Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging 9781800415690

Table of contents :
Contents
Contributors
Preface
1 Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide
Part 1: Inter-speaker Language Variation
2 Multi-competence and Translanguaging
3 Experience Coding and Linguistic Variation
Part 2: Codeswitching
4 Codeswitching, Translanguaging and Bilingual Grammar
5 ‘Translanguaging’ or ‘Doing Languages’? Multilingual Practices and the Notion of ‘Codes’
6 Codeswitching and its Terminological Other – Translanguaging
Part 3: Psycholinguistics
7 Evidence for Differentiated Languages from Studies of Bilingual First Language Acquisition
8 Integrated Multilingualism and Bilingual Reading Development
Part 4: Language Policy
9 To ‘Think in a Different Way’ – A Relational Paradigm for Indigenous Language Rights
10 The Grand Erasure: Whatever Happened to Bilingual Education and Language Minority Rights?
Part 5: Practice
11 Translanguaging and Immersion Programs for Minoritized Languages at Risk of Disappearance: Developing a Research Agenda
12 Understanding and Resisting Perfect Language and Eugenics-based Language Ideologies in Bilingual Teacher Education
Afterword: The Multilingual Turn, Superdiversity and Translanguaging – The Rush from Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy
Author Index
Subject Index

Citation preview

Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION AND DIVERSITY Series Editors: Professor Stephen May, University of Auckland, New Zealand, Teresa L. McCarty, University of California, USA, Dr Constant Leung, King’s College London, UK and Serafín M. Coronel-Molina, Indiana University Bloomington, USA The Language, Education and Diversity series publishes work at the intersections of language policy, language teaching and bilingualism/ multilingualism, with a particular focus on critical, socially-just alternatives for minoritized students and communities. The series is interdisciplinary, drawing on scholarship from language policy, language education, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology and the sociology of language, including work in raciolinguistics and translingualism. We welcome a variety of methodological approaches, although critical ethnographic accounts are of particular interest. Topics to be covered by the series include: • • • •

Bilingual and Multilingual Models of Education Indigenous Language Education Multicultural Education Community-based Education

All books in this series are externally peer-reviewed. Full details of all the books in this series and of all our other publications can be found on http://www.multilingual-matters.com, or by writing to Multilingual Matters, St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK.

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION AND DIVERSITY: 1

Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging Edited by Jeff MacSwan

MULTILINGUAL MATTERS Bristol • Jackson

DOI https://doi.org/10.21832/MACSWA5683 Names: MacSwan, Jeff, editor. Title: Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging/Edited by Jeff MacSwan. Description: Bristol; Jackson: Multilingual Matters, [2022] | Series: Language, Education and Diversity: 1 | Includes bibliographical   references and index. | Summary: ‘This book brings together a group of   leading scholars to critically assess a recent proposal within   translanguaging theory called deconstructivism: the view that discrete   or “named” languages do not exist. The authors converge on a   multilingual perspective on translanguaging which affirms the aims of   translanguaging but rejects deconstructivism’ – Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2022006520 (print) | LCCN 2022006521 (ebook) | ISBN   9781800415676 (paperback) | ISBN 9781800415683 (hardback) | ISBN   9781800415690 (pdf) | ISBN 9781800415706 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Translanguaging (Linguistics) | LCGFT: Essays. Classification: LCC P115.35 .M85 2022 (print) | LCC P115.35 (ebook) |   DDC 404/.2 – dc23/eng/20220415 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006520 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022006521 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-568-3 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978-1-80041-567-6 (pbk) Multilingual Matters UK: St Nicholas House, 31-34 High Street, Bristol, BS1 2AW, UK. USA: Ingram, Jackson, TN, USA. Website: www.multilingual-matters.com Twitter: Multi_Ling_Mat Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multilingualmatters Blog: www.channelviewpublications.wordpress.com Copyright © 2022 Jeff MacSwan and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher. The policy of Multilingual Matters/Channel View Publications is to use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products, made from wood grown in sustainable forests. In the manufacturing process of our books, and to further support our policy, preference is given to printers that have FSC and PEFC Chain of Custody certification. The FSC and/or PEFC logos will appear on those books where full certification has been granted to the printer concerned. Typeset by Riverside Publishing Solutions. Printed and bound in the UK by the CPI Books Group Ltd.

In Memoriam Vivian James Cook June 13, 1940 – December 15, 2021

Contents

Contributors

ix

Preface Jeff MacSwan

xvii

1 Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide Jeff MacSwan

1

Part 1: Inter-speaker Language Variation 2 Multi-competence and Translanguaging Vivian Cook

45

3 Experience Coding and Linguistic Variation James Paul Gee

66

Part 2: Codeswitching 4 Codeswitching, Translanguaging and Bilingual Grammar Jeff MacSwan 5 ‘Translanguaging’ or ‘Doing Languages’? Multilingual Practices and the Notion of ‘Codes’ Peter Auer

83

126

6 Codeswitching and its Terminological Other – Translanguaging154 Rakesh M. Bhatt and Agnes Bolonyai Part 3: Psycholinguistics 7 Evidence for Differentiated Languages from Studies of Bilingual First Language Acquisition Fred Genesee

183

8 Integrated Multilingualism and Bilingual Reading Development Rebecca A. Marks, Teresa Satterfield and Ioulia Kovelman

201

vii

viii Contents

Part 4: Language Policy 9 To ‘Think in a Different Way’ – A Relational Paradigm for Indigenous Language Rights Sheilah E. Nicholas and Teresa L. McCarty

227

10 The Grand Erasure: Whatever Happened to Bilingual Education and Language Minority Rights? Terrence G. Wiley

248

Part 5: Practice 11 Translanguaging and Immersion Programs for Minoritized Languages at Risk of Disappearance: Developing a Research Agenda Joanna McPake and Diane J. Tedick 12 Understanding and Resisting Perfect Language and Eugenics-based Language Ideologies in Bilingual Teacher Education Christian J. Faltis Afterword: The Multilingual Turn, Superdiversity and Translanguaging – The Rush from Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy Stephen May

295

321





Author Index Subject Index

343 356 361

Contributors

Peter Auer is Professor of German Linguistics at Albert-LudwigsUniversität, Freiburg (Germany). He has also taught German and General Linguistics at the universities of Konstanz, Saarbrücken and Hamburg. His research has been devoted to a wide range of fields in linguistics including bilingualism, social dialectology, phonology, syntax of spoken language, conversation analysis, gaze analysis in interaction, and sociolinguistics. He has published more than 200 scholarly articles in journals and edited volumes, and is the author or co-author of several textbooks, including Sprachliche Interaktion (2013) and Einführung in die Konversationsanalyse (2021, with Karin Birkner, Angelika Bauer and Helga Kotthoff). Rakesh M. Bhatt is Professor of Sociolinguistics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He specializes in sociolinguistics of language contact – in particular, issues of migration, minorities and multilingualism, codeswitching, language ideology, and world Englishes. The empirical focus of his work has been on South Asian languages – particularly, Kashmiri, Hindi, and Indian English. His study, Verb Movement and the Syntax of Kashmiri (1999, Kluwer Academic Press), was published in the series Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory. He also coauthored World Englishes (2008, Cambridge University Press) with Rajend Mesthrie. He is the author of essays that have appeared in the Journal of Sociolinguistics, Annual Review of Anthropology, International Journal of the Sociology of Language, International Journal of Applied Linguistics, Lingua, World Englishes, Studies in Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Research, English Language and Linguistics and other venues. He is currently writing a book on the sociolinguistic patterns of subordination of Kashmiri language in Diaspora, to be published by Cambridge University Press. He is also the co-author of two other books, both with Agnes Bolonyai, on codeswitching (to be published by Routledge and Edinburgh University Press) and is currently editing the Handbook of South Asian Englishes (Oxford University Press, to appear in 2023).

ix

x Contributors

Agnes Bolonyai is Associate Professor of Linguistics at North Carolina State University. Her current research interests include issues of language, identity, mobility, and migration, with a particular focus on codeswitching and other multilingual discourse and identity practices. Her empirical work has mostly focused on Hungarian-English bilingualism. She is also interested in right-wing populist political discourse. Her work has appeared in Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, the International Journal of Bilingualism, Cambridge Handbook of Code-Switching, Journal of Sociolinguistics, Language in Society and Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict. She is currently writing two co-authored books with Rakesh Bhatt, one on codeswitching in late modernity (Routledge) and a monograph on codeswitching (Edinburgh University Press). Vivian Cook, who sadly passed away before his chapter in this volume appeared, was a British linguist and was Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University. He was renowned for his work on second language acquisition and second language teaching, and for writing successful textbooks and popular books about linguistics. He worked on a number of topics such as bilingualism, EFL (English as a foreign language), first language acquisition, second language teaching, linguistics, and the English writing system. At the time of his passing at age 81, he had published more than 20 books and 100 papers across seven decades. He was founder and first President of the European Second Language Association (EuroSLA), and co-founder of the Oxford University Press journal, Writing Systems Research. He died on December 15, 2021. Vivian will be profoundly missed by his colleagues and students. Christian J. Faltis is Professor of Bilingual Education and Chair of the Education Department in the College of Education at Texas A&M International University. Prior to his appointment at TAMIU, Professor Faltis was Chair of the Department of Teaching and Learning at The Ohio State University. He is Professor Emeritus of UC Davis, where he served as the Dolly and David Fiddyment Chair in Teacher Education and Professor of Language, Literacy and Culture in the School of Education. He also taught at Arizona State University for 18 years. His research interests include bilingual teacher education for emergent bilingual users, critical bilingual education, and critical arts-based learning. Professor Faltis served as a Fulbright Scholar at the National Autonomous University of Honduras. He received the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Distinguished Scholar Award in 2001. He was inducted as an AERA Fellow in 2016. He received the Bilingual Research SIG Lifetime Achievement Award from AERA in 2018. He has been editor of four journals. He holds an MA degree in Mexican American Graduate Studies from San José State University, and an MA in second language education and PhD in curriculum & teacher education with an emphasis in bilingual cross-cultural education from Stanford University.

Contributors xi

James Paul Gee is a Regents’ Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He is author of many books and papers in discourse analysis, sociolinguistics and the learning sciences. His books include Social Linguistics and Literacies (1990, 5th edn, 2015); The Social Mind (1992); An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (1999, 4th edn, 2014); What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy (2003, 2nd edn, 2007); Situated Language and Learning (2004); The Anti-Education Era (2013); Literacy and Education (2015); Teaching, Learning, Literacy in Our High-Risk High-Tech World (2017); and What is a Human? (2020). He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education. He is retired and lives on a small farm on the Verde River in Cottonwood, Arizona. Fred Genesee is Professor Emeritus in the Psychology Department at McGill University, Montreal. He has conducted extensive research on alternative forms of bilingual/immersion education for language minority and language majority students, the academic development of at-risk students in bilingual programs, language acquisition in typically developing and at-risk pre-school bilingual children, and internationally adopted children. He has published numerous articles in scientific journals, professional books and magazines, and is the author of 16 books on bilingualism. He is a recipient of the Canadian Psychology Association Gold Medal Award, Paul Pimsler Award for Research in Foreign Language Education, Canadian Psychological Association Award for Distinguished Contributions to Community or Public Service, California Association for Bilingual Education Award for Promoting Bilingualism and the le prix Adrien-Pinard. Ioulia Kovelman is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan. Dr Kovelman is a developmental cognitive neuroscientist who uses neuroimaging to understand the effects of bilingualism on children’s language, literacy and brain development. To uncover the universal and language-specific elements of language development and bilingualism, her research examines bilingual and monolingual speakers of similar as well as typologically distinct languages, especially English, Spanish and Chinese. Dr Kovelman studies children within typical development and those with language and reading impairments. She holds a PhD from Dartmouth College and has completed postdoctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a recipient of NIH and NSF funding awards, among others. Jeff MacSwan works at the University of Maryland as Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education, Professor of Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, and affiliate Professor of Linguistics. His research focuses on the linguistic study of codeswitching, and on the role of language in the education of multilingual students. His work has appeared

xii Contributors

in the American Educational Research Journal, Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, Lingua, Bilingual Research Journal, World Englishes and Language Teaching Research, among others. He recently co-edited Codeswitching in the Classroom: Critical Perspectives on Teaching, Learning, Policy, and Ideology (Routledge, 2021, with Christian J. Faltis). He is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and of the National Education Policy Center, and the 2021 recipient of the AERA Bilingual Education Research SIG Lifetime Achievement Award and the Second Language Research SIG Leadership through Scholarship Award. He is Editor-in-Chief of the International Multilingual Research Journal. Professor MacSwan previously taught linguistically diverse middle and high school students in Los Angeles public schools. He grew up in the working-class town of Bell Gardens, California, and is a first-generation college graduate. Rebecca A. Marks is a postdoctoral scholar at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the MGH Institute of Health Professions. She studies language and literacy development, with a particular focus on bilingual children and children with dyslexia. Her work lies at the intersection of developmental psychology, education and cognitive neuroscience, where she uses behavioral and neurocognitive approaches to examine how language development lays the foundation for successful reading across diverse learners. Rebecca holds a BA from Washington University in St Louis, and an MA and PhD in Education & Psychology from the University of Michigan. Her work has been published in outlets such as Brain & Language, Child Development, NeuroImage and Annals of Dyslexia. Stephen May is Professor of Education in Te Puna Wānanga (School of Māori and Indigenous Education) in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He is an international authority on language rights, language policy, bilingualism and bilingual education and critical multicultural approaches to education. Additional research interests are in the wider politics of multiculturalism, ethnicity and nationalism, social theory (particularly the work of Bourdieu), sociolinguistics, and critical ethnography. Stephen has published more than 100 articles and book chapters in these areas, along with 27 books, including the award-winning Language and Minority Rights (2nd edn, 2012) and The Multilingual Turn (2014). His most recent books are Critical Ethnography and Education: Theory, Methodology and Ethics (2022, Routledge, with Katie Fitzpatrick) and Critical Ethnography, Language, Race/ism and Education (2023, Multilingual Matters, with Blanca Caldas). Stephen is Editor-in-Chief of the 10-volume Encyclopedia of Language and Education (3rd edn, 2017, Springer) and founding co-editor of the journal Ethnicities (Sage). He is a Fellow of the American Educational

Contributors xiii

Research Association and of the Royal Society of New Zealand (FRSNZ). Teresa L. McCarty is an educational anthropologist and applied linguist who lives and works in the homelands of the GabrielinoTongva, Tovaangar. At the University of California, Los Angeles, she is Distinguished Professor and G.F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology, and faculty in American Indian Studies. A member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the International Centre for Language Revitalisation, she is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and the current coeditor of the Journal of American Indian Education. Her books include A Place To Be Navajo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (Routledge), ‘To Remain an Indian’: Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (with K.T. Lomawaima, Teachers College Press), Language Planning and Policy in Native America (Multilingual Matters), Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism (with L.T. Wyman and S.E. Nicholas, Routledge), Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (with S.M. Coronel-Molina, Routledge), A World of Indigenous Languages: Politics, Pedagogies and Prospects for Language Reclamation (with S.E. Nicholas and G. Wigglesworth, Multilingual Matters) and Critical Youth Research in Education: Methodologies of Praxis and Care (with A.I. Ali, Routledge). She is currently engaged in a multi-university, US-wide study of Indigenouslanguage immersion schooling funded by the Spencer Foundation. Joanna McPake is Reader in Education at the University of Strathclyde in Scotland. Originally a teacher of modern languages and of English as a second language, she has conducted research, over a period of 30 years, into language education policy and provision in Scotland, the UK and in Europe, and into language teacher education. She coordinates the Gaelic Immersion for Teachers (GIfT) program at the University of Strathclyde, enabling qualified teachers working in English-medium schools in Scotland to acquire the linguistic and pedagogic skills required to transfer to the Gaelic-medium sector. She is currently researching teachers’ perspectives on language immersion principles and practice in Gaelicmedium classrooms, and the development of innovative approaches to teaching languages to young language learners. Sheilah E. Nicholas, Hopisino, is a member of the Hopiit, the Hopi People, who continue to reside on aboriginal lands in the Black Mesa region of now known Arizona. She is Professor in the Department of Teaching, Learning and Sociocultural Studies and the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) at the University of Arizona (UAZ), Tucson. Along with colleagues Dr Teresa McCarty and Dr

xiv Contributors

Michael Seltzer at UCLA and Dr Tiffany Lee at the University of New Mexico, she is the UAZ Co-PI of the Spencer Foundation-funded national study, ‘Indigenous-Language Immersion and Native American Student Achievement,’ which will establish a national database of Indigenouslanguage immersion (ILI) programs and identify the conditions under which ILI is beneficial as an innovative education practice. This and her research focusing on Indigenous/Hopi language maintenance and reclamation, the intersection of language, culture and identity, and Indigenous language teacher education have been published in the Journal of Language, Identity & Education, Native Studies Review Journal and in a co-edited volume, A World of Indigenous Languages: Politics, Pedagogies and Prospects for Language Reclamation (Multilingual Matters, 2019). She is an instructor consultant for the Indigenous Language Institute (ILI), Santa Fe, NM, an organization that assists tribal communities in their language revitalization/reclamation efforts. Teresa Satterfield is Professor of Romance Linguistics in the University of Michigan (UM) Department of Romance Languages & Literatures. She is also affiliated with the UM Department of Linguistics, and Combined Program in Education and Psychology (CPEP). Her areas of research include child bilingualism, bilingual first language acquisition (the roles of psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic factors in developing grammars), heritage language speakers and language contact phenomena in the context of US (Afro-)Latinx/o/a identity and culture. She has collaborated extensively on studies using fNIRS brain imaging techniques to inform theories of syntactic development and literacy research in bilingual children. She is the director of En Nuestra Lengua Literacy and Culture Project – a combined community-based Saturday Spanishimmersion literacy program, service learning experience, and research network – that addresses the significant academic achievement gap faced by US Spanish-speaking students in pre-kindergarten through fifth grade in Southeast Michigan. In operation since 2010, En Nuestra Lengua serves more than 200 Spanish heritage language students and has been recognized by the Center of Applied Linguistics, Washington, DC. Diane J. Tedick is Professor of Second Language Education at the University of Minnesota, where she has been a teacher educator and researcher for more than 30 years. Her research interests include student language development in immersion classrooms, content-based language instruction, and immersion/dual language teacher education and professional development. She provides professional development experiences for immersion and bilingual teachers in the US and internationally. Her publications have appeared in journals such as Applied Linguistics; Language, Culture and Curriculum; The Modern Language Journal and the International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism. She was founding co-editor of the Journal of Immersion

Contributors xv

and Content-Based Language Education and now serves on its editorial board as well as those of the International Multilingual Research Journal and Language Awareness. She has two co-edited books on immersion, both published by Multilingual Matters: Pathways to Multilingualism: Evolving Perspectives on Immersion Education (2008) and Immersion Education: Practices, Policies, Possibilities (2011). In addition, together with Roy Lyster she has co-authored Scaffolding Language Development in Immersion and Dual Language Classrooms (2020, Routledge). Professor Tedick has twice received the US Paul Pimsleur Award for Research in Foreign Language Education, in 2013 with co-recipient Laurent Cammarata, and in 2016 with co-recipient Tara Fortune. Terrence G. Wiley is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University, where he served as Executive Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education and Director of the Division of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies. He is also a Special Professor in the Graduate College, University of Maryland, and immediate past President of the Center for Applied Linguistics in Washington, DC, as well as Professor Emeritus in the College of Education at California State University, Long Beach. Professor Wiley’s teaching and research have focused on educational and applied linguistics; language policies; the history of language diversity in the United States; literacy and biliteracy studies; and second, bilingual and heritage-community language education. Professor Wiley co-founded the Journal of Language, Identity and Education and the International Multilingual Research Journal (both Routledge, Taylor & Francis), and he is co-editor of the Springer Series in Language Policy. Among his books are the Handbook of Heritage, Community, and Native American Languages (Routledge), co-edited with Joy Kreeft Peyton, Donna Christian, Sarah Catherine K. Moore and Na Liu; The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the United States (Multilingual Matters), co-edited with Jin Sook Lee and Russell W. Rumberger; and Ebonics: The Urban Education Debate, 2nd edition (Multilingual Matters), co-edited with David J. Ramirez, Gerda de Klerk, Enid Lee and Wayne E. Wright. He is the author of Literacy and Language Diversity in the United States, 2nd edition (Center for Applied Linguistics), and co-edited Review of Research in Education, Volume 38, ‘Language Policy, Politics, and Diversity in Education’ with Kathryn M. Borm, David R. Garcia and Arnold B. Danzig. Professor Wiley has received numerous awards for scholarship, teaching and service, including the American Association for Applied Linguistics Distinguished Scholarship and Service Award (2014) and the Joshua Fishman Award for Heritage Language Scholarship from the National Heritage Language Resource Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (2018).

