Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning 9781800415652

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Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION Series Editors: Professor David Singleton, University of Pannonia, Hungary and Fellow Emeritus, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and Associate Professor Simone E. Pfenninger, University of Salzburg, Austria This series brings together titles dealing with a variety of aspects of language acquisition and processing in situations where a language or languages other than the native language is involved. Second language is thus interpreted in its broadest possible sense. The volumes included in the series all offer in their different ways, on the one hand, exposition and discussion of empirical findings and, on the other, some degree of theoretical reflection. In this latter connection, no particular theoretical stance is privileged in the series; nor is any relevant perspective – sociolinguistic, psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, etc. – deemed out of place. The intended readership of the series includes final-year undergraduates working on second language acquisition projects, postgraduate students involved in second language acquisition research, and researchers, teachers and policymakers in general whose interests include a second language acquisition component. All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www​ .multilingual​ -matters​ .com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: 154

Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning Jennifer Martyn

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/MARTYN5645 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Names: Martyn, Jennifer, author. Title: Discourses, Identities and Investment in Foreign Language Learning/ Jennifer Martyn. Description: Bristol; Jackson: Multilingual Matters, [2022] | Series: Second Language Acquisition: 154 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “This book explores discourses of foreign language education in Ireland. It adopts a critical approach to SLA, examining the complex interplay between the construction of identity in the school context, discourses of language learning and investment in language learning”—Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022006513 (print) | LCCN 2022006514 (ebook) | ISBN 9781800415645 (hardback) | ISBN 9781800415652 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800415669 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Language and languages—Study and teaching (Secondary)— Ireland. | Second language acquisition. | Sex differences in education—Ireland. | Identity (Psychology) in adolescence—Ireland. Classification: LCC P57.I73 M37 2022 (print) | LCC P57.I73 (ebook) | DDC 418.0071/2415—dc23/eng/20220303 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006513 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006514 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-564-5 (hbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www​.multilingual​-matters​.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www​.facebook​.com​/multilingualmatters Blog: www​.cha​nnel​view​publ​ications​.wordpress​.com Copyright © 2022 Jennifer Martyn. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

Contents

Acknowledgements vii Transcription Conventions ix Introduction 1 Aims and Objectives 1 Chapters and Structure 2 Who is this Book for? 4 1 Language Education in Ireland: Sociolinguistic and Scholarly Contexts 5 Introduction 5 Language Education in Ireland 6 Situating this Book within SLA Research 18 Conclusion 24 2 Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism 25 Introduction 25 Identity in SLA Research 26 Imagined Identities and Language Ideologies 33 Elite Multilingualism 39 Conclusion 44 3 Gender and Language Education: Theoretical Approaches and Current Trends 46 Introduction 46 Early Research on Language, Gender and Education 46 Contemporary Approaches to Language, Gender and Sexuality50 Gender and Language Learning Scholarship 55 Conclusion 65

v

vi  Discourses, Identities and Investment

4 Fieldwork in SMSS: Community, Space and Identity 67 Introduction 67 Linguistic Ethnography 68 Fieldwork 70 Analysing the Data 80 In the Community 84 Discourses, Identities and Space 88 Conclusion 103 5 Language Choice, Discourse and Investment 105 Introduction 105 Language Choice in SMSS 105 Language Learning Discourses 110 Language Learning Investment and Imagined Identities 121 Conclusion 128 6 Addressing the Issues and Moving Forward 131 Introduction 131 Overview 131 Implications 135 Further Directions 140 References 143 Index 162

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues in the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies at Dublin City University, and in particular the members of the Applied Linguistics Research Group for their ongoing support. Special thanks are owed to Françoise Blin, Jenny Bruen and Ryoko Sasamoto for their support and generosity of time as I wrote this book. The Irish Association of Applied Linguistics (IRAAL) has long been incredibly supportive of researchers and practitioners of all career stages in Ireland, and has given me various opportunities to present my work and explore my ideas in front of a domestic audience. My sincere thanks go to past and present members of the IRAAL committee, including Susanna Nocchi, Marie-Thérèse Batardière and Stephen Lucek for their generous assistance and support during the preparation of this book. This book originally began as a PhD project at University College Dublin (UCD) and was funded by an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship. It was carried out under the supervision of Vera Regan, whose support is unwavering to this day. Her insights, as well of those of my PhD panel members Rosario Hernández, Bettina Migge and Goodith White, and examiners Ruth Kircher and Maeve Conrick were crucial to developing the original manuscript. My immense gratitude goes to Vera Regan and Barry Nevin who gave up much of their time to read and provide feedback on previous iterations of a number of the chapters of the book. I am very grateful to Noel Ó Murchadha for kindly allowing me to use his map, found in Chapter 1 of this book, as well as Melanie Goetz of DeGruyter for her assistance in the matter. Others who have provided invaluable assistance at various stages of this project include Lisa Butler, Chloé Diskin, Francesca LaMorgia, Malgosia Machowska-Kosciak, Mary McGill, Linda McLoughlin, Valerie Norton and everyone at the UCD Humanities Institute, Niamh Nestor, Aileen O’Driscoll, Amy Prendergast, Dawn Wheatley and Údarás na Gaeltachta. Profound thanks are extended to series editors David Singleton and Simone Pfenninger for accepting this book into the Second Language vii

viii  Discourses, Identities and Investment

Acquisition series. Heartfelt thanks are owed to the extended Multilingual Matters team and their associates, including Constance CollierQureshy, Elinor Robertson, Flo McClelland, and Jayanthi Chander, and in particular commissioning editors Laura Longworth, Anna Roderick and Rosie McEwan, to whom my gratitude is owed for their guidance and patience as I navigated the writing and publishing process. I must also extend my thanks to the anonymous reviewer for the insightful comments that have improved this book immeasurably. Any remaining shortcomings are my own. This book would not have been possible without the generous cooperation of the students and staff of SMSS. I will be forever grateful for their kindness in welcoming me into the school, their patience as they guided me through their routines and activities, and their trust as they shared their thoughts with me and allowed me into their classrooms. The public and the private have never been so enmeshed as in the past two years as the Covid-19 pandemic unfolded and during which time I navigated remote work and raised my two small children. My most heartfelt thanks go to my entire family, my ‘village’, who provided essential practical and moral support in order to allow me to continue to work. Senan and Laoise kept my spirits lifted, giving me a wonderful new perspective on life every day, and Paul has helped make this book possible with his continued support down through the years.

Transcription Conventions

(unintelligible) (text) [laughs] [deleted] … - TEXT ‘text’

Unintelligible speech Parentheses with text indicate possible utterances Square parentheses indicate non-verbal vocalisations such as laughter Square parentheses with other text signify a clarification or comment Indicates ‘trailing off’ Indicates a false start Signifies loud speech or word stress Signifies direct or hypothetical quotations

ix

Introduction

Aims and Objectives

In the Republic of Ireland (henceforth Ireland), European languages form an integral part of secondary education, yet the number of secondary school leavers with a foreign language qualification remains low when compared with other EU nations. Unsurprisingly, then, the number of higher education students who graduate with a qualification in a foreign language is also comparatively low (Bruen, 2021). Languages offered at secondary school are predominantly of Western European origin, with French being the most commonly studied. Although applied linguistic research on the subject is quite limited, studies and official figures indicate that formal language education is a pursuit that is in some way imbued with gendered meaning. Languages are taken up by more girls and women than boys and men at the non-compulsory level, as is the case in other Anglophone contexts (Department of Education and Science, 2007; Martyn, 2016a, 2016b). Research into the experiences of secondary school foreign language learners in Ireland is scant, although there are a number of outlying studies (e.g. Martyn, 2016a, 2016b; Ó Laoire, 2005; Regan et al., 2009). With respect to the Irish context, then, this book is largely exploratory in nature. It aims to give voice to the experiences of a group of young language learners encountered as part of an ethnographic inspired study in St Murtagh’s Secondary School (SMSS) in the west of Ireland. The primary objectives of this book are, firstly, to examine the day-to-day practices of students in SMSS, including the way in which the institution is implicated in the reproduction of practices and discourses that reinforce a binary understanding of gender. This involves both an examination of some of the school-sanctioned practices themselves, as well as the way in which a number of focal students construct their identities within the constraints of dominant discourses and what is institutionally permissible. Understanding how students construct their identities in their educational environment will allow for a more nuanced understanding of their investment in language learning. This leads to the second main 1

2  Discourses, Identities and Investment

aim of the book: examining discourses of language learning through an analysis of students’ own reported experiences and language ideologies. Students’ experiences and ideologies will then be located within wider discourses of language learning and other larger-scale social processes. In order to centralise the experience of the learner, this book draws upon second language acquisition (SLA) scholarship on investment, identity and language ideologies (e.g. Darvin & Norton, 2015; De Costa, 2016), and discursive and sociolinguistic-oriented work on gender and language learning (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Rowlett & King, 2017; Sunderland, 2019). Its approach sits, therefore, at the intersection of SLA and sociolinguistics, adopting elements from discursive approaches to language and identity that treat language as socially embedded, while also drawing upon SLA research that is situated within the ‘social’ (e.g. Norton, 2013) and ‘multilingual’ (e.g. May, 2014) turns. While this book aims to investigate and represent learner experiences of language learning, it does not aim to provide a comprehensive portrait of how the students in this study, nor indeed all students in the school, view language learning at all times. Nor does this book intend to comment on ‘the way things are’ at all times in the school and for the participants. Students’ own views about language learning are likely to change over time, and discourses of language learning are far from static; they shift across time and space. Since fieldwork was conducted, Ireland’s first foreign language education strategy was published, and important steps are now being taken at the national level to re-emphasise the value of language learning at all stages of education. The world is more connected than ever before, and ways of interacting and learning are in constant and rapid evolution. The data reported in this book represent specific moments in time, analysed using the interpretive lenses described in the individual chapters. Chapters and Structure

Chapter 1 sets the scene for this book, providing an overview of the ‘real-world’ sociolinguistic and scholarly contexts of the study. It begins with an overview of the status of language learning within the Irish education system, commencing with a discussion of the place of the Irish language, before moving on to examine the challenges with which foreign language education is currently faced. The first section of the chapter concludes by providing an overview of the status of heritage languages in education in what is an ethnically diverse and multilingual nation. The chapter then goes on to situate this book within contemporary SLA research. The construct of investment (Darvin & Norton, 2015), and the related concepts of identity, capital and ideology are integral to the analysis of interview data, as is the concept of elite multilingualism (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Finally, the chapter concludes with an overview of

Introduction 3

how gender is conceptualised and analysed in contemporary SLA and language education scholarship. Chapter 2 examines the concepts of identity, investment, ideology and elite multilingualism in the context of SLA research. At the forefront of the social turn in SLA is the work of Norton (2000, 2013) and colleagues (e.g. Darvin & Norton, 2015; De Costa & Norton, 2020; Norton & Early, 2011). Originally developed by Norton Peirce (1995), the concept of investment accounts for the role of power in language learning, and more recent models have also integrated notions such as capital and ideology (e.g. Darvin & Norton, 2015), further emphasising the roles of both learner agency and social structures in the language learning process. The chapter further examines frameworks to which the notion of power is integral, such as imagined identities, language ideology and elite multilingualism. The notion of language ideology is less commonly taken up by SLA scholars, but recent work has demonstrated its usefulness in the study of adolescent language learners’ identity positioning in the institutional context (e.g. De Costa, 2016). The concept of elite multilingualism is increasingly applied in applied linguistics, as evidenced by a number of recent papers (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Discourses of elite multilingualism construct language learning as not only a commodifiable skill to be exchanged in the global marketplace, but also, particularly in the case of global languages, as a passport to a better future, thereby reinforcing the status of ‘big’ languages worldwide (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Moving on to discuss the relationship between gender and language learning, Chapter 3 explores some past and current debates. Firstly, it describes early work in language and gender studies from the 1970s onwards, such as the dominance, deficit and difference approaches to language and gender. Some of these essentialist approaches, such as the difference approach, have crossed over into SLA research, prompting many inquiries into boys’ and girls’ language learning behaviour and attitudes. Since the late 1980s and 1990s, developments in conceptualisation of gender have allowed for greater understanding of the recursive relationship between discourses of gender and social structures and institutions. The chapter concludes with an examination of current gender and language learning trends across the Anglosphere, and other intersecting factors such as social class, heritage language background, teacher expectations and language textbooks. Chapter 4 presents a discussion of linguistic ethnography, the paradigmatic approach adopted in this book, as well as some of the findings that have emerged from the data. Firstly, the chapter describes the place of linguistic ethnography in applied linguistics research, before providing an overview of the school and community in which field research was conducted. The chapter then goes on to discuss the routine practices in which staff and students engage, before examining my role and identity

4  Discourses, Identities and Investment

as researcher. Finally, the chapter examines the way in which some students negotiate their (gender) identities within the school, with particular attention paid to the way in which space is organised along status (e.g. teacher versus student), age and binary gender lines, and how it may contribute to wider binary understandings of gender. Such understandings contribute to the reproduction of gender norms and discourses that intersect in various ways with the discourses and ideologies of language learning that are discussed in Chapter 5. Chapter 5 examines the data from semi-structured interviews conducted with a number of focal students, triangulating the findings with observational data. Many focal students had previously studied French or German for short periods during their final years of primary school as part of the now terminated Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative (MLPSI), or similar short programmes of study. These programmes had a demonstrable impact on their language choice of French or German, positively or indeed sometimes negatively. The chapter further locates students’ language ideologies and experiences of language learning within wider discourses of language learning, such as discourses of gender and language learning and elite multilingualism. Finally, the chapter examines the role played by imagined identities in student investment in language learning. The concluding chapter, Chapter 6, resituates this study and its findings within the Irish foreign language learning context, before discussing its limitations, the scholarly, policy and pedagogical recommendations, and future avenues of research. Who is this Book for?

This book is aimed at scholars interested in the relationship between language learning, identity and discourse, and it is hoped that those without a specific interest in language education in Ireland will benefit from the discussion of discourses that are prevalent across English-speaking contexts and beyond. More specifically, this book should be of interest to graduate students and scholars of applied linguistics, particularly those who seek to locate language choice and uptake within broader discourses.

1

1 Language Education in Ireland: Sociolinguistic and Scholarly Contexts

Introduction

Foreign language education in Ireland has been dominated by a number of European languages, such as French, German and Spanish, since their introduction to comprehensive secondary education in the 1960s. While the focus of successive governments since Irish independence has been on the revitalisation of the Irish language, with the education system as the primary vehicle, a foreign language education policy does not exist, nor are foreign languages mandatory subjects at any level of education. Although the cognitive, social, cultural and economic benefits of language learning are well established in the second language acquisition (SLA) literature (e.g. Bruen, 2013; Cook, 2016; Cook & Singleton, 2014), the country’s first strategy for foreign languages in education was published relatively recently, in 2017 (Department of Education and Skills, 2017). In recent years, there has been a proliferation of studies and volumes dedicated to the relationship between language use and learning, political economy and late-capitalism/neoliberalism (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Block, 2018; De Costa et al., 2020; Heller & Duchêne, 2012; KellyHolmes, 2016). In the context of the increasing marketisation of language skills, scholars such as Block (2018), Preece (2019) and Sayers and Láncos (2017) have noted that while globalised and ‘official’ languages are discursively constructed as assets that can enhance the learner’s profile in the jobs market, minority and regional languages are accorded less value, economic or otherwise (see also Chapter 2 of this book). Yet, despite the perceived value of official or globalised languages, the languages offered in education systems may also be regarded as difficult, unnecessary subjects that Anglophones, in particular, can do without (Bruen, 2021). Although science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects and related professions tend to be constructed as valuable to wider society, the value of languages, and the humanities more broadly, is less clear as education is increasingly treated as a commodity for exchange in the marketplace. Languages and the professions with which 5

6  Discourses, Identities and Investment

they have long-standing associations, such as teaching, are also often bound up with discourses of gender, with implications for who ‘ought to’ take up a language and who can access language learning. In Anglophone contexts, many young learners remain ambivalent about studying a language in secondary school or in higher education. Although some (e.g. Bruen, 2013) have examined language ideology and ecology, or language learning environment of the wider Irish context, research into the beliefs of young or adolescent language learners in Ireland is limited. In view of this, the present chapter aims to contextualise the current study within its sociolinguistic and scholarly contexts. The aims of this chapter are thus twofold: firstly, it situates the study described in this book in the context of language education in Ireland. This involves an overview of the place of the Irish language in the education system, and an examination of the role occupied by foreign languages and heritage languages. Secondly, this chapter situates the study within the scholarly literature. Language Education in Ireland Secondary education in Ireland

Schooling in Ireland is compulsory from 6 to 16 years of age. Children may, however, attend primary school from the September following their fourth birthday. Primary school is of eight years’ duration. Second-level (commonly known as secondary) education is of either five or six years’ duration, the length of which depends on whether or not a school offers or students avail of a ‘transition year’ programme. Transition year is completed following the three-year Junior Cycle programme, and prior to beginning the two-year Senior Cycle programme that culminates in the Leaving Certificate examinations. There are three secondary school types in Ireland: voluntary, vocational, and comprehensive and community schools. The voluntary school sector is the largest. Such schools are typically owned and run by a religious order while being simultaneously publicly funded. The majority of primary and secondary schools in Ireland are of Catholic denomination: just over 90% of primary schools and 50% of secondary schools (Griffin, 2019). The Catholic Church has historically been the main provider of education in Ireland since the inception of the state and, in particular, since the introduction of comprehensive education in the 1960s. This was largely due to the state’s reliance on the Church to provide school grounds and educational facilities, while the state provided funding for teachers’ salaries (Griffin, 2019). The Church’s role in the education system is, however, controversial. Until recently, children baptised in the Catholic faith were accorded enrolment priority in Catholic denomination primary schools. Now, however, the Education (Admission to Schools) Act 2018 ‘requires

Language Education in Ireland  7

publicly funded schools to publish an admission policy that prohibits discrimination across all equality grounds, including religion’. Nonetheless, according to the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, it is still possible to refuse admission to a school ‘where the refusal is essential to maintain the ethos of the school’ (IHREC, 2020: 35). Secondary education in Ireland is heavily examinations oriented. However, the current Junior Cycle programme has replaced a suite of state examinations, the Junior Certificate, originally undertaken at the end of the first three years of secondary schooling. The new Junior Cycle now includes classroom-based assessments and project work that are completed prior to undertaking final assessments. The Junior Cycle programme is centred around ‘key skills’, including ‘communicating’; ‘being literate’; ‘being numerate’; ‘working with others’; ‘staying well’; ‘being creative’; ‘managing information and thinking’; and ‘managing myself’. The programme’s learning outcomes are described as ‘Statements of Learning’, the first two of which are based on communicating effectively in a first language (L1) and a second language (L2) Upon completion of the programme, the learner ‘[c]ommunicates effectively using a variety of means in a range of contexts in L1’ and ‘[l]istens, speaks, reads and writes in L2 and one other language at a level of proficiency that is appropriate to her or his ability’ (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, n.d.). The Leaving Certificate is a programme that runs for the final two years of secondary education, with the Leaving Certificate examinations usually undertaken by students upon completion of the final year. Curricula are provided by the Department of Education and Skills for 38 subjects in total; however, schools usually only offer a limited number of subjects, depending on teacher supply and student demand. Irish, English and mathematics are ‘core’ subjects and students are required to sit examinations in these subjects for the Leaving Certificate, with the exception of exempt cases. Students follow a programme of study for each subject at either higher or ordinary level. Curricula are also provided for Irish and mathematics at foundation level (State Examinations Commission, n.d.). All subjects include a written examination, and the languages Irish, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, and now Polish, Portuguese, Mandarin Chinese and Lithuanian also include aural and oral components. Practical components are also offered for subjects such as construction studies and art. In addition, examinations are provided for all EU languages not otherwise provided with curricular specifications. Sitting these examinations is subject to the following conditions: students must speak the language in which they opt to be examined in as a mother tongue; they must have followed a programme of study leading to the examination; they must be sitting Leaving Certificate English; and they may undertake an examination in one non-curricular language subject only (State Examinations Commission, n.d).

8  Discourses, Identities and Investment

The Irish language

The Republic of Ireland has three official languages: Irish, English and, since 2017, Irish Sign Language. The Irish language has been spoken on the island of Ireland since the early centuries CE, but by the 17th century had already begun to lose significant ground to English (Flynn, 2020). Following a crucial phase of language shift from Irish to English across much of the island in the 19th century (Ó Buachalla, 1988), Irish ceased to be used as a vehicular language in Leinster, the eastern province of the country, and was instead relegated to regional pockets of Irishspeaking areas, known as Gaeltachtaí (see Figure 1.1), in Ulster in the north, Munster in the south and Connaught in the west. In the absence of standardisation, this instituted three principal dialects on the island (Flynn, 2020).​ Following greater autonomy and eventual full independence from the United Kingdom from 1922, the instituting of Irish as an official language was driven by a desire for its revival and widespread use

Figure 1.1  Map of Ireland with Gaeltacht areas highlighted. Created by and originally published in Ó Murchadha (2021) in the online reference text ‘The Irish Language in Ireland’ (De Gruyter Mouton).

Language Education in Ireland  9

(Mac Giolla Chríost, 2005). Following independence, it was ‘taught or used as a medium of instruction for at least one hour every day’ (Ó Buachalla, 1988: 62). Today, it is a compulsory subject in primary and post-primary education, and is a requirement to gain entry to many higher education institutions and programmes. In addition, Irish is the primary language of instruction of over 8% of primary school children and over 3% of secondary school students (Gaeloideas, n.d.). The responsibility for Irish language revitalisation has thus fallen largely on the shoulders of the education system, yet despite significant efforts, the ‘current state of the language is weak’, according to Flynn (2020: 7). The number of native speakers is low, with optimistic estimates of 60,000–100,000 people (Flynn, 2020) in a population of just over 5 million (Central Statistics Office, 2021). Although the 20 Year Strategy for the Irish Language, 2010–2030 (Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media, 2010) seeks to increase the number of those speaking Irish on a daily basis, among other goals, Crowley (2016) and Uí Chollatáin (2016) have remarked upon a disconnect between language policy and practice, while Ó Giollagáin (2020: n.p.) has called out the lack of follow-through on the strategy, deeming Irish ‘now governed by an ideology we could refer to as “staged Irish”. This ideology is a rootless variant of a cultural identity suited to those of us who are unperturbed about the loss of vibrant Gaelic communities’. According to Crowley (2016: 215), Irish policy has become isolated from its communities of speakers, and ‘forced to fit the prescriptive mode of identity’, undermining its place in the community and as part of its users’ plurilingual repertoires. There is, as Flynn (2020) describes, a growing number of L2 learners of Irish outside of the compulsory education system hailing from a range of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Census data reflects this, with the Irish-speaking Gaeltachtaí reporting fewer numbers of native speakers as the 20th century progressed, but with an overall increase in the number of L2 users nationally. However, there has been a small but steady decrease of L2 users overall since the beginning of the 21st century (Flynn, 2020). Irish is the medium of instruction in schools within Gaeltachtaí, whereas English medium education remains dominant outside of Gaeltachtaí. In Irish medium education, English is introduced to the curriculum in the second term of Naíonáin Bheaga (Senior Infants) or the second year of primary school (An Foras Pátrúnachta, n.d.). Irish medium or Irish immersion schools are relatively common outside of Gaeltachtaí, with many Irish medium schools featuring in higher education feeder ‘league tables’ of non-fee-paying schools. In English medium secondary education, the number of students who leave the education system with a high level of proficiency in Irish is in decline (Flynn, 2020). There are negative connotations associated with ‘school Irish’ or ‘book Irish’ (Flynn, 2020), and attitudes towards the Irish language are complex and often contradictory, bound up with learning

10  Discourses, Identities and Investment

experiences at school, dominant language ideologies and (the lack of) opportunities to use the language outside of the education system. A further consideration is the place of Irish in the context of other languages used by the L2 Irish language speaker. Given the multicultural and multilingual reality of contemporary Ireland, Irish cannot be assumed to be either an L1 or L2, since many young people speak a language other than Irish or English at home and in the community. The notion of L1, L2, etc. is itself problematic. The multilingual turn in SLA research (May, 2014) interrogates the term ‘native speaker’, a concept that presumes monolingualism to be the norm, and which is often ‘undefined’ in mainstream SLA literature (Galante, 2018: 314). While often treated as a uniform group, native speakers are in fact a heterogeneous group who have varying degrees of proficiency and competences in a language (Aronon & Singleton, 2008). The term native speaker also serves to strengthen linguistic norms of what constitutes ‘correct’ versus ‘incorrect’ language use, as well as reinforcing elite bi/multilingualism over ‘grassroots bilingualism’ (May, 2019; Ortega, 2019, following Han, 2013). May (2019: 123) argues that ‘[t]he intractability of monolingualism in SLA is no doubt also an artifact of its wider societal embeddedness, as a still foundational feature of modern social and political organization’. The role of the education system in the revitalisation of Irish, culminating in the Leaving Certificate, a high-stakes suite of examinations for which points are allocated depending on the grade received and which are used for entry to higher education programmes, may contribute to perceptions that Irish is a difficult language and a language of which a person is either a native speaker or not. In English medium schooling, exemption from studying Irish is granted by the Department of Education and Skills in limited circumstances only. The criteria for exemption are: if a pupil has spent a portion of their prior schooling abroad without the opportunity to study Irish; if they present with persistent learning difficulties and/or test at/lower than the 10th percentile on a discrete test involving word reading, reading comprehension or spelling; or if they are the child of a diplomatic or consular representative living in Ireland (Department of Education and Skills, n.d.). A focus on examinations without any opportunity to cease studying Irish at any stage of education may lead to a culture that overemphasises language accuracy rather than communication. Bilingualism scholars (e.g. Cummins, 2001) have long argued that bilinguals are more successful language learners than monolinguals, are able to draw on learning strategies from the L2 learning process and possess heightened metalinguistic awareness (Witney & Dewaele, 2018). The experience of learning Irish as an L2 prior to learning further languages, then, ought to scaffold the learning of subsequent languages. However, some have argued that learners do not conceptualise Irish in the same way that they do foreign languages (e.g. Ó Laoire, 2005). The benefits of learning Irish prior to undertaking further language study may not be,

Language Education in Ireland  11

therefore, as clear-cut as previously thought. In his study of university students of French, Ó Cofaigh (2019) found that those who study French through the medium of Irish at university attain higher grades than those who follow the mainstream programme of French through English. His data further suggests that having also attended an Irish medium secondary school prior to studying French through Irish at university is a predictor of higher grades, rather than possessing oral Irish proficiency alone. This suggests that strong literacy skills in Irish is an indicator of attainment in subsequent languages. Foreign languages

Prior to Education Minister Patrick Hillery’s educational reforms of the 1960s, which introduced comprehensive second-level education for all, a two-tier system existed: a fee-paying, academic and professionsoriented education and a vocational, technically-oriented education (Clarke, 2010). Comprehensive education was to provide free and more widespread access to second-level education for students across Ireland, placing greater emphasis on modern European languages as Ireland moved to join what was then the European Economic Community (before eventually joining in 1973). The emphasis on modern languages would be to the detriment of the uptake of classical languages such as Latin and Ancient Greek, once widely studied in Ireland (Ó Buachalla, 1988), but which are now largely the preserve of fee-paying schools. At the national level, foreign languages are not compulsory at any stage of education. The Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative (MLPSI), a pilot programme offering French, German, Spanish or Italian to primary school students in a limited number of schools, ran for 14 years and was terminated in December 2011 during a period of significant economic austerity. At second level, 70% of students study a foreign language (Bruen, 2021), with French by far the most popular, accounting for half of all students who take a foreign language (Bruen, 2019). At Junior Cycle level (the first three years of secondary education), other languages offered include German, Spanish and Italian. At Senior Cycle level (the final two years of secondary education), further languages may be offered, including Arabic, Japanese and Russian. A short course in Chinese Language and Culture has been developed for the Junior Cycle curriculum, and Portuguese, Lithuanian, Polish and Mandarin Chinese have also been added to the Senior Cycle curriculum in recent years. However, the provision of these languages is school and resource dependent. The numbers studying a foreign language drop significantly between the end of secondary school and the beginning of higher education. Currently, only 4% of students in higher education study a language in some capacity in any of the country’s higher education institutions.

12  Discourses, Identities and Investment

This includes students who study a language combined with specialist degrees such as law or business, or as a minor subject. A total of 3.5% of students study languages, literature and associated subjects in the United Kingdom, and 7% in the United States (Bruen, 2021). The reasons for the low levels of language uptake are complex, yet perceptions of foreign languages as difficult subjects persist (Bruen, 2021), as well as a belief that English is enough for future life and employment (Bruen, 2021; Lanvers, 2011). One likely reason (among many) for low language uptake at the optional level is the so-called ‘gender gap’ in language education. This phenomenon, whereby more girls than boys take a foreign language where a choice is provided, has long been acknowledged in Ireland, albeit occasionally, by government reports (e.g. Department of Education and Science and Council of Europe, 2008) or reports by academic bodies (e.g. Royal Irish Academy, 2011) and research institutes (e.g. Hannan et  al., 1983). A very limited number of academic studies and literature reviews address the issue (e.g. Feery, 2008; Martyn, 2016a; Murphy, 2009). Beyond schooling, the trend continues in Ireland’s nine universities, nine institutes of technology (IoTs) and other higher education colleges. More women than men graduated in 2018 with qualifications in subject areas where languages are established in the curriculum, such as teacher training with subject specialisation, language acquisition, literature and linguistics, and languages not elsewhere defined or classified (Higher Education Authority, n.d.). However, reports do not provide a breakdown of students studying a language alongside a specialist degree, for instance, business or law. Girls in Ireland are currently more likely to outperform boys in school across almost all subjects (O’Brien, 2019), and women are more likely than men to complete higher education, according to a 2019 report based on 2007/2008 higher education entrants. However, school or institution type and socioeconomic factors play a significant role in higher education completion rates, as non-completion rates for men and women are equal at 18% in a university located in one of Dublin’s more affluent areas, for instance (Higher Education Authority, 2019). Since studying a global language in higher education is increasingly associated with careers in multinational corporations, discourses of elite multilingualism, whereby a certain kind of multilingualism involving ‘official’, globally prestigious languages is venerated, are now strongly entrenched (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). As will be discussed at various intervals throughout this book, language learning in Anglophone settings provides greater opportunities for middle-class students whose futures conceivably involve travel and international business, and who have access to the necessary resources to attain such goals (Preece, 2019). Despite their higher completion rates overall and the associated increase in their participation in the workforce over the past number of decades, women are still likely to be paid less overall due to myriad

Language Education in Ireland  13

factors, such as being passed over for promotion due to time out of the workforce upon having children, partially or entirely leaving the workforce to undertake unpaid care work in the absence of other support systems, or their greater participation in contractual or lower-paid areas of employment. The largely male-dominated STEM fields tend to be viewed as more prestigious and attract greater funding and investment, whereas the humanities and social sciences tend to be less well funded, with postgraduates students and postdoctoral researchers, for instance, usually required to competitively seek out their own funding. Indeed, the humanities are often perceived to be less ‘serious’ and less necessary to society as a whole. The study of the complex interplay between gender and education systems has prompted concerns about the reification of the gender binary. Figure-based reports are only one part of the picture, and it must be pointed out that by investigating gender differences it is almost certain that they will be found (Jule, 2018). However, since social structures and ways of understanding our place in the world are still largely organised around a binary gender system, gender ‘categories’ become almost impossible to avoid. People continue to use the terms boy/girl, man/ woman and male/female to categorise their social world and their own and others’ place within it, and, as such, the binary must, as Davis et al. (2014) argue, be studied to some degree in (applied) linguistic analyses in order for researchers to accurately represent the communities that they study. However, qualitative, intersectional explorations of language and gender, taking into account context, circumstance and the student’s own experience, are crucial to understanding language learning trends. Due to the aforementioned challenges in Ireland’s foreign language learning landscape, there are insufficient numbers of language graduates to take up language teacher positions (Department of Education and Skills, 2017) and roles in business. The country’s controversial low corporate tax rates (which have, however, been increased for larger corporations in recent months as part of an OECD deal [Goodbody, 2021]), have made it a well-known hub for multinationals including data giants such as Google and Meta. The languages that are required by multinational employers remain largely unchanged over time, with EU languages such as French and German consistently required. The role of other languages within such companies can vary over time, and depends on political and economic demands. In 2012, for instance, knowledge of French, German and Nordic languages was solicited by employers with specified language skills requirements (Condon, 2012). More recently, in the context of Brexit and Ireland’s efforts to increase exports beyond the United Kingdom, non-EU languages, the languages of ‘Asia Pacific’ and the Gulf regions, as well as Portuguese and Russian, have been urgently called for by business leaders (Enterprise Ireland, n.d.; Sinnamon, 2015).

14  Discourses, Identities and Investment

In 2017, Ireland’s first foreign language education strategy was published. The strategy, titled Languages Connect, Ireland’s Strategy for Foreign Languages in Education 2017–2026, provides a roadmap for languages in the Irish education system. It acknowledges the place of heritage languages in Ireland, seeks to diversify the languages offered in schools and aims to develop wider awareness of the myriad benefits of language learning. It acknowledges the principal challenges faced by foreign language education in Ireland, namely, English hegemony on a global scale; lack of public awareness of the opportunities afforded to multilinguals; the perceived difficulty of language learning; the limited range of languages offered in the Irish education system and the longstanding dominance of the French language; low levels of language uptake in higher education; the shortage of teachers; and the lack of support for heritage and community languages. The strategy’s goals, long advocated by language teaching practitioners and researchers, are to ‘1. Improve language proficiency by creating a more engaging learning environment. 2. Diversify and increase the uptake of languages learned and cultivate the languages of the new Irish. 3. Increase awareness of the importance of language learning to encourage the wider use of foreign languages. 4. Enhance employer engagement in the development and use of trade languages’ (Department of Education and Skills, 2017: 2). The strategy is ambitious. Its measurable targets include increasing ‘the number of post-primary schools offering two or more foreign languages’, ‘the number of students sitting two languages for state examinations by 25%’ and ‘the proportion of the higher education cohort studying a foreign language, in any capacity, as part of their course to 20%’ (Department of Education and Skills, 2017: 19). Post-Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI), an organisation dedicated to supporting foreign language learning at second level, is responsible for implementing the strategy’s actions and raising awareness of the benefits of language learning (Bruen, 2021). The aforementioned targets of the strategy are welcome, but shrouded in uncertainty. Higher education language provision and recruitment is already ‘reaching crisis levels’, according to Brophy (2019: 36) in his critique of the strategy’s implementation plan. Implementation of the strategy will, therefore, depend on the financial resources allocated to institutions at all levels of education (Bruen, 2019, 2021). Given the aforementioned challenges, it is unsurprising that knowledge of a foreign language in Ireland is below the EU average. In 2012, the European Commission reported that 40% of Irish people were able to converse in an additional language, and that 18% were capable of conversing in two additional languages. Further EU reports indicate that approximately 20% of Irish people can converse in a foreign language (Bruen, 2019), compared to the EU average of 35%. There has been a call for increased state emphasis on and investment in foreign language

Language Education in Ireland  15

learning for some time (e.g. Bruen, 2013; Royal Irish Academy, 2011) and the Languages Connect strategy is undoubtedly a step towards expanding the role of languages in the education system. Indeed, the new Primary Language Curriculum developed by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) proposes to add foreign languages to the broader area of ‘Communication and Using Language’ after third class, or about nine years of age (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019). In May 2021, the Department of Education and Skills launched a pilot scheme involving the delivery of a ‘language sampler module’ over a six-week period, aimed at pupils from third to sixth class in 100 primary and special schools. Schools identify and deliver a modern foreign language of their choice, or Irish Sign Language, and recruit a suitable language tutor to deliver a module in this language (Languages Connect, n.d.). The sampler module is to ‘inform future developments in the area of language acquisition and development of the Primary Curriculum Framework’ (Department of Education and Skills, n.d.). However, given the known success of the MLPSI (see Chapter 5), the long-standing calls for and vast body of scholarly literature advocating the introduction of languages early in a child’s schooling, as well as the relatively small sum of €200,000 that is allocated to the pilot scheme, it is a cautious step forward. However, the publication of a consultation document for primary teachers and other stakeholders concerning the new draft primary curriculum (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2020) indicates a somewhat more positive outlook for languages at this level. In view of the lack of reference to the financial and practical supports that are required to implement the Languages Connect strategy, Bruen (2021) adopts a pessimistic tone when she points out that simply attempting to convince stakeholders of the importance or relevance of language learning and its social, cultural, cognitive or economic benefits, through campaigns alone will not be successful. It is therefore hoped that the rollout of and feedback from the language sampler module, and the proposals for the integration of modern foreign languages in all primary schools will inform future language provision and that the appropriate resources will be provided on a long-term basis. Heritage languages

Ireland is a multicultural and multilingual nation, having witnessed a significant increase in inward migration from over 200 countries since the year 2000 (Department of Education and Skills, 2017). The 2016 census reports that Poland, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Romania, Latvia and Brazil were the most commonly cited places of birth of those born outside Ireland (Central Statistics Office, 2017). The two most recent censuses have also included a question on languages

16  Discourses, Identities and Investment

of the home. Respondents have been asked ‘do you speak a language other than Irish or English at home?’. In 2016, 12.9% of respondents responded in the affirmative, with French the most commonly reported language spoken by Irish-born residents and Polish the most commonly reported language spoken by non-Irish born residents (Central Statistics Office, 2017a). The status of French globally, its entrenched place in the Irish education system and discourses of eliteness that surround it (see Chapter 2 for further discussion of elite multilingualism) may incite greater numbers of affirmative responses from those with knowledge of French. Irish and English, depending on the medium of instruction, are the L1 and L2 of primary and secondary schooling. Linguistic diversity in the classroom can pose significant challenges to education systems, with educators on the ground often unsure of how best to support students whose L1 is neither English nor Irish (Little & Kirwan, 2019). Various models of language education have been proposed over the decades, such as monolingual models that prohibit the use of home or heritage languages in the classroom, sometimes advocated by those who misguidedly feel that the student would benefit from a total immersion model, despite the associated negative impact on home language proficiency and identity (LaMorgia, 2011); and bilingual models where the student would have more than one medium of instruction. Further models that promote a functional application of home languages in the classroom have more recently been proposed (Sierens & Van Avermaet, 2014), where the various home languages are integrated into the existing curriculum without knowledge of any of these languages required by the teacher. Such an approach maintains that ‘banning the use of home languages at school certainly infringes a basic human right, but it also overlooks the fact that the individual’s home language is his or her primary cognitive tool and thus plays a key role in all intentional learning’ (Little & Kirwan, 2019: 2). In Ireland, partial withdrawal from mainstream education with specific language support is the standard method of facilitating the educational needs of students whose home language is neither English nor Irish (Little & Kirwan, 2019). Little and Kirwan’s (2019) book on linguistic diversity in the classroom reveals a possible wind-change in primary education, led by practitioners rather than policymakers. The book describes the language policy of Scoil Bhríde (Cailiní), a west Dublin girls’ primary school of which author Kirwan was principal at the time of research. In this English medium of instruction school, where children of migrant backgrounds make up 80% of the pupil cohort, pupils developed age-appropriate literacy in Irish and French (throughout the final two years of primary schooling), as well as developing their literacy skills in their home languages. The school embraced the diverse language backgrounds of its pupils, acknowledging that both ‘curriculum and

