The Politics of Incompetence
Learning Language, Relations of Power, and Daily Resistance
The Politics of Incompetence
Learning Language, Relations of Power, and Daily Resistance
Description
“Incompetence” is not an objective state lacking competence nor a kind of deficiency that needs to be filled. Rather, it is a constructed state that is productive, working in tandem with its opposite, “competence.” Perception of incompetence/competence works as what Michel Foucault (1977) calls a technology of “normalization” that pushes individuals to aspire to follow a shared norm, while hierarchically differentiating individuals according to their proximity to the aspired norm. The notion of incompetence is thus “productive” in that it turns individuals into specific kinds of “subjects” (Foucault 1977). The Politics of “Incompetence”: Learning Language, Relations of Power, and Daily Resistance further investigates other productive processes around the perception of “incompetence” specifically through its intersections with various ideologies—“academic achievement,” teacher-student hierarchy, “native speaker” ideology, normative unit thinking, and privilege of vulnerability—as such intersections generate new knowledge, new reflection on one’s assumptions and privilege, new space for marginalized language, and more. This volume opens up a new area of study—productive cultural politics of “incompetence”—by focusing on language learning in diverse contexts: Japanese as a Foreign Language classrooms in US colleges, Italian language tourism in Italy, and indigenous Maori language revitalization at an Aotearoa/New Zealand school.
Accessibility Information
Additional accessibility information
- EPUB 3.0
- Conforms with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec v1.1
- WCAG level AA
- WCAG v2.2 compliant
- accessibility@bloomsbury.com
Hazards
The publication contains no hazards
Support for non-visual reading
- No accessibility features offered by the reading system, device or reading software are disabled or otherwise unusable with the product
- Has alternative text descriptions for images
Visual adjustments
Appearance of the text and page layout can be modified according to the capabilities of the reading system (font family and size, spaces, as well as color of background and text)
Navigation
- Page list to go to pages from the print source version
- Elements such as headings, tables, etc for structured navigation
- All or substantially all textual matter is arranged in a single logical reading order
- Content is enhanced with ARIA roles to optimize organization and facilitate navigation
- Purposes of all links are made clear
Rich content
Language tagging provided
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Identities of (In-)Competence and Plurilingual Repertoires: Three Stories of Digital Storytelling in a Japanese Language Classroom by Keiko Konoeda
Chapter 2: “Incompetence” as a Productive Force for Making the Invisible Visible: Linguistic Landscapes Project as a Dialogic Space in a Japanese Language Classroom by Yuri Kumagai with Yuko Takahashi
Chapter 3: Discourse of Incompetence, Unit Thinking, and Uses and Risks of the Translanguaging Framework: Language Politics in Aotearoa/New Zealand by Neriko Musha Doerr
Chapter 4: Studying La Bella Lingua as an Edu-Tourist: An Auto-Ethnographic Account of (In)competence by Cori Jakubiak
Afterword: Towards Understanding Production and Perceptions of (In)Competence by Theresa Austin
Product details
| Published | Jun 25 2024 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 206 |
| ISBN | 9781666936247 |
| Imprint | Lexington Books |
| Illustrations | 1 BW Illustration, 1 Table |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
Reviews
ONLINE RESOURCES
Bloomsbury Collections
This book is available on Bloomsbury Collections where your library has access.
Related Titles
