Kristof SavskiPrince of Songkla University · Department of Languages and Linguistics
Kristof Savski
PhD in Linguistics (Lancaster University)
About
34
Publications
21,901
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
190
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
My expertise is in sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, critical discourse studies and language policy. My research explores the connections between these fields with regard to, for instance, the globalization of language standards and transnational migration of teachers of English. You can find more details about my current research below, under "Projects", or on my website: https://kristofsavski.org/
Additional affiliations
September 2020 - present
May 2016 - September 2020
October 2013 - March 2016
Education
October 2012 - May 2016
October 2011 - August 2012
October 2008 - September 2011
Publications
Publications (34)
Since its publication in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become a highly influential means of describing language proficiency. Its spread has, however, been marked by contradictions, since the frame-work has been appropriated in the service of a variety of different policy agendas. In this paper, I argue th...
The investigation and unmasking of racial inequality have been one of the cornerstones of the critical turn in TESOL, so much so that a significant body of literature on the topic now exists. Yet, there is often a lack of reflection on the fact that discourse surrounding contentious social issues like race is inherently dialogical in that it consis...
Over the last two decades, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become ubiquitous in ELT. In this article, I consider how differences in the way in which the framework is being interpreted by different powerful actors, including governments and for-profit organizations, affect its usability for ELT practitioners, a ke...
in English
There is now increased awareness of the need to challenge ‘common sense’ ideologies of language in education, turning language classrooms into spaces of analysis and liberation. Key to achieving this goal is equipping students with the skills needed to navigate diverse, complex discourses about language (critical thinking), as well as fo...
The multi/translingual turn in sociolinguistics has highlighted a number of ideological entanglements of foundational concepts, most significantly the way that the notion of ‘named languages’ as bordered entities is intertwined with ideologies of nation and race. In this article, I consider what the conceptual place for linguistic borders is within...
Recent work on linguistic landscapes at schools (schoolscapes) has highlighted the complex dialogic relationship between the semiotics of public signage in educational spaces and policies seeking to enforce dominant ideologies. In this paper, we discuss the results of research conducted in the Deep South of Thailand, a minority region in which the...
Since it was first published by the Council of Europe in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become one of the most widely referenced documents in language education, particularly in English language teaching and assessment (Savski, in press). The recently released CEFR Companion Volume (2020), with its new des...
This article examines how inequalities of race impact on the way migrant teachers of English in Thailand articular their identity and belonging to the teaching profession and to the society they live in. There is at present a rather limited body of work on the migration of language teachers, despite the fact that mobility of teachers across convent...
Neoliberal regimes of language have now become a particularly widespread feature of English language teaching (ELT) across the globe, largely because local actors in the Global South have appropriated key elements of neoliberalism. However, as ideologies like neoliberalism are transferred to new contexts and combined with existing ideological regim...
The increasing use of English as a global language has challenged many the fundamental assumptions underpinning English langugae teaching (ELT). The Global Englishes (GE) paradigm acknowledges linguistic diversity associated with English use today, highlighting the need for this diverse profile of English to be reflected in language classrooms. Thi...
Although English language variation is an inevitable and a natural linguistic phenomenon, language attitudes research has suggested that varieties other than the mainstream native-speaker standards usually receive unfavorable social evaluations. This may reflect the existence of prejudices and discrimination against speakers of many Englishes. Glob...
Zapis posveta o aktualnih sociolingvističnih izzivih in prednostnih raziskovalnih tematikah, ki sta ga organizirala doc. dr. Maja Bitenc in red. prof. dr. Marko Stabej z Oddelka za slovenistiko in je potekal v ponedeljek, 27. 9. 2021, na Filozofski fakulteti Univerze v Ljubljani in s prenosom preko Zooma. V prvem delu so vabljene strokovnjakinje in...
One of the products of globalization in sociolinguistics is the emergence of transnational regimes in language policy, in which power is exercised across boundaries of traditional nation states. This paper engages with audit culture, a transnational policy mechanism which involves the continuous evaluation of nation states’ performance through the...
The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become one of the most widely cited documents in language education across the globe, its influence now felt far beyond the confines of Europe, the context for which it was originally produced. In Malaysia, CEFR was given particular prominence in the Malaysia Education Blueprint 20...
The world we live and work in today is, in many ways, defined by boundaries of different sorts. In many cases, these boundaries relate to geographically defined spaces, such as nation-states, whose borders have been also loosened by the transnational flows of labour, products, information and capital associated with globalisation (Appadurai, 1990)....
Analysis of signage has traditionally represented a point of entry into examinations of language policy, with the visibility of different languages seen to be potentially indicative of repression of multilingualism, of struggles between different language regimes or of grassroots resistance to top-down agendas. This paper argues for a more discursi...
One of the features of the growing prominence of English across the globe is the proliferation of English-medium instruction (EMI) programmes at all levels of education, driven by a neoliberal agenda which places a disproportionate value on English over other languages. While this spread has primarily affected more developed, urban contexts, EMI ha...
Between 1945 and 1991, while Slovenia was part of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, it experienced a considerable amount of immigration, with large numbers of skilled labourers arriving from the less developed parts of the federation. As a result of this internal migration, recent census data shows that there are presently around 135,00...
