CLIL in Higher Education

Towards a Multilingual Language Policy

By Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2013 Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84769-936-7

Contents

Acknowledgements,
Introduction,
Part 1: Multilingualism and Multilingual Education,
1 Multilingualism,
2 Multilingual Education,
Part 2: Multilingualism in Higher Education,
3 The Sociopolitical Context,
4 The Language Component,
5 The Pedagogical Component,
6 The Human Factor,
Part 3: Towards a Multilingual Higher Education Institution: The Case of Universitat Jaume I,
7 Description of the Study,
8 Background and Context of Universitat Jaume I,
9 Proposals for a Multilingual Language Policy,
Conclusions,
Appendix 1: Questionnaires,
Appendix 2: Complete Tables,
References,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Multilingualism

1.1 Definition of Multilingualism

Although bilingualism and multilingualism refer to the knowledge and use of two and of more than two languages, respectively, very often the term ‘bilingualism’ has been used to refer to both concepts, as in the case of Baetens Beardsmore’s (1982) definition:

Bilingualism (…) must be able to account for the presence of at least two languages within one and the same speaker, remembering that ability in these two languages may or may not be equal, and the way the two or more languages are used plays a highly significant role. (Baetens Beardsmore, 1982: 3)

Moore and Gajo (2009) distinguish between multilingualism (the study of social contact) and plurilingualism (the study of individuals’ repertoires and agency in several languages). In this book I have chosen the term multilingualism to refer to both the social and the individual situation in which two or more languages are known and used by speakers. Plurilingualism is, in turn, considered as one of the characteristics of multilingual individuals, as explained in Section 1.3.

Multilingualism is not something new. It has happened all over the world and at all times in the history of humankind. However, according to Aronin and Singleton (2008: 4), current multilingualism is ‘assimilable to politicoeconomic aspects of globalisation, global mobility and “postmodern” modes of thinking’, and as such has different characteristics from historical multilingualism. Multilingualism is related to today’s ‘new linguistic dispensation’, that is, to the modern concepts of time, space and identity as a background to language. In relation to time, linguistic communication has been affected by the use of technologies that have made it instantaneous both in its written and oral forms (mobile phones, audio and video communication, computer software, etc.). Space is no longer fixed and its relationship with languages has varied. Mobility culture and the accessibility to modern means of transport have also altered the concept of identity and the idea of belonging to a certain culture and place. In addition, virtual existence in cyberspace has created new identities and new social groups to be part of.

Although it is true that today’s way of life, particularly in the West, favours multilingualism, throughout history a large number of people have always been multilingual, that is, they utilised and many still use two or more languages in their everyday lives (Cenoz & Genesee, 1998). Research on multilingualism has unveiled the complexity of linguistic and cultural variation in the multilinguals’ use of languages, which may vary over time. The competence of multilinguals in each of the languages they know is no longer the only important aspect of multilingualism. It is also important to learn the status of the languages each person possesses, which may differ according to the situation and place where these languages are used. They can be official or non-official languages, majority or minority languages, international, national, regional or local languages. The use the people make of the language can be individual or social.

Social multilingualism can be explained in relation to historical, political and educational dimensions. The concern for multilingual education in different parts of the world relates to the status of the language in any of the possibilities described above. In countries that went through a long colonial period in their history, such as India or South Africa, one of the major concerns is still the attitude towards the colonial versus the local or regional languages in educational contexts (Bekker, 2003; Ferguson, 2003). Although most of these countries have approved constitutions that declare as official languages several of their own languages along with the colonial language, it is the latter that is normally used in the classroom. The reasons usually given by the education authorities often relate to the great variety of languages used among the pupils (as many as 11 are official in South Africa out of the 25 that are spoken by a significant number of people). However, the underlying reason is often the power relationship between the speakers of those languages (Baetens Beardsmore, 2003). Even though European countries have been colonisers rather than colonies, a similar situation can be found in European regions which had their own language, such as Friesland in the Netherlands, Brittany in France or the Ruthenian region in Slovakia. Nowadays these languages have become mostly secluded within the family and home domain, and the state language has beenadopted in the education system (Hornsby & Agarin, 2012). Some other languages went through a similar situation but social, political and historical events swung in their favour so that a few years ago they began to be incorporated in some way or other into the classroom and the public and administrative domains. This is the case for Welsh in Wales, and Galician, Basque and Catalan in Spain.

