General Purposes
 
Faculty and students in the DSLS teach and learn about, conduct research on, and disseminate ideas in CSLS, in order to promote:

  1. Understandings of how matters of power affect language userslearners in educational, occupational, and other social settings;

  2. Approaches to second language research which are conscious of, or explore, the ideologies of our professional practices and attend to SL learning, teaching and use as sites where social relations are enacted, negotiated and potentially transformed;

  3. More equitable social relations through the actions of language professionals and the organization and implementation of language programs and projects.

Specific Objectives of the CSLS Specialization

Within the MA in SLS, a specialization in CSLS is intended to develop language professionals’ knowledge, abilities, and views in:

  a. approaches to language research that derive from a critical perspective, for example, participatory action research, critical ethnography;

  b. approaches to language pedagogy that derive from a critical perspective; for example, critical pedagogy;

  c. approaches to language curriculum that prioritize the needs and interests of minorities or marginalized groups; for example, bilingual education, and critical English for Academic  Purposes;

  d. approaches to language learning that reflect critical understandings of society (as hierarchical and often manifesting inequities such as those associated with class, race and gender) and of the individual (as embodied, gendered, positioned in discourses but having agency); for example, critical language awareness;

  e. approaches to language analysis and use that see language as non-transparent, manifesting sociopolitical forces, and active rather than neutral; for example, critical discourse analysis, critical sociolinguistics