Teaching & Learning Guide for: Multilingualism in Educational Contexts: Identities and Ideologies
Authors: Fuller Janet M. 
Published: August 2009

Author’s Introduction

This Teaching and Learning Guide is intended to provide instructors of courses in Sociolinguistics some guidance in incorporating the topic of multilingualism in educational contexts into their syllabi. Although schools the world over are increasingly serving multilingual populations, awareness of this reality has not, in many cases, sifted through to public consciousness, and incorporation of this topic into the sociolinguistic curriculum is a crucial step in addressing this gap in awareness.

The incidence of multilingualism in educational contexts has increased greatly in the last few decades in a number of critical ways. First, while multilingualism has long been the norm in educational settings in places such as India and some countries of Africa, widespread multilingualism has only recently begun to be seen as a factor in education in many parts of the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Second, in addition to there being more regions of the world that have multilingual populations of schoolchildren, the demographics of these populations are also changing. There are increasing numbers of middle class professionals moving to countries in which immigrants were previously overwhelmingly citizens of poor countries who came to work unskilled jobs. Third, not only have different patterns of immigration led to a broader range of regions and social groups becoming multilingual, but the ability to speak more than one language is increasingly seen as desirable for those who stay put. Bilingual education or intensive language study for the children of majority language populations is gaining popularity in Europe, the United States, and Asia.

What this amounts to is that multilingualism in schools is becoming more common, and the situations in which it occurs are as varied as the languages involved. This article addresses the social issues of language ideologies and identity construction in this context.

Key readings

Caldas‐Coulthard, Carmnen Rosa and Amelia Maria Fernandes Alves. 2008. ‘Mongrel selves’: identity change, displacement and multi‐positioning. Identity trouble: critical discourses and contested identities, ed. by Carmen Rosa Caldas‐Coulthard and Rick Iedema, 120–42. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.

This article offers an important viewpoint about the idea of the ‘third space’ created by bicultural and bilingual speakers and immigrants in particular. The authors note that people in the ‘third space’ are positioned this way, by themselves and others, because they are often not viewed as full members of their adopted culture and as émigrés are seen as no longer belonging in their culture of origin. This is a highly relevant aspect of multilingualism in all contexts.

Cummins, Jim. 2001. Negotiating identities: education for empowerment in a diverse society (2nd edition). Los Angeles, CA: California Association for Bilingual Education. Chapter 1: Identities and Empowerment.

The lasting message of this chapter is that educators are not trapped within discriminatory frameworks, but have the power to shape their students’ experiences. This text is based on the idea (pervasive in the social sciences) that ideologies and identities are constructed, and that this theoretical position can be applied in classroom contexts to enact change in educational practices.

De Meija, Anne‐Marie. 2002. Power, prestige and bilingualism: internationalperspectives on elite bilingual education. Chapter 4: Teaching and learning in elite bilingual classrooms. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

De Meija provides a clear defense of the use of bilingual discourse in the classroom for both teachers and students. The position here flies in the face of the implicit position of ‘bilingualism through monolingualism’ which is often the philosophy in multilingual educational settings, that is, that languages should remain strictly separate and speakers should act like monolinguals in each language. De Meija endorses the use of two languages as a linguistic strategy for teaching and learning.

Fitts, Shanan. 2006. Reconstructing the status quo: linguistic interaction in a dual‐language school. Bilingual Research Journal 29.337–65.

This article addresses how language ideologies are tacit in institutional structure and how students and teachers conform to, and occasionally resist, the hegemony of normative monolingualism. For example, although the school is intended to create a bilingual student body, the children are at times asked to identify their (one) native language, and ‘bilingual’ becomes code for ‘Latino/a’. Further, bilingualism is assumed to be enacted by speaking one language at a time, thus negating the importance of mixed language speech in identity construction.

Heller, Monica. 1999. Linguistic minorities and modernity: a sociolinguistic ethnography. Chapter 4: Being bilingual. New York, NY: Longman.

This chapter of the ethnography of a French‐language school in Toronto, Ontario, discusses the linguistic behavior of different segments of the student population, vividly portraying the how the uses and statuses of English and different varieties of French are used by the students not just to construct their own social identities but to promote and resist specific language ideologies. Although proficiency in French is necessary to be successful, it is only a particular kind of French which gives a speaker access to cultural capital and academic success.