Language Education in Ireland  17

home languages are at all times available in the classroom, whether as media of communication or sources of linguistic intuition and insight’ (Little & Kirwan, 2019: 3). Fostering metalinguistic awareness and language awareness and underscoring the notion that all languages have intrinsic value, pupils were found to undertake language learning activities on their own without instruction. This approach to linguistic diversity views as resources what are elsewhere considered challenges in the classroom. Scholars and educational bodies have long advocated an integrated approach to language(s) in the classroom (e.g. Department of Education and Science and Council of Europe, 2008; Little, 2003; Ó Duibhir & Cummins, 2012) as pointed out emphatically by Little and Kirwan: [f]rom the perspective of curriculum and pedagogy, languages (including English as the majority language of schooling) exist in isolation from one another. Although this replicates the situation of English and Irish in society at large, it has not reflected the views of language education specialists in Ireland for more than thirty years. (Little & Kirwan, 2019: 12–13)

They note that until recently, the language curriculum ‘remained firmly wedded to the belief that languages should be taught and learned in isolation from one another’ (Little & Kirwan, 2019: 13). However, responding to the call by Ó Duibhir and Cummins (2012), a significant recent step has been made with the publication of a new Primary Language Curriculum in 2019. The Primary Language Curriculum now formally acknowledges, among other key arguments for integrated language learning, that ‘[l]anguages by their nature are interconnected. Developing skills in one language will help children to develop similar skills in another language’ (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019: 8). Following on from the aforementioned developments in language education in Ireland and drawing on Little and Kirwan’s (2019, 2021a) work, PPLI has published guidelines on how to implement a plurilingual approach to using the linguistic resources available to all students in the context of the classroom (Little & Kirwan, 2021b). As this chapter has sought to show thus far, language education in Ireland has been historically focused on the Irish language and its revitalisation, which, as pointed out earlier, has been largely unsuccessful at the national level. Only in recent years have calls to integrate Irish and English in the primary curriculum been formally addressed by the adoption of an integrated approach to language learning in the primary curriculum. As noted, the proposed addition of modern foreign languages to the primary school language and communication curriculum from third class onwards would signify a positive step towards integrated language

18  Discourses, Identities and Investment

learning from a young age. Although this, in addition to the introduction of a number of heritage languages to the post-primary curriculum, is to be welcomed, a number of challenges remain, not least the continued compartmentalisation of languages in the secondary school curriculum. The global economic crisis of 2008 and the economic austerity measures introduced by the government in 2010 resulted in the termination of successful foreign language programmes such as the MLPSI. Such short-term thinking, however, only serves to exacerbate any existing matters which will inevitably require attention later. In light of the economic contraction at the time of writing, whether or not language education at all levels will be sufficiently resourced in order to meet the goals of the Languages Connect strategy remains to be seen. A rights-based approach to language education, whereby young people are provided the opportunity to use and develop literacy skills in their home languages, as well as English, Irish and more established foreign languages, reflects international best practice (e.g. Skutnabb-Kangas & Phillipson, 2017) that would result in longer-term educational, social, cognitive and economic gains. Situating this Book within SLA Research Identity, investment and ideology

Socially-oriented research is of increasing interest to SLA scholars today, with many concerned with engaging in some way with the ‘kind of research [that] enables scholars to investigate the relationship between language learners as social beings and the frequently inequitable worlds in which learning takes place’ (Norton, 2013: 13). This book is theoretically situated within the social turn in SLA and its subsequent developments. Since the call by Firth and Wagner (1997) for scholars to explore the role of context and society on the language learning process, the social turn has ‘afforded a host of non-cognitive approaches such as identity, language socialisation and conversation analytic approaches to flourish as SLA and applied linguistics researchers explore viable ways to examine language development’ (De Costa & Norton, 2020: 586). What were once ‘alternative’ approaches to SLA among the pervasive cognitive approaches are now more mainstream (Atkinson, 2011; De Costa & Norton, 2020), as evidenced by the number of major works, handbooks and special issues on identity, discourses of language learning and the social-situatedness of language learning (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Block, 2007, 2014; Darvin & Norton, 2015; De Costa, 2016; Norton, 2000, 2013; Preece, 2020a). The construct of investment in language learning was originally developed by Norton (Norton, 2000, 2013; Norton Peirce, 1995) in order to complement the social-psychological construct of motivation. Investment not only involves a consideration of motivation to learn a

Language Education in Ireland  19

language, but also relates to the investment of teachers and students in the language and literacy practices of a given classroom or community (De Costa & Norton, 2020: 587). It has also become associated with a learner’s ‘commitment’ to learn a language, as well as ‘intentional choice and desire’ (Kramsch, 2013: 195). More recent investment constructs have been developed to account for learning in a world characterised by transnationalism, mobility, technological innovation and the navigation of a multitude of online and offline spaces (De Costa & Norton, 2020). Darvin and Norton’s (2015) expanded model of investment accounts for the relationship between identity, ideology and capital. In this model, scholars can ‘go beyond the microstructures of power in specific communicative events and to investigate the systemic patterns of control that communicative events are indexical of’. In other words, it links everyday ‘discrete events’ to the establishment of broader ‘communicative practices’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 42). The concept of ideology has been of increasing interest to applied linguists and SLA scholars in recent years (De Costa, 2011, 2016; McGroarty, 2010). Since scholarship borne of the social turn treats language as a social construct, language maintains a recursive relationship with the social world, being both a product of and contributing to practice and discourse. Language can thus be understood ‘as a set of ideologicallydefined resources and practices’ (Heller, 2007: 2) that reflects the ‘poststructuralist shift toward a socially sensitive understanding of language use’ (De Costa, 2016: 19). Such an understanding of language must be located within globalisation and global flows, where language learners and users move frequently across physical and cultural borders, and between media of communication (e.g. Appadurai, 2001; De Costa, 2016). As such, as De Costa (2016: 20) explains, the notion of the speech community has become ‘somewhat obsolete’ and language users now inhabit various lived realities involving a range of media, which means that their language practices can no longer be considered uniform, homogeneous or territorially bounded. Such a shift in how language is viewed by applied linguists ‘requires a commensurate shift in how we view language learning’ (De Costa, 2016: 22). More recent SLA research has examined the role of language ideology and ideologies of language learning during the language learning process (De Costa, 2011, 2016). Although it has not enjoyed a prominent place in SLA research to date, the concept of ideology has been employed to some degree, as De Costa (2016: 23) points out, by way of concepts such as ‘cultural models’ (Zuengler, 2003) and ‘subjectivities’ (Norton Peirce, 1995). The notion of linguistic or language ideology draws largely on the work of linguistic anthropologists, for whom it refers to sets of beliefs about a language or languages, leading to the justification or rationalisation for the perceived structure or use of that language (Silverstein, 1979: 193). Language ideologies have been invoked at the macro level, with Gal

20  Discourses, Identities and Investment

and Irvine (1995) and Woolard (1998) advancing frameworks detailing the process leading to their establishment. Yet, as De Costa (2016: 23), following Woolard (1998), notes, ideology can also refer to ‘implicit construals that speakers make of particular instances of discourse’. Language ideologies can thus be understood as ‘representations’ of language use rather than explicit articulations (Cameron, 2017). The concepts of ideology and discourse are, therefore, intimately linked, yet they differ in their ontologies, deriving from linguistic anthropology, and social theory and philosophy, respectively. Yet, as Lazar (2017: 190) points out, discourse for applied linguists working within poststructuralist frameworks invokes ‘socially constitutive signifying practices’. Ideology in applied linguistics, then, tends to be viewed as the beliefs or representations that are borne out of discourse: ‘of particular interest to discourse analysts are those aspects of social practice that are discursive in character, and which are discursively represented in particular ideological ways’ (Lazar, 2017: 190). As I will discuss in Chapter 2, De Costa (2016) uses an identity and ideology lens to examine the social and identity processes involved in his ethnography of designer immigrant students in Singapore. He adopts the notion of imagined community (Anderson, 1991) as a means of understanding the learner’s sense of belonging in their learning environment. The imagined identity is central, according to Norton (2001), to understanding the imagined community, since the learner must envisage themselves becoming part of a community of speakers, however this community might be constituted or constructed. The learner’s identity in relation to both the real learning environment and any imagined or possible community of speakers is linked to capital and ideology, according to Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model. Drawing on Bourdieu’s (1977, 1984) notion of capital, they argue that investment in language learning involves the learner’s belief that they will acquire some kind of material or symbolic resources during or as a result of the process. The investment framework seeks to address the dichotomy of motivated versus unmotivated learner, as well as reconciling perceived tensions between structure and agency. The learner, once thought to be largely free to ‘choose’ to invest time and effort, or not, into language learning, is now thought to be at once capable of choosing their own path, albeit within a limited range of options, while also being constrained by dominant discourses and structures. Discourses of eliteness

One of the obstacles facing language learning at all levels in Ireland is the global dominance of English, as well as discourses of language education that link language learning with business and trade. Since the world of business is, presumably, of limited interest to children and young people, constructing languages as career-friendly alone, although a neoliberal discursive strategy in response to declining uptake or the

Language Education in Ireland  21

weakening of the role of languages, is unlikely to increase investment in language learning by young learners. Yet, as De Costa and Norton (2020: 587) point out, business ideologies have ‘infiltrated’ language education to such a degree that the individual is now an ‘entrepreneur of one’s self’ or homo economicus (Foucault, 2008) who needs to negotiate the globalised spaces that they inhabit. Following a discursive shift away from multilingualism as evoking travel and cosmopolitanism, and towards language learning as an economically instrumental pursuit, or an ‘access code’ to a perceived ‘elite’ way of life, locally, nationally or globally (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 365), languages are increasingly viewed as skills-based commodities to be exchanged in the jobs market (Heller & Duchêne, 2012). This serves not only to reinforce the global status of a select number of languages, but also to perpetuate demand for them within education systems, while migrant and minority languages are largely discounted from discourses of multilingualism entirely (Sayers & Láncos, 2017). What constitutes multilingualism, then, hinges on discourses of ‘good’ multilingualism, and therefore, the ‘good’ language learner (Norton, 2000, 2013) or ‘pure’ multilingual (Jaspers, 2009). Intersecting with constructs such as gender, ethnicity and social class, it is also bound up with policy and practical concerns such as language provision across school types, the languages offered on the national curriculum and language requirements for higher education matriculation. Gender and language education

The notion of the ‘good’ language learner is bound up with learner identity, how the individual is positioned and positions themselves in the world as a gendered being and how language learning is discursively constructed as a gendered activity. As noted earlier in this chapter, gender differences in the uptake of languages have been noted in Ireland, and indeed across the Anglophone world, for many years (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Hannan et  al., 1983). Gender and language education scholarship has been steadily growing in recent decades, with sexuality and language education, although struggling to find its place in the field, experiencing a proliferation of studies in recent years, as Rowlett and King (2017) describe in their state-of-the-art review. Since the performative turn in gender studies and the discourse turn in language studies in the 1990s (Menard-Warwick et  al., 2014: 472), gender has been reconceptualised as a facet of social identity that intersects with other aspects such as age, ethnicity, social class or sexual orientation (Higgins, 2010; Rowlett & King, 2017). No longer viewed by scholars as binary or static, it is instead viewed as emergent in practice and discourse. Discourse is understood here to be the social practices and experiences that shape behaviour and thought, whereas performativity refers to the way in

22  Discourses, Identities and Investment

which people draw from available discourses in order to perform, in a dynamic, ongoing manner, their gendered or sexual identities in context (Rowlett & King, 2017). Further frameworks such as the community of practice (CofP) have provided scholars with the tools to ‘think practically and look locally’ (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992) in order to avoid essentialising and generalising the language and gender practices under study. Ethnographic approaches, sometimes used in tandem with the CofP framework (e.g. Eckert, 1989, 2000), have been increasingly adopted by linguists in recent years, yielding nuanced, qualitative discussions of the recursive relationship between language and other social practices. Discourses of language learning can serve as vehicles for reinforcing binary gender stereotypes and ideologies. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, Carr and Pauwels’ (2006) study of the ideologies of language learning among boys in Australia found that many evoked what Cameron (2010a, 2010b) has elsewhere termed ‘biologism’; the notion that biological differences between boys and girls, including perceived brain differences, lead to boys and girls possessing different educational aptitudes. Similarly, popular perceptions of men’s and women’s communicative abilities hold that women are more talkative and more effective communicators, leading to perceptions that they possess an innate preference for and ability in literacy-based subjects (Cameron, 2010a, 2010b, 2017). Such ideologies may lead to the discursive construction of the ideal language learner, and indeed language teacher, as female. There have been a number of major contributions to the study of gender and language education highlighting the intersection of gender with factors such as class, ethnicity, migrant status and motherhood (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995). In their Australian study, Carr and Pauwels (2006) note that language study tended to be viewed as more appropriate for middle-class boys, due to its associations with business and the globally mobile lives many middle-class young people are expected to lead. For the working-class boys in their study, however, language learning was deemed less acceptable or appropriate. Although working-class masculinities have been associated elsewhere with lower levels of engagement with schooling (e.g. Lawson, 2013; Lynch & Feeley, 2009), SLA research that explicitly focuses on social class is limited. In recent years, however, scholars have begun to focus on elite bi/multilingualism (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Ortega, 2019; Preece, 2019), a kind of bi/multilingualism that is unavoidably bound up with social class, economic status and global mobility. Indeed, the ‘monolingual bias’ and ‘nativespeakerness’ (Ortega, 2019) inherent in SLA research has traditionally privileged elite bi/multilingualism, yet as Ortega (2019: 28), following Piller (2016), points out, ‘inequity and human oppression are bound to reveal themselves to the trained researcher eye (…) This is how social justice inevitably enters the research world of SLA and why it must be explicitly addressed when investigating any kind of multilingualism’.

Language Education in Ireland  23

In recent years, research on language teaching and learning has expanded to include sexuality as an important facet of identity in the language classroom. The concept of comprehensive sexuality education recognises the role played by gender and sexuality in education, largely guided by Queer theory and critical pedagogy (Banegas & Evripidou, 2021). While some recent studies have found that the language learning process enables the learner to access language learning communities through their gender and sexual identities (e.g. King, 2008; Takahashi, 2013), others have found that the language learning environment is a difficult space in which to resist or contest normative discourses of gender and sexuality (e.g. Norton, 2000). Classrooms and language learning spaces can be highly heteronormative environments, environments where binary gender discourses are reproduced, and where heterosexual norms, discourses and practices are unquestioningly privileged (Warner, 2001). Non-heterosexual and non-binary identities can therefore be marginalised, yet Queer theory as it is applied to language teaching and learning seeks to problematise gender and sexual identities, critiquing norms and the claims to ‘naturalness’ that heteronormative discourses perpetuate within language learning spaces and among its actors: the ‘invisible nature of how masculinity and femininity are taught to children (…) contribute to its maintenance’ (Banegas & Evripidou, 2021: 129). Following Pavlenko and Piller (2008), Rowlett and King (2017) have argued for a need for research that focuses on local yet dynamic gender ideologies, while also acknowledging the role of the global economy in language education, particularly in the context of the global periphery. ‘Western’ theoretical frameworks may not prepare scholars for their work in what Milani (2014) has termed ‘the margins’, a place of uncertainty and vulnerability for researchers. Appleby (2009) has further argued that researchers must become more comfortable with uncertainty so as not to impose frameworks of gender equality which originate from a place of ‘cultural superiority’ in their research communities. In order to sensitively explore language learning contexts, Rowlett and King (2017) advocate the use of the concept of ‘symbolic competence’ (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008: 664), which ‘is the ability not only to approximate or appropriate for oneself someone else’s language, but to shape the very context in which the language is learned and used’. Language learners and users have ‘the ability to manipulate the conventional categories and societal norms of truthfulness, legitimacy, seriousness, originality – and to reframe human thought and action. We have seen that this kind of competence is multiply distributed and that it emerges through the interaction of multiple codes and their subjective resonances’ (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008: 667). In other words, learners negotiate their lives and experiences through language and discourse, across contexts, within and in spite of social structures.

24  Discourses, Identities and Investment

Conclusion

This chapter has sought to situate this book in both its social and scholarly contexts. Although recent developments in foreign language education in Ireland, such as the Languages Connect strategy, the Primary Language Curriculum and the broadening of language offerings on the Leaving Certificate curriculum constitute positive steps towards a more inclusive and robust foreign language learning experience for young people, numerous challenges remain. Meeting the stated targets of Languages Connect will require the allocation of the necessary resources and an increase in teacher supply in order to connect policy with practice (Bruen, 2021). However, in order to ensure that language learning is viewed as a positively shaping process for the young people at whom this strategy is aimed, it is crucial that we give voice to their experiences and reflect on the ways in which they discursively construct language learning, as well as the way in which it is constructed around them and for them.

2

2 Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism

Introduction

Second language acquisition (SLA) research has been characterised by various paradigm shifts over the past two to three decades. The rise of sociocultural approaches in the 1990s was rooted in postmodern thought, with scholars seeking to acknowledge and make space for the roles played by both social structure and individual agency in the language learning process (e.g. Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995). More recently, the ‘multilingual turn’ in SLA has signified a reaction to the monolingual bias that provided the foundations for the mainstream, linguistic-cognitive approaches to SLA research for decades, presuming ‘monolingualism to be the unmarked, unexamined category and “native speaker” competence to be a uniform benchmark in relation to second language learning’ (May, 2014: 7). Indeed, the notion of the monolingual ‘native speaker’ is based on a ‘Western’ nationalistic model of language acquisition, having been critiqued for some time (e.g. Firth & Wagner, 1997; Kachru, 1985, 1994). Kachru’s (1985) ‘three circles’ model, for instance, problematised the notion that varieties such as British or American English are superior to other varieties. Instead, he argued that there are many equally valid varieties of English across the globe that exist within three ‘circles’: the inner circle, where English is spoken largely as a first language (L1); the outer circle, where English is used as a second language (L2) or language of administration, often due to a country’s history of British rule; and the expanding circle, whereby English is increasingly required as a language of business and trade and routinely taught as a foreign language. In recent years, scholars have sought to move beyond notions of native speaker and second/foreign language learner. Some have proposed reconceptualisations and alternative terminology, e.g. language expertise, language inheritance, language affiliation (Leung et al., 1997) or multicompetence (e.g. Cook, 2002, 2012). Moreover, the term ‘native speaker’ tends to be abstract and ‘typically left undefined in the literature’ (Galante, 2018: 314). For many language learners, native-like proficiency, 25

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whatever the interpretation of the term, in multiple languages is both ‘unnecessary and unrealistic’ (Galante, 2018). These paradigm shifts have led to a reconceptualisation of learning ‘from acquisition, which considers languages as fixed and static, to development, which embraces the fluidity and fluctuation of languages’ (Galante, 2018). What is more, as Galante (2018) explains, the concept of a ‘second’ language can be equally problematic, given individuals’ varying and complex language learning trajectories which intersect with social milieu and community, home and heritage languages, and language policies and ideologies, among other factors. Rather than absolute notions of native-like proficiency, then, the concept of the plurilingual repertoire (Council of Europe, n.d.) is often used to conceptualise an individual’s use of the range of languages and varieties at their disposition, in theory if not always acknowledged in practice (Galante, 2018). The various turns in applied linguistics evidence a growing dissatisfaction with the traditional concerns of SLA and sociolinguistics, such as norms, standards and the boundedness of named languages (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Dismantling the monolingual bias in SLA research, however, also involves a discussion of how multilingualism is discursively constructed in ways that only serve to reinforce the status quo and maintain the hegemony of English, as well as other globalised languages, at the expense of others (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Identity in SLA Research

According to sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (2001: 121), a ‘veritable discursive explosion’ of identity research characterised the ‘social turn’ of mid to late 1990s SLA. He further points out that this preponderance of identity scholarship is somewhat inevitable, being both a side effect and a consequence of globalisation and its tensions. In SLA, the work of scholars such as Norton Peirce (1995) and Firth and Wagner (1997) has significantly shaped our understanding of the language acquisition process, emphasising the role of identity and social structure. Norton Peirce (1995: 12), in particular, argued that SLA scholars had, in the mid-1990s, yet to develop a ‘comprehensive theory of social identity that integrates the language learner and the language learning context’. Pavlenko (2002) and Block (2007) similarly argued that some of the problems associated with social-psychological approaches to language learning could be addressed if scholars were to consider that monolingualism is not the norm, nor is the classroom necessarily the typical learning space; that individuals inhabit many sociolinguistic communities; that the goals and motivations of language learners vary greatly from context to context, even within the individual; that ‘culture’ is not a static entity, but shifting and subjective, discursively mediating the language learning process; that structure and agency are interdependent; that social and

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individual factors cannot be taken separately; and that language learning is a socially situated activity. Today, language learning is now also possible via a widely accessible range of digital media, obfuscating somewhat the ‘social’ element of socially situated language learning, since languages can be (to some degree, at least) learned or engaged with on one’s own, e.g. by way of language learning apps such as Duolingo. Digital technology now permeates all aspects of our lives, for better or worse, and ‘networked electronic communications have given rise to new social spaces, linguistic and semiotic practices, and ways of fashioning the self’ (Norton, 2013: 20). Technology, once thought to significantly change and disrupt teaching practices, has not done so as envisioned, however (Blin & Munro, 2008), and indeed has allowed for effective off-site learning in recent times. Identity and investment

In the years immediately following Norton’s call for a more integrated approach to language learning and its social context, scholars embraced the work of social theorists, sociologists and anthropologists (e.g. Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Weedon, 1987) in order to highlight the intersection of language learning, identity and relations of power (Norton, 2000, 2013; Pavlenko et  al., 2001; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004). Norton’s conceptualisation of identity typifies contemporary social-constuctionist and discursive approaches to language and identity (e.g. Baxter, 2020; Pérez-Milans, 2020). Following Weedon (1987), Darvin and Norton (2015: 36) maintain the anti-essentialist position that ‘language constructs our sense of self, and that identity is multiple, changing, and a site of struggle’. In her earlier work, Norton identified a discrepancy between the accounts and descriptions of learners in the SLA motivational literature, and the lived experiences of her own study participants (e.g. Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995). The existing literature tended to treat motivation as an individual trait, whereas Norton found that ‘high levels of motivation did not necessarily translate into good language learning, and that unequal relations of power between language learners and target language speakers was a common theme in the data’. Instead, her concept of investment ‘offers a way to understand learners’ variable desires to engage in social interaction and community practices’. Following Bourdieu’s (1984, 1991) model of capital, she argues that ‘[i]f learners “invest” in the target language, they do so with the understanding that they will acquire a wider range of symbolic resources (language, education, friendship) and material resources (capital goods, real estate, money) which will in turn increase the value of their cultural capital and social power’ (Norton, 2013: 6). Cultural capital and identity theoretically meet when cultural capital (itself socially situated and context dependent) increases (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). As this occurs, a

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person’s desires and learning goals are reassessed and reimagined. The concept of investment thus: seeks to collapse the dichotomies associated with traditional conceptions of learner identity (good/bad, motivated/unmotivated, anxious/ confident, introvert/extrovert) and recognizes that the conditions of power in different learning contexts can position the learners in multiple and often unequal ways, leading to varying learning outcomes. While constructs of motivation frequently view the individual as having a unitary and coherent identity with specific character traits, investment regards the learner as a social being with a complex identity that changes across time and space and is reproduced in social interaction. (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 37)

Crucially, Norton’s investment is a sociological construct (whereas motivation is primarily a psychological one) that aims to theoretically connect desires, goals and commitments around language learning to the social context in which language learning takes place. One of the key questions asked by investment researchers, as noted in Chapter 1, relates to the kind of research that enables scholars to examine the relationship between language learners and the ‘frequently inequitable’ world around them (Norton, 2013: 13, following Norton & McKinney, 2011). At the crux of investment in language learning, then, is power. There are many ways in which an otherwise motivated language learner might not overtly display any investment in language learning, as Norton (2000, 2013) has argued. The classroom or learning environment many be sexist, elitist, racist or homophobic, symbolically excluding the learner or positioning them as a ‘poor’ student. Nor might the learner’s expectations align with classroom practices, such as speaking the target language in front of the class, a source of anxiety for many students (e.g. Bruen & Kelly, 2014; Macaro, 2001), and something that educators often take for granted (see Bruen and Kelly [2014] for a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of exclusive target language use in the classroom). In some of Norton’s work (Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995), the participants were migrant women living in Canada and were all ‘good’ language learners: the very fact that they all took the opportunity to participate in a diary study is indicative of their desire to gain regular exposure to English, and practice in English. While all the women had a strong drive to communicate, the data indicate, however, that all the women had difficulty speaking under conditions of marginalization. (Norton, 2013: 95)

The inequitable worlds inhabited by the women in their places of work, such as working in jobs not commensurate with their prior qualifications

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(see also Kobiałka [2016] for a discussion of Polish migrants in Ireland), their exclusion from conversations by Anglophones, being unable to gain access to the social networks necessary to practice and improve their English and being allocated the more menial tasks, illustrate the difficulty in investing in language learning given such tensions between power structures on the one hand, and their own goals and desires on the other. An additional and highly affective dimension for many migrant women is illustrated by the intimate connection between their ‘mother tongue’ and their relationship with their children. Norton’s participant Katarina felt that her relationship with her daughter was under threat from her daughter’s ever increasing knowledge of English. For Katarina, Polish was ‘an essential link to her future: her ongoing relationship with her daughter and her identity as a mother’ (Norton, 2013: 126). One of the principal effects of the social turn in SLA research is the shifting of attention away from ultimate attainment as the model for language acquisition, a model that can privilege the learning experiences of the few, while failing to account for those of the many. It also ensures that the responsibility for language learning does not ultimately rest with the learner alone, transforming what it means to be a language learner and a language educator. In addition to asking ‘[a]re students motivated to learn a language?’, scholars now ask ‘[a]re students and teachers invested in the language and literacy practices of a given classroom and community?’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 37). One of the most striking examples of the way in which the construct of the motivated versus unmotivated learner has been reconceptualised is the revisiting of Schumann’s (1976) case study of Alberto by Norton (2000, 2013). A migrant from Costa Rica living in the United States, Alberto was integral to Schumann’s pidginisation hypothesis and provided the basis for his acculturation model. Alberto’s English proficiency had pidginised due to his limited contact with Anglophones, which, according to Schumann, was likely due to his own lack of motivation to practice with L1 English speakers. Norton (2000, 2013) proposes, however, that Alberto’s ‘ambivalence’ towards learning English was due to Anglophones’ ambivalence towards him because of his marginalised status as a migrant. Claiming the ‘right to speak’ as a language learner and a migrant is a highly complex and emotionally charged endeavour that depends on the ongoing negotiation of one’s position in a society ambivalent to or wilfully ignorant of the needs of migrants. In recent years, Norton and colleagues have sought to rework the construct of investment in the context of accelerated advances in digital technologies, as well as the increasing neoliberalisation of geographical regions, states, institutions and learning environments (Darvin & Norton, 2015; Norton & Williams, 2012). In their reconceptualisation of the investment model, Darvin and Norton (2015: 41) argue that ‘[s]hifts in the global economic order have led to new relations of power on macro

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and micro levels, reshaping language ideologies, linguistic capital, and interactions within multilingual and multicultural environments’. Migratory patterns and the movement of people, the affordability (for some) of travel and the opening up of world travel and tourism to more than a select few, the use of a wider range of semiotic spaces (online and offline) and the liminality of these spaces (e.g. Lim et  al., 2016; McGill, 2019) has succeeded in transforming identity and ideas of ‘public and private domains’ (Darvin, 2020: 523). Language use and pedagogies of language and literacy have been transformed due to the reconceptualisation of what constitutes learning spaces, learners’ own capacity for self-teaching and the likelihood of them becoming ‘more aware of hybrid linguistic systems and non-standard varieties, blurring the roles and objects of study of applied linguistics’ (Darvin, 2020: 531). As Darvin (2020: 532) notes, the ‘merging of the written and the spoken in the online world requires a shift from viewing the two as dichotomous, toward an effort to understand digitally mediated language practices as a whole, where spoken instructions are carried out on phones and computers, and where talking is not necessarily to or by real people’. This has vast implications for the language teacher, who must now recognise their students’ liminal spaces as forming part of their lived experience, thus challenging ideas of what it means to be a ‘foreign language learner’ or an educator whose role it once was to transmit the standard language (see Darvin [2020] for a more detailed discussion of the role of language learning and digital technology). In order to move between online and offline spaces, as well as engage in practices that exist across both, communicative competence now means adapting to a range of communicative norms and patterns (Darvin & Norton, 2015). The nature and location of communication significantly altered, the dichotomy of native speaker and language learner is less applicable than ever: ‘[b]eyond inclusion in a target community of speakers or the acquisition of material and symbolic resources, learners are able to participate in a greater variety of spaces in both face-to-face and virtual worlds and assert themselves to varying degrees as legitimate speakers’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 41). There are innumerable spaces now in which to write and communicate, requiring an array of digital literacies. With the online and offline worlds now increasingly indistinct, ‘literacy has become even more essential in being able to claim the right to speak’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 41). With the rapid development of online spaces and the ubiquity of digital technology in the lives of people across the world, ‘the spaces in which language acquisition and socialization take place have become increasingly deterritorialized and unbounded, and the systemic patterns of control more invisible’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 36). As the profile of the language learner now involves a wider range of learning contexts and new media, so too must we acknowledge the role of corporate,

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institutional and state surveillance in the liminal spaces in which many of us live: [m]echanisms of power become more invisible as the logic of a free market remains to be the postulate of corporate decisions. Through the individualization of labor and the proliferation of precarious employment, exploitation and inequality become even greater (…) The financial crisis of 2008 has demonstrated quite vividly the polarization wrought by this reality. At the same time, shifts in global economic power, for example, the rise of China and newly industrialized countries, have led to changes in the valuing of languages, consequently transforming language ideologies, which not only shape policy, but also inform the dynamics of multilingual encounters. (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 41) Identity, ideology and capital

Darvin and Norton’s (2015) reworking of the investment construct aims to expose the increasingly invisible corporate power that mediates our lives. To illustrate this, they employ the constructs of identity, ideology and capital in order to ‘sharpen the focus’, as well as widen the lens of previous investment constructs, going ‘beyond the microstructures of power in specific communicative events’ and investigating ‘the systemic patterns of control that communicative events are indexical of’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 42). This conceptualisation allows us to account for isolated events and utterances and their place within broader communicative repertoires, discourses and ideologies. In other words, it ‘establishes the link between the situated and the recursive’ (2015: 42). The investment model draws upon the notion of capital, which encompasses economic capital (material wealth); cultural capital (knowledge, socially legitimised educational credentials and qualifications, access to and appreciation of legitimised cultural forms and artefacts); and social capital (social networks and connections that allow people to access power). The forms of capital alter throughout time and space, but once they are legitimised, or perceived to be legitimate, they take the form of symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1986, 1987). The model also incorporates the notions of habitus and praxis, which allow us to understand identity as not only ‘a certain disposition to act and think in certain ways’, but also having the ‘agency to restructure’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 44). Darvin and Norton’s (2015: 45) conceptualisation of identity is one which is ‘a struggle of habitus and desire, of competing ideologies and imagined identities. Governed by different ideologies and possessing varying levels of capital, learners position themselves and are positioned by others in different contexts’. What the investment model thus succeeds in doing is reconciling structure and agency in a way that more tangibly identifies the effects

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of structures such as capital and institutions on the learning process. The learner is situated rather than decontextualised, capable of their own agentive practices and offering their own discursive contributions, all the while existing within, and negotiating, structural and ideological constraints. Institutions, regimes and other people position the learner in various, limiting ways: because of dominant ideologies, learners are positioned in certain ways by virtue of their gender, race, ethnicity, social class, or sexual orientation. How learners are perceived by others is shaped by prevailing notions of what it means to be man or woman, Black or White, middle class or working class in a specific society. In the same way, also because of habitus, learners in turn position others and accord or refuse them power. (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 45–46)

Developing an awareness of power structures and the ways in which they become accepted and thus reinforced has become crucial to the work of many SLA scholars, whose goal it now is to expose and challenge the dominant ideologies surrounding language learning (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Darvin & Norton, 2015; De Costa, 2016; Norton, 2013). As a consequence of globalisation, the acceleration of flows (goods, people, ideas, resources) has increased exponentially (Appadurai, 1990), and has added to the mediatisation and liminality of lived experiences. The daily realities of language learners are now more complex than ever. Despite the fact that (neoliberal) discourses of globalisation relate primarily to flows and related discourses of ‘mobility’, ‘flexibility’ and ‘de-regulation’, regulation, control and regimentation often, in fact, characterise the practices of globalisation (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 42). Duchêne et al. (2013: 9) call the spaces of this regimentation ‘ideological sites’ or ‘sites of control’, which can be institutional (public and private), non-governmental or corporate, and where soft power is embedded, experienced and contested (Darvin & Norton, 2015). These sites of control are very often not understood as such, or not yet understood within the parameters of neoliberal-informed discourses and policies. As the discourses that regulate the experiences of the language learner in a globalised era are exposed, the concept of ideology has become increasingly important in SLA research (e.g. De Costa, 2010, 2011, 2016). De Costa (2010) argues that while identity constructs in language learning research do orient towards ideology in many ways, a somewhat more material approach to ideology is now necessary, one that explicitly identifies and exposes dominant ideologies, the value of linguistic capital and the sociopolitical contexts of language learning sites. Darvin and Norton (2015: 43) treat ideology as a broad construct or ‘a normative set of ideas’. Following Bourdieu (1987), they argue that the various manifestations of power (visible and invisible) ensure that ‘[l]egitimated authority

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enables the arbitrary to be misrecognized as the natural order’ (Darvin & Norton, 2015: 43). They stress, however, that ideology, dominance and hegemony are not fixed and immutable products, but instead ongoing processes of construction whereby ‘the reproduction of determined meanings is concomitant with the performance of innovative practices’ (Darvin & Norton 2015: 4). Indeed, they note that orthopraxy, or engaging in or following hegemonic practices without subscribing to the ideology that underpins them (Blommaert, 2005), may in fact determine the practices of many people. Imagined Identities and Language Ideologies

The concept of imagined communities, conceived by Benedict Anderson (1991) in order to conceptualise notions of nationhood and belonging, has been adopted by SLA researchers (e.g. Darvin & Norton, 2015; Kanno & Norton, 2003; Norton, 2001, 2013; Pavlenko & Norton, 2007; Pavlenko & Blackledge, 2004) to account for the aspirations of learners that might otherwise be difficult to articulate using social-psychological frameworks of language learner motivation (although the notions of the ideal and future ‘L2 self’ has been theorised by Dörnyei and Ushioda [2009]). Imagined communities ‘refer to groups of people, not immediately tangible and accessible, with whom we connect through the power of the imagination’ (Norton, 2013: 8). For Anderson (1991: 6), the nation state is an imagined community ‘because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’. Imagined communities can be tied to our educational or religious institutions, local and neighbourhood communities, workplace communities, academic communities, activist communities, etc. They may exist online or offline, or both, and we may feel in some way bonded with those whom we have not met, have not met yet or hope to one day meet (Norton, 2013). Paying attention to the imagined communities of language learners allows us to consider the role they play in the language process, in learning trajectories and in learning outcomes (Norton, 2013). Along with their immediate school, classroom, workplace and other communities, the learner’s imagined communities are equally real, ‘and might even have a stronger impact on their current actions and investment’ (Norton, 2013: 8). For instance, Kanno (2008) found that either subtractive bilingualism or additive bilingualism were promoted to children in five Japanese schools, according to the child’s background. Additive bilingualism was promoted to children in upper-middle class schools, whereas subtractive bilingualism was promoted to those from an immigrant background. The communities imagined for the children led to different forms of education, with different learning trajectories and

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outcomes, reinforcing existing inequalities. Blackledge’s (2003) work on racialised discourses employs the concept of imagined community to investigate the cultural practices of minorities in the UK. He argues that the imagining of the UK as a monolingual and monocultural nation has led to the normativity of certain linguistic and cultural practices, othering those who do not conform to this standard. The normalisation of monolingual and monocultural discourses ‘racialises’ and others various communities and their (linguistic) practices, and competing and resistant discourses become all the more difficult to produce and sustain (Baxter, 2020). Examples of discourses of monolingualism, certain ‘kinds’ of multilingualism and discourses of nationalism have become more common in scholarly research in recent years, prompted by extreme neoliberalism, austerity policies and the rise of right wing ideas (e.g. Block, 2018). For instance, Blommaert and Verschueren (1998) found that an apparent acceptance of ‘foreignness’ in Germany was at odds with a concurrent drive that sought to deny immigrant groups the right to vote. In his analysis of the discourses of class warfare in Catalonia, Block (2018) argues that the conservative Partido Popular discursively positions civil rights protesters as ‘undemocratic’ and compares them to Nazis, employing ‘discursive and rhetorical strategies which combine incompatible phenomena [making] false claims that sound innocent’ (Wodak, 2013: 32–33, insertion added). The discursive strategies employed by governments and those in/with power, then, have the capacity to negate alternative discourses, allowing only a limited number to flourish. The concepts of identity and community are inextricably linked, and this is perhaps especially true for the language learner, for whom a language may represent an alternative lifestyle, place of residence, mobility and so on: for the learner, an imagined community ‘invites an imagined identity, and a learner’s investment in the target language must be understood in this context’ (Norton, 2001: 166). In Kanno’s (2000, 2003) work on long-term changes in bilinguals’ identities, the Japanese teenager Rui, who grew up in English-speaking countries but nonetheless considered himself to be Japanese, imagined an idealised version of Japan, despite little substantive knowledge of the country and what it was like to live there. When he did return, he experienced great disappointment, as the realities of living in the country did not align with his previously imagined community. As Kanno and Norton (2003) note, however, imagination does not equate to fantasies or impossibilities, but is associated with hope. They point out that ‘hopeful imagination’ enables us to ‘imagine [an alternative world] in a way that enables us to act in the present as if this alternative had already begun to emerge’ (Kanno & Norton, 2003: 244). The aforementioned example illustrates the power of the imagined community in bringing into being an imagined identity, and the

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potentially devastating effects on the individual when reality and imagination do not align. De Costa (2016: 25) points out that ‘imagination cuts both ways: while it offers what appears to be limitless possibilities, it can also be reined in by social constraints and expectations’. The notion of the social imaginary (Anderson, 1991) articulates the ‘set of understandings, practices and common expectations’ (De Costa, 2016: 25) that characterise an imagined community. The social imaginary thus mediates and regulates identity positioning and identity construction within and in relation to dominant discourses and practices (De Costa, 2016). Norton’s (2000, 2013) participants found that their imagined identities and the social imaginaries that positioned them were not in alignment, leading to difficulties in the workplace, at home and with their language learning progress. This can also be the case for foreign language learners in the classroom context. For many English as a foreign language (EFL) learners across the world, learning English is sold as essential to ‘success’ in life. However, as Piller (2016) notes, the global English language industry can have potentially devastating effects on local communities and their customs. Dominant discourses of multilingualism worldwide, such as the importance of learning English for career opportunities and social mobility, draw young people to study English at (often fee-paying) schools, universities and other institutions, helping to sustain the whole enterprise at the global level. In many cases, people eventually return to settle in their home communities where English language skills, however ‘useful’ or enjoyable learning a language can sometimes be as an end in itself, do not significantly help with the tasks at hand, such as managing a farm or local business. This linguistic imperialism of English and other ‘global’ languages threatens not only local languages and varieties, but also biodiversity, local practices, customs and ways of life (e.g. Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2018; Skutnabb-Kangas & Harmon, 2018). Language ideologies

The concept of linguistic ideology or language ideology was initially employed by linguistic anthropologists to theorise the relationship between practice and the belief systems that surround languages and language use. Silverstein (1979: 193) defines linguistic ideologies as ‘any set of beliefs about language articulated by the users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use’. Language ideologies, therefore, tend to be ‘common sense notions’ about language (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994: 57, following Rumsey, 1990), in that they appear to be obvious assumptions about language or language users. It is therefore difficult to disentangle the rationalisation for the belief system from the belief system itself. Woolard (1998) proposes four main interpretive strands to the term language ideology. The first of these is that ideology is ‘ideational or

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conceptual, referring to mental phenomena’ and that it is broadly speaking ‘the basic notions that the members of a society hold about a fairly definite (…) area such as honor, (…) [or] the division of labor’ (Friedrich 1989: 301, in Woolard, 1998: 5, insertion added). However, she points out that ideology can exist below the level of consciousness, and can be ‘behavioural, practical, prereflective, or structural’, or the practices that constitute ‘lived relations’ (Woolard, 1998: 6). The second strand conceives of ideology as directly related to social experience, and according to Woolard is the theoretical basis for ideology upon which most agree. Ideologies can be perceived to be natural and common sense due to the social experiences that mediate our belief systems. Thirdly, she maintains that ideology is linked to relations of power, and is the system of ideas and discourses required to gain or maintain power. The use of a particular ideology in the quest for power may also be appropriated by the subordinate, as well as being employed by hegemonic people and groups. The final major interpretive strand involves ‘distortion, illusion, error, mystification, or rationalization’, producing a camera obscura, ‘false-consciousness’ or ‘upside-down image of the world’ (Woolard, 1998: 7). This type of distortion is all too common in regimes across the world today as groups and politicians seek to gain and maintain power by using inflammatory and divisive language while concealing in plain sight damaging austerity policies and cutbacks (e.g. Block, 2018; Wodak, 2015; Wodak & Krzyżanowski, 2017). De Costa (2016), following Wortham (2001) and Woolard (1998), groups the now large body of work on language ideologies into two principal lines of research. The first is ‘macro in approach, with studies on language ideology focusing on standardization, language revitalization, language and nationalism, and diglossia and bilingualism’ (De Costa, 2016: 22). He cites the framework of Gal and Irvine (1995) as particularly influential as it provides conceptual tools with which to analyse language ideological processes. These processes, iconisation, fractal recursivity and erasure, have been used by language education scholars to analyse language ideologies in both macro- (e.g. McGroarty, 2008; Wee, 2006) and micro-level (e.g. De Costa, 2016) contexts. Iconisation refers to the process by which a language form or variety becomes associated with a group, image or activity. The second semiotic process is fractal recursivity, which ‘involves the projection of an opposition, salient at some level of relationship, onto some other level’ (Irvine & Gal, 2000: 38). Simply put, differences between two groups at one level may be projected onto another level. Linguistic differences between groups may come to signify social differences as a result of fractal recursivity. The third process, erasure, refers to the way in which ideology ‘renders certain persons or activities invisible’. In other words, erasure is the establishment of an ideology by muting (but not erasing) other belief systems, persons or practices. As Irvine and Gal explain, ‘facts that are inconsistent with the ideological scheme either go unnoticed or get explained away’ (Irvine & Gal, 2000: 38).

