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The Conservative Restoration and Neoliberal Defenses of Bilingual Education

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“What the right offers is to turn the world into one big mall where they can buy Indians here, women there...” Subcomandante Marcos, August, 1996.

Abstract

The paper presents a critique of a popular orientation to language planning. The resource orientation promotes language diversity as an important part of economic development and national defense. In other words, languages are resources. It is argued here that language pluralists who try to “sell” language diversity and bilingual education by this language-as-resource strategy ultimately help to preserve the inequitable linguistic status quo. This is because the language of “resource” upholds the language of neoliberalism. Language pluralists may be trying to use neoliberalism to combat neoconservativism. This is a strategic mistake since both are part and parcel of the conservative restoration and this strategy will ultimately backfire.

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  1. College of Education, The University of Alabama, Wilson Hall 206, Box 870302, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    John E. Petrovic

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  1. John E. Petrovic
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Correspondence to John E. Petrovic.

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Petrovic, J.E. The Conservative Restoration and Neoliberal Defenses of Bilingual Education. Lang Policy 4, 395–416 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-005-2888-y

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