The Many Faces of Multilingualism

Language Status, Learning and Use Across Contexts

Piotr Romanowski, Martin Guardado, Piotr Romanowski, Martin Guardado

• Éditeur: De Gruyter Mouton
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781501514517
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Languages & Linguistics
• Sous-sujet: Linguistics

Multilingualism has become an increasingly common global phenomenon especially in the last two decades. Therefore, multilingual programmes have now been regarded as a cornerstone of education systems in many countries around the world. Learning multiple languages helps us plug into a globalised world and strengthen links with a multitude of speakers from a diversified reality we live in. Thanks to the researched cases described in the chapters, further developments aimed at fostering multilingual practices in the contemporary world will be enhanced. The chapters included in the present volume, provide an overview of current theory, research and practice in the field. They deal with such prominent research topics as multilingual education, language policies, language contact, identity of multilingual speakers, to name only a few. The selected chapters focus on the numerous and heterogeneous relations between languages. They also incorporate a series of contextualized studies with diverse research designs applied in different settings across the globe. This volume constitutes a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on multilingualism from twelve different countries. It is a thought-provoking collection that provides a series of rich insights into the way multilingualism is practised in international contexts. It is ideally designed for academics, upper-level students, educators, professionals and practitioners seeking linguistic and pedagogical guidance on multilingualism.

Chapter 1 Introduction: The Many Faces of Multilingualism

Piotr Romanowski

Multilingualism is a complex phenomenon that can be studied from different perspectives in disciplines such as linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics and education to name but a few from a wide array of fields (Cenoz 2013). As much as multilingualism is a common phenomenon globally, there is a lot of divergence in defining the concept. The unifying focus in research is an interest in individuals and communities that use a number of languages (Aronin and Hufeisen 2004). There are many definitions of multilingualism. For example, Li Wei (2008) defined a multilingual individual as “anyone who can communicate in more than one language, be it active (through speaking and writing) or passive (through listening and reading). The European Commission (2007: 6) has provided a well-known definition of multilingualism: “the ability of societies, institutions, groups and individuals to engage, on a regular basis, with more than one language in their day-to-day lives”.

A multilingual is a person who has the ability to use three or more languages, either separately or in various degrees of code-mixing. Those languages are used for various purposes, competence in each varying according to such factors as register, occupation, and education. Multilinguals may not have equal proficiency in or control over all the languages they know (Kemp 2004). The term ‘plurilingual’ is also applied by some researchers, including the Francophone tradition, to indicate individual as opposed to societal multilingualism (Aronin and Ó Laoire 2004). Plurilingualism is not in every aspect different from multilingualism. It needs to be stated that plurilingualism is first and foremost a term that describes sociolinguistic phenomena in contact situations, where people use two, three or more languages in interactions, as does multilingualism (Marshall and Moore 2016). Perhaps the most notable key point of distinction found in the literature between the pluri and the multi centres on notions of the social and the individual. Accordingly, we can consider multilingualism (the study of societal contact) and plurilingualism (the study of individuals’ repertoires and language agency) (Beacco and Byram 2007, Gajo 2014, Moore and Gajo 2009).

Research in multilingualism has had an important boost recently and it is one of the most intensely investigated areas of applied linguistics today due to academic interest in globalization and multilingual work environments (Lüdi, Höchle Meier and Yanaprasart 2016; Meyer and Apfelbaum 2010). The ubiquity of multilingualism in private and public interaction is unprecedented worldwide. At the individual level, some of the most researched areas are: the cognitive outcomes of multilingualism (Schwieter 2016); the relationship between language and thought in multilingual speakers (Bylund and Athanasopoulos 2014); multilingual language processing (Bikel and Zitouni 2012); and cross-linguistic interaction in the multilingual brain (Cenoz, Hufeisen and Jessner 2001; Gabryś-Barker 2012; De Angelis, Jessner and Kresic 2015). At the societal level, multilingualism has been examined in relation to globalisation, human mobility, education, and the effect of new communication techniques. Some of the most relevant areas are: multilingualism as a social construct (Fishman 1991[2014]; Stavans and Hoffman 2015); multilingual identities (Pavlenko and Blackledge 2004; Block 2006; Blackwood, Lanza and Woldemariam 2016); multilingual practices (Li Wei and Zhu Hua 2013; Lanza and Lexander 2019) and multilingualism (Grucza, Olpińska-Szkiełko and Romanowski 2016); multilingual education (Gorter, Zenotz and Cenoz 2013; Otwinowska and De Angelis 2014; Garcia, Lin and May 2017; Romanowski and Jedynak 2018), multimodality (De Saint-Georges and Weber 2013) and new technologies (Kelly-Holmes and Milani 2013; Deumart 2014).

