Current Multilingualism: A New Linguistic Dispensation 9781614512813, 9781614513896

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David Singleton, Joshua A. Fishman, Larissa Aronin, Muiris Ó Laoire (Eds.) Current Multilingualism

Contributions to the Sociology of Language

Edited by Joshua A. Fishman Ofelia Garcia

Volume 102

Current Multilingualism A New Linguistic Dispensation

Edited by David Singleton Joshua A. Fishman Larissa Aronin Muiris Ó Laoire

ISBN 978-1-61451-389-6 e-ISBN 978-1-61451-281-3 ISSN 1861-0676 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. 6 2013 Walter de Gruyter, Inc., Boston/Berlin Cover image: sculpies/shutterstock Typesetting: RoyalStandard, Hong Kong Printing and binding: Hubert & Co. GmbH & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Table of contents Introduction Larissa Aronin, Joshua Fishman, David Singleton and Muiris Ó Laoire 1 Current multilingualism: A new linguistic dispensation

I

Language teaching and language learning

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Vivian Cook Global English: Central or Atypical Form of SLA?

27

2

Sandro Caruana and David Lasagabaster Faraway, so close: Trilingualism in the Basque Autonomous Community and Malta from a socio-educational perspective 45

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John Harris and Jim Cummins Issues in all-Irish education: Strengthening the case for comparative immersion 69

4

Ofelia García Informal bilingual acquisition: Dynamic spaces for language education 99

II

Social aspects of current multilingualism

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David Singleton, Larissa Aronin and Lorna Carson Minority language use in Ireland: The time dimension

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7

8

121

Guus Extra Mapping increasing linguistic diversity in multicultural Europe and abroad 139 Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović Multilingual attitudes and attitudes to multilingualism in Croatia Norbert Dittmar and Paul Steckbauer Emerging and conflicting forces of polyphony in the Berlin speech community after the fall of the wall: On the social identity of adolescents 187

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Table of contents

Moha Ennaji Multilingualism in Morocco and the linguistic features of the Casablanca variety 231

Camilla Bardel, Ylva Falk and Christina Lindqvist 10 Multilingualism in Sweden 247

III

Language Policy

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Joshua Fishman Language planning for a decimated and often forgotten non-territorial tongue 273

Tjeerd de Graaf 12 Endangered languages and endangered archives in the Russian Federation 279 Renate Kärchner-Ober 13 Linguistic quandary in multilingual Malaysia: Socio-political issues, language policy, educational changes 297 Vasiliki Georgiou 14 Managing language diversity in the Irish health services

317

Kathleen Heugh 15 Slipping between policy and management: (De)centralized responses to linguistic diversity in Ethiopia and South Africa 339 Index

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Introduction

Larissa Aronin, Joshua Fishman, David Singleton, and Muiris Ó Laoire

Current multilingualism: A new linguistic dispensation Abstract: This volume aims to bring some tangible concreteness to the theoretical concept of current multilingualism. The thesis of this book can be briefly expressed as follows: current multilingualism, although overlapping in very many respects with the multilingual arrangements of the past, represents an emergent and special linguistico-social global condition which we have branded ‘a new linguistic dispensation’. We explore here the major trends that underlie and breed multilingualism, focusing on the quintessential and unique properties of current multilingualism (as opposed to the multilingualism of the past).

Historical versus current multilingualism The current sociolinguistic global situation is very obviously vastly different from the way it was in the past. Hence our advocacy elsewhere (e.g. Aronin and Singleton 2008a, 2012) of the notion that contemporary multilingualism is distinct and differentiable from ‘historical multilingualism’. By ‘contemporary’ times we refer principally to the period starting at the end of World War Two – what sociologists and philosophers call the post-modern or globalization era – although we note that changes that became so evident at as the 20th century progressed are known to have got under way 150–200 years ago (Fishman 2006: 10). Multilingualism has existed from the earliest stages of human development. Long before the times referred to in the story of the Tower of Babel, myriad languages were already in use, encountering each other and competing with each other wherever cultures intersected. Clearly, all previous epochs bear witness to peoples and communities using multiple languages (see for example, Braunmüller 2007, Rindler-Schjerve & Vetter 2007, Braunmüller & Ferraresi 2003, Trotter 2000, Léglu 2010). Our claim, though, is that in noticeable and nonnegligible respects contemporary multilingualism is different from the multilingualism of the past. Our view is that, like many other characteristics of human society that have existed down through the centuries, multilingualism has undergone some important changes. We base our distinction on the premise that the fact of peoples and groups of people using multiple languages in the past did not per se imply a multi-

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lingual society, any more than the existence of slaves in the modern world means that we live in an age of slavery. Current multilingualism is, of course, comparable to historical multilingualism – in the sense that with regard to present times, as with regard to earlier times, we can identify multilingual individuals and multilingual areas; but our contention is that multilingualism has undergone an essential restructuring deriving from the evolution of its societal role. The crucial difference between current and ‘historical’ multilingualism lies in the degree to which multilingualism is or was integral to the construction of a specific social reality. Multilingualism has developed to a stage where it is no longer just one of the characteristics of human society; it has become an inherent and, arguably, in many ways, the most salient property of post-modern human society as a whole and of large numbers of specific communities, whatever their size. Even in locations where multilingualism has been in place for hundreds, nay, thousands of years, traditional patterns of multilingualism now rest on a different societal basis, even where superficially the same languages (or their descendants) continue to be used in the same territories. The distinctiveness of current multilingualism relative to ‘historical multilingualism’ lies in the degree to which at present virtually every facet of human life depends on multilingual social arrangements and multilingual individuals, whether directly or indirectly. Whereas vital societal processes and prominent characteristics of contemporary society are inseparably linked to multilingualism, ‘historical’ multilingualism was largely supplementary to the development and maintenance of previous societies. This crucial distinction between the current and ‘historical’ multilingualism is supplemented by numerous distinctions of extent, that is, differences in the extent to which various multilingualism in contemporary society is restricted to particular media of communication, to particular spatio-temporal aspects of linguistic interaction, to particular professions and classes, to particular kinds of contiguity, and/or to particular ritual situations (see further discussion in Aronin and Singleton 2008a).

The new linguistic dispensation Recent shifts in the language/society interface have been widely noted and discussed by educators, by sociologists and by researchers into globalization. In the relevant literature the application of the notion of a ‘new linguistic order’ to these recent shifts is entirely justified by the facts (Fishman 1998; Maurais, 2003). Joshua Fishman identified and defined the global linguistic changes in question in the article to which he in fact gave the title ‘The new linguistic order’:

Introduction

5

The globalisation phenomenon that we are currently seeing has lead to major linguistic changes on a worldwide scale. English has become the leading international language, in economic and political spheres, and is becoming the language of high society and of the young. At the same time, however, regional languages are also making considerable headway, thanks to new social interaction and economic backing from their governments. (Fishman 1998, abstract)

Beyond the confines of the sociology of language, the term world order is used predominantly in political science, where it is defined as ‘patterned human activities, interaction regularities or practices evident on a world scale’ which ‘have both motivating or dispositional elements, environmental-geographic contexts, and associated outcomes and effects’ and are ‘multidimensional’ and ‘dynamic’ (Alker et al. 2001). Such regularities are seen as affecting units of various kinds (nations, firms, parties, interest groups, class or status groups, armies, churches, communities, etc.) and as involving conscious and unconscious relationships between units and/or with social and natural environments. Bull (1977: 20–2, 67–71, 97; see also Bull and Watson 1984) defines world order as ‘those patterns or dispositions of human activity that [achieve and] sustain the elementary or primary goals of social life among mankind as a whole.’ It is evident that current multilingualism fits the above sociological definition of a world order perfectly. To be noted, however, is that, because of the association of world order with particular kinds of sinister political ideologies and regimes, in recent work, we have replaced the expression new linguistic world order with new linguistic dispensation (Aronin and Singleton 2008a, 2012). In relation to the present discussion of the scope and significance of current global language dispensation, the reiterating patterns of current multilingualism are discernible in a range of indisputable pertinent facts extending to all parts of the world. They are especially discernible in the fact that in modern times language patterns have changed so significantly that sets of languages, rather than single languages, now often perform the essential functions of communication, cognition and identity marking for individuals and communities (Aronin 2005). In the present volume the patterned regular activities, interactions, environments, relationships and dispositions of multilingualism are shown as having few general limitations regarding geography or societal type, as the contributions relating to Europe, the USA, Asia and Africa demonstrate. But alongside the fact of their existing in a wide variety of contexts, these patterned regular activities and relationships which characterize multilingualism are shown to have particular characteristics in each context and to develop in a specific manner in each context according to the interplay of a myriad of factors. The substantial and influential contributions offered by Joshua Fishman over many years in this connection bring to our consideration the complexity, nuances, and contrasts of sociolinguistic situations in various parts of the world (see e.g.

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Hornberger & Pütz 2006, Garcia, Peltz & Schiffman 2006, and the comprehensive bibliography in Fishman, G.S 2012). The niched and global-local character of the contemporary sociolinguistic situation also accounts for the undeniable fact that in some localities, up to now, there are pockets of time-spaces where a state of monolingualism still obtains, so that we cannot speak even of bilingualism, never mind multilingualism. Publications describing specifics of multilingual arrangements in various countries and regions, moreover, clearly illustrate the fact that current multilingualism, as well as exhibiting some global similarities, is marked by characteristics distinguishing it in each setting (see e.g. Pavlenko 2008 on multilingualism in post-Soviet countries, Turell 2001 on multilingualism in Spain, Prah and Brock-Utne 2009 on multilingualism in Africa, Edwards 2004 on multilingualism in the English – speaking world, Ennaji 2005 on multilingualism in Morocco, Garcia & Fishman on multilingualism in New York City, 1997/2002). The contributions to the present volume are very much in line with the above idea, detailing the factors rendering the multilingualism of the described time-space distinct from the others (e.g., the cases of South Africa and Ethiopia in the contribution by Heugh) and discussing which language policies might have ameliorated multilingualism in each particular reality (e.g., the case the multilingual arrangements in Malta versus those in Spain as presented by Caruana and Lasagabaster, and Karchner-Ober’s exposition of the multilingualism of Malaysia evolving from a cluster of geographical, political religious and historical factors. In the context of multilingualism, mobility, diversity and complexity, though distinct phenomena, are tightly knitted together, so that they constantly impact on each other. We do not in any sense claim that this is in itself a new development. What we would say about contemporary multilingualism, however, is that, in our ever smaller world, these phenomena are now more intensely, more multidirectionally and more obviously intertwined with the core activities of the current human situation than ever before – in such a way that it is difficult unambiguously to determine which is the result or cause of which.

Two trends Scholars have identified two major trends in the current global situation regarding language use, which we have characterized in terms of a new linguistic dispensation: 1. an unparalleled spread of the use of English as an international language; and 2. a remarkable diversification of the languages in use.

Introduction

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Fishman (1998: http://www.uoc.edu/humfil/articles/eng/fishman/fishman.html) observes that these two trends are developing simultaneously and appear, at first sight, to be in contradiction with each other. The resultant melee of human activity and social processes include diverse language policies and reactions to them, a range of decisions of individuals and groups on the use, acquisition and promotion of languages, a variety of educational and didactic practices, and a broad spectrum of social situations in glocalized locations. In turn, and as a result of these two trends, there is impetus for feelings of belonging to local communities which see their language as a sign of their own authenticity, one that has to be defended against the phenomena of globalisation and regionalisation. We are thus heading towards a multilingual society, in which each language has its own, distinct social functions, even though it is inevitable that there will be conflict between the languages that come into contact. Fishman (1998, abstract)

The contributions in the present collection each demonstrate either the local or the wider manifestations of the two trends and their interplay. One of the interesting outcomes of the foregoing which emerges very clearly in this volume is the dazzling array of faces, facets and flavours that English assumes in a variety of contexts. The role of English as a global language transcends context – but the particularities of its complexion are peculiar to each time-space, and these are traceable across the locations and histories which figure in the different chapters that follow. Most of the chapters focus on English as part of their central theme; in others English is part of the background against which their main topic is discussed; in any case, English is omnipresent in the work – explicitly or by implication. To be more specific, the volume treats of the circumstances of English in Canada, where it is an official language and a rival of French; in Ireland, where English is the second national language but the dominant language of everyday use; in Malaysia, where English is as rationally understood as needed for global purposes but is not embraced in political and emotional terms; in the USA, where English is perceived as a friend or foe to the multitude of languages of American bilinguals, supporting or hindering bilingual acquisition and use; in Malta, where English and Maltese coexist in what is close to diglossic situation; in Ethiopia and South Africa, where, in both cases, English is one of the important factors influencing language policies and language education. In each of these exemplary contexts English can be seen to have developed its own entirely distinct niche and set of functions. With regard to the diversification of languages in use this very much comes through in the present volume too in the manifold nature of the languages under discussion: majority languages and minority languages, well-established

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languages and endangered languages, languages brought to an area by internal migration and languages brought by migration from afar, languages used by millions and languages used by hundreds. These languages subserve the communities with which they are associated in a variety of configurations. For example, a very specific situation of the minority language Yiddish, is referred to in this volume by Fishman. The linguistic situation of this non-territorial language involves internal rivalry within the Jewish community from Hebrew and external competition from majority languages – English, German, Russian, and to a lesser degree, Polish. The economic, political, cultural and demographic factors, and the fact that Yiddish is an Ausbau language with a close linguistic relationship to German, significantly weaken the chances of this small language surviving (Fishman 1991b, 1996). Further diversification of languages is the inevitable consequence of globalization, which has utterly changed the face of social, cultural and linguistic diversity (Blommaert 2010). The notion of super-diversity introduced by Vertovec (2007) is described as “a tremendous increase in the categories of migrants, not only in terms of nationality, ethnicity, language, and religion, but also in terms of motives, patterns and itineraries of migration, processes of insertion onto the labour and housing markets of the host societies, and so on” (Blommaert and Rampton 2011: 2). The mere fact that so many languages other than English (LOTE) feature so prominently in discussions of multilingual countries and areas – from Yiddish (Fishman) to endangered Arctic languages (de Graaf) – testifies to their perceived importance. In addition to the formidable problem of the preservation and conservation of languages, there are also issues of exactly how and why groups of particular languages relate to particular multilingual contexts. One thinks here, for example, of the developing nature and role of speech varieties in particular segments of populations, such as Rinkeby Swedish, (Bardel, Falk and Lindquist), the Berlin vernacular of Turkish-German young people (Dittmar and Steckbauer) and the Casablanca variety of Moroccan (Ennaji). One also thinks of the language use of immigrants to Ireland, who perform their religious and everyday activities in languages as diverse as Korean, Lingala, Armenian, Georgian, Cantonese, Mandarin and Russian (Singleton, Aronin and Carson). The discussion of languages other than English in the contributions of this volume shows that these languages are frequently juxtaposed with each other and oftentimes operate in opposition to each other – for instance, Amharic versus other languages in Ethiopia, and Afrikaans versus other languages in the South Africa (Heugh). In Africa generally, the international languages of wider communication (French, English, Portuguese, etc.) are seen to jostle for their place and role both with larger, regionally dominant languages and smaller endogenous languages such as Tigrinya, the Nguni and Sotho families

Introduction

9

of languages, and smaller community languages in the Limpopo Provinces of South Africa. In the case of South Africa, and San and Khoe languages, the original languages of the country.

The properties and developmental directions of the new linguistic dispensation In addition to being subject to the intricate interplay of the two above-outlined trends, current multilingualism is characterized by specific qualities: suffusiveness, complexity and liminality. These three qualities (each separately and all together) in turn lead to specific developments: – shifts in norms, – extreme malleability, – the emergence of new issues of importance; – an expansion of affordances and – an ambience of awareness. (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Properties and developmental directions of the current global linguistic dispensation (after Aronin and Singleton 2008b)

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Larissa Aronin, Joshua Fishman, David Singleton, and Muiris Ó Laoire

Suffusiveness The attribute of suffusiveness is manifested in the ways in which multilingualismrelated phenomena pervade so many aspects of our lives. Probably less obvious but deeply significant is the degree to which multilingualism is integral to the construction of contemporary social reality. Contemporary multilingualism is suffusive not only in the sense that it permeates the world in terms of the existence of multilingual populations, multilingual spaces, and activity domains (e.g. business, education, entertainment, science, etc.), but also in the fact that virtually every facet of life in the present era depends on multilingual social arrangements and multilingual individuals. In fact, vital societal processes and salient characteristics of contemporary society are inseparably linked with multilingualism. The volume graphically illustrates the property of suffusiveness, the ubiquity of multilingualism and the high degree of relevance of multilingualism for a wide spectrum of groupings and populations in a variety of settings, niches and social categories. We perhaps need to point out here that the positing of the property of suffusiveness does not imply a claim that multilingualism is evenly spread through all the places in the world to the same extent and forever in the same pattern. As Fishman (1998) says, globalization, regionalization, and localization may all be happening concurrently, but that does not mean that they at the same strengths in different parts of the world at any given time. The various contributions to the volume bring us to time-spaces of differing dimensions and in different domains of activity – for example, to the Korean Church in Dublin, to the dwellings and settlements of indigenous inhabitants of Siberia, to the schools of Canada and Ireland, to specific populations of Casablanca, and to the young people of Berlin and Stockholm. Multilingual settings of a wider scope are addressed in discussion of South Africa, Ethiopia, Malta, Spain, Malaysia and the USA. The great diversity of languages, countries and areas where two and more languages are used, and the seemingly infinite variety of associated relationships and patterning are endlessly fascinating and endlessly surprising. This brings us to the next inherent property of current multilingualism – which accounts for the difficulties it presents to those wishing to study it – namely, complexity.

Complexity The property of complexity can readily be seen in the dynamic, polymorphous nature of current multilingualism, with its many interweaving levels and forms. The recent achievements of complexity thinking, with its concern to avoid reduc-

Introduction

11

tionism, while at the same time being open to the notion of discovering patterns of regularities, leads us to think that it may offer a way forward in coming to grips with the specific character of current multilingualism. García’s contribution, in its treatment of informal bilingual learning, concretely addresses the practices of language education, extending the perspective on language education policy and explicating its dynamism and complexity, inter alia by valuably introducing the concepts of concepts of transglossia and translanguaging. Cook’s analysis of the English language in its different functions and appearances for its part reveals the complex nature of the language and the infinite complexity of interrelations between teaching, learners, language and societally defined goals and needs. Other contributions illuminate educational approaches and pedagogical praxis vis-à-vis multilingual challenges (Caruana and Lasagabaster, Harris and Cummins), as well as the nature of that challenge in given countries or regions at specific periods arising from to the complex intricate interrelationship of social, historical and geographical factors (for example, Extra, Mihaljević–Djigunović, Kärchner-Ober). Complexity interacts with the diversity which is so characteristic of current multilingualism. Diversity is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as “[t]he condition or quality of being diverse, different, or varied; difference, unlikeness”. Linguistic diversity is encountered not only in the context of the co-existence and interpenetration of multiple languages in particular locations, but also in the context of, for example, stylistic differences at an individual level, differences in sociolinguistic affiliation, and differences in terms of language education and language-related professional training. With regard to language teaching, contributions to this volume make very clear that “the condition of being varied” sums up the teaching of languages of every kind and status extremely well. Recent social, social-psychological and legal perspectives on concept of diversity are often characterized by a moral dimension – bearing on attitudes towards race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, age, physical abilities and religious, political or other beliefs (cf. e.g. Leuprecht 2006; Simmons, Wittig & Grant 2010). In such approaches to diversity the spotlight is on the degree of acknowledgment and acceptance of the fact of variety. In the recent (booming) literature on mobility, diversity and complexity – in all disciplines (including multilingualism studies) – this issue has had an increasingly important place. We now recognize that diversity is more than a simple accumulation of different factors. It goes beyond the co-existence of multiple entities or phenomena in a given context – say, learners and languages in a particular class or community in a particular city or country. As well as being seen in terms of multiplicity, diversity also needs to be seen in terms of the interplay of the

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entities and/or phenomena in question, and in terms of the actions and reactions, the mechanisms and the patterns of processes which yield further diversification. According to this insight, diversity is, of its nature, never static. This perception is reflected in the manner in which the terms diversity and dynamism are these days everywhere juxtaposed across a very wide range of disciplines (see e.g. Losos & Leigh 2004; Park & Sung 2004; Raza 2007). In our approach throughout the present volume, therefore, diversity, or rather super-diversity, is not reduced to difference and multiplicity but is assigned the full richness of its value and significance in terms of the interactions and patterns of interactions which it implies. A persuasive explication of the dynamic nature of diversity lies, in turn, in recent perspectives on complexity. Aronin and Singleton have written elsewhere (2010: 2): “[t]hrough the lens of complexity we not only have a clear apperception of the unpredictability of outcomes and the impossibility of exact predictions, but, paradoxically perhaps, we also catch glimpses of patterns of diversity not only in terms of structures but also in terms of process.” Capra, for his part, comments (2005: 37) as follows: Whereas traditionally the study of complexity has been a study of complex structures, the focus is now shifting from the structures to the processes of their emergence.

Obviously relevant to such notions of emergence are the new language varieties mentioned earlier, the emergence of new immersion educational practices described by Harris and Cummins, and the emergence of the novel divisions of the English language users and learners in Cook’s work.

Liminality The degree of acceptance of newly emerged language varieties and the tone of much of the discourse relating to them testify to the shift in norms that is under way. The appearance of new hot issues is another dimension of change in this sphere – a dimension covered by all the contributions in this volume, and exemplified well by Singleton, Aronin and Carson’s chapter, which introduces the notion of time as an active factor in multilingualism, and which also It also illustrates the property of liminality. The term liminality derives from the Latin word for ‘threshold’ – limen. Liminal is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “[o]f or pertaining to the threshold or initial stage of a process”. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “[o]f or relating to a sensory threshold”, “barely perceptible” and “of, relating to, or being an intermediate phase or condition”. Although the term

Introduction

13

liminality is occasionally applied in the literature to linguistic and cultural transitions of individuals (e.g. Quist and Jǿrgensen 2007), in the present context we use liminality to advert to the fact that many processes and phenomena connected with language and languages seem recently to have become discernible or noticeable, the realization of their importance deriving perhaps from the challenge of recent linguistically connected events and developments and patterns. Examples are numerous and come from all areas of multilingualism; the one we cite here is extracted from the Extra’s chapter in the present volume, in which the following point is made: . . . there have always been speakers of immigrant languages in Europe, but these languages have only recently emerged as community languages spoken on a wide scale in urban Europe, due to intensified process of migration and intergenerational minorization. Turkish and Arabic are good examples of so-called ‘non-European’ languages that are spoken and learned by millions of inhabitants of the EU nation states.

The three above-discussed properties of the new linguistic dispensation – Liminality, Suffusiveness, and Complexity, have led to specific developments in this context. These developments further expose the distinction between current multilingualism and “historical multilingualism”. We will here briefly go over the developments that we ourselves have identified, but readily acknowledge that our inventory is likely to be far from exhaustive (1) Shifts in norms. This development is discussed in this volume by Cook. Probably the most celebrated change in norms lies in the way in which the so-called monolingual norm has given way to the multilingual and bilingual norm (Birdsong 2012; Cook, 1992, 1999, 2006; Grosjean 1985, 1992). Thus, the monolingual native English speaker norm is a now a matter of dispute, Cook and others arguing that a non-native English user is a language user in his/her own right, and some commentators contending that the proficient second language user of English is the model to be set before learners. (2) Extreme malleability. The development is illustrated in Graddol’s well-known reports on the English language to the British Council. Less then 10 years passed between the first of these reports (1997) and the second (2006), but the facts, findings and conclusions which feature in the the two documents show striking changes in the situation in relation to languages and the people using them which have taken place in the few years in question. (3) The emergence of the new issues of importance. A number of topics have moved centre-stage in the discussions of recent decades, sometimes taking the place of those previously regarded as important. These include:

14 – – – – – –

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Larissa Aronin, Joshua Fishman, David Singleton, and Muiris Ó Laoire

Tri- and multilingual early development Minority languages; their different kinds and their variety of specific circumstances; education via minority languages Multilingual identity Multilingual education and education of multilinguals Diversity and super-diversity Ways of promoting English, other international languages and minority languages; ways of not promoting one or two of these at the expense of the other(s). Language revitalization and reversing language shift

The identity of the language user features as a widely researched comparatively new topic in current multilingualism studies (Edwards, J. 2010, Riley 2010, Byrd Clark 2009). This topic, perhaps more obviously than other recently emergent discussion topics, signals the link between contemporary multilingualism and changes in global civilization. Formerly, such probing of the slightest motions of the personality, and of connections with the past life of the individual and of previous generations – factual, virtual, and psychological – would have been almost inconceivable. An illustration of this new trend is the work of Todeva and Cenoz (2009), who, looking at the identity of the multilingual, have combined emic and etic perspectives. We have already touched upon another new issue of importance in our reference to diversity and super-diversity. Blommaert’s (2010) Sociolinguistics of Globalization focuses on this dimension and connects it to recent changes in social reality. The author contemplates the challenges of such change in relation to the paradigms of linguistic practices, emphasizing the importance of the way in which globalization, super-diversity, and the mobility of people and resources connect with multilingualism. (4) An expansion of affordances. We are concerned under this heading with the nature of affordances in the use and acquisition of languages. Mobility has brought people to places where they encounter languages of which they previously had no inkling, and has delivered languages to locations where they were previously never heard. Furthermore, the media and technology allow us to become acquainted with dozens of languages without moving from our chair. This furnishes affordances in respect of acquiring languages in numbers in modalities unimaginable to our grandparents. Many languages, moreover, are now in novel situations of contact, providing affordances for cross-linguistic interaction and indeed for the evolution of new language varieties, as described in this volume in the chapters by Bardel, Falk and Lindqvist, by Dittmar and

Introduction

15

Steckbauer, and by Ennaji. Fishman, for his part appeals for attention to effectuating and cherishing affordances for the endangered language, Yiddish. The contribution by Heugh, on the other hand, discusses the wisdom of selecting and effectuating some language affordances and not others. Georgiou’s contribution talks about affordances for minority language use in health care and social care contexts, arguing for the creation and enrichment of such affordances, while García’s chapter describes a wide range of affordances conducive for bilingual acquisition but often neglected. (5) Ambience of awareness. In the present age the world is clearly aware of languages and language issues in more ways and to a greater extent than it used to be. In the last five or six years, for example, the number of books appearing whose titles feature the words multilingualism or multilingual has increased exponentially. In the past decade discussion and documents on multilingualism emanating from the European Union and other international bodies have similarly increased significantly (see e.g. European Commission 2005, 2009, 2011; European Parliament 2009). Likewise, multilingual awareness in language acquisition and use and societal awareness of the languages used in communities are increasingly being discussed and researched (see e.g. Jessner 2006).

Conclusion We have suggested in the foregoing that contemporary multilingualism is distinct in its nature, in its properties and in the attributes which mark its progress from the multilingualism of earlier times. We have put before the reader the trends and the properties of current multilingualism and some specific features of the ways in which it is developing. These various phenomena are emerging before our eyes. Our view is that it is incumbent on researchers to deepen understanding and awareness of the individual components of such phenomena and also to explore their interaction with each other and with the global context in which they move and have their being.

The content of this volume The chapters which follow differ as to topic, point of view and methodological perspective. What they have in common is their shared focus on currently operative patterns of interaction between contexts, events and processes; these emerge

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as having come into being as a result of diverse initial conditions. Each contribution to the book reflects in its own way on the complexity of interactions and interrelations, and each in its own way gives recognition to multilingualism’s striking diversity. A spectrum of multilingual settings are dealt with – cities (Berlin, Dublin, Casablanca), countries (Canada, Croatia, Ireland, Germany, Morocco, Malta, Spain, Sweden), continents (Europe, America, Africa), smaller communities of language users in various walks of life and of various ages (Gaeltacht Irish speakers, young users of so-called Rinkeby Swedish in Stockholm, adolescent urban Turkish-speaking immigrants in double-diglossia areas of West Berlin, triglossic speakers of the Casablanca variety of Moroccan Arabic, Lingala speakers, members of the Dublin Korean Church), as well as the very large community of users and learners of English. Cumulatively, the contributions cover emerging trends and crucial issues of concern in respect of the current multicultural and multilingual world and include within their purview issues relating to language varieties, diglossia and triglossia in multilingual settings, language communities, language attitudes and policies, immersion education, and language mobility via migration. The volume also includes a first attempt at examining the time aspect with respect to the use of multiple languages. The volume is divided into three parts on the basis of the broad themes: education, sociolinguistic dimensions and language policy. It is clear that the discussion contained in the respective contributions may leak across the broad thematic partitions, and this is quite natural given the manifold ways in which different aspects of multilingualism overlap. The chapters are distributed according the main thrust of the contributions in question, although, on the basis of what has just been said, in particular cases mention of topics which may belong to other parts of the volume is certainly not excluded.

Part One: Language teaching and language learning Part One consists of four chapters which refer to language education, to language teaching and language learning, including multilingual acquisition in its general, theoretical aspects. – Chapter 1, by Vivian Cook, addresses discussion within multilingual research of the functions and status of English. On foot of a thoroughgoing theoretical analysis Cook suggests dividing English L2 users into different categories rather than treating them as a homogeneous group.

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In Chapter 2 Sandro Caruana and David Lasagabaster compare and contrast the multilingual contexts of Malta and the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC), which both include a “local” language – Maltese and Basque respectively – as well as a language of wider international communication – English and Spanish respectively. The chapter juxtaposes and comments on the educational systems and attitudes towards multilingualism in these two countries. In Chapter 3 John Harris and Jim Cummins, on the basis of a summary of research on Canadian immersion and of immersion programmes in the Irish context, address the challenges facing schools in all-Irish immersion education. Their comparative analysis of the Canadian and Irish models and their social and cultural contexts culminates in a list of particular questions that need to be answered in this context. Chapter 4, contributed by Ofelia Garcia, proposes a wider and more comprehensive view of bilingual acquisition and consequently language education policy. The author talks about transglossia, ‘fluid language practices’ which transcend formal and supplementary schooling to draw on the full potential of human education, and she gives a detailed overview of the spaces and activities which can lend themselves to unplanned or unintentional language acquisition and education.

Part Two: Social aspects of current multilingualism Part Two deals with multilingualism at various levels (Europe, a country, socialethnic – age group within a city) which relate to the fields of sociolinguistics and sociology of language (or, macrosociolinguistics, to use Fishman’s term – 1985: 113). – In Chapter 5 David Singleton, Larissa Aronin and Lorna Carson turn their attention to the language practices of minority language users in Ireland, as such practices refer to time and as they unfold in time. The findings shed light on minority language situations from a previously unexplored point of view and connect the theoretical discourse on globalization with the workaday realities of how the global and the local are lived out. – In Chapter 6 Guus Extra presents the viewpoint that, although linguistic diversity is considered a constituent property of European identity, the degree to which non-national languages are “celebrated” as part of this identity differs widely. The chapter discusses the mapping of immigrant languages at home and at school, and the public and political discourse on the status of these languages.

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In Chapter 7 Jelena Mihaljević-Djigunović deals with learners and users of two and more languages in Croatia. She explores the complexities of attitudinal aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism and looks into differences in attitudes between bilinguals and multilinguals. This last aspect feeds into current discussion on the status and borders of multilingualism studies as a discipline and possible qualitative differences between bilinguals and multilinguals. In Chapter 8 Norbert Dittmar and Paul Steckbauer ponder the emerging and conflicting forces of polyphony in the Berlin speech community after 1990. The chapter gives an insight into the complex sociolinguistic scenario in the city, involving traditional Berlin dialect and the emergent ethnolectal variety of West Berlin, with its own creative cultural and social dynamics. The authors isolate the social identity of Turkish-German adolescents and present some markers of identity in oral versions of narratives. They elaborate on the sociolinguistic profile of the city by investigating the structures of narratives in everyday contexts. In Chapter 9 Moha Ennaji characterises multilingualism in Morocco, which is complicated by Arabic triglossia (Classical Arabic, Standard Arabic and Moroccan Arabic). He analyses Morrocan multilingualism with particular reference to Casablanca speech, which he presents as a language variety with its own specific linguistic features. The author claims that this variety, which has been neglected by linguists, reflects the cultural diversity of the population, bearing influences from urban and rural speech and from other languages, essentially Berber and French. In the last chapter in Part Two, Chapter 10, Camilla Bardel, Ylva Falk and Christina Lindqvist offer a state-of-the art review of research into linguistic diversity in multicultural Sweden. They discuss, inter alia, a variety of Swedish spoken in a particular district of Stockholm, Rinkeby, by first and second generations of immigrants from various backgrounds, focusing especially on young people’s speech, and referring to similar varieties in other areas of Sweden such as Malmö and Göteborg.

Part Three: Language policy Part Three of the volume contains five chapters focusing on a very specific issue with respect to language in society, that of language policy. – Chapter 11 is contributed by Joshua Fishman, who considers the most important of all his enterprises to be his “intellectual and moral dedication to small and unappreciated languages on all continents and particularly to

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my own mother tongue Yiddish.” Fishman has made continuous efforts to support, revitalize and promote Yiddish (1980, 1981, 1991,1996) in the conviction that weak languages are far from over and done with. Fishman holds a balanced view of the status of Yiddish today. He believes that only some sectors of a community will use “small” languages for all functions, most making use of just some of them. His belief is that even on the basis of a relatively limited range of functions a language many continue to be of extreme importance to the community. His latest concerns are the implementation and coordination of language planning decisions pertaining to Yiddish – whose case is taken by Fishman to be a private, community and humanistic matter. Chapter 11, then, is an emotional appeal for the nonterritorial language Yiddish to be sustained in the context of use by state agencies and powers as well as by individuals. The chapter also contains a realistic consideration of the complex situation faced by small “endangered and unstable” languages and provides an overview of the remarkable efforts and manifold activities, and of the macro- and micro policies deployed on behalf of Yiddish. The author, in addition, extends his vision to other languages in dire circumstances suggesting culturally acceptable contact between the communities of such languages with each other. Chapter 12 by Tjeerd de Graaf continues on the theme of endangered languages and offers a thorough description of the archiving project on Endangered Archives in the Russian Federation. The chapter includes stateof-the-art information on the preservation of sound archives for the languages of ethnic minority peoples of Russia and documents data from fieldwork in several parts of Northern Russia, Siberia, the Russian Far East and the border areas of Russia and Japan. In Chapter 13 Renate Kärchner-Ober addresses the relationships between multilingualism, national language policy and educational reform processes in Malaysia. In analysing the past and the present of the Malaysian complex multilingual scenario, the author considers the sociological and socioeconomic factors that affect the use and learning of languages of Malaysia. Chapter 14 written by Vasiliki Georgiou deals with the challenges posed in the domain of health services by the increasingly multilingual population of Ireland. The chapter looks at the way communication problems are experienced by both patients and the medical personnel and how these challenges are responded to. The chapter also analyses the diversity of linguistic groups, comparing the language issues encountered by both immigrants and Irish-speakers in the health services framework. Finally, in Chapter 15 Kathleen Heugh gives a comprehensive picture of the multilingual arrangements in two African countries – Ethiopia and South

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Africa – and specifically concentrates on language policies in the educational sphere. The chapter contains polemical argumentation with regard to the language policies of the apartheid period in South Africa and to recent choices in managing languages in both countries.

References Alker, Hayward R., Amin, Tahir, Biersteker, Thomas J. and Takashi Inoguchi. 2001. Twelve world order debates which have made our days. Chicago International studies Association Paper Archive. http://isanet.ccit.arizona.edu/archive/worldorder.html (accessed July 18, 2012). Aronin, Larissa. 2005. Theoretical perspectives of trilingual education. In The International Journal of the Sociology of Language, J. Fishman (general ed), J. Cenoz & D. Gorter (issue eds.), 171: 7–22. Aronin, Larissa and David Singleton. 2008a. Multilingualism as a new linguistic dispensation. International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (1): 1–16. Aronin, Larissa, and David Singleton. 2008b. English as a constituent of a dominant language constellation. Paper presented at the International Conference on Global English, Verona, Italy, February 14–16. Aronin, Larissa and David Singleton. 2010. Introduction. The diversity of multilingualism. In International Journal of the Sociology of Language, issue The Diversity of Multilingualism, Larissa Aronin and David Singleton (eds.), 1–5. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Aronin, Larissa and David Singleton. 2012. Multilingualism Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Birdsong, David. 2012. Beyond deficits and critical periods: A capacities approach to second language acquisition and bilingualism. Paper presented at the 2012 Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Boston, Massachusetts, USA. Byrd Clark, Julie. 2009. Multilingualism, Citizenship, and Identity; Voices of youth and Symbolic Investments in an Urban, Globalized World. London: Continuum. Blommaert, Jan. 2010. Sociolinguistic of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton. 2011. Language and Superdiversity: A position paper. Working papers in Urban Language and Literacies, Paper 70. www.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/ education/. . ./llg/workingpapers/70.pdf. Bull, Hedley. 1977. The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics. New York: Columbia University press. Bull, Hedley and Adam Watson (eds.). 1984. The Expansion of International Society. Oxford: Clarendon press. Braunmüller, Kurt. 2007. Receptive multilingualism in Northern Europe in the Middle Ages: A description of a scenario. In Receptive Multilingualism: Linguistic analyses, language policies and didactic concepts, J. ten Thije and L. Zeevaert (eds.), 25–47. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Braunmüller, Kurt and Gisella Ferraresi (eds.). 2003. Aspects of multilingualism in European language history (Hamburg studies on multilingualism 2). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Capra, Fritiof. 2005. Complexity and life. Theory, Culture and Society 22 (5): 33–44. Cook, Vivian. 1992. Evidence for multi-competence. Language Learning 42 (4): 557–591. Cook, Vivian. 1999. Going beyond the Native Speaker in Language Teaching TESOL Quarterly 33 (2): 185–209.

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Cook, Vivian. 2006. Interlanguage, multi-competence and the problem of the “second” language’, Rivista di Psicolinguistica Applicata VI, 3, 39–52, http://homepage.ntlworld. com/vivian.c/Writings/Papers/ILMC&L2.htm (accessed July 18, 2012). Definition of diversity http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~asuomca/diversityinit/definition.html (accessed July 18, 2012). Diversity http://www.thefreedictionary.com/diversity (accessed July 18, 2012). Edwards, John. 2010. Minority languages and group identity: cases and categories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Edwards, Viv. 2004. Multilingualism in the English-speaking world. Oxford: Blackwell. European Commission. 2005. Communication on Multilingualism “A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism Brussels: European Commission. http://ec.europa.eu/languages/eulanguage-policy/multilingualism_en.htm (accessed July 18, 2012). European Commission. 2011. An inventory of Community Actions in the field of multilingualism 2011 update. Commission staff working paper. Brussels: European Commission. European Commission. 2009. Study on the contribution of multilingualism to creativity: Final report. Brussels: European Commission. European parliament. 2009. Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment. European parliament resolution of 24 March 2009 on Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment (2008/2225 (INI)). http://eur-ex.europa.eu/Result.do?RechType= RECH_eurovocTerm&term=multilingualism (accessed October 29, 2010). Fishman, Joshua. 1965. Who speaks what language to whom and when? La Linguistique 2: 67– 88. Fishman, Joshua (ed.). 1980. Sociology of Yiddish International Journal of the Sociology of Language Issue 24, The Hague-Paris-New York: Mouton Publishers. Fishman, Joshua, (ed.). 1981. Never Say Die! A Thousand Years of Yiddish in Jewish Life and Letters [CSL] 30. The Hague: Mouton. Fishman, Joshua. 1985. Macrosociolinguistics and the sociology of language in the early eighties. Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 11: 113–127. Fishman, Joshua. 1998. The new linguistic order. Foreign Policy 113 (Winter), 26–40. http://www.uoc.edu/humfil/articles/eng/fishman/fishman.html (accessed July 18, 2012). Fishman, Joshua. 1991a. Reversing language Shift: Theory and Practice of assistance to threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. (Winner of the British Association of Applied Linguistics’ prize for “Best Book of the Year”) Fishman, Joshua. 1991b. Yiddish: Turning to life. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Fishman, Joshua. 1993. Reversing Language Shift: Successes, Failures, Doubts and Dilemmas. In: E.H. Jahr (ed.) Language Conflict and Language Planning. (pp. 69–81). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fishman, Joshua. 1996. In Praise of the Beloved Language: A Comparative View of Positive Ethnolinguistic Consciousness. Berlin New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Fishman, Joshua. 1999. Sociolinguistics: In Handbook of Language and Ethnicity. J.A. Fishman (ed.), 152–163. Oxford University Press. Fishman, Joshua. 2001. Can Threatened Languages Be Saved? Clevedon, Multilingual Matters. Fishman, Joshua. 2006. Do Not Leave Your Language Alone: The Hidden Status Agendas Within Corpus Planning in Language Policy. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Fishman, Gella Schweid and Charity Njau. 2012. Joshua A. Fishman bibliography (1949–2011). International Journal of the Sociology of Language 213: 153–248.

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García, Ofelia and Joshua Fishman. 1997. The Multilingual Apple: Languages in New York City. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (2002 second edition and new foreword) García, Ofelia, Rakhmiel Peltz and Hal Schiffman (eds.). 2006. Language loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua Fishman’s Contributions to International Sociolingustics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Graddol, David. 1997. The Future of English? London: The British Council. Graddol, David. 2006. English Next. London: British Council. Grosjean, Francois. 1985. The bilingual as a competent but specific speaker-hearer. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 6: 467–477. Grosjean, Francois. 1992. Another view of bilingualism. In Cognitive Processing in Bilinguals, R. Harris (ed.), 51–62. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Hornberger, Nancy and Martin Pütz. 2006. Language Loyalty, Language Planning, and Language Revitalization. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Jessner, Ulrike. 2006. Linguistic Awareness in Multilinguals: English as a Third Language. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Leuprecht, Peter. 2006. The difficult acceptance of diversity. Vermont Law Review 30: 551–564. Léglu, Catharine. 2010. Multilingualism and mother tongue in medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan narratives University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press. Losos, Elizabeth and Egbert Giles Leigh. 2004. Tropical Forest Diversity and Dynamism: Findings from a Large-Scale Plot Network. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maurais, Jacques. 2003. Towards a new linguistic world order. In: Jacques, Maurais and Michael Morris (eds.). languages in a Globalizing World (pp. 13–36) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Park, Hun-Joon and Sang-Hyeon Sung. 2004. A new perspective on diversity and group dynamics in Asia. In Handbook of Asian Management, Kwok Leung and Steven White (eds.), Part III, 459–474. Berlin: Springer. Pavlenko, Aneta (ed.). 2008. Multilingualism in Post-Soviet Countries. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Prah, Kwesi Kwaa and Birgit Brock-Utne (eds.). 2009. Multilingualism – a paradigm shift in African language of instruction polices. Cape Town: CASAS. Quist, Pia and Normann Jørgensen. 2007. Crossing – negotiating social boundaries. In Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication, P. Auer and Li Wei (eds.), 371–389. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Raza, Syed Aiman. 2007. Forces of globalisation, dynamism and diversity in the agro-ecological production system: a study in sustainable development from a hill tribe in Western Himalayas. International Journal of Agricultural Resources, Governance and Ecology 6 (6): 666–678. Riley, Philip. 2010. Reflections on identity, modernity and the European language portfolio. In Language Learner Autonomy: Policy, Curriculum, Classroom. A Festschrift in Honour of David Little. B. O’Rourke and L. Carson (eds.), 373–385. Bern: Peter Lang. Rindler-Schjerve, Rosita and Eva Vetter. 2007. Linguistic diversity in Habsburg Austria as a model for modern European language policy. In Receptive Multilingualism: Linguistic analyses, language policies and didactic concepts, J. ten Thije and L. Zeevaert (eds.), 49–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Simmons, Samantha J., Michele A. Wittig and Sheila K. Grant. 2010. A mutual acculturation model of multicultural campus climate and acceptance of diversity. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology 16 (4): 468–475.

