Course Description:
Hawai鈥檌 is a multilingual multicultural place, state, and sociocultural and political entity and environment. In 2016, 18% of Hawai'i's population was foreign born and over 130 languages were represented among them. Though exceptionally diverse, Hawai鈥檌 is typical of states, polities, and communities around the world in being multilingual and multicultural and the use of additional languages is common.
Around the world, being multilingual sometimes involves struggle, and difficult choices have to be made, that help or harm individuals and communities鈥攖hat is to say, ethical choices. Specialists in Second Language Studies (as well as other UHM students who intend to become active citizens and professionals who will engage with their multilingual environment) ought to consider the ethical shoulds and oughts they will face in their professional practice. Furthermore, it is not just Hawai鈥檌 that is, de facto, a multilingual multicultural space for living and being. This applies to much if not all of the USA, and to many other countries. Understanding of multilingualism can and should be developed through consideration of the ethics both of local issues as well as global aspects of this area of human practice and policy and development.
Course content concerns the domain of ethics as it applies to matters of second or additional and/or heritage language use and teaching. Six areas of ethics (following the Markkula six-element framework) will be reviewed. Areas of multilingual use and instruction to be considered through ethical lenses include the historical development of multilingualism in the Kingdom of Hawai驶i, then in the Territory of Hawai驶i, and now reflecting its resurgence in an English-dominant environment, in the State of Hawai驶i; civil rights as they apply to language choice, use, and discrimination, both locally and in the wider USA; aspects of personal and community identity as served or hindered by language policy; individual moral responsibility and activism in promoting or using languages; educational and institutional policies and practices, including at the classroom level.