Linguistic Justice in the Classroom: Teaching English in Diversity

This article examines the management of linguistic diversity in English-language classroom contexts from a linguistic justice viewpoint, which is concerned with the equitable and fair treatment of the multiple languages that coexist in a given social context. The analysis presented here shifts the focus from the more typical macro-level approaches in the linguistic justice literature and turns to the micro-level context of the language classroom. The aim is to develop a theoretical argument in connection to two main concerns: firstly, the incorporation (or not) of students’ first languages in the English language classroom, and secondly, the incorporation (or not) of different varieties and accents of English. The article argues in favour of recognizing and incorporating students’ first languages and the different accents and varieties of English in the language classroom. In addition, it argues in favour of developing an ethics of language that focuses on listening and the listening-subject position as key factors that may determine the fair and equitable treatment of the language resources in the English language classroom and beyond, for a more inclusive and just linguistic environment.