Dr Kate Spowage

It's happened 🥁 Language as Statecraft is available now from @RoutledgeLing 🎉 The book offers an original analysis of the politics of language in Rwanda, for a theory of global English that centres class struggle, capitalism, and colonialism. 🧵 routledge.com/Language-as-St…

Surprise surprise – the myth of the “millionaire exodus” has been conclusively debunked as misinformation spread by those who don’t want to see wealth taxed fairly (because they’ve got a lot of it!) Time for the govt to stop hiding behind this excuse and bring in a wealth tax

The thing that is so deeply admirable about Greta Thunberg is that she possesses this remarkable ability to make people three times her age psychotically, violently mad. And it’s largely because of an unwavering commitment to saving this planet and the people on it.

I've posted about Against the Game on Bluesky if you're interested! Post pinned here: bsky.app/profile/katesp…… 🙌 #Postcolonial #PopCulture #Sociolinguistics #Videogames #VernacularTheory #Toponymy #Ideology #IdeologyCritique #CriticalAppliedLinguistics #Linguistics

🚨🚨Call for contributors to next year's issue of Key Words, a special issue on 'Foreclosure,' guest edited by Chloe Ashbridge and Owain Burrell🚨🚨 Deadline for abstracts is July 18th, 2025. Read more here: raymondwilliams.co.uk/2025/06/09/cal… Please share widely.

NEW #OA ON FIRSTVIEW "Against the game: Sid Meier’s Civilization and vernacular theories of language" by @KateSpowage doi.org/10.1017/S00474… #LanguageIdeologies #Videogames #Postcolonialism

Join us! 👏

17 year olds writing their UCAS personal statement

An opportune moment to say I'll touch on some of this in my talk Global English, Decolonisation, and the Critique of Capitalism at the @wminlinguistics seminar next week! This may also be my final Twitter diatribe as thesisgate finally broke me and I've joined the other place...

As a result, it is stoking social tensions rather than resolving them, and there's a good argument to say that it is manufacturing consent and discontent at the same time. These latest figures - 90% unable to understand an English text at their grade level! - are emblematic.

Post-2008 #languagepolicy in Rwanda promised children of all social classes access to English, and, the logic goes, wealth and the freedom it brings. It's been flawed from the outset, and a political gamble.

On this day in 1969, activist and chairman of the Black Panther Party Fred Hampton, was assassinated by Chicago police and the FBI at just 21 years old. William O'Neal, an FBI informant, infiltrated the Black Panthers and set up Fred Hampton for $300. A THREAD

FUNDED PhD OPPORTUNITY at @UniWestminster Sociolinguistics at Westminster is great. I worked there - great researchers. Highly recommended! 10 Quintin Hogg Trust PhD Studentships at the University of the Westminster at University of Westminster jobs.ac.uk/job/DKR044/10-…