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As well as the aforementioned macro-level processes, ideologies also emerge at the level of discourse and are ‘borne out in interactions’ (De Costa, 2016: 23, following Woolard, 1998). For De Costa (2016: 23), ideologies are ‘discursively constructed and reflected’, and that there may be discrepancies between (a) ideologies and explicit utterances and texts, and (b) what is said explicitly and its implicit meaning. Cameron (2017) echoes the necessity to consider the discursiveness of language ideologies. She refers to language ideologies as ‘representations’, rather than beliefs or articulations, allowing for the study of a broader range of linguistic phenomena, as well as distancing ideologies from the notion of belief. Ideologies of language learning

Since language learners in classroom settings across the globe tend to learn prestigious languages or languages deemed to fulfil particular needs in local and global marketplaces, the learning process is imbued with language ideological meaning. McGroarty (2010) points out that language ideologies not only inform language policy, curriculum design and teaching practices for foreign or second languages, but they also extend to the language(s) of schooling and school life. When the standard language is used as a/the medium of instruction, it immediately disadvantages those without access to the standard variety outside of school, including both students and staff (Drummond, 2018) who may be instructed to modify their accents. Language ideologies therefore drive ‘which languages, whose languages, which texts and discourses will be privileged and promoted’ (McGroarty, 2010: 5, following Luke, 2005) within education systems generally, and in institutions specifically. These languages and texts may range from the aforementioned standard language of school life to the texts and representations that form part of the curriculum, which may be far removed from the lived experiences of many, as well as any additional languages provided in a school. As such, the languages provided in schools are ‘rooted in, reflective of, or responsive to the experience or interests of a particular social position’ (Woolard, 1998: 6), and serve to maintain or enforce a particular social order. De Costa’s (2016) The Power of Identity and Ideology in Language Learning marries the concepts of identity and ideology in its study of designer immigrants learning English in Singapore. Based on his critical ethnography in a Singaporean high school, De Costa (2016: 1) explores ‘the deeper social issues that characterise the nexus of language identity, ideology and migration’ of the students’ learning trajectories against the backdrop of their school, a site of state control, and the ‘national social engineering’ (De Costa, 2016: 2) project of attracting talented Asian migrants to maintain and heighten the country’s economic competitiveness. De Costa draws upon many of the aforementioned concepts, including identity, social imaginaries, language ideology, as well as circulating

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ideologies (Wortham, 2006), which can circulate through language, to document and interpret the experiences of five Grade 9 ‘designer immigrant’ students learning English. The term ‘designer immigrants’ was coined by sociologist Alan Simmons (1999) to describe the global phenomenon of states explicitly seeking to attract ‘highly skilled’ migrants (De Costa, 2016). All across the world, countries seek out migrants with particular skills that are deemed to be in short supply and, as De Costa points out, many countries compete for individuals who have not yet completed their tertiary education. Certain individuals with certain qualifications therefore become highly desirable. This includes, for instance, high tech workers in the United States (De Costa, 2016), natural science and social science professionals, engineers, information and communications technology (ICT) workers, among others, in Ireland (Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, n.d.), alongside a shift in the immigration policy of most Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries towards one that is more selective of ‘skilled’ migrants. This form of social engineering is typical of regimes and institutions (including the OECD), who are ‘guided by neoliberal impulses that constitute the primary motivation behind such global moves to attract immigrants’ (De Costa, 2016: 4). One of the prerequisites for becoming a member of this cosmopolitan, transnational group is knowledge of the language of the host nation. Language as a ‘filtering tool’ to ‘sort and sieve future citizens’ (De Costa, 2016: 5), and indeed current citizens and residents, has been of recent concern to linguists (e.g. De Costa, 2010; Norton, 2013), due to political shifts further right in the United States and Europe. For De Costa (2016), the ‘designer immigrant students’ of his study were five girls from China, Vietnam and Indonesia who won scholarships to study in Singapore due to their academic competence and proficiency in English. A circulating ideology in Singapore positions the immigrant student as academically competent and hardworking. Along with an ideology of the superiority of Standard English that is emphasised by the education system, the expectation that the students enact cosmopolitan identities shapes the students’ experiences at school and their identities. Known by the school administration as ‘scholars’, the resultant effects on the students’ identities was what De Costa terms a ‘designer immigrant complex’. Their identity positioning was marked, although they used the unmarked Standard English (as opposed to the Singlish used by their Singaporean peers), as academic expectations for them(selves) were significantly higher than those of their peers. De Costa’s (2016: 165) study is ‘unique in analyzing language learning through an expanded ideological framework that acknowledges that language ideologies are constantly interacting with other ideologies’. In particular, the ideology of Standard English was embedded within the

Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism  39

circulating ideology of the students as ‘scholars’. Despite attempts to position themselves as more than scholars, their use of Standard English heightened ‘the markedness of their identity as “scholars”’ (De Costa, 2016: 165). Adopting an identity and ideology lens also shows how standard language ideologies are established and promoted around the world, becoming associated with those socially positioned as the ‘brightest’, thereby further legitimising Standard English. Elite Multilingualism

The influence of the economic market on language learning and learner experiences cannot be overstated, and the sociolinguistic and SLA research of the past number of years reflects this (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Block, 2018; De Costa et al., 2020; Flubacher & Del Percio, 2017; Preece, 2019; Selleck, 2020). In the introduction to their 2012 volume Language in Late Capitalism (Duchêne & Heller, 2012), Heller and Duchêne (2012) argue that: we are witnessing the widespread emergence of discursive elements that treat language and culture primarily in economic terms. This discourse does not abruptly or entirely interrupt or replace older discourses which treat language as political and cultural, associating it with the formation of the nation-state; rather, the two are intertwined in complex ways. (Heller & Duchêne, 2012: 3)

Taking as a starting point the notion that the modern nation state is ‘a means of constructing and regulating a market of a size and capacity amenable to industrial capitalism’ (Heller & Duchêne, 2012: 4), they argue that, following a shift from language discursively inscribed as a political tool, once integral to positioning the nation state in opposition to other nation states, or pride, language is now discursively inscribed in terms of profit (they provide the example of French–English bilingualism in Canada; see also Brennan [2018] on the policing of the Irish language as an economic resource within non-Gaeltacht communities in Ireland). The shift, they point out, originates in changes to political economic structural conditions which materially affect people’s lives, how they make sense of the world and how they discursively construct language/ how language is discursively constructed for them and around them. Similarly, Block (2010) and Park and Wee (2012) have written that recent years have borne witness to a transformation in the discursive value ascribed to language. It has shifted from being imbued with discourses of national, geographical and community identity, to possessing ‘added value’ (Heller, 2010), and is now treated as ‘an economic resource to be cultivated for material profit, or acquired as a skill to be offered on the market’ (Park & Wee, 2012: 125). This debate is often framed as ‘language

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commodification’ (e.g. Heller, 2003, 2010), although some scholars maintain that terms such as commodification and political economy require a more material conceptualisation. Block (2017: 53), for instance, argues that ‘bereft of a good understanding of the past and present of political economy, and above all what a political economy inspired analysis entails, researchers can only deal in generalities and/or oversimplify the interrelationship between political economy and language related issues’. In particular, he argues that much of the current applied linguistic focus centres on the Global North and wealthier countries, ignoring the work that other countries do to support ‘Western’ neoliberal economies: ‘[i]n this sense, applied linguists taking a political economic stance regarding the objects of their enquiries seldom if ever note how the shift to services in one part of the planet means that countries in other parts must take up the production slack’ (Block, 2017: 54). Instead, Block (2017, 2018; Block et al., 2012) advocates the adoption of a critical realist approach. In terms of indigenous, minority and other languages of education in majority English-speaking contexts, communities, linguists and educators may rely on neoliberal discourses of ‘language as an economic resource’ in order to re-cast languages as ‘useful’ and ‘practical’. The reliance on these discourses is understandable and perhaps inevitable, given their ubiquity and the threat posed to indigenous, regional and heritage languages as a result of underfunded education systems, the lack of support provided to such languages and the global spread of English and other hegemonic languages. Discursively constructing languages as economic resources can also be an attractive solution to the difficulties of securing (financial) support for languages that are long established within the education systems of countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, but are nonetheless under threat for reasons including low levels of language uptake. For instance, as noted in Chapter 1, it is proving difficult for Irish schools to recruit suitably qualified teachers of Irish, French, German and Spanish, and for some university language departments to sustain their activities. However, discursively constructing languages as economic resources can have a profound and shaping effect on learner identities, as seen in De Costa’s (2016) designer immigrant study, as well as the future of these languages. A 2019 special issue of the Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development on what is termed ‘elite multilingualism’ exemplifies some of the current thinking around language learning in neoliberal regimes in applied linguistics research. In their introduction, Barakos and Selleck (2019) aptly summarise the competing discourses of language learning and multilingualism in a neoliberal global economy: New forms of globalisation, migration and mobility have led to a reevaluation of multilingualism as something that has a tangible market value (…) The social transformations of our time have also re-positioned

Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism  41

the role of language learning and teaching driven by the logics of the market. In fact, they have created a conundrum for the role of languages in society: a strengthened role of English as an international and global medium of education and vehicle of access to business and social life; versus a concern for maintaining linguistic diversity. Our current globalising, pluralising and dispersing society is marked by discourses about multilingualism and diversity, which emanate from supranational organisations such as the EU, and other national and local institutional bodies that promote the cognitive, social and intercultural benefits of multilingualism. (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 361–362)

This is no more evident than in majority English-speaking countries such as Ireland and the United Kingdom, where discourses of linguistic diversity have, in fact, nurtured ‘an elite kind of multilingualism’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 362, following Moore, 2017: 238). Where once multilingualism evoked ‘cosmopolitan or romanticised ideals’, language learning is now often undertaken for ‘instrumental, material and economic purposes, shaped by the rapid spread of neoliberal logics, and exacerbated by wealth inequalities’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 362). Within Europe, and from an Anglocentric perspective, Moore (2017: 238) argues, multilingualism is ‘celebrated’ within the parameters of its contribution to neoliberal logics, its links with entrepreneurship, and innovation, all the while ‘this same perspective associates non-elite forms of multilingualism with unemployment, urban crime and terrorism’. Treating language as capital and a source of power (Bourdieu, 1991) and a resource with both symbolic and exchange value (Duchêne et al., 2013), Barakos and Selleck (2019) argue that rather than being a neutral concept, multilingualism is hierarchical and imbued with ideological meaning. They point out that the notions of ‘elite’ and ‘eliteness’ do not refer to a particular social or economic group, but must be considered in terms of political, economic, cultural and linguistic capital. Eliteness, they argue, is a dynamic category, and is not something possessed, but something that is continually produced and reproduced. It is agentive and discursive, and does not necessarily relate to tangible or monetary wealth (e.g. Códo & Sunyol, 2019). In light of this, they define elite multilingualism as: a phenomenon that imbues social and/or material capital, prestige, excellence, privilege, and access to linguistic resources in certain groups of speakers. It describes the use of language as an access code to a local, national or global perceived elite (way of life). Elite multilingualism is also emotion-laden and interlocked with affective dimensions of language learning and use (…) [t]his affective work plays out in frustrations, anger and pain to satisfaction, desires and pride (…) lastly, elite multilingualism has an aspirational dimension (…) It is often a promise

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or constructed as such with the aim to make people aspire to it. Yet, elite multilingualism is not something everyone can equally attain and is thus a terrain for exclusion. (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 365, emphasis added)

The above definition encapsulates the effects of the promotion of multilingual discourses by institutions, corporations and governing bodies on people’s lives. Treating language as an access code to a more prosperous future and something to which one ought to aspire plays on people’s emotions, inciting them to materially and emotionally invest in an endeavour from which they may not, in fact, reap any rewards, material or otherwise. Discourses of elite multilingualism also propagate the notion of learner choice. Underpinning the concept of elite multilingualism, the notion of choice fundamentally means that language learners, as consumers, can ‘choose’ certain languages over others (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). This idea, however, is based on a market-driven demand for certain types of skills and competencies (Selleck, 2020). Within such a system, certain languages will, at certain times, be more in demand than others, and the choices with which the learner is presented will be highly restricted, yet often put forward as the opposite. A choice of one of five European languages offered at a university, for instance, is simply a choice of, most likely, globally hegemonic languages, and serves to reinforce existing inequalities between communities of language speakers, economies and the Global North and the Global South. It also serves to maintain and reproduce the perceived ‘essential’ status of English and other globalised languages. Language ideologies are therefore strongly implicated in discourse of elite multilingualism, and indeed are a ‘crucial mediating factor’ (Irvine, 1989: 255) linking language and the economy. Language ideologies inform discourses of language learning and language educational policies, both of which influence learner ‘choice’. Furthermore, Heller (2007: 15) explicitly connects language ideologies to social and economic inequality. She maintains that language ideologies are themselves discourses ‘in which processes of attribution of value to linguistic forms and practices are inscribed, along with the processes of construction of social difference and social inequality within which they are associated’. Discursively constructing language as an economic resource inevitably results in the hierarchisation of languages, whereby languages are ordered and ranked based on perceived benefits and affordances. These benefits and affordances are based on the prestige that a language acquires according to ‘the perceived socioeconomic and mobility advantages that [it] affords (or is perceived to afford)’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 368). There are, then, different ‘kinds’ of multilingual. Within a European context, Jaspers (2009) contrasts the ‘prestige’ or ‘pure’ multilingual who is upwardly mobile, highly educated, of a high socioeconomic status

Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism  43

and who speaks two or more internationally useful languages, with the ‘impure’ multilingual who is less well educated, working class and who speaks various regional or minority languages. Sayers and Láncos (2017) theorise a ‘multilevel language hierarchy’ which is (re)produced by EU bureaucracy. They distinguish between ‘working languages, official languages, and the non-official languages of the EU’ (Sayers & Láncos, 2017: 35), arguing that migrant languages are discounted from discourses of multilingualism, despite outnumbering indigenous languages. It is important, however, to recognise the shifting nature of market demands, which make linguistic hierarchies similarly unstable (Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Muth & Del Percio, 2018). The reinforcement of the market position of ‘big’ languages such as English and Western European languages is sustained by discourses of elite multilingualism, yet, as noted earlier, new discourses surrounding ‘small’ languages are also emerging (Barakos & Selleck, 2019), employing familiar notions of practicality and utility (e.g. Brennan, 2018; SmithChristmas et  al., 2018). Despite the pervasiveness of discourses of elite multilingualism, there are many for whom learning a big language is not a desirable option at school or in higher education and who remain quite unconvinced of the discourse of language-as-resource, offering a resistant discourse of utility for the rural setting, where knowledge of a big language would not necessarily confer any great advantage (see Chapter 5). In Anglophone settings, however, a rejection of the language-as-resource discourse needs to be carefully examined so as not to conflate it with the discourse of ‘English-as-enough’. As described by De Costa (2016), the effects of elite multilingual discourses on the learner are profound and shaping. A rejection of language learning as a pursuit for oneself must therefore be treated as a valid personal choice. Furthermore, the language-as-resource discourse harnessed by some institutions to counter a ‘language-as-problem’ discourse can ultimately serve to stratify language learners (e.g. Preece, 2019). Preece (2019), for instance, argues that the elite multilingualism of those from more privileged backgrounds in the university setting is reinforced, while the multilingualism of those less privileged is not similarly valued. A rejection of the big languages offered by institutions must not, therefore, be automatically taken to mean a rejection of language learning in and of itself. Despite the challenges faced by researchers and practitioners, efforts are being made to support heritage language users, both students and teachers, in the classroom and beyond. As noted in Chapter 1, various efforts are underway in Ireland since the publication of the Languages Connect strategy in 2017 that signify an acknowledgement of the role that languages and language learning play in education and in society as a whole. Post Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI) is a dedicated unit that provides support for the development of foreign language learning in Ireland at secondary level, and is tasked with implementing the Languages

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Connect key actions. It is responsible for the introduction of heritage languages to the curriculum, such as the recently developed Mandarin Chinese, Polish, Portuguese and Lithuanian Leaving Certificate specifications. It also supports language teachers and other practitioners through communities of practice meetings, among other activities (PPLI, n.d.). In collaboration with applied linguistic researchers, the unit has recently published guidelines on harnessing primary school pupils’ linguistic resources in the classroom for the development of metalinguistic awareness (Little & Kirwan, 2021b). In addition, the Migrant Teacher Project of the Marino Institute of Education in Dublin is an initiative that aims to increase the participation of immigrant internationally educated teachers (IIETs) in the Irish education system. Some of the supports they provide include an annual ‘bridging programme’ which aims to enhance teachers’ professional development and help them secure employment (Marino Institute of Education, n.d.). Ongoing investment in such initiatives is essential to both meet the stated aims of Languages Connect and to limit the reach of discourses of elite multilingualism. Conclusion

This chapter has sought to provide an overview of some of the most pertinent theories and frameworks relating to language learning discourses, language learning and identity, and language ideology as they apply to contemporary neoliberal regimes. The principal concepts discussed in this chapter have been part of the scholarly debate for many years, yet find themselves frequently reconceptualised in order to respond to the various turns or paradigmatic shifts in applied linguistics and SLA research in the context of the ever-increasing marketisation of language skills in the global economic marketplace. Current identity-oriented applied linguistics reconciles structure and agency, where the soft power of cultural imperialism and neoliberal capitalism are recognised for the profoundly shaping forces that they are, rather than mere backdrops to the language learning process. These forces must also be recognised in terms of their affective dimensions, since they possess the ability to alter the life courses and emotional lives of individuals and communities across the world (Barakos & Selleck, 2019; De Costa, 2019). The proliferation of recent texts placing language (learning) within its political economic context evidences a growing recognition of this. In terms of the languages that are learned within educational systems, De Costa (2019) reminds us that a ‘frenzy’ to learn a particular language or languages takes place with each period of political and economic instability. In the United States in the 1980s, for instance, Japanese was the foreign language du jour amidst anxiety around Japanese economic competitiveness. The recent uptick of the study of language commodification and elite multilingualism can therefore be regarded as reflective

Language Learning and Identity, Ideology and Elite Multilingualism  45

of scholars’ attention to ‘how such insecurities play out in the culture economy of language learning’ (De Costa, 2019: 453). In essence, a study of what languages are learned and why is by its very nature a study of political and economic insecurity. The concepts discussed in this chapter will be taken up in the subsequent chapters to varying degrees. The concept of investment in language learning, underpinned by identity, ideology and capital (Darvin & Norton, 2015) provides a foundation for the analyses that follow. The concept of elite multilingualism will be used to examine the languages offered in St Murtagh’s Secondary School (SMSS), the language ideologies emergent in student talk and students’ current and future plans with regard to language learning. Yet, as De Costa (2019: 454) argues, ‘[f]or elite multilingualism to exist, however, it needs to have a counter discourse, one that contrasts and subsequently helps characterise elite multilingualism’. Discourses of elite multilingualism shape language education, but, as will be discussed in Chapter 5, such discourses do not necessarily serve all students.

3

3 Gender and Language Education: Theoretical Approaches and Current Trends Introduction

While reports from various English-speaking contexts indicate that girls and women are more likely than boys and men to take up an additional language in formal education settings, binary gender figures require cautious interpretation. Although binary gender categories are still used in most educational contexts, and form part of the lived realities of many people, most applied linguistic and sociolinguistic research treats gender as intersectional and dynamic. Furthermore, gender is not, and cannot be, viewed as a variable that influences young people’s take up of a language in and of itself. Nonetheless, discourses of gender permeate the language learning experience. Gender identity is integral to one’s sense of self and impacts the learning process in a variety of ways, from investment in language learning, to identity positioning in relation to language learning (Rowlett & King, 2017). This chapter aims to provide an overview of the major works and approaches to gender and language learning scholarship. It will, firstly, provide a brief overview of early research in the areas of language and gender and gender and education that have informed contemporary gender, sexuality and language learning research. Secondly, this chapter will provide an overview of more recent approaches to gender and identity, including concepts such as performativity, upon which much contemporary scholarship draws. The chapter will then proceed to discuss key issues in contemporary language learning, gender, sexuality and language research, which until the 2000s was primarily conducted by second language acquisition (SLA) scholars working within social-psychological frameworks. Early Research on Language, Gender and Education Deficit, dominance and difference

Underpinning most language, gender and sexuality scholarship is a commitment to feminism, and feminist linguists have been in dialogue 46

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with feminists in other fields for decades (Bucholtz, 2017). However, not all research on the intersection of language, gender and sexuality can be viewed as feminist, as ‘not all of it shares a political commitment to social justice’ (Bucholtz, 2017: 23). As a field of study, language, gender and sexuality is said to have stemmed from the publication of various texts in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Thorne and Henley’s (1975) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance and Spender’s (1980) Man Made Language. Most famously, perhaps, is Robin Lakoff’s (1975) Language and Woman’s Place. Lakoff is associated with liberal feminist linguistics, a branch of feminism that sought to downplay essential gender difference, and whose success had been to integrate feminist viewpoints into policy and discourse in countries where second-wave feminism took hold (Bucholtz, 2017). She maintained that women’s powerlessness and subordination in society was reflected in, and reinforced by, the language they used, arguing that their use of hedges, tag-questions and hypercorrect grammar rendered their language submissive to men’s. This has been called the ‘deficit’ approach to language and gender. On the other side of the same coin is the ‘dominance’ approach, which maintains that men’s language oppresses women through their greater instances of interruption, or expressions and discourses of degradation and oppression (Rowlett & King, 2017). An alternative approach, the ‘difference’ or ‘two cultures’ approach popularised by Deborah Tannen (1990), was rooted in a further secondwave feminist theory called ‘cultural feminism’ and ‘views women’s ways of thinking, acting and speaking as distinctive’, possessing ‘inherent qualities that should be valorized by scholars and society’ (Bucholtz, 2017: 27). At its core quite a conservative approach, it explicitly advocates a kind of gender equality, while also maintaining core social differences between men and women based on their socialisation (e.g. Tannen, 1990). Tannen’s (e.g. 1994) scholarly work focused on the supposed different communicative styles of men and women, particularly between members of a couple in a heterosexual relationship, and takes the view that men communicate in a ‘report’ and ‘informational’ style, with women communicating through a ‘rapport’ and ‘affective’ style. The deficit approach has since been critiqued for privileging ‘men’s language’, devaluing the language women actually use and erasing heterogeneity in gendered talk (Pavlenko & Piller, 2001). Bucholtz (2017: 26) finds, however, that Lakoff’s work has been a ‘touchstone’ for feminist linguistics for over 30 years, since what is perceived to be ‘women’s language’ acts as ‘a set of ideologically saturated linguistic practices constraining women’s ability to participate in male domains’. Critics of the difference approach, however, note its binary understanding of gender, its tendency to underemphasise context and relations of power, and its lack of intersectionality (Pavlenko & Piller, 2001). The popularisation of the difference approach in self-help books (e.g. Gray, 1992) can also be

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linked to a rise in ‘neurosexism’ (Rippon, 2019) and biological essentialism (Cameron, 2010a, 2010b, 2017). The difference approach also fed into research on individual differences in SLA that maintained that men and women have different interactional styles (Gass & Varonis, 1986), that girls and women are generally the more proficient language learners (Ellis, 1994), and that women employ superior learning strategies (Oxford, 1993). Media reports of the 1990s also argued that not only were boys suffering in languages and literacy subjects, and indeed many others, but that schooling in countries where some feminist gains had been won was now ultimately geared towards the learning styles of girls (Epstein et al., 1998). Girls, boys and education

The 1980s witnessed an increase in critical sociological research reconceptualising and pluralising the concept of masculinity (e.g. Connell, 1989, 1995; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005). Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity, a framework for the theorisation of a gender hierarchy of multiple masculinities and femininities, where hegemonic masculinity sits at the apex (Carrigan et  al., 1985; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), furthered interest in the way in which masculinities are constructed through discourse and practice. This led to the publication of a number of studies in education and in sociolinguistics (e.g. Frosh et al., 2002; Johnson & Meinhof, 1997; Mac an Ghaill, 1996; Martino, 2000). Simultaneously, a conservative media discourse positioned boys as at best left behind by, and at worst intended victims of, ‘feminised’ education systems largely run by women, and where girls were allowed to flourish at the expense of boys (e.g. Mac an Ghaill, 1996; Mac an Ghaill et al., 2002; Skelton, 2002). Indeed, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a conservative media backlash in Ireland against a pilot secondary school module titled ‘Exploring Masculinities’ which aimed to address issues such as gender equality, homophobia, relationships and sexuality, men and sport, and violence. The module was eventually removed from the secondary school curriculum, although relationships and sexuality education forms part of both the primary and post-primary curriculum today, despite being delivered largely by teachers who report not feeling sufficiently confident to do so (Keating et  al., 2018). Discourses of boys’ ‘falling behind’ further encouraged the investigation of gender differences in achievement from a binary perspective. Epstein et  al. (1998: 3) have argued that this ‘globalized moral panic’ in response to 20th-century advances in women’s rights is ‘narrow through the ways in which the terms “achievement” and “education” have been understood’ (Epstein et  al., 1998: 4). It wilfully removes the individual from their social, cultural and educational contexts, presumes their gender identity and reduces crucial processes in the language learning experience, such

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as personal motivations and strengths, language (learning) background, social class and socioeconomic status, the role of the teacher and textbooks, school type and innumerable other individual, social and structural forces (e.g. Block, 2007, 2018; De Costa, 2016; Norton, 2000, 2013; Piller, 2016), to mere details. While much of the media discourse portrayed boys as falling behind girls, the scholarly literature theorised masculinity as a social and discursive construction, with discourses of homosociality and heteronormativity found in institutional and peer group contexts (e.g. Kiesling, 2005, 2006; Martino, 2000). Boys’ engagement with their schooling has also been linked to social class and the value placed on formal education by their communities, peers and milieu. Working-class masculinities have been found not to greatly value academics and scholarly pursuits (e.g. Connell, 1989; Lawson, 2013; Lynch & Feeley, 2009; Willis, 1977). Instead, ‘toughness and roughness’ (Trudgill, 1972), and sometimes violence (e.g. Hollingworth & Williams, 2009) have been found to be positively associated with working-class masculinities, while the forms of knowledge advocated by education systems, particularly those that are science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) oriented, are valued by middle-class masculinity: ‘working class males are usually taken as exemplars of a physically-based masculinity, in contrast with a more technically based masculinity which appears to be more associated with the middle classes’ (Lawson, 2015: 63). However, middle-class men also gain a ‘masculine dividend’ (Lawson, 2015) through their association with the violence of other men. Explicit expressions of ‘toughness and roughness’ and formal education are largely incompatible, however, due to schools’ authority over young people and their bodies through timetabling and control over the use of space. Middle-class boys and men often have access to the social and economic capital that can facilitate a ‘good’ education, and they are ‘invested in the idea of education and the career possibilities a good education opens up’ (Lawson, 2015: 60, following Willis, 1977). Engaging with the exigencies of education systems may not pay off for workingclass young people in terms of economic and social dividends, and may even further highlight their experiences of subordination in relation to their middle-class contemporaries. Boys from working-class and ethnic minority backgrounds are more likely to struggle at school, especially with literacy subjects, and are also likely to leave school early (Lynch & Feeley, 2009). The rejection of academic success by some boys may mean that difficulties with learning and/or literacy are concealed through ‘laddish (mis)behaviour’ (Lynch & Feeley, 2009: 58), often going unidentified. Expectations of middle-class girls, on the other hand, are high. They are expected to perform to a high academic standard. Quietness, studiousness, compliance and diligence are traits generally associated with

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girls, although girls are also thought to be, contradictorily, chatty and talkative (Cameron, 2007). Girls’ studiousness is rewarded within the education system, whereas their transgressions are less tolerated than those of boys (Lynch & Feeley, 2009). Since academic success is bound up with social class, any discourse focusing on gender alone in the study of ‘underachievement’ is misguided and reductive. In their book Growing Up Girl, Walkerdine et al. (2001: 16) point out that what changed in the late 20th century ‘is the gendered composition of middle class success’, rather than girls simply ‘overtaking’ boys in the classroom. Contemporary Approaches to Language, Gender and Sexuality Performativity and indexicality

Late 20th-century socially oriented linguistics, or ‘sociocultural linguistics’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), shifted towards poststructuralist and discursive approaches to identity. Such approaches ultimately reject the stability or fixedness of identity, largely maintaining that identity is an ongoing process, constructed through each utterance, action or instance of linguistic representation (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005). Poststructuralist scholarship on gender and sexuality, borne out of third-wave feminism, ‘scrutinizes binary models of sex, gender, and sexuality for what they reveal about the social organisation of these categories and how they are challenged by complex identities and practices’ (Bucholtz, 2017: 37). The concept of performativity (Butler, 1990, 1993) is thought to be one of the most significant contributions to language, gender and sexuality studies (Ehrlich & Meyerhoff, 2017). Performativity maintains that gender is emergent in discourse, rather than predetermined, and that ‘individuals do not simply act out a pre-existing gender; they are always actively involved in the “doing” of gender’ (Ehrlich & Meyerhoff, 2017: 4). Gender is, therefore, produced and reproduced through ‘a stylized repetition of acts’ (Butler, 1990: 191). The concept of performativity was embraced by language and gender researchers in the 1990s, moving scholarship away from essentialism, and allowing for the ‘pluralizing’ (Cameron, 2008: 2) of genders beyond the binary. Some scholars have, however, cautioned against the interpretation of identities as ‘performance’ (e.g. Trechter, 2017), as this risks minimising not only the material effects and realities of identity ‘categories’ and constructs such as gender, but also race, ethnicity and social class, for example. The concept ‘strategic essentialism’ involves the grouping together of various internally different group members in order to achieve social change. This is a contested strategy, however, since it may play ‘into the hands of those whose essentialism is more powerful’ (Eide, 2010: 76). In her review of gender and ethnicity in linguistics research, Trechter (2017: 336) points out, however, that ‘the available data on gender, language, and ethnicity has moved at a slower rate than our attempts to theorise

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it’. As such, and as pointed out in Chapter 1, and by Davis et al. (2014), researchers must represent the understanding of gender as it is present in the data and understood by participants, while simultaneously interrogating such understandings. The concept of performativity is closely related to the concept of indexicality, which refers to the manner in which meaning is attributed to linguistic forms. Indexicality refers to meaning ascribed to the repeated actions of performativity, actions that become indexed to, in the case of gender, the gender of the person doing the performing (Kiesling, 2019). The work of Ochs (1992) theorises indexicality and applies it to interaction. Direct indexicality refers to the connection between linguistic forms and gender that is determined by, for example, gender pronouns that make an explicit reference to the speaker’s gender, or inferring a speaker’s gender based on their voice pitch (Kiesling, 2019). Indirect indexicality, on the other hand, entails those often tacit understandings, agreements and ideologies about what constitutes the language forms of a particular gender. Indirect indexicality of gender, according to Ochs (1992: 342), is ‘far more revealing than simply identifying features as directly marking men’s or women’s speech’. Bucholtz (2009: 4) points out that it is at the level of indirect indexicality that ideology becomes more centrally involved: ‘[o]ver time, the mapping between linguistic form and social meaning comes to be ideologically perceived as direct, and the connections to interactional stance may undergo erasure or be backgrounded’. In other words, language forms become ideologically linked with a particular gender, and may even eventually become directly indexical of that gender. Understanding the process involved in associating language forms with gender allows us to conceive of speakers’ use of particular forms not as indicative of their adherence to a particular social role; rather, gender is the ‘indirect effect of using such language, a reversal of causality that underlies current social-constructionist thinking about language and gender’. Indexicality is thus the ‘intermediate step’ between language and gender that ‘recognizes the multifunctionality of linguistic forms and hence is less deterministic’ (Bucholtz, 2009: 4). The dominance of poststructuralist approaches to language and gender throughout the 1990s and 2000s can be interpreted as a response to ‘criticisms about the lack of agency in the [community of practice] framework’ (Meyerhoff, 2017: 97, insertion added) advanced by Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998), and which was subsequently adopted by many language and gender scholars (e.g. Bucholtz, 1999; Eckert, 2000; Mendoza-Denton, 2008). Yet, structure and agency need not be dichotomous, since it is only through discursive interaction that large-scale social structures come into being; on the other hand, even the most mundane of everyday

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conversations are impinged upon by ideological and material constructs that produce relations of power. Thus both structure and agency are intertwined as components of micro as well as macro articulations of identity. (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 607)

Structure and agency are conceptualised in more recent discourse approaches to language as interlinking constructs. Broadly referring to the social and cultural knowledge produced by language and other forms of representation (Block, 2007), discourses are mediated by institutions and dominant social forces, and consequently regulatory in their effect. Gender and language ideologies

As discussed in Chapter 2, language ideologies emerge at the level of interaction, and can be explicitly or implicitly expressed (e.g. Cameron, 2017; De Costa, 2016). For Cameron (2017: 281), they refer to ‘the representations through which language is imbued with cultural meaning’ and often manifest as beliefs that individuals or groups hold or appear to hold about language. Language ideologies are powerful, shaping forces in society that affect the material lives of individuals and communities. However, they can be difficult to identify, since their very existence depends on self-justification and reinforcement. Standard language varieties, for instance, are often considered to be ‘clear’, ‘neutral’ or ‘accentless’, all of which can appear self-evident. Gender and language ideologies then, can be conceived of as representations of language that act as vehicles for ideologies of gender as they exist in the wider community: ‘the normal linguistic behaviour of men and women will be represented in ways that are congruent with the community’s more general understanding of the natures of men and women’ (Cameron, 2017: 283, following Sherzer, 1987). They form part of the ‘apparatus’ used by society to maintain gender divisions and social structures, giving rise to the idea that men and women are ‘opposite’ (Cameron, 2017: 285), thus contributing to the reproduction of heteronormativity. Language ideologies act as powerful social norms, influencing the linguistic choices we make. In this way, they can appear to be self-fulfilling, oftentimes appearing to confirm popular stereotypes about gender and language. Differences between men’s and women’s language have been claimed for centuries, and women’s speech has long been othered and pathologised. Today, women’s language remains widely policed and discussed. Women can, for instance, be encouraged by prominent figures to avoid using certain aspects of voice quality, such as creak, in order to be taken seriously, as such features allegedly form part of women’s ‘destructive speech patterns’ (Wolf, 2015: n.p.). However, the constant noticing and policing of women’s language are indicative of a less overt form of

