My purpose in this chapter is to describe and critique some of the common sense beliefs about language that are often implicitly incorporated in the theories of political philosophers who engage in discussions on language policies and language rights in liberal democracies. I then consider the limitations of these views, based on research in sociolinguistics that problematizes at least some of the more common beliefs about the nature of language, that is, views on discreteness, competence, function, complexities in diagnosing linguistic inequalities and discrimination, the complexities of the language-culture nexus, and language and identity. It is these complexities that political theorists need to pay more attention to when, for example, they argue that linguistic and cultural assimilation into civil society is relatively easy, since language and culture are mutable. I then focus on the ways in which these common sense views about language and culture, and language and national identity, have played out in the Canadian context, especially over the past half century, referring to testimony in the hearings that preceded passage of the Official Languages Act of 1969. I consider the ways in which national census data obscure the actual complex linguistic diversity that exists in Canada today, and I provide an example of political speech that reinforces the deeply held ideology of French-English dualism in a country in which 200+ languages are spoken on a daily basis, in which French-English bilingualism is actually declining, and in which other types of bi- and multilingualism are flourishing.
In recent decades large components of the language sciences have been subjected to relentless critique. Criticism has not been exclusive to those branches directly concerned with application, such as applied linguistics, but it has been particularly robust when directed at language studies modified by the words ‘social’, as in socio-linguistics, sociology of language; or ‘education’, as in bilingual education, foreign language education; and ‘policy’ or ‘planning’, as in language policy (Lo Bianco 2004). Most trenchant has been the criticism generated from neo-Marxist, post structuralist and post-modernist positions, claiming that the practice, concepts and methods of the applied language sciences are complicit with the operations of power, especially the material and symbolic interests of powerful groups, and that LP practitioners are insufficiently aware of these collusions (seeLo Bianco 2010aand2010b, for an overview of these criticisms). In my field of specialisation, language policy and planning, LP, some of this criticism has served to sharpen our work, making contemporary LP writing more reflective and open to diverse kinds of socio-political activities that constitute LP, especially in urban, developed country multi-ethnic contexts, in contrast to ‘classical’ LP which had been directed for the most part to state activity and formal processes of resolving problems of national construction (Fishman 1972) in post-colonial developing societies. However, some of this criticism imagined that LP itself would be swept away, as a defective and tainted practice of state control of minority language, disadvantaged and marginalised populations (Lo Bianco 2009). While scholars of LP these days tend to be better aware of constitutive relations between forms and uses of language and social arrangements, replete with inequality, disparity, selective privilege and prejudice, one of the aspirations of the ‘critics’ was to challenge the very possibility of LP of any kind. However, in the early decades of the 21st century it has become clear that LP is a regenerated, invigorated andburgeoning practice. New kinds of LP scholarship and new kinds of LP activity that fuse technical procedures of formal policy making, with democratic practices of naming language problems and exploring solutions to them, are being generated. Rather than being a redundant practice located in the scientific policy era of the post-1950s, with its aspiration for finding technical solutions to contested social problems, what is emerging is a newly vibrant collaboration between language scholarship and community language vitality. The context of all this is the new, mainly urbanised but not exclusively so, multi-lingual polis of the contemporary age, the cities and cityscapes of a multilingual world on the move, tied together by instantaneous communications and immense population movements. What is needed to advance the rights and opportunities of minorities for intra-collective solidarity and transmission of tradition, with the imperative of horizontal communication across and beyond internal group solidarities? These twin needs of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conversation, in the context of a wider appreciation of the enduring importance of multi-lingualism, and of the emancipatory aspects of language and cultural diversity, are now problems posed globally, with solutions emerging in localities across the world shaped by contingencies that prevail in those places, and their historical legacies. New LP needs show that it was never simply enough to find fault with the methods, assumptions and practices of the applied language sciences. Producing the social improvement requires investment in democratised methods, refined concepts and critical awareness within reinvigorated language sciences, research informed by and close to its sites of application, and with new design and execution that the disciplines of language can produce. In such ways language planners, sociolinguists and language educators can generate knowledge to productively engage with the globalisation of multiculturalism. To put language and communication to the service of diverse kinds of social improvement requires more than criticism, it requires redirecting the critical eye towards productive ends, framing criticism within concern for improvement and directly engaging with the lived realities of complex communication in radically changing societies.
