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The Eighth International Literacy & Education Research Network Conference on
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Donaldo Macedo
The Ideological Construction of Language and Culture
Abstract Although the literature in multicultural education correctly stresses the need to valorize and appreciate cultural difference as a process for students to come to voice, the underlying assumption is that the celebration of other cultures will take place in English only, a language that may provide students from other linguistic and cultural backgrounds with the experience of subordination. In this paper I discuss the issue of language and its role in multicultural education, particularly in the multicultural debate in the United States where the issue of language is often relegated to a secondary status. In fact, some multiculturalists, without saying so, assume that multicultural education can be effectively implemented through English only. Such an assumption neglects to appreciate how English, as a dominant language, even in a multicultural classroom, may continue to devalue students and speakers of other languages. In other words, one cannot celebrate different cultural values through the very dominant language that devalues, in many ways, the cultural experiences of different groups. Multiculturalists need to understand that language is the only means through which one comes to consciousness. In this paper I provide a critical analysis of the politics of language and its role in multicultural education.
Donaldo Macedo is a full professor of English and a Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He is the Graduate Program Director of the Applied Linguistics Masters of Arts Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He has published extensively in the areas of linguistics, critical literacy, and bilingual and multicultural education. His publications include: Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (with Paulo Freire, 1987), Literacies of Power: What Americans Are Not Allowed to Know (1994), Dancing With Bigotry (with Lilia Bartolome, 1999), Critical Education in the New Information Age (with Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux and Paul Willis, 1999), Chomsky on Miseducation (with Noam Chomsky, 2000) and Ideology Matters (co-authored with Paulo Freire, forthcoming).
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