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Todeva, Elka and Jasone Cenoz (eds.). 2009. The Multiple Realities of Multilingualism: Personal Narratives and Researchers’ Perspectives. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Trotter, David (ed.). 2000. Multilingualism in Later Medieval Britain. Cambridge: Brewer. Turell, Teresa. 2001. Multilingualism in Spain: Sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of linguistic minority groups. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Vertovek, Steven. 2007. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30 (6): 1024–1045.

I Language teaching and language learning

Vivian Cook

1 ELF: Central or Atypical Second Language Acquisition? Abstract: The past decade has echoed to the sounds of supporters of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) cheering their side on to victory. An English out of the clutches of its perfidious native speakers, an English that adapts itself willingly to the needs of its global users, none of whom speak it natively, an English with qualities as distinctive as any self-proclaimed national standard, an English for the modern world of the twenty-first century, ELF has had an immense influence on the second language (L2) teaching of English. It has also had an impact on second language acquisition (SLA) research as seen in articles such as “Doing not being a foreign language learner: English as a lingua franca in the workplace and (some) implications for SLA” (Firth 2009) and “Points of view and blind spots: ELF and SLA” (Jenkins 2006). The present paper discusses the relationship between SLA research and ELF. It does not question the existence of ELF as an approach but raises questions about its relevance to SLA research. It applies the tools provided by two recent papers on SLA research (Cook 2009; 2010) to ELF to see whether the learning of a lingua franca is an unusual form of second language acquisition. First it considers what we mean by “language” in the ELF context and what groups of L2 learners ELF users belong to; then it looks at the similarities and differences between typical second language acquisition and lingua franca acquisition.

1 Is ELF a language? The word “language” can have many senses, six of which are enumerated in Cook (2010). First how do these relate to English?

1.1 Language as a representation system known by human beings – “human language” At this level men are distinguished from apes by knowing language, whether “a species-unique format for cognitive representation” (Tomasello 2003: 13) or “Hoc enim uno praestamus vel maxime feris, quod conloquimur inter nos. . .” [The one thing in which we are especially superior to beasts is that we speak to each other . . .] (Cicero 55BC). Like all human languages, English is an example

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of the unique human ability for language, hard as it may be to pin down exactly what this consists of.

1.2 Language as an abstract entry – “the English language” The English language is also a set of rules etc. independent of its speakers, laid down in grammars and dictionaries. Some languages are officially regulated by bodies such as the French Academy. English exists as an abstract idea in Popper’s Third World (Popper 1972), like the rules of golf; it is the vast abstraction captured in the 1859 page of the Cambridge Grammar of English (Huddleston and Pullum 2002) and the Oxford English Dictionary (2009) with its 60,000 words about “set”. “The English language” refers to this abstract form; it may be coded, written down, authorised by academies and pundits and lauded as a national treasure. No one human being knows the English language in its entirety even if what English speakers know corresponds to it in some fashion. Debate has raged whether there is one English or many Englishes; the language spoken in Scotland has as much right by centuries of history to the name Scottish as the one spoken in England has to the name English, yet we commonly speak of Scottish English; Australian English is codified in dictionaries but still seen as English rather than Australian; Indian English, Singapore English and all the others Englishes will doubtless one day shed their chains and become distinct languages just as we do not speak of Spanish as Spanish Latin or French as Parisian Latin.

1.3 Language as a set of sentences – “the language of Shakespeare” English can also mean a colossal set of sentences, say the two billion words now in the Oxford English Corpus (Oxford English Dictionary 2009) or the total writings of Shakespeare or of J.K. Rowling. English is all the things that English people have ever said. This view of language goes back to “the totality of utterances that can be made in a speech-community” (Bloomfield 1926/1957: 26). English in sense (1.3) is inseparable from objective concrete data; analysing English means extracting regularities and patterns without imputing any mental reality to them, as in contemporary corpus analysis (Hunston and Francis 2000). The purpose “. . . is to obtain a compact one‑to-one representation of the stock of utterances in the corpus” (Harris 1951: 366), the view that Chomsky was fighting against in Syntactic Structures (Chomsky 1957).

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1.4 Language as a community resource – “the language of English people” English is furthermore an external social force binding together the members of a community. It is spoken by various groups of people to carry out their lives cooperatively, a shared core value (Smolicz and Secombe 2003). Although since the eighteenth century languages are often identified with nation states (Anderson 2006), the communities may be pockets within the country, like Ulster Scots in Northern Ireland, or extend across many countries, like Kurdish spoken in Turkey, Iran and Iraq. English has many different roles in different countries and communities, sometimes identified with revolution as in South Africa (Biko 1978), sometimes with a ruling elite as in the British Raj. Language is for communicating with other people in groups, leading to social/functional approaches to English like Halliday (1985).

1.5 Language as an individual’s knowledge – “I know English” Another form of English is internal to the mind, the linguistic competence known by each individual: “a language is a state of the faculty of language, an I‑language, in technical usage” (Chomsky 2005: 2). English is known by the individuals who speak it. Much linguistics in every tradition has been devoted to the description of language in individual minds whether as static declarative knowledge or as dynamic procedural processes. Many linguist’s grammars aim to describe this inner mental reality, what Chomsky termed “descriptive adequacy” (Chomsky 1964), rather than the pure description of grammars as enumeration of forms in sense (1.2), “observational adequacy”.

1.6 language as a form of action – “language is doing” For many, English is a form of action, a tradition in European linguistics going from Malinowski (1923) through Austin (1962), Halliday (1985) and Schegloff et al. (2002) to Pekarek Doehler (2006) “a competence-in-action . . . socially situated, collaboratively established and contingent with regard to other competencies”. English is a way of doing things in a social situation, not just an abstraction of patterns or knowledge. In terms of these definitions “English” is multiply ambiguous. Cook (2010) relates these six senses of language to different ways of conceptualising second language acquisition, claiming that “SLA researchers often do not realise that they are working from different maps and exhaust their energy quarrelling over

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differences in basic assumptions or patiently defending them against their critics” (Cook 2010). Here we will continue this thread of argument by relating the senses to ELF. First there needs to be a clear idea of what people mean by ELF. Historically the term “lingua franca” came out of contact languages employed in the eastern Mediterranean during the Byzantine period with the modern use still incorporating its earlier essence “a prestige language reduced to a mini-structure – for colonials” according to Kahane (1976: 41). ELF has taken a more positive attitude, as seen in a representative handful of definitions: (a) “a way of referring to communication in English between speakers with different first languages” (Seidlhofer 2005). (b) “an additionally acquired language system which serves as a common means of communication for speakers of different first languages” (Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English 2009). (c) “the English that is used as a contact language among speakers who come from different first language and cultural backgrounds” (Jenkins 2004–5). (d) “an emerging English that exists in its own right and which is being described in its own terms rather than by comparison with ENL” (Jenkins 2007). (e) “a distinct variety of English used internationally as a lingua franca in a particular region of the world” (Saraceni 2008). In quotations (a) and (b) ELF is called a “communication” system, in (c) a “language”, in (d) and (e) a type of “English”. Definitions (a), (b), (c) refer to it being used by non-native speakers rather than native speakers, (d) implicitly so, while (e) regards it simply as “a distinct variety”. Quotations (b), (c), (d), (e) see it as a “language system”/“English”/“variety of English” distinct from English/ ENL (English as a Native Language). Let us then venture to call it a “language system related to English that is used by non-native speakers to communicate with each other”. In terms of sense (1.1) of “language”, ELF is a human language. There may be an interesting question whether it has the normal characteristics of human language, as has been explored for second languages in general by generative SLA researchers (White 2003), say in terms of syntax or of variation. Does ELF qualify as a language in terms of the abstract entity of sense (1.2)? In the minds of some of its proponents, there seems to be a single ideal form of ELF independent of any speakers. It has rules and words like any language and their nature is currently being established by projects such as Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE 2009); Seidlhofer speaks of “a codification of ELF with a conceivable ultimate objective of making it a feasible, acceptable and respected alternative to ENL in appropriate contexts of use” (Seidlhofer

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2001: 150). House (2003: 557) argues that LFE is already a fully fledged language: “ELF is neither a language for specific purposes nor a pidgin, because it is not a restricted code, but a language showing full linguistic and functional range”. While the task of sheer description is well under way in VOICE, ELF does not belong to any nation-state; it is global rather than regional. To other researchers though, ELF is a communication system continuously being created by its users, not a language in an abstract sense so much as a set of processes; sense (1.2) is irrelevant. It does differ from World Englishes under (1.2). It is one thing to argue that there are many Englishes in a sense (1.2) institutional and often national status; it is another to argue for a supranational language called ELF, as Berns (2008) and Saraceni (2008) have pointed out. Indeed Saraceni (2008) raises the issue of whether ELF itself has varieties, whether Chinese ELF, South American ELF, or whatever, in response to local needs and the relationship to various first languages. Meirkord (2004) also points to the lack of stability in ELF compared to World Englishes: ELF is perpetually created afresh each day rather than having a set form. In sense (1.3) ELF can clearly be construed as the set of sentences produced by non-native speakers of English communicating with each other, distinct from the sentences of monolingual native speakers addressed to each other or from those of natives and non‑natives addressed to each other. Establishing this distinctive set is a Herculean task since it potentially involves a billion users, only a small fraction of which can be tapped, from a minute range of situations, usually from those that are most accessible to researchers in some way, such as university students. As the uses of a second language are even more diverse than those of a first language, the problems of making a fairly complete or even representative description resemble those involved in compiling the Cambridge Grammar of English and the Oxford English Dictionary multiplied by a large factor: in terms of (1.3), ELF is considerably bigger than English. Current attempts to describe ELF necessarily scratch the surface in terms of numbers of users and of functions. Whether ELF acts as a community resources in sense (1.4) will be debated further below. Here we can simply raise the question of whether L2 users of ELF constitute a single social community or a multitude of different communities; even virtual communities in Anderson’s sense (Anderson 2006) have some shared characteristic that brings them together on Facebook or in reading science fiction, while the whole ELF community seems to have as little in common as say all the television viewers in the world. ELF is clearly the mental property of individuals in sense (1.5): L2 users possess strategies, processes and knowledge that enable them to communicate with each other. Past discussions of this have been obscured by the veil of the

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monolingual native speaker; anything that is not native-like in terms of the native speaker’s knowledge of English was thought deficient. A mental grammar or lexicon of ELF are the possession of multi-competent L2 users, not monolingual native speakers, and evade description in simpler monolingual terms. One issue is then indeed how the two language systems relate in the same multi-competent mind; it is potentially misleading to consider how they relate to a monolingual system in somebody else’s mind. ELF is also in a sense a form of action in sense (1.6) when it is conceived of as a “competence-in-action”, a set of procedures, strategies, etc. for communicating with other people. Firth (1990) talked of “lingua franca encounters” and has particularly concentrated on workplace encounters (Firth 2009); Canagarajah (2007) states “LFE [Lingua Franca English] is not a product located in the mind of the speaker; it is a form of social action”. ELF is then a funny sort of language. Compared to English, for good or for bad, it arguably does not have the sense (1.2) characteristics as an abstract entity and does not serve in sense (1.4) as a resource for a definable community. If these are the senses of “language” we consider important, ELF does not belong in the same category as English. If on the other hand we think of language as a set of sentences in sense (1.3), as knowledge in the mind in sense (1.5) or as communicative potential in sense (1.6), ELF has similar characteristics to English, with the various quibbles detailed above. In particular this highlights an important split in thinking about ELF, expressed by Saraceni (2008) as a difference between “form” and “function”. In the current discussion it can be called a “product” view of ELF that sees it as a set of sentences in sense (1.3), potentially capable of the abstract status of sense (1.2), versus a “process” view of ELF that sees it as psychological processes in sense (1.5) and actions in sense (1.6). Put in a nutshell does an ELF learner acquire a specific form like “When you will start practicing?” or do they acquire word order strategies that will yield this sentence among many others? The product view of ELF has effectively reified ELF into a distinct object, unlike the process approach. Much of the continuing debate about ELF can be seen as quarrels between people holding unacknowledged views of the nature of language. Treating ELF as a corpus in sense (1.3) is not the same as treating it as a social possession in sense (1.4); looking at ELF as a mental reality in sense (1.5) is not the same as considering it a form of action in sense (1.6). Doubtless there is a birds’ eye view at which the different senses of language merge together; Cogo (2008) for instance claims ELF research “is documenting the ELF features/strategies that are common to all ELF users and the local features/strategies that characterise distinct ELF varieties”. But this confuses a sense (1.3) analysis of features with a sense (1.5) account of mental processes;

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internal strategies can’t be directly derived from external corpus data: we know what people produce but that does not directly tell us why or how they produce it. We need to be careful not to argue from one sense of language to another without great care; the logical connections need to be painstakingly built up rather than trying to demolish arguments based on one sense of language with arguments based on another, as happens in the tedious bickering between generativists and cognitive psychologists in SLA research. After a hundred years of debate on such dichotomies as langue/parole (de Saussure 1915) or competence/performance (Chomsky 1965), the issue is far from resolved – yet it underlies any extrapolation from sense (1.3) ELF data to sense (1.5) mental knowledge or strategies.

2 What kind of L2 users are speakers of ELF? While it is convenient to make generalisations about the L2 user or the ELF speaker, these labels cover up an immense diversity – all the differences that monolinguals have plus the complex relations between two or more languages and extra uses of second languages, in short as diverse as human beings could be. A starting point for looking at variation in L2 users is De Swaan’s hierarchy of languages (De Swaan 2001), seen below:

Figure 1: The hierarchy of languages (adapted from De Swaan 2001)

The De Swaan hierarchy has four different levels. Going from the bottom up: – peripheral languages are spoken locally (I prefer the term “local languages” as less evaluative). Finnish is an example of a language spoken in Finland and Sweden but virtually unused outside these countries except by expats. English is a local language to monolingual English native speakers living in say Cheltenham, who need nothing else.

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central languages are used within a specific area by native speakers and by others for purposes of communication between different first language (L1) groups within a country, for example the use of English in India. English is a central language in Newcastle upon Tyne for the Chinese, Francophone African and Deaf communities. supercentral languages are used across national boundaries for particular purposes, say religion as in Arabic and Hebrew or martial arts as in Japanese. English is the official language of aviation, used everywhere in the world even between pilots and controllers with the same first language. While Swahili has 770 thousand native speakers mostly in Tanzania, it has 30 million lingua franca speakers spread across several African countries (Gordon 2005). hypercentral languages are used for all purposes everywhere in the world. At the moment only English belongs to this category; in the past Latin may have had a hypercentral role, though only within Europe.

The De Swaan hierarchy has two dimensions. One is geographical spread: the further up the hierarchy the greater the coverage of countries and continents (though local languages may of course exist in pockets spread across several countries, say Welsh in Wales and Patagonia, or Kurdish in Turkey, Iraq and Iran). The other dimension is specialisation of function: the higher up the language is on the hierarchy the broader its range of functions, say the supercentral use of English in broadcasts by the Voice of America (VOA 2009) versus the hypercentral use of English for most functions. According to De Swaan, L2 learning typically goes up the hierarchy. Speakers of local languages need to learn central languages for everyday living, say the Toronto Japanese learning English. Speakers of central languages learn supercentral languages for particular purposes, such as British Muslims learning Arabic to understand the Koran. Anybody anywhere may learn the hypercentral language, English, whether in the Cameroon or Korea, for almost any purpose apart from those for which they use their local language. In reverse, going down the hierarchy is possible, say an English speaker who moves to Finland acquiring Finnish, but it is certainly comparatively rare, particularly in taught second language acquisition. The supercentral languages cover virtually all language teaching in England (though Hindi and Swahili are not taught to any great extent); speakers of these twelve languages in other countries undoubtedly concentrate primarily on the study of the hypercentral language English. Clearly in a sense ELF is also going up the hierarchy. English is the hypercentral language used by anybody anywhere: Graddol (2006) sees it as an additional “R” on the primary school curriculum: reading, writing, arithmetic . . . and English. As it can be used for almost any function anywhere, it has the flexibility

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of the hypercentral language and is not confined to particular language functions, unlike say German for engineers, but covers any function for which its users may require a non-native language – not duplicating the uses they have for their local language but including additional functions. However, as we have seen, ELF is not a language in sense (1.2) in which English is a language; it does not belong to a nation-state and have a codified set of rules. Nor is it a language in sense (1.4) in that it does not have a community of native speakers by definition. Hence in a sense ELF is not on the De Swaan hierarchy, while English is; it seems problematic whether the English that is at the top of the De Swaan hierarchy is actually ELF. By freeing itself from native speakers, ELF has gone off the hierarchy into a different dimension. Perhaps we need a new hierarchy of languages used for special purposes, starting with central systems like the use of Italian among foreign workers in German-speaking Switzerland, going up to supercentral systems like Arabic for religion, having at the top the hypercentral language English that covers a multitude of functions. ELF is then different from English as a World Language that teaches English for communication with native speakers – the view incorporated in the Common European Framework notion of plurilingualism (CEFR 2009) – in that it does not aspire to English at all. The term English as an Additional Language (EAL) is revealing: becoming plurilingual is adding another language to your first, not becoming a multi-competent speaker in whom both are combined, maintaining in perpetuity Weinreich’s notion of coordinate bilingualism (Weinreich 1963). Let us now turn to the different groups of L2 user found for English, categorised by Cook (2009) into five main groups: (a) people using an L2 within a larger community – These people are users of English as a central language, whether in England or in India. Their need may be for contact with officialdom or for social contacts with the wider English-speaking community or with L1 speakers of other L1s. These are people living or working in a country, temporarily like Polish plumbers in Ireland, or permanently like Acadian French in Louisiana, citizens or noncitizens, who happen to speak a language other than English whether a local language like Scottish Gaelic, a language from a well-established local community like Greek speakers in north London or a language that has as yet no long-established local community, say Tigré in Newcastle. Though the crucial contact is with the central language of the community and its native speakers, the relationships with other language communities through English may be as important, for instance the Bengali-speaking newsagent in Bethnal Green using English to talk to an Arabic-speaking customer – in a sense a central language as a lingua franca. Examples of other lingua

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franca situations going beyond English include the multilingual service situation described in Kramsch & Whiteside (2007), the use of Spanish as a “niche” language in London restaurants (Block 2006), of Italian by Spanish migrant workers in German-speaking Switzerland (Schmid 1994) and by Vietnamese and Poles in their workplaces in Toronto (Norton 2000). (b) people using an L2 internationally for specific functions – The supercentral language is the classic territory of English for Special Purposes (ESP), language for carrying out a particular job, whether a Hungarian doctor treating patients in England or a Swedish airline pilot flying to Malaysia. As a supercentral language English is being used widely, but for a limited range of functions, whether by seamen, footballers, diplomats or whatever, including teachers of English in that their teaching role is as a user of English for a specialised function. Again this group of users may share a lingua franca in that it is used primarily but not exclusively by non-native speakers and it often has its rules and vocabulary laid down by a particular body like Simple English (Wikipedia 2008) or Maritime English, set internationally by the International Maritime Organisation in 2001 in the form of Standard Maritime Communication Phrases (IMO 2009). (c) people using an L2 globally for a wide range of functions – This global hypercentral language has become the territory of ELF, that spans the globe and knows no restrictions as to function. It is learnt as a tool in addition to the other languages the person may know; hence it is an aspect of multilingualism. People may come from any culture and may be learning it potentially to speak to people from any other culture. Arabic-speaking businessmen send emails to each other in romanised Arabic or English; hotel receptionists in Cuba speak to Korean guests in English; international sportsmen need English for TV interviews, and so on. Obviously it is difficult to make a hard and fast line between the group of special users in (b) and those (c) group users using it for a large variety of functions; to what extent are the businessmen employing a specialist or a general lingua franca? (d) people historically from a particular community (re)-acquiring its language – The concept of heritage language has become increasingly important for people seeking to establish their cultural roots. Chinese around the world are learning Mandarin; educational systems are recognising the need to honour the child’s own linguistic background, say in Singapore, something that was suspended in England in the 1980s. Perhaps English itself is of marginal relevance as a heritage language. It might perhaps apply to children with English-speaking parents educated in Welsh-speaking schools or say speakers in African countries where English has been lost. L2 users of English as a heritage language seem thin on the ground.

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(e) people using an L2 with spouses, siblings or friends – A unique group of L2 users that has come to light in recent years consists of pairs of people with different languages in a close relationship such as husbands and wives (Piller 2002) or indeed grandparents and children. These people often feel that they are highly efficient at using the second language within their own situation (Piller 2002) and are capable of passing for native speakers, though this claim cannot be verified by outsiders. ELF is therefore the domain of international users in situations where native speakers are not involved; that is to say it is Japanese tourists going to Spain, not to England, or French doctors practising medicine through English in Guyana, not in London. The borderline between ELF users and other type (b) international users is the hypercentral use of many functions and the lack of native speakers. These are the people described in workplace studies such as Firth (2009), with the proviso that to be hypercentral rather than supercentral, their use has to be multi-functional rather than restricted to a single function. What Cook (2009) explicitly excludes from these groups of language users are classroom students of English. These students have no current need to speak English to carry on their everyday lives – the classic so-called foreign language situation of say English in China. Their goals are all in the future when they may become users of English through travel, careers or other pursuits. In many cases they do not have any goals other than to get through the hurdles of their educational system and acquire the qualifications needed for whatever they want to do after education – a classic academic instrumental motivation. Jenkins (2002) studied how students from different backgrounds comprehend each other’s pronunciation of English, on the basis of which she has designed syllabuses for teaching pronunciation, i.e. a product-derived approach that yields a specific inventory of ELF forms for teaching. On the argument used here, this treats students as users rather than as learners; but their speech is not that of people who are using ELF for real-world purposes and they are not interacting with skilled L2 users, except inasmuch as the teacher is an example type (b). The product should not be the interim system of a student in transition in a classroom but the ELF system of the successful L2 user. What matters is that other L2 users will understand them in the world outside not whether they understand each other in the classroom. Oddly enough ELF speakers are never apparently seen as multilingual individuals in multilingual communities. From the multi-competence perspective, ELF exists alongside the L1 in the mind, forming a complex supersystem. ELF seems to be treated in isolation, perpetuating the traditional monolingual conception of bilinguals as being two monolinguals rather than different people from

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monolinguals in L1. Nor do ELF researchers engage with the multi-competence of the community (Brutt-Griffler 2002), as Canagarajah (2007) points out: it is only their role as ELF monolinguals (to coin a phrase!) that matters not the relationship of ELF to the other languages in their community. But suppose that ELF is not a product describable in its own terms so much as a set of skills for interacting with other people; ELF “. . . is intersubjectively constructed in each specific context of interaction” (Canagarajah 2007). Describing the product is reducing it to a language in sense (1.3). Instead ELF is a set of processes that people employ when they deal with other people, rather like the compensatory strategies that Poulisse (1990) and others established for overcoming the lack of a word, whether in the first language or the second, or the processes for creating a pidgin described by Bickerton (1981) and others. Bickerton (1981) has indeed outlined an innate bioprogram for language that is only activated when a language is being used for the first time, as in say the Nicaraguan Sign Language (Senghas et al. 2004). He remarked that “Pidginisation is second language learning with restricted input and creolisation is first language acquisition with restricted input” (Bickerton 1977: 49). In the natural L2 situation of the workplace something akin to pidginisation must be taking place; people are drawing on the resources of their bioprogram to communicate across the gap between their two first languages. Process ELF is like pidginisation; for example the processes of dropping third person “s”, omitting articles and use of dummy verbs like “make” and “put” (Seidlhofer 2004) resemble the typical reduction and simplification processes in pidgins (Andersen 1983) or indeed those at work in Venetian lingua franca in the mid-eighteenth century (Kahane 1976). In a way the product view of ELF seeks a stable creole that is no longer in process of being created by pidginisation; however, unlike a creole, it does not have native speakers or a community of its own. The question is whether there is any virtue to lumping all these different types of user together as a single group of ELF users speaking a single Englishrelated lingua franca. The group (a) L2 users of English as a central language are also creating their own variety of English for talking to other people within the same larger community, as are the international specialised (b) group of pilots and the like, sometimes with official sanction. Even classroom learners produce their own school lingua franca with its own jokes and convention (Rampton 1995). Is there a supra-variety that includes all of these lingua francas? Or are they just the product of the same communicative and psychological processes applied to different circumstances? In which case the products are beside the point; what is needed is an account of the processes and ultimately an application to teaching that does not teach product but process. As Canagarajah (2007: 937) says, “it is . . . premature to say if LFE [Lingua Franca English] is teachable like other languages in a product-oriented and formalistic manner”.

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3 Is ELF a form of second language acquisition? Let us now try to put these threads together and compare the two areas of ELF and second language acquisition.

3.1 Existence of a second language While second language acquisition implies the existence of a second language in sense (1.2), ELF does not. What ELF learners are aiming at is not “English” but an English-derived variety without national status or community; they aim to acquire the ability to speak to other people who know this variety, as well as to those who know English. English has native speakers; ELF does not. In so far as this affects second language acquisition, it means that, for good or for ill, there is no clear model of people who speak ELF available, and perhaps there never could be as they are as diverse as humankind.

3.2 Target user As ELF is targeted at non-specialists, an ELF type user is potentially anyone anywhere, distinct from the specialist lingua franca users of type (b) and more general in spread than the central language type (a) users. An ELF user is seen as an international wheeler and dealer who uses ELF for practical purposes, unlike most type (a) users who are forming a multilingual multi-competent community. ELF users are not changed by the English they learn; multi-competent users are. The target for a L2 user has often been seen as a native speaker, i.e. to become a person with a definite L2 internalised such as English; more recently it has been seen as a multi-competent user with two interacting language systems, neither of which corresponds to a monolingual native speaker’s first language. ELF is effectively ignoring the issue of multilingualism.

3.3 Relationship to teaching The proponents of ELF divide as ever into two factions. One side see ELF as the product of teaching; this is why the vast majority of school learners in the world are taught English and therefore teaching should be based on a description of ELF as product. The other see ELF as process arising in natural situations; wherever non-natives try to communicate with each other there ELF is at work. Teaching is more or less irrelevant; at best it can provide the resources for the

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user to employ in their communication situation. SLA research has seldom concerned itself with different situations of learning, mostly taking for granted that classroom learning under a teacher is the norm. Cook (2009) argues that classroom learners are only one group of L2 learners, distinguished from the other groups by not being users; concentrating on them almost exclusively undervalues the many other situations of L2 learning, particularly as the classroom is the most controlled by a dominant individual, the teacher. Firth (2009) distinguishes the natural behaviour of the workplace encounter in which people’s role is not that of learners with natural social encounters in which they do see themselves as learners. All of these are second language acquisition; even people’s behaviour in the workplace is subject to constant modification from experience, a definition of learning. The classroom has always been a difficult place to study second language acquisition, partly because it is contaminated by teaching whether through the teacher, the syllabus or the coursebook. One solution has been to test classroom students on areas of language that they have never been taught, say eager/easy to please (Cook 1973), so that they will have picked it up despite the teaching. The other solution is to adopt the straightforward psychological experimental approach to learners, controlling and assessing their learning in controlled circumstances where any teaching involved is perfectly explicit, for example the micro-artificial languages used to test acquisition of word order (Cook 1990). Pace Firth (2009), some SLA researchers have been aware of the dangers of concentrating on the classroom. So is ELF a typical form of second language acquisition? In many ways the answer has to be no: – the type of language that ELF belongs to is unusual, if not unique. There is currently only one hypercentral language, English, and ELF represents it in its most distilled form, separated from native speakers, specific functions and nations. If we are interested in how people learn second languages, it is necessary to look at languages that are not the hypercentral language. In linguistics and first language acquisition gone are the days when English was the only language that was studied; SLA research has also been turning its attention more to other languages so that feature like the order of acquisition of grammatical morphemes are treated as language-specific rather than universal. It would be foolish to let ELF become the main theme in SLA research, even if it becomes the predominant target of language teaching in the world. – The type of L2 user that ELF represents is only one of the different groups of L2 users and learners. SLA research has a responsibility to a much wider constituency and has to see the putative ELF user as one amongst many others.

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The product version of ELF belongs more among the descriptions of English than those of learning. Indeed it is noticeable that most of the publications for product ELF appear in journals like English Today, World Englishes and English World-Wide – i.e. descriptive journals concerned with properties of English rather than those concerned with language learning. Data from ELF users or learners are relevant to SLA research only in as much as they reveal how people learn or use second languages; the properties of sheer observational data may suggest the form of acquisition that is occurring but that entails a learning theory whose predictions can be checked by evidence – the same dilemma that performance data have ever presented as signs of acquisition processes (Cook 1990).

Process ELF has more to offer to the study of second language acquisition. Partly it is within the tradition of studies of strategies for communication going back to Andersen (1983)’s pidginisation, Tarone’s communication strategies (Tarone 1980) or the Strategies Inventory in Language Learning (SILL) (Oxford 1990), which see second language interactions as based on common social or mental strategies and processes employed by the learner or user. Second language acquisition must indeed involve processes of this kind; people invent their knowledge and use of languages for themselves out of their mental resources, not just through reacting deterministically to properties of the input – they have free will as human beings. But the ELF processes are only one aspect of second language acquisition and make up one sub-area of research rather than taking over the whole shebang. SLA research is such a potentially vast field, encompassing the study of the majority of the human race, that it cannot be constrained solely by the types of resources one group of users bring to the use of one language, English, in a limited range of communicative situations.

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Saraceni, Mario. 2008. English as a lingua franca: between form and function. English Today 24 (2): 20–26. Schegloff, Emanuel, Irene Koshik, Sally Jacoby and David Olsher. 2002. Conversation Analysis and Applied Linguistics. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 22: 3–31. Schmid, Stephan. 1994. L’italiano degli spagnoli. Interlingue di immigranti nella Svizzera tedesca [The Italian of the Spanish. Interlanguage of immigrants in German Switzerland]. Milano: Franco Angeli. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2004. Research perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 24: 209–239. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2005. English as a lingua franca. ELT Journal 59 (4): 339–341. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2006. English as a Lingua Franca in the expanding circle: what it isn’t. In English in the World: Global rules, Global roles, Rani Rubdy and Mario Saraceni (eds.), 40–50. London: Continuum. Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2010. Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a lingua franca. International Journal of Appllied linguistics 11: 133–158. Senghas, Ann, Sotaro Kita and Asli A. Özyürek. 2004. Children creating core properties of language: evidence from an emerging sign language in Nicaragua. Science 17 September 2004. Vol. 305. No. 5691: 1779–1782. Smolicz, Jerzy J. and Margaret J. Secombe. 2003. Assimilation or pluralism? Changing policies for minority languages education in Australia. Language Policy 2 (1): 3–25. Tarone, Elaine. 1980. Communication strategies, foreigner talk, and repair in interlanguage. Language Learning 30 (2): 417–431. Tomasello, Michael. 2003. Constructing a language: A usage-based theory of language acquisition. Cambridge, MA, US.: Harvard University Press. Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE). 2009. http://www.univie.ac.at/voice/ page/publications (accessed 19 January 2011). Voice of America (VOA). 2009. Special English. http://www.voanews.com/learningenglish/ home/ (accessed 19 January 2011). Weinreich, Uriel. 1963. Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. The Hague: Mouton. White, Lydia. 2003. Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammar. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press. Wikipedia. 2008. Simple English Wikipedia. http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page (accessed 19 January 2011).

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2 Faraway, so close: Trilingualism in the Basque Autonomous Community and Malta from a socio-educational perspective Abstract: Malta and the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC) represent two very distant contexts with very different linguistic, historical and cultural characteristics. However, within both contexts there is a sociolinguistic situation wherein a ‘local’ language (Maltese in Malta and Basque in the BAC) is in contact with a language which is very widespread internationally, namely English and Spanish respectively. In Malta and in the BAC many individuals have an integrative attitude towards Maltese and Basque as these two languages enable speakers to feel part of a clear-cut linguistic community. Due to their international status, English and Spanish are mainly useful for wider communication purposes. Besides, within both contexts there are positive language attitudes towards multilingualism and, not surprisingly, Italian in Malta and English in the BAC are seen in a positive light and play a significant role within the respective societies. In this paper we reflect on how learning three languages features in the two educational systems, and we illustrate how Malta and the BAC share some remarkable analogies, despite the obvious differences between the two contexts.

1 Introduction Multilingualism is high on the European agenda, as Europe intends to become a model for pluralistic language policy development. The European Commission has invested much effort in a determined attempt to boost multilingualism in European school systems, as Europe’s multilingual character is seen as an asset that deserves not only to be maintained but also to be fostered. In 2005 the European Commission formulated a general framework or policy to spread multilingualism amongst EU citizens and two years later appointed its first Commissioner, Leonard Orban, who was responsible for the language policy of the EU and whose job was exclusively centered on the promotion of multilingualism. Hajek (2008) points out that while the EU’s definition of multilingualism encompasses bilingualism, the European Commission’s long-term objective is to achieve minimally trilingualism. This is also outlined in the official EU language policy:

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A key instrument in this respect is the Barcelona objective communication in mother tongue plus two languages. More effort is needed towards achieving this objective for all citizens (Commission of the European Communities 2008: 5).

As a result of this language policy, there seems to be an increased awareness of the importance of multilingualism in the EU, also accompanied by an expansion of multilingualism in a number of EU states, although the spread is seemingly rather uneven. An important point to make is that there are significant differences depending on the context under analysis, as multilingualism is much more widespread in northern and central Europe than in southern Europe, although the situation in the latter is also far from homogeneous. The two contexts under review in the following sections are a very good case in point, as both Malta and the Basque Autonomous Community (BAC henceforth) in Spain stand out because of their multilingual educational systems, despite both being part of southern Europe, where European statistics claim there is a lower degree of multilingualism amongst its citizens. According to the Special Eurobarometer 243 (Directorate General for Education and Culture 2006), Greece, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy are amongst the EU countries with a lower degree of multilingualism, Malta being the only southern exception, as it is placed among the countries where multilingualism is widespread. One might rightly ask, from the onset, why indeed compare Malta and the BAC, especially when considering that there are obvious historical, social and linguistic differences between the two contexts. The initiative of carrying out this comparative analysis stems from the fact that we noticed some parallel trends when working on separate contributions for a publication on language attitudes (Lasagabaster and Huguet 2007). We also realised how both contexts could be considered as an example of how a minority language can be maintained and fostered in a complementary relationship with a majority language, while importance is also given to learning foreign languages. This represents a linguistic situation which is very much in line with the aforementioned European minimal trilingualism, also known as the “L1 + 2 other languages” policy. Furthermore, despite the distance and the diversities that separate the Basque and the Maltese communities, studies carried out in the recent past (Caruana and Lasagabaster 2008, 2011) also point at some remarkable analogies especially when language attitudes are taken into consideration. These analogies are the product of a number of parallelisms which can be related to the sociolinguistic conditions which today are present in both contexts. On the basis of these findings, in this paper we aim to outline the extent to which the current sociolinguistic situation of the BAC and of Malta are reflected in the educational systems and how this relates to the multilingual situation present in both contexts.

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In multilingual contexts some people tend to wonder whether children should be raised in conditions in which there is the presence of more than two languages (Clyne 2005), as it is often believed that the multi-language contact may lead to learning problems and create linguistic strains, especially if the professionals who have to implement a multilingual language policy are not properly equipped. In this chapter we will therefore focus on the effect of Basque and Maltese schools’ efforts to develop students’ multilingual potential, which ideally will help us to draw conclusions on how multilingualism can be fostered and also to identify the pitfalls to be overcome on the way. In our comparison of these two contexts, our main focus lies in illustrating the results of research in Malta and the BAC concerning multilingualism and to outline the challenges to be confronted. We focus our attention mainly on how education plays a paramount role in the success (or failure) of the implementation of multilingual language policies.

2 The Basque and Maltese sociolinguistic contexts The BAC is a bilingual autonomous community located in the north of Spain in which both Basque and Spanish are official languages. Basque is also spoken in Navarre (Spain) and three provinces in the south of France. Similarly, Malta is a bilingual country having both Maltese and English as official languages. In both Malta and the BAC a minority language is spoken. Defining Maltese as a “minority” language does, however, present some problems: firstly, because it is spoken by practically all Maltese nationals (Sciriha and Vassallo 2001 and 2006, indicate that Maltese is the native language of around 96% of the population) and, secondly, because of its official status in the country (and also in the EU). However, if we consider that the total population of Malta is just over 400,000 and that it is very difficult to find someone outside the country who is not of Maltese origin and who can speak the language, the minority language label may not seem so inadequate. In fact, according to the last sociolinguistic survey available (Basque Government 2008) the total number of Basque speakers is 665,700, which means that there are more speakers of Basque than speakers of Maltese, although the former only has official status in the BAC and not in Spain as a whole, let alone in European institutions. Consequently, despite their diverse sociolinguistic conditions, both Maltese and Basque can fit into the definitions of “minority” or “local” languages, although the conditions in which they subsist are largely different: Maltese is the L1 of practically all the island’s

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population, whereas Basque is reportedly spoken fluently by around 30% of individuals living in the BAC. Typologically, especially within the European geographical context, both languages have a unique status: Basque stands out as genetically isolated in the classification of world languages (Hualde, Lakarra, and Trask 1995) and has defied all attempts at explanation by linguists, historians and philosophers. It remains one of the main identity markers amongst its speakers, as the Basque language has played a key role in constructing Basque identity. Until the early 1980s the Basque language remained in a strongly diglottic situation with respect to Spanish and it was hardly ever used in formal contexts such as school, government or the administration. This situation has changed in the last four decades. Maltese, on the other hand, is the only Semitic language used in Europe, besides being the only Arabic language written in a Latin alphabet. Like Basque, its history is heavily characterised by struggles in order to survive in the wake of larger languages, namely Italian in the pre-World War II era and English more recently. In the case of both Maltese and Basque, political permutations – most notably Malta’s independence in 1964 and the re-establishment of democracy in Spain, after the demise of Franco’s regime in 1975 – led to situations wherein giving more importance to local languages was seen as a necessary step in order to establish a national or regional identity. Consequently, both in Malta and the BAC, the last forty years or so have seen the emergence of a large amount of literary works and written texts in the local language and also a considerable increase of the importance attributed to it in society at large. Local schools are amongst the domains where one may witness concretely how the status of both languages has improved: suffice to say, that up to around fifty years ago, in some Maltese schools students used to be severely reprimanded, if not punished, whenever they spoke in Maltese rather than in English, a similar situation to that endured by Basque speakers in the BAC. Nowadays students in all Maltese schools are encouraged to use both Maltese and English, as expressly indicated in Malta National Minimum Curriculum (Ministry of Education 1999), and both Basque and Spanish are used in schools in the BAC. Further analogies between the two contexts are also found in the fact that their recent history is characterised not only by the co-presence of two languages as explained above, but also by sociolinguistic situations and language policies geared towards multilingualism. The BAC has recently witnessed a strong drive in order to introduce English in its school: formal instruction in this language starts when most children are four years old. In Malta multilingualism has always been viewed as a key to success and the presence of Italian as a third

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language also has a significant role, despite a number of developments concerning this language in Malta which we will document at a later stage. The similarities are also observable in both contexts due to the fact that there is an international language with a co-official status, English in Malta and Spanish in the BAC, whereas learning an additional foreign language is also highly valued by society in general and is promoted by the educational system. For example, Sciriha and Vassallo (2006: 58), who carried out a survey among 500 Maltese nationals, report that the overwhelming majority of the Maltese consider foreign languages to be “very useful” (62.8%) or “useful” (34.4%). In Malta the foreign language which is learnt by most students is Italian (in most cases formal learning in this language initiates at 11 years of age), whereas as reported earlier, in the BAC English is introduced at Primary level. This leads to two educational systems wherein the three languages are consistently present in the curriculum. In this respect, the linguistic situation in Malta, despite being often described as bilingual, shares a number of features with diglossia, which is particularly evident in the schooling sector where Maltese has limited use as a vehicular language and a sound knowledge of English is important in order to gain access to tertiary education. In society, Maltese is particularly widespread in situations of immediate, often informal, communication and it is used extremely widely in oral exchanges, in a number of local newspapers and also when writing SMSs or chatting on the computer (Brincat and Caruana 2011). On the other hand, English in Malta, an inheritance of the island’s colonial past, still maintains a role of great importance. It is generally considered to be Malta’s “window to the world”, being an international lingua franca which also enables access to a wealth of knowledge. Since Malta’s economy largely depends on tourism, and the fact that English is spoken locally represents a significant asset for this market, the English language is recognized as a very important inheritance for Malta. Although at times the relationship between Maltese (the language of Malta’s identity) and English (the language of the “other” towards which many Maltese national harbour instrumental attitudes) has been a conflicting one, it is now widely accepted that safeguarding, developing and promoting the use of Maltese is a process which has to be complementary, and not in conflict with, the maintenance and the improvement of the standards of English locally. Basque also undergoes a diglottic situation and both the mass media and the working world are good examples in this respect. There is only one TV channel that broadcasts in Basque, whereas the remaining open channels (a minimum of 10, but varying widely depending on the area and the TV service provider) only use Spanish, as is the case with the innumerable subscription channels or payTV. The same situation applies in the case of daily newspapers, as there is only

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one entirely published in Basque, whereas a few ones make a symbolic use of it (a couple of pages at the most and not on a daily basis). Basque is also scantily present in the working world in the private sector, where few jobs have a formal language requirement, although its use varies considerably depending on the sociolinguistic context. In Table 1 below we summarise some of the considerations illustrated above: Minority language

Co-official (international) language

Main foreign language

Malta

Maltese (the mother tongue of the vast majority of Maltese nationals)

English (spoken fluently by the majority of the population)

Italian (taught at school as a foreign language, normally starting at Secondary level)

The BAC

Basque (spoken fluently by 30.1% of the population)

Spanish (spoken fluently by the vast majority of the population)

English (taught at school as a foreign language, normally starting at the age of 4 or 6)

Table 1: Major features of the Basque and Maltese sociolinguistic contexts

3 Educational perspectives 3.1 The Basque educational system Children spend a large part of their lives at school, a formal context in which their linguistic background is enhanced. Moreover, the vast majority of European citizens learn languages during their scholastic and academic life, whereas the percentage of those who set about learning a foreign language after compulsory education plummets. This is the reason why multilingual experiences as those present in Malta and the BAC are worth analyzing, as formal education plays a paramount role in the spread of multilingualism. In the BAC education is compulsory until the age of 16. Initially, children may attend kindergarten until the age of 6, the age when they start the six grades of primary education (6–12 year olds). At the age of 12 they start secondary education, the first four years of which are common for all students, and eventually they may proceed to with the baccalaureate program (16–18 year olds) or with vocational training. Since the passing in 1983 of the law establishing the use of the Basque language at pre-university levels in the BAC, and due to the existence of different

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social attitudes towards bilingualism, there are three linguistic models in which children can complete their studies: Model A: this is a programme in which Spanish is the vehicular language and Basque is taught only as a subject (around 4 hours per week). The L1 of the students is Spanish. Although it was originally designed to include some subjects in Basque in the last years of compulsory education, which would make it comparable with the Canadian late partial immersion, this original resolution has been discarded. In the 2009–10 academic year 18% of pre-university students were enrolled in this model. Model B: this is an early partial immersion programme in which both Basque and Spanish are used as means of instruction. These students’ L1 is usually Spanish, although there may be some exceptions with Basque as their L1. Without any doubt this is the most heterogeneous model, and depending on different factors such as the sociolinguistic setting in which the school is located or the availability of Basque teaching staff, the time allotted to each of the languages varies considerably. 22% of pre-university students were enrolled in this model in 2009–10. Model D: a total immersion programme for those students whose L1 is Spanish and a maintenance programme for those with Basque as L1 (unlike Finland or Canada, where total immersion programmes are only used with students who have no knowledge of the vehicular language). Spanish is only taught as a subject (around 4 hours per week). 59% of pre-university students attended model D classes in 2009–10.