This chapter presents the theoretical underpinnings of historical ethnography in the analysis of policy discourse and examines key methodological considerations in studies which take this approach. I begin by situating such research theoretically according to three dimensions, the discursive, ethnographic and historiographic, pointing out existing...
Since its publication in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become a highly influential means of describing language proficiency. Its spread has, however, been marked by contradictions, since the framework has been appropriated in the service of a variety of different policy agendas. In this paper, I argue tha...
Research into social-psychology of the English language has been carried out worldwide, as researchers have been interested in knowing what social information do language varieties carry. Research has also uncovered people's different attitudes toward varieties of English and their speakers, with the more mainstream (native-like) English is perceiv...
In recent years, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has spread far beyond the borders of Europe and become a point of reference for language teaching in a variety of contexts. It has seen particularly wide-spread use
in Asia, with Malaysia and Thailand recently joining the already large number of nations using the fram...
Existing research has highlighted the complexity of the discourse surrounding ‘(non-)native speaker’, particularly with regard to how teachers are perceived by learners. This complexity has been compounded by globalisation, which has increased transnational mobility of teachers. Thailand has been particularly affected by this, as its population of...
Contemporary public discourses are, despite the growing array of technologies and spaces for participation, becoming increasingly characterized by polarization – the formation of two distinct and relatively homogeneous ‘sides’. However, while such polarization may be commonplace, it is not an inherent property of discourse but rather a result of st...
Since its publication by the Council of Europe in 2001, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) has become truly global language policy instrument. While originally intended for the European context, it has been widely used by governments across all continents, in countries like Japan, Colombia and Taiwan. Furthermore, CEFR...
In this chapter, we focus on the synergy that researchers in language policy have developed by integrating two other sub-fields: critical discourse analysis and critical ethnography. We begin by discussing the meanings of the three key concepts used in these approaches, albeit sometimes in significantly different ways: critique, ethnography and dis...
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the potential of integrating Bourdieu’s notions of field and capital in discursive analyses of language policy. The paper presents an analysis of a debate in a committee session of the Slovene parliament, where different actors negotiated about the contents of a language policy strategy. The study draws on ne...
This paper examines the ecology of Slovene in the twentieth century by focusing on two key emergent themes. It focuses firstly on monolingualism as a key goal for Slovene language planners, starting with their efforts to create a standard language with no German influences in the nineteenth century, and continuing in their work to prevent Serbo-Cro...
This article analyses how the drafting and implementation of the Resolution for a National Language Policy Programme 2014-2018, a Slovene language strategy, were influenced by political instability and inter-institutional struggles. By conducting a historical ethnography to trace how different authors contributed to the policy text, and examining t...
Contemporary analyses of language policy often tend to presume ideological uniformity, rather than focus on the contrasts between various positions, and the power struggles that those differences bring about. In this paper, I present an approach that implements the notion of voice in language policy analysis to denote the ideological positions and...
In this chapter, I claim that the central aim of a discursive approach to language policy in the contemporary state should be to examine what spaces are available to actors engaging with a policy, and what the affordances of those spaces are with regard to their potential to shape policy and practices. I also argue that an analysis of policy needs...
Unpublished PhD Thesis, Lancaster University, 2016
Projects
Projects (3)
Stemming from my own experience as a migrant in Thailand, I have started examining an underexplored aspect of the globalization of English language education, transnational teacher migration. With Luke Comprendio, I worked on researdh examining how migrant teachers are perceived in Thailand. This research pointed to the existence of significant levels of discrimination and inequality among migrant teachers of English. I have since continued working on research, funded by the Faculty of Liberal Arts at Prince of Songkla University, which examines inequality in teacher migration in Thailand in more detail, focusing both on the discourse of job advertisements and on the lived experience of migrant teachers in this context.
Much of my current work focuses on studying the implications of globalization for language policy. Part of this work has examined how a particularly widespread policy text, the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), is being localized across the world. In two papers written on the basis of a project funded by the Thailand Research Fund, one in Journal of Asia TEFL and one in Language Policy, I analyzed how CEFR has been interpreted in the Thai and Malaysian context. I am presently developing further research into how CEFR could be reinterpreted in ways more suitable to Asian contexts. My other work in this area has examined the ways nationalizing and globalizing language policies are reflected in public signage (manuscript accepted in Linguistic Landscape), the implementation of English-medium instruction policy in a minority language community (article co-authored with Danik Widiawati now published in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development) and how global measurements of educational success (known as 'audit culture') affect local policy discourse in language education (manuscript in preparation).
Reflecting my interest in the structure-agency dialectic, a focus of my current work is on examining how public discourses in the late modern era have come to be polarized. That is, I am interested in how macro-level oppositions (such as “progressive” vs. “conservative” in the US, “Leave” vs. “Remain” in the UK, “monolingualism” vs. “multilingualism” in Slovene language policy) are established. At their basis, I see such polarization as false in the sense that it masks a greater discursive diversity (of voice, aka. heteroglossia, and of ideology, aka. polyphony) in favour of an oversimplified "us" vs. "them" Manichean dichotomy which ultimately serves the purpose of maintaining the status quo and stifling participatory democracy. A recent article in Critical Discourse Studies examined how this occurred in a Slovene language policy debate (about multilingualism in higher education) and I plan to pursue further work in this area in the future.
