Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration 9781441189929, 9781472542212, 9781441135698

Table of contents :
Cover
Half-title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Approaching Migration, Intercultural Contact and Language Learning
Migration
Intercultural contact
Language learning
The contact zone
Structure
References
Part 1: Migration and Language Contact
1 Migration and Language Management: The Jewish Experience
Jewish migration in biblical times
Migration after the destruction of the Temple
Migration into separation
Migrating back to Zion
Social and cultural contact after migration
Notes
References
2 Linguistic Vitality and the Polish Community in France
Introduction
Polish migration to France: Socio-historical background
Methodology
Research issues
Language acquisition
Language maintenance and transmission: Polish L1
Multilingual families: Intergenerational practices
Conclusion
Notes
References
3 Language Planners’ Cultural Positioning Strategies in Joint Negotiation of Meaning
Introduction
Ideological-cultural positioning
Some methodological considerations
Presenting the interviews: The discursive framework
Multilingualism policy-making in action
Textual anchoring
Conclusion
Appendix: Excerpts presented to language planners during the interview
Notes
References
Part 2: Language Learning: Communicating in the Contact Zone
4 Emergent New Literacies and the Mobile Phone: Informal Language Learning, Voice and Identity in a South African Township
Introduction
Background to the research
Informal learning and church life: Pearl
A Supervernacular as a ‘substitute language’: The story of Linda
Learning the ‘MXIT language’: Lisa and Ernestine
Conclusion
Notes
References
5 Language and Culture: Attitudes Towards, and Perceptions of, English L2 Acquisition among Adult Polish Migrants in Ireland
Introduction: The post-2004 Polish migration to Ireland
Language and culture
Research methodology
Results and discussion
Concluding remarks
Note
References
6 Face-to-Face Tandem Language Learning: Evidence of Intercultural Learning in a Zone of Proximal Development for Intercultural Competence
Introduction
Principles of tandem language learning
Intercultural communication integrated with tandem language learning
The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in a tandem exchange
First-hand experience of L1 speakers: Motivation and affect
Context of the study
Methodology
Findings and discussion
Conclusion
References
7 E-Portfolio Self-Assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Helping Language Learners to Become Autonomous Intercultural Speakers
Introduction
From ‘native speaker’ to ‘intercultural speaker’
The European language portfolio: A tool for developing‘ the competence to learn cultures autonomously’?
Research project
Results and discussion
Conclusion
Notes
References
Part 3: Migration and Contact: Community and Individual Experience
8 Heteroglossic Becomings: Listening to, and Learning from, Our Multiple Voices
Introduction
Incident 1: The resourcefulness of the foreigner position
Incident 2: The desire to ‘do one’s own thing’
Incident 3: The everydayness of heteroglossia
Incident 4: The preference to be non-categorizable
Heteroglossic becomings
Commentary
References
9 The Catalan Nova Cançó: Resistance and Identity Through Song
Introduction
Origins of La Nova Cançó
The process of nation building – historical background
La Nova Cançó: Beginnings and protest against the regime
The late fifties and sixties
The seventies
The eighties
The nineties and the new millennium
Perceptions of Catalan song within the Spanish state
Conclusion
Copyright acknowledgement
Notes
References
Discography
10 Wandering Words: Reflections on Ambivalent Cultural Belonging and the Creative Potential of Linguistic Multiplicity
References
Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

Intercultural Contact, Language ­Learning and Migration

Advances in Sociolinguistics Series Series Editor: Tommaso M. Milani, University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa Since the emergence of sociolinguistics as a new field of enquiry in the late 1960s, research into the relationship between language and society has advanced almost beyond recognition. In particular, the past decade has witnessed the considerable influence of theories drawn from outside of sociolinguistics itself. Thus rather than seeing language as a mere reflection of society, recent work has been increasingly inspired by ideas drawn from social, cultural and political theory that have emphasized the constitutive role played by language/discourse in all areas of social life. The Advances in Sociolinguistics series seeks to provide a snapshot of the current diversity of the field of sociolinguistics and the blurring of the boundaries between sociolinguistics and other domains of study concerned with the role of language in society. Discourses of Endangerment Ideology and Interest in the Defence of Languages Edited by Alexandre Duchêne and Monica Heller Globalization and Language in Contact Scale, Migration, and Communicative Practices Edited by James Collins Globalization of Language and Culture in Asia Edited by Viniti Vaish Language, Culture and Identity An Ethnolinguistic Perspective Philip Riley Language Ideologies and Media Discourse Texts, Practices, Politics Edited by Sally Johnson and Tommaso M. Milani Language Ideologies and the Globalization of ‘Standard’ Spanish Darren Paffey

Language in the Media Representations, Identities, Ideologies Edited by Sally Johnson and Astrid Ensslin Language and Power An Introduction to Institutional Discourse Andrea Mayr Language Testing, Migration and Citizenship Edited by Guus Extra, Massimiliano Spotti and Piet Van Avermaet Linguistic Minorities and Modernity, 2nd Edition A Sociolinguistic Ethnography Monica Heller Multilingual Encounters in Europe’s Institutional Spaces Edited by Johann Unger, Michał Krzyżanowski and Ruth Wodak Multilingualism A Critical Perspective Adrian Blackledge and Angela Creese Semiotic Landscapes Language, Image, Space Adam Jaworski and Crispin Thurlow The Languages of Global Hip-Hop Edited by Marina Terkourafi The Language of Newspapers Socio-Historical Perspectives Martin Conboy The Languages of Urban Africa Edited by Fiona Mc Laughlin The Sociolinguistics of Identity Edited by Tope Omoniyi

Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration Edited by Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

LON DON • OX F O R D • N E W YO R K • N E W D E L H I • SY DN EY

Bloomsbury Academic An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square London WC1B 3DP UK

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www.bloomsbury.com BLOOMSBURY and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2014 Paperback edition first published 2016 © Barbara Geraghty, Jean E. Conacher and Contributors 2014 Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the Editors of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury or the author. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-8992-9 PB: 978-1-4742-7406-7 ePDF: 978-1-4411-3569-8 ePub: 978-1-4725-8513-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration/Edited by Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher. pages cm. – (Advances in sociolinguistics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4411-8992-9 (hardback) – ISBN 978-1-4725-8513-4 (epub) – ISBN 978-1-4411-3569-8 (epdf) 1. Languages in contact. 2. Language and languages–Globalization. 3. Language and culture–Globalization. 4. Linguistic change. 5. Sociolinguistics. I. Conacher, Jean E., editor of compilation. II. Geraghty, Barbara (Linguist) editor of compilation. P130.5.I65 2014 306.44–dc23 2014003615 Series: Advances in Sociolinguistics Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain

Contents Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Approaching Migration, Intercultural Contact and Language Learning  Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher

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Part 1  Migration and Language Contact

1 2 3

Migration and Language Management: The Jewish Experience  Bernard Spolsky Linguistic Vitality and the Polish Community in France  Vera Regan and Ewelina Debaene Language Planners’ Cultural Positioning Strategies in Joint Negotiation of Meaning  Patrick Studer

23 41 61

Part 2  Language Learning: Communicating in the Contact Zone 4

5

6

7

Emergent New Literacies and the Mobile Phone: Informal Language Learning, Voice and Identity in a South African Township  Fie Velghe and Jan Blommaert Language and Culture: Attitudes Towards, and Perceptions of, English L2 Acquisition among Adult Polish Migrants in Ireland  Agnieszka Skrzypek, Romana Kopečková, Barbara Bidzińska and David Singleton Face-to-Face Tandem Language Learning: Evidence of Intercultural Learning in a Zone of Proximal Development for Intercultural Competence  Fionnuala Kennedy and Áine Furlong E-Portfolio Self-Assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Helping Language Learners to Become Autonomous Intercultural Speakers  Aleksandra Sudhershan

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Contents

Part 3  Migration and Contact: Community and Individual Experience   8 Heteroglossic Becomings: Listening to, and Learning from, Our 171 Multiple Voices  Julie Choi and David Nunan   9 The Catalan Nova Cançó: Resistance and Identity Through 188 Song  Núria Borrull 10 Wandering Words: Reflections on Ambivalent Cultural Belonging and the Creative Potential of Linguistic Multiplicity  Irmina van Niele 207 Conclusion  Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher Index

222 225

Notes on Contributors Barbara Bidzińska holds a PhD in applied linguistics from Trinity College Dublin. Her research interests include language transfer in second-/thirdlanguage acquisition, language attrition, native language maintenance and social psychology of inter-ethnic relations. She also translates from Polish into English and German. Jan Blommaert is professor of language, culture and globalization and director of the Babylon Center at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, and professor of African linguistics and sociolinguistics at Ghent University, Belgium. He holds honorary appointments at University of the Western Cape (South Africa) and Beijing Language and Culture University (China) and is group leader of the Max Planck Sociolinguistic Diversity Working Group. He has published widely on language ideologies and language inequality in the context of globalization. Publications include The Sociolinguistics of Globalization (Cambridge University Press, 2010), Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide (Multilingual Matters, 2010), Grassroots Literacy (Routledge, 2008), Discourse: A Critical Introduction (Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Language Ideological Debates (Mouton de Gruyter, 1999). Núria Borrull lectures in Spanish Studies in the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication at the University of Limerick. She is a member of the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS). Her research interests include Spanish and Latin American modern literature, translation studies, language teaching methodology and language learning and popular music in Spain. Julie Choi is teaching and completed her doctorate on multivocal identity construction and autoethnographic approaches at the University of Technology, Sydney, in 2013. Her areas of research include sociolinguistics, multilingual studies, media and cultural studies. Her work has previously appeared in her co-edited book Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity (Routledge, 2010) and in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education.

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Jean E. Conacher is senior lecturer in German in the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication at the University of Limerick and on the management committee of the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS). On the Royal Irish Academy Modern Languages Committee from 2011 to 2014, she is also a member of the German Sub-Committee of the National Council for Curriculum  and Assessment. She publishes primarily in the areas of language education, self-directed learning and new learning environments and has co-edited a number of volumes, including New Learning Environments for Language Learning. Moving Beyond the Classroom? (2007, with Helen Kelly-Holmes). Ewelina Debaene holds a PhD in English applied linguistics from Warsaw University (2005). From 2007 to 2010, she was an associate investigator in the Polish Diaspora Project, funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research and teaching interests revolve around Englishlanguage teaching methodology, English for specific purposes, and sociocultural aspects of migration. Áine Furlong her work in language learning and teaching is motivated by two key issues: the immediate relevance of language learning to the individual and the development of his/her plurilingual/cultural awareness within society. Her research interests focus on the teaching of subjects through other languages – content-based teaching or CLIL – plurilingual approaches to language learning as well as the relation of creativity to plurilingualism. She has been lecturing at Waterford Institute of Technology since 2002. Barbara Geraghty is lecturer in Japanese in the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication at the University of Limerick and is a member of the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS). She is a member of the National Steering Committee of the Irish Post-Primary Languages Initiative. Her research interests include self-directed learning, computer-assisted language learning, language and culture and Okinawan literature. Fionnuala Kennedy is lecturer in German and intercultural studies in the School of Humanities at Waterford Institute of Technology. Her research interests include intercultural competence, the intercultural dimension of tandem languagelearning and integration of international students in higher education. Romana Kopečková is lecturer at the English Department of the Westfälische Universität Münster, Germany. Her research interests include age-related

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differences in second-language acquisition, and cross-linguistic influence in third-language phonology. Irmina van Niele is a visual artist and lecturer at the University of South Australia’s School of Art, Architecture and Design. Since completing her PhD in 2006, she continues to research and write on human belonging, identity and loss. She is currently writing a memoir on her displaced adolescence in Paris in the late 1960s. David Nunan is professor emeritus of applied linguistics, University of Hong Kong and former president of Anaheim University. He has published over 100 books and articles in the areas of curriculum development, teacher education and research methods.  Vera Regan is associate professor of sociolinguistics in the School of Languages and Literatures at University College Dublin. She publishes in the area of sociolinguistics and second-language acquisition. Current research projects focus on migration, language and interculturalism. Former president of the European Association for Second Language Research, Association for French Language Studies and senior research fellow, Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences, she has held Fulbright research fellowships at the University of Pennsylvania and research fellowships at the University of Ottawa. David Singleton took his BA at Trinity College Dublin and his PhD at the University of Cambridge. He is a fellow of Trinity College Dublin, where he is professor of applied linguistics, and he also holds the title of Research Professor at the University of Pannonia. He has served as president of the Irish Association for Applied Linguistics, as secretary general of the International Association of Applied Linguistics and as president of the European Second Language Association. His publications number more than 180, his books and articles ranging across a wide spectrum of topics – including syllabus design and pedagogical grammar, but focusing mainly on cross-linguistic influence, the second-language lexicon, the age factor in language acquisition and multilingualism. His co-edited volumes include Current Multilingualism: A New Linguistic Dispensation (2013, with J. Fishman, L. Aronin and M. Ó Laoire) and Multilingualism (2012, with L. Aronin). Agnieszka Skrzypek is lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Aberdeen, UK. She has also taught on Applied Linguistics and TESOL programmes in a

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number of third-level institutions in Ireland and Poland. Additionally, she has considerable expertise in statistical research methods. Her research interests include, inter alia, the role of short-term memory in L2 learning and L2 processing, computerized working memory training, cognitive linguistics and educational psychology. She has published papers in international journals and edited volumes. Bernard Spolsky retired from Bar–Ilan University many years ago and was rewarded with the rank of professor emeritus. Since then, he has published several books (notably Language Policy, Language Management, The Cambridge Handbook of Language Policy – all with Cambridge University Press) and also edited two books for the Asian Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language, bringing the total of books he has authored and edited to 41 (not including the latest, The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History, now in production and another collection in preparation). He has also published 87 articles in peerreviewed journals (not including the three journals he founded and edited) and 134 chapters in collections (excluding this one). His current research interests are language management, public signage and Jewish varieties of language. Patrick Studer is professor of linguistics at the School of Applied Linguistics of ZHAW Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He has authored and edited books and journal articles in various fields of linguistics that are concerned with language as an institutionalized social practice. Patrick Studer takes a particular interest in style as a theoretical concept as well as a perspective that can be applied to a wide range of communicative contexts involving the diffusion and transformation of knowledge. Recent co-edited volumes include Ideological Conceptualizations of Language: Discourses of Linguistic Diversity (2013, with Erzsebet Barat and Jiri Nekvapil) and Linguistic Diversity in Europe: Trends and Discourses (2012, with Iwar Werlen). Aleksandra Sudhershan is lecturer in English as a foreign language at the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) Kufstein, Austria. She previously worked on the Language On-Line Portfolio Project, a pan-European partnership of 12 higher education institutions funded by the Socrates Lingua 2 programme. Its outcome was a multilingual, online and interactive version of the European Language Portfolio with an enhanced intercultural dimension. Her research interests include Business English, learner autonomy, intercultural competence and internationalization of tertiary education.

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Fie Velghe is currently a PhD student at Tilburg University, the Netherlands, as a member of the Transformations in the Public Sphere (TRAPS) research group at the Tilburg School of Humanities, Department of Culture Studies. Fie Velghe’s research focuses on mobile phone use and mobile phone literacies among middle-aged women in impoverished communities in Cape Town, South Africa. She has a master’s degree in African languages and cultures and a master’s degree in conflict and development, both obtained at Ghent University, Belgium.

Acknowledgements The impetus for this volume was a Royal Irish Academy conference entitled In/difference: Current and Historical Perspectives on Cultures in Contact, organized in November 2007 at the University of Limerick by Marieke Krajenbrink and Barbara Geraghty, at which early versions of some contributions were presented. Particular thanks are due to Michael G. Kelly for sparking the idea for a conceptual framework which generated such lively intellectual discussions throughout the conference and beyond, and to a range of generous sponsors of the event including Patrick O’Sullivan, the Austrian Embassy (Dublin), the German Embassy (Dublin), the Consejeria de Educación of the Spanish Embassy (Dublin), the Bank of Ireland, the president of the University of Limerick, the Institute for the Study of Knowledge in Society, the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication and the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. In preparation for the volume, the original presentations have been substantially reworked and updated; they have also been complemented by a number of invited chapters. We would like to thank all the contributors for their work in the preparation of this volume, the Royal Irish Academy and, in particular, Marieke Krajenbrink, for her unfailing support of this project. All the chapters included in this volume underwent double-blind review. Such vital academic work largely goes unrewarded, but we would like to take this opportunity to thank the following colleagues for the time and energy they invested in helping others make the most of their work: Kenneth Adams, Naoko Aoki, David Atkinson, Andrew Barfield, Angela Chambers, Mirjam Hauck, Christine Hélot, Tríona Hourigan, Helen Kelly-Holmes, Terry Lamb, Imogen Long, Joanna McPake, Freda Mishan, Máiréad Moriarty, Robert O’ Dowd, Lillis Ó Laoire, Muiris Ó Laoire, Helen Phelan, Taina Saarinen, Steve Walsh. Without the support of individual colleagues within the School of Languages, Literature, Culture and Communication and the Centre for Applied Language Studies (CALS), who offered encouragement, advice and moral support, this project would never have been completed: you know who you are! We would also like to acknowledge the support provided by the Glucksman Library at

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the University of Limerick, the Universitätsbibliothek Leipzig and the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (Leipzig) which was invaluable in completing such a wideranging volume. To Raymond Friel, Gillian Martin and Lillis Ó Laoire many thanks for invaluable contributions to the project in the early and final stages. We would like to thank everyone at Bloomsbury who has helped produce the volume you see before you; in particular, for their patient and thorough responses to our many questions, thanks must go to Gurdeep Mattu, Laura Murray, Andrew Wardell and the production team who helped with all the images. Bloomsbury Publishing, the editors and author are grateful to L’Empordà Edicions Musicals for permission to use the following copyright material in the text: Excerpts from I Si Canto Trist ©1974 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals), reproduced on p. 195. Campanades a Morts ©1977 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals), reproduced on p. 196. Somniem ©1979 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals), reproduced on p. 197. Finally, on behalf of the contributors of this volume, we would like to thank the anonymous respondents whose voices you hear across the chapters. It is their experiences of living intercultural contact, language learning and migration which bring the volume alive and help us all understand and appreciate the challenges, and rewards, of living every day in the transcultural space of the contact zone.

Introduction: Approaching Migration, Intercultural Contact and Language Learning Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher

In 1969, at the age of 17, the writer Vikram Seth left his family home in Calcutta and set out for London to continue his education. Like many migrants before and since, he went to join family; his Indian great-uncle, Shanti, and GermanJewish great-aunt, Henny, had met in 1933 in Berlin, where Shanti was pursuing dentistry studies. Unable to find work as a foreigner in Hitler’s Germany, Shanti moved first to Edinburgh to re-qualify and then to London. Only 5 weeks before the outbreak of war, Henny followed him, leaving behind in Berlin a sister and mother who would not survive the concentration camps. Neither Shanti nor Henny ever returned permanently to the countries of their birth, but made a life for themselves in London, using German as their home language, Shanti maintaining links with India and Henny acquiring British nationality. Reflecting much later upon all their lives, Seth comes to recognize that, across the generations, he and his relatives share the experiences and emotions of the long-term migrant, living in the space where multiple languages, cultures and traditions meet and interact: Shaken about the globe, we live our fractured lives. Enticed or fleeing, we re-form ourselves, taking on partially the coloration of our new backgrounds. Even our tongues are alienated and rejoined – a multiplicity that creates richness and confusion. Both Shanti and Henny were in the broader sense exiled; each found in their fellow exile a home. (Seth 2005: 403)

The Seth family’s experiences are shared by millions of people across the globe at any one time; living in, and with, diversity is both the challenge and condition of the post-modern world, and it has been argued (Vertovec 2009: 2) that this phenomenon has been intensified by the growth in globalization, a development which has been defined in various ways, emphasizing its economic, cultural and social aspects (Braziel and Mannur 2003: 10–1; Mukherjee and Krieckhaus 2011).

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For our current purposes, two recent discussions of globalization appear particularly apposite in foregrounding key characteristics which will underpin discussions in this volume. Citing Held et al. (1999), Vertovec (2009) argues that globalization ‘has entailed the increasing extent, intensity, velocity and impact of global interconnectedness across a broad range of human domains’ (p. 2), while Collins et al. (2009) explain the concept by what ‘it transcends: the nation-state, itself a unit of power and identity of considerable scale and breadth . . . surpassed by transnational, globe-spanning movements of peoples, commodities and cultural media’ (p. 1). In striving for a balanced representation of the concept, however, it is important to recall Bauman’s prescient critique of globalization where weakened nation-states are reduced to ‘securing [the] modicum of order required for the conduct of business, but need not be feared as effective brakes on the global companies’ freedom’ (1998: 42). In the chapters which follow, contributors adopt a range of perspectives to question how legitimately one can speak of the eclipse of the nation-state and to discuss the impact, both positive and negative, on people’s lives of the increased speed, scope and multiplicity of worldwide connections in situations of intercultural contact brought about frequently, but not exclusively, by migration. With technological advances and the growth in short-term travel for work and tourism, many people find themselves coming into contact with cultures other than their own, and such contact can now happen equally well without their ever leaving home. The need for many to engage with hybridity and multiple identities amid constant change ensures that people, operating as individuals, groups or communities, are constantly negotiating the challenges of intercultural contact through languages with which they are more, or less, familiar. At the heart of this volume, therefore, lies an exploration of what actually happens to both languages and their users when cultures come into contact. What actions do supranational institutions, nation-states, communities and individuals take in response to questions raised by the increasingly diverse forms of migration experienced in a globalized world, where top-down and bottom-up impulses exist in at times antagonistic, at times constructive, tension? Against this backdrop, our thesis is that the increasing diversity in interpretation of intercultural contact, language learning and migration apparent within the current research literature requires a multifaceted exploration of how these intertwine and a recognition of the need for greater diversity in methodological approach. Consequently, a number of the contributions engage both with the data themselves and the actual research process, addressing issues

Introduction

3

and challenges of gathering and analysing data. The volume not only engages with the type of research more often associated with applied linguistics but also explores the use of narrative, image and song as cultural manifestations of aspects of language and cultural contact brought about by short- and longerterm migration. Towards the end of this introduction, we will discuss the structure of the volume and provide outlines of the individual chapters in each part. First, however, it seems valuable to address each of our core concepts in turn, beginning with migration which so often acts as the trigger to intercultural contact, with language learning easing the process of negotiating one’s place in a new environment (while recognizing that language learning intrinsically presupposes a desire for intercultural contact, even if one never leaves home).

Migration Since earliest hominid movements from the Rift Valley two million years ago (Larick and Ciochon 1996), migration has characterized and shaped individual and community lives, and yet the term continues to evade concise definition. On closer examination, any nuanced formulations prove value-laden and ideologically driven, ‘the results of state policies, introduced in response to political and economic goals and public attitudes’ (Castles 2000: 270), while efforts to establish neutral descriptors risk dissolving into truism. Both political and academic bodies struggle to capture increasingly diverse and complex patterns of human movement within a multidimensional rubric integrating parameters of space, time, motivation and volition, overlaid with variables such as age, gender and ethnicity, in an endeavour to explain not just the sociocultural and linguistic choices made by, or imposed upon, individuals and groups, but also the impact such choices have for broader societal and global developments. Multidisciplinary approaches provide an important relativizing function to current debates, allowing individual examples of migrant experience to be valued both for their unique story and their contribution to broader trends in migration studies. Historical studies illustrate that many of our current concerns relating to migration, including power dynamics, citizenship and language politics, were already to be observed in ancient times (Koslowski 2002) and that remarkably similar patterns of migration have occurred across the globe, not just in Europe and the Americas, but also in Africa and north and east Asia,

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with ‘[t]he near contemporaneous rise of global migration suggest[ing] that non-Europeans were very much involved in the expansion and integration of the world economy’ (McKeown 2004: 171). Interwoven with the study of migration, and partly facing the same difficulties of definition, is the study of ‘diaspora’, frequently presented in relation to particular subsets of migrants who are dispersed beyond their original state borders and yet retain a loyalty to their ‘homeland’ which shapes their values, identity and a communal sense of loss. The clear setting of boundaries between the diasporic community and their host society and the establishment of diaspora organizations appear to nourish the preservation of a distinctive identity and a common sense of purpose (Brubaker 2005; Sheffer 2003). Yet, as Brubaker posits, ‘it may be more fruitful, and certainly more precise, to speak of diasporic stances, projects, claims, idioms, practices, and so on’ (2005: 13), firmly placing such ‘personal and cultural positioning’ (Hermans 2001) within the realm of Anderson’s (1983) ‘imagined communities’. That the term has not lost its cultural and political force in national and supranational efforts to exploit its emotional pull is clear from calls for Africa to counter the sustained ‘brain drain’ of its professional elite with the positive approach adopted by other countries such as India and China in encouraging their diasporas to reinvest in national development (Davies 2007); thus, ‘diaspora’, often interpreted negatively as lost human and cultural capital to the homeland, is reconstructed into a positive economic and cultural asset. Recent interpretations of migration seem increasingly marked by the interplay between top-down measures of (supra)national bodies and the bottom-up actions of individual migrants. Efforts ‘to encourage, restrict, select, protect, distribute, and monitor migration’ (McKeown 2004: 173) can be traced back to the growing importance of nation-building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the widespread introduction of official documentation, such as passports, as material evidence of belonging (Hoerder and Macklin 2006: 796). Indeed, some researchers view the nineteenth century as ‘an age of experimentation in migration control’ (Castles 2004: 856), arguing that such regulation is at least as important in explaining migration patterns today as globalized market forces; the establishment of strong national borders informs who belongs, and who does not, and creates sanctioned routes towards (partial) belonging (Calder et al. 2010). In response, the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have experienced a growing sub-categorization of the terms ‘migration’ and ‘migrant’; while allowing governments to establish differentiated approaches to the in- and outflows of

Introduction

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particular groups crossing their borders, this development can be seen to obscure the interrelated nature of all global migration processes (McKeown 2004: 171). Certainly, what it does create is an overriding atmosphere of uncertainty and tension: The question of who is a ‘stranger’ and who ‘does not belong’, however, is also continuously being modified and contested, with growing ethnic, cultural and religious tensions within as well as between societies and states. Politics of belonging have come to occupy the heart of the political agenda almost everywhere in the world. (Yuval-Davis 2011: 2)

Nonetheless, migration for the individual remains an intensely personal, and sometimes painful, experience, for ‘migrants are not isolated individuals who react to market stimuli and bureaucratic rules, but social beings who seek to achieve better outcomes for themselves, their families and their communities by actively shaping the migratory process’ (Castles 2004: 860). Increasingly, in defining migration, bodies such as UNESCO acknowledge the power of such migrant agency as a counterbalance to national aspirations and the long-term consequences of such a positive tension for all concerned: Migration is an important factor in the erosion of traditional boundaries between languages, cultures, ethnic group [sic], and nation-states. Even those who do not migrate are affected by movements of people in or out of their communities, and by the resulting changes. Migration is not a single act of crossing a border, but rather a lifelong process that affects all aspects of the lives of those involved. (UNESCO, no date)

While research would indicate that the nation-state remains resilient (Thiel 2011) despite forces from above (through, for example, the creation of supranational entities such as the European Union) or below (for example, the rejection at local level of existing political ‘national’ boundaries), the processes of globalization and the communication revolution have certainly made national borders increasingly porous. This has led researchers (Hoerder 2006; Thiel 2011) to question the extent to which ‘transnationalism’ (Glick Schiller et al. 1992), predicated as it is upon an understanding of bounded nations where migrants ‘were forging and sustaining multi-stranded social relations that linked their societies of origin and settlement’ (p. iv), remains a useful term to use, despite its intended recognition of the multiple border-crossings that many people experience in their lives. In fact, in defining transnationalism in a more nuanced way as ‘the flow of people, ideas, goods and capital across national territories

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in a way that undermines nationality and nationalism as discrete categories of identification, economic organization, and political constitution’, Braziel and Mannur (2003: 8) point to the inherent contradiction in the term – the more frequently borders are crossed, the more difficult they become to hold firm. The reality today is much more complex. The concept of ‘transnationalism’ must at least be complemented, if not immediately subsumed, by the concept of ‘transculturalism’ (Hoerder 2006; 2013), which facilitates a multimodal understanding of personal and group identity formation. Herrmann and Brewer (2004: 8) identify three main ways in which group identity can be configured: as nested identities, each fitting neatly inside the other like the layers of a Russian Matryoshka doll; as cross-cutting, where some members of one identity group also belong to another – as within the intersection of a Venn diagram; as totally separate, where members of two identity groups have nothing in common. While the first and second configurations point to the possibility of the development of Bhabha’s ‘third space’ (1994), which is inhabited apart from either the home or new culture, Hoerder (2013) rejects this interpretation and, drawing on Appadurai (1991), suggests that ‘[t]ransculture, in contrast to third space, emphasizes the overlapping, interactive, processual character of such scapes’ (p. 2968), whereby it constitutes: an everyday adjustment, negotiating, coping, accommodating in migrant lives and those of their resident neighbours. Strategic transcultural competence involves capabilities to act and plan life projects in multiple cultures and to choose between elements of cultures. In the process of transculturation individuals and societies change themselves by integrating diverse ways of life into a new dynamic everyday culture. (p. 2968)

Intercultural contact Even the most apparently stable existence today is coloured by intercultural developments and migration, as Hoerder (2006) aptly illustrates in his description of the multicultural influences on the ‘lifeworld of a conservative couple with anti-immigrant convictions and essentialist national identity’, sitting out in the garden after lunch and making plans for a visit with friends, where imports such as potatoes and tulips have become such an integral part of their lives that they are now culturally invisible (p. 93). Indeed, as we have seen, the movement of people, and the resulting contact between different cultures, has been such a

Introduction

7

pervasive feature of the human condition that it seems clichéd to single out the current era as being characterized by migration. However, developments in transport have undoubtedly increased both the speed and frequency of this type of movement (Vertovec 2009: 15), as well as changing the character of migration in terms of who migrates, and how. Figures from the International Organization for Migration for 2010 indicate that there are almost one billion migrants worldwide, of whom 214 million are international migrants and 740 million internal migrants. They estimate that the number of international migrants could reach 405 million by 2050 (IOM 2010; 2011). These levels of migration have led to greater intercultural contact, and the resulting intercultural communication, more often intercultural miscommuni­ cation, has been a major focus of research, particularly in the second half of the twentieth century. Much of that work resulted in guides being developed for those interacting with the ‘other’ in the business sphere and was based frequently on Hofstede’s definition of culture as ‘the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another’ (1980, cited in Nakata 2009: 3), which enabled him to group cultures (based on national boundaries) according to five dimensions allowing a classification aimed at achieving greater cross-cultural understanding. While his definition is helpful in that it emphasizes that cultural norms are unwritten, developing frameworks based on national boundaries risks essentialist or stereotyped images of cultures. In any case, in a world of hypermobility – in which ‘the circulation of commodities, people, information [and] cultural goods keeps increasing’ (Berger 2011: 147) – and where few, if any, nations are not multicultural, equating culture with nation becomes anachronistic. More usefully, Sadri and Flammia (2011) assert that culture ‘is learned, . . . involves the shared perceptions and values of large groups of people, . . . is expressed as behaviour, and . . . is dynamic and adaptive’ (p. 32). Fischer (2009) also argues that culture is passed on through socialization and concludes that culture is a ‘shared meaning system’ (p. 29). If the co-construction of meaning is central to communication in a shared first language, it is obvious that the negotiation of shared meaning in a second language within an intercultural contact situation is even more significant. Thus an individual as a social actor develops multiple cultural identities: ‘shared self- or hetero-categorisations that social actors develop, activate or modify in the particular interactive context, or historical or social circumstance according to the specific interest that prompts them to act as a group’ (Beacco 2005: 7). In common with many other concepts

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discussed in this volume, the image of culture as static and unitary can no longer be left unchallenged. This construction of shared meaning itself is multi-layered in that it can, of course, occur at all levels from the supranational to, and even within, the individual, as people modify their performance of culture and identity depending on the context or interlocutor (Dervin 2009). Indeed, given this fluidity, Dervin’s analysis questions the terms themselves, proposing that: ‘[identity and culture] should be seen in terms of identification and culturality, processes rather than objects, since they are mutable’ (p. 121). The sites where intercultural contact occurs have been detailed, for instance, by Ammon et al. (2006) as ‘variable’ (p. 2357), ranging from educational settings to healthcare, the workplace and the community. To these sites could be added the home, travel and social networks including contact through the internet, email and social media. It must always be remembered, however, that migration, and the intercultural contact which results, is not always a positive experience for either migrants or the society where they settle; it can be triggered by, and cause, trauma, anxiety and oppression. Hoerder (2006) argues that the trope of ‘the Uprooted’ is no longer relevant for the experience of today’s migrant, but this confidence may not be shared by all who find themselves leaving home. What is true is that intercultural contact today is characterized not only by rapid change, greater ease of contact by advances in physical transport, but also by dramatically increased transcultural contact brought about by computer-mediated communication. The increase in, and diversification of, intercultural contact radically changes the environment in which language learning takes place.

Language learning Since the middle of the twentieth century, both formal and informal language learning have been transformed by technological change. At the same time, increased participation in mass education has enabled the development of a larger and more diverse learner population. Formal language learning now uses technology as a matter of course, allowing all learners equal access to intercultural contact and liberating learning from the physical and temporal boundaries of the class. This offers increased potential for autonomy and learner agency in choosing what, when and how learning takes place. Outside the

Introduction

9

formal educational sphere, recent developments in interactive technologies have expanded possibilities to an even more diverse population of learners. The scale and pace of change in informal learning activities in particular have led to a questioning of some of the central tenets of language learning itself. A distinctive feature of this type of informal activity is its pragmatic, spontaneous and unregulated quality, where people use, adapt and acquire language as they need it. The growth of this phenomenon, where communication takes place virtually and globally, arguably redefines the traditional, bounded speech community and questions the hierarchical labelling of language, dialect and vernaculars (see also Blommaert 2011: 3–4; Varis and Wang 2011: 71). This growing sense of flux exemplifies the productive tension between traditional authority structures, which continuously attempt to regulate language use, and the unstoppable energy of people getting on with their everyday lives. Whether the learning is formal or informal, the answer to the question of what language should be learned and to what level has also changed since the 1990s, with ‘the idealized normative view’ (Cook 1999: 189) of the native speaker, traditionally held up as the norm for the non-native learner to approximate, seen to have ‘outlived its use’ (Kramsch 1998: 27). Cook recommends instead that second-language users be seen as ‘multicompetent language users rather than as deficient native speakers’ (Cook 1999: 185). An example of supranational policy which attempts to take the multifaceted nature of language learning into account is the Council of Europe’s language policy, which aspires to plurilingualism for European citizens: ‘a degree of communicative ability in a number of languages over their lifetime in accordance with their needs’ (Council of Europe 2012). This, it is hoped, will lead to individuals having a repertoire of languages at different levels of competency, reflecting the ways in which inhabitants of a transcultural world interact with and use languages. Currently, one of the main media for interacting transculturally is the internet. Computers have been used in language education since the 1960s, as Warschauer and Healey (1998: 57) remind us, with changes in Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) reflecting modifications to models of language education from behaviourist to communicative to socio-cognitive models. What has become known as Web 2.0 offers users the chance to generate content, interact and use ‘the participatory potential of the Web’ (Wang and Vásquez 2012: 412). The term refers not to ‘a new version of Web technology but changes in the communicative uses of the underlying Web platform’ (Warschauer and Grimes 2007: 2). The heightened level of interactivity and the increased variety of applications offering

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synchronous communication has revolutionary implications for education in general and language learning in particular. Of course, the technology is not as important as what is done with it, and learned using it. Applications for language learning are only as effective as the pedagogy used with them (Levy 2009: 775, 778); the adoption of information and communications technology (ICT) itself does not automatically bring about improvements in teaching or learning. Lack of teacher and learner training can be a problem, and traditional teaching approaches can continue in learning environments bristling with the most up-to-date equipment. Vallance et al. (2009) report that in Singapore: ‘technological implementation appeared to sustain and reinforce an instructor-focused, didactic pedagogy and not facilitate the student-centred constructivist pedagogy anticipated’ (p. 3). As Conacher and Kelly-Holmes (2007) remind us: ‘The term “new learning environment” is not a label reserved for technology-rich contexts. Instead, it constitutes a state of mind, a new way of approaching the teaching and learning environment that is characterised by diversity, flexibility, access and equality’ (p. 28). While access to the internet is still dependent on economic privilege (Warschauer and Grimes 2007: 16–17) – 2007 figures showed that 80 per cent of the world’s population remained offline (Alonzo and Oiarzabal 2010: 7) – mobile phone technology has been adopted enthusiastically in some of the least-developed countries on the planet. Mobile phone subscriptions (measured by the number of active SIM cards) in Africa rose from 16 million in 2000 to 376 million in 2008 (Aker and Mbiti 2010: 210), far outstripping predictions. Greater access to technological resources facilitates learner autonomy and radically broadens the scope of where and how language learning takes place, and who can learn languages, potentially giving greater voice to speakers in marginalized communities.

The contact zone All the essays in this collection deal with various aspects of intercultural contact within the context of transnationalism and transculturalism, contact that can result from long-term or target migration, shorter-term travel, study abroad, assertion of identity or by contact with difference within one’s own country. It would seem useful to have a construct which accommodates the diversity of the intercultural experience. Pratt’s (1991) concept of the contact zone offers the flexibility and subtlety that the issues raised in this volume demand. She defines

Introduction

11

this contact zone mainly in terms of geographical or historical conflict: ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in high asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination – like colonialism, slavery or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today’ (p. 34). Later use of the concept has broadened its scope and offers a useful construct for examining intercultural encounters not only in the geographical or spatial sense, but as a social metaphor as developed by Yeoh and Willis (2005): We take ‘contact zones’ to denote both a sense of embodied presence within geographical space as well as a social and cultural metaphor. The concept insists on analysis of everyday encounters and everyday experiences of sameness and difference . . . to view globalisation and transnationalism. (p. 271)

Viewed in this way, the contact zone provides an invaluable heuristic approach for the exploration of a variety of institutional, national, community and individual encounters with, and responses to, difference. This approach draws together diverse instances of intercultural contact into a debate which promises to provide new, thought-provoking insights.

Structure The chapters which follow reveal the profound impact that decisions made at national and international level can have on the lives of the individual migrant, language student, or speech community. Equally, they evaluate the broader ramifications of actions taken by migrant communities and individual language learners around issues of language learning, language maintenance and intercultural contact. The volume is divided into three parts, which focus in turn on migration and language contact (particularly language management and planning), language learning and cultural contact (particularly new language-learning environments) and migration and contact (particularly individual and community experiences of language contact). Each of the parts is prefaced with a brief discussion of key themes which are interwoven across the individual chapters and pick up threads explored across the volume, for such divisions are, of course, to some extent arbitrary, and readers will find it quite possible, and indeed desirable, to cross these borders (as the authors themselves have done) drawing alternative links between the individual chapters. In so doing, a range of themes emerges,

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such as negotiation of transnational identity (Borrull; Choi and Nunan; van Niele; Regan and Debaene; Skrzypek et al.; Spolsky; Studer), voice (Borrull; Choi and Nunan; van Niele; Regan and Debaene; Spolsky; Studer; Velghe and Blommaert), autonomy (Borrull) and the impact of changing technologies on communication  (Choi and Nunan; Kennedy and Furlong; Velghe and Blommaert). Part 1 examines how large-scale movements of people, driven primarily by political, economic and cultural factors, impact upon individuals, communities and institutions, and how those involved react to top-down efforts to regulate such environments through formal language policy and planning. Bernard Spolsky begins by exploring the global impact of the Diaspora in his historical analysis of the Jewish experience of migration and language management; he uncovers a continuous negotiation of transnational identity in the creation of interrelated languages which give voice to both local societal affiliations and a common heritage. He concludes that while migration in itself may bring change to people’s lives, the nature of that change will be decided by the degree of linguistic and cultural contact which ensues. This potential for intercultural contact can prove threatening, and reaction to the arrival of such larger migrant groups is frequently mixed, with public attitudes increasingly driven by media representations, impacting directly on the day-to-day experiences of individual newcomers (Pijpers 2006). Vera Regan and Ewelina Debaene take up the example of another group with a long history of migration, exploring the impact of local attitudes on the transnational experience of first- and second-generation Polish migrants in France, manifested not least in the transfer of the Polish language to children brought up in, and with, another culture. Migration – frequently seen historically as forced by economic necessity, political and religious intolerance, war and famine – has more recently been constructed positively within the European Union (EU) as ‘mobility’, one of the central pillars underpinning efforts to develop both a strong economic entity within Europe capable of competing successfully in the global market, and of a European identity superseding, or at least existing in parallel to, national and regional identities. In his study of how these aspirations potentially conflict with the EU commitment to linguistic and cultural diversity, Patrick Studer provides a valuable insight into the thinking of EU language planners, enabling them to articulate the challenges of multilingual intercultural communication in the space between public rhetoric and private ideology.

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In Part 2, authors examine language learning in the context of contact, migration and technological change. Sociolinguistic categories have been modified hugely by the processes associated with globalization. As Blommaert (2011) has found, the former attributes of a speech community – ‘territorial fixedness, physical proximity, sociocultural sharedness and common backgrounds’ – can no longer be depended upon in an era of super- or hyperdiversity (pp. 3–4). Larger, transcultural communities of language users increasingly meet and communicate virtually, transnational and transcultural ‘supergroups’ using ‘supervernaculars’, one of which is what Blommaert (2011: 6) terms ‘mobile texting codes’ and Velghe and Blommaert (this volume) term ‘textspeak’. Their chapter examines how middle-aged women in an economically marginalized community in South Africa learn and make use of textspeak in various ways, investigating to what extent increased access to interactive technology allows language learners to learn languages autonomously and informally, without having to access the educational system. Their research also questions whether language use on the web by communities of this type leads to cheerful anarchy, as the chapter explores how textspeak’s norms and local variations are learned and enforced informally in a bottom-up, learner-led process. In an interesting role-reversal, the ethnographer becomes a learner of this dialect and the study participants, teachers. In this way, the use of ICT facilitates the development of agency and voice in economically and educationally disadvantaged communities in the developing world. That one of the participants in this research is reported to have returned to using paper and pen (something she had had great difficulty with at school) to make notes to support her learning and use of this new dialect demonstrates the role that new technology can have in the teaching of ‘old’ skills. A more commonly studied locus of intercultural contact is the migrant community in its interaction with the majority society. While some migrants can struggle to maintain their own language and culture, other groups can build a strong community identity at the expense of learning the language of the surrounding society. In contrast, the chapter on the Polish migration to Ireland by Agnieszka Skrzypek, David Singleton, Romana Kopečková and Barbara Bidzińska examines ethnolinguistic vitality (ELV) in the community, motivation to learn English and the maintenance of Polish in Dublin, showing migrants balancing acquisition of English with successful maintenance of Polish language and culture. That direct, person-to-person interaction between learners has an important role in the development of consciousness through mediation and interpersonal

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relations is demonstrated in Fionnuala Kennedy and Áine Furlong’s chapter where study abroad students, paired with partners from the host institution, explore cultural difference through regular meetings discussing a range of diverse topics. Interaction enables learners to develop their consciousness of their own culture and engage consciously as mediators of knowledge. L2 awareness is also raised by these interactions, language anxiety is reduced and willingness to communicate is strengthened through the face-to-face tandem exchange. This recalls the importance in oral communication of access to body language and gesture in such exchanges. While facial expressions and gestures are visible on Skype, subtler metalinguistic clues are not so easily picked up. Though learning takes place in a traditional educational setting in the project under discussion, autonomous learning is encouraged, and the learners’ voices are central to the methodological and analytical approach adopted. The use of technology in facilitating learners to assess their developing intercultural competence is examined in Aleksandra Sudhershan’s chapter, where the use of an electronic addition to the European Language Portfolio by students from abroad studying in Ireland is shown to enhance the autonomous development of intercultural competence. Here, the Electronic Language Portfolio, a top-down initiative of the Council of Europe, is supplemented with a version based on Michael Byram’s savoirs (Guilherme 2013: 347). The research reminds us that incremental modifications to top-down supranational actions can be applied successfully at local level. In Part 3, the authors demonstrate how exploring individual and community narrative through reflection, life story and song can provide us with a deeper understanding of the experiences of those living in intercultural contact, language learning and migration. Julie Choi and David Nunan adopt a layered approach. They encourage individual reflection on language and cultural choices within a series of key intercultural incidents and marry this self-reflexive, insider perspective with a reflective, outsider commentary which simultaneously supports, and calls into question, the linguistic and cultural assumptions made and conclusions drawn. Núria Borrull explores the use of song to express individual and collective identity and resistance within a repressive political regime which seeks to supplant one culture with another. In her discussion of the role of La Nova Cançó in sustaining Catalan language and culture through Franco’s rule, she shows how a once subversive form can become the norm upon which future forms of cultural identity are built, while being ignored as a new elite settles into place.

Introduction

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Finally, in adopting a creative autonarrative approach, Irmina van Niele allows us, at least partially, inside the unique experience of the transnational and the transcultural, as she engages reflexively with her own life story as an intercontinental migrant, illustrating vividly Chambers’s (1994) point that once movement begins, the journey never ends: Migrancy . . . involves a movement in which neither the points of departure nor those of arrival are immutable or certain. It calls for a dwelling in language, in histories, in identities that are constantly subject to mutation. Always in transit, the promise of a homecoming – completing the story, domesticating the detour – becomes an impossibility. (p. 5)

The diversity in content in this collection of essays is reflected equally in a diversity in methodological approach, reflecting Jan Blommaert’s (2010) assertion that in a world shaped by globalization, what is needed is ‘a theory of language in society . . . of changing language in a changing society’ (p. 2). This volume argues that in a world where the national paradigm seems increasingly outdated, researchers must increasingly seek diverse methodological approaches if they are to do justice to the diversity of experience and response they encounter. In adopting a range of approaches, the chapters which follow take up this challenge and uncover the rich variety of positive and negative life stories which unfold within the contact zone.

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Bauman, Z. (1998), ‘On glocalization: Or globalization for some, localization for some others’, Thesis Eleven, 54: 37–49. Beacco, J. C. (2005), Languages and Language Repertoires: Plurilingualism as a Way of Life in Europe. Strasbourg: Council of Europe Language Policy Division. Berger, C. (2011), ‘Strategies of adaptation to hypermobility: Migrants who do not settle anywhere’, in G. Zarate, D. Lévy and C. Kramsch (eds), Handbook of Multilingualism and Multiculturalism. Paris: Editions des archives contemporaines, pp. 147–50. Bhabha, H. K. (1994), The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Blommaert, J. (2010), A Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(2011), ‘Supervernaculars and their dialects’, Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 81, London: King’s College London. Braziel, J. E. and Mannur, A. (2003), Theorizing Diaspora. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell. Brubaker, R. (2005), ‘The “diaspora” diaspora’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 28(1): 1–19. Calder, G., Seglow, J. and Cole, P. (eds) (2010), Citizen Acquisition and National Belonging: Migration, Membership and the Liberal Democratic State. Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan. Castles, S. (2000), ‘International migration at the beginning of the twenty-first century: Global trends and issues’, International Social Science Journal, 52(165): 269–81. —(2004), ‘The factors that make and unmake migration policies’, International Migration Review, 38(3): 852–84. Chambers, I. (1994), Migrancy, Culture, Identity. London: Routledge. Collins, J., Slembrouck, S. and Baynham, M. (2009), ‘Introduction: Scale, migration and communicative practice’, in J. Collins, S. Slembrouck and M. Baynham (eds), Globalization and Language in Contact Scale, Migration and Communicative Practices. London: Continuum. Conacher, J. E. and Kelly-Holmes, H. (2007), New Learning Environments for Language Learning. Moving Beyond the Classroom? Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. Cook, V. (1999), ‘Going beyond the native speaker in language teaching’, TESOL Quarterly, 33(2): 185–209. Council of Europe (2012), Education and Languages Policy. http://www.coe.int [accessed 23 August 2013]. Davies, R. (2007), ‘Reconceptualising the migration-development nexus: Diasporas, globalisation and the politics of exclusion’, Third World Quarterly, 28(1): 59–76. Dervin, F. (2009), ‘Transcending the cultural impasse in stays abroad: Helping mobile students to appreciate diverse diversities’, Frontiers, 18: 119–41. Fischer, R. (2009), ‘Where is culture in cross cultural research? An outline of a multilevel research process for measuring culture as a shared meaning system’, International Journal of Cross Cultural Management, 9(1): 25–49. Glick Schiller, N., Basch, L. and Blanc-Szanton, C. (eds) (1992), Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. New York: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.

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Guilherme, M. (2013), ‘Intercultural competence’, in M. Byram and A. Hu (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Abingdon and New York: Routledge, pp. 346–9. Held, D., McGrew, A., Goldblatt, D. and Perraton, J. (1999), Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001), ‘The dialogical self: Towards a theory of personal and cultural positioning’, Cultural Psychology, 7(3): 243–81. Herrmann, R. and Brewer, M. B. (2004), ‘Identities and institutions: Becoming European in the EU’, in R. K. Herrmann, T. Risse and M. B. Brewer (eds), Transnational Identities. Becoming European in the EU. Lanham and Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield. Hoerder, D. (2006), ‘Historians and their data: The complex shift from nation-state approaches to the study of people’s transcultural lives’, Journal of American Ethnic History, 25(4): 85–96. —(2013), ‘Transculturalism’, in I. Ness (ed.), The Handbook of Global Human Migration. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, pp. 2966–70. Hoerder, D. and Macklin, A. (2006), ‘Separation or permeability: Bordered states, transnational relations, transcultural lives’, International Journal, 61(4): 793–812. Hofstede, G. (1980), Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Work-Related Values. Thousand Oaks: Sage. International Organization for Migration (2010), The Future of Migration: Building Capacities for Change. World Migration Report. http://www.iom.int/files/live/ sites/iom/files/Newsrelease/docs/WM2010_FINAL_23_11_2010.pdf [accessed 20 August 2013]. —(2011), Communicating Effectively About Migration. World Migration Report. http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/free/WMR2011_English.pdf [accessed 9 September 2013]. Koslowski, R. (2002), ‘Human migration and the conceptualization of pre-modern world politics’, International Studies Quarterly, 46(3): 375–99. Kramsch, C. (1998), ‘The privilege of the native speaker’, in M. Byram and M. Fleming (eds), Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective: Approaches through Drama and Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 16–31. Larick, R. and Ciochon, R. L. (1996), ‘The African emergence and early Asian dispersals of the genus Homo’, American Scientist, 84: 538–51. Levy, M. (2009), ‘Technologies in use for second language learning’, The Modern Language Journal, 93: 769–82. McKeown, A. (2004), ‘Global migration, 1846-1940’, Journal of World History, 15(2): 155–89. Mukherjee, N. and Krieckhaus, J. (2011), ‘Globalization and human well-being’, International Political Science Review, 33(2): 150–70. Nakata, C. (2009), Beyond Hofstede: Culture Frameworks for Global Marketing and Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

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Pijpers, R. (2006), ‘Help! The Poles are coming’: Narrating a contemporary moral panic’, Geografiska Annaler. Series B. Human Geography, 88(1): 91–103. Pratt, M. L. (1991), ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’, Profession, 33–40. Sadri, H. A. and Flammia, M. (2011), Intercultural Communication: A New Approach to International Relations and Global Challenges. New York: Continuum. Seth, V. (2005), Two Lives. London: Abacus. Sheffer, G. (2003), Diaspora Politics: At Home Abroad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Thiel, M. (2011), The Limits of Transnationalism: Collective Identities and EU Integration. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. UNESCO (no date), ‘Migrant/migration’. www.unesco.org/shs/migration/glossary [accessed 17 August 2013]. Vallance, M., Vallance, K. and Matsui, M. (2009), ‘Criteria for the implementation of learning technologies’, in M. Thomas (ed.), Handbook of Research on Web 2.0 and Second Language Learning. Hershey, NY: IGI Global, pp. 1–19. Varis, P. and Wang, X. (2011), ‘Superdiversity on the Internet: A case from China’, Diversities, 13(2): 71–83. www.unesco.org/shs/diversities/vol13/issue2/art5 [accessed 16 August 2013]. Vertovec, S. (2009), Transnationalism. Abingdon: Routledge. Wang, S. and Vásquez, C. (2012), ‘Web 2.0 and second language learning: What does the research tell us?’, CALICO Journal, 29(3): 412–30. Warschauer, M. and Grimes, D. (2007), ‘Audience, authorship and artefact: The emergent semiotics of Web 2.0’, The Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27: 1–23. Warschauer, M. and Healey, D. (1998), ‘Computers and language learning: An overview’, Language Teaching, 31: 57–71. Yeoh, B. and Willis, K. (2005), ‘Singaporean and British transmigrants in China and the cultural politics of “contact zones”’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 31(2): 269–85. Yuval-Davis, N. (2011), The Politics of Belonging. London: Sage.

Part One

Migration and Language Contact Given that human migration simultaneously constitutes global trend and personal experience in ways which can be constructed positively and/or negatively by (supra)national, community and individual actors, its study can only be enriched by the adoption of multi-perspectival approaches addressing both individual case studies and their import for broader debates. It has become clear that the diversity of human movement can only be captured partially by official statistics (Massey and Capoferro 2004) and, while current globalizing forces of deregulation theoretically encourage free market economies and to some extent free movement, increased controls are being put in place at numerous levels to ‘manage’ migration, a process which is shaped by the actions of individuals and/or groups within both the communities from which migrants come and those to which they travel. While, in the opening chapter of this part, Spolsky rightly argues that ‘an inevitable result of migration . . . is an alteration in the sociolinguistic environment of the migrants’ (p. 24), it is clear that, within the contact zone where culture(s) and language(s) interact, the sociolinguistic environment of the host community is also open to change. Migration management – particularly where such migration occurs across national borders – also necessitates ‘language management’ (Spolsky 2009) on the part of governmental institutions, community groups and individuals, a complex of measures which can manifest themselves in inclusive or exclusive policies and practices. The study of such changing sociolinguistic environments allows the exploration of diverse examples of the contact zone, where two (or more) cultures/languages meet, and policy and practice interact. Each chapter within this part focuses on potentially large population movements and reveals some of the diversity of approach that can be fruitfully adopted in exploring these. Spolsky’s historical survey approach traces the migrant experience of the Jewish Diaspora and its

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partial return to a Jewish nation-state. The comparative analysis of the migration of one central linguistic culture to multiple cultural and sociopolitical locations demonstrates how divergent sociocultural and linguistic policies and practices within individual local contexts may interact with a strong binding ideological position in relation to language, culture and identity within the migrant community. The cultural positioning which initially favours the emergence of diasporic linguistic hybridity and the generation of multiple vernaculars over the simple adoption of the host culture’s language equally enables the later development of Hebrew as the unifying vernacular within the new state of Israel as host and migrant positions become more closely aligned. A comparative approach is also adopted by Regan and Debaene in their analysis of two distinct instances of Polish migration to France driven by (supra) national events (the Solidarity migration of the 1980s and the post-EU-accession migration from 2004 onwards). Similarities to Spolsky’s work lie in the authors’ decision to study migrants who perceive themselves as moving from one (national) culture to another (albeit to two regional sites), reinforcing the con­ tinued dominance of national frameworks, despite their increasing porosity in theoretical terms. Methodologically, the study offers a complementary per­ spective in allowing the voices of those most impacted by migration to be heard and to form the data under investigation; not least the use of sociolinguistic interviews demonstrates both the key role of interaction in successful living within the contact zone and the anxiety pervading that space, which requires continuous renegotiation of roles, identities and practices – in short, the ongoing personal and cultural positioning of self (Hermans 2001). The data within Studer’s study are drawn from more formal interviews which encourage multiple actors involved in language planning at supranational level to engage reflectively with the official documentation projecting the EU’s public commitment to language and cultural diversity. In enabling the individual voice from within the institutional hierarchy to be revealed, Studer sheds light on the real tensions that exist between public policy and individual experience of multilingual intercultural communication. Such tensions are symptomatic of broader strains within the European Project. The EU has, of course, been instrumental in reconstructing migration in positive terms as ‘mobility’ through the opening-up of borders and the internal movement of goods and people between member states – while at the same time strengthening its external supranational boundary (Wunderlich 2013). In the twenty-first century, however, it has become clear that this core principle of freedom of movement, which actively promotes transnationalism

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and transculturalism, exists in increasing tension with the subsidiarity principle allowing policy decision making to be made at the lowest possible level within an EU framework. In migration terms, this has been most visible in the decision taken ahead of 2004 to allow existing member states to invoke transitional measures restricting the immigration of workers seeking employment from the ten new accession countries (including Poland). This negotiation between potentially conflicting principles (which in itself reveals the persistent power of individual national entities even within a largely supranational project) was triggered by domestic fears of uncontrolled labour flows towards the richer EU countries which in the long term proved largely unwarranted (Belot and Ederveen 2012). Indeed, the same study indicates that less movement occurs within the EU – and that overall this movement is less predictably distributed – than might be expected. The authors conclude that, in continuing to promote its policy of maximizing internal mobility, the EU should concern itself less with easing restrictive, even if transitional, legislation than with paying far closer attention to a more fundamental factor impacting upon people’s decisions to cross internal borders – the complex nature of intercultural and language contact: Judging from the importance of linguistic and cultural distances, policies to raise labor mobility could be targeted at reducing cultural distance, for example by encouraging foreign language learning, in particular since what seems to matter for mobility between European countries is sharing a common language. (p. 1103)

In exploring where the challenges of large-scale migration and language contact meet, the chapters which follow reveal a continuous interplay of policy and practice at many levels. They engage with the linguistic and sociocultural decision making of individuals, groups and institutions and demonstrate how each draws upon a conscious, or subconscious, recognition of the power of migrant agency within the intercultural contact zone.

