Multilingual Reality Research Articles

World Englishes and L2 pedagogy: Focus on Error Corrections

This paper hopes to identify learning difficulties of students coming from a different variety of World Englishes (WE) in learning English as a second language (ESL) focusing on Hindi English. It examines the implications of Hindi English as a WE variety on language learning and teaching. An analysis of Hindi English (HE) in English language learning is provided to help understanding of multilingual realities of communication towards a contextualization of teaching conventions. For example, what is the stance an ESL instructor might assume while dealing with influences of native language in the English language classroom? How tolerant should instructors be in recognizing “error” in L2 learning? Should ESL teachers adhere to academic rules and conventions from other settings or embrace diverse accents and language needs of ESL students? Finally, the paper proposes a dual scheme of “error correction” and “accommodation” to the way English is taught to students in the outer and expanding circles of English. Following discussions that focus on features of spoken and written English that call for a different treatment of the language skills, and considering L1 interference in L2 learning, the paper suggests that “errors” in Writing need be corrected while “mistakes” in Speaking may be “accommodated”.

Multilingual Complexities in the Origins and Development of the Harrist Movement and Its Worship Patterns in Ivory Coast

The Harrist Church in Ivory Coast, West Africa, emerged from the ministry of Liberian William Wadé Harris who baptized between 10,000 and 200,000 people during his eighteen-month evangelistic tour, 1913–1915. This story is full of linguistic complexities and anomalies. Harris himself spoke only English and his own local Liberian Glebo language. He was therefore compelled to work through expatriate English-speaking merchants, knowledgeable of and conversant in local languages, as interpreters and translators in addressing the twelve ethnic groups who heard and accepted his message. Harris encouraged new converts to compose hymns in their own indigenous languages by transforming musical genres embedded in their local musical traditions. Additionally fascinating is that during this early colonial period, the twelve ethnic groups impacted by Harris’s ministry lived in almost total isolation from each other and developed their own hymn traditions for thirty-five years (1914–1949), unaware of the existence of churches and worship patterns in neighboring ethnic districts. Only in 1949 did they suddenly become acquainted with the broader, multi-musical, multilingual reality of the Harrist movement. Since then, individual musicians and choirs from local congregations have gradually begun to sing a few of each other’s songs, though the challenge of becoming a truly multicultural, multiethnic church remains a work in progress. Documentation of these developments include written colonial and early Protestant and Catholic missionary sources and a large number of eye-witness interviews. Primary research methods employed here come from four intersecting disciplines and theoretical frameworks: orality studies, with particular focus on oral sources in constructing historical narrative; religious phenomenology; mission history; and ethnodoxological research.

Subtitling Hong Kong Code-Mixing and Code-Switching

Translation has largely been considered a process involving only two languages, source and target. However, plurilingual audiovisual content has proliferated over the last few decades, reflecting, as a result, the world’s linguistic intermingling. Such a plurality complicates both theoretical categorizations and translation practices. Even though multilingualism in the media has received scholarly attention, more explorations are needed to ascertain the translation processes and methods adopted to handle linguistically diverse source texts in the streaming era. The present piece of research tentatively explores the treatment given to Cantonese and English code-mixing and code-switching present in Hongkonese films and TV shows currently streamed on Netflix, the video-on-demand platform. This article probes a selection of such content and compares the original dialogues with official Chinese, English and Spanish subtitles. Preliminary results point towards a loss of linguistic diversity and nuance caused by subtitling processes. The differentiated roles that both languages originally play in creating comedic, stylistic, or emphatic effects are rarely retained, possibly affecting viewers’ reception and appreciation. This article argues that further attention should be paid to the translation and adaptation of code-mixing and code-switching present in Hongkonese creations, both by the industry and academia, if such a multilingual reality is to be portrayed successfully via subtitles.

