The term “critical” when used with reference to poststructuralist and postmodernist scholarship is neo-Marxist and influenced by Derrida (1970) and Foucault (1970). Critical scholarship is “restless” (Pennycook 2004) as it questions assumptions made in the parent discipline. Criticality is a process of engaging with power and social inequality both within and outside applied linguistics. Nonetheless, critical applied linguistics (CAL) is not opposed to power but to its effects. CAL is skeptical of concepts such as the native speaker, language, identity, and agency.      Keywords:    citizenship,  civil rights,  colonial CAL,  context,  diaspora,  ethnicity,  ethnocentrism,  identity,  multilingualism,  polylingualism