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sexism, whereby the ‘core component of all mainstream ideologies of language and gender – the representation of women and men as distinct language users – has not become any less entrenched’ (Cameron, 2017: 286). It is merely hidden in plain sight. The idea of women’s language as problematic exists, however, alongside the orthodox view that women are linguistically superior to men. Women are supposedly the more competent language users and communicators, a view that has been with us for a number of decades, particularly among psychologists and education professionals (Cameron, 2017). Indeed, Cameron (2010b: 533) argues that ‘female verbal superiority is seen as such a key sex-difference among modern humans that in effect it is legitimate to reason backwards from it’. Such representations have been used across various media, including in advertising (e.g. Cameron, 2003; Talbot, 2017), further perpetuating the notion. Some discourses around women’s use of language today draw upon the notion of innate ‘wiring’: that women are ‘hardwired’ to talk more than men, hence the belief that women ‘gossip’ (e.g. Cameron, 2006). They are also said to ‘perform better on measures of verbal skill’ (Cameron, 2017: 287). Such discourses are reliant on a number of studies emanating from the ‘hard’ sciences, and evoke human anatomy and physiology to argue that abilities and preferences are determined by biological sex. Cameron (2010a, 2010b, 2017) terms this tendency the ‘new biologism’, since it represents a discursive shift away from the ‘softer’ forms of gender essentialism and sexism, and towards (…) a 21st century revival of the traditional view that differences between men and women are not, as feminists would have it, ‘socially constructed,’ but natural, rooted in our biological make-up. (Cameron, 2010b: 526–527)

Charting the rise of the new biologism, Cameron (2010a, 2010b, 2017) notes that the 1990s witnessed the emergence of what she has elsewhere (Cameron, 2007) termed ‘the myth of Mars and Venus’, in reference to the popular self-help book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus by John Gray (1992). Gray’s book, along with other similar publications of the era, maintained that men and women communicate in essentially different ways. Since, as Cameron (2017) points out, this assumes that men as well as women are gendered language users, men’s communication style must be represented as quintessentially different, and as a result, there has been some codification of what constitutes ‘men’s language’. Men’s language, therefore, relies on a deficit model of language, being largely defined in terms of what it supposedly lacks: ‘articulacy, fluency, sensitivity, emotional expressiveness, and semantic nuance’ (Cameron, 2017: 286). Many popular publications cite scientific research to back up these claims, lending them credibility and legitimacy, and further

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entrenching them in the public consciousness. A quite recent article in The Sun, for instance, is headed: ‘Men and women ARE born to be different as experts prove “brain differences begin in the womb”: Turns out we really are wired differently’. Despite the headline implying otherwise, the article concedes ‘it’s impossible to know how this changes the way women think’ (Pettit, 2019: n.p.). Louann Brizendine’s (2006) claim in her book The Female Brain that women talk three times more than men was taken from another self-help book, according to Cameron (2017), rather than any reliable piece of academic research. The work of neuroscientists (e.g. Baron-Cohen, 2003; Pinker, 2002) on gender and the brain represents what Cameron (2017: 288) calls the ‘upmarket’ end of the genre, yet also depends to a large extent on folk wisdom and anecdotal evidence, presenting data along binary gender lines, and does not refer to sociolinguistic, sociological or anthropological research (Cameron, 2017). In other words, should distinct brain differences even exist between men and women, publications that claim such differences do not generally aim to understand how these differences came to be (because for them, they simply ‘are’), or suggest ways to promote equality within relationships (Cameron, 2010a). Since such claims about gendered communication represent a confirmation bias, they pique public interest and the media run stories that promulgate the notion of ‘hard wiring’. Conveniently for proponents of biologism, women appear to be ‘hard wired’ for roles that are frequently either unpaid, such as childcare, housework and other domestic care work with which those with the financial resources can obtain assistance, or roles that are not as well remunerated as those to which men are supposedly best suited. Biologism provides a popular ‘scientific’ explanation for structural sexism, the gender pay gap and the lack of flexible working arrangements for parents of all genders. Above all, the popular science that promotes the idea that there are fundamental male and female brain differences that lead to essential differences in communication and social behaviour only serves to further silence the experiences of women, trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming people. Although women tend to be popularly considered verbally superior, men tend to be constructed as mathematically superior and more spatially aware (Cameron, 2017). Yet, some evolutionists posit that men have historically been more verbose than women, since language was the principal means of attracting a mate (Cameron, 2010a). However, as Cameron (2010a) argues, this is an inconvenient theory for the new biologists, who tend to ignore such hypotheses in their writings. Others, such as Locke and Bogin (2006), argue that men have a greater propensity towards verbal superiority, as evidenced in their greater engagement in public speaking social roles and occupations. However, this does not consider the structural inequalities that deny women, oftentimes through legislation and force, access to roles where public speaking and oration

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are desired or required. Nor does this approach consider teaching, a role that today tends to be occupied by more women than men, to be a public speaking role, which it invariably is. Supporters of inherent gender differences tend to cite Maccoby and Jacklin’s (1974) survey of psychologists’ assessment of gender differences, who judged there to be significant differences in four key areas: aggression, verbal ability, spatial awareness and mathematical ability (Cameron, 2010a). However, further meta-analytic studies of verbal ability have found gender differences to be negligible (e.g. Hyde, 2005; Hyde & Linn, 1988). Hyde’s (2005) influential ‘gender similarities hypothesis’ found that gender differences vary substantially across contexts and even across the lifespan. The overgeneralisation and overinflated claims of gender difference, Hyde (2005: 581) argues, ‘carry substantial costs in areas such as the workplace and relationships’. Given the range of contradictory language ideologies, as well as their culture and context specificity, any observable gender differences in language use are therefore ‘more convincingly explained as a manifestation in patterns of speaking of unequal power relations’ (Cameron, 2010a: 533). The aim of discourses of new biologism is to make gender differences such as those claimed above appear natural and to emphasise them to the point where they are considered essential to the smooth functioning of society. They are, therefore, inherently political (Cameron, 2006), serving the interests of patriarchal structures. Claims by social scientists and researchers that minimise social and/or biological gender difference, or that argue for a social constructionist and/or a discursive approach to gender are often explained away, a product of ‘political correctness gone mad’. Yet, such ideologies influence many of the social policies and institutions through and in which we spend a substantial portion of our lives, despite the concurrent liberalisation of laws around gender and sexuality across much of the world and the shift in traditional gender roles. The rise of discourses of biologism may, therefore, be a reaction to these rapid changes. Biologism can offer: a narrative about gender which addresses postfeminist anxieties about recent social change. In the West during the past half-century there has been a steady erosion of traditional gender distinctions (…) one of the ideological functions of the new biologism is to reassure the many people for whom this is a source of anxiety that gender distinctions have not been, and cannot be, erased. (Cameron, 2017: 293) Gender and Language Learning Scholarship

As noted in Chapter 1, gender differences in language uptake emerge in official and government data in Ireland and in many other countries (Carr & Pauwels, 2006), particularly at the post-compulsory

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levels of language education. Yet, context, cultural, and economic factors are inseparable from discourses of gender and language learning. For instance, foreign languages can be viewed as problematic or difficult subjects (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Tinsley & Doležal, 2018) which alone may not offer the young learner a career pathway other than becoming a language educator or translator, for instance. In Ireland, official acknowledgement of the role of gender in subject uptake in general, and language learning in particular, is rare. Some research publications (e.g. Martyn, 2016a; Murphy, 2009) and reports (e.g. Department of Education and Science, 2007; Royal Irish Academy, 2011) have drawn attention to issues of gender in secondary and tertiary education, yet given that Ireland’s first foreign strategy was only published in 2017 (Department of Education and Skills, 2017), it is unsurprising, then, that little consideration was given to the sociolinguistics of foreign language education by policymakers until then. Quite a substantial body of research has focused on gender and language education in other Anglophone contexts since the 1990s, however. In Australia, foreign languages are sometimes offered at primary school level, and although not compulsory, language learning tends to be viewed positively in this setting, and boys’ and girls’ participation rates are comparable. At secondary school, however, only approximately 10% of students study a foreign language in Year 12 (Mayfield, 2017). Carr and Pauwels (2006) found that boys accounted for only 38% of participating students at this level. Similar patterns are reported in New Zealand (Carr & Pauwels, 2006). These trends are noteworthy for their persistence through the decades. In the United Kingdom, excluding Scotland, foreign languages were made optional at Key Stage 4/General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) level in 2004, leading to a dramatic fall in language participation. Attempts have been made to combat this decline, such as the introduction of the English baccalaureate. A complement to the GCSEs, the English baccalaureate involves the student taking a specific set of subjects and must include at least one modern or ancient language (Department for Education, n.d.), although it is not required for entry to university or higher education. It is, however, also used as a performance indicator for schools. Despite such measures, the English baccalaureate has not increased language uptake in the long term (Tinsley & Doležal, 2018), and many university language departments across the United Kingdom have been shut down or face closure in the future. The future of foreign language learning in the United Kingdom is further endangered due to the country’s decision to leave the EU and the difficulty in recruiting teachers both domestically and from EU countries: the Referendum simply joins the series of policy mistakes that have over the years had the unintended consequence of causing a sharp decline of MFL in schools, the consequent closure of some fifty Modern Languages departments in UK universities, and a teacher shortage that is ultimately

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contributing to the country’s trade deficit with the EU because the UK’s foreign language expertise is diminishing along with its languages graduates. (Kohl, 2016: n.p.)

Perceptions of language education as irrelevant, impractical and not something that boys do, may contribute in some way to the low levels of uptake overall. The annual British Council report Language Trends finds that participation in A-level languages, particularly French and Spanish, is ‘highly gendered’. In 2018, 63% of A-level language candidates were female, while 37% were male (Tinsley & Doležal, 2018: 4). Even in the case of indigenous languages such as Welsh, 83% of those enrolled in 2017 were girls (Sunderland, 2019). Although there was no significant gender difference in the intention to study STEM subjects, it is of note that girls were more likely than boys to think that they would not be good at STEM subjects, 40% to 17% (Sunderland, 2019). Girls are also more likely to receive higher grades in languages than boys in Englishspeaking contexts across the world (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Murphy, 2009; Sunderland, 2019), a fact that is often repeated by local media, serving to reinforce discourses of girls’ supposed superiority in languages. Social-psychological approaches

Towards the end of the 20th century, public interest in gender and schooling and the failure of some boys to thrive in their educational environments led to a number of publications that focused on the relationship between gender and language learning. Many of these studies were United Kingdom and North America based, and were theoretically rooted within a social-psychological approach to SLA (Al-Hoorie, 2017; Dörnyei, 2007), examining language learning attitudes and learner motivation along binary gender lines (e.g. Barton, 1997; Callaghan, 1998; Clark & Trafford, 1995; Williams et al., 2002). However, many of these studies found that any discrepancy in language performance was linked to other sociocultural factors. For instance, Clark and Trafford (1995) investigated the attitudes of boys and girls towards modern languages and discrepancy in attainment through interviews with 75 students, 12 teachers and two headteachers in the United Kingdom. They found that classroom practices and teacher personality were of significance for both boys’ and girls’ outcomes, suggesting looking beyond the perceptions of subjects by boys and girls in order to ‘reassess teaching and learning’ (Clark & Trafford, 1995: 315) to improve outcomes for all students. In the introduction to their study of English students’ language learning motivations, Williams et al. (2002: 503) argue that in language education research, ‘the major concern has undoubtedly been the apparent reluctance of the British to learn a foreign language at all, and the declining level of achievement in this domain’, a concern that persists across

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English-speaking contexts. In their study, involving questionnaires and interviews carried out across three schools representing both rural and urban catchment areas, they found that students exhibited high levels of integrative orientation towards and motivation to learn French and German, and generally high levels of motivation to do well. Students were largely supported in their language learning endeavours by their parents, yet did not find language classes particularly enjoyable, and did not appear to think that French or German were particularly useful. Neither did they find learning a foreign language intrinsically motivating in and of itself. Boys tended to prefer German, however, and girls preferred French, which some students attributed to gender-coded cultural and sociohistorical imagery, such as love versus war. Girls also tended to display higher levels of motivation to learn a foreign language, displayed more positive sets of attitudes towards language learning in general and displayed a greater sense of agency. The authors caution, however, against oversimplified interpretations of the data, pointing out that the learning environment, and particularly teachers, are crucial mediators in the learning process: ‘teachers have a significant role to play in investing the content of their teaching with value, and in engaging learners in discussion about why they are studying languages’ (Williams et  al., 2002: 524). Further, the social, cultural or economic value of language learning may not be an immediate concern for students dealing with poverty and other forms of disadvantage, or for those who do not possess the economic, social or cultural capital to pursue higher education or gain entry to the kinds of jobs where additional languages are more immediately advantageous. More recent studies have adopted a critical approach to gender, investigating the attitudes of young people towards language learning and its perceived gender-appropriateness (e.g. Kissau, 2006; Kissau & Turnbull, 2008; Knisely, 2016). Chaffee et  al. (2020) examined the relationship between gender ideologies, ‘traditional’ masculinity and language uptake among students in Canada for whom English was a first language (L1). Their questionnaire respondents marked their levels of agreement or disagreement concerning ideals of masculine behaviour, and the researchers subsequently provided false feedback to some of the male students, with some informed that they scored within a ‘feminine’ range of personality measures, while others were told they scored within the ‘masculine’ range. Subsequently surveyed on their perceptions of academic subjects, the male students who were told they scored within a feminine range, or provided with what the authors call a ‘masculinity threat’ were less likely to express an interest in language study. Social class

Gender and language learning research of a social-psychological orientation has traditionally focused its efforts on English-speaking learners

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of European languages that have long been established in education systems, such as French, German and Spanish. As noted in Chapter 2, some of the critiques that have been levelled at social-psychological approaches relate to its abstraction from context, its tendency to avoid consideration of the situatedness of language learning, as well as the difficulties in identifying and representing motivation without a firm discussion of identity processes and power relations, including gender relations (e.g. Block, 2007; Pavlenko, 2002). What is more, social class, and by extension political economy, has been largely understudied in SLA, despite the fact that language learning is intimately bound up with issues of class. Due to its increased links with global business, middle-class boys are more likely to view language learning as useful for their careers, with many young people now studying business and language combinations in higher education programmes. For working-class boys, foreign languages may be constructed as or viewed as difficult and/or too academic, irrelevant to their future lives, a luxury that they cannot afford to pursue or an endeavour which is not aligned with working-class constructions of masculinity (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Lynch & Feeley, 2009). Social class is, however, difficult to define, and its material aspects and status-based ones should not be conflated (Block, 2018), therefore presenting a challenge in naming and analysing class-based categories. It is, according to Block (2018: 91), ‘a moving target that evolves as societies themselves evolve’. He does, however, attempt to find a way to pin down class in his ‘constellation of interrelated dimensions’ (Block, 2018: 91). These dimensions concern material life conditions: the individual’s relation to the means of production; economic resources such as property, income and wealth; sociocultural resources including occupation, social contacts and technological skills; behaviour, such as the symbolic behaviour of clothing, consumption patterns and pastimes; sociopolitical life conditions, such as a person’s relation to positions of power or type of neighbourhood; and spatial conditions such as local and/or global mobility, and type of dwelling. Since class is about ways of being in the world, it can be talked about as an aspect of identity, yet, according to Block (2018: 94), it is ‘first and foremost about the distribution and redistribution of material resources’, rendering it distinct from, but nonetheless intersecting with other facets of identity. Indeed, the unequal distribution and redistribution of material resources are embedded in the fabric of neoliberal regimes, and aspects of a person’s identity such as race, gender, sexuality or abledness are also characterised by (unequal) access to such resources, thereby shaping life experiences. As discussed in Chapter 2, concepts such as elite multilingualism have allowed researchers to examine the kind of language learning that is valued in neoliberal societies. Language learning is not accessible to all, and a limited number of global and official languages are prioritised in education systems. Language learning is also affective and

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aspirational, a process during which learners can undergo significant identity transformations (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Kinginger’s (2004) case study of Alice, an American university student of French, provides a lens through which to view the way in which eliteness and privilege mediate the language learning process. Through interviews, phone calls and letters with the author over the course of four years, Alice documents her experiences studying French at home in the United States, and abroad in Quebec and France. Outside of the middle-class ‘monolingual elite’ (Kinginger, 2004: 224), Alice did not grow up with material, social or cultural privilege. French, however, represented an imagined future, and inspired by ideologies of French culture as refined and sophisticated, she was engaged and motivated, excelling in her studies. Nevertheless, during her time abroad she was significantly aware of the privilege of other study abroad students, and the resources that allowed them to engage in frequent travel and socialising. Her experience involves an ongoing process of identity negotiation, particularly with respect to how she is positioned and positions herself in terms of class and gender. Her ‘investment’ in learning French thus becomes an investment in social identity, ‘a way of reorienting herself in the world’ (Kinginger, 2004: 240). First-person accounts of the learning process have traditionally been considered ‘incomplete, biased, unreliable or naive’ (Kinginger, 2004: 220) in SLA research, due to their purported failure to provide generalisable results, yet the effects of the generation of generalisable results only in SLA research result in the silencing of ‘non-standard’ experiences, and therefore, learners. Such a view assumes that there exists an ‘idealized Everylearner’ (Kinginger, 2004: 220) rather than reflecting the complex, difficult, inequitable and oftentimes messy experiences of life. Polyani (1995: 287) aptly summarises the intersection of the personal with the political when it comes to learning a language. The impersonal ‘one’ which ‘needs to know’ or ‘learns a language’ is the issue. Who ‘one’ is is not only a factor of one’s native talent for language learning, one’s educational background and motivation, but it is also a product of one’s gender, one’s class, one’s race, one’s sexual orientation, one’s health and degree of abledness. Ultimately, every language learner is alone with a unique experience, and experience tailored to, by and for that individual. Heritage and language background

As discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2, European languages are ‘entrenched globally’ (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2018: 121). Globalised languages possess a high level of prestige, and knowledge of such languages is associated with increased economic opportunities

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for individuals. The hegemony of such languages is reinforced by their elevated positions in education systems, along with the cultural institutes and organisations that support their global transmission, such as the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie and the British Council. Discourses of linguistic diversity in nation states and within bureaucratic organisations such as the EU are common place, but as Sayers and Láncos (2017) point out, a linguistic hierarchy is entrenched within and reproduced by EU bureaucracy, with national official languages such as English at the top. Discourses of gender and heritage language learning have been found to differ somewhat from discourses of gender and learning established curricular European languages. At the compulsory level of foreign language education in Australia, Carr and Pauwels (2006) found that the greatest gender gap in enrolment lay in the established languages of French, German, Italian and Japanese, whereas less emphatic differences were found in languages such as Indonesian, Vietnamese, Spanish and Modern Greek. In the case of Chinese, boys comprised over half of those enrolled. In the final year of schooling, when languages became optional, the only languages with over 40% of enrolments by boys were Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese. The authors partially attribute these trends to the fact that ‘[g]ender patterns around these languages may also be influenced by ethnolinguistic or cultural expectations about learning one’s “heritage” language’ (Carr & Pauwels, 2006: 14). Gaining access to heritage languages in mainstream educational contexts in Europe proves difficult, and many languages of migrant groups and heritage language users are not provided as curricular languages across European schools. Despite the significant minority of people of North African and Middle-Eastern heritage living in France, for instance, only 0.2% of collège (middle school) and lycée (high school) students study Arabic (Timsit, 2018). In Ireland, a curricular specifications have recently been developed for a small number of allochthonous languages such as Polish, Portuguese, Chinese and Lithuanian (Department of Education and Skills, 2017), although their level of uptake remains to be seen and will depend on many factors, including provision in schools, resources and ideologies. The conception of gender used by most scholars in the humanities and social sciences today is one which extends beyond the male–female binary and, as such, is ‘understood to be a system of social relationships and discursive practices that may lead to systemic inequality among particular groups of learners, including women, minorities, elderly, and disabled’ (Norton, 2013: 12). As discussed in Chapter 2, Norton’s (2000, 2013) participants, migrant women living in Canada, found it difficult to invest in learning and using English due to their greater social isolation as migrants, as mothers not working outside the home or in low prestige jobs.

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Future data pertaining to the uptake of heritage languages in schools will contribute to a growing body of research on SLA and language learning within migrant communities in Ireland. Ireland remains a destination of choice for migrants for economic reasons, for those who are escaping war and conflict (O’Toole & Skinner, 2018b), as well as for climate refugees. While scholars such as Diskin and Regan (2015), Kobiałka (2016) and Corrigan (2020) have studied sociolinguistic variation in migrants’ use of English on the island of Ireland, little research has been conducted to date on the heritage language use, as opposed to English language use, of the school-going population. In 2017, two seminars in Coleraine and Dublin, titled ‘Minority Language Pupils and the Curriculum – Closing the Achievement Gap’ resulted in the publication of proceedings that addressed challenges and opportunities for heritage language users (O’Toole & Skinner, 2018a). In their introductory article, O’Toole and Skinner (2018b: 4) note that the achievement gap among migrant children, first and second generation, is ‘a long-standing concern in Europe and North-America’. In Ireland, the principal significant difference between ‘native students’ and ‘immigrant students’ is in reading literacy, according to a 2015 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) report, where native students score 25 points higher than immigrant students (Shiel et al., 2016). Such trends, as pointed out by O’Toole and Skinner (2018b), require a focus on English as an additional language (EAL) in in-service and pre-service teacher education, and must involve the creation of ‘inclusive curricula, developing sound pedagogical practice, and establishing strong links between communities and schools’ (O’Toole & Skinner, 2018b: 5). In order to progress through the education system, the EAL learner must learn English and ‘catch-up’ to their peers in a relatively short space of time. While the acquisition of ‘informal’ or conversational language is generally quicker than academic language and is ‘context-embedded and supported by paralinguistic cues’, academic language is ‘context-reduced and more abstract; it comprises the more formal register of schooling, involving complex features and vocabulary such as hypothesising, persuading, classifying, arguing, and speculating’ (O’Toole & Skinner, 2018b: 6), making its acquisition a considerable task. In order to support heritage language users, O’Toole and Skinner (2018b), following Ladson-Billings (1995: 467), advocate a culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), which refers to ‘a more dynamic or synergistic relationship between home/community culture and school culture’. More recent research has built upon this concept. Gonzalez et al.’s (2005) notion of ‘funds of knowledge’ describes the ‘historically developed and accumulated strategies (skills, abilities, ideas, practices) or bodies of knowledge that are essential to a household’s functioning and wellbeing’, including language strategies and knowledge, that the student brings to the classroom and to their learning.

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Some have been critical of the model of interculturalism adopted in Irish schools, what Bryan and Bracken (2011: 122) term an ‘add diversity and stir’ approach, where people ‘over there’ have been ‘constructed as objects of NGO and western salvation’ in civic, social and political education (CSPE) subject texts. Indeed, the notion of CRP has been implemented in ways which have allowed educators to avoid focusing on white privilege by focusing on the ‘other’, instead of interrogating existing structures and discourses (Martin et  al., 2017: 236). However, the development of the Languages Connect strategy, the Primary Language Curriculum (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019), new Leaving Certificate curricular specifications for a number of heritage languages, as well as guidelines to support teachers in adopting a plurilingual approach to language use in the classroom (Little & Kirwan, 2021b) represents progress in the decolonisation and ‘dewesternisation’ of the curriculum. Teacher expectations and classroom discourses

Teacher expectations can play a key role in language uptake and students’ subsequent progress and attainment. As mediators of the hidden curriculum, teachers both consciously and subconsciously interact with students in ways that can reinforce assumptions about race, class and gender (Jule, 2018). In their study in a Polish gimnazjum (middle school), Pakuła et al. (2015) found that an English as a foreign language (EFL) teacher employed sexist stereotypes in order to support his lessons. One example reinforced an ‘old lady’ stereotype when recounting a story to his students about how he lost his wallet: ‘well, I ain’t no stupid old lady who puts the PIN number on the back of her debit card’ (Pakuła et  al., 2015: 70). The teacher also used gender stereotypes in order to elicit vocabulary from the students. Asking ‘what is a “hard drive”?’, he suggested that ‘this is too easy for boys’. A further example involved him associating boys with sport, explaining the word ‘goal’ by, again, addressing the boys: ‘[t]he boys should know this one’ (Pakuła et  al., 2015: 70). These instances demonstrate how teachers can interact with boys and girls in explicitly very different ways and using different reference material, and they also demonstrate the potential for long-term effects. In the case of the instances above, girls are not directly addressed, and it is therefore strongly implied that they are not supposed to know about certain topics. They become, therefore, symbolically excluded from the discussion. These interactions may have a cumulative impact on the lives and educational outcomes of young people (Sunderland, 2019). A body of work investigating the distribution of teacher time to boys and girls was conducted in the late 20th century (e.g. Spender, 1982). Such studies tended to be framed through a male-dominance perspective (Sunderland, 2019), and generally found that girls received less teacher

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time than boys. A meta-analysis by Kelly (1988: 20) found that boys received ‘more instructional contacts, more high level questions, more academic criticism and slightly more praise than girls’. Sunderland (2019) has noted, however, that a proportion of this time was for disciplinary purposes. In her book Gender, Participation and Silence in the Language Classroom: Sh-shushing the Girls, an ethnographic study of Punjabi girls in an ESL programme in Canada, Julé (2004: 156) found that girls were oftentimes ‘sh-shushed’ by their teacher. For one student in particular, this limited her language learning progress as it denied her the ‘linguistic space’ with which to progress. This aligns with the standards to which girls have tended to be held, as noted earlier; they are expected to be quieter, more studious and their ‘misbehaviour’ less tolerated (Lynch & Feeley, 2009). Due to commonly held beliefs about girls’ superiority in language learning, teacher expectations of girls in the language classroom may be higher than their expectations of boys. Such expectations may, indeed, become self-fulfilling prophecies (Sunderland, 2019). Interviews with language teachers in Australia revealed that although they acknowledged the complexity and multifactorial nature of language learning progress, some teachers still classified students’ learning styles and abilities in gendered terms. One remark, deemed ‘typical’ by the authors, maintained that ‘[b]oys… can’t stay with something like the girls can. They’ll concentrate on something for a short period of time, but then they’ll have to move on to something else’ (Carr & Pauwels, 2006: 135). Higher expectations of girls, and the self-fulfilling prophecy it engenders, is likely to prove to be ‘a short-term blessing’ for girls (Sunderland, 2019: 311), rather than indicative of future success, or even equality at home or in the workplace. Career paths emanating from language degrees without an additional component, such as business, for instance, are not always positively viewed, and do not garner the prestige of areas of knowledge which are more valued in contemporary societies, such as traditionally maledominated STEM subjects. Coupled with enduring beliefs that women are more suited to caring and pastoral roles, undertaking or being expected to undertake these types of roles, or these aspects of a particular role, e.g. in academia (e.g. Barrett & Barrett, 2011), linking the gender imbalance in career paths to the gender pay gap, is, therefore, quite reasonable (Sunderland, 2019). Language textbooks

The representation of gender and sexuality can create ‘linguistic barriers’ to full inclusion in the classroom ‘through “interactional inclusion/ exclusion” and “representational inclusion/exclusion” respectively’ (Sunderland, 2019: 3). The representation of gender in language textbooks, that is to say, characters depicted by photographs, character profiles,

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conversations or correspondence between characters, has been the object of a body of quantitative research since the 1970s (e.g. Porecca, 1984). A gender imbalance tended to be found in earlier studies, with tokens of male character outnumbering tokens of female ones (Sunderland, 2015: 21). Textbooks also featured ‘poor representation of female characters in terms of visibility, stereotyping of personality traits and occupational roles (including illustrations) and derogatory treatment’ (Sunderland, 2000: 211–212). More recent studies, such as those included in Mills and Mustapha’s (2015) volume on gender representation in learning materials, indicate some variation in the depiction of men’s and women’s occupations. However, in the same volume, Sunderland (2015: 33) cautions that despite some apparent progress, she has not found a study of a language textbook or textbook series that is not ‘failing somehow’ in terms of gender representation. Importantly, the role of the teacher in harnessing the textbook in ways that either reinforce or contest gender stereotyping is crucial, and ‘cannot be predicted from the text itself’ (Sunderland, 2015: 27). Neither does the learning process take place in a social or cultural vacuum, and teachers and students are likely to engage in some form of ‘talk around the text’ (Sunderland, 2015: 28), which may involve talking about the way gender is represented in the book. Consequently, reader responses can vary wildly, and students may not always view equality of representation as progressive (Sunderland, 2015). Some studies of the past decade or so have focused on representations of sexuality in textbooks (e.g. Gray, 2013; Pakuła et  al., 2015; Pawelczyk & Pakuła, 2015). Such studies have predictably found that textbooks, and indeed other books marketed to children, such as the Harry Potter series (Sunderland & McGlashan, 2015) remain highly heteronormative. There is a conspicuous absence of gay characters in textbooks, and a persistent inclusion of heterosexual two-parent family units (Sunderland, 2015, 2019). Despite some progress in the representation of gender in learning materials, it is clear that the representation of sexuality falls far behind, and indeed ought to be of serious concern for language education policymakers, educators and publishers alike. Textbooks must visually and textually represent a range of genders and sexualities in order to contribute to the dismantling of heteronormative discourses. Conclusion

Discourses of language learning and gender are complex and oftentimes contradictory. Menard-Warwick et  al. (2017: 485) argue that it can be ‘easy’ to find gender differences in certain contexts, but that, ultimately, ‘manifestations of gender intertwine with power, ethnicity and culture, so that gendered practices and ideologies differ significantly from one place to another, as well as varying between individuals of

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the same gender within a single classroom’. Sexuality is of increasing interest to language education scholars, and research on textbook representation demonstrates the need to develop learning materials that are representative of a broader range of gender and sexual identities. Factors such as the language in question are also of concern to researchers, since Western European languages that have been long established in education systems can present a different pattern of uptake to some heritage and community languages. Social class also plays a crucial role in a student’s decision to take up a language due to associations between elite multilingualism and international business, as elaborated further in Chapter 2. While the largely European range of languages on offer in schools in English-speaking contexts were once imbued with notions of romanticism and travel, they are now largely inscribed with discourses of profit (Heller & Duchêne, 2012). Multilingualism in English-speaking contexts is now discursively constructed as aspirational and a passport to a brighter future, while less prestigious multilingualism suffers due to the facilitation of market logics (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Such discourses interact with discourses of gender, impacting the way in which learners position themselves in relation to language learning at any given time or place.

4

4 Fieldwork in SMSS: Community, Space and Identity

Introduction

This chapter provides an account of the methodology and analytic methods employed in the present study, as well as some of the key findings relating to the way in which (gender) identities are negotiated by students within the discursive parameters of the institution. Identity is dynamic and contextual, and context is ‘a site of power that creates the conditions for particular identities to emerge’ (Preece, 2020b: 367). Identity is also ideologically mediated (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005; De Costa, 2016): language accumulates associations that are linked to specific identities (Preece, 2020b), and named languages develop associations over time that are linked with particular gender identities and subject positions (e.g. Kissau & Turnbull, 2008; Knisely, 2016). Schools are popular sites for ethnographic research, since they are highly controlled environments that are involved in the reproduction of social norms. Social norms are reproduced in institutions through what Foucault (1982) has termed ‘dividing practices’, the organising of the environment so as to physically and spatially segregate and separate people (e.g. Francis, 2000; Þrastardóttir et al., 2021; Shilling, 1991). Across the world, students are segregated along age and binary gender lines for many of their daily activities, in both co-educational and singlesex schools, and dividing practices facilitate the reproduction of further heteronormative discourses, as well as perpetuate notions of socially significant age cohorts. A binary understanding of gender both in school and in wider society allows for the perpetuation of discourses of masculinity and femininity (Þrastardóttir et  al., 2021) that prove difficult, although not impossible, for young people to contest. Schools and wider society thus maintain a recursive relationship, whereby schools are both informed by the discourses and practices of wider society, and involved in their reproduction. In light of the role played by schools in the reproduction of social norms, a linguistic ethnographic approach to data collection and analysis was employed in order to respond to the study’s main aims. This chapter 67

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will, firstly, describe the place of linguistic ethnography (LE) in contemporary applied linguistics research. Secondly, this chapter will describe the research site in which the fieldwork reported in this book was conducted, St Murtagh’s Secondary School (SMSS), involving an overview of data collection methods and data analysis. The chapter will then go on to describe the school and the routine practices in which staff and students engage, before reflexively examining my role as researcher. Finally, this chapter critically examines student practice, the use of school space and its effects on identity and interaction, and the interface of identity and language ideologies. Linguistic Ethnography

This book takes the ethnographic paradigm as an epistemological and methodological starting point. Ethnography takes many forms, and debates among practitioners about ‘what counts as ethnography’ (Eriksson & Kovalalainen, 2016: 151) and ‘how to represent the field’ (van Mannen, 2011) are common. Traditionally used by anthropologists to study ‘other’ cultures by ‘making the strange familiar’ (Hymes, 1996: 4–5), ethnography has become increasingly mainstream over the past two to three decades, featuring in edited collections of language and identity and language and gender research (e.g. Besnier & Philips, 2017; Pérez-Milans, 2020; Swann & Maybin, 2008), while also appearing as a core topic in applied linguistics handbooks (e.g. Maybin & Tusting, 2011; Paltridge & Phakiti, 2015). It has been the subject of recent monographs (Copland & Creese, 2015), with some of the first volumes devoted entirely to linguistic ethnographic theory and practice emerging in recent years (e.g. Snell et al., 2015; Tusting, 2019). In applied linguistics, ethnographies or ethnographic-inspired studies situate language as one of the many resources that are used to index identities, affiliations and community memberships. Pérez-Milans (2020) explains that LE has been influenced by a range of disciplines, including linguistic anthropology (e.g. Hymes, 1964; Irvine & Gal, 2000), sociolinguistics (e.g. Gumperz, 1982; Labov, 1972) and social theory (e.g. Bourdieu, 1977; Foucault, 1970; Giddens, 1982). LE as a distinct approach is said to have originated in the United Kingdom in the 1990s (Shaw et al., 2015). Although epistemologically aligned in many ways with critical ethnographies of second language acquisition (SLA) research (e.g. De Costa, 2016), LE has provided United Kingdom and European scholars (North American ethnographies tend to be ontologically derived from linguistic anthropology, e.g. Mendoza-Denton [2008]) with a framework that ‘adopts an interdisciplinary approach to research; uses topic oriented ethnography; combines linguistics with ethnography; brings together different sources of data; and aspires to improve social life’ (Shaw et al., 2015: 5). Indeed, aspiring to improve social life is critical to LE, with

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many linguistic ethnographies undertaken in healthcare settings and relating to healthcare policy (e.g. Shaw & Russell, 2015), the workplace (e.g. Tusting, 2015) and in literacy studies (e.g. Papen & Tusting, 2020). The LE set out in Snell et al. (2015) and in Copland and Creese (2015) provides scholars with a robust set of theoretical and practical tools with which to undertake their own research. Informing LE are a number of essential theoretical underpinnings. First, social reality is treated as ‘discursively constructed, reproduced, naturalised, and sometimes revised in social interaction, in the course of large-scale historical, political and socio-economic configurations’ (Pérez-Milans, 2020: 84). This, however, does not mean that structure is lost at the expense of the poststructuralist emphasis on agency. Although some have critiqued poststructuralist approaches for their perceived undermining of the role of material reality, power and resultant effects on agency (e.g. Block, 2018), LE goes some way towards addressing such tensions. Pérez-Milans (2020) argues that one of the primary reasons for the embedding of LE so successfully in the broader context of contemporary applied linguistic research is that it allows us to overcome the long-standing binaries in the study of language, culture, and identity in applied linguistics, such as that of ‘micro/ macro’ or ‘local/global’, while at the same time bringing about a new sensitivity that places instability, difference and mobility at the centre of the analysis. (Pérez-Milans, 2020: 84)

Second, following Giddens (1982), Pérez-Milans (2020) argues that structure and agency are mutually constitutive. Individuals may engage agentively and reflexively in practices that then go on to reproduce the conditions for further reproduction of these practices. These practices are ‘socially situated and ordered’ (Pérez-Milans, 2020: 85), and, as with performativity, their continued reproduction makes future production possible. Finally, language serves as a place where social processes take shape, ‘both in the ways that it forms part of the social practices that construct social reality, and in the ways it serves as a terrain for working out struggles that are fundamentally about other things’ (Heller, 2011: 49). In LE, or any ethnographically informed research, language is one aspect of a broader matrix of social activities, all inseparable from each other, and all involved in meaning-making. Despite the growing body of LE research in European contexts, this book is also indebted to North American ethnographies. The community of practice (CofP) model employed in sociolinguistic ethnographies (e.g. Bucholtz, 1999; Eckert, 2000; Mendoza-Denton, 2008) allows the ethnographer to make sense of the practices they witness in an environment where they also seek an understanding of their own place. Although now long-established in sociolinguistics, the model as adopted by language,

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gender and sexuality researchers has allowed for the theorisation of identity as ongoing practice, rather than a fixed social category (e.g. Bucholtz, 1999). This research is also influenced by critical SLA research that foregrounds the role of power structures, identity construction and language ideologies in language learning contexts (e.g. Block, 2007; Norton, 2000; Norton Peirce, 1995). The work of De Costa (2011, 2016) employs these key concepts in his critical ethnography of designer immigrants learning English in Singapore, where he emphasises the role of the external pressures that mediate the language learning process. For De Costa (2016: 24), quoting De Fina (2006: 353–354), identity and ideology are interlinked: ‘identities that people display, perform, contest, or discuss in interaction are based on ideologies and beliefs about characteristics of social groups and categories and about the implications of belonging to them’. For scholars of language, gender and sexuality, ethnography has proven popular due to the field’s pivot towards ‘local, qualitative explorations of gender’ (Swann & Maybin, 2008: 23) since the 1990s. As it draws on both linguistics and ethnography, LE researchers pay particular attention to the day-to-day practices of individuals and communities, their routines and activities, language patterns and language choices, and the social structures that mediate them. LE, however, treats language and other practices as interdependent and mutually shaping: the contexts for communication should be investigated rather than assumed. Meaning takes place within specific social relations, interactional histories and institutional regimes, produced and constructed by agents with expectations and repertoires that have to be grasped ethnographically. (Rampton et al., 2015: 18)

In this way, LE defines ‘itself in the new intellectual climate of poststructuralism and late modernity’ (Creese, 2008: 229), marrying established methods of data collection with uniquely postmodern epistemologies. Fieldwork Entering the field

The main objectives of this book are, firstly, to examine some of the day-to-day practices of students in their school environment in order to understand the role played by the institution in the reproduction of such practices, and more specifically, of a binary understanding of gender. Second, this study also aims to explore discourses of language learning through an analysis of students’ reported experiences and language ideologies as they exist within wider discourses of language learning both nationally and internationally. Given the dearth of research into the experiences of second-level foreign language learners in the Irish context,

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data collection for this project was driven by a desire to initiate a discussion of language learning discourses and the social and institutional conditions in which they emerge. The adoption of a linguistic ethnographic approach facilitates the analysis of ‘situated meaning-making practices’ in the field, ‘which are taken as an entry point to exploring wider institutional, sociological and ideological processes’ (Pérez-Milans, 2020: 94). Ethnography can be difficult to define, and what it means to conduct an ethnography will vary from one researcher to the next. Rampton (2006: 3) describes LE as ‘an umbrella term, wide ranging in its empirical scope’; Tusting and Maybin (2007: 578) argue that ethnography is a ‘cluster of research’; while Copland and Creese (2015: 10) note that there is ‘as much to disagree about as there is to agree about among linguistic ethnographers’. One thing that contemporary linguistic ethnographers tend to agree on, however, is the necessity for ethnographers to look ‘in our own backyard to understand shifting cultural meanings, practices and variations’ (Rampton, 2007: 598), or to study ‘ourselves’, rather than the ‘other’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 13). Shifting the focus from the other to oneself requires the researcher to look at environments familiar to them. The fieldwork described in this book took place throughout 2012 in SMSS, located in Loughmór (all people and place names are pseudonyms). Loughmór is a west of Ireland village in County Galway, the second largest county in Ireland, along Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The county of Galway and the province of Connaught in which it is located are predominantly rural, with towns and villages of varying sizes, rather than cities and suburbs, making up the majority of the region’s population clusters. County Galway is home to the country’s largest Gaeltacht area by size, which is also the largest Gaeltacht area by population (the other Gaeltacht areas are located in Mayo, Donegal, Meath, Cork, Kerry and Waterford). The population of County Galway is 258,058, and the population of the Galway Gaeltacht stands at 50,570, according to the 2016 census (the total population of the Republic of Ireland is just over 5 million [Central Statistics Office, 2021]). The population of the Galway Gaeltacht accounts for around 50% of the total Gaeltacht population of the country (Údarás na Gaeltachta, n.d.). Galway city and county, which includes the famous Connemara region, are recognised for their cultural vibrancy, owing largely to their Irish-speaking population, the multiple arts and community festivals occurring throughout the year, as well as their higher education colleges and universities. The National University of Ireland, Galway, formerly University College Galway and Queens College Galway, was established in 1849. Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, which opened in 1972 as a regional technical college, has several campuses in Galway and in 2022 is set to merge with two north-western institutes of technology, in Sligo and Letterkenny, to become Atlantic Technological University.