Multisemiotics, Race, and Academic Literacies

This study examines the trajectories of two multilingual, racialized academic writing faculty, presenting how we brought our Southern onto-epistemologies (e.g., Santos, 2016) to curriculum, teaching, and assessment. Although plurilingualism has become a significant dimension of Canadian higher education (Marshall, 2020), monolingual norms that emphasize native-like competence continue to be a mainstream discourse in many academic writing courses. Building on the recent raciolinguistic critique (Rosa & Flores, 2017) of the lack of discussion of racism in academic literacies discourse, we acknowledge that academic literacies continues to force plurilingual, international students into a white subject position. Acknowledging the tension between the monolingual ideal and multilingual realities, we explore how two plurilingual, non-white faculty challenge an academic writing tradition that is constructed by the white listening subject. By co-creating duoethnographic narratives that provide insight into our complex biographical journeys as cycles of becoming (Thibault, 2020), our story shows how teaching academic writing is not simply teaching a skillset but involves constant negotiation between students’ and teachers’ lived experiences. Through this process, we conceive of teaching academic literacies as both an ideological construct and a multisemiotic process that involves multiple histories and meaning-making resources across diverse time and place scales.

How educators navigate language ideology and pedagogy in refugee education

ABSTRACT There are over 30 million people living as refugees today, nearly half of whom are under 18. For most young people fleeing conflict and persecution, their only option is to pursue education in already-stretched national school systems in host countries neighboring those they have left, often in unfamiliar languages. Despite the pressing issue of refugee education globally, there is little research about the educational inclusion of refugees in the Global South, not least related to language. This study begins to address this gap. Through a comparative case study, I draw on school-wide and classroom observations and interviews with educators across three schools in Kampala, Uganda to understand how educators navigate the linguistic inclusion of refugees at school. I find that, in the absence of guidance or training, school leaders draw on their ideological beliefs about multilingualism and migration to determine how to approach linguistic diversity at school. In turn, classroom teachers navigate constrained implementation spaces, balancing policies that require a dominant language as the language of instruction with multilingual realities in classrooms.

How to Speak in Tongues: A Historical–Contextual Reading of Paul’s Use of γλῶσσα/方言 in 1 Corinthians 12–14 from a Multilingual Diasporic Chinese Christian Church Context

From its inception, Chinese Christianity has involved speaking in “tongues”, across cultures, about the person and work of Jesus Christ. This article presents a contextual original-language exegesis of the Apostle Paul’s use of the word γλῶσσα (glōssa) or 方言 (fangyan) in 1 Corinthians 12–14 and seeks to understand this contested lexeme in light of the multilingual reality of both the “diasporic” Christian church in first-century Corinth and the diasporic Chinese Christian church today. It is argued that understanding Paul’s instructions regarding γλῶσσα/方言 within the context of a multilingual Christian worship culture strengthens the definition of γλῶσσα as languages used and understood among inhabitants of first-century Corinth. This reading, while not rejecting the possibility of an “angelic language” (tianshide huayu 天使的话语), may offer a more fruitful application for those who shape and participate in the multilingual worship culture of the diasporic Chinese Christian church today.

The value of language skills in Latvia: From socio-economic inequality to multilingual awareness

Abstract This paper investigates the opposition between the realities and ideologies surrounding multilingualism in Latvia. Building mostly on Bourdieu’s theory of language in society, and multilingual awareness as a concept, we study the socio-economic value of multilingual repertoires in a multilingual setting (Latvia), and language users’ awareness of the link between their language competences (Latvian, Russian, English) and socio-economic status. By analysing sociolinguistic survey data, we demonstrate, firstly, that different multilingual repertoires are linked with differences in family income, level of education, and labour market position. Secondly, our data indicate that people generally do not acknowledge the link between their language skills and socio-economic status. To explore this further, we zoom in on language ideologies in formal education. We examine data on the multilingual awareness of Latvian language teachers from focus-group interviews and show that they tend to construe languages in competition, emphasise the symbolic value of Latvian, and ignore the multilingualism of their pupils and broader society. The study illuminates the dissonance between the multilingual realities of a post-Soviet EU country in which multilingual repertoires carry different values for individuals, and the Latvian-centred ideologies (disseminated by the teachers) that leave the presence of multilingualism and accompanying issues unacknowledged.

