Volume 2010, Issue 205

Linguistic landscapes have, in the main, been analyzed distributionally, noting the preponderance of different language codes in particular settings. In contrast, we develop a qualitative, critical, frame-analytic account of Welsh language and culture, as displayed in texts in public spaces in Patagonia, the site of a Welsh colonial experiment in the mid-19th century. We identify three frames through which cultural values are ascribed to Wales and to the Welsh language: the colonial history frame, the reflexive cultural Welshness frame, and the Welsh heritage frame. The last of these frames dominates in the visible landscape in Gaiman, Patagonia, where Welshness is associated with commercial heritage tourism initiatives, and particularly casas de té galesas ( ‘Welsh tea houses’ ). We comment on language choice (mainly Welsh and Spanish), but also on multimodal and stylistic resources, used in framing Welshness, and constituting it metaculturally, in various types of public signs and displays.

This article analyzes diversity as related to different types of multilingual education. Diversity in education is linked to different factors that can be classified as linguistic (language distance, different scripts, etc.), sociolinguistic status (minority, official, international, immigrant, etc.) and educational (school subjects, medium of instruction, age of introduction, methodologies). Language practices can be an important part of the make-up of language diversity among multilingual speakers at a micro level. The paper discusses the Continua of Multilingual Education as a tool to classify and compare different types of multilingual schools all over the world as a more efficient way to deal with diversity in multilingual education than traditional typologies. The advantages of the new tool can be shown by applying it to the case of multilingual education in the Basque Country in Spain, where Basque, Spanish, English and sometimes French, are the languages used by different actors in the education system. The paper also deals with diversity as linked to sustainable development and focuses on the advantages of multilingual education.

Growing mobility of important parts of the world's population has led to a massive increase in multilingualism in post-modern societies and a lasting change from homoglossic to polyglossic communities with important “deterritorialised” linguistic minorities, mostly plurilingual to a variable degree. Ideologies and practices of communication in old and new multilingual contexts vary largely. The “solutions” for overcoming potential problems go from using a lingua franca (often English), inventing pidgin like emergent varieties, choosing the language of one of the interlocutors known (partially) by the others (namely in the case of immigrants), insisting on receptive competences (everybody uses his or her own language, e. g. in officially multilingual institutions), to various forms of mixed speech and, of course, to interpretation and translation processes. Drawing on extensive field work in bilingual institutions and multilingual companies in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, we propose to discuss various ways of mobilizing multilingual repertoires in situations of cross-linguistic and intercultural communication. The analyzed data will mainly consist of dyadic and polyadic oral interactions. It will also include written texts and signs that are part of the linguistic landscape. Our work is grounded in the assumption that multilingualism is no longer considered a marginal phenomenon, only of interest to specialists, but instead a characteristic of the majority of human beings.

This study investigates the extent to which multilingualism has been practiced in Taiwan and the related factors that contribute to it. Taiwan is composed of various ethnic immigrants who usurped the lands of the existing Austro-Polynesian aboriginal populations. These ethnic languages provided the basis for the way in which multilingualism manifests itself in Taiwan, and were exposed to the impact of various language policies implemented throughout history. However, how those policies affected the development of multilingualism and to what extent is yet to be investigated. This study intends to do precisely this. First, it analyzes the contact situations among the ethnolinguistic groups and concurrent interventions of language policies. This analysis provides the background of the multilingual-make-up of Taiwan. Then, the vitality of languages in the current verbal repertoire is investigated in terms of Taiwanese people's language proficiency, language use in different domains, and language attitudes. The results show that the existing multi-ethnolinguistic community that developed from different waves of immigration in Taiwan has been subject to a high level of intervention by the Government's top-down language policies. The National Language Policy, which favors Mandarin at the expense of all Taiwanese ethnic languages, has led to the rapid shift of Taiwanese ethnic languages, but attempts to reverse language shift via the Mother Tongue Language Policy have not been effectively implemented. Issues of globalization have resulted in revisions to the English Language Policy, with English becoming strongly favored though not widely used. Other (ethnic) languages, although not officially restricted in use, appear to be in the process of rapidly losing capacity at the level of the expression of pragmatic functionality.

