Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism

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ISBN: 9782813000392
FOREWORD The three coordinators of the present volume, Claire Kramsch, Danielle Levy and Geneviève Zarate have worked in close collaboration throughout the whole project. All three have solicited contributions from doctoral students and colleagues and are grateful for the financial support given by their respective institutions.
Claire Kramsch drew on the resources of the Berkeley Language Center to organize an interdisciplinary seminar at UC Berkeley in February 2005. Danielle Levy engaged the Italian University Association for the Teaching of French, DoRiF-Universita, and the Center for Research and Documentation in the Teaching of French at Italian universities in the organization of a research seminar in Macerata, Italy in July 2006. Other colleagues have also contributed their scientific contacts for this project, in particular Aline Gohard-Radenkovic, who hosted a working group meeting of our research team at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, and Marie Christine Kok- Escalle who rallied the members of the International Society for the History of French as a Second Language (SHIFLES) for this project. While Claire Kramsch, Danielle Levy and Geneviève Zarate were principal investigators of the research project, Geneviève Zarate was editor-in-chief of the present volume.
The authors’multilingual and multicultural biographies are available at the following address: http://precis.berkeley.edu
General introduction
Geneviève ZARATE National Institute of Oriental Languages (INALCO), PLIDAM, Paris, France
Translated by David DIVITA, University of California, Berkeley
A DEFINITION OF PLURALITY This handbook is organized around linguistic and cultural plurality1. Following Bourdieu (1977), it defines language as an “instrument of action (or of power)” and aims to reconstruct the complexity of social and linguistic practices that constitute our relationship to the foreign. Plurality here is not defined as the mere coexistence of various languages, but rather as a specific social activity characterized by the circulation of values across borders, the negotiation of identities, and the inversions– indeed, the inventions–of meaning that are often masked by the shared illusion of successful communication.
Plurality is approached in this book:
—as a complex aggregate, rather than as the simplified object of a communicatively oriented language pedagogy primarily concerned with intelligibility
—as a coherent system of relationships whose description cannot be reduced to a series of mechanical operations
—as a socio-historical construct, observable from many simultaneous, spatio-temporal points of view, such as that of everyday interactions or that of institutions whose symbolic force cannot be accounted for from one point of view alone
1 The French concept of ‘plurality’ has different political connotations than the Angloamerican term ‘diversity’. While ‘diversity’ is the ideal of a neo-liberal democracy, ‘plurality’ is the ideal of a republican society committed to the tenets of the French Revolution.
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AN INTERNATIONALIZED SPACE The field of language didactics (LD) is undergoing transformation2. For more than ten years, Europe has constituted a specific geopolitical entity, less and less reducible to the sum of the countries that compose it. The role played by languages in the political, economic and social architecture of this conglomeration can be inferred from a number of texts that call for a common vision of linguistic and cultural diversity. The European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages (Council of Europe , 1992), the definition of European citizens’ linguistic competence based on the mastery of three European languages (Livre blanc. Enseigner et apprendre. Vers la société cognitive. European Commission, 1995), the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001) all attest to the role of languages as an official component of European identity. Even if European countries have not all participated in this common project at the same pace, a new model of LD has nevertheless been put in place–the European model. This model has modified the relations between languages and the linguistic, cultural and geographic landscapes with which they are associated, and has directly affected the perception of international space held by each nation-state.