There exist almost 7,000 languages in the world and about 200 independent countries (Lewis 2009). It is not only that there are more languages than countries but also that the number of speakers of different languages is unevenly distributed, meaning that speakers of smaller languages need to speak other languages in their daily lives. Multilinguals can be speakers of a minority indigenous language (e.g., Navajo in the United States, Maori in New Zealand, or Welsh in the United Kingdom) who need to learn the dominant language. In other cases, multilingual speakers are immigrants who speak their first language(s) as well as the language(s) of their host countries. In some cases, languages are learned as they spread internationally, and it is believed that they open doors to economic and social opportunity. This is currently the case with English, which is the most widespread language, and it is very common as a school subject and as a language of instruction in schools and universities worldwide (see, e.g., Kirkpatrick and Sussex 2012). Several factors, as indicated earlier, have contributed to the current visibility of multilingualism – among them, globalisation, transnational mobility, and the spread of new technologies are highly influential in different political, social, and educational contexts. In the 21^st century, the internet facilitates multilingual communication across great distances, both synchronously and asynchronously. Multilingual communication is multimodal and instantaneous in a variety of modalities. At the same time, globalisation has increased the value of both: societal and individual multilingualism. Speaking different languages has an added value. As Edwards (2004) pointed out, speaking English can be necessary, “but the ability to speak other languages nonetheless ensures a competitive edge”. Given its growing importance in modern society, multilingualism has increasingly attracted attention in applied linguistics as can be seen from the titles of articles, books, and academic conferences using the term multilingualism.

The aim of this volume is to showcase diverse perspectives and methodologies in the research on multilingualism. The book presents a range of perspectives and methods including qualitative, quantitative, critical and textual approaches–all within the area of societal and individual multilingualism. It also seeks to promote interdisciplinary research which connects various areas of investigation. We invited manuscripts from diverse research perspectives and language communities so as to provide rich insight into the phenomena of multilingualism and multilingual education. Hence, the disciplinary spectrum represented here includes linguistics, applied linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and education. The chapters’ discussions are anchored in the literature on early bi-/multilingualism, bi-/multilingual language development, education, competencies, literacy, identity, communities, work environments, later-learned additional languages, language maintenance and attrition.

The discussion of the different cases can provide useful examples of how multilingualism functions across diverse contexts and how multilingual education has been successfully implemented. The study of multilingualism as reported in the 11 chapters of the volume demonstrates the intersection of the social and individual perspectives as multilingualism is taught and enacted in educational settings around the world. Of major significance are the many diverse concepts defined and thoroughly discussed across the pages of the present volume, i.e. minority, language contact, code alternation, multilingual identity, interlingual education, translanguaging, etc. A minority is to be understood as a group numerically inferior to the rest of the population of a particular country, which is in a non-dominant position, and whose members, although being nationals of the country, possess ethnic, religious or linguistic characteristics differing from those of the rest of the population (Capotorti 1979). In various settings minority and majority languages come to contact. Language contact is the social and linguistic phenomenon by which speakers of different languages interact with one another, leading to a transfer of linguistic features. Two languages or codes can come to contact by means of code alternation, too. Code alternation describes the alternating use of two recognisable grammatical systems (Muysken 1997). Yet one might think that there is no difference between code alternation and code-switching. However, these are two different ways of thinking about language output, where the first relates more to the grammatical form and the second to the communicative function. Both concepts seem to exist in multilingual speakers, or speakers who have constructed the so-called multilingual identity. This notion describes speakers who have developed an awareness of their own linguistic repertoire. Multilingual identity formation can be viewed in terms of learners’ active involvement in the language learning process who can constantly (re)negotiate their own identity, both in and out the classroom (Fisher et al. 2018). The term of interlingual education is somehow related to the issue of multilingual identity formation. It is defined as the social process of facilitating the building of knowledge, competences and values through the active use of several languages in the learning process (Yamamoto 2001). Finally yet importantly, translanguaging frequently observed in interlingual education, having a clear pedagogical dimension – sometimes questioned and viewed as a re-conceptualisation of code-switching or code alternation – shaping a multilingual speaker’s identity and being part of their life, referring to both majority (prestigious) and minority languages, hence affecting language contact (Garcia and Li Wei 2014).

As such, this volume, composed of eleven chapters, has been divided into two thematic parts. The first part, “(Socio) Linguistic Aspects of Multilingualism”, is devoted to the role of heritage and minority languages as well language contact and language policies. It consists of five chapters where each one of them has clear theoretical grounds and is supported by detailed examinations of the evidence. The blending of the voices outlined by the contributors are grounded in experience in different geographical regions allowing the reader to see how multilingual themes are tackled in Poland, Brazil, Canada, Japan, and Germany. The second part: “Pedagogical Aspects of Multilingualism” focuses on a series of contextualised studies related to multilingual classrooms with diverse research designs applied in different educational settings, such as: Spain, Poland, Latvia, ...