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Ireland is a traditionally Catholic country, but although a majority of the Irish population continue to identify as Catholic (Central Statistics Office, 2017), Catholic identity is often based around traditions and rituals such as the baptisms, communions, weddings and funerals that punctuate the lifespan. Only 27% of the population are practicing Catholics who attend Mass weekly (O’Toole, 2022). The influence of the Catholic Church in Ireland has diminished considerably in Irish civic and social life in recent decades, exacerbated by numerous revelations of sexual and physical abuse that have emerged since the 1990s. Divorce was legalised following a referendum in 1995, and the eighth amendment, a constitutional amendment that accorded the foetus a legal status equivalent to that of its mother, effectively banning abortion in all circumstances apart from where the life of the mother was interpreted to be at serious risk, was repealed in 2018. In 2015, the government passed the Gender Recognition Act, allowing people to apply to legally change their gender. Also in 2015, the people of Ireland voted for marriage equality by constitutional referendum. Despite these changes in Irish society, however, many structural barriers to full gender equality endure. A gendered division of labour remains constitutionally enshrined in Article 41.2, which states that: In particular, the State recognises that by her life within the home, woman gives to the State a support without which the common good cannot be achieved. 2. The State shall, therefore, endeavour to ensure that mothers shall not be obliged by economic necessity to engage in labour to the neglect of their duties in the home. (Irish Statute Book, n.d.)

In 2021, however, a Citizens’ Assembly recommended the removal and replacement of this article with one that acknowledged all family types, as well as proposing that all carers receive a pay structure, training and benefits (McGreevey, 2021). Data collection

SMSS was approached for fieldwork as it fulfilled a number of criteria for this research. First, it offered the two most commonly studied foreign languages of the time, French and German. Second, it is a co-educational school in a country where single-sex schools are commonplace. About a quarter of all primary schools and about a third of all second-level schools are single-sex, the highest proportion in Europe (Doris et  al., 2013; Smyth, 2010). Many of the ‘top performing’ schools at the national level are single-sex, and beliefs persist as to their superiority and that students (particularly girls) perform better in single-sex environments. However, empirical evidence to support this notion is lacking (Smyth, 2010), notwithstanding the fact that single-sex education perpetuates an essential difference view of gender that has wide-reaching implications.

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With approximately 350 students enrolled at the time of field research, the relatively small size of SMSS allowed for ease of integration. The most significant factor in determining access to SMSS, however, was the privilege of insiderness. Familiar with the wider Loughmór area, I was already acquainted with some of the teaching staff, including the school principal who was my first point of contact for this project. The identification of key ‘gatekeepers’ (Holliday, 2007), or those who can provide access to a research site, often proves difficult (e.g. De Costa, 2016), but was less relevant in this case. A meeting was held with the school principal and vice-principal in late 2011 in order to discuss the particulars of the research project, and access to the school was granted in exchange for yard supervision at break times, a kind of mutually beneficial arrangement that is common in ethnographic approaches (Dörnyei, 2007) (upon access to the school early in 2012, I had the opportunity to discuss access to classrooms with individual language teachers). As is obligatory when working with minors in Ireland, I was vetted and approved by an Garda Síochána (Ireland’s national police and security service), and the project was approved by my institution’s research ethics committee. I endeavoured to ensure that my presence in the school, despite being noticeable in a school of its size, would not significantly alter the school dynamic or impinge upon student and staff routines, and the potential impacts of my presence in the school and interactions with the students were carefully considered. Ethnographic and ethnographic-inspired research designs tend to be flexible, and are usually not fixed at the onset of fieldwork. Theoretical frameworks are not usually predetermined, and are instead generated as the data collection and analytic processes develop (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007). Data collection and analysis are not entirely distinct from each other in ethnography, and ‘are often circular and frequently overlap’ (Dörnyei, 2007: 124). This lack of standardisation in the approach to data collection yields rich and complex data that ‘is often merely a reflection of the complex real-life situations that the data concerns’ (Dörnyei, 2007: 125). The challenges faced by the researcher in integrating into the site and collecting data simply reflect real-world challenges. As Blommaert and Dong (2010: 10) put it: ‘the whole process of gathering and moulding knowledge is part of that knowledge; knowledge construction is knowledge; the process is the product’. Copland and Creese (2015: 29) similarly argue that ‘[r]esearchers working from a linguistic ethnographic perspective have a range of research interests and investigate these interests in different and various ways’, meaning that there is no one prescribed set of data collection methods and tools. Indeed, adopting an ethnographic approach often means that the researcher is working within a particular set of constraints inherent to the research site. The principal period of data collection occurred between January and May 2012, with a brief resumption of sporadic visits later that year

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for further interviews. I spent between two and four days a week at SMSS, depending on the observation and interview schedule of a given week. A mixed-method approach was used, ensuring, as De Costa (2016: 41) argues, ‘greater fidelity to the world one is researching as different methods uncover different sorts of information’. Data was categorised into three distinct types: participant observation, classroom observation and semi-structured interviews. Data collection methods were not piloted; instead, they developed and were adapted as the project progressed. Various external factors constrained the time spent in the school and community, a fact which is not uncommon in ethnographic approaches, however (Shaw et al., 2015). These constraints impacted the type and quantity of data collected. Participant observation

In their book Linguistic Ethnography: Collecting, Analysing and Presenting Data, Copland and Creese (2015) point out that: [i]n ethnography there is only one kind of observation which can be broadly described as open ethnographic observation. It is open in the sense that a blank page and pen are the tools of the ethnographer, who writes down what he or she sees, hears, smells, feels and senses in the field. This differs from other kinds of more structured or ‘closed’ observations which use observation schedules sometimes organised by time or activity type. (Copland & Creese, 2015: 37–38)

Open observation is, therefore, integral to ethnographic research, and understanding the practices of a group or community means spending considerable amounts of time ‘lurking and soaking’ (Werner & Schoepfle, 1989). Although all ethnography involves open observation of some kind, ‘not all ethnographers participate in the field in the same way’. The nature of ethnography ensures that ‘different levels of participation’ are negotiated during the process. Alongside opportunities to record insights, observation requires movement between the various settings in the research site, thus allowing for the development of ‘informal interviews between researcher and participant while on the move’, while also being used ‘to build rapport and develop trust in the field’. As a result, observations ‘usually precede audio, video or interview recordings’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 38). Yet, as pointed out by Copland and Creese (2015: 38), who follow Blommaert (2007), observations mostly ‘record the lived stuff’. Observations are legitimate data in their own right, data which reflect ‘social complexity’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 38), as well as being artefacts of project development and researcher identity. Indeed, observational field notes reveal different things depending on who is recording them

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(Copland & Creese, 2015: 43). This does not mean that observations and their resultant field notes are without structure, however: ‘[i]n fact ethnographic observation requires detailed planning and negotiation and a keen understanding of how information can be marshalled’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 40). Ethnography and ethnographic approaches are defined by a complexity that is compounded by the shifting demands of becoming a member of an already established community. Observations for this project were not the primary source of data; instead, interviews yielded the most data in response to the overarching research questions (see also De Costa, 2016). However, open observations were integral to the interpretation and analysis of interview data. At the outset, I assumed the role of participant as observer, where my role as a researcher was made known to students and staff alike. I initially undertook to observe as much as possible during my time in the school, getting to know the routines and rhythms of school life through my interactions with students and staff outside of the classroom. Attending a German class twice a week was my initial ‘way into’ the school day (detailed below), and it was in this way that I became acquainted with a number of students, including the first interview participants. The routine of attending a class also brought with it opportunities to get to know teachers and have coffee with them during their free periods or chat with them over the lunch break in the staff room or in the yard. Field notes were recorded throughout the day on each day I attended SMSS, and reflected upon a short time later, usually that evening, with additional recollections and feelings about the various experiences sometimes added. Over time, the more indiscriminate observations recorded early in my time in SMSS narrowed to include ‘specific targets’ (Blommaert & Dong, 2010: 29) which were people or particular settings that provided a focus that was required to move the project forward. Field notes were usually recorded directly after, rather than during, a period of observation so as to minimise the observer’s effect. As the research progressed and as the focus narrowed from a ‘wide angled view’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 40), the field notes would reveal only the salient ‘rich points’ (Agar, 2008: 31) or less ‘readily understandable’ phenomena (Blommaert & Dong, 2010: 41). As negotiated with the school principal and vice-principal, I undertook yard supervision in exchange for access to the school. Until the fifth week of field research, I supervised indoor and outdoor areas at break times, including the 15 minute morning break and the lunch break. After this period, in consultation with the principal, I ceased my supervisory duties in the mornings as it sometimes necessitated my involvement in student disciplinary matters which I believed would compromise students’ willingness to participate in the study. I continued to spend time at school during break times, however, but not in a supervisory role. Below

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is an edited field note, describing the events of one lunch break during the second week of fieldwork: A lot of [boys] come down to the pitch and run in but the teachers try to get them out. Looking on, it looks like a bit of a riot, with lots of boys trying to get back on the pitch (they were all kicked off eventually) and others [are] standing, gripping, and shaking the fence (…) in protest. I can’t help feeling (…) amused and a little scared. (…) There are at least 40 of them, and I am wondering why they want [access to] the (…) pitch so much (…). And then it dawned on me – it’s because there are girls on the pitch. If there were other boys on the pitch, it would not be interesting to them. (…) I heard one first year say something like ‘get back in the kitchen’ to one of his (…) friends, probably about the girls. The pupils involved in this are all very young, Junior Cycle I believe.

The way in which space, particularly outdoor space, was used in SMSS, was an immediately salient point. The event described above proved to be a ‘rich point’ that guided further observations, both classroom and yard observations, and the direction the research was to take. Classroom observation

There are many types of interactional data. In educational ethnographies, classroom observation is one such type (interviews tend to be another). Classroom observation is extremely attractive to the researcher as the classroom is a somewhat closed environment around which the day-today routines of school life are structured. Each class also follows, according to De Costa (2016: 41), following van Lier (1988), its own ‘routines and scripts that occur in a controlled context’. However, interactional data need not be central to ethnography. Copland and Creese (2015) argue that: it is in combining the approaches that robust and nuanced findings emerge; each data set works with and for the other data sets so that it is difficult to imagine how findings could be arrived at without having gone through this process (…) Second, not all involved in linguistic ethnography collect interactional data (…) Finally, we suspect that this focus on interactional data as core comes from researchers’ antecedents. Many coming from a background in applied linguistics research, where talk is a central concern, will already be comfortable with analysing interactional data. For them, ethnographic approaches are ‘useful for contextualizing the event but not worthy of the same level of attention as the core, recorded data (Lefstein and Israel, 2015)’. (Copland & Creese, 2015: 52)

Although obtaining and recording interactional data is not essential in ethnographic work, even in (applied) linguistics, each researcher must determine for themselves the scope of the research project and the best

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way to respond to the project’s objectives. Although the current project may be classified as an educational, applied LE, interactional classroom data was not necessary to respond to the project’s research questions. Nonetheless, classroom observation was conducted in order to supplement the more ‘open’ ethnographic observation described above. It allowed for a more nuanced interpretation of the open observation data and the interview data described below. Classroom participation on my part was minimal so as to avoid disrupting or significantly altering the existing classroom dynamic. However, I occasionally assisted the teachers or contributed to class discussions at the request of the teacher (see Table 4.1 for an overview of classes observed).​ Each class in SMSS was of 40 minutes duration, and some classes were ‘double classes’ of 80 minutes. I observed three language groups, access to which was negotiated with language teachers after I began fieldwork in the school. My identity as a researcher was made immediately explicit to students. A limitation of the classroom observation conducted was that it did not involve video or audio recordings, since it was believed at the time that such recordings would compromise trust-building, particularly since negotiating access to the classrooms alone sometimes took weeks to arrange. The absence of video or audio recordings rules out the analysis of interactional data in the classroom. However, since classroom interaction was not an explicit focus of the project, this did not pose a problem. In order to minimise disruption, detailed notes were not recorded during class time. Only a sketch of the seating plan and a few key points were noted. Notes describing the lesson, notable interactions and other salient points were usually recorded after class. As with open observation, classroom observation was at first indiscriminate, but subsequently narrowed considerably to focus on the rich points, as well as a number of ‘focal students’ (De Costa, 2016) who agreed to be interviewed.

Table 4.1  Classroom observation Group

Frequency/week

Number of weeks

Second-year German

2

7

Third-year French

1

5

Fifth-year French

1

5

Semi-structured interviews

Formal interviews are usually divided into open, semi-structured and structured, and a semi-structured approach tends to be preferred in LE

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(Copland & Creese, 2015: 30). Semi-structured interviews have been less common in more traditional ethnographic research, whereas in LE ‘some of the contexts in which researchers work make conducting informal interviews difficult (for example, when researching children in classrooms it can be awkward to sidle up to a child after class to ask him/her about an incident that has just occurred)’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 30). Copland and Creese (2015) also point out that this may be because much linguistic ethnographic research adopts ‘an ethnographic perspective’ (Green & Bloome, 1997: 6) rather than taking a traditional approach, which means that limited time is spent in the field or in a range of contexts in the field. Answers to research questions that might have traditionally emerged through observation may not do so in this kind of research, making formal interviews valuable data sources (…) The formal interview, though not in all cases ideal (see Agar, 2008) enables time-pressed academics to attend to the perspectives of their participants as well as providing an efficient medium for getting answers to questions. (Copland & Creese, 2015: 30)

Semi-structured interviews allow for both preparation as well as flexibility around interviews that is attractive to the linguistic ethnographer. Researcher and participant(s) are free to discuss whatever topic arises throughout the course of the interview, while generally following a set of interview topics or modules prepared by the researcher (Copland & Creese, 2015; Dörnyei, 2007). ‘Probe questions’ may be created to allow for the researcher to move off-topic, to elicit further information about a subject or to allow the researcher to understand the experience of the participant (Copland & Creese, 2015: 30). Although such a line of questioning has been critiqued for ‘leading’ the participant, it has been argued that all questions are leading to some degree (Agar, 2008), and that it may even be necessary to lead in order to address the research questions. Ideally, there is scope for the interviewee to disagree with the interviewer (Copland & Creese, 2015), as is the case in this research (see Chapter 5). Interviews can be conducted with single participants alone, but pair and group interviews are increasingly common, ‘particularly when working with vulnerable groups such as children’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 30).​ As seen in Table 4.2, focal students were interviewed on a one-to-one basis, in pairs and in one instance in a group of three: Caitlin and Sophie brought their friend Andrea to their second interview due to Andrea’s interest in language learning. One language teacher also agreed to be interviewed. Second interviews with participants were scheduled where possible, depending on student willingness and availability. Interviews took place in various locations around the school, depending on the availability of rooms sufficiently quiet in order to record the interviews without background noise and without attracting the attention of other

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Table 4.2  Interview participants Name

Year group (if applicable) and language

Number of interviews conducted

Ciara and Sarah

Second-year German

2

Marie and Jessica

Second-year German

1

James

Second-year German

1

Jack and Seán

Third-year French

1

Sadhbh

Third-year French

1

Caitlin and Sophie

Fifth-year French

1

Caitlin, Sophie and Andrea

Fifth-year French

1

Mr Cawley

German teacher

1

students. Many interviews took place in a small, otherwise unused office, while others took place in a multipurpose assembly room. Interviews followed a set of pre-prepared modules, and all interviews were audio-recorded using a small, relatively unobtrusive recording device. Modules served primarily as a guide to elicit responses addressing the research aims. I deliberately excluded terms such as ‘identity’ or ‘gender’ from my questioning in order to avoid prompting or rendering the interviews overly formal or academic, an approach also favoured by De Costa (2016). Instead, I posed questions which aimed to elicit metalanguage or implicit metapragmatic discourse (Woolard, 1998), as well as details about the students’ day-to-day lives and schooling. Probe questions were also used to follow up on particular topics that arose or that were brought up by the participant. Indeed, if a discursive approach to interviews is taken, as in this research (see below), ‘leading questions will draw the analytic eye of the researcher as a matter of course’ (Copland & Creese, 2015: 33). The duration of interviews varied according to the time available to the student(s), and typically lasted between 20 and 40 minutes. Single participant interviews were shorter at around 15 minutes duration. Shorter interviews typically took place during the lunch break and longer interviews usually occurred during class time from which the students were excused. Notes were recorded either immediately following the interviews, or later the same day. All data collection processes face unavoidable challenges, and for the ethnographer, challenges are part and parcel of the process. The ‘messiness’ associated with ethnographic research is synonymous with the messiness of everyday life and the challenges associated with integrating into a highly controlled environment such as a school. Challenges encountered during this project were typical of ethnographic approaches, and related mainly to obtaining access to classrooms, the initial indifference of many students towards participating in interviews and unforeseen events such as student or teacher absences on days when interviews

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were scheduled. Of note is the fact that more girls than boys volunteered to be interviewed. Given that they were informed that the research project centred on language learning, this may say something about the perception of language learning itself, and who ‘ought to’ be involved in it and its associated activities. Also of significance were time constraints, since students did not have any free periods during the day in which to participate in interviews, and teachers’ non-teaching periods were usually devoted to preparing classes or correcting assignments. When interviews did take place, most participants conversed quite freely. Pair and group interviews proved fruitful, facilitating prolonged discussions of various topics, and presented a significantly more lively dynamic than single participant interviews. During single participant interviews, students were quite hesitant to engage in any prolonged discussion and topics would not deviate greatly from the pre-prepared modules, despite my efforts to keep the interview conversation-like. The challenges described above presented themselves at the time as major setbacks, but Blommaert and Dong’s (2010: 25) reminder that ‘chaos is the normal state of things’ during ethnographic research provided reassurance. In spite of these challenges, each interview yields a particular result, and, as a discourse between interviewer and interviewee, each interview reveals something about each party and the context in which the interview takes place (Blommaert & Dong, 2010). The interviewer-driven ‘thin’ interviews are now considered as integral to the analysis reported in this book as more dynamic ones, offering more data richness than I could have predicted at the time. Analysing the Data Transcription

Transcription in this research is based upon the assumption, following Lapadat (2000), that it is an inherently political practice, or an ‘interpretive retelling’ of the data (Dörnyei, 2007: 247). It is representative of researcher ideology, and this needs to be acknowledged through researcher reflexivity. The researcher or ‘researcher as author’ is always implicated: ‘[a]ll transcripts take sides, enabling certain interpretations, advancing particular interests, favouring specific speakers’ (Bucholtz, 2000: 1440). As Bucholtz (2000) notes, the transcriber makes certain interpretive and representational choices, affecting the reading and interpretation of the data. Interpretive choices relate to the politicised interpretation of an interview, such as the decision to render certain utterances ‘unintelligible’. Representational choices, consequences of interpretive choices, involve the rendering of the data as written text. The researcher is implicated as author in the choice process that comes with textual representation, as they produce ‘new texts that bear the mark of (…) authorship’ (Bucholtz, 2000: 1453). The researcher must therefore

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interrogate what their interpretive and representational choices say about their ideologies, bias and the implications for data analysis, rather than attempt to adhere to a static set of conventions (Bucholtz, 2007), all the while ensuring readability and accuracy (Roberts, 1997). No one set of transcription conventions is universally recommended, nor is there an ‘objective’ manner in which to transcribe (Dörnyei, 2007). The researcher should instead, according to Bucholtz (2000: 1461), strive for responsibility and vigilance rather than ‘neutral’ transcription. They may also wish to recreate the ‘feel’ of the interview using transcription techniques unique to the interview (Dörnyei, 2007: 247), as well as drawing upon other authors working within the field. To this end, the transcription conventions in this study are simplified versions of those employed in applied linguistics and discourse studies, as well as idiosyncratic ones. Analysis Themes and coding

In LE, analysis occurs the moment one chooses to record and interpret certain events over others. Later data analysis involves the repeated reading of field notes and listening to interviews, a process that facilitates the identification of themes and avenues for further analysis (Dörnyei, 2007; Holliday, 2010; Miles & Huberman, 1994; Silverman, 2006). The linguistic ethnographer usually draws on their research questions in order to target specific themes in the data, while also remaining open to those not originally central to the research design: For most researchers, the first stage of analysis will be listening/viewing over and over again. This might be accompanied by transcribing, but not necessarily. The purpose of this first stage generally is to identify themes. Some researchers have called this ‘unmotivated looking’ (Psathas, 1995) but in fact it is usual to approach the data with some ideas about what you are interested in, drawing on your research questions. Nonetheless, it is very important at this stage to be open to the data and allow them to speak to you. (Copland & Creese, 2015: 48)

Researchers can also focus on what they consider to be rich points, as these can provide a way into the data. During a period of open observation in the school yard, rich points quickly came to involve the use of space by students, the way in which boys and girls were spatially segregated, and the way boys and girls interacted within these spaces. Many interviews also yielded supplementary observations relating to the interaction of students outside the interview room with those within it. Some interviews were conducted in a room adjacent to the second-year boys’ locker area, and the way in which some of these students inserted themselves into the interaction opened up further opportunities for the

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analysis of gender dynamics in the school and the way in which boys and girls interacted within its open spaces. Two separate interviews, one with Marie and Jessica and one with Ciara and Sarah, yielded a discussion of such dynamics and the perceived differences between the second-year boys and second-year girls at school. Following repeated listening to interviews and the reading of transcripts and handwritten field notes, which were eventually typed up, the data underwent the following analytical processes, although often in the circular, non-linear manner typical of ethnography: (a) pattern coding; (b) determining themes; and (c) constructing an argument (Holliday, 2010). According to Holliday (2010: 99), such ‘gradual focusing’ is central to the process of both data collection and data analysis in qualitative research, and the reading and re-reading of field notes allowed for the gradual focusing from the broader portrait of SMSS to aspects of the data which proved especially relevant to the research at hand. As is common when dealing with small data sets, coding was completed manually (Copland & Creese, 2015: 35), using one code per theme in Word comment boxes. Discourse analysis

To reiterate the aims and objectives of this book, the first is to examine the role of the institution in perpetuating a binary understanding of gender and the way in which students construct their identities within the constraints of dominant discourses. The relationship between gender identity construction and discourses of language learning links the first aim to the second: to investigate discourses of language learning through an analysis of student talk. Discourse in this book refers to the social and cultural knowledge produced by language and other forms of representation. A distinction between language and discourse is provided by Baxter (2020), following Foucault (1984), who argues that language as a system does not represent human experience in a transparent and neutral way but always exists within historically specific discourses. These discourses are often competing, offering alternative versions of reality and serving different and conflicting power interests (…) Thus, a range of institutional discourses provide the network by which dominant forms of social knowledge are produced, reinforced, contested or resisted (…) discourses are responsible for the ways in which individual identities are recognised, constructed, regulated. (Baxter, 2020: 37)

In her chapter on poststructuralist approaches to language and identity, Baxter (2020) categorises the spectrum of discourse analysis undertaken by linguists from radical (e.g. performativity) to more moderate (e.g. positioning). This research takes a feminist poststructuralist approach

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that lies somewhere in the middle, which, as she explains, ‘recognises identity categories such as “woman” to be permeable [but] does not go along with the view that individuals are just the passive, unstable, fragmented effects of competing discourses’ (Baxter, 2020: 43). The subject is influenced by available discourses, yet is capable of resisting and negotiating the myriad of competing discourses around it. Concerning the relationship between language and identity, this research follows Norton (2006) in her classification of assumptions made by contemporary identity-driven research. These assumptions include: (a) that identity is ‘dynamic and constantly changing across time and place. Indeed, a recurring theme throughout much research on identity and language learning is that of “transition”’; (b) that identity is ‘complex, contradictory and multifaceted’; (c) that it ‘constructs and is constructed by language’; (d) that identity must be understood with regard to social processes and relations of power that can be ‘either coercive or collaborative’; and (e) that researchers strive to link identity theory with classroom practices (Norton, 2006: 22). In order to locate identity in discourse, Baxter (2020) identifies three principal discourse analytic approaches in current applied linguistics research: ethnomethodological, critical (CDA) and poststructuralist discourse analysis (PDA). CDA assumes that language and discourse interact dialectically with the material, whereas PDA is largely ‘antimaterialist’ (Baxter, 2020); real-world conditions for PDA scholars are assumed to be a product of discourse. Critical ethnographic sociolinguistics uses ethnography ‘to discover how language works as situated social practice’ (Heller, 2011: 10), and takes a more materialist approach to identity than PDA. Heller (2011) further links a materialist critical sociolinguistic approach to political economy: [t]he argument for political economy is the importance of understanding the material basis for social organisation, and how material conditions constrain how we make sense of things. Put in other terms, it is an approach that allows for the discovery of how social action is tied to social structuration. (Heller, 2011: 10)

Block (2018: 4) has also advocated for a ‘synthesis of the material and the symbolic’, and cautions against conflating representations of reality with material reality. However, scholars such as Norton have, according to Baxter (2020), bridged the critical–poststructuralist divide. At their core, however, both critical and poststructuralist perspectives advance the idea that ‘power relations are inscribed within social or institutional discourses, which permeate every linguistic interaction’ (Baxter, 2020: 46). Although influenced by poststructuralist approaches to identity and gender (e.g. Butler, 1990), this research is largely indebted to critical sociolinguistic research (e.g. Heller, 2011) and critical SLA (e.g. De Costa, 2011, 2016;

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Norton, 2013) in its approach to language and identity as it centralises the role of materiality and political economy in the development of identity as it relates to language learning. In the Community St Murtagh’s Secondary School

There are three second-level school types in Ireland: voluntary, vocational and comprehensive and community schools. The voluntary sector is the largest. Each such school is typically managed by a religious order, receiving a per capita grant from the Department of Education and Skills. Voluntary schools are, however, increasingly governed by lay school trusts (Darmody & Smyth, 2013). SMSS is a co-educational, non-fee-paying, voluntary sector school, privately owned and managed by a Catholic order and overseen by a Catholic trust. Located in the west of Ireland village of Loughmór, there were approximately 350 students enrolled at the time of fieldwork. It is located about 30 minutes from the nearest urban area and is a similar distance from the nearest Gaeltacht, or predominantly Irish-speaking area. The school catchment area includes the village and its environs, and the neighbouring rural parishes and townlands. The population of Loughmór village stands at approximately 1300 residents, with the wider local administrative area comprising over 2500 residents. The village is quite ethnically homogeneous, with few non-European residents. Of those not born in the Republic of Ireland, the most commonly reported birthplaces of residents of Loughmór are the United Kingdom, Poland and Lithuania. Loughmór village and its neighbouring parishes are predominantly L1 English speaking, and most of the day-to-day activity in the village is conducted through English. County Galway was, however, one of the more recent regions of Ireland to shift from Irish monolingualism to Irish–English bilingualism (Hindley, 1990), and, outside of Gaeltachtaí, to English monolingualism, or at least low rates of functional bilingualism. The most commonly spoken ‘foreign’ languages by residents of the county are Polish, French and Lithuanian (Central Statistics Office Open Data Site, n.d.). As noted in Chapter 1, French is the most commonly spoken language by Irish-born residents of Ireland (Central Statistics Office, 2017a). The Community of practice

The CofP is usefully applied to highly controlled environments where roles are predefined and practices are routinised. It is defined by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (1992: 464) as ‘an aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in an endeavor’, which is, in the case of schools, the education of young people. The education provided

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depends on the economic demands of any given time, although schools are also spaces that are heavily involved in the reproduction of other social norms and practices. Adherence or non-adherence to norms, shared practices or ‘ways of doing things’ (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1999: 185) that have developed over time in the community, can be indicative of orientation to the community itself. Within the CofP there may also be many more micro communities. Members may be oriented away from the larger community, all the while upholding the norms of a micro community. ‘Membership’ here is meant in the broadest sense possible, reflecting a complete, partial or lack of willingness to adhere to community norms, for whatever reason, at any given moment in time or in any context (Bucholtz, 1999). Lave and Wenger (1991) distinguish between ‘peripheral participation’ and ‘full participation’ in a CofP. Peripheral participation is not a negative term, but is intrinsically bound up with the practice at hand, and the reproduction of that practice: [full participation] places the emphasis on what partial participation is not, or not yet. In our usage, peripherality is also a positive term, whose most salient conceptual antonyms are unrelatedness or irrelevance to ongoing activity. The partial participation of newcomers is by no means ‘disconnected’ from the practice of interest. (Lave & Wenger, 1991: 37, insertion added)

Full participation is synonymous here with core membership and peripheral participation with peripheral membership, yet these conceptualisations of membership and participation are by no means static; people can inhabit degrees of each or both at the same time. They can move from core to peripheral and back again, depending on the context. Newcomers such as myself tend to be categorised as peripheral to ongoing activity, yet, as in Bucholtz (1999) and Holmes and Meyerhoff (1999), non-newcomers can also be peripheral members. Membership of a CofP ‘lies in how successfully an individual has acquired the shared repertoire, or assimilated the goal(s) of the joint enterprise, or established patterns of engagement with other members’ (Holmes & Meyerhoff, 1999: 176). At the time of fieldwork, the day-to-day running of SMSS was overseen by a principal, vice-principal and year heads who are teachers that deal with the administration of individual year groups. There were six year groups; the fourth year is known in Ireland as ‘transition year’, a programme (compulsory in SMSS, although not a requirement at the national level) in which students are permitted to try out various subjects and engage in a greater proportion of non-academic activities during school time than at any other point in their schooling. Each year group was divided into two or three further groups for classes, and some subjects with larger student numbers such as the compulsory subjects maths, English and Irish, along with French, were streamed according to ability

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level. The language of instruction of SMSS is English, and the ethnic and cultural makeup of the school reflects that of the wider community. Some students encountered as part of this research had spent part of their childhoods in countries such as the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Lithuania and Germany, or were of these linguistic and cultural heritages. The teachers and the administrative staff are considered here to be full participants of the CofP since they uphold the main aims of the institution, enforce the rules and possess authority over the students, although this does not mean that they cannot or do not critique the institution. They are also gatekeepers of the knowledge and understandings that are required for students to progress through the system and to engage with social and educational systems and structures as adults. Students’ membership of the CofP is achieved through legitimate peripheral participation, whereby their continued engagement in core practices allows them to participate more fully. Some students may become core members of the school CofP; however, this requires compliance with the aims of the institution, regular attendance, general adherence to the school rules and completing the required activities and assignments in-class and at home. As time goes on, students learn the practices and skills required in order to progress towards full membership, which in turn enables them to engage with education systems, employers and bureaucratic and social structures beyond school. Ethnographic reflexivity

Norton and Early (2011: 416) have noted that the role of the researcher and researcher identity have been vastly underrepresented in applied linguistics scholarship, acknowledging that the researcher is an ‘important stakeholder with considerable power, influence, and investment in the field’. Because of this, we have a responsibility as researchers to ‘explain ourselves, who we are and where we come from’ (MendozaDenton, 2008: 43). Ethnography can thus be viewed by scholars as a ‘joint production’ (Berger, 2001: 504) between researchers and participants. The circumstances that led to conducting this research were contingent on a number of factors, including my personal circumstances, privileges and the support of others. I am now a language educator, although I was not at the time of field research, and would consider myself multilingual and a feminist. The theoretical frameworks employed here are therefore those that fit most comfortably with my worldview, yet without these elements, this research would not have been conducted at all, or would have taken a very different shape. In their study of ‘small stories’ in their interactions with research participants in Uganda, Norton and Early (2011) analyse their own transcripts to identify different categories of researcher identity in the field.