Preface Jeff MacSwan

The contributors to this book raise concerns about the deconstructivist turn in translanguaging – the recent emergence of the contention that bilingualism is a fiction, at the social or individual level (or both), and that our actions, policy and research agenda should take this supposition seriously. Contributing authors converge on support for a multilingual perspective on translanguaging, which takes multilingualism to be psychologically real and socially significant. It affirms the pedagogical and conceptual goals of translanguaging but rejects deconstructivism. The project culminating in the present volume began as an invitation from Tadhg Ó hIfearnáin of the University of Limerick to organize a featured colloquium at the 11th International Symposium on Bilingualism (ISB11). Titled ‘Are There Discrete Languages? Implications for Codeswitching, Neurolinguistics, Pedagogy, and Language Rights,’ the colloquium included presentations by Rakesh M. Bhatt, Agnes Bolonyai, Vivian Cook, Christian J. Faltis, Ioulia Kovelman, Jeff MacSwan, Rebecca A. Marks and Terrence G. Wiley. Other ISB11 participants – Fred Genesee, Stephen May, Teresa L. McCarty and Diane J. Tedick – shared our interest in raising concerns about recent proposals and agreed to add their important work to the volume as well. Other talented colleagues, including Peter Auer, James Paul Gee, Joanna McPake, Sheilah E. Nicholas and Teresa Satterfield, joined too, completing the Table of Contents. This volume begins with an introductory chapter that contextualizes the epistemological roots of deconstructivism and assesses its promise as an approach to advocacy for multilingual children and communities. The subsequent chapters are organized in five parts. In Part 1, Vivian Cook and James Paul Gee begin the conversation, illuminating the nature of linguistic diversity in communities and individuals. Part 2 turns to codeswitching; I begin this section with a broad overview of codeswitching, reprising my response to García and colleagues’ critique of codeswitching research focused on the nature of bilingual grammar. Peter Auer, Rakesh Bhatt and Agnes Bolonyai also address the viability and critical significance of codeswitching xvii

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research, concentrating on its discourse-related attributes; they show that speakers’ awareness of their linguistic diversity (or multiple codes) is an important part of the special meaning-making attributes of codeswitching. In Part 3, Fred Genesee reviews the literature on bilingual child language acquisition as it relates to the question of linguistic discreteness, and Rebecca Marks, Teresa Satterfield and Ioulia Kovelman investigate the neurolinguistics of bilingualism to illuminate the nature of biliteracy. In Part 4, concerned with language policy, Sheilah Nicholas and Teresa McCarty present a relational paradigm for Indigenous language rights, detailing the critical significance of ‘language naming’ for language revitalization; and Terrence Wiley presents a critique of deconstructivist approaches to language rights, arguing in favor of language ideology as a strategy for improving conditions for linguistically diverse communities. Part 5 is focused on practice; in it, Joanna McPake and Diane Tedick critically examine the use of translanguaging pedagogies for the teaching of languages at risk of disappearance in immersion programs. Christian Faltis addresses systems of ideology in bilingual and language teacher education, urging teachers and teacher education programs to embrace anti-racist pedagogies. Finally, Stephen May concludes with an insightful afterword, offering a perspective on the major themes of the volume and its individual chapter contributions, while presenting his own concerns. I am grateful to these leading scholars for lending their talents and expertise to the pressing questions addressed in the volume. They went beyond the call of duty as well by providing feedback on other volume submissions. Additional feedback on chapters was generously provided by H. Samy Alim, John Baugh, Katja Cantone, Donna Christian, Nelson Flores, Peter Sayer, Marc Joanisse, Melinda Martin-Beltrán, Natascha Müller, Deborah Palmer, John Petrovic, Tom Roeper and Kellie Rolstad. Finally, Jim Cummins generously reviewed the full volume manuscript at the request of the series editors and provided numerous helpful suggestions. Many thanks to all! In addition to contributing to the volume and assisting with the review process, Christian J. Faltis is also responsible for the cover art adorning the volume. I am profoundly grateful to Chris for supporting the project both with his talent as a painter and as a scholar/contributor. The Language, Education and Diversity series editors, Stephen May, Teresa L. McCarty, Constant Leung and Serafín M. Coronel-Molina, provided phenomenal guidance at every stage. We are grateful to Tommi Grover, Managing Director of Multilingual Matters, with whom we initiated conversations about publishing the volume, and to Anna Roderick, the Editorial Director at Multilingual Matters, who handled the details of the publication process for us, and was critically important to the success of the volume. Thanks to them both, as well as to other members of the Multilingual Matters team.

Preface xix

Two talented graduate students at the University of Maryland assisted with proofing the work before it was turned over to the publisher. Katie Glanbock and Melissa Shelby Davis were diligent and gifted Editorial Assistants, providing critical assistance for both substance and mechanics on each chapter! Many thanks to you both! Katalina MacSwan generously proofread the final full manuscript, and spotted a plethora of persistent typos that had survived copious prior review. Thanks, Katsy! On a sad note, this volume includes the final living installment of Vivian Cook’s remarkable scholarly career. After serving the world with 20 books and more than 100 scholarly papers, written across seven decades, Vivian passed away on December 15, 2021 at the age of 81. We are grateful to him for investing his time and energy in a contribution written for this volume. With his many colleagues, students and friends, we will miss him dearly.

1 Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide Jeff MacSwan

This book concerns a recent and vibrant controversy in language education and applied linguistics around whether ‘named languages’ and, by extension, linguistic communities generally, actually exist. The supposition that they do not, called deconstructivism, implies that multilingualism and a vast array of related topics on linguistic diversity are fictions. Deconstructivism has become especially influential in the US in the last several years in the context of discussions of new terms introduced to refer to multilingualism, with various aims. While translanguaging – introduced by Williams (1994) and popularized by García (2009) – is without a doubt the most common of these, other terms include polylanguaging and polylingual languaging (Jørgensen, 2008; Jørgensen et al., 2011), metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2011), translingual practice (Canagarajah, 2013) and multilanguaging (Nguyen, 2012). Heteroglossia was used by Bakhtin (1975) to analyze the presence of multiple language varieties in a literary work. Codemeshing, introduced by Young (2003) to refer to African American language use in classroom contexts, was subsequently picked up by Canagarajah (2011) as a corollary of translanguaging in the more narrow context of writing. (See Lewis et al., 2012 for further discussion.) In this chapter, I briefly review the translanguaging literature to show that deconstructivism is an attribute of some recent versions but not of others. I offer a view of language ontology, presenting the senses in which languages and language communities can and should be said to exist. I then focus my discussion on the epistemological milieu of deconstructivism and its consequences for advocacy and social justice. Facets and Varieties of Translanguaging

Translanguaging is multifaceted, and has been developed along conceptual, pedagogical and theoretical lines of inquiry (MacSwan, 2017; Shi & MacSwan, 2019). As a conceptual framework, translanguaging 1

2  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

promotes a positive view of bilingualism, permitting bilinguals to act naturally, using language as they might at home and in their communities. Cenoz and Gorter (2011) describe translanguaging and related proposals as instances of holistic bilingualism, that is, Grosjean’s (1985) important observation that a bilingual is not two monolinguals in one, but a linguistically unique language user whose languages reflect the differential experience a bilingual may have with each language. Grosjean (1985, 2010) contrasts the holistic view with the fractional or monolingual view of bilingualism, which looks to native speakers of each language as ‘monolingual norms’ against which the bilingual’s two languages are each compared. Grosjean used a sports analogy to illustrate the holistic perspective: Hurdlers blend two separate athletic competencies, high jumping and sprinting, as an integrated whole. Compared individually to high jumpers or sprinters, hurdlers meet neither set of expectations; but by blending both, hurdlers compete athletically in their own right, excelling in their sport in ways that neither high jumpers nor sprinters could. Grosjean (1985) introduced the complementarity principle to capture the idea that different aspects of life may require different languages; thus, bilinguals typically acquire and use their languages for different purposes, in different domains of life, and with different people. Translanguaging, too, reflects a holistic perspective on bilingualism, what advocates often call a heteroglossic ideology (Bailey, 2007; Bakhtin, 1981; García, 2009), and applies it to pedagogy. Important research on pedagogical aspects of translanguaging has included studies of the ways in which students use their two languages in combination to support bilingual acquisition in small group activities (Martin-Beltrán, 2014), teachers’ dynamic and interactive use of two languages in classroom instructional settings (Palmer et al., 2014), and the effects of using two languages concurrently in the teaching of reading (Soltero-González & Butvilofsky, 2015; Soltero-González et al., 2016), among many others. Researchers have used a variety of terms to describe language mixing in classroom contexts, including translanguaging (Durán & Palmer, 2013; García, 2009; Gort, 2015; Gort & Sembiante, 2015; Henderson & Palmer, 2015; Hornberger & Link, 2012; Martin-Beltrán, 2014; Martínez et al., 2015; Palmer et al., 2014; Sayer, 2013; Smith & Murillo, 2015; Tigert et al., 2020), hybrid language practices (Gutiérrez et al., 1999; Gutiérrez et al., 2011; Palmer & Martínez, 2013), holistic bilingualism (Soltero-González, 2009; Soltero-González et al., 2011; Soltero-González & Butvilofsky, 2015; Soltero-González et al., 2016) and codeswitching (Cook, 2001; Fuller, 2009, 2010; García, 2009; Gort, 2012; Hopewell et al., 2020; Martínez, 2010; Martínez & Martinez, 2020; Moschkovich, 2007, 2020; Nava, 2009; Palmer, 2009, 2020; Reyes, 2004; Shin, 2005), following the foundational work of Jacobson (1978, 1981, 1990), Milk (1986, 1990) and Faltis (1989, 1990, 1996). Also see other contributions to MacSwan and Faltis (2020).

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   3

While many researchers have expressed enthusiasm about the pedagogical potential of translanguaging, some have urged caution. For example, Martínez-Roldán (2015) studied the translanguaging practices of primary-grade bilingual students mediated by bilingual teacher candidates in an afterschool program. She observed a strong tendency among teachers and students reflecting a preference for English due to its higher social status and testing requirements, creating a situation which ‘raises the stakes for the introduction of flexible language practices that may jeopardize language separation policies that can protect the minority language’ (2015: 56). As a result, Martínez-Roldán’s study led her ‘to advise caution regarding the incorporation of translanguaging in bilingual classrooms’ (2015: 56). In Chapter 11 of the present volume, Joanna McPake and Diane Tedick consider the role of translanguaging pedagogies in the context of endangered language revitalization, with a focus on Scottish Gaelic. The authors recognize potential for translanguaging pedagogies in these contexts, but see a need for further research as well; they propose a research agenda for translanguaging pedagogies, concerned that translanguaging might weaken rather than strengthen fragile gains in language revitalization. An important contribution of translanguaging in pedagogical contexts is its call to critically evaluate traditional assumptions about language separation through empirical inquiry. However, the questions that arise around flexible language use in pedagogical contexts are rarely affected by the theoretical discussions of the nature of bilingualism and linguistic diversity which principally concern the present volume, centering around the deconstructivist claim that discrete language communities do not exist, and that community- and individual-level conceptions of bilingualism are merely socially reified fictions. In MacSwan (2017), I contrasted this unitary view of bilingualism with a multilingual view. García and Lin (2017) described the unitary perspective as ‘a strong version of translanguaging’ in contrast to ‘a weak version.’ Cummins (2021: 10) aptly called the weak/strong distinction “semantically loaded,” and introduced Unitary Translanguaging Theory (UTT) and Crosslinguistic Translanguaging Theory (CTT) as alternatives; Cummins’ favored CTT may be seen as an instance of the general multilingual perspective advocated here. The contrast in theoretical perspectives might also be captured in historical terms, as early translanguaging theory versus late translanguaging theory. In Ofelia García’s influential 2009 book, Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective, which very successfully made translanguaging part of the common parlance of language education research, she did not criticize sociolinguistic research on multilingualism as she did in her subsequent work: For us, translanguagings are multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds. Translanguaging

4  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

therefore goes beyond what has been termed code-switching …, although it includes it, as well as other kinds of bilingual language use and bilingual contact. (García, 2009: 45, italics in original)

Indeed, García’s (2009) original introduction of the new term is partnered with an extensive discussion of codeswitching, borrowing and other dimensions of language contact, both as sociolinguistic concepts (2009: 48–50) and as pedagogical tools (2009: 298–301), in which these terms are used without reluctance or critique. This early view, in which translanguaging was seen as an umbrella term that included codeswitching and other kinds of language contact, evolved within the next few years to take on a competitive disposition toward traditional sociolinguistic research on multilingualism. Under the influence of deconstructivism, translanguaging was recast as a unitary perspective on multilingualism. As Otheguy et al. (2015) wrote, ‘the coinage of translanguaging’ was in part motivated by an ‘attempt to set aside this dual conception’ of bilingual language; the new term ‘aimed to overturn the conceptualization of the two languages of bilinguals … as clearly distinct systems …,’ but ‘the attempt to overturn has not been successful,’ as the new term ‘began to drift toward covering essentially the same conceptual terrain as code switching.’ On their view, codeswitching must be rejected because it ‘constitutes a theoretical endorsement of the idea that what the bilingual manipulates, however masterfully, are two separate linguistic systems’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 282). Largely spurred by Pennycook (2006), the deconstructivist thesis ‘suggests we no longer need to maintain the pernicious myth that languages exist’ (2006: 67), spelling trouble for ‘many of the treasured icons of liberal-linguistic thought … such as language rights, mother tongues, multilingualism or code-switching’ (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007: 22). In similar fashion, García et al. (2017) promote a proposed ‘critical poststructuralist sociolinguistics,’ defined by its skepticism toward ‘the ontological status of language’ (2017: 5) and, therefore, ‘the very idea of multilingualism’ (2017: 8). Indeed, it is important to note that the deconstructivist thesis implies, as Makoni and Pennycook (2007) make clear, that any research whatsoever that references multilingualism is incongruous, not only eliminating constructs like language rights, codeswitching and multilingualism, but also related ideas like linguistic communities, second language acquisition and much of the field of sociolinguistics. To illustrate, consider García and Li’s (2014) sharp criticism of Martínez (2010), Gort (2006), Kibler (2010) and Escamilla and colleagues (2013) – studies that focus on the use of children’s home language to support the development of second language literacy at school, often by using codeswitching. According to García and Li, a shared failing of these scholars is that they ‘still speak about L1, L2 and code-switching, signaling that there has not been a full shift in

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   5

epistemological understandings about language, bilingualism and education in the ways in which translanguaging points’ (2014: 62). We see here a clear indication that the emerging new deconstructivist variety of translanguaging not only eschewed such notions as language rights, codeswitching and multilingualism, but further disapproved of research which makes reference to first or second language (acquisition), and, by extension, much more. The deconstructivist critique as applied specifically to codeswitching is discussed at some length by chapters in the present volume. In Chapter 4, I present a brief synopsis of the broad landscape of codeswitching research – as both language structure (bilingual grammar) and language use (discourse and conversation) – which has guided understandings of individual and community bilingualism for decades. I then offer an updated version of MacSwan (2017), which critically evaluated García and colleagues’ portrayal and criticism of codeswitching research as well as their theory of bilingual grammar. I also add responses to Otheguy et al. (2018), which was a reply to MacSwan (2017). An important point in this chapter is that codeswitching scholarship generally converges on what I call an Integrated Multilingual Model (IMM) of bilingualism, which takes some components of grammar to be shared and others to be discrete; it contrasts with the Unitary Model advocated by García and colleagues, and with the Dual Competence Model they have attributed (incorrectly, I show) to codeswitching researchers. Furthering the discussion of codeswitching, in Chapter 5 Peter Auer powerfully challenges the claim that translanguaging scholarship has unearthed new dimensions of multilingual practices for which research on social dimensions of language mixing has been inadequate, and argues that existing research on codeswitching and other bilingual practices provides a rich set of sophisticated analytical tools capable of illuminating new and old data alike. Auer shows that, far from being unaware of the discrete codes of language use, bilinguals purposefully navigate these codes to express meaning and identity. In Chapter 6, Rakesh Bhatt and Agnes Bolonyai take the same position, showing that the social-indexical functions enacted in bilingual discourse are only meaningful in the context of the discrete language communities in which linguistically diverse speakers participate. Rakesh Bhatt and Agnes Bolonyai further review neurolinguistics evidence that bilingualism is neurocognitively real in the same way in which it surfaces in bilingual discourse through codeswitching. A related body of research is bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), or the study of children raised with simultaneous exposure to two first languages. In Chapter 7 of this volume, Fred Genesee reviews the extensive body of BFLA research to illuminate the tension between unitary and multilingual perspectives on bilingual grammar, arguing in support of the neurocognitive validity of discrete languages. Similarly

6  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

in Chapter 8, Rebecca Marks, Teresa Satterfield and Ioulia Kovelman examine neurolinguistic evidence of language differentiation in the brain sciences, with a focus on transfer effects in bilingual reading, arguing in support of the IMM as well. The authors use the IMM as a framework for understanding transfer effects in biliteracy as the combined effects of bilingual children’s grammatical knowledge and orthographic language experiences. In Chapter 2, Vivian Cook revisits his theory of multicompetences in second language acquisition research to find parallels with the present debate, recounting his view, originally staked out in Cook (1992), that holistic multi-competence suggests a modular system in which ‘some aspects of the total multi-competence supersystem may be unified, some may not’ (this volume: 54). One sees that translanguaging scholarship has been developed along a number of paths – relating to a holistic conceptual framework for multilingualism, an inclusive approach to multilingual pedagogy, and the theoretical understanding of whether speech communities and related concepts exist. The present volume is focused on this last tenet, and specifically challenges the deconstructivist (unitary, ‘strong,’ or late) perspective, favoring instead a multilingual perspective on translanguaging. The multilingual perspective accepts a holistic view of bilingualism, nicely captured by Grosjean’s (1985) complementarity principle, but rejects the idea that languages and linguistic communities do not exist. Language(s)

Many people associate languages with nations and states: Japanese with Japan, French with France and Urdu with Pakistan. Language is often used to consolidate political power and marginalize non-dominant groups who speak a language or language variety that differs from the one used by those in power. States sanction one or more languages or language varieties as legitimate, thereby privileging some ways of talking and stigmatizing others (May, 2012). Such concerns motivated Makoni and Pennycook (2007) to describe languages as social and political ‘inventions,’ not as discoveries. Linguistic stigma, whether associated with a marginalized language or language variety, is reinforced through traditional prescriptivism: the view that one language or language variety has an inherently higher value than others, and that it ought to be imposed on an entire nation-state (Crystal, 1986; MacSwan, 2000). Prescriptivists have often characterized marginalized languages or dialects as ‘inexpressive’ and ‘primitive,’ or lacking complexity in comparison to their own language – for example, as with the language academies committed to the task of ‘purifying’ the regional linguistic descendants of Latin established as early as 1582 in Italy, 1635 in France and 1713 in Spain.

