Legitimizing linguistic hierarchization: Elite multilingualism at an IB-accredited international school.

This project examines the linguistic construction of elite multilingualism in an IB international school. International schools are exclusive educational institutions which typically provide transnational education for expat children. To address the lack of knowledge on how language-based elitism manifests itself and how it is legitimized in an educational institutional context, this project specifically looks at (i) how teachers and students hierarchize linguistic forms in and through observable linguistic practices; and (ii) how they legitimize such a hierarchization of language use as a valuable, respectable and justifiable educational asset. To investigate these processes on the basis of real-life data this project proposes a linguistic-ethnographic case study which allows to analyze small-scale linguistic interaction processes as well as their social-ideological contextualization in adequate detail. In this way, the project sets out to generate (i) innovative descriptions of everyday linguistic hierarchization and legitimation at an international school; (ii) a more tangible, concrete understanding of elite multilingualism as an observable, on-going practice; and (iii) increased awareness among stakeholders of these subtle linguistic processes.

Keywords:LANGUAGE IDEOLOGY, LANGUAGE AND EDUCATION, LANGUAGE USE, SOCIAL INEQUALITY

Disciplines:Discourse studies, Pragmatics, Sociolinguistics