While the fall of the Berlin Wall has modified the geopolitical nature of relationships between European states, their languages and citizens, a new international economic order has ushered in a globalized vision of economic exchanges that is imposing new social and linguistic imperatives. These new imperatives are calling for new ways of conceptualizing the learning of foreign languages. In the future, as the French economist Jacques Attali stated recently, “travel will become a major part of a university education and professional development: one will constantly have to exhibit the qualities of a traveler in order to remain “employable” (…) In total, twenty-five years from now, around fifty million people will live outside of their country of origin or their parents’ country of origin” (Attali 2006). This vision of the future invites a concomitant reconsideration of the history of linguistic exchanges in the countries of Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas. Many of these countries did not wait for today’s globalization to become multilingual and multicultural. Military conquests, religious or ideological proselytism, slavery, colonialism, cultural and commercial exchanges and their own multilingual tribal practices have long diversified their societies. But language teachers trained in metropolitan centers are not necessarily
2 Some French terms, untranslatable into English, have been left in their literal translations. In particular, the term didactique des langues, translated by Gisele Holtzer (2000 :174) as « language didactics » (LD) and defined as « foreign language teaching » overlaps but is not quite equivalent to terms like foreign language (FL) education, methodology, pedagogy, second language acquisition (SLA) or applied linguistics. The research field of language didactics is epistemologically and culturally linked to the teaching of French as a Foreign Language (Fle), in the same manner as SLA and applied linguistics are closely linked to the teaching of English as a Second Language, and Fremdsprachendidaktik is associated with the teaching of German as a Second Language (DaF). LD focuses on the teaching of foreign languages in instructional settings and in that respect it overlaps with FL education, FL methodology and FL pedagogy. But it is also concerned with the acquisition of foreign languages in non-instructional settings, e.g., work, travel, leisure, study and any venue in which issues of language, power and identity come into play. In that respect its concerns are close to those of Anglo-Saxon applied linguistics.
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prepared for the globalized space of tomorrow. Teacher trainers themselves need to adjust to the rapid and radical changes brought about by globalization and train young teachers accordingly.
Efforts in Europe to put into place a translingual and transcultural awareness common to all languages are headed in precisely this direction. They advocate making connections between L1 and L2 pedagogies (Roulet 1980), sensitizing learners to metalinguistic activity or language awareness (Hawkins 1987; James & Garrett 1991), and raising the interest of children in early language instruction (Candelier 2003; Perregaux 1994; Moore 2006). All these initiatives strive to make the public conscious of the discourses and social representations linked to language use in multilingual contexts. The concepts of methodological competencies (Écouter pour comprendre, CRAPEL, Université de Nancy 2) and intercomprehension between related languages, focused on the development of reading and listening comprehension in linguistically related languages, have shown their instructional efficiency in the intercomprehension of Romance languages (the EuRom4 method, the Galatea and Galanet programs, the Euromania methods), and between Romance and Germanic languages (the ICE, InterCompréhension Européenne and EuroCom programs).
The Handbook deals with various facets of the debate on multilingualism and multiculturalism3, and discusses observable situations both within and outside Europe, but it does not prescribe any solutions. Rather, as a collection of current points of view, it makes every effort to leave reflection open. Every featured reflection, divided into chapters, is extended by a “Counterpoint” that, through the intervention of an author from outside the chapter, seeks to initiate dialogue, echo back the positions of the chapter coordinators, put into perspective the possibilities proposed, or introduce a new geographical anchoring.
A CONCEPTUAL MATRIX: 8 MACRO-ENTRIES AND 51 MICRO-ENTRIES In the spirit of these new developments the Handbook of multilingualism and multiculturalism focuses on second language learning and teaching. It is not a textbook or a prescriptive manual, nor a catalog of simplified, useful practices. It is, rather, a tool that encourages reflection and articulates practices, field observations and analyses in an innovative conceptual framework, adapted to an international environment marked by plurality. It is a generic matrix, designed to engender new ways of looking at language learning as a relation to alterity. It is intended to inform the setting of educational goals, the development of curricula and the training of teachers. This new configuration should also be of interest to politicians who are currently in need of conceptual tools to structure their decisions and are more likely to
3 In the U.S. multilingualism and multiculturalism are both individual and societal phenomena, whereas in Europe plurilingualism applies to individuals, multilingualism applies to societies. We have chosen to translate Precis du plurilinguisme et du pluriculturalisme with Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism because of the more widespreach use of the latter two terms in Angloamerican literature.
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be open to new ideas in our era of social and cultural change than in a period of geopolitical stability and ideological immobility.
The Handbook invites its reader to travel to different continents–Europe, North American, Australia, Asia—and to take two detours to Africa. Nevertheless, it does not claim to be a world tour of education and linguistic diffusion, nor an encyclopedia of world languages. The globalized vision that underlies it rests on the dynamic changes that are occurring in various countries at various levels and on the corresponding need to continuously recalibrate our approach to language didactics.