References Belot, M. and Ederveen, S. (2012), ‘Cultural barriers between OECD countries’, Journal of Population Economics, 25: 1077–105. Hermans, H. J. M. (2001), ‘The dialogical self: Towards a theory of personal and cultural positioning’, Cultural Psychology, 7(3): 243–81.

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Massey, D. S. and Capoferro, C. (2004), ‘Measuring undocumented migration’, International Migration Review, 38(3): 1075–102. Spolsky, B. (2009), Language Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wunderlich, D. (2013), ‘Towards coherence of EU external migration policy? Implementing a complex policy’, International Migration. doi: 10.1111/imig.12088.

1

Migration and Language Management: The Jewish Experience Bernard Spolsky

It is reasonable to suppose that the migration of people is a leading cause of contact-induced change; in other words, migration is a key extralinguistic ­factor leading to externally-motivated change. (Kerswill 2006: 2271) The recent interest in urban multilingualism has led to claims that one of the effects of globalization and urbanization has been the creation of a new phenomenon sometimes labelled super-diversity (Cadier and Mar-Molinero 2012; Vertovec 2007). Perhaps this is not such a new phenomenon, for Dursteler (2012) describes the rich multilingualism of the Mediterranean in the early modern period, citing a 1608 claim that in the Piazza San Marco you can ‘heare all the languages of Christendome, besides some that are spoken by the barbarous Ethnickes’ (p. 47). Thirty years later, he reports, a French traveller noted 13 languages being spoken at a dinner he attended (ibid.). About the same time, in the tiny ghetto of Venice, each of the four crowded synagogues had a different language, and a Haggadah (the traditional Jewish text for the home service for the first night of the Passover festival) was printed in four languages – Hebrew, Judeo-Spanish, Yiddish and Judeo-Venetian. I was reminded of my earlier studies of the languages of Palestine at the time of Jesus (Spolsky 1983); while many Anglophone monolingual scholars were wondering what language Jesus spoke, it became clear to me that anyone living in Jerusalem at the time would be plurilingual in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek, with a little Latin thrown in. So I suspect that, although populations were smaller, multilingual towns and plurilingual residents go back much further than we sometimes think, as the

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result of mixes produced among other things by migration, from one country to another, from one town to another, or from the village to the town. There are a number of relevant dimensions in describing migration or relocation: space (which can be local or across a boundary; short or distant, or directional), time (essentially short or long term), motivation (forced or voluntary) and sociocultural conditions (segregation or participation).1 In the Jewish case, we are dealing with migration across national boundaries, usually to urban areas, but in the Pale of Settlement – the 20 per cent of Imperial Russia where Jews were permitted to live – to small villages. While migration was sometimes voluntary, in most cases it was forced and, except in some cases (e.g. the migration to the United States or the return to Israel), it commonly led to continued segregation. An inevitable result of migration, whether external from one country to another or internal from the village to a town, is an alteration in the sociolinguistic environment of the migrants, who move from the environment of one culture and one set of language practices and policies to another. Successful adjustment to the new situation requires adding new cultural proficiency and also language management, both the simple management described by Nekvapil (2006) which involves an individual acquiring a new set of linguistic proficiencies or the complex language management defined as an attempt by some authority to modify the language practices of others (Spolsky 2009a). In simple management, the migrant as language learner may simply rely on exposure to speakers of the varieties or may hire a tutor or seek (nowadays) to enrol in any available educational programmes. In complex language management, where the migrant is managed rather than managing, there is a wide range of possibilities. Within each domain,2 we need to distinguish whether the management is internal (by another participant in the domain, such as a parent trying to modify a child’s language use) or external (such as a schoolteacher trying to control home language use patterns). In the widest domain such as the nation, we are concerned with governments managing their citizens or prospective citizens. Here there is a wide range of possibilities, including the use of language as a barrier to migration: the old Australian dictation test (Davies 1997), the current language proficiency requirements in parts of Europe, with even Australian professors seeking to stay in England are now required to take an English test (Spolsky 2009a: 229), and the growing language testing of asylum seekers (Eades et al. 2003; McNamara 2005). A somewhat rarer but more praiseworthy policy is the provision of language

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services in migrant languages (Angelelli 2012) and the provision of language instruction for migrants of various ages, as in the Israeli ulpan which provides intensive Hebrew instruction to new immigrants (Schuchat 1990; Spolsky 1999). Each of these national policies is based on a different attitude to migrants and migration, with language management serving as a means of implementation of policies. In this chapter, rather than attempting a complete survey of a multitude of cases at various times and places,3 I aim to give an idea of the array of possible situations and policies by describing and analysing some examples from Jewish history, a story replete with voluntary and forced migrations.

Jewish migration in biblical times The earliest accounts of Jewish migration in the Bible suggests that Abraham and his family were speakers of a Semitic dialect in Mesopotamia who migrated to Canaan where other Semitic dialects were spoken, the result being the development of Hebrew. For this first migration, we have no evidence of external language management, but can only assume it was a simple process of adaptation to local conditions, picking up the local language and slowly dropping the original one. Language shift is a gradual process, not normally involving an overnight shift from the use of one named language variety to another, but rather the creation of intermediate states of language contact for both the individual and the group (Weinreich 1953). The naming and objectification of individual language varieties tend to disguise this situation, a subject now starting to be stressed by sociolinguists. Blommaert (2001, 2005, 2006, 2010) has drawn attention to the complex mixtures of varieties that occur in multilingual situations. These call for grammatical models such as the parallel architecture of Jackendoff (2010a, 2010b) that can be modified to mark individual lexical and grammatical items for sociolinguistic features such as style and variety rather than labelling a whole grammar (Jackendoff 2012). This is more obvious at the dialect level; it surely also exists in regions with related languages (the Nordic and Baltic areas, for instance) and helps describe and account for code-switching in multilingual cities. Returning to Jewish migrations, in the biblical account, we learn that the by now Hebrew-speaking people left Canaan for Egypt because of famine. Some of them (especially Joseph who married an Egyptian and became a senior civil

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servant) picked up the new language. Chomsky (1957: 37–8) describes Egyptian influence on Hebrew and lists a number of borrowed words and usages in the Bible, but points out that this may have occurred later, during Egyptian rule over Palestine or the long period of contact between the superior civilization of Egypt and the less developed Canaan. The traditional Jewish view presented in the Talmud is that the Jews in Egypt maintained their identity by keeping up their language and names: There were some beautiful traits in the character of the Israelites in Egypt, by which alone they merited redemption. They did not change their names, such as Rufus instead of Reuben, Leon in lieu of Simeon, Listus in place of Joseph, or Alexander for Benjamin. Neither had they changed their language, but they retained the Hebrew tongue. They eschewed slander, and they were very chaste. (Leviticus Rabba 32)

There are scholars, however, who believe that this is not a historical statement but rather a later expression of a pro-Hebrew ideology. If so, it is an early example of language management,4 as the rabbis of the Talmud tried to encourage the continued use of Hebrew which they saw threatened by the growing use of Aramaic and Greek. In any case, it illustrates one kind of language policy that follows migration: an unwillingness to acquire the new ‘co-territorial language’, as Weinreich (1980: 2) calls it, but to continue speaking the heritage language, whatever isolation that involves. Returning from Egypt to what became Israel (Samaria) and Judah, Jews largely remained monolingual speakers of Hebrew, with evidence of the existence of dialects in the famous shibboleth story that has been used as a theme by many students of the use of language tests in immigration policy (Davies 1992). The incident itself had nothing to do with migration, but refers to the exploitation of dialect differences (pronouncing the word as sibboleth) to recognize that warriors crossing back over the Jordan River were from the tribe of Ephraim. Nonetheless, Davies used it in his 1997 account of the infamous dictation test employed by the Australian immigration officials to exclude undesirable immigrants: the customs officers were instructed to dictate a passage in a language that the subject did not know. It perhaps fits well the now common practice of many European governments to employ phonological testing to determine the country of origin of asylum seekers (Eades et al. 2003; McNamara 2005), or even the growing use of language tests to establish that prospective migrants are fluent in the national language (Diehl and Blohm 2003; Hawthorne 1997).

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The language of the kingdom of Judah was Hebrew (called Yehudit in the Bible). Officials of the royal court also developed proficiency in the official Aramaic, which was the language of diplomacy.5 This general monolingualism seems to have lasted until after the Babylonian conquest, when the exile of large numbers of Jews put them into a situation in which, as migrants, they quickly added Aramaic to their sociolinguistic profile. The Babylonian Exile was an example of forced population exchange, practised by the Babylonians who generally moved the leadership of a recalcitrant conquered people to a distant site, mixing them with others and encouraging their assimilation to the new social situation. Stalin carried out a similar policy, with the effect of reducing the chances of survival of conquered languages and encouraging the use of Russian as a needed lingua franca (Lewis 1972: 105ff). The forced demographic changes explain the rapid adoption of Aramaic both in Babylon, where the captives were taken, and in Judah, where the remaining less educated and lower-class people were brought into contact and even intermarried with others, such as the Ashdodese that Ezra and Nehemiah complained about. In Babylonia, Hebrew was maintained by the exile community (the term ‘exile’ stresses that they consider themselves in an alien place and longed for their return – ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat down and wept’, as the Psalmist wrote) as the preferred language for sacred texts, for worship, for learning and as a vernacular by some Jews, but the forced migration led to a major change in vernacular usage and the addition of a new variety which continued to exist alongside Hebrew for several hundred years and took its place alongside Hebrew in the writing of the Babylonian Talmud.6 The pattern of adopting or adapting a local vernacular remained common in much of the Jewish Diaspora, but in almost all cases, Hebrew (or, more precisely, Hebrew–Aramaic) continued as the language of worship and learning. In the Hellenistic period and under Roman occupation, Greek was added as a vernacular in Jerusalem by the upper classes and by all living in the Greek colonies in Palestine, but not by those in Babylonia, where Judeo-Aramaic developed. The many Jews who migrated to Greek cities in the Mediterranean region, whether out of choice or in the aftermath of persecutions, commonly acquired Greek and in fact developed a Jewish variety of it (Wexler 1985). There was a large community of Jewish migrants in Alexandria, who appeared to have switched almost completely to Judeo-Greek: they were responsible for the translation of the Bible into Greek (the Septuagint) and, while the Temple was still standing, had permission to pray in Greek in synagogues in Jerusalem itself.

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Migration after the destruction of the Temple The destruction of the Temple and the suppression of the later rebellions by Jews produced another kind of migration, as many Jews were taken as slaves to Rome. The classic cases of forced slavery and transportation were, of course, the later enslavement of defeated people by Arabs as part of the Islamic conquest which permitted the anti-Jewish campaigns and forced expulsion of Jews from Arabia in the eighth and ninth centuries and the replacement of exterminated indigenous people of the Caribbean and Latin America by slaves brought by European conquerors from Africa. This second case, which involved mixtures of ethnic origin and language and continued captivity and servitude in plantations, had a major linguistic influence in the development of pidgins and creoles (Bickerton 1975; Mühlhäusler 1986). While there are some who argue that these varieties were continuations of the Mediterranean Creole used by seafarers in the Middle Ages, it is clear that they resulted from mixtures of African languages with the dominant English, French or Dutch of the plantation managers. In the case of the Jewish slaves taken to Rome, the main linguistic effect was presumably the confirmation of Judeo-Greek as a vernacular and the gradual loss of vernacular Aramaic or Hebrew. In the Diaspora, the loss of Hebrew in Alexandria as a language of worship and learning and as the main language of a widespread literacy among Jews was exceptional; in most parts of the growing Diaspora it continued alongside the new vernacular (Judeo-Arabic and Judeo-Romance in North Africa and Andalusia, Judeo-Greek in Greece and southern Italy, Judeo-Romance in Spain and France, Judeo-German developing into Yiddish in Germany and Slavic lands, JudeoAramaic in Babylon, Judeo-Persian and Judeo-Tat in Persia, to mention only the best known), was learned by most boys in the widely established community schools and academies, used as language of worship by all Jews and maintained as a language for literary creation whether religious or secular. When the Jews moved as traders or refugees into Arabic-speaking lands before Muhammad, they not only converted many Arabic-speaking tribes to Judaism, but also started to pick up local varieties of Arabic (Newby 2009). When the Muslim Conquest brought Arabic to dominate Jewish communities existing throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the Jews quickly acquired the new language – going from one Semitic language to another was not difficult, it seems – but external pressures set limits on this acquisition. The anti-Jewish policies that kept non-Muslims (Christians as well as Jews) as second-class

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citizens included a number of language-related clauses (Ye’or 1985). For instance, non-Muslims were prohibited from using the system of naming in which a father was known by the name of his oldest son, and they were forbidden to own signet rings in Arabic. Critically, they were barred from studying the Qur’an, and, as a result, they could not generally learn either the script or the language of the sacred texts. Jews, therefore, adapted their traditional literacy in Hebrew to the new language, writing Arabic in Hebrew letters and producing what Blau (1965, 2002) labelled Middle Arabic and which developed into the many varieties of Judeo-Arabic used in Arab-speaking countries (Hary 2012).

Migration into separation Until the Emancipation in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe, Jews, wherever they lived, were segregated and denied access to local education, which was under religious control, whether Muslim or Christian. The long Jewish tradition of providing at least elementary education for all boys served, therefore, to assure the maintenance not just of social separation but also of the heritage language, Hebrew. From the age of five or six, boys were taught Hebrew and Jewish religious knowledge by their fathers or in the schools their fathers were required by Jewish communities to set up and finance. Even the smallest Jewish communities established Yeshivot alongside their synagogues and paid teachers and rabbis to pass on Hebrew language and traditional learning. The teaching took place in the local Jewish language, whether Judeo-Arabic or Judeo-Romance or Yiddish, but the texts studied and translated were in the sacred language. This involvement of religious institutions in the maintenance of immigrant heritage language remains important in much of the world today. In New Zealand, it has been the churches that maintain Samoan and other Polynesian languages (Spolsky 1991). In Australia, churches played a significant role in protecting European languages (Woods 2006). In Europe today, mosques and associated madrasas play a key role not only in maintaining the Islamic practices but also in encouraging the teaching of languages such as Arabic and Bengali (Rosowsky 2006). Among Jews, the synagogue and its continued use of Hebrew as a sacred and literary language has meant that migrants, while picking up new local languages, have maintained a linguistic connection to other Jewish communities. Indeed, one of the ways of defining a Jewish language has been to

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recognize it as including features from Hebrew and Aramaic and its continued use alongside the new co-territorial vernacular. Generally speaking, the transition for Jewish migrant communities has been simplified by the continuation of multilingualism. Jews in Renaissance Turkey were reported to ordinarily speak five languages. Among the Corfiote Jews, Greek, Ladino, Hebrew and Italian were all used in the synagogue service and prayer books, and the vernacular was a local Judeo-Italian patois. But the communities to which they had migrated were multilingual as well: merchants, of course, were proficient in many languages and various professional groups included a diverse linguistic repertoire: carpenters repairing a Venetian merchant ship in Istanbul around 1600 included Slavs, Genoese, Neapolitans, French, Romans, Greeks, Germans, Corsicans, Portuguese, Spaniards, Venetians and six kinds of Muslims. Christian missionaries were committed to working in many languages – Italian, Greek, Arabic and Turkish (Dursteler 2012). Thus, until the major changes brought about by emancipation in the West in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Jewish migrants maintained at least the triple pattern that had emerged in first-century Palestine: Hebrew–Aramaic as the language of sacred texts, learning, and literacy; one or more Jewish varieties for the home and life within the community; and what, as we have seen, Weinreich named a ‘co-territorial language’ (1980: 2), that is one or more gentile languages, for trade and business outside the community. The conditions of migration and the attitude of the new governments and populations to Jewish migrants had a major influence on language development. Where Jews were accepted albeit with limitations, as in most of the Muslim world, and in pre-Crusader Western Europe and for a while in Slavic lands, they soon acquired proficiency in a new local Jewish vernacular, which gradually replaced the older internal communal language. Thus, Judeo-Arabic replaced Judeo-Aramaic in Arabic-speaking countries, and Judeo-Romance replaced Judeo-Greek in the Roman Empire and in Western Christendom, and Yiddish replaced Judeo-French in Ashkenaz (the Rhineland and Germany) and JudeoSlavic (Knaanic) in the east. However, internal pressures (the continued appeal of Jewish separateness), external segregation (the restriction to Jewish streets and quarters that led to the development of the ghetto) and the expulsions from cities (that led to the development of Landjuden in Germany and the shtetl in the Pale of Settlement in Russia) confirmed this closure, a sure-fire method of assuring immigrantlanguage maintenance as Fishman (1966) showed in the United States. There,

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he demonstrated in an early study of US immigrants that those groups (like the Amish or the Hasidim) who separated themselves socially as well as linguistically from the upward mobility of the general population, or who were barred from easy assimilation by prejudice like the Native Americans or the Hispanic or African-American populations, were the ones who showed the longest maintenance of heritage languages.7

Migrating back to Zion The major immigration from Europe to the New World was different in amount and in kind: a key feature in both North and South America (to be echoed in Australia) was a belief that the land was empty, a denial of the significance of the indigenous people whom it was considered appropriate to hunt and exterminate like animals. The European languages were thus imposed on the new territories. Something like this happened in the Jewish return to Zion, but the process was actually much more complex as different groups of migrants came into differing sociolinguistic and political situations. The earlier groups of migrants in the seventeenth century were Sephardim (Jews expelled from Spain and Portugal at the end of the fifteenth century) speaking a variety of Judeo-Espagnol and literate in Hebrew and Ladino whose time in North Africa and the Orient had added Judeo-Arabic to their repertoire. They maintained a separate social and religious identity, but knew Arabic (both local and Classical) well enough to fit into the pattern of Ottoman Palestine, where Turkish was restricted to the bureaucracy and army and Arabic was the most common language. The Ashkenazi Jews who arrived in increasing numbers from Eastern Europe, especially after the 1880 pogroms, were speakers of Yiddish and other languages and strong in knowledge of traditional religious Hebrew–Aramaic. Among them were ultra-religious groups who rejected offers to teach their children the Arabic that would permit them to work and remove the necessity for poverty and dependence on charity. They also later opposed the use of Hebrew as a vernacular, excommunicating Eliezer Ben Yehuda for his involvement in this Zionist endeavour. In the 1880s, a new type of immigrant arrived: some of the Jews escaping the pogroms in Russia chose to go to Palestine rather than to the United States. The first group were the Bilu,8 university students from Kharkov who went to Palestine, spent a while on a training farm, then established a farming cooperative

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in Rishon LeZion that later, with the support of the Baron de Rothschild, became the beginning of the local wine industry. The movement called Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion) was founded in 1884 in Germany and led by Rabbi Samuel Mohilever and Leon Pinsker. A second group, led by the linguist Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhoff who was at the time writing a grammar of Yiddish and later created Esperanto, was formed in Warsaw about the same time. A third, based in Russia, was registered as a charitable organization with the name ‘The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel’. The Hovevei Zion movement was responsible for the development of Jewish farming settlements in a number of places including Rishon LeZion, Rehovot and Hadera. It was in these pre-Zionist farming communities that the major revolution in the use of Hebrew took place. This movement preceded political Zionism, which began when the first Zionist Congress took place in Basel in 1897, convened by Theodore Herzl who called for the re-establishment of a Jewish state in the ancient Holy Land. Herzl, an Austrian journalist, dreamt that the language of such a state would be German, the language of educated Western Europe. But many others considered that the revived Jewish state should use a Jewish language: there were some who supported Yiddish and others who believed it must be Hebrew. The question was debated not just in Europe, but also in the new farming communities of Palestine. The movement for the revival of Hebrew in Eastern Europe and in Palestine in the latter part of the nineteenth century was influenced by European nationalist movements, which saw the language of a people on its own territory as inextricably bound with its nationhood. But there were major differences: for the Jews, it was necessary to add the third component, national territory, to the mix. The non-territorial version of Jewish nationalism in Europe had chosen Yiddish as its symbolic language. The small number of Zionist immigrants who came to Ottoman Palestine proceeded to claim Palestine as their national home. They were territorialists and fought off other ideas such as the proposal to establish farming communities in South America, the United States and Australia, and a faction within the Zionist organization that proposed a new Jewish homeland in Africa such as Kenya or Uganda.9 The second major difference from European nationalist movements was the linguistic task: most of the European language movements already had a spoken vernacular so that their challenge was to add a formal written variety. Hebrew, on the other hand, had a high-status sacred and literary variety – the problem was how to develop an informal spoken vernacular.

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The revitalization of Hebrew took place in the farming settlements set up by Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe. Nahir (1988) suggests there were four stages: first, it was necessary to persuade the children of the villages that they should switch from their home language, Yiddish, to Hebrew; second,  they needed to be presented with a model of Hebrew language use in the school; third, they had to speak the language not just in the classroom but also outside the classroom and at home; fourth, when they grew up and married, they needed to continue to speak the language and pass it to their own children. Each of these stages was important and difficult. The ideological struggle between Yiddish and Hebrew had already begun in Europe, but was not resolved at the Czernowitz conference which, by establishing Yiddish as a national Jewish language left room open for Hebrew to claim the role of the Jewish national language (Fishman 1993). A critical victory for Hebrew had been a decision of the Labour Party in Palestine in 1907 to issue its journal in Hebrew only. This was a year before the Czernowitz meeting. The ideological struggle continued and was marked by strong rhetoric and worse. In 1918, the organization of the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) adopted a resolution requiring knowledge of Hebrew for election to its institutions. In 1927, an attempt to establish the chair of Yiddish at the Hebrew University was defeated. In the 1940s, there was even violence, with a Yiddish printing press being blown up.10 The residents of the new Jewish farming settlements had the kind of ideological fervour for the revival of Hebrew to be found in the writing of Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who arrived in Palestine in 1881 (Fellman 1973). An enthusiastic forerunner of Zionism, he started writing articles supporting the revival of Hebrew and the need to return to Zion as early as 1879. In 1880, he criticized the schools in Palestine that were teaching in French (if run by the Alliance Israélite Universelle) or German (those set up by the German-based Hilfsverein der deutschen Juden), calling for schools that would ‘teach our offspring in Hebrew, and let us lead a Hebrew life’ (Mandel 1993: 199). Ben Yehuda followed his own principles. Once he had moved to Palestine, he spoke only Hebrew in his home with his own children and would not allow nonHebrew-speaking relatives into the house.11 But he lived in Jerusalem, where, with a few exceptions, his arguments fell on deaf ears. The majority of religious Jews in Jerusalem continued to restrict Hebrew to sacred functions and even excommunicated Ben Yehuda for his heretical arguments. It was in the Zionist farming settlements that revitalization occurred.

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It was the settlers in these small villages who, having given up the city life to which they were accustomed in Eastern Europe, became farmers and took on the ideology of the language activists. To start with, the schools of the agricultural settlements, under the patronage of the Baron de Rothschild, had taught general subjects in French and used Yiddish for Jewish subjects. David Idelovitch (Yudelovich) was born in Rumania and joined the Bilu pioneers in Jerusalem in 1882 (Slutsky 1972). After a year in France, he became a teacher and later headmaster in the Rishon LeZion school, where in spite of opposition from the officials appointed by the Rothschilds, he started to teach all subjects in Hebrew. To meet the inadequacy of starting to use a new language of instruction in the first year, he started the first Hebrew kindergarten in 1898.12 He wrote children’s books in Hebrew and organized the first Hebrew teachers’ meetings. The ideological commitment of these settlers was critical to the revival of spoken Hebrew. I have been fortunate enough to observe similar devotion among Māori language activists in New Zealand. I visited one family of teachers, both of whom had learned Māori for the first time at university, who spoke the language to each other and to their children as they grew up; the children spoke to each other in Māori and became highly proficient bilinguals. Later, I attended a conference held by the Te Ataarangi movement. The movement had been founded in 1980 by young university students who were learning the language for the first time. Thirty years later, they were still gathering for a week-long conference, bringing their own children, during which time only Māori was spoken (Spolsky 2009b). Seeing their devotion to the cause and the ideological commitment showed me what the feeling must have been in those early migrant farming communities where Hebrew was revived. A letter written in 1889 tells of a group that came to Jerusalem during the festival of Sukkot who surprised people by their speaking Hebrew in public. ‘Many of the travelers would still be walking to and fro outside, with the Holy Tongue on their lips. . . . This made a strong impression in Jerusalem. All of the travelers walked about together at all times, speaking Hebrew in the streets . . . but the folk of Jerusalem could not believe their eyes: “Godless people talking the Holy Tongue!”’13 Even stronger ideological commitment to radical changes, including the adoption of Hebrew, was shown by the Zionist socialists of the second wave of immigration who migrated from Eastern Europe at the turn of the century and established the kibbutzim (communal settlements). Committed like the earlier wave of settlers to agriculture, they went further by rejecting private property

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and forming communal settlements where everything was held in common. There was no private space: the children lived in a communal children’s house, and there was often a third person in the room of a married couple. Devoted to Hebrew, they changed their names to Hebrew ones and followed a rule that only Hebrew was spoken in public. A married couple in private might speak their original language, but as soon as the third roommate or a child entered, the language would switch to Hebrew. These then were the kind of migrants, who like the Puritans who settled in North America, migrated with an idea of building a new society and in the Zionist case, adding an old-new language. Within 20 years, they had become the dominant force in the Yishuv (the growing Jewish community in Ottoman Palestine), able in 1913 to beat off a threat to use German in science classes in a planned tertiary technological institution. During the British Mandate, protected by the Treaty of Versailles inspired official status of Hebrew alongside the English of the government and the Arabic of the majority, they built up their own educational system that guaranteed linguistic assimilation to their own children and to new migrants. Statehood in 1948 provided additional institutional support for the linguistic integration of the large masses of immigrants that arrived, survivors of the Holocaust in Europe and Jews escaping or expelled from Arab lands. One aspect was the army, which made sure its conscripts could follow orders in Hebrew and provided them with a minimum of elementary-level education. There was a free compulsory educational system which offered instruction from kindergarten to doctoral seminars in Hebrew, and a five-month intensive Hebrew course (the ulpan) was offered to many qualified immigrants. This policy of teaching the official language rather than, as an increasing number of European nations are now doing, using tests to exclude immigrants, has succeeded in integrating all except the old and, in the 1990s, handled a million immigrants from the former Soviet Union.

Social and cultural contact after migration Israel, however, has been no different from most other nations (except the United States of America during a brief burst of support for bilingual education in the 1970s and 1980s) in providing inadequate support for the heritage languages of its migrants. Essentially, modern national-language-dominant nations expect immigrants to transfer their language as well as their civic allegiance when they

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are admitted. As Jews were not recognized as equal citizens in Europe until the nineteenth century or in Islamic countries ever, they remained separate and only slowly adopted the new language. The United States of America, with its ideology of the melting pot, and Israel, with its commitment to immigrant absorption, encouraged the rapid linguistic assimilation of immigrants. Migration, as Kerswill, in the opening quotation here, says, leads to language and cultural contact and so to change, but, as illustrated in this selection of cases from Jewish experience, it may be sped up or slowed down by internal motivation and local conditions. One of the key conditions is the possibility of social and cultural contact. For much of Jewish history, there have been outside and inside rules discouraging contact: Christian and Muslim laws against eating with Jews or marrying them or establishing ghettos, Jewish laws requiring kosher food and making it difficult to live in the same courtyard with non-Jews, bans on intermarriage, separate educational systems. An obvious effect was linguistic separation, as has been shown in the development of Jewish varieties of language. It is migration which weakens the immigrant language, but assimilation and social integration which lead to the adoption of the new one.

Notes 1 These dimensions and their sociolinguistic effects are spelled out in Kerswill (2006) who summarizes recent research. 2 In Spolsky (2009a), it is argued that to understand language policy and management, one needs to realize that these occur not just at the state level but in each of the smaller social domains (family, school, religious institution, workplace, etc.) that make up a larger speech community. 3 For fuller treatment, see Spolsky (2013). 4 An earlier example is of course the story of the Tower of Babel, the confusion of tongues presented in Biblical account as a method of punishment, but Bell (2011) has shown how this can be ‘re-constructed’ as presenting arguments in favour of multilingualism. 5 When the visiting ambassadors of Sennacherib address the public in Yehudit (Hebrew), the King’s officials ask them to speak Imperial Aramaic, which they know, so that ‘people on the wall’ will not understand. 6 Because the Talmud holds that you should quote a Rabbi in his own words, it often preserves evidence of switches from Hebrew (used for example to present legal principles) and Aramaic (used perhaps to then communicate with the general public).

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7 More recently in the United States, with the increase of civil rights for Spanish speakers, language maintenance has depended mainly on a continued flow of immigrants. 8 An acronym for the sentence Beit Yaakov Lekhu v’Neilkha (House of Jacob let us go up). 9 Theodore Herzl received approval from the British government to investigate the possibility of Jewish settlement in East Africa. The sixth Zionist Congress in Basel in 1903 voted to send an investigative commission to East Africa; the seventh congress voted down the proposal. 10 Fishman and Fishman (1974) describe the refusal of the Minister of Education to grant time for Yiddish news and radio programmes in the 1970s. Shohamy (2008) gives details of pressures from some central government agencies on local bodies to use Hebrew rather than Yiddish in the early years of the State. 11 Two relevant stories are told about him. One concerns the ‘dumb’ aunt: she was only allowed in the house on condition that she did not speak in front of the children. In the second, his wife came into the study to tell him that a telegram had just been delivered. He spent 2 days coming up with a Hebrew word for telegram before he opened it. 12 Similarly, noting the problem of Navajo children who encountered English for the first time, the Bureau of Indian Affairs schools added an extra pre-first grade year (Spolsky 1974). 13 Cited in Morag (1993: 211–12).

References Angelelli, C. V. (2012), ‘Language policy and management in service domains: Brokering communication for linguistic minorities in the community’, in B. Spolsky (ed.), Handbook of Language Policy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 243–61. Bell, A. (2011), ‘Re-constructing Babel: Discourse analysis, hermeneutics and the Interpretive Arc’, Discourse Studies, 13(5): 519–68. Bickerton, D. (1975), Dynamics of a Creole System. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blau, J. (1965), The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Middle Arabic. London: Oxford University Press. —(2002), A Handbook of Early Middle Arabic. Jerusalem: Max Schloessinger Memorial Foundation, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Blommaert, J. (2001), ‘The Asmara Declaration as a sociolinguistic problem: Reflections on scholarship and linguistic rights’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 5(1): 131–42.

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—(2005), Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(2006), ‘Language policy and national identity’, in T. Ricento (ed.), An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, pp. 238–54. —(2010), The Sociolinguistics of Globalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cadier, L. and Mar-Molinero, C. (2012), ‘Language policies and linguistic superdiversity in contemporary urban societies: The case of the City of Southampton, UK’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 13(3): 149–65. Chomsky, W. (1957), Hebrew: The Eternal Language. Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America. Davies, A. (1992), ‘Is language proficiency always achievement?’, Melbourne Papers in Language Testing, 1(1): 1–15. —(1997), ‘Australian immigrant gatekeeping through English Language Tests: How important is proficiency?’, in A. Huhta, V. Kohonon, L. Kurki-Suonio and S. Luoma (eds), Current Developments and Alternatives in Language Assessment: Proceedings of LTRC 96. Jyväskylä: Kopijyva Oy: University of Jyväskylä, pp. 71–84. Diehl, C. and Blohm, M. (2003), ‘Rights or identity? Naturalization processes among “labor migrants” in Germany’, International Migration Review, 37(1): 133–62. Dursteler, E. R. (2012), ‘Speaking in tongues: Language and communication in the early modern Mediterranean’, Past and Present, 217(1): 47–77. Eades, D., Helen, F., Siegel, J., McNamara, T. and Baker, B. (2003), ‘Linguistic identification in the determination of nationality: A preliminary report’, Language Policy, 2(2): 179–99. Fellman, J. (1973), The Revival of a Classical Tongue: Eliezer Ben Yehuda and the Modern Hebrew Language. The Hague: Mouton. Fishman, J. A. (ed.) (1966), Language Loyalty in the United States: The Maintenance and Perpetuation of Non-English Mother Tongues by American Ethnic and Religious Groups. The Hague: Mouton. —(1993), ‘The Tschernovits Congress revisited: The First World Congress for Yiddish, 85 years later’, in J. A. Fishman (ed.), The Earliest Stage of Language Planning: The ‘First Congress’ Phenomenon. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 321–32. Fishman, J. A. and Fishman, D. E. (1974), ‘Yiddish in Israel: A case-study of efforts to revise a monocentric language policy’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 1: 126–46. Hary, B. (2012), ‘Judeo-Arabic as a mixed language’, in L. Zack and A. Schippers (eds), Middle Arabic and Mixed Arabic: Diachrony and Synchrony. Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 125–43. Hawthorne, L. (1997), ‘The question of discrimination: Skilled migrants’ access to Australian employment’, International Migration, 35(3): 395–420. Jackendoff, R. (2010a), Meaning and the Lexicon: The Parallel Architecture 1975–2010. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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—(2010b), ‘The parallel architecture and its place in cognitive science’, in B. Heine and H. Narrog (eds), Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 583–605. —(2012), ‘Linguistic and sociolinguistic variation from the perspective of the Parallel Architecture’, presented at the Sociolinguistics Symposium 19, August. Kerswill, P. (2006), ‘Migration and language’, in U. Ammon, N. Dittmar, K. Mattheier and P. Trudgill (eds), Sociolinguistics/Soziolinguistik. An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society, vol. 3 (2nd edn). Berlin: de Gruyter, pp. 2271–85. Lewis, E. G. (1972), Multilingualism in the Soviet Union. Aspects of Language Policy and its Implementation. The Hague: Mouton. Mandel, G. (1993), ‘Why did Ben-Yehuda suggest the revival of spoken Hebrew?’, in L. Glinert (ed.), Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 193–207. McNamara, T. (2005), ‘21st century shibboleth: Language tests, identity and intergroup conflict’, Language Policy, 4(4): 351–70. Morag, S. (1993), ‘The emergence of Modern Hebrew: Some sociolinguistic perspectives’, in L. Glinert (ed.), Hebrew in Ashkenaz: A Language in Exile. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 208–21. Mühlhäusler, P. (1986), Pidgin and Creole Linguistics. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Nahir, M. (1988), ‘Language planning and language acquisition: The “Great Leap” in the Hebrew revival’, in C. B. Paulston (ed.), International Handbook of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education. New York: Greenwood Press, pp. 275–95. Nekvapil, J. (2006), ‘From language planning to language management’, Sociolinguistica, 20: 92–104. Newby, G. D. (2009), A History of the Jews of Arabia: From Ancient Times to their Eclipse Under Islam. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Rosowsky, A. (2006), ‘The role of liturgical literacy in UK Muslim communities’, in T. Omoniyi and J. A. Fishman (eds), Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 309–24. Schuchat, T. (1990), Ulpan: How to Learn Hebrew in a Hurry. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing House. Shohamy, E. (2008), ‘At what cost? Methods of language revival and protection: Examples from Hebrew’, in K. A. King, N. Schilling-Estes, L. Fogle, J. J. Lou and B. Soukup (eds), Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, pp. 205–18. Slutsky, Y. (1972), ‘Idelovitch, David’, in C. Roth and G. Wigoder (eds), Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 8. Jerusalem, Israel: Keter, pp. 1223–4. Spolsky, B. (1974), ‘Navajo language maintenance: Six-year-olds in 1969’, in F. Pialorsi (ed.), Teaching the Bilingual. New Methods and Old Traditions. Tucson, AZ: The University of Arizona Press, pp. 138–49. —(1983), ‘Triglossia and literacy in Jewish Palestine of the first century’, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, 42: 95–109.

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—(1991), ‘The Samoan language in the New Zealand educational context’, Vox, 5: 31–6. —(1999), ‘Ulpan’, in B. Spolsky (ed.), Concise Encyclopedia of Educational Linguistics. Amsterdam; New York: Elsevier, pp. 677–8. —(2009a), Language Management. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(2009b), ‘Rescuing Maori: The last 40 years’, in P. K. Austin (ed.), Language Documentation and Description, vol. 6. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, pp. 11–36. —(2013), The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vertovec, S. (2007), ‘Super-diversity and its implications’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, 30(6): 1024–54. Weinreich, M. (1980), History of the Yiddish Language, trans. S. Noble, with the assistance of J. A. Fishman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weinreich, U. (1953), Languages in Contact: Findings and Problems. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York. Wexler, P. (1985), ‘Recovering the dialects and sociology of Judeo-Greek in nonHellenic Europe’, in J. A. Fishman (ed.), Readings in the Sociology of Jewish Languages. Leiden: E.J. Brill, pp. 227–40. Woods, A. (2006), ‘The role of language in some ethnic churches in Melbourne’, in T. Omoniyi and J. A. Fishman (eds), Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 197–212. Ye’or, B. (ed.) (1985), The Dhimmis: Jews and Christians under Islam, trans. D. Maisel. Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press.

2

Linguistic Vitality and the Polish Community in France1 Vera Regan and Ewelina Debaene

Introduction This preliminary study addresses issues of migration, second-language acquisition and the transmission of migrants’ first language to their children. In particular, it considers these issues in relation to the Polish Diaspora in France (Paris and northern France), with the principal research questions being: what are the linguistic practices of Polish migrant speakers living in France, and how do they relate to linguistic vitality? The study explores the factors which affect the process of second-language acquisition and also those factors which  affect the transmission of Polish language and culture to the children of Polish immigrants. Here, preliminary qualitative results of the interview-based study undertaken among Polish community members in France are presented.

Polish migration to France: Socio-historical background Emigration has been a staple feature of the Polish societal landscape for at least 200  years. Poland was virtually wiped off the map of Europe for a period of 123  years from 1795, when it was partitioned between three neighbouring countries, until the year 1918, after which it regained its independence. It is frequently said that the most valuable contribution to Polish cultural heritage – artistic, educational, literary – was made outside Polish borders. The Polish community outside Poland, referred to as the ‘Polonia’, numbers 800,000; some put this estimate at one million (Judycka et al. 1996: 18; cf. Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna 1995: 430).

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In France, there are six distinguishable periods of Polish inward migration:

1. ‘The Great Emigration’ (1831–35): Polish refugees fled the repression which followed the partition, which was exacerbated by the defeat of the November Rising in 1831. The term ‘great’ refers not to numbers, since only approximately 6,000 emigrated (cf. Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN 1995: 430), but rather to the fact that this was considered an emigration of political elites. 2. The period between the two world wars: the influx of Polish workers in industry and agriculture after the first official immigration convention between France and Poland was signed in Paris in 1919; this regulated the employment of foreign workers (Ponty 2004: 126; Schnapper et al. 2003: 19; Jendrowiak 2001: 45). 3. The post-1968 emigration: caused by political upheavals and anti-Semitic policies in Poland, when Polish citizens of Jewish origin were forced to leave Poland. It is estimated that 12,000–20,000 Polish citizens of Jewish origin migrated to various countries as a result of anti-Semitic policies (Debaene 2013: 3). 4. The post-1980 emigration (1980–89): this forms the main focus of our research. This period is frequently referred to as ‘Solidarity migration’. Emigration reached a peak during, and in the aftermath of, the Martial Law period (1981–83), when the ruling Communist Party in Poland allowed oneway cross-border movement only. In terms of factors which influenced the decision to emigrate, the Solidarity Emigration is a complex phenomenon. Despite the common notion that this outflow of people was made up of anti-communist activists fleeing political repression (e.g. Żaliński 2005), economic factors, according to historians such as Habielski (1995: 37), also played a significant role. Polish people who emigrated to France before 1989, for instance, usually came with the intention of staying permanently. 5. Post-1989: this is the period of emigration which took place after the collapse of the Iron Curtain. European migration was primarily economically motivated and was facilitated by the free movement of people across borders. 6. Post-EU-accession migration. Following Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004, the perspective of the potential influx of Polish migrant workers into France was the topic of heated debate, and the image of the ‘Polish plumber’ frequently appeared in such debates. In fact, emigration numbers were much less significant than predicted.

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The participants in our study are, first, Polish migrants who came and settled in France in the 1980s (the ‘Solidarity migration’) and, second, recent Polish migrants to France from approximately 2004 to 2007 (post-EU-accession migration).

Methodology Data were collected using multiple methods, including questionnaires, interviews, language-elicitation instruments and media analyses. This chapter focuses mainly on interview data and questionnaires. Speech data were collected through both formal and informal interviews, while data regarding language and cultural practices were obtained through both written questionnaires and interviews. Background questionnaires (in Polish and French) were distributed through Polish centres (bookshops, cultural associations) and also made available online. Interviews with employees of Polish institutions were conducted in Polish, and sociolinguistic interviews in French were recorded (supplemented by languageelicitation techniques and analyses of Polish media published and broadcast in France). Subject recruitment started in May 2007 in Lille and Paris, and participants were divided into two groups. The first group comprised 20 Polish nationals who migrated to France between 1982 and 1995. Six participants were from Lille, and 14 from Paris. They were aged between 46 and 62 years and were sampled from various professional settings (i.e. teacher, shop owner, travel agent, museum attendant). Many of the participants in this group (16 out of 20) were found through the network of family and personal contacts developed by the  researchers.2 Four were found through Polish organizations in France (e.g. The Polish Catholic Mission). The researchers took care, however, to avoid over-reliance on Polish institutions as a source of contacts in order to achieve a more random selection. The participants in this first group varied with regard to level of education, family situation (i.e. marital status, number of children), reasons for emigration, socio-economic status, level of language proficiency in French, exposure to, and reliance on, the Polish language, degree of contact with the host country and degree of contact with Polish centres in France. The majority of migrants from this period settled in the Paris region, as Paris presented the best opportunities for accommodation and employment. Polish organizations and support centres, operating mainly in the capital, eased the initial stage of

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adjustment in France. The remaining people settled in northern France. The mining regions of the north have long been an area of settlement for Polish people, through a chain migration pattern. People traditionally relied on the help and support of their relatives and friends who had migrated to work in these mining regions, such as Lens, for instance, throughout the twentieth century. Their ‘model minority’ reputation (the French still view the Poles as a hard-working community who have enriched the region without causing any increased crime rate or jeopardizing public or social welfare) has tended to facilitate the process of integration and acculturation, as many of the speakers in the study indicate. The second group of Polish people represent ‘officialdom’: employees of various Polish organizations – educational, diplomatic, cultural and others. These interviews were carried out in Polish by the Polish researcher. Fifteen employees of Polish institutions and cultural centres in Lille, Dunkirk, Lens and Paris were interviewed. These participants came from the Polish Embassy/ Consulate in Paris, the Polish School in Paris, Polish libraries, Polish bookshops, Polish resource centres, the Polish church (Mission Catholique Polonaise), the Polish Literary Institute in Maisons-Laffitte, the Centre de Civilisation Polonaise, Sorbonne, Paris IV. The organizations were selected from ‘French Polonia’ official websites and were also reached through personal recommendation from other subjects participating in the study. The purpose and focus of the interviews with this group were to obtain insights into the activity of Polish organizations in France, to obtain quantitative data concerning Polish migration to France, to find out about French immigration strategies, to understand better the situation of Poles in France after 1980 and to create a database of consultants and informants. Speech data from this group were also used for linguistic analysis with the purpose of investigating their utility as an indicator of integration, as well as a measure of language maintenance and language loss. Insights from interviews with this group provide material for the socio-historical background and migration strategies formulated and implemented by French policy-makers regarding the Polish community in France. All the interviewees in Group 1 (Polish migrants from the 1980s) were interviewed in two stages. The first contact and introductory interviews (in Polish) took place in May 2007. Then, in September and October 2007, sociolinguistic interviews (in French) were conducted. The fact that two researchers conducted the study, one being a native speaker of Polish, the other of English, and the fact that the subjects’ native language is shared (or not) by the people conducting

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the interview created a unique opportunity to elicit natural samples of speech, both in Polish and in French, to track code-switching and to obtain the broadest possible sweep of data of multiple types.

Research issues Data were collected relating to migration and second-language maintenance, focusing on various aspects of migrants’ lives, including social, cultural and psychological factors (such as motivation, integration, attitudes and identity) and linguistic factors (such as second-language acquisition, first language maintenance and daily coping strategies in the new language/culture).3 Introductory interviews also established personal profiles, including educational and employment histories, language competence and use and cultural attitudes.4 These introductory individual interviews in Polish were followed up by group interviews in French with two interviewers present. This approach both enriched the data and opened up a number of research issues.

Introductory interviews in Polish Each subject in the study provided us with an interview of at least two hours. The co-ethnic research was an advantage at the first contact stage in building good relationships with the interviewees, because it was based on shared background knowledge of the subjects’ migration history. The catalogue of questions served as a framework for conversations; these initial interviews were not recorded, but notes were taken. In some cases, where further clarification was needed, telephone conversations and/or e-correspondence followed the face-to-face interviews. The conversations were structured to cover a range of items (see Note 3), but particular emphasis was placed on the heterogeneity of the differing stories of interviewees.

Sociolinguistic interviews Sociolinguistic interviews were carried out with the first group of migrants, the ‘non-officialdom’ participants who came to France both in the 1980s and in the 2000s. Both the L1 Polish speaker and the L1 Irish English speaker were present at these interviews. The interviews were carried out in French with rare code switches to Polish.

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The term ‘sociolinguistic interview’, used traditionally within the variationist paradigm in sociolinguistics, indicates conversations where people are relaxed enough to speak naturally, that is, without ‘monitoring’ their speech. Labov (1984), the founder of modern variationist sociolinguistics, developed modalities in fieldwork methods which elicit such non-monitored speech which can be described as vernacular speech. According to Labov, the vernacular is the most ‘systematic’ speech: ‘The vernacular, in which the minimum attention is paid to speech, provides the most systematic data for linguistic analysis’ (Labov 1984: 29). In a sense, we could say that vernacular speech, being the least monitored, is the ‘truest’ reflection of an individual’s identity. The principal way in which variationist fieldworkers elicit such spontaneous speech is to engage people in topics where they are emotionally involved. When people are intensely engaged in what they are saying, in stories they are telling about issues important to them, they are generally unaware of whether they are speaking ‘correctly’; instead, they speak as they would naturally, that is without paying attention to ‘correctness’ (or ‘monitoring’ themselves). Intrinsic to this approach remains the ‘observer’s paradox’, which refers to the situation where (to satisfy the ethical requirements of research) people know they are being taped, but where the researcher needs them to virtually ‘forget’ this fact, at least temporarily. To this end, detailed research methodology has been developed and fine-tuned by Labov and subsequent scholars since the 1960s (e.g. Labov 1966; Weinreich et al. 1968). This has resulted in the development of a powerful paradigm in linguistics, which bases itself on large databases of speech of what is considered ‘good data’ (Poplack 1989; Feagin 2001; Tagliamonte 2006). This has, through close quantitative computational analysis of speech data, elucidated numerous features of speech as well as issues in linguistic theory. For the purposes of our study of the Polish community in France, we adapted Labovian research-field-work techniques to fit the research questions we were asking: what are the linguistic practices of Polish migrant speakers living in France, and how do they relate to linguistic vitality? Many of the interviews took place in the homes of the speakers, sometimes over a family meal. Several of these family meals involved three generations of the family, friends and relatives, as well as family pets. They were intimate and warm occasions where, as noted earlier, one of the two researchers was Polish and both were Frenchspeaking. The language used was French, but on occasions people switched to Polish. This was the case particularly when the grandmother in one family spoke. On other occasions, we met the speakers at their place of work. These were quiet offices: one was attached to the home of the principal speaker, and

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one was a cultural centre where people dropped in and out occasionally during the interview. The remaining interviews took place in restaurants over meals, in cafés and one in the lobby of a hotel over coffee. In general, the settings for the interviews constituted ideal situations for people to chat in a relaxed environment. In relation to the topics of conversation, we adapted Labov’s ‘modules’ to the current and previous life experience of these people. Many of the adults gave us accounts of their life histories as children in Poland, some even told stories of World War II. The majority told us of their experience of migration to France, and several talked of acquaintances and relatives, who had come to France previously and worked (frequently) in the mining areas of northern France. We adapted the modules to include emigration experiences. Labov’s famous ‘danger of death’ module (Labov and Waletzky 1967) worked well for adult speakers when we asked them about the War or the circumstances of emigration, some of which involved a degree of danger (one involved ‘escaping’ from a communist ‘tour group’ when it arrived in France). The speech data came mainly from the adults, with the children occasionally joining in the conversation of their own accord, or being addressed by an adult and drawn into the conversation. Most of the adults talked about their experiences of adapting to French life, learning French and surviving in a country where they did not speak the local language on arrival and where they worked at jobs which were considerably less prestigious than those they had left behind or for which they were qualified. They told of adapting to the very different, and generally more formal and ritualistic French culture than the one they were used to, managing to have their children – who sometimes confronted xenophobic reactions at school (sale Polonais) – educated in France and, nevertheless, managing to keep those children connected to their Polish heritage, language and culture to varying degrees. This they did in different ways. Some of the parents spoke Polish to the children at home, although the majority did not. Most saw French as crucial for success within their new culture and encouraged the children to be as successful as possible in French. Many, however, sent the children to Polish school on Wednesday (the free half-day in the French school system) and many took them (or sent them, if they were working) to Poland during the summer holidays, where they often lived with grandparents. Most of the children of the participants were bilingual. Here a holistic view of bilingualism is supposed, as represented, for instance, by Cook (2002) and Grosjean (1982). Grosjean (2010) defines bilingualism, arguing that ‘bilinguals are those who use two or more languages (or dialects) in their everyday lives’ (p. 4).

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Particularly noticeable initially was the fact that the children of Polish parents were indistinguishable from non-Polish French children. They used the same age and sex-appropriate community speech norms in terms of vocabulary, slang, variable speech patterns, discourse patterns and native phonology (for a detailed linguistic analysis of this speech, see Regan and Nestor 2011; Regan 2013). Body language and gestures were also indistinguishable from those of French children. The adults (aged 30 upwards) had varying degrees of native-like speech proficiency. Many of those in the 30–50 age bracket had near-native speech, and some of those who were older less so. This was particularly noticeable in terms of phonology. When the topic turned to language (towards the end of the interview, so as to avoid the speakers monitoring their speech), the subjects demonstrated a high level of consciousness of their own learning process. They tended to be very critical of their level of French, to the point almost of linguistic insecurity. Several of the subjects specifically mentioned areas where they felt their competence was ‘deficient’: for instance, grammatical constructions, direct translation, articles, pronunciation and written competence (all of the informants say they are unable to produce formal letters or documents in French). This may not be surprising, given that in France there tends to be a general linguistic insecurity in any case among native speakers vis-à-vis prescriptive norms (Posner 1997: 12). These native-speaker attitudes may have increased the understandable insecurity of the L2 speakers of French. On a general note, it can be said the participants, as soon as they relaxed, were highly engaged in the telling of their story of migration, their particular situations and their decision to emigrate, offering insights from their expertise in the area of migration. Anecdotes and narratives enriched the data with the  subjects’ individual perspectives. These insights will be presented against the backdrop of the interviews with employees of Polish cultural organizations, further substantiated by an overview of literature on the subject.

Language acquisition Support structures Whatever motives lay behind their decisions to emigrate, the Poles came with an intention, often based on necessity, of staying in France and making their lives in their new country. In this sense, they had no choice about language learning. To

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function effectively, they needed to be able to speak, and ideally write, French. Many of the participants, however, emphasize the positive experience they managed to draw from ‘overcoming obstacles’ and the sense of achievement they derived from successful mastery of a new language. Despite focusing on obstacles, they were aware of the benefits they received from a variety of support structures and processes. Several participants commented on the support they felt from the French for Polish solidarity activities. They also commented on the facilitation of the immigrants’ first steps in the new country by the provision of simplified procedures for obtaining legal social status, accommodation (HLM – habitations à loyer moderé – subsidized government housing), access to re-qualification professional programmes and free language courses. Moreover, the Polish church (The Polish Catholic Mission) made a major contribution, and many interviewees said they had been provided with assistance there in their search for employment and accommodation. The vast majority of new arrivals spoke little or no French when they first came. The respondents frequently commented on the positive attitude and understanding offered by the French, including language-learning support and integration: I was lucky the lady I was au-pairing for forced me to speak. Each time I was to do shopping she didn’t allow me to go the supermarket but to the ‘le marché in the street where I had to communicate with the vendors, ask for prices, negotiate if I had to’. (Female, mid 50s, Paris) My husband’s colleagues ‘took care of him’. They slowed their speech, made him repeat the most needed phrases, they bought him a dictionary, at the beginning they assisted him in his duties (delivering goods to shops). (Female, mid 50s, Lille) They took me to football matches and then after a couple of beers I began to speak. (Male, early 60s, Paris)

By and large the participants were positive about their experience of integration into French society. A few expressed the opinion that many French people lacked basic knowledge about Poland and that they demonstrated a superior attitude towards the non-French nationals. However, most felt they had been accepted by the French and felt respected as hardworking and reliable workers: When our younger daughter was born my husband’s boss gave him a huge financial reward. He was a highly valued employee. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

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At the same time, the informants often retrospectively noted they frequently had to make the first move to integrate or interact with French citizens: I remember, at the beginning I was not invited to ‘their’ parties. And one day I invited my colleagues to my daughter’s communion. They came, and then – the following month – my boss invited me and my family to his boy’s christening. I was so happy! (Female, mid 50s, Lille)

Language acquisition strategies Language issues were the most acute problem facing the Poles who came to France in the 1980s. The majority of the respondents came to France with no French at all or with only a couple of years of school instruction. Most said it took them 1–2 years to acquire communicative skills and learn to function effectively in the working environment, while another 2 years had to pass before they could feel communicatively efficient and comfortable. Those with prior school experience drew attention to the fact that language taught in Polish mainstream schools was unlike the day-to-day language spoken by native speakers and so they were forced to learn it anew. The participants all demonstrated a high level of proficiency in French, and when asked how they learnt French, they mentioned strategies such as watching TV, reading press articles, speaking to native speakers, not being around other Polish people, mixing with native French speakers both at work and in their dayto-day lives and attending language programmes/classes. The respondents stressed the difficulty they personally experienced or related difficulties faced by their acquaintances due to their lack of linguistic skills on arrival in France. Such problems often led to frustration and in some cases even affected their sense of well-being and family life (marital break-ups were not infrequent): At the beginning I felt mute and deaf. I desperately missed my family and friends. I had no one to talk to. (Female, mid 50s, Paris) My wife had an emotional breakdown when we first arrived in France. She said she wanted to go back to her family, friends and the main problem was that she was slow at learning French, couldn’t speak to people. (Male, late 50s, Paris)

The Head of the Polish School (l’Ecole Polonaise de Paris) pointed to problems suffered by teenagers who on arrival were immediately enrolled in French mainstream schools even though they were unable to communicate with their French teachers or peers:

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Such a boy/girl is psychologically devastated. They can’t speak, can’t operate in peer groups and this leads to serious personality crises. (Head of the Polish School in Paris, personal communication, May 2007) My son (14) suffered enormously when he went to the French school. It was one of the most difficult times we’ve gone through since our arrival in France. (Male, early 60s, Paris)

The experiences evoked by these descriptions point to the fact that the school system did not accommodate these children whose families had migrated to France and thus caused considerable distress and suffering to the young people. It does not seem that the system in France has changed since that time. For that reason, these discourses are interesting in the current narrative of the migrant experience.