Therefore, since 1983 the monolingual system only in Spanish has disappeared and nowadays the Basque educational system is a bilingual one. In fact, model A is in constant decline, whereas more than half of pre-university students are registered in model D. This is therefore the model with the greatest number of students and it continues its upward trend since the 1983–84 academic year, when the three linguistic model were first established. As far as the foreign language is concerned, English is without any doubt the most widespread foreign language in Spain in general and the BAC in particular. As a matter of fact, the age at which Basque students start learning English has been gradually lowered, and since the 2000–2001 school year it has been taught to children as young as four years old. This is an attempt on the part of the Basque Government to respond to social pressure in this direction, as the Basque society supports and demands constant improvement in the teaching of this international language, and this early start when teaching this language is widely believed to be the correct way forward, despite the lack of research which clearly bears out this belief in formal contexts (Muñoz 2008). It is generally accepted that there is a critical age to learn an L2 or additional language, so much so that, once this critical period is over, the learning process becomes much harder and more effort has to be made. Clyne (2005: 124) nicely summarizes this critical age hypothesis:

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The critical age hypothesis is usually treated as a relative not an absolute in the literature. According to this hypothesis, age-related constraints set in from the age of about six for suprasegmental phonology (prosody/intonation), later for segmental phonology (pronunciation) and much later, if at all, for morphology and syntax. The hypothesis relating to morphology and syntax is very controversial. For phonology, the critical age is often cited as between eight and 12, and this is sometimes given as a reason for introducing a second language at primary school.

As a result of the early introduction of English, all pupils have contact with three languages from a very early age, irrespective of their linguistic background, as the Basque educational system attributes a growing importance to trilingualism and multilingual education. French and, to a much lesser degree, German are the second foreign languages taught in secondary schools, but they are not compulsory where available and only taught in secondary education and baccalaureate. However, results show that the early introduction of English is not sufficient, as Basque students’ proficiency at the end of compulsory education is far from what could be expected after so many years learning the language. Singleton (2003) reiterates that it should not be forgotten that the amount of exposure a person receives in a natural setting in one year exceeds all the input a learner may be exposed to throughout the whole of compulsory education. In search of a solution, the Basque Government Education Department has put its faith in trilingual education, as proved by the implementation of experimental programs in both primary and secondary education where the CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) approach is mushrooming (see Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010, for further information). In these programs a subject (such as history, music, arts and craft, or citizenship) is taught through English. These public schools join the private schools which are already carrying out trilingual experiences. However, the Basque Department of Education has decided to go a step further and in the 2010–11 academic year a trilingual model has been established, in an attempt to overcome the three aforementioned models in the future, which would be replaced by this new trilingual model if its implementation turns out to be successful. 40 schools have decided to participate in this new pilot trilingual programme and it will be initially implemented in grade 4 of primary education (9 year olds) and grade 1 of secondary education (12 year olds). In the case of primary education, students will receive at least five hours of teaching per week in each of the three languages, whereas in secondary education this figure goes up to six hours per language. In this way 20% of the curriculum will be devoted to each language, whereas the schools’ autonomy is ascertained by allowing them to decide how the remaining 40% will be distributed between the 3 languages. In this way, one of the languages may be

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used during 60% of the teaching time (for example Basque in predominantly Spanish speaking areas). In this way the teaching staff and the management of the school have the opportunity and freedom to design a tailor-made curriculum aimed at achieving functionally trilingual students. In brief, the Basque Government has implemented four courses of action with a view to fostering multilingual education: (i) Early Start to English (2nd cycle of pre-primary education); (ii) INEBI (English through content in primary education); (iii) BHINEBI (English through content in secondary education); (iv) the brand new trilingual model (primary and secondary education). Before concluding this section, it has to be noted that there is an important difference between the Basque and Maltese context regarding the presence of the foreign language. In the BAC the great majority of students do not come into contact with the foreign language outside school. Although nowadays access to satellite television broadcasting in English is much easier and this is more widespread than a decade ago, most students are still hardly ever exposed to English via the media. At the University of the BAC, for example, students enrolled in the English Studies degree are required to fill out a questionnaire at the beginning of the academic year and those who report watching television programs or films in the English original version represent less than five per cent (data gathered in the last five years) despite having chosen to pursue studies at a degree level in English (Lasagabaster and Sierra 2010).

3.2 The Maltese educational system The distribution of the Maltese educational system is quite similar to the one of the BAC: schooling starts at 5 years of age, and both English and Maltese are obligatory subjects from the first year of primary education. Students move to secondary education at the age of 11 when they start studying an L3. Although Italian is the subject chosen by most students, French is also popular while smaller numbers of students opt for German or Spanish. As one might expect both English and Maltese have central roles as vehicular languages in Malta’s present educational system. This is in stark contrast with the situation of a few decades ago, when Maltese was largely overshadowed by English in local schools. However, despite this improvement in the status of Maltese, the educational domain is certainly the one in which the diglottic relationship between the two languages is mostly evident: in this respect, it is necessary to point out that regular use of English in Malta, especially as a spoken medium, is often associated with families pertaining to a higher socioeconomic class. English also gains ground over Maltese in some limited contexts, the most influential of which is the educational sphere.

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The National Minimum Curriculum1 (Ministry of Education 1999) – henceforth NMC – dedicates an entire section to the strengthening of bilingualism in schools, wherein in is stated that: The NMC considers bilingualism as the basis of the educational system. This document regards bilingualism as entailing the effective, precise and confident use of the country’s two official languages: Maltese, the national language, and English. . . . knowledge of foreign languages is developed following one’s knowledge of the native and national language, Maltese. . . . While students are in the process of strengthening the first language, the school must ensure that the children are familiarising themselves with the second language2. . . . The school could, after all, constitute the only source of learning in the second language. . . . Equal importance should be given to the teaching of the first and second languages at all levels (Ministry of Education 1999: 30).

Whilst acknowledging that the principles included in this document are valid, they do not always reflect what occurs in reality. As far as obligatory schooling is concerned, Maltese and English are both compulsory subjects from the start of Primary schooling. The NMC states that at Primary Level (from 5 to 11 years of age) some subjects are to be taught in English as the vehicular language (English, Maths, Science etc.) whereas others (Maltese, Religious Education, Social Studies etc.) are to be taught in Maltese. In reality, the vehicular language used for teaching also depends heavily on the background of the pupils as well as on their abilities. Maltese is used much more frequently as a vehicular language in State schools, whereas English is used more often for this function in Independent schools3. This immediately creates differences between the various schooling institutions and, not surprisingly, a number of students in some State schools sometimes find it harder to attain high levels of proficiency in English whereas, conversely, students in some Independent schools encounter problems in Maltese. The situation in Church schools, which offer education free of charge but are traditionally also frequented by students from a number of Englishspeaking families, is somewhat less clear-cut. 1 At the time of writing, the present National Minimum Curriculum (Ministry of Education, 1999) was in the course of being replaced by the National Curriculum Framework (Ministry of Education 2011) of which consultation documents were being circulated among stakeholders in order to obtain feedback. This implies that changes may be implemented to the policies of language teaching in Maltese schools. 2 Second language within this document refers specifically to English. 3 In Malta schooling is offered free of charge by the State (frequented by the majority of Maltese students) and by the Church, and against payment by Independent institutions. As a consequence of this, it is quite common that children from higher income families attend Independent schools. These are families in which English is normally used more frequently when compared to other households on the island.

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At Secondary level, students start learning one or two other languages, besides Maltese and English, and generally choose between Arabic, French, German, Italian and Spanish. Italian is the most popular choice (around 70% of Maltese students learn this language), whereas Arabic is learnt only by a handful of students every year. Though this may sound surprising, considering that the origin of Maltese is Arabic, the lack of a tradition of teaching this subject in local schools, coupled with religious prejudice and some controversial political decisions, never allowed this language to gain ground in Malta. As far as language teaching at Secondary level is concerned, the policy included in the NMC states that: With regard to language teaching, at Secondary level, one should continue with the strengthening of the students’ knowledge of the two official languages and the introduction of teaching of foreign languages. This document obliges teachers of Maltese and English to teach in the language of their subject and recommends teachers of foreign languages to teach in the language of their particular subject. This document recommends that: teachers of Maltese, Social Studies, History, Religion and PSD4 teach these subjects in Maltese; teachers of foreign languages teach in the language in question; and teachers of the remaining subjects teach in English. Only in those cases where this poses great pedagogical problems, does the NMC accept code switching as a means of communication (Ministry of Education 1999: 62).

Despite the fact that in the above paragraph code-switching between Maltese and English is viewed as a strategy to be used in cases of “great pedagogical problems”, it must be said that in reality code-switching features very regularly in the Maltese classroom (Camilleri 1995; Caruana 2011). Undoubtedly the fact that this is not acknowledged clearly in educational policy making in Malta represents a major shortcoming, as it is a feature which cannot be ignored and which ought to be addressed adequately, by illustrating both the problems that can ensue from constant code-switching but also how this feature is sometimes a pedagogically useful tool in the bilingual classroom. Furthermore, always with regards to code-switching in the Maltese classroom, it must be pointed out that a similar – albeit linguistically more complex situation – is evident when foreign languages (L3) are taught in Malta. Though exposure to foreign languages in the classroom context is greatly encouraged and although the policy of L3 teaching by direct exposure is advocated, in line with the principles of Communicative Language Teaching, one often encounters situations of three languages in contact, wherein code-switching between Maltese and English is then flanked by input in the L3 which is taught as a subject at school. 4 PSD = Personal and Social Development, a subject taught in all Maltese schools.

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As far as the L3 in Malta is concerned, one can undoubtedly state that historically this role has been occupied by Italian. The Italian language had a very strong presence on the Maltese linguistic scene through television up to some years ago, but it has shown signs of a decline recently. This was largely due to the fact that Italian television channels were received locally and the media was dominated by the Italian language which served as a vehicular language to the world of news, sports, entertainment etc. In this respect, it must be said that a very strong degree of spontaneous acquisition of Italian via the media was registered in Malta especially between the Seventies and the Nineties (Brincat 1992, 1998; Caruana 2003, 2006). Besides language acquisition, as Di Liddo (2007) documents, a cultural and social image has been formed: The point of view, which is certainly incomplete and politically conditioned by whoever produces the information, does not allow the Maltese, who are very interested in Italy, to possess the adequate notions to know the Italian reality in all its aspects and through different points of interpretation. Despite this, the popular critical level is certainly not inferior to what is found in Italy (Di Liddo 2007: 62) [our translation].

The extremely rapid developments in the field of the media over the past years have changed the role of Italian television in Malta. Where once it was the uncontested means of entertainment in many households, it now has to “compete” with other computer-based attractions, most notably the use of Internet and of online chatting and blogging. Furthermore, the availability of satellite television (which is very popular in Malta because, as stated above, Maltese nationals generally have no problems in order to understand English), coupled with the proliferation of local channels has led to the demise of the monopoly once held in this sector by the Italian media. This, especially among the younger generations, has affected negatively the popularity and widespread use that Italian had in the past and the level of spontaneous acquisition of Italian via television programmes is in decline. This, of course, has increased the pressure on the local schooling system to ensure that the presence of this L3 does not fade into oblivion, and is not reduced to a mere other subject taught in schools alongside the others. Despite the efforts of teachers of Italian, one cannot describe the current situation in totally positive terms and a revision of Malta’s language policies vis-a-vis multilingualism is deemed to be a necessary step to take in order to address the current developments.

3.3 Trilingualism in the Maltese and in the BAC educational systems: Outcomes and challenges As seen above, the Maltese and BAC educational systems both cater for formal instruction settings in which more than two languages are taught at school. In

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both cases one finds a sociolinguistic context in which most students are exposed to at least two languages from a very early age. This bilingual situation is further augmented within formal classroom settings wherein English is introduced at an early age in the BAC and Italian (alongside other possible language options) is introduced from eleven years of age onwards in the Maltese setting. In both contexts we find a situation where the educational system has undoubtedly led to a complementary relationship between the local language and the international language. In fact, Maltese and Basque, despite their limited use beyond the two contexts, today enjoy an important status in the country or region where they are spoken. One can affirm, without much doubt, that they have both achieved significant status: their use is quite widespread, BAC and Maltese nationals often express strong integrative attitudes towards them, and in several domains they are also used as official and administrative languages. At the same time the presence of the international language is deemed to be highly significant in both contexts: in Malta instrumental attitudes are harboured towards English in the acknowledgement that this is the language which, even in practical terms, creates a wealth of opportunities beyond the local shores; in the BAC Spanish is taken for granted and the need to achieve a high linguistic command is beyond any doubt, as it embodies the majority language and the language shared by the remaining 16 Spanish autonomous communities. What is also very interesting to note is that despite the positive inclination towards multilingualism in both contexts, formal instruction in the L3 still presents a number of problems to deal with and challenges to face. In the BAC, as reported earlier, results show students’ proficiency in English at the end of compulsory education is not what one might expect, which has led to the implementation of CLIL programmes in English (Lasagabaster and Ruiz de Zarobe 2010) in an attempt to improve students’ foreign language competence. Furthermore, although students are exposed to English in class from a very early age, not many of them are interested in using the language within other domains and very few find the necessary motivation, for example, to watch television programmes or films in English. In Malta, since input in Italian via the media has declined in recent years, especially among the younger generations, language competence in this L3 seems to be in decline. This is accompanied by a significant decrease in the number of students who sit for the local examination in order to obtain certification in Italian at the end of Secondary Schooling. Furthermore, there also seems to be a pervading issue of students who do not feel the need to learn an L3 in Malta since they claim that their knowledge of English is nowadays sufficient in order to reach their future goals. These issues point to a very specific direction in both contexts: formal instruction on its own is often not sufficient enough in order to achieve meaningful L3 competence

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even in situations, like those of the BAC and Malta, where policies towards multilingualism are present within the educational system. There is no doubt that if multilingualism is to be fostered, teachers have a lot to say in this respect. Albeit a truism, it has to be highlighted that a multilingual educational system requires multilingual professionals who can carry out their chores in the different languages present in the curriculum. Teaching staff need to be prepared to work in multilingual school contexts, which is why in this section we will proceed to briefly summarize pre-service teachers’ training in both contexts. This will also lead to reflections as to whether their training matches the multilingual needs of the system. In both Malta and the BAC there are two routes to teacher education: the more “direct” route involves completing a four-year Bachelor of Education degree, whereas the second route involves the completion of a Post-graduate Certificate in Education one-year course (a Master’s level degree in the case of the BAC). The entry requirements for the latter course include a Bachelor of Arts or Science degree. In the case of the BAC, bilingual teachers must hold the certificate of Basque language competence (Euskararen Gaitasun Agiria, known by its acronym EGA) which “is directly awarded to those who have completed 80% of the teacher training program in Basque, and it can also be obtained by passing the exam” (Arocena, Douwes, and Hanenburg 2010: 23). Teacher training schools in the BAC deliver their courses mainly through Basque due to the ever increasing enrolment figures of Models B and D, but there are also parallel Spanishmedium courses. If future teachers are to teach in model A, no Basque proficiency is required, although the offer of this type of positions is in sharp decline. As for English as a foreign language, and despite the recent implementation of the new trilingual model, little provision has been made in order to train prospective teachers. If a truly trilingual model is to be enforced, this is an issue that undoubtedly deserves further action, as the teachers participating in CLIL programmes should be fluent speakers capable of tackling complex and demanding tasks in the foreign language in an effective manner. In Malta student teachers who enter the Primary track are required to pass a proficiency test in both English and Maltese, since both are obligatory subjects in Maltese Elementary schools. Students of the Secondary track are only required to sit for a proficiency test in English as this is still widely regarded as a more important vehicular language at Secondary level, although Maltese is frequently used for this purpose, as documented earlier. Though these provisions do ensure that future teachers are indeed bilingual there is no further special provision in order to encourage future teachers to learn other languages unless, of course, they are specialising in the teaching of a foreign language. In this

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sense, one must admit that the growth of English witnessed worldwide and its present role as the lingua franca of academia leads to the disputable belief that, once a teacher masters the English language, there is no need for him/her to become multilingual: this reasoning which seems relatively widespread, despite the fact that it requires further investigation, is in conflict with the fact that multilingualism has, even historically, played an important role in Malta. Despite the fact that they are key actors in the multilingualism as envisaged by the European Commission, very few studies have been completed among future teachers in both the BAC and Malta, and even fewer comparing two different contexts. This consideration does not only apply to the BAC and Malta but also to various other contexts (Lasagabaster and Huguet 2007). In order to analyze whether the Basque and Maltese teacher training schools are preparing prospective teachers to deal with multilingualism at school, we will examine their trilingual language competence and their attitudes towards the 3 languages in contact in the respective curriculum. In the light of the above considerations on teacher training, in the following sections we will compare the results of two independent studies (Caruana 2007; Lasagabaster 2007) which analyzed the language competence and attitudes of prospective teachers in both contexts, but on this occasion we will compare their results in order to attempt to draw conclusions about how multilingualism is displayed among pre-service teachers and to point out the main features of the two contexts in question.

4 Language competence and attitudes among future teachers in Malta and the BAC The sample consisted of 411 undergraduates (222 in the BAC and 189 in Malta) who were completing a university degree to become teachers. The characteristics of the sample in both contexts are apportioned in table 2. BAC

Malta

Mean age

20 years old

19 years old

Gender

Female 68.5% Male 31.5%

Female 75% Male 25%

L1

Basque 24% Spanish 66% Both 9%

Maltese 83% English 5% Both 12%

Table 2: Characteristics of the sample

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The questionnaire used to gather the data was divided into three parts. The first part dealt with personal information such as age, gender, and L1. In the second section the participants were asked to provide information regarding their language use and language competence, whereas the final section focused on language attitudes. As far as language attitudes are concerned, the participants’ attitudes towards each of the three languages in contact were codified in the following way (Lasagabaster and Huguet 2007: 4): the option Strongly Agree (SA) was recoded as 100, the option Agree (A) as 75, Neither Agree Nor Disagree (NAND) as 50, Disagree (D) as 25, and Strongly Disagree (SD) as 0. Once the results were codified, the average for the ten items related to each language was obtained, which allowed us to distinguish three categories: (i) Unfavourable attitudes, that is to say, those between 0.000 and 33.333; (ii) Neutral attitudes, for those whose scores were between 33.334 and 66.666; (iii) Favourable attitudes, i.e. those between 66.667 and 100.000. In this way, we had at our disposal a quantitative variable (the average score for the ten items) which could also be interpreted qualitatively (according to the subjects’ favourable, neutral or unfavourable attitudes).

4.1 Language competence In Table 3 below we provide data regarding the language competence of the 411 subjects included in the study: Language competence in the local language None

A little

Good

Very good

BAC (Basque)

4.5%

15%

41%

40%

Malta (Maltese)

0%

2%

17%

81%

Language competence in the international language None

A little

Good

Very good

BAC (Spanish)

0%

1.4%

20.7%

78%

Malta (English)

0%

3%

54%

43%

Language competence in the foreign language None

A little

Good

Very good

BAC (English)

4.1%

59.5%

34.2%

2%

Malta (Italian)

7.5%

27%

35.5%

30%

Table 3: Level of competence in the 3 languages in the BAC and Malta

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The vast majority of Basque and Maltese future teachers consider themselves to possess a “good” or a “very good” knowledge of both the local and the international languages. Figures also reflect the tendencies of surveys referred to earlier with the percentage of those claiming to have a “very good” knowledge of Maltese which is almost double the number of those who state that they have a “very good” knowledge of English, while for Basque and Spanish these figures are practically the opposite: 78% state that they have “very good” competence of Spanish, 40% of Basque. Figures related to the L3 also present some worthwhile considerations: in the BAC 59.5% of the subjects claim only to know “a little” English, despite the efforts to introduce this language in Basque school; on the other hand, more Maltese to-be teachers seem competent in the L3, with 30% of them claiming to possess a “very good” knowledge of Italian. This is undoubtedly not only due to formal instruction in the L3 but also to exposure to Italian via the media, which evidently still contributes to language acquisition in Malta despite the changes experienced in this sector during the last few years.

4.2 Language attitudes In both contexts (see Figure 1 below) it emerges clearly that attitudes towards Basque and Maltese are generally favourable. This confirms what was illustrated earlier in this paper regarding the improvement of the status of these two languages over the recent years and regarding the awareness of the fact that they both form an important aspect of the local identity.

Figure 1: Attitudes towards the local language (Basque/Maltese)

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In Figure 2 below we report future teachers’ attitudes towards the two international languages used in Malta and in the BAC.

Figure 2: Attitudes towards the international language (Spanish/English)

In Malta, as documented in previous research, instrumental attitudes are harboured towards English: it is normally considered to be a language of great importance and it is also associated to one’s level of education and social class. Although many future teachers demonstrate a favourable attitude towards this language, the percentage of those who show neutral attitudes towards it is quite high (54%). Despite the different sociolinguistic circumstances, attitudes of to-be teachers in the BAC are practically identical to those registered in Malta, with 42% and 53% of subjects respectively expressing favourable and neutral attitudes towards Spanish. The positive attitudes towards Maltese and Basque described earlier are therefore complemented by the fact that totally unfavourable attitudes towards the international languages are very limited, as illustrated in Figure 2. In Figure 3 data in attitudes towards the L3 in both contexts are apportioned. Even in this case, despite the distance between the locations, attitudes of future teachers towards the L3 are remarkably similar.

Figure 3: Attitudes towards the third language (English/Italian)

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In this situation, albeit limitedly to the subjects who were involved in this study, whether one is exposed mainly to the L3 both through the classroom and exposure via the media (as in the case of Italian in Malta) or almost exclusively via formal instruction (as in the case of English in the BAC), did not lead to very marked differences. It is, however, worthwhile to note that unfavourable attitudes (12%) towards Italian in Malta are somewhat higher than those reported in this category with regards to English in the BAC. This is possibly the result of the fact that Italian does not carry the same weight as English does as a lingua franca of international communication, but it could also be the outcome of the historical role that the Italian language has had in Malta which, in some instances, was in conflict with the use of English and Maltese. In any case, those encompassed in the “favourable attitudes” category are less than 25% in both contexts, a percentage well behind what could be expected from future teachers, especially if they are to be the propagators of the EU “L1 + 2 other languages” policy we referred to at the beginning of this paper.

5 Conclusions While examining and comparing two diverse contexts we have observed a number of similarities which are noteworthy, as they are a result of similar conditions of the languages used in Malta and in the BAC. Table 4 summarises the comparative analysis carried out in this chapter. The educational system plays a capital role when it comes to making multilingualism central by emphasizing that its achievement is very desirable. This entails making the presence of the different languages substantial and allocating them enough time and curriculum content (Clyne 2005) to show society at large that proficiency in more than two languages is achievable while students’ learning of other skills and contents is not hindered. The Maltese and Basque experiences will hopefully turn out useful to all those interested in the spread of multilingualism. Despite the similarities we have encountered when comparing various aspects of the two contexts, we also noticed that there are also remarkable differences in the ways employed in order to try and enhance multilingualism. We also reiterate that contextual features should always be borne in mind. In the case of the BAC it is time for research. The implementation of the new trilingual model has been fraught with controversy, as some voices have warned against the possible negative impact in the recovery of the Basque language. These fears are understandable, as the recovery of Basque is still on its way

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Contexts and use

BAC

Malta

1. ‘Local’ language

Basque – had to face a number of struggles to emerge in the light of the use of Spanish

Maltese – for several centuries the language was viewed exclusively as a spoken vernacular, with English and Italian as acrolects.

2. ‘International’ language

Spanish

English

3. L3

English

Italian

4. Language use in schools

Different models, but moving from the predominant bilingual models towards a trilingual model. Research currently indicates that despite the initiation of English at (Pre-) Primary level the degree of competence achieved in this L3 is not yet satisfactory.

A bilingual educational policy geared towards the use of both Maltese and English in schools. The L3 is introduced at Secondary level but as input via Italian media has become less widespread, the spontaneous acquisition of this L3 seems to be on the decline.

5. Attitudes towards multilingualism

Highly positive

Highly positive

6. Attitudes towards the ‘local’ language (based on research among future teachers)

Highly positive

Highly positive

7. Attitudes towards the ‘international’ language (based on research among future teachers)

Generally positive or neutral

Generally positive or neutral

8. Attitudes towards the L3 (based on research among future teachers)

Generally neutral

Generally neutral

Table 4: A summary of comparative aspects

and the efforts made have been enormous. Yet, the desire to recover this minority language should not become a hindrance to the spread of multilingualism among the new Basque generations. The results of foreign language competence amongst Basque would-be teachers are worth considering at this point. The proficiency level obtained by most pre-service teachers is rather frustrating, which is why the incorporation of foreign language courses (or ideally the presence of subjects taught through

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English) and a CLIL component in Faculties of Education and the new compulsory Masters course, to be completed by all those who intend to become secondary education and vocational training teachers, seem to be a must. This lack of foreign language knowledge is a source of difficulty if multilingualism is to be boosted in the Basque educational system. Although some Basque higher education institutions have already incorporated a CLIL component (such as Mondragon University, a private university), this is far from being the general rule in the BAC. In fact, the three public teacher training schools have disregarded the presence of a foreign language (except in the case of the teacher training school in San Sebastián-Donostia, where the prospective teachers of English are trained) and a CLIL component in their curriculum. If future teachers have no CLIL training, it is hard to imagine how they will be able to teach content areas through the foreign language. Moreover, the desired implementation of the new trilingual model seems to be put in jeopardy, as many would-be teachers will not be able to meet the multilingual challenge. The situation of the L3 in Malta is undoubtedly different to that played by English in the BAC: the very fact that the L3 is Italian, a language which has limited use outside the Italian borders, and that English is widely used in Malta puts pressure on the whole notion of multilingualism. There are clear indications that Malta is becoming “less” trilingual than it was in the recent past and this situation is not likely to improve especially when one considers that it is the younger generation that is losing Italian because of the reduced exposure to this language. Over the recent decades Italian in Malta has gone through a number of shifts and changes: up to a few years ago it was the undisputed language of television entertainment and in some cases, it still maintains this role, though not as undisputedly as in the recent past. However, it is certainly not the language of online chatting and of Internet surfing in Malta. This also shows that developments and changes in mass media have a significant impact on the sociolinguistic context and on the domains and functions of different languages within a community. Schooling and language teaching can be ‘called in’ to remedy the situation but this is not an easy task, as research regarding the teaching of English in the BAC clearly shows. One must also add that incorporating CLIL components in the Maltese educational system has to date never really been considered, again probably because of the overwhelming role of English in Maltese schools. Consequently, despite the multilingual Maltese context that the Special Eurobarometer 243 (Directorate General for Education and Culture 2006) portrays, the weak link is clearly represented by the L3. Although multilingualism is encouraged in Malta, as it is in the BAC, problematic issues regarding the L3 are still evident and they are often related to the formal settings in which they

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are taught. Bilingualism seems to be on the right track but the trilingual challenge seems harder to achieve, although one may also argue that this is also because multilingual education is sometimes modelled on a traditional, monolingual approach where each language is compartmentalised and taught separately rather than pursuing a multicompetence approach, as advocated by Jessner (2008) and Cenoz and Jessner (2009). Yet, both in Malta and the BAC, we witness situations in which citizens do become active trilinguals and we cannot underestimate the efforts of education authorities in both contexts who consciously encourage trilingual education and strive to make it an achievable aim. Furthermore, research in both contexts also warrants a positive outlook to the challenges ahead. Results demonstrate that bilingualism can foster the learning of a third language, which is why underpinning the presence of the foreign language in the curriculum can be beneficial as far as the minority language (Maltese or Basque) maintains a robust and vigorous situation. As Cenoz (2009: 233) states, “establishing clear goals for the different languages and integrating them in multilingual syllabuses are necessary steps to establish additive multilingual education”. The Maltese and Basque systems, although still with many aspects to be improved, are examples of how a type of multilingualism that is respectful to the minority/local language can be managed.

References Arocena, Elizabet, Rynke Douwes and Marieke Hanenburg. 2010. Frisian and Basque Multilingual Education: A Comparison of the Province of Fryslan and the Basque Autonomous Community. Leeuwarden: Mercator, European Research Centre on Multilingualism and Language Learning. Basque Government. 2008. Fourth Sociolinguistic Survey 2006. Vitoria-Gasteiz: Basque Government. Brincat, Giuseppe. 1992. L’apprendimento spontaneo dell’italiano per televisione: L’esperienza dei bambini dai sei a dieci anni a Malta. In Linee di Tendenza dell’italiano Contemporaneo, Atti del XXV Congresso della Società Linguistica italiana, [Spontaneous acquisition of Italian through television: the experience of 6 to 10 year-old children in Malta. In Tendencies of contemporary Italian. Proceedings of the XXV Congress of the Society of Italian Linguistics], 501–519. Roma: Bulzoni. Brincat, Giuseppe. 1998. Languages across frontiers. The acquisition of Italian in Malta by viewers of Italian TV programmes. In Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Linguists, Paris 20–27 July 1997, Bernard Caron (ed.), CD-Rom. Oxford: Pergamon/Elsevier Sciences. Brincat, Lara and Sandro Caruana. 2011. Il-Malti Mgħaġġel: Maltese in computer-mediated chat conversations. In Variation and Change: The Dynamics of Maltese in Space, Time, and Society, Sandro Caruana, Ray Fabri, and Thomas Stolz (eds.), 65–89. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.

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Camilleri, Antoinette. 1995. Bilingualism in Education, the Maltese Experience. Heidelberg: Julius Groos Verlag. Caruana, Sandro. 2003. Mezzi di comunicazione e input linguistico. L’acquisizione dell’italiano L2 a Malta [Means of communication and linguistic input. The acquisition of Italian L2 in Malta]. Milano: Franco Angeli. Caruana, Sandro. 2006. Trilingualism in Malta – Maltese, English and ‘italiano televisivo’. International Journal of Multilingualism 3 (3): 159–172. Caruana, Sandro. 2007. Language use and language attitudes in Malta. In Language Use and Attitudes towards Multilingualism in Bilingual European contexts, David Lasagabaster, and Ángel Huguet (eds.), 184–207. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters. Caruana, Sandro. 2011. Bilingualism and language policy in Malta, In Language Contact and Language Decay: Socio-political and Linguistic Perspectives, Paolo Ramat and Emanuele Miola (eds.), 11–46. Pavia: IUSS. Caruana, Sandro and David Lasagabaster. 2008. Atteggiamenti linguistici a Malta e nei Paesi Baschi: uno studio comparativo. [Language attitutudes in Malta and in the Basque Country: a comparative study]. In Conversarii. Studi Linguistici. Dynamics of Language Contact in the Twenty-first Century, Carla Vergaro (ed.), 67–92. Perugia: Guerra. Caruana, Sandro and David Lasagabaster. 2011. Using a holistic approach to explore language attitudes in two multilingual contexts: the Basque Country and Malta. In Becoming multilingual. Language learning and language policy between attitudes and identities, Cecilia Varcasia (ed.), 39–64. Brussels, Oxford: Peter Lang. Cenoz, Jasone. 2009. Towards Multilingual Education: Basque Educational Research from an International Perspective. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, Jasone and Ulrike Jessner. 2009. The study of multilingualism in educational contexts. In The Exploration of Multilingualism, Larissa Aronin, and Britta Hufeisen (eds.), 121–138. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Clyne, Michael. 2005. Australia’s Language Potential. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press. Commission of European Communities. 2008. Multilingualism: an asset for Europe and a shared commitment. Unpublished report, available online: http://ec.europa.eu/ education/languages/pdf/com/2008_0566_en.pdf. Directorate General for Education and Culture. 2006 . Europeans and their languages. Special Eurobarometer 243/Wave 64.3 – TNS Opinion & Social. Brussels: European Commission. Online: http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_243_en.pdf Di Liddo, Marco. 2007. Il ruolo della televisione italiana a Malta [The role of Italian television in Malta]. Unpublished tesi di laurea, Università degli Studi di Torino. Hajek, John. 2008. Multilingual knowledge, practices and attitudes in the European Union. In Multilingual Europe: Reflections on Language and Identity, Jane Warren and Heather Merle Benbow (eds.), 167–183. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Hualde, José Ignacio, Joseba A. Lakarra and Larry Trask (eds.). 1995. Towards a History of the Basque Language. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Lasagabaster, David. 2007. Language use and language attitudes in the Basque Country. In Language Use and Attitudes towards Multilingualism in Bilingual European Contexts, David Lasagabaster and Ángel Huguet (eds.), 65–89. Cleveland: Multilingual Matters. Lasagabaster David and Ángel Huguet (eds.). 2007. Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts: Language Use and Attitudes. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Lasagabaster, David and Yolanda Ruiz de Zarobe (eds.). 2010. CLIL in Spain: Implementation, Results and Teacher Training. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Lasagabaster, David and Juan Manuel Sierra. 2010. Immersion and CLIL in English: More differences than similarities. ELT Journal 64: 376–395. Ministry of Education. 1999. Creating the future together. National Minimum Curriculum. Malta: Ministry of Education. Available online: http://curriculum.gov.mt/docs/nmc_english.pdf Ministry of Education, Employment and the Family. 2011. Towards a quality Education for all. The National Curriculum Framework 2011. Available online: https://www.education.gov. mt/Page.aspx?pid=543 Muñoz, Carmen. 2008. Symmetries and asymmetries of age effects in naturalistic and instructed L2 learning. Applied Linguistics 29, 578–596. Sciriha, Lydia and Mario Vassallo. 2001. Malta – a Linguistic Landscape. Malta: Vassallo & Sciriha. Sciriha, Lydia and Mario Vassallo. 2006. Living Languages in Malta. Malta: Vassallo & Sciriha. Singleton, David. 2003. Critical period or general age factor(s)? In Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language, María del Pilar García Mayo and María Luisa García Lecumberri (eds.), 3–22. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

John Harris and Jim Cummins

3 Issues in all-Irish education: Strengthening the case for comparative immersion1 Introduction From the beginning of the modern phase of immersion in Canada in 1965, French immersion education for children from English-speaking homes has been the focus of a huge number of research studies. Cummins (1991) estimated that there had been approximately a thousand studies in Canada alone. As Johnson and Swain (1997) point out, immersion education has now been in existence long enough to have acquired a distinct identity and a body of theory and research. It is still young enough, however, to be evolving in new directions, arising from new applications of theory and in response to emerging problems. Immersion has spread to many other places around the world and is often employed for language support and revival e.g. in Hawaii, Catalonia, the Basque country and Ireland (Slaughter 1997; Artigal 1993). Johnson and Swain point out that immersion differs from other forms of bilingual education as a consequence of factors such as the role of the second language as a medium of instruction, the nature of the immersion curriculum, the level of support available for the L1, the attempt to achieve additive bilingualism, the fact that L2 exposure is largely confined to the classroom, the student’s limited or non-existent L2 proficiency on entry in to the program and the bilingual status of the teachers. The results of research on Canadian immersion have been summarised and reviewed in a number of major publications (Lambert and Tucker 1972; Swain and Lapkin 1982; Genesee 1987; Johnson and Swain 1997; Swain and Johnson 1997). Many of the studies carried out were originally programme evaluations, focussing on the acquisition of proficiency in English and French in immersion schools, as well as learning outcomes in the other subjects of the curriculum. These evaluations generally confirmed the advantages of immersion in developing a high level of receptive proficiency in the second-language, particularly the acquisition of almost native-like comprehension skills. High levels of fluency and confidence in speaking proficiency and in writing were also achieved but these productive skills did fall considerably short of native like skills. The evaluations also showed that pupils’ acquisition of fluency and literacy in French was 1 The main focus here is on all-Irish schools in Galltacht (English speaking) areas although we refer in passing to Gaeltacht (Irish-heartland area schools).

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achieved at no apparent cost to their English skills. By grade 5, and earlier for some aspects of English literacy, there was usually no difference between immersion and mainstream school children in English standardised test performance. There is also no evidence of any difference in achievement in the other subjects taught through French. In Ireland, there was a substantial growth in Irish medium education outside Gaeltacht heartland areas in the decades after independence from Britain in 1922. By 1940/1941, 12.3% of primary schools were teaching entirely through the medium of Irish and a further 43.2% were teaching varying proportions of children through Irish. This extensive Irish-medium programme was largely a “top-down” development, initiated or promoted at official level, and began to decline from the 1940’s. By 1980/1981, only 3% of children nationally, including those in Gaeltacht areas, were being taught entirely through Irish. The numbers have grown rapidly again since the 1970s, albeit from a very low base, though this time the movement is very much parent led. There are currently 138 all-Irish schools in the Republic of Ireland and 31 in Northern Ireland. The schools in the Republic are the main focus here. While immersion generally has a strong record of research and evaluation, studies of the modern phase of all-Irish immersion which would be comparable to those conducted in Canada have yet to be carried out. This is not to say that we have no objective information at all on the operation of all-Irish schools. The Irish achievement (listening, speaking and in one case reading) of pupils in all-Irish primary schools has been compared with that of pupils in ordinary and Gaeltacht schools in a number of national surveys over a 25 year period (Harris 1984, 1988, 1991; Harris and Murtagh 1987, 1988a, 1988b, 1999; Harris et al. 2006). The findings of these studies are summarised below and confirm the success of Irish immersion in producing a high level of proficiency in Irish. Some of these national surveys have also examined the relationship between Irish-immersion pupils’ general academic ability (as measured by English verbal reasoning test) and achievement in Irish (Harris and Murtagh 1987) and have also related a range of social, linguistic and educational home-background variables to their L2 proficiency in Irish (Harris et al. 2006). There have also been a number of very useful studies of particular aspects of Irish-immersion programmes (e.g., Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin 1979; Henry, Andrews, and Ó Cainín 2002; Ní Bhaoill and Ó Duibhir 2004). But this work still does not amount to the kind of broad-based evaluation that would be aligned specifically with the needs, characteristics, and processes of all-Irish education and that would be driven by the particular theoretical and empirical issues to which immersion gives rise. Apart from deepening our understanding of how immersion works in the case of Irish, high-quality evaluation

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studies could make a great contribution to the long-term growth of all-Irish education just as they have done elsewhere. The most urgent reason for carrying out this work, however, is that despite the evidence mentioned above for the positive impact of Irish immersion on speaking proficiency, there are a number of particular challenges facing schools in the sector that require investigation. Just three of the challenges are discussed in this paper: 1. The existence of variations in Irish-immersion children’s speaking proficiency related to variables such as socioeconomic, sociolinguistic and educational variables. 2. Concerns about the quality of all-Irish children’s command of the spoken language. 3. The issue of the early introduction of English in all-Irish schools and the related question of the sequencing of early reading in Irish and English – an issue that has been the subject of particular controversy and debate in recent years. While the main goal of the present paper is to describe and analyse these specific questions, and suggest the kind of research needed if the immersion sector in Ireland is to thrive, there are two other aspects of our analysis that may be of more general interest. First, we draw attention to the fact that some important characteristics of all-Irish schools, and some of the challenges to which they must respond, are not directly comparable to Canadian immersion at all. Just three of the characteristics we discuss here which contrast with many Canadian French immersion contexts are the following: the minority status of the Irish language itself, the fact that all-Irish schools are invariably immersion centres rather than dual track schools and the fact that attrition rates appear to be very low. These differences are potentially all the more significant because the Canadian immersion model – along with its practices, goals, and associated evaluation evidence – have been a crucial reference point and source of validation for the rapidly developing Irish immersion sector. One of the issues we hope our analysis will highlight, is that despite the undoubted broad comparability of Canadian, Irish and many other immersion contexts in terms of program practices and policy responses, insufficient attention may have been given in the past to analysing and interpreting the significance of some of the sociolinguistic and educational differences. The second point arises from the fact that Canadian immersion itself is, in some respects, in the process of redefining itself. Swain and Lapkin (2005) point out that changes in Canadian demographics in recent decades mean that some core features of the standard immersion model identified in Swain and Johnson’s (1997) description may have to be modified considerably. The evolving context is

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characterised by the rapid growth of highly diverse populations in large urban centres. Immigrant parents who speak languages other than English or French at home are now sending their children to French immersion. Thus, for example, since overt support for the home language has always been a core feature of the prototypical Canadian immersion model, and the teacher has typically been bilingual in French and English, the presence of diverse L1s among immigrant students in immersion schools poses significant new programming and organisational challenges. Efforts to respond to these changes in turn have led to a more fundamental reappraisal of the role of L1s in immersion generally (Swain and Lapkin 2005), an endeavour which has been very productive in terms of insights and theoretical development. The very fact that changing internal sociolinguistic circumstances can require changes in Canadian immersion, of course, strengthens the case for closer scrutiny of the applicability of standard immersion models and teaching practices across sociolinguistic and country contexts. The examination of Irish immersion here provides us with an opportunity to detect both significant continuities and significant differences across immersion contexts. As we hope to show later, the results of our examination argue for a more systematic and focussed approach to comparative immersion research generally than has existed in the past. Given the importance of immersion in language education and language revitalisation around the world, however, such a sustained programme of comparative research might produce considerable dividends.

Irish immersion: High levels of proficiency maintained despite rapid growth Turning now to Irish immersion, it will be useful to look first at the evidence relating to the levels of proficiency in Irish produced by all-Irish schools. The main source of evidence on achievement in Irish in primary schools is a series of national surveys conducted in ordinary mainstream schools, all-Irish schools and Gaeltacht schools in the late 1970s and 1980s (Harris 1982, 1983, 1984, 1988; Harris and Murtagh 1988a, 1988b). These showed that about one-third of pupils in ordinary schools attained mastery of each of a number of curricular objectives in Irish (Listening and Speaking) at sixth, fourth, and second grade. Achievement in all-Irish schools, however, was considerably higher than in either ordinary mainstream or Gaeltacht schools. In the case of each Irish Speaking and Irish Listening objective tested, the highest percentage of pupils attaining mastery was always associated with all-Irish schools, the second-highest with

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Gaeltacht schools, and the lowest with ordinary schools. In second grade, for example, the mean percentage of pupils attaining mastery of each of ten speaking and listening objectives in all-Irish primary schools was 83.8%, while it was 57.9% in Gaeltacht schools and 31.1% in ordinary schools. More recent research, again based on national samples (Harris et al. 2006) shows that the success of all-Irish schools in developing high levels of proficiency has in most respects being maintained during a period of unprecedented growth in the sector. While Irish-immersion pupil numbers increased from 1.1% to more than 5% nationally in the period between 1985 and 2002, the Harris et al. data show that they have maintained generally high standards of achievement in Irish. Overall mean scores on Irish Listening in Irish-immersion schools, for example, do not differ significantly over the 17-year period since the mid 1980s. By comparison, overall mean scores in ordinary mainstream schools fell from 46.9 (SD 13.65) to 34 (SD 9.35) – a statistically significant drop and one which very nearly equals the 1985 standard deviation. While the Harris et al. study shows there was a significant decline in Irish-immersion schools in the percentages of pupils attaining mastery of some objectives relating to grammar and morphology (which were tested by relatively small numbers of items), performance on the main Irish Listening and Irish Speaking objectives remained essentially the same. We return to a discussion of the significance of these weaknesses in proficiency later and consider the implications for research and evaluation relating to the improvement of Irish-immersion pupils’ proficiency. There was a significant increase in the percentage attaining mastery of one objective. In the case of Irish Listening, for example, the percentage attaining mastery of Listening vocabulary was 90.4% in 1985 and 89.3% in 2002, while the percentages for General comprehension of speech were 96.4% in 1985 and 96.3% in 2002. Similarly, the major Irish Speaking objectives of Fluency of oral description, Communication (second grade), and Speaking vocabulary showed no significant difference between the two points in time. The views of teachers in all-Irish schools about changes in standards of achievement in Irish in Harris et al. (2006) are consistent with this overall trend: 34.6% of pupils in all-Irish schools were taught by teachers who believed that there had been no change in standards of speaking proficiency in Irish in the previous 15 years, while the remainder were almost equally divided between those whose teachers perceived a decline (29.3%) and an improvement (27%). This is in sharp contrast to the perceptions of teachers in ordinary and Gaeltacht schools where, particularly in the case of the former, a decline in pupil speaking proficiency is reported by a large majority.

