Muuttuvat näkökulmat monikielisyyteen

Abstract

Within sociolinguistics, perspectives to multilingualism have changed considerably during the last decades. At the same time, along the ‘multilingual turn’ in sociolinguistics and in language education studies, the number of available concepts to discuss multilingual repertoires and practices has increased very quickly. Notions such as translanguaging and plurilingualism have entered the linguistic parlance yet the actual nature of the change or its pedagogical relevance might be difficult to discern amid the diverse scholarly discourses where theoretical and practical concerns are tangled together. This article discusses the multilingual turn and its theoretical and pedagogical consequences by focusing on some broader, metatheoretical changes that have taken place along the so-called turn in language education studies. These changes in perceiving the essence of language, language skills, language learning and multilingualism are tightly connected with ideological changes within the field. I illustrate these ideologies and discuss their relevance especially for classroom pedagogy with newcomer students.