Prof Makoni teaches in die Department of Applied Linguistics and Program in African Studies at Penn State University in Pennsylvania, USA.
His main research interests are colonial linguistics, language policy and planning and ontologies and epistemologies of language and ageing.
His lecture promises a look at applied linguistics and ageing from the Global South and southern perspectives.
Prof Makoni explains that southern perspectives are not simply a case of adding some perspectives from the Global South, including various southern people who are often forgotten, incorporating geographical areas, or topics derived from analysis in Global Northern applied linguistics.
“What we are addressing here, by contrast, is a much more far-reaching set of challenges to what applied linguistics means,” he says. We address what it encompasses, what its central concerns are, what it regards as its antecedents and historical pedigree, and what ideas and traditions it therefore draws on.”
He adds that the innovations and challenges that need to be brought to applied linguistics have far-reaching implications for ageing, which extend beyond an agenda that seeks to redress various exclusions. Rather, these are deep-seated challenges to some of the core tenets of applied linguistics, as well as new directions for theories and practices in the field.
Prof Makoni acknowledges the complicities of applied linguistics with a history of colonialism and capitalism and a range of contemporary inequalities. He argues that we need to remake applied linguistics at a global level in open-ended ways if it is to be relevant to ageing.
The lecture is to be concluded by making a case for alternative understandings of language and ageing and the importance and contribution of the Global South to the Global North scholarship.
More about the expert
Prof Sinfree Makoni holds a PhD in applied linguistics from Edinburgh University. He has published extensively, and his most recent publication is with Alastair Pennycook. Innovations and Challenges to Applied Linguistics from the Global South will be published by Routledge Press in August 2019.,
Prof Sinfree Makoni