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The success of all-Irish schools in gradually becoming a more mainstream option, while at the same time continuing to produce reasonably high levels of pupil proficiency in Irish generally, represents a major contribution to strengthening the language nationally. Harris et al. argue that by producing substantial numbers of pupils with high levels of proficiency, all-Irish schools may be crossing a crucial threshold in terms of contributing to the formation of Irishspeaking networks outside Gaeltacht areas. This effect is enhanced in so far as individual all-Irish schools themselves, like all schools, can often provide a focus for the development of social networks. Because all-Irish schools bring together a greater proportion of parents with relatively high levels of ability in Irish, who might otherwise be rather thinly dispersed in the population, the possibility that adult and family Irish-speaking networks will develop is greater (see Ó Riagáin and Ó Gliasáin 1979). Such networks can also exert an impact on pupil proficiency in all-Irish schools.

Links between home background variables and Irish proficiency in immersion We turn now to a number of issues related to (a) differences in the social, linguistic and educational profile of all-Irish school parents compared to ordinary mainstream-school parents and (b) variations in the levels of Irish proficiency (i) between different all-Irish schools (ii) between pupils (i.e. within all-Irish schools) related to parental and home background variables and (iii) possible links between homebackground variables on the one hand and between-school variations in levels of Irish proficiency achieved by all-Irish schools on the other. These issues are important because we need to (a) identify the real source of the all-Irish schools’ success in producing high levels of proficiency in Irish (school effects versus home background effects); (b) understand the different circumstances in which different all-Irish schools may operate and the challenges to which individual schools may have to respond. Harris et al (2006) show that all-Irish parents generally have a “better” profile than ordinary mainstream-school parents in terms of their attitudes to Irish, their own ability to speak Irish, the frequency with which they use Irish at

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home, their own educational background and their socioeconomic status2. They also found that various aspects of parents’ profile were significantly linked to pupils’ achievement in Irish Listening, Irish Speaking and/or Irish Reading. A key question arising from this, therefore, is the following: Could the success of all-Irish schools in producing high levels of proficiency in Irish (compared to ordinary schools), be largely or entirely “explained away” by differences in the parents’ socioeconomic, linguistic or educational profile? The evidence strongly suggests the answer is “No”. To illustrate this, it will be useful to look first at some of the differences between parents in the three populations of schools studied by Harris et al. In Table 1 below, the answer options on the left relate to a question which asked parents “what is your general attitude to Irish now?” In ordinary mainstream schools, the most common category of response was “neutral” (39.6%), followed closely by “favourable” (34.2%). Smaller percentages were “very favourable”, “unfavourable” or “very unfavourable”. The contrast with the attitudes of allIrish school parents, which are the most favourable in all three populations of schools, is striking. For example, 56.5% of all-Irish school parents were very favourable towards Irish, compared to 46.7% of Gaeltacht parents, and 14.5% of ordinary mainstream-school parents. A further 35.9% of all-Irish parents were favourable. Only 0.7% were unfavourable to any extent. Parents’ general attitude to Irish now

Ordinary

All-Irish

Gaeltacht

Very Favourable

14.5% (0.71)

56.5% (3.12)

46.7% (3.48)

Favourable

34.2% (0.97)

35.9% (2.56)

35.6% (2.42)

Neutral

39.6% (0.96)

6.6% (0.98)

14.7% (2.03)

Unfavourable/Very unfavourable

11.2% (0.67)

0.7% (0.35)

2.6% (0.80)

Missing

0.5% (0.13)

0.3% (0.22)

0.5% (0.42)

Table 1: Percentage of parents associated with ordinary mainstream schools, all-Irish schools and Gaeltacht schools according to their general attitude to Irish Standard error printed in italics. N Ordinary = 2744, N All-Irish = 609, N Gaeltacht = 575.

We turn next to parents’ assessment of their own ability to speak Irish based on replies to a multiple choice question. Table 2 shows that the speaking category with which the greatest percentage of parents associate themselves differs

2 All-Irish parents also had a better profile than Gaeltacht parents, as far as attitudes to Irish are concerned. Gaeltacht parents have a better profile than either all-Irish or ordinary-school parents in terms of ability to speak Irish and frequency of use of Irish (See Harris et al, 2006).

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by type of school: “a few simple sentences” in the case of ordinary mainstreamschool parents (37.7%), “parts of conversations” for all-Irish school parents (38.3%), and “native-speaker ability” for Gaeltacht school parents (37.2%). It can be seen also that a combined total of 32% of ordinary mainstream-school parents assign themselves to one of the two lowest Irish-speaking categories: “No Irish” and “the odd word”. By comparison with these ordinary school parents, only 10% of all-Irish parents and 11.4% of Gaeltacht parents rated their speaking ability as low as “no Irish” or “only the odd word”. Parents’ ability to speak Irish

Ordinary

All-Irish

Gaeltacht

No Irish

10.8% (0.89)

1.8% (0.64)

3.3% (0.78)

Only the odd word

21.2% (0.97)

8.2% (1.30)

8.1% (1.39)

A few simple sentences

37.7% (1.18)

26.9% (1.65)

15.8% (2.19)

Parts of conversation

22.6% (1.00)

38.3% (2.44)

19.9% (2.37)

Most conversations

6.2% (0.51)

18.7% (1.90)

14.1% (2.13)

Native speaker ability

1.0% (0.18)

5.8% (1.17)

37.2% (5.21)

Missing

0.6% (0.14)

0.4% (0.24)

1.7% (0.71)

Table 2: Percentage of parents associated with ordinary mainstream schools, all-Irish schools and Gaeltacht schools according to their self-assessed ability to speak Irish Standard error in italics. N Ordinary = 2744, N All-Irish = 609, N Gaeltacht = 575.

Table 3 presents data on the use of Irish by parents at home in all-Irish schools, compared to ordinary mainstream and Gaeltacht schools. It can be seen that substantial percentages of the parents of pupils in ordinary schools rarely if ever spoke Irish to their children (33.1% “seldom” and 42.3% “never”). The combined percentage for the “seldom” and “never” categories of use (75.4%) may be compared with the combined percentage in the three lowest categories of speaking ability among ordinary mainstream-school parents in Table 2 (69.7%). It is much less common in all-Irish schools to have parents speaking Irish with such a low frequency to their children: while 25.5% of allIrish parents “seldom” speak Irish to the child, only 8.4% “never” do3.

3 Only in the case of Gaeltacht schools do substantial percentages of parents speak Irish to their child as their everyday language of choice – 22.6% ‘Always’ speak Irish to the child. The most frequently-chosen description of frequency of use of Irish with the child in Gaeltacht schools, however, is ‘occasionally’ (25.7%), the same frequency-of-use category which is also most often selected by all-Irish parents (43.4%).

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Parent speaks Irish to child Always

Ordinary 0.1% (0.09)

All-Irish 1.1% (0.55)

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Gaeltacht 22.6% (4.76)

Very often

1.0% (0.24)

5.2% (1.04)

8.1% (1.73)

Often

2.2% (0.29)

15.6% (1.97)

14.5% (2.39)

Occasionally

20.6% (0.82)

43.4% (1.73)

25.7% (2.78)

Seldom

33.1% (0.99)

25.5% (1.17)

17.7% (2.34)

Never

42.3% (1.28)

8.4% (1.45)

10.8% (1.89)

0.7% (0.15)

0.8% (0.45)

0.7% (0.45)

Missing

Table 3: Percentage distribution of parents (respondents) in three categories of schools according to the frequency with which they speak Irish to their child Standard error in italics. N Ordinary = 2744, N All-Irish = 609, N Gaeltacht = 575.

Assessing programme impact versus parent profile in determining proficiency In other analyses, Harris et al. show that the success of all-Irish schools in producing high levels of pupil achievement in Irish (relative, for example, to ordinary mainstream schools) does not depend in any essential way on these linguistically related differences in home background, or on other parental education or social factors. What all the comparisons crucially show is that pupils in all-Irish schools who have no such linguistic, social, or educational advantages still succeed in reaching levels of achievement in Irish which are substantially higher to a statistically significant degree than the achievements of pupils in ordinary mainstream-schools who do have such linguistic social or educational advantages. This adds weight to the argument that the essential contribution of all-Irish schools derives from the fact that they are Irish-medium, so that extensive and sustained in-school contact with the language is equally available to all pupils. To show this, Harris et al. compared various aspects of achievement in Irish in two groups of pupils: “Irish-disadvantaged background”. Pupils in all-Irish schools whose parents’ ability in Irish is at the level of “No Irish/the odd word/simple sentences” and who “seldom or never” speak Irish to their child. Group 2 “Irish-advantaged background”. Pupils in ordinary schools whose parents’ ability to speak Irish is at the level of “most conversations/ native speaker” and who speak Irish to their child “occasionally (or more often)” – the highest category in ordinary schools which will provide enough children to make a worthwhile comparison. Group 1

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The results show clearly that “Irish-disadvantaged-background” pupils in all-Irish schools (Group 1) have a level of performance on Irish Listening, Irish Speaking, and Irish Reading which greatly exceeds the level of the “Irishadvantaged background” group in ordinary mainstream schools (and to a statistically significant degree). For example, the mean percentage correct on the Irish Listening Test for the “Irish-disadvantaged” pupils in all-Irish schools was 83.0% (SE = 1.4) while for the “Irish-advantaged” pupils in ordinary mainstream schools it was only 53.6% (SE = 1.23). The mean percentage correct on the Irish Speaking Test for the “Irish-disadvantaged” all-Irish group was 79.5% (SE = 3.05) while for the “Irish advantaged” ordinary-school group it was only 52.8% (SE = 3.31). Harris et al. made a similar comparison between (i) the Irish achievement of those pupils in all-Irish schools who were least advantaged in terms of parents’ educational and socio-economic backgrounds and (ii) pupils in ordinary mainstream schools whose parents were most advantaged in these same terms. The two groups of pupils whose Irish achievement were compared were (1) pupils in all-Irish schools whose parents’ highest level of education was the Intermediate Certificate and who were also in receipt of a medical card and (2) pupils in ordinary schools whose parents had a third-level degree and were not in receipt of a medical card. Again, the all-Irish “disadvantaged” group of pupils had a substantially higher performance than the “advantaged” ordinary group on all three Irish tests. For example, mean percentage correct on a 25-item Irish Reading test (the one common to all-Irish and ordinary schools) was 69.1% (SE = 3.11) for the allIrish ‘disadvantaged’ group, but only 45.2% (SE = 0.89) for the ordinary school ‘advantaged’ group. For Irish Listening, the means were 77.6% (SE = 2.05) and 51.4% (SE = 0.93) respectively. There can be little doubt, therefore, that the allIrish schools’ contribution to pupils’ proficiency does not depend in any critical way on the kind of linguistic and socioeconomic advantages just described.

Need for research on between-pupil and between-school variance in Irish Despite this, however, the fact remains that there are significant relationships between parental variables and all-Irish school pupils’ proficiency in Irish. In addition to these individual pupil/parent level relationships, other data from the Harris et al. study indicate the existence of relatively large between-school

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variance in achievement in Irish4 in all-Irish schools (as well as in ordinary mainstream and Gaeltacht schools). Presumably, at least some of this schoollevel variation within the all-Irish sector relates to these same individual pupil/ parent linguistic, social and educational variables. In this context, as well as in relation to reading issues discussed later, it is notable that Bialystok and Cummins (1991) report similar developments and trends in Canadian immersion: “In Canada, more than 250,000 students from mainly English backgrounds are enrolled in French immersion programs as a means of developing bilingualism. The initial results of these programs tended to be highly positive, with students developing close to native-like receptive skills in French and relatively fluent (but by no means native-like) expressive skills (Lambert and Tucker 1972). However, as students entering immersion programs have gradually diversified with respect to socioeconomic and linguistic background, results have become more mixed: for example, not all students succeed equally well and a small but significant proportion drop out of the program during the early grades. A number of investigators (e.g. Cummins 1987) have suggested that pedagogy in immersion programs requires greater individualization to address the learning needs of an increasingly diverse student population.’ (Cummins and Bialystok, 1991: 226). While further research would be necessary to test the hypothesis that significant school-level variation within the all-Irish sector relates to these pupil/ parent linguistic, social and educational variables, we did uncover preliminary evidence which suggests the possibility of two or more distinctive groups of schools within the all-Irish population in terms of proficiency in Irish. It would be very well worthwhile to investigate this question further. It would be useful also to investigate whether these between-school differences, either in Irish proficiency5 or in pupil background, are linked in any way to the variation in school practice relating to the sequencing of early reading in Irish and English within the all-Irish sector which is discussed later in the paper.

The quality of all-Irish pupils’ Irish Despite the success of immersion programmes in developing speaking proficiency, studies have also found explicit weaknesses in learners’ grammatical, lexical and sociolinguistic development (Lyster 1987; Harley, Allen, Cummins, and Swain 1990). The importance of verb morphology is that it has a crucial

4 Irish Listening, Irish Speaking and Irish Reading. 5 Ní Bhaoill and Ó Duibhir (2004) emphasise that issues of early reading cannot be adequately assessed without taking account of other language skills – listening, speaking and writing.

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semantic role in communication. Yet this kind of difficulty with certain aspects of grammar has been a feature of immersion programmes in many countries such as Canada where pupils, despite being able to communicate effectively at a high level in the language, appear to have certain “fossilised” linguistic errors which are difficult to eradicate. The immersion classroom in Canada, which typically might consist of 25 learners of French and one native or near-native speaker of French as the teacher, produces a distinct interlanguage by Grade 8 (Lyster 1987). As soon as students achieve a level of competence in French which allows them to communicate their intended meaning to one another, there appears to be little impetus for them to be more accurate in their use of the language in conveying their message (Kowal and Swain 1997; Swain 1985, 1993). Probably the greatest cause for concern in the all-Irish schools is the evidence for a decrease in the percentage of pupils attaining mastery of the verb-related objective in Irish Listening. The percentage of pupils attaining mastery of the objective Understanding the morphology of verbs in listening is down significantly, from 76.1% in 1985 to 61.3% in 2002. The slippage in performance involved, however, is to a more basic level of achievement (“at least minimal progress”) rather than to “failure”. The percentage failing the verb objective in 2002 is negligible (0.6%) and does not differ from 1985. While the corresponding objective on the Irish Speaking Test, Control of the morphology of verbs in speaking, also suffers a fall in the percentage of pupils attaining mastery, the difference in this case is not significant. The change in the failure rate over time for this objective is not significant either. Ó Duibhir (2009, 2010) has recently completed a comprehensive study of the spoken Irish of pupils in Irish immersion schools. The linguistic data are derived from conversations between groups of all-Irish school pupils while cooperating on a planning task outside the regular classroom context. The study, which also used stimulated recall to explore learners’ awareness and understanding of different aspects of their use of Irish, promises to add considerably to our understanding of all-Irish children’s proficiency in the language. Research in recent years has related the kind of problems we have just been discussing to features of existing immersion teaching practices and this, in turn, has led to the development of some promising approaches to ameliorating them. Swain and Carroll (1987) report that observational studies of grade 3 and grade 6 immersion classrooms showed that grammar was taught at particular times of the day and that the rules, paradigms and grammatical categories being learnt tended to be separated from their meaning. A focus on form-related meaning in the context of content-based activities, which might have reinforced grammatical points studied during language classes, was absent. Swain and Carroll argued that more regularity and systematicity in linguistic analysis and in the handling

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of error correction were needed in immersion contexts. Subsequent studies showed that focussing teaching on a particular feature of the language within a meaningful communicative context enhanced learning and helped to overcome environmental weaknesses in the programme’s setting (Day and Shapson 1991; Harley 1989; Lyster 1993). Other studies showed that collaborative tasks can be used to encourage groups of students to think and talk about the function and application of grammar in specific writing activities. With the inclusion of final corrective feedback as part of this process, existing knowledge of form and function can be consolidated or modified and new knowledge generated (Kowal and Swain 1997).

The profile of all-Irish parents as the immersion sector expands Harris et al. (2006) point out that one important thing we do not know about allIrish school parents is whether their social, linguistic or educational profile has changed between 1985 and 2002 as the sector significantly expanded. Unfortunately, while we have some information relating to home language in all-Irish schools in 1985 – based on questions put to pupils and teachers (Harris and Murtagh 1987) – the data are not comparable to 2002 data which were collected from the parents themselves. Nor do we have comparable information for 1985 and 2002 on other variables such as parental ability to speak Irish, educational level, or social class. It would not be at all surprising, of course, if the profile of all-Irish parents had indeed changed to some extent over the period in question as these schools became – relatively speaking at least – more mainstream. The expectation would be that their profile had become somewhat more like that of ordinary mainstream-school parents, compared to what it had been when the all-Irish sector was much smaller and less mainstream. Given that the Harris et al. study shows that background linguistic, educational, and social factors are significantly related to pupil achievement in Irish, any change in the profile of all-Irish parents over time would be of interest in trying to account for the decline in the percentage of all-Irish pupils attaining mastery of the two verb-related objectives mentioned above. Changes in the profile of all-Irish parents could also be important in accounting for any future changes in the quality of immersion-children’s Irish more generally and in understanding the factors governing all-Irish schools’ decisions about the sequencing of early reading instruction in Irish and English (See discussion in Sections 9–15 below). Arguably, all-Irish school parents who had relatively high levels of speaking proficiency in Irish, and who frequently used Irish with their child, might be expected to provide exactly the kind of real communicative environment which would help to prevent or correct some of the more persistent errors

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which are characteristic of the L2 speech of children in Irish immersion. If the proportion of all-Irish parents with these high levels of speaking ability were to decline over time, for example, or if such parents were to be present in smaller proportions in some all-Irish schools as the sector continued to expand, information on these trends would be of considerable use in planning and policy development within the sector and in interpreting other data on all-Irish education. It would be of considerable interest in future surveys and evaluation work, therefore, to collect information on the linguistic, educational and socioeconomic profile of all-Irish and ordinary school parents comparable to the information collected in Harris et al. (2006).

Sequencing the introduction L2 Irish and L1 English reading in immersion We turn now to another set of issues concerning Irish immersion which have long been the subject of discussion: whether English as a subject should be introduced in the early years of all-Irish education, and the related question of whether reading in the children’s second language (Irish) should be introduced before reading in English6. These questions are important because practice varies from school to school and because there appears to be no general agreement on many of the issues involved. Ní Bhaoill and Ó Duibhir (2004) report that 58% of all-Irish schools begin formal reading instruction in Irish first (IRF 7) while 36.4% begin reading instruction in English first (ERF). Only 5.7% of all-Irish schools begin reading instruction in both Irish and English at the same 6 Most of the discussion here focuses on reading. 7 For convenience, IRF (Irish Reading First) will be used to refer to those all Irish primary schools in which the introduction of English is delayed to some extent or in which Irish reading is introduced before English reading. ERF (English Reading First) will be used to refer to all-Irish primary schools which introduce English from the beginning, or which introduce reading in English before reading in Irish. In 2007, a Ministerial order (Circular 0044/2007) ‘Language and Literacy in Irish-medium Schools’ required all schools to begin instruction in English for an 30 minutes a day from the beginning of the second term in Junior Infants/Kindergarten. While this paper was being prepared, a vigorous campaign of opposition to this instruction, led by the Irish immersion sector, was still in progress. Subsequently (January 2010) the Circular was withdrawn. A new circular requiring instruction in English to commence no later than the beginning of the second term in Senior Infants was expected to be issued in due course but has not yet appeared. Since some Irish immersion schools already introduce English from the beginning, of course, practice in this area still varies across the immersion sector generally.

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time. By comparison, it may be noted that early immersion in Canada usually involves 100% French in Kindergarten and Grade 1 and sometimes in Grade 2 and 3 as well. The question of sequencing is also important, of course, because in the case of a minority language such as Irish, which is not widely encountered by pupils outside school, it is clearly desirable that, as far as possible, the school should be the one domain where Irish is the sole language. The initial years in an immersion school are particularly important in establishing the convention that all interaction in the school should be in Irish. In this section, an attempt will be made to set out some of the issues to which the reading sequencing question gives rise. It will be argued that the existing international research is not adequate to decide the reading sequencing issue clearly in the context of Irish immersion – either in a general way or in particular schools. It is proposed that a substantial, comprehensive study of early reading in all-Irish schools is needed in order to clarify issues and inform the debate. This research is particularly needed for two reasons: (1) because Irish immersion differs from the most common forms of immersion in Canada in a number of ways outlined below which may be central to the reading-sequencing issue; (2) because of the more general lack of large scale evaluation research on the nature, processes and impact of Irish-medium education comparable to that carried out on immersion in Canada and which would provide the objective context and information necessary for an informed debate. Apart from contributing to our understanding of the specific issue in Ireland, however, such a study could make a major contribution to the international literature relating to the early introduction of the home language in immersion and to the issue of the sequencing of early reading. While there are many individual case studies of dual language programmes in the US where this issue has been implicated (e.g. 50 : 50 models vs. 90 :10 models), there has not been any systematic study of sequencing that has set out to isolate this variable. The discussion below focuses on two main justifications for introducing Irish reading before English reading (the pattern favoured by 58% of schools) – (1) the linguistic interdependence principle, and (2) established practice relating to the sequencing of early reading in immersion, particularly in Canada. These are also the same reasons which are often advanced in other immersion contexts for the strategy adopted in relation to early reading. It will be argued that while both the linguistic interdependence principle and practice in Canadian immersion provide support for the strategy of IRF all-Irish schools, they do not, for a number of reasons, necessarily undermine the different strategy of ERF all-Irish schools. The issues involved should ideally be decided by comprehensive research. In the meantime, however, it must be acknowledged that in our present

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state of knowledge, the different strategies of IRF and ERF all-Irish schools may well represent the optimum response at individual school level to different educational, social and linguistic circumstances. There is no necessary reason why best practice in this area should be the same in all all-Irish schools. The discussion concludes with a set of questions on which research relating to the sequencing of early reading in all-Irish schools might focus.

The interdependence principle and all-Irish practice on English reading Beginning reading instruction in L2 before reading in L1 in the context of immersion is usually justified on the basis that skills in second-language reading appear to transfer readily to first (majority) language reading later. The “interdependence principle” states (Cummins 1981: 29) that “to the extent that instruction in Lx is effective in promoting proficiency in Lx, transfer of this proficiency to Ly will occur provided there is adequate exposure to Ly (either in school or environment) and adequate motivation to learn Ly”. Thus, even though the outer form of languages and language use differ (e.g. pronunciation, fluency, etc.), there is an underlying cognitive/academic proficiency that is common across languages. This “common underlying proficiency” makes possible the transfer of cognitive/academic or literacy-related skills across languages. While both the linguistic interdependence principle itself, as well as actual Canadian immersion practice generally, appears to validate the approach of the majority of all-Irish schools that begin reading instruction in Irish first, the issues are in fact extremely complex. The linguistic interdependence principle, however, actually predicts, and is consistent with evidence, that skills in L1 reading will also transfer to L2 (Noonan, Colleaux, and Yackulic 1997) – which in relation to reading issues at least validates the approach of the minority of all-Irish schools (ERF schools) who begin reading in English first. Cummins (2000a) does argue that the transfer of literacy skills across languages is more likely to operate from the minority to the majority language because of the greater exposure to literacy in the majority language outside of school and the strong social pressure to acquire reading skills in that language. Yet, he also recognises the significance of research by Verhoeven (1991) in the Netherlands showing that transfer of literacy-related skills can occur both ways in bilingual programs: from minority to majority languages and from majority to minority languages. Similar results are reported by Cashion and Eagan (1990) in the case of early French immersion. They found that as pupils spontaneously

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acquired English reading and writing skills, they transferred this knowledge from English to French. In addition, this process of transfer of reading and writing skills from their first to their second language was much more evident than the transfer of literacy-related skills from their second to their first language (French to English). A more general difficulty about using the linguistic interdependence principle as a basis for decision-making, or for prescribing strategy in relation to the early introduction of the child’s home language (L1) in particular immersion contexts, is that it is a principle or explanation of a very general kind. It does not specify the mechanisms of skill transfer from reading in one language to reading in another. In addition, in situations where reading instruction begins in the second language (Irish), it is difficult to know to what extent the effective operation of the interdependence principle depends on a substantial parental/home contribution in relation to reading in the majority language (e.g. giving children the experience of being read to, promoting reading in English at home and so on). Note in this context the significance of Cummins’ point quoted earlier “Transfer is more likely to occur from minority to majority language because of the greater exposure to literacy in the majority language outside of school and the strong social pressure to learn it” [emphasis added]. To an unknown extent, therefore, during pupils’ early years in an IRF all-Irish school context, someone outside the school has to ensure that English reading skills develop. Another issue about the optimal sequence of reading instruction was raised by Cummins many years ago in the context of Irish immersion. While at the time (1977) the number of all-Irish schools was much smaller than it is today, the issue is as relevant now as it was then. The context was a study of beginning reading instruction in the child’s second language (Irish). The title of Cummins’ article in the Canadian Modern Language Review indicates his message: “Delaying native language reading instruction in immersion programs: A cautionary note.” Cummins’ point arises from the reasons which teachers gave for favouring the introduction of reading in the home language prior to the second language in all-Irish schools: A large number of teachers also stressed the possible motivational consequences of holding a child back from a skill he is ready to learn. These teachers argued that many children could recognise a sizeable number of English words before coming to school and consequently had more interest in learning to read in that language. . . . In short, many teachers felt that the introduction of reading instruction in L2 would fail to stimulate the child’s interest in reading and might have long-term detrimental consequences for his motivation to read (Cummins 1977: 47).

Cummins argues that at Grades 1 and 2, for example, the child’s L2 skills are not sufficiently developed for him to widely explore the different reading

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materials which may be appropriate for his cognitive level. Thus, his L2 reading experiences may not stimulate an interest in reading to the same extent as L1 reading experiences might. He also points out, however, that delaying L1 reading instruction may not have these undesirable motivational consequences in cases where parents “fill the gap left by the school”. The rapid transfer of reading skills from L2 reading to L1 skills in immersion generally may in part be a function of parental involvement in the reading process. But what happens if support of this kind is not available in the case of particular schools, or if the home needs support from the school itself, or from other agencies, in this regard? Cummins suggests that “until we discover to what extent parents do promote L1 reading, few generalisations can be made regarding the optimal sequencing of reading instruction in immersion programs.” (Cummins 1977: 48).8 Although not necessarily directly relevant to the Irish-context, it is notable that Cummins has expressed concern about the relatively extreme “pattern of resistance to the teaching of English in full-immersion Maori-medium contexts” (May and Hill 2005) and has questioned how readily academic skills may be expected to transfer across languages if reading in the home language is not developed: The rationale is that the minority language (Maori) needs maximum reinforcement and transfer of academic skills to English will happen ‘automatically’ without formal instruction. Although there may be instances where this does happen, in my view, this assumption is seriously flawed. ‘Automatic’ transfer of academic skills across languages will not happen unless students are given opportunities to read and write extensively in English in addition to the minority language (Cummins 2000b: 194).

A crucially problematical issue about using the linguistic interdependence principle to determine strategy regarding the sequencing of reading instruction in a particular immersion school context is that it is extremely difficult to be sure about the direction of effects at all. Even where the school successfully introduces reading in L2 before L1, we cannot be sure that the early rate of progress in L2 reading is not determined by basic literacy skills/readiness already acquired in L1, or by the success of the ongoing transfer of skills by the child between L1 and L2 arising from reading outside school. In other words, we have no way of knowing at present whether, or to what extent, what we might call the “L1 loop” is actually the basic engine of progress in children’s acquisition of reading skills even in L2, in those cases where L2 reading is introduced before L1 at school. This is ultimately a question to be determined by research. 8 For a review of educational disadvantage and reading literacy in Ireland, see Eivers, Shiel and Shortt (2004).

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Because of the range of early reading practices in different all-Irish schools, they provide an exceptionally useful natural laboratory for studying the issues. Indeed, research here could make a major contribution to the international literature on the subject of the optimal sequencing of the introduction of L1 and L2 reading in different immersion contexts.

Parental involvement Given that the growth of immersion generally, including all-Irish schools, has been parent-led, and that parents and the home are considered central to the early development of reading (Kellaghan, Sloane, Alvarez, and Bloom 1993; Eivers, Shiel, and Shortt 2004), it is surprising just how little detailed information is available on how immersion parents contribute to their children’s early acquisition of literacy or how they try to complement the work of the school. Ideally, the formulation of policy about early reading and the introduction of the home language should be based on detailed information about (a) the manner in which parents, either directly or indirectly, seek to promote their children’s acquisition of reading skills in Irish and English and (b) parents’ understanding of how their own efforts relate to the school’s strategy concerning the sequencing of early reading and their level of trust and confidence in the school’s strategy. Likewise, it would be useful to know how all-Irish schools themselves view the contribution of parents in these early years, and how well the school’s view matches that of the parents about these matters. Finally, information is needed on how school and parent views on the contribution of the home vary within the all-Irish sector; how these variations relate to the kind of socioeconomic, sociolinguistic and educational variables discussed earlier; and how the views of parents in the all-Irish sector about these matters compare to the views of parents in the ordinary mainstream schools sector.

A flexible approach to sequencing L1 and L2 reading at school and pupil level? Is it possible that the all-Irish sector’s entirely legitimate goal/strategy to establish Irish as the language of the school could be reconciled with flexibility regarding initial reading instruction? The compromise strategy in question would consist of starting off reading in Irish, but reverting to English reading

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instruction if difficulties develop. This approach would have the merit of allowing schools who were marginally leaning towards either IRF or ERF strategies to steer a middle course, committing themselves generally to entirely Irish-medium instruction initially, but retaining the option of abandoning this policy in the case of individual children or groups of children. The question is whether this is a practicable approach within the classroom in terms of the organisation and management of teaching, and more generally in the school in terms of formulating a clear policy. Cummins (2000a) believes the approach has merits, though he does not spell out whether a strategy of flexibility should apply at the individualpupil level or at the class/school level. He refers to a Japanese immersion context in which reading instruction, as in the case of ERF schools, begins as a matter of routine in the majority language: An implication of the interdependence principle is that children who are experiencing difficulties in the early stages of a French immersion program might be helped by encouraging the two-way transfer of skills across languages. In other words, if students are slow in learning to read through French (L2), it makes sense to promote literacy development in their stronger language (English) and work for transfer to their weaker language after they have made the initial breakthrough into literacy. In this regard it is noteworthy that the Katoh Gakuen program has the same proportion of L1 language arts instruction in the early grades as do other Japanese (non-immersion) schools. This appears as a very appropriate strategy both in view of the increased possibilities for promoting literacy across languages and also the specific challenges of developing literacy in a character-based language such as Japanese (Cummins 2000a: 6).

Differences between Canadian and Irish immersion: Implications for sequencing The second important argument favouring the introduction of reading in L2 before L1 in Irish immersion is the fact that this is the general practice in Canadian immersion and that it appears to reliably produce successful reading in both languages. While Canadian practice in this respect, of course, validates the approach of IRF all-Irish schools, a key question is whether, at the same time, it represents a significant challenge to the different approach in ERF schools. The argument to be made here is that practice in Canada in this area does not undermine the strategy of those all-Irish schools that introduce reading in English first. Generalising directly from other immersion contexts in relation to an issue such as this is always going to be fraught with difficulties. But there are two crucial differences between Canadian and Irish immersion which are relevant to the early reading sequencing question and which should make us particularly cautious about generalising Canadian practice to the Irish situation:

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(1) the fact that the attrition rate in immersion is high in Canada (compared to all Irish schools) and (2) that unlike the situation in all-Irish schools, which are whole-school immersion ‘centres’, immersion programmes in Canada often consist of streams within an English speaking school. From the beginning, early French immersion has been characterised by relatively high rates of student drop-out from programmes due either to academic or behavioural problems (Cummins 2000a). In the province of Alberta between 1983–84 and 1990–91, for example, attrition rates from immersion ranged from 43% to 68% by grade 6, 58% to 83% by grade 9, and 88% to 97% by grade 12 (Keep 1993).9 While detailed data on all-Irish schools are not available, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests that attrition from Irish immersion is nothing like this. One implication of the Alberta data is that Canadian practice on the effects of introducing reading in the second language before the first language, and the research evidence about later reading achievement based on that practice, actually relates only to those pupils who remain in immersion after a very substantial process of attrition. Pupils who opt out of Canadian immersion do not contribute to the research findings concerning the impact of reading sequencing. In contrast, what we see in Irish immersion, whether we are talking about sequencing strategy or reading achievement, are academic results based on populations of pupils who have stayed in immersion without any significant attrition. To that extent, statements about the success of pupils in transferring reading skills from L2 to L1 in Canadian immersion, and their implications for Irish immersion generally, must be qualified in important ways that they often are not. The second difference between Canadian immersion and all-Irish schools which may have implications for the emergent reading issue, is that in Canadian schools with an immersion programme, those in which the programme consists of just one French-medium stream far outnumber those in which the entire school is an immersion centre. Cummins (2000a) attributes this general tendency to the difficulties which would arise if an entire neighbourhood school was devoted to French-medium education – parents who wanted their children in the English programme would have to send them to a less convenient school. Because dropping out of a Canadian immersion programme usually means simply switching streams within the same school, dropping out is neither as 9 The Alberta attrition rates, of course, may not be generalisable across Canada – certainly they will be much lower in bilingual cities such as Montreal and Ottawa. But it is still true that pupils who experience difficulties are likely to be counselled out of the programme.

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big a decision, nor as big a trauma for the child (and parent), as it might be in an Irish context (where all-Irish schools are invariably immersion centres rather than streams).10 Choosing to send a child to an all-Irish school is in some respects, therefore, a larger educational decision, both for parent and child, than choosing an L2 immersion stream within an otherwise English-medium school. It also means that in the Irish case, once children arrive for the first time in school, the universally-felt responsibility of schools and teachers to accommodate the varying academic needs of pupils within the school will be synonymous in the case of an all-Irish school with the obligation to accommodate these needs within an immersion environment. Switching to an English stream within the same school if difficulties should be encountered is not an option for those individual pupils who may find particular aspects of “conventional” immersion programmes challenging. To put it another way, Irish immersion may often have to “stretch” more than Canadian immersion to accommodate a wide range of pupils. It follows, of course, that within Irish immersion, issues such as the early introduction of the home language, and the sequencing of early reading, may be weightier ones for teachers and parents, and may demand a more flexible response from teachers and schools, than they might elsewhere.

Undesirable departure from immersion orthodoxy or adaptive innovation? Does the early reading sequencing strategy of ERF all-Irish schools represent a sensible, appropriate accommodation to challenges that, in the different context of Canadian immersion schools, may be accommodated by the higher attrition rate (i.e. by students who are experiencing difficulties arising in whole or in part from the language- and reading-sequencing strategy switching out of the immersion stream into the regular stream)? While it is an empirical question, if the answer should turn out to be “yes” it would imply that ERF all-Irish schools may be succeeding in keeping children within L2 immersion who might otherwise (in an IRF-type school or in Canadian French immersion) transfer out of it

10 While it is incidental to the discussion here, Cummins, 2000a notes that expressive skills in the second language tend to develop better where the entire school is an immersion centre rather than when immersion is confined to a stream within a majority language school. Lapkin et al (1981) also report superior achievement in several aspects of French and English skills in an immersion centre compared to a dual track school.

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over time. To that extent, the ERF strategy might be seen as optimum in terms of promoting Irish-medium education in a wide range of different local populations of children, while at the same time stretching immersion conventions to maximise the promotion of literacy. None of this, of course, implies that there are not important questions to be asked about the consequences of an ERF strategy for the establishment and maintenance of an Irish language ethos in the school. Ultimately, however, any possible disadvantages of an ERF strategy in this respect may have to be set against potential advantages related to the promotion of literacy and the provision of Irish immersion education for the broadest possible range of pupils. It should also be acknowledged that there is no evidence at present in any case that proficiency in Irish or linguistic attainments in Irish generally are any different in IRF than in ERF programmes. The research simply has not been done. The fact that practice relating to the sequencing of early reading differs from school to school (ERF or IRF) is not, in itself, evidence of a departure from optimum strategy either at the school level or nationally. Which approach to sequencing early reading is correct? may simply be the wrong question. There may be no one best way, no one correct strategy relating to early reading that is appropriate for all Irish-immersion schools. Thus, pressure to resolve this apparent curricular conflict with a universal recommendation may be misguided. Such a prescription, in our present state of knowledge, might very well not be in the interests either of the future continued growth of all-Irish education or the development of literacy in children. Finally, mention must be made of a paper by Parsons and Lyddy (2009) which became available too late to be considered in detail here. In brief, however, it provides evidence that the language in which reading is formally introduced in the two kinds of Irish immersion schools, ERF or IRF, is not critical to later L1 reading attainment or L2 literacy. The IRF group in the Parsons and Lyddy study demonstrated an early advantage in an Irish non-word reading task at senior infants, while the ERF group performed significantly better on an English real-word reading task at senior infants. Any disadvantages on the English reading tasks were resolved by fourth class. These results provide some validation for the existing diverse practices in Irish immersion schools. Nevertheless, the findings must also be considered preliminary in that they are based on a quasi-experimental design in which each immersion school type, ERF and IRF, is represented by classes within just one school. While the study carefully controlled many factors, no detailed initial matching of children across schools or grades was possible. Potential confounding of school and class effects with immersion school type (ERF, IRF), therefore, cannot be discounted.

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It is important also to note that because intact schools/classes were used in this study, the influence of the many complex factors discussed above are likely to be embedded in the reading-skills outcomes ultimately observed. The decision of particular Irish immersion schools to adopt either the ERF or IRF model, the possible different initial social or educational factors which might have determined that decision, and the subsequent adaptation of each school and the children’s parents to the policy decision itself, are all likely to contribute to the eventual reading achievement of pupils in each school. In other words, without detailed additional research showing how these complex intervening processes operate, we cannot conclude from reading achievement comparisons in quasiexperimental studies that the decision to adopt an IRF or ERF policy in the particular circumstances of a given school will not have significant consequences or that it will make no practical difference to the development of reading skills.

Research on emergent reading in ERF and IRF Irish immersion schools11 In this concluding section, we set out a preliminary set of questions which a comprehensive program of research on emergent reading in ERF and IRF schools might address. Answers to these questions would also be very useful to immersion schools in other in minority language contexts which tend to favour immersion centres rather than dual-track schools. 1. Do ERF all-Irish schools accommodate a greater range of pupils (in terms of social and educational background) within immersion than IRF all-Irish schools do? 2. Are schools that adopt ERF attracting pupils with a different socioeconomic and home background profile to IRF schools? 3. Do ERF all-Irish schools provide immersion for pupils who might otherwise (i.e. if they were attending IRF all-Irish schools) transfer out of immersion as significant proportions of Canadian pupils appear to? 4. What is the level of attrition in ERF and IRF all-Irish schools? 5. Is there any evidence that the existing reading instruction policy in ERF schools is detrimental to (i) pupils’ acquisition of literacy and proficiency in speaking the language and (ii) the use of Irish in the school more generally? 11 No attempt is made here to specify a research approach for investigating these issues but it does seem that quantitative research based on a representative sample of all Irish-medium schools, complemented by more qualitative studies carried out within selected schools, would be most informative for the development of policy.

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6. 7.

8. 9.

10.

11.

12.

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What strategies are used by schools to circumscribe the use of English during the early years of ERF all-Irish education? How do ERF and IRF all-Irish schools compare in terms of achievement/ proficiency in Irish generally and in Irish and English reading? (See the discussion earlier of data on between-school variance in Irish). Can variations in speaking proficiency and reading achievement between the two kinds of schools be linked to (a) early reading sequencing and (b) socioeconomic, sociolinguistic and home background variables? To what extent do Irish immersion schools (either ERF or IRF) produce similar levels of language skills to those in Canada? Do parents have different perceptions of ERF and IRF all-Irish schools? Do they feel there are differences in the kind of children who are capable of benefiting from each kind of school? How are parental queries regarding the suitability of immersion for all children handled in different all-Irish schools? How is policy on early reading and related issues decided in newly founded all-Irish schools and what role do parents have in the evolution of that policy? What are the views of teachers and parents in the all-Irish sector on the present balance nationally between IRF and ERF all-Irish schools? Is the present balance in the best interests of the growth of immersion in Ireland? Would an attempt to change practices in particular schools be (a) desirable, (b) possible? How will the all-Irish sector grow and what is the likely future balance between IRF and ERF all-Irish schools as the sector expands? What pedagogic and school policy issues will arise as all-Irish schools become more and more mainstream in terms of the socioeconomic, educational and linguistic profile of parents? If home and parental input are critical in promoting the acquisition of literacy skills, what consultation processes and mechanisms are presently used in all-Irish schools to involve and inform parents regarding their children’s reading in L1 and L2? Are there differences between ERF and IRF all-Irish schools in the kind of support for reading provided by parents?

There are many other questions, apart from those relating to early literacy acquisition, about the place of the home language within immersion whether in Ireland or elsewhere, which a major programme of research might answer. Cummins (2000a) points out, for example, that one common weakness of immersion schools from an educational point of view is that, in the effort to maintain the L2 ethos, classrooms often become more teacher-centred than non-immersion classrooms. Cooperative learning and project-based strategies

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tend to be avoided in immersion because teachers worry that these activities may prompt pupils to begin using English in class and in the school environment more generally. Behan, Turnbull, and Spek (1997), however, show that L1 use can both support and enhance L2 development, while functioning at the same time as an effective tool for dealing with cognitively demanding content. Work reported in Swain and Lapkin (2005, 2007) also shows how collaborative dialogue in the L1 or L2 can mediate L2 learning. Cummins (2007, 2008) does acknowledge that because of the importance of promoting extensive communicative interaction and comprehensible input in the target language, it is reasonable to create largely separate spaces for each language within an immersion program. He also believes, however, that there are compelling arguments for creating a shared or interdependent space for the promotion of language awareness and cross language cognitive processing. In other words, it may be worthwhile relaxing immersion conventions so that, for example, under certain circumstances, pupils would be free to use L1 for pupil-pupil discussions but be required to report back to the class in L2. It would be a significant contribution to the future development of Irish immersion to establish all-Irish teachers’ views on issues such as these and to ascertain whether, and to what extent, the circumscribed use of English is currently permitted in the context of cooperative learning. Finally, it would also be very useful to determine the effect that this kind of limited use of English by pupils in the classroom has on the use of Irish more generally in the school.

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Slaughter, H. B. 1997. Indigenous language immersion in Hawaii: A case study of Kula Kaiapuni Hawaii, an effort to save the indigenous language of Hawaii. In Immersion education: International perspectives, R. K. Johnson and M. Swain (eds.), 105–130. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swain, M. 1985. Communicative competence: Some roles of comprehensible input and comprehensible output in its development. In Input and second language acquisition, S. Gass and C. Madden (eds.), 235–253. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Swain, M. 1993. The output hypothesis: Just speaking and writing aren’t enough. Canadian Modern Language Review, 50: 158–164. Swain, M. and S. Carroll. 1987. The immersion observation study. In The development of bilingual proficiency: Final report, Vol. 2, B. Harley, P. Allen, J. Cummins and M. Swain (eds.), 190–341. Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Modern Language Centre. Swain, M. and R. K. Johnson. 1997. Immersion education: A category within bilingual education. In Immersion education: International perspectives, R. K. Johnson and M. Swain (eds.), 1–16. New York: Cambridge University Press. Swain, M. and Lapkin, S. 1982. Evaluating bilingual education: A Canadian case study. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Swain, M. and Lapkin, S. 2005. The evolving sociopolitical context of immersion education in Canada: Some implications for program development. Internationaln Journal of Applied Linguistics, 15 (2), 169–186. Swain, M. and S. Lapkin. 2007. “Oh, I Get It Now!” From production to comprehension in second language learning. In Heritage Language Acquisition: A New Field Emerging. D. M. Brinton and O. Kagan (eds.), 301–320. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Verhoeven, L. 1991. Acquisition of biliteracy. AILA Review, 8: 61–74.