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These include: researcher as international guest; researcher as collaborative team member; researcher as teacher; and researcher as teacher educator. Similarly, following Sangari and Candlin (2003), De Costa (2016) locates himself as researcher as insider/outsider, researcher as resource, researcher as befriender, and researcher as expert/consultant, moving through these categories according to the situation. Following De Costa, I have categorised my identity positioning in SMSS as (a) researcher as insider/outsider; (b) researcher as befriender; and a further identity category (c) researcher as teacher/non-teacher, depending on the given interaction. As a native ethnographer, I enjoyed an unusual status in SMSS. I am intimately familiar with the routines and rhythms of rural Irish and west of Ireland life. However, this threw my outsiderness into relief. On her experiences of native ethnography in India, Chawla eloquently summarises the process of identity negotiation of the native ethnographer, who (re)enters her field ensconced in degrees of outsiderness created by temporal, geographic, demographic, intellectual, or emotional distance from the field (…) these distances occasion identity transformations, thereby making ethnographic sites fecund for the mingling, multiplying, and disappearance of various self-identities: those of the ethnographer as well as her participants. (Chawla, 2006: 2)

I was therefore faced with the difficulty of representing the binaries of self/other (or local person versus external researcher) and home/field throughout my time in SMSS, and the lines between them were significantly blurred in day-to-day life. Yet, aspects of both my insiderness and outsiderness facilitated my integration into the community; insiderness enabled access to SMSS, and outsiderness facilitated my engagement with students from across various age cohorts. This leads to the second identity category. Since I became a quasiclassmate of the students, as well as occasionally helping out at the local youth club, I was able to invoke a status of researcher as befriender. Students immediately identified me as someone other than a typical staff member and would often approach me to talk. Ciara and Sarah were two second years I encountered through observing their German class, and they became the so-called ‘marginal individuals’ (Eckert, 1989: 31) who are crucial for researcher integration and legitimacy, providing a lens through which to interpret school life, sometimes in the absence of other discernible lenses. The third identity category represented in the data was that of researcher as teacher/non-teacher. For some students, I represented both. I was both an authority figure and an adult, first and foremost, and one who supervised lunch breaks; but also a non-teacher. I observed, rather

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than taught classes. Indeed, many could not conceive of a non-staff member or trainee teacher willingly spending time in the school, and a number of students would regularly approach me in order to ‘uncover’ my identity. Unsure of what was meant by the term (post)graduate student, they would sometimes address me or refer to me as the ‘teacher who is not a teacher’. Other students would later tell me that they originally thought I was an art teacher. In order to test my allegiances and whether or not I would intervene, some would frequently ‘misbehave’ in my presence. The mere presence of an outsider in a school context, then, can significantly alter interactions, what gets recorded and the subsequent interpretation of the data. Discourses, Identities and Space Understanding space

Understanding space is crucial to understanding social relations. Geographer Doreen Massey (1994: 4) has argued that ‘the spatial organization of society (…) is integral to the production of the social, and not merely its result. It is fully implicated in both history and politics’. In their introduction to Space, Gender, Knowledge: Feminist Readings, McDowell and Sharp (1997) argue that space matters because spatial relations and layout, the differences between and within places, the nature and form of the built environment, images and representations of this environment and of the ‘natural’ world, ways of writing about it, as well as our bodily place within it, are all part and parcel of the social constitution of the gendered social relations and the structure and meaning of place. The spaces in which social practices occur affect the nature of those practices, who is ‘in place’, who is ‘out of place’, and even who is allowed to be there at all. (…) Physical and social boundaries reinforce each other and spatial relations act to socialise people into the acceptance of gendered power relations. (McDowell & Sharp, 1997: 2–3)

For geographers, space and the way we interact with it forms part of the meaning-making process, rather than pre-empting meaning. It is always in the process of ‘becoming’ and, informed by and informing practices of wider society, is involved in producing social relations through both material and discursive processes (Lefebvre, 1992; Þrastardóttir et  al., 2021). Foucault’s (1982: 777) notion of ‘dividing practices’, the process of separating and segregating in order to socially classify people, informs how we think and talk about others. Space thus constitutes both discursive and physical, or material dimensions (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 12). Physical spaces are not merely vacuums populated by human behaviour and activity, but are part of a ‘dichotomous, dialectical’ relationship between the ‘physical (built) environment’ and ‘a symbolic system

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of signifiers with wide ranging affordances’ that are ‘activated by social actors to position themselves and others in that context’ (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 6). A recent ‘spatial turn’ (Warf & Arias, 2009) in the social sciences and semiotics has led to a rejection of ‘absolutist notions’ of space in favour of a discursive approach. Research now looks towards ‘spatialisation’, or the way space is ‘represented, organized and experienced’ (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 7). In sociolinguistics and discourse analysis, the study of space has become more than simply ‘context’ for language use. For King (2011: 2), language is ‘inherently spatial’, since our identities, communities and relationships are linguistically created and constructed. Relations with others are mediated by space, and linguistic representations of space can involve ‘territorial claims, spatial segregation or encroachment, and the categorization of social actors into ingroup and outgroup members, into Self and Other’ (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 8–9). It is impossible to divest language of its spatialisation, since to disregard the role of space means to disregard the meaning it imbues our day-to-day lives, our understanding of our social relationships, and of ourselves. The ‘moral order’ of a society or community is, as Mills (1993: 150) puts it, ‘reflected in its spatial order’. Space, education and gender

Schools are fertile sites for research on space, since school spaces are involved in a society’s norm-making. They are not separate systems where young people simply come to learn, but ‘an intersection in social space, a knot in a web of practices that stretch into complex systems beginning and ending outside the school’ (Nespor, 1994: xiii). Throughout her sociolinguistic research, Penelope Eckert (1989, 2000, 2017) documents the effects of the institutionalisation of young people which manifest as linguistic and discursive processes. Adolescence, she notes, is ‘an age- and generation-based location in the political economy’ (Eckert, 2017: 529), designed to prepare young people to enter the workforce. It is also ‘constructed around body changes’. It ‘is a “stage” designed to encourage and, by so doing, survey and control, rebellious behavior’ (Aitken, 2001: 77). Schooling, then, becomes almost as much about disciplining bodies as it is about formal education, since a ‘considerable part of the energy of the schooling system has to go into disciplining and confining the bodies of students, so that they cannot interfere with the main purposes of schooling, which are to do with the mind’ (Paechter, 2006: 127–128). Architecture holds power over the discourses and practices that are available to us, as it both reflects social and cultural norms and serves as a medium for their reinforcement (Lång, 2010). School buildings, physical structures and timetabling are used to spatially and temporally organise

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young people who are expected to be in the right place at the right time (Paechter, 2006). What young people ‘ought’ to do is thus mediated by school architecture and how school rules interact with the architecture. School rules reproduce, among other things, ideas about how young people ought to dress and adorn their bodies within particular spaces, hence the existence of school uniforms and rules around piercings, hair colour and so on. In SMSS, students were required to wear a school uniform. Unlike many other secondary schools in Ireland, girls in SMSS were not required to wear a skirt, but assumed gender was marked in other ways, such as differences between the cut and colour of boys’ and girls’ trousers. School architecture is further implicated in the (re)production of heteronormative practices and discourses, creating spaces that establish social differences between young people (Kuhlmann, 2013). Massey (1994: 179) has argued that being allocated and required to occupy separate spaces has long served to control women’s bodies, and as such, the way in which space is used participates in the ‘social control on identity’. She maintains that the spatial organisation of men and women affects our perceptions of their characters and abilities, thus leading to the reproduction of binary gender and heteronormative discourses. Women’s abilities and characteristics are discursively constructed as being more suited to the domestic sphere and to caring or caretaking, whereas men’s abilities and characteristics relate to arenas such as the public sphere and to competitive sports (Þrastardóttir et al., 2021). This is supported by research on gender and language ideologies (e.g. Cameron, 2017), whereby men’s and women’s social roles and abilities are linguistically constructed as gendered, becoming seemingly obvious ‘truths’ (see Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of gender and language ideologies). At school, girls are often expected to be cautious and responsible, and boys more outgoing and physical. Such discourses feed into ideas about how space ought to be or is expected to be used by boys and girls (e.g. Þrastardóttir et al., 2021). Space and gender in SMSS

Although I use the term ‘gender’ throughout this book, ‘sex-segregation’ and ‘mixed-sex’ are commonly used terms to represent the practice of spatially dividing young people in school institutions, and such terms will also be employed here at various intervals. The way in which space was used by students was, as noted, particularly salient during fieldwork. With regard to classroom spaces, some teachers maintained seating plans, but there was little obvious difference between classes with assigned seating and those without, as students without assigned seats tended to sit in the same area of each classroom every day (classrooms observed to have assigned seating reflected where the students sat on the first day of term). Seats in SMSS were arranged mostly in twos, meaning

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that each student usually sat with someone else, except in the case of uneven student numbers. Boys tended to sit with boys, girls tended to sit with girls, and boys and girls often sat in different rows. Boys and girls rarely sat together voluntarily in the classes observed. Many of the school’s non-classroom spaces were sex-segregated, including the locker areas of most year groups. During the morning break, students spent time socialising and organising themselves for subsequent classes in these areas, or moving between these areas and the school yard. At lunchtime, Junior Cycle students were required to remain on school grounds, whereas Senior Cycle students were permitted to leave. Yard observations were mostly based upon younger students and those who remained on the school grounds. First-year girls tended to spend the entirety of the morning break in their locker areas organising themselves for the next period of classes, and many would stand and talk in small groups by the walls and lockers. A few of the girls occupied the central space of the room along with most of the boys, and some of the boys also spent time in the courtyard, depending on the weather. At lunchtime, some older girls chose to remain in the school, walking around the perimeter of the school building, or sitting and talking. Girls of all age groups were seen to walk around or sit talking during the lunch break, whereas most younger boys left the school building during lunch time to socialise or play sports to the rear of the building, as well as walk around the school grounds. Girls sitting and talking and boys occupying the social and sporting spaces has also been noted elsewhere (e.g. Hickey, 2008; Lodge, 2005). Since interviews were often conducted during the lunch period, the noise levels outside the small interview room would rise at this time, often affecting the sound quality of the recording, as well as altering the dynamic and topics discussed during the interview. Some of the secondyear boys, whose lockers were located outside of the room, would frequently look through the window in the door to see who was inside, and would, on occasion, attempt to interact with me and the students being interviewed. At one point, I expressed concern about their activity: JM: Sarah: JM: Ciara: JM: Ciara: Sarah:

So, yeah, okay, I hope those boys aren’t messing, eh. I don’t think they could hear over themselves. No, no. [laughs] They’re very loud alright. Yeah. The difference between us and them [laughs].

In this extract, Sarah indexes social distance from the boys and their behaviour through her use of ‘us’ and ‘them’ (Duszak, 2002), and along with her explicit mention of their ‘difference’, this suppresses any

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similarities between them ‘that might undermine the construction of difference’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 600). The disruption and attention would quite likely have been intimidating to them, especially given the attention that the unusual occurrence of an interview taking place with a relative newcomer to the school was drawing. Sarah’s use of mockery and the employment of a discourse of maturity/immaturity may have been employed in order to reclaim discursive power (Hay, 2000) over the boys in order to feel comfortable continuing with the interview. In similar circumstances, during an interview with second-years Jessica and Marie, the conversation turned to their classmates: a large gathering of boys who were shouting and jostling outside the interview room. Jessica and Marie go on to recount an incident in which the boys once turned the girls’ lockers around to face the wall: Jessica: JM: Marie: JM: Marie: Jessica: Marie: Jessica: JM: Jessica:

They turn the lockers around. (unintelligible) They did it to my one. Really? Yeah, I was gonna use it (unintelligible). It took us like, ten girls to turn it around again. [Laughs] And I’d say it was like only three or four of them that turned it. Jeez, they turned the whole thing, and like...? Yeah.

Turning lockers to face the wall is highly symbolic, since it involves the literal reorientation of the girls’ lockers in their own designated space, and it removes their access to their schoolbooks and other possessions. Cashman (2018: 418) describes the way in which, in narrative studies, ‘[o]rientation/disorientation/reorientation’ is often ‘the story’. Jessica’s description of events articulates a displacement, both physical (of the reorientation of their lockers, possessions) and psychological (of being disoriented in their designated ‘space’). Both the disruption of the interview and Jessica and Marie’s joint memory and depiction of the locker incident serve to reorient their identity positioning in the interview away from the boys outside the room. Although hyperbolic, Jessica’s assertion that it took 10 girls to turn the lockers back around indexes her willingness to index a social distinction between the girls and the boys’ past and present behaviour. Sport and masculinity

A body of school-based research in Australia (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Connell, 1989; Hickey, 2008) and the United Kingdom (e.g. Francis, 2000; Shilling, 1991) has examined boys’ engagement in sporting activities and their talk about sports and the body. For Carr and

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Pauwels’ (2006: 46) adolescent participants in Australia, sport was ‘the defining masculine activity’ and ‘a physically articulated discourse of embodied masculinity’ pervaded boys’ talk. In Ireland, Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) sports such as Gaelic football and hurling, as well as soccer, remain important expressions of masculinity (e.g. Ferguson, 2001; Ging & Free, 2015). This may be particularly true of rural communities, where ‘hegemonic masculinity is embodied, performed and produced in part through participation in sport, and particularly the GAA’ (Donkersloot, 2012: 587). Since most people in Ireland tend to view themselves as being from a particular county, participation in the GAA, especially for one’s county, and particularly for boys and men, is a ‘source of local cultural capital’ (Inglis, 2008: 136–137). The men’s AllIreland GAA finals, which take place annually in August and September, are among the most prestigious and most-watched televised events of the year. Girls’ and women’s teams, although not provided with the financial resources or level of televised coverage afforded to boys and men’s teams, are increasingly common, receiving a greater level of public support and corporate sponsorship than in previous decades. Nonetheless, the level of financial and media support is not yet close to matching that which is accorded to male teams. SMSS, Loughmór village and indeed most schools, towns and villages across Ireland possess a boys’ or men’s GAA team (or several) that enjoys wide local support, and such teams span a range of age cohorts and skill levels. At the time of fieldwork, SMSS possessed several boys’ GAA teams and a number of girls teams (an improvement on previous years when there were no girls’ GAA teams), in addition to girls’ and boys’ basketball teams. The school also possessed a number of indoor and outdoor sports facilities which were consistently used by students during their breaks from class. The outdoor facilities included three adjacent basketball courts, which had become the de facto school yard, and where soccer was usually played but where basketball was only occasionally played. The school grounds also included an astroturf pitch that was allocated to one group per lunch period. At the time of research, girls were allocated use of the pitch on one occasion per week only, ostensibly due to the lack of numbers interested in using it. Girls availed of the basketball courts less often than boys, and Junior Cycle boys used the courts the most, since most senior students left the school grounds during the lunch break. Younger girls were not observed to have used the courts for any activities apart from sitting in smaller groups around the periphery. Boys of all ages, however, availed of the school’s sports facilities more frequently for the purposes of sport itself. The astroturf pitch was located to the rear of the school and enclosed by a high fence and a gate that was unlocked by a member of staff at the beginning of each lunch period. Various sports were played here, usually soccer and occasionally Gaelic football. Junior Cycle boys had access to

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the pitch three days per week, yet would also repeatedly request access on the day that Junior Cycle girls had their turn, despite their usual unrestricted access to other adjacent play areas. Indeed, on most occasions during the field research period during which Junior Cycle girls had access to the pitch, a group of boys would mill about the gates, attempting to gain entry. Oftentimes, they would conjure up ploys to distract and bypass the supervising teacher, and on one particular occasion, dozens of boys rushed en masse to gain access to the pitch, while others yelled and climbed the overlooking fence (see the field note earlier in this chapter). Only once was it observed that the boys actually accessed the pitch this way, and they did not protest or attempt to gain access to the pitch on the occasions it was used by the Senior Cycle boys. Similar uses of play areas have been reported by Lodge (2005), in her study of middle childhood pupils in an Irish primary school. She found that both the institution and the peer group police the boundaries of what is considered masculine, and that most boys played football; those who did not do so were not considered popular with their peers. Echoing Connell’s (2003) work on hierarchies of masculinity, she notes that ‘[e]ngagement in football and aptitude in the game allows young boys to participate in a game that is also a high status adult male activity’ (Lodge, 2005: 183). She also found that the most dominant pupils were boys, who ‘asserted power over their peers through highly visible, assertive styles of behaviour and interaction in their classroom and playground’ (2005: 183), and, tellingly, the game ‘kiss chase’ was the only game in which boys who usually played football engaged with girls in the school yard. The behaviour of some of the boys in the SMSS schoolyard was similarly visible and assertive, initially involving a limited number of students, but eventually drawing the interest and engagement of others. The practices of the SMSS students examined above are facilitated by the ‘dividing practices’ (Foucault, 1982) of SMSS that segregate the students from the day they enter secondary schooling. What is more, two of SMSS’s feeder primary schools were single-sex at the time of fieldwork. Without such sex-segregation, the above practices would be far less likely, if not unlikely, to occur as they did. The long-standing sex-segregation and heteronormative discourses are not, however, unsurprising in the Irish context. The majority of Irish primary and secondary schools maintain a Catholic ethos, and over a third of secondary schools are single-sex (Smyth, 2010). Yet, such practices are not restricted to single-sex schooling. In their recent study of the use of space in an Icelandic secondary school, Þrastardóttir et al. (2021) found that the dividing practices and gendered discourses of the school led to the favouring of a ‘sports guys masculinity’, facilitated by some staff by way of classroom management, and which are ultimately legitimated by society at large. The findings of Þrastardóttir et al. replicate in many ways what has been found in other school settings for many years (Kjaran & Sauntson, 2020;

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Major & Santoro, 2014). Major and Santoro (2014) note that teacher education programmes have been largely silent about the way in which discourses of gender can impact teaching and learning, leading to the construction of boys as ‘silly’ and girls as ‘sensible’. Despite progress in terms of how gender is conceptualised at a societal level, Þrastardóttir et al. (2021: 14) find that ‘[t]he dominant discourse on gender as binary and institutional heteronormativity reflected in these results are surprisingly longstanding’. Echoing these findings, the observations of the use of designated and non-designated space by students in SMSS similarly indicate ‘how a binary understanding of gender both inside and outside the school is highly reflected in school practices’ (Þrastardóttir et  al., 2021: 14). The dividing practices were not overtly questioned by SMSS students during my interactions with them, although whether they were accepted as ‘normal’ by the majority of students, or whether they felt merely obliged to accept such practices, is unknown. Within the institutional setting, space is a site of both claims to and resistance to power, and as Þrastardóttir et al. (2021) have argued, endorsed and enforced gender division throughout school spaces reinforces a binary understanding of gender that is also constructed around power relations. In SMSS, these relations of power are played out in the way in which designated school spaces such as sports facilities and sex and year-group locker areas are used and claimed, as well as how ‘neutral’ spaces such as corridors and classrooms are claimed. Space itself, therefore, becomes ‘part of the very construction of a gendered power relation’, and ‘[t]hose who have the power to symbolically label areas within schools, provide others with rules they can draw on in using space’ (Shilling, 1991: 40). Competing discourses and identities of resistance

In her ethnography of a rural Donegal community, Donkersloot (2012) found that pub and GAA cultures remain central to rural Irish life, particularly for men. Male-dominated industries in such areas, including fishing and farming, are also important aspects of the local rural economy. These activities also ‘have an important and highly gendered impact on young people’s sense of identity, obligation and attachment to a place’ (Donkersloot, 2012: 580). Rural communities are, however, particularly vulnerable to economic change, and many young people migrated from rural Ireland to cities or further afield in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, although in recent years many towns and villages, particularly those on tourist routes and close to urban areas, as Loughmór is, have witnessed a resurgence in economic activity. However, since male-dominated industries and cultural activities continue to enjoy a high status in communities such as Loughmór, men may be more likely to remain in the community than women. As has been found

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elsewhere (e.g. Gal, 1978; Ni Laoire, 2005), the leisure lives of young women are often ‘out-migrated’, since ‘male perspectives and activities (both work and leisure) typically define rural life, [and the] perceived constraints of rural life and desire to leave are felt more strongly by young women’ (Donkersloot, 2012: 578–579, insertion added). Ciara and Sarah: ‘Computer geeks’

Second-years Ciara and Sarah were two self-professed outsiders whom I first encountered through my observation of their German class, and whose practices exemplified the out-migration of leisure life. They spent much of their interviews describing themselves as peripheral to the practices within the school, giving the impression of looking in, rather than joining in, through their criticisms of the school rules and some of the practices of their peers, and their description of how they spend their free time (adapted from Martyn [2016a]): Ciara: Sarah: Ciara: JM: Ciara: (…) Sarah: Ciara: Sarah:

We spend most of our time on the Internet. Mm. [laughs] In school or outta school? Outta school, I suppose, yeah like. [laughs] We’re, we’re like computer geeks. We are. [laughs] [laughs] Yeah, it’s kinda sad.

It was clear during the interview that Ciara and Sarah do not purport to be ‘computer geeks’ in the ‘computer expert’ sense of the term, but rather in terms of connotations of social peripherality. Sarah’s assertion that it is ‘kinda sad’ is meant and treated as ironic. It is also assumed that Ciara and Sarah spent the time to which they refer on a laptop or desktop, since it is unlikely that either owned a smartphone at the time of fieldwork. The associations between being online and ‘geek’ culture would therefore have been more pronounced than in today’s world where smartphones are ubiquitous and where the blurring between offline and online spaces is significant. As in Bucholtz’s (1999) study of ‘nerd girls’, the value placed by Ciara and Sarah on intelligence ‘is reflected in non-linguistic identity practices’ such as spending time online and being ‘geeks’. Unlike the nerd girls however, their hobbies do not orient ‘to the world of school, books, and knowledge’ (Bucholtz, 1999: 214), but towards the kind of knowledge that they feel the school cannot provide for them. Knowledge, as with the nerd girls, is a form of symbolic capital for them, yet Ciara and Sarah’s schooling does not provide them with the kind of knowledge that they seek.

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With regard to the social stratification of SMSS, Ciara and Sarah position themselves as peripheral to the ‘popular groups’: Sarah:

Ciara: Ciara: Sarah:

I don’t like Facebook though ‘cause it’s all like, it’s really s- like there’s all these you know those kinda kids in school, like the popular groups, and they’re all just being really stupid on it, and it’s just like seriously, Facebook is to like talk to people that you can’t phone ‘cause they’re in a different country. Like that’s one of the uses. Neither do I. Yeah they’re just like taking the piss out of people as well. Yeah.

Status systems are extremely important to adolescents, since they lack other forms of power and capital in the context of the school (Currie et al., 2007). As part of their Girl Power project, Currie et al. (2007: 28) note that ‘[t]he designation of high-status peers as “popular” is a consistent finding in adolescent research’. Yet, although they may be envied for their status, being popular does not necessarily translate to being well liked. It does, however, furnish adolescents with ‘the power to squash people’ (Currie et al., 2007: 30). Ciara and Sarah reject Facebook as a tool to interact with people with whom they are otherwise in regular contact, distancing themselves from the practices of those who use it frequently. Constructing alternative femininities

Style and adornment are reflective of dominant ideologies, and controlling how people dress and adorn themselves is a ‘form of disciplinary power that keeps girls’ bodies under wraps and under control, a tool of surveillance that enables others to monitor what girls are up to, thereby compelling girls to monitor themselves’ (Pomerantz, 2008: 4). Ciara and Sarah’s personal style and ways of adorning themselves were considered alternative in SMSS, and Ciara’s in particular was notable in its deviation from the school rules. Like Kelly et  al.’s (2005) ‘skater girls’, Ciara and Sarah decorated their backpacks with handwritten messages, symbols and buttons and pins from their favourite bands, and wore skate shoes and hoodies. Ciara’s hair was streaked with bright colours, and she often wore dark eye make-up and facial piercings. Both girls regularly sported nonuniform items of clothing, flouting the school rules. Below, they discuss the significance of dying one’s hair blonde (adapted from Martyn [2016a]): Ciara: Sarah: Ciara:

But everybody’s all blonde lately, everybody’s dying their hair blonde. Yeah. [laughs] Yeah. It’s ridiculous.

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Sarah: Ciara: Sarah: Ciara:

Now that’s what I call, what’s the word for it? Cheap. Yeah. [laughs] [laughs] I always wanted to dye my hair blonde but I don’t want to now ’cause everybody else is.

The body (and its adornment) is a site of identity negotiation and performance, and although youth culture is a ‘(semi)autonomous sphere of adolescent agency, [it] is marked by a hetero-sexist gender hierarchy and the sexual competition of mainstream culture’ (Currie et  al., 2007: 33, insertion added). For adolescent girls, this heterosexist gender hierarchy means that to achieve ‘popular’ status in school, girls must perform femininity through the male gaze (Currie et al., 2007). Ciara and Sarah reject this expression of femininity, valuing instead alternative expressions of identity through adornment. Dying one’s hair blond has been found elsewhere to be indicative of popularity (Currie et al., 2007), yet popular girls can also be perceived as ‘slutty’ should they do femininity the ‘wrong way’ (Currie et al., 2007: 29). The label ‘slut’ can be applied due to ‘sexualized appearance rather than behaviour’ (Currie et al., 2007: 29). Above, Sarah labels dying one’s hair blonde ‘cheap’, a classification which has a heterosexist connotation and links female sexuality to social class. The competitiveness of the heterosexist gender hierarchy, and her perceived place within it, is such that Sarah’s judgement is severe: ‘[h]owever imperceptible to adults, when the line between “cool” and “slutty” was crossed, girls could be very harsh in their judgement’ (Currie et al., 2007: 29). Adornment is a discursive process involving an act of ‘self-presence’ or ‘accomplishing self-hood’ (Currie et al., 2007: 25), yet for Ciara and Sarah, their expressions of style and adornment are often met with criticism and scrutiny (as adapted from Martyn [2016a]): Ciara:

(…) JM: Sarah: (…) Sarah:

And this girl in my class, I was sitting in class one day, (she’s like) ‘you know how you’re emo or goth?’ I’m just like ‘I’m not those things’ and she’s like ‘well you say you are’. It’s just like, ‘I hate when people call me that, I get really upset when people call me (that)’. ‘Yeah but you know how you wear loads of black eyeliner, why don’t you wear black lipstick?’ I was like ‘what?’ Then the teacher was laughing at me, and (unintelligible) and then she was like ‘now [deleted name]’, kinda thing. I was just like ‘what!’ [angrily] And would you see yourselves as, like? Normal, we’re human! (…) oh it’s just annoying, it’s so funny how immature people are though. And especially just by like the make-up you wear or your hair colour, it’s just like so stupid.

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Identities are governed by subject positions that are sanctioned by culture and community, and are made available by the discourses that operate within a specific context (Baxter, 2020). Ciara’s style and adornment practices exist outside of the school’s ‘approved discourses’ (Baxter, 2020: 37), and her interlocutor in the above anecdote does not possess the discursive knowledge or language to interpret Ciara’s style in the way that Ciara wishes. Despite Ciara’s protestations that she considers herself neither emo or goth, the other student’s rebuttal denies Ciara the capacity to linguistically define her own identity, effectively othering her. This is an instance of what Baxter (2020: 38) has called the ‘regulatory effects’ of discourse. These regulatory effects are particularly evident in institutional settings where students tend to be offered only a limited number of discourses of ‘approved ways to be’ (Baxter, 2020: 38). The power of language and ‘naming, labelling, and membership categorisation’ (Baxter, 2020: 37) in such an environment can be heightened due to the lack of power felt by students and the difficulty, as witnessed above, in offering and garnering legitimacy for competing discourses. Along with the tacit endorsement of such talk by the teacher (as reported by Ciara, although the teacher too may have been unable to offer any resistant discourse) who laughs and does not intervene in the interaction in any meaningful way, this extract exemplifies the way in which language ‘acts as a regulatory force to pressurise individuals to conform to socially approved patterns of speech and behaviour’ (Baxter, 2020: 37). In a further extract, Ciara discusses the pressure of the school rules and her unwillingness to conflate her studies with style and adornment (adapted from Martyn [2016a]): Ciara: Sarah: Ciara: JM: Ciara: (…) JM: Ciara: Sarah: Ciara:

She says I wear too much eyeliner, and my hair’s, she doesn’t like my hair at all. [laughs] I’m here to learn [deleted], I wouldn’t mind but I, I don’t think I’ve ever gotten anything lower than a B in [deleted subject name]. Yeah. And she always gives out to me, it’s just like [high pitched] ‘I’m a really good student!’ Like, it’s nothing to do like, it’s just a personal thing, isn’t it, it’s a personal choice. Yeah. It’s your way of expressing you. But it says, em, and my friend’s laughing at this ’cause she’s going into first year, and she says she found in the rules that it says ‘we want you to express yourself’. (It’s like) ‘yeah you want us to express ourself, but as soon as I go into that school I’m gonna have to dye my hair back, amn’t I?’ [laughs]

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Students in SMSS must wear the school uniform and must not adorn themselves in any distinguishable way. Subtle make-up is permitted, more obvious make-up is not; dying one’s hair blonde is permitted, but bright colours are not. Nor are facial piercings permitted. Yet, Ciara and Sarah expect to be able to negotiate these restrictions, given that style and adornment are, according to Sarah, ‘your way of expressing you’. However, they feel that their flouting of some school rules has led to them being treated differently by teachers, despite the fact that they view style and adornment and their studies as mutually exclusive (the phrasal verb ‘to give out’ is an Irish–English expression meaning to scold or speak angrily to someone). Teachers are not only gatekeepers of knowledge, but are also the enforcers of the codified gender practices, since ‘girls’ bodies and self-presentations are under constant assessment by peers (as well as adults)’ (Currie et al., 2006: 31). The self-expression in the school rules to which Ciara alludes, then, refers only to a limited acceptable range of practices, and these practices are policed by teachers and other students. Ciara and Sarah both resoundingly reject labels and dominant subject positions in SSMS. They resist the regulatory effects of language around personal style with Sarah supporting Ciara’s narrative by trivialising others as ‘immature’ and the institutional discourses as ‘annoying’ and ‘stupid’. Elsewhere during my interviews with them they mention their friends ‘in town’, away from Loughmór, who share their interests. They are therefore exposed to a range of discourses in their lives outside of school. The resistant discourse offered by Sarah here is therefore one which is also ‘constituted by peer value systems’ (Baxter, 2020: 38), and is presented as more ‘mature’ than the institutional discourse. As discussed in Martyn (2016a), Ciara and Sarah also reject discursive constructions of the gender binary in other guises, admitting that they do not like the sound of French, commonly believed to be an attractive, ‘feminine’ language (e.g. Knisely, 2016): Ciara: Sarah: Ciara: Sarah: Ciara: Sarah:

Yeah it doesn’t like, isn’t it supposed to be like the sexiest language or something? No, that’s Italian. Or Spanish. Yeah but like French is one of them ’cause they always say like people from Paris have really nice accents. Yeah okay [laughs]. Like it isn’t. I don’t like the French accent that much. No, not at all.

Their view of the French accent differs greatly from the perception of the French language put forth by other students, who described French as ‘fancy’ sounding (Marie), ‘pretty’ (Sophie) and ‘rolls off your tongue’ (Caitlin). Such perceptions of French are common, often evoking

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stereotypically feminine concepts, such as love and beauty (e.g. Williams et al., 2002). Below is an excerpt of a discussion of their perception of the German language (adapted from Martyn, 2016a): JM: Sarah: Ciara: Sarah: JM: Ciara: Sarah: Sarah: JM: Sarah: Ciara: Sarah: JM: Sarah:

What do you think, like, of the-the sound of the language, like German, say. What does it sound like to you? It is actually, like, I think it was [deleted] at the start of the year who said it was a very unattractive noise you have to make. Yeah, it is actually unattractive [laughs]. I think it’s really cool! Do it! What is the noise? I can’t, it’s like, when you try to pronounce ‘r’. I can’t do it, I just say ‘r’, but like, everybody, you have to make this really weird noise like. You’re kinda, yeah. [laughs] In the back of your throat, it’s like you’re about to puke. [laughs] [laughs] But [deleted] said the, the women sound like men and the men sound more manly and I’m just like, ‘the hell’? [laughs] So everyone just sounds more manly? Slightly more manly [laughs].

Their assertion that German is considered more ‘manly’ and somehow ‘unattractive’ is not new. Other students find it ‘abrupt’ (Caitlin) or ‘aggressive’ (Marie). Only Jessica, who is of German heritage and who grew up speaking German at home, counters this notion: JM: Marie: Jessica: JM: Marie:

Do you think it [French] sounds nicer? Well it does, like, German’s very manly. Not as manly as French though. (unintelligible) No but French is kind of more sophisticated. You’d kind of sound more fancy saying French, wouldn’t ya? Wouldn’t ya? JM: I dunno [laughs]. Marie: You sound, I mean, even, even listening to like. JM: I studied French you see, so, like I did French, eh, I did French in college so I’m biased like, I couldn’t. Marie: I dunno, I think, I think French sounds nicer. Jessica: [sighs]. The assertion by Marie that German sounds ‘manly’ mirrors Ciara’s earlier take on German. Such a notion is reflective of, and is evidence of

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the reproduction of a commonly held language ideology, as is her treatment of French as ‘sophisticated’ (see also Chapter 2). Jessica’s rebuttal of French as, in fact, more manly than German, is reflective of her dissatisfaction with this gendered ideology; indeed, she seems to take offence. For her, it is not, nor cannot be gendered, since it is one of her home languages, and so she redirects the perceived insult to French. Ciara and Sarah, on the other hand, embrace the perceived ‘manliness’ of German, or certain features of it. In the above interview, they do not dispute or disagree with the gendering of German, instead they play with and enjoy the idea of a phoneme as unattractive. Identity positioning, as Preece (2020b: 367–368) explains, hinges on the context in which we find ourselves and the relations of power negotiated therein. It is multidimensional and intersectional, and ‘ideologically informed’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 605), meaning that ‘over time, interactional positions accrue ideological associations that are linked to local and social order identity categories’ (Preece, 2020b: 367). As peripheral members of their school’s community, Ciara and Sarah engage and reflect upon language ideologies that are accepted by their peers and others, which renders said ideologies less effective. By engaging with language ideologies, they also subvert the accepted association between gender and named languages. For them, the ‘manliness’ of German sounds is not something that ought to exclude women and girls. There is, perhaps, an acknowledgement on their part of the arbitrariness of gendered language ideologies, as well as an acknowledgement of the fluidity of gender identity. The rejection of gendered language ideologies constitutes a further avenue through which to counter dominant subject positions in the school. Ciara and Sarah’s ‘outsiderness’ may have been constructed differently were they to grow up with access to today’s technologies. Given the ubiquity of smartphones today, a ‘multiplicity of identities have become more available to us’ (Beinhoff & Rasinger, 2020: 576). The affordances of new technologies would have granted Ciara and Sarah a large number of online platforms at their instant disposal for the exploration of their interests and the negotiation of their identities. However, online identities mean different things to different people: ‘[f]or some, online identities can be very different from their “real life” identity, whereas for others their online identities are extensions of their identities in their work and/ or home domains’ (Beinhoff & Rasinger, 2020: 580). Indeed, online identities may allow, or even at times force people to self-categorise (Driscoll & Gregg, 2010) when in ‘real life’ such categorisation may be fuzzier and more nuanced. However, identities within online communities are ‘far from static, being both dynamic and shaped by both the constraints of the online and text-based communication, as well as real-life experience’ (Beinhoff & Rasinger, 2020: 580). Ciara and Sarah may have found an online community of peers that would have provided them the

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opportunity to negotiate their identities without the overt miscategorisation they experienced at school. Since the development of online social networks from the mid-2000s, scholarly research has expanded ‘to include the multilingual and multimodal practices of young people in digitally mediated, transnational settings’, while new technologies ‘make visible the immense variability as well as stability in the ways that bi/multilingual youth are creating, sustaining and adapting their linguistic identities’ (Domingo, 2020: 541). New technologies allow language learners to challenge ideas about what constitutes an L1, an L2, and so on, while also allowing them to challenge dominant language ideologies (it is worth pointing out, however, that online spaces can also serve to reinforce language ideologies, e.g. Phyak [2015]). The case study of Ciara and Sarah highlights the ways in which students can construct their own micro communities of practice constituted by peer value systems. Their friendship group values intelligence, rejects heteronormative discourses and practices, and values alternative ways of being. Since they avoided labels and wished to be considered ‘normal’, they will not be labelled here. However, they offered resistant discourses of how to be a girl in SMSS. This allowed them to transgress ‘heterosexist gender norms’ (Currie et  al., 2006: 420), rejecting the femininity that gives ‘“popular” girls currency in the gendered economy of school culture’ (Currie et  al., 2006: 420). Instead, like the geek girls in Currie et al. (2006), they actively cultivate an alternative identity which in many ways places them at a social disadvantage in SMSS, but which is valued in other contexts. Feminism was not a subject that was broached with any student during my time at SMSS; however, it is reasonable not to discount feminist influences from Ciara’s and Sarah’s discourses of alternative femininity. A ‘discourse of rational individualism’ (Currie et  al., 2006: 431) or ‘authentic individualism’ (Currie et al., 2011: 303) was more readily identifiable. Much like Currie et al.’s (2011: 304) ‘skater girls’, their rejection of normative femininity may not be ‘feminist in intent [but] by opening new possibilities for girlhood they are feminist in effect’. Conclusion

Given the large proportion of single-sex primary and secondary schools in Ireland, it is unsurprising that a sex-segregated culture should persist throughout co-educational schools to some degree. In SMSS, as has been found in co-educational schools in Ireland and elsewhere (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Lodge, 2005; Major & Santoro, 2014; Þrastardóttir et al., 2021), a binary understanding of gender informs much of the day-to-day running of the school, and allows for the creation of boysonly and girls-only spaces and timetabled activities. These ‘dividing

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practices’ (Foucault, 1982) underscore the practices that young people go on to reproduce themselves, and are difficult to contest in the face of institutional and societal pressure. However, dominant discourses of gender can be contested, and Ciara and Sarah do so through their rejection of heteronormative style and adornment rules, as well as through their engagement with and rejection of otherwise accepted language ideologies that link named languages to gender. If, as Cameron (2017) argues, the effect of gendered language ideologies is to maintain and reinforce gender difference, Ciara and Sarah minimise this difference. Since language is a ‘resource for the performance of identity’ (Cameron, 2017: 293), their engagement with language ideologies has a destabilising effect on both the gender norms and ideologies themselves. Research influenced by the social and multilingual turns in SLA has advocated a more nuanced analysis of power relations around language learning and in the language learning context. Ethnographic approaches such as the one adopted in this book provide a unique insight into the reproduction and contestation of dominant discourses and practices by triangulating various data types. As long as binary gender distinctions are made and dividing practices used to segregate students in their educational environments, a binary understanding of gender will continue to permeate all aspects of the lives of young people, including their language learning.

5

5 Language Choice, Discourse and Investment

Introduction

This chapter has three main strands. Firstly, it presents St Murtagh’s Secondary School (SMSS) students’ own reasons for their choice of language. It subsequently examines discourses of language learning as they emerge in the data, including discourses of elite multilingualism, ideologies of language ‘usefulness’, as well as discourses of gender and language learning. Finally, the chapter examines student investment in language learning and the notion of imagined identities, and how discourses of elite multilingualism mediate the learning experience. Language Choice in SMSS Foreign languages

Prior to 1963, Ireland’s secondary education system consisted of two tiers, academic and technical (Clarke, 2010). Education reforms subsequently paved the way for free comprehensive education for all. Latin was provided in all public secondary schools, as was a ‘modern’ European language such as French or German. Today, Latin and other classical languages are now largely the preserve of private, fee-paying schools, whereas French and German, alongside Spanish, remain the most studied foreign languages. At the time of fieldwork, students of SMSS were required to study one foreign language, French or German, which were the most commonly studied languages nationally. French is by far the most popular language in Irish schools, followed by German and Spanish, the latter having become increasingly popular in recent years (Central Statistics Office and Department of Education, n.d.). French was the most commonly studied language in SMSS, with almost twice as many students taking French as German at the time of fieldwork. As a result, the school had two French teachers and only one German teacher. German became slightly more popular with boys between the 1990s and the mid-2000s (Department of Education and Science, 2007). At the time of fieldwork, more boys than girls in SMSS studied German through Years 1 105

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to 5. Although there were slightly more boys than girls enrolled in SMSS, 186 boys to 170 girls, 21 more boys than girls studied German overall. As noted in Chapters 3 and 4, German is often popularly constructed as ‘harsh’ or unattractive (e.g. Cronin, 2013; Phillips & Filmer-Sankey, 1993), and associated with more traditionally ‘masculine’ interests (e.g. Williams et al., 2002). Such discourses are reproduced by students (e.g. Phillips & FilmerSankey, 1993) as evidenced in Chapter 4. Given the supply and demand nature of language education in Ireland, whereby there are more graduates of French than any other language, at both second and third levels, gendered language ideologies and associations between named languages and gender are to be treated with caution. Instead, as will be discussed later in this chapter, such ideologies form part of a web of language learning discourses that may or may not affect uptake by a particular individual. Heritage

SMSS, like Loughmór village, is quite ethnically homogeneous, although some students encountered were of a cultural or linguistic background other than Irish, such as German. When asked about their reasons for choosing French or German, participants generally offered one or two of three reasons: they chose the language their friends were intending to study; they had some prior exposure to French and/or German either in primary school or on holiday; and, in the case of two students, they were of (part) German heritage. Second-years Sarah and Jessica acknowledged that they chose to study German over French, in part at least, due to their German heritage. Both also studied German as part of the now terminated Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative (MLPSI): Sarah: (…) Sarah:

I dunno. I had it like in primary school we did like two or three years of it Yeah so I just said like, I already know a good bit of it, so I was like what’s the use of doing French then. And like, I’ve German people on my side of the family, so.

Jessica visits Germany regularly with her German mother, and used to speak German at home when she was younger. She says that the teacher often looks to her for clarifications, and she finds her German classes relatively easy: Jessica:

I kinda know how to do, like, the accent so whenever I say a word, it sounds right.

Peer group

School subjects and their associated professions and activities are imbued with ideological meaning. Although French, German and Spanish are widely studied in Ireland and increasingly viewed as marketable

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skills, particularly in a post-Brexit Europe, foreign language learning at the optional level is often discursively constructed as gendered (see Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of this). What is more, while the ‘big three’ of French, German and Spanish are clearly established within the education system at both second and third levels, other languages are discursively constructed in different ways, and in some cases, are provided in certain school types and to certain cohorts of students only. For instance, in Ireland, Italian is provided in more girls’ schools than boys’ schools (Central Statistics Office and Department of Education, n.d.), while Latin is largely provided in fee-paying or private boys’ schools (National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2004). However, no student to whom I spoke openly admitted that language learning or that studying a particular named language was a gendered activity. Speaking to second-year Sarah, I use the example of the traditionally gendered subject home economics to ask if studying a (particular) language possessed some kind of gendered meaning: JM: (...) Sarah: JM: Sarah:

I was just taking Home Ec. as an example Oh right, yeah, with Home Ec., yeah, but not with, really, languages. Yeah. You don’t think there’s a, like a…? No, there’s like, people would follow each other.

