Thomas Ricento

Dr. Ricento was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA. His B.A. (Political Science) is from Gettysburg College; his M.A. (Applied Linguistics) is from the University of Southern California and his Ph.D. (Applied Linguistics) is from U.C.L.A. He was a Fulbright Scholar in Colombia (1989) and Costa Rica (2000). He has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Russell Sage Foundation, among other funders. He is the first North American Research Chair in English as an Additional Language. Since arriving at the U of C in 2007, Dr. Ricento has led several research projects on the status and education of various populations, including immigrants/migrants, refugees, and students in bilingual education programs. He has published widely in the areas of language policy, critical discourse analysis, English as a global language, language ideologies, and language and political economy. He is fluent in Spanish and has been a visiting professor and invited speaker at universities in England, Germany, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Norway, Mexico, Costa Rica, as well as in Canada and the United States.

Dr. Ricento’s research has focused on language policies, particularly as they relate to speakers of minority languages in North America. He has conducted research on LINC programs in Calgary, looking at the ways in which curricula and the philosophy of instructors reflect assumed ideologies about Canadian identity and citizenship. Another recent project focused on government sponsored refugees and their experiences over a one year period as they struggled with succeeding, linguistically and culturally, in the current political-economic situation. A current project focuses on the academic achievement of two groups of Chinese language background students in Edmonton: those in monolingual English programs and those in Mandarin-English bilingual programs. Other research has looked at the various roles English plays, globally, in employment patterns in the formal economy; this work bridges the gaps between language policy, economics, and political theory, leading to a new paradigm in research in language policy.

Current Projects:

• A Comparison of the Academic English Achievement of Chinese-language background students in Mandarin-English bilingual and English-only programs. Funding from the Confucius Institute in Edmonton, and EAL Chair

PhD
University of California, Los Angeles, U.S.A.

MA
University of Southern California, U.S.A.

BA
Gettysburg College, U.S.A.

Dr. Ricento has worked with various community and professional organizations in his role as an expert in language policy and the education of English language learners. He has been a member of the American Association for Applied Linguistics for more than 20 years, serving in various leadership capacities, including on the Executive Committee. He has been a plenary speaker at the ATESOL conference (Calgary), the Alliance Francaise (Calgary), the Language Research Centre (U of C), and he has also given numerous workshops on research methodology at the U of C and at universities in other countries. He has been a plenary speaker at the University of Montreal, the University of Toronto, and the University of Calgary, as well as in many other countries. He has evaluated research proposals for agencies in South Africa, Croatia, Canada, and the U.S. He worked closely with the Margaret Chisolm Resettlement Centre, Calgary, on his two-year long project ‘Linguistic and Cultural Barriers to Refugees’ Access to Social and Medical Services in Calgary’ (2009-2011).

• American Association for Applied Linguistics; Member, Executive Committee (2009-2012)
• Language Policy Research Network (LPREN), Advisory Committee

Ricento, T. (Ed.) (2019).  Language politics and policies:  Perspectives from Canada

            and the United States.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. 

Ricento, T. (Ed.) (2016).  Language policy and planning:  Critical concepts in

            linguistics [4 volumes]. New York:  Routledge.  [1,642 pages]

Ricento, T., Peled, Y., Ives, P. (Eds.).  (2015). Language policy and political theory:  Building bridges, assessing breaches.  Dordrecht:  Springer.

 Ricento, T. (Ed.) (2015).  Language policy and political economy: English in a   

              global context.  New York:  Oxford University Press. [Winner, Best Book Award,

            American Association for Applied Linguistics, 2018]

Ricento, T. (2014).  Thinking about language:  What political theorists need to know about

language in the real world.  Language Policy 13(4), 351-369.

Ricento, T.  (2013). The consequences of official bilingualism on the status and perception of

non-official languages in Canada. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 34(5): 475-489

• ·       Best Book Award, American Association for Applied Linguistics (2018) for Language Policy and Political Economy:  English in a Global Context, Oxford University Press, 2015

  ·         TESOL Award for Distinguished Research, 2013, with Andreea Cervatiuc, for the co-authored research article ‘Curriculum meta-orientations in the LINC program’.  Canadian Journal for the Study of Adult Education, 24(2): 17-31. [Cervatiuc was a Post-Doctoral Fellow supervised by Ricento]

  ·         Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ), Award for Best New Journal (runner-up), Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, 2002. Ricento is founding co-editor of the journal.

  ·         Russell Sage Foundation, President’s Research Award, 2006-2007

• ‘Finding the Words’: CBC Radio: Live Radio Interview with CBC Calgary radio on the ‘Linguistic Diversity and Language Policy’ conference, organized by Tom Ricento. The topic of the April 30, 2012 conference was ‘Aboriginal Languages in Canada’.
• A live television interview with Omni Mandarin News, Sept. 7th, 2012 about the conference Ricento organized at the University of Calgary: ‘Multidisciplinary Approaches in Language Policy and Planning’, Sept. 6-8, 2012. The interview was broadcast Sept. 7th, 2012.
• ‘Language Policy, Political Theory, and English as a ‘Global’ Language’; an invited talk given at an international symposium held at the University of Arizona, ‘Multilingual, 2.0?’.