Meike Wernicke, our guest blogger this week, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on French second language teacher education, multilingualism, and critical intercultural studies, and draws on critical perspectives and decolonizing approaches.

This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

I come to this question as a multilingual white immigrant settler in Canada, as a language teacher educator and researcher working on ancestral, traditional, and unceeded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm territory, as someone whose language practices include primarily colonial languages originating in a European context. My knowledge and use of German, English, French, and occasionally very neglected Spanish, have been and continue to be shaped by my personal experiences and relationships yet also by the history, practices, and the different values associated with these constructed languages. In other words, the knowledge and use of language means different things to different people and directly connects to the cultural and social meanings in our societies more generally.

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