Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of English language classrooms in a South African township, this book highlights linguistic expertise in a setting where it is not usually expected or sought. Rather than being 'peripheral and unskilled', South African township teachers and learners emerge as skilled (re)languagers central to the workings of South African education, and to our understanding of how language classrooms work. This book foregrounds the heterogeneity, flexibility and creativity of day-to-day language practices that African urban spaces are known for, and conceptualises language teaching not as a progression from one fixed language to another, but as a circular sorting process between linguistic heterogeneity (languaging) and homogeneity (a standard language).
Lara-Stephanie Krause is Assistant Professor in the Institute of African Studies, Leipzig University, Germany. Her research interests include fixity / fluidity of language in education, (trans)languaging, language and protest movements, actor-network theory, and science and technology studies.
Title: Relanguaging Language from a South African Township School (New Perspectives on Language and Education): 99
Author: Lara-Stephanie Krause
ISBN: 9781800412118
Binding:
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Publication Date: 2021-12-20
Number of Pages: 256
Weight: 0.3539 kg
Lara Krause presents a startlingly innovative, deeply meditative, yet meticulously reasoned and entirely convincing, approach to educational languaging. Substantiating her exhaustive interrogation of prevailing hypotheses with a thoroughgoing analysis of what actually happens in a township classroom, Krause develops a bold new conceptual framework. * Tessa Dowling, University of Cape Town, South Africa *
In this book Lara Krause provides an evidence-based and nuanced analysis of English language classrooms in a township setting. Guided by a comprehensive understanding of relevant research and theory, she meticulously develops and uses the lens of (re)languaging to foreground the tension between linguistic fluidity and fixity, heterogeneity and homogeneity in language classrooms. Clearly argued and compelling, this book provides new insights into the complex relationships between language curricula and policy in contexts of linguistic diversity. * Pinky Makoe, University of Johannesburg, South Africa *
Lara Krause as elegantly as radically twists our perspective on language practices by heuristically setting the fluidity of language as norm and then rigorously following this intellectual project throughout her compelling analysis. Apart from giving novel insight into the didactics of teaching in English in a fluid setting, she also demonstrates how we can overcome the disciplinary constraints that keep haunting the field. * Rose Marie Beck, Leipzig University, Germany *
