Conquistador–settler grammars: Borders and boundaries of the colonial geographies of language

Abstract This article explores the coloniality of language from decolonial feminist and critical ecological linguistic frameworks, centering and building on the notion of conquistador–settler grammars. Through moments in our research in Chile, Guatemala, and the United States, we analyze the multiple ways conquistador–settler grammars are embedded in language (teacher) education and enact violence and erasure. In particular, through the cycles of critical reflection, we focus on curricular, ecological, and generational refusals in schooling and language teacher education (LTE) as they presented themselves across geographic spaces and moments in our research and embodied experiences and practices. In Chile, we discuss the use, reproduction, and futurity of coloniality through nation–state symbols, religious rituals, and rote memory native‐speakerism. In Guatemala, we share how Maya Chuj students and educators navigated, took up, and resisted persistent policies and practices of Indigenous language bracketing and erasure. We connect these moments and lessons to our roles and experience as teacher educators in the United States. Overall, we trace the colonial entanglements and conquistador–settler grammars that are made visible when we look at LTE geographically and ecologically and center “otherwise” possibilities and decolonial feminist frameworks and (re)imaginings for LTE.