“It Is Not Just One English”: Negotiating Global Englishes through Critical Sociolinguistic Inquiry in a Mexican Teacher Education Classroom

Document Type : Original Article

Author

University of Guanajuato, Mexico

10.30466/ijltr.2026.57716.3503

Abstract

Drawing on Global Englishes Language Teaching (GELT) and Critical Language Awareness (CLA), the present article examines how pre-service and novice in-service English teachers negotiate their understandings of Global Englishes through critical thinking activities in a sociolinguistics classroom in central Mexico. The study investigates nine pre-service and novice in-service English teachers as they engaged with language variation, accent, native-speaker norms, multilingualism, linguistic legitimacy, and English language teaching through local and transnational experiences within Global Englishes teacher education. This qualitative interpretative case study drew on four course-based data sources: asynchronous online discussion forums, linguistic landscape/photo-essay reports, sociolinguistic observation reports, and an end-of-semester focus group. The results reveal that participants’ perceptions were formed through an uneven process of ideological negotiation rather than through a linear transformation—that is, critical awareness advanced in relation to some assumptions while established ideologies persisted in relation to others.  Also, they show that experiential sociolinguistic investigation facilitated participants' ability to link theoretical insights with everyday language practices in classrooms, families, public spaces, digital environments, and migration-related experiences. This article argues that sociolinguistics courses can be the basis for Global Englishes-oriented teacher education if they support teachers as they begin to learn about the study of language ideologies in a critical and locally relevant way, providing testimony from a Mexican teacher education context.

Keywords

Iranian Journal of Language Teaching Research
Volume 14, 3 (Special Issue)
November 2026
Pages 111-130

Files

History

  • Receive Date: 06 October 2026
  • Accept Date: 21 October 2026

Share

How to cite

Statistics