The Handbook is organized on two levels. The first level is that of the eight chapters, which function as macro-entries and present a new way of looking at familiar reference points in LD. Each chapter features one conceptual focus chosen for its capacity to generate an interdisciplinary approach to various languages and for its connections with various linguistic and cultural domains: 1) From the learner to the speaker/actor; 2) The self and languages; 3) Mobility and itineraries; 4) Social affiliation and relations; 5) Images, discourse and cultural representations; 6) Institutions and power; 7) History, practices and models. The second level consists of micro-entries that function successively as glosses, expansions, case studies and contextualizations of one or more notions within the macro-entry. The Handbook thus contains 51 micro-entries that allow the reader to locate familiar points of reference in LD. They represent either disciplinary fields (for example, psycholinguistics, conversation analysis…), or historical, geographical, national or transnational points of reference, or easily identifiable pedagogical categories (e.g., learner, evaluation, advertising, translation). Each micro-entry is itself organized in three parts: the presentation of one or several notions, a corpus of data which anchor the concept within a field or in practical experience, and a commentary that clarifies the relationship between the notions and the data. The data themselves, clearly set off in a box, are readily accessible to the reader who prefers to enter the work by way of concrete examples.
AN INTERDISCIPLINARY FRAMEWORK The Handbook focuses on the translingual and transcultural processes at work in language learning and language use. These processes usually tend to elude the academic classifications imposed by school subjects vying with one another for students’ attention, e.g., language, history, geography, civics. The book does not aim to offer reassuring models of cross-cultural tolerance or a peaceful vision of social relations such as those offered by school textbooks. Embracing conflict is the price to pay for liberating language pedagogy from its exclusively school-centered institutional base and opening it up to the real-world. In this Handbook, research on education is drawn upon to analyze learning trajectories that are not limited to schooling, but rather extend over a lifetime.
The observation and identification of the complexity of relationships among languages, cultures and identities are only possible on condition that an interdisciplinary conceptual framework is put forth. By interdisciplinary we mean a
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framework that draws inspiration from various disciplines, or constructs hybrid disciplines, or borrows and modifies concepts traditionally used in other disciplines. During the seminar in which this Handbook was conceived (2003) and at the subsequent conferences that marked its development (2004, 2005, 2006), relevant domains of previous research in language didactics were identified, and the project’s internal coherence and innovative nature were defined. Researchers from different disciplines were invited to discuss from their point of view the very questions and areas that the Handbook would focus on: the relationships between the individual and the collective in an increasingly fast-paced world, the contacts and conflicts that result from it, their impact on language education and teacher training. Thus, anthropologists, psychologists, historians and geographers, even mathematicians, drew on their own methods to interrogate a common ground, opening up the way, throughout the gestation of the Handbook, to disciplines (e.g., cognitive science, human and social sciences…) from which notions such as actors, spaces, stories and History were interrogated and then translated into headings of chapters and micro- entries. A list of transverse concepts was generated, which cut across the various chapters: theoretical notions such as complexity, plurality, capital or resources, representation of actions or postures, and pedagogic notions such as imitation, negotiation, interpretation, translation, appropriation, borrowing, rejection. These transverse concepts make it possible to redraw the social, cultural and historical boundaries of language didactics and to redefine its research categories.
