Multilingual Perspectives from Europe and Beyond on Language Policy and Practice

Bruna Di Sabato, Bronwen Hughes, Bruna Di Sabato, Bronwen Hughes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032073408
• eBook ISBN: 9781000437799
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This edited volume offers an overarching, yet detailed view of fast-changing language policy and practice in Europe and beyond. It provides a thorough investigation of different linguacultural scenarios, exploring how language policy has repercussions on research and initiatives in the field of language education.

With contributions from a range of European settings as well as Turkey and the USA, the book discusses topical issues related to language learning and explores how these can shape our identities. Chapters present cutting-edge research on translanguaging, English Medium Instruction, multilingualism and minority languages in Europe. The volume forecasts what future educational policies might look like, and questions how evaluating and rethinking educational practices can produce positive effects on language practices as well as language policies.

The book has a wide-reaching international focus and will be an important resource for researchers, academics, language experts and postgraduate students in the fields of applied linguistics, language education and sociolinguistics.

Part I Ouverture

Preface

Bruna Di Sabato

Università di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa

Bronwen Hughes

Università di Napoli Parthenope

DOI: 10.4324/9780429351075-2

What has happened to us as a global family, since the beginning of 2020, is the actualisation of one of the worst fears ever to be inflicted upon humanity. Powerless in the face of a worldwide pandemic, whose rapid escalation was hitherto relegated to the realms of science fiction literature, we experienced life as a form of protracted limbo, well aware that the normalcy we once enjoyed might never be recovered. And this applies to everyone, in all walks of life. Whatever segment of society we belong to, whatever our profession, our hobbies, our relationships, no aspect of our lives has been left unscathed and we have been forced to adapt to new life circumstances while striving to find that elusive silver lining.

Besides the inevitable upheaval in their personal lives, as university lecturers, the editors of this volume have both experienced the move from face-to-face teaching to online instruction. In terms of technological know-how and innovative distance learning tools and styles, we have learnt a lot, but, as is often the case, we only became aware of some of our ‘losses’ after they had gone. Therefore, rather than referring in these opening lines to the much-debated cognitive loss distance learning may occasion, we would rather start out by mentioning those things once considered futile, such as the hustle and bustle of a classroom at the beginning of a lesson, the easy jokes shared with our students, but also the direct eye-contact which enabled us to gauge not only their mood, but also any confusion or perplexity without the need for questions and the risk of ensuing embarrassment. We have also missed our social and professional encounters with colleagues, the opportunity to thrash out extemporary problems or ideas in the corridor, between classes, without the distance and time lapse inherent to online communication. To such losses, as teaching professionals in any corner and educational context of the world, we must add the difficulties of the academic community. Though the web has allowed for synchronic research, we have missed face-to-face exchanges with the community, those occasions of direct confrontation which help mould inspiration into consistent and significant research paths. Last but not least these professional changes combine with our loss in terms of social contact – those affective encounters which fuel our brain and soul.

The year 2020 will doubtless be remembered as the year of the pandemic, but also as the year of major antiracist protests spreading from the USA across the world, just one of the many political protests in favour of freedom, equality and inclusivity. While the common fight against the virus absorbs our attention, multiple forms of reality keep breaking through. Fear of the virus does not prevent desperate people from undertaking perilous journeys towards foreign shores to escape famine and violence. In the wealthier western scenario, intersectional tensions persist, generating protests and disorders. Whatever direction future changes may take, they will be enriched by the migratory flows towards wealthier and more peaceful areas of the world, because where migrant communities settle, different social norms, cultural habits and language variations and varieties will emerge and take root.

The terms ‘foreigner’, ‘stranger’, ‘immigrant’, ‘migrant’ and ‘displaced person’ occur frequently in discourses related to the global scenario when referring to people we recognise as somewhat unfamiliar, and all of these words and phrases encapsulate more than their literal meaning – political connotations lie behind each and every alternative. Such labels may change their implications or become less frequent, other alternatives may step in when referring to the social landscape of the future, but our world will always be inhabited and enriched by ‘different people’. Although we use this expression because we tangibly perceive such differences, the concept remains tricky – different compared to what? Compared to whom? Is diversity an objective and static condition? Can the term express an immutable meaning? Of course, the answer is ‘no’: when we refer to nationality and/or ethnicity, all those factors which bring us to classify someone as like us or diverse from us somehow shrink. To these characteristics we must add differences in cultural habits, race, religion, but also gender, sex, sexuality, physical appearance… Diversity and/or otherness are such pervasive conditions of today’s society that we need a different concept to qualify them – that of ‘superdiversity’ – to describe the social changes we are currently experiencing and the ones which may occur in the hopefully Covid-free near future. We extend the concept originally proposed by Vertovec 2007 to refer to population diversities related to migratory phenomena to all the possible diversities listed above.