“Wel iet wat verschelende, maar zó niet óf elck verstaat ander zeer wel”

Abstract This paper delves into language differentiation in the 16th and 17th-century Low Countries, focusing on how vernacular languages were labeled and framed in grammatical descriptions. We examine both monolingual grammars as well as grammatical descriptions in multilingual textbooks for foreign language learners. By comparing these two corpora, we gain insights into the differences between monolingual and multilingual approaches to language differentiation and uncover language ideologies that shaped the Language-Making process during this early stage of standard languages. An example of language differentiation is the evolving relation between ‘Dutch’ and ‘German’. In the monolingual grammars, Dutch is explicitly positioned along the lines of an ‘ours’ versus a ‘theirs’, but what is considered ‘ours’ differs between the grammars and changes over time. In the multilingual textbooks, the direct juxtaposition between Dutch and German on the title page leads to distinct labels (‘Nederduits’ vs. ‘Hoogduits’) whereas there is no consistent distinction in the body of these textbooks until the late 17th century. Overall, we conclude that a ‘Dutch language’ was certainly being ‘made’ during this period, in name and in reference to other vernacular languages. However, its boundaries were still fuzzy, reflecting the multilingual reality of the early modern Low Countries.

Translanguaging in higher education: experiences and recommendations of international graduate students from the Global South

ABSTRACT Canada is among the top three receiving countries for international students globally, and the leading sources of international students consist of countries in the Global South. Despite the multilingual reality of universities in Canada, most institutional language policies require only English or French to be used in instruction and assessment. The consequences of these policies include challenges in ensuring inclusive and equitable education. A translanguaging pedagogy has the potential to affirm and leverage the diverse language practices of international students, but it needs to be centered in the lived experiences, language practices, knowledge systems, and goals of a multilingual student body. This paper reports on the experiences and recommendations of international graduate students from the Global South related to pedagogical translanguaging in higher education. Data sources included interviews with 15 graduate students enrolled in the education faculty of a Canadian university. A thematic analysis of the data suggested that students’ translanguaging practices are restricted to informal spaces and ‘secret talk,’ and influenced by their instructors’ varied attitudes and language policies. Students’ recommendations include affirming translanguaging as a right and pedagogical resource for international students, incorporating translanguaging in academic writing, diversifying hiring practices, and providing training for instructors and prospective teachers.

Investigating the opportunities and challenges for African languages in public spaces: an introduction

ABSTRACT This introduction to the Special Edition provides a rationale for the inclusion of the selected articles. We begin with a consideration of various factors that led to the marginalisation of African languages, including the hegemony of English, colonialism and ensuing language policies that still hold today. Such policies proclaimed languages exogenous to the continent as official languages for formal public discourses, including the education domain. This led to the low visibility of indigenous languages in such domains. European missionaries also contributed to this by imposing Western linguistic frameworks on the continuum of African languages such that they became separate, named and bounded, which is counter-intuitive to the heteroglossic, multilingual realities of language use in African indigenous communities. We then examine the expanding role of African languages in response to technology, social media, globalisation and more responsive and dynamic language policies. The articles in this Special Edition cover language policy and language in education; language and identity negotiation in contexts of migration; language use on social media platforms; language and the workplace and language use in advertising. These contributions reveal that the multilingual reality of Africa’s language ecology is increasingly visible in many domains.