Language courses In the 1980s, the French state offered free language courses to unemployed members of foreign communities, and such courses were usually held in town halls (les mairies). The participants vary substantially in their evaluation of the efficiency of instruction. A woman who was enrolled in a free French programme in 1989, for a period of 12 months, says it was a real breakthrough in her linguistic progress. Two other subjects, however, complain the courses were not well matched to their level and were aimed mainly at an Arabic-speaking community with little prior language-learning experience, which slowed down the rate of instruction. Those who were able to afford them would sign up for fee-paying language courses offered by the Alliance Française, and, even though they acknowledged their undeniable benefits, they also remembered the financial cost as a significant expenditure in their budget. The general feeling of those participants we interviewed was that more free language initiatives would have been valued both as linguistic support and as help towards integration: I wish I could have afforded a language course. My wife, as an unemployed person was entitled to one for free and I could see she was making fast progress. (Male, mid 50s, Paris) When my employer saw I was a good worker, he paid for two language courses during my first two years in France. I really appreciate that. (Male, early 60s, Paris)

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Language proficiency in French L2 What became noticeable, even in the preliminary conversations with the subjects held in French, was that, despite some non-target structural elements (such as use of articles), their communicative efficiency (for instance, their use of pragmatic markers including conversation breaks such as ‘quoi’) approximated native-speaker usage. A detailed, quantitative analysis of their use of ne omission and deletion appears in Regan and Nestor (2011), which demonstrates nearnative rates of ne deletion.

Language maintenance and transmission: Polish L1 Whereas French was, and still is, critical for the majority of the participants at work and for social contacts, they reported that Polish was most typically used at home, in telephone conversations with family and friends in Poland and less frequently in conversation with other Polish people in France. Two out of ten Polish couples interviewed insisted on the exclusive use of Polish at home, whereas the remaining participants spoke Polish to their spouses and to their children, but allowed their children to answer in French. Factors normally most powerful in reversing language shift (cf. Fishman cited in García et al. 2006: 21) seemed to be operative in the lives of these Polish people in France. Stays in Poland, for example, provided an opportunity for children to be around, and to talk with, their Polish grandparents, relatives and friends: My children spoke Polish at home for three months following their holidays in Poland, usually until Christmas, then switched back to French. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

Another efficient way to maintain and transmit the native language was the Polish School which, affiliated to the Embassy, implemented the Polish primaryand secondary-level mainstream education programmes in areas absent from the French curriculum (e.g. Polish language, history and geography). As a form of complementary education, classes take place on Wednesday and Saturday, 2  days free of school in France. According to the Head of the Polish School, Polish children usually enjoyed their time at Polish school: There is always a group of children who are complaining, but they are few and far between. (Head of the Polish School in Paris, personal communication, May 2007)

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Located in central Paris, the Polish School was not easy to reach for families living in the outskirts of Paris: Sometimes the whole extended family is involved in bringing the children to school. The parents drive them in the morning and the grandparents collect them after the classes. (ibid.)

The school is valued by parents, as it helps sustain Polish language and culture abroad and, on successful completion, gives extra points in school-leaving exams (baccalauréat). Of the participants in this study, two out of ten families interviewed sent children to the Polish schools, one in Lille and one in Paris.

Multilingual families: Intergenerational practices Aware of their linguistic limitations, many respondents saw their children as a potential ‘language support’. They told of turning to their children for help, especially when it comes to producing written letters and documents, filling in forms and deciphering complex written texts (e.g. contracts, legislative texts): Pola (the participant’s 23-year-old daughter) is our ‘secretary’. When we have a formal letter to write – she double-checks us. (Male, late 40s, Lille) My sons frequently double-check my correspondence and important forms to be filled in. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

In addition, the adults say their children often help them deal with the cultural sensitivities of French society, and the children accept the role of mediator between their parents’ native and adopted culture: My daughter often interprets for me – not only the language but also the ways society functions. (Legislations/rules/regulations governing the life of society) (Female, 50, Lille)

This linguistic (or cultural) mediation performed by fully competent children for their non-native parents is seen by some of the participants as a shift in relations of power/authority in the family, and some identify this as an issue to address (cf. Burck 2005): There came a moment when we had to remind our daughter where her place was as she was demonstrating the superiority she had over us. (Female, early 50s, Lille)

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In an attempt to counteract this shift in authority and to reinforce their standing in the children’s eyes, the subjects often decided to emphasize their expertise in other areas, so as to compensate for their weaker linguistic abilities: We were saying to our children we could always help them with maths or physics, even though we can’t be of much help with their French homework. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

Issues of identity were referred to at times, frequently evoking a sensitivity to issues of belonging. There was quite a degree of variation in how closely people wanted to identity with their Polishness. Some were keen to ‘fit in’ and become as French as possible. Many wanted to hold on to, and pass on to their children, their sense of being Polish: We always strongly emphasised and wanted our children to know we were a Polish family who live in this country only because we work here. We always wanted them to be and to feel Polish. They always knew and respected it. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

Bilingualism/Multilingualism The way bi-/multilingualism is perceived by the child and his or her family seems to be connected to parent–child relations and influences these relations. Placing a high value on multilingualism as an enabler rather than seeing it as an impediment appears to generate confidence which children can draw on outside home. One respondent shared with us her recollection of a telephone conversation between her then 10-year-old daughter and her school friend: I remember once my daughter’s friend rang us at home I took the phone and only later called Ola* [names have been changed]. The girl who was calling asked Ola why her mother spoke ‘with a strange accent.’ Ola’s reply was immediate: ‘Tell me how many languages your Mum speaks!’ ‘French only? My Mum can speak both French and Polish!’ (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

Another woman remembers an unpleasant event which happened to her 14-year-old son. He was insulted during a PE class by a French girl on the basis of his Polish origins: After what happened Wojtek said to me: ‘She has no right to call me like that. My parents were Polish, my grandparents were Polish. I’m proud I’m a Pole too’. (Female, mid 40s, Lille)

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As shown in the last two examples, the children – in order to understand and cope with a difficult situation – drew on their parents’ pride in their Polish roots (Wojtek) as well as on the belief that a command of a language is an asset (Ola). Also apparent, in reference to the effects of bi-/multilingualism on children, is their perceived increased aptitude for foreign languages and tolerance of ambiguity, as frequently observed by the respondents: Wojtek has been learning English for two years and he has the best results in his group. I noticed he is not afraid of speaking, making mistakes or ‘making a fool of himself ’. (Female, mid 40s, Lille)

The parents interviewed feel that each subsequent foreign language came more easily to their children in comparison with their children’s peers.

Inter-generational strategies in language maintenance The majority of participants have managed to maintain and transmit spoken Polish language to their children. Only three couples out of the ten interviewed succeeded, however, in teaching their children how to write in Polish. Many of the issues parents raised are discussed further in the considerable literature on home bilingualism (see, for instance, Barnes 2006; de Angelis and Dewaele 2011; Baker 2011). The parents interviewed took pride in their children’s ability to speak Polish and said it required much effort and discipline on their part to transmit their native language: It was not at all easy to teach our children Polish given that they go to French schools, have French friends, speak French everywhere except home. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

Many of the parents we spoke to had theories about language loss on the part of their children. Some felt that Polish spoken at home would have slowed down the integration of their children into French society and create too much confusion, as did attempts by parents to improve their own French by speaking only French at home to their children and to model their speech on that of their children: I have to admit we made the mistake of speaking French at home at one stage. The children will learn French at school anyway, whereas we were unable to express ourselves properly and it wasn’t good either for us or for the children. We quickly abandoned the idea. (Male, mid 40s, Paris)

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Another theory about loss of their heritage language on the part of parents was that some parents attempted to take on a French identity at the expense of a Polish one. It was felt that this would most likely be the case in those Poles who perceive the Polish language and culture as inferior to French, and do not want to be associated with the former. Others saw their problem in their sheer lack of time, long working hours and the lack of Polish centres around: My daughter (Olga) who came to France aged five, lost Polish at the age of ten. She always recounted her daily events from school in French and spoke French to us even if we spoke back in Polish. (Female, mid 50s, Lille)

It is often the case, as confirmed by the respondents, that children undergo a rejection stage in their Polish language use, most commonly during their adolescence, refusing to speak Polish altogether and objecting to their parents’ speaking Polish to them in their peers’ presence. This occurs at the age when peer group pressure is most intense. This has been found to be the case not only with Polish migrants but with many language and cultural migrant groups (Heller 1982): When our son was around 14 he established an embargo on Polish when his friends were coming to our house. We could only speak French then. (Female, mid 50s, Paris)

As several of the participants interviewed were contacted through Polish educational/religious institutions, these people might attach importance to maintaining their native language and traditions (hence their willingness to stay in touch with Polish organizations). (The wider study includes Polish migrant families whose children speak French only.) In the absence of a wider sample to substantiate this hypothesis, we can only speculate for the moment, that those children without Polish (now aged 15 or more) may react to their parents’ lack of interest in Polish by trying later to rediscover their roots on their own. Giddens (2007) has claimed that the third generation of migrants is the one most likely to embark on a search for their roots, native language and culture. In our study, interviews conducted in Polish bookshops in Lille and Paris confirmed such interest being displayed by the second and third generations of Polish migrants: We observe an increased demand now for Polish language textbooks and Polish guidebooks. (A book seller of Polish books, personal communication) There are young people aged 20 coming and explaining in native French they are Polish and want to find out about the region they come from . . . (Assistant at a Polish Bookshop, personal communication)

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Conclusion This very preliminary description of a particular section of the Polish community in France raises issues regarding the role of language and language use in the migrant experience. (For another investigation of Polish language attitudes, see Skrzypek, Kopečková, Bidzińska and Singleton, this volume). Drawing on two sources of data, one from Polish ‘officialdom’ in France (who gave us invaluable information about the official position of Poles in France), and the other from ‘non-official’ migrants (who told their own individual stories of migration), we have begun to piece together a picture of Polish peoples’ lives in France as well as their language practices. They tell us about their need to learn French in order to ‘fit in’ and for their children to succeed in the French educational and social system. They also tell us about their wish for their children to speak and even write Polish. Their life choices show a major investment in this aspiration. There is not, however, a neat dichotomy between the two positions. While many have an emotional attachment to Polish language and heritage, they also have an instrumental interest in their children’s success in Polish because it also helps them to succeed within the French examination system. (Polish can be taken as a subject for the Baccalauréat examination). Like many people in an increasingly globalized world, these Polish migrants, while wishing to invest in a high-status European language of international communication, also seem to cherish their heritage language, not only for instrumental reasons but equally as a symbol of ethnic identity. From this initial description of the data, it can only be concluded that there is no simple conclusion which can be drawn as to the reasons for L1 transmission or lack of it. Closer quantitative and qualitative analysis needs to be carried out to provide more detail in the picture we paint of the migrant experience and the role of language within it.

Notes 1 The authors acknowledge the generous support of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences; this project was part of the study of ‘Second language acquisition and native language maintenance in the Polish Diaspora in Ireland and France’ (2006–09), with David Singleton as principal investigator. 2 One of the researchers in the fieldwork is Polish. 3 The full range of factors explored under the two main headings is as follows: Social, cultural and psychological aspects: push/pull mechanisms in the decisions to emigrate; length of stay; investments and remittances; integration in the host

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Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration community; success or failure in the acculturation process; access to housing and employment; shift in the hierarchy of values generated by migration; language attitudes; identity issues; visits and returns to the home country.

Linguistic aspects: second-language acquisition routes; (investment in) secondlanguage learning; maintenance of Polish language and culture; transmission of Polish language and culture to children; influence of L1 on L2 and reciprocally of L2 on L1; psychological effects of language shift; psychological effects on the parent–child relationship when the L1 is not shared; coping strategies used by immigrants in day-to-day lives in the new language/culture. 4 The full range of factors explored with all participants in individual interviews is as follows: date of arrival in France; age; origins (region of Poland they came from); education; occupation; reason/s for emigrating; intended length of stay in France (on arrival); self-assessed level of French as it is now; self-assessed level of French on arrival; language-learning strategies; attitudes towards the host culture; attitudes towards the home culture; language spoken at home; visits to Poland/returns; questions concerning children included number of children, language proficiency of children (as regards both Polish and French), educational experience of Polish children in French mainstream schools.

References Angelis, G. de and Dewaele, J.-M. (eds) (2011), New Trends in Crosslinguistic Influence and Multilingualism Research. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Baker, C. (2011), Foundations of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism (5th edn). Bristol, New York, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Barnes, J. D. (2006), Early Trilingualism: A Focus on Questions. Clevedon, New York, Toronto: Multilingual Matters. Burck, C. (2005), Multilingual Living: Explorations of Language and Subjectivity. Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Cook, V. (ed.) (2002), Portraits of the L2 User. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Debaene, E. (2013), ‘Emigration versus mobility. The case of the Polish community in France and Ireland’, in D. Singleton, V. Regan and E. Debaene (eds), Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition in a Migrant Community. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 1–27. Feagin, C. (2001), ‘Entering the community: Fieldwork’, in J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill and N. Schilling-Estes (eds), The Handbook of Language Variation and Change. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 20–39. García, O., Peltz, R., Schiffman, H. and Fishman, G. S. (eds) (2006), Language Loyalty, Continuity and Change: Joshua A. Fishman’s Contributions to International Sociolinguistics. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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Giddens, A. (2007), Europe in the Global Age. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grosjean, F. (1982), Life with Two Languages: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. —(2010), Bilingual: Life and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Habielski, R. (1995), Emigracja. Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Szkolne i Pedagogiczne. Heller, M. (1982), ‘Negotiations of language choice in Montreal’, in J. J. Gumperz (ed.), Language and Social Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 108–18. Jendrowiak, W. (2001), L’immigration polonaise dans le bassin minier du Nord-Pas de Calais, unpublished dissertation (Maîtrise), Université Charles-de-Gaulle, Lille 3. Judycka, A., Judycki, Z. and Judycki, Z. A. (1996), ‘Les Polonais en France: dictionnaire biographique’, vol. 1. Paris: Editions Concorde. Labov, W. (1966), The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics. —(1984), ‘Field methods of the project on linguistic change and variation’, in J. Baugh and J. Sherzer (eds), Language in Use: Readings in Sociolingustics. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, pp. 28–53. Labov, W. and Waletzky, J. (1967), ‘Narrative analysis: Oral versions of personal experience’, in W. Labov (ed.), Language in the Inner City: Studies in the Black English Vernacular. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 354–96. Nowa Encyklopedia Powszechna PWN (1995). Warsaw: Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN. Ponty, J. (2004), ‘Immigration. Au XXe siècle, phenomène nouveau, l’immigration devient un enjeu dans les relations internationales’, in B. Geremek and M. Frybes (eds), Kaleidoscope Franco-Polonais. Paris: Noir sur Blanc, pp. 123–9. Poplack, S. (1989), ‘The care and handling of a megacorpus: The Ottawa-Hull French Project’, in R. Fasold and D. Schiffrin (eds), Language Change and Variation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 411–51. Posner, R. (1997), Linguistic Change in French. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Regan, V. (2013), ‘The bookseller and the basket ball player: Tales from the French Polonia’, in D. Singleton, V. Regan and E. Debaene (eds), Linguistic and Cultural Acquisition in a Migrant Community. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, pp. 28–48. Regan, V. and Nestor, N. (2011), ‘Les Polonnais français, l’acquisition de langue, le maintien, la perte et l’identité’, in F. Martineau and T. Nadasdi (eds), Le Français en Contact. Hommages à Raymond Mougeon. Quebec: Presses de l’Université Laval, pp. 281–98. Schnapper, D., Kreif, P. and Peignard, E. (2003), ‘French immigration and integration policy. A complex combination’, in F. Heckmann and D. Schnapper (eds), The Integration of Immigrants in European Societies. National Differences and Trends of Convergence. Forum Migration. Stuttgart: Lucius & Lucius, pp. 15–44. Skrzypek, A., Kopečková, R., Bidzińska, B. and Singleton, D. (2014), ‘Language and Culture: Attitudes towards, and perceptions of, English L2 acquisition among Polish migrants in Ireland’, in B. Geraghty and J. E. Conacher (eds), Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 112–30.

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Tagliamonte, S. (2006), Analysing Sociolinguistic Variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weinreich, U., Labov, W. and Herzog, W. I. (1968), ‘Empirical foundations for a theory of language change’, in W. P. Lehmann and Y. Malkiel (eds), Directions for Historical Linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 95–188. Żaliński, H. W. (2005), ‘Polacy we Francji. Historia i współczesność’, Konspekt 21(1). http://www.wsp.krakow.pl/konspekt/21/polfranc.html [accessed 17 June 2013].

3

Language Planners’ Cultural Positioning Strategies in Joint Negotiation of Meaning Patrick Studer

Introduction Language and culture form powerful elements in the identity-building of individuals and social communities alike. The rhetoric of politicians and policymakers in various national and supranational contexts within Europe and beyond now features the buzzword ‘language’ alongside others such as ‘integration’ and ‘migration’ (see, for example, Pelinka 2007). While it is in these very contexts that language debates almost inevitably clash with ideas of equality and linguistic human rights, little is known about how language planners actually develop and negotiate their policies, beyond a description of the institutionalized planning process and the macro-social conditions underlying societal misunderstandings and conflicts (cf., generally, Cooper 1989: 28–9). In reality, however, language planning is a situated practice vulnerable to, and influenced by, sociopsychological factors, involving processes of identity formation and positioning (cf. Studer et al. 2010; Studer 2012, 2013). This chapter seeks, therefore, to examine the discursive role of language planners in greater detail; it explores EU-internal debates surrounding multilingualism policy from a ‘micro-discursive’ perspective, addressing  both the personal views of planners and their perception and understanding of their own role in ideological contexts. The challenge of such a study is both methodological and substantive: it implicates questions of both analytic procedure (sociolinguistic methods of narrative analysis, conversation analysis, discourse analysis) and the discursive manifestation in spontaneous speech of planners’ off-the-record ideologies towards languages.

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This chapter is based on the analysis of a series of focus interviews with language planners from different EU institutions and highlights the microinteractive patterns that arise when such officials engage in negotiating the meaning of policy concepts. It argues that language planners negotiate in patterned ways, motivated by the conceptual complexity of language-policy concepts and their application to language planning, a process which involves communicative strategies of cultural positioning of the self in diverse contexts. Cultural positioning, as will be shown, provides a particularly powerful conceptual anchor only activated once the communicative activity at hand has been recognized.

Ideological-cultural positioning Language, culture and language planning are inextricably intertwined (Schiffmann 1998), and language policies, even when negotiated in a ‘nationally disinterested’ transnational context, are never produced in a cultural vacuum; instead, they can be viewed as products of social actors from different sociocultural backgrounds holding different (overt or covert) language ideologies which inevitably influence how such actors approach and manage their planning activities. One’s linguistic and cultural heritage, therefore, forms a set of common-sense beliefs about what is, or is not, considered the appropriate and normal use of one’s own language. These common-sense beliefs become visible where assumptions about using one’s own language risk clashing with those of the interlocutor within a language-planning dialogue. In decision-making processes about language use, the concepts of culture and ideology cannot be viewed independently, for any difference between these conflates at the level of the single utterance; cultural anchors in an individual’s speech simultaneously reveal their ideological positions within the ongoing negotiation. According to such Bakhtinian thinking, ideology, and hence culture, can be defined as ‘the product of the interaction of langue and the context of the utterance – a context that belongs to history’ (cited in Todorov 1984: ix–x). This reference to history, particularly relevant here, draws attention to aspects of cultural-ideological heritage as embodied in speech, encompassing both communicative activities and the broader history of individual participants’ behaviour. Consequently, everything verbal, and every instance of speech, is not only ideological in its core but reflects, simultaneously, historical and situated uniqueness. This, of course, extends to the activity of language planning.1

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Bakhtin (1981) provides clues to the direction empirical research could take when studying ideology from this perspective. Most significantly here, attention should be directed towards ‘common language in speech’ (Bakhtin 1981: 301–2), rather than scientific jargon. If one focuses on the ‘common language in speech’, argues Bakhtin (ibid.), one can see the ‘going point of view’ and the ‘going value’ of a social group. Linguistic analysis of such common language in speech reveals broader accommodation practices of social actors towards commonsense norms and ideologies, as linguistic analysis can make visible the ways we bend towards conventional language behaviour in speech. This play with speech convention represents the speaker’s ‘parodic’ evaluation of genres, which is achieved on the basis of four speech styles: emotion-filled, moral-didactic, sentimental-complaining or descriptive-idyllic style (Bakhtin 1981: 302). From this assumption it follows that we parody or evaluate in narrative thoughtpatterns – when we speak, we impersonate characters by narrating versions of ourselves and others. The idea of character impersonation or narration in speech can be seen as a choice, a freedom and as a psychological need (cf., for example, Sarbin’s 1986 narrative psychology). Through Bakhtin’s lines, therefore, runs a powerful claim underlying speech which contains immediate methodological-analytic implications for the analysis of ideology: 1. genres organize ideological belief systems incorporated in our speech; 2. we evaluate these belief systems in patterned ways adopting speech styles; 3. we embed our evaluation in narratives that feature protagonists. Consequently, our analytic focus is to be directed to speech expressing indirectness, conditionality and distance towards overt or covert assumptions embodied in common language (Bakhtin 1981: 324–30). This Bakhtinian view allows us, therefore, to access an ideological layer in speech beyond the pragmatic view of language planning as communicative activity constraining, or scripting, the communicative efforts of participants (cf. Drew and Heritage 1992: 23; Levinson 1992: 66–98). In other words, while the pragmatic view directs our attention to issues of communicative framework, which goals activities pursue, the communicative routines activated, the cooperative behaviour of the participants, the Bakhtinian dimension situates the participants’ behaviour in their broader ideological-cultural framework by studying the degrees to which they reference this in subtle and explicit ways. Pragmatic behaviour and ideological-cultural behaviour do not always go hand in hand, but often instead entail conflict. Such instances of conflict seem

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particularly relevant to the study of language-planning dialogues as they reveal the tensions which may exist between the scriptedness of language planners’ contributions and the respective cultural positions underlying their activities.

Some methodological considerations A major methodological challenge within the study of language planning arises from the quality of data obtained. Access to language planners’ meetings is often not granted, making unobtrusive observation or observer participation in Denzin’s (1978) classical sense impossible. Instead, the method of the focus interview with language planners has been used in this study, assuming that this offers a valid alternative approximating focused interaction in decision-making processes. Focused interaction can be understood as communicative activity directed at solving problems involving cognitive challenges and dissonances which are internal to the discourse or manifest between participants. Problemsolving is key to policy planning, as it is goal-oriented, abstract, and requires managing alternative or opposite scenarios (cf. Studer 2012). The focus interview has been used extensively in research from the 1970s onwards, particularly studying group evaluations and attitudes in market research (cf. Calder 1977). In recent years, focus-group discussions have been employed in social psychology to explore communicative behaviour that can be connected to personal dilemmas resulting from ideological choices made when negotiating with others (e.g. Marková et al. 2007). The focus interview, as understood in these studies, is treated as more than a simple data collection tool with which we can reveal participants’ ‘free-standing opinion packages’ (Potter and Puchta 2002: 346); it is viewed instead as a type of conversational practice that mirrors groups’ negotiating and decision-making behaviour, whereby one person sets the agenda but otherwise forms part of the dynamic process of the interaction occurring between the speakers involved. In other words, focus interviews are expressive of behaviour that is characteristic of communities of practice (Wenger 1998) which require knowledge of, and access to, the field. The inclusion of this broader conversational, or ethnographic, dimension facilitates the exploitation of focus interviews as a valid data-collection method for studying language planning and further infuses a definition that views planning as the negotiation of meaning resulting from, and leading to, language policy, the formal outcome of the planning process (Studer et al. 2010). This

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interpretation of language planning upholds Cooper’s (1989) distinction between policy and planning but, more importantly, interprets language planning socio-psychologically as the negotiation of meaning which is related to language planners’ positioning behaviour in interaction. This positioning behaviour simultaneously forms part of the language planners’ identities as members of certain communities and cultures. The definition given here, moreover, places the focus of study on individual language-planning episodes. In doing so, it draws attention to micro-analytic levels and their possible interrelationship with macro-levels. This primary focus on short stretches of interaction, which is included in Cooper (1989), suggests a bottom-up approach to the analysis of language planning, as practised by other analytic methods, particularly Language Management Theory (Neustupny and Nekvapil 2003).

Presenting the interviews: The discursive framework The case analysis is based on data obtained through semi-structured focus interviews with representatives from European institutions charged with language-planning portfolios. In total, eight interviews (six individual and two team interviews each with two participants) were conducted with key players responsible for European language policy. Interviews took place in the respective language planners’ offices and were complemented by a questionnaire distributed to the participants after the interview which contained questions about their sociolinguistic background.2 The interviews contained a reading component, followed by the spontaneous thoughts of the interviewee(s) and questions relating to their current work and personal role. The interviews lasted approximately one hour. No interpretative or pragmatic transcription was undertaken at this stage, but interviews were subsequently transcribed verbatim following a minimal coding schedule. The resulting text was divided into coherent and cohesive episodes, or ‘turns’ – to adopt Sacks et al.’s (1974) term – rather than sentences (cf. Studer et al. 2010). The findings presented here refer to the initial parts of the interviews in which participants were asked to read and comment on excerpts from a core text on current language policy (see Appendix). Of particular interest in the following discussion are those parts of the interview where language planners provide initial interpretations of the contents of the excerpts, but the turns  springing from these initial attempts are also considered. These initial

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reactions are relevant insofar as they open the door for subsequent negotiations of meaning of fundamental policy concepts underlying the European Union. In so doing, they reveal the particular cultural-ideological vantage points the participants take when approaching the subject matter and provide insight into the communicative strategies they employ to justify their thoughts. The three excerpts shown to language planners were drawn from the New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism of the EU, published as a communication in 2005 and selected for the study here, as they represent potential tensions in relation to the multilingual situation in the European Union. The first draws an idealized image of the EU as a place where diversity is celebrated rather than dissolved. The second stresses the paramount importance of language as the most direct expression of one’s culture. The third advertises the economic value of language skills and the need to promote multilingual situations. The document from which the three excerpts are drawn was written in the spirit of the Lisbon Strategy 2000, which advocated Europe as a knowledge-based society. Language, in the context of the Lisbon Strategy, entered public discourse as a commodity with monetary value, an interpretation which motivates scientific argumentation patterns supporting the economic value of language competences (cf. Fairclough 2001: 27). In European language planning, this discursive trend competes with political concerns connected to the tension between the language rights of citizens or states and the concept of the European Union as an institution creating political, linguistic and cultural unity. These cornerstones of languageplanning discourses can be viewed as an ‘extra-linguistic framing model’ when analysing language-planning events and, alongside further categories (cf., for example, Hyltenstam and Stroud 1996: 596, or the typological framework model of Edwards 1994: 51), provide a simplified, but important, reference grid for language planners. The tensions inherent in these contradictory discursive trends present a cognitive challenge to language planners trying to produce coherent and selfcontained political statements. In spontaneous speech, such challenges may easily result in reactions typically associated with the strategic communicative competence of the speakers when they try bridging difficult situations. At the same time, these challenges may present turns in policy planning in that they eventually force language planners to take positions as they attempt to reconcile the gap between rhetoric and reality in the ideas expressed in EU languagepolicy documents (Fairclough 2001: 34). For the researchers, situations in which such attempts occur are of particular relevance, as they reveal how language

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planners handle discursive contradictions in talk, that is how they enact their own ambiguity towards language policy, how they reconcile language policy and reality, or how they negotiate their ability to understand it.

Multilingualism policy-making in action Let us assume the communicative setting of the semi-structured focus interview involves cognitive tasks similar in part to those arising in a focused discussion between language planners at the workplace and that these planners exploit previous policy documents as a common denominator for their discussion. Limited levels of trust and confidence between unfamiliar interviewer and interviewee do not in themselves affect the authenticity of the situation, as social distance between colleagues operating in larger institutions or organizations is fairly common. In this context, imagine the participants in the planning activity jointly read text passages from key sources which they would like to discuss. We can assume the presence of certain cues in the selected text passages that function as ‘conceptual reference points’ (Studer 2012: 122), activating conceptual inferencing of background knowledge. These conceptual reference points, in turn, provide the substance for the speakers’ subsequent communicative efforts towards ideological-cultural positioning with respect to the discursive framework introduced in the previous section. In the following sections we consider how these cues are activated and developed in the course of the interviews. The interviews reveal that cohering with the concept of multilingualism proves a serious challenge to all participants, perhaps complicated by the fact that the term itself is a relatively new addition to EU policy-making-speak and was not widely used before 2005 (cf. Studer and Werlen 2012). All the language planners interviewed found it difficult to relate multilingualism to a superordinate policy category or to see it as manifesting prototypicality. In the analysis of interview data, it could be seen that the excerpts shown activated different conceptualizing reflexes that helped define and situate the activity and address the cognitive challenge. Six types of reflexes were identified, which seemed to form a sequential episode. I have termed these as follows: text anchoring, personalization, role allocation, automatic identification, elaborate identification and cultural-ideological positioning. Although some of these processes may be active simultaneously, they appeared in an order reflecting degrees of cognitive investment in the subject matter. Text anchoring,

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personalization and role allocation tended to appear immediately in the first few minutes of the conversation; identification processes (including automatic identification) were observed at later stages during the interview. It is worth noting that none of these reflexes concerned the actual content of the excerpts read but were cognitive aids in placing the activity within the larger agenda of policy-making. In other words, in trying to understand the concept of multilingualism, language planners instinctively tried to figure out the role it played in the context of their work. Figure 3.1 summarizes the interplay of these coherence reflexes within the broader discursive framework. The numbers reflect the stages in an episode when these reflexes typically became manifest. In the following section, closely related categories have been discussed together.

1. Text anchoring

6. Culturalideological positioning

2. Personalization

Discursive Framework

3. Role allocation

5. Reflected identification

4. Automatic identification

Figure 3.1  Sequential patterns in focus interviews.

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Textual anchoring Efforts at textual anchoring may be understood as the participants’ efforts to situate the selected excerpts within a broader context of known policy documents and to identify these as specific document (or text) types. Successful anchoring seemed to activate specific expectations about context, form and content. Such efforts were very common at the beginning of the interview, once participants had read the excerpts. While recognition of the texts seemed important to all participants, reactions varied depending on their familiarity with the text type. Although its source was clearly indicated on the sheet after each quotation, some interviewees immediately asked about the source document, while others seemed pleased to have recognized it at first glance. A lack of familiarity with the document led to insecurity as to how to formulate a response. Much as in the real world, participant reaction also seemed to depend upon how serious and formal respondents considered this task and to what extent they felt under pressure to produce a coherent response. Examples (1)–(4) illustrate some different reactions by language planners observed in the data. In terms of response formality, (1)–(3) can be considered formal, while in (4) the respondent adopts a more informal approach to answering our questions. With regard to text familiarity, (3) and (4) differ from one another, in that the respondent in the latter example did not recognize the particular excerpts shown, but did recognize the type of discourse and text. (1)  Respondent asking for context Resp: [reading quote] may I ask you from which commissioner that comes? Is it a quotation from one of the speeches of one of the commissioners, no? Int: No, it is from an official paper . . . Resp: . . . it starts like a communication of a commissioner . . . Int: Yes . . . it is from the unit for multilingualism. (2)  Respondent recognizing quotation Resp: The first quotation or all of them? Int: Only the first. Resp: Yes, this is probably from the communication on the strategy on multilingualism. (3)  Respondent feels insecure due to unfamiliarity with document Int: . . . may I in this context ask you a question? What we asked the other interviewees is to have a look at two or three short quotations from the new

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Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration framework strategy for multilingualism . . . are you familiar with this strategy at all? Resp: I know the documents but it’s not something I have studied specifically or for the purposes of work . . . Int: . . . that is not at all necessary. If you take a look at the first statement and perhaps just tell us what comes to your mind spontaneously, what kind of associations you get when you read this. Resp: Associations in terms of legal associations or just interpretations? Int: Just the first thing that springs to mind. (4)  Respondent does not feel insecure despite unfamiliarity with document Resp: I see this is from a commission document. . . . Int: Do you know that particular passage? The one that you’ve just read? Resp: It does ring a bell. I must admit it must be something very terribly famous. Isn’t that very shaming if I don’t know what this is . . . 2005 . . . A famous document from 2005. No. I wouldn’t attempt to identify which precise document it was but it rings a bell, yes . . . Int: It does ring a bell . . . Resp: Can you tell me, can you put me out of my misery, which document it comes from? Int: Is it from the new framework strategy for multilingualism? Resp: It could be. Yes, it could well be . . . 2005.

The difference between (3) and (4) may also reflect differences between the respondents in terms of involvement with multilingualism in their work. In (4), the respondent seems to have seen many such documents and text passages and found it easy to classify the one shown immediately as a typical instance of the same type.

Personalization and role allocation Following recognition of the text type, participants turned to defining their own role within the policy-making process. They did this by personalizing and localizing the text within their own work and breaking it down to their individual sphere of experience, competence and influence. Consequently, the concept of multilingualism policy appeared as a localized and personalized phenomenon. Personalizing and role-allocating reactions occurred almost automatically in most interviews, either in the form of participants’ experiences with multilingualism at the workplace or in the form of descriptions of their encounters with multilingual situations outside the institutional context. Personalization and localization efforts could be observed not only at the beginning of, but throughout, the interviews.

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Role allocation, as understood here, is closely connected to personalization but specifically refers to instances of speech in which participants make references to multilingualism in an argumentation context, either to evaluate their own competence and role within the activity they identified as language planning or by citing recent studies published in the field in an attempt to underline their point or argument. Both forms of role allocation occurred without much prior reasoning and can be interpreted as automatic argumentation devices, although citing studies seemed to require greater cognitive investment than making references to one’s own role. Interestingly, all participants cited the same surveys across all institutions in which the interviews took place.3 Some examples of how relationships between the passages and the respondents were established are provided here. These references occurred at the very beginning of the interview before or after the respondents had read the excerpts. They show different contextualization efforts in that (5) and (6) refer to recent or ongoing personal involvement, and (7) to a situation when the respondent (or his/her unit) came in direct contact with the particular policy document shown. (5)  Yeah the first quotation it points to also what I’ve been working with in terms of the communication on culture and also what we’re working with in the intercultural dialogue. (6)  I see this is from a commission document. I would say that I have seen the proof of the concept that diversity is celebrated in the programmes that we run definitely in the last 6 years I’ve been working on. . . . (7)  They did look at this for one of our . . . decisions I remember looking at it actually if you look at the paragraphs in the decision . . . one of the paragraphs we drafted it having looked at this particular document. But in any case [reads].

In relation to role and responsibilities allocation, respondents often did not foreground their own competence but tended to refer to colleagues believed to be more qualified to respond to the issue at hand. It seemed that some participants did not appreciate the importance of their own role in the policyplanning process or actively tried to draw attention to their limited knowledge and experience; responses indicate that the participants tended to interpret their own contribution as small: (8)  Here my colleagues in multilingualism might be able to go further than I am . . . but I must say just from a little bit of an outsider but still working also with multilingualism but really most of my work has been press work . . .

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Intercultural Contact, Language Learning and Migration (9)  In our working methods but maybe first of all from the mini-perspective of our working methods starting really at the most immediate level of the way in which we work with our committees and with our colleagues in member states, etc. (10)  I can only really speak of the last ten years or so because that’s the limit of my historical experience on European policy of any sort language or otherwise.

References to studies were made in most interviews and served to expand the participants’ own understanding of the subject matter and support their arguments. This is particularly evident in (11) where the speaker gives his/her opinion first and then seems to remember that this conclusion was precisely mentioned in a study read previously. In contrast, in (12) the speaker introduces the results of a study to add another perspective to the discussion. In (13), the speaker advances his/her belief that the study had a decisive impact on the decision-making process. In a few examples, the link between current policy and the Lisbon Strategy was established: (11)  I think it’s actually quite compatible in many respects with what’s good for the economy because multilingualism is good for the economy and openness and diversity is good for the economy that is we have a study of the economy of culture in Europe which give us the reason to believe that this kind of policy is also what’s a comparative advantage for Europe in the 21st century. (12)  Of course there are studies on the issue of European identity. I saw a few weeks ago the Eurobarometer study which was trying to define European identity, what might it consist of, and it did come up with some values. . . . (13)  There was a lot of scepticism and there have been tough questions asked in parliament as well but I think that in the meantime when the Commissioner presented the policy to the press and when this study came out proving that 11 percent of business was lost because of lack in language skills. . . .

Automatic and reflected identification The category of identification refers to instances of speech that signal agree­ ment and disagreement with the text content from a personal perspective. Compared to the categories introduced so far, identification may be seen as requiring slightly more reasoning and is likely to be activated at a later stage of the interview. Identification is mainly negotiated at two levels: at the level either of current multilingualism policy (which presupposes familiarity with the discourse) or identification with the EU or working institution. At the more

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automatic end of the continuum, we can include cues of agreement routinely used in institutional discourse. The forms of positioning found in the data reflect what in Critical Discourse Analysis might be called us-and-them discourse (e.g. van Dijk 1988), that is discourse of including oneself in the group of language planners against the discourse of positioning oneself in opposition to those responsible for this policy. Such instances often provide evidence of internalized identification with the institution in one of the following ways: identification with the EU as an institution (‘we’, ‘us’), uncritical reproduction of policy content (in an argumentative context) and outright agreement with language policy. Forms of identification may occur below the level of awareness. The most formal example of automatic identification occurred in the form of the thirdperson singular in replies to a personal question, as can be seen in example (14). One example of uncritical policy reproduction can be observed in (15) where argumentation patterns from the Lisbon Strategy are merged with the respondent’s own views. (14)  Institutional identification Int: And what would be your involvement with such a case – what would you do in your work? Resp: The approach institution X takes is that a complaint has to be analysed first of all whether it is admissible . . .; (15)  Reproduction of policy content Int: And you mentioned the strength of diversity. Could you elaborate on that a little bit? Resp: There’s economic factors like for example the huge language industry, translation, free copy writing, what have you. There’s a huge industry. Also the fact that of course business is also lost because of language skills lacking but there is also I think a lot of business done because of language competencies or by European firms all over the world. It’s multilingualism. Knowing languages also gives people the possibility to be more mobile, to find other jobs elsewhere. There’s so many aspects to it which I think are a strength. People talk in different languages and will still be able to communicate by learning a second language or a third language which is commonly understood or with the help of translators and interpreters. I think it’s the core of what we are in Europe.

Elaborate identification efforts, on the other hand, reflect a critical evaluation of the concept and a conclusion deriving from these considerations. One common way of explaining the concept of multilingualism was embedding

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it in the history of language policy-making of the EU over the past decades. Some participants tried to differentiate multilingualism from terminology used in previous years. This form of inferencing tended to occur at an early stage of the interview. While these attempts at establishing semantic relations remained value neutral, most efforts to identify with multilingualism policy failed upon reflection and led to open or indirect criticism. Most interviews contained at least subtle reservation towards policy content, despite the apparently automatic identification of participants with their institution. How criticism was expressed differed widely, ranging from open deconstruction of the text to ironic remarks or resignation and an acceptance of ‘reality’. Some respondents immediately interpreted the excerpts as a way of presenting ideas in a certain institutional jargon, which contained catchy phrases and irreconcilable differences. The most elaborate example of ‘open deconstruction’ of this type of interpretation is the interview with one respondent who systematically analysed the excerpts in atomic detail. In doing so, the respondent highlighted fundamental inconsistencies in the wording of the text. Most analyses were not as elaborate, but failure to comprehend the policy message – or to reconcile it with experienced reality – can be illustrated with other examples. Resignation was expressed by those respondents who acknowledged the ideological value of the policy, but saw it as conflicting with policy practice (16). The aims of the policy, therefore, seemed unrealistic and removed. Similarly, another respondent (17) tried to explain the policy document as a means of creating an institutional narrative, even if this might not be realistic if taken literally: (16)  Clash between ideology and practice Int: So if you hear the word multilingualism which of the three quotes do you think would reflect your understanding of the term best? Resp: If I forgot that I was a lawyer, I mean in the first place, I would say the second one. (17)  Institutional ‘narrative’ Int: And you would agree with this statement completely? Resp: In principle yes. You might say it’s a little bit idealistic, that this is what the European Union is, because of course when you talk about a European Union or indeed a country or perhaps even a human being you cannot give one description in one sentence without it being subject to further refinements but at the end of the day this is the narrative and narratives are a very important thing in a policy house.

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In yet other cases, distance from policy content, and indeed multilingualism policy in general, was expressed more subtly by making inferences about politicians’ possible intentions when drafting the document, thus clearly dissociating the speaker from the process. This dissociation can be seen in (18), where the respondent tries to answer the question why multilingualism appeared on the Commission’s agenda. The final highlighted phrase clearly includes an ironic undertone. (18)  I guess it’s an indication of the fact that the Commission . . . as they are politicians wish to be seen to be giving a higher profile to the issue of multilingualism and that’s, and I word that carefully, I suppose they wish to be able to signal that there is a unit which is responsible for multilingualism, there is a commissioner who is responsible for multilingualism and one can speculate about why that’s now come to the fore rather than 5 years ago 10  years ago. . . . Obviously that’s a relatively non-contentious belief that the  Union should be seen to be trying to do something for language diversity.

Failure to reconcile contradictions raised by the interview situation sometimes took less elegant forms. At the most minute level, conceptual conflict may best be understood in terms of Levelt’s (1989) theory of speech production. Starting from a mental concept or image, the speaker accesses lexical entries stored in the lexicon, which are then morpho-syntactically and phonologically encoded. Conflicts may occur at every stage of this process. Conflicting concepts may manifest themselves in speech in the form of competing ideas, which are then sequentially corrected or amended. Conceptual conflicts, however, can also be seen as occurring at more global levels, reflecting the overall ability of a speaker to cohere conceptually with a topic. In the interviews, conceptual incoherence was communicated in dead ends, incoherent argumentation or jumpy discourse, indicating that the subject matter seemed to exceed the momentary abilities or readiness of the respondents to make sense of the issue. In the two team interviews (i.e. interviews with two respondents), the lead respondent passed the word on to his/her colleague, while in situations with one respondent only, respondents suddenly switched to a different voice (e.g. anecdotes from personal life (see Mishler 1986); for a more detailed analysis of such instances, see Studer et al. 2010 and Studer 2012). At the smallest linguistic level, these breaks occurred, for example, when respondents spontaneously refined or corrected their own speech.4

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Cultural-ideological positioning While questions relating to the participants’ personal linguistic and cultural background formed a fixed component of the interview, most respondents were generally very quick at positioning themselves without being prompted. At the discursive level, ideological positioning occurred in instances of participants’ references to specific language situations in Europe, and specifically to their own linguistic background and culture. In the interview data, two types of discourse could be identified. Bearing Moscovici’s (1976) theory of social change in mind, these types might be termed majority and minority discourse, respectively. Attitudes tended to be communicated differently when expressed by members of one of the dominant European language communities. Members of the majority language communities tended to background their own linguistic roots and tried to foreground the value of communities other than their own. This is nicely illustrated in (19) and (20), where a German speaker justifies his appreciation of his own language and an English speaker bemoans the increasing importance of her own native language at work in the European Commission. (19)  Well, I have no objection, I’m not here to propagate the German language, the German language is a beautiful one. . . . I love the German language but this doesn’t mean that I want other people to speak it; if they enjoy it, if they find it useful I’m happy; but I am just as happy if they use English, French or any other. . . . (20)  I have been working in the sector for six years and we have probably made year by year less of an effort, less of an investment in language diversity. For example, six years ago, even working documents with our experts tended to be in French and English, so we translated them by translation service, and in our meetings we tended to have probably five language interpretation regimes, and over time that has fallen off mostly at the request of the participants. There’s quite a strong lobby amongst that group of experts to work in English only with the argument that this puts everybody on an equal footing. . . .

For members of smaller language communities, however, diversity was often perceived as an achievement in their struggle for recognition of their own language community, even where only expressed indirectly: (21)  I think I should give my impression [about the excerpts] from the point of view of somebody who comes from the new member states. Because this enlargement changed the number of languages we are now using.

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In this particular instance, the excerpt shown to respondents is immediately connected to the person’s own experience as a member of a language community only recently granted official status in the European Union. Generally, the link between one’s own background and the excerpt was more readily established in cases where participants identified themselves as belonging to a minority group. These minority groups defined themselves as smaller language communities or groups of cultural newcomers in Europe. Worth noting, too, is that these respondents expressed a more enthusiastic and positive picture of multilingualism policy in general. While the majority of respondents tended to adopt a pragmatic approach to the dwindling role of their own language and culture in Europe, some saw the language and culture issue as a power struggle between the dominant European language communities. In the final example, the respondent emphasized German efforts towards maintaining their status in Europe: (22)  Comments on German efforts towards language maintenance Int: I think the use of one’s own language is an emotional thing as well. Do you think this may give rise to controversy or to problems in the future, this development or this competition between the major languages in Europe? Resp: I don’t know if it’s a problem but we can see that the German authorities are attaching enormous importance to the presence of their language every­where. . . .

Conclusion This study set out to explore in greater detail the informal language-planning process in a large political organization, such as the EU, so as to reveal underlying communicative practices that guide language planners’ negotiation activities. A detailed study of language planning from a socio-psychological and microdiscursive perspective has not been undertaken to date, although political decisions, just like any other negotiation process, may be assumed to be sensitive to situational and contextual conditions. The study operated on the assumption that the focus interview provides an experimental setting offering approximate insight into how focused interaction between language planners might take place in the real world. While this assumption awaits validation through the analysis of data gained from recorded observation, the study has shown that the interactions examined activate recurrent communicative patterns that seem to relate to, and reflect, language planners’ attempts to identify with language

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as an expression of their personal biography and culture. These attempts have been found to be more or less automatic and tend to follow a series of steps. These steps, first, reflect the language planners’ effort at interpreting the subject for discussion in the context of institutionalized language-planning activities. This first step commonly includes a reference to the language planners’ roles within this process, containing cues revealing their identification with current language policy. This initial phase then leads to a broader discursive engagement with the subject in which the underlying cultural-ideological positions of the language planners become accessible. Such ‘anchoring’ in one’s personal biography happens both spontaneously and reflectively and guides the subsequent positioning with respect to majority and minority language discourses. The findings of this study point to the conclusion that cultural-ideological positioning forms an integral part of language planning at the micro-interactive level that cannot easily be detached from institutionalized language planning. The study thus suggests that informal language planning, especially in intercultural and multilingual contexts, is strongly guided by the cultural-ideological background of the planners involved. More attention should, therefore, be paid to bottom-up micro-level language-planning processes as it is often during these processes that policies are developed which impact on the linguistic rights of both minority and majority communities.

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Appendix: Excerpts presented to language planners during the interview 1. ‘It is this diversity that makes the European Union what it is: not a “melting pot” in which differences are rendered down, but a common home in which diversity is celebrated, and where our many mother tongues are a source of wealth and a bridge to greater solidarity and mutual understanding’. (Commission 2005 596, 1.1) 2. ‘Language is the most direct expression of culture; it is what makes us human and what gives each of us a sense of identity’. (Commission 2005 596, 1.1) 3. ‘The European Union is developing a highly competitive economy. Intercultural communication skills are assuming an ever-larger role in global marketing and sales strategies. To trade with companies in other Member States, European businesses need skills in the languages of the European Union as well as in the languages of our other trading partners around the globe’. (Commission 2005 596, III.1)

Notes 1 A detailed discussion of the conflation of ideology and culture in Bakhtin’s thinking is outside the scope of this chapter. I have operationalized the concept of ideology in Studer (2013). 2 The data were collected in various stages during the year 2007 and 2008. Only limited details of participants are provided here to preserve anonymity in a narrow field, but the sociolinguistic data collected allowed for more evidence-informed interpretations to be made by the researcher. 3 The surveys most commonly referred to were ELAN and Talking Sense. For a sociolinguistic discussion of these surveys, see Sherman et al. (2012). 4 Conceptual conflicts, however, should not be confused with grammatical correction, which rather takes place at the level of lexical access and morphosyntactic encoding. Such corrections occurred frequently with both non- and native speakers of English.

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays, trans. M. Holquist, ed. C. Emerson and M. Holquist. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.

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Calder, B. J. (1977), ‘Focus groups and the nature of qualitative marketing research’, Journal of Marketing Research, 14(3): 353–64. Commission of the European Communities (2005), A New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism. Brussels: Commission of the European Communities. Cooper, R. L. (1989), Language Planning and Social Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Denzin, N. K. (1978), The Research Act: A Theoretical Introduction to Sociological Methods (2nd edn). New York: McGraw Hill. Dijk, T. A. van (1988), News as Discourse. Hillside, NJ: Erlbaum. Drew, P. and Heritage, J. (1992), ‘Analyzing talk at work: An introduction’, in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–65. Edwards, J. (1994), Multilingualism. New York: Routledge. Fairclough, N. (2001), Language and Power (2nd edn). London: Longman. Hyltenstam, K. and Stroud, C. (1996), ‘Language maintenance’, in H. Goebl, P. H. Nelde, Z. Stary and W. Wölck (eds), Kontaktlinguistik. Contact Linguistics. Linguistique de contact. Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung. An International Handbook of Contemporary Research. Manuel international des recherches contemporaines, vol. 1. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 567–78. Levelt, W. J. M. (1989), Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Levinson, S. C. (1992), ‘Activity types and language’, in P. Drew and J. Heritage (eds), Talk at Work: Interaction in Institutional Settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 66–100. Marková, I., Linell, P., Grossen, M. and Salazar-Orvig, A. (2007), Dialogue in Focus Groups: Exploring Socially Shared Knowledge. London: Equinox. Mishler, E. G. (1986), Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moscovici, S. (1976), Social Influence and Social Change. London: Academic Press. Neustupny, J. V. and Nekvapil, J. (2003), ‘Language management in the Czech Republic’, Current Issues in Language Planning, 4: 181–366. Pelinka, A. (2007), ‘Language as a political category: The viewpoint of political science’, Journal of Language and Politics, 6(1): 129–43. Potter, J. and Puchta, C. (2002), ‘Manufacturing individual opinions: Market research focus groups and the discursive psychology of evaluation’, British Journal of Social Psychology, 41(3): 345–63. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A. and Jefferson, G. (1974), ‘A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation’, Language, 50(4.1): 696–735. Sarbin, T. R. (ed.) (1986), Narrative Psychology: The Storied Nature of Human Conduct. Westport, CT: Praeger. Schiffmann, H. F. (1998), Linguistic Culture and Language Policy. London: Routledge.

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Sherman, T., Engelhardt, O. and Nekvapil, J. (2012), ‘Language use in multinational companies in Europe: A theoretical and methodological reframing’, in P. Studer and I. Werlen (eds), Linguistic Diversity in Europe: Current Trends and Discourses. Berlin, Boston, Beijing: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 287–310. Studer, P. (2012), ‘Conceptual contradiction and discourses on multilingualism’, in P. Studer and I. Werlen (eds), Linguistic Diversity in Europe: Current Trends and Discourses. Berlin, Boston, Beijing: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 115–35. —(2013), ‘Managing language ideologies in informal language planning episodes’, in E. Barát, P. Studer and J. Nekvapil (eds), Ideological Conceptualisations of Language: Discourses of Linguistic Diversity. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, pp. 193–216. Studer, P. and Werlen, I. (2012), ‘Introduction’, in P. Studer and I. Werlen (eds), Linguistic Diversity in Europe: Current Trends and Discourses. Berlin, Boston, Beijing: de Gruyter Mouton, pp. 1–20. Studer, P., Kreiselmaier, F. and Flubacher, M.-C. (2010), ‘Language planning in the European Union: A micro-level perspective’, European Journal of Language Policy, 2(2): 251–70. Todorov, T. (1984), Mikhail Bakhtin: The Dialogical Principle, trans. W. Godzich. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Wenger, E. (1998), Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Part Two

Language Learning: Communicating in the Contact Zone In an era of increasing diversity in migration and intercultural contact, language learning is becoming ‘ever more important – central to politics, economics, history, and most obviously education’ (Fischer 2012: 23). Language learning environments, the learning ecology, learners and methodologies are all adjusting constantly in response to rapid social and technological change. As individual users worldwide harness communication technologies, especially mobile technology, to their own needs, they often use devices and software in inventive ways not anticipated by their designers. Developments in Web 2.0 technologies allow access to information and the possibility of interactivity in the form of asynchronous and synchronous chat, while voice and video communication over the internet are now significantly more accessible. Thanks to these developments, diversity in learning environments is also increasing, taking language learning out of the classroom into more informal environments and facilitating learner autonomy. At one end of the interaction continuum, a wide range of commercial and other materials is available for use by those learning languages outside the education system. Commercially available materials are often sold as all-in-one language-learning solutions for learners working alone. Of course, the mere fact of learning language alone does not make an effective autonomous language learner. In fact, when using this type of material, it emerges that successful autonomous learners make the most of opportunities for face-to-face interaction (Nielson 2011: 110). Further, research on distance learning has shown that ‘interaction is critical to the success of online learners’ (p. 112; a point confirmed

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by Kelly Hall and Walsh (2002: 187) and by Jepson (2005)). Indeed, Nielson’s 2011 study of the use of commercially available CALL materials by motivated zero beginner learners in the workplace found huge attrition rates and ‘very limited proficiency gains’ (p. 125), leading her to conclude that learners needed technical support, guidance, access to a larger range of materials and, it seems, more human contact: ‘While CALL products offer increasingly sophisticated graphics and interfaces, they are not yet able to offer an alternative to human support or interaction’ (p. 125). At the other end of the interaction continuum, Web 2.0 is distinguished by interactivity and the generation of content by users, with seemingly unlimited access to authentic materials and the possibility of an easy means to communicate with native speakers. Though this environment would seem to be an obvious means of facilitating learner autonomy in language acquisition, things are not that simple. Just as working alone does not make an autonomous language learner, neither does using technology for language learning, of itself, promote autonomy. As Benson points out, much thinking on learner autonomy sees autonomy as ‘an internal capacity of the learner . . . to take charge of, responsibility for, or control over one’s own learning’ (2009: 218). For effective self-directed learning to take place, this capacity needs to be developed regardless of the environment, materials or technology being used. As Blake (2009) has so pithily observed: ‘technology itself does not constitute a methodology’ (p. 824), and he concludes that the main concern is now with student agency with well thought-out and well-planned, expert assistance (p. 832). One of the tools developed at supranational level to support, record and measure life-long language learning has been the European Language Portfolio (ELP) developed by the Council of Europe and launched in 2001 (Little et al. 2011). Supplementary to the Common European Framework of reference, and comprising three parts, the ELP contains a language passport; a language biography and a dossier (Dobson 2013: 233; Little 2009: 60). The ELP has been shown by Little (2009) to have functioned as a successful tool for collaborative curriculum negotiation, assessment and certification for nearly 1,000 adult immigrants with refugee status to Ireland, between 2001 and 2008. The chapters in this part cover various types of language acquisition and the development of intercultural competence in different situations, two informal and two in higher educational institutions. A common thread that runs through the chapters in this part is the impulse towards agency and the varied ways in which learners develop their own voice within the contact zone. Language

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learning and developing greater intercultural awareness can become a means of finding one’s own voice and so part of identity formation and individual empowerment. In the opening chapter, Velghe and Blommaert explore the development of voice and identity through the widening of language repertoires, in this case textspeak used by middle-aged women in Wesbank, an economically marginalized community near Cape Town. Using semi-structured face-toface interviews, group interviews and the analysis of text messages, the chapter examines motivations for learning and using textspeak and the language repertoires and norms developed. The participants used their mobile phones in church-related activities, for community activism or for communication with friends. Device literacy and acquisition of textspeak are shown to happen within ad hoc communities of practice (Barton and Lee 2013: 32) and the learning proves no less effective for being informal; indeed, this research throws up an interesting role-reversal as the ethnographer becomes a learner and the subjects of the research teachers of the variety of textspeak used in the community. Using surveys and proficiency tests, the chapter by Skrzypek, Kopečková, Bidzińska and Singleton analyses the acculturation of the Polish migrant community in Ireland after EU enlargement in 2004. Even 5 years after the 2008 economic crash, Ireland had the third highest number of Polish migrants in the world and the highest per capita (Carberry 2013). Skrzypek et al. find high levels of ELV among the Polish community, with participants reporting extremely strong attachment to Polishness. Current changes in the experience of migration are demonstrated by the amount of travel to, and contact with, Poland, with 96 per cent of the sample keeping up with news from home. Along with these trends, participants reported positive attitudes towards learning English and towards the host community in Ireland, with high motivation to achieve fluency in English, where English proficiency was seen as a means to finding better employment. Qualitative analysis of post hoc learner reports of a tandem learning experience aimed at developing intercultural competence in a mixed-nationality group of third-level students forms the core of Kennedy and Furlong’s chapter on faceto-face tandem learning. While much tandem learning in recent years has been done through text-based communication tools online (Little et al. 1999; Appel 1999; O’Dowd 2011), this chapter reminds us of the importance of face-to-face interaction in language acquisition and intercultural communication. Kennedy and Furlong examine students’ reflections on their meetings with native speakers

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of their target languages and the role of increased cultural awareness, non-verbal cues, motivation and autonomy in enhanced intercultural communication. Sudhershan’s chapter on self-assessment of intercultural communicative competence using an e-portfolio is based on field notes from class observations, focus-group data, one-to-one interviews and documentation including student journals and evaluations. The chapter questions traditional notions of communicative competence and stresses that intercultural competence is as important as communicative competence to learners. With sufficient training in European Language Portfolio use, self-assessment of intercultural competence can encourage autonomous engagement with the learning process. In common with Kennedy and Furlong’s chapter, the qualitative analysis of learners’ reflections foregrounds learners’ voices as they share their confusion, struggles, moments of illumination and triumphs in shaping their intercultural and plurilinguistic identities inside and outside the classroom. The chapters which follow investigate how learner agency can be supported in diverse ways and in diverse settings. Whether as individuals or communities, with or without technology, learners are seen, through interaction with others, to expand their language repertoires for social and professional purposes. In so doing, they strive towards greater understanding of themselves and others in a never-ending process of becoming.

