Discourses of appropriateness are ideologies about
language, claims about “appropriate” ways of speaking
that point to contexts in which language of various kinds should or should not be used, and by whom, based on imagined forms of language and categories of people. As has been illuminated by linguistic anthropologists studying language and education over the last several decades, these imagined forms of appropriateness maintain a very real and established social hierarchy. Time and again, talk about what kind of language counts as “correct” and for whom shifts to serve this mission. Often advice about “appropriateness” is directed to named categories of people: working class (Fairclough), African Americans (Smitherman, Alim), Spanish-speaking bilinguals in the USA (Rosa, Flores), Multilingual international students (Matsumoto), Women in any context (Cameron) or even Indian American spelling bee champions (Shankar). All these groups and others have been scrutinized and critiqued for speaking or writing in ways that might be fine in one context, but deemed not “appropriate” in educational contexts. This talk will illustrate how discourses of appropriateness infuse the pervasive hierarchical, hegemonic, nature of language use and instruction in schools. I will also point to new forms of collaborative anthropological research on language and education and forms of reflexive action and resistance, even in educational contexts.