Pedagogical processes and standard dialect use: Implications for creative multilingual interaction from a Yorùbá‐language classroom in southwestern Nigeria

AbstractIn many language classrooms in multilingual nations, standard dialects are associated with and promoted in formal domains. Through classroom pedagogical processes that reify standard language use, other dialects are relegated to informal domains and therefore devalued in classroom settings. Informed by critical pedagogy, this article challenges the reification of standard dialects and examines their relationship with learners’ language use through an analysis of a Yorùbá‐language classroom in southwestern Nigeria. Findings from ethnographic data—classroom observations, instructor interviews, educational language policy, and curricular documents—show that learners’ social, linguistic, and cultural experiences interacted with and sometimes contradicted classroom expectations. I argue that the expectation of standard dialect use stifles fluid interaction in the classroom but, paradoxically, triggers learners’ linguistic creativity. To bridge the gap between classroom expectations and learners’ experiences, I call for an alternative pedagogy that privileges language users’ multilingual realities for optimizing standard language use in the classroom context. The article also contributes to ongoing conversations in applied linguistics about standard dialect use and the lack of affirmation of learners’ linguistic creativity in educational contexts.

The Constraints of Monolingual Language Policy and Heteroglossic Practices as a Vehicle for Linguistic Justice

This paper draws on conceptualisations of language as heteroglossic practices to examine how the experienced bilingual science teacher navigates between the monoglossic ideology that is embodied in the official Namibian Language in Education Policy (LiEP) within a linguistically constrained Namibian bilingual context. This paper aims to support recent research that challenges monolingual and monoglossic language practices, which tend to ignore the linguistic resources that children bring to the classroom. Data were collected from a classroom including video and audio recordings of lessons, field notes and photographs. The data were analysed through socio-cultural discourse and fine-grained multimodal analytical methods. The data findings illustrate the moment where the science teacher was constrained by English monolingual policy to mediate learners’ access to science learning, and harnessed all linguistic resources that the learners bring to the classroom. Subsidiary to that, there were moments where the teacher worked flexibly across languages, discourses and modes to interrupt the monoglossic ideology that is embodied in the official Namibian Language in Education Policy (LiEP). The use of rich heteroglossic practices is a clear testimony to enhanced science meaning-making regardless of learners’ ‘limited proficiency in English. The findings highlight the need to support learners from linguistically diverse backgrounds through a deliberate inclusive language policy that harnesses the heteroglossic nature of communicative practices and prepares teachers for a multilingual reality.

Visuals to Ideologies: Exploring the Linguistic Landscapes of Mindanao State University Marawi Campus

The research demonstrated the linguistic landscapes of the Mindanao State University Marawi Campus in the Southern Philippines, known as the “Melting Pot of the South”, where multilingualism, multiculturalism, and multimodality were quite situated. Linguistic Landscape (LL) encompassed and manifested the range of language use in society. Under the theoretical lens of linguistics, the research aimed to qualitatively and descriptively illustrate the linguistic tokens that marked the context of the school community. The needed data were photographed and collected inside the university premises and analyzed in terms of the number of languages used, language choice, and types of signs. The research reveals a sociolinguistic paradox: the multilingual realities of the school community and the prevalent exhibitions of monolingual English on its linguistic landscapes, which consequently seems to dishearten the status, propagation, promotion, and/or effectivity of multilingual policies and education in the Philippines. Furthermore, the research provides theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it shows another lens of the notion of presumed language prestige and hierarchies. Furthermore, practically, it aids the deepening of knowledge and understanding of language use, and its implications, in public spaces. Finally, the research suggests revisiting and recalibrating the exhibition of multilingualism in the country by simply considering the status of language use in their environments, as they do not just reflect or manifest languages but also propagate and promote them.

Language and employment in Ghana: capturing the multilingual reality

ABSTRACT Research on economic activity in Africa consistently ignores the importance of individuals’ linguistic repertoires. We argue that an important contributing factor to the persistence of this lacuna is the lack of visibility of language in the social and economic data that is collected by governments through social surveys. We examine the specific case of language use at work in Ghana. Through this we aim to demonstrate the importance of improving understanding of the role of language in the economy and assess the potential for improving visibility of languages in the socioeconomic data sources used to inform public policy. This case is interesting as, prima facie, education policy in Ghana appears misaligned, prioritising the acquisition of English and skills formation for further study, with less focus on entry into informal employment. Eighty percent of the Ghanaian workforce is in informal employment; this is a much less English-intensive work context than the formal sector, which itself is not a monolingual environment. We suggest that current language policies within the country undervalue the potential which multilingual language skills have for employment; moreover, we emphasise that multiple languages are visible within the labour market, and suggest strategies for more effectively capturing this visibility.