Despite the grim scenario described so far, we do, however, also feel optimistic because, while both physical and institutional barriers have been raised between countries to fight the spread of the virus, the media has contributed to make us aware that we are closer than it may seem, and that what is happening in communities far removed from us must now be our concern, even more so than in the past. In much the same way as confines, laws, regulations and human measures have never stopped the migratory waves flowing across our borders, they have never halted linguistic and cultural exchanges, even in apparently closed communities. The Covid-19 pandemic may be seen as a metaphor for all this: physical proximity is currently being avoided, travelling away from home is being discouraged, yet communication among different countries has never been so vital and necessary. To move ahead successfully we need to share information, experiences, ideas and solutions, and all this implies an effort to find ways of understanding each other that go above and beyond mere linguacultural differences.

It is still too early to imagine our post-lapsarian future but not too early to realise that our conception of human diversity must soon change. We have no certainty about the future, but are confident that the crucial importance of mutual understanding and cooperation foregrounded by this experience will not be forgotten. Any form of ‘difference’ is expressed through language, through the words we employ to communicate our vision of ourselves and of the other. That is why new ‘transversal’ forms of communication are being sought out, recognised and investigated. Language education must adapt to a superdiverse world and, in turn, stakeholders must devise policies to foster multilingualism and language education more prominently in their agendas. The contributions to this volume all embrace a multilingual perspective, one from which language studies and language education needs to be investigated today.

The opening lines of this volume are therefore devoted to our contributors who, despite facing numerous setbacks and difficulties in their personal and professional lives, have been willing to participate in this project and have all produced original, ground-breaking studies that serve to frame the current scenario and shape perspectives on language policy and practice. Once the pandemic is over, the language learning scenario may well undergo a seismic shift; in that case this volume will serve to trace and track the sociocultural humus at the root of future changes.

References

1. Vertovec, S. (2007) ‘Super-diversity and its implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6): 1024–1054.

1 Multilingual perspectives from Europe and beyond on language policy and practice

Picking up the threads

Bruna Di Sabato

Università di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa

Bronwen Hughes

Università di Napoli Parthenope

DOI: 10.4324/9780429351075-3

Premise

Today, the idea of languages as divisory structures impeding contact between cultures or within cultures is, or indeed should be, a thing of the past. Language education in an instructional context no longer concerns the narrow field of lexical, grammatical, syntactic elements pertaining to one single dominant language, but embraces pluralistic linguistic and cultural aspects stretching across all languages and disciplinary fields.

Indeed, the rise of break-away independence movements on the one hand, the upsurge of nationalistic and protectionist attitudes on the other; the need to protect the cultural and linguistic diversity of the less powerful and less numerous communities, and the often precarious equilibrium generated by supranational migratory flows have led to the continuous re-evaluation of language policies aiming to foster integration and inclusion through forward-looking social and academic programmes.

These are the considerations from which this project took shape when such covidious times were far removed from our imagination. In this first chapter the focus is on multilingualism as the common thread that binds the different responses from current research in the field of language education. We feel such a thread is still recognisable in spite of all the disruptive recent events which have, of course, produced crucial changes in language practice. We are also aware that some relevant issues are gaining prominence and terrain though they have not been considered in this volume. We will recall them at the end of the chapter as the possible agenda for future studies. Although it is impossible to describe all the different aspects of multilingualism that academic research has been investigating in recent years, in this introductory chapter we will set the scene by mentioning some of them in order to offer a number of thought-provoking perspectives on multilingual education. We will conclude by critically introducing the studies presented throughout the volume.

