Integrationism in context: the integrationist tradition in the contemporary landscape of linguistic research - towards a "Critical Communication Studies"

ABSTRACT: This paper presents a personal view on where integrationism sits in the current field of linguistics and applied linguistics research. In doing so, the paper aims at clarifying the distinctive contribution that the integrationist tradition may make in responding to the challenge that Alastair Pennycook and Sinfree Makoni (2020) have posed of a re-made linguistics that can learn from and do justice to the struggles for both social justice and equality across both the Global South and Global North as well as for harmonious and mutually beneficial relations with our world and the other beings that share it with us. The question, then, is whether in recoiling along this particular critical trajectory from within and against our own cultural heritage we will meet and join productively the decolonizing tide coming towards us in the form of the insurgent intellectual and activist movements of the global south.