Spaces of Multilingualism

Robert Blackwood, Unn Røyneland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000472622
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This innovative collection explores critical issues in understanding multilingualism as a defining dimension of identity creation and negotiation in contemporary social life.

Reinforcing interdisciplinary conversations on these themes, each chapter is co-authored by two different researchers, often those who have not written together before. The combined effect is a volume showcasing unique and dynamic perspectives on such topics as rethinking of language policy, testing of language rights, language pedagogy, meaning-making, and activism in the linguistic landscape. The book explores multilingualism through the lenses of spaces and policies as embodied in Elizabeth Lanza's body of work in the field, with a focus on the latest research on linguistic landscapes in diverse settings. Taken together, the book offers a window into better understanding issues around processes of change in and of languages and societies.

This ground breaking volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars in multilingualism, applied linguistics, and sociolinguistics.

Part I

Rethinking the Context

1 Language Policy

Taking Stock in a Changing Context

Li Wei and Helen Kelly-Holmes

DOI: 10.4324/9781003125839-1

Introduction

In this chapter, we apply our different but complementary foci to examining how the key concepts of language policy have evolved over the last two decades in response to socio-political disruptions and how they might continue to change in the future. We also want to raise new, further questions that need to be explored and debated, given the ever-changing context, particularly in relation to the emergence and integration of smart technology into our everyday lives. The chapter is constructed as a dialogue in which we discuss and evaluate these key disruptions from our particular perspectives on language policy: Helen Kelly-Holmes works on the economic dimensions of multilingualism, focussing for example on advertising and the concept of linguistic fetish, and language policy with a particular interest in minority languages. Her focus has always been on mediated language, and for that reason she is particularly interested in the role of technology. Li Wei’s work is around everyday multilingual practices in families and communities. In particular, he has studied community language schools for immigrant and ethnic minority children in the UK as well as Family Language Policy in transnational families. He has contributed to the development of the concept of translanguaging. The chapter is structured as a reciprocal interview between us. We believe these questions have wider implications for language policy research and practice and enable us to take stock as we move forward in this rapidly changing context. We are aware that we are offering more questions than answers, for example in relation to whether changing concepts of language and language policy are driven by social, economic, and technological changes or whether such changing conceptions are themselves driving change. In other words, the fascinating question of whether language policy is evolutionary or revolutionary remains deliberately open.

Li Wei: How fit is language policy for twenty-first-century challenges?

Helen: When I read articles framed within language policy, I often question whether the concept, the term, and the key tenets are in fact useful and relevant in today’s world and whether studying language policy forces complex problems into simple frameworks. For example, the nineteenth-century narrative of one language = one people = one territory still underpins, no matter how it might be resisted, for better or worse, most minority language revitalisation movements and policies as well as studies of national policy. Twentieth-century concepts and assumptions also underpin much contemporary research in language policy, most notably the idea that language policy can fix both language problems and/or social problems. So, language policies at macro or state levels or at meso levels within schools and other institutions can be implemented to redress inequalities – individual and societal – and address injustice. This conceptualisation of language policy seems to me to rest on the same assumptions, namely that we know what language is and how to do it (and we all agree on this), we can do things to it, we can control and direct it, and we can manage people’s behaviours around it and attitudes to it (see, e.g., Nekvapil and Sherman 2015).

