관용으로서의 이중언어교육 담론 비판

Critique of bilingual education discourses as tolerance

This study questions whether bilingualism in Korean multicultural education is constructed, perceived, and practiced as a discourse of ‘tolerance’. The purpose of this study is to examine the perceptions, practices, and implications of bilingual education by analyzing policy documents and field research texts related to multicultural language education. Five major discourses on migrants’ languages in Korea are identified: Korean language as the key for migrants to succeed; Korean language for migrants vs. English language for Koreans; migrants’ languages as a sign of problems and deficiencies; and migrants’ languages for global recognition of Korea. This paper argues that bilingualism in Korea works as tolerance because the discourses and practices of bilingual education, which seem to recognize diverse languages, in effect, discriminate against migrants’ languages, positioning migrant students and their languages as the objects of tolerance, and delimiting the boundaries of tolerance and intolerance. Further, bilingual education discourses depoliticize language discrimination and educational inequality that migrants face.