In addition to the minority local languages, some countries have received a great number of immigrants who may keep their own language through one or several generations. Sometimes these languages are considered to be problematic for their integration and immigrants are encouraged to use only the national language of the host country with their children, forcing them to become monolingual. In cases where they decide to preserve their mother tongues, their multilingualism is most often reduced to the private domain only. Most countries in Europe, as in many other parts of the world, have received immigrants at some time in their history, especially in the large cities, so this situation needs to be considered when dealing with multilingualism.

Regarding individual multilingualism, the situation is rather different depending on whether the bilingual or multilingual speakers are immersed in a society that shares this multilingualism (social multilingualism) or, on the contrary, they are surrounded by monolinguals or people who speak languages different from the ones spoken by them. A case thoroughly studied, especially from the point of view of psycholinguistics and second language learning, is that of a child with a home language which is different from the social or school language, such as in the case of the immigrants described above (Cots & Nussbaum, 2008; Kasanga, 2008; Lotherington & Eamer, 2008).

On the other hand, looking through the social perspective, a country may be multilingual even when most of the citizens have competence in just one language, such as for example in Switzerland or Canada, where several languages are official, but depending on the area of the country only one is spoken. On the contrary, there may be countries where most of the population is multilingual whereas the official languages consist of only one or two, as in many countries in Africa (Edwards, 2006).

The social consideration of languages may also have a major influence on their use; majority national languages may not be useful when they are used in another country where those languages do not have a high status or are perceived with a negative attitude by the population (Nunan & Lam, 1998). This may happen, for example, in China, where all the population is compelled to learn Mandarin, a language very few people understand outside China and which is not very popular in other countries (Verma, 2002). In addition, the social status of a language may change over time, as is the case in the Philippines, where Spanish was the official language until the end of the 19th century, and the language of instruction until the 1920s when it was replaced by English, and nowadays has completely disappeared from the educational context, where local languages co-exist with English (Gonzalez, 1998). Moreover, there is also the case of borderline areas where, for pragmatic reasons, several languages co-exist, some of them as official languages, others being the official language of a neighbouring country, and sometimes a third language being spoken in both states when they share a linguistic area (for example in some parts of the Pyrenees where Spanish, French and Catalan co-exist).

A different question that needs to be addressed here is the ‘lingua franca’. These are the international languages used in extensive parts of the world to communicate with people of different origins and mother tongues (Hamers & Blanc, 2000). The most important languages used as lingua francas nowadays are English, Spanish, Russian, French and Chinese. Even in those countries where these languages are not official, some of them have been adopted as the language of instruction in the education system, on their own or coexisting with one or several other languages.

In recent years a new idea has been developed about the linguistic competence of multilinguals. Some researchers (Cook, 1992; Herdina & Jessner, 2002; Moore & Gajo, 2009) assert that the knowledge they have of their languages differs from that of monolingual speakers, since they can develop language learning, language management and language maintenance skills that are seen to contribute to the kind of metalinguistic awareness associated with multilingualism – the M-factor (multilingualism factor) and CLIN or cross-linguistic interaction.

1.2 Types of Multilingualism

There have been several attempts to provide a typology of multilingual phenomena. As Baetens Beardsmore (1982: 4) stated, ‘typologies are only descriptive labels that help to establish certain limits of a complex field of investigation into smaller areas with a clear frame for reference’.

Two main types of multilingualism have been established by most researchers, which serve as a framework for further classification:

(1) Social or societal multilingualism. A group of individuals share the knowledge of two or more languages.

(2) Individual multilingualism. An individual has certain knowledge of at least two languages.

These two main types are not exclusive and mainly differ in standpoint. Societal multilingualism tries to explain the tensions and relative powers of the languages in the community, their interrelationships, and the connections between language and political, economic, social, cultural and educative forces (Baetens Beardsmore, 1982: 4). For the purpose of this book it will be interesting to learn more about societal multilingualism and the role of bilingual or multilingual education, especially in the context of higher education upon which this book is focused.

As for individual multilingualism, it can logically follow the societal multilingualism of a certain community or it can be an exception, as in some of the cases described above for minority languages or immigrants, or for individuals who live in a monolingual society and decide to become multilingual. In any of these cases, it is interesting to look at how individuals acquire their second and foreign languages and the psychological processes involved in this acquisition (see Section 2.2).

Nowadays the opinion that is most often supported is that multilingualism is a matter of degree. Somebody who knows a few words in another language is multilingual but to a very low degree. At the other end of the continuum, a person who has a perfect domain of several languages possesses a high degree of multilingualism (Edwards, 2006: 7). Multilingualism can be measured in order to ascertain the current situation in a particular community, as in the case presented in Part 3 of this book, Universitat Jaume I. Picturing the current situation can help to establish the best language policy in order to achieve certain goals. The success of the multilingual language policy can then be determined by measuring the same factors of multilingualism again several years later.