Ofelia García

4 Informal bilingual acquisition: Dynamic spaces for language education policy 1 Introduction Language policy (LP) scholars in the more globalized world of today have been critical of the top-down approaches that characterized early language planning in the 1960s. But in giving agency to speakers and adopting post-structuralist positions, critical language policy scholars have often not questioned the institutional domains in which LP work has focused. This has been especially the case in speaking about education and “acquisition planning” (Cooper, 1989), and the school domain to which it has been relegated. Cooper (1989) described the formulation and implementation of language policy as a “spiral process, beginning at the highest level of authority and, ideally, descending in widening circles through the ranks of practitioners who can support or resist putting the policy into effect (p. 160).” The idea in Cooper’s formulation of acquisition planning was that interested governmental and school authorities decide on the desirable form and use of languages. Teachers then would follow these directives as “soldiers” (Shohamy, 2006), and the result would be language spread (García, 2010). But others have shown that educators negotiate the language education policies that are imposed, and in so doing become policy makers themselves (see especially Menken & García, 2010 for teachers. See also Mc Carty, 2010). Rather than a spiral, García and Menken (2010) argue that language education policy is dynamic, with educators negotiating institutional demands on a moment-to-moment basis, according to their diverse students’ plural needs. This paper builds on a dynamic critical notion of language education policy, but brings a dynamic lens to the concept of institutional domain. It departs from other studies of language education policy by problematizing the notion of the

1 This chapter draws from García, Ofelia. 2009. “Bilingualing” without schooling. The role of comprehensive education. In: H. Varenne and E. Gordon (eds.), Theoretical Perspectives on Comprehensive Education: The way forward, pp. 187–216. Lewiston, New York: The Edwin Mellen Press. I am very grateful to Hervé Varenne and Ed Gordon for their permission to use this material.

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school domain for educational purposes, focusing instead on how informal, rather than formal school efforts, shape the language practices of speakers, especially the acquisition of bilingual or multilingual practices.2 Early language planning and policy work served the interests of nation-states. Thus, what is known as bilingual education, or alternatively as second or foreign language education, has dominated research on the many ways people acquire the languaging (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007) they use. This paper, however, focuses on a little understood phenomenon, that of informal bilingual acquisition. We argue here that when we take the perspective of speakers, and not of nation-states, bilingual acquisition, just like language itself, cannot be controlled within a school domain. The dynamism of the language education policy is not confined to the actors of the policy, but extends to the spaces in which those policies are negotiated. In speaking of this informal acquisition, the chapter introduces the concept of transglossia, which focuses on a new description of how complex language practices, that is, translanguaging, is used in interrelationship within same domains for sense-making. This paper then proposes that scholars of language education policy widen their lens to take into account a comprehensive language education policy that is different from a school language education policy. A comprehensive language education is not confined to formal schools or complementary schools, such as after-school or weekend spaces where speakers are engaged in new language practices (Blackledge & Creese, 2010; Fishman, 1980). It encompasses both planned or intentional activities, and unplanned or unintentional ones. That is, a comprehensive language education policy includes what we might call supplementary education practices (Gordon et al., 2005), as well as the processes of simply living a bilingual existence that we might call, following Varenne (2005), human education. The chapter reviews bilingual acquisition efforts supported by supplementary education, but focuses on the intricacies of human education and what it teaches us about bilingual acquisition and language practices. The chapter ends by arguing that unless we change our descriptions of how languages function in society, include “subaltern” understandings, and embrace a more comprehensive view of education beyond schooling, we are negating the human potential for open communication and educability as a life-long process.

2 Throughout this chapter we use the term “bilingual acquisition” to refer to the multiple acquisition of many languages without regards to the number. Thus, our use includes what others call “multilingual acquisition” or “plurilingual acquisition.”

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Education and informal bilingual acquisition Krashen (1985) has distinguished between informal language acquisition and more formal language learning. According to Krashen, acquisition refers to “picking up” a language subconsciously, usually in domains other than those associated with formal schools – communities, families, workplace, media. Learning, however, refers to language that is formally taught in classrooms. When originally proposed, Krashen alluded to the success of those who become bilingual informally, as opposed to the great failure of formal language education in foreign language and second language classrooms. Although touting the success of informal language acquisition and the failure of formal language instruction, this theoretical distinction only became a way of infusing the language classroom with more informal and naturalistic ways of teaching language. In second language education, grammar-translation approaches gave way to communicative approaches, with language being used for authentic communication. The growth of bilingual education throughout the world, as opposed to just foreign or second language instruction, has also been an attempt to capitalize on the informal ways in which language is successfully acquired, since bilingual education creates a context in which an additional language is used as a medium of instruction, rather than being formally taught. Although the theoretical distinction between acquisition and learning did much to change the ways in which languages were formally taught in schools, it did not succeed in focusing scholarly attention on the informal ways in which bilingual acquisition occurs outside of the strictures of the school domain or on the agency of communities of speakers in such an educative process. The process by which language practices have evolved in 21st century society is the subject of the next section.

From diglossia to transglossia Diglossia, a societal arrangements in which one variety of a language (or one language) is used for prestigious or High functions, whereas the other variety (or language) is used for informal or Low functions, has been a foundational principle in macro-sociolinguistics since Ferguson introduced it (1959) and Fishman extended it (1967). Fishman et al. (1971, p. 560) warn that: “socially patterned bilingualism can exist as a stabilized phenomenon only if there is functional differentiation between two languages.” In Fishman’s macro-sociolinguistic framework, diglossia is necessary because “no society needs two languages for one and the same set of functions” (1972, p. 140).

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But in the 21st century, as the movement of people, goods and information has become more complex and technology have afforded us different and simultaneous communication capabilities, the separate functional distribution of two languages in bilingual and multilingual societies has been increasingly questioned. For example, Indian sociolinguists have pointed out that multilingual contact is the norm in India, and yet language practices have been maintained for generations (Mohanty, 2006). The Indian sociolinguist Annamalai (2005, p. 111) explains: “When multilingualism is taken as the norm, the functional (or ecological) relationship between languages in a multilingual network (or linguistic ecology) defines the nature of each language in the network.” Mühlhäusler’s ecological approach (2000, 2002) posits that languages automatically readjust themselves to fit into the environment and that they are maintained precisely through language contact, rather than in isolation. The spread of English throughout a globalized world has also meant that more groups of people use English without giving up their language practices, and most often use these practices in interrelationship, as the multimodalities made possible through advanced technology confronts us with different language practices simultaneously. If we focus on how the languaging of people in today’s complex world incorporates practices that are traditionally linked to other groups or communities (Rampton, 2006), we start understanding that the process of bilingual acquisition relies on what García (2009, forthcoming) has termed transglossia. I have argued elsewhere (García, 2009) that transglossia is a stable, and yet dynamic, communicative network, with many languages in functional interrelationship. Transglossia rests, but goes beyond, the important concept of heteroglossia posited by Bakhtin (1981), which Bakhtin defines as the differences of language practices and the different social forces that move them. According to García (forthcoming), transglossia adds a dimension that has much to do with the concept of transculturación/transculturation coined by the Cuban ethnologist Fernando Ortiz (1940) in explaining the complex processes of cultural transformation in Cuban society. As Mignolo (2000) has pointed out, Ortiz’ concept of transculturation questions the directionality of cultural transformations, and offers an alternative description to the myth that it was the European “discovery” that constructed the Americas, by pointing out that it was the other way around. That is, the Americas created Europe, as American riches made it back. Ortiz’ concept of transculturation questions the epistemological purity of traditional descriptions and disciplines, as it affects the knowing subject because as Mignolo (2000) has said, it “infects the locus of enunciation” (p. 220). Transculturation changes the principles of previous descriptions and transforms the views of how people interact. Transculturation involves what Mignolo (2000)

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calls “border thinking;” that is, “knowledge conceived from the exterior borders of the modern/colonial world system,” that is, “subaltern knowledge.” In a similar way, transglossia releases ways of speaking of subaltern groups that had been previously fixed within static language identities and that are constrained by the modern/colonial world system. Thus, transglossia has little to do with the static maintenance of two or more languages of nation-states and other societal groups which maintains the asymmetry of language practices. The focus of transglossia is, as Mignolo (2000: 231) says about transculturation, to question and transgress “the coloniality of power and knowledge.” The objective of transglossia is to have subaltern groups develop what Mignolo calls “an other tongue,” “the necessary condition for ‘an other thinking’ and for the possibility of moving beyond the defense of national languages and national ideologies – both of which have been operating in complicity with imperial powers and imperial conflicts” (p. 249). Whereas diglossia was said to rely on static language patterns in different domains to achieve stability and preservation of group bilingual practices, transglossia refers to the fluid language practices that question traditional descriptions built on national myths, as well as that challenge the locus of enunciation. Transglossia is then tied to what we’re calling here informal bilingual acquisition because it releases “an other tongue,” the tongue of the subaltern, instead of that of the nation-state. Thus, the description of informal bilingual acquisition differs from that of formal bilingual acquisition. But before we turn to that discussion, it is important to describe what we mean by informal bilingual acquisition.

Informal bilingual acquisition Formal bilingual learning is always intentional, that is, students are enrolled in courses for the purpose of becoming bilingual. But the education that spurs informal bilingual acquisition could be 1) planned or intentional, with speakers consciously wanting to acquire additional ways of communicating and being involved in activities that might be called supplementary education, or 2) unplanned or unintentional,3 with speakers becoming bilingual without explicit formal intent

3 In calling this type “unplanned,” we’re not implying that there is no intent and deliberation. For example, some ways of texting messages by teenagers are “planned” to ensure that parents cannot read them.

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Degree of Control and Intentionality

simply by living and participating – what we’re calling here human education. These processes can be diagrammed as in Figure 1. + Control & Intentionality

– Control & Intentionality

Formal Bilingual Learning

School Education

Informal Planned Bilingual Acquisition

Supplementary Language Education

Informal Unplanned Bilingual Acquisition

Human Language Education

Comprehensive Education

Figure 1

Although treated here as categories, it is important to understand that these are continuous processes that occur mostly simultaneously, although sometimes sequentially. All human beings are at all times involved in processes of languaging that are educative, that is, in human language education. And if engaged in multilingual contexts, all are involved in human bilingual education. Formal bilingual learning is best served when accompanied by the informal acquisition of supplementary language education and human language education, and vice-versa. There exists a myriad of combinations in which all these educative processes interact dynamically, although most scholarship has only focused on the education promoted by school. Fishman (1991: 371), has warned: The corresponding need for out-of-school . . . reinforcement is doubly or triply great in conjunction with various aspects of language learning and this is so due to the communicational and identificational roles of language. . . . Without considerable and repeated societal reinforcement schools cannot successfully teach either first or second languages and, furthermore, where such reinforcement is plentifully available, languages are acquired and retained even if they are not taught in school.

Speakers involved in formal bilingual learning and planned bilingual acquisition have been called elective bilinguals, whereas immigrants, indigenous peoples, and autochthonous minorities who become bilingual simply by living are usually identified as circumstantial bilinguals, since their use of the additional language is a product of the circumstances in which they live and is not

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an elective intentional choice (the distinction between elective and circumstantial bilinguals has been proposed by Valdés & Figueroa, 1994). But again, this is not always so, since speakers of majority and minoritized languages4 all have intentions and choices, even though the institutional opportunities afforded to majorities are greater than those given to minorities. In the next section, we describe what we are calling informal planned bilingual acquisition, that is, supplementary education efforts. In so doing, I start to question who and what controls bilingual acquisition, a topic that will be further explored in the section on unplanned informal bilingualism.

Planned informal bilingualism and supplementary education That bilingual acquisition has become important for many adults, as well as children, is evidenced by the many products that are sold in the market. Audiotapes and electronic products of all kinds, some produced by private companies like Pimsleur, others by government units such as the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State, abound. Some of these products target specific language communities. For example, among U.S. Latinos Inglés sin Barreras is popular, a program that purports to teach English while sleeping. Most products promise that one can learn the additional language while doing other things, like driving and cooking. Language software such as the commercial product Rosetta Stone provides interactive lessons that include speech recognition tools and correction systems. That bilingual acquisition is marketable is also evidenced in the thousands of websites where one can go to acquire an additional language, often maintained by paid advertisements. Some websites offer language lessons to interact with people in specific trades or populations. In the United States, a website offers Spanish for those who want to speak to their maids! Both the British Council and the BBC maintain important websites for acquiring English. The ability to download multimedia files through pod casting is also enabling many to share their own languages, and others to acquire them on their own, without the help of schools, intermediaries, or even advertisements. Technology has also enabled machine translation, facilitating the acquisition of an addi-

4 We refer here to minoritized languages and not just minority languages to emphasize the power dimension of languages.

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tional language. Bilingual acquisition is now more than ever in the hands of people who can act to access it. Besides commercial products and technology, there are ways of tapping into the language resources and practices of the community that speaks the language that is being acquired. To develop listening proficiency in the additional language, people can listen to radio, watch television, or go to movies in that language. To develop reading proficiency, they can read newspapers, books, and public signs in the community. Whenever they can, they interact with the local speech community itself. They go to local community centers where the language is used, or they attend religious services in that language. When it is impossible to find a speech community, these individuals travel to other countries where they live with families who speak the language. In an effort to promote the plurilingualism of European citizens, the European Commission introduced Erasmus, an exchange program that encourages university students from different European countries to study for part of their degree in a different language in another country. In answering whether students need to be fluent in the language of the university in which they plan to study, the website says: If you are starting from scratch, do not be put off . . . everyone can learn languages. You will find that it is easier and more fun when you are living and studying in the country than when you are in the classroom at home! (Erasmus, 2007).

Erasmus recognizes the advantage of informal bilingual acquisition, even when planned, over more formal bilingual learning in classrooms. In communities where bilingualism is important, family bilingual planning is rapidly becoming an important endeavor, a way of promoting informal bilingual acquisition while making families conscious of its potential. For example, in Wales, all parents attending family planning clinics are now also given a kitbox with information on bilingualism, in an attempt to stimulate them to reflect seriously on the possibilities of a bilingual future for their children (Edwards & Newcombe, 2006). In Scotland too, there is official support of the same kind, with the promotion of guidebooks entitled The Family Language Action Plan, addressed to families to encourage them to speak Gaelic to their children (García, 2009). Language revitalization (Hinton, 2001, 2002; Hinton and Hale, 2001; King, 2001; Nettle and Romaine, 2000) or Reversing Language Shift (RLS) (Fishman, 1991) efforts throughout the world for communities who have experienced language loss have also been built on the potential of informal planned bilingual acquisition – community-based programs, language camps and clubs, theatrical performances and religious services, play centers. We discuss some of these efforts below.

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For indigenous peoples, language revitalization efforts include ways of tapping into the language practices of the community. For example, in Australia and Papua New Guinea, community-based local programs parallel the ways in which indigenous people have been observed to learn – by imitation, observation, and individual trial and error (Grenoble & Whaley, 2006 citing Harris 1977). Thus, these programs select a community activity that is well suited to informal acquisition, use the indigenous language in carrying out the activity, and then encourage others to join in. This is also the principle used in the Master-apprentice programs developed after the 1990s in California for indigenous languages. This program pairs those who want to become bilingual with elder master speakers in real-life situations such as cooking or gardening. The apprentices are full participants and in so doing the indigenous language is acquired (Grenoble & Whaley, 2006). The potential of informal bilingual acquisition is also recognized by the many summer immersion camps that are organized for the purposes of developing fluency in additional languages. There are many of these summer immersion camps for language majorities who want to become bilingual. They have also been shown to be extremely effective in reversing the language shift of indigenous peoples and autochthonous minorities or in maintaining and developing their home languages, and that of immigrants. For example, the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages supports summer immersion camps for the small regional languages of Europe. They also provide backing to communitybased language clubs in which members come together socially to use the additional language. And they award the title of “Language friendly Community” to municipalities that encourage multilingual signs and correspondence, multilingual language use at public events, speeches and reports, multilingual cultural activities such as theatre and religious services, and the integration of speakers of other languages. The promises of informal bilingual acquisition is also behind the many supplementary after-school or weekend language activities organized by communities who want their children to become bilingual, either in the language of the majority or the language of the ethnolinguistic minority.5 Children are immersed in drama, song, cookery, art, all done in the additional language. It is precisely the promise of this informal context for language acquisition that has spurred the growth of bilingual pre-schools or play groups throughout the world and of immersion bilingual programs for early childhood. Small children 5 Many use the term “heritage language programs” for these activities. I have objected to the term “heritage language” because of its backward connotation, but also because it replaces the more dynamic concept of bilingualism. For more on this, see García (2005).

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have also been observed to learn languages by imitation, observation, and individual trial and error. Pre-school bilingual programs build on this capacity of young children to acquire understandings, as they acquire an additional language. This is also the source of the success of the so called “language nest” movements in places like Aotearoa/New Zealand and Hawaii. For example, Te Kōhanga Reo programs in New Zealand involve pre-school children under the age of five in centers where the whanau, or extended family, impart Māori spiritual values, language and culture (Fleras & Spoonley, 1993; May, 2010). It is the use of language informally, in authentic and meaningful culturally relevant ways that has succeeded in revitalizing the Māori language. Although planned informal bilingual acquisition has long been recognized as important in acquiring an additional language (Fishman, 1991), scant scholarly literature exists on how this actually takes place. From the foregoing, however, we can surmise that there are a few principles involved in what we’re calling here supplementary education efforts for bilingualism: – A focus on using the language as an instrument for communication and signification, rather than on the language itself; – Real speakers and their language practices as the center of attention, rather than teaching the language as an object; – The additional language complements but does not in any way threaten the other language or identity; – The process is dynamic and developmental, although not linear, and responds to the communicative situation in question, rather than being considered an artificial step-wise system outside of the speakers themselves. Although this kind of supplementary planned language education relies on the use of language as practiced in a speech community6, it still does not always involve active participation in a bilingual community of practice (more on this below). It relies on the planned acquisition of an additional language as if it were two separate languages, that is, it mostly considers bilingualism as dual languages.7 Although this supplementary planned language education often does not partake of the constructed definitions of academic language used in schools, it still views the acquisition of two “standard” languages as the goal.

6 We define speech community, following Romaine (1994: 22) as a group of people who “share a set of norms and rules for the use of language.” 7 The recent trend in the U.S. of calling bilingual education programs dual language responds to this more elite notion of bilingualism where the two languages are kept separate under all circumstances, while it attempts to distance itself from the controversy over bilingual schooling.

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Because it does not evolve from participation in bilingual communities of practices, it supports a monoglossic language ideology that obviates the heteroglossia that is prevalent in bilingual communities.8 It is the transglossia that makes it possible to offer a new description of the translanguaging practices that make up unplanned informal bilingual acquisition or human education, that is the focus of the next section.

Unplanned informal bilingualism and human education Planned bilingual acquisition is deliberate and as such, speakers in some way are complicit with the modern/colonial world system and how it views languages as autonomous systems functioning within nation-states. Unplanned bilingual acquisition is more complex than that which is planned, for, as we will see, it involves using language practices in functional interrelationship for communicative and social benefit (Martí et al, 2005). Bilingual speakers pragmatically access their multiple linguistic and cultural resources, as they participate in plural social networks. Mühlhäusler’s ecological approach (2000, 2002) to bilingualism proposes that speakers find “a situation of equilibrium whereby languages automatically readjust themselves to fit into the environment, and perpetuate themselves through language contact, rather than isolation” (my emphasis, quoted in Tsai, 2005: 11). In bilingual speech, Lüdi (2003) tells us, “rules and norms are activated that overlap single languages and govern the harmonic, i.e. the ‘grammatical’ mixing of elements from different languages.” Gutiérrez and her colleagues (Gutiérrez et al., 2001: 128) explain that the hybrid language practices of bilinguals is “a systematic, strategic, affiliative, and sense-making process” that is most important for the community’s educative potential. As Homi Bhabha (1994: 2) says: “the intersubjective and collective experiences of nationness, community interest, or cultural value are negotiated” and that “opens up the possibility of a cultural hybridity [a newness] that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy” (my italics). In other words, unplanned informal bilingual acquisition fits squarely a transglossic arrangement where the linguistic hierarchies previously described by the modern/colonial world system are altered by changing the locus of enunciation and opening up the possibility of subaltern voices and knowledge. 8 Bakhtin (1983) contrasts the traditional concept of monoglossia to heteroglossia, that is, the multiplicity of languages and rhetorical forms that are the product of linguistic interaction.

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Following García (2009) I refer to all processes of engaging in multiple discursive practices to make meaning as “translanguaging.” Translanguaging is an approach to bilingualism that is centered, not on standard autonomous languages as has been often the case, but on the practices of bilinguals that are readily observable. Translanguaging, goes beyond what others have termed “code-switching.” Whereas code-switching describes bilingual contact from the perspective of the language itself and perceives it as deviant from standard language practices, translanguaging refers to the language practices of bilinguals from the perspective of the users themselves. Translanguaging is thus the normal mode of communication and sense-making strategies that characterizes bilingual communities throughout the world (García, 2009). That bilingual acquisition would happen spontaneously, without planning from the state or controlled by school, without direction, in overlapping ways, is considered threatening to the “regulatory” language practices that nationstates impose on their citizens. And yet, this is the most common way of becoming bilingual, especially in Africa, Asia and the Pacific. The Polish writer, Ryszard Kapuściński describes how people became bilingual in Ethiopia: To protect themselves from the plague of informers, people learned – without anyone knowing how or where, or when, without schools, without courses, without records or dictionaries – another language, mastered it, and became so fluent in it that we simple and uneducated folk suddenly became a bilingual nation. (1989, p. 94, my italics)

In Melanesia, for example, an area comprising the south-west Pacific island nations of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and Fiji, up to 1,500 languages are spoken, and many people speak four or five languages without the benefit of schooling (Romaine, 1994). In South Africa, Batibo (2005: 1) describes the language practices of a Tshivenda speaker: [H]e may speak Tshivenda to his parents but use IsiZulu to address his workmates, and then receive orders from his employer in Afrikaans. But he may use English in a bank or when talking to educated strangers, and finally use Fanagalo in a pub with colleagues.

Batibo (2005) also gives the example of a woman trader in a Lagos market who may choose to address her client in standard Yoruba, dialectal Yoruba, Pidgin English or, if she is educated enough, Standard English. But beyond these complex multilingual situations in the developing world, it turns out that this is the way in which most people throughout the developed world, and even in nation-states that consider themselves “monolingual,” become bilingual. In countries like the United States where bilingualism is not recognized or encouraged, we come across adults who have develop bilingual repertoires informally through work, family, community, and who can negotiate the func-

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tional interrelationship of their multiple languages and the different social roles afforded them – the Salvadorian attendant in the Korean nail salon who can communicate in Korean, the Italian contractor who gives orders to his Mexican workers in Spanish, the Brazilian seamstress who participates in conversation with her Latino co-workers in Spanish, the Korean green grocer who speaks to his workers in Spanish, the many African Americans who speak Spanish to their Spanish-speaking neighbors, the scores of U.S. Latinos who speak English with features of African American Vernacular, and the countless U.S. Latinos who acquire English as adults without the benefit of schooling or any planned activity, and without limiting those efforts to a specific domain. This unplanned informal bilingual acquisition is even more prevalent among children. In New York City where English-speaking children are often left in the care of Spanish-speaking nannies, there are many children growing up bilingual. In some cases, these nannies have been intentionally hired for this purpose, but in most cases, the unintended consequence of this child-care arrangement results in bilingualism. And the same happens when U.S. Latino children are born into families where Spanish is spoken. Despite never having the advantage of bilingual schooling, these children acquire Spanish, as well as English. Some acquire English before they go to school even when their parents do not speak it, from the television, the radio, the computer, the signs, or because as a Latina mother once told me, “English is in the air.” Unplanned informal bilingual acquisition does not rely on targeted action and cannot be controlled so as to be able to describe two or more separate language systems, but it happens nonetheless. It does need, however, “communities of practice” that provide experience using languaging in socially meaningful ways. A community of practice, according to Eckert & McConnellGinet, 1992: 464 is: An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of talking, beliefs, values, power relations – in short, practices – emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social construct, a Community of Practice is different from the traditional community, primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its membership and by the practice in which that membership engages.

Paraphrasing Lave and Wenger (1991: 115), bilingual acquisition and a sense of multiple identities are inseparable. A dynamic understanding of language socialization, beyond that originally proposed by Schieffelin and Ochs (1989), is needed to understand this unplanned informal bilingual acquisition. Schieffelin and Ochs (1989) proposed that children are socialized through language (how they learn the group’s ways of being and doing via language) and to language (how they become speakers of the languages

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of their community) at the same time. But language socialization is not only directed from caretakers to children, it does not only occur in childhood, and is not just developmental. Language socialization is steeped in practice that shifts in response to negotiation with the social context and participants in which the interaction takes place. It is a lifelong process in which those being socialized, including children, exhibit considerable agency, choosing among multiple options offered, and sometimes resisting and constructing new ways of using language and new identities. Language socialization must be understood as participation, and not simply as transmission. We know, for example, that bilingual children growing up in bilingual households can change ways of speaking, as well as “accents” on and off, depending on the social context in which they’re interacting and the identities they’re performing or want to project. In explaining this more dynamic model of language socialization, phenomenon, Bayley and Schecter (2003: 8) state: Socialization by and through language is not simply a process in which experts in a particular community pass on ways of understanding and acting in the world to novices. Rather, even young novices. . . . differ in what they draw from socialization activities.

Furthermore, language practices, language ideologies and identities change over a speaker’s lifespan, reflecting changing social networks, pressures, and opportunities (Luyx, 2003). Unplanned informal bilingual acquisition involves the acquisition of a linguistic repertoire that can draw upon plural systems, and the social meanings of the different combinations. And it is situated in a place of resistance, of power, and of solidarity. This fluid discourse is central to the construction of the multiplicity of identities in which multiple factors like age, race, social class, generation, sexual orientation, geopolitical situation and institutional affiliation come to bear (Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Breaking with other scholars on how to raise children bilingually, Roca (2005) challenges the idea that it is possible to follow the one language-one person principle in the hybrid communities of bilingual practices of the United States. She compares her mother’s success in having raised her bilingual, even though she was a Cuban refugee with no money or training and at a time when Miami hardly spoke Spanish, to her own struggles raising her son, Juanchi, in bilingual-Miami today. Roca tells us that her partner and she speak to their son almost exclusively in Spanish, but then continues, but the two of us very often speak English between ourselves. He watches far too much television (in both languages), although we have spent a small fortune on videos and DVDs in Spanish, searching everywhere on the back of a DVD . . . to see if it has a Spanish audiotrack. . . . He hears too much English-language news. . . . We have made a conscious effort to teach Juanchi Spanish, but we have not made any effort to teach him English. We

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believed that his acquisition of English would come by osmosis, as it has, via interactions with the American side of the family, with the English mode of instruction at his Montessori pre-K school, and with monolingual friends. Juanchi listens to us speak to each other in English, and many of our friends sometimes speak to him in English. My partner’s mother speaks to him only in English because she does not know Spanish, and Clifford the Big Red Dog is not available in Spanish (pp. 115–116).

Roca’s words remind us that in the complex globalized world of today with its mixed and unconventional family configurations, bilingual acquisition happens in unplanned ways, by “osmosis” she says, because life itself is that way, even if there is intent and volition. Today there are also many cases of reconstituted families where there may be no common language shared between the new partners and their respective offspring in the family cell. For example, a new sort of family cell is fairly frequent in international circles like the headquarters of the European Union in Brussels, where mixed language marriages among the civil servants from all over Europe are commonplace (Baetens Beardsmore, 2009). Just as in India or South Africa, the language practices of these homes are complex and do not simply correspond to different interlocutors or places, as had been described in the literature of planned bilingual acquisition. The human potential for drawing from multiple sources in our meaning-making practices is far greater than our social understandings of how language and bilingualism “should” behave. The potential for educability in unplanned bilingual acquisition is great. One only has to notice immigrant children translating for their parents (Orellana et al., 2003). Or one has to listen to the many African children and adults whose multiple multilingual discourse appears to us, as westerners, to switch from one language to the other, whereas for them it is just their typical language practices. And we have to step into a bilingual home to understand the complexity and richness of language practices with siblings, parents, extended family, acquaintances, all speaking in different ways. Most of the time these bilingual families are multi-bilingual-tasking as they watch television in one language, listen to a radio in another one, read lists, labels, books and newspapers in different languages, write to different interlocutors pulling from one or another, at the same time that the young child, the older child, the parents, the relatives are speaking not only in different ways, but also using different languages. And this is not unlike the practices of shoppers and salespersons in the high-end shopping mall in Coral Gables or of the botánica in the working class neighborhood of Hialeah, both in Miami-Dade County, which the author witnessed recently. Advances in technology have extended the possibilities of unplanned informal bilingual acquisition. For example, Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP), available to consumers at no cost, mobile phones with their capacity for Short Text

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Messages (SMS or Short Message Service), and Facebook make it possible for many more people to become immersed in language practices with others than the immediate community, thus exposing speakers to other languaging. The 3-D virtual world, Second Life, offers its “residents” the ability to socialize and chat in many ways and many languages. It also provides machine translation of public chats that makes it possible for residents who speak different languages to communicate. The media is powerful in encouraging this unplanned informal bilingual acquisition. These processes demonstrate the speakers’ tremendous facility in acquiring and using a multiplicity of languaging and performing their plural identities. Children, as well as adults, acquire, through practice, the ability to adapt their languaging to different settings, using their languages and identities in functional interrelationship, not just functional complementarity. Compare this to the limited education that takes place in most countries of the world — Africa, but also the United States – where children’s multiple discourses and identities are ignored while they are restricted to one language only, increasingly English, and where schools continue to insist in a unidirectional link between language practices and identity. Translanguaging practices remain stigmatized, even in bilingual schools (see García, 2009). Heteroglossic language practices of bilinguals are often studied only from a monolingual and monoglossic perspective, and thus debased as inferior. For example, the language practices of U.S. Latinos, drawing creatively from both of their linguistic and cultural systems in innovative combinations are often characterized as deficient, a “patois” that is sometimes called Spanglish (Stavans, 2004). But their translanguaging reflects choices of a greater range of expression than each monolingual separately can call upon or that schools can ever accept, and conveys not only linguistic knowledge, but also combined cultural, social and political understandings that come to bear upon language practices. Sandra María Esteves (1997) expresses this in a poem to the Puerto Rican woman when she says: “I speak two languages broken into each other but my heart speaks the language of people born in oppression” (p. 384). Despite the absence of much scholarly theoretizing on the topic of unplanned informal bilingual acquisition, we can advance a few principles: – It rests on a transglossia that increasingly characterizes language interactions in the 21st century and that enables us to go beyond the limits on language practices set by the modern/colonial world system; – It is characterized by fluid language practices and especially translanguaging, as well as a heroglossic language ideology; – It is common throughout the developing and the developed world;

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It is more complex than that which is planned formally because it requires participation in plural social networks; It is not based on functional complementarity of languages or identities as in that of the planned kind, but on functional interrelationships that maintain an adjusting language ecology.

Conclusion Even scholars that study communities’ ways with words (see, for example, Heath 1983) privilege school language in their call for teachers to build upon the communities’ discourse practices to promote children’s “standard” academic language. The impressive work of Moll and colleagues (see González, Moll & Amanti, 2005) documents the “funds of knowledge” of the U.S. Latino communities, but is often used as ways of helping educators improve the school learning of Latino children. We maintain here that informal languaging practices serve important purposes for human educability in and of themselves, that is, that they’re also “funds of education” in their own right for entire communities. The lack of attention to informal bilingual acquisition, especially of the unplanned kind, is testimony that western scholarship misunderstands the dynamic heteroglossia of bilingual communities of practices, sensing them as challenges to the “education” (in the narrow sense of schooling) of bilingual communities. Introducing a transglossic lens that releases ways of speaking and understanding that are constrained by the modern/colonial world system, we have shown here how these fluid and multiple bilingual practices are in themselves educative processes for adults and children. Through these translanguaging practices, we develop understandings of life – parenting, cooking, music and movement, religion, games, courtship, intimacy, birth and death – that are educative in themselves. Insisting on monoglossic language practices only limits these understandings. By negating these transglossic communities of practices, scholarship may even be destroying the lifelong opportunities, and even schooling possibilities, of all of us who are able to translanguage and transculture in multiple ways beyond those that have been previously defined.

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II Social aspects of current multilingualism

David Singleton, Larissa Aronin, and Lorna Carson

5 Minority language use in Ireland: The time dimension1 Abstract: The aims of this chapter are twofold: (i) to draw attention to the dimension of time as a parameter in the sociology of language and multilingualism studies; and (ii) to report on a pilot study involving multilingual immigrants in the Republic of Ireland. Linguistic minority populations in Europe, both immigrant communities and minority language users within the host community, are typically multilinguals, combining the official language(s) of the country they live in with daily or occasional use of their home languages. This they do within social and physical time and within their own perceived time. This is an area of human experience which is often claimed to have been modified by globalization. Our study addresses the language practices of minority language users in Ireland, as they refer to time and unfold in time. Our findings concerning the time aspect of language use shed light on the minority language situation in Europe from an as yet unexplored point of view and connect the theoretical discourse on globalization with the workaday realities of how the global and the local are lived out.

1 Introductory Minority languages have recently attracted much attention; numerous aspects of their use, status and prospective fate have been the subject of investigation (Extra and Gorter 2001; Extra and Yağmur 2004). Historical events which took place in Europe at the end of the last century and the impact of global changes have created a need for a re-evaluation of the theoretical questions and research methodologies that guide investigations of minority languages and their communities. Such investigations are inconceivable without taking into consideration the aspect of time. Gurvitch (1964: 14) writes: . . . each social framework and, more particularly each global society, cannot be analysed without placing it in time. When nations and civilizations (French, British, American, German, Occidental, Oriental, etc.) confront each other directly, the differences of their social time become apparent, and grave errors are committed if they are not correctly delineated. 1 An earlier version of this article was delivered at the 11th International Conference on Minority Languages (ICML 11). Pécs, Hungary, July 2007.

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This paper is an attempt to introduce the dimension of time as a parameter for sociolinguistic and multilingualism studies. In particular, we propose that time must be seen as an important aspect of minority language research. The introduction of time as a variable and one of the active and influential components of the sociolinguistic situation leads sociolinguistic research along a cross-disciplinary path. Much of our current understanding of time emerged with respect to globalization, where the theme of time is intertwined with that of space, and where the concept of timespace has gained currency (cf. Sklair 1999, Cilliers 1998, 2005 Bauman 1998, Urry 2000, Castells 1997, Cwerner, Kesselring & Urry 2009; Blommaert 2010). Of particular importance is the diversity aspect of globalization, which has augmented to an enormous extent. Recent years have seen “a tremendous increase in the categories of migrants, not only in terms of nationality, ethnicity, language, and religion, but also in terms of motives, patterns and itineraries of migration, processes of insertion onto the labour and housing markets of the host societies, and so on” (Blommaert and Rapton 2011: 2), Such changes have been referred to in terms of ‘super-diversity’, after Vertovec (2010). In general linguistics and applied linguistics, the links between languages and time are also under scrutiny, although this connection is principally oriented towards grammatical tense studies and studies of the expression of temporality in the lexicon and in discourse (cf. Porter 2006; Klein 1994). To the best of our knowledge, there has to date been no interest shown in the idea of approaching the study of language use, let alone the study of minority language use, from the sociological perspective of time. The present chapter is an attempt to fill this gap, presenting a pilot study which represents a first adventure into the vast, unexplored area of the interconnection between time and multilingual language use. The purpose of the study was to establish and describe the time-language connection as an influential relationship impacting on and modifying the sociolinguistic situation. To this end we set out to examine the use of minority languages in one of the niches of ‘super-diverse’ reality, in Ireland in correlation with the time aspect. As we are at the beginning of our voyage of exploration, no specific hypothesis was posited. Indeed, even the selection of questions to be asked in this area of investigation remains a task yet to be undertaken. Among the questions to which we may be able to find some glimmerings of answers would, we think, be the following. – What is the nature of the time regime of minority language speakers (that is, what “kinds” of time, e.g. instantaneous, enduring, cyclical, retarded, alternating, etc. characterize their time regime)? – Does the use of minority languages affect the time dimension of minority language users’ social and private lives (e.g. rhythm, timing and tempo,

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social synchronization, collective memory), and does it in consequence affect their life trajectories? If the answer to the above question is yes, in what ways do minority languages shape the sociotemporal rhythms of their users in comparison with the sociotemporal rhythms of majority language users?

In addressing these questions we shall: 1. Review some relevant sociological studies of the time dimension and explore the intrinsic relationship between time and language in creating/modifying life trajectories; 2. Report and discuss some empirical findings on the time-language connection gathered from minority language-users in Dublin; 3. Discuss some implications of the above and suggest some directions for future research in this area.

2 Theoretical treatments of time in globalization studies and sociology Time has always been a subject of discussion among philosophers. Such discussion includes disputes around the issue of whether time is a fundamental feature of nature and exists independently of human knowledge about it, or whether it is a feature of human perception and is thus “constructed” subjectively. Attempts to define what time is have not as yet yielded a commonly agreed upon answer. Some (e.g. Whitehead 1929) imagine time as “the form of becoming”; others (e.g. Zeno, see Aristotle 1984, McTaggart 1908) maintain that it is nothing because it does not exist. Partly as a result of this impasse, various fields of knowledge operate with differing notions of time – e.g., astronomic time, biological time, social time, and physical time. The issue of time has received substantial treatment from sociologists too, especially with regard to the changes brought about by globalization. The global changes in the modern and post-modern world are commented on in contemporary globalization scholarship – primarily in the context of designating time and space, “timespace”, or “spacetime” as a medium through which we manifest life. Scholars frequently point to the “tyranny of the moment” (Eriksen 2001), to “an overwhelming sense of compression of our spatial and temporal worlds” (Harvey 1989: 240), to the peculiar way in which contemporary society lives in an eternal present, and to the phenomenon of finding oneself instantaneously in contact with everybody everywhere. Web 2.0 plays an essential role in facilitating the prevalence of the present. The popular microblogging

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web application, Twitter, allows for almost instantaneous commentaries, from a multiplicity of perspectives, on events as they unfold in “real time”. The Twitter website invites participants to “share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world”; contributions are recorded by time of posting (e.g. seven minutes ago). Social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Friends Reunited provide opportunities to remain in contact with individuals from our “past lives”, whom we may have previously, and perhaps happily, forgotten. The key question which governs many of these websites relates to the current “status” of individuals; the ever-changing status bar on Facebook asks members to record: “what’s on your mind?” Changes to an individual’s status are posted on the homepage of all their contacts, and the time of status change is noted. Vast numbers of us have everyday experience of using telephone technology, of communicating via e-mail, of sending SMS texts to friends and family across short or vast distances, and of witnessing world events on the internet or television on an hour-by-hour, even a minute-by-minute, basis. The internet telephone service, Skype, continually notes how many millions of users are online and using their software at any given moment. Such experience undoubtedly underlies the (in fact, erroneous) popular belief that contemporary life is lived exclusively in instantaneous time. Modifications in humanity’s experience of time have far-reaching implications for the way people inhabit their present, understand their past and form their future. Existing in the changed time context is also inseparable from other formative experiences which have been altered by recent global shifts – especially patterns of language use. The human experiences of time and language are interrelated. The crucial role of language in the functioning of society is paralleled by the decisive role of time, on which topic it has been rightly observed that “[t]emporal coordination is integral to social interaction” (Flaherty and Seipp-Williams 2005: 46). Several concepts established in the sociology of time seem to be relevant for us in our endeavour to shed light on the connection between time and minority language use. We shall briefly discuss some recent research related to time and later in the paper draw on this research in our treatment of time/language patterns among minority language users. The terminology and the conceptual framework relative to time exhibit considerable variety, which is hardly surprising, given the multiplicity of perspectives in this domain, the wide range in the scope of treatments on offer and the diversity of disciplines which are involved (psychology, philosophy, sociology, etc.). On the other hand, most of the terms and notions proposed are transparent and overlapping. Here we shall be fairly eclectic and relaxed in our use of the relevant terms, except where precise specification/definition is needed.

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Engel-Frisch (1948), as cited in Flaherty & Seipp-Williams (2005: 40), distinguishes “three temporal aspects of human ecology: rhythm (the times at which people do things), timing (the synchronization of these rhythms), and tempo (the number of activities per unit of time)”. Sociologists talk about “social time”, that is, time “separate from, and opposed to, the sense of time employed by the natural sciences” (Urry 2000: 107). Social time is seen as impersonal and socially organized (Durkheim 1912/1995), as “an objectively given social category of thought produced within societies and which therefore varies as between societies” (Urry 2000: 107–108). Gurvitch (1964: 13–14) proposes eight different kinds of social time as frames of reference for sociological analysis. These include “Enduring Time”, “Deceptive Time”, “Erratic time”, “Cyclical Time”, “Retarded Time”, “Alternating Time”, “Time Pushing Forward” and “Explosive Time”. Braudel (1969), for his part, distinguishes between “slow time”, “intermediate time”, and “fast time” for different kinds of historical developments – e.g. climate change, economic developments and battles. Braudel makes the point that the individual may have consciousness of and agency over “fast” processes, while “intermediate” processes and “slow” macro processes are not discernible to the individual and not open to individual agency. This raises the question of agency over time and time regimes. The likely agents are several: (1) society, governments and institutions; (2) technological advances; and (3) individuals and groups led by their own agendas and affordances. Let us discuss each of these three agency items in turn.

2.1 The agency of society, governments and institutions First and foremost, time frames and synchronization are imposed by human culture (in the broad sense of this word), as well as by governments and institutions. Most contemporary human societies are organized around functionally indispensable clock-time. Time is synchronized across all the continents and across contemporary social practices – e.g. mass travel and newer modes of communication revolve around clock-time. Clock-time, based on a universally measurable, standardized calculation of time, “unnaturally” imposed by the clock, has largely replaced “kairological time”, that is, time connected with nature, need and inclination rather than with what the clock says (cf. Gault 1995: 155) Social standard temporal units (e.g. hour, day, week, and month) “impose a rhythmic” “beat” (Zerubavel 1989, as cited in Flaherty & Seipp-Williams 2005: 40) on a vast array of major activities, including work, consumption and socializing, and “a calendar expresses the rhythm of the collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure its regularity” (Durkheim 1912/ 1995: 23). Experiences of time are conditioned by collective organization, or

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daily social practices (cf. Adam, 1990). For example, Durkheim, in his study of suicide, discovered seasonal, monthly, daily, and hourly variations (Durkheim 1912/1995: 23). Zerubavel (1979), in his ethnographic study of hospital life, where the stability of the temporal structure is vital, describes in detail how institutionalized rhythms, expressed and experienced through shifts, the schedules of mealtimes and times for administering medicine, determine the temporal structure of the hospital’s everyday life.

2.2 The agency of technological advances The convenience and accessibility of the Internet, TV, telephones (both fixed and mobile), and other recent technologies delivered by technological advances, allow for instantaneous, 24/7/365 interaction. Urry (2000: 105) notes that “new technologies appear to be generating new kinds of time which dramatically transform the opportunities for, and constraints upon, the mobilities of peoples, information and images”. Bauman (1998: 18), though, warns against thinking that such shifts and outcomes affect everyone in the same way. He writes that the “interfacing of computer terminals” has had a varied impact on the plight of different kinds of people, pointing out that some people – in fact quite a lot – may still, as before, be “separated by physical obstacles and temporal distances”. The “24-hour society” and flexibilization, the phenomenon of the “reduction of rigidly institutionally timed events” (Southerton 2003: 7) – e.g. allowing employees to work at unregulated convenient hours – drives “collectively maintained temporal rhythms towards individually defined moments in time and space”. Working times and locations are increasingly deregulated and scattered (cf. Garhammer 1995; Breedveld 1998). Among other recent developments in “living in time”, we may mention the collapse of the distinction between home and the workplace, and of the distinction and distribution of time spent between worktime and private/leisure/consumption time (Cilliers 2005; Southerton 2003: 6). Southerton explains that as consumption, which puts considerable demands on time, is more available to people than before, they are tempted to engage in more and more diverse kinds of consumption/leisure activities, which in its turn leads to “time pressure”, “time dissonance” (Waterworth 2003: 47); they experience rush and haste, feeling “hurried” and stressed. Chunks of uninterrupted time diminish, and people engage in “multitasking” (Southerton 2003: 7). Interestingly, it seems that, despite all these clearly discernible shifts, the agency of biology and human culture can still overrule global innovations. Despite the existence of 24/7/365 affordances, a widespread predisposition to stay with traditional time regimes (“9 to 5, Monday to Friday”) has been noted

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by several researchers (Flaherty and Seipp-Williams 2005). The predominant pattern still appears to correspond to the traditional rhythms of the working day and week. Baker et al. (2003) found that the preferred times for work and leisure activities, which in principle, especially in the latter case, can now proceed at any of the time of the day or at any point in the week, remain within the conventional frames. For example, evenings and weekends are the times of choice for families and friends to get together. In other words, despite everincreasing flexibility, and the possibility of activity around the clock, employees, both those working regular hours and those working in shifts at “unusual” times, prefer to keep their time revolving around “traditional” regimes, which in their turn, ultimately depend on the biological regime. Similarly, Flaherty & Seipp-Williams (2005: 42) found clear patterns of e-mail use by students and teachers at a university in the USA in terms of the temporal flow of e-mails in weekly, daily and hour cycles. They concluded on the evidence that the volume of e-mail per hour and per day is structured by socio-temporal rhythms.

