Postmonolingual Critical Thinking

Internationalising Higher Education Through Students' Languages and Knowledge

Michael Singh, Si Yi Lu

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781000059779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación general

Maintaining English as the sole language of knowledge production and dissemination in universities that enrol students who speak multiple languages, and those students learning other languages, is questionable. This groundbreaking work calls into question the exclusive use of academic English in internationalising higher education teaching and research. By interrogating the dominant assumptions informing the monolingual mindset, Postmonolingual Critical Thinking indicates that academically literate students can capably use their repertoires of languages and knowledge for educational purposes. The case for students' languages and knowledge having a place in English-medium universities is made through evidence of the uses of Zh?ngwén, academic Chinese.

Proposing to broaden the scope of languages used for knowledge production and dissemination, this book highlights the educational potential of multilingualism. Postmonolingual Critical Thinking makes a unique proposal: that universities which recruit doctoral students from Asia create education policy practices that enable them to extend their multilingual capabilities. Arguing that by drawing on intellectual resources from their various languages, students construct knowledge of critical thinking in complex, interesting and potentially innovative ways, this book guides higher education institutions in putting this into practice. It outlines a pragmatic approach for universities to explore the potential of multipolar, multilingual education, while being attentive to the tensions posed by assertions of a monolingual mindset.

Postmonolingual Critical Thinking has the potential to create great change in a higher education sector which is mired by a monolingual approach to graduate training. This unique and thought-provoking book is essential reading for those in the fields of applied linguistics, comparative education, higher education, international studies, teacher education and translation studies.

Chapter 1

Multilingual/monolingual tensions

Introduction

Multilingualism is a permanent structural condition in many countries throughout the world. Prior to British colonisation, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand were home to multilingual Indigenous nations. Yīngwén (英文, English) itself is a multilingual language. Loanwords from French (académique), Greek (homogenḗs), Latin (moribundus), and Spanish (exógeno) bring to the fore the internal multilingualism of Yīngwén. Increasing numbers of East Asian words are now entering into its lexicon due to demographic shifts in the multilingual landscape. In general, British university students have a positive deposition towards using words from the Hangugeo (한국어, Korean), Nihongo (日本語, Japanese) and Pǔtōnghuà (普通话, spoken Chinese) in their daily conversations (You, Kiaer, & Ahn, 2019). Today’s structural multilingualism is a product of the British colonialisation of these Indigenous nations. This structural multilingualism has been extended by the flows of migrant workers over the centuries.

Each year the inflow of new immigrants and refugees, including international students, reproduces this structural multilingualism. Structural multilingualism is a part of the structuring of the international trade in education through the economic policy practices of governments in these countries. Universities, and associated sectors in these multilingual nations – accommodation, travel, healthcare – have a massive financial reliance on the billions of dollars that international students inject into their economies (Deloitte Access Economics, 2015). Through paying their tuition fees and living costs as well as their contributions to job creation along with their knowledge production, and dissemination, international students are a significant source of revenue for these institutions, and countries (Levent, 2016). This trade in international students means that every semester these governments organise the importation of languages into these countries, thereby reproducing centuries of structural multilingualism. In other words, governments in these countries have made structural multilingualism a permanent operational condition of their universities. Structural multilingualism is a long-term, historically constituted phenomenon produced across generations by government policy practices.

Against this structural multilingualism created by these governments, they have also insisted that the Indigenous peoples and immigrants in each of these very different countries have to speak Yīngwén, and only Yīngwén, to be students, and eventually citizens. Universities in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US have invested in normalising a monolingual mindset ahead of adding value to students’ functionings, and substantive freedom by extending their multilingual capabilities. The term ‘monolingual mindset’, or in Deutsch, ‘monolingualer habitus’ (Gogolin, 1993), refers to the valuing of monolingualism over multilingualism based on the mistaken perception that monolingualism is the norm in these multilingual nations. This ‘monolingual mindset’ resists acknowledging structural multilingualism, refuses its personal and societal advantages, and tries to erase these (Clyne, 2008; Molla, Harvey, & Sellar, 2019; Ndhlovu, 2015; Xu, Leung, Hall, Jafari, & Pour, 2019). For instance, in the US, university students from Zhōngguó (中国, also known as China) are warned against speaking Pǔtōnghuà (普通话, the common spoken language) (Wang, 2019). They were threatened with punishment for speaking Pǔtōnghuà, including having their academic, research, and employment opportunities subjected to penalties. Disheartened, and demoralised the students petitioned against the penalties driving this insistence on them adopting a monolingual mindset. Likewise, research into international students writing across the curriculum takes for granted the collection and analysis of evidence only in Yīngwén; the students, and researchers’ multilingual capabilities, are conspicuous by their absence (Weng, 2016).

