WHAT′S A LANGUAGE, WHAT’S A DIALECT？ THOUGHTS ON MORE EQUITABLE TEACHING PRACTICES

What’s a language, what’s a dialect? This seemingly easy question is taken for granted in much of language teaching. For languages that have dominant standard varieties, teaching professionals have usually been content to teach just those “main” varieties. The present talk starts from what are indeed arbitrary boundaries behind the socio-political concept of “language” and the ideologies underlying it.

Using examples from European languages (German, English, Swedish, French, Spanish), I will make the point that the inclusion, however small, of features from a non-dominant standard variety in language teaching would not only enrich the learning process but would add an identity-confirming element to language teaching.

This suggestion is not intended to add to the already large scope of tasks in language teaching, but to render, via a minor adaptation of the established method, the learning outcomes even more relevant to the learner.

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