2.3 The agency of individuals and groups led by their own agendas and affordances In addition to the two above agency types, temporalities and rhythms are created also by more direct human agency – at the level of individuals and groups. Various collectivities of people try to attune to reality, technology opportunities and societal shifts. Researchers have reported on various patterned time variations they have discovered in respect of human activities. Particular sociotemporal rhythms were found by Melbin (1969) in the context of a mental hospital. Zerubavel (1989), as cited in Flaherty & Seipp-Williams (2005: 46), remarks that God gave us only one day of rest; but the unions gave us another. From the above discussion, we can see, among other things, that instantaneous time is far from being the only type of time associated with contemporary human life. As Adam (1995) notes, there is no single time but rather a variety of times (Adam 1995; Urry 2000: 105–106). Moreover, the allocation of time does not always go smoothly. Both the modern 24/7/365 regime and traditional time regimes may be in a state of instability, necessitating “negotiation” on the part of individuals trying to optimize their life opportunities but also between the time regimes of organizations, government institutions and groups as well as individuals. Time regimes may not and very often do not coincide, but rather clash. This is especially the case in the modern circumstances of global mobility, where people increasingly often find themselves intermixed with others from differing cultures, traditions, memories and civilizations. An illustration of a

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clash of temporalities between the host society and asylum seekers is given in Cwerner’s (2004: 80) discussion of the time politics of asylum in the UK, which imposes temporal regulations concerning the entry and exit of individuals. Cwerner (2004: 74) describes how “in relatively recent times these modern nationstates began to develop effective mechanisms to regulate and police the movement of people across borders”. Mobility appears to be the most obvious nexus of interconnection between time and languages, as the social topology of structure (communities, groups, states) is being replaced by the fluid social topology of network (Friedman 1999; Urry 2000). Flows of people and the consequent multiplicity of languages in use in given areas have resulted in new linguistic forms and varieties as well as in an increase of linguistic and social affordances (Aronin and Singleton 2010). Hence our choice of immigrants as the participants in our study.

3 The present study 3.1 Participants The study involves a sample of recent immigrants to Ireland – all members of minority ethnic groups – whose length of residence (LOR) in the host country ranges from 1 month to 5 years, and whose L1s range from Cantonese to Russian. They share the characteristic of using two or more languages in their daily lives, and of undergoing a process of building and re-organizing their linguistic assets. Clearly, language issues are likely to have a major influence on their chances of work, of integrating into Irish society and of adjusting their perspective and identity to their new situation. Group

Number

L1(s)

Occupation

LOR in Ireland

Age

East Asian

19

Cantonese Korean Mandarin

EFL students Part-time workers Restaurateurs Traders

1 month–5 years

24–40

African

2

Lingala

Unemployed Housewife

5 months–7 years

30–32

Eastern European

1

Armenian Georgian Russian

Artist/graphic designer

7 years

25–30

Table 1: Sample profile

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Most of the respondents are from East Asia. Data were obtained from 22 such participants, some of whom were students studying English as a foreign language at schools in Ireland and others of whom were involved in business or professional activities (supermarket owners, restaurant owners, interns, etc.). Korean and Chinese students are granted visas to study English in Ireland on condition that they enroll in a registered English language school for twenty hours of tuition per week. They are also permitted to engage in part-time work for up to a maximum of twenty hours per week. Most stay for one or two years, hoping that the improvement in their spoken English will help them obtain wellpaid jobs in their home countries. Some Korean and Chinese immigrants have full-time commitments in the restaurant or supermarket business. These are first generation immigrants, but usually of mature years, with families attending Irish schools. Such immigrants usually intend to remain in Ireland. It is noteworthy that members of this category generally do not enroll for any kind of English language tuition. All of the above respondents are members of the Dublin Korean Church, a Korean-language Christian denomination which meets at a venue made available to it by the Irish Presbyterian Church. Of the two respondents from Africa, one is a Convention refugee from Angola and the other is an asylum-seeker from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Convention refugees are granted refugee status under the Geneva Convention, and have the same rights and entitlements as Irish citizens, including the right to seek paid employment and the right to set up their own businesses. Refugees also have access to some English language tuition funded by the State. Asylum seekers are not entitled to work whilst their claim for asylum is being processed; nor do they have access to any State-funded English language tuition. The Democratic Republic of Congo figures consistently in the top five countries of origin of asylum seekers in Ireland. Also, many Angolan refugees arrived in Ireland following decades of civil war in their homeland (1975–2002). The language of both our African participants is Lingala, a Bantu language spoken throughout the northwestern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), and a large part of the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville), as well as to some degree in Angola and the Central African Republic. Finally, our Eastern European respondent is an artist/graphic designer from Georgia. He claims to be highly multilingual, mentioning that he has eight languages in all at his disposal.

3.2 Research instrumentation and methodology We chose to deploy questionnaires and spreadsheets as complementary means of collecting our data. The participants were asked to complete a questionnaire

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and three spreadsheets. The questionnaire elicited personal data (languages known, country of origin, age, LOR in Ireland, etc.). It also explored perceptions and indirect evaluations in respect of participants’ languages via the manner in which participants chose to label these languages (mother tongue, third language, etc.). The questionnaire was also designed to probe the perceived importance of languages at various stages of participants’ lives, the existence of significant time-markers (e.g. particular days of the week) and the future intentions of respondents regarding their languages – i.e., whether they see “before” and “after” arrival in Ireland as different from the point of view of time and language use, and whether their perceive their patterns of time use to have changed along with their changing patterns of language use. Our methodology relied on self-declaration of language use, which of course brings with it some particular challenges in terms of accuracy, under-representation, overrepresentation, failure to record, and so forth. However, no valid or reliable alternative seemed feasible. It would have been impossible to record the breadth and depth of linguistic activity in any other way, and we build on a rich tradition of self-declaration, for example multiple national censuses, the European Language Portfolio, and the many home language surveys conducted across Europe by Guus Extra and his collaborators (e.g. Extra & Gorter 2001; Extra & Yağmur 2004). The spreadsheets were designed to capture the sequence of a participant’s daily activities (over 24 hours) in terms of the languages they heard, they spoke, they read, and they wrote in the course of their daily activities. All the participants were asked to fill in the spreadsheets on the same days of the week: Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. Sunday was selected as a “marker of time” with possible religious and family connotations as well as the only day off for many workers (often the only day when many shops and restaurants close in Ireland). Monday was selected as a typical working day but at the start of the week, usually a day when people concentrate on work and do not have many social engagements after the weekend. Tuesday was then selected as a further typical working day. Three sequential days were opted for in an attempt to obviate respondents’ forgetting to complete their spreadsheets. The spreadsheets were completed over two periods: 10–12 June and 17–19 June. One feature of the spreadsheet data collection was the use of multiple colours for languages of different status (L1, L2, L3, etc.) with a view to rendering the invisible time dimension visible. Participants were asked to indicate on the spreadsheets the activities (speaking, reading, writing, listening) they were engaged in over the relevant groups of three days. The time axis was divided into 30 minute chunks so to obtain as detailed a picture as possible. In addition, participants were asked to specify,

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using different colours, which language or languages were associated with every activity. Columns were provided for the kind of activity, the place, the language(s) used by participants and the language(s) used by their interlocutors. The participants were explicitly asked to use verbs in describing their activities so that each activity could be classified with regard to the kind of time involved. When describing their actions participants were asked to indicate the circumstances and place in which the activity took place. For example: “had dinner with my friends in the restaurant” – the colour used showing the language or languages used. The actions specified by the participants were subsequently classified according to the associated time modes. Asking migrants to record their time and language practices posed a number of challenges. Language barriers are frequently a problem in such research, and it had to be stressed, for example, that respondents were not being singled out because their language use was problematic. It also had to be explained why the project demanded such a detailed breakdown of three days of their life, why this would be of interest to anyone. It was, furthermore, necessary to construct an instrument that was sufficiently simple to be comprehensible by individuals with very limited proficiency in English, but that would elicit sufficient detail about their practices and habits. Additionally, working within immigrant communities requires time on the part of researchers: instruments cannot simply be dropped off and collected. Many meals, visits and much conversation were vital elements in the data gathering outlined here. The suspicion with which many immigrants regard the majority population is always problematic in such research; trust must be gained in order for any satisfactory data collection to proceed.

3.3 Analysis of the spreadsheet data In this pilot investigation we decided to defer a more thoroughgoing quantitative treatment till a later date, on the basis of more finely tuned methods and larger populations. Our present findings in this context are of the kind that the two Israelites brought back from the land of Canaan, which they had been sent by Moses to reconnoitre. Just as the ancient Israelites looked to the land flowing with milk and honey, the time/language perspective directs us to a place where there is more than enough of everything – in our case, new insights. However, in the present context we can offer only a teasing glimpse of the richness of the territory we intend to explore, just as Moses’ spies were able to bring back to the people of Israel in the wilderness only a taste of the delights of Canaan. Rather than furnishing exact statistical information, the spreadsheets served as a source of visual information for the general trends we uncovered. The use

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of the graphic format and colours allowed us to see some tendencies in time/ language use of these immigrants which diverge from the received wisdom on time use. The overall time regime of our participants complies with traditional biosocial rhythms without “flexibilization” effects. Our respondents are occupied with their work during normal “working hours”. Their Sundays are constructed differently from the other days of the week, and similarly to the way in which Sundays are constructed in much of the host population, revolving around family, home and church. The kinds of “excesses” noted as trends in the globalization literature are not as yet apparent in this population. They do not use the affordances of the 24/7/365 regime. The spreadsheets do not show evidence of consistent or even occasional late night or early morning activities in general and late night/early morning activities mediated by modern technology in particular. There is no evidence either of “multitasking” (Southerton 2003: 7), of a diversity of consumption/leisure activities, of a collapse of the difference between home and the workplace, or of a blurring of the distinction between worktime and private/leisure/consumption time (Cilliers 2005; Southerton 2003: 6). On the contrary, the distinction between home and work is actually highlighted and perhaps, enhanced by the different languages used in there two spheres. Neither did we discover in our data evidence that working times and locations are increasingly deregulated and scattered, as reported for more globalized populations (cf. Garhammer 1995; Breedveld 1998). We note here the importance of the location of this research project, which took place in Ireland. Unlike, perhaps, its closest national neighbour, Ireland is not characterized by a 24/7/ 365 regime. Whilst late-night and 24-hour convenience stores do exist, legislative limits have been placed on the size of out-of-town retail stores, on the number of hours that retailers can open in city centres on Sundays, and on the closing times of pubs and nightclubs. Sunday has been a manifestly different day for the Irish – a day for religion, for sport, for family activities – and these manifestations appear in our researched population as well. The time/language regime of the minority language speakers in this study thus presents some rather interesting characteristics. 1. Whereas multilingualism and contemporary life-styles typically evoke images of fuzziness and mixture, and the metaphors of the whirlpool and the melting pot, our data suggest that the most prominent characteristic of our participants’ way of life is a rather and “even” time regime without pressures and sudden switches of activities. This seems to be calibrated to a traditional rather than what we may have previously understood as a “globalized” life style.

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2.

Our participants’ time regime appears to consist of relatively large chunks of time in an interchanging sequence. The time slots in question are mostly between three and five hours in length, less often between two and three hours. Typical for our respondents are regular monolingual time chunks of one to three hours’ duration, devoted either to minority language use or to English language use. This constitutes a very specific pattern of daily life. 3. In most of the time periods the relevant activity is reported to be mediated via one language, only a minority of the periods involving two or more languages. That is, within a given period, the norm is for one language is used, rather than several languages with codeswitching. 4. The spreadsheets reveal symmetric time spans (See Figure 1 below). That is, it is typical that within a given time-block the same language is spoken by participants and also spoken to them. Much less often one language is the medium of interaction but another or several other languages are present in the environment. Even less often interaction takes place in two languages but there is exposure to several others in the context. We provide here two of the four language activities that we asked participants to record (speaking and listening). We aimed to investigate both the productive language skills of speaking/writing, and the receptive skills of listening/reading. The spreadsheet below thus shows one productive skill and one receptive skill. Whilst speaking is fairly self-evident in its manifestations, reading may refer to a range of activities from reading a book to browsing the internet. In this phase of our research on time, we were not closely interested in the breakdown within language activities, but rather the shifts between languages. It seems from our data that those immigrants who have been in Ireland only a short time and those who have undergone a shift in their language constellations have time regimes which are relatively simply structured, particularly in relation to limited use of the host language, which is rarely deployed in reading or writing. Interestingly, though, the two respondents who deploy and value the same language constellation now as before immigration exhibit a time pattern which is much more elaborate, splintered and complicated. We might perhaps very tentatively hypothesize then, that clearly demarcated time patterns are characteristic of those who are at the beginning of the use of languages other than a minority language, and that with experience in using both minority and host country languages, the language/time pattern becomes more complicated, motley and mixed.

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Figure 1: Spreadsheet

3.4 The case of Sunday As in the case of the host population, our participants’ time allocation on Sunday differs from that characterizing the other two days under scrutiny. On Sundays the focus of their activities is on home and church, family and religion, rarely on meetings with friends. Their Sunday is clearly divided into language chunks corresponding to the relevant activities. The differences in the languages used undoubtedly point up the boundaries between activities, as compared with the case of the host population, whose Sunday activities are typically all performed in the same language. Our respondents’ Sundays are organized mostly into three large language/time chunks. Usually language switch occurs in the

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middle of the day – around 12.15 p.m. The time portions are sizeable – minimum two-hour spans, average three- to five- hour spans, sometimes four- to sevenhour spans (see Figure 2). We considered 21 of our respondents for this part of the analysis. One very ascetic person who practically does not, according to his own report, speak on Sundays was excluded. The 21 participants in question reported an average of being awake on Sundays of 14.65 hours (range 11–17, 5). Out of these hours the reported average number of hours per person of minority language use was 8.8 hours. The reported average number of hours lived through English, on the other hand was 3.2 hours. The reported average number of hours per person of mixed language use in the same activity was 1.38 hours. This means that on Sundays

Figure 2: Use of languages on Sunday Legend, Figure 2 Vertical axis numbers 1–22: participants; Vertical axis hours: reported number of hours of wakefulness during Sunday. Horizontal axis (top) numbers 7–24: hours of the day and night. Yellow (here light gray): English Red (here dark gray): minority language Pink (here light charcoal): minority language and English.

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our respondents used minority languages 60% of the time, used English less then 22% of their time, and used a mixture of minority languages and English within the same activity slightly more than 9% of their time. We again note the Irish context of this research, for example the limited hours of retail trade, greatly reduced public transport provision, and a general social demarcation of Sunday as a ‘different’ day (despite greatly reduced numbers of regular attenders to religious services). We have some qualitative data pointing to the promise of interesting conclusions in respect of the analysis of the rest of the questionnaire data on language perception and use before and after immigration. There is a wealth of information on the use of minority languages to be extracted from findings of this sort. For example, we hope at a later stage to compare the number of hours “lived via minority languages” by those who considered English important before they arrived in Ireland and those who considered minority languages important, in order to see whether there is any correlation between previous language evaluation and the amount of time actually lived through particular languages on arrival. It will also be interesting to explore whether these factors its turn have an impact on the further use of languages, on employment and on personal development. Another example of what might be further investigated is provided by the respondent who identified himself as an ascetic; practically all his time slots are marked as “silence”, “do not speak and quiet” and “no language around me”. More informative are his reports on the very few instances when he was obliged to speak. These instances are characterized by both minority language use and English language use, but it is noteworthy that minority language use has a particularly impressive presence in this context.

4 Conclusions In the present study, we set out to draw the attention of sociolinguists to the aspect of time in language practices. We wish to claim, that the time feature adds a further dimension to our understanding of the diversity and complexity of multilingualism occasioned by global changes and mobility. The present pilot study , as well as providing some theoretical considerations on the time aspect in sociolinguistics, reveals some rather particular characteristics of the time/ language regime of a group of immigrant multilinguals in Dublin. Among these characteristics are: – a rather unhurried and “even” time regime, as opposed to a regime of instantaneous time and extreme time pressure;

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–

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a very specific pattern of daily time allocation – involving relatively large chunks of time “lived through” minority language(s); an interchanging sequence of time/language chunks, about 3–4 per day; minimal periods of time when activity is mediated via two languages, the majority of time being lived in the mode one language per time-block; moderate use or absence of use of the technology associated with instantaneous time (e-mail, internet, mobile phones).

Time must be recognized as an important aspect of investigation into minority languages, and in the sociology of language as a revealing research domain. Our view is that taking time into account will bring fresh illumination to the contemporary sociolinguistic situation and may point to practical measures to ameliorate conditions for those at risk of being disadvantaged in this situation.

References Adam, Barbara. 1990. Time and Social Theory. Cambridge: Polity Press. Adam, Barbara. 1995. Timewatch: the Social Analysis of Time. Cambridge: Polity Press. Aristotle. 1984. ‘On Generation and Corruption’, A. A. Joachim (trans), in The Complete Works of Aristotle, J. Barnes (ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press. Aronin, Larissa and David Singleton (guest eds.). 2010. The Diversity of Multilingualism. In: the International Journal of the Sociology of Language. Joshua A. Fishman (ed.), Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Baker, Angela, Sally Ferguson and Andrew Dawson. 2003. The perceived value of time: Controls versus shiftworkers. Time and Society 12 (1): 27–39. Bauman, Zygmunt. 1998. Globalization: The Human Consequences. Cambridge: Polity Press. Blommaert, Jan. 2010. The sociolinguistics of globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, Jan and Ben Rampton, Language and Superdiversity: A position paper. Working papers in 2011 Urban Language & Literacies, Paper 70. ww.kcl.ac.uk/sspp/departments/ education/. . ./llg/workingpapers/70.pdf Braudel, Fernand. 1969. Histoire et sciences sociales. La longue durée [Long term]. Écrits sur l’histoire [Writings on the History] Paris: Flammarion. 41–83. Breedveld, Koen. 1998. The double myth of flexibilization: Trends in scattered work hours, and differences in time sovereignty. Time and Society 7 (1): 129–143. Castells, Manuel. 1997. The Power of Identity. Oxford: Blackwell. Cilliers, Paul. 1998. Complexity and Postmodernism. Understanding complex systems. London: Routledge. Cilliers, Paul. 2005. On the importance of a certain slowness: Stability, memory and hysteresis in complex systems. Paper delivered at the Complexity Science and Society Conference, University of Liverpool, UK, September. 11–14. Cwerner, Saulo B. 2004. Faster, faster and faster: The time politics of asylum in the UK. Time and Society 13 (1): 71–88.

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Cwerner, Saulo B., Kesselring and John Urry (eds.). 2009. Aeromibilities. London: Routledge. Durkheim, Emile (ed.). 1995[1912] The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: The Free Press. Engel-Frisch, George. 1948. Some neglected temporal aspects of human ecology. Social Forces 22: 43–47. Eriksen, Thomas Hylland. 2001. Tyranny of the Moment: Fast and Slow Time in the Information Age. London: Pluto Press. Extra, Guus and Durk Gorter (eds.). 2001. The Other Languages of Europe. Demographic, Sociolinguistic and Educational Perspectives. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Extra, Guus and Kutlay Yağmur (eds.). 2004. Urban Multilingualism in Europe: Immigrant Minority Languages at Home and School. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Flaherty, Michael G. and Lucas Seipp-Williams. 2005. Sociotemporal rhythms in e-mail: a case study. Time and Society: 14 (1): 39–49. Friedman, Lawrence M. 1999. The Horizontal Society. Newhaven, CT: Yale University Press. Garhammer, Manfred. 1995. Changes in working hours in Germany. Time and Society 4 (2): 167–203. Gault, Richard. 1995. In and out of time. Environmental Values 4 (2): 149–166. Gurvitch, George. 1964. The Spectrum of Social Time. Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Co. Harvey, David. 1989. The Condition of Postmodernity. Oxford: Blackwell. Klein, Wolfgang. 1994. Time in Language. London: Routledge. McTaggart, John The Unreality of Time, Mind 17, pp. 457–474. 1908. Melbin, Murray. 1969. Behavior rhythms in mental hospitals. American Journal of Sociology 74 (6): 650–665. Porter, Kevin J. 2006. Meaning, Language, and Time. Towards a Consequentialist Philosophy of Discourse. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press. Sklair, Leslie. 1999. Competing conceptions of globalization. Journal of World-Systems Research 5(2): 143–162. Southerton, Dale. 2003. Squeezing time. Allocating practices, coordinating networks and scheduling society. Time and Society 12 (1): 5–25. Urry, John. 2000. Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century. London: Routledge. Vertovec, Steven. 2010. Super-diversity and its implications. Ethnic and Racial Studies 30/6: 1024–1054. Waterworth, Susan. 2003. Temporal reference frameworks and nurses’ work organization. Time and Society 12 (1): 41–54. Whitehead, Alfred North. 1929. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology Corrected edition 1979/edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. – New York: Free Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1989. The Seven-Day Circle: the History and Meaning of the Week. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1979. Private time and public time: the temporal structure of social accessibility and professional commitments. Social Forces 58 (1): 38–58.

Guus Extra

6 Mapping increasing linguistic diversity in multicultural Europe and abroad 1 Introduction The focus of this chapter is on mapping linguistic diversity in Europe and abroad, more in particular in European Union countries and in non-European English-dominant countries (Barni and Extra 2008; Extra and Gorter 2008). Linguistic diversity is generally conceived of as a constituent characteristic of European identity (Arzoz 2008). However, some languages play a more important role than other languages in the European public and political discourse on “celebrating linguistic diversity”, the motto of the first European Year of Languages (2001). The constellation of languages in Europe actually functions as a descending hierarchy (see Nic Craith 2006 for similar considerations) with the following ranking: – English as lingua franca for transnational communication; – national or “official state” languages of European countries; – regional minority (RM) languages across Europe; – immigrant minority (IM) languages across Europe. The increasing spread of English as the dominant language for transnational communication, in particular for scientific communication, has been documented in such studies as Phillipson (2003) and Carli and Ammon (2007), respectively. Whereas the national languages of the EU with English increasingly on top are celebrated most at the EU level, RM languages are celebrated less and IM languages least. IM languages are only marginally covered by EU language promotion programmes and – so far – are mainly considered in the context of provisions for learning the national languages of the “migrants’ countries of residence”. In the official EU discourse, RM languages are referred to as regional or minority languages and IM languages as migrant languages. Both concepts are problematic for a variety of reasons (to be discussed). In Section 2, methodological issues in mapping linguistic diversity are explored in terms of concepts, paradigms, and databases. Section 3 deals with national languages and minority languages in Europe. Criteria for the definition and identification of population groups in multicultural societies are discussed in Section 4. Derived from this discussion, the focus of Sections 5 and 6 is on mapping diversity in non-European English-dominant countries and in European Union countries, respectively. Conclusions are offered in Section 7.

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2 Methodological issues: concepts, paradigms and databases The focus of this section is on methodological issues in mapping linguistic diversity in multicultural societies. We will explore well-known and established approaches, now commonly referred to by the coinages demolinguistics (De Vries 1990) or language demography (Clyne 2003: 20–69) and geolinguistics (Van der Merwe 1989). The term demolinguistics originated among Quebec demographers, probably during the 1970s. Over the last few decades, the field has become an international crossing for demography and linguistics; the same holds for geolinguistics as the crossing for geography and linguistics. More recent approaches have been explored in terms of linguistic landscaping (Gorter 2006; Shohamy and Gorter 2008). Whereas geolinguistic and demolinguistic studies tend to focus on the spatial and temporal distribution and vitality of languages in the private domain of the home, linguistic landscaping has as its focus the public domain in the most literal sense, i.e., in terms of the visibility and distribution of languages on the streets. In this sense, the outcomes of linguistic landscaping research should be read with care: they do not intend to present a faithful mapping of the linguistic make-up of the population in a given place. We will offer crossnational demolinguistic perspectives on languages other than “national” languages. Depending on particular contexts or perspectives, such languages are often referred to as minority languages or dominated languages. Numerical classifications do not necessarily coincide with social classifications. According to the 2001 census outcomes in South Africa, (isi)Zulu is the most widely spoken home language in this country and English functions commonly as lingua franca with all its power and prestige (Van der Merwe and Van der Merwe 2006). Whereas English is a minority language in the homes of South Africans, it is the dominant language in society. In Western Europe, Turkish belongs to the major immigrant languages, and it is spoken in the homes of far more people than any of the national languages of the three Baltic States for instance. Demolinguistic and geolinguistic research can be characterized as empirical approaches with a strong fascination for large data sampling and for the visual representation of the resulting outcomes in tabulated figures and language maps. This is not to say that qualitative small-scale data, common in ethnographic research, should be under-estimated. In particular in the domain of multilingualism in multicultural contexts, there is a need for multidisciplinarity and complementarity of data collection methods. Table 1 gives an outline of complementary approaches or paradigms in ethnographic versus demo/geolinguistic research.

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Research paradigms

Ethnographic research

Demo/geolinguistic research

Research methods

– Inductive/Heuristic – (Participating) observation – “Qualitative”

– Deductive – Distance between researcher and informants – “Quantitative”

Usual data

– Observed data in multiple contexts – Open-ended and in-depth interviews

– Reported data in single contexts – Selective set of questions in pre-designed questionnaires

Informants

– (Multiple) case studies – Single/few informants

– Large-scale studies – Many informants

Table 1: Complementary approaches or paradigms in ethnographic versus demo/geolinguistic research (Barni and Extra 2008: 5)

Particular validity issues arise in each of these two approaches – in ethnographic research in terms of representativeness of the data and in terms of making generalizations, in demo/geolinguistic research in terms of a (mis)match between observed and reported data. A prominent concept in geolinguistic research is the spatial confinement of language groups to a particular geographical area. One should be aware that some language groups show a stronger degree of spatial or territorial confinement than others. Spatial confinement holds in particular for regional (minority) languages, spatial dispersion for immigrant (minority) languages. Henceforward, these two types of languages will be referred to as RM and IM languages, respectively (Extra and Gorter 2008). Taken from a dynamic perspective, regional languages may become (im)migrant languages within or across the borders of nation-states. Take the case of (isi)Xhosa as spoken in South Africa: it has its regional base (“center of gravity”) in the Eastern Cape but in the post-Apartheid era has started to spread to the Western Cape. As a result, Xhosa is beginning to be firmly established next to Afrikaans and English in Cape Town (Van der Merwe and Van der Merwe 2006). A similar awareness should take hold for the concept of “language groups” itself. Although there are many reasons for its popularity, one should be aware that this concept is problematic in any multicultural context. The language repertoire of people in such a context often consists of more than one language. In the European public and political discourse, this has led to the popularity of the reference to plurilingual people in multilingual societies. Taken from this perspective, plurilingualism refers to the ability of individuals to communicate in more than one language, whereas multilingualism refers to a key marker of societies at large.

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Demolinguistics helps in analyzing questions of language and ethnicity in various ways. First of all, large-scale language data can offer key information on both the distribution and vitality of languages as core values of ethnic identity for different groups in multicultural societies (see Extra and Yağmur 2004: 100–132 for methodological considerations about the concepts of distribution and vitality of languages). Comparison of large-scale language data collected at different intervals (in particular census data) has led to studies of shift from minority/dominated languages to majority/dominant languages. De Vries (1990) and Veltman (1991) provide early accounts of Canadian census data, in particular with respect to the measurement of the concepts of mother tongue, home language use, and language speaking ability. There is a huge body of knowledge in non-European English-dominant immigration countries on patterns of intergenerational shift from languages other than English (LOTE) to English in different groups. Clyne (2003: 23–46) offers analyses of Australian census data on language shift in first (overseas-born) and second (Australian-born) generations. Language data can be cross-tabulated with other types of data on individual and group factors collected at the same time, e.g., data on exogamous vs. endogamous marriages, age, period of residence, gender, English proficiency, education, group size and group spread. In this chapter, we want to compare the European state of knowledge on mapping linguistic diversity in multicultural contexts with initiatives taken in other parts of the world. Over the last century, Europe has shifted from being a continent of emigration to being a continent of immigration. Multicultural self-definitions have been created by former European immigrants in such nonEuropean English-dominant immigration countries as Australia, Canada, the USA and South Africa (cf. the concept of “rainbow nation”). A similar multicultural self-definition also holds for Europe at large: its identity is commonly described in terms of “celebrating cultural and linguistic diversity”. A paradoxical phenomenon in the European public and political discourse is the absence of this celebration in the case of non-European immigrant groups and their languages. From a European perspective, much can be learnt from the experiences abroad in dealing with multilingualism and multiculturalism, both in terms of public and political discourse and in terms of data provision and data analysis. Both in Europe and beyond, there is huge variation in the types of databases for the definition and identification of population groups in multicultural societies. Some of these databases may include language data, derived from a variety of single or multiple language questions. In the European context, Poulain (2008) makes a distinction between nationwide censuses, administrative registers and statistical surveys. Censuses take place at fixed intervals (commonly 5 or 10

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years) and result in nationwide databases. Administrative registers are commonly built up at both the municipal and central level, and they are commonly updated every year. Statistical surveys may be carried out at regular intervals among particular subsets of population groups. All three types of data collection may finally take place in various combinations. The advantage of survey data over census data is that surveys commonly allow for multiple questions rather than single questions on particular topics. Obviously, this also holds for language questions. Census data are common phenomena across the world. In this chapter our focus is on census data in European Union (henceforward EU) countries and in non-European English-dominant immigration countries, with a focus on Australia, Canada, South Africa and the USA. To give an example: the Linguistic Atlas of South Africa (Van der Merwe and Van der Merwe 2006) is based on comparative analyses of census data across space and time, collected at the national, provincial and metropolitan level (Cape Town) at intervals of 10 years (i.e., in 1991 and 2001). Register data at the national and municipal level commonly contain data on nationality and birth country (of municipal inhabitants and/or their parents in a given year). Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands are examples of EU countries in which such information is collected and updated yearly through municipal registers instead of nationwide censuses. European examples of survey data on home language use of school population groups have been analyzed and published in the context of the Multilingual Cities Project or MCP (Extra and Yağmur 2004) and in the context of Local Educational Authorities (LEA) projects in the United Kingdom (Baker and Eversley 2000, Eversley et al. 2010). The MCP offers crossnational data on language distribution and language vitality derived from multiple language questions that have been collected among school populations in six multicultural European cities. An important similarity in questions about home language use, whether in census, register of survey planning, is that the outcomes are based on reported rather than observed facts. Answers to questions on home language use may be colored by the language of the questions themselves (which may or may not be the primary language of the respondent), by the ethnicity of the interviewer (which may or may not be the same as that of the respondent), by the (perceived) goals of the sampling (which may or may not be defined by national or local authorities), and by the spirit of the times (which may or may not favor multiculturalism). These problems become even more prominent in a school context in which pupils are the respondents. Apart from the problems mentioned, the answers may be colored by peer-group pressure and they may lead to interpretation problems in attempts to identify and classify languages. For a discussion of these and other possible effects, we refer to Nicholas (1988) and Alladina

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(1993). The problems referred to are inherent characteristics of large-scale data gathering through questionnaires about language-related behavior and should be compensated by small-scale data gathering through observation of actual language behavior. Such small-scale ethnographic research is not an alternative to large-scale language surveys but a necessary complement, which can offer rich details and variation at the individual level. For a discussion of (cor)relations between reported and measured bilingualism of IM children in the Netherlands, we refer to Broeder and Extra (1998). One final point should be mentioned. In the context of our reference to nation-states in this chapter, we will refer to nationality rather than citizenship. Even if the two concepts are often used as synonyms nowadays, we should be aware of their historical and contextual difference in denotation (Guiguet 1998). Nationals belong to a nation-state but they may not have all the rights linked with citizenship (e.g., voting rights); in this sense, citizenship is a more inclusive concept than nationality.

3 National languages and minority languages in Europe Europe’s identity is to a great extent determined by cultural and linguistic diversity (Haarmann 1995). Table 2 serves to illustrate this diversity in terms of EU (candidate) member-states with their estimated populations (ranked in order of decreasing numbers) and corresponding official state languages. As Table 2 makes clear, there are large differences in population size amongst EU member-states. German, French, English, Italian, Spanish and Polish belong, in this order, to the six most widely spoken official state languages in the present EU, whereas Turkish would come second to German in an enlarged EU. Table 2 also shows the close connection between nation-state references and official state language references. In 28 out of 30 cases, distinct languages are the clearest feature distinguishing one nation-state from its neighbors (Barbour 2000), the only exceptions being Belgium and Cyprus. This match between nation-state references and official state language references obscures the existence of different types of other languages that are actually spoken across European nation-states (Haberland 1991; Extra and Gorter 2001; Nic Craith 2006). Many of these languages are indigenous minority languages with a regional base; many other languages stem from abroad without such a base. As mentioned before, we will refer to these languages as regional minority (RM) languages and immigrant minority (IM) languages, respectively (Extra and Gorter 2008). As all of

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Nr

Member-states

Population (in millions)

Official state language(s)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Germany France United Kingdom Italy Spain Poland Romania The Netherlands Greece Portugal Belgium Czech Republic Hungary Sweden Austria Bulgaria Denmark Slovakia Finland Ireland Lithuania Latvia Slovenia Estonia Cyprus Luxembourg Malta

82,0 63,5 62,8 61,0 46,8 38,3 21,4 16,7 11,4 10,7 10,8 10,6 10,0 9,5 8,4 7,4 5,6 5,5 5,4 4,6 3,3 2,2 2,0 1,3 0,8 0,5 0,4

German French English Italian Spanish Polish Romanian Dutch (Nederlands) Greek Portuguese Dutch, French, German Czech Hungarian Swedish German Bulgarian Danish Slovak Finnish Irish, English Lithuanian Latvian Slovenian Estonian Greek, Turkish Luxemb., French, German Maltese, English

Nr

Candidate member-states

Population (in millions)

Official state language

28 29 30

Turkey Croatia Macedonia

79,7 4,3 2,1

Turkish Croatian Macedonian

Table 2: Overview of 30 EU (candidate) member-states with estimated populations and official state languages (EU figures for 2011/2012)

these RM and IM languages are spoken by different language communities and not at state-wide level, it may seem logical to refer to them as community languages, thus contrasting them with the official languages of nation-states. However, the designation “community languages” would lead to confusion at the surface level because this concept is already in use to refer to the official state languages of the EU. In that sense, the designation “community languages” is occupied territory, at least in the EU jargon.

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A number of things need to be kept in mind. First of all, within and across EU member-states, many RM and IM languages have larger numbers of speakers than many of the official state languages mentioned in Table 2. Moreover, RM and IM languages in one EU nation-state may be official state languages in another nation-state. Examples of the former result from language border crossing in adjacent nation-states, such as Finnish in Sweden or Swedish in Finland. Examples of the latter result from processes of migration, in particular from Southern to Northern Europe, such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian or Greek. It should also be kept in mind that many, if not most, IM languages in particular European nation-states originate from countries outside Europe. It is the context of migration and minorization in particular that makes our proposed distinction between RM and IM languages ambiguous. We see, however, no better alternative. In our opinion, the proposed distinction leads at least to awareness raising and may ultimately lead to an inclusive approach in the European conceptualization of minority languages (cf. Extra and Yagmur 2012). Contrary to many popular views, the concepts of “nation” and “nation-state” in the modern sense are relatively recent phenomena (Haarmann 1991; Wright 2000, 2004). Barbour (2000) discusses the distinction between these two concepts in terms of a population and a legally defined entity, respectively. Nations have frequently developed from ethnic groups, but nations and ethnic groups do not coincide. Ethnic groups are often subsets of nations or they function as collective entities across the borders of nation-states. Fishman (1989), Gudykunst (1988) and Riley (2007) go into the link between ethnic identity and (nonnational) language use. The construction and/or consolidation of nation-states has ingrained the belief that a national language should correspond to each nation-state, and that this language should be regarded as a core value of national identity. Equating language with national identity, however, is based on a denial of the co-existence of majority and minority languages within the borders of any nation-state and has its roots in the German Romanticism at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century (cf. Fishman 1973: 39–85, 1989: 105–175, 270–287; Edwards 1985: 23–27; and Joseph 2004: 92–131 for historical overviews). Equating German with Germany was a reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment and was also based on anti-French sentiments. The concept of nationalism emerged at the end of the 18th century; the concept of nationality took hold only a century later. Romantic philosophers like Johan Gottfried Herder and Wilhelm von Humboldt laid the foundation for the emergence of a linguistic nationalism in Germany on the basis of which the German language and nation were conceived as superior to the French language and nation. The French, however, were no less reluctant to express their conviction that the reverse was true. Although every nation-state is characterized by heterogeneity, including

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linguistic heterogeneity, nationalistic movements have always invoked this classical European discourse in their equating languages with nations (cf. renewed references in Germany to such concepts as Sprachnation and Leitkultur). For recent studies on language, identity and nationalism in Europe we refer to Barbour and Carmichael (2000), Gubbins and Holt (2002), Wright (2004), Schneider (2005) and Mar-Molinero and Stevenson (2006), and for a comparative study of attitudes towards language and national identity in France and Sweden to Oakes (2001). The USA has not remained immune to this type of nationalism either. The English-only movement, US English, was founded in 1983 out of a fear of the growing number of Hispanics on American soil (Fishman 1988; May 2001: 202– 224). This organization resisted bilingual Spanish-English education from the beginning because such an approach would lead to “identity confusion”. Similarly, attempts have been made to give the assignment of English as the official language of the USA a constitutional basis. This was done on the presupposition that the recognition of other languages (in particular Spanish) would undermine the foundations of the nation-state. This nationalism has its roots in a white, protestant, English-speaking elite (Edwards 1994: 177–178). The relationship between language and identity is not a static but a dynamic phenomenon. During the last decades of the 20th century, this relationship underwent strong transnational changes. Within the European context, these changes occurred in three different arenas (Oakes 2001): – in the national arenas of the EU nation-states: the traditional identity of these nation-states has been challenged by major demographic changes (in particular in urban areas) as a consequence of migration and minorization; – in the European arena: the concept of a European identity has emerged as a consequence of increasing cooperation and integration at the European level; – in the global arena: our world has become smaller and more interactive as a consequence of the increasing availability of information and communication technology. Major changes in each of these three arenas have led to the development of concepts such as a transnational citizenship and transnational multiple identities. Inhabitants of Europe no longer identify exclusively with singular nation-states, but give increasing evidence of multiple affiliations. At the EU level, the notion of a European identity was formally expressed for the first time in the Declaration on European Identity of December 1973 in Copenhagen. Numerous institutions and documents have propagated and promoted this idea ever since. The most concrete and tangible expressions of this idea to date have been the introduction of a European currency in 2002 and the proposals for a European constitution

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in 2004. In discussing the concept of a European identity, Oakes (2001: 127–131) emphasizes that the recognition of the concept of multiple transnational identities is a prerequisite rather than an obstacle for the acceptance of a European identity. The recognition of multiple transnational identities not only occurs among the traditional inhabitants of European nation-states, but also among newcomers and IM groups in Europe. At the same time we see a strengthening of regional identities in many regions in Europe, in particular those where a RM language is in use. Multiple transnational identities and affiliations will require new competences of European citizens in the 21st century. These include the ability to deal with increasing cultural diversity and heterogeneity (Van Londen and De Ruijter 1999). Plurilingualism can be considered a core competence for such ability. In this context, processes of both convergence and divergence play a role. In the European and global arena, English has increasingly assumed the role of lingua franca for international communication (Oakes 2001: 131–136, 149–154). The rise of English has occurred at the cost of all other official state languages of Europe, including French. At the same time, a growing number of newcomers to the national arenas of the EU nation-states express the need of competence in the languages of their countries of origin and destination. Europe has a rich diversity of languages. This fact is usually illustrated by reference to the official state languages of the EU. However, many more languages are spoken by the inhabitants of Europe. Examples of such languages are Welsh and Basque, or Arabic and Turkish. These languages are usually referred to as “minority languages”, even when in Europe as a whole there is no one majority language because all languages are spoken by a numerical minority. The languages referred to are representatives of RM and IM languages, respectively. RM and IM languages have much more in common than is usually thought. We find issues on their sociolinguistic, educational and political agendas such as their spread, their domestic and public vitality, the determinants of language maintenance versus language shift towards majority languages (Fishman 2001), the relationship between language, ethnicity, and identity, and the status of minority languages in schools, in particular in the compulsory stages of primary and secondary education. Only in the last few decades have some RM languages become relatively well protected in legal terms, as well as by affirmative educational policies and programmes, both at the level of various nationstates and at the level of the EU at large. Cenoz & Gorter (2008) offer case studies at the national level on the status of Basque, Catalan, Irish, Welsh and Frisian in education. There have always been speakers of IM languages in Europe, but these languages have only recently emerged as community languages spoken on a wide

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scale in urban Europe, due to intensified processes of international migration and intergenerational minorization. Turkish and Arabic are good examples of so-called “non-European” languages that are spoken and learned by millions of inhabitants of the EU nation-states. Although IM languages are often conceived of and transmitted as core values by IM language groups, they are much less protected than RM languages by affirmative action and legal measures, for example, in education. In fact, the learning and certainly the teaching of IM languages are often seen by mainstream language speakers and by policy makers as obstacles to integration and as a threat to the national identity.