References Appel, M.-Ch. (1999), Tandem Language Learning by E-mail: Some Basic Principles and a Case Study. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin, CLCS Occasional Paper 54. Barton, D. and Lee, C. (2013), Language Online: Investigating Digital Texts and Practices. Abingdon and New York: Routledge. Benson, P. (2009), ‘Mapping out the world of language learning beyond the classroom’, in F. Kjisik, P. Voller, N. Aoki and Y. Nakata (eds), Mapping the Terrain of Learner Autonomy: Learning Environments, Learning Communities and Identities. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 217–35. Blake, R. J. (2009), ‘The use of technology for second language distance learning’, Modern Language Journal, 93(s1): 822–55. Carberry, G. (2013), ‘Number of Polish weekend schools doubles to 24 over past three years’, Irish Times, 27 August 2013. http://www.irishtimes.com/news/education/ number-of-polish-weekend-schools-doubles-to-24-over-past-three-years-1.1506362 [accessed 27 August 2013].

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Dobson, A. (2013), ‘European language portfolio’, in M. Byram and A. Hu (eds), Routledge Encyclopedia of Language Teaching and Learning (2nd edn). Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 232–3. Fischer, K. (2012), ‘Language learning and culture in an age of globalisation’, in B. Della Chiesa, J. Scott and C. Hinton (eds), Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding. Paris: OECD Publishing, pp. 23–4. Jepson, K. (2005), ‘Conversation and negotiated interaction – in text and voice chat rooms’, Language Learning & Technology, 9(3): 79–98. Kelly Hall, J. and Walsh, M. (2002), ‘Teacher-student interaction and language learning’, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 22: 186–203. Little, D. (2009), ‘Learner autonomy in action: Adult immigrants learning English in Ireland’, in F. Kjisik, P. Voller, N. Aoki and Y. Nakata (eds), Mapping the Terrain of Learner Autonomy: Learning Environments, Learning Communities and Identities. Tampere: Tampere University Press, pp. 51–85. Little D., Goullier, F. and Hughes, G. (2011), The European Language Portfolio: The Story So Far. http://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/elp/elp-reg/Source/Publications/ ELP_StorySoFar_July2011_Final_EN.pdf [accessed 25 August 2013]. Little, D., Ushioda, E. and Appel, M.-Ch. (1999), Evaluating Tandem Language Learning by E-mail: Report on a Bilateral Project. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin Centre for Language and Communication Studies CLCS Occasional Paper 55. Nielson, K. B. (2011), ‘Self-study with language learning software’, Language Learning & Technology, 15(3): 110–29. O’Dowd, R. (2011), ‘Online foreign language interaction: Moving from the periphery to the core of foreign language education?’, Language Teaching, 44(3): 368–80.

4

Emergent New Literacies and the Mobile Phone: Informal Language Learning, Voice and Identity in a South African Township Fie Velghe and Jan Blommaert

Introduction Since people never learn ‘a language’, but specific and specialized bits of languages, sufficient to grant them ‘voice’ and to make themselves understood by others (Blommaert 2003), people’s repertoires can consequently be seen as an organized complex of semiotic traces of power they gather in the course of their lives (Blommaert and Backus 2011). ‘People gather things they need in order to be seen by others as “normal”, understandable social beings’ (Blommaert and Backus 2011: 28), or in order to have a voice in specific contexts, specific time frames and with specific interlocutors. Learning processes of language(s) ‘develop in a variety of learning environments and through a variety of learning modes, ranging from regimented and uniform learning modes characterizing schools and other formal learning environments, to fleeting and ephemeral “encounters” with language in informal learning environments’ (Blommaert and Velghe 2012: 1). The high uptake and intensive use of mobile communication technologies open new opportunities for, and consequently generate a need to investigate, informal (language) learning. In an impoverished and excluded community such as the research site Wesbank (see later), where ‘the macrocontextual circumstances of poverty, unemployment and social marginalization turn various forms of literacies into rare commodities’ (Blommaert and Velghe 2012: 2), the high uptake of the mobile phone has made certain forms of literacy (device literacy, SMS literacy, standard English, Afrikaans and ‘supervernacular’1 literacy etc.) more accessible to vast numbers of poor and marginalized people. The large cost difference between instant chat messaging and SMS versus voice

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services encourages illiterate, low-literate and literate people to learn how to read and write SMS and chat messages (see Aker et al. 2010) and instigates literacy interests and practices that were often absent before the uptake of mobile phones. Online and mobile communication technologies open a vast space of opportunities for various forms of informal learning, ‘offering users access to vocabularies, registers, styles and genres, as well as templates for practices’ (Blommaert and Velghe 2012: 1–2). In line with the New Literacy Studies (NLS) movement, we approach literacy here as a complex of social and cultural practices rather than the mere acquisition of ‘technical’ reading and writing skills (see Street 1984, 1993; Heath 1983; Barton and Hamilton 1998; Prinsloo and Breier 1996). Literacy must be seen as an unequally distributed resource which (re)produces old and new inequalities, integrally linked to cultural and power structures (Juffermans and Van der Aa 2011). Obtaining voice then becomes a struggle, relating to having the freedom to have one’s voice heard as well as having the freedom to develop a voice worth hearing (Hymes 1996). With the arrival of the mobile phone, new power structures have come into play, and the new communicative environments – created by the mobile phone and other ICTs – have developed an elaborate and deterritorialized sociolinguistic system which people (partly) have to learn in order to become part of and have a voice in those new communicative communities or new ‘supergroups’ (Blommaert 2011: 4). New communicative environments create ‘new channels of communication, new linguistic and cultural forms, new ways of forming and maintaining contacts, networks, groups and new opportunities for identity making’ (Varis and Wang 2011: 70). Those new communicative environments – created by the mobile phone in this case – are challenging the established rules of ‘standard’ language practices. A new supervernacular – textspeak or instant messaging language in this case – is however ‘not merely characterized by happy heterogeneity but is constantly controlled, ordered and curtailed’ (Varis and Wang 2011: 75). Literate people who are learning ‘new’ specific and specialized bits of language(s) used on the internet and in mobile communicative environments are thus broadening their language repertoires, in order to function and be seen and heard as ‘normal’, understandable beings within the cultural and power structures of new communicative communities. Since not anything ‘goes’ or is allowed in texting, an emergent normativity goes hand in hand with the development of such a new global vernacular. ‘Gr8, C U@8’ will be regarded as ‘correct’ according to the norms and rules of the ‘global medialect’ (McIntosh 2010: 337); ‘Gr8, S U@8’ would be regarded as ‘wrong’.

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As it is possible to write things ‘wrong’ or ‘correctly’ in textspeak, the norms, modes and codes of the supervernacular have to be learned and made one’s own. Just as one has to learn standardized forms of language, one has to learn and acquire the supervernaculars and their local dialects. Not learned in formal schooling, alternative literacies, such as textspeak, are learned through often very informal, more democratically organized learning practices (Blommaert and Backus 2011). As repertoires are ‘indexical biographies’ (Blommaert and Backus 2011:  22) of the people using them, it is important to speak or write ‘right’. Repertoires, and the possibility of applying, or not being able to apply, them in the right place, at the right time and in the right context, produce social and cultural meanings of the self and ‘contribute to the potential to perform certain social roles, inhabit certain identities and be seen in a particular way by others’ (Blommaert and Backus 2011: 22). Not much research has been done on the basic informal (language) learning processes that the appropriation and distribution of mobile phones in the developing world create, and for which no special applications and programs need to be developed. Based on ongoing ethnographic fieldwork in Wesbank, an impoverished and disenfranchised community in Cape Town, South Africa, this chapter will look at the informal learning processes literate people engage in on their phones, in order and in an attempt to get as much out of their technological device as possible, to become members of the new communicative environment and to create certain identities and voices that this new membership generates (for a detailed description and reflection on informal learning processes on the mobile phone of illiterate and semi-literate people, see Velghe (2012)). We will focus on the ways in which and to what extent (semi-)literate women have found their own ways to appropriate the phone and how the uptake of new communication technologies has instigated literacy interests and has broadened people’s language repertoires. In other words, this chapter will look at the informal learning strategies women engage in, in an attempt to make ‘themselves understood by others’ and to gain voice in new communicative realities by learning how to become literate in the new communicative environment – created by the uptake of mobile phones and the access to instant chat messaging and the internet more generally. Let us start by preparing the canvas, and provide some background information on Wesbank and the research methodologies. After that, we will turn to different case studies of informal learning practices and mobile phone use among literate and semi-literate women in the community. In the first case study

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of the woman Pearl,2 we will see how certain institutions and organizations (e.g. the church) can become learning environments for (new) literacy acquisition. In the three subsequent case studies (Linda, Lisa and Ernestine), individual channels of mobile phone ideologies, identity making and peer group pressure prompted the women to become as literate as possible in the new communicative environment.

Background to the research The field Wesbank was built in 1999 as part of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) implemented by the first South African democratic government after the abolition of apartheid in 1994, as a response to an evergrowing crisis in housing due to internal migrations from rural areas into the cities and the mushrooming of illegal settlements. Situated 27 kilometres out from the centre of Cape Town and intended to give home to deprived people irrespective of colour and descent, the building of Wesbank was one of the first post-apartheid housing projects in an area that was not segregated along racial lines. As a consequence, ‘black’, ‘coloured’, some ‘white’ people3 and a growing number of African immigrants all live in the same community, in over 5,000 fully subsidized, but poorly equipped, small houses. As Wesbank was intended to relocate ‘minimum income’ families, poverty has characterized the eligible population from the first days of its existence. Basic service delivery is very limited, education levels are low, gangsterism, drug abuse and crime rates very high and (chronic) unemployment rates for the area stand at over 60 per cent.

Methodologies The data for this chapter have been collected by Fie during two separate ethnographic fieldwork periods in the community from January to May 2011 and November 2011 to April 2012, with a special focus on mobile phone use and literacy among middle-aged women4. The specific focus on (middle-aged) women is for several reasons: first, a lot of households in the community are run by females; husbands and fathers are either working or are absent due to divorce, death or separation. All of the women discussed in this chapter are

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single, divorced or widows and are thus the matriarchs of the household. First, because of their position in the household, their often very limited educational background and overall unemployment, a lot of those women struggle to transgress their often very limited social spaces and to have their voices heard. Second, a lot of research on the social, cultural and learning aspects of ICTs, and mobile phones more specifically, has in a South African context, as elsewhere, mainly focussed on youngsters. As a consequence, research on the empowering capacities of mobile phone use and mobile phone literacy among middle-aged women is a vital aspect of overall ICT research. The study included in-depth, face-to-face interviews with 25 middle-aged women and two group interviews of women attending two different craft clubs in Wesbank’s multi-purpose centre. The women interviewed were all between 40 and 65 years old. Face-to-face interviews were all held in the women’s residences and lasted between one and two hours. Potential interviewees were selected and introduced with the help of two well-known community workers or by snowball effect, in which interviewees introduced friends or neighbours. Although a list of questions was used as a directory, the interviews were semi-structured, allowing interjections, follow-up questions and space and time for the interviewees to accentuate their own fields of interest. Six interviewees kept a mobile phone diary in which they noted all the text messages and phone calls they made and received during the course of 1 week. If the women concerned were ‘illiterate’, Fie asked them not to delete the call log and sent and received text messages during the course of 1 week. She would then transcribe the messages and write down the calls herself, seated next to them. This turned out to be a very productive way of collecting the mobile phone diaries, since she could ask the women a lot of extra questions on the reasons for certain phone calls, missed calls and text messages and on the relationship with the sender or receiver. Three mobile phone courses were organized in which Fie was assisted by two teenage girls who taught the participants how to send and read text messages (four middle-aged women present) and how to use the mobile internet (two times; one woman). The courses were held in the living room of one of the women, with participants seated next to each other on the couches. As much time as possible was spent in the community and daily observations of female behaviour, literacy classes for adults, family situations and mobile phone use. Informal conversations were written down in a fieldwork diary to further support the data. Other data are text messages and emails (both composed on

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a mobile phone or on a computer) received from residents, and screenshots of conversations on the very popular mobile phone-based instant messaging service MXIT.5

Informal learning and church life: Pearl In line with Horst and Miller’s research (2006: 124) among low-income Jamaicans living in the shanty towns, the way in which mobile phones link with church networks is crucial in alleviating social problems of what Jamaicans themselves describe as ‘pressure’, a negative feeling which includes elements of loneliness, depression and boredom. Church community members, prayer and Bible study group members, pastors and women known in the community for their healing prayers and special talent to feel physical and mental discomforts by simply being in a person’s presence were the main contact groups in the mobile phone network of most middle-aged women living in Wesbank. Residents used their mobile phones extensively for religious and spiritual purposes: they arranged transport to and from church, requested prayers from addressees, sent prayer messages to relatives and friends or subscribed to religious chain messages from famous preachers and church leaders. Prayer chain messages are composed by one person and then forwarded to new addressees by the initial addressees, then to be forwarded again, and so forth. They are mostly established in ‘standard’ English but sometimes include textspeak (characterized by abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, etc.) as well. Middle-aged Afrikaans-speaking women living in Wesbank are often capable of speaking English – or a specific Capetonian vernacular called ‘kombuis English’6 – but less regularly encounter or read written English. The same counts for middle-aged isiXhosa7-speaking women. For some of those women, reading those (textspeak) English text messages represents a real challenge; it broadens their linguistic repertoires and challenges their literacy skills. “I pray the 5 P’s of GOD over u 2 day: His Power His Presence His Protection His Purpose & His Peace . God Bless.”

“Dear God. The lady reading this is beautiful, classy and strong and i love her Help her live her life to the fullest. please promote her and cause her to *some text missing*”

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These transcribed text messages are two examples of religious chain messages that Fie received from two different women in Wesbank. The SMS on the left contains two cases of textspeak (u instead of ‘you’ and 2 day instead of ‘today’). The message on the right is written in ‘standard’ English, but does not strictly respect rules of punctuation, particularly the use of capitals. Part of the message was missing, as the message exceeded 160 characters, the limited amount of characters for one SMS. Two Afrikaans-speaking ladies who hardly ever write text messages in English forwarded the messages to me. Asked how they had been able to read those chain messages, they said they asked their children for assistance. Through their devotion and religious commitment, these women have been motivated to expand their (device) literacy skills. Pearl, a middle-aged Xhosa woman who speaks Afrikaans, English and isiXhosa, became device-literate and ICT-literate as a consequence of her membership of a specific church congregation, the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG).8 UCKG has 31 church locations in Cape Town alone. The church that Pearl and her family attended is located in Bellville, a predominantly ‘white’ and ‘coloured’ Afrikaans-speaking, middle-class suburb of the Cape Town metropolitan area, 20 kilometres out of the city centre and ten kilometres away from Wesbank. English was the medium of communication in all the 31 UCKG churches. The UCKG has embraced and applied ICTs in order to better reach their church communities and followers. The homepage of the South African website of the UCKG immediately links to the church’s Facebook and Twitter account (see http://www.universalarkcommunity.com/ and http://twitter.com/uckgsa). Besides attending the UCKG church services, Pearl also attended weekly ‘sisterhoods’, religious meeting platforms for female church members. During those meetings women discussed the Bible, got lectures on spiritual topics or discussed and shared daily problems and worries. Women attending these ‘sisterhoods’ received homework: every week they had to fulfil certain tasks in the house or in their community, aimed at creating a more pleasant living environment and family feeling. The tasks varied from cleaning up the house, cooking a nice three-course menu to cleaning the wardrobe and donating clothes that are no longer worn to less privileged neighbours. To prove that the weekly tasks had been fulfilled, the members had to take pictures of their completed work and then send the pictures in a word document to the group’s email address. Other tasks were to post three comments on the church’s blog during the span of 1 week or to tweet on their own personal Twitter account.

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Pearl was thus not only obliged to purchase a handset with a camera, but also had to learn how to take pictures, how to use a text editor, how to send an email with an attachment, how to access and comment on the church’s website and Facebook profile and how to create and maintain a Twitter account, all in order to get regular updates on the church’s programme and the weekly tasks. Assisted by her daughter, who attended a similar youth group in the same church, Pearl’s religious background thus compelled her to become device and internet literate. As she was not wealthy enough to buy two third-generation (3G) mobile phones with camera and internet access, Pearl used her daughter’s 3G mobile phone or went to a cybercafé close to the church when she needed to upload pictures, read or send emails or write posts on the blog. Wesbank does not have any cybercafé so far. Residents access the internet on their mobile phones or travel at least ten kilometres to the closest cybercafés in neighbouring suburbs. As all communication with the church was conducted in English, Pearl exuberantly expanded her English writing skills, and moreover encountered English textspeak in tweets, text and Facebook messages. The following transcribed text message is written by Pearl, in which both isiXhosa (bold) and textspeak English are used. None of the words are written in ‘standard’ English. ‘Hi makoti hpybltd annvrsari lovechersh n apprctyr hby ja . . . ja . . . james sori ndiyathintilha’ Translation: Hi young bride happy belated anniversary love and cherish and appreciate your husband ja . . . ja . . . james sorry I stutter

According to Pearl, she learned how to write textspeak from observing her 18-year-old daughter and was now trying to learn to use it herself, especially so that she could write more words in one text message and read the Twitter and Facebook messages of the UCKG. With the help of her daughter who gave her input for textspeak on the one hand, and the church who expected her to be very productive in the new communicative environment on the other hand, two different ‘forces’ propelled Pearl to expand her literacy skills and ICT literacy in her ongoing struggle to obtain ‘voice’. When Pearl wanted to send a text message and did not know exactly how to abbreviate certain words, she took pen and paper and wrote the word in ‘standard’ English (or Afrikaans), to then decide which letters she could erase without making the word illegible. The words ‘annvrsari’ and ‘apprct’ were created in that way. Although ‘anniversary’ is more commonly abbreviated in textspeak as ‘annvrsry’, Pearl’s abbreviation of ‘appreciate’ is the common global textspeak variant.

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The abbreviation of ‘husband’ as ‘hby’ is uncommon and difficult to decode, a proof of the fact that Pearl’s textspeak is not yet totally streamlined with global textspeak and that she is still in the process of learning. In line with Deumert and Masinyana (2008), who investigated mobile language choices of bilingual (isiXhosa English) South Africans and discovered a reluctance to abbreviate isiXhosa words, the two isiXhosa words (makoti and ndiyathintilha) used in the SMS are written in full, regardless of the fact that both words are quite long. As we can see in Pearl’s text message quoted earlier, the exposure to new ICTs such as mobile phones and computers has led to the emergence of new ways and new channels of expression. The mere use of standardized forms of expression and certain standard repertoires can, after some time of familiarization or in certain contexts, turn out to be insufficient in order to be(come) a full member of the new communicative environment and thus develop into more complex forms of expression. Propelled by her daughter and her church community, Pearl not only had to become device-literate and ICT-literate, but also had to learn how to make use of and how to apply new language resources. For Pearl to be a full and respected member of her church community and her sisterhood and, as a consequence, be regarded as a good Christian, she had to learn how to master those new repertoires (textspeak, posting blog comments, reading Twitter posts, writing e-mails, etc.). New literacies such as textspeak, emerging in the light of the new communicative environment and shaped by the opportunities and constraints of the electronic medium (Crystal 2001), have to be learned and made one’s own. The informal learning processes that women in Wesbank have to engage in, in order to learn those ‘new literacies’ and in order to have a ‘voice’ in the new communicative environment, will be further scrutinized in the following section. We will look at three more case studies of women acquiring, maintaining and deploying a supervernacular (textspeak) in conditions of extreme marginalization and superdiversity and look at the different cultural meanings of the self and the social roles that are being created through the mastering and use of these particular repertoires. Moreover, we will shortly touch on the topic of ‘the ethnographer as a pupil’.

A Supervernacular as a ‘substitute language’: The story of Linda9 Linda is a 25-year-old ‘coloured’ and Afrikaans-speaking resident of Wesbank. During the first years of primary school, teachers had already expressed their

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concerns about Linda’s writing and reading skills. Those concerns, however, never resulted in specialized and individual follow-up. Once in high school, Linda’s literacy level started causing serious problems, as she could not absorb and reproduce the graphic word-images she was taught and could not read written texts. After several pen-and-paper reading and writing and instant chat sessions with Linda, and after analysing her writing and reading skills and her recurring spelling ‘mistakes’, we as researchers have little doubt that Linda, if tested, would be diagnosed with a severe form of dysgraphia. In the marginal socio-economic circumstances of Wesbank, however, tests like that are nonexistent. Learning disabilities of this sort remain undiagnosed and are, as a consequence, not properly followed-up by teachers and educational specialists. Linda’s mother forced her daughter to follow extra Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) literacy classes10 after school hours. For 4 months, Linda did follow the extra classes, and both she and her mother had the feeling that she was benefiting from the extra attention, as her marks at school improved. When her mother had to stay home because of pregnancy, however, Linda lost her interest and stopped attending the courses. At school, Linda tried to keep up with the help of her friends, who would read things for her and correct her writing as much as possible. Frustration and loss of motivation, however, made her drop out of high school before reaching the final matriculation year. Sitting bored and jobless at home, Linda spent most of her time on MXIT, in South Africa a very popular mobile instant messaging program that can be downloaded on even very basic mobile phones, chatting with friends from both inside and outside the community. Her friends introduced Linda to MXIT; they assisted her in downloading the application on her phone and were still assisting her when it came to Linda’s reading and writing on the instant messaging program. During the first weeks of chatting, Linda constantly carried a piece of paper with her on which her cousin wrote down the most common abbreviations, emoticons, paralinguistic constitutions and contractions used in textspeak. With the support and intervention of several friends, who wrote sentences and status updates down on paper for her to copy or who corrected her when things were written ‘wrongly’, Linda engaged in an informal learning trajectory in which textspeak proved to be an instrument for considerable progress and self-development. For Linda, textspeak was not an isolated object of learning; its acquisition went hand in hand with the further development of pen-and-paper writing and reading. Both forms of literacy development (penand-paper and textspeak) proceeded in parallel. Since the first day she has been on MXIT, she has started to write with pen and paper as well, something she

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claimed never to have done before in out-of-school contexts. Linda started copying words and sentences from her chat partners and when asking for or writing advice to her friends. All over the house, papers and notebooks could be found, on and in which Linda took ‘textspeak notes’, writing down status names and sentences she might have to use in the future. In this way, Linda has collected a ‘corpus’ of copied words, expressions and phases both drawn from and prepared for use on MXIT. Since she started being active in MXIT, her pen-and-paper writing also increased, thus creating a more complex, intertwined and layered literacy learning environment in which pen-and-paper literacy is a critical support infrastructure for textspeak. For someone who was classified as near-illiterate due to her disability, the informal learning environment provided by MXIT, therefore, appeared to provide motivation to learn, as well as effective learning practices, that Linda had never encountered at school. As mentioned before, the combination of pen-and-paper writing and the acquisition of textspeak were also observed with Pearl, who wrote down words on paper to then decide which letters could be erased, in order to turn a ‘standard’ word into a textspeak variant. As can be seen in Figure 4.1 Linda engaged in MXIT interactions by copying standard passepartout phrases and expressions. She asked standard questions ‘Linda is now online’ ‘Linda is now sad’ You: Hi Linda! How are you? (Hi Linda! hoe gaan dit) Linda: Good and you? (lekker en met jou) You: joh, I can hardly read the colour of your letters! Linda: ohk You: But everything’s ok (Maar alles gaan goed) You: I’m at home Linda: ()

Figure 4.1  Picture of an MXIT chat session between Fie and Linda. Translation and standard Afrikaans orthography in the right column.

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such as wat maak jy? (‘what are you doing?’), hoe gaan dit? (‘how are you?’) and was able to reply to such predictable and ‘phatic’ questions by means of routine answers (ek is bored – ‘I am bored’ – ek is by die huis – ‘I’m at home’). This could go on for a while, and it satisfied the requirements of interaction in many instances. Her illiteracy was masked by her scaffolding practices, but by masking it she could appear as a competent and literate user of MXIT, which gave her a certain, respectable identity among her acquaintances in her MXIT network. In other words, the mobile phone gave Linda a ‘voice’ which she did not have before and the possibility to exhibit a certain identity.

Learning the ‘MXIT language’: Lisa and Ernestine11 Literate people encountering textspeak in SMS messages or on instant messaging platforms such as MXIT might get the feeling they are suddenly ‘illiterate’, not being able to decode the words and sentences produced and sent to them by their interlocutors. As repertoires are biographically organized complexes of resources, they follow the rhythms of human lives, not developing along a linear path of ever-increasing size, but developing explosively in some phases of life and gradually in others (Blommaert and Backus 2011: 10). In this way, ‘the ‘language’ we know is never finished and learning language as a linguistic and sociolinguistic system is not a cumulative process but rather a process of growth, of sequential learning of certain registers, styles and genres and linguistic varieties while shedding or altering previously existing ones’ (Blommaert and Backus 2011: 9). Consequently, ‘there is no point in life in which anyone can claim to know all the resources of one language’ (Blommaert and Backus 2011:  9). One might be perfectly literate in the reception and production of written standard English but at the same time have tremendous difficulties with reading and producing the written supervernacular of textspeak and its different dialects. As mentioned before, in order to have a distinct ‘voice’ and to be heard on platforms such as MXIT and in order to be regarded as a full member of the new communicative community, one has to learn and make the new language repertoire one’s own and thus engage in informal language-learning practices, learning the supervernacular and its – in this case Capetonian – dialect by trial and error. As we have seen with Pearl, both the church community and her daughter have motivated her to expand her language repertoires. In order to become a full and dedicated member

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of her church community and thus exhibit a ‘good Christian’ identity, Pearl started experimenting with textspeak and new communicative platforms such as email, blogs, Facebook and Twitter. As MXIT was regarded as a communication tool of the youth, and textspeak was commonly referred to as ‘MXIT language’, as it was mostly used and elaborated in instant messaging conversations, most middle-aged women Fie talked to and interviewed regarded textspeak as ‘the language of the youth’, such as the interviewee quoted in the following interview extract: The MXIT language they mos [Afrikaans stop word] call it the MXIT language you see I also learn how to use the MXIT language cause I never knew how to short the words cause most of my words are the whole sentence ha [laughs] but my sister send MXIT words and my sister in law she will SOME of her words is MXIT words but most of it is also the whole word cause we don’t understand actually but the children I see on their phones and then they say oh mommy you’re MXIT now I say no I learn from you they say no you’re OLD you cannot do it and then they skrik [Afrikaans for ‘being surprised or scared] when they see you write MXIT language it’s a joke for them now you it’s with the younger children you that’s older how can YOU write MXIT . . . and it’s going quick you know on the trains the people just sit with their phones like that it’s like they’re on the computer and you know they send messages to each other because they MXIT and they chat now and it fascinates me to see joh in a FLIP [joh is a South African expression of astonishment or surprise and ‘flip’ in this South African context means ‘very short’ or ‘very fast’] second you can send somebody a message I’m very honest with you I don’t understand it

Some adult women, however, did use MXIT as a platform to connect with the world around them, to flirt or to make new acquaintances or to stay in touch with family and friends in the cheapest way possible. Those women had to acquire new literacy skills, if they did not want to be exposed as ‘a greenhorn’ in the  new communicative environment. Women who already possessed considerable textspeak literacy skills said it was very easy to detect newcomers on MXIT since they simply did not know how to write (read: abbreviate) ‘properly’. Lisa, quoted later, is a 47-year-old single mother of three children, whose two sons have already left the house and live on their own. Together with her 12-year-old daughter, Lisa lives in her lately extended full-subsidy RDP house. Lisa, originally from Oudtshoorn, a predominantly Afrikaans-speaking area in the Little Karoo area of the Western Cape province more than 400 km

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away from Cape Town, moved to Cape Town after she gave birth to her two sons, seeking shelter from and protection against her violent husband. She never finished her matriculation year in high school but has always followed extra teacher and management training courses in order to upgrade her diploma. Previously surviving on the income from several informal businesses (craft work, buying and selling of food in bulk, etc.) and child support, Lisa finally found a formal job in the community, first as a teacher and later as the head of the government body of the ABET classes organized in the community. In the marginal socio-economic circumstances of Wesbank, Lisa is regarded as a well-educated and well-spoken individual, and she has always been a dedicated community member of different organizations. Lisa had been chatting on MXIT for the past 3 years and because of that had mastered the new literacies of textspeak like no other. Looking at a corpus of 30 text messages and chat messages from Lisa (with a total of 343 words), gathered during Fie’s first fieldwork period in 2011, we see that an average of 56 per cent of the words and signs used are encoded, code switched or emoticons. This correlates with the work of Plester et al. (2009), who, in their research on the text message language of British teenagers, concluded that 58 per cent of the words used were textspeak instead of Standard English. Lisa mastered the textspeak repertoire so well and fluently that she was no longer aware of how deeply textspeak was entrenched in her day-to-day online and offline conversations. When Fie confronted her with her dense use of textspeak in text messages, her reaction was as follows: Fie: Here this is from you [showing her a message she wrote earlier] ‘hpe u f9, wl hav ur potjie [typical South African dish] 4 suppr 2nght – plse let me know wen u get home – mwah [onomatopoeic word imitating a kiss]’ L: [reads the message aloud] hope you’re fine i will have your potjie as supper tonight please let me know when you get home MWAH Fie: So only 6 words out of 20 words are standard L: [shocked] is it JOH XXXX [unintelligible due to screaming] NO MAN you make me . . . [sighs and laughs] now you make me feel guilty now

Lisa’s use of the new supervernacular of textspeak in chat and text messages was, however, a well-considered choice of register. Standard English – often with some grammatical or orthographic ‘errors’ since English is not her mother tongue – and English textspeak, as well as standard Afrikaans and Afrikaans textspeak were all part of her language repertoire, and it seemed that Lisa was literate enough to make deliberate choices of appropriate registers, according

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to context, value and format in and for which the piece of text was written (for a more detailed description and discussion, see Velghe 2011). This is what she talks about in the next interview fragment: L: Even I struggle when I when I must send like to this lady I must I must write the full sentence or the full word even to [her daughter’s] ehr gym ehr ehr look here I mus I mus I mus write it full it’s the coach Int: Ow and you say that when you write you have to think about it L: Jaaa I must be CAREfull then I must read OVER did I write it right

Ernestine was another middle-aged lady who had been active on MXIT for several years. In her forties and a grandmother already, Ernestine was also the only head of her household and had lately lost her eldest son during a gang fight in the community. Ernestine was an important resident of Wesbank, as a member of several community organizations. Because of her community work, she was in close contact with the local government. Because of her position in the community and her urge for networking, she really wanted to create an email address on her mobile phone. After Fie taught her how to create and operate an email address on her handset, they mainly communicated through email. Ernestine was extensively using textspeak in her email conversations (see Figure 4.2). Since email is a platform where one expects a more ‘standardized’ language use, in which emails are composed as if they were little letters (with a title, a main text and an official greeting and a name as closure), the emails Fie received from Ernestine were remarkable. They did not meet the general expectations on what a ‘real’ email should

Figure 4.2  Email in textspeak from Ernestine. Translation: If possible I want to introduce you to the Greenpark community [community next to Wesbank] at human rights day at an event on social development let me know as soon as possible if you want to attend the event.

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look like. The emails did not have a title, greeting, nor closure and were not at all written in ‘standard’ English. Writing on her mobile phone, Ernestine used the same register (i.e. textspeak) for her emails as for any other text she produced on her handset (text messages or instant chat messages on MXIT). The choice of textspeak answered Ernestine’s opinion on what register to use when communicating on a mobile phone. Lisa, however, had a laptop with prepaid internet access through the use of a modem with SIM card on which Fie had taught her how to compose, send and receive emails. Written on a different device and in another format than on a small mobile phone screen, Lisa did manage to make well-considered choices of appropriate registers and styles. The email (see Figure 4.3), sent to a former research partner of Fie, is written in standard Afrikaans and the email is composed as a letter (title, text, closure and signature). Both Ernestine and Lisa are fervent MXIT and textspeak users, but Lisa could however, due to the medium she was using, make deliberate choices on what ‘appropriate’ register she had to use to send an email. Since Ernerstine was composing emails  on her mobile phone, the choice between different registers was less distinct.

Dag Hannelujah!

Dear Hannelujah!

Dit is my eerste boodskap wat ek stuur. Dit is nou my

This is my first message that I send. This is my email address.

emailadres. Jy kan my nou baie boodskappe stuur.

You can send me many messages now. Fieke showed

Fieke het my gewys. Ek mis jou baie. Die volgende

me. I miss you a lot. The name of my next grandchild is

kleinkind van my se naam is Hannelore!

Hannelore!

Ek geniet vir Fieke hier.

I enjoy Fieke here.

Sien uit om jou weer te sien en om jou nou te lees!

I look forward to see you again and to read you!

Lisaaaaaaa

Lisaaaaaaa

Figure 4.3  Email in standard Afrikaans from Lisa.

According to Lisa and Ernestine, they learned the supervernacular through chatting on MXIT, memorizing and copying words interlocutors used before, just like we have seen with Linda. Chatting in standard registers was regarded ‘boring’ and too slow. If one did not want his/her correspondents to lose interest and if one wanted to be seen as a competent MXIT user, one was obliged to learn

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how to master new literacy skills, this by simply observing how other people wrote and by advising one another. Lisa mentions this in the following interview extract with Fie. Fie: And then the language that you’re using this text language L: Text language MXIT language mingles Afrikaans English Fie: and how did you learn it just by doing it L: I just yeah Fie: So you just learned it by yourself by trial and error and then do people like correct your mistakes or something if you make mistakes L: No we don’t correct each other if I don’t know what the person say then I say explain then that person explain then tomorrow I use the same [laughs] . . . for me is it mos [Afrikaans stop word] no it’s not something wrong you see because we if I gonna chat like FULL words then no man something is wrong is boring no it’s not right Fie: So you can see like when you are in these chat rooms who is new L: Ja ja [laughs] Fie: And then do you make fun of it L: Not actually we help each other that person

When Fie asked Ernestine why she wrote Hloz, hu ganit (Halloz hoe gaanit, ‘Hello, how are you’) the way she wrote it in her first email addressed to her, she answered ‘nou hulle sê hloz met ‘n z’ (‘now they say hloz with a z’) in which the hulle (‘they’) referred to ‘the people’ chatting on MXIT and using textspeak in text messages. She must have picked up this new greeting form from one or more of her interlocutors and then started to use it herself. In this way, people are constantly changing, adapting and broadening their language repertoires in accordance with and depending on what ‘hulle’ are doing and saying. The same happened to Fie, once she immersed herself as an ethnographer in the field in South African chat and text messaging during her fieldwork periods in Cape Town. Her chat and text message communication with South Africans expanded elaborately during her stays in South Africa. She might have had a voice in certain registers, styles, genres and linguistic varieties of English; however, she lacked a distinct voice in English textspeak and Afrikaans textspeak. In order to be able to decode and understand the online and mobile conversations Fie had with South Africans, she not only had to extend her literacy of the supervernacular, but immediately had to learn the dialect of the supervernacular, or the localized supervernacular, characterized by typical South

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African words, orthography and Afrikaans textspeak. Although Fie was more literate in the reception and production of written Standard English than Lisa, Ernestine and Linda, they were much more literate than she was in the reception and production of the written supervernacular of textspeak. Lisa and others became informal teachers, introducing Fie to the localized supervernacular – which was very alien to her – not saving her from the challenges and the confusion the decoding of their writings was causing. In a very subtle, informal and empirical way, they became instructors and Fie, the ethnographer, became the pupil, learning the supervernacular and its Capetonian dialect by simply being immersed in it, by trial and error and by asking a lot of questions. In Figure 4.4 one can see an example of such an informal learning moment on MXIT. Fie was chatting with Lisa (nicknamed ‘Sexy Chick’ on MXIT) and had to ask for an explanation of two abbreviations in a very short span of time. The first time it concerned a textspeak abbreviation of the English word ‘girlfriend’ into ‘gf ’. The second request for explanation concerned the abbreviation ‘lmk’, Afrikaans textspeak for ‘lag my klaar’, standard Afrikaans for ‘I’m laughing

Lisa: Enjoy this gf (geniet dit gf) You: What is gf? Lisa: Girlfriend ☺ You: Ow You don’t have to laugh (jy moe nie lag nie) Lisa: Lmk You: ? Lisa: Laughing nicely (Lag my klaar) You: Lag my klaar? What does that mean? Lisa: I’m laughing nicely now (Ek lag lekker nu)

Figure 4.4  Instant chat conversation on MXIT between Lisa and Fie.

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nicely’ and thus the local supervernacular variant of ‘LOL’ (‘laughing out loud’) in English textspeak. As an ethnographer approaching the field, wanting to find out as much as possible about mobile phone use and mobile phone literacy of middle-aged women in a post-apartheid township in Cape Town, Fie turned out to be illiterate and her language resources inadequate to be(come) a full member of the new communicative environment that the uptake of mobile phones, the introduction of instant chat messaging and other ICTs has created.12

Conclusion In spite of moral panic and public anxiety (see Crystal 2008; Vosloo 2009 for critical approaches on the effects of texting on literacy), people in the new communicative environment shaped by ICTs are reading and writing more than ever before. Text messages, instant messaging, chatting, blogging, tweeting, Facebook, etc. all form platforms of literacy and literacy acquisition. According to Banda (2003) – cited in Deumert and Masinyana 2008: 119 – SMS writing constitutes an important form of everyday literacy in South Africa, especially in the metropolitan areas. There is no library in Wesbank; the closest library in the neighbouring community is only accessible by a gang-controlled pedestrian bridge over the freeway. Except for schoolbooks, Bibles and sensational tabloids, other reading materials such as novels, magazines and newspapers are hardly present in the households. With only 10 per cent of the inhabitants having finished the last 2 years of high school (Blommaert et al. 2005), Wesbank has a very low average level of education. Since literacy stimulation and learning in out-of-school contexts in Wesbank is, due to poverty, social marginalization and limited availability of resources and infrastructure, very limited, the uptake of mobile phones has created literacy interests, enthusiasm and an eagerness to learn among literate, sub-literate as well as ‘illiterate’ people that would have been more limited or non-existent without the presence of mobile phones. Since a mobile phone is, next to a television, often the only technological device residents of Wesbank possess, there is an urgent wish to use and appropriate the handset to the fullest. The middle-aged women who took part in the research showed great eagerness to learn on their devices, to go online, to chat and to expand their communication circles and, as a consequence, their literacy skills and repertoires.

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As mentioned earlier, the ‘language’ we learn is never finished, and there is no point in life at which we can claim to know all resources of one language (Blommaert and Backus 2011). Lisa, Ernestine and Pearl might have been more literate than many other residents in Wesbank, for example, their encounter with MXIT and the new language resources that are being used on this and other digital platforms made them quasi-‘illiterate’ again. The same happened with Fie as a researcher approaching the field, with (‘standard’) English as her second language and completely unfamiliar with the textspeak variant of it. We have seen that both the women as well as Fie, through informal learning processes (of trial and error, scaffolding, observation and informal tutoring by interlocutors, etc.), have tried to become literate in the new communicative environment and to expand language repertoires, since language repertoires of this kind are not being taught in formal or institutionalized schooling. The learning of those new literacies or new language resources made it possible for Lisa, Ernestine, Linda and Pearl to expand their communicative network and to become part of new large-scale mobile or online communities and to express new identities. Lisa and Ernestine, both women in their forties, mainly chatted and flirted on MXIT with (predominantly) male interlocutors from outside the community. Ernestine was using her textspeak repertoire to send Fie SMS-like email messages, mostly to keep Fie updated about activities, meetings and events in the community. The possession of a handset with internet enabled Ernestine to broaden her social network also, not only on MXIT but also via her mobile email address through which she was in contact with local government leaders, NGOs and community organizations. Linda could appear as a competent, literate user of MXIT by masking her scaffolding practices, which gave her a certain, respectable identity among her acquaintances in the MXIT network and Pearl could, thanks to her growing digital and textspeak literacy, be a ‘better’ and more devoted Christian in the eyes of her church community.

Notes 1 The term ‘supervernacular’ was first used by Varis and Wang (2011), Velghe (2011) and Blommaert (2011) referring to stabilizing and changing dialects we actually observe, hear, speak, read and write and that emerge out of the large-scale and deterritorialized communicative communities that the spread of ICTs such as the internet and the mobile phone has created. Mobile texting codes (characterized by abbreviations, acronyms, emoticons, etc.) can be described as a supervernacular,

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4

5

6

7

8

9 10

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with its englobalized patterns of formation of symbols, an emergent normativity of vocabulary and spelling and the deglobalization processes resulting in dialects of the supervernacular (Blommaert 2011). All names used in this article are pseudonyms. The term ‘coloured’ remains problematic, since it formed part of the segregation policy of the apartheid government to clearly define and divide the South African population. However, it is a firmly entrenched term, still used by the majority of the South African population itself. To indicate the dilemma for the author, quotation marks will be used whenever racial criteria are being used. The term ‘middle-aged’ in Wesbank is difficult to define or outline, as many 40-year-old women have grandchildren already and are effectively ‘retired’ due to chronic unemployment. The average age of the women questioned in the questionnaires was 47.8 years, and the women interviewed in the face-to-face interviews were all between 40 and 65. MXIT is a mobile instant messaging (MIM) program accessible and used on mobile devices and comparable to computer-based instant messaging programs such as MSN messenger. MXIT is a very popular South African communication tool, especially among the South African youth. MXIT users can either chat in chat rooms (often centred on themes or geographical locations) or on a one-toone basis with contacts one has to invite or accept. MXIT is very cheap; an MXIT message costs two South African cents, compared to 70 South African cents for a text message. More info: see http://site.mxit.com. ‘Kombuis English’, also called ‘Kaaps’ or ‘kombuis Afrikaans’, ‘Cape Flat English’, or ‘Cape Flat Afrikaans’ (depending on the matrix language) is the name given to the unique blended variety of English and Afrikaans and to a lesser degree other languages like Malay, isiXhosa, etc., spoken in the Cape Peninsula. isiXhosa is one of the 11 official South African languages. In Cape Town and the rest of the Western Cape, English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa are the three main official languages spoken. The Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG) is a Pentecostal Christian organization, established in Brazil in 1977. Today, the church is present in 180 countries. See www.uckg.org.za for the South African website. For more information and details on Linda, see Blommaert and Velghe (2012). The Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET) courses that are organized in the High School in Wesbank in the evenings and in Hoofweg Primary School during the afternoon are organized within the framework of a national foundation towards lifelong adult learning and development. The Department of Education provides adult education and nationally recognized certificates for learners at ABET schools. ABET offers basic literacy courses from level one to four, but also economic management courses, life orientation, human and social sciences,

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mathematical courses, arts and culture, tourism, and the opportunity for adults to finish their matriculation year. 11 For more information and details on Lisa and Ernestine, see Velghe (2011). 12 The ‘ethnographer as a pupil’ concept is elaborated extensively in Velghe (2011).

References Aker, J., Ksoll, C. and Lybbert, T. J. (2010), ABC, 123: The Impact of a Mobile Phone Literacy Program on Educational Outcomes. Washington, DC: Centre for Global Development, Working Paper 223. http://www.cgdev.org/content/publications/ detail/1424423 [accessed 9 September 2013]. Banda, F. (2003), ‘A survey of literacy practices in black and coloured communities in South Africa: Towards a pedagogy of multiliteracies’, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 16: 106–29. Barton, D. and Hamilton, M. (1998), Local Literacies: Reading and Writing in One Community. London: Routledge. Blommaert, J. (2003), ‘Commentary: A sociolinguistics of globalization’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 7(4): 607–23. —(2011), Supervernaculars and their Dialects. London: King’s College London Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, paper 81. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/ groups/ldc/publications/workingpapers/index.aspx [accessed 9 September 2013]. Blommaert, J. and Backus, A. (2011), Repertoires Revisited: ‘Knowing Language’ in Superdiversity. London: King’s College London Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, paper 67. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ldc/publications/ workingpapers/67.pdf [accessed 9 September 2013]. Blommaert, J. and Velghe, F. (2012), Learning a supervernacular: Textspeak in a South African Township. Tilburg: University of Tilburg Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies 22. http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/ babylon/tpcs/ [accessed 9 September 2013]. Blommaert, J., Muyllaert, N., Huysmans, M. and Dyers, C. (2005), ‘Peripheral normativity: Literacy and the production of locality in a South African township school’, Linguistics in Education, 16(4): 378–403. Crystal, D. (2001), Language and the Internet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(2008), Txtng. The gr8 db8. New York: Oxford University Press. Deumert, A. and Masinyana, S. O. (2008), ‘Mobile language choices – The use of English and isiXhosa in text messages (SMS). Evidence from a bilingual South African sample’, English World-Wide, 29(2): 117–47. Heath, S. B. (1983), Ways with Words: Language, Life and Work in Communities and Classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horst, H. and Miller, D. (2006), The Cell-Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. New York: Berg Publishers.

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Hymes, D. (1996), Ethnography, Linguistics, Narrative Inequality: Toward an Understanding of Voice. London: Taylor and Francis. Juffermans, K. and Van der Aa, J. (2011), Analysing Voice in Educational Discourses. London: King’s College London Working Papers in Urban Language & Literacies, 82. http://www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ldc/publications/workingpapers/index. aspx [accessed 9 September 2013]. McIntosh, J. (2010), ‘Mobile Phones and Mipoho’s prophecy: The powers and dangers of flying language’, American Ethnologist, 37(2): 337–53. Plester, B., Wood, C. and Joshi, P. (2009), ‘Exploring the relationship between children’s knowledge of text message abbreviations and school literacy outcomes’, British Journal of Development Psychology, 27(1): 145–61. Prinsloo, M. and Breier, M. (eds) (1996), The Social Uses of Literacy: Theory and Practice in Contemporary South Africa. Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Street, B. V. (1984), Literacy in Theory and Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. —(1993), Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Varis, P. and Wang, X. (2011), ‘Superdiversity on the Internet: A case from China’, Diversities, 13(2): 70–83. Velghe, F. (2011), ‘Lessons in textspeak from Sexy Chick: Supervernacular literacy in South African instant and text messaging’, in K. Juffermans, Y. M. Asfaha and A. K. Abdelhay (eds), African Literacies: Scripts, Ideologies, Education. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars. Tilburg Papers in Culture Studies, 1. http://www.tilburguniversity.edu/research/institutes-and-research-groups/babylon/ tpcs/ [accessed 9 September 2013]. —(2012), ‘Deprivation, distance and connectivity: The adaptation of mobile phone use to life in Wesbank, a post-apartheid township in South Africa’, Discourse, Context & Media, 1(4): 203–16. Vosloo, S. (2009), The Effect of Texting on Literacy: Modern Scourge or Opportunity? An Issue Paper from the Shuttleworth Foundation. (Unpublished) http://stevevosloo. com/pubs/ [accessed 9 September 2013].

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Language and Culture: Attitudes Towards, and Perceptions of, English L2 Acquisition among Adult Polish Migrants in Ireland Agnieszka Skrzypek, Romana Kopečková, Barbara Bidzińska and David Singleton

Introduction: The post-2004 Polish migration to Ireland Data collection for this chapter took place in 2007, 3 years after the May 2004 enlargement of the European Union (EU). In order to contextualize the data obtained for the current study, we shall begin by looking at issues related to the 2004–07 Polish migration to Ireland.

The 2004–07 Polish migration to Ireland In the months following the 2004 EU enlargement, a significant number of Poles migrated to Ireland. A high rate of unemployment in Poland (Drinkwater et al. 2006: 4) and the attractive salaries on offer in Ireland were powerful factors in this migration. At the time of the 2006 Census, Poles were the dominant group among migrants from the new EU states (63,276). Informed estimates from a number of sources put this figure at an even higher level – closer to 200,000 (Holmquist 2006: 1). A number of migration-related polls conducted in Ireland at around the time when the current study was being carried out indicated that many Poles intended to stay in Ireland permanently (e.g. Scally 2007). Given the international importance of English, the opportunity to improve English-language skills in Ireland may have been a strong pull factor for some Poles. In order to obtain access to English-language tuition free of charge, Polish migrants often turned to the Polish Social and Cultural Association

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and the Polish-Irish Society (NESC 2006: 235). Free 6-month-long Englishlanguage courses were also offered at Trinity College (Skrzypek 2010). Other less conventional opportunities in relation to English-language tuition were also made use of by Polish migrants: for example, free Sunday afternoon Bible classes in English at a Protestant church in Dublin. A number of specialist facilities were available to Polish migrants in Ireland at the time of the current study: these included the Polish Information and Culture Centre, the Polish Social and Cultural Association, the Polish House and the  Polish–Irish Society. Apart from disseminating information about Polish culture in Ireland, Polish institutions and organizations offered a free information service for newcomers in Polish, ran libraries where Polish books were available and organized cultural events. As a response to the post2004 surge in Polish migration, a number of newspapers targeting Polish readers were set up, including, for example, Polska Gazeta, Polski Express and the weekly supplement to the Evening Herald called Polski Herald. Another dimension of Polish visibility in Ireland was the large number of Polish shops, pubs and restaurants, as well as Polish versions of signs and notices in public areas.

The post-2007 economic downturn in Ireland Much of this picture changed radically in the wake of the global economic crisis. The first signs of the global economic downturn appeared a few months after the data for the current study were gathered. At the end of 2007 and in 2008 the first effects of the economic crisis were already beginning to be felt, but from 2009 onwards the Irish Government imposed severe spending cuts, levies and tax increases. The construction sector, which had employed large numbers of Polish migrants, collapsed. Unemployment spiralled, as many businesses went into receivership. The allocations of PPSN (personal public service numbers) to Polish nationals fell from its peak of 93,615 in 2006 to 13,765 in 2009. Only half of the foreign nationals from the EU-25 states who had been assigned PPSN in 2004 were reported to have employment activity in 2009 (CSO 2011: 4, 15). With the economic downturn, some immigrants and Irish nationals left Ireland to find better opportunities elsewhere. Many migrants, however, appear to have no immediate plans to return home, and accordingly the likely prospect is that Ireland will remain a country of immigration – though no longer of net immigration (Krings et al. 2009; MCA 2010).

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Language and culture Acculturation and ethnolinguistic vitality The 2004–07 immigration to Ireland posed numerous challenges both for the arriving and for the host communities, one of which related to the process of acculturation. This section briefly introduces some models of acculturation relevant to this study and goes on to present the notion of ELV. The changes that occur when people from different cultures come into contact have long been discussed by scholars from a number of fields. For instance, Schumann (1978, 1986) relates the degree to which migrants acculturate – in social and psychological terms – to their success in acquiring the target language. Padilla (1980) emphasizes the importance of cultural awareness (cultural knowledge of one’s own community and the host community) and ethnic loyalty (preference of one cultural orientation over the other). The notion of individual choice with respect to the acculturation process is introduced in Berry’s model (1980), which proposes four modes of acculturation: assimilation (willingness to abandon one’s cultural identity), integration (aspiration to becoming a member of both cultures), rejection (withdrawal from the majority community) and deculturation (loss of identity). In contrast, Kim’s model (1988) recognizes that both the minority and majority communities play an important role in the acculturation process, distinguishing five factors: adaptive predisposition, host environmental conditions, personal communication, social communication and adaptation outcome. More recently, Kang (2006) discusses the process of psychosocial adjustment, including self-esteem, stress and relationships with friends and peers, as importantly related to the language competence of an immigrant. Clearly, if we are to arrive at a good understanding of the varied experiences and outcomes resulting from cultures in contact, linguistic aspects of acculturation need to be studied alongside the dynamics of psychological and sociological factors. One of the key variables affecting language use and language shift within a community is ELV. Giles et al. (1977) define the vitality of an ethnolinguistic group as ‘that which makes a group likely to behave as a distinctive and active collective entity in intergroup relations’ (p. 308). Higher levels of this vitality in a group are believed to increase the likelihood of that group’s maintaining its language and culture. Variables that are believed to affect a group’s ELV include, for example, status factors (the socio-economic status of the group and the status of the group’s native language), demographic factors (group size

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and level of concentration in the same geographical area), institutional factors (institutional support and institutional control) (Giles et al. 1977: 309–15), the closedness of the social networks of the minority group and the willingness of group members to maintain their heritage values (Ehala 2010). Unsurprisingly, these factors interact with each other. For example, a high degree of influence from political, social and religious institutions may counteract the effects of demographics. In relation to the Polish community in Ireland in 2007, some of the factors mentioned earlier indicate a low level of ELV, while others indicate the opposite. On the one hand, the difference between the international status of the group’s L1 (Polish) and the status of L2 (English) may have potentially lowered the Polish community’s vitality. On the other hand, the substantial number of Polish migrants, their high level of concentration in some geographical areas and the availability of a wide range of institutional support may have contributed positively to the vitality of the Polish community. Intended length of residence in Ireland and attitude towards maintaining Polish culture were also likely to have played a role in shaping the group’s ELV. If the Polish community had been classifiable as a low-ELV group, intergroup contact would have been expected to result in a subtractive process involving the gradual loss of L1 group characteristics. If, on the other hand, the Polish community were to be classified as a high-ELV group, identification with the L2 community would have been expected to occur as an additive process, without loss of L1 community identity (Clément 1980). Other scenarios were also plausible. For example, it would also have been possible for some members of the Polish group to identify with the L1 community exclusively, especially if their everyday lives proceeded mostly within an L1 context.

L2 motivation and confidence If the process of acculturation is accompanied or influenced by particular linguistic, sociological and psychological factors, which in turn may have an effect on individuals’ motivation in respect of getting to grips with that community’s culture, it seems likely, as Schumann argues (1978), that this will affect the minority community’s patterns of second-language acquisition. Motivation has long been seen as a factor in the L2 learning process (Dörnyei and Ottó 1998; Dörnyei and Ushioda 2009; Gardner and Lambert 1959, 1972), together with related factors such as anxiety (Gardner 1985) and confidence (Clément et al. 1977, 1980).

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One of the models that warrants a mention in the context of L2 motivation and L2 confidence is the socio-contextual model of L2 learning (Clément 1980; Clément and Kruidenier 1985). According to this model, the frequency and the quality of contact with the members of the L2 community have an impact on L2 confidence and ultimately on L2 proficiency. A number of studies have addressed the relationship between these variables. Research by Spada (1985, 1986), for example, showed that frequency and type of contact were significantly linked to proficiency measures. Research by Labrie and Clément (1986) indicated the existence of a close link between L2 contact and L2 confidence, but interestingly also showed that quality of contact (its pleasantness) was a more influential factor than quantity of contact when it came to fostering L2 confidence. On the basis of the socio-contextual model and related research, it would be plausible to assume that L2 confidence can act as a precursor to contact with members of the L2 community; it would also be plausible to assume that an increase in confidence may be a result of contact experiences. Rubenfeld et al. (2006) argue that in the case of individuals with lower L2 confidence, an increase in L2 confidence tends to occur passively as a result of L2 contact. Individuals with higher L2 confidence, on the other hand, are more likely to pursue contact actively with members of the L2 community owing to their L2 skills and their past experiences (Rubenfeld et al. 2006: 626). Another oft-quoted model in the current connection is Gardner’s socioeducational model (see e.g. Gardner 1985, 1988, 2006). In the most recent versions of the approach three major variables are seen as operative:

1. Integrativeness, namely the level of identification with the target language community and the nature of intentionality with respect to getting closer to this community and its language and culture. 2. Attitudes towards the target language and culture, in turn permeating attitudes towards the learning of the target language. 3. Motivation to learn the majority language. These three factors, according to Gardner, are crucial to the distinction between motivated and unmotivated learners. A high degree of integrativeness, positive attitudes towards the learning situation and strong motivation together constitute what he calls ‘integrative motivation’, that is, motivation to learn the language associated with willingness to identify with the target language community. Gardner posits that, of the aforesaid three variables, motivation is responsible for achievement in L2 acquisition, while the other two have an important supportive function in the process.