Sarah’s assertion that language choice is determined by what one’s friends or peer group is doing is echoed by other students: James:

Sometimes they eh, I’d say they just guess, like, which they like or else they find out what their friends are picking. They’d just like to be with their friends, and so it’s handier.

Second-years Marie and Jessica both studied German as part of the MLPSI in primary school: JM:

’Cause I think my idea before I came into the school, and my memories, was that, you know, French, there were loads of girls doing it, but boys, maybe more boys picked German than picked French.

(...) Jessica: Not really. Marie: Most of, well a lot of people from our year, our class kind of went into German. Well a few [names deleted]. So that, yeah most of the ones out- from our class.

Based on these accounts, peer and friendship groups are indicators of what language a student will choose in secondary school, which also relates to whether or not students have had prior exposure to a language.

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Prior experience

Students such as Marie and Jessica who had taken part in the MLPSI attended German lessons regularly during their final two years of primary school. Others, such as Jack and Seán, both third-year students of French, spent periods of sixth class in another primary school studying both French and German in what appears to have been an inhouse language learning initiative. Jack and Seán attribute their selection of French at secondary school to having spent a number of weeks studying it in primary school, as well as their negative experience of learning German: JM: Jack: Seán: Jack: (…) JM: Jack: (…) Jack: Seán: Jack: (…) JM: Jack:

(…) JM: Jack:

Why did ye pick French, like, when ye were coming into secondary school, like, was it, did ye know much about it before first year? It was more like, we like, learned a little bit (unintelligible). Yeah we’d done a bit in sixth class of both. And like, my sisters did it as well, so like, they, like, helped me. Well they didn’t really, but like, I thought they would have been able. And ye did French for a bit there? Yeah just like, one class a- well for like six or seven weeks. And we did a bit of German as well, but like. No-one liked German. Yeah. Oh right, and do ye find that most of your friends ended up doing French or…? Eh yeah, it was more like all the Loughmór people went in to do, eh, French, and then the [other local primary school that participated in the MLPSI] people went to do German, ’cause they spent time doing German as well. Okay, so it’s like a parish thing. Yeah.

The role that prior experience of foreign language learning in primary school plays in secondary school language choice is evident in the cases of Jack and Seán, as well as those students who studied German as part of the MLPSI. Many MLPSI students went on to study German in SMSS, whereas the students who briefly studied both French and German have largely, reportedly, chosen to study French. Prior learning of a foreign

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language can thus have the opposite anticipated effect, for a myriad of potential reasons, including relationship to the curriculum, teaching style and interactions with the teacher, resulting in students choosing an alternative language option (should there be one) when they reach secondary school. Travel abroad was cited by many students as a factor influencing their choice of language. For Sadhbh, both her negative experiences of learning German at primary school, as well as having visited France many times already, were determining factors in her choice of language: Sadhbh: Now I mean, like, I sort of regret it [her language choice]. (…) Sadhbh: I wouldn’t mind going to German ’cause it’s supposed to be a cool language and stuff, and like they’re saying that German class is really, like the teacher’s class [slang word in IrishEnglish for ‘really good’] (…) Sadhbh: But I mean I really like French, but like French for, you know, I’ve been to France like, tons of times. (…) JM: So is that kind of wh- a big reason why you chose French then in secondary school? Sadhbh: Yeah, mainly, because I was never to Germany and I’ve been to France like five times or something. Similarly, when presented with the option of French or German, fifthyear student Caitlin found herself influenced by her time in France on holiday, and her acquisition of vocabulary during her visits: Caitlin: Yeah I- we used to go on holidays every year to France, and em, I dunno like, you know when you’d go over on holidays you just, like, pick up a few words. And then when I came into first year I just really liked it so that’s why I picked it. Students’ reasons for choosing French or German were largely echoed by German teacher Mr Cawley: Mr Cawley:

 hen the kids come into first year, on occasion I’d ask W them why did you choose this subject, why did you choose that subject. In recent years, I’ve heard ‘I chose French because my friends have chosen French’, ‘I’ve chosen French because I did German in national [primary] school and I didn’t like it’. And then I’ve also heard ‘I’ve chosen German (…) because I did like it’, and ‘I’ve chosen German

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because my friends are doing it.’ Em, they’d be the two main reasons that dictate that choice for kids at the age of eleven and twelve. Friends and previous experience. Students who participated in the MLPSI benefited from regular, timetabled German classes over the course of their final two years of primary school, and had the time to develop a rapport with their language teacher. They were afforded the opportunity to engage in foreign language learning in a low-stakes environment, before the pressures of secondary school exams. The impact of the programme on students’ choices at secondary school is, based on the above comments, significant, with a particularly positive impact on German uptake: Jessica: Most people in our class, there are only like two or three that didn’t go to our primary school. This can be interpreted as an indicator of the MLPSI’s success, particularly since students would also have had the opportunity to study French ab initio upon entering secondary school. The students’ experiences chime with the final MLPSI report, which documents the programme’s popularity with students, teachers and school principals alike (Department of Education and Skills, 2012). Given the success of the programme, the consequences of its termination must not be understated. As discussed in Chapter 1, Ireland’s language education researchers and practitioners have long called for a foreign language education policy, a step towards which has been taken in recent years with the publication of a language strategy, Languages Connect (Department of Education and Skills, 2017). However, as also noted in Chapter 1, the success of this strategy depends on the allocation of financial and practical resources to institutions at all levels of education. Should these resources not be delivered, it is difficult to envisage any change from the status quo, whereby secondary school language teachers are in short supply, and where the number of foreign language graduates of higher education programmes remains comparatively low when compared to other degree programmes. Language Learning Discourses Elite multilingualism and language ‘usefulness’

Due to its low corporate tax rate, Ireland is a hub for multinationals such as Google and Meta, many of whom require multilingual employees for customer-facing roles. However, the shortage of foreign language skills among university graduates in Ireland is well documented (Department of Education and Skills, 2017). It was in this climate that the country’s first foreign language strategy was published in 2017 and,

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as discussed in more detail in Chapter 1, its aims include not only to diversify the languages offered at secondary school level (curricular specifications have recently been created for Portuguese, Polish, Lithuanian and new learners of Mandarin Chinese), but also to increase the number of university students who study a language as part of their degree programme to 20% by 2026 (Department of Education and Skills, 2017). However, as Bruen (2019) points out, such ambitions are not without risk, potentially pressurising universities into dropping entrylevel standards which could increase the rate of failure later on, thereby contributing to the already established perception of language learning as difficult. Moreover, unless resources are provided to ensure the provision of a diverse range of languages across the country, it will be difficult for schools to get around the discourses of elite multilingualism that underpin language education, particularly in Anglophone contexts. The global status of the English language has privileged its speakers to the point where knowledge of additional languages is often discursively constructed as CV enhancing (Block, 2018), when studied as part of international business programmes, for instance, an access code to a national and global elite or perceived elite way of living, and as a source ‘of investment to increase social power’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 362). Yet, studying a language can also be constructed as a luxury that provides few career options post-graduation. Although (certain) languages may be constructed as aspirational and associated with greater employment opportunities and global mobility, they may also be sidelined in favour of more ‘practical’ subjects or degree programmes for which there may be a stronger market demand. The associations between language learning and social class are becoming increasingly acknowledged in applied linguistics scholarship. Norton and Toohey (2011), following Block (2007), have pointed out that the literature on social class and language learning remains scant, although they do note that this may be to do with shifting conceptualisations of class in a globalised world and the unease around the determinism that Marxist conceptualisations of social class evokes. However, a number of studies have highlighted the association between economic privilege and language learning (e.g. Kanno, 2008; Kinginger, 2004) and, more recently, scholars such as Preece (2019) have highlighted the intersection of class, eliteness and language learning in higher education. Although not synonymous with eliteness, social class is intrinsically linked to elite multilingualism, since elite multilingual discourses construct language learning as aspirational and life-improving, all the while excluding ‘unofficial’ languages and migrant languages (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Sayers & Láncos, 2017).​ Foreign language ideologies are intrinsically bound up with the local and global economies. They are ‘therefore not about language alone, but are always socially situated and tied to questions of identity and

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Table 5.1  Number and percentage of students studying French and German in SMSS at the time of field research

Year group

Number of Number of students studying Percentage studying students studying Percentage studying French French German German

First

30

54

26

46

Second

46

62

28

38

Third

56

81

13

19

Fourth

33

64

18

36

Fifth

32

60

21

40

Sixth

32

60

21

40

Total

229

64

127

36

power in societies’ (Blackledge, 2000: 27). Languages and language skills are now treated as commodities, and the commodification of language ‘relies on and is shaped by’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 367) language ideologies (which in turn reproduce discourses of languages as commodities). Higher education itself is also increasingly commodified, ‘no longer seen mainly as a way to pursue socially valuable knowledge, but as a process wherein value is determined by how much direct benefit it will bring to the student-consumer’ (Kauppinen, 2014: 394). A ‘languageas-resource’ approach to language policy is often employed by educators and administrators to attract support for subjects and languages so as to obtain, or avoid the loss of, funding. This approach links language(s) with social and economic status and instrumentality (Ruiz, 1984), and has been criticised by Petrovic (2005) for being ‘a corollary of the neoconservative agenda whereby the value of social goods is determined by its demonstrable economic and military utility’ (Ruiz, 2010: 156). However, Ruiz (2010: 163), in a defence of the approach, argues that it is ‘extremely difficult to engage in maintenance, reversing language shift, or revitalization activities without acknowledging that some measure of instrumentalization is required’. In SMSS, ideologies of language usefulness emerged in some way in almost all interviews with students. The ‘third language requirement’ of the National University of Ireland, the body that governs four of the country’s universities, requires that students obtain a minimum grade H3 in the Leaving Certificate (above 70% in the higher-level paper) in addition to qualifications in Irish and English in order to enrol in most programmes in the humanities, social sciences and health sciences. On the one hand, this measure ensures that secondary schools continue to provide foreign language options, and like SMSS, may make studying a foreign language a compulsory requirement. On the other hand, it may render language subjects mere abstract academic requirements for university matriculation. Some students openly acknowledged the fact that

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they would discontinue study of a foreign language if they had the choice. Jack, a third-year student of French, does not see French in his future: JM: Jack: JM: Jack:

Do you- can you ever see yourselves being fluent (…)? No, not really. (unintelligible) it’s not something you want? Well like, you ha- you might have to like, like move there or something, but like, I dunno (unintelligible).

He also notes that he would not study a foreign language if it were optional: Jack:

No, like if you had a choice in Leaving Cert, you’d- we- I’d drop it anyway (…) like if I could I’d drop it.

Similarly, fifth-year Sophie does not envisage using French post-secondary school. Sophie: Em, I probably won’t. I’d say I’ll probably, like after school, I’d say I’ll probably kinda go more in the route, I dunno, like, Biology kinda, or like sport or something like that. Like I’d love to be a physio but, unless I move to France now as a physio, I can’t really see myself using it then [laughs]. Foreign languages are not, of course, going to be perceived as useful by everyone, nor should it be expected that, as academic subjects, they be enjoyed by everyone. However, many young people from Loughmór regularly travel to countries such as France on family holidays, and would likely meet many French-speaking people throughout their lives. Even should they not find themselves in a community of native speakers, opportunities to use French or German would likely still arise. Ideologies of German as useful or practical have been found in a number of UK studies, with many young people deeming German useful for industry and commerce (Barton, 1997). Boys were identified by Williams et  al. (2002) as displaying higher extrinsic motivation towards learning German than girls. However, the belief that German is useful for boys in particular may no longer hold due to the increased participation of women in the workforce since these studies were conducted, the status of the German language within the EU, and Germany’s global influence (indeed, in De Costa’s [2016] ethnography of designer immigrants in Singapore, one of student Daphne’s reasons for studying German was her crush on a German soccer player). German has been a mainstay of the Irish education system for decades, yet its popularity waxes and wanes depending on political and economic (in)security. In 1980s recessionary Ireland, the German

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language was perceived to be an asset in the search for jobs both at home and abroad. Mr Cawley traces a parallel between ideologies of German in the 1980s and in the early 2010s, to which he attributed the recent increase in numbers studying German: Mr Cawley:

(…) Mr Cawley:

( …) German was very popular during the last recession in the nineteen eighties, when lots of people were emigrating to Germany, and it was seen as a bonus not to have to go to Australia or America, and there was a very, very strong economy, well paid jobs. I’m aware at the moment, that currently, that people are starting to think that way again. Yeah. ( …) on account of the recession at the moment as well, the size, the class numbers [in German] have increased over the last couple of years now. There’s 28, 29 students in first year.

Discourses that link a language with employment opportunities circulate widely during times of economic insecurity (De Costa, 2019). Since parents/guardians influence students’ educational choices to varying degrees, both implicitly and explicitly, it seems likely that they would play a more shaping role in times of economic unrest. For many participants in this study, however, Chinese, and particularly Spanish, neither of which were offered in SMSS, were seen as useful, practical languages. Mr Cawley notes the rise in popularity of Spanish in Ireland, which now rivals German in student numbers: Mr Cawley:

 nd more recent times, Spain, Spanish became popular A (…) I don’t know if it’s scientifically based or not, that Spanish became popular because parents were bringing their children out there on holidays, and they wanted their kids to be able to speak a little bit of Spanish when they went out there, which is very practical.

Sadhbh states that she would have chosen Spanish over French had she had the choice: Sadhbh: Yeah. If there was Spanish though I probably would have picked that (unintelligible). JM: Oh right? Sadhbh: Eh, it’s supposed to be better or something [laughs]. James and Jack point out the high number of Spanish users worldwide:

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James:

---Jack: (…) Jack:

(…) Like if- if Spanish was available in the school, I always wanted to learn Spanish, and it’s one of the highest used languages or something in most countries so I’ve always wanted to learn that. I would have preferred to do Spanish (unintelligible). Spanish would have been the best like, ’cause it’s like, like (unintelligible) it’s just, there’s more like, it’s more worldwide as well like. French, you only speak in France, and, like, Canada, but who’d go to Canada, like.

Despite Jack’s view of Canada, the country has long been a destination for Irish migrants, including following the 2008 economic crisis. Migration to the United States has declined steadily since the election of Donald Trump, in a phenomenon that has been labelled ‘the Trump effect’, while migration to Canada increased by 26% in the year to April 2019 (Carswell, 2019: n.p.). Furthermore, despite the French language forming part of the plurilingual repertoires of people across West and Central Africa, South and Central America, including the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, students may not necessarily be aware of this. Countries in the Global South may indeed be excluded from discourses of multilingualism and French. Caitlin and Sophie, who regularly travels with her family for holidays to the Canary Islands, also find the prospect of studying Spanish an attractive one: Caitlin: I really like Spanish. ---Sophie: I’d like to learn, say, Spanish, because it’s spoken like in so many places, like it’s spoken in the Canary Islands and stuff. (…) Sophie: But em, I don’t really have any Spanish or anything. I haven’t really picked up any. (…) Sophie: Yeah it’s like a resort we go to, so like, there isn’t really like many Spanish around, really. Unless you go like go in- unless you go into the town and stuff. Elite multilingualism informs language provision at the highest level, and shapes students’ own language choices. The notion of ‘choice’, however, is itself reflective of market demands for certain education types (Selleck, 2020), where ‘choice’ is simply a choice ‘between certain codes over others’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 367), and very often, a choice between a limited number of ‘big’ languages. Elite multilingual discourses are shaped by

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circulating ideologies that perpetuate the notion that certain languages are useful and practical, yet what is useful and practical is in perpetual flux. Such discourses in turn render learning other, lesser spoken languages less useful, less practical and even luxuries with which people are less likely to engage due to intense competition for jobs in the neoliberal marketplace. Ideologies of usefulness can become self-reinforcing and self-sustaining, perpetuating the prestige and status of the ‘big’ languages and reinforcing their perceived importance. Knowledge of the ‘big’ languages thus provides symbolic capital to their learners and users, becoming ‘an objective skill, acquired and possessed, that affords status, recognition, legitimacy, and ultimately material remuneration, to those who possess it’ (Block, 2017: 6). That students themselves go on to (re)produce ideologies of usefulness only serves to indicate their prevalence. The rationales behind their own desire to study Spanish are also telling; Sadhbh notes that Spanish is ‘supposed to be better or something’. She does not elaborate on why it is ‘better’, and her use of ‘supposed to’ and ‘or something’, coupled with her laughter, indicates a reflexivity around her production of the ‘Spanish-asbetter’ language ideology; she is somewhat aware of its arbitrariness. This indicates a level of orthopraxy (Blommaert, 2005) on her part: reproducing dominant discourses and practices without fully subscribing to the ideology that underpins them. Yet, elite multilingualism is aspirational and students are meant to aspire, as they do here in a non-committal way, to learn a particular language. Sadhbh and other SMSS students may thus aspire to learn Spanish for reasons that they may not quite know themselves. It is also interesting to note that despite the status of French as a global language, a language that is employed as a vehicular language in international business and trade, as a working language of international institutions such as the EU and UN, and which is spoken as a home language and a language of education across seven continents, students indicate that other languages, ones which were not offered in SMSS at the time of research, would be more useful to them. This is not necessarily surprising, however, and may be reflective of a ‘grass is greener’ effect, particularly since French is so entrenched in the Irish education system and would be largely devoid of a novelty factor for young people entering secondary school. However, it is also possible that the ‘kinds’ of places to which one might travel with French are not perceived in the same way as Spanish-speaking countries. None of the students interviewed expressed concrete plans to use or study Spanish in the future, perhaps unaware of how to undertake such an endeavour outside of the education system, nor would they necessarily use it when presented with the opportunity. As in Sophie’s case, even regular travel to Spanish-speaking countries does not require knowledge of Spanish to get by. Elite multilingualism thus renders Spanish highly aspirational, as witnessed here, and, although constructed as a useful language, it would not necessarily be used in practice. For English speakers,

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studying another global language, then, may be less about intercultural competence and communication, than about an idealised notion of how and where a language might be used. Gendered discourses

As much as classroom-based language learning in Anglophone contexts can be a classed pursuit, bound up with discourses of elite multilingualism, it can also be very much a gendered one, as discussed in Chapter 3. Carr and Pauwels (2006: 1) have previously noted that any gendered dimension to language uptake is generally accepted as ‘how things are’. Educational institutions tend to be conservative places ‘where society itself seeks to reproduce the status quo’ (Jule, 2018: 64). Adolescents are ‘the major institutionalized population within industrial (…) culture’ (Eckert, 1989: 381), and institutions are places where social norms and expressions of identity are policed by both students and staff alike. The secondary school institution is one in which a significant amount of symbolic ‘work’ is being done with regard to the construction of social norms, such as those around gender and sexuality. Since, as Jule (2018: 53) argues, the education system is a domain of cultural and social reproduction, ‘the existing patterns of gender inequality are reproduced within schools through both formal and informal processes. In particular, classrooms are important settings for the foundations of social behavior’. The processes involved in the reproduction of existing patterns of inequality involve both the curriculum and the hidden curriculum, or ‘the way teachers interact with and teach their students in a way that reinforces relations of gender (as well as race and social class)’ (Jule, 2018: 54). Norms, values and cultural scripts are passed on to young people through their learning material and by their teachers, as well as through the ways in which practices and behaviours are policed, how young people are spatially and temporally organised and how they are permitted to behave in the institution. Gender and language ideologies scholarship (e.g. Cameron, 2006, 2017; Formato, 2019; Philips, 2017) investigates the recursive relationship between representations of language and representations of gender in society. As discussed in Chapter 3, linguistic behaviour is represented in ways that reflect and reinforce people’s understanding of the behaviour and roles of women and men (Cameron, 2017; Sherzer, 1987). Cameron (2017) has charted the rise of ‘new biologism’, discourses that associate certain practices and structural inequalities with essential, ‘natural’ differences between the sexes. She notes that since approximately the turn of the millennium, ‘there has been a proliferation of representations which portray the female of the human species as biologically predisposed (or now in the familiar jargon “hard-wired”) to talk more than the male, and to perform better on measures of verbal skill’ (2017: 287). Despite the ‘different but equal’ (Cameron, 2017: 286) message of such portrayals,

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discourses of biologism ultimately seek to advance a conservative ideology of gender relations, one which ensures that women continue to shoulder most care work, work in low-paying jobs and bear the brunt of other inequalities. Discourses of biologism were not explicit in my interactions with students, yet some nonetheless constructed a knowledge binary that reflects and reinforces the institutional and societal gender binary. Second-year student James did not wish to pursue a language in higher education, and seemed to agree that English was enough for his future life and career. Despite being a ‘good student’, and an apparently proficient user of German in class, he does not believe himself to be particularly good at German: James:

German’s okay but I’m not really a language-y person (…) I find languages hard.

Of particular note is James’ wording of ‘language-y person’. It would appear that, for James, there are language people and other kinds of people, and he belongs to the latter category. Although he may find languages more difficult than other subjects, he appeared, superficially at least, to be what might be considered an ‘all-rounder’, and expressed a wish to one day become a computer programmer. Irrespective of his (perceived) abilities and his stated preferences laid out here, James nevertheless discursively constructed language(s) in opposition to something undefined, which is encapsulated more explicitly by third-year Jack: Jack:

No, like if you had a choice in Leaving Cert, you’d- we- I’d drop it anyway (unintelligible). It depends on the type of person is, like, if they’re into, like, something like Sciences and Maths or something, or they’d be into languages like, but like if I could I’d drop it.

Jack explicitly constructs languages in opposition to science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects, something that James only implies, by explicitly polarising these areas of knowledge. He thus authenticates (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) and reproduces what is a common discursive binary. The discursive process of authentication focuses on individuals’ claims that certain language or language forms are ‘genuine’ or authentic, whereas its counterpart denaturalisation draws attention to the way in which identities are self-consciously created. Viewing Jack’s ‘language person’ versus ‘science person’ binary through the lens of authentication demonstrates the apparent ‘realness’ of such a construct. It is a self-evident statement needing no further explanation. This construct is reflected within our very education systems, where students choose between various streams and programmes that separate STEM from the humanities and ‘soft’ sciences, both in secondary

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education and in higher education. Higher education students of science, for instance, are not usually free to simultaneously devote a substantial portion of their time and allocated credits to languages or literature, and vice versa. In education systems such as that of Ireland, students choose a programme of study prior to entry, and after a cut-off point early in the first semester, it is not usually possible to switch to another programme that same academic year. However, as noted in Chapter 2, student choice exists largely within the parameters of what is deemed economically useful and so the concept of ‘choice’ is ‘fundamentally entrenched with a neoliberal rationality that propagates the idea that we are all free to choose our course in life’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 367). Selleck (2020) further argues that ‘choice’ is ideologically linked to consumerism and ‘a reflection of the market-driven demand for certain types of education’ (Barakos & Selleck, 2019: 367). It is also linked to the notion of human capital, as Barakos and Selleck (2019) explain, which aims to consolidate the ‘knowledge, skills, competencies and attributes embodied in individuals that facilitate the creation of personal, social and economic well-being’ (OECD, 2001). The discursive knowledge binary, then, of the humanities and social sciences on the one hand, and STEM on the other is the product of globalised economic systems, where the concept of choice is a fundamentally misleading one. The neoliberalisation and ‘consumption’ of education has been of increasing interest to scholars in recent years (e.g. Block, 2018; Busch, 2017). As consumers of knowledge, our educational ‘choices’ also index our identities and affiliations. They allow us to position ourselves relative to others, sending a message about what our interests are, what kind of person we wish to (be perceived to) be and what we hope to ‘do’ in life. Our identities are therefore shaped by the subjects and disciplines that are provided to us in the first place, and the way in which they are discursively constructed within any given context. Since knowledge is presented in the form of distinct subjects and disciplines so as to train students for specific roles (Busch, 2017), this allows for the reproduction of existing social structures and inequalities. In the case of Jack and James, irrespective of their stated subject preferences, they, quite understandably, reproduce this very construct of separateness, languages on the one hand and STEM on the other. Humanities subjects, including languages, are often viewed as less serious and less important than STEM areas, and in the case of some languages, as discussed in Chapter 1, a luxury in economically challenging times unless they can be unambiguously monetised. Conversely, subjects and academic programmes that are known to meet the economic demands of a particular time, such as information and communications technology (ICT), tend to be viewed as essential to ‘progress’, and are discursively constructed as such. Although knowledge of one or more of the ‘big’ languages is generally perceived as an asset to help secure better financial circumstances and mobility, among other benefits, this

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does not necessarily apply to studying a language full time. In the Anglophone setting, majoring in a language has traditionally been associated with becoming a teacher of that language, rather than an activity that is undertaken for personal satisfaction, communicative purposes, or other career avenues (less so perhaps in recent years given the development of the ‘Silicon Docks’ in the docklands area of Dublin, the location of many tech giants and start-ups with multilingual workforces). Such a discursive link is made by James: JM:

I think it might be a requirement to get into certain colleges, a language, a foreign language. James: Yeah you have to have three languages I think. JM: And is that a factor for you then? Do you want to go to college and stuff? James: I do yeah, but I would nev- I wouldn’t want to go into, like, teaching or something like that. Over the years, teaching has been negatively described as ‘feminised’, or a profession consisting mainly of women that has catered to the needs of girls over boys (Epstein et al., 1998; Skelton, 2009). Historically one of the few professions open to women, it is also perceived as facilitating women’s other ‘roles’, such as childcare, given the shorter on-site working hours and longer summer holidays. Although it was not my intention in this extract to link university matriculation requirements with becoming a language teacher, this is how James interpreted the question. It would appear that he at the very least felt compelled in some way to respond to any potential implication, and in doing so engaged in a process of distinction, which ‘focuses on the identity relation of differentiation’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005: 600). By linking teaching, a profession in which he emphatically states a lack of interest, with language learning, he distances himself from those who are interested in such endeavours, reinforcing his identity positioning as ‘not a language-y person’. Ideologies of men’s and women’s language behaviour inform ideas about language learning and what constitutes a ‘good’ language learner. As discussed in Chapter 3, some of the boys in Carr and Pauwels’ (2006) study of young people in Australia evoked a ‘brain sex’ or ‘hardwiring’ argument to explain language learning behaviour. Girls, according to some of the boys interviewed, are better language learners because ‘of the size of something in their brains’; ‘girls can do languages – that’s how their brains are’; they can ‘stay with something until they’ve got it’, and ‘will ask for help’ (Carr & Pauwels, 2006: 66–67). In other words, language learning is constructed as something boys are simply not good at, or at least not meant to be good at. In the present study, James’ immediate rejection of language teaching can be read as a rejection of a life that is just not ‘meant’ for him. His and Jack’s remarks implicitly imply

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a biological, essential aspect. They position themselves as not ‘language people’ or not ‘hard-wired’ to be good at languages. Instead, they position themselves as more suited to or more interested in STEM and business subjects. They do, however, appear to be interested in their studies and are aware of future educational requirements and opportunities, constructing a technically based masculinity (Lawson, 2013) that values the affordances of higher education within certain parameters. Language Learning Investment and Imagined Identities

The dominance of English in international relations, business and, increasingly, as a medium of instruction in institutions across the world, profoundly impacts the social, economic, educational and affective experiences of people across the globe (e.g. Piller, 2016). English is perhaps the ultimate ‘access code’; it is highly aspirational and ideologically associated with more favourable economic circumstances, mobility and migration, and increased employment opportunities. In Anglophone contexts, however, English can often be perceived as simply ‘enough’ for future life and work (Royal Irish Academy, 2011). Yet, in recent years there has been an uptick in discourses of linguistic diversity by public bodies and larger organisations, although these, as some have pointed out (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Sayers & Láncos, 2017), do not necessarily challenge the status quo, even serving to reinforce linguistic hierarchies and the status of already privileged languages. In Ireland, discourses of English-as-enough have coexisted for many years alongside discourses of language-as-resource. The Languages Connect strategy frequently references the economic benefits associated with knowledge of additional languages. In his forward to the strategy, the then minister for education notes that ‘[t]here is a significant opportunity for Ireland to excel on the global stage’ (Department of Education and Skills, 2017: 5). The strategy also notes that: Knowledge of foreign languages is essential for Ireland’s cultural, social and economic welfare. Even though we are a small, open economy which depends on international trade and are now home to immigrants from almost 200 countries who, for the most part, have migrated here since 2000, our competency levels in foreign languages remains low. The range of languages which are offered to students by schools is not sufficiently diverse, and too few students take advantage of mobility opportunities, such as Erasmus+, to experience language immersion as part of their studies. This has led to the enterprise sector indicating that there is a shortage of graduates and sufficiently skilled people in the languages of trade and business. (Department of Education and Skills, 2017: 6)

While the cultural and social value ascribed to language learning is frequently mentioned throughout the document, the economic value in the

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above extract appears to carry extra weight; the shortage of skills in the languages of trade and business is constructed as the end result of shortcomings elsewhere in the education system. It is the last straw, as it were. Fieldwork for this study was carried out during a time of economic austerity a number of years prior to the publication of the strategy. It was also a time when foreign language learning was not a government priority, given the termination of schemes such as the successful MLPSI in order to redirect financial resources. Although foreign languages can be perceived as difficult but useful subjects, they can also be constructed as unnecessary ones. In interviews with students, a discourse of Englishas-enough emerges in their talk. Neither Jack nor James envisage French or German, respectively, as part of their futures: JM: Jack: ---JM: James: JM: James: JM: James: JM: James:

Do you- can you ever see yourselves being fluent (…)? No, not really. Em, is it something that you’ve- that you’d like to, you know, say ‘I can speak German’ (…) does, say, knowing another language mean something to you? Or not? Eh, sort- no, not really. No, so it doesn’t really mean anything to you to say, say when you’re- when you’ve done your Leaving Cert? That I’m able to speak another language, yeah. That’s not a- no? No. Em, so you think English is, English is enough. Yeah. Something like that, yeah.

Jack does not envisage himself becoming fluent in French, nor does James foresee using German in future. Neither does James appear to regard knowledge of a foreign language as in some way meaningful or aspirational. Interestingly, throughout my period of observation of their language classes, both students appeared to be engaged language learners, offering (mostly correct) answers to their teacher’s questions, sometimes unprompted. Although possibly encouraged by my presence, neither Jack nor James appeared to struggle with language learning. During an interview, Jack, who was part of the higher-level French stream (German students were not streamed into different classrooms/ability levels due to lower student numbers), admits that he even somewhat enjoys the class: Jack:

Yeah, it’s not like one of those classes that’d you’d like, you don’t wanna go to next, like.

He also states that he enjoys speaking the language in class, as it is ‘so much craic’, although as discussed earlier, he does not consider himself to be the ‘type of person’ who is ‘into’ languages.

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The discrepancy between my perception of Jack’s and James’ investment in language learning during class time, and their own characterisations of their abilities and preferences may be further interpreted using Norton’s (2013) and Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment, which links the concepts of capital, ideology and identity. The symbolic capital associated with their language learning is linked to short- and medium-term gains, such as being considered a ‘good student’, maintaining a good relationship with their teacher, and attaining good grades. ‘Successful’ foreign language learning allows students to progress through their secondary schooling and to gain entry into a higher education institution. Once achieved, however, knowledge of another language appears to become largely irrelevant for them. Beyond attaining the grades necessary for enrolment in higher education and other forms of symbolic capital more immediately relevant to their school lives, the potential for the acquisition of a ‘wider range of symbolic resources (…) and material resources’ (Norton, 2013: 6) is low, or at least this is their perception. Both Jack and James position themselves at the STEM end of a languages versus STEM binary discursive construct. This construct aside, it is clear that Jack and James do not wish to position themselves as ‘language people’, despite their apparent investment in learning their respective foreign languages within the confines of the classroom. However, the lack of symbolic capital associated with language learning beyond secondary school level, and their rejection of what it means to be a ‘language person’, would indicate that at the time of research they were unlikely to invest in language learning upon leaving school. As stated earlier, one of the features of contemporary neoliberal regimes is the coexistence of English hegemony alongside a superficial concern for linguistic diversity (Barakos & Selleck, 2019). Such discourses are difficult to contest and resist, particularly given the prevalence of the language-as-resource model for language policy and planning (e.g. Department of Education and Skills, 2017). A competing discourse, which, on the surface, appears to be a rejection of foreign languages, exposes the disillusionment felt by those who do not buy in to dominant discourses of multilingualism. German teacher Mr Cawley recalls a moment when a student expressed his views about learning German: Mr Cawley:

 s famously one fella said to me here ‘Sure, what are we A learning German for? Sure, sheep don’t speak German!’ [laughs]

Although anecdotal, this recollection summarises the effects of elite multilingualism on the lives of many young people in rural communities such as Loughmór. Many SMSS students live on farms, may be expected to participate in tasks on the farm, and some will eventually inherit their

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family’s farm. Farmers, particularly those who maintain and manage smaller farms, usually also work in some other form of paid employment in order to make ends meet. Although privileged in their knowledge of English, many of those who wish to work the land may perceive languages such as French and German to be irrelevant to their current daily or future lives, which are often largely oriented towards the local (e.g. Donkersloot, 2012). The above anecdote may not, therefore, be a case of rejecting multilingualism per se; rather, the languages offered, and in the case of SMSS, that they are obliged to study, do not serve their more immediate educational and practical needs. Offering a counter discourse to oppose that of elite multilingualism is difficult within the parameters of the current education system, however. Located in the Galway Gaeltacht are the headquarters of a number of Irish-speaking institutions such as an Coimisinéir Teanga (the Language Commissioner), which ‘functions as an ombudsman service and compliance agency in relation to state services through Irish’ (An Coimisinéir Teanga, n.d.), and media organisations such as TG4, established in 1996, and Radio na Gaeltachta, established in 1972, the state-funded Irish language TV and radio stations, respectively. Such organisations are significant employers in the region, necessitating a high level of Irish language proficiency. Although it is close to a large Gaeltacht and some smaller Gaeltacht enclaves, Loughmór and many of its surrounding areas are largely English speaking. In English-speaking areas such as Loughmór, those who speak Irish in the home must generally use English outside the home when dealing with official bodies and education systems. Yet, Irish is shifting, as discussed in Chapter 1, from a predominantly rural language, or a language associated with rurality, to one also associated with urban life. The National University of Ireland, Galway houses Áras na Gaeilge, a dedicated Irish language unit for teaching and research, and some of the top university feeder schools in the county are Irish medium schools located in English-speaking areas and Gaeltachtaí. Furthermore, of the approximately 50,000 people living in Gaeltacht areas in Galway county, 15,300 live within the Galway city suburbs (Údarás na Gaeltachta, n.d.). In rural, predominantly English-speaking communities such as Loughmór, a working knowledge of local varieties of both Irish and English is of importance to many local farmers due to the necessity of maintaining working relationships, working with and within various communities, and participating in trade in the local and national settings. Despite the official status of Irish both in Ireland and in the EU, this form of multilingualism is not economically valued in the same way that knowledge of English alongside another high-status language is valued, nor is it valued in the same way as English–Irish bilingualism for professional (e.g. educational, political, administrative) purposes. Irish and English do, however, form part of the plurilingual repertoires of a large segment of the local Gaeltacht (and indeed non-Gaeltacht) population, as

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evidenced by the code-switching and code-mixing of those living in Gaeltachtaí (Ní Laoire, 2016). There is, however, some way to go before those living in English-speaking communities who were brought up speaking English and who do not use Irish professionally or for work purposes use the Irish language on a daily basis. Although most participants in this study did not plan to use their foreign language upon leaving school, many students favourably compared their chosen foreign language with Irish. The following remarks were typical of those encountered during interviews: Marie: (…) Marie:

I can’t do Irish. I mean. I’m good at, like, German and English. I’m good at other languages, but I’m just not good at the hard subjects like Maths and Irish. The basics I’m not good at.

German is so much, I dunno, it’s easier, way easier to learn, and they actually speak (unintelligible). Jessica: The book, the German book is so good but then, like, the Irish book is like fifth year level, it’s really hard. ---JM: And em, like, wha- what do ye think of French overall, are ye happy in the class, or are ye kind of…? Seán: Yeah Jack: Yeah it’s alright, yeah, it’s better than Irish. JM: Mm. Jack: It’s easy like, it’s easier than Irish as well, like. JM: Yeah, how? Seán: It makes sense, like, German just looks stupid, the writing and stuff. Jack: And it’s like really close to English as well, ’cause you know the way they all came down from, was it Latin or something? Yeah they all came, like, it’s really close to English so it’s way, way more easier to understand than German or Irish. Unprompted, some students used Irish as a frame of reference for discussing their experiences of French or German, while also comparing their language of choice to the other foreign language option. Of note in these discussions was the perceived difficulty level of Irish compared to their foreign language of study. Worryingly for the Irish language, Irish was perceived as more difficult than French or German by all seven of the students with whom the subject was discussed, aside from fifth-year Sophie who had extended family living in a Gaeltacht area and who spoke Irish with them regularly. Irish is not generally ‘necessary’ for life outside of Gaeltachtaí, and indeed at times within it, given the widespread use of English. The above comments evidence a dissatisfaction with the difficulty level of ‘school Irish’ (Flynn, 2020), possibly very few opportunities

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to use Irish outside of the classroom, while also indicating a linguistic segregation between Gaeltachtaí and non-Gaeltachtaí that exists even in counties with large Gaeltacht regions. Given the place of Irish in both primary and secondary curricula, this requires further examination in order to support learners and Irish-speaking communities. As discussed in Chapter 2, Norton (2001) has argued that investment in language learning is, in essence, an exercise in imagination: imagining a community of speakers with whom to use the language, as well as imagining oneself using the language. Imagination, as De Costa (2016) has pointed out, can be restricted by the social imaginary: the understandings, practices and expectations that characterise an imagined community. If discourses of an imagined community do not circulate within the student’s ‘real-life’ communities, conceiving of an imagined multilingual identity will be particularly difficult. Most students interviewed did not express a desire to pursue French or German beyond secondary school. However, many admired fluent speakers of multiple languages and felt that speaking a language ‘fluently’ would be ‘cool’, but ultimately out of reach. Regarding French, Caitlin states: Caitlin: Yeah like I’d love to be able to like speak it fluently (…) Like go over like studying or something. Caitlin admits to enjoying a range of subjects at school, particularly chemistry and French. She attributes this, in part at least, to her teachers and the atmosphere they foster in their classes and their ability to render challenging material accessible. However, her post-secondary school plans do not include pursuing French in any formal learning capacity, and although she says that she would love to be able to speak the language fluently, she does not appear to be aware of any steps to take to do so. Coupled with the lack of options to study a language alongside scientific subjects in Ireland, discourses surrounding higher education are heavily vocational and STEM oriented, particularly in recessionary times. Fifth-year student Andrea volunteered to participate in this study at Caitlin and Sophie’s encouragement due to her strong interest in the French language. Andrea was the only student to express firm plans to study a foreign language upon leaving school, and French was her favourite subject overall. To my knowledge, she was also the only participant who had gained an immersion experience abroad, during which she spent three weeks with a host family in France while simultaneously attending French lessons in a private school: Andrea: I can’t wait to go back again [laughs]. (…)

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JM: And em, was it scary, like, being in France last year? Andrea: Not really, I didn’t think it was that scary, I thought it was, I dunno. I’m kinda not really a homesick person anyways, so I was kinda dying to go away [laughs]. She also expresses her haste to return and had already made arrangements to do so: Andrea: I went to school as well then for a while, and it was kind of a private school, ’cause I went with other Irish people. There’s like six of us in total, or seven, and em, we went to school and we, like, learned stuff as well and, em, and then, we came home and we had to have family time and stuff with the family. So, it was really hard though, at the weekends I felt it really hard, ’cause you were there the whole time, and you just had to talk French and, you know, it was just hard, but, I kind of got in on it, like in the last week I felt I really settled in. Do you know, I could have stayed longer, but, em, I only had three weeks there, so it was kind of limited but, next time when I go back now I’m just going to the family and that’s it. So I’m gonna be immersed in French. Andrea’s experiences were facilitated by her personal circumstances, as well as her apparent willingness to try new things. Despite the challenges of being a young person away from home and family, she ‘got on with it’ and eventually came to view her experience as enjoyable and rewarding. She was confronted with her imagined community of French speakers, and after about two weeks in France, she ‘settled in’. In other words, her expectations of her imagined community of speakers adjusted to the reality of daily life in a new country and through a different language. Viewing Andrea’s experience through Darvin and Norton’s (2015) investment lens, the role played by economic capital and language ideologies is particularly noteworthy. Her experience of attending a private school in France and staying with a host family would be beyond reach for many. Students with the resources, or the ‘material wealth and social connections for gaining command of prestigious languages and literacy practices’ (Preece, 2019: 405) to engage in such activities may be more likely to imagine themselves as foreign language speakers. Since they facilitated this trip, it’s likely that Andrea’s family believe language learning and such intercultural experiences to be in some way beneficial and useful to her future life. Preece (2019: 404) notes that ‘[e]lite identities, such as that of an elite bilingual, depend on access to a range of material and symbolic resources; these resources are not equally accessible to working-class students, placing them at a disadvantage to more socially elite groups’.

