Abstract

This article aims to raise some general questions related to mobility and the traffic between languages in times of globalization. While defining “globalization” as a set of discourses, we outline some of its internal contradictions and paradoxes as well as the equally contradictory role of the English language as a homogenizing and fragmentary force in this context. Next, taking the perspective of language as socio discursive practice, we situate the multilingual speaker and the interweaving between languages and meanings in a world dominated by intense patterns of diversity and fluxes of people and discourses. Finally, we turn to the context of the bi/multilingual classroom, trying to point out alternatives to monolingual assumptions underlying educational and pedagogical discourses and practices related to bi/multilingual education that prevent us from understanding multilingual speakers in all their complexity. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Highlights

  • This article aims to raise some general questions related to mobility and the traffic between languages in times of globalization

  • THE MULTIPLE FACES OF GLOBALIZATION What we call ‘globalization’ is best understood not as a vague concept whose meaning we hope is shared by our interlocutors whenever we refer to it: globalization should be best understood as discourse (KUMARAVADIVELU, 2008, p.129; FAIRCLOUGH, 1989, p.206)

  • If globalization can mean so many different things, it is because people across the world feel and suffer the transformations and consequences related to it in different ways and, represent and understand it in different ways: globalization has “different meanings, for different people at different times” (KUMARAVADIVELU, 2008, p.130)

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Summary

Introduction

This article aims to raise some general questions related to mobility and the traffic between languages in times of globalization. We wish to problematize questions related to languages and discursive practices in a global context that has English as an immanent linguistic resource.

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