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Research methodology Rationale for the study At the time when the data for this study were being collected, there was quite a limited amount of empirical research on post-accession Polish migrants’ patterns of language acquisition and language use in Ireland (e.g. Kropiwiec and KingO’Riain 2006; NESC 2006). No empirical research had been conducted in relation to attitudes, levels of confidence and perspectives with respect to the encounter of adult Poles with the English language in Ireland after the 2004 enlargement. Our main objective was, therefore, to arrive at a broad idea of the nature of the sample (the Polish community in the Dublin area) along these parameters and to explore aspects of ELV of the community. To examine the group’s ELV we gathered the following types of data: participants’ attitudes towards acquiring English as an L2, their attitudes towards Ireland, their patterns of L1 (Polish) and L2 (English) use, their L2 proficiency and L2 confidence, their intended length of stay in Ireland, their willingness to maintain their heritage values and their perception of how important it is for their children to be able to speak Polish and/or English. Our findings, presented in the results section, focus on the following aspects:

1. L1 and L2 use, L2 confidence and motivation to learn L2. 2. ELV and integration into Irish society. As mentioned in the earlier discussion on acculturation and ELV, at the time of the current study a number of factors may have contributed positively to the level of ELV in the Polish community in the Dublin area, but there were also other factors that may have lowered the ELV of the Polish group. The factors that may have contributed positively included, for example, demographic and institutional factors. With regard to demographics, there was a high concentration of Poles in larger urban areas, such as the Dublin area, and in some smaller urban areas such as Killarney, Monaghan and Roscommon (O’Brien 2007). With regard to institutional factors, a wide and increasing range of Polish organizations was available to the Polish community. The factors that may have potentially lowered the Polish community’s vitality included, for example, the difference in international status between Polish and English. Other factors such as intended length of stay, level of L2 confidence and willingness to communicate with the members of the L2 community were also likely to be at play. To obtain a clearer picture of the ELV of the Polish group, the current study looks at a number of selected factors known to contribute to the vitality of a migrant community.

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Participants One hundred adult Polish native-speakers resident in the Dublin area were recruited within the framework of the Polish Diaspora Project via newspaper advertisements and personal contact. The majority of the participants had arrived in Ireland within the space of 2 years prior to data collection (M = 16.2, SD = 13.04), the shortest and the longest length of residence being 1 month and 75 months, respectively. The sample consisted of 64 females and 36 males, and the mean age of the sample was 29 years (min/max = 19/56, SD = 7.3). Sixty-three per cent of the subjects reported being single, 61 per cent of the respondents had experienced tertiary education, while 38 per cent reported reaching the end of secondary or vocational education. Eighty-three per cent were in what could be classified as white-collar employment. The subjects reported having diverse levels of English proficiency ranging from beginners’ level to advanced users’ level. Apart from English, most of the subjects (95 per cent) had further foreign languages at their disposal: 43 per cent referred to one further additional language, 41 per cent to two further additional languages and 11 per cent to three or more further additional languages. Our sample can thus be seen as comprising mostly rather experienced language learners.

Instrumentation Questionnaire The current chapter presents attitudinal and motivational data gathered at the initial stage of the project via a general-purpose questionnaire developed by Kopečková. Between 2007 and 2010, the project research team engaged in a number of related migration studies, and therefore for the sake of comparability one general-purpose questionnaire was constructed in addition to other instrumentation required for individual studies (for more detailed descriptions of the individual projects, see Debaene and Singleton 2010; Kopečková 2011; Regan and Nestor 2009; Skrzypek 2009). The questionnaire was designed to elicit general biographical, linguistic, socio-psychological and language-educational data from the participants. It consisted of 38 items in the format of Likert items, multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions. The sections into which items were grouped include contact with the English language, contact with the Polish language, language motivation and attitudes, integration into the Irish society and general

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information. The questionnaire was administered electronically and was available in two versions – Polish and English. Sample items from the questionnaire are presented in Table 5.1.1 Table 5.1  Sample questionnaire items Number

Content

5.

How often do you speak English with English native speakers? •  never •  rarely •  sometimes •  often •  always

11.

What is the balance of Polish and English in your everyday life in Ireland? •  much more Polish •  more Polish •  half and half •  more English •  much more English

17.

When you arrived in Ireland, how confident were you about speaking English? •  very confident •  confident •  neutral •  nervous •  very nervous

23.

In which culture do you feel at home? •  in Polish culture •  in Irish culture •  in both Polish and Irish cultures •  other (please specify)

25.

Which term best describes the way you think of yourself? •  a Pole •  an Irish Pole •  Irish •  other (please specify)

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OUP pen-and-paper English test (2001) In order to measure our subjects’ English-language proficiency, the OUP penand-paper test (2001) was administered. The OUP test is a test of Englishlanguage proficiency that is available in two parallel versions. It assesses reading, vocabulary and grammar. The test takes approximately 30 minutes to administer and is relatively quick to check. A test manual is provided alongside the test containing guidelines on how to interpret results in relation to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) levels (Council of Europe 2001). Since the test designers recommend that the test be used alongside another form of assessment, an additional writing task was devised and added. The results obtained in the OUP test were cross-referenced with the level and complexity of student writing.

Results and discussion L2 proficiency, L2 confidence and motivation The Polish participants in this study range from beginners in English to experienced users of English. Two measures of English-language proficiency were used:

1. Self-assessed general proficiency levels tapped by Likert scales (1 = no English, 6 = native-like). 2. General proficiency levels tapped by the OUP pen-and-paper test (CEFR levels: A1–C2). Most subjects considered themselves to be intermediate-level learners or below (81 per cent, see Table 5.2), and their self-assessed levels correlated significantly with their level of education (p  0.0001, rs = 0.528; large effect size). According to the OUP test, one-third of the sample (30 per cent) comprised basic users of English (A1/A2), one-third (33 per cent) comprised independent users of English (B1/B2) and a mere 2 per cent comprised advanced users at Level C1 (N.B. the remaining 35 per cent did not agree to take the OUP pen-and-paper test). A highly significant Spearman’s correlation was detected between selfassessed proficiency levels and OUP-elicited proficiency levels (n = 65, rs = 0.713, p  0.0001; large effect size).

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Table 5.2  Participants’ self-assessed English proficiency levels and OUP-elicited English proficiency levels Self-assessed English proficiency levels No English

Frequency (n = 100)

OUP-elicited English proficiency levels

2

A1

Beginner

17

A2

Pre-intermediate

32

B1

Intermediate

30

B2

Advanced

17

C1

Native-like

1

C2

Missing

1

Missing

Basic user Independent user Proficient user a

Frequency (n = 100) 7 23 20 13 2 0 35

N.B. 35 of the100 subjects did not agree to take the OUP pen-and-paper test.

a

Many of the subjects were first exposed to English rather late in life, the average age of first contact with English being around 17.4 years (min/ max = 5/44, SD = 8.6). Their first contact with English was viewed as positive or very positive by 66 per cent of the respondents, with only 11 per cent of subjects reporting a negative experience of their first encounter with English and 23 per cent reporting a neutral experience. Participants’ motivation to arrive at a situation where they would be able to use English fluently was very strong. Eighty-seven per cent of our subjects considered being able to use English fluently as very important, while 13 per cent viewed it as important. Moreover, a majority of our participants (73 per cent) expressed the view that sounding native-like in English was either important or very important, with 17 per cent expressing neutral views, and only 10 per cent expressing the view that this was not important. Their comments on their motivation make reference to English as a stepping stone to a better job, whether in Ireland or in Poland, as a means of better communication and fuller participation in Irish society, as of benefit in respect of international travel, and as an important element in feeling happy and comfortable about their own general abilities. Participants’ confidence levels in their ability to speak English had risen significantly since their arrival in Ireland. Upon arrival, the subjects’ confidence in their ability to speak English was reported to be rather low (n  =  99, median  =  2  – nervous, range  =  4). Their reported level of confidence at the

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time of the current study was noticeably higher (n = 100, median = 3 – neutral, range = 3). A significant difference was detected between confidence scores at arrival and confidence scores at the time of the current study (Wilcoxon signed ranks test: Z = 7.432, p  0.0001), and the magnitude of the difference was large (r = 0.528). When confidence scores of lower proficiency subjects (A1 and A2 English users, n  =  30) and confidence scores of higher proficiency subjects (B1, B2 and C1 English users, n = 35) were scrutinized separately, the increase in confidence scores between arrival and the time of the current study remained significant in both proficiency groups (Wilcoxon signed ranks test for the lower proficiency group: Z  =  3.701, p    0.001; Wilcoxon signed ranks test for the higher proficiency group: Z  =  4.551, p    0.0001). The increase observed in the lower proficiency group represented a medium effect size, while the increase observed in the higher proficiency group represented a large effect size (r =  0.478 and r =  0.544, respectively). The average confidence levels among respondents with a lower proficiency level (A1/A2) and respondents with a higher proficiency level (B1/B2/C1) reveal an interesting picture. On arrival, the lower proficiency group (n = 30) and the higher proficiency group (n  =  35) exhibited on average the same amount of confidence in relation to speaking English. The median in the lower proficiency group was the same as the median in the higher proficiency group (Mdn = 2 – nervous; Mann–Whitney U test: U = 498, p  0.05). In contrast, at the time of the current study, the average levels of confidence in the lower proficiency group and the higher proficiency group were significantly different (Mann–Whitney U test: U = 380, p = 0.043). The median for the lower proficiency group was 3 (neutral), while the median for the higher proficiency group was 4 (confident). The magnitude of this difference was small (r = 0.252). It would seem intuitive that higher proficiency learners should, on average, exhibit a higher level of confidence about interacting in English than lower proficiency learners. This, however, is not supported by the figures representing the subjects’ confidence at arrival. It is plausible that the relatively low level of confidence in both proficiency groups at arrival was linked to the increased demands of real-life interactions as compared to demands of classroom interactions. The relatively low level of confidence in both proficiency groups at arrival may also have been linked to the difference between Irish English pronunciation and the English pronunciation that the subjects had been exposed to prior to their arrival in Ireland. Level of difficulty of understanding spoken Irish English was not measured at the time of arrival, but at the time of the current study

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many subjects still had some difficulty understanding spoken Irish English (50 per cent of the lower proficiency respondents and 34 per cent of the higher proficiency respondents). Presumably the perceived level of difficulty of understanding spoken Irish English was even higher at arrival.

Ethnolinguistic vitality and integration into Irish society The relatively high number and density of Poles in the Dublin area were predicted to have an impact on the balance of Polish and English use among the Polish community. More specifically, interactions in Polish were predicted to be more frequent than interactions in English. In line with this prediction, the majority of respondents (63 per cent) indicated that they used Polish more frequently than English in their everyday lives. Only a minority of the participants (14 per cent) reported that their interactions in English were more frequent than their interactions in Polish. Use of the Polish language in the workplace was rated as frequent by 41 per cent of respondents, while use of Polish in interactions with friends was rated as frequent by as many as 81 per cent. Judging by the frequency of use of Polish with friends, it would seem that the respondents tended to socialize with speakers of Polish. Despite the prominent role of Polish, the subjects reported having ample opportunities to speak English. Frequent interactions with native English speakers and non-native English speakers were reported by 64 per cent and 48 per cent of the participants, respectively. Seventy-five per cent of the respondents reported frequent use of English in the workplace, and 37 per cent reported frequent use of English in interactions with friends. The participants appeared to appreciate the amount of exposure to English that they were getting in Ireland, and they reported being satisfied with the opportunities to practise their English in Ireland. When asked to rate their satisfaction level in this connection on a five-point Likert scale (from 1 = ‘very satisfied’ to 5 = ‘very dissatisfied’), 67 per cent indicated a high or very high level of satisfaction. Most of the participants exhibited a high level of attachment to their Polishness. Ninety per cent of the respondents reported, for example, that it was very important for them for their children to speak Polish. By comparison, 75 per cent of the subjects reported that they considered it very important for their children to speak English. One of the reasons why the Polish language ranked higher than the English language in this connection could have been subjects’ intended length of residence in Ireland. Almost half of the sample viewed

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their stay in Ireland as a short-time venture and intended to return to Poland (45  per  cent). In contrast, only about one-sixth of our subjects (17 per cent) reported that they saw themselves as being resident in Ireland in 5 years’ time. Had a higher number of respondents intended to remain in Ireland long term, the issue of their children being able to speak English would quite likely have come across as more of a priority. Another aspect that indicates respondents’ attachment to their Polishness is their frequency of contact with Poland and the Polish language, as well as their ethnic self-identification. Over half of the respondents (52 per cent) reported that they tended to travel to Poland two to three times a year; 25.3 per cent scheduled trips to Poland four or more times a year. Sixteen per cent reported travelling to Poland once a year, while just 6 per cent said they did not travel to Poland. With regard to keeping in touch with the Polish news, the overwhelming majority of the respondents (96 per cent) claimed that they read Polish newspapers, with 48.5 per cent claiming to read a Polish newspaper at least once a week. Four per cent reported not reading Polish newspapers at all. Ethnic identification of the subjects also revealed a high level of attachment to Polishness. When asked whether they would describe themselves as Poles, Irish Poles or Irish, the vast majority of the subjects (86 per cent) reported that they viewed themselves as Poles. Interestingly, 7 per cent of participants said that they thought of themselves as Irish Poles. The participants who described themselves as Irish Poles had resided in Ireland for an average of 16 months (min/max = 1/35, SD = 12.4). The emergence of the aforementioned identification as Irish Pole may seem a little surprising given the rather short duration of the respondents’ residence in Ireland. Of the seven subjects who labelled themselves as Irish Poles, one who will be referred to here as Kasia had been resident in Ireland for only a month prior to data collection and yet claimed she would describe herself as an Irish Pole rather than a Pole. Her answers to questions regarding contact with Polish and English revealed that she was seeking exposure mainly to the target language and that she did not intend to travel to Poland frequently. It would be premature to draw conclusions about this case without a proper follow-up interview, but the fact that Kasia labelled herself as an Irish Pole after a mere month’s stay in Ireland may well have been an indication of her willingness to participate fully in Irish society rather than a fully developed identification with the target community. When Kasia’s case is removed from the ‘Irish Poles’ group, the average length of residence of the group increases from 16 to 19 months

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(n = 6, range = 30, SD = 11.1). By comparison, the length of residence of the participants who described themselves as Poles was 16 months on average (n = 86, range = 74, SD = 12.99). The observed difference between the two means could be interpreted as an indication that the emergence of the identification as an Irish Pole might have been linked, at least in part, to the length of residence. This cannot, however, be confirmed by inferential testing owing to the small size of the ‘Irish Poles’ group. As mentioned in the earlier discussion on L2 motivation and confidence, the level of identification with the target community is believed to play an important supportive role in L2 acquisition in a naturalistic context (e.g. Gardner 1985). Working on the assumption that achievement in L2 acquisition in a naturalistic context is affected, inter alia, by the quality and frequency of L2 contact, we measured reported frequency of speaking English with native speakers (Item 5 in Table 5.1) and reported balance of Polish and English use (Item 11 in Table 5.1). In order to compare these variables in two groups with different target community identification status, we also measured the respondents’ identification with Polish and Irish cultures (Item 23 in Table 5.1). One of the two groups in question consisted of subjects who reported feeling at home in Polish culture (the ‘Polish culture’ group, n = 67), while the other consisted of subjects who felt at home in both Polish and Irish cultures (the ‘both cultures’ group, n = 30). A Mann–Whitney U test was carried out and revealed a significant difference between the reported balance of use of English and Polish in the ‘Polish culture’ group (median = 2 – more Polish used than English) and the ‘both cultures’ group (median = 3 – same amount of Polish and English used) (U  =  669.5, p    0.01). This represents a small effect size (r = 0.276). A significant difference between the reported frequency of speaking English with native speakers in the ‘Polish culture’ group and the ‘both cultures’ group was also detected. The difference was marginally significant (U = 760, p  =  0.049), but it represented a small effect size (r  =  0.201). The observed differences between the reported frequency scores and the reported balance scores in the ‘Polish culture’ group and the ‘both cultures’ group could have also been related to other factors such as English-language proficiency. Since only 65 participants agreed to take the OUP English-language test, the size of some subsets of scores was insufficient to calculate interactions that would include English proficiency levels. L2 confidence has been shown to promote identification with the L2 group. According to the socio-contextual model of L2 learning, L2 confidence is

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the key construct that underlies L2 behaviour (Clément et al. 1980; Clément and Kruidenier 1985). The level of L2 confidence is believed to be linked to frequency of face-to-face interactions with members of L2 society and frequency of contacts with other L2 sources such as L2 media (e.g. Rubenfeld et al. 2006). To investigate the relationship between L2 confidence and L2 contact in the Polish group we looked at the change in English confidence scores (1  =  very nervous, 5  =  very confident) and the corresponding change in three sets of English contact scores: 1. Frequency of speaking English with native speakers (1 = never, 5 = always). 2. Balance of use of English and Polish (1 = much more Polish, 5 = much more English). 3. Amount of time a day spent on passive activities in English (1 = not at all, 5 = more than 5 hours). English confidence scores did not correlate significantly with the amount of time a day spent on passive activities in English (Spearman’s correlation: rs = 0.133, p  0.05), but they correlated significantly with frequency of speaking English to native speakers of English (Spearman’s correlation: rs = 0.446, p  0.0001; medium effect size) and with balance of use of English and Polish (Spearman’s correlation: rs  =  0.595, p    0.0001; large effect size). In other words, when confidence about speaking English increases, so does the frequency of interacting in English with native speakers and the frequency of English use relative to Polish use. It is plausible that increased L2 confidence causes an increase in L2 contact time or that the reverse takes place. Our data do not permit us to draw conclusions about the direction of causality. What comes through from the responses to our questionnaire is a feeling of relative contentment regarding living in Ireland or at least an absence of widespread discontentment. A majority of our sample seemed to be content with their lives in Ireland: 58 per cent reported that they were happy, 36 per cent reported neutral feelings and only 6 per cent said they were unhappy. Similarly, 60 per cent reported positive associations with Ireland, 33 per cent neutral associations and only 7 per cent negative associations. Positive associations with Ireland specified by our subjects in open questions included the friendliness of the Irish, the greenness of the country and the lack of financial hardship. Negative associations, on the other hand, included dirty streets, traffic jams and bad weather. While the aforementioned have the ring of real experience, other associations mentioned – for example Guinness, music and shamrock – probably

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derive from pre-arrival stereotypes. The subjects were also asked about associations with Poland. In the positive category were, predictably, elements such as family, friends, home and good food, while in the negative category were financial hardship, unemployment and political corruption.

Concluding remarks This chapter presents some initial findings of the Polish Diaspora Project in relation to the notion of the ELV of the Polish community in Ireland in 2007 and in relation to attitudes of the group members towards the L2 (English) and the L2 culture. In the course of the current study, information on patterns of L1 (Polish) and L2 use, confidence to speak L2, motivation to learn L2, and attitudes towards the L1 and L2 cultures were collected. The participants’ patterns of L1 and L2 use in formal and informal contexts, and their attachment to their Polishness and the Polish language indicate that the group qualified for classification as of high ELV. The subjects reported using Polish predominantly in interactions with friends, which suggests a tendency to socialize with members of the same ethnic group. The overwhelming majority of the respondents reported that they considered it very important for their children to speak Polish, although many of them also considered it very important for their children to speak English. Additionally, the subjects were more inclined to describe themselves as Poles than as Irish Poles. The current study also revealed that the subjects exhibited positive attitudes towards the English language and the Irish community. There is evidence that their coming to Ireland was in the main a positive or at least not a negative experience, and that a sizeable minority were already, after a stay in Ireland of just 2 years, happy and engaged enough with Irish society to consider staying on a long-term basis. Since our data suggest that the Polish exhibited a high level of ELV and had a positive outlook on English and the Irish culture, it is highly plausible that their identification with the Irish community in subsequent months and years would have occurred as an additive process and would not have involved losing their Polish identity. It seems reasonable to speculate that at least a substantial minority would have integrated both culturally and linguistically to a very high degree, without losing contact with their Polishness. For the rest, no doubt, cultural and linguistic integration would have been at various levels, but, in the light of their

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broadly positive/non-negative experience of Ireland and the importance they ascribed to English, their general level of English-language proficiency could have been expected to rise, and to continue rising.

Note 1 The full version of this questionnaire can be obtained from Romana Kopečková upon request ([email protected]).

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Drinkwater, S., Eade, J. and Garapich, M. (2006), ‘Poles apart? EU enlargement and the labour market outcomes of immigrants in the UK’, IZA Discussion Paper No. 2410, from http://ftp.iza.org/dp2410.pdf [accessed 2 August 2007]. Ehala, M. (2010), ‘Refining the notion of ethnolinguistic vitality’, International Journal of Multilingualism, 7(4): 363–78. Gardner, R. C. (1985), Social Psychology and Second Language Learning. The Role of Attitudes and Motivation. London: Edward Arnold Publishers. —(1988), ‘The socio-educational model of second-language learning: Assumptions, findings, and issues’, Language Learning, 38(1): 101–26. —(2006), ‘The socio-educational model of second language acquisition: A research paradigm’, EUROSLA Yearbook, 6: 237–60. Gardner, R. C. and Lambert, W. (1959), ‘Motivational variables in second language acquisition’, Canadian Journal of Psychology, 13(4): 266–72. —(1972), Attitudes and Motivation in Second-Language Learning. Rowley: Newbury House. Giles, H., Bourhis, R. Y. and Taylor, D. M. (1977), ‘Towards a theory of language in ethnic group relations’, in H. Giles (ed.), Language, Ethnicity and Intergroup Relations. London: Academic Press, pp. 307–48. Holmquist, K. (2006), ‘2020 vision’, Irish Times. Weekend Review, 11 March, pp. 1–2. Kang, S.-M. (2006), ‘Measurement of acculturation, scale formats, and language competence: Their implications for adjustment’, Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 37(6): 669–93. Kim, Y. Y. (1988), Communication and Cross-Cultural Adaptation. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Kopečková, R. (2011), ‘Learning vowel sounds in a migrant setting: The case of Polish children and adults in Ireland’, in M. Wrembel, M. Kul and K. Dziubalska-Kołaczyk (eds), Achievements and Perspectives in SLA of Speech: New Sounds 2010 Vol. II. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 137–48. Krings, T., Bobek, A., Moriarty, E., Salamonska, J. and Wickham, J. (2009), ‘Migration and recession: Polish migrants in post-Celtic Tiger Ireland’, Sociological Research Online, 2009(2). http://www.socresonline.org.uk/14/2/9.html [accessed 15 June 2009]. Kropiwiec, K. and King-O’Riain, R. C. (2006), Polish Migrant Workers in Ireland. Dublin: NCCRI. http://www.nccri.ie/pdf/06_Polish_Report.pdf [accessed 15 June 2009]. Labrie, N. and Clément, R. (1986), ‘Ethnolinguistic vitality, self-confidence and second language proficiency: An investigation’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 7(4): 269–82. Migrant Careers and Aspirations Project (2010), MCA Newsletter No. 4. Polish Migration to Ireland: New Mobilities in an Enlarged EU. Dublin: Trinity Immigration Initiative/Employment Research Centre. http://www.tcd.ie/immigration/css/ downloads/MCA_Newsletter_No_4.pdf [accessed 9 September 2013].

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National Economic and Social Council of Ireland (2006), Managing Migration in Ireland: A Social and Economic Analysis. Dublin: The National Economic and Social Council of Ireland. http://files.nesc.ie/nesc_reports/en/NESC_116_2006.pdf [accessed 9 September 2013]. O’Brien, C. (2007), ‘Patterns of Polish and UK settlement here differ’, The Irish Times Online, 3 July, p. 8. http://search.proquest.com/docview/528859808?accountid=1456 4 [accessed 9 September 2013]. OUP (2001), Paper and Pen Test: User Manual. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Padilla, A. M. (1980), ‘The role of cultural awareness and ethnic loyalty in acculturation’, in A. M. Padilla (ed.), Acculturation: Theory, Models and Some New Findings. Boulder: Westview, pp. 47–84. Regan, V. and Nestor, N. (2009), ‘Language and emigration, maintenance and loss: The story of three communities’, in K. Jarosz, Z. Szatanik and J. WarmuzińskaRogóż (eds), De la fondation de Québec au Canada d’aujourd’hui (1608–2008): Rétrospectives parcours et défis. From the foundation of Quebec City to Present-Day Canada (1608-2008). Krakow: Agencja Artystyczna PARA, pp. 319–33. Rubenfeld, S., Clément, R., Lussier, D., Lebrun, M. and Auger, R. (2006), ‘Second language learning and cultural representations: Beyond competence and identity’, Language Learning, 56(4): 609–31. Scally, D. (2007), ‘Half of Poles in Ireland say they intend to stay’, Irish Times Online, 5 July 10. http://search.proquest.com/docview/308992647?accountid=14564 [accessed 9 September 2013]. Schumann, J. H. (1978), ‘The relationship of pidginization, creolization and decreolization to second language acquisition’, Language Learning, 28(2): 367–79. —(1986), ‘Research on the acculturation model for second language acquisition’, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 7(5): 379–92. Skrzypek, A. (2009), ‘Phonological short-term memory and L2 collocational development in adult learners’, EUROSLA Yearbook, 9: 160–84. —(2010), The Relationship between Phonological Short-term Memory and the Development of L2 Vocabulary and Collocational Knowledge: A Study of Adult Polish Learners of English at the A2 and B1 Levels of English Proficiency, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Trinity College Dublin. Spada, N. M. (1985), ‘Effects of the informal contact on learners L2 proficiency: A review of five studies’, TESL Canada Journal, 2(2): 51–62. —(1986), ‘The interaction between type of contact and type of instruction: Some effects on the L2 proficiency of adult learners’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8(2): 181–99.

6

Face-to-Face Tandem Language Learning: Evidence of Intercultural Learning in a Zone of Proximal Development for Intercultural Competence Fionnuala Kennedy and Áine Furlong

Introduction Language learning in tandem has been a well-established practice for nearly two decades, especially since the emergence of the internet. The approach was formalized by Brammerts (1995a and 1995b) with the establishment of a tandem server at Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany. This opened doors for creating ‘cultures-in-contact’ eTandem experiences, as well as offering new possibilities for learner autonomy in language learning (Little and Brammerts 1996; Schwienhorst 2002). These online experiences are well documented, for example the online bibliography (Brammerts 2007), or in academic journals such as ReCALL and CALICO. However, little evidence of face-to-face tandem language learning exists, despite the presence in higher education across the EU of large numbers of native-speaker Erasmus and international students (Furlong and Kennedy 2011). The main focus of this chapter is an analysis of the evidence of both language and intercultural learning. We will achieve this through qualitative analysis of learner reports, to provide new evidence on such exchanges, in particular, empirical evidence of the learning process through mediation and within the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in face-to-face tandem language learning. Evidence of the value of combining intercultural communication theories with a lived experience through tandem language learning also emerges.

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Principles of tandem language learning Tandem language learning in its original form was conducted face-to-face, with two partners of different native languages agreeing to meet at regular intervals for language exchange, with the common objectives of learning each other’s language and exchanging personal, cultural and linguistic information. The exchange may be based on tasks set by the teacher, or the learners can identify their own needs, negotiate and agree topics for discussion. Online collaborations are different from face-to-face encounters in that face-to-face tandem language learning focuses on oral communication, while also allowing learners to use non-verbal strategies (e.g. body language, intuition or the psychological tools described later) to clarify any misunderstandings that may arise. This approach has largely been replaced by online eTandem partnerships of language learners who are geographically distant and collaborate online using synchronous (e.g. chats, Instant Messenger or MOOs) or asynchronous tools (forums, blogs and wikis) (O’Dowd 2007: 12). The emphasis is usually on writing and reading skills, and each learner is required to correct their partner’s L2 text. Whatever form the tandem exchange might take, it is based on two key principles: reciprocity and learner autonomy. Reciprocity requires that ‘both ­partners profit equally from the experience’ (Appel 1999). To achieve this, partners must negotiate goals, agree working methods, monitor and evaluate the exchange (Schwienhorst 2003: 431). Learner autonomy implies that each learner is responsible for their own and their partner’s learning (Schwienhorst 2003: 431). Little (1991) defines autonomy as ‘a capacity for detachment, critical reflection, decision making and independent action’ (p. 4). The freedom associated with the structure of meetings (what topics to talk about, in what depth, where and when to meet) requires the learner not only to be able to make decisions, but also to be aware of their own learning goals and how to achieve them (O’Rourke 2007: 46).

Intercultural communication integrated with tandem language learning Tandem exchange within the structural framework of intercultural communi­ cation can influence students’ choice of topics and lead them to a deeper reflection in their discussions of their own and their partner’s cultural context. O’Dowd (2003) has referred to intercultural learning as a learning objective, a learning

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process and as a particular form of communication. We would contend that the intercultural learning that took place in this study was all of these: instructed intercultural communication with specified objectives combined with communication during the tandem language exchange in a process leading to intercultural learning. In fact, it can be claimed that the participants in this study become ‘intercultural speakers’: ‘the ‘intercultural speaker’ is someone who has an ability to interact with ‘others’, to accept other perspectives and perceptions of the world, to mediate between different perspectives and to be conscious of their evaluations of difference’ (Byram 2001: 5). The unspoken and subconscious rules of culture emerge: cultures are defined ‘in relation to each other, which includes perceptions, self-perceptions and cross-perceptions’ (Rantz and Horan 2005: 211).

The Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) in a tandem exchange The situation where an L2 learner is assisted by an L1 speaker immediately brings to mind Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and mediation whereby learners whose current level of development does not allow them to solve a problem on their own work with a learner at a higher level of development. In the context of the present study, learning outcomes include the development of intercultural awareness within the learner, hence the adoption of a Vygotskyan perspective in this study. In addition, the combination of formal instruction of intercultural communication concepts with the tandem exchange is also reminiscent of another Vygotskyan principle, namely that ‘the only good kind of instruction is that which marches ahead of development and leads it. It must be aimed not so much at the ripe as at the ripening functions’ (1986/2002: 188). In the context of the tandem partnership, ‘ripe functions’ can be described as those which are expected to be acquired by the learner in the initial stages of the exchange, knowledge of the practices and products (savoirs) of the culture of the partner (Byram 2001), such as Irish feast days. However, by combining the formal instruction of intercultural communication concepts with reallife experience through the exchange, the learning experience taps into the ‘ripening functions’ of the individual’s cognitive processes and also develops the skill and attitudes described by Byram’s other savoirs (see Byram 1997: 34); the experience takes the learner into a zone not usually explored in a formal

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learning context – for example humour – yet appropriate in terms of the learner’s readiness for such learning. How can we, however, establish with certainty that the learners of this study are in a ZPD? What are the indicators that point to the reality of these participants’ learning? According to Vygotsky, at the heart of the learning process is the concept of consciousness through mediation (see, for example, Vygotsky’s analysis of concept development 1986/2002: 196–7).

Mediation: Psychological tools and interpersonal relations Vygotsky describes mediation as the generator of consciousness and divides the mediated activity into two components: psychological tools and interpersonal relations. Psychological tools include gestures, language, sign systems, mnemonic techniques and decision-making systems. These tools enable the learner to access higher mental functions. In contrast to lower/natural mental functions which comprise elementary perception, memory, attention and will, the higher functions, which are developed through one’s experience of culture, are specific to humans and effect the change of the lower functions. This change, essentially cultural, comes from outside, through mediation, that is, from one’s reliance on psychological tools and engagement in interpersonal relations. These interactions with the outer world are then distilled and internalized by the individual. In short, higher mental functions in humans must be viewed as products of mediated activity. In other words, this kind of development is, in essence, cultural development which progresses from ‘with-out’ (with and through others) to ‘within’ (at the level of the individual). Interpersonal relations, the second component of the mediated activity, enables learning to take place in a non-threatening manner where tandem partners become aware of their own cultural make-up and engage consciously in a new role as mediators of knowledge. The mediated activity is transformed into a ‘socially meaningful activity’ which, according to Vygotsky, ‘. . . may serve as a generator of consciousness’ (1986/2002: xxiv–vi).

Consciousness On the subject of individual consciousness, as discussed earlier, Vygotsky believes that it is built from outside through relations with others: ‘we are aware of ourselves, for we are aware of others and in the same way as we know others; and this is as it is because in relation to ourselves we are in the same position as others are to us’ (1986/2002: xxiv).

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Awareness or consciousness comes about through cognitive processes such as noticing and attending as well as strong emotional reactions; this study shows evidence of consciousness/awareness at the individual level and through the emergence of language awareness and cultural awareness.

First-hand experience of L1 speakers: Motivation and affect In the field of SLA, Rubenfeld et al. (2006) report a more positive disposition towards the L2 when learners have direct contact with speakers of the target language. It is through human contact and first-hand experience of the language and its speaker(s) that non-linguistic outcomes in the form of changes in motivation and attitude emerge (Ó Cuinneagáin 2006). In the context of tandem exchanges, Little et al. (1999) emphasize the personal dimension of the tandem exchange and, in particular, the increased interest in learning and using the language that this particular type of interaction encourages. These characteristics emerged clearly in the participants’ reports of this study, along with the manifestation of affective variables.

The role of affective factors in the tandem exchange This study does not focus on participants’ L2 learning experience per se; nevertheless, it emphasizes the use and/or exchange of the partner’s L1. Moreover, in the light of the core learning outcomes of the module in question – the development of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) – the position advocated here supports the integrated view of language and culture proposed by, among others, Fantini (2005) and Candelier et al. (2007). In Fantini’s case, this integrated view leads to the consideration of linguaculture(s) (LC1 and LC2) as opposed to the separation of language from intercultural communication. Candelier et al. (2007: 31–2) argue that, in the context of pluralistic approaches to language and culture, the promotion of ‘global competences’, ‘valid for all languages and cultures and concerning the relationships between languages and between cultures’, leads to the development of individuals’ plurilinguistic and pluricultural repertoires. If such is the theory, in practice, the successful acquisition of an LC2 is dependent on many internal and external variables. The L2 literature sheds some light on the matter, particularly when affective factors are considered in the context of ‘willingness to communicate’ (WTC). According to MacIntyre et al. (1998), the degree of uncertainty associated with L2 use is contained in

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enduring influences such as intergroup relations or learner personality and more transient situational influences. MacIntyre et al. (1998) define WTC as ‘a  readiness to enter into discourse at a particular time with a specific person or persons, using a L2’ (p. 547). Closely linked to WTC is perceived L2 confidence which comprises two components: one, cognitive and based on self-evaluation of one’s L2 proficiency, and the other, affective and based on language anxiety, ‘specifically, the discomfort experienced when using the L2’ (p. 551). Based on participants’ reports in the present study and endorsing an integrated view of language and culture, it is not unreasonable to consider affective factors, including L2 anxiety, as a function of WTC, in the wider context of WTC in LC2.

Context of the study The context of the research was an intercultural communication module taught as part of a third semester course on the BA (Hons) in Languages and Marketing, and as part of a French module for students taking a business degree with French (but not intercultural communication) at Waterford Institute of Technology in 2005 and 2006. While the intercultural communication module is mandatory for full-time students on the Languages and Marketing course, it was also chosen by a number of visiting Erasmus students. As an integral part of the modules in question, students were required to participate in tandem language learning and to write individual reports on their experience. This chapter is based on analysis of 65 of these reports (23 Irish, 42 Erasmus students), with combinations of two of the following languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Swedish, Danish and Dutch. The objectives of including tandem language learning for these groups were as follows:

1. To develop the practice of autonomy and reciprocity in language and intercultural learning. 2. To encourage social interaction and collaboration between learners of different languages. 3. To enable students to improve their language and intercultural skills (as described by Byram’s (2001) five savoirs) in authentic contexts with the assistance of more capable peers. 4. To create a direct link between language and intercultural learning: LC1 and LC2.

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5. To provide opportunities to reflect on their own and their partner’s cultural context and intercultural experiences. 6. To bridge the gap between knowledge of theories of intercultural communication presented in lectures and development of intercultural competence.

Methodology The methodology used in the research project was a qualitative analysis of students’ reports in order to establish common categories. Altogether 15 categories were identified. In the introductory session, students were given an outline of the principles underpinning the tandem exchange and a loose framework. The first step for the student was to find a suitable partner. The majority of the students were able to find their own partner within the intercultural communication class, but some help was given by lecturers where a partner could not be easily found. Each of the student partnerships was required to meet for one hour at least five times during the semester and to ensure reciprocity of respective LC1/LC2 input. Each student was responsible for the success of these meetings, that is agreeing time and location of meetings, negotiating topics for discussion and setting objectives, ensuring reciprocity in terms of time and effort, and recording their reflections and critical analysis of the meetings in their reports. Students were required to hand in individual written reports before the end of the semester; this formed part of their continuous assessment for the module.

Findings and discussion The findings and discussion that follow suggest that the mediated nature of the communication taking place between more and less knowledgeable peers in a tandem language-learning situation leads learners to a ZPD. The results provide  evidence of mediation, the development of individual consciousness including language and cultural awareness and evidence of growth and the development of human higher mental functions in the ZPD. Increased motivation, as well as affective factors, is also reported. Finally, the results also suggest the potential of combining instruction in intercultural communication

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theory together with participants’ choice of topics within the informal context of the tandem meetings. It should be noted that the data were unsolicited and represent a window into these learners’ cognitive experiences.

Mediation (1): Psychological tools used during tandem language-learning exchanges As outlined previously, Vygotsky’s psychological tools include gestures, language, sign systems, mnemonic techniques and decision-making systems, each of which is manifest in the student statements that follow.

1. Gestures: In the following statement, by noticing the partner’s ‘shining eyes’, the learner gains an understanding of the importance of hurling as a sport in Ireland: ‘I think the Irish are really proud of these kinds of sports [hurling]. My tandem partner got “shining” eyes while she told me all about that. They are personally connected with these sports’. (Erasmus student) 2. Language: Through advance preparation of the lexicon required for the topic, learning can take place: ‘Because of the special topic of this meeting I prepared some vocabulary in advance’. (Erasmus student) 3. Sign systems: Pictures and diagrams enable comprehension. Symbols (mathematical, cultural) are also included in this category: ‘We used pictures and diagrams a lot to explain what we meant’. (Irish student) 4. Mnemonic techniques: The new (French) vocabulary is inserted in context and precedes its translation in English. In other words, the L2 vocabulary takes precedence over the L1 equivalent. In addition the use of double opening quotes and of the colour red facilitates the retention of this new vocabulary: ‘I told her the main superstitions in Ireland, “casser”, break a mirror is 7 years bad luck, step under “une échelle”, a ladder, is bad luck’. (Irish student) 5. Decision-making systems: Planning strategies are part of these systems and ensure the relevance of the exchange for the individual: ‘For me it will be necessary to deal with Irish companies and business people from Ireland in the future. Therefore I hope from this meeting to get also information about business manners in Ireland’. (Erasmus student) In the following case, learners make the decision to use the L2 to discuss the aspect of the topic they know best and which they can talk about at considerable

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length, that is, their own country. This ensures a higher output of language in the L2. In this manner, the learners create a total immersion situation during the short time of the exchange: ‘We split the languages differently. When I spoke to her about Ireland and myself, I spoke French and she asked me questions in French. Ursula spoke English telling me about France and herself and I asked her questions in English’ (Irish student).

Mediation (2): Interpersonal communication during tandem language-learning exchanges The second component of mediation involves interpersonal communication. Participants’ statements on this indicate the development of a new consciousness among these L2 learners. For the L2 learners, learning through interpersonal communication takes place in a non-threatening manner: ‘The way she corrected me was very nice and of course very useful’ (Irish student). Interpersonal communication is extended beyond the tandem partner: ‘I also met other ERASMUS students through Franzi whom I probably wouldn’t have otherwise met’ (Irish student).This interpersonal communication led to increased consciousness: the reciprocal nature of the tandem partnership leads participants to become conscious of their role as mediators: ‘We both found each other’s accents and in my partner’s case, my use of slang difficult to understand, so it helped us both to realise what each of us could understand’ (Irish student).

Development of individual consciousness through mediation, language and cultural awareness For the participants, cognitive processes, that is noticing and attention lead to consciousness; the following expressions used by participants themselves illustrate these processes: ‘I was surprised. . . . I come to understand . . .’ ‘This brought to my attention . . .’ ‘This is very strange for me!’ ‘We realised . . .’ ‘I found it unusual . . .’ ‘But what surprised me most . . .’

Emotional reactions are also recorded: ‘I was shocked. . . . I was ashamed . . .’

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Consciousness through language awareness More specifically, consciousness takes the form of language awareness as well as cultural awareness. Illustrations of learners’ progress in their knowledge of the LC2 are provided here. With regard to language awareness, learners discover that translation is not a straightforward process: ‘We exchanged stories about how figures of speech are completely different when directly translated’ (Erasmus student). For others, the mediated activity leads to the development of the will to be understood or to communicate and, consequently, to a change in behaviour (MacIntyre et al. 1998): ‘When we spoke English I had to speak a lot slower and made myself as clear as possible’ (Irish student). For a number of tandem partners, the experience implied communicating through a lingua franca (L3), leading to heightened language awareness: ‘So studying a language [French as a L2] in another language than my mother tongue [English as an L3] is very good for my skills’ (Erasmus student). Finally, through language, an L2 learner is enabled to touch on a deeper layer of culture and to hypothesize about a collective subconscious represented by the L1 speaker’s use of colloquial language: ‘[the] French find it easier to find expressions and words to describe their feelings. They are not being vulgar at all. Young Irish people swear a lot and I find that very often they cannot find appropriate words to express their emotions’ (Polish student studying in Ireland).

Consciousness through cultural awareness Cultural awareness manifests itself in various degrees of intensity. Multiple perspectives on particular issues are acquired, for example parallels are drawn on the importance of protecting minority languages such as Basque and Irish; current affairs topics such as the riots in French suburbs in 2006 are discussed from the perspective of the French and that of English-speaking media reports: ‘It was very interesting to hear Esther’s views about keeping the language alive as part of our culture’ (Irish student). Or as another student commented: ‘I enjoyed having the perspective of a French person on French topics, A.M.’s views on the riots were very interesting! and I got an insight into the French political system. This was a very different experience’ (Irish student). Learners who adopt a very focused approach to the tandem exchange, for example learning about business manners, are able to connect with deeper cultural values such as cultures with a people-orientation as opposed to cultures which value task-orientation: ‘Another important point for doing business in Ireland is to reach the trust of

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the business partner. Trust is in Germany not so much important as in Ireland but also a component of business’ (Erasmus student). Finally, one tandem exchange report illustrates Vygotsky’s statement that mechanisms of consciousness and mechanisms of social behaviour are the same: ‘We are aware of ourselves for we are aware of others and in the same way as we know others’ (1986/2002: xxiv). For the participant whose statement is presented in  the following quotation, this means awareness of punctuality, of her need to plan in advance, and of respect for individuals’ private sphere. The same learner begins to understand the patterns, the time orientation, the appearance and the interactional behaviour of others. This awareness of self and others leads to personal growth: the tandem exchange becomes a personal experience, leading to comprehension of one’s own cultural background. It is a mirroring process – looking at the self through others – which reflects a transformed image of the self: The tandem exchange was for me a personal experience as I learned much about myself and I recognized that I’m a typical German person. Despite ­several stays abroad, my cultural background is really deep and I like plans which go up, punctual people and my private sphere. But the stays abroad helps me to became more and more tolerant with other cultures and understand their ­patterns, like  time comprehension, appearance in the environment and in particular the behaviour against others and the comprehension of the own cultural background. (Erasmus student)

Development of human higher mental functions as outcomes of the mediated activity Vygotsky stresses ‘the social and cultural nature of the development of the higher mental functions and its dependence on cooperation with adults [or more knowledgeable peers] as well as on instruction’ (1986/2002: 189). Higher mental functions represent the transformation of lower natural mental functions such as elementary perception, memory, attention and will. The transformation is essentially cultural and the result of the constructive principles of the mediated activity. The learner’s report that follows indicates, first, the learner’s dependence on another more knowledgeable peer as well as formal instruction, that is intercultural communication classes, in order to progress: The tandem partnership was definitely a good experience. The tandem sessions offered us a good opportunity to ask questions that we never knew who and when

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we could ask them about the country and culture of the other. We improved our language skills, as well as the knowledge of each other’s culture. Comparing how things are in Germany with how they are in Ireland also offered a reflection on my own culture. (Erasmus student)

and second, the development of higher functions resulting from the mediated activity of the tandem exchange – transformation of lower natural mental functions such as perception and memory on his return to Germany: ‘When I will be back in Germany, I will definitely perceive some things in another way than I did before my stay in Ireland. The tandem partnership also added its share to this change of perception, which I believe is less biased and culturally influenced than before’ (Erasmus student).

Evidence of growth in the Zone of Proximal Development Growth as an outcome of the tandem exchange itself is expressed by participants in different ways. For some it is related to the experience itself: ‘Because of the Tandem Language-Learning Programme, I now feel more confident about my Erasmus year next year in France’ (Irish student). Another participant perceives growth as an ongoing process stretching beyond the end of the module/semester: ‘All in all I think I learned a lot from Kate and her culture here. I will bring her after Christmas a lot of teas for her because she never tried other sorts of tea only black tea. We will see if she likes it too or not’ (Erasmus student). Finally, for this student, Irish humour and accents become accessible: ‘I learnt more about Irish culture, traditions and communication. Indeed I learnt to understand Irish humour and different Irish accents, even if it was really difficult at the beginning’ (Erasmus student).

Increase in motivation as a result of the tandem exchange The evidence emerging from the tandem reports points to increased interest: ‘I was eager to learn . . .’ (Irish student) or from another Irish participant: ‘From Pauline speaking to me about her country, she has made me very excited about going to study in France for the flexible semester’. Motivation as a result of socially meaningful interaction spurs a learner to spend more time on French as this type of exchange also allowed her to speak about subjects that ‘mean a lot’ to her: ‘I want to be able to talk to Pauline about my friends as they mean a lot to me’ (Irish student).

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Affective factors and willingness to communicate Affective factors recorded by students at the early stage of the partnership show a difference between Irish and Erasmus students. Common to all of the Irish students involved in this study were L2 anxiety and the fear of meeting native speakers; words used in the reports were ‘worried’, ‘apprehensive’, ‘ill-at-ease’, ‘daunted’ and ‘uncertain’: ‘When faced with the task of meeting a French student and speaking French with them, I was a bit daunted. The fact that someone would be able to pick out my flaws when speaking in French was something that I felt very nervous about’ (Irish student). While concern about inadequate level of linguistic competence was common for Irish students, Erasmus students viewed the task as an opportunity to meet and work with an Irish student: ‘I was really excited and impatient to meet Caroline and to talk with her’ (Erasmus student). The following strategy was used by an Irish student in order to overcome her anxiety: ‘Initially, I was a bit apprehensive about the whole situation, so I decided for our first meeting, some of the girls from my French class would meet their tandem partners with me’ (Irish student). Finally, the tandem partnership is perceived as a non-threatening activity and ultimately fosters the learner’s ‘willingness to communicate’ (WTC): ‘The learning of words and the daily use of a foreign language is easier if you have a pleasant communication partner’ (Erasmus student).

Choice of topics This section will show students’ initial reactions to the task and a progression in the focus of their discussions from the more obvious and visible elements of their respective cultures to a more in-depth analysis of how their own and the other group functions. Although students were expected to choose the topics they wanted to discuss, possible topics were provided with reference to material covered in the intercultural class (for the group taking intercultural communication) and tasks suggested by the Bochum tandem server for face-toface tandem (http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/tandem/tasks-en.html). The most common approach used by students was planning future discussions together during the first meeting and setting their goals for subsequent meetings. The first meeting was vital in getting to know one another generally, negotiating the location and frequency of meetings, establishing common interests and deciding on the topics they might discuss during future meetings. Little et al. (1999) have referred to this as ‘tandem-related metatalk’. This approach was

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seen by one of the students as an ice-breaker exercise for possibly more ‘serious’ discussions at a later stage. It could also be seen as a strategy for preventing a future breakdown in communication, in line with Canale and Swain’s (1980) model of strategic competence: ‘We used our first meeting to get to know each other, finding out details about each other’s family, studies and way of life. We did this so as it would be easier later on in time, to discuss other topics on a more familiar basis’. (Irish student) The iceberg metaphor of culture is a good illustration of the progression in choice of topics for the students involved. In the initial stages of the partnership, students tended to choose topics which could be considered visible, obvious and less likely to be controversial, for example sport, Christmas celebrations, television. The following extracts show how observations of difference have led students to reflect on their own and their partner’s personal values, behaviour and assumptions.

1. Behavioural Norms: ‘I knew Ireland was a country where it was usual to drink a lot but I was surprised by the behaviour of Irish people in general’. (Erasmus student) 2. Dress Code: ‘I wanted to know why Irish girls dressed up with sport clothes to go to the university. Indeed in France it is very different, student girls are always well dressed and fashion to go to the university’. (Erasmus student) 3. Humour: This student gains a deeper insight into the partner’s culture(s) and has reflected on the different understanding of what humour is by analysing what is considered funny by the Irish people she has met: ‘Irish humour is really different from French humour. . . . I suppose it is a kind of cynical humorous, because most of the time the Irises use the weaknesses of others to make a joke’. (Erasmus student) 4. Different Attitude to Time: ‘Especially for me as a German it is very difficult for me to find my way in a completely different view of time and order’ (Erasmus student). ‘We wanted to elaborate on the differences in how time is perceived . . . time as something precious and consumable that they have a limited amount of. . . . This could be based on the different perceptions of time in Ireland and Germany . . .’ . (Erasmus student) ‘. . . it has to be spent in a way that brings some benefit, like generating income (b) or enjoying oneself (leisure time . . . time horizon) in which

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people plan in advance seems to be significantly shorter in Ireland than it is in Germany’. (Erasmus student) 5. Sport: The following extract is concerned more with the underlying values associated with the sport, rather than a surface-level insight into the rules of that sport: ‘We talked about the meaning of the national team . . .’ . (Erasmus student)

Influence of intercultural instruction on outcome of tandem learning The following extracts show that students are beginning to form hypotheses on what they see around them, reasons behind the behavioural norms, linking them  to values and beliefs. They also tend to use the meta-language of intercultural communication, which suggests that they are applying the theory dealt with in lectures to their own intercultural experience and reflection: ‘It was also interesting to learn about a culture with the background knowledge from the lessons’ (Erasmus student). The findings also show that once students had established a rapport, some of them moved on to a critical analysis of this knowledge or to more difficult or possibly controversial topics; the focus became more intercultural, particularly in terms of the following topics:

1. Communication Style: The following reflection on difference in greeting style leads a French student to analyse the underlying meaning of expressions used by Irish people in greetings as both a pessimistic view of life and a tendency for hyperbole: ‘Moreover, in France when you ask “How are you” the most of the answer is “I am fine”, whereas in Ireland, most of people say “Not so bad” or “It could be worse”. They are more pessimistic in their answer. Actually, such answer in France will be followed by “Really? What’s wrong? What’s happened?” . . . In addition, compared to French people, Irish people are very expressive and like exaggerating. I often listen “Oh Great!” or “That is so lovely!” for banal events’. (Erasmus student)



This student notices differences in style of communication: ‘. . . different communication styles of the two countries. In Germany the conversation is more direct and in Ireland more indirect’ (Erasmus student).

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2. Forces that influence culture: This student reflects on the impact of history on culture: ‘For Germans I would say that they think that history is not a good topic to talk about. I began to ask him very carefully if it is still dangerous in the North for a tourist with all that I.R.A Terrorists. And there it was! My first intercultural misunderstanding’. (Erasmus student) 3. Institutional networks: The following students explored how the Church and family are sources of values with the Erasmus student commenting: ‘Culture between Ireland and Germany is very similar because the institutional network . . . the church plays an important role in both countries’, while the Irish student reported: ‘we talked about what family means to us and family means in the culture’. Another Erasmus student said: ‘Both of us gained our basic values and ideas of what is important in life through our education in our family surroundings’. 4. Cultural dimensions: The following statement shows an understanding of ascription versus achievement (Trompenaars and Hampden-Turner 1997): ‘If you apply for a job in France the reputation of your university is very important. The degree is more important than specific marks’. (Erasmus student) 5. Cultural Values: A class discussion of the changes that took place in Ireland during its economic boom up to around 2008 has led this student to form a hypothesis that changing values and behaviour are linked to changing economic circumstances: ‘The fact that holiday houses are becoming more popular could be due to the economic success of the country and the increasing masculinity that may go along with that. Showing wealth and status through things like owning a second house in another country is probably more common in Ireland now than it was two decades ago’. (Erasmus student) This extract shows a realization of differences between the organization of academic institutions, a critical analysis of practices in the culture of origin and willingness to adapt behaviour: We were used to having our schedule for the next semester weeks in advance, and not much changes taking place after that. I think this was a good

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experience for us Germans to see that things can definitely also work out well in the end if they are not planned weeks or months in advance. Things can be handled more flexible and spontaneously, while on the other hand on some occasions long term planning also has its right to exist. (Erasmus student)

Conclusion The effects of intercultural communication instruction on face-to-face tandem partnership as well as evidence of learning within the ZPD were considered with reference to Irish and Erasmus students’ reports on face-toface tandem language-learning experiences. The results suggest the following: Vygotskyan principles, namely, the role of instruction and the role of more knowledgeable peers in mediated activity are central to the development of consciousness. Learners’ reports show evidence of the development of consciousness which took the form of self-awareness, cultural awareness and language awareness. Moreover, learners’ reports point to the development of higher mental functions with particular reference to long-lasting perceptual changes of their own and the target culture. The student reports also show that the tandem exchange has given them an opportunity to reflect on intercultural communication, to apply the knowledge of the module to their discussions and to develop a capacity for autonomy. Little (1991) stresses that autonomy is ‘displayed both in the way the learner learns and in the way he or she transfers what has been learned to wider contexts’ (p. 4). In the context of this study the process relates to L2 and intercultural learning acquired formally in the classroom and less formally outside the classroom, and possibly long after the required exchange has been completed, which confirms that the process develops over time and is not necessarily linear (Woodin 2001). In 2001, Said argued that the world faced not a clash of civilizations but a clash of ignorance. In global terms, educational exchange programmes have long offered a structured response to this problem. Only by facilitating and rewarding real and meaningful communication between language learners of diverse backgrounds, however, can the successful integration of language education and enhanced intercultural communication help counter this clash of ignorance between cultures.

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References Appel, M.-Ch. (1999), Tandem Language Learning by E-mail: Some Basic Principles and a Case Study. Trinity College Dublin, CLCS Occasional Paper 54. Brammerts, H. (1995a), ‘International E-Mail Tandem Network’, in M. Warschauer (ed.), Virtual Connections: Online Activities and Projects for Networking Language Learners. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center, pp. 127–8. —(1995b), ‘Tandem learning and the Internet. Using new technology to acquire intercultural competence’, in A. Jensen, K. Jæger and A. Lorentsen (eds), Intercultural Competence: A New Challenge for Language Teachers and Trainers in Europe, Vol. II, ‘The Adult Learner’. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, pp. 209–22. —(2007), Language Learning in Tandem Bibliography. http://www.slf.ruhr-uni-bochum. de/learning/tanbib.html [accessed 28 November 2011]. Byram, M. (1997), Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. —(2001), Developing Intercultural Competence in Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Canale, M. and Swain, M. (1980), ‘Theoretical bases of communicative approaches to second language teaching and testing’, Applied Linguistics, 1: 1–47. Candelier, M., Camilleri-Grima, A., Castellotti, V., Pietro de, J.-F., Lörincz, I., Meissner, F.-J., Schröder-Sura, A. and Noguerol, A. (2007), CARAP Framework of Reference for Pluralistic Approaches to Languages and Cultures. Graz: European Centre for Modern Languages. Fantini, A. E. (2005), ‘About intercultural communicative competence: A construct’, in A. E. Fantini and A. Tirmizi (eds), Exploring and Assessing Intercultural Competence. Final Report. St Louis, MI: Washington University, Appendix E: 1–4. Furlong, A. and Kennedy, F. (2011), ‘Towards the development of awareness in intercultural communicative competence: A tandem exchange experience’, in A. Witte and T. Harden (eds), Intercultural Competence: Concepts, Challenges, Evaluations. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 325–39. Little, D. (1991), Learner Autonomy: Definitions, Issues and Problems. Dublin: Authentik. Little, D. and Brammerts, H. (eds) (1996), A Guide to Language Learning in Tandem via the Internet. Dublin: Trinity College, CLCS Occasional Paper No. 46. Little, D., Ushioda, E., Appel, M.-C., Moran J., O’Rourke, B. and Schwienhorst, K. (1999), Evaluating Tandem Language Learning by e-mail: Report on a Bilateral Project. Dublin: Trinity College, CLCS Occasional Paper 55. MacIntyre, P., Dörnyei, Z., Clément, R. and Noels, K. A. (1998), ‘Conceptualizing willingness to communicate in a L2: A situational model of L2 confidence and affiliation’, The Modern Language Journal, 82(iv): 545–62.