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   7

While 17th-century Europe was preoccupied with the ‘special’ languages of elites, the Port Royale Grammar of 1660 advanced a very different view of language and of the human condition. Written in French, the Port Royale Grammar formed part of the movement to displace Latin as an outdated mode of academic discourse. However, what marked the Port Royale Grammar as deeply distinct from contemporaneous approaches was its devotion to philosophical and universal properties of human language in descriptive terms (Chomsky, 1968; Newmeyer, 1988; Robins, 1967). As in contemporary approaches in the linguistic sciences, the Port Royale grammarians worked on the assumption that normal human intelligence is capable of acquiring knowledge through its own internal resources, making use of the data of experience, but moving on to construct a cognitive system in terms of concepts and principles that are developed independently. Language has thus both a sociopolitical dimension and an individual cognitive dimension, among others. Chomsky (1980, 1986) referred to the sociopolitical sense of language as E-language, where E denotes externalized and extensional. In this sense, language is not the product of an individual per se, but of a community of speakers; and it is extensional in the formal sense: its expressions can only be listed, not defined by a generative system of rules; it is a collection of overlapping individual languages, or I-languages, where I denotes internalized, individual, and intensional (defined by a recursive rule system). Linguistic theories about language structure and acquisition are focused on I-language, not E-language. ‘What we call “English,” “French,” “Spanish,” and so on, even under idealizations to idiolects in homogeneous speech communities,’ Chomsky (1995: 11) noted, ‘reflect the Norman Conquest, proximity to Germanic areas, a Basque substratum, and other factors that cannot seriously be regarded as properties of the language faculty.’ The term idiolect was introduced by Bloch (1948: 7) who defined it as ‘the totality of the possible utterances of one speaker at one time,’ differing from a dialect, or community language, which Bloch defined as ‘a class of idiolects’ (1948: 8). An I-language is similar to an idiolect in that it denotes an individual’s language, and an E-language is similar to a national or community language in that it denotes an externalized collection of I-languages. Just as Makoni and Pennycook (2007) recently contended that languages are social and historical ‘inventions,’ Chomsky (1980) regarded languages in the E-language sense as fictional. The realization that speech communities are idealizations, in this respect, is also evident in the work of early structuralist linguists like Leonard Bloomfield, who defined a language as ‘the totality of utterances that can be made in a speech community’ (1928: 26). For Bloomfield and those who followed, it was understood, as Chomsky (1986) further noted, that speech communities,

8  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

or ‘collections of individuals with the same speech behavior,’ actually ‘do not exist in the real world.’ Rather, ‘Each individual has acquired a language in the course of complex social interactions with people who vary in the ways in which they speak and interpret what they hear and in the internal representations that underlie their use of language’ (1986: 16). While I-languages reflect the individual internalized grammatical system each of us has, with each likely to vary one from the other in some respect, it is important to recognize that I-languages do not vary at random. Our divergent experiences result in individual linguistic differences, but the mechanisms and circumstances of language acquisition are such that we expect learners exposed to similar linguistic input to converge on similar I-languages. For instance, a learner exposed to a community of ‘English speakers’ will come to place subjects before verbs (e.g. Sam ate lunch), but a learner exposed to a community of ‘Irish speakers’ will place them after verbs (e.g. Cheannaigh Máire carr [bought Máire car, ‘Máire bought a car’]; Stenson, 2007). A child raised in South Carolina might use double modal constructions like I thought you might could help me (Mishoe & Montgomery, 1994). Furthermore, a language learner in London might acquire a phonological rule which changes t to the d-like sound (flapped t) in water ([wɑːɾɜ]) and writer ([raɪɾɜ]) because somewhere in her diverse language experience she spent significant time with somebody who learned English in the US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. Thus, while I-languages each vary one from the other, language learning experiences generally confine variation to fairly narrow limits. We each speak individual languages, but our individual languages are remarkably similar to those of other members of our immediate linguistic communities. Despite the recognition that language is individually represented, linguists refer to languages and even classes of languages by name in order to capture generalizations that hold across them. Scientists in other fields use idealizations in a similar way. As Weisberg (2007) noted, idealization plays an important epistemic role across a wide range of disciplines (e.g. biology, physics, economics, mathematics), defined in the philosophy of science as ‘the intentional introduction of distortion into scientific theories’ (2007: 639). ‘Frictionless planes, point masses, infinite velocities, isolated systems, omniscient agents, and markets in perfect equilibrium are but some well-known examples’ of scientific idealization (Frigg & Hartmann, 2012; see also Cartwright, 1989; Nowak, 1972, 1992). In linguistics, researchers interested in the range of structural variation associated with wh-constructions (questions which use words like who, what, and why, among others) might refer to ‘Chinese’ or ‘English’ to capture structural generalizations about these languages despite the presence of other language-internal variation, noting that English moves wh-question words to the front of an utterance (e.g. What

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   9

does Steve like? where what, as the object of like, has been moved from its position after the verb to the front of the sentence), while Chinese leaves these words in place (e.g. Zhangsan xihuan shenme, with word order Zhangsan likes what to mean ‘What does Zhangsan like?’). Or researchers may even find it useful to refer to broad classes of languages with similar typologies, using terms like wh-movement languages (e.g. English, French, Hungarian) and wh-in situ languages (e.g. Chinese, Korean, Swahili), or even English-type languages and Chinese-type languages. Sociolinguists interested in studying language use among African Americans might refer to African American English (AAE), another idealization across regional and individual variation, seeking to understand any number of language-related behaviors specific to one or another community of speakers. Idealizations like these treat members of a speech community as though they are homogeneous, purposely ignoring irrelevant variation as a tool of focused inquiry. Linguists interested in studying language diversity refer to E-languages (named languages, or any speech community) or even collections of E-languages (linguistic typology) by name as a convenience; this permits them to idealize across cases of individual variation to focus on relevant aspects of language which appear to be common to a community of speakers. These methods are used by linguists interested in language structure as well as those specializing in sociolinguistics, who study both structural characteristics of discrete speech communities and the social practices surrounding their language use. Individual grammars constitute the object of study for linguists interested in the theory of grammar, and speech communities are idealizations. For linguists who study the social variables of language diversity, however, speech communities, while still idealizations, are themselves the objects of study, guided by questions about how language structure and use vary by geography, social class, age, sex, sexual orientation and other factors (see Chambers & Schilling, 2013). Groups use language differently within varied and overlapping speech communities (Gumperz, 1964; Labov, 1972) to engage in different language practices (e.g. Eckert, 2000) or discourses (e.g. Gee, 2015b; Resnik et al., 2015). In large part, our linguistic uniqueness (I-language) is defined by our participation in multiple overlapping speech communities, resulting from the effects that each of these communities has had on each individual’s cognitive representation of language. In Chapter 3 of this volume, James Paul Gee explicates how language is coded experientially, creating social languages for diverse affinity groups. Experiential coding is at the heart of our linguistic repertoires, permitting us to communicate ‘as’ a particular person, in a particular sort of relationship to our interlocutors. Gee reminds us that all humans speak many different social languages, enacted through their experiential coding, each signifying a

10  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

socially significant identity. This view of universal bilingualism, enacted through our social languages and diverse linguistic repertoires, is further discussed in Chapter 4. Language Names, Coloniality and Language Ideologies

Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007) novel contribution, which in many respects forms the basis of the deconstructivist turn in translanguaging, is not the observation that named languages are sociopolitical and arbitrary with respect to their boundaries, which has been well established for nearly 100 years (e.g. Bloch, 1948; Bloomfield, 1928; Chomsky, 1965, 1986, 1995; Gee, 2015a; Labov, 1972; Lyons, 1981; MacSwan, 2000, 2020), but is rather their contention that this observation invalidates linguistic phenomena predicated on the existence of discrete speech communities, such as codeswitching, language rights and multilingualism itself. A central concern is that ‘named languages,’ which are typically identified with nation-states, form part of the colonial agenda. For García and colleagues, the colonial history of named languages motivates a repudiation of linguistic discreteness in the case of individual bilingualism (bilingual grammar, or I-language) but not of ‘a named language as a socially constructed rather than a linguistic object’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 283), or E-language. ‘Because we recognize the importance of the scholarly, political, and sociolinguistic distinction between monolinguals and bilinguals, we are not simply abandoning the distinction or scuttling the concepts of language and bilingualism, as Pennycook (2010), and Makoni and Pennycook (2007) have urged’ (2015: 293). However, García and colleagues strongly reject scholarly perspectives which affirm the psychological reality of individual bilingualism, as such approaches reify the presumption of discrete languages that arose from colonialism and nation-building efforts, as well as give credence to the imaginary line imposed by colonial logics, enabling the continued identification of racialized bilinguals’ language practices as fundamentally deficient when compared to those of dominant monolingual language users. (García et al., 2021: 215)

If the view that bilingualism is psychologically real reifies the presumption of discrete languages, one would expect that affirming ‘named languages’ as socially constructed entities would do no less. The advantage of Pennycook’s position – while mistaken, in my view – is that it is consistent in its disdain for ‘named languages’ due to their association with colonialism in both the E- and I-language cases. Language names are used for a wide range of overlapping political, social or structural purposes. Sometimes the political distinctions are

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   11

farcical from a structural point of view (e.g. Romanian vs. Moldovan), or social registers (e.g. academic English, gamer English) may lack clear political identification or significant structural differences. And sometimes structural generalizations pertain to broad (e.g wh-in situ languages) or narrow (e.g. AAE consonant cluster reduction) distinctions that cannot be neatly sorted politically or socially. While ‘named languages’ have been used as part of an effort to colonize, and some have also used language academies and school curricula to promote prescriptivist language ideologies, the act of naming a community of speakers does not necessarily form part of a colonial agenda. Indeed, Hopi scholar Sheilah Nicholas and Teresa McCarty (Chapter 9, this volume) promote a relational approach to language rights that foregrounds Indigenous notions and practices of mutuality and responsibility, and observe that Indigenous language naming is a critical step in language reclamation, helping to decolonize Indigenous communities; they show that ‘naming in the Indigenous [Hopi] language is central to (re)claiming collective linguistic and epistemic memory… .’ Indeed, ‘Names and naming – myaamia, Hopilavayi, Kanienké:ha – are vitally important connectors to distinct lands/waters, people and home place’ (p. 242). Furthermore, the logic of repudiating ‘language names’ extends to speech communities by any name, as we cannot selectively challenge the ontology of some ‘named languages’ and not of others, as Makoni and Pennycook (2007) recognized. As Cook (Chapter 2, this volume) observes, languages specifically associated with nations represent a minority; Cook notes that the 193 countries in the United Nations collectively speak more than 7000 languages, and several languages of the world – such as Yenish, Kurdish and Swahili – have no clear political homeland. Thus, if deconstructivism implies that named languages like French and Spanish do not exist, it also implies that African American Language, Chicano English, Nahuatl and Navajo do not exist. As I will revisit below, this important consequence of deconstructivism not only undermines a vast array of research on linguistic diversity (anthropological, linguistic, sociolinguistic, psychological, educational and more), but it also undermines reasonable and effective advocacy (see also May, 2018). Thus, denying the ontology of language does not in and of itself undermine standard language ideology, as language naming can serve to decolonize as well as to colonize, and to identify socially privileged as well as socially stigmatized language varieties. Moreover, standard language ideology can surface even when attention is focused on individual language (or ideolects, as in Otheguy et al., 2015). Indeed, standard language ideologues fully accept individual variation, often called ‘individual differences,’ but still assert that some individual languages are superior to others in precisely the same way classical prescriptivists held some languages or language varieties

12  Multilingual Perspectives on Translanguaging

to be superior to others. For example, Hart and Risley (1995) studied children in poor and professional families, and statistically estimated that ‘by age 3 the children in professional families would have heard more than 30 million words, the children in working-class families 20 million, and the children in welfare families 10 million’ (1995: 132). Professional parents exposed their children to more words of all kinds, including ‘more multiclause sentences, more past and future verb tenses, more declaratives, and more questions of all kinds’ (1995: 123–124). These individual differences were dubbed ‘meaningful’ in Hart and Risley’s work, a subject of grave concern, which has now set in motion a small industry of psychological researchers sounding increasingly louder alarms about the ‘language gap’ evident in poor children (Fernald & Weisleder, 2015). Language gap researchers see these ‘individually different’ languages as hierarchically related in an order determined by the number of words each speaker knows, illustrating once again that a rejection of ‘named languages’ does not undermine standard language ideology. (For critical discussion of the language gap research, see Baugh, 2017; Benbow, 2006; Blum, 2017; Dudley-Marling & Lucas, 2009; Dyson, 2015; Gorski, 2012; Johnson et al., 2017; Michaels, 2013; Miller & Sperry, 2012; Rolstad, 2014; Smyth et al., 2010.) Language is and has been relevant to coloniality, just as it is relevant to language prejudice and racism (Alim et al., 2016). But naming language does not necessarily reify colonialism; indeed, naming languages can de-colonize (Nicholas & McCarty, Chapter 9, this volume) too, and can be part of an effort to achieve important goals of social justice, discussed later in this chapter. We turn next to the epistemological milieu of deconstructivism in the broader context of postmodernism. The ‘New Epistemologies’

As noted, deconstructivism was prominently promoted in language planning and policy by Pennycook, who saw it as a natural extension of postmodernism: A postmodern (or postcolonial) approach to language policy … suggests we no longer need to maintain the pernicious myth that languages exist. Thus we can start to develop an anti-foundationalist view of language as an emergent property of social interaction and not of prior system tied to ethnicity, territory, birth, or nation. The very notion that ... we can decide to have one, two, three, five or eleven languages in a language policy becomes highly questionable. ... Yet the questions I have raised here suggest that languages cannot in fact be planned ... since there is ultimately no good reason to continue to posit their existence. (Pennycook, 2006: 67)

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   13

Pennycook (2006: 71) saw languages not as real things in the world, but as ‘products of language use sedimented through acts of identity.’ (Also see Wiley, Chapter 10, this volume.) Echoing Pennycook, García and Li remarked, With the rise of post-structuralism in the post-modern era, language has begun to be conceptualized as a series of social practices and actions by speakers that are embedded in a web of social and cognitive relations. Furthermore, a critique of nation-state/colonial language ideologies has emerged, seeking to excavate subaltern knowledge …. Post-structuralist critical language scholars treat language as contested space – as tools that are re-appropriated by actual language users. (García & Li, 2014: 9)

What are sometimes called ‘new epistemologies’ (García & Li, 2014: 62) in this context are in fact very old ideas which began to thrive in the 1980s, but soon wore out their welcome among many critically engaged education scholars. For example, as early as 1999, Peter McLaren, a leading critical theorist, wrote: Postmodern theory has made significant contributions to the education field by examining how schools participate in producing and reproducing asymmetrical relations of power, and how discourses, systems of intelligibility, and representational practices continue to support gender inequality, racism, and class advantage. For the most part, however, postmodernism has failed to develop alternative democratic social models. This is partly due to its failure to mount a sophisticated and coherent opposition politics against economic exploitation, political oppression, and cultural hegemony. In its celebration of the aleatory freeplay of signification, postmodernism exhibits a profound cynicism – if not sustained intellectual contempt – towards what it regards as the Eurocentric Enlightenment project of human progress, equality, justice, rationality, and truth … (McLaren & Farahmandpur, 1999: 89)

Poststructuralism and deconstructivism were reactions to structuralism, which had been introduced into the study of language by Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916). Prior to Saussure’s important work, linguistics, better known then as philology, had focused on patterns of historical language change. In 1786, for example, Sir William Jones famously postulated a common ancestry of Sanskrit and European languages – known as Proto-Indo-European – based on his discoveries of systematic sound correspondences in semantically related words (as in f and p in English father, Latin pater and Sanskrit pitar). Saussure changed the focus from the rules of language change (diachronic linguistics) to the rules of contemporary language structure (synchronic linguistics). Saussure’s contribution emphasized that language structure is regular and rule governed, and that ‘at the heart of language lies a structured relationship of elements characterizable as an autonomous

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system’ (Newmeyer, 1988: 20). Saussure notably distinguished langue (language), the abstract systematic rules and conventions of a signifying system, from parole (speech), the language experienced in everyday life. Saussurean structuralism expanded across a wide range of fields in Europe, and was especially influential on literary criticism and the social sciences. Its most prominent early figures included Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan and Claude Lévi-Strauss (Dosse, 1997; Newmeyer, 1986). As François Dosse elucidates in his comprehensive history, the success of structuralism in France ‘during the 1950s and 1960s is without precedent in the history of the intellectual life of this country’ (Dosse, 1997: xix). In fact, the support for structuralism was so widespread among most of the French intelligentsia at the time that published criticisms were simply ignored at first. The reasons for its success were twofold, according to Dosse: ‘First, structuralism promised a rigorous method and some hope for making decisive progress toward scientificity’ in the social sciences, modeled after Saussurean linguistics as a ‘pilot science.’ However, ‘even more fundamentally, it was a particular moment in the history of thought, which we can characterize as a key moment of critical consciousness’ (Dosse, 1997: xix), at least in the academy. The enthusiasm for structuralism in France was thus: also the product of the remarkable growth in the social sciences, which ran up against the hegemony of the aged Sorbonne, bearer of scholarly legitimacy and dispenser of the classical humanities. The structuralist program was a veritable unconscious strategy to move beyond the academicism in power, and it served the twofold purposes of contestation and counterculture. (Dosse, 1997: xx)

Poststructuralism was reacting to Saussurean structuralism in the specific context of its influence on literary criticism and other social sciences. For Jacques Derrida, who had studied under Michel Foucault – later a leading poststructuralist as well – deconstruction was a method for interrogating European structuralism by undermining Platonism, understood by Derrida as the belief ‘that existence is structured in terms of oppositions (separate substances or forms) and that the oppositions are hierarchical, with one side of the opposition being more valuable than the other’ (Lawlor, 2019). Although Saussure had not posited different components of the language system to be hierarchically related, it was so interpreted by many of the French structuralists and poststructuralists (Dosse, 1997). Postmodernism entered the lexicon of poststructuralists in 1979 with the publication of Jean-François Lyotard’s Postmodern Condition, in which Lyotard defined postmodernism as ‘incredulity toward metanarratives,’ particularly those of the modern sciences, which emerged from the Enlightenment (Lyotard, 1979: xxiv). Although some have attempted to distinguish postmodernism from poststructuralism,

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   15

the two terms are widely regarded as approximate synonyms, especially with respect to their epistemological convictions (Agger, 1991; Susen, 2015). For poststructuralists and postmodernists, modernism refers to general acceptance of the project of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. The Enlightenment and Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries altered the way the West thought about truth, moving away from a primarily religious worldview to a much more secular perspective. Leading figures of the Enlightenment – Copernicus, Galileo and Newton – advanced human understanding of the universe by postulating natural laws, no longer attributing observed patterns to a mysterious God. Against the backdrop of this ‘modern’ perspective, poststructuralism and postmodernism actively engaged in epistemological skepticism, resulting in the emergence by the 1980s of ‘the relativist turn’ in the social sciences, privileging perspective over discovery (Susen, 2015). As Susen explains: Supporters of postmodern conceptions of knowledge tend to be suspicious of the Enlightenment project in that they distance themselves from the – arguably ‘modern’ – obsession with the discovery of ‘truths’ about the functioning of both the natural and the social realms of worldly existence. From a postmodern point of view, one of the main problems arising from Enlightenment thought is that it portrays ‘truth’ as an objective representational force ... .(Susen, 2015: xxxii)

