Politicising languages

[smmg]

i don't think speakers/learners of majority languages realise how non-politicised their languages are?? or maybe that's the wrong word bc everything is politicised to some degree in some way whether people realise it or not i think. but there were students from the modern foreign languages department at our university (so english/spanish/french speakers learning italian/french/spanish/german) complaining bc "how dare our lecturer bring politics into the classroom" but as a speaker and learner of multiple minority languages it feels weird and wrong that politics wouldn't be brought into lessons?? like the act of speaking and learning welsh is inherently political whether i want it to be or not. learning celtic languages means having to learn about all the politics surrounding the languages and their histories and erasure. and obviously languages like english and french and spanish etc are political too, but in a different way. but majority language speakers learning other majority languages don't seem to realise this?? at least in my experience. idk how to word this. i just can't imagine having a clear divide between language and politics??

Comments

uncensored language tends to connect

[(Anonymous)]

The first Spanish book I used (written for college students, and I was going into grade four) had conversations with lines like "Se dice que la vida es suenno. Bajo una dictadura es una pesadilla."

The one we used when Spanish was finally formally taught at school had lines like "Nunca conoci un otro lider" (than Franco). That was deemed to be something teenagers would talk about, along with "la escasez de gasolina" and "Hay siempre una inflacion despues de una guerra."

But when I took an advanced Spanish course in college, editors had been sensitized to the need to represent all sides of political issues or none, and THEN the conversations were about popular songs, backpacks, and minor illnesses...