This study presents an intervention reframing teaching language analysis skills (lexicon, inflection, grammar, pronunciation, discourse) within a “language as hospitality” framework (Smith & Carvill, 2000). Teacher trainees connected key analytical skills to their desire to extend linguistic hospitality, with implications for re-designing and motivating language analysis courses.
Motivating linguistics courses to language teacher trainees is no new challenge (Spolsky, 1969; van Lier 1994). Some question the usefulness of linguistics courses in the core teacher-training sequence (Freeman, 2002; Spada, 2007), especially as globalization destabilizes the “ideal speaker/hearer” (Kramsch, 2014) on which linguistics classically rests. Yet detecting and describing patterns at all levels of form, meaning, and use remain an essential skill for teacher tasks like designing curricula, responding to learners’ emergent questions, and implementing effective assessment. This study analyzes an intervention to building investment in a required linguistics class by reframing language analysis around a personally-valued identity (Ushioda, 2011), the framework of “language as hospitality”. In an era of increased suspicion towards “outsiders”, and policies reducing both legal and undocumented migration, unconditional hospitality (Derrida, 1999) is an emergent framework for language education (for curriculum design [Smith & Carvill, 2000; Smith, 2009; Anwarruddin, 2016]; listening [Baurain, 2011]; intercultural competence [Dervin & Layne, 2013]; discourses [Khawla 2018]). Hospitality contests exclusionary discourse yet uniquely has currency across both religious-and-secular and right-and-left divides. Hospitality is also personally valued by the teacher-trainees in this study, as they have experienced hospitality while residing abroad, and entered language education motivated to facilitate intercultural understanding. “Language as hospitality” was introduced as a key concept on day one, yet left intentionally undefined. After each unit of the course (analyzing lexicon, morphology, pronunciation, grammar, discourse), teacher trainees submitted journals applying their newly mastered knowledge and skills to the concept of hospitality. At course end, teacher trainees recorded small-group discussions applying language analysis to the creation of hospitable spaces and mindsets in language education, and problematizing hospitality as a framework. Quantitative analysis surfaced key affordances of a hospitality framework for each skill, as well as for the larger role of language analysis in a social-justice oriented language teacher curriculum.
