My research brings qualitative and quantitative research on the social dimensions of language into dialogue with the way languages are taught and legislated. At the nexus of sociolinguistics and applied linguistics, I seek to call into question the monolingual and colonial tendencies of prevailing theories of foreign language pedagogy and second language acquisition. The common thread connecting the projects described below is a desire to connect empirical linguistic research with broader humanistic questions concerning language and power. By drawing on the tools of applied linguistics to question how language pedagogy serves to replicate social inequalities, my research empowers language educators and scholars to interrupt ideological discourses which permit language to be used as a proxy for ethnic-, racial-, class- and gender-based bias and discrimination.