The diversity discourse and language ideologies around international teaching assistants

ABSTRACT

This article sets out to investigate the discourses, ideologies, and identities of international teaching assistants (ITAs) as they engage in hegemonic diversity discourses concerning inequality within the space of American higher education. In order to explore the effects of the hegemonic discourse of diversity on identity construction, this study is framed around critical discourse studies on text, discourse practice, and social practice with a focus on the power relations of language ideologies and identity politics. The research explores how discourses on ITA’ diversity have been constructed and reproduced through recontextualization at different social levels, particularly by tracing the intertextual chains of talk and text over the past three decades. The detailed analyses of these discursive texts, gleaned from classroom interactions and readings as well as from documents from institutional-level language policies and practices, illustrate the genesis, reproduction, and persistence of the dominant diversity discourse charged with ideological significance in its relation to how ITAs are positioned. This article sheds light on the relations between the hegemonic discourse on diversity and the identity politics that contribute in the broader social level, as well as the local level, to sociolinguistic differences.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity discourse
• language ideologies
• critical discourse studies
• intertextuality
• ITA
• discursive identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jung Sook Kim is an assistant professor of Center for Multiculturalism and Social Policy at Daegu University, Korea. Her research interests concern critical discourse studies on language ideologies, linguistic diversity and identity.