Stephen May

The University of Auckland, Te Puna Wananga, Faculty Member

University of Bristol, School of Politics and International Studies, Adjunct

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Stephen May is a Professor in Te Puna Wānanga (School of Māori and Indigenous Education), University of Auckland, New Zealand.
He is an international authority on language rights, language policy, bilingual education, critical multiculturalism, and the multilingual turn in education and, to date, has published 27 books and over 100 articles and chapters in these areas.
In 2015 he became an American Educational Research Association (AERA) fellow. In 2016, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ).
He is the Editor-in-Chief of the 10-volume 3rd ed. Encyclopedia of Language and Education (Springer, 2017), a Founding Editor of the international, interdisciplinary journal, Ethnicities, and was from 2005-2015 an Associate Editor of Language Policy. His homepage is: https://unidirectory.auckland.ac.nz/profile/s-may
Address: Auckland, New Zealand

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Selected Books by Stephen May

The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education

Routledge, 2014

Drawing on the latest developments in bilingual and multilingual research, The Multilingual Turn ... more Drawing on the latest developments in bilingual and multilingual research, The Multilingual Turn offers a critique of, and alternative to, still-dominant monolingual theories, pedagogies and practices in SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. Critics of the ‘monolingual bias’ argue that notions such as the idealized native speaker, and related concepts of interlanguage, language competence, and fossilization, have framed these fields inextricably in relation to monolingual speaker norms. In contrast, these critics advocate an approach that emphasizes the multiple competencies of bi/multilingual learners as the basis for successful language teaching and learning.

This volume takes a big step forward in re-situating the issue of multilingualism more centrally in applied linguistics and, in so doing, making more permeable its key sub-disciplinary boundaries – particularly, those between SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education. It addresses this issue head on, bringing together key international scholars in SLA, TESOL, and bilingual education to explore from cutting-edge interdisciplinary perspectives what a more critical multilingual perspective might mean for theory, pedagogy, and practice in each of these fields.

"Boundary-breaking, with wonderful width as well as originality, this book is at the cutting edge. The star-studded list of chapter authors are THE experts in their fields of study.” Prof. Colin Baker, Bangor University, UK"

Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, nationalism and the politics of language (2nd ed.)

Routledge, 2012

This significantly revised and updated second edition of Stephen May's ground-breaking and award ... more This significantly revised and updated second edition of Stephen May's ground-breaking and award winning book on language and minority rights addresses new theoretical and empirical developments since its initial publication, including the burgeoning influence of globalization and the relentless rise of English as the current world language. May’s broad position, however, remains largely unchanged. He argues that the causes of many of the language-based conflicts in the world today still lie with the nation-state and its preoccupation with establishing a 'common' language and culture via mass education. The solution, he suggests, is to rethink nation-states in more culturally and linguistically plural ways while avoiding, at the same time, essentializing the language-identity link.

This edition, like the first, adopts a wide interdisciplinary framework, drawing on sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, sociology, political theory, education and law. It also includes new discussions of cosmopolitanism, globalization, the role of English, and language and mobility, highlighting the ongoing difficulties faced by minority language speakers in the world today.

"This is a very important book and should be required reading for students, scholars, policy makers and others interested in linguistic pluralism." – CHOICE"

Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and praxis (with Christine Sleeter)

Routledge, 2010

Critical multiculturalism has emerged over the last decade as a direct challenge to liberal or be... more Critical multiculturalism has emerged over the last decade as a direct challenge to liberal or benevolent forms of multicultural education. By integrating and advancing various critical theoretical threads such as anti-racist education, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy, critical multiculturalism has offered a fuller analysis of oppression and institutionalization of unequal power relations in education. But what do these powerful theories really mean for classroom practice and specific disciplines?

Edited by two leading authorities on multicultural education, Critical Multiculturalism: Theory and Praxis brings together international scholars of critical multiculturalism to directly and illustratively address what a transformed critical multicultural approach to education might mean for teacher education and classroom practice. Providing both contextual background and curriculum specific subject coverage ranging from language arts and mathematics to science and technology, each chapter shows how critical multiculturalism relates to praxis. As a watershed in the further development of critical multicultural approaches to education, this timely collection will be required reading for all scholars, educators and practitioners of multicultural education.

"This masterful treatment of transformative critical multiculturalism within unconventional disciplines, in one collection and across many nations, positions this book as an important contribution to the field and marks a turning point in critical multiculturalism."--Language Arts

"I truly believe that this book is a must-read for critical race theorists, critical pedagogues, and critical multicultural practitioners…. [and] conclude that May and Sleeter accomplished their ambitious goal: to show how critical multiculturalism relates to praxis."--Education Review"

Ethnicity, Nationalism and Minority Rights (with Tariq Modood & Judith Squires)

Cambridge University Press, 2004

Focusing on minority rights and recognition, this interdisciplinary collection addresses the posi... more Focusing on minority rights and recognition, this interdisciplinary collection addresses the position of minorities in democratic societies. Featured topics include the constructed nature of ethnicity, class and the "new racism," different forms of nationalism, self-determination and indigenous politics, the politics of recognition versus the politics of redistribution, and the re-emergence of cosmopolitanism.

Selected Papers by Stephen May

New Zealand is "racist as f**k": Linguistic racism and te reo Māori

Ethnicities, 2023

A key feature of the confluence of modern nation-state formation and colonization has been the ma... more A key feature of the confluence of modern nation-state formation and colonization has been the marginalization and denigration of minoritized language varieties, particularly Indigenous languages, over time. Indigenous languages have been actively proscribed in public language domains, such as education, leading to their inevitable shift and loss, in settler-colonial contexts worldwide. This process of linguistic hierarchization has long been recognized in the sociology of language and the sociology of nationalism but the overt and covert linguistic racism attendant upon it had remained relatively under-explored. Recent discussions within sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology, however, have addressed this lacuna, particularly through the development of raciolinguistics as a theoretical framework. Linguistic racism, a form of cultural racism, uses discursive constructions of language use and related linguistic hierarchies as a proxy for the racialized discrimination and subordination of Indigenous peoples and other minoritized ethnic groups. Here, I explore discourses of linguistic racism by Pākehā (White) New Zealanders in Aotearoa New Zealand toward te reo Māori, the Indigenous Māori language, in everyday discourses and the media. I focus particularly on the public contestation of the increasing normalization of te reo Māori in contemporary New Zealand society, the result of the successes of the last 40 years of Māori language revitalization, via both overt and covert forms of linguistic racism toward te reo Māori. These discourses act in defense of English monolingualism, the direct linguistic legacy of New Zealand’s settler-colonial history, along with the privileges this history has provided for White, monolingual English-speaking New Zealanders. Interestingly, the racialized opposition to te reo Māori is most evident among older, White New Zealanders. This suggests the potential for change among younger New Zealanders and New Zealand’s increasingly diverse migrant population, both of whom appear more open to the ongoing development of societal bilingualism in English and te reo Māori.

Stephen May

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