Dr Kate Spowage

Profile

I did my undergraduate work, my Masters by Research, and my PhD at the University of Leeds. I joined the University as a Lecturer in September 2020. 

Research interests

Broadly, my expertise is in sociolinguistics, with a particular emphasis on language policy and the politics of language (by which I mean the relations between language, society, history, and politics). In order to explore the role of language in sociopolitical life, I draw on interdisciplinary methodologies, particularly from sociolinguistics, political theory, and cultural theory. My work engages with ‘global’ languages, both as an idea and a (putative) phenomenon. Chiefly, my interest is in ‘global English’/’world Englishes’, but I also work on French and La Francophonie. 

Much of my work centres on African contexts, where language policy is of vital importance to questions around ‘development’, democracy, and social class. English is often heralded as holding out particular economic opportunities in post-colonial contexts more broadly, and one question that I attempt to answer is who, precisely, is able to access such opportunities. This fits into a broader interest in the political function of language policies in the post-colonial globalised world, which is the subject of a monograph that I am currently producing. The context that I have worked on predominantly is Rwanda, where I have examined: the role of language policy in constructing Rwandan neoliberal hegemony; the interrelation between English-medium mass education, social class, and the requirements of transnational capitalist enterprise; La Francophonie and the Rwandan Civil War; and translanguaging as a site of resistance in Rwandan classrooms.

I am also interested in post-colonial contexts more broadly, and in the relations between colonialism, its legacies, and linguistic thought in Britain and Europe. In this regard, I have worked on: the history of ‘Bantu’ as a category (originally) applied broadly to sub-Saharan African speakers; race, colonialism, and the work of Johann Gottfried Herder; and linguistic nationalism in relation to the ‘Brexit’ debate in modern Britain. With Dr. Hayley G. Toth, I am currently working on the liberal linguistic thought of John Locke in relation to internal colonialism and fears around mass literacy in Victorian Britain.

Qualifications

• PhD English Language
• MRes English Language
• BA (Hons) English Language and Linguistics

Professional memberships

• Treasurer, British Association of Applied Linguistics (BAAL) Language in Africa Special Interest Group
• Raymond Williams Society

Student education

I am an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. I teach on a range of modules in the School of English, including Key Concepts in English Language Study, Language in Society, Keywords, and the Politics of Language. I also supervise dissertations in Sociolinguistics and the Politics of Language (and welcome enquiries in these areas). Exemplary topics: language policy or linguistic ecologies in postcolonial societies; ‘global English’; language ideologies; language in relation to race and/or class; the history of English; language debates; multi/translingualism.