Throughout Postmonolingual Critical Thinking excerpts from evidence provided by Mǐ Tù (米兔), a doctoral student from Zhōngguó, provide insights into the processes by which she made sense of critical thinking in Yīngwén and Zhōngwén (中文, also known as Mandarin). Sounding like ‘me too’, Mǐ Tù is a pseudonym for an international doctoral student from Zhōngguó who completed her doctoral thesis in an Australian university. Among the netizens actively involved in online internet communities in Zhōngguó, Mǐ Tù is symbolised by a rabbit wearing a red scarf, and a cap bearing a red star. Her evidence indicates the links she made between her languages and the knowledge they provided her access to; how she constructed what was happening in this field, and the reasons for her particular views. Mǐ Tù’s account of supervisors’ monolingual mindsets indicates their presuppositions, ambivalence and uncertainties, while making visible the position within the debates over the relationship between ‘critical thinking’ and ‘Chinese students’.

It was common for supervisors to say that did not want to grapple with the linguistic diversity of their students, other than to insist that they undertake programs in academic Yīngwén (英文, English) literacy. Others were not interested in the ways in which languages, other than Yīngwén, are involved in the production and dissemination of knowledge. Some said they did not want to engage with other languages because they felt embarrassed at being monolingual speakers. Likewise, a few of those who supervised students investigating the education policy practices governing the uses of Yīngwén medium instruction in Asia and Africa insisted on linguistic separatism. Several insisted that, because they used intercultural pedagogies with what they called ‘culturally and linguistically diverse students’. On the one hand, they claimed to engage with their students’ cultural diversity by acculturating them into Western knowledge, especially research practices and the operating systems of their university. On the other hand, they did not see this as meaning they had to engage with their students’ languages and the knowledge these provide access to. More than a few insisted that their intercultural supervision did not extend to allowing or enabling their students to foreground the role of languages in the knowledge they used in, or produced, their investigations. While several sanctioned their students’ use of theories produced by researchers originally from outside the Euro-American sphere of influence, they insisted that the focus be on theories published in Yīngwén-language texts. At best, they could use Zhōngwén equivalents for theoretical terms in Yīngwén. However, others regarded the introduction of words Zhōngwén into Yīngwén an irrelevant exercise in exotica, rather than foregrounding multilingualism, let alone an invitation to engage in dialogue with new theoretical ideas.

Efforts to speed up this language shift to Yīngwén (英文, English) – and only Yīngwén – are driven by Yīngwén language entry tests, academic Yīngwén literacy re-education programs, Yīngwén-medium instruction and research, and Yīngwén literacy tests for graduates entering fields such as teaching. These interventions treat structural multilingualism as a temporary disruption caused by particular groups of students – immigrants, refugees, international and Indigenous students. As students complete their degrees in accordance with the demands for Yīngwén language proficiency those who speak these many different languages change each semester. Despite the press for Yīngwén-only monolingualism, structural multilingualism will persist in universities for as long as these governments grow academic capitalism through recruiting international students, and intellectual labour who speak a diversity of languages. Universities in these countries are at a marked disadvantage in terms of the challenges they have long confronted in educating international students with multilingual capabilities (Pinder, 2005; Sowden, 2005). However, education that adds value to their multilingual capabilities remains inaccessible to these students due to these institutions’ investment in Yīngwén-only monolingualism (Preece & Martin, 2009).

