The cost of doing nothing: Educating language-minoritized students
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early-language-learning-handbook en
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- Languages as social constructs
| Translanguaging To understand the concept of translanguaging as proposed by Ricardo Otheguy, Ofelia García and Wallis Reid (2015), it is necessary to make a distinction between (1) named languages and (2) idiolects. Named languages are what we would normally call languages from a cultural, social and political - an outside - perspective. They are not real from a linguistic point of view - they are social constructs - often associated with a geographical space (a territory) and a particular history. An idiolect by contrast is a person’s own unique, personal language, the person’s mental grammar that emerges in interaction with other speakers and enables the person’s use of language (idem 289). This is the language that each individual actually uses, as seen from the speaker’s perspective. Translanguaging occurs, according to Otheguy, García & Reid, when a speaker is able to use his or her full linguistic repertoire, without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages (idem 289). Languages as social constructs That languages are social constructs is no news to linguists, but can be news for teachers, politicians or the public at large most people firmly believe that it is perfectly possible to draw a line around a language and to equate that line with a national or regional border. English is spoken in England, Dutch is spoken in the Netherlands, Flemish in Flanders and soon. Language maps such as the one below are widespread and serve to establish a link between language and territory as a central and normal way to think about language use (Piller 2016: 33). Source http://www.facegfx.com/vector/colour-english-language-world-map-vector Comparable maps were produced in the late 19 th and early 20 th century to depict the distribution of race, when it was widely believed that there were white, yellow, brown and black races. Unlike language, which has not yet been recognised as asocial construct in the public mind, one could argue (or at least hope) that it is fairly well known that there exists no such thing as a biological race. Yet race continues to be widely used in everyday conversations, because the color of your skin, the texture of your hair or the form of your nose, can have very real social and material consequences. It may determine where you sit in the classroom (at the back or at the front, see Weiner 2015) and what expectations your teachers have of you, which greatly influences your educational performance (Payne 2008, 3 Papageorge, Gershenson & Kang 2016), or whether you are even allowed to attend school in the first place (seethe recent uproar in South Africa 3 where girls were sent home to straighten their hair with chemicals, as afro hair was deemed inappropriate. This is why the distinction between named languages and idiolects is so relevant ones idiolect or linguistic repertoire, particularly when used by a racialized or otherwise minoritized body, has important social and political implications. As mentioned earlier, everybody has their own linguistic repertoire, so everybody, both monolinguals and plurilinguals, is capable of translanguaging. But as Otheguy and his colleagues point out, plurilinguals are often not allowed to use their full idiolect in the classroom, whereas monolinguals only have to suppress a small part of their linguistic repertoire (the part they use for speaking with their peers outside the classroom for instance. Allowing plurilingual children to translanguage in the classroom is an important help for them Clearly, learning to deploy one’s idiolect so as to be considered a speaker of English or Spanish or Euskara or Hawaiian is an important sociolinguistic accomplishment and a valuable social skill. But learners must first be allowed to speak freely, so they can develop the lexical and structural features for the different social contexts in which they are expected to interact (Otheguy, García & Reid 2015: 302) Various ways have been suggested for teachers to give room to translanguaging. These range from giving children the opportunity to write essays in their own idiolect (using their full linguistic repertoire to make meaning) to allowing small group discussions among speakers of the same named languages (see Celic & Seltzer 2013, Arpacik 2015 ). Download 0.49 Mb. Share with your friends:
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