It goes without saying that these understandings have been and are being continuously challenged. For example, Kathryn Woolard’s (2016) work on linguistic authority in relation to Catalan has challenged a perhaps often too easy assumption about where power and agency lie in language policy. Deborah Cameron’s (2005) concept of verbal hygiene showed how language management does not just happen in relation to different languages and that the need to manage and control what, how, and where others speak is a widespread, deep-seated tendency that often has very little to do with language. With language policing, Jan Blommaert et al. (2009) attempted to identify that there can be multiple, competing centres of normativity and policymaking, and to show that these can be powerful and impactful, and that there is more going on than just the top-down and meso levels. We have moved away from the idea that only governments and institutions make language policy and towards the idea that we are all constantly making language policies – sometimes contradictory ones – throughout the course of our lives, perhaps even of our day, and attempting to monitor and control our own and others’ language behaviours (Shohamy 2006). The “new speaker” concept (O’Rourke and Ramallo 2013) also introduced a new dimension to language policy by attempting to address the difficulties that learners experience when they attempt to acquire a minoritised language and in the process challenge the language = people = territory tenet. As Alexandra Jaffe (2007) pointed out, revitalisation efforts actually need these fluid and flexible constructions of speakerhood. To succeed, such efforts need not only new speakers, who are to be created and encouraged through acquisition policies, but also those new speakers need to be able to have a relationship with the language and to stake a claim and not be excluded from ownership, not least if they are to continue to support language policy and planning efforts by their respective governments and regional authorities. Language policy’s assumptions have also been challenged by the evolution of “translanguaging” (Garcia and Li 2014) as a way to describe a phenomenon that is very real in all of the domains that are of interest to language policy but that evades capture and understanding by many traditional frameworks and methodologies of language policy.

Tom Ricento’s (2000) three eras model of language policy is a framework that can be applied more generally to the field, in my experience. The first era is that of the postcolonial nation-building, where a unifying language is needed (one language = one people = one territory); the second is the era in which the cracks and fissures upon which that policy is built begin to appear, and language is used to fix those problems; and finally the current era, or what he terms the postmodern one, which is characterised by hybridity and the loss of certainty about what language is, how it can possibly “fix” problems and indeed the critiquing of why and how these “problems” have been framed as such, since such a problematising, however well-intended, was based on the same tenets of one country = one nation = one language. In our work trying to chart the development of minority language media policy in Sámi and Irish, Sari Pietikäinen and I used Ricento’s framework to try to put a shape on our findings. We dubbed the first era that of gifting – whereby the central government gifts media resources to the minority language community, which presents itself as internally homogenous for this purpose and is subsequently addressed as an internally unified and homogenous group. In the second era, the attempt is to fix the language problems that are occurring, as inevitably the complexity that is covered up by this homogenous unity starts to appear. The aim is for full normalisation of the language situation, a modernist goal of having the trimmings of a modern language. In the contemporary era, which we termed the “performance” era, these certainties are gone – or rather the easy assumptions that we had about these certainties are gone and are replaced by fluid concepts and changing tenets. Where previously languages were seen to belong to (particular) speakers, now they are up for grabs and available as part of anyone’s repertoire, albeit in different ways and with different limitations. A few interesting conclusions emerged from our study (Pietikäinen and Kelly-Holmes 2011), and they are worth thinking about in a wider context of understanding language policy and allowing it to grow and develop as a concept or perhaps be cast aside, its time being done now that the era of mega-policies is apparently done. First of all, an appreciation of the economic and technological dimensions, not just political, to these different eras is crucial. Older conceptions of language policy force us to include the macro and meso into our analyses as we increasingly focus on micro-level management. Secondly, it is important to recognise that while models allow for a neatly ordered chronology, the reality is much messier, and instead what we have are parallel and overlapping stages. Our conclusion was that to understand this complexity, we needed all of these concepts from all of these eras. While twenty-first-century concepts are inclusive, if we abandon the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ones, then it becomes very hard to talk to governments, for example, who may be more than happy to curtail funding for heritage language maintenance when languages with a capital L, linked to recognisable and delineable groups, disappear from the vocabulary and studies. So, what is needed, perhaps today more than ever, is a delicate balancing act that involves constantly and vigilantly checking, acknowledging, and living with both complexity and simplicity.

Helen: In your work with immigrant and ethnic minority communities, what are the key language policy concerns, and how does the concept of translanguaging relate to language policy?