Postmodernism and poststructuralism further posed as an approach to political critique. As a strategy or method, deconstruction challenged accepted perspectives, often viewed as hegemonic, by denying their epistemological claims to legitimacy. Postmodernists developed a political critique founded on epistemological doubt by positioning all knowledge as subjective and perspectival, thus seeking to undermine the perspective of political elites who cloaked themselves in ‘objectivity.’ Meanwhile in linguistics, European structuralists developed sophisticated phonological and morphological theories using the observational techniques of modern science, showing that the languages of the world could be analyzed in discrete units of sound and meaning. In American linguistics especially, where structuralist methods were applied to the Indigenous languages of the American continents, the clear conclusion was that all languages of the world evidenced rich and complex structure. This conclusion became ‘a rallying point for American structural linguists,’ which ‘could be called, for want of a better term, “egalitarianism,”’ Newmeyer (1986: 39) noted. ‘The essence of this principle for linguistics is that, in some fundamental sense, all of the languages of the world are cut from the same mold.’ Indeed, the work of early sociolinguists, who began to focus on

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stigmatized language varieties, was especially disruptive to prevailing language ideology in the academy: As long as American structuralists confined their campaign to the languages of remote tribes, they did little to upset their colleagues in departments of modern and classical languages. … But such was certainly not the case when they began crusading for the linguistic equality of all dialects of English and other literary languages, no matter how ‘substandard’ they were regarded. This egalitarian view came in direct conflict with the long-seated tradition in the humanities that values a language variety in direct proportion to its literary output. (Newmeyer, 1986: 42)

Franz Boas, who began publishing parts of his remarkable Handbook of American Indian Languages in 1911, produced detailed descriptions of Chippewa/Ojibwa, Apache, Mohawk and other Indigenous languages of North America, emphasizing their sophistication and complexity, a controversial perspective at that time (Beach, 2001). Boas campaigned vigorously against claims that the sounds of non-Western languages were vague and variable, thus defying transcription, and that their grammatical structure was incapable of expressing abstract concepts. Boas exposed the transparently ideological nature of these ideas, and painstakingly showed that the grammatical sophistication of non-Western languages is every bit as advanced as that of Western ones. (Newmeyer, 1986: 40)

A pioneering linguist and anthropologist, Boas similarly clarified the study of race, using scientific methods to show that races were not organized hierarchically, and that cultures should be understood within their own historical contexts, effectively debunking the ‘scientific racism’ of his predecessors (Alim, 2016; Charity Hudley, 2017; Charity Hudley et al., 2020). As Baugh noted, Boas’ work was highly controversial in his time because ‘he espoused the principle of racial equality among all people’ (Baugh, 2018: 153). Linguistics in the US began to align with behaviorism and positivism under the intellectual influence of Leonard Bloomfield, whose book Language (1933) outlined an approach to the synchronic study of language that depended on a set of procedures for taxonomic analysis (Bloomfield, 1928). Bloomfield and other American structuralists imposed a restriction that linguistic descriptions must be extractable from primary data alone. For behaviorists, the positivist principle of verificationism grounded the methodological doctrine that behavior (and behavioral tendencies) must be stated in terms of experimental observations, as only propositions that were verifiable through the senses were seen as meaningful. Talk of ‘minds’ or ‘mental states’ was eschewed,

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   17

with strict enforcement of a requirement to speak only of that which can be directly observed and verified. As support for logical positivism began to wane in the wake of an influential critique by Carl Hempel (1950, 1951), the foundation of Bloomfieldian structuralism experienced a crisis that threatened fundamental principles of its research methods (Newmeyer, 1986). Noam Chomsky, whose work would fundamentally change linguistic theory, also strongly attacked behaviorism and American structuralism in the 1950s and 1960s. Chomsky saw the goal of linguistic theory as an effort to understand the nature of a possible human language rather than a set of procedures for linguistic description. In conjunction with his critique of American structuralism, Chomsky presented a radically different view of human nature, especially in relation to linguistic knowledge and language acquisition. In his landmark review of B.F. Skinner’s (1957) Verbal Behavior, an application of behaviorist psychology to language, Chomsky noted that, because behaviorists are committed only to the observation of external behavior, Skinner and other behaviorists refused ‘to study the contribution of the child to language learning,’ thus permitting ‘only a superficial account of language acquisition’ (Chomsky, 1959: 60). Rather, Chomsky suggests, ‘The fact that all normal children acquire essentially comparable grammars of great complexity with remarkable rapidity suggests that human beings are somehow specially designed to do this, with datahandling or “hypothesis-formulating” ability of unknown character and complexity’ (Chomsky, 1959: 60). While Chomsky was highly critical of structuralists, Saussure’s idea of autonomous system became an enduring influence in his work and on the field. Chomsky showed that language structure was independent of meaning, illustrating with the famed example Colorless green ideas sleep furiously that an utterance can be syntactically well formed but semantically meaningless. Note that Chomsky does not claim that the totality of language is structure and nothing more, which would be reductionist. Rather, like Saussure before him, he sought to analyze discrete subsystems of language much as biologists might separately analyze the cardiovascular and the pulmonary systems of human anatomy. Chomsky’s program created firm grounding for the egalitarian thesis of American structuralism because it posited that language is an essential human attribute. For Chomsky, humans acquire language by instinct, the way birds acquire birdsong. The behaviorists whom Chomsky challenged saw language acquisition as the result of experience alone. Chomsky argued persuasively that human beings acquire language because it is in their nature to do so. In important respects, this proposition is the unifying force of Chomsky’s linguistics program and his politics, both of which posit a rich internal capacity inherent to all human beings (Chomsky, 2015).

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About the same time Chomsky’s linguistics was uprooting behaviorism, sociolinguistics was developing as a new field devoted to the study of linguistic variation and its relation to social variables. Sociolinguistics, powerfully set in motion in the 1960s by William Labov (Coulmas, 2013; Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2014), studies the social correlates and structural variation of language evident in different linguistic communities. Although Labov’s work is far ranging, his work on AAE (African American English) is among his best known.1 Labov and other pioneering sociolinguists documented the richness and complexity of AAE just as early American linguists like Franz Boas had documented the sophistication and complexity of American Indigenous languages (Green, 2002; Wolfram & Thomas, 2002). Inspired by Labov’s and others’ research on AAE, many scholars similarly investigated bilingual codeswitching, establishing that it was structured and rule governed like other ways of talking (Riegelhaupt, 2000; see also Chapter 4, this volume). In the course of questioning the ontology of linguistic communities, some deconstructivists have also presented sharp critiques of linguistics in general. For example, Pennycook (2004: 2) asserts: ‘The concept of language used by linguists was invented by European theorists to account for the diverse modes of articulation by different human groups, but for all the supposed relativism of the notion of language, the concept’s model of totality, basically organic in structure, is no different from the nineteenth-century concepts it replaced.’ As comparative philology ‘developed into modern linguistics, with its hierarchies, fixed languages, language trees, and so forth, it carried with it many of the assumptions of the colonial collateral that brought about its emergence’ (Pennycook, 2004: 3–4). Amplifying Pennycook, Shohamy (2006) offered this assessment of linguistics: The field of linguistics, then, played a major role in the process of language becoming a tool of domination and oppression in the nation-state, especially in controlling the quality of language that was legitimate and that lent itself to notions of membership and categories. Thus, ideas such as correct and standard languages become other forms of domination. Rather than just describing languages, linguists started dictating strict rules regarding how languages should be used. Specifically, this meant that not only should all people in the political entity speak the same recognized and standardized language, it also meant that languages should be used in certain homogeneous and fixed ways. (Shohamy, 2006: 33)

More specifically, according to Shohamy, ‘Linguists took the stand that language is a finite system with one solution, one formula and one way to be used, i.e. language purity’ (2006: 32). Neither Pennycook nor Shohamy offers any specific evidence for these claims. Pennycook’s reference to the ‘supposed relativism of the

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   19

notion of language’ may be an allusion to the egalitarian principle that has served as the guiding light of linguistic scholarship since the early 20th century. However, he does not tell us how linguists’ concept of language reflects a ‘model of totality’ such that it is ‘no different from the nineteenth-century concepts it replaced’ (Pennycook, 2004: 2), or why he thinks modern linguistics is commited to ‘hierarchies’ and ‘fixed languages’ such that ‘it carried with it many of the assumptions of the colonial collateral that brought about its emergence’ (2004: 3–4). These historical claims are empirical in nature, and should be demonstrated by clear evidence. Shohamy similarly offers vague associations and unsubstantiated assertions in lieu of evidence, charging that linguists went beyond the task of ‘describing languages’ to dictate ‘strict rules regarding how languages should be used,’ promoting dogmas about ‘language purity.’ Indeed, notions of hierarchy, fixed languages and language purity are utterly anathema to linguistics, whose practitioners have labored to refute linguistic prejudice and standard language ideology since the foundational work of Franz Boas (Alim, 2016; Baugh, 2018; Lippi-Green, 2012; Newmeyer, 1986). García et al. (2017), building contrast to motivate their ‘critical poststructuralist sociolinguistics,’ similarly paint sociolinguistics in a bad light: In the 1960s, in the context of the independence of many African and Asian countries and ethnic revival movements around the world, sociolinguistics became established as a scholarly field. Confronted with the multilingual realities of many postcolonial contexts and the clamoring of ethnolinguistic minorities, sociolinguists used nationstate language ideologies to develop positivist modernist approaches to the study of language and society. From this perspective, language was seen as a monolithic entity that was connected with a bounded territory, and language-minoritized populations within those places were often considered backward and in need of change. (García et al., 2017: 3)

More specifically, ‘Through what became known as corpus planning, sociolinguists contributed to nationalist attempts to purify languages of what were considered undesirable features.’ In so doing, ‘Sociolinguists aided governments and institutions to ensure that people in newly developed nation-states adopted a standard language that often represented the interests of the dominant group …’ (García et al., 2017: 3). García et al. (2017) anchor their broad criticism of sociolinguistics as a scholarly field to research carried out in the early history of language planning and policy (LPP), an interdisciplinary field comprising sociolinguists, anthropologists, philosophers, policymakers and legal scholars, among others. Ricento (2000) dates this period of LPP early scholarship to the 1960s. However, as McCarty (2013) notes, LPP has evolved over the last several decades to reflect a much more critical stance on language

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planning. McCarty contrasts ‘early approaches to LPP’ which were ‘largely technocratic and linear’ with a newer perspective which ‘critically interrogates the ideological, social-structural and historical bases of LPP, emphasizing the relationships among language, power, and inequality’ (McCarty, 2013: 39; also see May, 2014). As Ricento (2000) points out, even among early technocratic approaches to LPP there was criticism of attempts which aimed to achieve ‘results’ such as ‘clarity,’ ‘economy,’ ‘aesthetic form’ and ‘elasticity’ (Jernudd & Das Gupta, 1971, offering a critique of Tauli, 1968). (Also see Milroy & Milroy, 2012, on standardization in corpus planning.) Contemporaneous criticism of early LPP alleged that it tended to reinforce state power at the expense of non-dominant languages. As Ricento (2000: 198) noted: ‘the idealization of one nation/one (standard) national language, popularized in Europe beginning in the 1820s …, was the model which at least implicitly informed language planning in decolonized states in Africa, Asia and the Middle East’ during this period. Critics of this approach, some of whom identified with critical sociolinguistics – the second LPP era, in Ricento’s brief history of the field – faulted the technocratic and linear method, as well as the focus on ‘standard grammars’ in language standardization efforts, for undermining the status of non-dominant languages, contributing to standard language ideology. Finally, in the 1980s, a third period of LPP scholarship emerged alongside the critical sociolinguistic perspective, which sought to apply postmodernist critique to LPP, exemplified by Pennycook’s work in this field (Ricento, 2000). As one expects in any vibrant field, contemporary LPP evidences a plurality of approaches. While some LPP scholars are committed to postmodernist critiques of ‘named languages’ – the ‘post-(post-)modern “non-nominalizing” myth-makers,’ as Skutnabb-Kangas (2009) called them – others (e.g. Wiley, 1996, 1998; Wiley & Lukes, 1996) have used the critical lens of language ideology to illuminate inequality. Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) advocated the ‘ecology-of-language paradigm’ as an approach to LPP, which ‘involves building on linguistic diversity worldwide, promoting multilingualism and foreign language learning, and granting linguistic human rights to speakers of all languages’ (1996: 429). For McCarty, language policy is ‘a situated sociocultural process – the complex of practices, ideologies, attitudes and formal and informal mechanisms that influence language practices and futures in profound and everyday ways’ (McCarty, 2013: 40), what she calls a critical sociocultural approach to LPP. Furthering the discussion of language policy in this volume, Terrence Wiley (Chapter 10) criticizes postmodernist approaches to language rights, arguing that ‘the grand erasure’ of languages and multilingualism undermines progressive policies promoting bilingualism in the US and other contexts. Wiley emphasizes the utility of

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   21

language ideology as an analytical lens in promoting language rights. Wiley adds a wide-ranging review of the history of bilingual education policy in the US, anti-immigrant efforts accompanying languagerestrictionist policies, and racialization of language initially rooted in World War I xenophobia. The critical and ideological perspectives on language rights are consistent with the egalitarian perspective that emerged first in American structural linguistics, under the influence of Franz Boas and others, then under Chomsky, and later in sociolinguistics, which critically examined the ‘sacred distinctions’ of race and social class embodied in common prescriptivist language ideologies. Disciplinary fields – linguistics, sociolinguistics, LPP – are not monolithic, but move in directions shaped by their most influential researchers and theorists, and benefit from continual self-reflection; critical evaluation is as important for linguistics and its subfields as it is for anthropology, sociology, psychology and other fields, and linguists have actively engaged in such reflection (e.g. Charity Hudley et al., 2020). Regardless of how one views early language planning efforts in LPP, whatever may be true of a historically outdated perspective in a relatively small subfield of sociolinguistics does not imply that the same is true of the field as a whole, then or now. That is, it does not follow from the work of a handful of early LPP scholars engaged in language standardization efforts (Milroy & Milroy, 2012) that sociolinguists saw language ‘as a monolithic entity that was connected with a bounded territory, and language-minoritized populations within those places’ as ‘backward and in need of change’ (García et al., 2017: 4). Again, these notions have always been anathema to sociolinguistics as a field, and the suggestion that traditional empirically grounded sociolinguistics as a whole – or what García, Flores and Spotti call ‘modernist sociolinguistics’ – promotes ‘attempts to purify languages’ is an unfair affront to the many sociolinguists who have worked tirelessly for social justice (Baugh, 2018; Charity Hudley, 2013). The poststructuralist/postmodernist commitment to doubt, incredulity and relativism creates a strong challenge for language education researchers who wish to ask important research questions and offer illuminating answers deriving from empirical methods. For Derrida, deconstruction implied that meaning is undecidably ambiguous and unstable, defining the ‘relativist turn’ that emerged in the 1980s as the postmodern critique of the Enlightenment and empirical inquiry more broadly (Susen, 2015; Zuckert, 1991). By contrast, traditional researchers are committed to scientific realism, the generally accepted view that empirically grounded theories can be reasonable approximations of the real world (Chakravartty, 2017; Pylyshyn, 1984). Poststructuralists also saw deconstruction as political critique, as an approach to undermining the authority of science as a tool of oppression. For Derrida, deconstruction

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implied that there is no order or structure in nature, thus, ‘everything is open to manipulation, reconstitution, or re-form, including the human beings doing the reforming’ (Zuckert, 1991: 344). For Derrida, deconstruction served to delegitimize ideology by undermining any claims to truth or certainty. Ideology and the ideological use of science in social and educational policy have been central concerns among social justice-oriented scholars in applied linguistics and multilingualism across a wide spectrum of epistemological orientations. We next examine how deconstructivism fares as a tool for advancing social justice compared to empirically grounded approaches. Critical Perspectives in Multilingualism

Critical pedagogy has been an important component of translanguaging for many scholars. Indeed, in an analysis of 53 publications focused on translanguaging, appearing between 1996 and 2014, Poza (2017) found that 87% emphasized translanguaging as sociolinguistic critique or critical pedagogy. Jaspers (2017: 3) similarly noted that translanguaging ‘is suggested to result in new subjectivities, to give back voice, transform cognitive structures, raise well-being and attainment levels, and eventually to transform an unequal society into a more just world.’ While deconstructivism is seen as an important premise supporting this critical approach for many critically oriented scholars, it is not specifically dispatched by all, as Poza’s review notes. The origin of critical pedagogy is generally dated to the publication of Paulo Freire’s influential book Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970). Freire (1970) described the predominant model of education using banking as a metaphor: In the banking concept of education, knowledge is a gift bestowed by those who consider themselves knowledgeable upon those whom they consider to know nothing. Projecting an absolute ignorance onto others, a characteristic of the ideology of oppression, negates education and knowledge as processes of inquiry. (Freire, 1970: 72)

Freire’s approach inspired a wide range of critical voices whose work viewed schooling as an institutional mechanism of oppression and class reproduction. As McLaren (1998: 162) elaborated: ‘Critical pedagogy is founded on the conviction that schooling for self and social empowerment is ethically prior to a mastery of technical skills, which are primarily tied to the logic of marketplace ...’. Furthermore, it ‘has sharply defined the political dimensions of schooling, arguing that schools operate mainly to reproduce the values and privileges of existing elites’ (1998: 163). For Freire, critical consciousness is the ability to read the world,

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   23

not just the word (Freire & Macedo, 1987); it implies a self-awareness of oppression, and an engagement in the struggle for social justice by teachers and students, toward ‘a humanizing pedagogy’ (Freire, 1970: 68). Even as postmodernist voices began to engage in the expanding new literature in critical pedagogy, Freire steadfastly opposed the relativist escape (Roberts, 2003). As McLaren and da Silva (1993) observed: Freire could be charged with positing reality as relational, but this is hardly the same thing as labelling him as a relativist. The distinction is worth emphasizing. Freire does not consider all ideas to be of equal merit, but rather argues that they must be understood contextually as historically and culturally informed discourses that are subject to the mediation of the forces of material and symbolic production ... (McLaren & da Silva, 1993: 54)

Freire’s approach did not challenge whether truth is possible, but engaged in the analysis of ideology used to support the indoctrination of the oppressed; Freire’s approach points out deceit, which presupposes the possibility of truth. Criticalists often express concern about positivism, sometimes positioning it as a staple of scientific realism. As noted, as a companion of behaviorism in the study of language and cognition, (logical) positivism insisted on verificationism, the idea that only propositions that could be verified through the senses were meaningful, ruling out talk of unobservable ‘mental’ states. Chomsky’s (1959) trenchant refutation of behaviorism also largely purged verificationism from the cognitive sciences. But positivism of a different ilk persists today, and that is the sense of positivism that is the scorn of criticalists. Positivism, in this sense, refers to the ideological use of science to oppress and to avoid critique, sometimes by arbitrarily attempting to narrow the scope of acceptable research methods or neglecting critical elements of the social and historical context in social science research (Adams St Pierre, 2002; Berliner, 2002; Feuer et al., 2002; Leistyna, 1998; Macedo, 2000). As Freire (1985) succinctly observed: Those who use cultural action as a strategy for maintaining their domination over the people have no choice but to indoctrinate the people in a mythified version of reality. In doing so, the right subordinates science and technology to its own ideology, using them to disseminate information and prescriptions in its effort to adjust the people to the reality the ‘communications’ media define as proper. By contrast, for those who undertake cultural action for freedom, science is the indispensable instrument for denouncing the mythos created by the right, and philosophy is the matrix of the proclamation of a new reality. Science and philosophy together provide the principles of action for conscientization. Cultural action for conscientization is always a utopian enterprise. (Freire, 1985: 86)

