Language and Education: Ideologies of Correctness

Abstract

This review illustrates how language ideologies about correctness, in speaking and writing, have been discussed in research on the role of language in education. Research illustrates a give-and-take between the interests of multilingual speakers and advocates of language diversity on the one hand and, on the other, the correctness ideologies embedded in institutional demands for correctness and standardization (in schools and language policies) and commodification (in the global educational marketplace). More subtle than ideologies of correctness, language ideologies about “appropriate” language emerge as related to race, ethnicity, gender, and other embodied biases, and the nuanced mechanisms of language socialization illuminate the persistent dynamics of these appropriateness ideologies. Finally, we discuss the relevance of postcolonial epistemologies, the collaborative participatory research methods that are reframing what counts as correct and appropriate for the study of language and education, and the emerging role of generative artificial intelligence for language in education.