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Friday, January 29, 2010

"There is Something Furtive"

Suresh Canagarajah's 2007 article, "There is Something Furtive About the Behavior of Evangelicals in TESOL," touches on themes later discussed in his chapters of Christian and Critical Language Educators in Dialogue -- which should be required ready for any MATESOL student at a religious institution. The whole article is worth a read.

Perhaps we should propose a semantic shift and ask that our critics change their pejorative terms for a positive experience. Evangelical teachers are not being furtive, stealthy, deceptive, and separatist. They periodically bond together and recharge themselves in safe houses for a very social/public mission that is holistic, integrated, embedded, all pervading, deeply ingrained, transformative—in short, incarnational.


P.S. Looking at a review of the book Controversies in Applied Linguistics, I came across this quote:

No doubt Phillipson would argue that the dominant threat of linguistic imperialism is such a vital issue in the world today that adopting a measured, respectful approach is not appropriate and that it is only by aggressively attacking those who are perceived to be defending this hegemony of English that one can hope to achieve anything in the struggle against the new imperialism. I remain unconvinced.