2025 IJRSE – Volume 14 Issue 13
Available Online: 10 July 2025
Author/s:
Canete, Jonathan James O.
Department of Innovation and Sustainability, De La Salle University, Laguna Campus, Philippines (Ncanete976@gmail.com / Jonathan.canete@dlsu.edu.ph)
Abstract:
This study conceptually offers a philosophical inquiry into the bilingual education policy of the Philippines, employing Charles Taylor’s theory of the politics of recognition as a lens for re-evaluating its ethical and sociocultural dimensions. It argues that the state-sanctioned privileging of English and Filipino within formal education systems, while often justified in the name of national unity and global competitiveness, has contributed to the systemic marginalization of regional and indigenous languages. This marginalization, the paper posits, is not a neutral byproduct of modernization but a form of misrecognition that undermines the formation of cultural identity and belonging among students whose mother tongues lie outside the dominant language pair. Taylor’s philosophical emphasis on the dialogical nature of identity and the moral significance of recognition provides the theoretical framework for analyzing how language policy functions as a site of either affirmation or exclusion. The paper further critiques the prevailing instrumentalist logic that equates language education with economic utility, calling attention instead to the deeper human need for cultural rootedness and expressive freedom. Drawing on both philosophical insight and contextual analysis of Philippine educational history, the study envisions a more inclusive language policy; one that actively embraces linguistic plurality as a source of national richness rather than as an administrative challenge. In so doing, it repositions bilingual education as a moral and political commitment to justice, dignity, and the recognition of all cultural narratives within the nation’s pedagogical spaces.
Keywords: bilingualism, politics, Taylorian view, policy, language, Philippines
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2025.25211
Cite this article:
Canete, J. J. O. (2025). Bilingualism and the politics of recognition: A Taylorian view of cultural identity in Philippine language policy. International Journal of Research Studies in Education, 14(13), 113-125. https://doi.org/10.5861/ijrse.2025.25211