Each year, for the more than five million international students, the most popular destinations, particularly for those from Zhōngguó (中国, also known as China) are multilingual countries such as Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US. The multilingual cities in these countries mean that overseas study by many international students makes the daily use of their multilingual capabilities possible (Benson, Chappell, & Yates, 2018). Moreover, because international students have the substantive freedom to do so, they employ their full repertoire of languages and knowledge to pursue their everyday functionings through using the multilingual resources available via their social media networks (Solmaz, 2018). Nations such as Zhōngguó are dramatically increasing the internationalisation of their higher education system to make substantial advances in producing original knowledge (Bao, Kehm, & Ma, 2018; Gao & Zheng, 2019; Zhu, Cai, Shen, & François, 2017).

Through government investment in knowledge production, and dissemination, Zhōngguó is improving its multilingual preparedness in doctoral education and research (Lin & Deng, 2018). The research productivity, and impact of scholars in Zhōngguó, and those from there who are working overseas, is well-developed in the natural sciences, and is improving in the social sciences (Lou, Wang, & Yang, 2018). Not surprisingly, Zhōngwén (中文, also known as Mandarin) is becoming increasingly important in international knowledge production and dissemination. Internationally, the direction of research is being influenced as a result of the way Zhōngguó deploys its investment in research now that it has achieved a comparative advantage in knowledge production (Taylor & Cantwell, 2015; Xie & Freeman, 2019). Of greater significance for universities that recruit students from Zhōngguó, is the power of these students to influence disciplinary fields they are studying, especially those undertaking research-driven knowledge production and dissemination. These universities are unlikely to be able continue marginalising these students’ repertoire of knowledge-and-languages, given that Zhōngguó is a knowledge producing superpower (Pells, 2018; Tollefson, 2018; Xie, Zhang, & Lai, 2014).

Recognising that structural multilingualism and Yīngwén-only monolingualism exist in tension as a consequence of conditions created by the economic policies of governments across these different nations, Postmonolingual Critical Thinking investigates ways of internationalising higher education through capitalising on students’ languages and knowledge. How might universities throughout the popular study destinations for students from Zhōngguó prioritise, negotiate and reward students’ uses of their multilingual capabilities in knowledge production, and dissemination when they privilege Yīngwén-medium instruction and research? How might educators do likewise when they do not speak, and cannot access knowledge in any of their students’ languages? How might international students use their repertoire of languages and knowledge to express, and to give meaning to critical thinking when they have elected to study in these universities to improve their Yīngwén language proficiency?

Bringing postmonolingual critical thinking into focus

Among the intellectual resources used by researchers and doctoral students in the production and dissemination of advances in knowledge are their languages. Thesis examiners, peer reviewers and research grant funding agencies carefully control the languages used in research. They police theses for the clarity of expression, they check the accuracy of definitions given in journal articles, they test the rigour of reasoning for a given research methodology against its application, and they demand respect for selected bibliographic conventions (Maingueneau, 2015). However, to validate and legitimise their knowledge claims, researchers work within communities that use oral languages for conferences, debates, seminars, symposia and workshops. Written languages are used for scholarly books, chapters, conference papers, dissertations and theses, edited works, journal articles, project reports, research manuals and research proposals. Research is always funded, organised, performed, disseminated, translated, interpreted, applied and taught in one or more spoken and written languages (Cormier, 2018; Edmonds-Wathen, 2019). Representing students’ uses of their repertoire of languages and knowledge in their education, and research makes their multilingual capabilities explicit.

How is the necessary work of translation approached through postmonolingual critical thinking? Here the concept of postmonolingual critical thinking is explored in Zhōngwén, albeit in ways that preserve the disruptive effects of translating this concept from one language into another la...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Author note
• 1 Multilingual/monolingual tensions
• 2 Thinking critically about assumptions in the literature
• 3 Presuppositions about postmonolingual critical thinking
• 4 Pedagogically engaging students’ prior critical thinking
• 5 Students’ rules for postmonolingual critical thinking
• 6 Reconstructing postmonolingual critical thinking through popular culture
• 7 Open-ended postmonolingual critical thinking about the business of education
• 8 Intercultural self-confidence through postmonolingual critical thinking
• 9 Lessons in postmonolingual critical thinking
• Index