Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-7-2026

Abstract

Language attitudes have been recognized as an important area of study in sociolinguistic research (Evans & Preston, 2023; Preston, 2013), and the consequences of prescriptive ideologies and negative attitudes toward non-privileged varieties extend to language instruction. These ideologies regard certain uses of the language as unacceptable if they diverge from what is considered the “standard” variety, established through linguistic imperialism and a colonial heritage (Benaglia & Smith, 2022) and perpetuated by linguistic authorities. Adherence to a prescriptive perspective without questioning its ideological and discriminatory function leads to the reproduction of a “deficit perspective”, in which those who use alternative varieties of a language are considered academically deficient (Quan et al., 2025). These attitudes can influence students’ feelings about themselves, their abilities, and their academic performance, especially for speakers of heritage languages (Loza, 2024). With this in mind, we propose a critical multidialectal approach to language teaching that leverages critical language awareness (CLA, see Beaudrie & Loza, 2022; Leeman, 2014, 2018) and calls on language teachers to engage students in critical reflection on the diverse reactions to and attitudes toward linguistic variation in society (Potowski & Shin, 2018; Shin & Hudgens Henderson, 2017; Train, 2020). Additionally, we make pedagogical recommendations for language teachers of four target languages (Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese) that focus on: 1) including input that represents linguistic diversity, 2) approaching language teaching from a descriptive perspective, 3) addressing the relationship between language and power, 4) integrating structured critical reflection, and 5) incorporating students’ diverse identities, histories, and multidialectal realities.

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This work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

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