Teachers as foreign Language Makers: on standard language ideology, authenticity and language expertise

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this article is twofold: first, we apply the concept of “Language Making” – which is introduced in this thematic issue – to the domain of foreign language learning and teaching. More specifically, we investigate the role of teachers, as well as other social actors in the domain of foreign language education, in the making of foreign languages, i.e., their role in selecting varieties and forms that they deem appropriate to be learned. We assess how they justify their selections and which language ideologies inform their choices. A specific focus is on how these “foreign Language Makers” construe their linguistic expertise: how do they argue for the legitimacy of their “foreign Language Making”? Second, we argue that present day conceptions of the “ideal language teacher” have their roots in the past. Therefore, we include two case studies: our first case study zooms in on the Early Modern period and draws on introductions to foreign language textbooks from the 16th and 17th centuries. Our main sources are the multilingual textbooks of the Colloquia, et dictionariolum as well as the work of Gerard De Vivre, a language teacher and textbook author from Ghent who published French language textbooks for Dutch- and German-speaking learners in the second half of the 16th century. The second case study focuses on present-day teachers who teach Dutch as a foreign language at universities outside of the Dutch-speaking language area. For this analysis, we make use of data from qualitative interviews with 20 teachers, collected in 2015. We analyse, contrast and compare these cases, thereby taking into account the dynamics of socio-political and language ideological changes of the past centuries.