Multilingualism

‘Multilingualism is languages crossing the boundaries of nations’ (Maher 2017: 1). We borrow this definition to introduce the concept because we love the idea of multilingualism as a superpower stepping across boundaries and breaking down confines. A greater effort is necessary, however, to fine-tune the current vision of multilingualism and multilingual education as the concept is multifaceted with many possible socio-historical as well as disciplinary and ideological perspectives (for a thought-provoking survey of the different meanings of multilingualism see Coulmas 2018, in particular §2). Our chosen standpoint regards language education and its interrelations with the sociology of language; therefore both ‘societal multilingualism’, i.e. a social trait of a community within which more than one language is used to communicate, and ‘individual multilingualism’, i.e. the individual’s ability to use more than one language ‘separately or mixed, with varying degrees of competence’ (Maher 2017: 3). Individual multilingualism is also often referred to as plurilingualism, but to avoid any form of terminological confusion, we have opted to employ multilingualism to describe both societal situations and individual abilities. In relation to multilingual competence, the official documents published by the European Union also move in this direction, mainly to avoid difficulties deriving from a lack of equivalence between languages other than English and French (see The Council of the European Union 2018: §2).

Turning to multilingual education, this sub-thread running through many of the chapters in the volume, is again vague. Many different variables can determine the use of more than one language in education – such as the languages involved and their official status, their use in and out of the school environment, the factors involved in the educational process (Cenoz and Gorter 2015).

A multilingual classroom may be loosely defined as ‘one in which there are students who know and use two or more languages in their home or community. It is also one where students are expected to learn two or more languages’ (Heugh et al. 2019: 11). Indeed, a crucial difference must be foregrounded between being multilingual and becoming multilingual, both conditions are represented by multilingual education as ‘two ends of a continuum that also allows for intermediate positions’ (Cenoz and Gorter 2015: 9).

Different perspectives for different realities, then. Starting from Europe, research and policies in the field of language education in the European context have been mutually enriching thanks to the work European institutions have promoted over the last fifty years. Languages have always been a pivotal element upon which the institutions belonging to the European Union and the Council of Europe have invested with new projects, policies and initiatives; intercultural dialogue and professional development being the two main objectives. To mention but a few decisive actions, the 2018 Council key competences update lists multilingualism as one of the eight competences for lifelong learning (The Council of the European Union 2018). The Council Recommendation of 22 May 2019 on a comprehensive approach to the teaching and learning of languages, recalls previous pronouncements recommending once again that Member States:

Explore ways to help all young people to acquire before the end of upper secondary education and training – in addition to the languages of schooling – where possible, a competence level in at least one other European language which allows them to use the language effectively for social, learning and professional purposes, and to encourage the acquisition of an additional (third) language to a level which allows them to interact with a degree of fluency.

(The Council of the European Union 2019)

This recommendation is in line with the prospective European Education Area 2025 in which ‘in addition to one’s mother tongue, speaking two other languages has become the norm’ (European Commission 2017). The objective is further recalled in the 2020 European Commission Communication on achieving the European Education Area by 2025: the document stresses the importance of language awareness previously expressed in the 2019 Council Recommendation, announcing that support will be granted to Member States in order to promote ‘language aware schools’ and to strengthen proficiency in the language of schooling, thus underlining once more the multilingual component of European schools with pupils from diverse linguacultural backgrounds.

Multilingualism in Europe is also perceived as an issue which must be handled with care because of the many political and ideological implications it retains when referring to languages which, for instance, coexist in the same territory and/or that are endangered by the prevailing use of the national language. In our European home we aim to grant equal instruction to all and multilingualism is currently recognised as one of the key factors to achieve this objective.

From a Eurocentric and Western perspective, none of us knows only one language; we are all multilingual since at school we studied at least one foreign language, namely English, in those EU countries where English is not the first language (on the predominance of English as the main foreign language taught in Europe see Di Sabato and Kirkpatrick forthcoming; Mezzadri 2016). We do not generally possess a proficient use of more than one (maybe two languages) apart from our mother tongue but by resorting to our linguistic, non-verbal and gestural resources, by mixing language items and switching from one language to another, we are able to communicate across many diverse communities of speakers. Nowadays, we speak of translanguaging when describing such practices, typical of ever more forms of world contact.

Language education thus leaves the narrow setting of the canonical ‘foreign language class’ to embrace different languages and disciplinary domains. Such an expansion calls for innovative pedagogical practices characterised by the recognition of all the languages present in the school context as being part of the individual linguistic patrimony of the learner: such practices are differently acknowledged in extra-European contexts and the rationale behind the choices adopted deserves attention because the different perspectives and experiences may be mutually enriching. We will return to this point later but research studies in the field of multilingualism and related practices such as translanguaging, share the view of language i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Notes on the contributors
• Acknowledgments
• Part I Ouverture
• Part II The chapters
• Index