The commodification of English in ‘Madrid, comunidad bilingüe’: insights from the CLIL classroom

Abstract

This article analyzes how multilingual education in the Madrid region has been addressed through the medium of Spanish/English content and language integrated learning (CLIL) bilingual programs, widely implemented in public schools of this region in the last decade. By adopting a critical interpretive perspective (Tollefson in Language policies in education: critical issues. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, 2002) to the understanding of bilingual education in the Madrid region, the article explores the links between current CLIL classroom practices, local and European language education policies and wider social and ideological processes of globalization and neoliberalism in late modernity. Particularly, the article analyzes the commodification of CLIL programs by examining how local values and beliefs about bilingualism and the prestige of English as Europe’s lingua franca intersect with situated notions of who counts as a bilingual student in the CLIL classroom and the emergent categorization of elistism assigned to bilingual programs in Madrid. Drawing on data collected as part of the team critical sociolinguistic ethnography conducted at ‘Villababel High’, the article discusses specifically language choice in the CLIL classroom as a key practice to understand the tensions involved in bilingual education policy in late modernity.