Homogenization through inclusion: exploring language regimes at four multilingual schools in the Czech Republic

ABSTRACT Linguistic diversity at Czech schools has increased in the last decade, and it has become a new everyday reality. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of studies investigating lived experiences with managing multilingualism at schools. Our study examines schools as multilingual social spaces in which the visible language choice on signs reveals the language regime based on ideologies and policies. We contextualize our study according to top-down language policy, and the essential theoretical concepts such as social space or language regime are explained. The linguistic landscapes at schools (so-called schoolscapes) are analysed and interpreted to capture schools as multilingual social spaces. The focus lies on (1) displayed languages; (2) authorship of the object: (3) location of the object. The data from schoolscaping are complemented by interviews with school principals, who are responsible for language choice decisions. The investigation took place in four schools, where multilingualism plays an essential role. The results indicate that despite the multilingual reality and the promotion of multilingualism by anchoring it in the agenda of inclusive education, language homogenization is operative in schools. Our results are relevant for exploring the linguistic environments and language regimes at schools and reveal possible explanations for linguistic homogenization.

Linguistic Prejudices in Interviews: An Analysis of Research Projects in a University in Mexico

Traditionally, social research in Mexico has not adjusted so much to a multilingual phenomenal reality as to a monolingualistic social imaginary representation. This means that when researchers analyze their reality, they do so under personal biases; thus, ignoring and hiding the daily multilingual reality. To find out how these linguistic prejudices and biases affect the methods applied, the authors of the present case study analyzed 77 postgraduate theses carried out in 2002-2019 at Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico. These theses applied interview techniques to speakers of national indigenous languages. The results show their study designs tend to linguistically homogenize populations based on a monolingual nationalist imagined community. A prevalence of more than 90 % in the application of linguistically minoritizing interviews evidences the pervasiveness of monolingual attitudes in the academy that limit methodological results and discriminate against studied populations. This means that the detection of linguistically minoritizing interviews can serve as another indicator to assess the university as an entity that exercises linguistic pressure on the communities being studied.

Multilingual Realities, Monolingual Ideologies: Social Media Representations of Spanish as a Heritage Language in the United States

Abstract Little is known about how monolingual ideologies and their effects manifest in online contexts as compared to offline contexts. We conducted a corpus-assisted discourse study to investigate this, with a focus on Twitter representations of Spanish as a heritage language in the USA. We analysed two corpora (one English and one Spanish—over 30 million words), examining frequencies, collocations, concordance lines, and larger text segments. The results revealed evidence of the same ideologies found in offline contexts: normative monolingualism (drawing on the one-nation-one-language ideology and language purity ideologies) as well as raciolinguistic ideologies. We show how the semiotic processes of iconization and erasure lead to the (evidently erroneous) essentialization of Spanish heritage language speakers as a homogeneous group of un-American, racialized immigrants with broken language. This discursive creation of difference constitutes the basis for the systematic discrimination of Spanish heritage language speakers, thus reflecting and reproducing social inequality. Our findings therefore indicate the necessity of extending planning measures to protect heritage language speakers (and other minority groups) from offline contexts to online contexts.

Language Policies in Nigeria and Ghana: A Plurilingual Perspective

The purpose of this paper was to reveal the linguistic situations in Nigeria and Ghana by examining language policies in both countries so as to establish how plurilingualism is accommodated and implemented. Plurilingualism has been identified as a leeway for attaining linguistic democracy which offers inclusive opportunities. In this dimension, language in education policy is very sacrosanct as it gives a blueprint for language use in mostly educational settings. A design adopted for this paper is qualitative study approach in a case study form. Data was retrieved from Google scholar database and time filter was applied to select articles between 2015 to 2022 in addition to other inclusion criteria. Articles were analyzed in line with the theme that guided the study. Findings show that both countries have not adequately integrated the concept of plurilingualism in their language policies. Lack of proper implementation of language policies has largely marred the multilingual reality in those countries, thereby allowing English language to exert an excessive influence. However, Ghana was found to fare better in terms of implementation. It is therefore recommended that both countries should review their language policies and accommodate plurilingualism by creating room for both majority and minority languages to thrive through translanguaging in educational settings.