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Ó Cuinneagáin, S. (2006), Motivation in Language Learning: A Comparative Study of Motivation in the Learning of Irish and German among Leaving Certificate Students. unpublished PhD thesis, Tralee: Tralee IT. O’Dowd, R. (2003), ‘Understanding the “other side”: Intercultural learning in a SpanishEnglish e-mail exchange’, Language Learning & Technology, 7(2): 118–44. —(ed.) (2007), Online Intercultural Exchange: An Introduction for Foreign Language Teachers. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. O’Rourke, B. (2007), ‘Models of telecollaboration: e-tandem’, in R. O’Dowd (ed.), Online Intercultural Exchange: An Introduction for Foreign Language Teachers. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 41–61. Rantz, F. and Horan, P. (2005), ‘Exploring intercultural awareness in the primary modern language classroom: The potential of the new model of European Language Portfolio developed by the Irish Modern Languages in Primary Schools Initiative’, Language and Intercultural Communication, 5(3&4): 209–21. Rubenfeld, S., Clément, R., Lussier, D., Lebrun, M. and Auger, R. (2006), ‘Second language learning and cultural representations: Beyond competence and identity’, Language Learning, 56(4): 609–31. Said, E. W. (2001), ‘The clash of ignorance’, The Nation, 22 October 2001, 11–14. Schwienhorst, K. (2002), ‘Evaluating tandem language learning in the MOO: Discourse repair strategies in a bilingual Internet project’, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 15(2): 135–45. —(2003), ‘Learner autonomy and tandem learning: Putting principles into practice in synchronous and asynchronous telecommunications environments’, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 16(5): 427–43. Trompenaars, F. and Hampden-Turner, C. (1997), Riding the Waves of Culture. New York: McGraw Hill. Vygotsky, L. (1986/2002), Thought and Language, trans. and ed. Alex Kozulin. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Woodin, J. (2001), ‘Tandem learning as an intercultural activity’, in M. Byram, A. Nichols and D. Stevens (eds), Developing Intercultural Competence in Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 189–202.

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E-Portfolio Self-Assessment of Intercultural Communicative Competence: Helping Language Learners to Become Autonomous Intercultural Speakers Aleksandra Sudhershan

Introduction There is a growing consensus among foreign-language professionals that language learners should develop not only communicative but also intercultural competence. The developmental nature of intercultural competence requires that learners are encouraged to take responsibility for the acquisition of their intercultural knowledge, skills and attitudes. The European Language Portfolio (ELP), as a tool designed to promote learner autonomy and intercultural language learning, has the potential to support learners in the development of such responsibility, although until recently this aim was not realized due to the underdevelopment of the ELP’s intercultural component, particularly its self-assessment grid. Drawing on the findings of a case study conducted at the Irish University,1 this chapter discusses the role that an innovative online ELP (LOLIPOP ELP) providing opportunities for intercultural self-assessment can play in helping learners to become autonomous ‘intercultural speakers’ (Byram 1997: 8).

From ‘native speaker’ to ‘intercultural speaker’ Foreign-Language Education (FLE) has witnessed a gradual shift in its approach to culture teaching, as manifested in a swing away from a monocultural and towards an intercultural approach (Risager 1998; Chambers 2004). One of

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the reasons for this development concerns the criticism levelled against the monocultural approach in relation to, first, its emphasis on what the literature refers to as a ‘received’ (Atkinson 1999: 626), ‘essentialist’ (Holliday et al. 2004: 3) or ‘coherence-oriented’ (Rathje 2007: 260) model of the target-language culture (national, homogenous, static and prescriptive in terms of human behaviour), and second, its promotion of the native speaker as a model for the language learner to follow (Risager 1998). The notion of ‘native speakership’ is regarded as controversial and increasingly problematic (e.g. what criteria are to be used to call someone a native speaker of a language?) (Kramsch 1998: 16); in addition, its use as a benchmark in foreign-language learning is said to create ‘an impossible target and consequently inevitable failure’ (Byram 1997: 11). In the light of the widespread acknowledgement that language learners can no longer be expected to ‘become’ native speakers of the target language, and taking into account the fact that a ‘knowledge-based’ approach to culture teaching (Wright 2000: 330) is inadequate since the image of the target culture presented in the classroom is often divorced from reality (e.g. Chambers 2004), FLE has been faced with the task of revising its objectives. Bearing in mind that the emphasis is increasingly placed less on communication with native speakers of a given language, or ‘[t]he bilateral communicative model which has underpinned FL learning’ (Mughan 1999: 62), and more ‘on all aspects of communication across cultures, and in all kinds of situations’, including instances where the foreign language is used as a lingua franca (Álvarez 2007: 127), it has been proposed that the traditional notion of communicative competence based on the native speaker be reconceptualized in order to prepare learners for successful intercultural communication and interaction (e.g. Jensen 1995; Byram 1997). This has led to the emergence of what is now commonly referred to in the literature as an intercultural approach to FLE (e.g. Chambers 2004), which proposes that an attainable aim for the language learner is to become an ‘intercultural speaker’ (Byram 1997; Kramsch 1998; Byram et al. 2001). Consequently, attention has increasingly shifted towards defining the intercultural communicative competence that such a speaker should possess (e.g. Jensen 1995; Byram 1997; Kramsch 1998), and finding appropriate ways of fostering it in the language classroom (and beyond). Intercultural communicative competence, which ‘aims essentially at establishing and maintaining human relationships in a foreign language’ (Álvarez 2007: 127) as much as it aims at developing learners’ ability to use language for communication (Byram et al. 2002: 7), is said to involve linguistic, sociolinguistic and discourse competences, in addition to intercultural competence (Byram 1997). The latter is understood as

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‘knowledge, skills and attitudes, complemented by the values one holds because of one’s belonging to a number of social groups, values which are part of one’s belonging to a given society’ (Byram et al. 2001: 5). According to the model put forward by Byram (1997: 34–8), knowledge (also referred to as savoirs) refers to the knowledge of the learner’s own as well as the target culture(s), and in addition, of the processes involved in individual and societal interaction. Attitudes (savoir être) concern the learner’s openness, curiosity and ability to suspend disbelief or judgement, to ‘decentre’. Both components are, in Byram’s view, preconditions for successful intercultural interaction. His model also comprises three types of skills: the skill of interpreting documents or behaviours from another culture and relating them to those from one’s own culture (savoir comprendre); the skill of discovery of new behaviours, beliefs and values (savoir apprendre); and the skill of interaction (savoir faire). Finally, in an educational setting one can also identify a sixth savoir (savoir s’engager), that is critical cultural awareness. This Byram (ibid.: 63) defines as ‘an ability to evaluate, critically and on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives, practices and products in one’s own and other cultures and countries’. While knowing the specific components of intercultural competence is certainly important for embracing the concept in the foreign-language classroom, equally important is the realization that the acquisition thereof is a life-long process. In the words of Fantini (2000), whose own model of the construct comprises three domains, a range of traits, four dimensions (awareness, attitudes, skills and knowledge) and proficiency in the target language, ‘[o]ne is always in the process of “becoming”, and one is never completely “interculturally competent”’ (p. 29). Furthermore, in the light of the opportunities for intercultural contact that increasingly exist in professional, private and educational settings (the internationalization of higher education being a case in point), it is difficult to disagree with Jensen et al. (1995) when they write that the development of intercultural competence is not ‘likely to be constrained to a classroom setting and . . . be constantly supervised by a teacher’ (p. 14). As a result, the question arises as to how foreign-language teachers can prepare learners to take responsibility for their intercultural development both in the language classroom and outside it, especially once formal instruction is over. In the words of Sercu (2002), what can be done to help learners to develop ‘the competence to learn cultures autonomously’ (p. 72; emphasis added)? This brings us to the issue of the European Language Portfolio (ELP) and the role that it can play in this process.

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The European language portfolio: A tool for developing ‘the competence to learn cultures autonomously’? The ELP was developed by the Council of Europe as a tool to promote, inter alia, learner autonomy, plurilingualism and pluriculturalism (Council for Cultural Cooperation 2000: 2). Although ELP models vary in their design and intended target users (e.g. adolescents, immigrants, adults), each ELP should comprise the following three components: the Passport, the Biography and the Dossier (ibid.: 3). More specifically, the Passport serves as an overview of the learner’s linguistic and intercultural competence; the Biography allows the learner to plan and reflect on his/her learning objectives and assess the progress made; and finally, the Dossier contains examples of the learner’s work. One of the most distinctive features of the ELP is its ‘self-assessment grid’, which is based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Language Learning and Teaching (CEFR) (Council of Europe 2001). Whereas the vertical scale of the grid describes six common reference levels for language competence (A1 and A2 for a ‘Basic user’; B1 and B2 for an ‘Independent user’; and C1 and C2 for a ‘Proficient user’), the horizontal scale covers both receptive skills (reading and listening) and productive skills (spoken interaction, spoken production and writing) in the target language. Both the grid (which is included in the Passport) and the more detailed self-assessment checklists (which are part of the Biography and which allow the learner to plan, monitor and assess the learning process) contain Can do descriptors that, as the name suggests, celebrate the learner’s achievements in the target language, rather than his or her communicative deficits. With regard to the other two goals of the ELP mentioned at the beginning of this section, the portfolio is supposed to recognize ‘the full range of the learner’s language and intercultural competence and experience’ (Council for Cultural Cooperation 2000: 2; emphasis added). However, its ability to acknowledge the learner’s intercultural competence has raised some concern among foreignlanguage teachers. For example, Bruen et al. (2007) argue that even though the ELP ‘has the potential to develop and reflect a student’s pluricultural awareness and competencies’, its design has been driven by ‘predominantly linguistic concerns’ (p. 115; emphasis added). Among others, the ELP has been accused of not providing the learner with any opportunity to self-assess his or her intercultural competence (e.g. Bruen et al. 2007; Murphy-Lejeune 2007), although whether or not such self-assessment

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is possible remains a contentious issue. On the one hand, Little and Simpson (2003) point to one important difference that may exist between language and intercultural self-assessment scales: The common reference levels are defined by descriptors that refer to communicative behaviour: on the whole we know what we are capable of doing and what lies beyond our competence. By contrast, the components of intercultural competence may well be opaque in the absence of reflected intercultural experience: in many circumstances ELP users may not be in a position to judge their own intercultural competence. (p. 5; emphasis added)

On the other hand, Murphy-Lejeune (2007) writes that: the notion of plurilingual experiences in the ELP needs to be extended to embrace pluricultural experiences. The missing link between the two may be an appropriate description of pluricultural experiences, which would include specific descriptors, such as those which exist for language learning. (p. 220; emphasis added)

To redress the balance in the design of the ELP, the LOLIPOP project, a panEuropean partnership of 12 academic institutions funded by the EC Socrates Lingua 2 programme, set out to create a multilingual, online and interactive version of the ELP and to enhance its intercultural dimension.2 In relation to the latter, the partnership inter alia extended the self-assessment grid and checklists also to include intercultural Can do descriptors and provide examples for them.3 The descriptors are embedded in two theoretical frameworks that have been particularly influential in the fields of FLE and intercultural communication respectively: Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural competence, described earlier, and Bennett’s (1993) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). Whereas Byram’s model breaks down the concept of intercultural competence into different sub-components,4 Bennett’s model describes a progressive scale of intercultural sensitivity,5 thus showing how it may be possible to distinguish between different levels of the construct. Sample intercultural Can do descriptors for level A1 include the following statements: ‘I can give some examples of facts about the other country (geography, climate, etc.) (savoirs)’ and ‘I can appreciate the opportunity to have new intercultural experiences, although I have not yet had many opportunities to do so (savoir être)’. It has to be pointed out that the intercultural descriptors developed by the LOLIPOP project have not as yet been empirically validated (unlike those for

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the language skills), and this issue merits further research. The question arises as to whether, in spite of this limitation, such an example of ‘an honest effort to take culture testing as seriously as language testing’ (Barnwell 2004: 116) can nonetheless help learners to develop into autonomous ‘intercultural speakers’? The following section of this chapter outlines a research project whose findings help us to address this very question.

Research project The aim of the research project was to investigate how international students can be supported in a multicultural foreign-language classroom in the development of autonomy in intercultural language learning. Such autonomy is conceptualized as the capacity to take responsibility for one’s own language and intercultural development. The study focused on the experience of international students since it appears that this student group in particular may be in need of such autonomy: even though empirical research suggests that study abroad can lead to significant linguistic and intercultural gains (e.g. Freed 1998; Engle and Engle 2004; Jackson 2006), international students often miss out on the opportunities it offers in this regard by, for instance, not making an effort to seek communication opportunities with members of the host culture (Allen and Herron 2003; Llanes and Muñoz 2009). To investigate the research issue, a qualitative case study involving a cohort of 30 international students was designed. A case study is a study of a phenomenon in its ‘naturalistic settings’ (Cousin 2005: 423). It is also defined as a ‘bounded system’ (Creswell 1998) – it is bounded by time and space. The ‘naturalistic setting’ in this project refers to a Content and Language Integrated Learning English language module (LAN01) which ran for 12 weeks at the Irish University (IU) and which involved three contact hours per week (i.e. two-hour seminars and one-hour sessions in a computer laboratory). The course was open to international students who were either pursuing an academic degree at the IU or were exchange students there; potential students were required to have already achieved at least B1 level in English (as per CEFR). The group which was the subject of investigation in this study comprised 4 male and 26 female students from no fewer than 15 different countries of origin. The four aims of the module, as per the official module descriptor, included the development of English-language skills; critical engagement with the

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topic of globalization; fostering collaborative learning and promoting learner autonomy. The final aim was to be achieved inter alia through student engagement with the LOLIPOP ELP, an aspect on which this chapter will focus. Although due to some delay with the development of the software, the students’ exposure to the portfolio was much shorter than originally envisaged (the students were asked only once, half-way through the semester, to conduct selfassessment and objective setting via the tool), their feedback on the experience6 provides, nonetheless, a valuable insight into the role that the LOLIPOP ELP can play in helping international students ‘to become independent explorers of cultures’ (Sercu 2006: 69). This issue is the focus of the discussion in the following section.

Results and discussion Being an autonomous learner can be conceptualized on a number of different levels (see, for instance, Oxford 2003) and the findings of this study suggest that intercultural self-assessment via the LOLIPOP ELP can help students to develop into autonomous ‘intercultural speakers’ in two important ways, which will be now addressed in turn. The first contribution that the Portfolio can make to this process concerns expanding learners’ metacognitive knowledge, defined as ‘the stable, statable and sometimes fallible knowledge learners acquire about themselves as learners and the learning process’ (Wenden 1995: 185; emphasis added). In particular, it appears that engagement in intercultural self-assessment can raise learners’ awareness of the intercultural dimension of foreign-language learning. In the light of the fact that teachers still perceive teaching for intercultural competence as ‘an important proposal for innovation . . . peripheral to the commonly accepted linguistic goals of foreign-language education’, and that those views have an impact on what they do in the classroom (Sercu 2006: 68; emphasis added), it is reasonable to expect that learners may often be unaware of the fact that developing intercultural competence is as important as developing communicative competence. With regard to this study, this argument is given credence, for instance, by the fact that when asked to reflect in writing on the qualities of a good language learner, only 4 out of the 28 students who submitted their reflections mentioned interest in the target culture(s). Furthermore, as illustrated by the following comment made by one of the students, whereas

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learners may have developed metalinguistic awareness, this may not be the case as far as the intercultural dimension is concerned: I became more aware. Yeah. I became more aware definitely. Intercultural, looking at the intercultural, doing the – all the things – language and reading because I did Cambridge exams, I kind of knew it so that’s – that wasn’t really new to me but intercultural . . . Yeah. I became more aware and more I suppose open to other opinions . . . now I know that there are other ways of thinking (Agata)7

As is evident from this quote, self-assessment of intercultural competence can bring to the fore ‘what it means to be culturally skilled’ (Danilo), help ‘understand [a] few of the intercultural issues’ (Milena) and finally stimulate reflection on learners’ own intercultural communication skills, an issue that, as the following quote illustrates, may be of particular importance to international students: Regarding the intercultural part I think that it is a very interesting section because it makes you think about your own behaviour and as an international student I consider that I need plenty of time to sit down and think about it. This is because I am coming from a different background, therefore my culture it is not only different from the Irish one but it is also different from any other international classmate. And given the circumstances I really need to change my perspective and open myself in order to fit in and make these moments not only more pleasant but at the same time educational ones. (Carla, emphasis added)

Second, intercultural self-assessment can help learners ‘to become independent explorers of cultures’ (Sercu 2006: 69) by encouraging them to ‘take charge of [their] own learning’ (Holec 1981: 3) through the planning, monitoring and assessing of the intercultural learning process. As is evident from the student feedback, engaging in self-assessment can help students to realize ‘what level [they have] reached’ (Elsa), and to develop an awareness of what they are good at as well as of areas for improvement.8 As Lisa pointed out: ‘Using the LOLIPOP program has helped me to recognize my strengths and weaknesses as an intercultural learner as well as a language learner’. Furthermore, as is evident from the following two quotes, once learners have identified gaps in their own competence, they can then select relevant learning objectives and monitor if they are making progress: For example, about question, ‘I can behave in accordance with the expectations of the other culture in most everyday situations both private and professional, even though it might sometimes require effort on my part.’ I might not have cared much about this before, and maybe checked it as ‘I can do,’ but now, I faced

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many difficulties by being in different situation from my home culture and are feeling this problem personally, for example, I argued with my boyfriend who is Irish because he required me being more talkative and expressive which might be rude or vulgar in Japan, rather than being so modest which is so called virtue in Japan, and I found it really difficult to adapt myself to Irish style, so though this subject is not high level, I checked it as ‘I want to do it’. (Noriko) All in all I think the self-assessment was a great and interesting experience and I would have liked to have started it when I started this course so I could be able to follow my development. (Hanna)

Finally, as is evident from the following quote, the process of self-assessment and objective setting can set a ‘virtuous circle’ (Dam 2000: 19) in motion in which being in control of the learning process can lead to a sense of achievement and an even greater involvement in learning: I think setting objectives through portfolio is a good idea, specially if you work with it for a long period. It is really satisfactory to set an objective and sometime later see that you can change its colour from orange to green because you are already able to say ‘I can do this’.9 That way, students can feel more confident about their possibilities for future objectives. Even if the one you have completed is a small step, reflecting on it and knowing that it was something you have been able to achieve helps you go for the next objective. (Isabel)

However, the student feedback suggests that in order to maximize the potential of intercultural self-assessment for helping learners to become autonomous ‘intercultural speakers’, teachers need to bear in mind the difficulties involved in self-assessment in general and intercultural self-assessment in particular. Lack of experience with self-assessment, considered to be ‘one of the pillars of learner autonomy’ (Harris 1997: 12), appears to be one of the key difficulties. This issue is manifested in some of the adjectives that were used by the students to describe their self-assessment experience: ‘a hard thing to comprehend’ (Hanna), ‘strange’ (Katia), ‘weird’ (Keiko) and ‘difficult’ (Agata). It is likely that such lack of experience can be related to the other key problems encountered by the students in this study such as problems with being objective (which some of the students attributed to the influence of their cultural backgrounds) and a sense of discomfort some of them experienced. The former point is exemplified by the following quote: The most difficult part of the self-assessment was trying to be honest with myself about what I recon is the level of my English. This was particularly hard when it came to Spoken, Writing, Intercultural areas that had no examples to refer to. (Danilo)

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As far as the sense of discomfort is concerned, whereas many of the students felt generally comfortable with the exercise, a few of them did not, as reflected in some of the expressions they used to describe it: ‘really confused’ (Noriko), ‘embarrassment’ (Hoshiko) and ‘awkward at first’ (Hanna). Based on the student feedback, this feeling can be attributed to a number of reasons, including the following: lack of experience with self-assessment; the need to be honest about one’s own limitations; lack of confidence in one’s own evaluation; and finally, feeling that one is taking over the teacher’s job. As far as the difficulties involved in intercultural self-assessment are concerned, these concern mostly its perceived ‘abstractness’, a point illustrated by the following comment: for me it was a bit difficult to do the intercultural one, much more than the ones about oral comprehension because these ones are easier. In fact you know if you can do it or not. Like the other ones you start doubting, like, it’s more difficult to know, to evaluate yourself, I think. (Isabel)

This quote, as well as some of the other expressions used by the students to describe intercultural self-assessment as ‘obscure’ (Hoshiko), ‘vaguer than language’ (Keiko) and ‘more of an abstract subject compared to the language questions’ (Lisa), provides support for the argument made by Little and Simpson (2003: 3), and cited earlier in the chapter, according to which it is much easier to self-assess one’s own communicative competence since ‘on the whole we know what we are capable of doing and what lies beyond our competence’. Furthermore, it appears that previous intercultural experiences are a prerequisite for conducting a meaningful intercultural self-assessment, as is evident, for instance, from the following comment made by Noriko: ‘Before, I didn’t take those questions seriously, because they are really vague, and don’t make sense if we haven’t experience the things’. Such comments seem to support, therefore, the belief that learners may not be in a position to judge their own intercultural competence because its components may be too opaque in the absence of reflected intercultural experience (Little and Simpson 2003: 5). As Katia explained: ‘It was easy for me to understand what the question mean. I think it because of intercultural atmosphere I am living now at’. In the light of this discussion, it is worth considering for a moment what can be done to help learners overcome some of the problems they may encounter with engaging in (intercultural) self-assessment. Self-assessment has been described as ‘the art of balance between self-denigration and self-inflation’ (Heron 1988: 86), and it seems that learners should acquire such an ‘art’ if they are to benefit from the experience. To this end, teachers may consider the provision

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of self-assessment training which should ‘provide a series of experiences and opportunities for reflection so that learners could “operationalize” selfassessment concepts’ (Cram 1995: 296). Furthermore, whereas the development of diagnostic tools such as DIALANG10 can help learners compare their language self-assessment with that generated by the software, and in this way overcome problems of objectivity, no parallel diagnostic tool is available for intercultural competence. Consequently, teachers may want first to foster learners’ reflection on the nature of intercultural competence, for instance, by asking them to consider ‘critical incidents’ (McAllister et al. 2006) in which they may have been involved. Critical incidents can be described as: brief descriptions of situations in which there is a misunderstanding, problem, or conflict arising from cultural differences between interacting parties or where there is a problem of cross-cultural adaptation. (Wight 1995: 128)

Noriko’s experience, mentioned earlier in this section, concerning different cultural expectations between herself and her boyfriend can be regarded as one example of a critical incident. By reflecting on such experiences and sharing them with their classmates, learners may be able to operationalize more easily the specific components of intercultural competence and, in this way, overcome both the perceived ‘vagueness’ of intercultural self-assessment and the problems with the intercultural examples that are currently provided in the LOLIPOP ELP. In addition, the case study findings also seem to support the need for a careful integration of the portfolio into classroom practice. First of all, it seems that, without it, few students may make the vital leap from setting their own learning objectives to actually working on achieving them. As Little (2007: 10; emphasis added) puts it, ‘it is all too likely that unless the introduction of the ELP is appropriately embedded, it will sink without trace’. As the following quote illustrates, learners may treat working with the ELP as an ‘extracurricular’ activity with the priority being given to compulsory course components: But I think it is too hard to actually find time to work on my personal ability to write when I have so much homework to do so I figure that I will spend time on it during the summer. (Hanna)

Second, proper integration of the ELP encourages regular objective setting, monitoring and self-assessment, which in turn is likely to help students to overcome initial problems experienced with the latter. This is evident from the

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following comment made by one of the two students who engaged in LOLIPOP ELP self-assessment in the course of two semesters: Yes, I felt comfortable making a self assessment of my language skills and intercultural skills. I used LOLIPOP before to assess my skills so I knew what to expect. (Angelika)

Conclusion Culture teaching in an intercultural approach has moved away from the transmission of knowledge on the target-language society towards helping language learners to develop an intercultural skillset, mindset and heartset (Bennett, 2008). This chapter has argued that being an ‘intercultural speaker’ requires taking responsibility for the development of one’s own intercultural competence. The findings of the research project described in this chapter show that the LOLIPOP ELP can assist learners in developing such responsibility in two ways: by increasing their awareness of the intercultural dimension of foreign-language learning and by engaging them in the interrelated processes of planning, monitoring and assessing of the intercultural learning process. To maximize the potential of this tool, however, it is important that foreign-language teachers bear in mind the difficulties that their learners may experience when being asked to engage in (intercultural) self-assessment, and also to consider how best to integrate the Portfolio into their courses.

Notes 1 The names of the university, the course and the students are pseudonyms. 2 LOLIPOP stands for ‘Language On-Line Portfolio Project’. The LOLIPOP ELP is freely available in seven languages (English, French, German, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish and Spanish) at http://lolipop-portfolio.eu. It has been designed with the adult learner in mind. 3 The LOLIPOP ELP also provides learners with examples for the receptive skills, i.e. listening and reading. 4 In the case of the LOLIPOP ELP these are as follows: savoirs, savoir être, savoir apprendre/faire, savoir s’engager and savoir comprendre. 5 Briefly, the DMIS proposes a progressive scale of six different reactions to cultural difference. These are as follows: denial, defence, minimization, acceptance, adaptation and finally, integration.

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6 In order to gather rich data, a variety of data sources were used in the study. These included field notes from class observations, focus groups and one-to-one interviews, documents produced by the students (such as their ‘Reflection on learning’ journals, end-of-the-semester module evaluations and reflective reports on the peer teaching sessions) and the lecturer (those included the module descriptor and assessment details). The data were analysed (coded, categorized and assigned to themes) using Nvivo8. 7 The students’ comments have generally not been corrected for errors unless specific mistakes hinder understanding. All emphasis has been added by the author. 8 It has to be pointed out that, with a few exceptions, the students’ comments on their experience of self-assessment via the LOLIPOP ELP often lacked specificity as far as the distinction between the language and intercultural sections of the self-assessment grid is concerned. This point is illustrated, for instance, in the following comment: ‘I think that self-assessment is useful to have an idea which part of the way I have already done and what still has to be done in the future’ (Angelika). 9 The significance of the two colours – green and orange – in the self-assessment grid is as follows: a descriptor that is marked green describes a task that the learner can already do; a descriptor that is marked orange has, in contrast, been identified by the learner as a learning objective. In the latter case, the learner can specify a date by which he or she would like to achieve the objective and can choose to be reminded about such a ‘deadline’ by email. 10 DIALANG is ‘an on-line language assessment system, which contains tests in 14 European languages and is based on the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)’ (Alderson and Huhta 2005: 301).

References Alderson, J. C. and Huhta, A. (2005), ‘The development of a suite of computer-based diagnostic tests based on the Common European Framework’, Language Testing, 22(3): 301–20. Allen, H. W. and Herron, C. (2003), ‘A mixed-methodology investigation of the linguistic and affective outcomes of summer study abroad’, Foreign Language Annals, 36(3): 370–85. Álvarez, I. (2007), ‘Foreign language education at the crossroads: Whose model of competence?’, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 20(2): 126–39. Atkinson, D. (1999), ‘TESOL and culture’, TESOL Quarterly, 33(4): 625–54. Barnwell, D. (2004), ‘Can culture be tested?’, in M. Smith (ed.), Readings in the Teaching of Culture. Dublin: The Linguistics Institute of Ireland, pp. 115–21.

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Bennett, J. M. (2008), ‘On becoming a global soul: A path to engagement during study abroad’, in V. Savicki (ed.), Developing Intercultural Competence and Transformation: Theory, Research, and Application in International Education. Sterling, Virginia: Stylus Publishing, pp. 13–31. Bennett, M. J. (1993), ‘Towards ethnorelativism: A developmental model of intercultural sensitivity’, in R. M. Paige (ed.), Education for the Intercultural Experience. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural, pp. 21–71. Bruen, J., Pechénart J. and Crosbie, V. (2007), ‘Have portfolio, will travel: The intercultural dimension of the European Language Portfolio’, in A. Pearson-Evans and A. Leahy (eds), Intercultural Spaces: Language, Culture, Identity, Proceedings of the Annual Symposium of the Royal Irish Academy. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 115–26. Byram, M. (1997), Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Byram, M., Gribkova, B. and Starkey, H. (2002), Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language Teaching: A Practical Introduction for Teachers. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Byram, M., Nichols, A. and Stevens, D. (2001), ‘Introduction’, in M. Byram, A. Nichols and D. Stevens (eds), Developing Intercultural Competence in Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 1–8. Chambers, A. (2004), ‘Changing concepts in culture and language learning’, in M. Smith, (ed.), Readings in the Teaching of Culture. Dublin: The Linguistics Institute of Ireland, pp. 15–19. Council for Cultural Cooperation (2000), European Language Portfolio (ELP): Principles and Guidelines [Online]. Strasbourg: Council of Europe. Available from www.coe. int/portfolio [accessed 9 January 2006]. Council of Europe (2001), Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cousin, G. (2005), ‘Case study research’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 29(3): 421–7. Cram, B. (1995), ‘Self-assessment: From theory to practice. Developing a workshop guide for teachers’, in G. Brindley (ed.), Language Assessment in Action. Sydney: NCELTR, pp. 271–305. Creswell, J. W. (1998), Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Dam, L. (2000), ‘Why focus on learning rather than teaching? From theory to practice’, in D. Little, L. Dam and J. Timmer (eds), Focus on Learning Rather than Teaching: Why and How? Papers from the IATEFL Conference on Learner Independence, Kraków, 14–16 May 1998. Dublin: CLCS, pp. 18–37. Engle, L. and Engle, J. (2004), ‘Assessing language acquisition and intercultural sensitivity development in relation to study abroad program design’, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 10: 219–36.

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Fantini, A. E. (2000), ‘A central concern: Developing intercultural competence’, SIT Occasional Papers Series [Online], 1: 25–42. http://www.sit.edu/SITOccasionalPapers/ sitops01.pdf [accessed 17 December 2011]. Freed, B. F. (1998), ‘An overview of issues and research in language learning in a study abroad setting’, Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, 4: 31–60. Harris, M. (1997), ‘Self-assessment of language learning in formal settings’, ELT Journal, 51(1): 12–20. Heron, J. (1988), ‘Assessment revisited’, in D. Boud, (ed.), Developing Student Autonomy in Learning (2nd edn). London: Routledge, pp. 77–90. Holec, H. (1981), Autonomy and Foreign Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon Press. Holliday, A., Hyde, M. and Kullman, J. (2004), Intercultural Communication: An Advanced Resource Book. London and New York: Routledge. Jackson, J. (2006), ‘Ethnographic pedagogy and evaluation in short-term study abroad’, in M. Byram and A. Feng (eds), Living and Studying Abroad: Research and Practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 134–56. Jensen, A. A. (1995), ‘Defining intercultural competence for the adult learner’, in A. A. Jensen, K. Jaeger and A. Lorentsen (eds), Intercultural Competence: A New Challenge for Language Teachers and Trainers in Europe. Volume II: The Adult Learner. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, pp. 29–41. Jensen, A. A., Jæger, K. and Lorentsen, A. (1995), ‘Introduction’, in A. A. Jensen, K. Jæger and A. Lorentsen (eds), Intercultural Competence: A New Challenge for Language Teachers and Trainers in Europe. Volume II: The Adult Learner. Aalborg: Aalborg University Press, pp. 9–15. Kramsch, C. (1998), ‘The privilege of the intercultural speaker’, in M. Byram and M. Fleming (eds), Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective: Approaches through Drama and Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 16–31. Little, D. (2007), ‘Introduction: Reconstructing learner and teacher autonomy in language education’, in A. Barfield and S. H. Brown (eds), Reconstructing Autonomy in Language Education: Inquiry and Innovation. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1–12. Little, D. and Simpson, B. (2003), European Language Portfolio: The Intercultural Component [Online]. http://www.tcd.ie/CLCS/portfolio/ELP_network/Intercultural_ LHTLTemplates.pdf [accessed 9 January 2006]. Llanes, À. and Muñoz, C. (2009), ‘A short stay abroad: Does it make a difference?’, System, 37(3): 353–65. McAllister, L., Whiteford, G., Hill, B., Thomas, N. and Fitzgerald, M. (2006), ‘Reflection in intercultural learning: Examining the international experience through a critical incident approach’, Reflective Practice, 7(3): 367–81. Mughan, T. (1999), ‘Intercultural competence for foreign languages students in higher education’, Language Learning Journal, 20(1): 59–65. Murphy-Lejeune, E. (2007), ‘Identity, culture and language learning: The benefits of a mobility capital’, in A. Pearson-Evans and A. Leahy (eds), Intercultural Spaces:

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Language, Culture, Identity, Proceedings of the Annual Symposium of the Royal Irish Academy. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 219–26. Oxford, R. L. (2003), ‘Toward a more systematic model of L2 learner autonomy’, in D. Palfreyman and R. C. Smith (eds), Learner Autonomy across Cultures: Language Education Perspectives. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 75–91. Rathje, S. (2007), ‘Intercultural competence: The status and future of a controversial concept’, Language and Intercultural Communication, 7(4): 254–66. Risager, K. (1998), ‘Language teaching and the process of European integration’, in M. Byram, and M. Fleming (eds), Language Learning in Intercultural Perspective: Approaches through Drama and Ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 242–54. Sercu, L. (2002), ‘Autonomous learning and the acquisition of intercultural communicative competence: Some implications for course development’, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 15(1): 61–74. —(2006), ‘The foreign language and intercultural competence teacher: The acquisition of a new professional identity’, Intercultural Education, 17(1): 55–72. Wenden, A. L. (1995), ‘Learner training in context: A knowledge-based approach’, System, 23(2): 183–94. Wight, A. R. (1995), ‘The critical incident as a training tool’, in S. M. Fowler and M. G. Mumford (eds), Intercultural Sourcebook: Cross-cultural Training Methods, vol. 1. Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press, pp. 127–40. Wright, D. A. (2000), ‘Culture as information and culture as affective process: A comparative study’, Foreign Language Annals, 33(3): 330–41.

Part Three

Migration and Contact: Community and Individual Experience The power of the narrative – ‘the semiotic representation of a series of events meaningfully connected in a temporal and causal way’ (Onega and García Landa 1996: 3) – can be dramatic. In a piece first written in 1966, Barthes argues that ‘narrative is international, transhistorical, transcultural: it is simply there, like life itself ’ (1977: 79). Yet how one decides to remember, or present, that life is not as simple: in selecting individual events to recount or in weaving a sustained life story, the narrator clearly makes choices as to what instances to highlight and what interpretation to place upon these (Bruner 1991: 8). Indeed, as Davies (2008) suggests, ‘remembered lives’ (p. 206) are not important for their individual interest but because they may ‘improve understanding and knowledge of social and cultural processes more generally’ (p. 207). Such an approach recalls Lyotard’s (1984) rejection of the grand narrative; instead, emphasis on the small, localized event, the individual story, reminds us that it is individual experience of intercultural contact, language learning and migration which, like a mosaic, shapes our understanding of these terms. The sheer magnitude of human movement can cloud our recognition that each migrant, each community coming into contact with another has their own story to tell; it is only through better understanding the impact on the individual or community of such encounters that we can begin to build a fuller picture of intercultural experience. The narratives that individuals and communities tell (of) themselves and others contribute to the creation of Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ (1983), at many, not simply national, levels. They act as gatekeepers, granting access to newcomers who must adopt the common narrative, perhaps shaping it

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slightly to accommodate their own voice, in order to demonstrate their sense of belonging: The newcomer is expected to assume the collective narratives of the past of the group, first as part of the audience, then as actor performing in the on-going socio-historical drama, and eventually . . . as a voice transmitting the received stories, or even as a more or less original author of new ones. (Brescó de Luna and Rosa 2012: 300)

Narrative gives us a sense of who we are, where we come from and what we might become. It demands creativity and reflection, thus giving individuals and communities a voice and empowering them to become agents who can, partially at least, shape their own lives. Exploring narrative can uncover a positioning, a stance, a belief system that might otherwise go unnoticed. Within the intercultural contact zone, competing narratives may vie for space, and interaction with ‘the Other’ may encourage a degree of reflexivity which requires the individual or community to reaffirm, revise or reject their story and seek new ways to make their voice heard. Each of the chapters within this part focuses on the unique experience of an individual person or community, and yet in so doing encourages the reader to engage with broader issues. In exploring her position as a KoreanAmerican living in Japan, Choi draws on a range of textual and visual evidence to demonstrate how social interaction and engagement brings with it a constant (re)positioning of the self, as she continuously works to have her image of herself accepted by those around her. She repeatedly alludes to the traditional ‘nativespeaker’ model, long considered the ultimate goal for the advanced language learner; here it is revealed as a key feature of an assimilationist model of migration and intercultural contact which Choi rejects. In viewing herself as living within multiple languages, cultures and identities, Choi argues for the individual right not just to choose which elements of those linguistic and cultural identities she uses at any one time, but also to shape those identities as she interprets them for herself. In response to this reflexive approach, Nunan, as co-author, provides an informed outsider perspective on the instances and media Choi selects to form her individual narrative and analyses some of the methodological implications of the choices facing the autoethnographic researcher. Exploring the form and function of the Nova Cançó during and since the Franco period in Catalonia, Borrull demonstrates how community narrative, expressed through music and song, can have a powerful political influence in developing and sustaining a group identity within an autochtonous community under threat. In performing an act of resistance by invoking a Provençal ­tradition

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of the travelling troubadour and thus reaffirming allegiance to the local territory rather than the imposed nation-state, the singer–composers simultaneously fashioned a linguistic and cultural space for Catalan which had systematically been erased from the public landscape following the Civil War. Borrull shows how, particularly since the 1980s, the Nova Cançó has experienced varying levels of popularity not least under pressure from other musical forms. Arguably, this reflects a normalization of the genre; in becoming part of the received cultural narrative of Catalonia, the Nova Cançó has cemented its historical role of rejuvenating Catalan song and providing a foundation for the organic development of subsequent musical forms which secures a voice for future generations. Exploring the idea of life as narrative, Bruner (1987/2004) argues that the inherent instability of personal accounts ‘makes life stories highly susceptible to cultural, interpersonal, and linguistic influences’ for in a sense, ‘we become the autobiographical narratives by which we “tell about” our lives’ (p. 694). In the final chapter in this part, van Niele creatively portrays this ‘becoming’ in her reflexive engagement with her physical, linguistic and cultural migration from the Netherlands to Australia. She explores the range of emotions she experiences and encounters in negotiating the intercultural contact zone in both countries and analyses her changing relationship with the languages between which she constantly moves, questioning at times whether, and where, she can, or will be allowed to, belong fully in either. The key for van Niele appears to lie in the very linguistic creativity which allows people to tell their tales; in the play with language(s), she becomes conscious of the imaginative opportunity to inhabit an internal intercultural space from which one can engage fully with the world outside and give expression to one’s own complex of identities. Whether exploring the individual or the community experience, each of the chapters within this part again reveals the potential for individual agency within the contact zone as a factor in shaping that experience. They uncover varying levels of realization of the right to exercise that agency in their everyday lives and show how that agency can manifest itself in creative forms of both resistance and playfulness which can prove equally effective.

References Anderson, B. (1983), Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso. Barthes, R. (1977), ‘Introduction to the structural analysis of narratives’, in R. Barthes (ed.), Image, Music, Text, trans. S. Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 79–124.

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Brescó de Luna, I. and Rosa, A. (2012), ‘Memory, history and narrative: Shifts of meaning when (re)constructing the past’, Journal of Psychology, 8(2): 300–10. Bruner, J. S. (1991), ‘The narrative construction of reality’, Critical Inquiry, 18: 1–21. —(2004) ‘Life as narrative’, Social Research, 71(3): 691–710 [Originally published in 1987, Social Research, 54(1): 1–17]. Davies, C. A. (2008), Reflexive Ethnography (2nd edn). London and New York: Routledge. Lyotard, J.-F. (1984), The Post-modern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. G. Bennington and B. Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Onega, S. and García Landa, J. Á. (1996), Narratology. London and New York: Longman.

8

Heteroglossic Becomings: Listening to, and Learning from, Our Multiple Voices Julie Choi and David Nunan

Introduction In this chapter, I (Choi) take as my point of departure Piller’s (2002) notion of ‘passing’, a notion used to describe a type of act performed by advanced speakers of a language other than their mother tongue, ‘expert L2 speakers’ (p. 180), who feel they can match the default speaking styles of ‘native speakers’ in their current speaking contexts. In the chapter, I want to reflect critically on my own language and identity performances as an L2 speaker of Japanese while living in Tokyo during the years 2000–07. As a Korean-American, I consider both English and Korean as my first languages. I acquired Chinese and Japanese for purposes of study and work while living in China and Japan during my teenage and young adult years. Apart from speaking English while teaching English to Japanese learners in Japan, I mainly conversed in Japanese both in personal and professional settings, as I also worked as a teacher trainer to Chinese teachers teaching Chinese to Japanese learners. Piller suggests that we still know very little about ‘whether L2 speakers consider themselves high-level achievers, what high-level proficiency means to them, and how and why it has been achieved, or whether they can and do pass for native speakers’ (p. 184). Exploring some of these issues will provide deeper insights into language and identity. I would like to question the assumptions that L2 speakers are even interested in speaking like native speakers (whoever these native speakers may be), and that achieving native-speaker-like fluency or proficiency is their ultimate goal. Critically reflecting on my own incidents from different settings that involve my position as a foreigner performing in Japanese in the space of Tokyo, I draw out the underlying dynamics that shape certain linguistic performances that are

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not about desiring to ‘pass’ as native speakers but about becoming a ‘resourceful speaker’ (Pennycook 2012: 74). Such speakers ‘have available language resources and [are] good at shifting between styles, discourses and genres’ (p. 99). Drawing on Bakhtin’s notion of ‘heteroglossia’ (1981: 428), I make visible the complex entanglements embedded in acts of speaking and other semiotic performances that move us out of harmful dichotomies such as ‘native/non-native’ and into spaces of simultaneity where speakers are ‘do[ing] their own thing’ (Canagarajah 2007: 927). My experiences in Tokyo dissolved my self-concept as a KoreanAmerican, transforming it into something else, something different, un-definable by simplistic labels and not easily identifiable or categorizable by others. We should now be asking, not whether we can ‘pass’ as something, but following Jacquemet (2005), how ‘speakers understand their “multiple voices” ’ (p. 274). This critical autoethnographic writing is one attempt to listen to, and learn from, our multiple voices. In the commentary that follows Choi’s narrative, I (Nunan) examine some of the methodological issues that are entailed in, and flow from, autoethnographic work. Although, on the surface, Choi’s piece follows a conventional research structure, there are aspects of the work that challenge the way that empirical research is conventionally conceived.

Incident 1: The resourcefulness of the foreigner position Here I draw on data from a farewell card written by Yukiko, a student at the 2-year college in Tokyo where I taught English (all names used here have been changed to pseudonyms and images have been blurred where necessary). In Figure 8.1, Yukiko reminds me that the ‘I’ being complimented is viewed first and foremost as someone who is an outsider, a foreigner, an L2 speaker; this ‘I’, however, is also someone who not only has linguistic knowledge but also knowledge of the insider’s world (i.e. how to speak, what to say, how certain words feel, etc.) and knows how to perform that knowledge successfully. The background to Yukiko’s comment is my use of a familiar expression (discussed later) that is usually shared between L1 speakers and/or only with advanced level L2 speakers. In this example, the issue is not so much how I mixed ‘Japanese    English’ together, as Yukiko comments in Line 2 (indeed she also begins to mix in Line 8: ‘Please love Japan ippai [a lot] ~ onegaishimasuYO [please]!’), but the ‘YO!’ that has been capitalized at the end of the sentence. This is a phrase I playfully used with the students when they did not do their

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Figure 8.1  ‘Cool’ foreigners. Tokyo (2006). Transcript: Julie, Before in my life, I never hear folener use Japanese    English mixing together. SO nice Julie! I am surprised! Before I HATE English but now I LOVE English (DAISUKI desu!) [I love English] Thank you! Please love Japan ippai ~ onegaishimasuYO [a lot – please]! We love cool folener. You are my cool folener forever! Arigato! [Thanks!] Yukiko

homework or were not doing their work in class. This sentence-ending particle ‘yo’ in Japanese is normally used to emphasize a command, but put together with ‘onegaishimasu’ [please] in a playful tone, combined usually with a smile, it can be translated as ‘please, give me a break/I’m begging you to do your work’. I originally picked up this phrase while watching Japanese variety shows on television, where I noticed its use created laughter among the characters. I did this with my students as a way of telling them that they needed to do the work, without making them feel they were being scolded or putting myself in an authoritarian role. The utterance resulted in laughter and a light apology. Students took the cue and went quietly back to work. This was the intended effect, but in order to achieve it, one needs to be adept at getting the right balance in terms of the playful rhythm and tone. The final flowing pitch on the ‘yo’ needs to be exerted in tandem with a non-serious facial expression that is partially

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smiling and partially stern, sending the implicit message ‘I’m not angry at you’. One wrong pitch or look – which might sound something like ‘I am sick and tired of dealing with you’ – can potentially be threatening to students. For an L2 speaker of Japanese to be able to get this balance right can be that one active ingredient indicating to the other that the speaker is ‘in the know’ or, perhaps the way Yukiko sees it, is a ‘cool’ foreigner (Lines 9–10). Achieving this type of ‘cool’ is not about how well one imitates a native speaker but how well one can use one’s position of difference to show L1 speakers that one does understand, and can perform, certain styles with ease. Furthermore, as Jenkins (2009) notes in relation to students studying English in East Asian contexts: [students] wish to make their own decisions about the kind of English they speak, and to protect – by means of the influence of their L1 on their English accent – a sense of their own local identity, as well as to develop some kind of hybrid global identity in their English, instead of being told to take on the identity of an NS of English in the US or UK. (p. 54)

From this viewpoint, L2 speakers are fundamentally not interested in speaking or performing like a native speaker but seek to use the resources in their linguistic repertoire in order to be recognized as the competent and unique individuals they wish to be in the particular locations in which they are situated. A further example of this can be seen in the following example, a letter (Figure 8.2) I wrote to Kenji, my then Japanese partner, after an argument (I never ended up giving him the letter, but left it in my diary). In this example, I show my deliberate intention or desire to represent myself as a speaker of Japanese who wishes to be seen as a competent resourceful speaker who draws on knowledge of my other languages.

Incident 2: The desire to ‘do one’s own thing’ In this entry, I express my frustration about how Kenji compares me to the images of Korean women in Korean dramas which we would sometimes watch together on local Japanese television channels and I refuse to apologize for something I can no longer remember. In Line 6, I write 疲れるスタイル [tiring style] in Japanese, but this is clearly a direct translation from the Korean phrase 피곤한 스타일 [tiring style, which is better understood in English as ‘high maintenance’]. Because the grammatical system and certain nuances of expressions of Japanese and Korean are similar, I found it is easy to slot in words and phrases in these ways. I could have also

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Figure 8.2  Heteroglossic utterances, Tokyo (2002). Transcript: Line 1: Kenji, Line 2: What just happened? I don’t understand what just happened but Line 3: I just wanted to say that I’m not like those kinds of Korean women in the Korean dramas so Line 4: I don’t want you to always compare me to them. I’m Korean-American [emphasis shown in the original through the circling and underlining of the symbol for the hyphen]. Line 5: It is such a waste of energy for us to be fighting about such things. Line 6: I really hate the ‘tiring style of people’ [high maintenance kind of people]! Line 7: Why should I have to apologize? Line 8: A dog passing by outside would laugh! (Do you use this phrase in Japanese? Hmm . . . probably not . . .) Line 9: Love is never having to say you are sorry. Don’t you know this? Line 10: Ugh!! What’s the point!?! Line 11: What am I talking about! Line 12: So exhausted. Line 13: Wanna sleep. Line 14: Good night. Zzzz…

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easily used the common phrase in Japanese おかしいよ！[It’s ridiculous!] but the Korean expression 지나가는 개가 웃겠다 [even a dog passing by would laugh] (Line 8) expresses more clearly the message I wanted to deliver: that everyone, even a dog, would agree with me that it was ridiculous for him to ask me to apologize. The important sentence here is in the parenthesis: ‘(Do you use this phrase in Japanese? [emotive drawing of a thinking expression] Hmm . . . probably not . . .)’. Here I demonstrate awareness that such a phrase in Japanese is odd, and this effort to point it out renders it a ‘marked choice’ (Myers-Scotton 2006: 159), carrying with it certain intentions of how I want to be heard, as an experienced multilingual speaker. By drawing on the multiple linguistic resources I possess, my utterances demonstrate a sense of independence or freedom and power in deliberately moving away from the default styles of speaking. The desire here is not to pass as a native speaker, but to be seen as a competent and thinking L2 speaker. Writing in Japanese may be a way of making sure Kenji will receive and understand my message but most of all, it is a way of showing that I am capable of participating effectively in Japanese. By suggesting oddity in my own decision to use Korean expressions in Japanese, I show him that this was deliberate and intended to stop him from correcting or controlling what I want to say, which he often did by saying ‘in Japanese, we say it like this’. I demonstrate that I have the right to debate, discuss, resist, define and shape the ‘third place’ (Kramsch 1993: 233) between us, which in this case is the space of the letter I create for us. By asking him if a certain type of phrase is used in Japanese, I am not asking for approval, but am perhaps suggesting that Japanese might lack certain expressions that express what I am feeling and am also trying to include him in negotiating the language practices that can become possible in our particular relationship. The drawing of the face may not be a minor point here, if we think of it as a strategy, a way of creating and balancing the mood (the tone of the letter) to show that I can negotiate in a calm and practical manner. It is in this way that we can see, as Canagarajah (2007) states on facilitating communication with outsiders, that each speaker ‘brings his or her own strategies to negotiate these culturespecific conventions. . . . Not uniformity, but alignment is more important for such communication. Each participant brings his or her own language resources to find a strategic fit with the participants and purpose of a context’ (p. 927). In short, speakers ‘do their own thing’ (ibid.). It is not only Korean that is hidden underneath the layers but also English. The expression ‘love is never having to say you are sorry’ (Line 9), from the

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American movie Love Story (Minsky 1970), is often used among speakers of English in the Western world to convey that it is not necessary to apologize because love is unconditional. However, in the context of our argument, it is more likely that I am portraying my unwillingness to apologize and the absurdity of being expected to do so while possibly also trying to assert a different cultural frame. Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of ‘heteroglossia’ states that ‘at any given time, in any given place, there will be a set of conditions . . . that will insure that a word uttered in that place and at that time will have a meaning different than it would have under any other conditions’ (p. 428, see also Bailey 2012 for a more in-depth discussion of ‘heteroglossia’). Through Japanese, it is possible to see how my ‘internally persuasive discourse’, utterances that are ‘half-ours and half someone else’s’ (Bakhtin 1981: 345–6), is formed by my history of experiences in Korean and English, and how this growing complexity of entangled polyphony of voices, intentions, scripts and meanings can bring about new or different meanings, identities and ways of speaking. A heteroglossic understanding of words or utterances turns our attention not only to expert L2 speakers, but to speakers with knowledge in multiple languages at varying levels of proficiency, experience and understanding. As Pennycook (2010) states, ‘translingual language practices of metrolingualism, polylingual languaging, or plurilanguaging are not the occasional language uses of exceptional communities but rather the everyday language practices of the majority world’ (p. 133). In the next example (Figure 8.3), I include an email received from Yoko, a student I taught in Tokyo, who had been learning Korean for 3 months at the

Figure 8.3  Email from Yoko to me using katakana to write in Korean. Tokyo/Sydney (2009). Translation: I am still learning Korean. It’s very difficult but I am studying hard. I went to Roppongi Hills with my friend. So Ji-Sub [Korean actor] came to Japan to greet his fans. He is really attractive/fashionable/handsome. I want to say a lot of things to you but I’m a bit tired today. Good night. I love you Julie.

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time of writing me this email. She writes in Korean without using hangeul, the Korean writing system, but katakana [often used for foreign words in Japanese]. Yoko is ‘doing her own thing’; in so doing, she is also offering us a glimpse into how L2 identities are not always ‘caught between’ two languages or cultures.

Incident 3: The everydayness of heteroglossia Yoko has little opportunity to use Korean in her everyday life. I am one of the few people she can practise her Korean with, but having to learn the Korean keyboard is much too time-consuming for her. However, her desire to write Korean in katakana is, I believe, more than just practising language. This persistence and insistence in using Korean stemmed from her strong desire to understand the lines of her favourite actors in Korean dramas, not through subtitles translated in Japanese, but directly from their utterances in Korean, particularly when these actors go to Japan to greet their fans. This desire is linked to the nostalgia many older Japanese women have of what life and relationships were like in their younger years (see Iwabuchi 2008). Within the Cinderella stories in Korean dramas, many of these viewers find pleasurable fantasies through the images of ‘soft masculinity’ seen in the Korean male characters (see Jung 2011). Also, similar to my own experience of learning Japanese, the similarities in the grammatical structure, certain vocabulary words and expressions in Japanese and Korean may enable her to ‘feel’ the words on a deeper level where she can express herself better than when she speaks in English, a language she has learned for much longer but only enjoys for purposes of travel and conversing with foreigners. The reason I include her message as part of my data here is to draw out the importance of thinking about the dynamics of particular relationships that not only produce multivocal texts but are also the ‘normal’ language practices in certain relationships. For Yoko, speaking or writing Korean may be a way out of her conventional or routine ways of operating in Japanese. It is unconventional (in both Korean and Japanese) to use the term ‘saranghae Julie’ [I love you Julie] among casual friends. The unexpectedness of the utterance surprises me especially since no one besides my mother says this to me and even then only in emails, never on the phone or in person. The bulk of her message in Korean is written using honorifics and what often looks like the standard textbook style of language developed for language learners to speak politely. The content of the message in reference to talking about a Korean movie star, however, evokes the discourse of pop culture, particularly in Line 4 ‘he is really

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attractive/fashionable/handsome’. She then uses a highly polite form of a ‘goodnight’ greeting in the end ‘ahnnyunghee joomoosaeyo’, often used in spoken contexts between young individuals who bid their elders a restful sleep; this evokes a strange kind of dynamic between us, especially as I am 30 years younger than her. Of course, this may be nothing more than her attempt to translate the casual Japanese goodnight greeting, ‘oyasuminasai’ which is used both in spoken and written mediums in Japanese. After such a degree of politeness, the intimacy of ‘saranghae’ [I love you] evokes a different kind of relationship that to me, as I mentioned earlier, feels motherly. In the end, the way in which I understand her message is not only through the words she communicates but through her choice of form (katakana Korean) and her multivocal self that is built by her multiple positions as a language learner, a fan of Korean actors, a mother and caring friend. The combination of utterances that normally belong in different genres and discourses ‘works’ for me/us. What Yoko demonstrates to me is her ability to show me that she has some understanding, at whatever level, of the conventions but is bringing her own strategies to communicate and is ‘doing her own thing’. This leads me to question whether we can recognize the multivocality of speakers such as Yoko when we receive their messages? Some may easily dismiss her message as knowledge demonstrated typically by beginnerlevel language learners or simply as errors. As I have shown in Figure 8.2, my own heteroglossic utterances are deliberate and do not seek correction. The recognition of how successful and legitimate these texts are depends greatly on the knowledge, history and attitude of the receiver. These heteroglossic acts or utterances reflect a whole conglomeration of shuttling between attitudes, desires, shifting senses of identity and life trajectories that are encapsulated between, and behind, the lines of visibility. Yoko’s language usage resonates with my example of drawing on available linguistic resources, even though we do this in rather different ways. A single code does not quite do the work of expressing the many desires and histories we feel and want to express through our words, even if we appear to be using a single code. The fragments of resources we put together are preferable and seem to do that work best. Who qualifies as an ‘expert’ or ‘multilingual’, what we mean by such terms and why we think they are important need to be thought about with great care, when we consider what identity possibilities our judgements might have for others and ourselves. Thinking through the lens of heteroglossia allows us to see that these acts are not only moment-to-moment ways of performing in others’ languages but representations of the changing ways in which we understand and seek to portray who we are becoming. My trajectory as an English teacher in Japan who

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can perform certain styles in Japanese, a partner to a Japanese man who wants to negotiate and develop a third place, a friend to a Japanese student who can use Japanese and Korean linked to certain interests such as Korean dramas show that ‘resourceful speakers’ (Pennycook 2012: 99) carry around their resources everywhere and find ways of organizing, negotiating and maximizing their resources to the best of their abilities in different environments. It is a way of life where relationships and everyday practices are fundamentally built on recombinations of multiple languages and cultural signs. These recombinations may all seem rather chaotic but if we take Blommaert and Varis’s (2011) understanding that individual life-projects are a blending of ‘several microhegemonies valid in specific segments of life and behavior’ (p. 2), we can see that people often are not at all ‘confused’ or ‘ambivalent’ about their choices, nor do they appear to be ‘caught between’ different cultures or ‘contradict themselves’ when speaking about different topics. The complex of micro-hegemonies just provides a different type of order, a complex order composed of different niches of ordered behavior and discourses about behavior. (p. 3)

Thinking along the lines of heteroglossia and ‘recombinations’, which I will turn to in the next section, moves us away from notions such as ‘passing’, which ultimately limit the possibilities of how we can think about language performances and linguistic identities. My background as a Korean-American who spoke Japanese and Chinese working within a Japanese institution in particular practices opened me up for increasingly flexible positionings and not easily identifiable identity categories. In Iwabuchi’s (2002) term in Japanese, this might be seen as a mukokuseki position literally meaning ‘something or someone lacking any nationality, but also implying the erasure of racial or ethnic characteristics or a context, which does not imprint a particular culture or country with these features’ (p. 28). In other words, one’s body can become ‘culturally odorless’ (p. 29). In the final figure (Figure 8.4), I illuminate the various positions I was asked to take up while working as a teacher trainer, teaching Chinese teachers in Japanese how to teach Chinese to Japanese learners borrowing techniques from TESOL.

