Language, Culture and Curriculum

Languages in Motion: Foreign Language Education, Cultural Transmission, and Identity Politics in the Global South

Second or foreign language education in the Global South is not simply about developing communicative competence; it is entangled with questions of identity, politics, ideology, and cultural transmission (Blommaert, 2005; Wee, 2010). By extension, introducing foreign languages into national education systems is far from a neutral pedagogical act. It is a deeply socio-cultural and political process that recalibrates local linguistic ecologies, reconfigures identity matrices, and renegotiates cultural values. As Blommaert (2005, pp. 10-11) asserts, "there is no such thing as 'non-social' language"; every utterance is laden with social diacritics that reflect and shape identities, expectations, and wider social structures. While much research has explored heritage language maintenance among diasporic and migrant communities in the North (e.g., García, 2009; Curdt-Christiansen, 2014), less attention has been paid to the introduction of foreign languages—Arabic, English, Chinese, Japanese, French, among others—into diverse societies across the Global South. These languages, often introduced through curricula, national projects, or soft power initiatives, reshape linguistic repertoires and contribute to cultural flows, tensions, and new imaginaries of belonging. Curriculum choices—such as which (foreign) languages to be introduced, at what grade levels, with what pedagogical orientation, and for which imagined futures—are deeply political. They embed assumptions about desirable identities, global participation, economic competitiveness, cultural alliances, moral values and societal norms.

We argue that language is not culturally neutral; as the theory of linguistic relativity suggests, it structures perception and cognition. Similarly, the linguistic capital theory confers symbolic and material value to languages (Bourdieu, 1991; Kramsch, 2020). The core premise here is that learning a new language is akin to "wearing a new identity hat"—a process that involves contestation, adds a new feather to one's linguistic repertoire, and inevitably affects one's existing cultural and social identity. This process raises critical questions about linguistic relativity, as adopting a new language means internalizing different cultures, histories, and perspectives, thereby influencing ways of seeing the world. Thus, when Chinese is taught in Saudi Arabia or Arabic in Indonesia, learners are not merely acquiring vocabulary but negotiating competing linguistic ideologies, religious values, and/or pragmatic opportunities. These processes reflect larger dynamics of linguistic competition and complementarity (Phillipson, 1992; Hornberger, 2002), where languages coexist, clash, or align within hierarchies of value shaped by nationalism, cultural politics and globalization.

This special issue therefore foregrounds foreign language education as a site of cultural spread, transmission, and contestation in the Global South, engaging with frameworks of language ecology (Mühlhäusler, 1996), linguistic vitality (Fishman, 1991), and southern multilingualism (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007, 2019). It asks how new language introductions interact with existing linguistic hierarchies, how they generate cultural and ideological shifts, and how learners and societies make sense of linguistic diversity in pragmatic, symbolic, and instrumental terms.

Also, this special issue on foreign language education is never complete without critically interrogating its curriculum policy and implementation, both of which help enlighten us about how foreign languages are taught, framed, and legitimised within national education systems. It further draws attention to the ways teachers interpret and negotiate policy expectations in their daily practice, and how learners engage with the cultural narratives embedded in learning materials, assessments, and classroom interactions. A curriculum lens also places emphasis on the local contextualisation of syllabus design and the epistemic assumptions encoded in teaching and assessment materials. Through this perspective, we can better analyse why certain foreign language programmes thrive or falter, and how their outcomes are often shaped by the broader socio-cultural, ideological, and institutional contexts in which they are implemented.

Key Themes

We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following interrelated themes:

• Language as Cultural Transmission and Identity Formation: i) How learners negotiate multiple identity layers when acquiring new languages; ii) Imagined communities and cultures associated with foreign languages
• Linguistic Capital, Repertoires, and Hierarchies: i) Competing and complementary roles of global and regional languages (e.g., English, Arabic, Chinese, French); ii) Indexicalities of language tied to class, religion, gender, or nation
• Language Ecologies in the Global South: Case studies of foreign language introduction and its impact on linguistic vitality (e.g., Arabic in Southeast Asia, Chinese in Africa, French in North Africa); ii) Pragmatic uses of language for trade, migration, religious authority, and education.
• Linguistic Tensions and Ideological Contestations: i) Language policy and curriculum reforms introducing so-called “unlikely” languages in “unlikely places.”; ii) Cultural clashes, resistance, and shifts in attitudes/ideologies towards foreign languages.
• Beyond English and Heritage Languages: Much of the literature has focused on English as a lingua franca or on heritage language preservation in migrant contexts. This issue extends the discussion to less studied cases, e.g., Chinese in Saudi Arabia or Kenya, Arabic in Indonesia, Japanese in Brazil, or French-English-Arabic tensions in Tunisia, amongst others.
• Curriculum Complexities and the Politics of Foreign Language Education: i) Teacher agency in implementing foreign language curricula: tensions between policy, classroom realities, and local sociocultural norms; ii) Challenges of curriculum localisation—how global language teaching paradigms are adapted, resisted, hybridised, or recontextualised; iii) The role of assessment, proficiency benchmarks, and e.g., CEFR-aligned curricula in shaping cultural and linguistic expectations; iv) Student experiences with curriculum content: identity negotiations, cultural imaginaries, and the interpretation of foreign cultural knowledge in classroom contexts.