routledge.
Quijano, A. (2007) Coloniality and Modernity/Rationality, Cultural Studies, 21 (2):168–178.
Rubin, J. and Jernudd, B. (Eds.) (1971). Can Language be Planned? Sociolinguistic theory and
practice for developing nations. Honolulu, HI: University Press of Hawaii.
Weinreich, U. (1953/1974). Languages in Contact, Findings and Problems. The Hague:
Mouton.