“I’m Trilingual – So What?”: Official French/English Bilingualism, Race, and French Language Teachers’ Linguistic Identities in Canada

The privileging of French and English in Canada has led to an official language policy that minimizes the country’s long-established multilingual realities in favour of a socio-politically constructed linguistic and cultural duality. The impact of this policy directly shapes the linguistically diverse yet monoglossically constructed French language classroom with teachers overwhelmingly orientated to “balanced” bilingualism. Research narratives generated with Western Canadian French as a second language (FSL) teachers show how an emphasis on official languages constrains the construction of a legitimate professional identity, especially among multilingual teachers of French. The article argues that official French/English bilingualism in Canada constitutes a key obstacle to moving beyond monolingual and racializing language ideologies associated with standardized French and has a significant impact on FSL teacher professional identity. The analysis of interview extracts shows teacher-participants prioritizing English and French at the expense of their heritage (non-official) languages, in effect erasing dimensions of their linguistic, racial, and cultural identities. The article concludes by considering how a lack of researcher reflexivity with regard to issues of race can reinforce both monoglossic ideologies and a well-entrenched disregard for multilingual knowledge in teacher education programs.

Translanguaging spaces and multilingual public writing in Zambia: tracing change in the linguistic landscape of Ndola on the Copperbelt

ABSTRACT Zambia is home to a complex set of language practices, which involve languages being used in different ways across social contexts. Historically written communication has typically been associated with English with African languages mainly associated with used spoken contexts. Recently, however, there has been a shift in this pattern with African languages being used more frequently in and across the linguistic landscape of Zambia in public writing [Banda, F., and H. Jimaima. 2017. “Linguistic Landscapes and the Sociolinguistics of Language Vitality in Multilingual Contexts of Zambia.” Multilingua 36 (5): 595–625; Simungala, G. 2020. “The Linguistic Landscape of the University of Zambia: A Social Semiotic Perspective.” Unpublished MA Thesis, University of Zambia; Simungala, G., and H. Jimaima. 2020. “Multilingual Realities of Language Contact at the University of Zambia.” Journal of African and Asian Studies, 1–14]. In this paper, we add to the growing body of work within linguistic landscape research that draws on a translanguaging perspective to understand the ways in which language is used as a resource for meaning making in the social world [Wei, Li. 2011. "Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain." Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5): 1222–1235; Wei, Li. 2018. “Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language.” Applied Linguistics 39 (1): 9–30; García, O., and T. Kleyn. 2016. Translanguaging with Multilingual Students: Learning from Classroom Moments. Routledge; MacSwan, J. 2017. “A Multilingual Perspective on Translanguaging.” American Educational Research Journal 54 (1): 167–201; Jaspers, J. 2018. “The Transformative Limits of Translanguaging.” Language & Communication 58: 1–10]. More specifically, we adopt the concept of translanguaging spaces [Wei, Li. 2011. "Moment Analysis and Translanguaging Space: Discursive Construction of Identities by Multilingual Chinese Youth in Britain." Journal of Pragmatics 43 (5): 1222–1235; Wei, Li. 2018. “Translanguaging as a Practical Theory of Language.” Applied Linguistics 39 (1): 9–30; Reilly, C. 2021. 3 Malawian Universities as Translanguaging Spaces. In English-Medium Instruction and Translanguaging, 29–42. Multilingual Matters] to explore the ways in which language is used in billboards and advertising spaces and propose that important shifts in language uses are observable. We discuss the changing status and uses of local African languages and why this is important in understanding language use in post-colonial contexts such as Zambia.