Multiple Classrooms of Life: English, Ideology and ‘Sparkle’ Moments

ABSTRACT

This essay comprises multiple sets of dialogues between us as colleagues and friends as we revisit the question of the status of English as a global language. Through the metaphor ‘multiple classrooms of life’, we share reflections and narratives arising out of our experiences with English that are embedded in our professional work, scholarship, pedagogy and creative interests. Our discussion encompasses a range of artefacts, including excerpts from our diaries, poems, vignettes, visuals, letters, songs and anecdotes. This amalgam of materials represents our personal engagement with English, as distinct from treating the spread of English simply as a metanarrative played out at a remove from personal experience. We reconstruct ‘sparkle moments’ arising from personal encounters and social interactions that have caused us to reflect on the role of English in our lives. We thus focus on ideology as personally felt and lived from within and through inter-personal interactions.

KEYWORDS:

• English
• ideology
• power
• Vološinov
• narrative
• creativity
• cultural politics of language
• language ideology
• translanguaging
• English as a global language
• language empowerment

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Phung Ha Thanh and her friend for helping translate the lyrics of our song Người Nghệ Sĩ Đường Phố from Vietnamese into English.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Phan Le Ha

Phan Le Ha is currently Senior Professor at Sultan Bolkiah Institute of Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, and concurrent Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, College of Education, University of Hawaii at Manoa. She was with Monash University in Melbourne prior to her current posts. Her expertise, teaching and research include language and literacy studies, the internationalisation and globalisation of education in global contexts, identity studies, academic mobilities, and sociology of education and knowledge. She writes songs, poetry, short stories and novels in both Vietnamese and English.

Bao Dat

Bao Dat has worked with Cornell University in the United States, Leeds Beckett University in the UK, the National University of Singapore, Assumption University of Thailand, and currently Monash University in Australia. His expertise includes language, culture, curriculum, communication and creativity. His various books on silence, creativity and education are popular worldwide for their novel theoretical contributions in pedagogy.