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Criticalists like Freire endorse science (or empirical research, more broadly) and the reasoned search for truth, and see these as critical tools for exposing and denouncing folk theories and pseudoscience in the service of oppressive ideologies (Macedo, 2000). By contrast, the ‘new postmodernist relativism’ asks not ‘How can we eliminate suffering?’ but rather ‘What is suffering?’ (McLaren & Hammer, 1989: 33), using deconstruction as a strategy to undermine not only the pseudoscience of oppression but also the science which undergirds ‘the principles of action for conscientization.’ A number of scholars have focused on the specific relevance of Freire’s work to bilingual education. For example, Akkari (1998) used Freirean critical pedagogy as a lens to evaluate approaches to bilingual education, distinguishing between ‘instrumental bilingualism’ and ‘liberatory bilingualism’ to recommend ‘critical bilingual education’: Influenced by the powerful legacy of Freire (1970), we view bilingualism not as an instrumental skill but rather as a cultural tool that can be used for learning and living together, for writing our own histories, and for sharing solidarity. In Freire’s view of education, learning is not an individual objective for dispossessed people, but empowering through social change and accomplished with unity and shared power. (Akkari, 1998: 120)

Bartolomé (2000) similarly addresses the need for critical bilingual teacher preparation; drawing on Freire and other critical scholars, Bartolomé argues that: Prospective and current teachers must begin to develop the ideological and political clarity that will guide them in denouncing a discriminatory school and social context so as to protect and advocate for their students. In addition, this clarity will also serve to help them move beyond the present and announce a utopian future in which social justice and a humanizing pedagogy are always present in our classrooms. (Bartolomé, 2000: 183)

Macedo and Bartolomé (2014) present a critique of some approaches to multicultural education more broadly which focus on the teaching of tolerance and ignore ‘the importance of language in the construction of human subjectivities’ (2014: 25). While the multicultural education literature ‘correctly stresses the need to valorize and appreciate cultural differences as a process for students to come to voice, the underlying assumption is that the celebration of other cultures will take place in English only, a language that may provide students from minority linguistic and cultural backgrounds with the experience of subordination’ (Macedo & Bartolomé, 2014: 25). Macedo and Bartolomé draw on critical pedagogy and critical multiculturalism, with a focus on

Introduction: Deconstructivism – A Reader’s Guide   25

democratization through bilingual and multicultural education to create a ‘utopian pedagogy,’ in Freire’s sense. More recently, Palmer et al. (2019) proposed to expand the widely accepted goals of two-way dual language (TWDL) education to include Freirean critical consciousness, which involves continuously interrogating power, historicizing schools and educational policy contexts, critical listening, and a willingness to create discomfort. These elements contribute to the enactment of a humanizing pedagogy: Engaging in humanizing pedagogies in TWDL bilingual programs supports moving these elements of critical consciousness into action (and vice versa). It means learning the words to describe the inequities around us and taking up opportunities to challenge them. (Palmer et al., 2019: 8)

Language education scholars have also engaged in focused critique of standard language ideology, the view that a ‘standard language,’ generally the language of social and economic elites, should be imposed on other members of society whose language or language variety has less social prestige or is stigmatized (Lippi-Green, 2012; MacSwan, 2018; Milroy, 2001; Wiley & Lukes, 1996). While views supporting standard language ideology often come from outside the field of language education, there has also been considerable field-internal criticism of theoretical approaches which draw on prescriptivist dogma to characterize the learning needs of bilingual students at school. Dichotomous views of language, which pit social against academic language, have been the subject of strong criticism among many researchers (e.g. Edelsky et al., 1983; Faltis, 2013; Gee, 2014; MacSwan, 2000, 2018; MacSwan & McLaren, 1999; MacSwan & Rolstad, 2003, 2006, 2010; MacSwan, et al., 2017; Martin-Jones & Romaine, 1986; Rolstad, 2014; Rolstad et al., 2000; Wiley, 2005; Wiley & Rolstad, 2014) who see language and literacy as socially situated, and who view language used in all settings as social (Heath, 1983; Scribner & Cole, 1981) and contextualized (Gee, 1986, 2014). These approaches affirm and draw out communityand home-based knowledge, culture and language, permitting inclusive approaches aimed at sustaining cultural and linguistic diversity (Lopéz, 2017, 2018; MacSwan, 2018; Paris & Alim, 2017). In Chapter 12 of the present volume, Christian Faltis applies the lens of what he calls eugenics-based language ideologies to analyze the role of racism and language ideology in language teacher education. Faltis recasts the critique of standard language ideology as the critique of eugenics-based language ideologies, the tacit belief among teachers that effective and logical language and racially marked language varieties do not mix. Faltis likens these language ideologies to eugenicist beliefs about intelligence and race, and advocates a ‘race radical

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multilingual vision of resistance’ to support bilingualism in schools. Flores and Rosa (2015) apply a raciolinguistics lens (Alim, 2016) to the analysis of academic language, arguing that academic language inscribes white values and privilege contrasting with the every day language practices of communities of color. Faltis draws on this important work to repudiate doctrines of ‘perfect language’ which challenge a wide range of stigmatized language varieties, including Black, Chicano, Asian Englishes and Indigenous languages, as well as codeswitching among them. These issues are also discussed in the present volume by Wiley (Chapter 10) and May (Afterword). Like many others who have sought to combat standard language ideology in school, the poststructuralist critique of ‘named languages’ similarly sought to undermine the notions of ‘real Spanish’ and ‘real English,’ as such ideas excluded stigmatized or less socially prestigious varieties by definition. However, I have argued here that the erasure of language communities is unlikely to solve such problems, because dispensing with the idea of named languages and affirming only idiolects (or individual language varieties) as García and colleagues (García & Otheguy, 2014; García et al., 2017; Otheguy et al., 2015) have urged, means that the concept of linguistic community, whatever its social prestige, is also erased. In support of their proposed ‘critical poststructuralist sociolinguistics,’ García et al. (2017) express concern about sociolinguists’ focus on language differences, alleging that: the reification of these differences was used to legitimize the stigmatization of what were considered ‘inferior’ languages and cultures. … The result was that the early efforts of sociolinguists to improve societal conditions failed because they were describing imagined contexts where language and culture were independent wholes and could coexist in a diglossic arrangement. (García et al., 2017: 4)

By contrast, ‘[c]ritical poststructuralist sociolinguistics disrupts the past of sociolinguistics by questioning the ontological status of language …’ (2017: 5). More concretely, we might ask whether the poststructuralist/postmodernist deconstruction of language – the denial that discrete speech communities exist – is a better strategy for achieving social justice than the linguistic and sociolinguistic approach of challenging standard language ideology using empirical inquiry to expose such ideologies – as Freire (1985: 57) put it, ‘the indispensable instrument for denouncing the mythos created by the right.’ Let us consider the effects of the sociolinguistic approach and the likely effect of the deconstructivist approach in some actual historical cases involving language rights in the US context.

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Language and advocacy: Three examples The Ann Arbor Decision

In July 1979, a federal suit filed in the Eastern District Court in the state of Michigan provided a significant legal precedent for the determination of school districts’ legal and educational responsibilities with regard to the particular issue of AAE in public schools. Commonly known as the Ann Arbor Decision, the final disposition was formally known as Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District Board. Judge Charles W. Joiner found in favor of the plaintiff’s claim that the Ann Arbor School District had violated federal statutory law because it failed to take into account the home language variety, AAE, of the children enrolled in the district. The judge ordered the school district to identify AAE speakers in the schools and to use that knowledge in teaching them school content, a tremendous victory for advocates of AAE-speaking children and families. The case was rooted in the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) of 1974, which had essentially codified Lau v. Nichols (1974), a case in which the Supreme Court unanimously found that a ‘disparate impact’ occurred when a San Francisco school district failed to provide for the language barriers facing school-age second language learners, a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In court, William Labov and J.L. Dillard, among others, organized by Geneva Smitherman, discussed the phonological and syntactic characteristics of Black English, in addition to educational barriers confronted by African American children, ‘the most damaging of which is the tendency of teachers to make such speakers ashamed of their native dialect by teaching standard English without recognizing that the child uses a dialect acceptable to his linguistic community,’ as reported by Bountress (1982: 79–80). Suppose the scholarly community had believed that African Americans did not form a speech community, and could not be identified as a group who were disadvantaged because their language differed in significant ways from the dominant community language. Applying a deconstructivist approach, there would be no basis in that case for arguing on the children’s or their community’s behalf. Questioning the ontological status of AAE would have undermined the Ann Arbor Decision, a critically important legal decision supporting the language rights of African Americans in the US. By contrast, the linguistic approach used by William Labov, J.L. Dillard and others sought to understand the specific linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics of AAE as a stigmatized speech community, and to make the case that the underlying system functions as a distinct language – similar to the dominant variety of English but significantly different in a structured and meaningful way. This approach permitted

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them as linguists and sociolinguists to illuminate ‘disparate impact’ as it affects specific groups like African Americans in the US. Housing discrimination

In the greatest wave of social unrest since the Civil War, riots broke out across the United States in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr in 1968. The social unrest provided political capital for President Lyndon B. Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1968, Titles VIII through IX of which are known as the Fair Housing Act (FHA). The FHA prohibited the refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person based on race, color, religion or national origin. Twenty-two states have passed laws extending the provisions of the FHA to sexual orientation and gender identity. Sociolinguist John Baugh pioneered the field of linguistic profiling, the practice of identifying the social and racial characteristics of an individual based on auditory cues evident in dialect and accent. Baugh’s initial research focused on housing discrimination against African Americans and Chicanos who called advertisers to inquire about the availability of apartments for rent. Baugh’s experiments compared callers’ use of AAE, Chicano and SAE accents to show patterns of linguistic discrimination. His interest had been sparked when, as a young African American assistant professor at Stanford University, he received positive responses on the telephone when he used a formal academic register, only to find that apartments were suddenly unavailable when he showed up in person to see them. In groundbreaking work, linguists Purnell, Idsardi and Baugh (1999) conducted four experiments to show that housing discrimination based on telephone conversations alone occurred as landlords identified a speaker’s dialect based only on the phonetic correlates in the word hello. The discrimination was directed against speakers of AAE and Chicano English. The research led the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) to examine suspected cases of housing discrimination linked to aural cues with some success, and led to a number of successful enforcement efforts through the NFHA and the court system. Without a concept of AAE and Chicano English as discrete language varieties with distinguishable phonologies, it would be impossible to argue cases of discrimination in housing or in other matters. No law prevents discrimination based on a personal reaction to a voice, unless the voice is a proxy for race or other protected categories. Taken seriously, the idea that discrete speech communities do not exist in this sense prevents us from making a case for the civil rights of speakers who are members of stigmatized speech communities. However, the focused and rigorous research of Baugh and his colleagues, which crucially relies on the concept of a speech community, generated findings which effectively

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permitted advocates to defend the civil rights of Chicanos and African Americans in the US. The Arizona language wars

Educational programs available to bilingual students in Arizona were significantly changed in 2000 when Proposition 203 ended bilingual education in the state. Bilingual education is a program in which children who do not speak English are taught bilingually, combining in various ways the home language and English. Talk of bilingual programs entails the existence of discrete languages, frequently English and Spanish in the US. If we take seriously the proposition that discrete languages do not exist, and multilingualism does not exist – as the deconstructivists would have us believe (García & Otheguy, 2014; García et al., 2017; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Otheguy et al., 2015) – then we cannot meaningfully advocate for children to have access to instruction in their home language (May, 2018). However, in Arizona, a number of scholars conducted research specifically designed to inform language education policy, and hence language rights. For instance, in MacSwan and Pray (2005), we studied rate of acquisition of English for Spanish-speaking children (N = 89) enrolled in bilingual programs prior to the passage of Proposition 203, and found that they achieved linguistic parity with native English speakers in a range of from 1 to 6.5 years and in an average of 3.31 years, providing evidence against the claim of English-only advocates that children enrolled in bilingual programs fail to learn English in a reasonable timeframe. In a meta-analysis of studies specifically focused on Arizona – a subset of studies examined in Rolstad, Mahoney and Glass (2005a) – Rolstad, Mahoney and Glass (2005b) showed that access to home language support provided learning advantages for children learning English. Many other studies were conducted by researchers specifically designed to inform language education policy in Arizona and advance the interests of bilingual learners (e.g. Mahoney et al., 2004; Mahoney et al., 2005; Rolstad et al., 2012; Thompson et al., 2002; and contributions to Faltis & Arias, 2012 and Moore, 2014). Twenty years later, the steady flow of program evaluation research in Arizona has put the state’s Republican-controlled legislature on the cusp of repealing the English-only instruction law. Representative John Fillmore, a Republican lawmaker, introduced legislation to repeal the law. Although Representative Fillmore’s proposed legislation has not yet become law, it has been approved by committees in both chambers with broad support, and was endorsed by the Arizona Department of Education. Taking the deconstructivist thesis seriously, which ‘calls into question the very idea of multilingualism’ (García et al., 2017: 8), advocacy on behalf of these students would make no sense; where there is no

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multilingualism, there is no evaluative research comparing bilingual to English-only instruction. Deconstructivism and social justice

In each of these actual cases, empirically oriented scholarship unaffected by the deconstructivist thesis generated critical resources for social justice advocacy. Sociolinguists serving as expert witnesses under the leadership of Geneva Smitherman helped to persuade Judge Joiner to find that the Ann Arbor School District had violated federal law because it did not take children’s home language variety, AAE, into account, a major victory for Ann Arbor AAE-speaking children and families. Years later, John Baugh’s research team showed that landlords continued to engage in housing discrimination through linguistic profiling against AAE and Chicano English speakers, leading the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide greater enforcement on housing discrimination. In Arizona, as elsewhere, scholars labored rigorously to compare bilingual to monolingual approaches and consistently found that bilingual teaching was more effective than the English-only approach, which led to curtailing regressive policies and building a foundation upon which the Republican-controlled Arizona state legislature would consider repealing the English-only instruction law. Calling attention to language differences in these cases did not ‘legitimize the stigmatization of what were considered “inferior” languages and cultures’ (García et al., 2017: 4) but, rather, led to improved conditions for linguistically diverse children and communities (Baugh, 2018; Charity Hudley, 2013). By contrast, if we take deconstructivism seriously, as its proponents intend, then the effective advocacy illustrated in these examples would be impossible. As Pennycook (2006: 67) himself noted: ‘The very notion that ... we can decide to have one, two, three, five or eleven languages in a language policy becomes highly questionable,’ suggesting that ‘languages cannot in fact be planned ... since there is ultimately no good reason to continue to posit their existence.’ Claims about the non-existence of discrete languages and community-based language varieties would be seen as transparently false to courts, regulatory agencies, lawmakers and the general public, and researchers who truly accept the deconstructivist thesis could not meaningfully advocate for marginalized speech communities. As Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (2017: 10–11) observe, some scholars ‘working in the area of language policy with postmodernist leanings have challenged even the basic concept “language,” whereas in national and international law the concept is self-evident and problemfree.’ As they note, the challenge this presents for advocacy is obvious: ‘in legal documents on language rights these rights cannot be attached to non-existing entities.’

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These concerns are not limited to postmodernist language education scholars, but apply to postmodernist approaches to social justice advocacy generally. As Zuckert (1991: 356) noted, Derrida’s ‘radical uncertainty has a debilitating effect on political action’. In the more narrow domain of critical pedagogy, as McLaren and Farahmandpur (1999: 89) observed, ‘postmodernism has failed to develop alternative democratic social models’ due to its failure to offer a ‘coherent opposition politics against economic exploitation, political oppression, and cultural hegemony’. A more effective approach to challenging oppressive ideology, as suggested by Freire (1985), involves the use of science as ‘the indispensable instrument for denouncing the mythos created by the right’ (1985: 86). Conclusions

The deconstructivist thesis, premised on postmodernist/poststructuralist epistemological convictions, denies the existence of discrete language communities. Taken seriously, this idea not only threatens a wide range of empirical research on bilingualism and language education, but it also severely weakens our ability to advocate for linguistically diverse communities. While some varieties of translanguaging are committed to the ‘new epistemologies’ of deconstruction, others are not. The original presentations of translanguaging described it as an umbrella term, capturing a wide range of language mixing phenomena – accepting and usefully incorporating linguistic and sociolinguistic research. This early version of translanguaging, later dubbed a multilingual perspective (MacSwan, 2017), avoids these concerns by accepting language diversity as psycholinguistically real and socially significant, drawing on empirically informed theories of language and society to challenge prevailing language ideologies which oppress and disadvantage linguistically diverse communities. These themes are explored in greater depth in the chapters which follow. Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Kellie Rolstad and Stephen May for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter, some portions of which were previously published in MacSwan (2017, 2020); and to Terrence G. Wiley for much fruitful discussion of these ideas. Thanks, too, to Katie Glanbock and Melissa Shelby Davis, who assisted with editing. Note (1) Labov refered to AAE (African American English) as AAVE, or African American Vernacular English. See Green (2002) and Wolfram and Thomas (2002) for discussion.

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Part 1: Inter-speaker Language Variation

2 Multi-competence and Translanguaging Vivian Cook

A group of people working on a film are conversing round a dinner table in English, Spanish, French and German – a scene from Robert Le Page’s Lipsynch in the five-hour stage version in Newcastle upon Tyne in 2007. For the audience’s convenience, English supertitles run across the stage when necessary. Several languages are being used as part of modern life, without any comment. Both multi-competence and translanguaging start from the very ordinariness of multilingual use: multilingualism is taken for granted in much of the contemporary world and monolinguals are now arguably in the minority. Yet we still have difficulty in reconciling the idea of separate languages with how they interweave around the dinner table. This chapter is concerned with how languages interact with each other within the multi-competence and translanguaging approaches. It raises stubborn problems about the nature of language that have refused to go away despite centuries of arguments among linguists, philosophers and psychologists. The discussion here picks a path through a minefield of unresolved disputes and controversies, using a sketch-map based on linguistics and second language acquisition (SLA) research. Dimensions of Language

People often take language to be a primitive term like word or noun that requires no explanation. But the word language is not so much a precise scientific term as a chameleon that changes to suit its surroundings. De Saussure once remarked: ‘D’autres sciences opèrent sur des objets donnés d’avance et qu’on peut considérer ensuite à différents points de vue; dans notre domaine, rien de semblable’ (Saussure, 1916/1976: 23) (trans. 1959: 8: ‘Other sciences work with objects that are given in advance and that can then be considered from different viewpoints; our field does nothing like this’). Language has been deconstructed in different ways over the years, whether langue, langage and parole (de Saussure 1916/1976), 45

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I-language and E-language (Chomsky 1986), communicative competence (Hymes, 1971), or many more. My first attempt to make sense of this yielded six distinct meanings of language, labelled Lang1-Lang6 (Cook, 2007), given for reference purposes in Box 2.1. I argued that any discussion of language should state explicitly which of these meanings is being used, to prevent misinterpretation and confusion. For example, the undignified squabbling between generativists and emergentists largely reduces to ‘My definition of language is better than yours.’ Box 2.1  Meanings of language (Cook, 2007, 2010)

Lang1: a representation system known by human beings – ‘human language’ Lang2: an abstract entity – ‘the English language’ Lang3: a set of sentences – everything that has or could be said – ‘the language of the Bible’ Lang4: the possession of a community – ‘the language of French people’ Lang5: the knowledge in the mind of an individual – ‘I have learned French as a foreign language for eight years’ Lang6: a form of action – ‘I sentence you to twenty years imprisonment’

This chapter reconceptualizes the meanings of language as four dimensions, given in Box 2.2. These are similar to what Harvey (2015: 4) calls ‘contradictions’, which may lead to innovation but also ‘have the nasty habit of not being resolved but merely moved around’. Box 2.2  Dimensions of meaning for language

external/internal: language as an objective object in the external world versus language as an internal system in the human mind individual/shared: language in an individual versus language in a community countable/uncountable: language as a general human property versus the ‘named’ languages of the world integrated/separate: languages in isolation in the same community or mind versus languages entwined with each other

The external/internal dimension (roughly Lang2 versus Lang5) is language as an objective object in the external world versus language as an internal system in the human mind, more or less Chomsky’s E-language and I-language (Chomsky, 1986: 20). At one end, external language is an institutionalized abstraction – ‘the English language’