Links

http://www.unavarra.es/tel2l/eng/MBELinks.htm

Tel2l stand for Teacher Education by Learning in 2 Languages, and this site includes an introduction to the basics of bilingual education as well as overviews of bilingual programs in the U.S.A., Canada, Germany, France, England, Wales, and Luxemburg.

http://www.cal.org/index.html

The Center for Applied Linguistics website with links to pages on English Language Learners, including but not limited to a page on two‐way immersion in the United States (http://www.cal.org/jsp/TWI/SchoolListings.jsp)

http://eacea.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/Eurydice

This site is for ‘the information network about education in Europe’, and has links to various reports about education, including such things as ‘Integrating Immigrant Children Into Schools in Europe’ and ‘Content and Integrated Learning at Schools in Europe’ (this deals with teaching certain subjects in a foreign language, called Bilingualer Fachsachunterricht in German).

http://www.thomasandcollier.com/index.htm

This link provides access to research by Wayne Thomas and Virginia Collier on educational issues, including bilingual education, in the United States.

http://www.id21.org/insights/insights‐ed05/insightsEdn5.pdf

This documents is a newsletter titled ‘Mother Tongue First?’ which includes articles about the right of children to learn their home language in school, looking at situations in Viet Nam, Africa, Bolivia, Thailand and India.

Focus Questions

 What is normative monolingualism and what impact does it have on the education of multilingual populations?

 What does speaking more than one language/linguistic variety have to do with the construction of social identity?

 How are language ideologies and social identities related?

 What are the different situations you can name (either from your own experience or from reading about them) that create multilingual populations of schoolchildren? How might these different situations give rise to different educational needs?

 Why does Fuller, in the conclusion to her article on Multilingualism in Educational Contexts, problematize the dichotomy between native and non‐native speakers?

 What does ‘critical’ mean when used by social scientists to describe a type of analysis, e.g., ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’?

 In what ways are the issues of language ideology and social identity relevant for educators who are developing curricula and materials for education in multilingual settings?

Outline of the relationship of this material to other topics in sociolinguistics

→ Connection to the study of dialects and education. In recent decades there has been an increased awareness of the importance of recognizing and legitimizing non‐Standard dialects in the educational context as part of a move to both empower and better teach the children who speak them. This has direct parallels to the teaching of minority language speakers. However, an important point of discussion is how these two situations – educating minority language children and educating children who speak non‐Standard dialects of the majority language – are (and should be) dealt with differently in educational institutions and policies.

→ Connection to the study of language maintenance and shift. Many Sociolinguistics textbooks include a section on bilingualism, and cover the basic concepts of language maintenance and shift. Buried among the many factors which influence minority language maintenance is the factor of education in the minority language. The studies summarized here show the importance of education, but also that even when minority language programs are present, this does not insure language maintenance.

→ connection to other studies of codeswitching. Any framework should be able to explain codeswitching in different settings, including but not limited to the classroom, and the framework of the Sequential Approach has frequently been applied to codeswitching in other contexts.

→ link to the study of Conversation Analysis (C.A.). The Sequential Approach discussed here is based on C.A. methodology and assumptions. Application of this method to bilingual data can provide a valuable opportunity to address the concept central to C.A. of only using information made relevant to the speakers within the text.

→ relevant to other studies of identity construction. The concept of the ‘third space’ is raised with regard to bilingual/bicultural speakers, but the concept of multiple, hybrid, or shifting identities is one which is relevant for all research on identity construction.

Practical Exercises

Find out what policies your nation/state/city has with regard to serving populations of children who enter school not speaking the majority language (much of this information can be found online). Do these policies reflect normative monolingualism?

If you have some competence in a language other than English, find a magazine (or blog, website, etc.) in that language and look for English borrowings and use of English phrases, especially but not limited to advertisements. (For example, the German airline Lufthansa ran a series of ads in German newspapers and magazines which were in German, but contained the English slogan, ‘There’s no better way to fly.’) What does the presence (or absence) of English tell you about the language ideology of that country of origin for that magazine? How could this influence educational practices?

Look at the school philosophy on the website for the John F. Kennedy School in Berlin, Germany, a German‐American bilingual school. What language ideologies are represented in this text? http://www.jfks.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=61

(This questions complements of Elizabeth Erling, Open University). Read the following excerpt and answer the discussion questions.

Beatrice Asamoa grew up in Ghana, where she used English regularly, along with Ashanti, a Ghanaian language, both at home and at school. English was the primary language of her education. At the age of fifteen, she moved to Germany where she learned German and completed her schooling in that language. After finishing school, she wanted to study English literature at a German university. The university that Beatrice applied to required students to pass an entrance exam on English grammar. Exceptions were made for students who come from English‐speaking countries. But the university did not consider Ghana to be an English‐speaking country, so Beatrice had to take the exam. Unfortunately, she failed the exam by a few points. As a result, she was put into a remedial course for a year before she was allowed to start her studies. Beatrice was one of the best students in this course, received good marks and even helped other students with their university work. When asked why she thought she failed the exam, she responded: ‘I still have this Ghanaian English’ (Adapted from Erling 2004).

As the official language of Ghana is English (see http://www.ethnologue.com/show_country.asp?name=GH), what factors contribute to the language ideology that Ghana is not considered an English‐speaking country?

What does Beatrice mean while she says ‘I still have this Ghanaian English’?

Why do you think Beatrice failed the entrance exam on English grammar, when her performance indicated that she was capable of doing well on English courses?

How is Beatrice’s identity constructed by herself and others (as far as we can gather from this short text) in terms of her relationship with English?