Empirical studies have widely documented the influence of the language input children receive in the family on their (academic) language development and identified differences in the home literacy experiences of mono- and multilingual children as a potential source for the lower language skills and educational success of multilingual children and adolescents. Using data from the LiMA Panel Study, this article investigates how frequently mono- and multilingual children in middle childhood are engaged in different home literacy activities that have been shown to be frequently practiced by families with children in early childhood. Our results point to systematic differences in the home literacy experiences of mono- and multilingual children, and suggest that the family’s socioeconomic position can partly but not fully account for these differences.
In this study we investigate heritage language use among Turkish and Vietnamese mothers in Germany. We suggest that exclusive use of the heritage language in mother-child interactions is affected by an interplay of structural characteristics in the family environment as well as mothers’ rational expectations aimed towards their language use. We seek to provide an appropriate explanation for mothers’ heritage language use by expanding the usual model through the integration of further types of rationalities. Our results strongly confirm recent findings that immigrants’ heritage language use is mostly linked to the respective social environment and its opportunity structures. The use of the heritage language between immigrant mothers and their children is therefore mainly influenced by situational instrumental rationality aimed towards interactional pragmatism. Interestingly, we did not find any negative relation between mothers’ exclusive heritage language use with their child and mothers’ strategic instrumentally rational expectations aimed towards their child’s future educational success.
The paper deals with the script choices made by bilingual Russian-German children when they are asked to compose texts in their Russian heritage language. Furthermore, the relationship between script choice and overall proficiency in the heritage language is investigated. We compare two different age groups of bilingual children. The analysis reveals that knowledge of the Cyrillic script is not dependent on their age upon arrival in Germany. Even those who use the Cyrillic script for writing in Russian sometimes use Latin graphemes. The appearance of Latin graphemes can be treated as an unconscious negative transfer from German, but also sometimes as a purposeful transfer to substitute for complex Cyrillic graphemes. Most of the factors used for assessing language proficiency (e.g. morphological correctness, mean length of sentences, etc.) are related to script choice, but significant effects were found only for task accomplishment.
The present study examined the development of lexical abilities in German in Turkish-/Russian-German bilinguals. In particular, the effect of the age of onset and the socio-economic status, identified through self-reported parental education and occupation, on the productive and perceptive lexicon – verbs and nouns – was investigated. Two groups, one with 39 Russian-German and one with 55 Turkish-German simultaneous and sequential bilinguals from Berlin nursery schools, participated in the study. The age range was 26 to 47 months (mean age: 38.5 months, Standard Deviation (SD) = 5.8). The age of onset ranged from 0 to 39 months (mean age of onset: 21.0 months,SD = 9.9) and did not differ significantly in both investigated groups. The mean length of exposure to German was 17.5 months (SD = 9.3). The results showed that age of onset negatively impacts the productive lexicon of both groups. Russian-speaking children were somewhat better in the development of the perceptive lexicon in German. No effects for parental education and occupation were found. The results are discussed with respect to sensitivity and age of acquisition, and possible differences in the home language environment of Turkish and Russian bilinguals.
Heritage languages (HL), like other contact varieties, are subject to considerable transfer. However, the question remains of whetherstructuresare reallytransferredfrom one language to another. Two case studies, one about datives in heritage Spanish, and the other about resultatives in heritage Ambon Malay, serve as a basis for discussion around the nature of structural transfer in HLs. The main conclusion is that structural transfer can be characterized as a redistribution of already available structures, driven by lexical and conceptual properties. In order to account for this, we explain structural transfer in terms of cross-linguistic activation in a psycholinguistic model inspired byHartsuiker et al. (2004).
This pilot research project addresses the interlanguage transfer of phonetic-phonemic phenomena in a trilingual situation: Bundeli-Hindi (L1-L2, not standard – standard) bidialectism extended by L3 English. The audio data analysis focuses on semantically and grammatically empty cross-phonemic consonant alternations that are not conditioned by phonotactics. Their transfer points to a specific transfer type, involving systemic relations. I introduce an alternation rate index as a tool to assess the dependence of cross-phonemic interlanguage alternations on linguistic and sociolinguistic parameters. The results of the analysis indicate that cross-phonemic alternations are unilaterally transferred from Bundeli to Hindi and English and that the alternation rate is inversely related to the socio-educational level and language proficiency as well as to the level of language standardisation.