Multi-competence and Translanguaging  47

or ‘the Chinese language’ – a creation of the human mind that stands outside any individual and is captured in dictionaries and grammar books like The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (2009) and A Grammar Of Contemporary English (Quirk et al., 1972), called ‘named languages’ in the discussion of translanguaging (Otheguy et al., 2015). The countries of 19th-century Europe established their identities by adopting national flags, national anthems and national external languages (Anderson, 1983). However, languages named after a country are in a minority: the 193 countries in the United Nations after all speak 7,097 languages (Simons & Fennig, 2018). Twelve super-central languages including French, Arabic and Spanish are spoken in many countries and the one and only hypercentral language, English, is used almost everywhere (De Swaan, 2001); many central or peripheral languages like Yenish, Kurdish or Swahili have no clear political homeland. At the other end, ‘a language is a state of the faculty of language, an I-language, in technical usage’ (Chomsky, 2005: 2). I-language is knowledge represented internally in people’s minds. Hence it is invisible and inaudible: a monk with a vow of silence or Harpo Marx are still speakers of a language even if they never speak. Any linguistic theory or language acquisition model has to reconcile the external visible language called English with the internal invisible language that people have in their minds, also referred to as English: ‘although languages are thus the work of nations … they still remain the self-creations of individuals’ (Humboldt, 1836/1999: 44). This applies both to whether the past tense system in the mind of an English speaker corresponds to a teacher’s description of the English past tense, and to whether a meal cooked by Ofelia García is part of Cuban cuisine (Otheguy et al., 2015). The second individual/shared dimension of meaning is language in an individual versus language in a community (roughly Lang5 versus Lang4). Individual language is what one person knows; shared language is common to a community of people interacting with each other by speaking, writing or signing, for all the diverse functions of language. Grammar books and dictionaries eliminate variations in favor of the ‘standard’ form, disregarding, say, the distinction between singular you and plural youse or the meanings of stotty and canny found in Newcastle. A third dimension of meaning for language is countable/uncountable (roughly Lang1 versus Lang4). Here, at one end language is an uncountable abstraction that defines the human species. At the other end, countable languages reflect the sheer quantity and complexity of languages in the world. The general uncountable idea of language as a human possession is opposed to the many countable languages that people actually speak. Second language (L2) users have already learned how language functions through their first language: they have learned how to mean

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(Halliday, 1975), perhaps the only inescapable difference between first and sequential second language acquisition. But they also need to distinguish what is general about all languages from what is specific to their own first language: L2 learners have to separate uncountable language from a particular countable language. For instance, when the first writing system you have learned is alphabet-based, you may be shocked to learn that Chinese writing does not consist of letters that relate to sounds: writing system is a variable, not a universal. The fourth integrated/separate dimension (not in Cook, 2007/2010 as such) concerns how multiple languages relate to each other in the same community or mind, that is to say, it involves more than one language; this provides the rationale for second language acquisition (SLA) research being a separate discipline from first language acquisition research. Changing Weinreich’s (1953) polar distinction between compound and coordinate bilingualism to a varying dimension allows for possibilities in between the idealized poles, whether for individuals, for communities, for changing roles or for different areas of language. These four dimensions of meaning for language are in principle distinct, even if they overlap in practice: an external language is not the same as internal knowledge, just as an apple is not the same as our mental representation of ‘apple’; the internal knowledge of ‘English’ in my mind is not the same as the ‘English’ language spoken by billions of people nor that recorded in the OED. The languages that SLA and bilingualism research deal with are living systems in minds and communities used for the diverse purposes of human beings, varying from moment to moment to fit the demands of the situation. The present chapter concentrates on the internal, individual, countable and integrated ends of these dimensions. Multi-competence

Multi-competence is defined as ‘the overall system of a mind or a community that uses more than one language’ (Cook, 2016: 3); it is summed up in the three premises given in Box 2.3. Box 2.3  Multi-competence premises (Cook, 2016: 7–19)

Premise 1: multi-competence concerns the total system for all languages (L1, L2, LN) in a single mind or community and their inter-relationships. Premise 2: multi-competence does not depend on the monolingual native speaker. Premise 3: multi-competence affects the whole mind, i.e. all language and cognitive systems, rather than language alone.

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Premise 1 states: ‘multi-competence concerns the total system for all languages (L1, L2, LN) in a single mind or community and their interrelationships’. This combines the idea of an overall system with that of two or more languages. A person does not have separate systems for L1 and L2 but a single system that connects the languages together: one language may be more or less activated than the other according to the moment-to-moment demands on the speaker; but all the languages are always present in the system in some way. A street in England may include signs in one language fáiLte or another Welcome, and bilingual signs like Image Studio Polski Fryzjer, but each has a place in the total system (Cook, 2022). A bilingual Chinese restaurant sign in England means one thing to the Chinese user, another to the monolingual English passer-by. Multi-competence treats the language system of the L2 user as a whole. The different components that make it up are faute de mieux called by the names of external languages – English, Chinese, etc. But these are not to be identified with the external languages that have the same names, described in grammars and dictionaries. As a system, they interact with each other through cross-linguistic influence in which one affects the other, through attrition and aphasia in which one’s role in the system diminishes, and through codeswitching in which both combine in producing sentences. Many sources of evidence support an overall system consisting of all the languages a person knows rather than separate systems. L1 English users who have learned L2 Korean change their English pronunciation slightly after only six weeks of instruction (Chang, 2011). L2 users process the word order in their first language differently from monolingual natives (Cook et al., 2003). L2 English affects the meaning of causal verbs in L1 Russian (Wolff & Ventura, 2009). It is not possible to turn one language off when using another. For example, L2 users identifying objects in one language are influenced by objects that have similar names in the other language (Spivey & Marian, 1999, 2003); L2 users of English and French activate both the French and English meanings of a word whichever language they are using (Beauvillain & Grainger, 1987). For the most part this overall system is said to produce benefits for the L2 user and its possible handicaps are less stressed – say slower L1 reaction times in bilinguals: ‘The very fact of having available more than one response to the same stimulus may lead to slower reaction times unless the two response systems are hermetically isolated from each other’ (Magiste, 1986: 118). In other words, the use of a second language does not add a parallel system to the first but produces a more complicated total system. The third premise of multi-competence is: ‘multi-competence affects the whole mind, i.e. all language and cognitive systems, rather than language alone’. By seeing the language system in the context of the whole mind, it thus claims that language affects thinking, a version of linguistic relativity. The effects of knowing more than one language

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on thinking have been widely confirmed (Cook & Bassetti, 2011). For example, the longer the period Japanese people spend in England, the more they adopt the English categorization of objects by shape rather than the Japanese categorization by material (Cook et al., 2006). Highly proficient L2 Polish/English users notice aspects of motion differently from native speakers of both L1 and L2 (Czechowska & Ewert, 2011). However, most bilingual cognition research has dealt with the effects of semantics on language; the distinctive effects of syntax such as word order or of the lexicon such as association and collocation are still comparatively untested, other than referential meaning (Cook, 2010). Going further afield, L2 users are more creative with maths problems (Leikin, 2012), have better short-term memories (Ljungberg et al., 2013) and have delayed onset of Alzheimer’s Disease (Schweizer et al., 2012). The entire cognitive system of L2 users is subtly different from that of monolinguals, not only language, though of course there are inevitable dangers in generalizing from the specific limited research that has been carried out. Learning another language has knock-on effects on other cognitive skills; it is not just that the languages are related to each other but also that they are related to the rest of the L2 user’s mind. Changes in bilingual brains have also been discovered in neurolinguistic studies. Differences in brain structures have been found in bilingual babies (Petitto et al., 2011), in first-year students of French at a US university (Osterhout et al., 2008) and in people who have had one hour 48 minutes of instruction (Kwok et al., 2011). More long-term effects have been found in the brains of language teachers (Coggins et al., 2004) and in 10-year-old multilingual children (Della Rosa et al., 2013). Increased amounts of white matter are seen in the brains of L2 learners, both old and young (Pliatsikas et al., 2015). Elements of the brain are altered by second language acquisition: the system changes physically as well as mentally. As Blackburn (2018: 125) puts it: ‘bilingualism confers cognitive advantages, in part, by strengthening the functional and structural connectivity across widely distributed networks’. However, this may be looking at bilingualism from the wrong direction; in a world where it is probably more common to be an L2 user than a monolingual, so-called bilingual benefits should perhaps be seen in reverse as monolingual deficits: it is monolingual bias that makes us see the question in terms of adding to monolingualism rather than failing to reach the multilingual state potentially available to everyone (Cook, 2016). The relationships between the languages in the mind have been conceptualized in terms of the integration continuum seen in Figure 2.1. At one end of the continuum, the two languages are entirely distinct; at the other, they are completely integrated. MacSwan (2017: 180) expresses basically the same diagram as three distinct models rather than as a continuum, while the version in García and Li (2014: 14) labels separation ‘traditional bilingualism’, interconnection ‘linguistic

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Figure 2.1  The integration continuum (Cook, 2003, 2016)

interdependence’ and integration ‘dynamic bilingualism’. In the multicompetence perspective, the place on the continuum potentially varies for different individuals, for different stages of language acquisition, for different aspects of language such as grammar or phonology, for different types of learning situation such as the home versus the classroom and for the demands of bilingual and monolingual modes (Grosjean, 1998): essentially there are multiple continua. The integration continuum thus allows for individuals who separate the languages – compound bilinguals – and for areas of language such as phonology or the lexicon that may be at different points on the continuum in some circumstances. So the integration continuum is highly flexible, not a rigid permanent state. Translanguaging

Translanguaging has developed from talking about using languages in the classroom to a ‘theory of language’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 284), as seen in the quotations in Box 2.4. It relies on traditions of sociolinguistics, Box 2.4  Definitions of translanguaging

… translanguaging means that you receive information through the medium of one language (e.g. English) and use it yourself through the medium of the other language (e.g. Welsh). Before you can use that information successfully, you must have fully understood it (Williams, 1996: 64). … the dynamic process whereby multilingual language users mediate complex social and cognitive activities through strategic employment of multiple semiotic resources to act, to know and to be (García & Li, 2014) … using one’s idiolect, that is, one’s linguistic repertoire, without regard for socially and politically defined labels or boundaries (Otheguy et al., 2015: 297)

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education and bilingual research and activism, whereas multi-competence draws on SLA research, linguistics and psychology. Translanguaging recognizes the tension between external and internal languages by insisting that the languages found in the mind are not the same as the abstractions called the Chinese language, the French language, and so forth: The two named languages of the bilingual exist only in the outsider’s view. From the insider’s perspective of the speaker, there is only his or her full idiolect or repertoire, which belongs only to the speaker, not to any named language. (Otheguy et al., 2015: 281)

Codeswitching between languages is not a property inherent in the utterance itself but is a product of the observer’s knowledge of external languages, according to Otheguy and colleagues. Like multi-competence, translanguaging sees the L2 user’s languages and cognitive processes as a whole. Accepting that utterances are produced by a single overall system means abandoning the idea of switching between two languages: we have instead to talk of activating different parts of one complex system, the L2 user’s multi-competence. Switching from speaking the L1 to speaking the L2 may not be taking one grammar off-line and replacing it with another, but weighting the parts of one overall system, i.e. ‘wholistic’ multi-competence. (Cook, 1991)

Echoed by De Bot: If there is only one merged system, and the speaker uses those elements that are associated with the setting, there is no switching in the proper sense ... (De Bot, 2016: 135)

Codeswitching in this view means changing the weighting of different elements in the system, not switching between two external languages, a process of balance within the system rather than choosing between two distinct entities. Though these elements may be labelled English, French, etc., this does not make them identical to the external languages of the same names, as translanguaging seems to assume. A dynamic system is constantly in a state of flux (De Bot, 2016). This is in the tradition of MacSwan (2000), where it is couched in terms of the lexical parameters of the Minimalist Program: … a bilingual may be assumed to have a unitary system of syntactic operations responsible for mapping the numeration to LF (the computation N → λ). However, because each lexicon must have distinct internal operations for forming morphologically complex lexical items (like walked and caminó ‘he walked’), it appears reasonable to assume that

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bilinguals have distinct lexicons, each with their own internal morphological principles of word formation. Because the computation N → λ does not need to discriminate among lexicons, the operation Select may draw items from either lexicon and introduce them into the derivation where they will be checked for convergence. (MacSwan, 2000: 51–52)

A language system in the mind is continuously working in two senses: the ‘decoding’ process through which it is producing and comprehending texts, like broadband connecting a computer to the internet; and the ‘codebreaking’ process through which it establishes and maintains itself, like engineers installing and maintaining the network (Cook, 1971). Changes in a language system thus involve not only how it actively comprehends and produces utterances, but also how it simultaneously develops and renews itself in homeostasis, a constant movement along the integration continua in one direction or the other. Codeswitching is thus a decoding use of the system to produce utterances on the fly, while translation in the classroom is a codebreaking process of acquisition. The processes that shape the language system in the mind are arguably different from the processes used to produce speech. Arguments about decoding, i.e. language use, are not necessarily arguments about codebreaking, i.e. language learning; a system for creating utterances is not necessarily the same as a system for acquiring language. It is possible to learn a language effectively through grammar– translation, as vast numbers of European university graduates showed throughout the 20th century. That is to say, translanguaging as a target behavior outside the classroom does not logically entail translanguaging in the classroom. Switching

To some extent this hinges on the time-scale for changing between languages. The core activities of translanguaging are presumably those that involve using both languages simultaneously, say, the parallel processing of British Sign Language and written English at the same time, an everyday activity for many signers. Others are simultaneous interpreting at conferences, sports commentaries etc.: a legendary radio operator heard one language in Morse Code and transmitted a Morse translation in another. And, at a trivial level, there are puns like shop names such as Cellar d’Or or the byline of a TV sports commentator Juan and Only that require both languages at once to make sense. Most other activities involve switching from one language to another rather than using them simultaneously. Codeswitching research has mostly been interested in the point when the switch goes from one language to another. But it is also possible to consider how long a stretch is in one language before a switch occurs, i.e. run-length (Dechert et al., 1984),

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measured in phonological or syntactic terms. Some stretches in one language may last a second or so, say, for words. The runs for word phrases, intrasentential switches, topics, social roles, etc., may last for minutes, the switches in alternating approaches to language teaching for hours or days. For instance, I taught summer courses for French teachers of English and English teachers of French in which the two languages alternated from one day to the next for all the teaching and social activities for students and staff, a technique called reciprocal language teaching (Cook, 1989). At some point depending on the size of linguistic unit, shorter scale codeswitching has to be distinguished from longer duration alternating. So, are different languages involved in these apparent switches? External language underlies confident statements like Weinreich (1953: 7): ‘A structuralist theory of communication ... necessarily assumes that “every speech event belongs to a definite language”’. But words don’t come with language labels stuck to them: transcripts of code-switching usually contrast the two languages in the text by italicizing them or signalling which is which in some other way, A Nuevo Twist on Refreshment. A poster for Stella Artois proclaims Into a chalice → not a glass, c’est cidre → not cider: we recognize the two languages involved because of our previous experience with French or English or at least by recognizing the non-Englishness of c’est cidre. But this depends on us recognizing two languages: these are projected by us, not inherent in the texts themselves. Otheguy et al. (2015: 298) see this as the imposition of the named language: ‘the dual tagging of the data, a tagging performed on the basis of the external named language categories’. However, these categories are not so much external languages as internal elements that happen to have the same names as external languages. As I once put it: … the question of wholistic multi-competence should be modularized into separate questions that apply to different components of language; some aspects of the total multi-competence supersystem may be unified, some may not. (Cook, 1992)

The lexicon is one such component. The mental lexicon contains information about tens of thousands of lexical items consisting of one or more words. If we know the English word man, for example, we know its pronunciation /mæn/, /mən/ in some compounds, and spelling (with consonant doubling in ), its grammatical category, noun (with a distinctive plural form /men/ ), rarely verb, and its meaning ‘male’, ‘adult’, ‘human being’, ‘concrete’, ‘animate’, etc., as well as its behavior in collocations such as man to man and in morphology such as mannish and unman, its unique uses such as ‘One of the pieces used in chess’, its possible dialect uses, say for a cairn on a hill in Cumbria (OED, 2009) and its use as a form of address, my man.

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Words in the lexicon are not so much atoms as molecules, combining a variety of complex information. In the Minimalist Program (Chomsky, 1995), everything about language that is learned is part of the lexicon; syntactic variables about how the lexical items combine to form sentences are added to the lexical entry (MacSwan, 1999, 2017). The speaker is then choosing words to put in sentences to fit their meaning, along with the information stored as part of their lexical entries, such as their elements of meaning, their use in syntax and their parameter-settings. In a sense, this is a very traditional view: ‘Syntax will teach you how to give to all your words their proper situations or places, when you come to put them together in sentences’ (Cobbett, 1819: 10). Those who speak more than one language have a wider choice of words than monolinguals but are behaving in much the same way: ‘the multilingual’s processing system is profoundly non-selective with respect to language’ (Van Hell & Djikstra, 2002: 1). Like any speaker, I choose my words to fit the circumstances at the moment of speaking or writing, according to the many aspects of the lexical entry; it is automatic for me not to say canny or youse outside Newcastle and to say Grüss Gott and Merci when I am in Switzerland. A language tag for each word in the mental lexicon is a small addition to the complex lexical entry. Any utterance or written text recognized by the listener or reader as having bits from two external languages seems to count as translanguaging. The examples in García and Li (2014) range from I ♥ NY to itu yang kita panggil bread (that’s what’s called bread) to extracts of classroom discourse. My own favorite extreme example is the pop song, ‘Mustapha’, which uses English, French, Tamil, Bahasa Malaysia and Chinese: Cherie je t’aime, cherie je t’adore My darling I love you a lot more than you know Cherie je t’aime, cherie je t’adore My darling I love you a lot more than you know Oh Mustapha, Oh Mustapha Yen Kathalan my Mr Mustapha Sayang, sayang na chew sher wo ai ni Will you, will you fall in love with me? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pE0T07zs5s)

Western literature indeed has a tradition of mixing languages in poetry, from macaronic mediaeval verse to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. A speaker of a language is also a listener: unless what is said is also understood, it hardly counts as language. Codeswitching implies that the listener knows both languages; hence it tends to occur when participants are aware of their languages in common. A German-speaking colleague who knew I spoke some Swiss German as a child used to slip into German when talking to me without apparently noticing he was

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doing so. A related use is the so-called Swiss model (Lüdi et al., 2010) in which multilingual participants speak in their first language and listen in their second language, as practiced in the quadrilingual Swiss Army (Berthele & Wittlin, 2013). I can speak to this from personal experience having participated in committees in Geneva where other people spoke French or German and I spoke English; my only problem was linguistic jokes, which stretched my listening command too far. In other words, the model of the L2 user needs to include listening as well as speaking. Translanguaging is not just producing utterances that combine elements from two languages but producing them for someone who understands both languages, as children as young as two demonstrate for codeswitching (Genesee et al., 1996; Chapter 7, this volume). Translanguaging occurs whenever bits from two external languages are audible or visible – say the Geneva street sign Les outiles high-tech pour le jogging, the Brussels restaurant sign Un verre South Park gratuit avec le menu double Swiss, the Wallsend station sign No Smoking Noli Fumare, or recently-encountered tweets Happy Weekend leute and Go l’écouter je vous le recommande! The implicit assumption in translanguaging is that, if a language cannot be seen or heard, it is not there. But this is only the visible tip of the iceberg. However much we may want to, we cannot turn languages off in our minds, just raise or lower their availability. Whichever language the L2 user is using, both languages are involved. Behind the great advantages for the participants of using both languages overtly stand the many advantages they gain from them covertly at other times. Multi-competence suggests that both languages are always active in the system, translanguaging that it only occurs when it is visible in speech or writing – a difference probably predictable from their respective psychological and sociological biases. Translanguaging, Bilingual Education and Language Teaching

Since the 19th century, language teaching methodologists have been under the illusion that they can get rid of the first language in the classroom by fiat and so forget its existence in decoding or codebreaking. But, as so much SLA research has shown, the first language is nonetheless always present in the students’ minds; it has not disappeared simply because the teacher has banned its use, just become invisible and inaudible. If the first language is unavoidable, its presence might as well be acknowledged instead of ignored: ‘rather than the L1 creeping in as a guilt-making necessity, it can be deliberately and systematically used in the classroom’ (Cook, 2001). The question is not how to ban it but how to exploit it, particularly as such dual language use mirrors what the students have to do in the world outside better than the pretend singlelanguage classroom from which the first language and indeed codeswitching are excluded (Cook, 2001).