4 Criteria for the definition and identification of population groups in multicultural societies Collecting reliable information on the diversity of population groups in multicultural societies is no easy enterprise. What is, however, more interesting than numbers or estimates of the size of particular groups, is what the criteria are for determining such numbers or estimates. Throughout the EU it is common practice to present data on RM groups on the basis of (home) language use and/or ethnicity, and to present data on IM groups on the basis of nationality and/or country of birth. However, convergence between these criteria for the two groups emerges over time, due to the increasing period of migration and minorization of IM groups in EU countries. Due to their prolonged/permanent stay, there is strong erosion in the utility of nationality or birth-country statistics. Comparative information on population figures in EU member-states can be obtained from the Statistical Office of the EU in Luxembourg (EuroStat). An overall decrease of the indigenous population has been observed in most EU countries over the last decade; at the same time, there has been an increase in the IM figures. For a variety of reasons, however, reliable and comparable demographic information on IM groups in EU countries is difficult to obtain. Seemingly simple questions like How many Turkish residents live in Germany compared to France? cannot easily be answered. For some groups or countries, no updated information is available or no such data have ever been collected. Moreover, official statistics only reflect IM groups with legal resident status. Another source of disparity is the different data collection systems being used, ranging from census data to administrative registers or statistical surveys (Poulain 2008). In addition, most residents from former colonies already have the nationality of their country of immigration. Most importantly, however, the most widely used criteria for IM status – nationality and/or country of birth – have become less valid over time

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because of an increasing trend towards naturalization and births within the countries of residence. For a discussion of the role of censuses in identifying population groups in a variety of multicultural nation-states, we refer to Kertzer and Arel (2002). Alterman (1969) offers a fascinating account of the history of counting people from the earliest known records on Babylonian clay tablets in 3800 BC to the USA census in 1970. In addition to the methods of counting, Alterman discusses at length who were counted and how, and who were not counted and why not. The issue of mapping diversity through nationwide periodical censuses by state institutions is commonly coupled with a vigorous debate between proponents and opponents about the following “ethnic dilemma”: how can you combat discrimination if you do not measure diversity? (Kertzer and Arel 2002: 23–25). Among minority groups and academic groups, both proponents and opponents of mapping diversity can be found (cf. Blum 2002 on this debate in France): – Proponents argue in terms of the social or scientific need for population data bases on diversity as prerequisites for affirmative action by the government in such domains as labor, housing, health care, education or media policies. – Opponents argue in terms of the social or scientific risks of public or political misuse of such data bases for stereotyping, stigmatization, discrimination or even removal of the “unwanted other”. Kertzer and Arel (2002: 2) point out that the census does much more than simply reflect social reality; rather than merely reflecting it, it plays a key role in the construction of that reality and in the creation of collective identities. At the same time, it should be acknowledged that the census is a crucial area for the politics of representation. Census data can make people aware of underrepresentation. Minority groups often make language rights one of their key demands on the basis of (home) language databases. Decennial censuses became common practice in Europe and the New World colonized by Europeans in the first part of the 19th century. The USA became the first newly established nation-state with a decennial census since 1790. The first countries to include a language question in their census, however, were Belgium in 1846 and Switzerland in the 1850s, both being European countries with more than one official state language (see Table 2). At present, in many EU countries, only population data on nationality and/or birth country (of person and/or parents) are available on IM groups. To illustrate this, Table 3 gives comparative statistics of population groups in the Netherlands, based on the birth-country (BC) criterion (of person and/or mother and/or father – PMF) versus the nationality criterion, as derived from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (2008).

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Groups

BC–PMF

Nationality

Absolute difference

Dutch Turks Moroccans Surinamese Antilleans* Italians Spaniards Somalians Chinese Indonesians Other groups

13,187,586 368,600 329,493 333,504 129,965 36,495 31,066 18,918 45,298 389,940 1,487,127

15,676,060 96,779 80,518 7,561 – 18,627 16,468 1,175 15,266 11,389 434,194

2,488,474 271,821 248,975 325,943 129,965 17,868 14,598 17,743 30,032 378,551 1,052,933

Total non-Dutch

3,170,406

681,932

2,488,474

16,357,992

16,357,992

–

Total

Table 3: Population of the Netherlands based on the combined birth-country criterion (BC–PMF) versus the nationality criterion on January 1, 2007 (*Antilleans are Dutch nationals; CBS 2008)

Table 3 shows strong criterion effects of birth country versus nationality. All IM groups are in fact strongly under-represented in nationality-based statistics. However, the combined birth-country criterion of person/mother/father does not solve the identification problem either. The use of this criterion leads to nonidentification in at least the following cases: – an increasing group of third and further generations (cf. Indonesian/Moluccan and Chinese communities in the Netherlands); – different ethnocultural groups from the same country of origin (cf. Turks and Kurds from Turkey or Berbers and Arabs from Morocco); – the same ethnocultural group from different countries of origin (cf. Chinese from China and from other Asian countries); – ethnocultural groups without territorial status (cf. Roma people). From the data presented in Table 3, it becomes clear that collecting reliable information about the actual number and spread of IM population groups in EU countries is no easy enterprise. Krüger-Potratz et al. (1998) discuss the problem of criteria from a historical perspective in the context of the German Weimarer Republik. In 1982, the Australian Institute of Multicultural Affairs recognized the above-mentioned identification problems for inhabitants of Australia and proposed including questions in the Australian census on birth country (of person and parents), ethnic origin (based on self-categorization in terms of which ethnic group a person considers him/herself to belong to), and home language use.

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For a discussion of the concepts of ethnicity and ethnic identity in a variety of multicultural contexts we refer to Guibernau and Rex (1997), Jenkins (1997) and Verkuyten (2006). Fishman (1989) and Edwards (1985) are key references on the link between ethnicity and (home) language use. In Table 4, the four criteria mentioned are discussed in terms of their major (dis)advantages. First of all, Table 4 reveals that there is no simple road to solving the identification problem. Moreover, inspection of the criteria for multicultural population groups is as important as the actual figures themselves. Seen from a European Criterion

Advantages

Disadvantages

Nationality (NAT) (P/F/M)

– objective – relatively easy to establish

– (intergenerational) erosion through naturalization or double NAT – NAT not always indicative of ethnicity/identity – some (e.g., ex-colonial) groups have NAT of immigration country

Birth country (BC) (P/F/M)

– objective – relatively easy to establish

– intergenerational erosion through births in immigration country – BC not always indicative of ethnicity/identity – invariable/deterministic: does not take into account boundary changes in society (in contrast to all other criteria)

Self-categorization/ ethnicity (SC)

– touches the heart of the matter – emancipatory: SC takes into account person’s own conception of ethnicity/identity

– subjective by definition: also determined by the language/ ethnicity of interviewer and by the spirit of the times – multiple SC possible – historically charged, especially by World War II experiences

Home language (HL)

– HL is significant criterion of ethnicity in communication processes – HL data are prerequisite for government policy in areas such as public information or education

– complex criterion: who speaks what language to whom and when? – language is not always a core value of ethnicity/identity – useless in one-person households

Table 4: Criteria for the definition and identification of population groups in a multicultural society (P/F/M = person/father/mother) (Extra and Gorter 2001: 9)

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perspective, there is a top-down development over time in the utility and utilization of different types of criteria, inevitably going from nationality and birthcountry criteria in present statistics to self-categorization and home language use in the future. The latter two criteria are generally conceived of as being complementary criteria. Self-categorization and home language references need not coincide, as languages may be conceived to variable degrees as core values of ethnocultural identity in minority or migration contexts.

5 Mapping diversity in non-European Englishdominant countries Various types of criteria for identifying population groups in multicultural societies have been suggested and used outside Europe in countries with a longer immigration history, and as a result of this, with a longstanding history of collecting census data on multicultural population groups (Kertzer and Arel 2002). This holds in particular for non-European countries in which English is the dominant language, like Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the USA. To identify the multicultural composition of their populations, these countries employ a variety of questions in their periodical censuses. In Table 3, an overview of (clusters of) kernel questions is provided; for each country, the given census is taken as the norm.

Kernel questions in the census

Australia 2001

Canada 2001

SA 2001

USA 2000

Crossnational coverage

1

Nationality of respondent

+

+

+

+

4

2 3

Birth country of respondent Birth country of parents

+ +

+ +

+ –

+ –

4 2

4 5 6

Ethnicity Ancestry Race

– + –

+ + +

– – +

+ + +

2 3 3

7 8 9 10

Mother tongue Language used at home Language used at work Proficiency in English

– + – +

+ + + +

– + – –

– + – +

1 4 1 3

11

Religious denomination

+

+

+

–

3

7

11

5

7

30

Total of dimensions

Table 5: Overview of (clusters of ) census questions in four multicultural countries (Extra and Yağmur 2004: 67)

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Five types/clusters of questions are distinguished in Table 5. Variation emerges in the type and number of dimensions per country and in the crossnational coverage of dimensions. Canada takes up a prime position with the highest number of questions. There are only three questions that are asked in all countries while two questions are asked in only one country. There are four different questions asked about language. The operationalization of questions also shows interesting differences, both between and within countries over time (see Clyne 1991 for a discussion of methodological problems in comparing the answers to differently phrased questions in Australian censuses from a longitudinal perspective). Questions about ethnicity, ancestry and/or race have proven to be problematic in all of the countries under consideration (Spencer 2006; Ansell and Solomos 2008). In some countries, ancestry and ethnicity have been conceived of as equivalent, cf. USA census question 10 in 2000: What is this person’s ancestry or ethnic origin? Or, take Canadian census question 17 in 2001: To which ethnic or cultural group(s) did this person’s ancestors belong? Australian census question 18 in 2001 only involved ancestry and not ethnicity, cf. What is the person’s ancestry? with the following comments for respondents: Consider and mark the ancestries with which you most closely identify. Count your ancestry as far as three generations, including grandparents and great-grandparents. As far as the concepts of ethnicity and ancestry have been distinguished in census questions, the former concept relates most commonly to present self-categorization of the respondent and the latter to former generations. The diverse ways in which respondents themselves may interpret both concepts, however, remains a problem that cannot easily be solved. According to Table 5, South Africa remains as the only country where a racial question is asked instead of a question on ethnicity and/or ancestry. The paradox in South Africa is that questions on ethnicity are often considered to be racist, while the racial question (in terms of Black/White/Colored/Indian) from the earlier Apartheid era has survived. Although the validity of questions about ethnicity, ancestry and/or race is problematic, at least one question from this cluster is needed to compare its outcomes with those of questions on language. Language is not always a core value of ethnicity/identity and multiculturalism may become under-estimated if it is reduced to multilingualism. For this reason, one or more questions derived from cluster 4–6 in Table 5 are necessary complements of one or more questions derived from cluster 7–10. Whereas, according to Table 5, “ethnicity” is mentioned in recent censuses of only two countries, all four language-related questions are asked only in Canada. Over time, a “mother tongue” question has been replaced by a “home language” question in three out of four countries. Canada has retained the mother tongue question in addition to the home language question, which allows for comparative analyses of predictably different outcomes. The mother

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tongue question (7) in Canada is defined for respondents as the language first learnt at home in childhood and still understood, whereas questions 8 and 9 are related to the language most often used at home/work. Table 5 shows the added value of language-related census questions for the definition and identification of multicultural populations, in particular the added value of the question on home language use compared to questions on the more opaque concepts of mother tongue and ethnicity. Although the language-related census questions in the four countries under consideration differ in their precise formulation and commentary, the outcomes of these questions are generally conceived as cornerstones for educational policies with respect to the teaching of English as a first or second language and the teaching of languages other than English. Table 5 also shows the importance of comparing different groups using equal criteria. Unfortunately, this principle is often violated in the public and political discourse. Examples of such unequal treatment are references to Poles vs. Jews, Israelis vs. Arabs, Serbs and Croatians vs. Muslims, Dutchmen vs. Turks (for Dutch nationals with Turkish ethnicity), Dutchmen vs. Muslims, or Islam vs. the West (where does the West end when the world is a globe?). Equal treatment presupposes reference to equal dimensions in terms of Table 5.

6 Mapping diversity in European Union countries The data presented here has been derived from the analysis of two comprehensive documents published by the European Commission and EuroStat (2004, 2005). In 23 out of 27 EU countries nationwide censuses held at variable intervals are still in use. Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands rely on yearly updated administrative (municipal) registers in combination with periodical sample surveys. Other countries combine nationwide census data with administrative register data and/or sample survey data (Austria, Belgium, France, Latvia, Slovenia). The following parameters are used in all or many EU countries for the definition and identification of population groups: – (dual) citizenship or nationality: the category of (dual) citizenship or nationality is used in all EU countries; in North-Western European countries these two concepts are commonly used as synonyms nowadays; in Southern, Middle and Eastern European countries, however, these two categories are commonly used distinctively: in these countries citizenship refers to what is termed nationality or citizenship in North-Western Europe, whereas (ethnic) nationality refers to what is termed ethnicity in North-Western Europe; in the Czech Republic, for instance, the nationality question asks for an indication of what nationality you consider yourself to be, which is different from the citizenship question;

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birth country/place: this is a common category in all EU countries; in some countries, this question refers explicitly to the country/place of (permanent) residence of your mother when you were born; ethnicity: ethnicity or ethnic nationality is asked for in 13 EU countries, 3 of which consider this question to be voluntary/optional; language: one or more language questions are asked in 17 EU countries, 2 of which consider this/these question(s) to be voluntary/optional; religious denomination: religious denomination questions are asked in 15 EU countries, 6 of which consider this question to be voluntary/optional.

Table 6 gives an overview of the status quo with respect to the latter three parameters across EU countries. It should be noted that data collection on some or all of these questions in some EU countries is considered to be in conflict with privacy legislation and/or illegal, while in other countries such questions are taken to generate crucial information. EU countries

Ethnicity/ ethnic nationality

Language

Religious denomination

Total of Dimensions

Austria Belgium Bulgaria Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Estonia Finland France Germany Greece Hungary Ireland Italy Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Malta Netherlands Poland Portugal Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain Sweden United Kingdom

– – * + + – + – – – – * + – + + – – – + – + + * – – +

+ – * + + – + + – – – * + – + + – + – + – + + + + – +

+ – * + + – * + – + – * + – – + – – – – * + + * – – *

2 0 3 3 3 0 3 2 0 1 0 3 3 0 2 3 0 1 0 2 1 3 3 3 1 0 3

Table 6: Identification of ethnicity, language and religious denomination in 27 EU countries (Extra and Gorter 2008: 19) (* voluntary/optional question)

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Table 6 shows that there is strong variability across countries in the utilization and optionality of each of these three parameters. This holds also for the operationalization of questions asked. Detailed ethnicity questions are asked in the UK and Ireland. In the UK, 5 main categories are distinguished, i.e., White, Mixed, Asian (British), Black (British), Chinese/Other, in all cases with subcategories. Similar questions are asked in Ireland. Hungary lists 14 categories (plus other) and asks which of these nationalities’ cultural values and traditions do you feel affinity with? Estonia lists 6 (plus other) ethnic nationalities, and Cyprus lists Greek-Cypriot, Armenian, Maronite, Latin and Turkish-Cypriot. Questions on religion are asked in terms of belief, church, faith, religion and/or religious affiliation/community/confession/denomination, and in terms of religion/ religious denomination you were brought up in. The latter – additional – question is only asked in Scotland, not in the UK at large. Table 7 gives an overview of the operationalization of the language questions asked for in 17 out of 27 EU countries.

EU countries

Mother tongue

(Other) language(s) spoken (frequently)

Language(s) (most frequently) spoken at home

Language(s) spoken with family or friends

Speak well/ average/ a little

Understand/ Speak/ Read/ Write

Austria Bulgaria Cyprus Czech Republic Estonia Finland Hungary Ireland Latvia Lithuania Malta Poland Romania Slovakia Slovenia Spain United Kingdom

– + – (1) + + + – + + – – + + + (3) –

– – + – + – + (2) + + – – – – – – –

+ – – – – – – – – – + + – – + (3) –

– – – – – – + – – – – – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – + – – – – – –

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – (4) (5)

Table 7: Operationalization of language questions in 17 EU countries (Extra and Gorter 2008: 20) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Indicate the language spoken by your mother or guardian when you were a child Only Irish; if yes, daily within/outside the educational system/weekly/less often/never Both language questions in the Basque County, Navarre and Galicia, for Basque/Galician In Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearic Islands for Catalan Only in Wales and Scotland, for Welsh and Gaelic respectively

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Three main conclusions emerge from Table 7. First of all, European census questions on non-national languages focus on RM languages, not on IM languages. Secondly, the three most commonly asked questions on language use relate to mother tongue (11 countries), (other) language(s) spoken (frequently) (6 countries) and language(s) (most frequently) spoken at home (5 countries); this variability in the operationalization of language questions leads to serious limitations in carrying out crossnational comparisons of language data. Thirdly, Hungary makes the most investments in finding out about language use. For a complete picture, it should be mentioned that in some countries collecting home language data is in fact in conflict with present language legislation. This holds in particular for Belgium, where no census data on language use have been collected since 1947 and traditional language borders between Dutch, French and German have been allocated and fixed in the law.

7 Conclusions In this chapter, we discussed concepts, paradigms, methods and databases for mapping linguistic diversity in multicultural contexts. In terms of databases, we made a distinction between census data, register data and survey data. Our focus was on census data, in particular on various types of language data. Research at this international crossing of demography and linguistics is referred to as demolinguistics. We compared the European state of knowledge in this domain with initiatives in other parts of the world. Taken from this international comparative perspective, our focus was on mapping diversity in EU countries and in nonEuropean English-dominant immigration countries, in particular Australia, Canada, South Africa and the USA. We discussed four criteria for the definition and identification of population groups in multicultural societies in terms of nationality/ citizenship, birth country, ethnicity and home language. Both advantages and disadvantages of each of these criteria were presented, and the utilization of these criteria was illustrated for both European and non-European contexts. If censuses take place at all in European nation-states, census data may or may not include language data. If they do, the focus tends to be on mother tongue data and, in the case of minority groups, on RM languages. In the above-mentioned non-European contexts, census data do include language data, while the focus is on home language data and, in the case of minority groups, apart from South Africa, on IM languages. The higher validity of home language data and the increasing presence of IM groups and IM languages

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across Europe will lead to European databases on population groups that will inevitably follow these longstanding non-European examples. Given the decreasing significance of nationality and birth-country criteria in the European context, the combined criteria of self-categorization (ethnicity) and home language use are long-term complementary alternatives for obtaining basic information on the increasingly multicultural composition of European nation-states. Across Europe, it is common practice to present data on RM groups on the basis of language use and/or ethnicity, and to present data on IM groups on the basis of nationality and/or country of birth. However, convergence between these criteria for the two groups will emerge over time in the direction of the former two criteria. Due to its particular history of immigration from previously colonial nonEuropean countries, the United Kingdom plays a leading role in the European context in introducing the concepts of ethnicity and language in its periodical censuses: an ethnicity question was introduced in the 1991 UK census and a question on Languages Other Than English (LOTE), including both RM and IM languages, was introduced in the 2011 UK census (see Extra 2010 for critical comments on the operationalization of the LOTE question in terms of What is your main language?). The added value of home language statistics, whether originating from census data, register data or survey data, derives from at least four different perspectives (Extra and Gorter 2008: 316): – taken from a demographic perspective, home language data play a crucial role in the definition and identification of population groups in a multicultural society; – taken from a sociolinguistic perspective, home language data offer valuable insights into both the distribution and the vitality of home languages across different population groups, and thus raise the public awareness of multilingualism; – taken from an educational perspective, home language data are indispensable tools for educational planning and policies; – taken from an economic perspective, home language data offer latent resources that can be built upon and developed in terms of economic opportunities. To conclude, home language data put to the test any monolingual mindset in a multicultural society and can function as agents of change (Nicholas 1994) in a variety of public and private domains. Taken from an educational perspective, it remains a paradoxical phenomenon that language policies and language planning in multicultural contexts often occur in the absence of basic knowledge and empirical facts about multilingualism (Extra and Gorter 2008).

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References Alladina, Safder. 1993. South Asian languages in Britain. In Immigrant Languages in Europe, Guss Extra and Ludo Verhoeven (eds.), 55–65. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Alterman, Hyman. 1969. Counting People. The Census in History. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Ansell, Amy and John Solomos. 2008. Race and Ethnicity: The Key Concepts – Routledge Key Guides. London/New York: Routledge. Arzoz, Xabier (ed.). 2008. Respecting Linguistic Diversity in the European Union. (Studies in World Language Problems 2). Amsterdam, The Netherlands/Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: John Benjamins. Baker, Philip and John Eversley (eds.). 2000. Multilingual Capital. The Languages of London’s School Children and their Relevance to Economic, Social and Educational Policies. London: Battlebridge Publications. Barbour, Stephen and Cathie Carmichael. 2000. Language and Nationalism in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barbour, Stephen. 2000. Nationalism, language, Europe. In Language and Nationalism in Europe, Stephen Barbour and Cathie Carmichael (eds.), 1–17. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Barni, Monica and Guus Extra (eds.). 2008. Mapping Linguistic Diversity in Multicultural Contexts. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Blum, Alain. 2002. Resistance to identity categorization in France. In Census and Identity. The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses, David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel (eds.), 121–147. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broeder, Peter and Guus Extra. 1998. Language, Ethnicity and Education. Case Studies on Immigrant Minority Groups and Immigrant Minority Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Carli, Augusto and Ulrich Ammon (eds.). 2007. Linguistic Inequality in Scientific Communication Today: What Can Future Applied Linguistics Do to Mitigate Disadvantages for Nonanglophones? (AILA Review, Volume 20). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Cenoz, Jasone and Durk Gorter (eds.). 2008. Multilingualism and Minority Languages: Achievements and challenges in education. AILA Review. Volume 21. Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS). 2008. Jaarrapport Integratie 2008. Den Haag/Heerlen. CBS. Clyne, Michael. 1991. Community Languages. The Australian Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Clyne, Michael. 2003. Dynamics of Language Contact: English and Immigrant Languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Vries, John. 1990. On coming to our census: a layman’s guide to demolinguistics. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 11 (1–2): 57–76. Edwards, John. 1985. Language, Society and Identity. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (in association with André Deutsch). Edwards, John. 1994. Multilingualism. London: Routledge. European Commission and EuroStat. 2004. Documentation of the 2000 Round of Population and Housing Censuses in the EU, EFTA and Candidate Countries, Parts I–III and Annexes. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities.

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Jelena Mihaljević Djigunović

7 Multilingual attitudes and attitudes to multilingualism in Croatia 1 Introduction Bloomfield’s (1935: 56) definition of a bilingual person as one that has “nativelike control of two languages” has been replaced by more flexible views – for example Cook’s (2002: 4) definition of the L2 user as “a person who knows and uses a second language at any level”, or Baker’s (2001) inclusion of minimal competence in the term “incipient bilingualism”. In this chapter we will define multilingualism from the same perspective as the broader definitions of bilingualism. Multilinguals will, thus, include learners and users of more than two second/foreign languages whose command of the languages may range from minimal to near-native. Bilinguals will be defined as individuals who learn and use one additional language besides their first language and whose command may include the same wide range. Although bilingualism is often considered to be part of multilingualism (Cenoz 2009), some studies (e.g. Dewaele 2002, 2007; Dewaele, Petrides and Furnham 2008; Kemp 2007; Safont-Jordà 2005) have found bilinguals to differ from multilinguals on characteristics such as metapragmatic awareness and communication anxiety. In this chapter we will look into differences in attitudes between bilinguals and multilinguals in order to shed more light on the need to distinguish between these two types of language learners and users from the attitudinal perspective. It is often stressed that bilingualism and multilingualism are very complex phenomena. Attitudinal aspects have been shown in numerous studies to contribute to this complexity. Thus, strong relationships have been found between linguistic attitudes and the outcomes of learning second language(s) as well as the overall competence in second language(s) (e.g. Mihaljević Djigunović and Bagarić 2007; Nikolov 2007). Along with these, positive relationships have been detected between the knowledge of additional languages and attitudes to languages and language learning (e.g. Mettewie and Janssens 2007). However, studies are missing on the differential effect of bilingualism and multilingualism on attitudes to languages and language learning. Apart from that, there is also a lack of insights into differences in broader attitudes, those that go beyond language and language learning and extend to tolerance of otherness and perception of one’s identity. It is possible to assume that, just as third language

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acquisition has made it clear that there may be important differences between second and third language acquisition (Cenoz and Jessner 2000; Voorwinde 1981), there might be important differences in linguistic and other attitudes between bilingual and multilingual individuals. In order to look into the complexities of attitudinal aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism we carried out a study with Croatian learners who were users of two and more than two languages.

2 The Croatian context 2.1 A brief historical note The context in which participants in the study live is characterised by a long tradition in foreign language learning. The choice of languages used, and learned in school, however, has changed throughout history, reflecting the changes in the cultural, educational and political life of this part of Europe. In the nineteenth century, as in many other parts of Europe, French was considered as a language of prestige among members of the higher social classes. Up to World War II, Croatian secondary schools included German and Latin as part of the curriculum, besides French. English was taught only exceptionally and thanks to a few enthusiastic teacher-linguists (Filipović 1972), who introduced innovative methods of language teaching. Although English language and literature was introduced as a university major towards the end of the nineteenth century, studies were often discontinued due to the shortage of teaching staff and to the greater importance of German. However, a few scholars, who managed to graduate in English during and shortly after World War II, managed to create a firm basis of what later became philological departments. During the post-war period the compulsory first foreign language at school was Russian, with German and French as the dominant second foreign languages. It was only after Yugoslavia (which Croatia was part of at the time) had broken with the Soviet Union that students could choose English, German, French or Russian as the first foreign language to be learned at school. English slowly increased in popularity, while German experienced first a fall following the war, and then a rise, thanks to the large number of Croatian guest-workers in Germany. Over many decades, the teaching of foreign languages in Croatian schools was quite up-to-date, owing, on the one hand, to the help of institutions like the British Council and, on the other, to the willingness of the educational authorities at the time to allow innovations in the totally centralised educational

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system. These happy circumstances were coupled with an interest in the investigation of language teaching and learning processes on the part of some linguists and applied linguists. The most prominent research projects recognized internationally dealt with contrastive analyses (e.g. Filipović 1975) and the age factor (e.g. Vilke 1979; Vilke and Vrhovac 1993, 1995). These projects produced a number of new researchers, who now focus on individual variables, bilingual development, third language acquisition, etc. Teaching foreign languages from quite an early age has been part of the school curriculum since the 1930s. For a long time, children started foreign language learning at age 11, and as time passed by, the introduction of foreign language teaching moved to 10 years of age, provided there were qualified teachers available. Around the 1960s a second foreign language started to be offered at the beginning of the secondary school (age 15) but only as an optional subject. In addition to the state-school teaching of foreign languages, a kind of parallel, alternative educational system for foreign language learning has been available from the 1950s. It started with American aid in the form of a course in English for Croatian citizens who were in need of English proficiency for study purposes abroad. The course followed the audio-lingual method based on Bloomfield’s structuralist principles. This triggered the genesis of a new system of foreign language teaching that ended up as a set of private language schools teaching other foreign languages, too. Thanks to some innovative approaches to language teaching and the favourable conditions, such teaching was more successful than the one offered in state schools. This encouraged many parents to send their children to private language courses for additional training in foreign languages. As a small country whose economy is based on tourism, Croatia has had foreign languages quite high on the priority list for a long time. This, unfortunately, does not mean that much is invested in foreign language education by the state, but that the levels of motivation for foreign language learning are quite high.

2.2 The current situation in regard to the learning of foreign languages Since 2003 foreign language teaching has been a compulsory part of the primary education curriculum in Croatia from grade 1. Since the Croatian educational system is still centralised, learning a foreign language is compulsory in all

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primary schools1. English is the most popular foreign language taught, with between 85–90 per cent of children taking it from the first year of formal education (Medved Krajnović and Letica 2009). The second most popular foreign language in grade 1 is German, which is followed by Italian, then French and, more recently, Spanish. Having been the first foreign language and then one of the four foreign languages taught in Croatian schools, Russian ceased being part of the curriculum in the early 1990s, owing to the general political situation. Croatian law stipulates that in cases where pupils start with a language other than English in grade 1, they have to take English from grade 4 (age 10) as a second foreign language. Thus everyone is required to have had English by the end of the 8-year primary education in Croatia. Those starting with English in grade 1 are recommended to take up a second foreign language later in primary education, but this is not compulsory. A third foreign language is offered during secondary education. Foreign language education (mostly in the first foreign language) extends throughout one’s entire education including tertiary education, where in many cases a foreign language is compulsory for at least one or two years, or is offered as an optional course. It would be hard to find individuals in the urban population in Croatia that are monolingual. The national curriculum requires that every student learn at least one foreign language from the beginning of formal education. Since knowledge of foreign languages is considered important, many Croatian citizens not only take the opportunity to learn more than one foreign language at school but invest effort and money to reinforce the language(s) they are already learning or to learn new languages.

2.3 Attitudes to foreign languages Studies on attitudes to foreign language learning in Croatia generally show very positive trends. Much research has been done into the attitudes of young foreign language learners and the investigations were of a longitudinal character. Findings show that early foreign language learning in Croatia is connected with highly positive starting attitudes if the learning conditions are favourable (Mihaljević Djigunović 2009). The results of a ten-year longitudinal experimental project on early learning of four foreign languages (English, French, German

1 Croatian primary education consists of eight grades. Children start their compulsory education at age 6–7.

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and Italian) showed that the initially positive attitudes were maintained, and in the case of English even enhanced, over eight years (Mihaljević Djigunović and Vilke 2000); but it should be noted that the experimental project provided highly favourable learning conditions (intensive classes, small groups, welltrained teachers). There is a general self-perception by Croats that they are good language learners. However, it was not until a few years ago that attempts were made at measuring their competence in English in a large national research project. The findings (Bagarić 2007a; Geld and Stanojević 2007; Josipović Smojver 2007; Medved Krajnović 2007; Zergollern-Miletić 2007) show that they do reach the levels required by the national curriculum (A2 by the end of primary education, i.e. age 14, and B1 by the end of secondary education, i.e. age 18, according to CEFR 2001), but that their stronger points tend to lie in language reception rather than language production. This is not all that surprising because out-ofschool exposure to English is very high, owing to the language’s extensive presence in the media (e.g. undubbed films and TV programmes). Research on such exposure has shown evidence of its effect on incidental learning of English (Mihaljević Djigunović and Geld 2002/2003). A recent comparative study of Croatian learners of English with Hungarian learners of English at age 14 (Mihaljević Djigunović, Nikolov and Ottó 2008) showed that Croats performed significantly better in communicative tests, with significant differences existing in overall scores and listening and reading comprehension; the scores in spoken and written production were also higher for Croatian learners but the differences were not significant. Comparative studies of attitudes to different foreign languages taught in school have found that attitudes to German are less positive than attitudes to English (e.g. Bagarić 2007b; Mihaljević Djigunović and Bagarić 2007). The qualitative part of these mixed-design studies suggests that the reasons may lie in the different teaching approaches connected with the two languages. Since about two decades ago English has had a different status among the foreign languages taught in Croatia. It has been considered as the main lingua franca. Thus, the attitudes to native speakers of English have been shown to have a different role in the language learning process. A study of attitudes towards the British and Americans and achievement in English in a sample of teenage learners showed there was no significant relationship (Mihaljević Djigunović 1998). Participants in the study viewed English as a language of international communication and not as a language belonging to its native speakers.

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3 The study 3.1 Aims The aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, we wanted to look into the attitudes of Croatian foreign language learners and users to foreign languages and foreign language learning as well as to investigate their more general attitudes such as perception of the role of L1 in their identity and tolerance of otherness. Secondly, we wanted to compare multilinguals’ to bilinguals’ attitudes in order to see whether – from the attitudinal point of view – multilinguals should be considered a distinct group from bilinguals.

3.2 Sample A convenience sample of 280 participants took part in the study (about 40% males, 55% females, 10 participants failed to give information about their gender). As far as the geographical distribution is concerned, the majority came from the mainland part of the country and a very small minority from the coast. The age range was between 18 and 80 (mean: 33 years of age). Over half of the participants had spent most of their lives in big cities, while about 20% had lived in small towns and another 20% had spent the largest part of their lives in villages. As far as their educational background is concerned, almost half of the participants had completed secondary education, one third were higher education graduates, and the rest had postgraduate research degrees. Close to one third of the sample were bilinguals (N = 82), the rest were multilinguals (N = 198). The number of languages that the multilinguals had learned and currently used ranged from two to five (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Breakdown of the multilingual group according to the number of foreign languages learnt

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The majority of the multilinguals spoke two foreign languages and the number of individuals speaking more than two steadily decreased to only two individuals who knew five foreign languages.

3.3 Instrument and procedure A questionnaire (see Appendix) was designed to elicit data on the attitudes we were interested in. It consisted of two parts. The first part required the participants (1) to give their general biographical data (age, gender, education, profession, type of settlement where they spent most of their life); (2) to report on their language learning history in terms of types of languages learnt; to self-assess their language learning aptitude, the competence levels achieved, the frequency of using the foreign languages in private and professional life as well as who they used foreign languages with; (3) to state how many languages they thought pupils should learn at school. The second part of the questionnaire comprised 27 statements relating to attitudes to L1, to learning and using foreign languages, to people of different religion, nationality and colour and to living abroad. Five-point Likert-type scales accompanied each statement. Before processing the data some of the items were recoded so that the higher score always indicated open and flexible attitudes. Some participants filled in the paper version of the questionnaire during classes or at work, while others filled it in electronically. The data were entered into the SPSS statistical programme and analysed quantitatively.

3.4 Results First we will present data description for the whole sample (sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2). In the third part (section 3.4.3) we provide comparative statistics for bilinguals and multilinguals.

3.4.1 Starting age, length of learning, self-assessment of competence, frequency of using the foreign languages Figure 2 below shows that participants started each subsequent language consecutively, except for the fifth language. In Croatia, age 10 used to be the onset of learning the first foreign language; this was the case for a long time, up to 2003, when the foreign language became a compulsory part of the primary

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curriculum from age 7 (see section 2.2). The starting ages of the other reported foreign languages are not necessarily connected with state school learning: many of them refer to languages taken up in private courses.

Figure 2: Ages at which participants started learning foreign languages

As can be seen from Figure 3 below, the length of learning was the highest for the first foreign language, showing continuity of learning the first foreign language throughout one’s education, and length of learning gradually decreased to the lowest mean in the case of the fifth language.

Figure 3: Length of learning foreign languages

When asked to self-assess their competence in each of the languages they spoke, participants reported that their proficiency was the highest in the first foreign language, and their command consistently decreased with each following language (Figure 4).

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Figure 4: Self-assessment of competence in respect of each of the foreign languages

Next, participants were asked to report on the frequency of using each foreign language in private and professional life. The frequency for each of the four language skills within each language was assessed along four points (never, sometimes, often, all the time). The reported frequencies are presented in Figures 5 and 6. In both assessments participants who knew five languages failed to assess their use of the fifth language, probably considering it too low to report on. Thus we present only the frequencies for four languages.

Figure 5: Frequency of using known foreign languages in the private sphere

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The mean values in Figure 5 show that in their private life participants used the listening skills most frequently. It was only in their third foreign language that they reported using the speaking skill equally frequently. Since they started the third foreign language later than the first two, it can be assumed that their language needs were different and implied oral production to a greater extent. It can also be noticed that the frequency of use of each skill decreases with each subsequent language. One of the possible logical explanations is the decrease in competence due to a shorter period of learning. Means for the frequency of use of the four language skills in the professional life (Figure 6) show that, again, language reception is more represented than language production. This time it is the reading skills that are the most frequently used ones, except for the fourth language, where listening and reading are reported as being used equally often. Here again the frequency of all skills decreases with each subsequent language. It is also noteworthy that the participants used all the foreign languages they knew more frequently in their private than in professional life. When asked who they used the foreign language(s) with, the most frequent replies referred to foreign friends and tourists, and to foreigners they would meet abroad.

Figure 6: Frequency of using known foreign languages in the professional sphere

We also looked into the relationship of attitudes to self-assessed language aptitude and success in language learning. Interestingly, participants who thought they were gifted language learners had significantly less positive attitudes than

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those who reported not being talented (t = –3.034, p = .003). Nearly 70% of participants considered themselves successful language learners. A significant difference (t = –2.174, p = .031) in attitudes was found between these participants and those that did not consider themselves successful: the attitudes were more positive in the former group.

3.4.2 Attitudes to languages, language learning, perception of identity and attitudes to otherness The scale reliability of the 27-item questionnaire (see Appendix) was α = .755. The overall mean (on a five-point Likert scale) was 3.813 (SD = .437), indicating rather high levels of favourable attitudes. The highest agreement with the items in the questionnaire was found with items 1, 5 and 7. Participants believed that it was very useful to speak foreign languages, that the foreign language should be a compulsory part of the curriculum and that through foreign language learning we enrich our knowledge of other cultures. The lowest means were found for items 2 and 21: participants’ feelings were least positive about hearing foreign words mixed into Croatian sentences in the public media, and about the Croatian language being the key factor in their identity. In order to look into the attitudes in more depth, we grouped the items according to subcategories of attitudes. The first group consisted of items 8, 12, 13, 19, 24 and 30, and reflected attitudes to foreign language learning. Reliability alpha was .589. The second group comprised items 2, 5, 7, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 24, and 27 and its reliability alpha was .694. These referred to attitudes to otherness and reflected the level of tolerance to differences. The third group included the following items: 1, 11, 14, 17, 25, 29, 36, 38 and 40 (reliability alpha: .769). They elicited attitudes to multilingualism. Item 26, referring to the Croatian language as the key factor of Croatian identity, was kept as a separate category. Figure 7 shows a comparison of the average means for the three groups and item 26. As can be seen from Figure 7, the highest means were found for attitudes to foreign language learning and to multilingualism. The lowest average found for considering the Croatian language a key factor of national identity is somewhat of a surprise. For many years after Croatia became an independent state in 1992, the Croatian language featured as a very strong symbol of Croats’ identity. This was probably one of the consequences of the decades of forcing Serbian words into the Croatian language and of Croats not being allowed to freely call their language Croatian. The official name was Serbo-Croatian and calling their language Croatian was politically incorrect. Hence, after 1992 once banned and

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now slightly archaic Croatian expressions were reintroduced into the language in order to make people aware of their linguistic identity. The results of the present study suggest that by now the need for insisting on the national language as a symbol of Croatian identity has diminished. However, one needs to be cautious here because a single-item measure was used to tap into national identity.

Figure 7: Means for groups of attitudes

A t-test (t = –.3165, p = .002) revealed that female participants had significantly more favourable overall attitudes than their male counterparts. The significance of differences in total scores in the questionnaire between participants living most of their lives in different types of settlement was tested by ANOVA: those that had lived in villages had significantly less favourable attitudes than those living in small towns or big cities (F = 3.485, p = .032). The level of education correlated positively with the questionnaire scores (participants with higher level education reported more positive attitudes) but the coefficient, though significant, was low (r = .14, p = .032). A significant correlation was found between the questionnaire scores and the number of foreign languages participants spoke (r = .19, p = .003): the more foreign languages participants knew, the more positive their attitudes were. A significant negative correlation in the questionnaire scores was found with the starting age of the first foreign language (r = –.16, p = .012) indicating that early starters developed more open and flexible attitudes to languages, to their identity and to otherness. The starting age of the subsequent foreign languages did not show a significant correlation with the questionnaire scores. This underscores the impact of early second language learning on attitude development. Interestingly, the length of both first and second foreign language learning

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correlated significantly with the questionnaire scores (r = 19, p = .003 and r = 16, p = .04 respectively). While the average length of learning for the first foreign language was about ten and a half years, and was a little above six years for the second foreign language, it was much lower for the other languages. From this we may assume that the effect of contact with the language on attitude takes time to develop. Similar results were found for the relationship of attitudes and self-reported command of the foreign languages when considered individually: only with the competence in the first foreign language was a significant positive relationship found (r = .22, p = .001). It seems that the role of the first foreign language is crucial in this study owing to the interaction of starting age, length of learning and the resulting positive self-concept. When scores on the questionnaire were correlated with the frequency of using the foreign languages in private and professional life, significant relationships were established again with the use of the first foreign language. The correlations were higher with the frequencies of use in private than in professional life, as can be seen from Table 1 below. Private life

attitudes score

Professional life

speak

listen

read

write

speak

listen

read

write

.263**

.265**

.259**

.272**

.206**

.167*

.259**

.233**

Table 1: Correlations of questionnaire scores and frequency of using the first foreign language ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level

Stronger relationships were found with private uses, the strongest one being with the frequency of writing in the foreign language. We tend to think that writing in private life refers mostly to e-mail correspondence. It is possible to assume that people who often write in the foreign language in their private life probably have closer and deeper contacts with foreigners and develop more positive attitudes in the process. Attitudes also correlated positively with the number of languages participants thought should be learnt in Croatian schools (r = .21, p = .002). Participants whose attitudes were more open and flexible suggested that a greater number of foreign languages should be learned than those with less flexible attitudes.

3.4.3 Comparison of bilinguals and multilinguals The bilingual/multilingual comparisons were carried out at different levels. First, attitudes of bilinguals and multilinguals were compared at the level of

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the total score in the questionnaire. A t-test indicated that the differences were significant: t = –3.167, p = .002. Multilinguals showed more positive and flexible attitudes (Figure 8).

Figure 8: Comparison of mean scores in the attitudes questionnaire

Furthermore, we looked into the differences in scores in the groups of items eliciting different aspects of attitudes (see section 3.4.2). The bilingual and multilingual groups differed significantly on the three subscales but the differences in viewing the role of Croatian in defining national identity were not significant.

Figure 9: Comparison of mean scores in attitudes to foreign language learning

Multilinguals had more positive attitudes to foreign language learning (t = –2.670, p = .008): they believed that foreign language learning should be compulsory, that everyone should speak English, that English is not a threat to

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small languages and that foreign language learning does not make people neglect their L1 nor that learning several languages leads to confusion.

Figure 10: Comparison of mean scores in tolerance of differences

Bilinguals reported significantly less tolerance than multilinguals (t = –2.466, p = .014). They were more bothered by hearing foreign words inserted in the middle of Croatian utterances, especially in the public media like TV. They preferred watching Croatian to foreign TV channels and found it less acceptable to marry a person of different colour, religion or nationality, or to move to another country where living conditions would be better. They also thought that the national minorities in Croatia were enjoying too many rights.

Figure 11: Comparison of mean scores in attitudes to multilingualism

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The differences in attitudes to multilingualism (t = –2.353, p = .019) are presented in Figure 11: they show that, in comparison with bilinguals, multilinguals valued the knowledge of foreign languages more, thought that multilingual individuals were respected, open and tolerant, and believed that foreign languages enriched our knowledge of other nations and cultures and helped us integrate into the world. Interestingly, bilinguals and multilinguals did not differ significantly in relation to considering the Croatian language to be the key element of Croatian identity. We also compared effects of gender, age, place of living, education, perceived talent and success separately for the bilingual and multilingual groups. In the bilingual group, females had more positive attitudes to foreign language learning (t = –3.299, p = .002). Age correlated significantly with attitudes to multilingualism (r = .339, p = .002) and to foreign language learning (r = .352, p = .001). In the multilingual group, the level of education had an effect on attitudes to foreign language learning: those with a postgraduate degree had significantly more positive attitudes than those with only secondary education. As in the bilingual group, multilingual females had significantly more positive attitudes to foreign language learning than their male counterparts (t = –2.160, p = .032). Significant positive, though low, correlations were found between attitudes to multilingualism and education (r = .174, p = .017) and age (r = .167, p = .020). The correlation between tolerance of otherness and age among multilinguals was also significant but negative (r = –.393, p = .000).

3.5 Discussion Interesting findings were obtained relating to both our aims set out in section 3.1. As far as attitudes to foreign language learning are concerned, Croatian learners and users of foreign languages seem to be instrumentally oriented. They consider knowledge of foreign languages a great asset in life and many of them are willing to invest time and money in learning several languages. The generally positive attitudes to foreign languages reported by our participants are probably a consequence of a number of factors. A long tradition in foreign language learning and in starting relatively early compared to the starting age in many contexts worldwide (see section 2.1), the abundant presence of foreign languages in everyday life through the media, and the usefulness of languages in private and professional life seem to be a winning combination as far as attitudes are concerned.