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Elite or ‘prestigious’ multilingualism, involving two or more high-status languages, also defines itself in opposition to ‘plebian’ multilingualism (Jaspers, 2009), involving ‘the linguistic repertoires of urban migrant communities using heritage language(s) learned in natural, rather than schooled settings’ (Preece, 2019: 406). Language learning in schooled settings is dependent on linguistic hierarchies, language ideologies at national and local levels, and student capital. Andrea’s experience of learning French, both in Ireland and in France, comes as a result of formalised arrangements, rather than solely ‘natural’ settings. Even her stay with a host family was based on the mutual interests and pastimes of both her own family and the host family. Although I did not have the opportunity to get to know more about her background, her experiences were nonetheless made possible through discourses of elite multilingualism, affording her the opportunity to study a global language at school and engaging in potentially life-changing experiences abroad. The conditions required to develop an imagined identity as a French speaker, to envisage the range of personal, social and economic benefits associated with learning French in contemporary Anglophone contexts, and to imagine herself studying French at university, were fostered as a result. Preece (2019: 406) argues that the ‘elite–non-elite binary about bilingualism holds great resonance when it comes to institutional discourses about language’, as it is necessary to maintain the linguistic status quo and ensure the status of languages that sit towards the apex of the hierarchy. Many heritage and minority language speakers do not have access to the extracurricular activities, events and experiences offered to promote prestigious multilingualism in Anglophone contexts (e.g. exchange programmes and the various cultural institutes), and when they do, such activities are time and labour intensive for students, parents and teachers, often taking place outside of regular school hours. Nor are local varieties of English and Irish learned in ‘natural’ settings afforded the same status as standard Englishes and other global languages and varieties. Current foreign language learning arrangements across Anglophone settings thus tend to benefit students from higher socioeconomic groups, as highlighted by Preece (2019: 416), since they ‘are more likely to be able to position their multilingualism as an asset within institutional discourses than their counterparts from working-class backgrounds’. Conclusion

The language choices that student participants made were, as per their own accounts, based on prior exposure to a foreign language, or, in some cases, language background. They also told of how students choose the language that their friends intend to study. The cuts to primary school language provision in 2012, despite the positive impact that early exposure to additional languages has for the learning of subsequent languages

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and for the development of cultural awareness and literacy skills, has since undoubtedly had long-term implications for young peoples’ perceptions of and attitudes towards language learning more broadly. On a more positive note, foreign languages were reintroduced to a select number of primary schools by way of a pilot scheme in the academic year 2021–2022. Furthermore, the new Primary Language Curriculum aims to ‘encourage and enable children to communicate effectively in both the first and second language of the school and to communicate in their heritage language for a variety of purposes’ (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019: n.p.). Indeed, integrating students’ home languages into the primary, and even secondary, curriculum should not be an unwelcome challenge. As discussed in Chapter 1, primary schools with a large multilingual cohort such as Scoil Bhríde Cailíní in West Dublin have reported positive outcomes for students of all language backgrounds following the integration of students’ home languages into the existing curriculum (Little & Kirwan, 2019). However, if such a measure were rolled out, the appropriate financial and practical support would be necessary to allow schools and teaching staff to confidently implement it. It is impossible to extricate the discourses of language learning identified in student talk from the demands of the economic market. Most student participants admitted that their foreign language skills would be unlikely to be put to use once they finished school. Some invested heavily in their language of study due to the capital that it would enable them to acquire, but this capital would diminish upon obtaining the required grades for university. Fifth-year student Caitlin found the idea of becoming fluent in her language of study a highly attractive notion, but the higher education pathways of the time limited her options. Only Andrea, who had spent time with a host family in France while studying at a language school over the summer holidays, was able to experience the personal satisfaction associated with successful communication through another language, and thus conceive of the range of benefits associated with full-time language study. This mirrors Sophie’s experience of Irish. She expressed a positive attitude towards the language and did not find it as difficult as her peers did due to her family ties to the Gaeltacht. The excerpts above raise questions about the way in which languages are taught in Ireland, and students’ access, or lack thereof, to communities of speakers with whom to use their chosen language. Students such as Jack and James discursively constructed language learning in opposition to STEM subjects, with James linking language study in higher education with language teaching. Such constructs are suffused with gendered meaning, since teaching, and particularly language teaching, is a profession that is often discursively constructed as a gendered one. Prestigious and socially and economically valued STEM subjects are, on the other hand, associated with middle-class, technically

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based masculinities, involving in-demand neoliberal skills or ‘keywords’ (Block, 2018: 126), such as innovation, creativity and entrepreneurial skills. Language learning in Ireland, particularly developing proficiency in one or more of the ‘big’ languages, is increasingly constructed as an asset and a gateway to employment opportunities and mobility. However, most of the students interviewed were reluctant to engage in language study in higher education. Although languages continue to be regarded as difficult subjects (Bruen, 2021), the dominance of a limited number of languages in the education system means that it may be difficult to conceive of using a foreign language outside of a vague ‘business’ context. Along with the limited number of higher education programmes alongside which one may study a foreign language (although the introduction of elective and minor languages in some institutions, and the creation of a database by Languages Connect [n.d.] and careersportal​.​ie have made it easier to identify a college course), conceiving of an imagined multilingual identity may be difficult for Irish students.

6

6 Addressing the Issues and Moving Forward

Introduction

As noted in the introduction to this book, research into the foreign language learning experiences of secondary school students in Ireland is limited. This book has sought to illuminate some of these experiences by adopting an ethnographic perspective and drawing on poststructuralist and critical approaches to second language acquisition (SLA), and a discourse approach to phenomena such as gender and eliteness. This book had two central objectives. Firstly, it aimed to examine practice and discourse within St Murtagh’s Secondary School (SMSS), particularly with regard to the way in which institutional requirements and dominant discourses contribute to a binary understanding of gender. This involved an examination of practice through participant observation, and an analysis of the way in which students construct their identities in the face of institutional constraints and dominant discourses. The second main objective involved the examination of discourses of language learning through an analysis of students’ own reported experiences and their language ideologies, largely through an analysis of interview data. Examining how gender is understood and how students construct their identities in the educational context has allowed for a greater understanding of their investment in language learning and their relationship to discourses of language learning. The relationship between practice and discourse is recursive; micro-level practices and macro-level discourses are mutually shaping – analysing discourse provides a valuable insight into other social processes, since language acts as a medium for working out issues that are often linked to other things (Heller, 2011). Overview Overview of the findings

As pointed out in Chapter 3, a number of major contributions to gender and language learning have taken a discourse approach (e.g. Carr 131

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& Pauwels, 2006; Norton, 2000, 2013), treating gender and sexuality as emergent in discourse and interaction, rather than isolated variables (Rowlett & King, 2017). As Rowlett and King (2017) point out, identity positions and power are acted out through discourses, and these processes are dynamic and ongoing. Discursive ‘performances’ ‘can both reflect and contest normative discursive constructions of gender or sexual identity. In other words, there is potential for agents to negotiate positions within the discursive and material constraints of their circumstances in order to either accomplish actions or resist marginalization’ (Rowlett & King, 2017: 87–88). The study of space, including material space, discursive space and liminal spaces, or the blurred, transitional spaces between online and offline, have come to the attention of sociolinguists and SLA researchers in recent years, due to an increased awareness of the significance of ‘spatialisation’ or of how space is in perpetual (re)production by the actors that use and organise it (Jaworski & Thurlow, 2010: 7). In Chapter 4, I examined the way in which a binary understanding of gender is integral to the way in which SMSS is spatially and socially organised and managed on a day-to-day basis (although not limited to SMSS or Irish schools, of course). Students are segregated according to assumed gender, and some of the spaces they are permitted to occupy at any given time reflects this. These ‘dividing practices’ (Foucault, 1982: 77) encourage the reproduction of further gendered practices, such as the tendency of boys and girls to choose to sit apart in the classroom, a practice that becomes routinised. The way in which space is used is implicated in the construction of gender identities, as seen in this book and elsewhere (e.g. Carr & Pauwels, 2006; Þrastardóttir et al., 2021), with implications for investment in language learning. Some students, however, negotiate their identity positions within the material and discursive constraints of the school. Ciara and Sarah do so by rejecting a number of school rules, including those concerning adornment. Since girls’ bodies can be sites of control or resistance, Ciara and Sarah risk and indeed sometimes endure marginalisation by teachers and peers due to their infringing school rules relating to dress and adornment in order to index their identities, or to ‘accomplish self-hood’ (Currie et al., 2007: 25). Instead, they prefer an aesthetic of what I have termed ‘alternative femininity’, which is at odds with both the dominant dress and adornment styles of the time, as well as the school rules. A further way in which they index their identities is through their engagement with and sometimes rejection of gendered language ideologies. It is at this nexus of identity and ideology that they render language ideologies less effective and challenge gender norms and discourses. However, despite some resistance and negotiation, a binary understanding of gender underscores much of what students are permitted to do, and their understanding of ‘appropriate’ behaviour, what is ‘for’

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them or an appropriate path to follow when it comes to current subject choices and higher education pathways. Language ideologies have elsewhere been found to be underpinned with ideas of ‘biologism’ (Cameron, 2010a, 2010b), or the belief that boys and girls or men and women possess innately different and even opposite aptitudes or preferences. Such discourses are bound up with the way in which knowledge systems are constructed and the way in which knowledge is compartmentalised into subject areas and disciplinary fields to meet market demands. In Chapter 5, I discussed how students James and Jack discursively construct a knowledge binary of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and business versus languages. This reflects the broader discursive construction of knowledge within neoliberal economies, with languages and the humanities treated as distinct from or not fully compatible with STEM fields. Instead, they tend to be associated with professions such as teaching, although in recent years they have been increasingly linked to entrepreneurship, international business and jobs within multinational companies. The knowledge binary constructed by the students possesses a gendered dimension that is often passed off as ‘choice’. On the one hand, the choices of girls and boys are simply seen as reflective of their preferences, with boys tending to choose to study languages less often at the optional level. However, as pointed out in Chapter 5, the notion of ‘choice’ is ideologically driven, reflecting market demands for certain education types, as well as certain types of graduates. Also embedded in the notion of learner ‘choice’ are discourses around who ought to and who gets to participate in language learning (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Selleck, 2020). If language learning is, at certain times and in certain contexts, discursively constructed as an endeavour to which girls are more suited, studying a language is not, therefore, a ‘choice’ for all. Discourses of gender and language learning do not act alone, however; social class and the political economy are bound up with discourses of gender and language learning to form a complex web of mediating factors. Discourses of elite multilingualism (Barakos & Selleck, 2019) and the hierarchy of languages in the global economy (Jaspers, 2009; Sayers & Láncos, 2017) mean that a limited number are considered valid and useful languages that will serve the learner in some way in their future lives, while others are viewed as impractical and even redundant. Elite multilingualism is bound up with language ideologies, which are evident in how the students in this book talk about what constitutes a more useful or ‘better’ language to learn. Students cited Spanish, and to a lesser extent, Chinese, neither of which are offered in SMSS, as examples of languages that would somehow serve them better in the future. However, despite appearing to be common sense beliefs (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994), ideologies of language learning change over time and are largely dictated by economic demands and dominant societal discourses.

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Student investment in language learning does not solely depend on dominant language ideologies, although these play a key role in determining which languages are ultimately provided in schools. As evidenced in the case of French language student Andrea, the only student interviewed who demonstrated a commitment to pursuing a language beyond secondary school, the notion of investment in language learning also involves access to resources. Experiences such as those of Andrea, who enjoyed access to French as a ‘living language’ through her stays with a host family and lessons in a private school in France, are usually only possible due to a combination of symbolic and material resources. Such experiences are rarely available to speakers of languages other than those that enjoy a privileged status in the Irish education system. Andrea’s experience allowed her to conceive of language learning as a personally enriching pursuit beyond the confines of the classroom. In the interval since data was collected for this project it is likely that discourses of elite multilingualism have intensified, serving to strengthen associations between language learning and international business. As discussed in Chapter 1, Ireland’s recently published first foreign language strategy, Languages Connect (Department of Education and Skills, 2017), frequently mentions the business and trade advantages that knowledge of a foreign language can confer on the individual learner, and on Irish society more broadly. Such discourses are even more prevalent since the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, leaving Ireland in an ‘Anglophone bubble’ (O’Leary, 2020). Public discourse of how Ireland must now not only leverage its position as one of the only remaining Anglophone countries in the EU, alongside Malta, but also avoid marginalisation due to its comparatively poorer foreign language skills, is commonplace. Yet, the discourses revealed in this book are not going to simply disappear overnight. Language ideologies endure due to their perceived legitimacy and self-evidence. Indeed, many people believe, quite simply, that English is enough for their day-to-day lives and beyond. Incentives to learn a foreign language are so bound up with discourses of elite multilingualism that it is difficult for anyone, let alone young people, to see beyond the benefits of language learning for the purposes of either a career in international business or teaching a language, for instance. Such discourses endure, and are produced and reproduced through talk and other forms of representation. Despite some strategic steps forward, language education in Ireland remains at the mercy of the funding allocated to it, and is already in crisis (Brophy, 2019), at both secondary level and in higher education. Limitations of the study

This study is not without its limitations. As discussed in Chapter 4, the ‘boundlessness’ of an ethnographic approach can be viewed as a limitation; there is always more data to collect, more interviews to

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conduct, more observations to be made. Yet, the linguistic ethnographer, irrespective of their level or career stage, will invariably find themselves bound by life’s limitations (Copland & Creese, 2015). One cannot spend indeterminate periods of time in the community without bringing the data collection process to some sort of a close, even if from time to time one ends up returning to the field. PhD projects must be completed, other commitments must be upheld. Nevertheless, this project would undoubtedly have benefitted from more time in the field. Gathering and analysing audio-recorded classroom data and interrogating pedagogic methods would have added to the discussion, yet these were beyond the scope of fieldwork at the time, and are therefore recommended avenues of further exploration. A further semester or school term would have likely led to further interviews and more participants, which could only have served to add to the perspectives described earlier, and would have added further layers of richness and depth to the analysis. However, as noted in Chapter 4, linguistic ethnographic approaches do not assume a fixed research design with a set number of targets as in quantitative research, for instance. Instead, whether or not a community member decides to be interviewed ‘says’ something about them, about the community and about the researcher, and each interview becomes a joint construction between the researcher and participant. Even the seemingly less-successful interviews, the short ones, those where not much appears to be ‘said’, become significant in an ethnography’s tapestry of events. Criticisms of ethnography, although less common now that ethnography has become an established paradigm in applied linguistics, particularly in the past decade, point out its ‘qualitativeness’ as somehow problematic; that, due to the focus, usually, on one community and a small number of participants, the data cannot be representative of the general population. Yet, ethnographies do not claim to generalise across large populations. The small number of participants and the focus on one community are not a hindrance to the study; rather, what is observed becomes significant, and observations inform other data collected (rather than simply providing context for it), allowing for a richness of data out of which themes and discourses emerge. Instead of constructs such as language and community being preordained, they are what Pérez-Milans (2020: 94) calls ‘emerging constructs that are interactionally constructed, negotiated and transformed by social actors in situated encounters, in the course of large-scale institutional and societal processes’. Small-scale interactions are situated within and ultimately bound up with larger social processes. Implications Scholarly implications

This book contributes to the growing body of poststructuralist SLA research that examines the way in which relations of power play out in

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the language classroom, in schools and within education systems more broadly (e.g. Block, 2006; De Costa, 2016; Norton, 2000, 2013). Such research, as De Costa (2016: 164), following Pavlenko (2002: 285) notes, centralises identity, views it as dynamic and fluid, and treats ‘language as symbolic capital and the site of identity construction’. Viewing language and identity in this way allows us ‘to examine how linguistic, social, cultural, gender, and ethnic identities of L2 users, on the one hand, structure access to linguistic resources, and interactional opportunities, on the other hand, are constituted and reconstituted in the process’ (Pavlenko, 2002: 285). Similarly, Preece (2020a: 3) has recently noted that the identities that people ‘inhabit’ are constrained by ‘access to the types of spaces and relations (or discursive spaces) in which identities are constructed, constituted, negotiated, accomplished, and/or performed’; by the identities that are ascribed or given to us by others, such as gender identities; and access to material resources ‘including the income, property and employment status derived from their social class positioning in society’ (Preece, 2020a). Although Block (2017, 2018) has drawn attention to the dearth of social class research in applied linguistics, it is increasingly integrated into more recent discursive approaches to language learning (e.g. Barakos & Selleck, 2019; Preece, 2019). Through its examination of discourses of elite multilingualism and ideologies of what is considered a ‘useful’ language, this book contributes to this body of research. By drawing on Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model for analysing investment in language learning, which brings together the constructs of identity, ideology and capital, this book shows that inequality of material and symbolic capital can contribute to how young people perceive the subjects on offer to them, ultimately impacting their experiences of language learning. There is immense scope in SLA for the study of language learning environments and the way in which space mediates the language learning experience, from the classroom and school yard to spaces of the community. Although applied linguistic ethnographies both implicitly and explicitly consider the physical environment (e.g. De Costa, 2016; Mendoza-Denton, 2008), the study of space is less common in SLA than in sociolinguistic research (e.g. Baynham & De Fina, 2005; Cashman, 2018; King, 2011). Benson’s (2021) recent text on spatial perspectives on SLA is a notable exception. Institutional space deserves particular attention since it serves to facilitate the reproduction of the status quo, from both pedagogical and societal perspectives. Policy implications

It would seem that policymakers are already astutely aware of the challenges facing foreign language education in Ireland today, many of which are discussed in some capacity in this book. The challenges faced

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by foreign language learning in Ireland put forth in the executive summary of Languages Connect are, as highlighted in Chapter 1: The global dominance of English. Lack of awareness of the opportunities that foreign languages offer for careers and mobility. The perceived difficulty of learning languages. The limited choice of foreign languages available in schools. The shortage of qualified teachers of foreign languages. The traditional dominance of French in the system. Low uptake of foreign languages in further and higher education. Lack of adequate support for immigrant languages (Department of Education and Skills, 2017: 7) Based on both the findings of this book and the research literature discussed in the earlier chapters, one could also add ‘the social barriers to language learning’ to this list. Language learning is discursively constructed as a middle-class pursuit, associated with material and symbolic resources, and possesses a gendered dimension that is rarely discussed in foreign language education circles in Ireland. However, it is also clear from this study that some students are in some way interested in pursuing a foreign language beyond secondary school. Their prior experience of language learning at primary school, including their experience of the Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative, contact with native speakers, language background and heritage, and experiences abroad provide an ideal foundation for their continued learning. Yet, there are numerous barriers to moving beyond second-level language learning. These include the dearth of higher education opportunities to continue studying a language, particularly alongside traditional ‘professional’ degrees, such as law, or degrees in STEM or the health sciences. In addition, the range of languages provided in regional universities and institutes of technology (IoTs) is more limited than in their Dublin counterparts. In Trinity College Dublin, Eastern European languages and Middle Eastern languages are offered as part of ‘studies’ degrees, whereas east Asian languages such as Chinese and Japanese are offered alongside specialisations such as translation studies and international business in Dublin City University, for instance. For young people from western Irish regions, the cost of living in Dublin, one of the most expensive cities in Europe, a city that also has a significant shortage of affordable accommodation, can be prohibitive. English, then, must be enough for young learners if it means that they can live at home or in a less expensive town or city while they further their education at the postsecondary level. Funding for the provision of a wider range of languages in universities and IoTs across the country at major, minor and elective level must, therefore, be considered.

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In her critique of the Languages Connect strategy, Bruen (2021) argues that the success of the strategy will depend on top-down changes to language policy. Post Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI) has been tasked with raising awareness of the benefits of foreign language learning, largely through social media and awareness raising events, but, as she points out, its success will be determined by whether or not the Languages Connect targets are reached. However, PPLI’s task is a monumental one, given, as she argues, the reasons for the low uptake of languages at post-secondary education may be less to do with the availability of places, than due to the low demand for places. The new Primary Language Curriculum for primary school language education acknowledges that ‘Ireland is a linguistically-and culturallydiverse country. Our schools include children with English as a first language, children with Irish as a first language and children with another language as their first language’ (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019: 12). While it is clear that following an integrated Irish and English language curriculum, as well as encouraging ‘children of different languages and cultures to be proud of and to share their heritage’ (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019) represents significant progress for language education in Ireland, much work remains to be done. The new language sampler module of 2021–2022 will only be delivered in 100 schools and teaching time will amount to one hour per week over a six-week period. It will, however, inform future modern foreign language and Irish Sign Language developments in primary education, according to the Languages Connect website (Languages Connect, n.d.). Explicitly integrating foreign and/or heritage languages into the primary language curriculum in a systematic and long-term fashion would provide greater exposure to languages at an early age, thus giving children the opportunity to engage with language learning in a low-stakes, examfree environment. It would encourage a move away from the view that languages are academic subjects that are studied for university matriculation purposes. Indeed, the Primary Language Curriculum already explicitly acknowledges the role that an integrated approach to language would have on ‘adequate exposure to the language, and adequate motivation and opportunities to engage with the language. An explicit focus on integration between languages enables children to make cross-lingual connections and develop an awareness of how language works’ (Department of Education and Skills & National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, 2019: 8). Extending curricular integration to foreign languages is, therefore, a logical next step. Bringing heritage languages into the classroom environment and offering a selection of foreign languages in the primary school curriculum would also serve to increase, not only language awareness, but also awareness of the status of a select number

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of global and official languages, which would afford young people a greater level of agency in their language learning trajectories. This would likely contribute to an eventual increase in demand for language degree programmes, for degree programmes with a language component, and for a broader range of languages in higher education. However, as Bruen (2021) has also recently argued, in order for the Languages Connect strategy, and indeed any policy recommendation to succeed, it needs government oversight and the appropriate financial investment. Following Lanvers (2011), she points out that simply aiming to ‘convince’ the relevant parties of the myriad benefits of language learning and engaging in online campaigns are unlikely to have any longerterm benefits. As the findings of this book indicate, student investment in foreign language education involves university matriculation requirements, possible career options and the material and symbolic resources required to become confident users of the language outside of the classroom context, many of which are policy, and therefore ideologically driven. In order to ensure the development of foreign language education in Ireland, what is needed, according to Bruen (2021) is a reduction in the discrepancy between policy announcements and the financial and practical support of teaching institutions that will implement them. Pedagogical implications

Although the findings of this book merely scratch the surface of secondary school language learner experiences, they indicate significant issues around foreign language education in Ireland. The examinationcentric approach to language education must be re-thought in order to allow students more scope to focus on their chosen language as a ‘real’ and ‘living’ language. The current Leaving Certificate curriculum is assessed by a suite of end-of-school examinations which account for the majority of the final grade in most subjects. Foreign languages are also assessed by oral and aural examinations, with the oral examination taking place prior to the June examinations. While the written examinations are, arguably, ‘fair’ in that students’ work is anonymised and corrected by anonymous markers, the examination process hinges third-level matriculation on two weeks in June. The limitations of the Leaving Certificate have been no more evident than throughout the past two years during the Covid-19 pandemic, when teachers and students pivoted towards remote and hybrid learning and alternative means of assessment. In 2020, teachers calculated a final Leaving Certificate grade based on probable exam performance, and in 2021, Leaving Certificate students were given the option to sit an examination for their subject, or to opt for a calculated grade. Many students chose a combination of the two, opting to receive an ‘accredited grade’ in some subjects, and to sit an exam in others (Mooney, 2021). The accredited

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grades model allowed students to utilise their year-long performance, rather than one-off examinations, for their final result. There is now immense scope as well as appetite for change to the Leaving Certificate examinations. Classroom-based assessment in particular should be introduced, as it has been for the Junior Cycle (see Chapter 1), to account for at least part of the final grade. To discard the learnings of the past two years, particularly given the significant investment by practitioners, researchers, teacher educators and indeed students in developing and consolidating their knowledge of continuous, remote and hybrid learning approaches would be an error. A rethink of the current language teaching and assessment methods for the Leaving Certificate would give schools and teachers the space to explore languages in a less exam-centric manner, while also potentially providing students with the tools to explore their own identities around and through the target language. A Content and Language Integrated Learning approach, which is favoured by many university language programmes, could allow students to explore issues of identity and gender in the classroom through the medium of the target language. With the right supports in place, schools could also focus on developing telecollaborative projects with schools in other countries so that all students, not just those who can afford family holidays or private tuition abroad, can access target language users and experience the language outside of the classroom context. Further Directions

As financial and practical resources are now required to ensure that the targets of Languages Connect are met, resources must also be allocated to the appropriate research groups and institutions in order to further develop foreign language education research in Ireland. Ireland has a small but dynamic and growing cohort of applied linguistics researchers and researcher-practitioners whose expertise must be harnessed going forward. The progress represented by the publication of the Languages Connect strategy and the new Primary Language Curriculum, and the targets and aims therein, must be followed through in order for foreign language learning in Ireland to orient away from examinations and the Eurocentric range of languages offered at both secondary and tertiary levels. In order to avoid past complacency around foreign language learning, ongoing research into the practices of learners and discourses and ideologies as they relate to language learning is crucial. De Costa and Norton (2020) advocate a focus on investment in language learning, where, as described in Chapters 2 and 5 of this book, investment is mediated by identity, ideology and capital (Darvin & Norton, 2015). They also argue for the study of literacy and digital literacy, since the use of digital

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technologies in the language learning process can offer learners ‘opportunities for meaning-making’ that extend ‘beyond their particular second language capabilities’ (De Costa & Norton, 2020: 590, following Toohey et al., 2012). Such a focus is all the more important in the hybrid learning environment that the Covid-19 pandemic has engendered. However, the use of digital resources and online pedagogical tools depends on access to the relevant technologies and consistent, high-speed internet access, to name just two factors. In terms of research populations, much work remains to be done on the various language learning cohorts in Ireland. De Costa and Norton (2020: 591) point out that ‘[a]n area of identity research that is gaining momentum is that of language teacher and language teacher education’, on which there is a small body of research in the Irish context (e.g. Farr & Riordan, 2015; Farr et al., 2019; Riordan & Farr, 2015). The role of teaching in perpetuating inequalities must be examined in order to break away from ‘the dependency on “Western” knowledge of production and methods common in the Anglophone world’ (De Costa & Norton, 2020: 591). Further research populations that require future study include primary school cohorts and their attitudes towards and beliefs around foreign language learning, heritage language users and their experiences of language education at all levels of education (e.g. Baumgart & Farr, 2011; Nestor & Regan, 2011), and study abroad cohorts in the context of rapid technological and communications advances and digital/remote learning practices. The relationship between social class and language education is understudied in SLA and applied linguistics more broadly (Block, 2017). This is no more true than in Ireland, where little such research has been conducted. Although this book examines discourses of elite multilingualism, a more active investigation into the relationship between political economy and language education would be desirable for future research. Given the complexity of defining social class, and the difficulty in identifying it outside of urban areas, the concept of elite multilingualism is a suitable lens through which to analyse the intersection of learner agency, language learning discourses and political economic structures. Research that considers the role of gender in language education in Ireland is extremely limited, despite sporadic publications calling for further investigation into the subject (e.g. Feery, 2008; Martyn, 2016a; Murphy, 2009). Since gender identity and discourses of gender mediate our daily interactions, experiences of the world, and life chances and choices, future applied linguistics research must consider the role of gender in language learning. Such research must be intersectional, treating gender as one part of an interconnecting web of discourses and social ‘categories’ such as social class, race and ethnicity. Ethnographic and ethnographicinspired approaches allow for an otherwise impossible insight into school and institutional culture, relations of power and the interaction between practice and discourse.

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Index

Adornment  97-100, 104, 132 Architecture, see school architecture Arabic  11, 61

Education system(s), see Irish education system Elite multilingualism  2, 3, 4, 10, 12, 16, 20-21, 22, 26, 39-44, 45, 59, 60, 66, 110-117, 123-124, 127-128, 129 Eliteness, see elite multilingualism English, varieties of  25, 124 Ethnicity  21-22, 32, 50, 65, 141 Ethnographic approach  1, 3, 22, 64, 67, 73-78, 80, 81-82, 95-96, 104, 134-135, 136, 141 Critical ethnography  20, 37, 68, 70, 83, 113 Ethnographic reflexivity  86-88 Linguistic ethnography  67-70, 71, 74-80, 81-82, 135-136 EU languages  7, 13, 43, 61, 116

Bilingualism  10, 33, 36, 39, 84, 124, 128 Capital, symbolic; economic  3, 19, 20, 27-33, 41, 45, 49, 58, 93, 96-97, 116, 123, 127-128, 129, 136, 140 Capitalism  39-40, 44 Catholic church, the  6-7, 72, 84, 94 Catholic ethos, see Catholic church Chinese Ideologies of Chinese  114, 133 Mandarin Chinese  7, 11, 44, 61, 111, 137 Circulating ideologies  37-39, 116 Classroom observation  76-77 Community language, see heritage language Community of practice  22, 51, 69, 84-86 Critical pedagogy  23 Culturally responsive pedagogy  62-63

Femininity, femininities  23, 48, 58, 67, 97-103, 132 Fieldwork, see data collection Foreign language And elite multilingualism  3, 44, 110-117 And gender  1, 3, 56-61, 63-66, 117-121 And investment  121-128 And language ideologies  37 And language policy  136-139 Learning  1, 5-6, 11-15, 17-18, 25-26, 30, 35, 37, 44, 56, 105-110, 121-122, 134 Pedagogy 139-40 French language  1, 4, 7, 11, 13-14, 16, 39, 40, 57-61, 72, 84, 85, 105-110,

Data collection  4, 70, 71, 72-80 Designer immigrant  37-38, 40, 70, 113 Discourse(s)  20-21, 82-84, 131 Of elite multilingualism  20-21, 39-44, 110-117 Competing  31, 34, 40, 82, 83, 95-103 Of gender and language learning  21-23, 117-121 Regulatory effects of  52, 99-100 Discourse analysis  82-84, 89 162

Index 

112, 113-117, 122, 125-128, 134, 137 French, ideologies of  58, 60, 100-102 Gaeltacht, Gaeltachtaí  8-9, 39, 71, 84, 124-126, 129 Gender And education  48-50 And feminism  103, 46-48, 50, 53, 55, 82-83 And language education  21-23, 55-65 And language, theories of  46-48, 50-55 And space  76, 81-82, 88-95 And sport  48-49, 63, 90-91, 92-95 German  4, 5, 7, 11, 13, 40, 58-59, 61, 72, 75, 86, 87, 96, 105-110, 112, 118, 122-124, 125, 126 German, ideologies of  58, 101-102, 106, 113-114 Heritage language(s)  2, 3, 6, 14, 15-18, 26, 40, 43-44, 60-63, 66, 86, 101, 106-108, 128, 129, 138, 141 Hidden curriculum  63, 117 Home language, see heritage language(s) Human capital  119 Humanities, the  5, 13, 61, 112, 118-119, 133 Identity, identities And discourse  82-84 And gender  23, 50-52, 95-103, 118-121, 132-133 And language background  60-63 And social class  58-60, 141 And the ethnographer  86-88 In SLA research  18-20, 26-35 Positioning  3, 28, 35, 38, 46, 82-83, 87, 92, 102, 120, 136 Imagined community  20, 33-35, 126-128 Imagined identity  5, 33-35, 121-128 Indexicality  19, 51 Institutes of technology  12, 71, 137 Interviews  58, 60, 64, 76, 57,135 Semi-structured interviews  4, 74, 75, 77-80, 81, 82, 91 Investment, construct of  2-3, 18-20, 21, 27-35, 45, 46, 60, 111, 121-128, 131, 132, 134, 136, 139-141

163

Irish education system  6-18 Irish-English  100, 109 Irish English bilingualism  10, 39, 84, 124 Irish language  5, 7, 8-11, 16-17, 39, 40, 84, 85, 112, 124-126, 129 Irish Sign Language  8, 15, 138 Italian  7, 11, 61, 100, 107 Japanese Culture 34 Language  7, 11, 44, 61, 137 Junior Certificate, see Junior Cycle Junior Cycle  6, 7, 11, 76, 91, 93-94, 140 L3 learning  11 Language choice  105-110 Languages Connect  14-15, 18, 24, 43, 63, 110, 121, 130, 134, 138-139, 140 Language, gender and sexuality studies  21, 46-47, 50, 55, 59, 70, 131-132 Language ideologies And gender  52-55, 132-134 And language learning  2,4, 6, 10, 18-20, 30-31, 35-39, 42, 70, 90, 102-104, 111-117, 107-121, 127-128, 134, 136 And the standard language  30, 37-39, 52 Language ideology, see language ideologies Language policy  9, 16, 37, 123, 138 Language sampler module  15, 138 Language strategy, see Languages Connect Language teaching  14, 23, 27, 30, 37, 41, 57, 58, 109, 120-121, 129, 133, 134, 138-141 Language textbooks  64-65 Leaving Certificate  6, 7, 24, 44, 63, 112, 113, 118, 122, 139-140 Linguistic diversity  16-17, 41, 61, 121, 123 Linguistic repertoire, see plurilingual repertoire Lithuanian  7, 11, 44, 61, 84, 111

164 Index

Masculinity, masculinities  23, 48-49, 58, 59, 67, 92-96, 106, 121, 130 Migrants, communities and languages  20, 21, 22, 28-29, 33, 34, 37-39, 43, 44, 61-63, 111, 113-115, 121, 128 Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative (MLPSI)  4, 11, 15, 18, 106-110, 122, 137 Monolingualism  10, 25-26, 34, 84 Monolingual bias  22, 25 Monolingual models of education  16 National University of Ireland  112, 124 Neoliberalism, neoliberal regimes  5, 20, 32, 34, 38-44, 59, 116, 119, 123, 130, 133 Official languages  59, 61, 139 Of Ireland  8 Of the EU  43 Open observation  74-76, 77, 81 Participant observation, see open observation Peer group  49, 94, 106-108 Performativity  21-22, 46, 50-52 Plurilingual repertoire  9, 26, 115, 124, 128 Polish language  7, 11, 16, 29, 44, 61, 84, 111 Polish migrants  29 Political economy  5, 39-44, 59, 83-84, 89, 133, 141 Portuguese  7, 11, 13, 44, 61, 111 Post Primary Languages Ireland (PPLI)  14, 17, 43-44, 138 Poststructuralism, poststructuralist approaches  19, 20, 50-51, 69, 82-83, 131, 135 Power, relations of  3, 19, 27- 33, 36, 41, 47, 52, 55, 59, 70, 83, 88, 94, 95, 97, 102, 104, 111-112, 132, 135, 141 Primary language curriculum  15, 17, 24, 63, 129, 138, 140 Queer theory  23

Resource, language as  19, 39, 40-43, 68, 104, 111, 121, 123 Russian  7, 11, 13 School architecture  89-91 School buildings  89, 91 Second language acquisition research  2, 3, 5, 10, 18, 19, 22, 25-29, 32-33, 39, 44, 46, 48, 59-60, 68, 131 Critical approach to  70, 83, 131 Ethnographies in  20, 64, 70, 113 Multilingual turn in  2, 10, 25, 104 Social psychological approaches to  57 Social turn in  2, 3, 18-19, 26, 29, 104 Senior Cycle  6, 11, 91, 94 Sexuality And language education  23, 64-65, 66 In education  48, 98, 117 SLA, see second language acquisition research Social class  3, 21, 22, 32, 49-50, 58-60, 66, 98, 111-112, 117,133, 136, 141 Social imaginary  35, 37, 126 Space And language learning  23, 26, 132, 136 And gender  89-90 Liminal space  30-31, 96 Linguistic space  64 Online space  19, 27, 30-31, 96, 103 Theories of  88-90, 132, 136 The use of  76, 81-82, 90-95, 104-105 Spanish  5, 7, 11, 40, 57, 59, 61, 100, 105-117, 114-116, 133 STEM  5, 13, 49, 57, 64, 118-119, 121, 123, 126, 129, 133, 137 Style, see adornment Teaching materials, see language textbooks Third language requirement  112 Transcription, theories of  80-81 University, universities  35, 42-43, 56, 58, 60, 110, 140 In Ireland  11, 12, 40, 71, 111, 112, 120, 124, 128-129, 137-139