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The idea of translanguaging emerged from bilingual education rather than from language teaching or mainstream education research. It concerns itself mostly with minority language students living in the USA, who have a dominant host language and are ascending the De Swaan hierarchy from super-central Spanish to the hypercentral English (De Swaan, 2001). The English/Spanish situation in the USA seems specific to a country where Spanish is currently the official language of one of its territories, Puerto Rico, and some states were historically Spanishspeaking before they were acquired by the USA. In the prototypical translanguaging classroom, the students already speak two languages, to whatever level, say through immigration or home language; they have some community support in the target language and are surrounded by the target language in the wider community. It is then hard to generalize from Spanish/English translanguaging in New York classrooms bound up with their own history and context to, say, bilingual education in Singapore, Toronto or Berlin, let alone to modern language teaching in Finland or Chile. Translanguaging is primarily about the situation of speakers of minority languages in particular multilingual societies, whether New York or Singapore. The term translanguaging was first applied to language teaching techniques that overtly employ both first and second languages together in the bilingual English/Welsh classroom (Williams, 1994), such as ‘providing students with information in one language and asking them to produce a piece of written or oral work in the other language’ (Beres, 2015). The traditional teaching technique that used two languages was translation, still popular in examinations and in university teaching but despised by teaching methodologists since the New Reform Method of the 1880s (Howatt, 2004). The Welsh Bilingual Method (Dodson, 1967) nevertheless relied on translation in the interpretation phase of the lesson in which the teacher provided an L1 meaning equivalent of an L2 sentence rather than a literal translation. The celebrated, if rarely encountered, Community Language Learning Method utilized ad hoc translation of the students’ L1 remarks by the teacher (Curran, 1976). Examinations in Languages for International Communication (Institute of Linguists, 2008) tested the joint use of both languages – say reading an L2 travel brochure to get information that can be used in the L1, or writing an L1 report on immigration based on a dossier of L2 newspaper articles and interviews the students conducted themselves in the L2, similar to what García (2009) advocates for translanguaging and Brown (2013) for multi-competence. The Institute’s current Diploma in Police Interpreting (Institute of Linguists, 2018) makes candidates read aloud the suspect’s statement written down in English to the suspect in their own language. In other words, there have always been teaching and testing techniques that use both languages alongside each other,

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particularly if one considers modern language teaching rather than the teaching of English as a Foreign Language, with its powerful vested interests of monolingual native teachers and their associations, and of publishers and culture-promoting organizations based in Englishspeaking countries. For years there has been a substantial discrepancy between the official dogma that the class should take place only in the target language and what actually happens there (Macaro, 1997). The classroom examples of translanguaging given in García and Li (2014) are similar to what probably happens in many classrooms taught by bilingual teachers – when the government inspector or the head teacher is not present. The use of both languages is natural and frequent when the teacher can speak both of them (Eurostat, 2013). If only the target language is employed, the classroom is rendered a sterile and make-believe monolingual situation unrelated to the multilingual world outside (Cook, 2001). The problem is the authorities’ insistence on only the target language being used, implemented in the UK, for instance, by the edict that ‘The natural use of the target language for virtually all communication is a sure sign of a good modern language course’ (Department of Education and Science, 1990: 58). Teachers are reluctant to implement translanguaging in case they are caught using the L1 – around the world, teachers talk of how guilty this makes them feel. Applied linguists’ advice should be addressed to the designers of syllabuses, examinations and coursebooks rather than to language teachers, who, in most educational systems, have in actuality little freedom to teach as they would like (Cook, 1998). Translanguaging may well be accepted by bilingual teachers, but the important people to convince are the powerful hidden figures who control language teaching behind the scenes. Translanguaging, however, has made more general claims for bilingual education, which: … distinguishes itself from other forms of language education in that content and language learning are integrated; that is two or more languages are used as a medium of instruction. (García & Li, 2014: 48)

This separates it, in principle, from bilingual education in which languages alternate by time of day, school subject or other trigger. Nor is it the same as Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL), which teaches content through the new language (Coyle et al., 2010), since the first language is not involved. Even the New Concurrent Approach (Jacobson & Faltis, 1990) is ruled out because it switches from one language to another when concepts are important, when the students are getting distracted, or when the student should be praised or told off, but does not employ both languages at once. Translanguaging demands both languages be visible in a public activity, rather than seeing both as active

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all the time, albeit invisibly in the students’ minds, as multi-competence would maintain. (See Faltis, 2020, for discussion.) Unresolved Questions

This chapter started by arguing that disputes about different models of language acquisition and use often arise from differences about the nature of language rather than from matters of substance. Has this discussion resolved some contradictions or just moved things around? In a way, how could it settle anything? These fundamental issues have existed in linguistic theory since time immemorial and will never go away. This concluding section goes back to the general ideas of language that underpin multi-competence and translanguaging. Abstraction and the meaning of language

There’s a rose growing outside my window. I would call it a méiguī if I spoke Chinese, triantafyllo if I spoke Greek or Rosa if I spoke gardener’s Latin. The link between the word and its meaning is arbitrary: ‘When I use a word … it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’, as Humpty Dumpty said. Talking about a rose means linking what one sees to the concept in one’s mind via the word rose (or méiguī or …): ‘Den Sinn finden wir nicht in den Dingen vor, wir legen ihn auch nicht in die Dinge hinein, aber zwischen uns und den Dingen kann er sich begeben’ (‘We do not find meaning in things, nor do we put it in things, but it can come between us and things’, Buber, 1932). Something only has meaning if we assign meaning to it. Naming a rose involves classifying it among its fellows, no longer treating it as a single individual but placing it in levels of meaning. At the basic level of prototype theory (Rosch, 1977), my rose is a rose; at the superordinate level, it is a shrub rose rather than a climber or a standard, and at the subordinate level, it is Ingrid Bergman, distinguished more finely from roses such as Ena Harkness or Hot Chocolate. Classification is part of human thinking, language and science; as Gertrude Stein famously wrote: ‘A rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ (Stein, 1922). We organize the world by grouping things together in our minds or by splitting them up, whether foods, schools of painting, genders of people, or languages. Rose is not a proper name that refers to a unique object but to a dozen roses in my garden and billions world-wide. Even the apparent proper name Ingrid Bergman no longer refers to an individual film star but to four bushes in my garden, and thousands across the world. Otheguy et al. (2015: 283) point out that language is a social construct. But then so are all words; rose, atom or birch are labels for how we interpret the world, not how it actually is. ‘Categories as such

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are a fixed quality of language. The principle of classification is inherent in all idioms, all times and all places’ (Hjelmslev, 1943: 78, trans.). Most language does not assign a name uniquely to an individual, apart from National Insurance numbers and the like. The dilemma of language research is that language has to be used to talk about language. One solution is to define language in the linguistic metalanguage rather than vacillating between the many meanings of language; my labelling of Lang1-Lang6 (Cook, 2007, 2010) was intended as a step in this direction, and I tried to show there how a single academic paper switched invisibly between these six meanings. Otherwise we are struggling with the kind of paradox of meaning that physics encountered a century ago when it discovered that light was both a verb-like wave and a noun-like particle: ‘We have two contradictory pictures of reality; separately neither of them fully explains the phenomena of light, but together they do’ (Einstein & Infeld, 1938: 262–263). Language is both an external reality and a complex internal system: live with it! The internal system cannot be adequately expressed in terms of distinct external languages; nor can the external languages be properly expressed as internal systems. While both the external and internal languages are often known by the same name, this is a matter of historical convenience; confusing the external named language with the internal mental language is a category mistake (Ryle, 1949). The individual and the group

A second related issue is the individual/shared dimension. Translanguaging starts from the idiolect: An idiolect is for us a person’s own unique, personal language, the person’s mental grammar that emerges in interaction with other speakers and enables the person’s use of language. (Otheguy et al., 2015: 289)

Conventionally, idiolect refers to the unique language of a named individual, whether Shakespeare, the Unabomber or Donald Trump. It concerns how an individual’s knowledge of language deviates from the norm, particularly in terms of frequency. It wasn’t distinctive words that caught the Unabomber out but the co-occurrence of 12 phrases like at any rate, clearly and gotten, compared to other texts (Coulthard, 2004). Idiolects are studied by forensic and stylistic linguists trying to find the idiosyncratic features that pinpoint someone’s identity. The use of idiolect in Otheguy et al. (2015) is, however, closer to Chomskyan linguistic competence in encompassing the total language knowledge of the individual, far from the perception of idiolect as the frequencies that distinguish one person’s language from another’s. Translanguaging is more like identity politics emphasizing qualities inherent in the

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individual, multi-competence more like citizen-based politics putting the individual in the context of society (Lilla, 2017). As a social practice, an idiolect is useless without someone else to understand it; even an idiolect implies a minimal group of two people: a speaker and a hearer (Chiffi, 2012). My idiolect is useful in so far as it allows me to comprehend the speech of others and to produce speech that others will comprehend; it is socially useless if it shares no properties with other people. Linguistic competence – ‘the speaker-hearer’s knowledge of his language’ (Chomsky, 1965: 4) – is in a sense the average of a group, varying between speakers of regional, class and gender dialects up to speakers of languages. It is immaterial that my Ingrid Bergman has blackspot and greenfly; it is what the typical Ingrid Bergman rose looks like that matters. This does not mean that linguistic competence counts as language: Language is another epiphenomenon; the psychological reality is the grammar that a speaker knows, not a language. The grammar in a person’s mind/brain is real; it is one of the real things in the world. The language (whatever that may be) is not. (Chomsky, 1982: 5)

Chomsky’s attempt to rebrand knowledge of language as individual grammar has, however, led to some misinterpretation that grammar only concerns syntax or, even more narrowly, morphosyntax rather than the lexicon and phonology as well. If linguistic competence covers everything that the speaker knows about language, this must include inter alia the ability to shift style, register and dialect to produce appropriate speech even if this strays into the territory of pragmatic competence – ‘language in the institutional setting of its use, relating intentions and purposes to the linguistic means at hand’ (Chomsky, 1980: 225). An English speaker knows that you would use Vehicular Access or Life Jacket Donning Instruction only in written notices; you would call an alley a folly in Colchester, a chare in Newcastle, a lane in the Isle of Wight; you wouldn’t address a judge as mate, a friend as your honour. The ability to control and vary our speech for different reasons is intrinsic, and the choice of a word for stylistic reasons is little different in principle from choice for language. Translanguaging and multi-competence both describe the behavior of average human beings. The study of people starts by describing their common possession of arms, teeth, livers, etc., not their individual freckles, scars and warts. The monolingual L1 user switches dialects, registers, styles and genres, drawing on different vocabulary sets, grammar rules and phonologies; ‘every person is multiply multilingual in a more technical sense’ (Chomsky, 2000: 44; compare Roeper, 1999). L2 users differ in having extended choices. Monolinguals are denied one normal form of choice in their language behavior.

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This chapter has used phrases of French, faute de mieux, and of Latin, inter alia, et al. and ad hoc, like many academic texts written in English, quotations in French from Ferdinand de Saussure and in German from Martin Buber, and short examples from English, Chinese, German, Tamil, etc., typical of linguistics papers. Multiple languages are not found just around Robert Le Page’s dinner table. It is not necessary to know much of another language to be able to use it in discourse. We are all able to make use of elements from different languages, however minimally. Multi-competence and translanguaging are ways of capturing the richer choice available to L2 users, arguably a fuller and more complex overall language system than that possessed by monolinguals. References Anderson, B. (1983) Imagined Communities. New York, NY: Verso. Beauvillain, C. and Grainger, J. (1987) Accessing interlexical homographs: Some limitations of a language-selective access. Journal of Memory and Language 26 (6), 658–672. Beres, A.M. (2015) An overview of translanguaging. Translation and Translanguaging in Multilingual Contexts 1 (1) 103–118. Berthele, R. and Wittlin, G. (2013) Receptive multilingualism in the Swiss Army. International Journal of Multilingualism 10 (2), 181–195. Blackburn, A.M. (2018) The bilingual brain. In J. Altarriba and R.R. Heredia (eds) An Introduction to Bilingualism: Principles and Processes (pp. 107–138). Abingdon: Routledge. Brown, A. (2013) Multi-competence and second language assessment. Language Assessment Quarterly 10 (2), 219–235. Buber, M. (1932) Zwiesprache. Berlin: Schocken Verlag. Translated into English as Buber, M. (1947) Between Man and Man. London: Fontana. Chang, C.B. (2011) Systemic drift of L1 vowels in novice L2 learners. ICPHS, XVII, 428–431. Chiffi, D. (2012) Idiolects and language. Axiomathes 22, 417–432. Chomsky, N. (1965) Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (1980) Rules and Representations. Oxford: Blackwell. Chomsky, N. (1982) Some Concepts and Consequences of the Theory of Government and Binding. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (1986) Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin and Use. New York, NY: Praeger. Chomsky, N. (1995) The Minimalist Program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, N. (2000) The Architecture of Language. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Chomsky, N. (2005) Three factors in language design. Linguistic Inquiry 36 (1), 1–22. Cobbett, W. (1819) A Grammar of the English Language. Reprinted 1984, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coggins III, P.E., Kennedy, T.J. and Armstrong T.A. (2004) Bilingual corpus callosum variability. Brain and Language 89 (1), 69–75 Cook, V.J. (1971) Freedom and control in language teaching materials. In R.W. Rutherford (ed.) BAAL Seminar Papers 1970: Problems in the Preparation of Foreign Language Teaching Materials (pp. 65–73). York: Child Language Survey. Cook, V.J. (1989) Reciprocal language teaching: Another alternative. Modern English Teacher 16 (3/4), 4,853. Cook, V.J. (1991) The poverty-of-the-stimulus argument and multi-competence. Second Language Research 7 (2), 103–117.

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Cook, V.J. (1992) Evidence for multi-competence. Language Learning 42, 557–591. Reprinted in L. Ortega (ed.) (2010) Second-Language Acquisition: Critical Concepts, Vol. I. Foundations of Second Language Acquisition. Abingdon: Routledge. Cook, V.J. (1998) Relating SLA research to language teaching materials. Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics 1 (1–2), 9–27. Cook, V.J. (2001) Using the first language in the classroom. Canadian Modern Language Review 57 (3), 402–423. Cook, V.J. (2003) The changing L1 in the L2 user’s mind. In V.J. Cook (ed.) Effects of the Second Language on the First (pp. 1–18). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cook, V.J. (2007) The nature of the L2 user. In L. Roberts, A. Gurel, S. Tatar and L. Marti (eds) EUROSLA Yearbook 7 (pp. 205–220). Reprinted in Li Wei (ed.) The Routledge Applied Linguistics Reader (pp. 77–89). Abingdon: Routledge. Cook, V.J. (2010) Prolegomena to second language learning. In P. Seedhouse, S. Walsh and C. Jenks (eds) Conceptualising Language Learning (pp. 6–22). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Cook, V.J. (2016) Premises of multi-competence. In V.J. Cook and Li Wei (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Multi-competence (pp. 1–25). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cook, V.J. (2022) The Language of the English Street Sign. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Cook, V.J. and Bassetti, B. (2011) Language and cognition: The L2 user. In V.J. Cook and B. Bassetti (eds) Language and Bilingual Cognition (pp. 143–190). New York, NY: Psychology Press. Cook, V.J., Iarossi, E., Stellakis, N. and Tokumaru, Y. (2003) Effects of the L2 on the syntactic processing of the L1. In V.J. Cook (ed.) Effects of the Second Language on the First (pp. 192–213). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Cook, V.J., Bassetti, B., Kasai, C., Sasaki, M. and Takahashi, J.A. (2006) Do bilinguals have different concepts? The case of shape and material in Japanese L2 users of English. International Journal of Bilingualism 10 (2), 137–152. Coulthard, M. (2004) Author identification, idiolect and linguistic uniqueness. Applied Linguistics 23 (4), 231–244. Coyle, D., Hood, P. and Marsh, D. (2010) CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Curran, C.A. (1976) Counselling-Learning in Second Languages. Apple River, IL: Apple River Press. Czechowska, N. and Ewert, A. (2011) Perception of motion by Polish-English bilinguals. In V.J. Cook and B. Bassetti (eds) Language and Bilingual Cognition (pp. 287–314). New York, NY: Psychology Press. De Bot, K. (2016) Multi-competence and dynamic/complex systems. In V.J. Cook and Li Wei (eds) Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-competence (pp. 125–141). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. de Saussure, F. (1916/1976) Cours de linguistique générale. Bally, C. and A. Sechehaye (eds) (1916). Critical edition by T. de Maurio. Paris: Payothèque, Payot, 1972. De Swaan, A. (2001) Words of the World: The Global Language System. Cambridge: Polity Press. Dechert, H., Möhle, D. and Raupach, M. (1984) Second Language Productions. Tubingen: G. Narr. Della Rosa, P.A., Videsott, G., Borsaa, V.M., Canini, M., Weekes, B.S., Franceschini, R. and Abutalebi, J. (2013) A neural interactive location for multilingual talent. Cortex 49 (2), 605–608. Department of Education and Science (DES) (1990) Modern Foreign Languages for Ages 11 to 16. London: Department of Education and Science and the Welsh Office. Dodson, C.J. (1967) Language Teaching and the Bilingual Method. London: Pitman. Einstein, A. and Infeld, L. (1938) The Evolution of Physics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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3 Experience Coding and Linguistic Variation James Paul Gee

In this chapter I am going to use the term ‘experience coding.’ I want to use this term in a quite specific way (and unrelated to the term ‘experiential coding’ as it is sometimes used in qualitative research methods classes and as an approach to advertising). I am not talking here about codes for research, but coding in the sense of assigning meanings to symbols, as in Morse code. In particular, I want to talk about ‘codes’ in terms of my interpretation of how Basil Bernstein meant (or should have meant) the term (though he was not always clear about this). I am not concerned whether I am right or wrong about Bernstein. Either way, I am using him for my own ends here. This chapter is about a key source of linguistic variation, one I will call ‘social languages.’ Social languages are a form of ‘experience coding.’ Such coding is centered on how people use their social knowledge and experiences to communicate as a certain ‘type of person.’ Social languages are, thus, something like a Morse code for socially meaningful identities. Experiential coding is about meaning first and foremost. Linguistic structure (‘grammar’) enters the scene here as a tool for this coding, but a tool that serves many other purposes as well. This renders the relationship between experiential coding and grammar complicated and an issue that needs great care if we are not to replicate linguistic prejudices (and it is this issue that got Bernstein in trouble – see below). Whenever we speak, we have to speak ‘as someone’ (Gee, 1990, 1999, 2017). If a doctor says to her patient (who happens also to be a friend of hers), ‘I am telling you this as your friend, not as your doctor,’ she is making clear ‘where she is speaking from,’ from which ‘social position’ or ‘socially-situated identity.’ Of course, the patient has the option of responding by speaking ‘as a friend’ or ‘as a patient,’ with different social effects in each case. What does it mean to speak ‘as someone’ (to speak ‘as a friend’ or ‘as a doctor’)? It means that we draw on experiences and relationships on the basis of which we can (be accepted as having the ‘right’ to) make certain sorts of claims. When someone talks to you ‘as a friend,’ they draw on 66

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personal experiences they have had with you and other connected friends or family. When they talk to you ‘as a doctor,’ they draw on experiences they have had with doctors and patients in the institution of medicine. Whenever we speak, we also address the other ‘as someone.’ The doctor above is addressing the patient as a friend, not as a patient. If the patient accepts the doctor’s attempt to speak ‘as a friend’ and speaks back as a friend, then we have what I will call ‘symmetrical coding.’ Each party to the talk is speaking and responding within the same realm of experience (here friendship experiences). Now, say the doctor speaks as a doctor, not a friend, to someone who is, in fact, also her friend – perhaps she even says, ‘I am telling you this as your doctor, not your friend.’ If the patient speaks back by the norms of being/speaking as a patient in a doctor–patient interaction, the interaction is again an example of symmetrical coding. Each party is speaking and responding within the same realm of experience (here institutional medical care experiences). If the doctor attempts to speak ‘as a friend’ and the patient refuses to speak back that way and speaks back as a patient in a doctor–patient relationship, or if the doctor attempts to speak ‘as a doctor’ and the patient responds as a personal friend of the doctor, the interaction is an example of non-symmetrical coding. Each is speaking on the basis of different realms of experience. People can speak out of a great many different identities tied to different realms of experience (Hacking, 1986, 2006). However, if we stay at a very high level of abstraction, we can distinguish five major social identities (Table 3.1), each connected to a distinctive realm of experiences and relationships in the world (Gee, 2004, 2017): • Familiar (Personal, Individual) Identity: Here we speak based on – with reference to – shared personal experience within social circles like families and friends and people we see (or seek to treat) as close to us. What counts as friends and family and how we treat each other varies across social and cultural groups. Table 3.1  Regulatory regimes Identities

Regulatory regimes

Familiar:

Norms, values and personal knowledge shared with those with whom one feels or wants to express close social distance, such as family and friends.