THE PRODUCT OF AN INTERNATIONAL NETWORK OF INSTRUCTOR-RESEARCHERS AND INSTRUCTORS A project like this one constitutes of course a challenge. Such a redrawing of the boundaries of language didactics could not be constructed without bringing together an international team of researchers. A fresh perspective was first created at a seminar held in March 2003 at the INALCO and jointly organized with the Berkeley Language Center at the University of California at Berkeley (United States) and the doctoral program/formation doctorale Politica, educazione, formazione linguistic-culturali at the University of Macerata (Italy). The seminar continued in March 2004 with public workshops held at the Sorbonne Nouvelle through support from the France/Berkeley fund (2004-2005). The initial partners (Berkeley Language Center, INALCO, the University of Macerata) met again, this time in Berkeley, to continue their collaboration for the second phase of the France-Berkeley program through the international conference Teaching Languages in Multilingual, Multicultural Environments. It was there that the overall architecture of the Handbook was definitively adopted. In May 2005, the Société Internationale pour l’Histoire du Français Langue Étrangère ou Seconde (SIHFLES) joined the project for a workshop held at INALCO. Following the international conference “Large” and “small” languages and plurilingual and pluricultural language didactics: models and experiments, held at the Sorbonne (July 3-5, 2006), an expanded group, comprised of all the chapter coordinators, met in July 2006 under the auspices of the University of Macerata and adopted the definitive editorial framework. A final seminar, organized
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by the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and its Centre d’Enseignement et de Recherches en Langues Étrangères in February 2007, enabled a collective evaluation of the proposals received. During the meeting, the research team Pluralité des Langues et des Identités en Didactique: Acquisition, Médiations (PLIDAM, JE 2052) was created and reaffiliated with INALCO. Until 2005, Monica Heller of the University of Toronto took part in our collective reflections. May she find here our gratitude for her contribution.
Moreover, the project benefited from discrete funding from the Canadian Embassy in France (Programme France-Canada 2004), from the research team of ERADLEC (subsequently DILTEC) at the University of Paris III, the Plan Pluriannuel “Mise en réseau des universités parisiennes” jointly sponsored by INALCO and Paris III, the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie and the Délégation Générale à la Langue Française et aux Langues de France (DGLFLF), and from partner universities through the individual contribution of researcher-writers. Without having the sound financial logistics of international projects that are federated around a centralized institution, but benefiting from loyal support and gradually accumulating contributions, the Handbook was developed according to a financial logic that conformed to its scholarly intentions: a network of competencies that emerged progressively around a project that itself was in the process of being constructed. The Agence universitaire de la francophonie’s financial support at the time of publication will ensure a primary and important diffusion among the agency’s network.
Based on this support, 90 instructor-researchers, representing 68 institutions, joined the project.
THE MULTILINGUAL AND MULTICULTURAL POLICY OF THE HANDBOOK How to organize an international team of researchers who don’t all share the same language without detracting from the quality of the exchanges? While French and English were the dominant languages of the discussions and the circulation of texts, the composition of the Handbook did not escape its own object of study and was itself multilingual and multicultural.
Little by little the Handbook constructed a language policy commensurate with its object of study. English and French became the languages of scientific exchange. But texts written in English, Italian and German were translated into French due to the constraints of the editorial market. The reader will find the trace of these texts in the translator’s name which doubles the author’s. The framed texts, where the data appear in all their authenticity, echo back the languages in which they were produced and the sociolinguistic variations that do not necessarily align with a standard language. The multilingual dimension is thus found operating at this level as well.
While internationally valid research is predicated on international recognition, our international teamwork revealed divergent concepts of research among different team members due to different academic traditions, which we had to clarify and transcend.
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Indeed, scientific legitimacy itself is the outcome of specific conditions of possibility. For example, Anglo-Saxon research is financed by private or public sources on the basis of competition between researchers or teams of researchers on subjects proposed by private foundations or governmental organizations. Researchers or directors of research teams send detailed project proposals to these sources of financing that outline the objectives, methods of research, anticipated results, methods of evaluation and means of disseminating the results, including a detailed budget and a timeline. Projects are chosen by these funding agencies on the basis of scientific criteria; of course, the prestige of the researchers plays a large role as well. Every year the researchers must submit a review of progress made and, on that basis, ask for a renewal of funds for a maximum length of 2 or 3 years. Research in Europe is approximating these criteria and modalities more and more when it draws from multinational sources of funding. But it is also complemented by national structures that approve laboratories for a period of four years in France and three years in Italy, bringing together senior and junior researchers on collaborative projects established through the initiatives of these members and validated by internal (University) and national authorities. The Handbook draws from this latter structure.
The Handbook was initially constructed as a research project that was not only oriented towards publication but was, as well, an intellectual adventure that left as much time for debates as it did for the production of texts. As such it could have caused misunderstandings and seemed too loosely structured for an Anglo-Saxon culture used to the format of specific calls for proposals. The time spent in…