Imagining and anticipating institutional linguistic justice in schools

Abstract

Linguistic justice as a named concept in applied linguistics and related fields receives a growing amount of scholarly attention, especially concerning educational contexts. Yet use of the term often relies on theories of change which frame pedagogical interventions and diversity training as a solution for achieving linguistic justice, typically overlooking the need for structural and institutional transformation. Here, I draw on the speculative methodology of imagination infrastructure to propose a set of design principles for the creation of linguistically just schools at an institutional level. Rooted in place-based activism, this prefigurative and anticipatory vision for institutional linguistic justice incorporates the nonlinguistic factors that lie at the root of structural discrimination, embodies cross-movement solidarity to situate linguistic justice in partnership with other social justice struggles, dismantles linguistic hierarchies and associated relations of power, and accompanies schools in the design of new worlds. Ultimately, this vision pushes for the creation of capacities and conditions that bring different and desired futures into the present.