With the advent of globalization and the consequent and concomitant establishment of a new linguistic dispensation, the diversity of multilingualism has increased exponentially. Unsurprisingly, such diversity has attracted the closest attention of researchers, as well as those involved in managing the practical ramifications of multilingualism, particularly, perhaps, in regard to issues relating to the ethnic diversity of multilingual populations, both indigenous and immigrant. In this contribution, we call attention to further numerous distinctions manifested in the diversity of multilingualism. We also discuss the recent emergence of new language nominations. Language nominations are terms which have been traditionally attached to languages used in society, such as mother tongue, heritage language and foreign language — as opposed to the proper names of particular languages (e.g. English, Turkish, Urdu, etc.). In addition to strong subjective connotations, language nominations advert to the value and role currently assigned to a given language by a given society/community. We go on to argue that the concept of affordances has considerable explanatory power in relation to the unprecedented flourishing of multilingual diversity of all kinds and can provide a framework within which the description and explication of the intriguing array of attributes of multilingual communities and individuals becomes feasible. In addition, we suggest that societal linguistic affordances are more conducive to the selection of particular languages for use and study in society than to the selection of others: in other words, that social affordances pave the way for the realization of specific individual linguistic affordances. It is our view that the affordances perspective will facilitate a more efficacious organization of a research perspective on multilingual diversity — allowing investigators to fish out, as it were, identifiable societal underpinnings for individual patterns of linguistic behavior from what may appear to be an unruly pool of complexity.

Features of Indian multilingualism are discussed to show that, despite several positive forces favoring maintenance of minority languages, languages are subjected to inequality and discrimination. It is argued that multilingualism in India, as in other South Asian countries, is hierarchical in nature, characterized by a double divide — one between the elitist language of power and the major regional languages (vernaculars) and, the other, between the regional languages and the dominated ones. The nature and implications of this double divide are analyzed in respect of the relative positions of English, Hindi, regional majority languages and other indigenous/minority languages. The paper shows that, at the same time as hierarchical multilingualism has led to a general loss of linguistic diversity, the progressive domain shrinkage and the marginalization of the surviving indigenous and minority languages affect the dynamics of the relationship between languages and linguistic groups in contact and negotiation of linguistic identities. The chasm between policy and practice affecting the place of languages in society, it is argued, leads to educational failure, capability deprivation and poverty in the minority linguistic groups, particularly the tribal mother tongue speakers. Programs of multilingual education are briefly discussed in the context of recent attempts to deal with classroom language disadvantage of tribal children in India.

The so-called Chinese diasporas, i.e. Chinese communities outside Greater China (China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan), have traditionally been dialect dominant; that is, the vast majority of Chinese immigrants are speakers of (especially Southern) dialects. Cantonese and Hokkien are two of the most prominent dialects. With globalization and the rise of China as a world politico-economic power, the national, standardized variety, Putonghua, is gaining particular prestige amongst the Chinese diasporas. For example, all the Cantonese schools for British Chinese children in the UK now also teach Putonghua, but none of the Putonghua schools teach Cantonese. Using ethnographic interviews with and participant observation of Chinese people of different generations in various diasporic communities, this paper examines the changing hierarchies of varieties of Chinese, the implications of such changes for the education and identity development of the young, and the constitution of a (speech) community in the post-modern era. It focuses on language attitude and linguistic practices (including literacy practices). It also investigates the tensions between the competing ideologies and discourses on national and ethnic identities, nationalism, community relations and cultural values.

Luxembourg is designated as a trilingual country, officially recognizing three languages in its language law of 1984: Luxembourgish as the national language, and French and/or German as legal, judicial and administrative languages. While Luxembourgish is mostly used for spoken communication, written functions are carried out primarily in standard French and German, which as a result also dominate within the educational system. Luxembourgish thus presents the somewhat paradoxical case of being a small and mostly spoken language that is officially recognized as the national language of the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. At the same time, in relation to fluctuating demographics, a discourse of endangerment has developed around the Luxembourgish language. The focus has been on the limited role of Luxembourgish within the educational system, as well as its potential role as the “language of integration”. A major contradiction is reflected in these current debates and developments: though the emphasis in language-in-education policy continues to revolve mostly around the teaching of standard German and French and though Luxembourgish is not widely used for functions linked to standardized written languages, the 2008 citizenship law has introduced formalized language testing in Luxembourgish. It thus signals and enacts a shift away from the “trilingual ideal” towards the national language as the sole icon of “Luxembourgishness”.