Incident 4: The preference to be non-categorizable In Figure 8.4 (1), I am asked to pose as a Chinese teacher who is instructing a Japanese businessman. While I could ‘pass’ as a Chinese female, many staff

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Figure 8.4  Taking on multiple cultural roles simultaneously. Tokyo (2005–06).

members joked that they were not sure who was the teacher and who was the student. In (2), I am posing as a Chinese teacher with Fei, one of the ‘real’ Chinese teachers, who is posing as a Japanese student, even though she is a Chinese citizen of Korean descent. In the bottom left image in (3), I pose as a Japanese businesswoman seeking to learn Chinese. On the same page of the website, with a different hair colour, I take the role of a Japanese staff member pointing out the government rebate scheme. In (4), I play the role of a Japanese beginner-level student making the typical pronunciation mistakes Japanese students make with difficult sounds in Chinese and the facial expressions students make when they do not understand an explanation by their teachers in role-playing scenarios with new Chinese teachers. While Pennycook’s notion of the ‘resourceful speaker’ largely concerns utterances that involve language resources, I wish to add to this notion of ‘speaking’ our bodies as resources. Semiotic resources, including one’s choice or styles of attire, are identity features that co-occur with linguistic utterances. They play an equally powerful role in our linguistic repertoire. By the ‘body’, I am not only talking about how we look physically, but also our chosen style of clothing, make-up techniques, hairstyle and how we smile, walk, stand, gaze, the tone of our voice, etc. These semiotic resources may be features that ‘are infinitely small

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in the eyes of the analyst but may be very important to the participants in the interaction’ (Blommaert 2005: 232). It is not so much that individuals have those physical features stereotypically identifiable as ‘local’ which makes our bodies resourceful (although in being seen as ‘local’ these may contribute greatly), but that we do things to/with our bodies that make them become resources for particular practices in particular spaces. The real challenge as we work at spaces of language and cultural contact is not about authenticity, of wanting to recreate our bodies so that we can pass ourselves off as someone who looks stereotypically from certain nationalities, races or ethnicities, but of understanding where we are located and working out what kind of place our bodies can occupy in those particular spaces. As Canagarajah (2013) states, ‘it is not what we know as much as the versatility with which we can do new things with words . . . in the global contact zones’ (p. 192). Again, I would extend this idea to not only ‘words’ but what we can do with other semiotic resources that are available to us in particular settings. These multiple positions become possible because certain aspects of my body appear to be ‘neutral’ enough to fit images of a Japanese or Chinese (and of course Korean, if necessary) female in these spaces. Here, my body is used as a resource for the company, and at the same time I use my features as a resource to create and open up more identity possibilities. I do not know if these were intentional moves to keep my body open to new opportunities, but as I now reflect on the possibilities that were open to me then, I prefer this position of not being easily identifiable or belonging to some cultural or national label. In a world where, as Kramsch (2012: 483) states, mobility and global flows are slowly erasing cultural and national origins, for an increasing number of individuals moving in and out of different spaces, relationships and everyday practices are fundamentally built on recombinations of multiple languages and cultural signs (for a more thorough discussion on recombined identities and linguistic practices, see Jacquemet’s (2005) notion of ‘transidiomatic practices’).

Heteroglossic becomings Pennycook (2012) finds the notion of ‘passing’ problematic because it ‘implies being something that one is not, fooling others into believing that one actually is a native speaker. . . . [T]his idea potentially reinforces, rather than undermines, the non-native/native dichotomy’ (p. 76). Ultimately, as he points out, ‘the idea

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of native and non-native speakers really does not do any useful work in thinking about real language use, and does a great deal of harm as a categorization that cannot escape its roots in nationalism, racism and colonialism’ (p. 99). As I have shown through my own data of multiple linguistic and bodily performances, I see the notion of passing as a concept too simplistic to understand the deeply complex relationship between language and identity. In interrogating my own experiences, I have come to see the notion of ‘resourceful speakers’ as a more efficient way forward in thinking about the use of multiple languages and speakers’ rich linguistic identities. Moving away from uncritical notions such as ‘passing’, Jacquemet’s (2005) questions can take us to a more advanced and progressive understanding of the relationship between language and identity. As he states, we must ‘now raise the question of how groups of people no longer territorially defined think about their multiple voices, transidiomatic practices, and recombinant identities. . . . [I]t is time to conceptualize a linguistics of xenoglossic becoming, transidiomatic mixing, and communicative recombinations’ (p. 274). Individuals do ‘do their own thing’. These ‘own things’ are shaped by the multiplicity of their voices. The recombination of multiple linguistic and semiotic resources from various linguistic and cultural codes can demonstrate the multiple meanings single utterances can hold which have traces of one’s personal history and the prevailing discourses of particular times and spaces. Combinations are organized, amenable, adjustable and able to be recreated according to the dynamics of where the participants are located, the uncertain practices in which they become involved, the particular relationship between the interlocutors, the particular norms and discourses that permeate certain spaces and the unique history each individual brings. Understanding that the link between utterances and identity performances is partial but simultaneously multiple can move us towards the ‘dissolution of the supposedly “natural” link between place/territory and cultural practices, experiences, and identities’ (Jacquemet 2005: 262), opening up more possibilities for the ways in which we can mix, match and utilize the resources we have available. Bringing to the fore the focus on multiple or heteroglossic voices speakers carry can point us, as I have shown here, towards thinking about the particularities, that is interlocutors, location, genres, discourses, images and so on, of linguistic and other semiotic performances. Hopefully, this moves us away from limited understandings bound up in binaries, ideologies and exoticisms and instead into spaces of being able to hold onto different ideas and identities simultaneously, to look not for a position/identity but to see the value of many

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simultaneous positionings/identities that run parallel to each other. What we require now is to look at different sites of individuals’ lives, those of the visible, hidden, silent, agentic, complicit and vulnerable spaces. As Canagarajah (2004) states, ‘the data we need may not be more of the same; we may need data from different sites of [everyday] life’ (pp. 117–18). Heteroglossia is essentially about simultaneity, mixings and recombinations that produce multivocal texts and meanings. By talking about heteroglossic becomings, I am not calling for a new label to give to multilingual identities, but for a way of thinking about multilingual language development and practices as inherently something of, as I pointed out earlier in Blommaert and Varis’s words, ‘a different type of order, a complex order composed of different niches of ordered behavior and discourses about behavior’ (2005: 3). The entanglement of multiple semiotic resources operating in particular times and spaces are always complex, but participants are not always confused or ambivalent, nor are they always stuck or caught ‘in-between’ dichotomous ways of thinking. Critically reflecting on the simultaneity of our voices in particular practices can illuminate the complex dynamics that constitute moment-to-moment performances and, in the process, surprise us with multiple possibilities for new becomings.

Commentary In autoethnographic types of research, from personal memories to textual artefacts, researchers are able to pull together data that range from major incidents to the most micro details. Such data can be helpful in gaining a deeper or different understanding of the changing practices of everyday life. In this type of research the researcher and the researched are one and the same. This raises issues, on both methodological and substantive fronts. In this commentary, I confine myself to methodological issues. ‘Research’ is conventionally conceived as a ‘systematic process of inquiry consisting of three elements or components (1) a question, problem or hypothesis, (2) data – that is, external records of events (Bateson 1972) – (3) analysis and interpretation of data. Any activity which lacks one of these elements (for example, data) I shall classify as something other than research’ (Nunan 1992: 3). It is also generally accepted that the activity should be tied in to relevant pre-existing literature and that, in psychometric and some types of naturalistic research, steps should be taken to guard against threats to reliability and validity.

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In the presentation of the research, there is usually a clear separation between the data and the analysis/interpretation of the data. At first sight, Choi’s work is conceptualized and executed within a traditional framework and contains the expected elements of data, analysis/interpretation and references to the literature. A closer look, however, reveals that the conventional view of research which I have articulated in the preceding paragraph is not an adequate reflection of what Choi is doing. I want to support this assertion by looking at each of the four incidents in turn. Incident 1 takes its point of departure from a card written to Choi by a former student. This card would seem to fit Bateson’s (1972) definition of data. It is the external record of the student’s reaction to Choi’s use of Japanese, leading the student to see Choi as a ‘cool foreigner’. As in conventional qualitative research, she then goes on to present an analysis and interpretation of the data. There is, however, a crucial difference. In conventional research, the analysis and interpretation would be about the informant’s position and views. In the type of autoethnographic work that Choi is engaged in, however, the data are a springboard, a point of departure, as it were, for Choi to interrogate her own reactions and views on the student’s comment. In other words, we learn about Choi’s interpretation of ‘cool foreigner’ rather than the informant’s. Despite the fact that the data come from an external source, Choi is both the researcher and the researched. Incident 2 also takes as its point of departure a piece of data in the form of a letter from Choi to her former boyfriend. Again, it would seem to fit Bateson’s definition. In this instance, the letter is an external record of Choi’s reaction to the boyfriend’s invidious comparison of Choi to Korean females as portrayed in Korean dramas. In contrast with Incident 1, the data are derived by Choi herself. However, there is more in the data than this. There are complex linguistic issues embedded in the text that can only be explicated by Choi. When Choi produces an interpretation and analysis years after the data were produced, she makes statements such as the following: ‘I found it easy to slot in words and phrases in these ways’. As I read this and other similar sentences, I was struck by the complex intermeshing of data and interpretation/analysis. Although this sentence is ostensibly part of the analysis, it is, in fact, a piece of data, being an external record (or post hoc assertion by Choi) about the process of constructing the original letter. Like Incident 1, Incident 3 takes its departure from data provided by someone other than the researcher. In this case, it is an email, again from a former student

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and friend. It is an external record of the friend’s excursion in Tokyo with a celebrated Korean actor. At the end of the email, the friend expresses affection for her former teacher. As with Incident 1, Choi reflexively analyses and interprets her own reactions to the text. She does not interview the friend or otherwise present the friend’s interpretation of the subtext to the email. Choi chooses, as befits the main themes of the chapter, to explore the informant’s use of katakana symbols to represent Korean. Only Choi can explicate the meaningfulness of this linguistic choice because the justification is rooted in the relationship, which had been built up between Choi and the informant. The final incident is based on a series of photographs. In ethnographic work, the use of visuals such as this is not uncommon, although in ethnographies with a linguistic focus, visual data are usually omitted. Here again, the fact that the researcher is the researched is central to the analysis. Only Choi can provide an exegesis on the visuals. In this commentary, I have briefly highlighted some of the implications of autoethnographic work in which the researcher and the researched are one and the same. In this work, the traditional distinction between data and analysis can become difficult to sustain. Through their interrogation of self-generated data, the researcher as informant and insider can add insights and perspective that are themselves data. In his argument for the melding of multiple languages in transnational and plurilingal communities, Block (2010) calls for an approach to research that melds the story as lived by participants with the story as lived by researchers. In her approach, I believe Choi has achieved just that. She demonstrates that autoethnographic approaches can generate insights into the complexity of multivocality that could not be achieved in any other way.

References Bailey, B. (2012), ‘Heteroglossia’, in M. Martin-Jones, A. Blackledge and A. Creese (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Multilingualism. London: Routledge, pp. 499–507. Bakhtin, M. (1981), The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin, ed. M. Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. Bateson, G. (1972), Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution and Epistemology. New Jersey: Jason Aronson. Block, D. (2010), ‘Speaking Romance-esque’, in D. Nunan and J. Choi (eds), Language and Culture: Reflective Narratives and the Emergence of Identity. New York: Routledge, pp. 23–9.

Heteroglossic Becomings: Listening to, and Learning from, Our Multiple Voices 187 Blommaert, J. M. E. (2005), Discourse: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Blommaert, J. M. E. and Varis, P. K. (2011), Enough is Enough: The Heuristics of Authenticity in Superdiversity. London: King’s College London, Working Papers in Urban Language and Literacies, 76. www.kcl.ac.uk/innovation/groups/ldc/ publications/workingpapers/76.pdf [accessed 10 September 2013]. Canagarajah, S. (2004), ‘Subversive identities, pedagogical safe houses, and critical learning’, in B. Norton and K. Toohey (eds), Critical Pedagogies and Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 116–37. —(2007), ‘Lingua franca English, multilingual communities, and language acquisition’, The Modern Language Journal, 91: 923–39. —(2013), Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations. New York: Routledge. Iwabuchi, K. (2002), Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham: Duke University Press. —(2008), ‘When the Korean Wave meets resident Koreans in Japan: Intersections of the transnational, the postcolonial and the multicultural’, in C. B. Huat and K. Iwabuchi (eds), East Asian Pop Culture: Analysing the Korean Wave. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, pp. 243–64. Jacquemet, M. (2005), ‘Transidiomatic practices: Language and power in the age of globalization’, Language and Communication, 25(3): 257–77. Jenkins, J. (2009), ‘Exploring attitudes towards English as a lingua franca in the East Asian context’, in K. Murata and J. Jenkins (eds), Global Englishes in Asian Contexts: Current and Future Debates. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 40–56. Jung, S. (2011), Korean Masculinities and Transcultural Consumption. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. Kramsch, C. (1993), Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press. —(2012), ‘Imposture: A late modern notion in poststructuralist SLA research’, Applied Linguistics, 33(5): 483–502. Minsky, H. G. (1970), Love Story [film]. Los Angeles: Paramount Pictures. Myers-Scotton, C. (2006), Multiple Voices: An Introduction to Bilingualism. Malden: Blackwell Publishing. Nunan, D. (1992), Research Methods in Language Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pennycook, A. (2010), Language as a Local Practice. New York: Routledge. —(2012), Language and Mobility: Unexpected Places. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Piller, I. (2002), ‘Passing for a native speaker: Identity and success in second language learning’, Journal of Sociolinguistics, 6(2): 179–206.

9

The Catalan Nova Cançó: Resistance and Identity Through Song Núria Borrull

Introduction This chapter examines the cultural phenomenon of La Nova Cançó (Catalan New Song), which has been largely ignored outside Catalonia, and analyses the perceptions of this form both in Catalonia and the rest of the Spanish state. La Nova Cançó was a cultural phenomenon that used song as an instrument of ideological expression against the cultural monopoly imposed by the dictatorship of General Franco (1939–75). La Nova Cançó not only constituted a different political and cultural discourse from the one imposed by the regime and promoted the Catalan language, but also provided the Catalan political opposition with a forum at a time when political meetings were banned. Most critics agree that the promotion and celebration of difference inherent in La Nova Cançó were subsequently curtailed by the indifference, of the very same members of the opposition who had been using it for their political goals, once they attained positions of power during the years of transition to democracy (1976–82). I will argue, however, that despite such marginalization, La Nova Cançó had by that stage already become an enduring symbol of Catalan national identity and, furthermore, had initiated a pioneering movement of Catalan song which served as the basis for inspiration for future generations of musicians who wanted to write songs in Catalan.

Origins of La Nova Cançó Most critics (Fuster 1979; Soldevilla 1993; García-Soler 1996) argue that La Nova Cançó is deeply rooted in the lyrical and poetic tradition of the

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medieval troubadours of Occitania, an area which until the thirteenth century encompassed a great part of the south of present-day France, the kingdom of Aragon/Catalonia in north-eastern Spain and some regions of northern Italy. The troubadours were a diverse group of poet-composers who composed and interpreted songs in various Romance languages. Some were multilingual and others used only a variety of langue d’oc, a Romance language and sister tongue of old French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and Galician-Portuguese. The content of the songs was also varied. Some portrayed a political reaction to the current affairs of the turbulent times of the Middle Ages, while others reflected the reality of daily life around them. Despite such variety, the troubadours can be considered as the first authors of lyrical poems in a Romance language in Western Europe (Aubrey 1996). After the consolidation of France as a centralized state, with the rise of the monarchy as a political power, beginning with Philip II as king (1180–1223), the troubadour tradition continued to develop in France without interruption, albeit sung in French and absorbing many different influences along the way, and had an important influence on French song. However, the development of this tradition was interrupted in Catalonia during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries due to unfavourable political and social circumstances, resulting in the repression of Catalan institutions and language.

The process of nation building – historical background The formation of the Spanish state began in the Middle Ages. The Kingdom of Spain was established with the alliance between the crowns of Castile and Aragon and Catalonia in 1479 and later completed with the incorporation of Navarre into Castile in 1512. However, the territories of the Crown of Aragon and Catalonia retained their own parliament, and the Basque Country and Navarre their own systems of administration. Ordinary citizens continued to speak a multiplicity of languages. Nonetheless, Mar-Molinero (1996) argues that the end of the fifteenth century marks the beginning of the imposition of Castilian language hegemony in Spain in an attempt to increase solidarity in the face of the common Moorish enemy. In the seventeenth century, a move to consolidate Spanish national identity took place as the Spanish Empire began its decline and language policies began to be implemented, but it was not until the eighteenth century that a reaffirmed national Spanish identity was consolidated when the forces of King Philip V

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occupied Barcelona in 1714 and the use of Castilian as the predominant language was imposed: This is the true origin of the incorporation of Catalonia to the Spanish Crown. It was not through political pacts, or marriage alliances or any other pacific means. It was an act of force that the Catalan people never accepted through the Catalan institutions, Les Corts Catalanes, the only institution which could have legitimately done so. (Ainaud de Lasarte 1995: 7)¹

The early years of the nineteenth century saw a revival of Catalan culture when Catalonia became one of the first industrial areas in Spain. This period became known as La Renaixença. Economic growth, together with the emergence of an autochthonous bourgeoisie who spoke Catalan, was the motor that launched the movement and its aim was the full restoration of Catalan through the promotion of various forms of arts, theatre and literature, especially poetry, and also through attempts to establish a normative standard for the language. This normative standard was not, however, fully accomplished until the early twentieth century. The year 1898 marked a further blow to the nation-state project in Spain. The defeat of Spain and loss of Cuba in the war with the United States was a crucial turning point. With defeat came a sense of disillusionment, and the Spanish government was incapable of structuring a coherent national identity. Thus Spain was in a very unstable position at the beginning of the twentieth century, with a traditional, conservative and highly centralized political system. The tension in the regions on the periphery that opposed this centralization reflected this economic and social instability. Proclaimed in 1931, the democratic spirit of the Second Republic emerged in difficult circumstances, complicated by a World Depression and growing pressure upon democratic values throughout Europe. The first task facing the government of the Republic was to draw up a constitution. Its citizens were assured of a long list of rights and freedoms including respect for the autonomous institutions of the regions and awareness of different identities within the Spanish state. In 1932, a regional government was re-established in Catalonia, and Catalan identity, language, culture and politics were reaffirmed. This process was abruptly interrupted by the Spanish Civil War (1936–39). The right-wing rebels, led by Franco, rose against the democratically elected government of the Republic and were soon in control of a large part of Spain. A single political party was formed, modelled on the parties created by Mussolini and Hitler. The Catholic Church also largely backed the rebels’ cause, as Franco

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regarded the Church as one of the foundations of the ‘true’ Spain he sought to restore. With the abolition of democracy in 1939 at the end of the Civil War, the dictatorship of General Franco was characterized by brutal repression of the vanquished, extreme social control, heavy censorship of all artistic expression, the reinforcement of traditional views on gender and repression of the minorities on Spain’s periphery. The regime tried to suppress any cultural identities which were different from what was claimed by the new regime to be intrinsically ‘Spanish’. Inspired partly by the regime’s flirtation with Hitler’s views on ‘race’, this ‘true Spanish’ identity was based on notions of Spanish nationalism and Catholicism, the political and cultural autarky which closed Spain to the rest of the world, political centralism (the idea of Castile as the essence of ‘Spain’ and its imperial past of the ‘Golden Age’) and a highly idiosyncratic interpretation of history. Ironically, however, rather than focusing on Castile as such, the dictatorship promoted a Spanish identity based on exoticized, folkloric images of Andalusia and its flamenco traditions (Graham and Labanyi 1995). Consequently, Catalan and other regional languages and cultures were relegated to a more or less clandestine existence and remained in that position for several decades.

La Nova Cançó: Beginnings and protest against the regime After Catalonia’s fall in 1939, public use of Catalan was banned. Censors had to report whether items offended Catholic dogma, morality, the Church or the regime. Labanyi points out, however, that during the 1950s literary censorship became more lenient towards high cultural forms, including poetry, which were able to become a vehicle for social protest. The perception appears to have been that dissidence could be tolerated in a minority genre. Labanyi stresses that despite the fact that censors were sometimes dismissed as stupid, in reality their tolerance of high art-forms suggests that they understood that élite culture does not represent a political threat, whereas mass culture does (Labanyi 1995: 214). In 1961, amid the ‘relaxation’ of some of the more repressive laws, a group of Catalan artists and intellectuals formed a group named Els Setze Jutges (The Sixteen Judges), which through song initiated a cultural resistance movement, La Nova Cançó. Catalan New Song was born in a context where Catalan was not a language of public use, schools could not teach it, it was absent from the media and forbidden in all areas of public administration. Several studies have been carried out on the subject, mostly written in Catalan, some with a more academic orientation and others from a journalistic

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perspective (Mainat 1982; Llach 1988; Soldevilla 1993; García-Soler 1996; Pujadó 2000; Riera 2002; Jurado and Morales 2006). Despite some differences in perspective, they all agree, however, that Catalan New Song was instrumental in the reaffirmation of Catalan identity and language use: Very few cultural manifestations have had such positive repercussions, at least in the contemporary popular culture of Catalan society, as regards the restoration of linguistic and cultural rights. Furthermore, La Nova Cançó more than any other artistic form, has made possible both the plurality and the unity of the Països Catalans.² (Soldevilla 1993: 11)

In this respect, Pi-Sunyer (1985) emphasizes the importance of symbols of identity: New societies, or those undergoing a process of transformation, reshape old meanings or invent new ones to satisfy the requirements of social cohesion, corporate action, and individual conduct . . . another quality of symbols is what might be termed their great semantic economy or metalinguistic properties. A symbol can integrate an indefinite, and not necessarily logically consistent, variety of meanings . . . [they] will have different ‘resonances’ for different individuals. (p. 112)

Catalan New Song carried a multiplicity of symbolic meanings; it was embraced by the majority of Catalans with diverse political views as a symbol of personal freedom, political democracy and the right to self-determination but, in some cases, as a symbol for outright independence. Concerts gave the political opposition to the regime a platform through which to express political ideas and the chant of ‘amnesty, freedom and self-determination’ spread among people, alongside the display of Catalan flags. Furthermore, the way in which the phenomenon was perceived by both critics and the original members of the group who, as composers of lyrical poems, saw themselves as troubadours is very significant as a political strategy. The appropriation or re-claiming of the historical past, that is the reclaiming of the Occitan background, served to emphasize Catalan difference and separateness from the Castilian central government. Therefore, the form became in itself a symbol of resistance, independent of the content of the lyrics or the use of the Catalan language. With regard to musical styles, the members of the movement developed their own approaches based on a range of diverse international influences. Some, such as the singer Joan Manuel Serrat, were inspired by French song and pop music, others, such as Maria del Mar Bonet, drew on traditional Mediterranean folk music, while others again,

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such as Lluís Llach, were more influenced by jazz, blues and gospel music, also incorporating some Mediterranean sounds. Jurado and Morales (2006) point out that in order to ‘normalize’ Catalan song, songwriters sought to emulate what the Americans or the French were doing and give the Catalan song an image of modernity. The appropriation of foreign international music styles in the case of Catalan New Song also represented an act of subversion and a way of articulating difference from the popular culture that the regime had promoted for 40 years. In analysing the development of La Nova Cançó, I argue that its abandonment by powerful constituencies in Catalan politics and society after the dictatorship was counterproductive from a cultural and linguistic point of view. I also argue, however, that the effort that some members of the movement made to defend it by demanding quotas of songs in Catalan in the media in Catalonia meant that there has been a certain amount of continuity and that La Nova Cançó has influenced the development of later, often very different, genres such as Catalan rock, which have contributed to the process of linguistic normalization, albeit only in Catalonia. Although these artists enjoy great popularity in Els Països Catalans, they are largely unknown in the rest of the Spanish state.

The late fifties and sixties During the first years of its existence, La Nova Cançó was a phenomenon which originated among the bourgeoisie in Barcelona. It was promoted by a group of intellectuals and artists who started to write and sing songs in Catalan, among them the writer Lluís Serrahima who in 1959 published an article ‘Ens calen cançons d’ara’ (we need new songs for our times), which was the first published article on the new cultural phenomenon that was taking place. Most academics point to this publication as the start of the new movement (Jurado and Morales 2006). Serrahima, together with the intellectuals Josep Benet and Josep Maria Espinás, came up with the idea of creating a movement which promoted modern Catalan song. The name of the group, Els Setze Jutges, was symbolic of Catalan identity and a marker of difference as it is the title of a traditional Catalan tongue twister which uses phonemes that do not exist in Castilian and are therefore difficult to pronounce correctly for a non-Catalan speaker. The group performed for the first time in 1961. In the same year, a recording company, Edigsa, was founded, with the aim of promoting Catalan singers/songwriters, while in 1965

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another recording company of Catalan records, Concentric, appeared. Although there were only three members in the group at the start, the name suggested that they were also open to new members. Exponents of the movement grew not only in numbers but also in variety and musical quality, with many songwriters from different parts of Els Països Catalans singing in different varieties of Catalan. Serrahima summarizes the motivation behind the creation of the group: The initial project of Els Setze Jutges was to use a medium of communication that had not been used before, in order to create an attitude of protest and of defence of human rights in the context of Francoist Spain. A medium that at the time was very modern and efficient: the record. We thought it could be a useful tool and, in fact, it very much proved to be so. (Jurado and Morales 2006: 55)

The group was essentially amateur at the beginning. Consistent with their antiestablishment values, they performed in a very informal and democratic way, sitting on a bare stage together in a row and with only a curtain for a backdrop. They took turns to sing, while the others listened. Although they were conscious that they were not professionals or that they necessarily had great musical talent, their project, at an intellectual level, was to trigger a movement which could become important for Catalan culture and an expression of its own identity. The original members managed to motivate young talented musicians and song writers who slowly became incorporated into the group. Newer members included Quico Pi de la Serra, Guillermina Motta, Xavier Elies, Joan Manuel Serrat, Rafael Subirachs and Lluís Llach from Catalonia, Maria del Mar Bonet from Mallorca and Raimon from Valencia. There was thus representation from the different parts of Els Països Catalans. The new members brought the movement to a professional level and managed to become very successful. Serrahima claims: ‘Obviously we had achieved our objective: Els Països Catalans definitely had a group of very talented young musicians and interpreters’ (Jurado and Morales 2006: 54). Lluís Llach merits particular attention, as in addition to consistently defending his ideology and the right to use Catalan, he has always supported and encouraged other developing movements of song in Catalan. For Llach, becoming a member of the group meant his launch as a singer/songwriter at a professional level and contact with older intellectuals who were highly politicized. He soon formed his own ideology which defined him clearly as against the dictatorship and in favour of human rights and freedom (Jurado and Morales 2006). In 1968, Llach composed L’Estaca (The Stake) (Els Èxits de Lluís Llach 1968), the song that became the hymn of the resistance to the regime. The main character of the

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song, L’avi Siset, a grandfather, makes his grandson aware that we are all tied to a stake – which functions as a symbol of the dictatorship – and until we can untie ourselves from it, we will not be able to move forward. At the end of the song the grandfather has died but his grandson remembers the song that he taught him. L’Estaca was not forbidden until 1969. However, its prohibition was, in fact, the reason for its popularity. The audiences already knew it and sang it as an anthem to freedom. Llach states ironically that the royalties for the copyright of L’Estaca should have gone to those who for years censured it and signed its prohibition (Mainat 1982).

The seventies By the early seventies, Llach had already been classified by the regime as a student who defended Catalan nationalism, but he came to be particularly persecuted as a result of a concert in Cuba, during which he publicly attacked Franco. On his return to Catalonia, the police banned so many of his concerts that it became impossible for him to survive as a musician; he also started to fear for his personal safety and decided to move to Paris where he lived from 1970 to 1974. Llach expresses the feeling of fear in many of his songs. ‘I Si Canto Trist’ (If I Sing in a Sad Tone) (I Si Canto Trist 1974) was written in memory of Salvador Puig Antich, an anarchist student garrotted in 1974. In the song there are many references to fear: I si canto trist És perquè no puc Esborrar la por Dels meus pobres ulls (Llach in Climent 1979: 117) (And if I sing in a sad tone, it’s because I can’t erase the fear from my poor eyes)

This decade is also famous in the Catalan musical arena for the legendary festivals which took place in the mid-1970s, the most famous one being held in 1976 with a record audience of 60,000 people and a heavy police presence. Pujadó (2000) states that at the beginning of the seventies there is no point any longer in cataloguing the Catalan song as ‘new’. He points out that even the Catalan singers did not like the term because they considered themselves as part of a consolidated genre in a society where Catalan was becoming more ‘normalised’.³

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Reality did not, however, correspond to the ambitions of a great part of Catalan society. At the beginning of the seventies, censorship became more systematic and fiercer, with more songs censored or performances banned. Singers such as Llach and Raimon were constantly being persecuted, while Serrat went into exile in 1975 because of his anti-Franco statements. Llach and others quickly came to realize that the more popular the movement became, the more repressively the regime acted against it. Songwriters had to resort constantly to metaphors, however transparent, in order to circumvent censorship. Llach even had to resort to Latin for the title of one of his songs ‘Debilitats formidinis’ when the censors refused to approve the Catalan title ‘La Impotència amb la Por’ (Helplessness in Fear), claiming that there was no fear in Spain (Llach 1988). By the mid-1970s, some exponents of the movement had developed conspicuous profiles beyond the borders of Spain. Llach gave concerts abroad, in the United Kingdom and France, as well as three concerts in 1976 in a large stadium in Barcelona, holding an audience of more than 30,000. The year 1976 is also marked in Llach’s musical career by another historical event 4 months after Franco’s death; the sacking of 70 steel workers in Vitoria (The Basque Country) had motivated the leaders of the workers’ unions to call a general strike on 3 March. Members of the police opened fire upon the strikers, killing three protesters – one of them only 17 years old. Forty more were wounded, with two more dying as a consequence of their wounds. The Spanish government refused to accept responsibility for the killings. Llach explains that he had just watched the events on TV and out of pain and desperation, he composed the music to what would become ‘Campanades a Morts’ (Bell Tolls for the Dead) (Jurado and Morales 2006). For Llach this was proof enough that the system during the transitional period to democracy was fighting for the survival and continuation of the old regime, and to be able to do so it had to resort to the killing of innocent people. He chose the requiem as his musical response to such tragic events. Amongst Llach’s songs it is, perhaps, the song that shows the most fury, with Llach’s discourse becoming more categorical at a crucial time in Spanish history: Assassins de raons, de vides, que mai no tingueu repòs en cap dels vostres dies i que en la mort us persegueixin les nostres memòries (Llach in Climent 1979: 145) (Assassins of reason, assassins of life! May you never find peace for the rest of your days, and when you die, let our memories haunt you forever)

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The forte at the end of the requiem reinforces the victory of those who are not prepared to be silenced any more. Llach went to the Basque Country to sing the composition. After that his concerts were again forbidden. Another of his songs from 1979, ‘Somniem’ (We dream), expresses the yearning at that time for a better, free society: Somnieu. es clar que sí, somniem constantment . . . volem l’impossible per a arribar al possible (Llach in Climent 1979: 197) (You dream, of course we do. We dream constantly . . . we want the impossible in order to reach what is possible)

The years 1975 and 1976 were marked by the death of General Franco and mass concerts by Raimon (1975), Llach (1976) and Pi de la Serra (1976). Soldevilla (1993) explains that the concerts signalled the end of an era and the beginning of the true crisis in Catalan song as, for the last time, the singers were backed up by all the political factions opposing the regime: While it is true that the song benefited a lot from its politicization, it is also true that the incipient Catalan political leaders and the trade unions also used the song justifiably for their political purposes. Those were the times where everything was valid in the name of a united fight against an oppressive regime. At the same time the songwriters needed a platform to spread their messages, political messages because of the historical, but also – we must not forget – artistic context. (Soldevilla 1993: 11)

The same idea is supported by Stokes (1994): ‘For regions and communities within the context of the modernising nation state that do not identify with the state project, music and dance are often convenient and morally appropriate ways of asserting defiant difference’ (p. 12). However, many critics (Llach 1988; Soldevilla 1993; García-Soler 1996; Pujadó 2000; Riera 2002; Jurado and Morales 2006) point out that during the period of democratization, in Catalonia there was a progressive indifference towards Catalan song. It seemed as if the young Catalan clandestine political force believed that once they attained positions of power in the new democracy, there was no reason for Catalan song’s existence any more, and they perhaps feared its power in case it turned against them. Consequently, they did nothing to promote it and, in some cases, denigrated it. Referring to the marginalization of Catalan song during this period, García-Soler (1996) argues that if Catalonia

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and the Catalans want to become a culturally ‘normal’ and ‘normalized’ nation, it is necessary to have songs written in Catalan and adds that a movement such as La Nova Cançó should not be relegated to Catalan history as a phenomenon that lasted only about 35 years. In terms of the issue of survival of cultural identity in a place (Els Països Catalans) where the dominant language of the state is different from the main ethnolinguistic identity (i.e. Catalan) and with the lack of a nation-state to protect this identity, García-Soler’s view that the song should have a representation in Catalan is arguably very relevant indeed. The transition to democracy in Spain was presented, both in Spain and outside, as a model process – there was a widespread perception that Spain had effortlessly gone from being a dictatorship to a democracy. However, the process was far from bloodless. The regime in Spain had not been defeated by anyone; it had simply lost its ruler. All the institutions of the dictatorship were still in place. Bitter divisions still existed between the victors and the vanquished of the Civil War. In 1977, for example, there was an extreme rightwing attack on a law practice in the centre of Madrid which was linked to the trade union movement and militants of the Communist Party (which had not yet been legalized), with five people left dead and four injured. A few days later, two policemen and a civil guard were killed by the armed group GRAPO. Moreover, several students died during protests in favour of an amnesty for political prisoners. Nevertheless, the majority of politicians at that moment felt there was a need to ensure that there would be no return to the violence of the Civil War, a concern which, it is sometimes argued, is vindicated by the attempted coup which took place on 23 February 1981. Ostensibly, to ensure peace, all the political parties came to the consensus that the only way forward was a mixture of amnesty and amnesia and in October 1977, a general amnesty for all political crimes was declared. It was decided that all groups would share equal responsibility for the Civil War. This was a huge concession by Republicans, but it was deemed more important to keep the transition to democracy on course rather than to exact revenge on those who had oppressed them during Franco’s regime. These agreements are what many historians have named El Pacto de Olvido (The Pact of Oblivion): ‘the “pact of oblivion” saw a curtain of silence drawn over the past in the interests of a still-fragile democracy’ (Preston 2007: 12). The year of the first democratic elections in Spain was 1977, but it was not a quiet year either. In the artistic sphere, Albert Boadella, theatre director, was imprisoned for his play ‘La Torna’ in which he set out to expose the truth behind

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Puig Antich’s execution. Boadella was tried in a court martial and sentenced to 2  years’ imprisonment; Llach expressed his reaction: ‘It was incredible, we couldn’t believe that the old military justice went on exercising their authority after the death of the dictator and that nobody with political responsibility could do anything about it’ (Jurado and Morales 2006: 209). Llach’s response to this event was the song ‘Companys no és aixó’ (This is not it, Comrades) (El Meu Amic El Mar 1978). His song expresses serious doubts about the incipient democracy which would not allow freedom of speech. Jurado and Morales (2006) point out that when Llach composed the song, a high-ranking member of the Catalan Socialist Party questioned the fact that he was still writing protest songs at a moment when there was nothing to protest about. They add that the reason why the media and the politicians criticized the Catalan singers and songwriters was that they did not want to have voices which appealed to a series of values they had decided to ignore: At that time very important issues were being decided that would condition the following fifty years and it was very important to define the rules of the game. They were difficult times full of doubts and debates and I (Llach) felt it was my duty to make my voice and my opinions heard in a context where most politicians couldn’t do it. (Jurado and Morales 2006: 208)

The eighties In 1988, the Catalan singers/songwriters opted to create an association, L’ACIC. Members of the association, among them Llach, organized a sit-in, accusing the autonomous Catalan government of not supporting singers in Catalan. They were also accusing all Catalan cultural media of becoming too globalized, with the slogan: ‘Canta en anglès si vols sortir a TV3’ (sing in English if you want to appear on Catalan TV). The official response was not to permit a press conference on the grounds of the safety regulations of the building. The same year, L’ACIC supported a bill in the Catalan Parliament to pass an act which would include provisions such as a requirement for a 25 per cent quota of songs sung in Catalan in the Catalan audio–visual media, citing the example of existing quotas in France and Quebec (40 per cent and 60 per cent, respectively of songs sung in French). The Catalan Parliament passed the bill in the same year, although in practice, the quotas were not always implemented (Pujadó 2000).

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While some of the main members of La Nova Cançó had gone on enjoying some success, others such as the group La Trinca opted for bilingualism and started appearing in popular TV shows singing in Spanish. Lluís Llach, Raimon and Maria del Mar Bonet were the exceptions as they continued to write and sing only in Catalan. They have also gone beyond the initial phase of the movement and have helped to consolidate it, developing their very personal musical styles. Llach, in particular, has maintained throughout his musical career his passionate defence of the Catalan language and Catalan song. He also supported and encouraged young musicians who were starting a new movement: Rock Català (Catalan Rock) (Jurado and Morales 2006). Furthermore, Llach was acutely aware that any wrong step during the early years of democracy could set Spain back to a state of violence and repression (Llach 1988), but he still set out to differ when he felt it necessary.

The nineties and the new millennium By the 1990s, the process of normalization in Catalonia had already had considerable success. The decade saw the emergence of Catalan Rock, with a massive concert in the Palau Sant Jordi in Barcelona which had the participation of several Catalan rock groups who sing exclusively in Catalan, such as Els Pets, Sangraït Sau and Sopa de Cabra. Gerard Quintana, lead singer of Sopa de Cabra, stated that La Nova Cançó was out of fashion then (Jurado and Morales 2006) – even though some of the groups had interpreted some of Llach’s songs in a rock style – and that, for the first time, there was a generation that had been educated in Catalan and wanted to listen to rock songs sung in that language, rather than (or as well as), say in English. The young generation of the nineties needed to find another referent to express their rebellion and they embraced rock music as it differentiated them from their parents’ generation who had embraced the singer/songwriters of La Nova Cançó. Furthermore, as Steenmeijer (2005) argues: ‘Rock music symbolised everything the Generalísimo had gagged, muzzled and even tried to eradicate root and branch: hedonism, hybridity, change, freedom; in short, everything Franco considered to be non-Spanish’ (p. 245). O’Flynn (2007) argues that given that national identity and music are a socially constructed field of meaning, it would be wrong to assume that the music itself is in some essential way representative of a given cultural–political entity because, as often happens in the globalized world, the music of a particular sociocultural

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group is culturally appropriated and integrated by groups external to it (Biddle and Knights 2007: 19–38). Thus, clearly, there is no reason why a genre which did not originate in Catalonia, such as rock, should not become a vehicle for the expression of Catalan identity. Stokes (1994) also emphasizes that musicians in many parts of the world appropriate genres to transform and reinterpret them in their own terms. In the case of Catalonia, the appropriation of foreign international music styles, both by Catalan song and Catalan rock, represented an act of subversion and a way to articulate difference from the centralist cultural establishment. At this point, Catalan rock groups had the full support of many Catalan politicians of the party who ruled the autonomous Catalan government. Politicians saw once more an opportunity to sponsor music written in Catalan. Although these Catalan rock groups were influenced mainly by Anglo-American musical genres, they sang in Catalan. Their lyrics seemed to have a less earnest discourse than those of La Nova Cançó and politicians of the time thought that Catalan rock did not represent a direct threat to them. However, in reality this was not always the case. Lluís Gavaldá, singer of Els Pets (Blay 2003), points out that, although there were Catalan rock groups that behaved as if they were American, Els Pets had taken from the beginning a protest stance with a clear vindication of Catalan identity. The group wrote songs such as ‘No n’hi ha prou amb ser català’ (Being Catalan is not enough) (Els Pets 1989) which criticized the fact that many Catalan people were starting to take the complacent attitude that there was no need any more to do anything to promote Catalan culture and identity. They also wrote songs that expressed their concern about macroeconomic issues that affected them directly, such as the massive industrialization of their native village which completely changed the villagers’ way of life and brought serious problems to the area. There are some signs that the tide of indifference to La Nova Cançó, which began in the 1980s, might be turning, at least at grassroots level. The year 2000 saw the creation of a new Catalan ‘super-band’, Mesclat. This project was led by the drummer of Els Pets, Joan Reig, and involved the collaboration of various rock bands: ‘with some of the members of this project, we have analysed the Catalan rock phenomenon and its links with La Nova Cançó’ (Jurado and Morales 2006: 361). Reig also argues that the main difference between La Nova Cançó and Catalan rock lies in the fact that the former took their inspiration from French songwriters such as Brel and Brassens or the American protest song, while the latter were inspired by the Anglo-Saxon tradition of rock represented

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by the Beatles and The Rolling Stones: ‘I (Reig) don’t understand why there is this eagerness to divide us. Journalists have done so to differentiate eras, but for me, it represents continuity’ (Jurado and Morales 2006: 361). Another of Reig’s projects, called Refugi, started in 2007 and was conceived as a ‘lecture-recital’ with the pedagogical goal of bringing to schools the history of Catalan music from the sixties to the present and is currently, through concerts, setting out to raise people’s awareness, or ‘historical memory’, as he refers to it, of the artistic and cultural merits of La Nova Cançó.

Perceptions of Catalan song within the Spanish state The pact of oblivion clearly had a severe impact on La Nova Cançó, which was treated by Catalan politicians as a threat to democracy that had to be stifled as well. However, that alone does not explain why a cultural phenomenon that played such a significant role in subverting and protesting against the dictatorship has had, even up to the present day, so little resonance outside Catalonia, both in the academic world and the central media in Spain. Despite the widespread international perception that Spain under the democratic system has a diversity of cultures and languages, the reality remains that there is little cultural exchange, linguistic coexistence and very little representation of this diversity in the media. In the case of Catalan song, for example, those singers who have opted to sing only in Catalan, including Catalan rock, still remain almost unknown in the rest of the Spanish state, with the exception of, perhaps, other autonomies in the periphery such as the Basque Country. On the few occasions that the singers have been interviewed on Spanish television programmes, they have invariably been asked why they do not sing in Spanish as well. For example, in an interview during a Spanish television programme, the interviewer asks Llach this question, to which Llach responds explaining his motives, among them, the idea that there has always been a very difficult cultural coexistence in Spain, and that if it became normal to sing in Catalan or Basque in the Spanish mass media, Spanish society would become more accepting of cultural diversity (TVE1: no date). The fact that the question arises is clearly an indication of the perception that exists in the Spanish state of Catalan singers who insist on singing in Catalan as adopting an anti-Spanish stance. Fernàndez (2008) argues that the trauma of Catalan subordination within the framework of the Spanish state is that Catalonia is ‘invisible’. He makes reference

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to a letter published in the influential national Spanish paper El País (23 February 1999) after Llach’s appearance on a previous programme for the private television channel, Tele-5, in which a viewer, supposedly in favour of multiculturalism and multilingualism and allegedly an admirer of Llach, accuses the singer of intolerance because of his refusal to sing in Spanish. According to this view, Llach’s refusal to sing in the language of the ‘other’ violates the principles of tolerance on which modern Spanish culture is based. However, Fernàndez points out that the appearances of Catalan singers on Spanish television are conspicuous by their rarity and in this respect, if Llach had agreed to sing in Spanish, this would have meant that the phenomenon of acquiescence to the dominant language would have been reinforced as ‘normal’. Fernàndez emphasizes that this insistence that a cultural minority adopt the majority language of the state, based on a false pretence of equality, is ‘clearly a symbolic act of violence’ and that the aggressive message behind it is ‘assimilate’ (p. 147). This type of incident, in Fernàndez’s view, has the effect of legitimizing the assimilation project of Spanish nationalism disguised as tolerant multiculturalism, and this is carried out by the de-legitimization of Llach and, by extension, of Catalan culture. In this respect Stokes (1994) points out that music is socially meaningful because when a particular genre is taken as a symbol of identity it is also used to create boundaries and to maintain distinctions and, therefore, ‘dominant groups oppose the construction of difference when it confronts their interest’ (p. 8).

Conclusion Recalling García-Soler’s idea that for a culturally ‘normalized’ nation, it is necessary to have songs written in the language of habitual use, it is worth emphasizing his argument that music, as an inherent part of the culture of a nation, plays a key role in the preservation of its own identity. In the case of Catalonia in particular, considered by many as a nation within the Spanish state, and facing the domination of globalized music produced in the Spanish and English languages, it can be argued that it is vitally important that music which is written in Catalan be given the support it needs to flourish and that the division Catalan politicians have tried to create between La Nova Cançó and Catalan rock is irrelevant. Many Catalan musicians have nowadays recognized the fundamental part that La Nova Cançó has played in the history of modern Catalan music. So perhaps indifference is beginning gradually to be replaced,

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albeit only in Els Països Catalans, by a renewed interest in the historical continuity of the cultural phenomenon which has been the focus of this chapter. The direction which this historical continuity takes in the immediate future will certainly be of great significance as a cultural barometer of events in Catalonia. As this chapter goes to press, the current Catalan administration is committed to a referendum on independence for Catalonia during its current legislature. Furthermore the tensions created between Catalonia and the Spanish state as a result of this commitment have been exacerbated by the Catalan Parliament’s Catalan Sovereignty Declaration, issued in January 2013, which further asserts the right to self-determination for Catalonia, and the subsequent suspension in May 2013 of this declaration by Spain’s Constitutional Court due to its putative incompatibility with the Spanish constitution. It will be of great interest to observe the cultural and linguistic trajectory of Catalan song in the context of such momentous political developments.

Copyright acknowledgement The author and publishers are grateful for the right to reproduce the following copyright material: I Si Canto Trist ©1974 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals) Campanades a Morts ©1977 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals) Somniem ©1979 by Lluís Llach (L’Empordà Edicions Musicals)

Notes 1 All translations of quotes and song lyrics in Catalan are mine. 2 The term Països Catalans (often translated in English as The Catalan Countries) refers to the territories where the different varieties of Catalan are traditionally spoken. However, the term has no legal existence. Catalan is spoken in Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, the Valencian community, Andorra, most of the French department of the Pyrénées Orientales (known in French as Le Pays Catalan) and the Italian city of Alghero on the island of Sardinia. 3 From the late 1970s onwards, the Catalan government created an infrastructure for the implementation the normalització lingüistica (linguistic normalization). This initiative is designed to ensure that the population of the region is competent and literate in the language, that the language has a presence in all areas of public life and that its use is accepted and promoted by all citizens of Catalonia.

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References Ainaud de Lasarte, J. M. (1995), El Llibre Negre de Catalunya. De Felip V a l’ABC (5th edn). Barcelona: Edicions La Campana. Aubrey, E. (1996), The Music of the Troubadours. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Biddle, I. and Knights V. (eds) (2007), Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local. Aldershot: Ashgate. Blay, P. (2003), Els Pets, Cara a Cara. Barcelona: Rosa dels vents. Climent, E. (ed.) (1979), Lluís Llach: Poemes i Cançons. València: Tres i Quatre. Fernàndez, J. A. (2008), El Malestar en la Cultura Catalana. Barcelona: Editorial Empúries. Fuster, J. (1979), ‘Pròleg’, in E. Climent (ed.), Lluís Llach: Poemes i Cançons. València: Tres i Quatre, pp. 9–19. García-Soler, J. (1996), Crònica Apassionada de la Nova Cançó. Barcelona: Flor del Vent Edicions. Graham, H. and Labanyi, J. (eds) (1995), Spanish Cultural Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jurado, O. and Morales, J. M. (2006), Lluís Llach, Sempre Més Lluny. Tafalla: Editorial Txalaparta s.l. Labanyi, J. (1995), ‘Censorship or the fear of mass culture’, in H. Graham and J. Labanyi (eds), Spanish Cultural Studies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 207–14. Llach, Ll. Interview [tv], TVE1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEpJhmFA4a0 [accessed 2 November 2011]. —(1988), Història de les Seves Cançons Explicada a Josep M. Espinàs. Barcelona: Edicions La Campana. Mainat, J. R. (1982), Tretze Que Canten. Barcelona: Editorial Mediterrània. S.A. Mar-Molinero, C. (1996), ‘The role of language in Spanish nation-building’, in C. ­Mar-Molinero and A. Smith (eds), Nationalism and the Nation in the Iberian Peninsula: Competing and Conflicting Identities. Oxford: Berg, pp. 69–87. O’Flynn, J. (2007), ‘National identity and music in transition: Issues of authenticity in a global setting’ in I. Biddle and V. Knights (eds), Music, National Identity and the Politics of Location: Between the Global and the Local. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19–38. Pi-Sunyer, O. (1985), ‘The 1977 parliamentary elections in Barcelona: Primordial symbols in a time of change’, Anthropological Quarterly, 58(3): 108–19. Preston, P. (2007), The Spanish Civil War: Reaction, Revolution and Revenge. New York: Norton. Pujadó, M. (2000), Diccionari de la Cançó. D’els Setze Jutges al Rock Català. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, S.A. Riera, I. (2002), Lluís Llach. Companys no és això. Barcelona: Rosa dels vents. Serrahima, Ll. (1959), ‘Ens calen cançons d’ara’, Germinabit, 58: 15.

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Soldevilla, Ll. (1993), La Nova Cançó (1958-1987): Balanç d’una Acció Cultural. Argentona: L’Aixemador Edicions. Steenmeijer, M. (2005), ‘Other lives: Rock, memory and oblivion in post-Franco fiction’, Popular Music, 24(2): 245–56. Stokes, M. (ed.) (1994), Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Discography Els Éxits de Lluís Llach (Concentric 1968) I Si Canto Trist (Movieplay 1974) Campanades a Morts (Movieplay 1977) El Meu Amic el Mar (Ariola 1978) Somniem (Ariola 1979) Els Pets (Disc Medi 1989)

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Wandering Words: Reflections on Ambivalent Cultural Belonging and the Creative Potential of Linguistic Multiplicity Irmina van Niele

This chapter investigates language as place of belonging. Yet language also appears as a lack, a silenced self without a voice. I investigate language as muteness and loss on the one hand, and as ‘outside-in’ appropriation on the other. Belonging is inseparable from language, as lived experience is entirely enmeshed in language. What happens when one language becomes overlaid with another? Based on my personal experience of living inside and outside the English language as culturally displaced ‘other’, I search for meaning across gaps in translation, while considering the potential for enrichment in ‘wandering’ through languages, telling stories, uttering ‘otherness’. I wonder how a sense of belonging might be developed, resisted, achieved; how a sense of otherness may persist and (re)surface. In a world of everincreasing displacement of people from their original country, region, family and language, the long-term consequences of migration have barely begun to be addressed; little appears to be known yet as to what belonging might mean in relation to increasing experiences of cultural otherness. Massumi (1997) argues that ‘belonging per se has emerged as a problem of global proportions, perhaps the planetary problem’ (p. 188). Does a migrant’s ambivalent position merely amplify a universal dilemma? Australian attitudes towards Dutch immigrants are generally favourable; the Dutch were in many ways ideal migrants. They were physically inconspicuous northern whites who learnt English and seemed to blend into the mainstream population without difficulty. Their integration and participation were simply assumed. The majority of Dutch in Australia emigrated during the 1950s.

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They  belonged to an older generation, whose Dutchness appeared to have stagnated in conservative pre-war attitudes. There was no real sense of an identifiable Dutch-Australian community of any significance, but it was unimportant to me. I moved among the general population and lived in sharehouseholds with young Australians. I enjoyed the status of being foreign but did not identify myself as migrant. My life as other became constructed as not other enough to make a convincing case for ethnic difference. I remember a comment made by a girl in a share-house shortly after my arrival: ‘You’re all right’ she said, ‘you’re not a wog, you’re one of us’. I realized that to be included meant to fully adapt myself, to agree to fit in. On the other hand I was just different enough to be interesting: ‘say something in Dutch, let us hear it’! To perform my Dutchness on demand, however, was to relegate aspects of myself to the ‘freak show’ where my foreignness could be accommodated, my excess put on show and contained. In general, multicultural notions still implicitly assume that migration is a process of repositioning that will result in becoming and staying adjusted and integrated. The idea of ‘the migrant’ persists and fails to note differences, such as between those who settle in among a community with which they identify culturally and linguistically and those who leave every connection behind and become absorbed into the language and customs of the place of resettlement. Another difference often overlooked is between those who come as adults and those who spend at least part of their childhood, and therefore their schooling and language acquisition, in the new place. As Nancy (2000) points out, there exists a well-intentioned discourse of generalized multiculturalism, of unity in diversity and complementarity, which does not reach beyond the simplification and distortion of the other. This is the ideology of the melting pot (p. 148). Nancy prefers the term mêlée, which implies a ‘crisscrossing, weaving, exchanging, sharing . . . never a single thing’ (2000: 150–1). Recent academic research has tended to shift analyses of place away from the politics of essence, locatedness and specificity, to notions of hybridity, intertextuality and dislocation, and to an understanding of the past as a web of conflicting and often disjointed factual narrations. Papastergiadis (2000) describes migrancy as an ongoing, restless and ambivalent process and points out a universal need for a sense of connectedness (pp. 196–200). I understand cultural identity to be above all idiosyncratic; a complex of accumulating and interacting fragments. Nancy (2000) writes that ‘identity is never “pure and simple”’. She uses the word ‘ipseity’ to indicate ‘being-its-self ’, without this of necessity being founded on purity, but more an identity formed of a network

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of exchanges ‘from difference to difference’ (p. 153). Ipseity, as singularity, only exists in the plural; it is a distribution, an ‘all in one’ all mixed up. A whole of fragments; completely incomplete (p. 156). Identity is complex. In what ways do I articulate such a mixture of singularities and complexities? Is cultural identity portable? The problem with assimilation is the denial of this singular–plural. ‘You will be one of us’ forcibly leads to repression of whatever might ‘leak out’ from that confine. Preconceived generalizations include the idea that migrants settle into a ‘migrant’ or ‘multicultural’ community. This is by no means always the case, but I also contradict simplistic assumptions that regard migration as adaptation and a forgetting of the past. I want to make room for a different view. Endless are the theories, practical guides and courses for and about the new migrant, the bilingual migrant child, the ignorant newcomer. But what of the long-term migrant dweller without family and language? The capable learner of countless new skills for years who survives and thrives? My position as migrant is complex. Much of it I share with other immigrants, much I do not. It is a way of living, developed gradually over time as a result of a wide range of factors. If I do not have the right words, what can I say?

My language is foremost this language, Australian English. It is the major language, from after the shift. Major in the sense of being all around me, in its enormity. By shift I mean the moment at which Dutch became suppressed. There was no easing in, no gradual letting go: I simply stopped being able to use it. All that had been then became mute, only uttered in translation and transformed into stories that were always unfinished, and from which I was somehow removed. These stories were periodically solicited through questions about my reasons for coming, what I did when I arrived, whether I missed my family. I never really felt that my answers were right or sufficient to what seemed huge and personal questions, and the wrong questions, though what the right ones might have been I did not know. Gradually my attempts at explanation became transformed into a repertoire of generalities with a touch of bravado, of tales that connect and build friendships, but that in their retelling left me disconnected. Filtered through the transformation of translation, these were tales of a ‘surface self ’, at a distance from experience. Why did you leave? Why are you here? Will you go back?