Language development of adolescents and in particular of multilingual adolescents to date does not get the attention it deserves. This contribution gives a brief overview of what later language development means and aims at highlighting some of its features in personal experience narratives written by mono- and multilingual secondary school students. To this end, concepts of narrative structure will also be reviewed briefly. Then a closer look will be taken at the use of the temporal adverbial ‘dann’ (‘then’). This adverbial allows verbalising specific aspects of the event structure in relation to narrative structure. Students display different degrees of convergence with target language patterns of use. The discussion then centres on in how far this is a developmental issue and/or can be traced back to multilingualism. Regarding the latter no clear tendency can be found.
Students’ success in school is closely linked to the mastering of academic language. In the context of linguistic und socio-cultural diversity, teaching practices which support students’ acquisition of this capability have become increasingly important. Empirical research in this field, however, is scarce. The video studyBildungssprachförderliches Lehrerhandeln(‘Teaching practices of academic language support’ –BilLe) analyzes the teaching of academic discourse practices in regular multilingual classrooms with a focus on teachers’ activities. The project is embedded in intercultural educational research focusing on curriculum development. For the purpose of this study, expert teachers were video-taped in regular lessons in various types of schools, grades and subjects. Based on content-based analyses (low-inference video coding) and interpretive video interaction analyses this article presents results from the part of theBilLestudy that focused on a primary school.
This article offers an overview of the multilingual city of Dublin. We draw on research undertaken for the LUCIDE (Languages in Urban Communities: Integration and Diversity for Europe) network to describe the rapid linguistic diversification that occurred as recently as the 1990s. Yet English, the globallingua francaand Ireland’s second official language (with Irish), remains the dominant language of city life. Dublin is constitutionally bilingual, normatively monolingual, yet actually multilingual. Its historically evolved language policy and linguistic habitus matter to how we describe and discuss this (new) multilingual city. We apply a scalar lens to multilingualism in Dublin to show the vertical layering of language in two districts of economic activity, one regenerated from ‘above’, the other from ‘below’. We show how the city’s linguistic habitus, combined with the conditions of language and cultural diversification from the 1990s, serve to index languages in the urban environment. Some suggestions for further research are also made.
My purpose in this chapter is to describe and critique some of the common sense beliefs about language that are often implicitly incorporated in the theories of political philosophers who engage in discussions on language policies and language rights in liberal democracies. I then consider the limitations of these views, based on research in sociolinguistics that problematizes at least some of the more common beliefs about the nature of language, that is, views on discreteness, competence, function, complexities in diagnosing linguistic inequalities and discrimination, the complexities of the language-culture nexus, and language and identity. It is these complexities that political theorists need to pay more attention to when, for example, they argue that linguistic and cultural assimilation into civil society is relatively easy, since language and culture are mutable. I then focus on the ways in which these common sense views about language and culture, and language and national identity, have played out in the Canadian context, especially over the past half century, referring to testimony in the hearings that preceded passage of the Official Languages Act of 1969. I consider the ways in which national census data obscure the actual complex linguistic diversity that exists in Canada today, and I provide an example of political speech that reinforces the deeply held ideology of French-English dualism in a country in which 200+ languages are spoken on a daily basis, in which French-English bilingualism is actually declining, and in which other types of bi- and multilingualism are flourishing.
