Towards an educational linguistics for peace

Abstract

The world is facing a confluence of crises, from poverty, misinformation, and intolerance to disease, climate change, and geopolitical conflict. In 2015, the United Nations set an ambitious agenda for worldwide sustainable development to accomplish by 2030 in the form of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Halfway to this deadline, only 15% of SDG targets to inter alia reduce poverty, enhance education, advance equality, ensure health and well-being, and preserve natural resources are on track (United Nations, 2023). It is easy to feel despair and hopelessness. What can educational linguists and language teachers do in the face of such daunting challenges?

Since its inception, it has been a central tenet of educational linguistics to be theme-based and problem-driven (Hornberger, 2001; Hult, 2010a). That is to say, we begin with a practical problem and look to relevant principles, theories, and methods that allow us to investigate and address it (Hornberger, 2006). There is, perhaps, no greater thematic challenge today than the threat to peace. In their work on peacebuilding in language education, Oxford et al. (2021) emphasize that peace is not simply the absence of violence and war but the positive presence of equitable social structures that foster human rights for everyone and that language educators have a pivotal role to play in cultivating peace (cf. Skutnabb-Kangas, et al., 2009).

Accordingly, I argue that peace studies (e.g., Curtis, 2022; Manojlovic, 2018) is a useful addition to the fields and disciplines that inform educational linguistics. In particular, I examine how Oxford’s multidimensional Language of Peace Approach (Oxford et al., 2021), which includes inner peace, interpersonal peace, intergroup peace, intercultural peace, international peace, and ecological peace, aligns with the intellectual roots of educational linguistics as a way to account for the socially situated nature of language (in) education (e.g., Douglas Fir Group, 2016; Hornberger, 2003; Hult, 2010b, 2019; Hult & King, 2011; Spolsky, 1972; Van Lier, 1994, 2004). To that end, I discuss how my own work and that of others applying ecology of language and nexus analysis (Hult, 2013, 2017; cf. Scollon & Scollon, 2004) can advance an educational linguistics for peace. I describe how language education policy and practice can be leveraged to foster peace and how educational stakeholders as social actors can become agents for peace. As we search for hope in turbulent times, we can begin looking right in our own classrooms.