1.2.1 Societal multilingualism

Unlike what was stated in the first definitions, one of the admitted characteristics of multilingualism nowadays is the different use speakers make of the languages they know. In societal multilingualism, very often the use of the languages is determined by certain dimensions:

(1) social status;

(2) geographic bilingualism;

(3) language use and language planning;

(4) cultural identity.

One of the most common ways to measure societal multilingualism is censuses or a survey; that is, the whole population, or just a sample of it, are asked to respond to a questionnaire or to answer some questions in a structured interview (Baetens Beardsmore, 1998; Baker, 2001; Hamers & Blanc, 2000). Most censuses are mainly interested in the geographical boundaries of multilingualism, although others try to investigate further by asking questions about the mother tongue, preferred language or dominant language. However, these are rather subjective and ambiguous concepts. It is difficult to determine the mother tongue of an individual whose parents have each spoken to him or her in a different language since the day she was born. The preferred language may change depending on context and is often strongly influenced by the social status conferred by each individual to a language. On the other hand, the dominant language can be measured in terms of frequency of use, though again subjective perceptions are the only way to measure this variable.

Much more interesting may be questions regarding attitudes towards a language. These can provide information about the social perception of a language as elite multilingualism, about the cultural identity the multilingual subject relates to the knowledge and use of a language, and the motivation to maintain that language, for example, instrumental motivation, when the language is perceived as having only utilitarian purposes, or integrative motivation, when the language is perceived as an element of integration in a linguistic community (Baetens Beardsmore, 1998).

Regarding the units that can be used to measure the four dimensions determined for societal multilingualism, all of these can follow a continuum that goes from ‘elite’ or the highest social status of a language to ‘folk’ or the lowest status, or from a language most related to the geographic and historical factors of the place where it is spoken, to the least geographic relation. For example, English in Romania or in Spain cannot be associated with geographical multilingualism, whereas it can be in other parts of the world such as Sri Lanka or India. In relation to language use and language planning, the continuum will have at one end the languages with the widest use, and at the other end those with the most restricted use, i.e. instrumental languages. Finally, in order to measure social identity, the continuum will show the degree of identification of a certain language with the cultural values of a social group.

1.2.1.1 Social status

Throughout history, a certain type of societal bilingualism has been associated with the upper classes, in what has been coined as elite bilingualism, in contrast to folk bilingualism. Educated people throughout history voluntarily learned a prestigious language such as Greek, Latin or French, in order to be recognised as belonging to an elite group. On the other hand, folk bilingualism has usually been driven by necessity and frequently learned in the street without any formal instruction. This is the case for most immigrants (Edwards, 2003). However, nowadays it is difficult to distinguish one from the other in many social contexts, since everybody is supposed to have access to education in developed countries, where infant, primary and secondary education are public and obligatory, including learning one or several official languages of the country and some foreign languages. Therefore, in many cases multilingualism has become obligatory (a characteristic of folk multilingualism) and learned through formal instruction (as described for elite multilingualism).

A phenomenon associated with societal multilingualism, which has its origin in the unbalanced status of languages in contact, is that of diglossia, which was described by Ferguson as early as 1959 as:

a relatively stable language situation in which in addition to the primary dialect of the language, which may include a standard or regional standard, there is a very divergent, highly codified, often grammatically more complex, superposed variety, the vehicle of a large and respected body of literature, heir of an earlier period or another speech community, which is learned largely by formal education and is used for most written and formal purposes, but is not used by any sector of the community for ordinary conversation. (Ferguson, 1959)

This definition accounts for extreme situations where one language or a variation of a language is imposed for political, economic or religious reasons. For example, in Arab-speaking countries a high form of Arabic is used for education, religion and formal communication, whereas a low form is used for informal and local communication (Baetens Beardsmore, 1982; Ferguson, 1959). Other researchers have developed this concept (Fasold, 1984; Gumperz, 1971; Hudson, 1994; Williams, 1992) in order to relate it to the functional distribution of languages and the power relations between their speakers, where languages with a relatively low status are used for at-home and informal interactions, and those with a relatively high status are used for formal communication. The status and use given to a language may vary geographically; that is, it may be conceived as the low variety, dialect or language in precedence to a dominant language in a certain area, whereas in an area only a short distance away the situation may be the opposite. Additionally, a diglossic situation may also vary chronologically, when one variety or language takes over the functions formerly reserved for the other language as power relations change in the society (Hamers & Blanc, 2000). Diglossic situations have been identified in some areas in which multilingual education was introduced, including English where this language is considered a language of power in contrast to the local languages.

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