User:JennyRosen/Auer, Peter & Wei Li (2007) Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication.

Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication (eds. Auer Peter & Wei Li).
Introduction In the introduction to the handbook of multilingualism and multilingual communications the editors, Li Wei and Peter Auer, try to put the issue of multilingualism into a new perspective. While most research on multilingualism has been made from a monolingual bias of European thinking in terms of one nation-one language – on state, the editors want to challenge this understanding of multilingualism as a problem or/and abnormal state. Moreover, the idea of one standard language as distinct from other languages is also challenged. The European idea (and ideal) of one standard language as a symbolic “glue” of one national unity, is not only misleading for understanding the language situation in most part of the world, but also in Europe from a historic perspective. The large standard languages have been codified over many centuries and their norm has been enforced by several institutions, particularly the school systems (2). Still, the process of homogenizing the standard varieties (at the cost of other languages or dialects in the area) took hundreds of years (and it can be discussed whether such monolingual situation was ever reached).

Still, even though the ideal of monolinguals and one language – one nation never seem to have responded with the situation in most part of the world, the idea has had great impact in the research and approach towards multilingualism both in the academy and in society. The emergence of standard national languages brought with it the idea of purism: an attempt to keep languages pure and non mixed (3). But as Auer and Wei points out, language purism is nothing but a symbolic battle field for social conflicts (3). So, the problems arising from multilingualism are not “naturally” inherent to multilingualism itself, but instead they arise in a certain context in which certain ideas and assumption regarding multilingualism and monolingualism exists (3).

Finally, the editors remark on the importance of the handbook. They argue that although tremendous progress have been made in research on multilingualism during the last twenty years, the monolingual ideology is still dominant in many spheres of society and many bi- or multilingual individuals have misconceived ideas about their language use. The ideology of monolinugalism is still creating restrictions, barriers and conflicts in society (11).

From bilitaracy to pluriliteracies by Ofelia Garcia, Lesly Bartlett and JoAnne Klefgren

This text deals with the question of literacy in a multilingual context. Drawing on the field of biliteracy as developed by especially Nancy Hornberg, the ideas of plurilingualism and the New Literacy movement, the authors try to argue in favor for a new approach and pedagogy of language and literacies.

The term plurilinugalism and pluiliteracieis are used by the authors because they more accurately describe the complex language practices and values of speakers in multilingual communities of the 21st century (208). Plurilinugalism is about “proficiency, of varying degrees, in several languages and experiences of several cultures” (Common European Framework of Reference for Languages cited in 208). Moreover, plurilinuugalism can be said to involve “practices and values that are not equivalent or homologous in different languages but integrated, variable flexible and changing” (208). Therefore, plurilingualism requires the integration of unevenly developed competency in a variety of languages, dialects and registers, and the valuing of linguistic tolerance (208).

The question of biliteracy has usually been addressed in terms individual literacy skills in the two languages. However, broader definitions of biliteracy can be founds as “the acquisition and learning of the decoding and encoding of and around print using two linguistic and cultural systems in order to convey messages in a variety of contexts” (209). Theories on biliteracy and approaches to biliteracy pedagogy have changed over time. During the end of the 20th century a popular position has been that the first language L1 has to be developed prior to literacy in L2. The bilingual programs developed from this approach didn’t aim for bilingualism or biliteracy per se, but rather that skill in L1 was a tool for achieving skills in the dominant societal language L2. This sequential view of biliteracy suggests that literacy in L2 should not be introduced until the child has competence in speaking, reading and writing in L1 (211). Simultaneous biliteracy on the other hand, refers to a situation in which children develop literacy in L1 and L2 in the same time. However, in the simultaneous programs studied, the children acquired literacy in the two languages in different educational spaces i.e. with different teachers or different classrooms (212).

Both sequential and simultaneous views on biliteracy are grounded in a belief that each language develops separately and that each literacy should be taught as monolingual literacy (212). Pedagogies on biliteracy therefore usually demands two separate developed competencies. However, the continua of biliteracy developed by Nancy Hornberg supports the potential for positive transfer across literacies and how such transfer can be promoted or hindered by different contextual factors (214). This approach acknowledges not only the psychological and linguistic factors affecting the development of biliteracy but include also the social and political factors (214).

