Theorizing global service learning through Vietnamese metaphors

This chapter explores the prospects for theorizing global service learning from new perspectives using Vietnamese metaphors. Used as analytical concepts, these metaphors reframe concerns about gendered power relations in service and learning. Findings indicate that generating these Vietnamese theoretic–linguistic tools provides a basis for future investigations of the gendered dimensions of global service learning in English and other languages. The chapter sharpens the issue of what a global perspective in higher education might mean if global service learning continues to ignore or neglect the world’s intellectual resources in humanity’s many languages. The study has implications for multilingual education and higher degree research in responding to trends of increasing linguistic and theoretical diversity in universities.