Keynote speaker		Home
STEPHEN MAY is Foundation Professor and Chair of Language and Literacy Education in the School of Education, University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand. Stephen has written widely on language rights, language education, ethnicity, nationalism and multiculturalism, with seven books and over 70 academic chapters and articles to date. His book Language and Minority Rights, first published by Longman in 2001, has had a major impact on the field and was shortlisted for the British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Book Prize 2002. Reprinted by Routledge in 2008, it has since been recognized as an American Library Association Choice 2008 Outstanding Academic Title.
Stephen is a founding editor of the international and interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities (Sage), an Associate Editor of Language Policy (Springer), and is on the editorial boards of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, International Multilingual Research Journal, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Language and Education and Sociolinguistic Studies. Reconnecting the local and global in language education At present, we see two countervailing trends in the area of language and education. The first is a recognition that the majority of the world’s population are multilingual, and a related recognition that the world is becoming increasingly globalised, with multiple new flows and forms of communication. Such recognition suggests the possibilities of a more multilingual and multimodal approach to language education. The second is a process of language hierarchization which constructs languages as useful and/or valuable in relation solely to their ‘reach’. Global languages (especially English) are placed at the top of this language hierarchy, followed by national languages, and with local/regional/indigenous languages at the bottom. The smaller the reach, the less useful and/or valuable the language, the less likely it is to be used as a medium of instruction. This second trend directly militates against the pluralization of language education, reinforcing instead a monolingual, hierarchical approach. In this keynote address, I will explore and critique the dichotomous construction of global and local languages, and its implications for education, that underpins this latter trend. Drawing on my work in language rights, I will argue that both global and local languages have a crucial role to play in education and that, as we move forward into the 21st century, we must adopt an overtly multilingual and multimodal approach to language education.

Stephen is a founding editor of the international and interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities (Sage), an Associate Editor of Language Policy (Springer), and is on the editorial boards of International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, International Multilingual Research Journal, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, Language and Education and Sociolinguistic Studies.

Reconnecting the local and global in language education

At present, we see two countervailing trends in the area of language and education. The first is a recognition that the majority of the world’s population are multilingual, and a related recognition that the world is becoming increasingly globalised, with multiple new flows and forms of communication. Such recognition suggests the possibilities of a more multilingual and multimodal approach to language education. The second is a process of language hierarchization which constructs languages as useful and/or valuable in relation solely to their ‘reach’. Global languages (especially English) are placed at the top of this language hierarchy, followed by national languages, and with local/regional/indigenous languages at the bottom. The smaller the reach, the less useful and/or valuable the language, the less likely it is to be used as a medium of instruction. This second trend directly militates against the pluralization of language education, reinforcing instead a monolingual, hierarchical approach.

In this keynote address, I will explore and critique the dichotomous construction of global and local languages, and its implications for education, that underpins this latter trend. Drawing on my work in language rights, I will argue that both global and local languages have a crucial role to play in education and that, as we move forward into the 21st century, we must adopt an overtly multilingual and multimodal approach to language education.