In recent decades large components of the language sciences have been subjected to relentless critique. Criticism has not been exclusive to those branches directly concerned with application, such as applied linguistics, but it has been particularly robust when directed at language studies modified by the words ‘social’, as in socio-linguistics, sociology of language; or ‘education’, as in bilingual education, foreign language education; and ‘policy’ or ‘planning’, as in language policy (Lo Bianco 2004). Most trenchant has been the criticism generated from neo-Marxist, post structuralist and post-modernist positions, claiming that the practice, concepts and methods of the applied language sciences are complicit with the operations of power, especially the material and symbolic interests of powerful groups, and that LP practitioners are insufficiently aware of these collusions (seeLo Bianco 2010aand2010b, for an overview of these criticisms). In my field of specialisation, language policy and planning, LP, some of this criticism has served to sharpen our work, making contemporary LP writing more reflective and open to diverse kinds of socio-political activities that constitute LP, especially in urban, developed country multi-ethnic contexts, in contrast to ‘classical’ LP which had been directed for the most part to state activity and formal processes of resolving problems of national construction (Fishman 1972) in post-colonial developing societies. However, some of this criticism imagined that LP itself would be swept away, as a defective and tainted practice of state control of minority language, disadvantaged and marginalised populations (Lo Bianco 2009). While scholars of LP these days tend to be better aware of constitutive relations between forms and uses of language and social arrangements, replete with inequality, disparity, selective privilege and prejudice, one of the aspirations of the ‘critics’ was to challenge the very possibility of LP of any kind. However, in the early decades of the 21st century it has become clear that LP is a regenerated, invigorated andburgeoning practice. New kinds of LP scholarship and new kinds of LP activity that fuse technical procedures of formal policy making, with democratic practices of naming language problems and exploring solutions to them, are being generated. Rather than being a redundant practice located in the scientific policy era of the post-1950s, with its aspiration for finding technical solutions to contested social problems, what is emerging is a newly vibrant collaboration between language scholarship and community language vitality. The context of all this is the new, mainly urbanised but not exclusively so, multi-lingual polis of the contemporary age, the cities and cityscapes of a multilingual world on the move, tied together by instantaneous communications and immense population movements. What is needed to advance the rights and opportunities of minorities for intra-collective solidarity and transmission of tradition, with the imperative of horizontal communication across and beyond internal group solidarities? These twin needs of inter-ethnic and intra-ethnic conversation, in the context of a wider appreciation of the enduring importance of multi-lingualism, and of the emancipatory aspects of language and cultural diversity, are now problems posed globally, with solutions emerging in localities across the world shaped by contingencies that prevail in those places, and their historical legacies. New LP needs show that it was never simply enough to find fault with the methods, assumptions and practices of the applied language sciences. Producing the social improvement requires investment in democratised methods, refined concepts and critical awareness within reinvigorated language sciences, research informed by and close to its sites of application, and with new design and execution that the disciplines of language can produce. In such ways language planners, sociolinguists and language educators can generate knowledge to productively engage with the globalisation of multiculturalism. To put language and communication to the service of diverse kinds of social improvement requires more than criticism, it requires redirecting the critical eye towards productive ends, framing criticism within concern for improvement and directly engaging with the lived realities of complex communication in radically changing societies.
Empirical studies have widely documented the influence of the language input children receive in the family on their (academic) language development and identified differences in the home literacy experiences of mono- and multilingual children as a potential source for the lower language skills and educational success of multilingual children and adolescents. Using data from the LiMA Panel Study, this article investigates how frequently mono- and multilingual children in middle childhood are engaged in different home literacy activities that have been shown to be frequently practiced by families with children in early childhood. Our results point to systematic differences in the home literacy experiences of mono- and multilingual children, and suggest that the family’s socioeconomic position can partly but not fully account for these differences.
In this study we investigate heritage language use among Turkish and Vietnamese mothers in Germany. We suggest that exclusive use of the heritage language in mother-child interactions is affected by an interplay of structural characteristics in the family environment as well as mothers’ rational expectations aimed towards their language use. We seek to provide an appropriate explanation for mothers’ heritage language use by expanding the usual model through the integration of further types of rationalities. Our results strongly confirm recent findings that immigrants’ heritage language use is mostly linked to the respective social environment and its opportunity structures. The use of the heritage language between immigrant mothers and their children is therefore mainly influenced by situational instrumental rationality aimed towards interactional pragmatism. Interestingly, we did not find any negative relation between mothers’ exclusive heritage language use with their child and mothers’ strategic instrumentally rational expectations aimed towards their child’s future educational success.
The paper deals with the script choices made by bilingual Russian-German children when they are asked to compose texts in their Russian heritage language. Furthermore, the relationship between script choice and overall proficiency in the heritage language is investigated. We compare two different age groups of bilingual children. The analysis reveals that knowledge of the Cyrillic script is not dependent on their age upon arrival in Germany. Even those who use the Cyrillic script for writing in Russian sometimes use Latin graphemes. The appearance of Latin graphemes can be treated as an unconscious negative transfer from German, but also sometimes as a purposeful transfer to substitute for complex Cyrillic graphemes. Most of the factors used for assessing language proficiency (e.g. morphological correctness, mean length of sentences, etc.) are related to script choice, but significant effects were found only for task accomplishment.
