Session Information
31 SES 04 C, Developing Multilingualism Across the Lifespan: Effects of teacher beliefs and ideologies
Paper Session
Contribution
Language teaching and learning takes place in an increasingly marketized climate that posits language as a vehicle for participating in the employment market and for accessing education and services. The various turns in language education and applied linguistics, e.g. the socio-cultural, reflexive, and multi / pluri turns (e.g. May 2014; Kubota 2016), along with the global and social transformations of our time, have re-positioned the role of language learning and teaching. In the European context in particular, globalization, migration and mobility have led to a re-evaluation of individual and societal multilingualism as something that has a tangible market value individual and that has been recognised and promoted as cultural and economic capital (e.g. Duchêne and Heller 2012; Martin-Jones, Blackledge, and Creese 2012).
Further to the advancement of linguistic diversity, (inter)cultural diversity has become a cornerstone of the language education market in the twenty-first century. These developments have, in fact, created a conundrum for the role of languages in society: a strengthened role of English as a global medium of communication and lingua franca versus a concern for developing and maintaining linguistic diversity. Language learners feel increasingly compelled to acquire an additional language –often an elite language – in order to obtain and assemble the ‘appropriate’ linguistic credentials to succeed in school and society. As such, language education companies cater for the multilingual development of adult learners that bring an increasingly rich and diverse linguistic and intercultural repertoire to the classroom. Whilst there is a strong focus on teaching successful communication skills and multicompetence to such learners, the ‘monolingual habitus’ (Gogolin 1994) or monolingual mindset (Clyne 2008), ideologies of native speakerism, standardness, and norm-centred models of language acquisition are prevailing phenomena. Such phenomena are, however, often silenced in the routine work practices of freelance language trainers, who need to cope with tensions over precarious, non-linear, and elite working conditions and negotiate a new language trainer agency with an assemblage of skills, going beyond ‘mere’ language teaching.
Against this background, the current paper takes the case of an Austrian language education institute and interrogates the discursive and social complexities that multilingual language trainers face in teaching English, German, Spanish and intercultural communication to a cohort of adult learners. Specifically, I explore how a set of Austrian, Spanish and British trainers (co)construct their identities as ‘native’ and ‘non-native’ trainers, and how these constructions are reflected in the pedagogies of their diverse classroom practice. The study raises two key questions: what are the beliefs and ideologies of these professional educators in relation to the role of English and multilingualism as part of the wider diversity policy of the language institute? How is ‘nativeness’ negotiated and accommodated in the educational work practices of these trainers?
Method
Methodologically, I draw upon Critical Discourse Studies (e.g. Krzyżanowski 2011) and institutional ethnography (Smith 2005) to trace the discursive subjectivities, affects and power constellations of these trainers and to highlight the metalinguistic awareness that underpins the development of adult multilingualism, and the ways the language trainers navigate, buy into or resist the institutional construction of labels and social categories. Similar to Critical Discourse Studies, institutional ethnography locates text as a central category while it also empirically examines its conditions of production and the social connections between people within and beyond institutional arrangements. The discourse-ethnographic approach focuses on tracing people’s everyday discourses, experiences and actions of their working lives in local situated contexts and assumes that people’s ideas about language and diversity are produced in their own practices. Specifically, I draw on interview data (with trainers and the management of the language education institute), observational field notes, and institutional data (website, photographs), to examine the institutional ‘language regime’ (Busch 2012) that is based on processes of control, hierarchisation and stratification over what type of language is taught by what type of language trainer under what circumstances. Such an empirical investigation allows problematizing whose voice is heard, what is sayable and doable as a trainer, and whose voice is silenced under the conditions of the globalised, pluralising and dispersing language education market. The discourse-ethnography offers an adequate way to zoom in and out of the linguistic and to disrupt essentialist and common-sense forms of knowledge creation in the context of adult multilingualism.
Expected Outcomes
The findings show that the trainers draw on an assortment of skills in language training that require them to act increasingly reflexively, affectively, empathetically and with the ability to connect the linguistic with the cultural and interpersonal. Language teaching thus emerges as a constant process of negotiation that involves a broad repertoire of skills, diverse communication strategies, pragmatic competence, and growing meta-linguistic and intercultural awareness. Another finding relates to the complex discursive positioning of the language education institute, its management and the trainers. The trainers identify shifting demands for adult language training in times of economic inequalities and a growing pressure of clients to accelerate learning. They are positioned as experts that pursue the ideal of ‘effective communication’ skills, with a shared consensus to move language teaching away from its traditional focus on attaining fluency and accuracy towards being able to communicate in real-life situations. Yet, the trainers tend to accept a pervasive linguistic hierarchisation at work (with native and non-native language trainers used for different types of educational purposes). So not all trainers, including their linguistic repertoires, are considered and treated as equal. The study further shows that the management of the institute follows orthodox ways of conceiving (and ultimately selling) language and culture teaching to adult learners. It also discursively promotes a discourse on diversity and expertise in language and intercultural communication, which seems to masque the actual pervasiveness of native and non-native speaker ideals. To conclude, the study flags up the perennial need for the language teaching institute to self-reflect on its hegemonic structures, despite its overall diversity agenda, and to move towards a more inclusive repertoire-based approach that deconstructs the existing linguistic and social dichotomies in language training. This would allow for a more equitable approach to developing adult multilingualism across elite and marginalised circles.
References
Clyne, M. (2008). The monolingual mindset as an impediment to the development of plurilingual potential in Australia. Sociolinguistic Studies 2, 347–365. Duchêne, A., and Heller, M. (Eds.). (2012). Language in late capitalism. Pride and profit (1st ed.). New York: Routledge. Gogolin, I. (1994). Der monolinguale Habitus der multilingualen Schule. Münster: Waxmann. Krzyżanowski, M. (2011). Ethnography and critical discourse analysis: towards a problem oriented research dialogue. Critical Discourse Studies, 8 (4), 231-238. Kubota, R. (2016). The Multi/Plural Turn, Postcolonial Theory, and Neoliberal Multiculturalism: Complicities and Implications for Applied Linguistics. Applied Linguistics 37 (4), 474-94. Martin–Jones, M., Blackledge, A., and Creese, A. (Eds.). (2012). The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism . London, UK and New York, NY: Routledge, 2012. May, S. (ed.). (2014). The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL, and Bilingual Education. London: Routledge. Smith, D. (2005). Institutional Ethnography. A sociology for people. Lanham: Altamira.
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