A pluriliteracies approach includes not only the continua with its different interrelated axes but also an emphasis on “literacy practices in sociocultural contexts, the hybridity of literacy practices afforded by new technologies, and the increasing interrelationship of semiotic systems” (215). Literacy practices are to be understood as “the socially regulated, recurrent, and patterned things that people do with literacy as well as the cultural significance they ascribe to those things” (Brandt and Clinton 2002:342 cited in 215). The concept of plurilingal literacy practices put into focus the social and cultural contexts that are integral to doing literacy and the transfer between contexts of ways of knowing and doing (216). A pluriliteracies approach move away from the dichotomy of the traditional L1/L2 pairing, emphasizing instead that languages and literacies are interrelated and flexible, and positing that literacy practices have equal value (216). Such approach can better capture the sociolinguistic realities in the contemporary world of plurilingual societies where languages are not compartmentalized in a diglossic situation, but rather overlap, intersect and interconnect (217). Finally a pluriliteracies approach - emphasized the integrated, hybrid nature of plurilingual literacy practices; - values all plurilingual literacy practices equally; - highlights the continuous interplay of multiple languages, scripts, discourses, dialects, and registers; - calls attention to the ways in which multilingual literacies are enmeshed and rely upon multiple modes, channels of communication, and semiotic systems; - adopts form new literacy studies a constant awareness of the ways in which cultural contexts and social relations influence literacy practices; - and attends to the development of literacy practices beyond the school, even as work within this vein endeavors to bring theoretical insights to bear on pedagogical developments. (217).

Multilingual forms of talk and identity work by Benjamin Bailey

In his text, Benjamin Bailey, sets out to discuss how identity is constructed in multilingual interaction. Bailey has a social constructivist approach to multilingualism and identity. However, it is important to notice that such approach doesn’t change the social force at the level of lived experience (362).

Studying identity not as an object but in terms of identity work, encounters of individual social actors with meaning and structures that added up through history are examined. Such examination builds on the assumption that individuals use language to both resist and reproduce existing meanings and structures, and therefore making identity work a lens for viewing the on-going constitution of society in the present (344). So, social identity is not about what a person is, but rather what she/he counts as in a particular context (345). The identity is formed through the processes of self-ascription and ascription by others or in Stuart Hall’s words “the name we give to the different ways we are positioned by, and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past” (1990:225 cited in 345). However, this doesn’t mean that identity is totally fluid, but rather the constitution of identity is restricted by certain parameters (habitus). Individuals can only ascribe themselves identities that are imaginable and available in a particular social and historical context and that are only ratified in identities through others ascription that social history makes available to them (345). Therefore, identities cannot be consumed as in an “identity market” but are dependent on social and historical context in a particular context. Therefore, multilingual talk for identity negotiations are a function of the history that add up to differently valued identity options and impart ways of speaking with social meanings and perspectives (361).

Baileys main argument is that “what is distinctive about identity negotiations in multilingual contexts is not so much linguistic as social and political, i.e., that the distinctive salience of multilingual talk in Western societies is a function of social and linguistic ideologies rather than the nature of the forms themselves” (344). Therefore, to study identity work in multilingual contexts is to analyze the larger social and political systems in which identity options and the value attributed to associated linguistic forms are created, contested and maintained (344).

Bailey then sets out to examine identity work in multilingual speech, focusing on code-switching. In situational switching, the speaker use distinct codes in particular setting and speech activities and with different categories of interlocutors, while metaphorical switches function mainly to violate conventionalized associations between codes and context, activity, or participants (349-350)(Baileys view on code switching can be compared with Gafaranga). By such changes in language an alternative cultural framework for interpreting experience and constructing social reality can be constituted (350). However, such metaphorical switches do not only occur in multilingual speech (switching between two languages) but also in monolingual speech as the speaker uses different dialects, sociolects etc. in order to invoke a certain socio-cultural world. But, as Bailey also argues, if you examine code-switching from a functional perspective rather than formal definitions, the researcher is to a certain degree relieved of questions regarding what constitute a language and the competence levels of the different languages in order for a person to be multilingual. From such perspective the focus can shift to individuals as social actors using heteroglossic sets of linguistic resources to negotiate the social world (357). From the perspective of social identity, language alteration can be socially meaningful and worth analyzing regardless of the speakers language competence (357). Moreover, in some contexts language alteration functions as a discourse mode in its own right rather as an opposition between languages and a one-dimensional relation between one language and one identity (358).

Multilingual identity work is characteristic of more rapidly changing social contexts that destabilize assumptions about an essential unity of language, nation, and identity (360).