Deterritorializing Language, Teaching, Learning, and Research: Deleuzo-Guattarian Perspectives on Second Language Education

It is now recognized that language teachers and learners are both users and creators of knowledge in socially, culturally, politically, materially complex, and unpredictable environments. With this in mind, an increasing number of researchers in Second Language Education have progressively broken away from traditional ways of studying educational practices to find novel, and more complex ways to conceptualize and study language teachers’ and learners’ teaching and learning practices and knowledge development.

This book is in line with these trends, and should be considered as the actualization of experimentations with novel ways to apprehend the interrelationships between language and education by drawing on the conceptual repertoire of French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and his collaborator Félix Guattari. To guide us through this reflexive journey ten scholars, specialized in the field of Second Language Education, call on their experiences as language educators and researchers to explore the intersections between language, teaching, learning, and research, focusing on the experiences of diverse populations (e.g. students, immigrants, teachers, etc.) in multiple settings (e.g. Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, universities, and family literacy intervention programs).

Through this book, new insights and lines of thought are generated on how research and educative practices can be transformed to reimagine second language teaching, learning, and research to think differently about the experiences of language teachers, learners, and researchers, and disrupt the processes that may prevent us from innovating and seizing future opportunities.

Contributors are: Francis Bangou, Maria Bastien-Valenca, Joff P. N. Bradley, Martina Emke, Douglas Fleming, Roumiana Ilieva, Brian Morgan, Enrica Piccardo, Aisha Ravindran, Gene Vasilopoulos and Monica Waterhouse.

Francis Bangou, Ph.D. (2003), The Ohio State University, is Associate Professor of Second Language Education at University of Ottawa. His research focuses on second language teachers’ and learners’ adaptation to unfamiliar teaching and learning environments including technology-enhanced language classrooms.

Monica Waterhouse, Ph.D. (2011), University of Ottawa, is Associate Professor of language education at Université Laval. Her publications in national and international journals focus on the socio-political dimensions of language and literacies teaching and learning in Canadian newcomer language classrooms.

Douglas Fleming, Ph.D. (2007), University of British Columbia, is Associate Professor of Second Language Education at University of Ottawa. His research focus is on the intersections of critical notions of citizenship, equity, multilingual communities and post-structural qualitative methodologies.