They are fair enough questions but they continue to place me in an interim between an arrival with dubious motives, and possible future departure. Being

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asked to explain my presence in terms of the past or the future, repeatedly points towards otherness. I learnt to relate stories that could be kept short: a quick and simple explanation was best. But many stories never got told, as they fell outside the explanation repertoire. Gunew (1988) suggests that the impulse to create validating stories comes out of the repression in the public realm of the other, previous language. One becomes inserted into an already existing, different social order of language and law. Referring to Lacan’s symbolic order, Gunew wonders what happens in this passing from one language system to another. If we enter the symbolic order through a particular language, and ‘this first subjectivity, by necessity, is repressed’ (1988: 37), where then does the migrant’s former subjectivity become located? Language is a cultural construction within which our identities exist; we cannot simply finish with one language and start with another, abandoning our previous identity. ‘What happens to the other and prior language attached to a specific culture?’ (ibid.). Is it lost, within the new symbolic order? During the slow process of gathering a new vocabulary, speaking was continually compromised by the inability to articulate thoughts exactly. Becoming fluent in another language means learning to think and express thoughts differently, through a myriad of finest nuances in the multiple meanings of words and a different language structure. In Lost in Translation, Hoffman writes: ‘My words often seem to baffle others. They are inappropriate, or forced, or just plain incomprehensible. People look at me with puzzlement. . . . Anyway, the back and forth of conversation is different here. People often don’t answer each other’ (1995: 147). Hoffman describes her fascination, confusion, desire and inability, to speak spontaneously and with ease. ‘I listen breathlessly . . . [to] every syncopation, every stress, every maverick rush over a mental hurdle. Then, as I try to respond with equal spontaneity, I reach frantically for the requisite tone, the requisite accent’ (ibid.: 219). From my off-centre position, I manifested difference which was reflected back as ‘not fully’, ‘not yet’, ‘not quite’. For instance: ‘still quite an accent, haven’t you’?

Accent, as difference, is often assumed to be a remnant of inadequate mastery of the language, with the expectation of its gradual fading until it will finally disappear. I will of course never be accent-free, shed my foreign linguistic aspects entirely, nor wholly absorb the unheard, local accent. I am inside this language and yet on the outside. And insofar as I have internalized it, it has happened in

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that way, from the outside in. This is still an inadequate way to describe what I feel. English is a language I have acquired through experience but without this having been formed and influenced by family linguistic patterns, with their particular ways of thinking, their linguistic agreements, secrets, omissions. Instead I have absorbed the spoken language through each encounter, conversation and interaction’s particular flavour, slant or form of expression; a hybrid collection of vernacular styles, demanding a relationship of careful adjustment and control. The acquisition of Dutch took place so naturally that I cannot imagine myself without it. There was no reality, no thought possible, without it. Never was that language ‘on the outside’. I lived and grew inside that language. I was that language. English I consider more as a ready-made, taken up as found. I, the outsider, having come in and become insider, by letting go of the old referents, of speaking, listening, thinking in the other language. Hoffman describes the process of learning English in Canada: ‘. . . that was a terribly long process. I mean in the sense that the language didn’t quite belong to me, that it wasn’t quite inside, that it wasn’t mine. I would say this lasted . . . for about twenty years. . . .’ (1998: 18). I have often been asked: ‘do you think in English? When did you first start thinking in English?’ Even after 30 years, this still mystifies people. Unlike Hoffman, I had no family around me in which Dutch would remain present. No daily pull away and back. No in and out. I was immersed. When my first child was born I did not speak Dutch with her, or with the two that followed later; none of my children speak my native language. Oh, it occurred to me to do so, I briefly tried to. But without anyone to speak the language back to me, my solitary utterings felt ethereal and hollow. I have not passed on to my children any of the songs, rhymes and stories I knew as a child. They have grown up with their connections in place in the manner of local Australian children and do not experience this loss at all, they are fine. The feeling is mine, to do with my own memories of what was passed on to me and for which a rich tapestry of English nursery rhymes, stories and songs is not a substitute. English has become embedded, but lightly. I live within this language from the outside in, still at times at that edge, while being immersed and surrounded. At the same time this is freeing, enabling a sense of playfulness I do not recall having in Dutch. It is a strange multiplicity within which previous fragments may surface and form odd connections or juxtapositions. This can extend or shift meanings, often in a humorous way. The strangeness of this is not so much that it occurs, but that it is not usually possible to share the joke. Playing scrabble for instance is frustrating. Half of what my mind conjures up is invalid. It is as if

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thoughts need to adhere to the strictly habitual structure, and when this is upset, as in word games, language is not tidy: letters form sequences that may have meaning, regardless of which language. Like Hoffman, I have acquired an extra sensitivity to how the language sounds, beyond the meaning of words. I too have been seduced again and again by eloquence in this language. Hoffman (1995) refers to this extra sensitivity as obsession and emphasizes its importance as well as her own confusion, between her attraction to the language and the people who master its skill, feeling a lack of meaningful connection (pp. 219–20); emotional distance persists (p. 227). What I miss in English sometimes, is the flexible, yet very precise elasticity of words themselves. Dutch composite words, complex conjugations of verbs in French, manoeuvring the language itself. There is a strange gap between ‘the Dutch language’ and Nederlands. The word ‘Dutch’ is a utilitarian indicator, but Nederlands is a world. There is a thing, outside of me; a blunt, opaque and awkward thing called ‘Dutch’. This, it is said, is my language; incomprehensible, difficult, don’t-bother-trying, irrelevant, useless Dutch. It is the one that is not understood. There is, within me, a language, sometimes – this time – itching to come out and be uttered, to reach, to greet, to touch and to be reached, greeted and touched in turn. From within me, where I shoved it, where it shoved itself: Nederlands. From the very first re-uttering of its own name, its re-thinking even, it is from within its own being – Nederlands – that its expression pushes and tugs, but to where, towards what? Just the edge of inner-outer is reached, hard, long, of nothing.

In Amsterdam I love listening to the sound of Dutch all around me in its countless nuanced layers, and among myriad other languages. And when I speak Dutch it is a delight, because it is a real and audible affirmation and a relief, it is still there, and I am in it. I absorb, I am surrounded, but I can become unsure, even unstuck. I remember the language as innately mine but I re-enter it from the outside now. New, unfamiliar elements crowd out what I thought was mine. The memory of unquestionably belonging in Dutch is not so readily revived into a renewed experience by my presence now. With speaking Dutch comes the expectation of cultural belonging, that is, of understanding how things work. I do things wrong in supermarkets, need to have really basic things explained, am too slow at crowded market stalls. Feeling foolish and vulnerable while tentatively seeking to re-connect leads me to switch to English for basic questions, and to feeling numb.

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Switching between languages in speech is not always neat: ways in which thoughts are formed and expressed in one language are at times carried over into the other, leading to strange expressions and turns of phrase, making language awkward. I still do not find conscious switching between languages easy. It involves a changeover that is beyond translation. Other selves speak those other languages: in het Nederlands, en français. The switching process is distinct from translation, or beyond translation. Translation happens by reaching into another language while simultaneously staying in the first one. Switching means passing from one thought complexity into another; out of one domain of linguistic presence into an ephemeral other or vice versa, a displacement. Hermans (1996) points out two related aspects of translation: ‘cultural transmission and retrieval’ and ‘interpretation as making intelligible to others by means of verbal explanation and gloss’. In the first meaning the translator is the one who enables understanding, whereas the second meaning, making intelligible, looks for representation as similarity or imitation in a different language order (no page). There are endless slips in meaning between one language and another, but more than that, language utters culture, through cultural thought-patterns expressed in words. The difficulty with translation is that it aims to transfer a particular set of thoughts, experienced by a particular self and in a particular place, into another language, while different selves operate within these different languages. Who I am in Dutch is not quite who I am in English. Translation results in both connecting and remoteness simultaneously. Hermans draws a parallel between translation and understanding, and suggests that translation inverts the original language. He refers to ‘ambivalences and paradoxes, the hybridity and plurality of translation, its “otherness” as “awkwardness” . . . in contrast to the perception of translation as replica or reproduction . . .’ (ibid.). I prefer to think that translation derives its own structure, its own being, from its mobility, its tactics and its sensitivity to nuance. It is difference and therefore opaqueness and untidiness that are inscribed in the operations of translation, not coincidence or transparency or equivalence in any formal sense. Speaking of translation in terms of equivalence means engaging in an elaborate – if socially necessary – act of make-believe. (ibid.)

Thoughts are formulated in either one language or another, which may or may not alternate rapidly, and this might even happen in more than two languages, but not as simultaneously operating blended layers; instead there is rapid movement backwards and forwards from layer to layer. I think of language memories as

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x-rays able to penetrate these layers and take imprints of deposits from different linguistic regions with ease, perhaps even simultaneously. Sometimes words seem like ledges where my thinking can come to a rest . . .

In different languages words become skewed in their translated meanings, even nonexistent in their exact meaning, but are nonetheless thoughts expressed meaningfully and with subtle distinctions in each language. But the ‘ledges’ or ‘rungs’ are different, placed differently and maybe certain precise nuances of thought and meaning can be succinctly expressed in one language and not in another or only by connecting the surrounding edges of ledges, which leads to composite words and clumsy descriptions. Expressing in one language what has been experienced in another can have a surreal quality. Genuinely conveying something that can be comprehended can require tremendous effort; it can only happen in short bursts. This has no doubt contributed to the need to fabricate ready-made stories; they require less effort even if they mostly leave me out. Or perhaps precisely because they leave me out. In stories one can cover a space of several years in a few sentences, as well as laboriously recount the memory of a single event in great detail. Both are frustrating in their incompleteness and limitation, but the story as thin skin-like cover or façade which both shelters and represents me is important. De Certeau (1988) talks about stories as a form of spatial practice: ‘every story is a travel story’ (p. 115). According to Ahearne (2001), he speaks of ‘utterance’, a speech act or response ‘that engages the meaning of an existence’ (p. 451). I meander through languages while walking in the local streets. Simply replacing words like avenue, road, street or place with their Dutch equivalents produces a startling emotional response. A link is produced, exquisite and excruciating all at once. That which appears to build connections opens gaps I am reluctant to traverse. I experiment with naming and translations. Thus I walk linksaf and rechtsaf, in the uselessness of the wrong language that is also the right one and the first. ‘The verbal relics of which the story is composed’, writes de Certeau, ‘being tied to lost stories and opaque acts, are juxtaposed in a collage where their relationships are not thought, and for this reason they form a symbolic whole. They are articulated by lacunae’ (1988: 107). Hoffman writes: ‘[It is] as if language were an enormous, fine net in which reality is contained – and if there are holes in it, then a bit of reality can escape, cease to exist’ (1995: 217). If language were a large net in which reality is contained, then finding holes in it might be a way to let other realities come through and begin to exist. . . . I want a space to insert other stories, room to speak. But I remain uncertain: will my

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writing in English be enough? Is this writing English enough? Have I rephrased enough sentences, eliminated enough peculiar turns of phrase, deleted enough awkward excess?

There are plenty of gaps between meaning and communication. At times while speaking in Dutch about experiences or ideas which were thought and lived in English, I can become stuck, lost for words. The language, in translation, becomes awkward. A moment, a thought, through translation, gathers distance. My Dutch vocabulary has become limited, it has acquired boundaries. Stumbling while going through the complex processes of translation, I feel rage at the fact of my losses. At the same time, there is tremendous pleasure in sensing the expansion of receptive vocabularies taking place with tremendous speed, closing gaps while traversing them, stretching limitations. Where these processes take place is significant and influences everything. Where am I not a stranger? Which language do I speak where? Restless searching across ambivalent linguistic locations. . . . In which language do I belong?

‘We always inhabit a specific language’ writes Hermans. ‘More than that: unless we find ways of overcoming the limits of our particular language, we remain imprisoned in it’ (1996: no page). While according to Nancy ‘language is always a mêlée . . .’ and in its aim towards a singular identity, ‘a crisscrossing of tones, borrowed elements, dispersions, and developments . . .’ (2000: 154). So language is always already in process, influenced, and changing. To belong: behoren/thuis horen/erbij horen/toehoren/horen

When translating ‘belonging’ into Dutch, meaning slips. I end up hedging, approaching it in a partial and fragmentary way through a variety of terms, none of which convey exactly the meaning of the word in English. It appears that in Dutch ‘to belong’ is perceived as something so natural that it needs no succinct word to describe it. Behoren is hardly in use, and nearly always shortened to horen. I associate horen with a moral or class-based judgement, to do with what is the done thing. It is often used in a negative sense, keeping foreign ways out. My childhood memories are filled with experiences of having my conduct curbed with dat hoort niet: being confined within that which hoort. According to Lacan, language cuts us off from the objects of our desire and at the same time enables us to articulate meanings. Language offers the child identity, rationality, objectivity and coherence (Minsky 1998: 70–2). Yet if Lacan’s view were the only reality, that is, that there is no reality outside language able to have meaning and signification, I doubt that people could survive the trauma of exile; it would surely lead to psychosis and death. For Lacan a solid sense of

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subjectivity can only be achieved through the acquisition of language, which has coherence and certainty. Though Lacan argues that unconscious desires always slip into the language we speak, between words and double meanings, so that in reality language is not that stable, and if language is unstable, so is identity (ibid: 61–73). In Lacan’s view the unconscious is structured like a language. Does that mean that ‘deposits’ of early childhood experiences and impressions are indelibly embedded in the native tongue? At home, language was used to draw borders around neighbourhoods with words like keurig and fatsoenlijk, which mean something like proper and decent, based on social bias. They restricted my geographical range by prohibiting streets considered unacceptable. At the same time they helped instil the idea that there are things to be explored in other places. . . .

It took a few years before I began to deviate towards the harbour and the ferry, but these are English words, and therefore utilitarian signs; they do not contain the emotional impact of words like het IJ, or de pont. Those words evoke memories like theatre settings. It was Walter Benjamin who compared memory with a theatre, in which past experience is played out: ‘Language shows clearly that memory is not an instrument for exploring the past but its theatre. It is the medium of past experience, as the ground is the medium in which dead cities lay interred’ (1986: 25–6). Of course the word ferry can take me to a pleasant remembering of trips across waters made since, but these are vague gestures devoid of emotional content. It is what always happens in stories, in translation. ‘Walking across the locks’ for instance, is a generic idea, whereas over de sluizen lopen is very precisely located, geographically, in language, in memories. In English, ‘home’ covers a wide array of concepts, not something easily translated. The Dutch word thuis implies home values shared across the family, so the locatedness of thuis and ‘the way we do things’ is very strong. But home as tradition, regional loyalty, duty, community, nationalism, are hardly covered. In translation each loses in strength and emphasis. House and home overlap, as do huis and thuis. But the gaps and overlaps are located differently. Thuis comes from tehuis, literally at home, now only used to denote an institution, for instance kindertehuis. Huis is not necessarily home, but may contain several of these. Woning is generally used over huis; it is an accurate, elastic term, meaning all forms of abode of a certain basic standard of sufficiency. Rather than a type of building being emphasized, it is the available living space as a unit. dwell – woon, dwelling – woning, inhabit – bewoon, habit – gewoonte

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The term ‘home country’ does not translate easily. The Dutch vaderland is not quite the same concept. Vaderland as fatherland is more authoritative and sober than home country which has a comfortable aspect, like ‘hometown’. It links one together with one’s fellow country inhabitants into a pseudo family bond. Motherland does not translate into Dutch. It implies a sense of being nurtured, as in ‘mother England’, whereas one has a sense of duty to one’s fatherland. Though all these terms contain a sentimental aspect linked to a sense of historical belonging through generations. Although literature at home was minimal, there were fairytale books, the atlas, the Bible, some Dutch household weeklies and bound volumes of old sepia toned children’s magazines filled with stories, in segments. The memory still evokes echoes of a theatrical Older Europe. Fields, the midday Angelus, trains to distant places, hiding among strangers . . .

Theatrical settings can return powerfully in dreams. Dream images in turn become part of memory’s theatrical settings afterwards. But dream images are vague, misty things, likely to evaporate when trying to look very close. Perhaps Freud was right about dreams as wish fulfilments, at least sometimes. Dreams may be in English and Dutch, crossing boundaries freely with bilingual wordplay. I do not remember when I began dreaming in English; I don’t always. Hoffman too has bilingual dreams, in which meanings in different languages are ‘elaborately interwoven’ and words change to become a medium in which she lives and through which she can ‘get to myself and to the world’ (1995: 243). How to utter in a way that does not exclude the internal structures? How in English? How to move beyond English-as-obstacle? Not just in a strictly linguistic sense but in a way that entwines memories of cultures and places? A gathering force is necessary, which is precisely generated when speaking and listening takes place. But a solitary uttering? How?

I am asking these questions from within the English language, from thoughts formed in it, not for ways out of it, but for possible links with something ephemeral, to which I belong ‘all the way down’. I consider uttering ‘otherness’ as a necessary response to the need to maintain some form of distance, in order not to lose all connection to the previous reality as meaningful; to maintain a sense of self as real and valid. I wonder where and how such utterances might take place or what form they might take. How to give the silent language which is also the first, a space for itself? Having been internalized so much, it has become a most intimate language. And there is pleasure in having this

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language on the inside, dormant but available, entirely of self, a language of reality once lived. It is a shelter of sorts; it is what its presence has become. Inside it I can retreat. Ik kan erin wegkruipen . . . Nostalgia? Like a precious collection of small souvenirs, I carry this language, in its reduced state, around in the ‘pockets’ of my mind. There to ‘hold’, and every so often lift this or that bit to the surface. I mutter and hum; I hope that I will not be heard. Well, I hope that I do, that I don’t, ja en nee . . .

Deleuze (1998) writes about language as mobile and linking together, about intervals and empty spaces and making languages stutter. This is more than a simple mixing of two distinct languages, which takes place in bilingual or multilingual speech. Rather, it is to invent a minor use within the major language (p. 106). He suggests that when one language is allowed to act within another, a third, unheard of, almost foreign language is produced: language then becomes sign, or poetry (ibid.: 109–10). But those words are not my language niet mijn taal

By juxtaposing both languages Door beide talen bij elkaar te zetten I seek to locate spaces tracht ik de plaats te bepalen van ruimten where meanings become vague or waar betekenissen vaag of amorphous, intangible vormloos worden, ongrijpbaar where a flow-over might be possible waar een overstromen mogelijk zou zijn as a way of bridging als een manier om het onoverbrugbare the unbridgeable te overbruggen



it is always flawed het is altijd gebrekkig



eventually meaning uiteindelijk is betekenis



is lost verloren

Is there a different way, of sounding the minor language in and as the other? A mêlée, in which both languages are audible but distorted, graspable in fragments only, yet simultaneous? Deleuze proposes a way of writing that digs beneath stories, reaches regions without memories, the limits of language itself: ‘[t]he only thing the reader will see marching past . . . are inadequate means: fragments, allusions, strivings, investigations’ (1998: 112). I am reading my own English writing aloud, pronouncing the words in phonetic Dutch. It is a strange process of exaggeration, satisfying in its uttering of old and familiar sounds, while stripping most words of their meaning. As a form

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of bridging the unbridgeable it is utterly flawed. It is fake; a performance of nothing, into nothing. . . . Something is missing. How can lack be? How is what is not, how present? How to present absence?

One option would be to create a visual representation of loss. This leads to the idea of portable loss. To ‘carry loss’ seems the obvious solution to the need to travel lightly: to make a language for instance so tightly bound and concealed that one can forget it for a long time. I prefer to go along with approaches from without, from English, so I can keep the lid on what I cannot unpack. At any rate there is excess, valuable and useless cultural baggage. By making art I thought I could circumvent the need to choose a language of words. Regardless of whether I then use language (language as substance, as material for making). But it did not last. It seems necessary to deconstruct English-as-a-whole, the leading language. This culture is British-derived and American-influenced. I am drawn towards discarded popular encyclopaedias, atlases, history books and geographical magazines. It is a process of gathering ‘residue’, and eventually leads to the collecting of language itself: printed words found in journals, pamphlets, brochures, the oldest dating from 1950. In this material any meaningful sense of identity is lost to me, absorbed in generalizations. I’ve become obsessed with words, I gather them, put them away . . . swallow them and hunger for more. If I take in enough, then maybe I can incorporate the language, make it part of my psyche and my body. (Hoffman 1995: 216)

I cut out words, which I collect like found objects, claiming this language as a collection of things. I am building a vocabulary. I categorise words into grammatical groups; nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, and further groupings based on similar word endings: searching, meandering, finding, selecting, sorting, keeping, listing. I am not really writing, I am collecting and arranging signs. I place words into rows, I make lines. Do I use appropriated text because I speak a language that is not mine from within? Linking words leads to trails. Words in trails are like rungs on ladders like trajectories. I am letting words wander. In order to find . . . what? Gaps? I do not find any that I can insert Dutch or French into. No trails or trains of thought seem to want be inserted. Not in narrow bits that risk going unnoticed within the dense network of English. When finally possible, it is the energy of the release itself that generates the space, and it comes like a force, all at once, won’t let itself be led and split into ‘narrow trails’ at all. As Bauman puts it: ‘Cultural identities, patterns and products have become more like eddies rather than like islands, that consist in distinct ways of

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selecting/recycling/rearranging the cultural matter which is common to all, or at least potentially available’ (1999: xlv). There is also the idea of saving fragments from oblivion. If I do not retrieve my memories they will be lost, but here they mean little, they float in an intangible not-now-here space. I attempt to extract meaning out of the irrelevant. So I am retrieving something particular out of the general, with which to construct these ambivalent narratives. ‘Stories about places’, writes de Certeau, ‘are makeshift things. They are composed with the world’s debris’ (1998: 107). I cut page after page of old grammar textbooks into strips. Had I been a schoolchild here, then all this would have been familiar. Instead, I was thoroughly taught Dutch grammar, which later facilitated my grasp of other language structures. What has formed my viewpoint? Picture books, postcards, atlases: my childhood windows on the world. I begin again in the middle. I experiment. I combine cutout words with fragments from street directories, atlases and gazettes. I make a concertina book, of fragmented, reconstructed journeys, with words. Surface connections, linked fragments, linguistic paper cuts joining the surface, floating. I let the word text walk.

It is always an improvisation with what is at hand, and what can be done between that limitation and the drive to make sense. The links that are made are never entirely within my control, more a navigating by association, open to unknown next encounters. I realize that I am partly driven by the unconscious, which strives towards expression. Yet chance is not really my focus, but incidental to experience. Experience is my focus. Regardless of whether new letter sequences or word orders do or do not appear to make sense, I doubt that it is altogether possible to circumvent language as a signifying system, while continuing to use it, even in the most arbitrary and unconventional way. A book is a retreat, a shelter, a fold, somewhere to hide and from where to tell stories. Page by page, it is intimate, linear, narrative, folding, unfolding. Yet meaning and physicality now lack substance, fragments are linked by a thread. Constructing text trails is really done by allowing one association to be linked to a previous one; going simultaneously backwards and forwards; forwards is the unknown, the connection not yet made. I think of this as moving along paths – some short walks, some long, that intersect. Many end in impasses, dead-end streets. Some intersections are a ‘coming together’ of thoughts, like gathering on a park bench. Some are short chaotic movements; all are internally/externally intertwined. I pleat words together into a fragile woven surface, of fragmented meaning.

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I want to consider a potential for joyful enrichment in living in linguistic multiplicities; in finding and constructing meaning in overlaps as well as gaps, in listening, in uttering, and in translation. By enrichment I mean being able to move through languages, understanding differences in ways of thinking, being open to possibilities, relating more widely to the world. Not an opposition, either or, but an expansion of layers. If I have forfeited the possibility of fully belonging in one language for good, I have gained the potential of moving through and across linguistic worlds, letting words wander, if not always with ease, then at least with a strong sense of play.

References Ahearne, J. (2001), ‘Questions of cultural policy in the thought of Michel de Certeau’, in I. Buchanan (ed.), Michel de Certeau-in the Plural; The South Atlantic Quarterly, 100(2): 447–63. Bauman, Z. (1999), Culture as Praxis. London: Sage. Benjamin, W. (1986), Reflections. Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. E. Jephcott, ed. P. Demetz. New York: Schocken Books. Certeau, M. de (1988), The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Rendall. Berkeley: University of California Press. Deleuze, G. (1998), Essays Critical and Clinical, trans. D. W. Smith and M. A. Greco. London: Verso. Gunew, S. (1988), ‘Home and away: nostalgia in Australian (migrant) writing’, in P. Foss (ed.), Island in the Stream: Myths of Place in Australian Culture. Leichhardt: Pluto Press, pp. 35–46. Hermans, T. (1996), ‘Translation’s Other’, inaugural lecture at University College London, 19 March. http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/198/1/96_Inaugural.pdf [accessed 10 September 2013]. Hoffman, E. (1995), Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language. London: Minerva. —(1998), ‘Life in a new language’ in M. Zournazi (ed.), Foreign Dialogues: Memories, Translations, Conversations. Annandale, NSW: Pluto Press, pp. 17–26. Massumi, B. (1997), ‘The political economy of belonging and the logic of relation’, in C. Davidson (ed.), Anybody. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 174–89. Minsky, R. (1998), Psychoanalysis and Culture: Contemporary States of Mind. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Nancy, J.-L. (2000), Being Singular Plural, trans. R. D. Richardson and A. E. O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Papastergiadis, N. (2000), The Turbulence of Migration: Globalization, Deterritorialization and Hybridity. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Conclusion Barbara Geraghty and Jean E. Conacher

The chapters in this volume explore the complexities of a world in continuous flux where population movement and technological and social transformation are leading to greater diversity and tension. This in itself is nothing new: each era has been characterized by its own particular combination of migration and technological innovation, and each contends with the challenges which arise in its own way. The distinguishing features of the first decades of the twenty-first century are surely the revolution in the potential of communication technologies and a more differentiated interpretation of the migratory experience. Contributors demonstrate how societies are also characterized by opposing impulses which are both top-down, driven by national and supranational institutions, and bottom-up, where action is taken by individuals often operating in groups and communities. The tension created by the meeting of these forces can, at times, produce a creative energy which results in new, and sometimes better, ways of (inter)acting, learning and communicating. This tension, however, does not always have such positive outcomes for those, often less powerful, who struggle to retain control of their day-to-day lives. These opposing impulses can be clearly seen within the phenomenon of globalization itself which appropriates the local to produce the simultaneous focus on the global and the local termed ‘glocalization’; Bauman (1998) critiques this combination of globalization and territorialization as ‘two sides of the same process: that of the world-wide redistribution of sovereignty, power, and freedom to act’ (p. 42), and the process itself as inherently negative, resulting in greater inequality, poverty and powerlessness for many. While manifestations of globalization such as transnational corporations and increased flows of information and capital are undeniably here to stay, identification with the nation-state, however, is proving surprisingly resilient. Nonetheless, while many discussions begin from a transnational position, the sporadic rise and fall in attendance to, and faith in, the idea of national identity make a focus on the

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transcultural more useful. The transcultural is a recognition of both the global and the local; when people talk, they are most frequently talking about their local community, and when they move, they move from one local environment to another. It is not so much that individual actors have changed their behaviours: rather, the constructs being used to frame, manage and control what is happening have been transformed. In line with much recent research (for example, Bauböck and Faist 2010; Armbruster and Meinhof 2011; Ushioda 2011), the chapters in this volume demonstrate the ongoing instability of even fundamental concepts around migration, culture and language. While such instability makes framing clear definitions problematic, it can equally allow fresh perspectives and new insights to emerge. Where less is stable, more is possible. This volatility presents new and exciting opportunities for research, not least in methodological terms (VargasSilva 2012). A broadening of research methodologies, as in this volume, makes possible more nuanced analysis of rapidly changing and increasingly complex situations from new perspectives. The recognition, too, of ‘the complex fluid realities of our globalized multilingual society, where more than half of the inhabitants are not only bilingual or multilingual but members of multiple ethnic, social and cultural communities, and where pluralism (rather than integration) is the norm’ (Ushioda 2011: 200) demands that researchers explore the experience of the individual as well as the group/community, and within individuals, their layered identities. In doing so, researchers must take cognizance of the identities individuals have, those they are taken to have by others and the ones they see themselves as having in the future as a result of learning a language, moving localities and coming into contact with diverse cultures (Dörnyei 2005: 98–105). Though there may often be a sense of research running to catch up with constant change, it seems important that this research be done with a sense of partnership with those being studied. Perhaps as a result of this, it is clear that the voice of the individual – be they migrant, language user or even researcher – has become more prominent in the literature, leading to a greater emphasis on narrative and (auto)ethnographic studies (for example, Gardner and Martin-Jones 2012; Horsdal 2012; Chang et al. 2012). This is a welcome trend which, in complementing other existing approaches, can enrich debate in a wide range of fields and open up opportunities for the ‘powerless’ to express their identity. Hearing the individual voice forces a recognition of the presence of individual agency, whether of the migrant or language learner, or both. Fully acknowledging this agency

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challenges the existence of traditional sites of authority and makes possible the shift in the balance of power to a point where, for instance, the teacher is no longer the ‘controller of knowledge’ and learners can assert their identities more autonomously as ‘informed community members’ through meaningful interaction (Norton 2010: 174). Producing this volume has reminded us how fruitful exposure to multiple research paradigms can be. Rather than one approach being simply replaced by another, it can prove more constructive to remain open to different influences, research cultures and methodologies, thus ensuring that individual studies are embedded within a broader epistemological framework. Despite frequently increasing constraints on researchers (including time, money and bureaucracy), perhaps one of the most valuable contributions that research can make is not to allow itself to become confined to the privileged domains to which researchers have easy access, but rather to continue to engage with those more diverse, not always easily accessible, groups of people, who challenge us in our research to do justice to the intricacies of their experience of living in the intercultural contact zone.

References Armbruster, H. and Meinhof, U. H. (2011), Negotiating Multicultural Europe: Borders, Networks, Neighbourhoods. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Bauböck, R. and Faist, T. (2010), Diaspora and Transnationalism: Concepts, Theories and Methods. Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press. Bauman, Z. (1998), ‘On glocalization: Or globalization for some, localization for some others’, Thesis Eleven, 54: 37–49. Chang, H., Ngunjiri, F. and Hernandez, K.-A. C. (2012), Collaborative Autoethnography. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Dörnyei, Z. (2005), The Psychology of the Language Learner: Individual Differences in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Gardner, S. and Martin-Jones, M. (eds) (2012), Multilingualism, Discourse and Ethnography. Abingdon: Routledge. Horsdal, M. (2012), Telling Lives: Exploring Dimensions of Narratives. Abingdon: Routledge. Norton, B. (2010), ‘The Practice of Theory in the Language Classroom’, Issues in Applied Linguistics, 18(2): 171–80. Ushioda, E. (2011), International Perspectives on Motivation: Language Learning and Professional Challenges. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Vargas-Silva, C. (2012), Handbook of Research Methods in Migration. Cheltenham and Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Index abbreviations, use of  96–7 Abraham  25 ‘abstractness’  159 accent  210 Adult Basic Education and Training (ABET)  98, 102, 109n. 10 Africa  3, 32 ‘brain drain’ from  4 mobile phone subscriptions in  10 technology in  10 African-American populations  31 Ahearne, J.  214 ‘ahnnyunghee joomoosaeyo’  179 Ainaud de Lasarte, J. M.  190 Alexandria Hebrew in  28 Jewish migrants in  27 alignment  176 Alliance Française  51 America see United States  31, 32, 35, 219 Americas  3 Ammon, U.  8 Anderson, B.  4 Anglophone monolingual scholars  23 Antich, Salvador Puig  195 Appadurai, A.  6 Arabia  29 anti-Jewish campaigns  28 anti-Jewish policies  28–9 Jews before Muhammad  28–9 non-Muslims in  28–9 Arabic-speaking tribes  28 Arabs  28 Aramaic  23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 36nn. 5, 6 Ashkenazi Jews  31 Asia  3–4 asylum seekers  26 language testing  24 asynchronous tools  132 Aubrey, E.  189

Australia  24, 31, 169, 207–8, 209 churches’ role in protecting European languages  29 farming communities in  32 phonological testing  26 Australian dictation test  24 Australian English  209 autoethnographic work  172, 184, 185, 186 automatic identification  68, 72–5 Babylonia exile community  27 Hebrew in  27 Judeo-Aramaic in  27, 28 Bailey, B.  177 Bakhtin, M. M.  172 notion of ‘heteroglossia’  177 thinking ideology  62 on common language in speech  63 Banda, F.  107 Barton, D.  90 Bateson, G.  184, 185 Bauman, Z.  219, 222 behoren  215 Benet, Josep  193 Bengali  29 Benjamin, Walter  216 Bennett, M. J.  154 Benson, P.  84 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer  31, 33 Berlin  1 Berry, J. W.  114 Bible  25, 26, 27 Biddle, I.  201 Bidzińska, Barbara  13, 57, 85, 112 bilingualism  47, 54–5 Bilu  31, 34 Blake, R. J.  84 Blay, P.  201 Block, D.  186

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Blommaert, Jan  9, 12, 13, 15, 25, 85, 89, 90, 91, 100, 107, 108, 108n. 1, 109nn. 1, 9, 180, 182, 184 Boadella, Albert  198 Bonet, Maria del Mar  192, 194, 200 Borrull, Núria  12, 14, 168, 169, 188 Brammerts, H.  131 Braziel, J. E.  1, 6 Brewer, M. B.  6 Bruen, J.  153 Byram, Michael  14, 133, 150, 151, 152, 154 Calcutta  1 CALICO  131 Canaan  25, 26 Canada, learning English in  211 Canagarajah, S.  172, 176, 182, 184 Canale, M.  144 Candelier, M.  135 Capetonian  94, 100, 106 Cape Town, South Africa  85, 91, 92, 95, 102, 105, 107, 109n. 7 Caribbean, indigenous people of  28 Castilian language  189–90, 193 Catalan culture  190, 194 language  14, 188, 192 Catalan Nova Canço  188 eighties  199–200 La Nova Cançó  14, 188, 191, 193, 198, 200, 201–3 beginnings and protest against regime  191–3 origins  188–9 late fifties and sixties  193–5 nation building, process of  189–91 nineties and new millennium  200–2 perceptions of Catalan song within Spanish state  202–3 seventies  195–9 Catholic Church  190 Catholic dogma  191 Chambers, I.  15 China  171 China, ‘brain drain’ from  4 Choi, Julie  12, 14, 168, 171, 172, 185, 186 Chomsky, W.  26 Christian laws  36 Christian missionaries  30

Christians  28 Church life, informal learning and  94–7 Clément, R.  116 Climent, E.  195, 196, 197 coherent national identity  190 Collins, J.  2 ‘coloured’  92, 95, 97, 109n. 3 common-sense beliefs  62 communication intercultural  131–3 and meaning, gaps between  215 with outsiders  176 styles  145 Communist Party  42n. 4, 198 complex language management  24 Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL)  9, 84 computers, in language learning  9 Conacher, Jean E.  1, 10, 222 Concentric  194 conceptual reference points  67 connectedness  208 consciousness  13, 14, 48, 134–5, 137, 147 through cultural awareness  140–1 through language awareness  140 through mediation  139–41 contact zone  10–11, 15, 19, 20, 21, 168, 169, 182, 224 communicating in  83–6 culture(s) and language(s) interaction  19 ‘cool foreigner’  174, 185 Cooper, R. L.  65 Corfiote Jews  30 Corsicans  30 co-territorial language  26, 30 Council of Europe  7, 14, 84, 120, 153 Critical Discourse Analysis  73 cultural awareness  133–41 cultural construction, language as  210 cultural contact  182 cultural dimensions  146 cultural positioning  4, 20, 61, 62 cultural values  140, 146 cultural-ideological positioning  67, 76–8 culture definition  7–8 iceberg metaphor  144 and language learning  11

Index ‘cultures-in-contact’ eTandem experiences  131 Czernowitz conference  33 ‘danger of death’ module  47 Debaene, Ewelina  12, 20, 41 ‘Debilitats formidinis’  196 de Certeau, M.  214, 220 Deleuze, G.  218 Denzin, N. K.  64 descriptive-idyllic style  63 Deumert, A.  97, 107 Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS)  154 DIALANG  160, 162n. 10 ‘diaspora’  4 Diaspora, Jewish  12, 19, 27, 28 Diaspora, Polish  41, 57n. 1 ‘do one’s own thing’, desire to  174, 176–8 dream images  217 Dublin, Polish in  13, 117, 118, 123 Dursteler, E. R.  23, 30 Dutch  28, 136, 208–19 grammar  220 immigrants in Australia  207 Edigsa  193 Edinburgh  1 Egypt  25 Jews in  26 ‘elaborately interwoven’ languages  217 ELAN  79n. 3 Electronic Language Portfolio  14 Elies, Xavier  194 El Pacto de Olvido  198 Els Països Catalans  192, 193, 194, 198, 204n. 2 Els Pets  200, 201 Els Setze Jutges  191, 193, 194 emergent normativity  90, 108–9n. 1 emigration between two world wars  42 emotion-filled style  63 England  24 English  28, 35, 76, 85, 94, 95, 96, 97, 102, 105, 106, 108, 109n. 7, 112, 117, 120, 121, 123, 125, 126, 138, 139, 140, 158, 171, 174, 176–7, 200, 203, 207, 211, 213, 215, 216, 217, 219 English-as-a-whole  219 English textspeak  96, 102, 105, 107

227

Ens calen cançons d’ara’  193 Ephraim, tribe of  26 Espinás, Josep Maria  193 ‘the ethnographer as a pupil’  97 ethnolinguistic vitality (ELV) in Polish community  114–15 research on  117, 123–7 Europe  3, 12, 14, 24, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 41, 61, 72, 76, 77, 84, 153, 190, 217 English test  24 language planning  66 language policy  9 mosques in  29 Yiddish-speaking immigrants from  33 European Language Portfolio (ELP)  14, 84, 86, 150, 153–5, 160, 161 European nationalist movements  32 European Union (EU)  5, 12, 21, 43, 66, 67, 74, 79, 112 language planners  12 New Framework Strategy for Multilingualism  66 ‘expert L2 speakers’  171, 177 extra-linguistic framing model  66 Facebook messages  96 face-to-face interaction  83, 85 face-to-face tandem language learning see tandem language learning Fantini, A. E.  135, 152 Fernàndez, J. A.  202–3 Fischer, K.  83 Fischer, R.  7 Fishman, D. E.  37n. 10 Fishman, J. A.  30, 33, 37n. 10 Flammia, M.  7 fluency, in another language  210 focused interaction  64 focus interviews, sequential patterns in  68 foreigner position, resourcefulness of  172–5 foreign languages  218 Foreign-Language Education (FLE)  150, 151, 154 foreignness  208 formal language learning  8 France  28, 34, 42, 43, 52, 58n. 4, 139, 142, 189, 196, 199 language learning support and integration  49 Polish migration to  12, 20, 41

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bilingualism/multilingualism  54–5 first language maintenance  45 inter-generational strategies in language maintenance  55–6 introductory interviews in  45 language acquisition  48–52 language maintenance and transmission  52–3 methodology  43–5 multilingual families  53–4 research issues  45 second-language acquisition  45 socio-historical background  41–4 sociolinguistic interviews  45–8 free market economies  19 French  30, 33, 34, 43, 44, 47, 48, 49, 52, 54–6, 58n. 4, 76, 136, 138–9, 140, 142, 143, 145, 161n. 2, 189, 193, 204n. 2, 212 French Polonia official websites  44 Furlong, Áine  12, 14, 85, 86, 131 Fuster, J.  188 García-Soler, J.  188, 192, 197–8, 203 Gardner, R. C.  116, 125 Gavaldá, Lluís  201 Genoese  30 Geraghty, Barbara  1, 222 Germans  30, 146, 147 Germany  1, 28, 30, 32, 76, 131, 142, 145, 146, 161n. 2 Giddens, A.  56 Giles, H.  114, 115 globalization  1–2, 5, 13, 15, 23, 156 and territorialization  222 ‘global medialect’  90 global migration processes  5 ‘glocalization’  222 ‘Gr8, C U@8’  90 Graham, H.  191 GRAPO  198 the Great Emigration (1831–35)  42 Greek  23, 26, 27, 30 Bible translation into  27 in Jerusalem  27 Gunew, S.  210 Habielski, R.  42 Hadera  32 Haggadah  23 Hamilton, M.  90

Healey, D.  9 Hebrew  20, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32 in elementary-level education  35 ideological struggle between Yiddish and  33 Hebrew-Aramaic  27, 30, 31 Held, D.  2 Hermans, T.  213, 215 Hermans, H. J. M.  4, 20 Herrmann, R.  6 Herzl, Theodore  32, 37n. 9 heteroglossic becomings  171, 182–4 commentary  184–6 desire to ‘do one’s own thing’  174, 176–8 everydayness of heteroglossia  178–80 preference to be non-categorizable  180–2 resourcefulness of foreigner position  172–5 higher mental functions, development of  134, 137, 141 Hispanic American populations  31 Hitler, A.  1, 190, 191 HLM (habitations à loyer moderé)  49 Hoerder, D.  4, 5, 6, 8 Hoffman, E.  210–12, 214, 217, 219 Hofstede, G.  7 ‘home’  216 ‘home country’  217 horen  215 Horst, H.  94 Hovevei Zion movement  32 huis  216 human migration diversity  19 global trend  19 personal experience  19 Idelovitch, David  34 identification forms  73 ideological-cultural positioning  62 Imperial Russia  24 India  1 ‘brain drain’ from  4 informal learning  9, 89, 91, 98, 106, 108 and church life  94–7 Information and communications technology (ICT)  10, 13, 90, 93, 95, 96, 97

Index instant messaging  90, 94, 98 institutional networks  146 intercultural communicative competence (ICC)  135, 150 European language portfolio  153–5 from ‘native speaker’ to ‘intercultural speaker’  150–2 research project  155–61 self-assessment  86, 153 intercultural contact  1, 2, 6–8, 11 intercultural instruction, on tandem learning  145–7 intercultural speakers  150, 155, 156, 158 ‘internally persuasive discourse’  177 international migrants, estimation of  7 International Organization for Migration (2010)  7 internet in language learning  9 in transcultural interaction  9 voice and video communication  83 interpersonal communication, during tandem language-learning exchanges  139 interpersonal relations  134 ‘ipseity’  208–9 Ireland  13, 14, 57n. 1, 84, 85, 138, 140–1 cultural values in  146 language and culture  114–27 Polish migration to  13 post-2004 Polish migration to  112–27 post-2007 economic downturn in  113 ‘I Si Canto Trist’  195 isiXhosa  94, 95, 96, 97, 109n. 7 Islamic countries  36 Israel  20, 24, 25, 26, 35, 36 Israeli ulpan  25 Istanbul, Venetian merchant ship in  30 Italy  28, 189 Iwabuchi, K.  178, 180 Jackendoff, R.  25 Jacquemet, M.  172, 182, 183 Japan  158, 168, 171, 172, 177, 178 Japanese  185 Korean expressions in  176 writing in  176 Jenkins, J.  174 Jensen, A. A.  152

229

Jerusalem Bilu pioneers in  34 Greek in  27 Hellenistic period in  27 plurilingual in  23 Jesus Christ, languages at time of  23 Jews  24 from Egypt to Israel  26 laws  36 migrants in Alexandria  27 migration back to Zion  31 in biblical times  25–7 and language management  23 migration into separation  29–31 social and cultural contact after  35–6 after temple destruction  28–9 in Russia  31 as slaves to Rome  28 Jordan River  26 Judah see kingdom of Judah Judeo-Arabic  28, 29, 30, 31 Judeo-Aramaic  27, 28, 30 Judeo-Espagnol  31 Judeo-French  30 Judeo-German  28 Judeo-Greek  28, 30 Judeo-Italian patois  30 Judeo-Persian in Persia  28 Judeo-Romance  28, 29, 30 Judeo-Slavic  30 Judeo-Spanish  23 Judeo-Tat in Persia  28 Judeo-Venetian  23 Jung, S.  178 Jurado, O.  192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202 Kang, S.-M.  114 katakana  178, 179, 186 Kelly-Holmes, H.  10 Kennedy, Fionnuala  12, 14, 85, 86, 131 Kenya  32 Kerswill, P.  36n. 1 Kim, Y. Y.  114 kindertehuis  216 kingdom of Judah Aramaic in  27 Hebrew in  27

230 intermarriages in  27 monolingualism in  27 Kingdom of Spain  189 Knights, V.  201 ‘kombuis English’  85, 94, 109n. 6 Kopečková, Romana  13, 57, 112, 118 Korean  171, 172, 174, 178 dramas  9, 175 expression, in Japanese  176 Kramsch, C.  176, 182 Labanyi, J.  191 Labour Party in Palestine  33 Labov, W.  46, 47 Labovian research-field-work techniques  46 Labrie, N.  116 L’ACIC  199 Ladino  30, 31 ‘La Impotència amb la Por’  196 Landjuden  30 language awareness  135, 140 in context of Lisbon Strategy  66 and culture  114 acculturation and ethnolinguistic vitality  114–15 L2 motivation and confidence  115–16 research methodology  117–20 ideologies  62 learning  1, 8–10 applications for  10 and cultural contact  11 in tandem (see tandem language learning) maintenance  11 planners  12, 61 from EU institutions  62 shift  25, 52 Language Management Theory  65 langue d’oc  189 La Renaixença  190 Latin America, indigenous people of  28 La Trinca  200 L’avi Siset  195 learner autonomy  10, 83, 84, 131, 132, 150, 153, 156, 158 L’Estaca (The Stake)  194–5

Index Lille  43, 44, 53, 56 lingua franca  27, 140, 151 Lisbon Strategy  66, 72, 73 literacy  85 as a complex of social and cultural practices  90 Little, D.  131, 132, 135, 143, 147, 154, 159, 160 Llach, Lluís  192, 193, 194–7, 199–200, 202–3 L2 motivation and confidence  115–16, 125 research on  117, 120–3 LOLIPOP ELP  150, 154, 156, 157, 160, 161n. 2, 162n. 8 London  1 Lost in Translation  210 Love Story  177 low-income Jamaicans, research on  94 L1 speakers  172, 174 first-hand experience  135–6 L2 speakers  171, 172, 174, 177 of French  48 MacIntyre, P.  135, 136, 140 Mainat, J. R.  1, 192, 195 Mannur, A.  1, 6 ‘marked choice’  176 Mar-Molinero, C.  23, 189 Masinyana, S. O.  97, 107 mass education  8 Massumi, B.  207 mediated activity  134, 140, 141–2, 147 Mediterranean folk music  192, 193 multilingualism in  23 Mediterranean Creole  28 mêlée  208 Mesclat  201 Mesopotamia  25 metrolingualism  177 ‘middle-aged’  109n. 4 Middle Arabic  29 Middle East  28 migration  2, 3–6, 12, 208, 209 contact  11 in each era  222 family experiences  1 historical studies  3–4 and language contact  11

Index long-term  2 management  19 short-term  2 Miller, D.  94 Minsky, H. G.  177 Minsky, R.  215 mobile communication technologies  89–90 mobile instant messaging (MIM)  109n. 5 mobile phone  89, 90, 91–2, 93–4, 96, 107 diaries, collecting  93 subscriptions in Africa  10 technology  10 in Africa  10 in language learning  10 mobile texting codes  13, 108n. 1 Mohilever, Rabbi Samuel  32 moral-didactic style  63 Morales, J. M.  192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 199, 200, 201, 202 Moscovici, S.  76 mosques, in Europe  29 ‘mother England’  217 motivation  24, 115, 135–6, 142 Motta, Guillermina  194 mukokuseki position  180 multiculturalism  203, 208 multilingualism  23, 54–5, 67, 72, 73–5, 77 Murphy-Lejeune, E.  94, 153, 154 Muslim Conquest  28, 44, 55, 115 Muslim laws  36, 48 MXIT language  98–107, 109n. 5 Myers-Scotton, C.  176 Nahir, M.  33 Nancy, J.-L.  208, 215 nation building, process of  189–91 Native Americans  31 native language  52, 56, 132, 211 native speakers  9, 50, 126, 151, 171–2 ‘naturalistic settings’  155 Neapolitans  30 Nekvapil, J.  24, 65 Nestor, N.  48, 52, 118 new communicative environments  90, 91 new learning environment  10

new literacies  89, 97 New Literacy Studies (NLS) movement  90 New Song see Catalan: New Song New Zealand Māori language activists in  34 Polynesian languages in  29 Samoan languages in  29 non-Muslims  28–9 non-verbal strategies  132 North Africa  28, 31 North America  35 Nova Canço see Catalan Nova Canço Nunan, David  12, 14, 168, 171, 172, 184 ‘observer’s paradox’  46 obsession  212 Occitan background  192 Occitania  189 O’Dowd, R.  85, 132 officialdom  44, 57 O’Flynn, J.  200 ‘onegaishimasu’  170, 172, 173 ‘otherness’  207, 210, 213, 217 Ottoman Palestine  31, 32, 35 Oudtshoorn  101 OUP pen-and-paper English test (2001)  120 ‘oyasuminasai’  179 Padilla, A. M.  114 Palau Sant Jordi  200 Pale of Settlement  24, 30 Palestine Greek in  27 Jews in  31–2 Labour Party in  33 languages at time of Jesus  23 Papastergiadis, N.  208 Paris  41, 42, 43, 44, 53 ‘passing’  171, 180, 182, 183 pen-and-paper writing and reading  98, 99 Pennycook, A.  172, 177, 180, 181, 182 Persia Judeo-Persian  28 Judeo-Tat in  28 personalization  67, 68, 70–2

231

232

Index

Pi de la Serra, Quico  194 Piller, I.  171 Pinsker, Leon  32 Pi-Sunyer, O.  192 plurilanguaging  177 Poland  21, 47, 52, 58n. 4, 85, 121, 124, 127 migration to Ireland  43, 112–13 socio-historical background  41–3, 44 Polish Catholic Mission  49 Polish House and Polish-Irish Society  113 Polish Information and Culture Centre  113 Polish migration to France  20, 41 first language maintenance  45 the Great Emigration  42 introductory interviews in  45 Labovian research-field-work techniques  46 language acquisition  48 courses  51 maintenance and transmission  52–3 proficiency in French L2  52 strategies  50 support structures  48–50 linguistic aspects  58n. 3 linguistic factors  45 methodology  43–5 multilingual families  53–4 bilingualism  54–5 inter-generational strategies  55–6 native-like speech proficiency  48 participants, in interviews  43–5 period between two world wars  42 post-1968 emigration  42 post-1980 emigration (1980–89)  42 post-1989 emigration  42 post-EU-accession migration  42 psychological factors  45 research issues  45 introductory interviews, in Polish  45 sociolinguistic interviews  45–8 second-language maintenance  45 social, cultural and psychological aspects  57–8n. 3 socio-historical background  41–3

sociolinguistic interviews  45–8 speech data  43 Polish migration to Ireland  112 during 2004–7  112–13 acculturation and ethnolinguistic vitality  114–15 L2 motivation and confidence  115–16 post-2007 economic downturn in Ireland  113 Polish Social and Cultural Association  112, 113 Polonia  41 polylingual languaging  177 population movement  19, 222 Portugal  31 Pratt, M. L.  10 Prayer chain messages  94 Preston, P.  198 pre-Zionist farming communities  32 pro-Hebrew ideology  26 psychological tools  134 in tandem language learning  138–9 Pujadó, M.  192, 195, 197, 199 Quintana, Gerard  200 Qur’an  29 Raimon  194, 196, 197, 200 ReCALL  131 reciprocity  132, 136, 137 Reconstruction and Development Programme  92 reflected identification  68, 72–5 reflexes, types of  67 Refugi  202 Regan, Vera  12, 20, 41, 48, 52 Rehovot  32 Reig, Joan  201 religious chain messages  94, 95 relocation  24 see also migration repertoires  30, 85, 89, 91, 97 ‘resourceful speakers’  172, 174, 180, 181, 183 Riera, I.  192, 197 Rift Valley  3 ‘ripe functions’  133 Rishon LeZion school  32, 34 Rock Català  200

Index role allocation  67, 68, 70–2 Romance languages  189 Romans  27, 30 Rubenfeld, S.  116, 126, 135 Ruhr-Universität, Bochum  131 Rumania  34 Sacks, H.  65 Sadri, H. A.  7 Said, E. W.  147 San Marco, Piazza  23 Sangraït Sau  200 ‘saranghae’  178, 179 savoirs  14, 133, 136, 152, 154, 161n. 4 Schumann, J. H.  114, 115 self-assessment  86, 150, 153–4, 157, 158, 159, 160–1 semiotic resources  181–4 Semitic dialects  25 sentimental-complaining style  63 Sephardim  31 Sercu, L.  152, 156, 157 Serrahima, Lluís  193, 194 Serrat, Joan Manuel  192, 194, 196 shibboleth story  26 Shohamy, E.  37n. 10 shtetl  30 silent language  217 simple language management  24 Simpson, B.  154, 159 Singleton, David  13, 57n. 1, 85, 112, 118 ‘sisterhoods’  95 Skrzypek, Agnieszka  12, 13, 85, 112, 113, 118 Slavs  30 SMS  95 -like email messages  108 vs. voice services  89–90 writing  107 social transformation  222 The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Eretz Israel  32 sociocultural conditions  24 sociolinguistic environments  19 Soldevilla, Ll.  188, 192, 197 Solidarity migration  20, 42 Sopa de Cabra  200 South Africa  13, 89, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97

233

South Africa, MXIT language  98–107 South America  31, 32 Spada, N. M.  116 Spain  28, 31, 189, 190, 191, 194, 196, 198, 200, 202, 204 Spaniards  30 Spanish Civil War (1936–9)  190 Spanish national identity  189–90 Spanish speakers  37n. 7 Spanish state, perceptions of Catalan song within  202–3 speech common language in  63 community  9, 11, 13 styles  63 switching between languages in  213 vernacular  46 spoken language  211 Spolsky, Bernard  12, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 29, 34, 36, 37 Stalin, I. V.  27 ‘standard’ English  20, 94, 95, 96, 99 ‘standardized’ language use  103 Steenmeijer, M.  200 Stokes, M.  197, 201, 203 ‘stories about places’  220 Studer, Patrick  12, 20, 61, 64, 65, 67, 75, 79n. 1 Subirachs, Rafael  194 Sudhershan, Aleksandra  14, 86, 150 super-diversity  23 supervernacular  13, 89, 90, 91, 97, 102, 105, 108n. 1 as a ‘substitute language’  97–9 Swain, M.  144 synchronous tools  132 Talking Sense  79n. 3 Talmud  26, 27, 36n. 6 tandem language learning  131 affective factors and willingness to communicate  143 choice of topics  143–5 human higher mental functions, development of  141–2 increase in motivation as a result of  142 individual consciousness, development of  139–41

234

Index

influence of intercultural instruction on  145–7 intercultural communication integrated with  132–3 interpersonal communication during  139 L1 speakers, first-hand experience of  135–6 principles  132 psychological tools in  138–9 study on  136–47 ZPD in  133–4, 137, 147 tandem partnership  133, 139, 141–2, 143, 149 ‘tandem-related metatalk’  143–4 Te Ataarangi movement  34 technological innovation  222 technological transformation  222 Tele-5 203 temple destruction, migration after  28 territorialization, and globalization  222 text anchoring  67–8, 69 textspeak  13, 85, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 98–9, 102–3, 104, 105, 106 third space  6 thuis  216 transculturalism  6, 10, 21, 222–3 translation  27, 48, 140, 177, 207, 209, 213, 215, 216 translingual language  20, 177 transnational identity  12, 192 ‘transnationalism’, concept of  5, 6 troubadours  169, 189, 192 ‘true Spanish’ identity  191 Turkey, Jews in  30 Turkish language  30 Twitter  95, 96, 97, 101 Uganda  32 ulpan see Israeli ulpan UNESCO  5 United States  3, 24, 30, 31, 32, 35, 190 farming communities in  32 Jews in  31 linguistic assimilation of immigrants  36 Universal Church of the Kingdom of God (UCKG)  95, 96, 109n. 8

urbanization  23 urban multilingualism  23 us-and-them discourse  73 ‘utterance’  62, 173, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 183, 214, 217 vaderland  217 Vallance, M.  10 van Niele, Irmina  12, 15, 169, 207, 215 Varis, P. K.  9, 90, 108n. 1, 180, 184 Velghe, Fie  12, 13, 85, 89, 90, 91, 93, 103, 108n. 1 Venice  23 verbatim  65 Vertovec, S.  1, 2, 7, 23 Vygotsky, L.  133–4, 138, 141, 147 wandering words  207–21 Warschauer, M.  9, 10 Web 2.0 technologies  9, 83, 84 Weinreich, M.  26, 30 Weinreich, U.  25, 46 Wesbank, ethnographic fieldwork in  85, 89, 91, 92–4, 97 ‘willingness to communicate’ (WTC)  135–6, 143 Willis, K.  11 women, textspeak literacy skills  101 Yehuda, Eliezer Ben  31, 33 Yehudit  27, 36n. 5 Yeoh, B.  11 Yeshivot  29 Yiddish  23, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37n. 10 Yishuv  33, 35 ‘yo’, in Japanese  173 Zamenhoff, Ludwig Lazarus  32 Zionism  32, 33 Zionist organization  32 Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) consciousness  134–5 evidence of growth in  142 psychological tools and interpersonal relations  134 study on  137 in tandem language learning  131, 133–5