Towards an understanding of the language ideologies informing student teachers’ voices in Moscow, Russia

This doctoral research aims at investigating the language ideologies that inform a group of English language student teachers at a state university in Moscow, Russia, in the development of their professional voices. In its early stage, the study focalizes how individuals pursuing a bachelor's degree in Language Teaching negotiate their positions as both students and teachers of English. This ethnographic enquiry is conducted in dialogue with scholarly works in applied linguistics and linguistic anthropology that seek to dislodge the longstanding tradition of viewing languages as solid entities, by rather considering them as repertoires. Within this framework, what is conventionally understood as "English" is then reconceptualized in the face of the social and multi-layered character of interaction, which calls for decentering the idealized "native speaker" as an authoritative model in language education. For the time being, I consider colligating the theoretical insights from the theoretical apparatus of language ideologies and their semiotic processes (Kroskrity, 2000, 2004; Irvine and Gal, 2000) and the concept of entextualization (Bauman and Briggs, 1990, 2003; Silverstein and Urban, 1996) in the analysis of institutional documents and semi-structured interviews and focus groups. I am nevertheless committed to letting the data generated point to the most responsive theoretical-analytical constructs. Over the course of this study and upon its completion I aspire to contribute to the area of language teacher education in Russia, towards deepening our understanding of the multiple social trajectories that reverberate in teacher education in this country.