Li Wei: The recent surge of interest in multilingualism amongst the international academic research community may have come as something of a surprise to the very many communities across the globe where multilingualism has always been an integral part of people’s everyday life. The new curiosity may be partly due to the presence of large numbers of ‘misplaced’ populations who speak languages other than the assumed ‘indigenous’ ones, especially in Western Europe and North America, where people seem to be more used to imposing their own languages onto the local populations as they go to other parts of the world than having others coming to their land. These ‘misplaced’ speakers are usually labelled as ‘immigrants’, “‘migrants,” “refugees”, or “ethnic minorities.” Over time, their languages become called “community” or “heritage” languages. A key policy concern regarding immigrant and minoritised communities is the labelling of the various languages in their linguistic repertoire. The designation of a language and its speakers with one of the above-mentioned labels is a policy decision and has serious consequences for the status of the language and the community in society. Policies that are designed to support the minoritised languages and social groups usually assume that their status is a real one rather than one constructed and imposed by society. For instance, in many English-dominant countries, such as Britain and the USA, people who have roots in another country are often designated as English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) speakers. EAL children are expected to struggle in the mainstream educational system. They need help with English. And if they do achieve well in schools, they will be celebrated as examples of success. In the USA, the label “bilingual learners” is often used to refer to school-aged children from immigrant families, who may or may not themselves be immigrants. Just because their parents and the ethnic community they have been categorised into have a language, or languages, in addition to English, they are deemed as having incomplete knowledge of English and being in need of remedial support in English. García and Alvis (2019), following Mignolo (2015), have pointed out that the epistemology from which the minoritised speakers are observed and described and taught in the standard educational system is, of course, not their own epistemology. In the refugee population in Western Europe, there are numerous cases of people who are highly educated and skilled, with knowledge of several languages, but had to flee their home countries because of war, political and religious persecution, or natural disasters. Their social status does not render them linguistically or professionally less competent. Yet they are often treated by the system as inferior and in need of charity. Amongst the so-called economic migrants, the motivation for learning the society’s dominant languages is usually very high as they want to get jobs, earn a good living, and support the family. Where we do find cases of migrants lagging behind in acquiring the dominant language of their newly found homes, it is usually because they have been discriminated against and stigmatised (Dabach 2014). In Britain, lack of English is often used as an excuse for the under-employment of certain immigrant and ethnic minority communities, especially women of these communities. Yet, when one looks at the opportunities for these people to learn English, they are hardly there. Public funding for free English language classes for adult learners of minority ethnic backgrounds has been withdrawn. As a result, some of the eager ethnic minority learners are put into adult literacy classes, which were meant for those who have had interrupted education and are in need of developing their reading and writing skills. There are reports that competitions for the limited places on adult literacy classes between white working-class learners and ethnic minority learners have led to tensions between the communities (Hamilton and Merrifield 2000). Yet the official discourse has always been “English is the language of social integration and community cohesion” for the immigrants and members of ethnic minority communities. Del Percio and Wong (2019) have critiqued some of the current policies and practices regarding English language for employment for refugees, migrant workers, and ethnic minorities in England.

Internal differences amongst the immigrant and ethnic minority communities themselves tend to be ignored in the macro social policies of governmental institutions, which treat individuals within the communities as if they are all the same. “Diversity from within” is one of the toughest policy challenges regarding minoritised communities. There are significant differences in tribal membership, religious affiliation, and, of course, language in many immigrant and ethnic minority communities. Terms such as the Asian community, Chinese community, Italian community, Black community, or Hispanic community neglect many of these very important differences – differences that are particularly meaningful from within the communities concerned. Over time, communities change and develop, and intergenerational differences occur. One of the persistent questions that ethnic minority communities of all kinds have to address is how to manage language maintenance and language shift across generations. Whilst some communities seem to have managed to maintain their ethnic languages better than others, few have been able to resist the intergenerational language shift altogether. Linguistic ideologies play a crucial role here. Some believe that language maintenance is important primarily for identity reasons. To be a member of a community, one needs to be able to speak the language of that community. Yet, in recent decades we have seen a new kind of ethnic and racial awakening – a complex combination of increased awareness about the social position that the ethnic minority community is assigned in society and a desire to have a more powerful voice in social life. It is a much deeper understanding of what is means to be an ethic minority or descendent of an immigrant, which involves their personal experiences and/or observations, education, and sociopolitical activ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• PART I Rethinking the Context
• PART II Interactions, Ideologies, and Identities
• PART III Linguistic Landscapes
• PART IV Concluding Remarks
• Index