The present study examined the development of lexical abilities in German in Turkish-/Russian-German bilinguals. In particular, the effect of the age of onset and the socio-economic status, identified through self-reported parental education and occupation, on the productive and perceptive lexicon – verbs and nouns – was investigated. Two groups, one with 39 Russian-German and one with 55 Turkish-German simultaneous and sequential bilinguals from Berlin nursery schools, participated in the study. The age range was 26 to 47 months (mean age: 38.5 months, Standard Deviation (SD) = 5.8). The age of onset ranged from 0 to 39 months (mean age of onset: 21.0 months,SD = 9.9) and did not differ significantly in both investigated groups. The mean length of exposure to German was 17.5 months (SD = 9.3). The results showed that age of onset negatively impacts the productive lexicon of both groups. Russian-speaking children were somewhat better in the development of the perceptive lexicon in German. No effects for parental education and occupation were found. The results are discussed with respect to sensitivity and age of acquisition, and possible differences in the home language environment of Turkish and Russian bilinguals.
Heritage languages (HL), like other contact varieties, are subject to considerable transfer. However, the question remains of whetherstructuresare reallytransferredfrom one language to another. Two case studies, one about datives in heritage Spanish, and the other about resultatives in heritage Ambon Malay, serve as a basis for discussion around the nature of structural transfer in HLs. The main conclusion is that structural transfer can be characterized as a redistribution of already available structures, driven by lexical and conceptual properties. In order to account for this, we explain structural transfer in terms of cross-linguistic activation in a psycholinguistic model inspired byHartsuiker et al. (2004).
This pilot research project addresses the interlanguage transfer of phonetic-phonemic phenomena in a trilingual situation: Bundeli-Hindi (L1-L2, not standard – standard) bidialectism extended by L3 English. The audio data analysis focuses on semantically and grammatically empty cross-phonemic consonant alternations that are not conditioned by phonotactics. Their transfer points to a specific transfer type, involving systemic relations. I introduce an alternation rate index as a tool to assess the dependence of cross-phonemic interlanguage alternations on linguistic and sociolinguistic parameters. The results of the analysis indicate that cross-phonemic alternations are unilaterally transferred from Bundeli to Hindi and English and that the alternation rate is inversely related to the socio-educational level and language proficiency as well as to the level of language standardisation.
Language development of adolescents and in particular of multilingual adolescents to date does not get the attention it deserves. This contribution gives a brief overview of what later language development means and aims at highlighting some of its features in personal experience narratives written by mono- and multilingual secondary school students. To this end, concepts of narrative structure will also be reviewed briefly. Then a closer look will be taken at the use of the temporal adverbial ‘dann’ (‘then’). This adverbial allows verbalising specific aspects of the event structure in relation to narrative structure. Students display different degrees of convergence with target language patterns of use. The discussion then centres on in how far this is a developmental issue and/or can be traced back to multilingualism. Regarding the latter no clear tendency can be found.
Students’ success in school is closely linked to the mastering of academic language. In the context of linguistic und socio-cultural diversity, teaching practices which support students’ acquisition of this capability have become increasingly important. Empirical research in this field, however, is scarce. The video studyBildungssprachförderliches Lehrerhandeln(‘Teaching practices of academic language support’ –BilLe) analyzes the teaching of academic discourse practices in regular multilingual classrooms with a focus on teachers’ activities. The project is embedded in intercultural educational research focusing on curriculum development. For the purpose of this study, expert teachers were video-taped in regular lessons in various types of schools, grades and subjects. Based on content-based analyses (low-inference video coding) and interpretive video interaction analyses this article presents results from the part of theBilLestudy that focused on a primary school.
This article offers an overview of the multilingual city of Dublin. We draw on research undertaken for the LUCIDE (Languages in Urban Communities: Integration and Diversity for Europe) network to describe the rapid linguistic diversification that occurred as recently as the 1990s. Yet English, the globallingua francaand Ireland’s second official language (with Irish), remains the dominant language of city life. Dublin is constitutionally bilingual, normatively monolingual, yet actually multilingual. Its historically evolved language policy and linguistic habitus matter to how we describe and discuss this (new) multilingual city. We apply a scalar lens to multilingualism in Dublin to show the vertical layering of language in two districts of economic activity, one regenerated from ‘above’, the other from ‘below’. We show how the city’s linguistic habitus, combined with the conditions of language and cultural diversification from the 1990s, serve to index languages in the urban environment. Some suggestions for further research are also made.