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The self-perceived language competence of participants in this study suggests that they are quite positive in their assessment of the first foreign language but are far less so in the case of subsequent languages. As already pointed out (see section 2.3), results of recent large-scale foreign language testing have shown that Croatian learners do reach the expected levels of competence, especially in receptive skills. Such results can be ascribed to the length of learning and also to the earlier start in case of the first foreign language. An early start in foreign language learning in Croatia was found to be related to self-confidence in using the language (Mihaljević Djigunović and Vilke 2000), hence possibly the higher self-assessment for the competence in the first foreign language. On the other hand, it should be kept in mind that self-assessment of competence in foreign languages has been spotted as a problem area, mostly in the sense that foreign language users underestimate their competence levels (Sia and Dewaele 2006), which may be the case with our participants’ self-assessment of competence in the second and subsequent foreign languages. It can be assumed that attitudes to language learning are also connected with experiences in using the language. The evidence from many studies suggests that females tend to be more successful in foreign language learning than males. Our findings indicate a connection between perceiving oneself as a successful language user and positive attitudes, and also that female participants entertained more positive overall attitudes than male participants. Such interactions can explain the more positive attitudes of female participants. The results of the comparison of attitudes of bilinguals and multilinguals, presented above in section 3.4.3, suggest that – at the attitudinal level – bilinguals and multilinguals may be considered as two different groups. Multilinguals in this study were characterised by more positive attitudes overall, and in three out of four subcategories of attitudes investigated, i.e. attitudes to foreign language learning, to multilingualism and tolerance of otherness. When combined with the different effects of gender, age and education on the three subcategories of attitudes, our findings support the claim that bilinguals’ and multilinguals’ structure their attitudes differently. While both groups share the association of more positive attitudes to foreign language learning with female language users, and more favourable attitudes with more advanced age, in the case of multilinguals other factors seem to be important too. In this case educational level was found to interact with attitudes to both foreign language learning and to multilingualism. It can be assumed that more highly educated multilingual language users can make more use of the many and varied sources of linguistic and extra-linguistic input they are exposed to: they may reach higher levels of awareness of the many possible approaches to language learning and to the possible benefits of knowledge of more than one foreign language. The

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additional interaction of attitudes to multilingualism with age corroborates such an assumption about the structure of multilinguals’ attitudes. It should also be noted that age interacted with multilinguals’ tolerance of otherness: the younger the multilinguals were the more tolerant they were. There was no such interaction in the bilingual group. It is our belief that, just as studies of cognitive aspects of bilingualism and multilingualism (e.g. Cook 2002; Herdina and Jessner 2002) suggest, multilinguals reach increased levels of metalinguistic awareness, and an increased meta-awareness emerges in multilinguals at the attitudinal level. Also, just as they may be different from bilinguals at the levels of pragmatic awareness and communication anxiety (e.g., Dewaele, Petrides and Furnham 2008), they may be different in their attitudes owing to a different interplay of other learner characteristics with attitudes. It is well acknowledged that the nature of multilingual learning is very dynamic and complex. Part of the complexity can probably be ascribed to attitudinal aspects. The attitudinal level is highly important in understanding language learning processes, as languages are connected with constructing new identities (Auer and Wei 2007). Multilingual users can be conceived as constructing multiple new identities. Based on our findings, this process seems to be structured differently when acquiring a second and subsequent foreign languages than when acquiring a first foreign language.

3.6 Conclusion The findings in this study indicate that Croatian learners and users of foreign languages have, generally speaking, positive attitudes to foreign language learning and a rather high tolerance for otherness. More open and flexible attitudes are held by females than males, by more educated people, and by people who spent most of their lives in big cities. Positive attitudes are also associated with early foreign language learning, with greater length of learning and with higher self-assessment of foreign language competence. A significant correlation exists between attitudes and the frequency of using foreign languages, especially in private life. Multilinguals and bilinguals have displayed a range of significant differences in attitudes. These differences are evident in attitudes to foreign language learning, in tolerance of otherness, in attitudes to speaking several foreign languages, and in the value that foreign language competence entails. Many of the relationships we looked into were associated with higher self-perceived competence and frequency of use of the first foreign language, but our findings offer important evidence of major attitudinal differences between bilinguals and multilinguals.

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Therefore, on the basis of our study we would like to suggest that, from the attitudinal perspective, bilinguals and multilinguals should be considered as two separate types of language users.

3.7 Limitations of the study and implications for further research Although this study is revealing in relation to multilingual attitudes and attitudes to multilingualism, future investigations might benefit from a more balanced sample. A third group of participants (that of monolingual speakers) would be of additional value. A larger size of the sample might provide harder evidence for some of the aspects that were looked into. Attitude is a very complex phenomenon, and valuable insights could be obtained from a mixed-design research. Qualitative approaches to investigating attitudes might throw light on aspects of attitude that quantitative analyses cannot reveal clearly.

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Appendix Translation of the questionnaire used in the study PART I Gender:

male k female k

Age: ________ years Type of settlement where you spent most of your life: city ___________

town ___________ village ___________

Education level: primary k secondary k two-year degree k university k research

MA k PhD k

(1) Which foreign language have you learned, at what age did you start and low long did you learn them? _________ language

_________ language

_________ language

_________ language

At what age did you start? How long did you learn it?

(2) Assess your competence in each of the languages you learned.

Competence

_________ language

_________ language

_________ language

_________ language

_________ language

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

1 2 3 4 5

_________ language

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(3) In which situations and how often do you use the foreign languages you have learned? Lang

Private life

Professional life

speak

listen

read

write

speak

listen

read

write

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

Never Sometimes Often All the time

(4) How many languages do you think Croats should learn in school? _______ (5) Which languages should be learned? Rank them by importance (1 = the most important, 2 = the next more important, etc.)

1 ____________________________________ 2 ____________________________________ 3 ____________________________________ 4 ____________________________________ (6) Do you think you have a gift for languages? YES k

NO k

(7) Do you think you are a successful language learner? YES k

NO k

(8) Who do you most often use the foreign language you know with? _____________

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PART II Please read the statements carefully and mark (from 1 to 5) how much you personally agree with each of them. Please do not skip any statement.

_____________________________________________________________________ 1 – I completely disagree 2 – I slightly agree 3 – I neither agree nor disagree 4 – I moderately agree 5 – I strongly agree

_____________________________________________________________________ 1. It is useful to know as many languages as possible. 2. I don’t like it when they insert foreign words in the media (e.g. TV). 3. I can’t imagine living in any country except Croatia. 4. I wouldn’t mind marrying a person of another nationality. 5. The foreign language should not be a compulsory school subject. 6. National minorities in Croatia have too many rights. 7. Through learning foreign languages we enrich our knowledge of other cultures. 8. Everyone in Croatia should learn English. 9. Learning several languages can lead to confusion. 10. By learning foreign languages we become a part of the world. 11. I never insert foreign words in conversations. 12. I would readily move to another country if it offered better conditions of living. 13. People who speak several languages are more open towards other nations and cultures. 14. I’d rather hear Croatian than a foreign language. 15. Compulsory learning of at least two foreign languages in school is an exaggeration. 16. I wouldn’t mind marrying a person of another religion. 17. I hate it when someone inserts a foreign word in the middle of the sentence. 18. I prefer watching Croatian TV to any foreign TV. 19. Foreign language learning can result in the neglect of one’s mother tongue. 20. Individuals who speak foreign languages are highly respected. 21. A good command of Croatian is the key element of Croatian identity. 22. I wouldn’t mind marrying a person belonging to another race. 23. I’m interested in other nations and their cultures. 24. English is endangering small languages like Croatian. 25. Multilingual individuals are more tolerant than those who do not speak foreign languages. 26. You are worth as many people as many languages you speak. 27. Multilingual individuals are more open to others.

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References Auer, Peter and Li Wei (eds.). 2007. Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Bagarić, Vesna. 2007a. English and German learners’ level of communicative competence in writing and speaking, Metodika 8 (14): 235–257. Bagarić, Vesna. 2007b. Communicative competence in the foreign language. Unpublished doctoral thesis. Zagreb: University of Zagreb. Baker, Colin. 2001. Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Bloomfield, Leonard. 1935. Linguistic aspects of science. Philosophy of Science 2 (4): 499–517. Cenoz, Jasone. 2009. Towards Multilingual Education. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cenoz, Jasone and Ulrike Jessner. 2000. English in Europe: The Acquisition of a Third Language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cook, Vivian. 2002. Background to the L2 user. In Portrait of the L2 User, Vivian Cook (ed.), 1–28. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Council of Europe. 2001. Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning, teaching, assessment. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Dewaele, Jean-Marc. 2002. The effect of multilingualism and socio-situational factors on communicative anxiety of mature language learners. In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Trilingualism, Jehannes Ytsma and Marc Hooghiemstra (eds.). Leeuwaarden: Fryske Akademie (CD-Rom). Dewaele, Jean-Marc. 2007. Becoming bi- or multi-lingual later in life. In Handbook of Multilingualism and Multilingual Communication, Peter Auer and Li Wei (eds.), 101–130. Berlin – New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Dewaele, Jean-Marc, Dino Petrides and Adrian Furnham. 2008. The effects of trait emotional intelligence and sociobiographical variables on communicative anxiety and foreign language anxiety among adult multilinguals: A review and empirical investigation. Language Learning 58 (4): 911–960. Filipović, Rudolf. 1972. Englesko-hrvatske književne veze [English-Croatian Literary Connection]. Zagreb: Liber. Filipović, Rudolf. 1975. The YSCECP at the End of its Second Phase (1971–1975). Zagreb: Institute of Linguistics. Geld, Renata and Mateusz-Milan Stanojević. 2007. Reading comprehension: Statistical analysis of test results for primary and secondary schools. Metodika 8 (14): 160–172. Herdina, Philip and Ulrike Jessner. 2002. A Dynamic Model of Multilingualism. Perspectives of Change in Psycholinguistics. Clevendon, UK: Multilingual Matters. Josipović Smojver, Višnja. 2007. Listening comprehension and Croatian learners of English as a foreign language. Metodika 8 (14): 137–147. Kemp, Charlotte. 2007. Strategic Processing in Grammar Learning: Do Multilinguals Use More Strategies? International Journal of Multilingualism 4 (4): 241–261. Medved Krajnović, Marta. 2007. How well do Croatian learners speak English? Metodika 8 (14): 182–189. Medved Krajnović, Marta and Stela Letica. 2009. Učenje stranih jezika u Hrvatskoj: politika, znanost i javnost [Foreign language learning in Croatia: policy, science and the public]. In Jezičnapolitika i jezična Stvarnost [Language policy and language reality], Jagoda Granić (ed.), 598–607. Zagreb: Croatian Association of Applied Linguistics.

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Mettewie, Laurence and Rudi Janssens. 2007. Language use and language attitudes in Brussels. In Multilingualism in European Bilingual Contexts. Language Use and Attitudes, David Lasagabaster and Ángel Huguet (eds.), 117–143. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena. 1998. Ethnic stereotypes and English as a foreign language learning. SRAZ 43: 51–60. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena. 2009. Impact of learning conditions on young FL learners’ motivation. In Early Learning of Modern Foreign Languages. Processes and Outcomes, Marianne Nikolov (ed.), 75–89. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena and Vesna Bagarić. 2007. A comparative study of attitudes and motivation of Croatian learners of English and German. SRAZ 52: 259–281. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena and Renata Geld. 2002/2003. English in Croatia Today: Opportunities for Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition. SRAZ 47–48: 335–352. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena, Marianne Nikolov and Istvan Ottó. 2008. A comparative study of Croatian and Hungarian EFL students. Language Teaching Research 12 (3): 433–452. Mihaljević Djigunović, Jelena and Mirjana Vilke. 2000. Eight years after: Wishful thinking vs. facts of life. In Research into Teaching English to Young Learners, Jayne Moon, and Marianne Nikolov (eds.), 66–86. Pecs: University Press PECS. Nikolov, Mariannne. 2007. Early modern foreign language programmes and outcomes: factors contributing to achievements of Hungarian learners. In Early Learning of Modern Foreign Languages. Processes and Outcomes, Marianne Nikolov (ed.), 90–107. Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters. Safont-Jordà, Maria Pilar. 2005. Third Language Learners. Pragmatic Production and Awareness (ed.). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Sia, Jennifer and Jean-Marc Dewaele. 2006. Are you bilingual? Birkbeck Studies in Applied Linguistics 1: 1–19. Vilke, Mirjana. 1979. English as a foreign language at the age of eight. SRAZ 24: 297–335. Vilke Mirjana and Yvonne Vrhovac (eds.). 1993. Children and Foreign Languages I. Zagreb: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. Vilke Mirjana and Yvonne Vrhovac (eds.). 1995. Children and Foreign Languages II. Zagreb: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb. Voorwinde, Stephen. 1981. A lexical and grammatical study in Dutch-English-German triangualism. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 52: 3–30. Zergollern-Miletć, Lovorka. 2007. Writing – the proficiency of Croatian students at the end of primary and secondary education. Metodika 8 (14): 205–220.

Norbert Dittmar and Daniel Steckbauer

8 Emerging and conflicting forces of polyphony in the Berlin speech community after the fall of the Wall: On the social identity of adolescents1 Looking for urban polyphony In the 19th century Wilhelm von Humboldt sketched an idea, comparing languages with clouds on a mountain top: Denn wie Wolken auf einem Berggipfel nur, von fern gesehen, eine bestimmte Gestalt haben, allein wie man hineintritt, sich in ein nebligstes Grau verlieren; so ist die Wirkung und der Charakter der Sprachen zwar im ganzen deutlich erkennbar, allein so wie man anfängt zu untersuchen, woran nun dieser Charakter im einzelnen hängt, entschlüpft einem der Gegenstand gleichsam unter den Händen (ct. Hoffmann 1996: 13). [For as clouds on a mountain top have a definite form only when seen from afar, dissolving into a most misty greyness when one steps into them; so with the functioning and character of languages, which, it is true, are clearly discernible at the level of the whole entity, but as soon as one begins to investigate what this character relates to in detail, the object of enquiry immediately slips through one’s hands.] (Editors’ translation)

From a distance urban varieties and styles seem to be well organized and clearly arranged in appropriately structured patterns, but when a participant observer listens to speakers in natural communicative situations, urban language splits up into a complex and manifold entity. Spoken language may be perceived as a growing and fading phonetic continuum, which variably triggers, arranges, manages and communicates action(s). We use it for shaping our social relationships, but how this happens in relevant contexts is not easy to observe and still less easy to describe in linguistic terms. To capture the flow of speech (“verba volant”) in everyday life, linguists have devised technical methods for the accurate documentation of natural communicative events: audio and video recordings and transcription (“scriptum manet”). The examples discussed in this article, illuminating the polyphonic clutter (“thicket”) of Berlin vernacular, are taken from everyday interactions recognized as representing living language in some typical social contexts. They are fixed in 1 We would like to thank David Singleton and his team as well as Johannes Thormeyer and Tom Mullins for comments and assistance during the process of writing this article.

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written form as transcripts, described by sociolinguistic methods and evaluated in the cultural context of multiethnic northern European contexts.2 Every city features both simple and complex communicative structures, which usually coexist on different levels or in parallel worlds. They generate sense in very different settings bodying forth both innovation and continuity. Adolescents, in particular, use a divergent variety to identify themselves as members of adolescent groups in the larger speech community.3 As Eckert (1997: 52) states: “adolescents are the linguistic movers and shakers, at least in western industrialized societies, and, as such, a prime source of information about linguistic change and the role of language in social practice.” For this reason, we will have a look at narrative practices of adolescents in everyday life encounters and we will attempt to analyse how adolescents use language and narrative patterns for the constitution of their own social identity. In this article we try to detect the socially constituted, multi-scaled manifestations of communicative practices at different interfaces of the varieties (and styles) occurring as concretion and attenuation, as overt or covert, pure or blended, normative or deviant communicative and narrative practices, and to increase consciousness of the whole urban speech community around these important margins of urban communication which mark the “abyss of polyphony”, often inaccessible in everyday life.

1 Some useful ethnographic information about the social milieu of Berlin There are numerous cultural, ethnic and social networks in the city of Berlin – inhabited by 4 million people – constituting a multi-layered, complex urban communicative entity: 1. In the urban and political institutions of a large city like Berlin, many languages of different frequencies of occurrence and associated with many different situations are used at the same time and in parallel. But only German is the official, legally supported and promoted language. 2 With regard to the limited scale of an article, we cannot present all the data in the form of transcripts or tables. Please refer to Norbert Dittmar’s homepage http://personal. geisteswissenschaften.fu-berlin.de/nordit or the homepage of the DFG-Project “Jugendsprache im Längsschnitt” (the language of adolescents in a longitudinal perspective) http://www. jugendsprache-berlin.de for further documentation and transcripts. 3 This issue is not restricted to the area of Berlin. For example there is the substandard of English Cockney (rhyming slang) or the Swedish ‘Rinkebysvenska’ (named Rinkeby Swedish after a suburban district in Stockholm), exhibiting comparable phenomena.

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2.

The daily routine of Berlin citizens may be either mono- or multilingual, depending on the district and the urban context. Where there is contact between different languages, creative linguotopes are deployed, originating new forms and functions of language. 3. The lower classes have no direct access to the language of the upper classes. Contrariwise, the language of the lower classes seems to be of dubious access for members of the upper classes.4 So, to use a metaphor, the head doesn’t know what the feet are doing (and vice versa). 4. The history of certain places as well as the presence in particular locations of different generations cause what Bloch in the 1920s called “the nonsimultaneity of the simultaneous”. East-Berlin citizens, having been being socialized in the former GDR, have different social and moral values from those of West Berlin citizens, who were confined to an FRG-associated enclave and developed a kind of western morality called “Spaßkultur” (which alludes to a society’s preoccupation with the pursuit of pleasure), trying to euphemize the Cold War situation at that time with regard to both the West and the East. When these two oral worlds collide, there is neither Babylonian confusion nor does incomprehension manifest itself in chaotic uproar. Misapprehension rather insinuates itself subliminally from one situation to another, having the effect of a slow-working poison. 5. The real “Wild West” of complex modern cities can be found in multicultural and multilingual contact-milieux, where different ethnic groups do meet, talk and explore their similarities and diversity by practising new creative forms of communication. In such ways, public transport (like the UBahn, the S-Bahn and trams), youth clubs and centres, shopping malls, and other public places are transmuted into marketplaces of oral exchange.

2 The Berlin variety space after the fall of the Wall Everything formerly divided by the Wall has now been harmonically reunited. Despite this, Berlin continues to be marked by the “traditions of speaking” (Schlieben-Lange 1983) of the former “capital of the GDR” and, looking further back in German history, that of the first German Republic (“Weimarer Republik”) 4 There is no symmetry in the mutual perception. Members of the upper or middle classes are (in general) not interested in how the lower classes speak. But these two cultures rub shoulders in school, where they meet each other and come into conflict with each other.

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in the 1920s. A western style of hegemony meets an eastern style of emancipation and solidarity. With respect to this conflict, the last twenty years are in a way revolutionary years of communication. The growing number of foreign embassies and the redefinition of cultural institutions have turned Berlin into a forum of polyphony, of languages in contact, of subvarieties and social styles, accompanied by a blending of codes. To define what makes up the sociolinguistic profile of Berlin one has to consider the co-ordinates of space and time – which are of great importance (city quarters and districts; the Berlin dialect before and after the Second World War, during the time the city has been divided, and after the Wall came down) – as well as interactional communicative settings. Following this approach, we, on the one hand, encounter monolingual, multilingual or even hybrid (blended) communication; on the other hand, we come across varieties, registers, social, and ethnic styles. This linguistic profile is complemented by the medium of written language.5 Finally, we have to recognize the symbolic power the official language represents: its function in legitimizing Berlin in its definition as a monolingual society, in whose institutions – with few exceptions – German is the official and legally sanctioned language.6 Seen from a macro-level, the sociolinguistic profile takes into account languages and communicational territories on a broad scale. Data from the Berlin Statistics Office 7 state that non-German citizens from 183 different countries currently live in Berlin. There are a total of 470,100 foreign nationals from Europe, Africa, America, Asia and Australia registered in Berlin. Using these figures, one can note the fact that the majority (73.1%) of the speakers in question are of European origin – whereas 14.6% come from Asian countries, 5.6% from America, 3.8% from Africa and only a tiny minority (0.4%) from the Australian continent. Turkish citizens, numbering 111,300 (23.7%), comprise nearly the same totality of speakers as the 145,600 coming from the 27 countries of the current European Union. All of these are registered in Berlin. But at the same time there are thousands of unregistered people living in Berlin. Also, the great variety of the above-mentioned 183 countries implies numerous other minority languages – spoken and (in many cases) written in the relevant countries – as being also 5 The varieties of written language are as complex as the varieties of spoken language. In this article we regrettably cannot go into phenomena like functional illiteracy, predominantly orally organized societal groups or non-standard versus standard written German, even though we have much relevant material at our disposal. 6 In cities like Zurich or Bern also, German dominates the scene, but French and Italian are official languages as well. 7 Amt für Statistik Berlin-Brandenburg; press release of December 2009.

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unit

2000

2004

foreign nationals unit Dec., the 31st

1000

435,1

450,9

470,1

Europe

1000

326,0

328,0

341,6

from the European Union

1000

67,3a

115,3b

145,6c

Turkey

1000

127,3

118,7

111,3

Africa

1000

15,6

17,4

17,9

America

1000

19,0

22,7

26,4

from the USA

1000

10,7

12,1

14,2

Asia

1000

59,4

66,4

68,6

from Vietnam

1000

8,9

10,9

12,5

Australia and Oceania

1000

1,0

1,4

2,0

stateless, unexplained, not specified

1000

14,1

15,0

13,5

191

2008

Table 1: Information about population in Berlin. Details regarding the European Union relate to a) 15 member states, b) 25 member states and c) 27 member states.

involved. Accordingly, Berlin actually incorporates as many languages as are documented in the Atlas de langues (Comrie, Matthews, and Polinsky 2004). Although this wide variety of different languages is spoken, many of them manifest themselves only in particular locations, in byways and linguotopes – small areas beyond the confines of the communicational mainstream involving German, English, Russian, Turkish and Polish. At the same time there are certain microcosms to be observed, where German is virtually irrelevant for daily routine and social life (some districts of West Berlin), whereas it dominates in other large local areas, where foreign communicative practices are rather hard to find (some districts of East Berlin). But, in common with language itself, the details of such diversification are subject to constant change. Whereas English is spoken and known everywhere (in institutions, administration and large companies/corporations), and functions, beside German, as a working language in all urban domains, Turkish is the most important inner city language and can be found particularly in the districts of Mitte (21.6%), Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg (23.2%), Neukölln (22.3%) and CharlottenburgWilmersdorf (18.5%).8 These data indicate the presence of immigrants in general, and it should be noted that Mitte is the home of many foreign students 8 The districts whose names appear in italics have a high proportion of immigrant inhabitants. Since January 2001 most Berlin districts have been conflated for administrative purposes.

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enrolled at Berlin Universities, whereas Kreuzberg and Neukölln are especially characterized by the presence of Turkish residents.9 With regard to numbers of speakers, the most widely spoken non-German languages are, in this order, Turkish, Polish, languages of former Yugoslavia (Serbian, Montenegrian and Croatian), and Russian. Overarching all these languages is English, which serves as the bridging lingua franca. Up to now the normal Berliner has not been as competent in using English as the average Dutch person, but, on the other hand, anywhere in the city, with knowledge of English it is easy to get by. There is no diglossia in Berlin of the kind documented for the Swiss-German speech community. However, in the areas of Northern Mitte, Kreuzberg, Neukölln and Charlottenburg, there is such a high percentage of Turkish immigrants that we have evidence of a double nested diglossia of German-Turkish (cf. Fasold 1984).10 Written and spoken German, as well as written and spoken Turkish, constitute a kind of intra-language diglossia, participating in a societal macrodiglossia at a higher level of sociolinguistic argumentation. All in all, Turkish is a low variety (L) in regard to official, prestigious standard German (H), which sits atop the popular Berlin vernacular (h). The same relationship holds for Turkish: isolated local Berlin Turkish (l) has a lower status than the Turkish standard to be found in Turkey (h). Such an embedded h/l structure within the H/L macrostructure has been discussed in terms of double nested diglossia by Fasold (1984). The socially most marked variety is the Turkish-German ethnolect at the bottom of Figure 1. This ethnolect (in the German literature sometimes called “Türkendeutsch” or “Kiezdeutsch”) occurs mostly in inner-city encounters and situations of use. Ethnolectal speaking is about creating the case of a native German sociolect. Let us consider the paradoxes in Berlin. East Berlin culture reflects a non-commercial and socialistic morality, but nevertheless it represents a communication community having a wide tolerance with respect to varieties (“urban dialect”). West Berlin culture shows characteristics of a commercial and consumerorientated culture (“Spaßgesellschaft”), but only the standard language is accepted as the official and effectual variety. In contrast to the “pleasure society” dimension, status-oriented, market-based morality is predominant. Figure 2 depicts these variety conflicts (also see Dittmar 2002, Glaeser 2000). 9 Statistically the Tempelhof-Schöneberg district features only 15.7%. But if Schöneberg is taken by itself, one finds a relatively high percentage of Turkish immigrants. 10 Cf. figure 1: H = high variety, L = low variety, h = high intra-lingual variety, l = low intralingual variety. German (H) is more prestigious than Turkish (L). Both are classified internally into a formal high and an informal low variant.

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Figure 1: Double diglossia German/Turkish in Berlin

Figure 2: The variety-specific differences between East and West, differences with regard to the quality of networks, differences in the social and communicative standards, and a qualitative presentation and appraisal of the process of adjustment from East to West

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3 The construction of East vs. West identity in narrations (contrastive method) Manifesting your own identity by contrasting it with the characteristics of an opponent is one of the most popular pragmatic techniques applied in narratives. This technique is often used to confront one’s own social values and attitudes with those of another person with whom one is in conflict. In the context of the “Wendekorpus”, it is the procedure of “constructing” a contrast which is used to underline East-identity against West-identity. In the following discourse extract (conversation of an American sociologist of the Chicago school with a fifty-sixyear old East-Berlin employee working in the GDR “Kreisschiffart” (“ferry association” of the GDR) the pronoun man (indefinite pronoun “one”, cf. French “on”) expresses the “generalized other” beyond the “me”. The social identity of the female speaker (“cook”) is manifested here by her natural, sociolinguistically non-marked speech (her GDR style; see e.g. Dittmar/Bredel 1999, Pszolla 1999, Schlobinski 1996), which contrasts with those parts of speech where she refers with deictic, referential expressions (i.e. hier – “here”) as well as with direct speech to the western (capitalist) society where she has to live now. She marks in a contrastive way the dominant “new” western society as bad, not social, not showing solidarity, one which she does not accept (“I would like to get back my former old GDR”). She refers with the deictic hier (here) metaphorically to the “socio-political world in which she is currently living”). The repetitious use of the deictic hier underlines her non-identification with and refusal of the hegemonic society where she currently lives (see e.g. the negatively and emotionally used formula “hier muss man alles beantragen” (“here you have to apply to the authorities for all kinds of things”). (150) F: .h aba man hAtte dit tÄglije !LEB!n ‘but what we needed in daily life we were able’ (151) konnte man beZA:hln. ‘to pay that’ (152) I: ja‘yes’ (153) F: man hatte krAnkn:versicherung- man: (äh=äh) ‘everybody had a health assurance at his or her disposal. – all of ’ (154) war ja ALLes, (.) man konnte krAnkmachen so oft wie man `WOLLte, ‘us were in a position to let somebody’s boss know that one is sick – as many times as one wanted to’ (155) I: ja‘yes’

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(156) F: .h o:ch wenn die KINder krank waren dann konnte man zu hause ‘and the same was true when the children were sick – you could stay at home’ (157) blei(b)m .hhh ja ´hier übalE:gt man sich ja allet drEIma:; hier ‘HERE, you (man) have to think about things three times, HERE’ (158) {{--> daß ich meinen Job nicht verliere}} .hhh und !DAS! ‘and it is’ (161) is eigentlich dIt wat einen so::- dit le:bm so: !SCHWER! macht; man ‘this thing / trouble what makes life so hard here; but HERE’ (162) o:ch hier .h ´früher ↓autoMAtisch ‘you are obliged to apply to all kinds of things . at the time of the GDR,’ (163) hat man KINdajeld jeKRICHt- (.) hier muß man allEs beANtragen; ‘you got your child allowance automatically; HERE, in contrast, you have to apply to all things’ (164) I: ja‘yes’ (165) F: .h weil:: mein lEbmsjeFÄHRte is damals jeSTORBM:-=und für ´meine ‘because – you see, my husband, he died at that time – and I had to apply’ (166) tOCHta mußt ick ↓dann !HALB! waisenrente beANtragen-=dit hat vIER ‘to a orphan’s half allowance you know, HERE this’ (167) !JA:HRE! hier jedAUert; (-) .h zu de=de=ER=zeiten ha: ick VIRz=n: ‘lasted for 4 years at the time of the GDR, it took (only) 14 days’ (168) ! TA:!re; (--) ((Hände fallen auf den Tisch)) ja dit ´iss:- (-) ja (her hands fall down on the table) ‘you see, unbelievable, so you’ (169) also ick (.) ff=h also wenn=t nach MIR je:hn würde=ick .hh weil ick ha:be !RU:H!ijer jeLE:BT;=es wa:r-[(-) ‘quite sincere -- you know I lived there in calm you had’ (173) I: ‘same I mean’ du kannst DEUtsch und TÜRkisch gen↓AUso gut;= ‘you can speak German as good as Turkish’ =ja ‘yes’ .h und welche sprichst du LIEba, ‘and which one do you prefer speaking’ ((verlegen)) DEUtsch; ((shy)) ‘German’ ˇwarUM, ‘(and) why’

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47 C: weil dAs ‘because that’ 48 kommt mir ein’ ein bisschn ANders vor deswegn; (.) nich IMMa?=also ‘always speak Ger- uh Turkish at home | not always but’ 50 MANschMAL, (.) mehr TÜrkISCH, (.)so=z=SAgn- DES!wegn is=es mir ‘sometimes | more Turkish | so to speak that’s why I’ 51 lieber=äh (.) DRAU!ßn DEUtsch=z=spreschn; ‘prefer speaking German outside’ The explanation for the preferred usage of German is very interesting. Speaker C uses German to deliberately make a delimitation of a language towards the communicational area of the home, where Turkish is preferred (l. 47–51). In the communicational context “DRAU!ßn” (‘outside’, l. 51) German is predominant. Subsequently the interviewer again refers to the practice of mixed speech. 52 I:

hm=hm ((schnalzt)).h ‘hm hm ((tongue click))’ 53 und dieses geMISChtsprEchn; (.) n M, dis=damit mEInst du zum ‘and this kind of blended speaking | that – with it you mean for’ 54 bEIspiel ein: SAtz wo bEI!de sprA:chn da drin sind; ‘instance a sentence in which both languages are involved’ 55 C: ja- zum ‘yeah for’ 56 beispiel äh=jA! das (wär=ss) MIX!; ‘instance uh yes that(‘s) mixture’ 57 I: mix; (.) das sprichst du mit ‘mixture | so this way you talk to’ 58 deinen geschWIStern so; [mix; ‘your siblings | mixture’ 59 C: [ja – mit mein frEUNdn auch; (.) kommt ‘yes with my friends too | (it) works out’ 60 hin; ‘well’ 61 I: und was hÄLst du davon, ‘and how do you feel about this’ 62 (---) 63 C: .h EIntlich iss=s nich gut; (.) abba: (.) von ANdaraseits- (--) ‘in a sense it is not good | but | from the other way round’

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64

iss AUch gut; (-) wEIl- (.) wir mÜSSn ja noch dEUtsch (.) ‘it is all right | because | we have to speak and learn’ 65 (bä)=sprECHn und lERNn, .hh ja das (.) das rÄICH!t aber; (.) ‘German | yes that – that’s enough but’ 66 wir müssen noch lernen? .h und DESwegn- (.) (es)=is=(heit) nich ‘we just have to learn | and that’s why it is (just) not’ 67 nich gUt aber- (.) wir machn dis trOTZdem; ‘not good but | we do it anyway’ 68 I: ‘hm’ 69 C: ENT!weder ‘either’ 70 dEUtsch oda tÜRkisch- (-) oda:- (.) wass=mein:=sie; ‘German or Turkish | or what do you mean’ Speaker C considers mixed speech as relating to a learner variety (l. 63–67) and having rather negative attributes. As far as possible, in this perspective, only one language should be used (see l. 69f). In the “discourse of hybridity” code-switching is being re-evaluated as pointing to a self-contained GermanTurkish social identity. It separates the speakers from German mainstream society and characterizes a speech community, which features a flowing and flexible code-switching as part of an independent variety – not showing a social or individual deficit. It neither shows the speaker as being caught between two stools nor the socio-cultural practice of sharing a common language for the constitution of identity.17 The following example18 illustrates a short passage of Turkish-German mixing. 30 C: Hani Frau John’un arabasina halten yaptik [Weißt du noch, wir haben sie an Frau Johns Auto gehalten] ‘do you still know | we have clamped her at Mrs. Johns car’

17 This development stands for the transformation of the image of a disadvantaged and socially discriminated against proletariat in the direction of a self-assured minority, which seems to become some kind of governing ethnic group amongst other immigrant populations (see Dirim & Auer 2004). 18 This evidence has been taken from Rengin Akyol’s M.A. thesis on code-switching (FU Berlin). The data was collected over a period of several weeks observing a youth group during homework meetings (participant observation). In the translation-tier cursive typeface show the usage of Turkish while non-cursive typeface show the usage of German words and phrases within the conversation.

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31 32

33

34

35

36

37 38 39

207

M: Echt ! ‘really’ R: Ne ? Anlamadim [Was ? Ich hab nichts verstanden] ‘what | I didn’t get anything’ C: Bir tane ögˇretmen. Arabasi var. Sie ist so . . . ((stottert)) [Eine Lehrerin. Die hat’n Auto] ‘a teacher | she’s got a car | she is so ((stumbles))’ hep Greenpeace, für Greenpeace und so. [immer] ‘always Greenpeace | for Greenpeace and stuff’ Hep Greenpeace seyleri aliyo, aber die hat’n Auto ((lacht)) [kauft immer Greenpeace Sachen] ‘always buys Greenpeace stuff | but she’s got a car ((laughs))’ Onun arabasinin arkasina tuttuk und gleich am [wir haben hinten an ihr Auto gehalten] ‘we hold at the back of her car and just the’ nächsten Tag ((lacht)) alle Blumen krepiert, echt ! . . . ‘other day ((laughs)) all flowers croaked really’ (( alle lachen )) ‘((laughter))’ Aber Greenpeace ! Dann fährt se noch so’n Auto ! ‘but Greenpeace | and then she’s driving a car like that’

In districts of multi-ethnic configuration the transfer of Turkish can often be monitored, from either fragmentary understanding of certain words to the use of whole phrases. Formulas and routines become inherent parts of peergroup communication. These routines are adopted by German adolescents as well as by adolescents with non-Turkish background. The last example19 shows the transfer of certain structures by German speakers. 30 MEL ´ (.) .h hätt=isch ihr auch ‘if she was honest I would have helped’ 31 rischtisch oft gehOlfn= komm wir gehn zus!AMM! zum jugend[amt; ‘at home come on we go to the youth welfare office together’ [ja ‘yes’ nei:n; ‘no so the next day come on we go (to) youth welfare office’ sag=so ja mAma isch=geh jUgendamt=isch=klÄr das ‘(I) say like Mum I go (to the) youth welfare office I clear’ Ab=und=so´ ach okee. (.) [so .h ‘not because of you because of Steffi | oh okay’ [haha wEgen DIr haha ‘((laughing)) because of you’ ((lacht)) ich=sag=so lOs kOmm wir gEhn jetzt‘I say like | come on let’s go now’ ja ‘yes’ nEI::n- (-)ich=wIll dOch nich=mehr. na is=ok. ich=sag=so hoch wIllst du mich ver!ARSCH!n‘(to the) youth welfare office | I say like you’re kidding me’ [ich= sag=so was wIllst du isch=komm=nisch= ‘closed anyway | I say like what do you want | I don’t go to’ [ja ‘yes’ =mehr zur schUle- wir gehn hIn isch=sag=so n!EI!n; pech; wenn ‘school anymore | we go there I say like no | bad luck | if’ dU nich willst´ will Ich jetzt Auch nich mehr; ‘you don’t want to I don’t want to go neither’

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The adoption of the ethnolectal characteristics described above is clearly visible. Primarily the coronalization of the phone [Χ] becoming post alveolar fricative [Σ] as well as the omission of prepositions (l. 36, 37, 38, 45f ) and the morphological contraction of single words (‘macro-morphemes’; l. 33, 37, 38, 42, 47, 49, 51) stand out. On the other hand, there are certain normative constructions which are typically produced only by native speakers (l. 30f, 33f, 49 and 51, 51f ). So, the female informant MEL constitutes her social identity by adopting style characteristics of ethnolectal speaking. The special effect of what is produced suggests authenticity – the reproduction of specific style features connected with a nongeneric way of importing direct speech is used for the constitution of socially determined street credibility and affiliation to a certain milieu. Thus, this special way of speaking is part of her socio-cultural identity – a “bad girl” coming from the streets of a trouble hotspot, where diverse ethnic groups collide and build up a self-contained way of speaking to assure cross-contextual understanding. To be confident in making a firm statement about the language of these adolescents being “restricted code”, contrastive written data has to be collected as well as formal oral representations (i.e. descriptions), comprising different genera for the evaluation of the communicative competence. Currently the data pool does not yet offer enough valid data. We suspect this language to contain many simplifications, which cannot be ignored by simply estimating this variety to be creative and innovative with its independent rhythmic and prosodic phrasing of utterances. The successful shifting to “formal style” is of very great importance and has to be verified. In the following we should like to focus on adolescents’ everyday narrations to answer the following questions. Are there differences in the language use (i.e. the narrative competence) of German speakers and speakers with ethnic background? How are their everyday narrations organized and which narrative techniques can be observed? How are such techniques used to constitute individual and social youth identity?

5 Adolescents’ narrations – stories from the streets Having so far listed some determining formal criteria for ethnolectal speaking (occurring even in the speech of German adolescents), we will now have a look

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at a macro level of communication – examining larger structures of speech in everyday live narrations20. To do so, we first try to characterize “youth language” as an informal speaking style of adolescents of a certain age. We consider “youth language” to be an abstract concept of socially determined communicative style, being restricted by local, situation-specific and temporally group-specific aspects. The word “style”, on the other hand, is used to express social affiliation. The communicative style of adolescents can be determined by some general characteristics: – expressivity of utterances (interjections, lexical level, intensifiers, extralinguistic phenomena) – special language routines and phrases for greeting, insulting and threatening (rude talk/speaking) – elliptical utterances – scenic narrations (story telling) with immediate change of perspectives (deictic particles) – specific ways of talking; adoption of “different voices” like the reconstruction or stylization of immigrant speech styles and patterns – usage of Anglicism and pseudo-Anglicism – creativity and invention “Youth language” follows its own rules and is affected by the media (Androutsopoulos 2001). It consists of group-specific styles of speaking which adolescents use with unique linguistic characteristics. As Buschmann (1994: 221) said, “youth language” is situated both between creativity and stereotypy as well as economy and redundancy. In contrast to dialectal or sociolectal varieties, which are bound by longlasting and cross-generational matters in different local areas or different social ranks, “youth language”, or rather juventulect, is an idiosyncratic generational variety of transition. It verbalizes and communicates the natural transition towards being an adult, looking for individual and social identity in the age between ten and thirty. Adolescents’ talk repertoire contains supra-regional as well as group-specific and socially specific similarities which we describe as secondary variety, acquired during secondary socialization. It is habitually applied in everyday informal communication in the social age of youth and is therefore identified as being the language of adolescents. It is based upon a locally and socially differing primary variety and consists of a certain configura20 The data discussed here have been taken from the JuSpiL-Corpus collected in the project supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) “Jugendsprache im Längsschnitt” (the language of adolescents in a longitudinal perspective) in the years between 2005 and 2008. For further information/documentation please refer to the webpage http://www.jugendspracheberlin.de/.

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tion of morpho-syntactic, lexical and pragmatic characteristics (Androutsopoulos 1998: 592). The secondary variety features three peculiarities: (a) It changes over the years. That means it evolves towards a formal style of “adult language” settling as configurative linguistic depositions. This shows the cognitive process of maturation, similar to the growing of tree rings. (b) It depends on territorial and situational input as well as socio-cultural orientations. Juventulect is used in manifold communicative practices we describe as juventulectal styles. (c) The aim of adolescent language development is the ability to use normative language (“adult talk”) effectively. However, this aim can never be fulfilled because the acquisition of normative rules is concomitant with the appearance of new patterns of adult talk. The repertoire of adult talk is not static, but affected by juventulect. With this in mind one can recognize the paradoxical characteristic trait inherent in adolescent variety: its development focuses on the acquisition of normative language, which is underlyingly diversified by experimental communication of adolescents’ acts of identity. In this respect the relatively loose bondage to written language norms also has consequences for language change (Androutsopoulos 1998). The following model shows the different relations between influences on the language of adults and adolescents.

Figure 4: Juventulect, media, and the impact on language change21 21 This figure is part of a study of the JuSpiL-project “Jugendsprache im Längsschnitt” (The language of adolescents in a longitudinal perspective).

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The question we should like to address now is: how do adolescents use their specific speech style for the construction of narrations? How do they constitute social identity (see Bamberg 2004, Lucius-Hoene/Deppermann 2004)? Are there differences in using narrative devices between German speakers and speakers with an ethnic background (see Wiese 2006, Özçelik 2005, Keim 2004, Bierbach/ Birken-Silvermann 2002, Füglein 2000, Rampton 1995, Zaimoglu 1995)? To do so, we will have a look at narrations taken from different corpora of German speakers and Turkish speakers of the third generation. To ensure certain comparability, we decided to choose narrations featuring a similar topic. In our data, the main topic of culturally and socially marked differences is predominant as well as the topic of prejudices against others and the topic of violence. This seems to be a common theme of narrations produced by adolescents with different ethnic backgrounds, living in close quarters in a variegated city like Berlin. All of the narration examples deal with the violent harassment of other adolescents and/or groups of adolescents. That does not mean that this is the only topic in adolescent narrations – but, besides gossip, showing off, or stories with sexual themes, this is a very prominent topic in our data.

5.1 Example “Insulaner” ( JuSpiL) Our first sample comes from a longer conversation which investigator N conducted with a small group of adolescents in their tent at night-time – collected as a covert recording. The talk features a few short narrations being told collectively by our informants. The main topics are prejudices against other ethnic groups, their individually perceived behaviour of foreign (especially Turkish) people in public and reflections on adolescents’ language use in general. The following narration is embedded in a larger context of talking about certain cultural characteristics of ethnic groups and how they were assessed by our informants. It is initiated by speaker Xe, who persuades speaker Xi to tell the story of what happened at the public pool called “Insulaner”22 (l. 254). One day speaker Xi and his friend Domenik are at the ‘Insulaner’, when speaker Xi tries to ask a young Turkish boy to lend him his squirt gun for a moment. The young boy doesn’t want to and resists Xi’s acts of persuasion. Thus, Xi judges him by positioning the other boy with “voll der Verräter” (what a betrayer; l. 350f ). After rejection of his demand, Xi and his friend Domenik leave the facility and are faced with a group of the young boy’s elder relatives (l. 352ff ), bearing rude accusations against the narrator (l. 357f.). 22 The “Insulaner” is an outdoor swimming facility in Berlin Steglitz and it is often visited by our informants during summer.

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The narrator describes himself as a small 12 year-old boy who is unable to fight back against the superiority of the aggressive group. So, he does not respond to the group’s provocative statements and tries simply to walk away, when the situation turns into a fight (l. 368ff.). After a short assault narrator Xi and his friend Domenik run away (l. 372ff.). The stereotypical behaviour of approaching one or two guys with a larger group of brothers is attributed to Turkish adolescents in general (l. 363). There is a typical phrase in stylized Turkish which is often used by German speakers to characterize similar situations “. . . oder isch hole meine BRUda . . .” (don’t bother me or I’ll get my brothers). 330 N: 331 332 Xf: 333 N: 334 Xg: 335 336 337 Xe: 338 339 340 Xk: 341 Xi: 342

343 Xk:

is dis (.) is dis bloß bei:- (äh) was weiß ‘is this is this (something) only I don’t know’ ICH; (.) bei TÜRkn jetz so- oda [a:so- (.) oder bei DEUTSCHn ‘is it a special Turkish thing or is it the same with Germans’ [ja na=TÜ′ ‘yes of cou(rse)’ meinetwegn die: verSUCHn so=ne=a:′=so=n [HARTn‘for example who try to act like they were cool’ [(nur) die türkn ‘(but) the Turks’ überTREIben=s ja; sogar die KLEINen mucken auf mit=ner RIEsen= ‘overact it even the younger ones are offensive having a huge’ =family; ‘family (in the back)’ (.) DUStin erzähl mal das mit (den) ‘eh Dustin (please) tell that (what happened)’ insuLANer;>=oder ‘at the Insulaner ((quiet)) Dennis or who else (I have)’ (unverst.) ((nonunderstandable))