Public:

Norms, values and personal knowledge shared with some public.

Authorized Expert:

‘Officially’ sanctioned norms, values and knowledge.

Participatory Specialist:

Norms, values and knowledge sanctioned by participation and emergent norms stemming from that participation.

Institutional:

Norms, values and knowledge of ‘official’ and tacit rules and regulations and roles supposed to be known to all the people who interact in or with the institution.

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• Public Identity: Here we speak based on – with reference to – shared experience within social public circles and spaces that include more than friends and family. We speak not as experts or specialists of any sort, but as ‘everyday people.’ There are a great many ‘publics,’ small and large, such as fellow Americans, fellow African Americans, fellow Catholics, or fellow townspeople, and many others. • Authorized Expert Identity: Here we speak based on – with reference to – shared experience and special knowledge within social circles and spaces that include fellow ‘credentialed’ experts. There are many sorts of authorized experts such as doctors, lawyers, physicists, certified contractors, and so on. • Participatory Specialist Identity: Here we speak based on – with reference to – shared experience and special knowledge within social circles and spaces that include people with whom we share a special activity and its associated skills and knowledge and where people earn ‘authority’ by participation and achievements and not official credentials. There are also a great many groups (‘interest-driven groups’) of participatory specialists, such as anime aficionados, avid gamers, activists of all sorts, citizen scientists, and many others. • Institutional Identity: Here we speak based on – with reference to – our roles, rights, and responsibilities as defined by an institution. Of course, there are a good many institutions such as schools, hospitals, government offices, and so on. Each of these large realms of experience is governed or regulated by certain norms, values and types of knowledge rooted in social conventions about how people in a society can enact and recognize different socially-situated identities. We will call these norms, values and types of knowledge ‘regulatory regimes’ (Bernstein, 2000), though without the negative connotations that term seemed to have for Bernstein. Regulatory regimes can serve good or bad purposes in different situations. Experience Coding

When people speak ‘as someone’ I will say they are engaged in the process of ‘experience coding.’ So, what is ‘experience coding’? To understand the notion of such coding, imagine that you are a secret agent and want to code a message so that outsiders cannot read it. To create the code, you have to consider what you and the receiver mutually know and use this awareness to help you set up the code. If the code is going to a friend, you can trade on familiar and personal knowledge. If it is going to a stranger, you cannot trade on that knowledge but will use shared public knowledge (for some public), such as what every American knows. If it is going to a fellow authorized expert or participatory

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specialist, you can trade on shared specialist knowledge (such as physics or gaming). For example, if I was constructing a secret code for only my wife to read, I could trade on such knowledge as ‘the name of a pet mouse who likes to hide things’ (Mandy). Perhaps, part of my code would say ‘Mandy the money’ (for ‘Hide the money’). On the other hand, I cannot use that shared knowledge with a fellow gamer, but I could trade on our shared knowledge about what boss battles are, to say of an encounter I am soon to have in the real world: ‘Wish me luck, I am about to face the final boss battle in my academic career.’ An experience code in language-in-use formulates information with reference to a shared base of knowledge based on certain sorts of experiences. Like a spy code, it automatically creates insiders (people ‘in the know’) and outsiders. Coding is a way of relating words and experience via assessments of knowledge and experience as they are distributed in society. All language in use is, of course, coded to specific contexts we are in (e.g. ‘The coffee spilled, go get a broom’ is coded to a context where coffee grains or beans have spilled, not liquid coffee). But experience coding is coded with reference to assumptions about shared knowledge stemming from experiences connected to different social realms, not just specific contexts. Experiential Identities Colliding

There are many situations in any pluralistic and complex society where experiential identities collide because of non-symmetrical coding. If a person who knows little about games asks me a technical question about gaming, I have to speak as a gamer (using my specialist gamer experience), but to someone who is not a gamer. I will have to simplify (‘pidginize’) ‘gamer talk,’ but I will also have to elaborate more, since I cannot take shared knowledge for granted. My interlocutor will speak to me as a public person based on shared public knowledge (or even prejudices) about games and gaming. Note the non-symmetrical match-up then between identity and experience here: participatory specialist (gamer) talking to member of (some shared) non-gamer public. Imagine a white interviewer asking an African American whether she thinks racism is still a severe problem in the United States. The African American can choose to talk ‘from first-hand experience’ (familiar identity) and use examples drawn from experiences she, her friends and her family have had (personal knowledge). Or, she could use examples that all African Americans tend to know about (public knowledge where the public here is African Americans). Or she can choose to use examples and arguments drawn from a larger public that she and the white person share (e.g. fellow Americans). She has, among others (e.g. African

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American young woman), three different experiential bases from which to speak. When the African American talks to the white interviewer in terms of public knowledge that black and white Americans share, we have symmetrical coding. But when she talks out of her personal or public African American identity, we have non-symmetrical coding, since the white interviewer can only respond in a wider shared public identity like ‘fellow American.’ The sorts of interactions we have been discussing here can, of course, get quite sensitive in the United States. The confluences and conflicts of different publics and different experiential bases can become quite vexed. And, I should point out, though it needs a paper of its own, identity for humans happens in reality at the level of kinds – so not at the larger level of African Americans or gamers, but at the level of different kinds of African Americans or kinds of gamers. One of the more studied examples of experience-coding dilemmas concerns children in school (Gee, 1990, 2004) who respond to a teacher as an everyday person or even as a ‘friend’ but receive a response back with an institutional identity enforcing rules and regulations (‘teacher’). Indeed, schools are vexed in terms of identities and coding. A teacher might be a member of a local community and thus able to interact with the children either as a member of a shared restricted public (say, local community-based African Americans) or as an institutional actor (a ‘teacher’ in a ‘school’). Since local communities can sometimes get small and tightly-knit enough to function as extended ‘friends,’ in some cases and situations the teacher is able to interact with the children – or some of them – as a friend or courtesy relative. In each case she draws on different experiential bases and their associated knowledge norms and the child has to figure out how to respond. I want now to give an extended real example of this school dilemma, but first I want to introduce the notion of the ‘lifeworld’ (Habermas, 1984). A person’s lifeworld is composed of all those situations in which he or she communicates as an ‘everyday person,’ not as an expert, specialist, or institutional actor of any sort. The lifeworld is, thus, composed of our familiar (personal) and public identities and experiences. It is the realm of ‘common sense.’ People from different social and cultural groups have different conceptions of, and norms, beliefs and practices in, their lifeworld, but there is usually enough overlap that they can deal with each other in a society as ‘everyday people’ (barring prejudices of various sorts). Let me now turn to my example from public schooling (Gee, 2017). A third-grade teacher is working with a small group of children on a guided reading lesson. As part of the lesson, she has the children do a ‘picture walk.’ The children look at just the pictures and book, and they make predictions about what the book will be about and say.

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One little girl (who happened to be African American) is bouncing in her chair, showing manifest excitement and volunteers enthusiastically each turn. The teacher eventually told her to calm down. The girl said, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m so happy.’ The teacher responded, ‘Well, just calm down.’ As a visitor in the classroom, and a linguist who came to education late, I was surprised by the teacher’s response to the girl’s saying, ‘I’m sorry, but I’m so happy.’ In the lifeworld of this teacher and student, if someone says ‘I’m so happy,’ the polite thing to do is to ask them why. This teacher was well respected in the school and neither she nor the children appeared to see anything odd going on. The teacher was more focused on teaching students to follow guidelines and remain well-ordered than she was on the content of the lesson alone (Bernstein, 2000). Here she clearly subordinates lifeworld coding to institutional coding. In institutions, routines and regulations can become rigidified and taken for granted. Routines help us function efficiently but they can sometimes become dysfunctional or even do harm. For example, perhaps responding to the girl’s happiness could have helped build her emotional affiliation with the lesson, the teacher and schooling, and thus furthered her allegiance to the school as a public domain and its norms and values. By the way, what I have said thus far does not tell us whether the fact that the girl is African American is relevant or not. After much collection of data in this and other schools in the area, I came to see that many of the teachers operated with a taken-for-granted principle, which was something like this: With young children, if ‘you give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.’ They believed that if you let children get away with small things, the children would quickly escalate to lots of noise and disruption. In the schools I was visiting at the time of the event described above, teachers often turned the lights out when children made noise, in order to get them to be quiet. I came to notice that it was very often one of the more ebullient kids in the class that caused the lights to go out. This makes sense. The teacher, thanks to the ‘give them an inch, they’ll take a mile’ principle, is going to turn the lights off at the first sign of noise and, thus, the more ebullient children are likely to be the first to go over the line, however minor their noise-making may have been. People from different cultural groups have different normal degrees of what we might call ‘pitch’ (a cultural difference in lifeworld styles). Some groups tend to show emotion and involvement more strongly – to be ‘livelier’ – than other groups. In these schools, which were in Wisconsin, the white children and teachers tended to be lower pitched than the African American children; indeed, they were lower pitched than whites in some other cultural groups (Kochman, 1981). So, in these schools, some of the African American children were a step ahead of the other children and went over the low-bar noise line just before

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other children were about to cross it. Thus, they ‘caused’ the lights to go out more commonly, but not because they were particularly noisy or disruptive (indeed, the little girl we just discussed was quite enthusiastic about her academics), but rather because they were a bit higher-pitched than the white children. Unfortunately, the child who causes the lights to go out can come to be seen as a troublemaker, even if he or she is acting just a step ahead of other children in the class. There is nothing inherently good or bad about a groups’ pitch level (and not all members of a group behave the same). At the same time, there are some groups (defined by culture or class) whose pitch level is low enough that they can seem to others ‘disinterested.’ And there are some groups whose pitch level is high enough that they can seem to others ‘excited.’ There is a continuum here, not a binary distinction, but when the poles interact, interesting things – some of them unfortunate – can happen. Pitch level can vary even within groups that share aspects of a larger culture (e.g. Jewish people from a Western European background tend to be lower pitched than Jewish people from an Eastern European background, and people from some areas in Italy tend to be higher pitched than most white people from England (Tannen, 1984)). When the teachers turn out the lights, they have long since ceased to reflect much on the matter and the assumptions behind it. It is just routine practice. So, it is easy to perceive the child – and whatever is salient about the child – to be the ‘trouble,’ not the practice and the assumptions behind the act of turning off the lights to gain quiet. If one realized that noise can be a sign of disruption or of learning – and we need to know which is which – the practice might well change. If one realized that people have different normal degrees of ‘pitch,’ the bar for lights-out might be raised. There is a great need for people to know and reflect on the fact that people in a pluralist society come together as ‘everyday people’ in the lifeworld, but that cultural conceptions of the lifeworld and how to be and do in it can differ in ways that lead to misunderstanding. Even in the symmetrical coding of lifeworld (personal or public identities)-tolifeworld communication, there can still be sources of asymmetry. Specialist Worlds

When we talk as an expert or specialist of some sort, we have left the lifeworld for a specialist world. These are domains like physics, gaming, anime aficionados, medicine, cat fanciers, tech geeks and many others (each of a certain kind). The core function of communicating within a specialist identity (authorized or participatory) is to create and maintain special knowledge and expertise. Specialist worlds overlay on the lifeworld a ‘new order.’ The lifeworld’s core function of maintaining social relations (personal or

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public) is subordinated to a ‘higher-order’ function in specialist worlds of establishing, maintaining and sharing expertise that allow ‘public people’ to form sub-societies of specialization that have their own rules and regulations. In the act, specialist worlds also re-align the language and interactional practices of the lifeworld, adding to them, adjusting them, and norming and assessing them in different ways, creating specialist coding. Let me give an example of how specialist worlds can re-align, transform and even replace lifeworld language and practices (Gee, 2017). Below is a dialogue between two players (who call themselves ‘Bead’ and ‘Allele,’ actually my twin brother and myself) in the massive multiplayer game World of Warcraft. The dialogue was typed into a chat box: Bead: Are you really dead? Allele: Yes, did you get the heart? Bead: I got the heart – another guy was helping. Allele: Good. Bead: I am standing over your body mourning. Allele: I died for you. Bead: So touching. Allele: It’s a long way back. Bead: I know – I’ve done it.

Lifeworld coding gets its meaning from everyday personal and shared ‘everyday’ public experiences. While the interaction above looks like an everyday conversation (and follows many of its rules), the interaction gets its meaning from a ‘special’ world (realm of experience), the virtual world of World of Warcraft. A person has to be adept enough at the conventions germane to this special world and the experiences in it in order to engage in such dialogue. These conventions are ‘owned and operated by’ a group of ‘specialists’ (adept players) with deference to ‘experts’ (the game’s designers and the players who set the norms for behavior, interaction, and knowledge in and of the game). No adept player would have written something like: ‘Is your character out of play because you lost the battle?’ instead of ‘Are you dead?’ And no adept player would write: ‘Is your character dead?’ instead of ‘Are you dead?’ where ‘you’ refers to the real person/avatar blend. The interaction above is written in a language that, for those who do not know it, can seem odd indeed. This conversation is taking place after these two players have tried to accomplish a quest (goal). Having accomplished the goal that Allele was helping him to accomplish, Bead notices that Allele is not around anymore. Thus, he messages him to see if he died in the act of helping – and Allele, in turn, asks if Bead

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stayed alive and accomplished the goal (to get a heart out of a grave). The events the players have observed, partly together and partly separated, and are now discussing, have a narrative logic that is itself situated in games like this one, and not exactly like the narrative logic of everyday life. Here is another example of language from World of Warcraft as a specialist world (Gee, 2017: xvii): Mitigation from armor class is the only non-linearly scaling stat (that is, each percent of mitigation granted by Armor Class requires more than the point before it).

This is a sentence from a theory crafting site where World of Warcraft players analyze the underlying statistics and rules of the game in order to better understand the game and enhance their strategies and play. This language, too, gains its meaning not from everyday lifeworld experience but from a ‘special world’ (domain) removed from the lifeworld and inhabited by specialists and their ‘fellow travelers.’ These two examples of specialist coding make clear that experience coding is not about structural complexity. The second example is certainly far more syntactic complex and technical than the first, but they are both specialist coding in terms of experience coding. These examples also make clear that different forms of coding make use of genres like conversation and explanation (which often involve different degrees of structural complexity in their structural coding) in different ways for different purposes. Everyday conversation and chats in specialist worlds can be different due to the fact that conversation in specialist worlds must follow the norms of the specialist world and not just (or even at times any of) the norms of the lifeworld. People’s individual and public identities interact and so do these two identities and specialist and institutional identities (Gee, 2004). As families socialize their children into their individual identities, they often want to ensure these children will also be well-prepared for later entrance and ‘success’ in certain public, institutional or specialist identities. So, some families use early family-based (individual, personal, private) socialization to prepare their children for ‘success’ in certain sorts of institutions, whether these be schools of certain sorts, different religions, or professions or special interests of various sorts. Institutional Identities

Institutional identities (like doctor and patient, teacher and student, salesperson and customer, and many more) are not in the lifeworld either, but they are very often poised as meditators between the lifeworld and authorized expert identities. A college teacher of physics teaching undergraduates is an institutional actor maintaining rules and regulations that lead to grades, credits, majors, certificates and

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graduation. At the same time, the college professor is an authorized expert who has the ‘right’ to speak symmetrically to other such experts. So, in the classroom, the college professor speaks as an institutional actor who also has ties to an authorized expert (specialist) identity that allows him to have the power in the institution he has, a power the student as institutional actor does not have. Institutional worlds also overlay a new order on the lifeworld. They subordinate and regiment the lifeworld (say, of the college undergraduates) with institutional rules and regulations and necessary allegiance to attenuated forms of expert language and knowledge shaped by the institution (here, college undergraduate education). When I go to the DMV (Division of Motor Vehicles) to renew my license, I come as a ‘client’ to deal with a clerk who has the responsibility to enforce the rules and regulations of the institution. The clerk, unlike the college professor, is not herself an authorized expert but she defers to authorized experts (like lawyers and high-level administrators) when need be, and this deferral gives her ‘power’ as an institutional actor that I, the client, do not have in my role as an institutional actor here. Schools are an interesting example here. Teachers are institutional actors enforcing and maintaining institutional rules that students as institutional actors must follow. But are they like college professors whose identity as an authorized expert underwrites their power in the institution? Or, are they like clerks whose deferral to authorized experts gives them what power they have? In many US schools, the situation is more like clerks than professors. Linguistic Repertoires and Communication Repertoires

What does experience coding have to do with linguistics and language variation? It has taken us a long while to get to this question, the point of the chapter. Knowing a person speaks Spanish or Farsi tells us very little about how this person produces and comprehends meaning in communication and interaction. All languages have many dialects, registers, styles and other sorts of variations, things which tell us more about a person as a social being than does the name of their language. Furthermore, the difference between a ‘dialect’ and a ‘language’ is largely a political distinction, not a linguistic one. There is no reason beyond politics and convention to see Dutch and German as separate languages and not dialects, and all the Romance languages as ‘dialects’ of Latin. If we are interested in language variation we are better off using a notion like ‘linguistic repertoire’ (LR for short) for the full set of linguistic resources (sounds, phonemes, morphemes, words, phrases, sentence structures and discourse features from whatever languages, dialects or registers) a given person has available to them for production,

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comprehension or both. However, one’s LR is always part of a larger ‘communication repertoire’ (CR for short), the entire set of linguistic and non-linguistic resources a given person has available to them for producing and comprehending meaning. Sociolinguistics ought to be about how people put LR and CR resources to use. Experience coding is the starting point of all linguistic and communicational variation. If we do not know who we are when we speak and who we wish to address, in terms of situated socially significant identities, we cannot make choices about how to use our linguistic repertoire. We would be at a ‘loss for words’ because we would not know from where and to where we are to direct meaning in social space. Language Complexity

I said above that the familiar realm and the public realm together constitute our ‘lifeworld.’ Our lifeworld is made up of the times and places where we formulate information in ways where ‘everyday’ (common) shared experiences – those we assume ‘people like us’ have had – directly inform the meanings of what we say. In our lifeworld, we rely on ‘common sense,’ the shared knowledge of ‘everyday people’ communicating and acting as such and not as experts or specialists of any sort. We can distinguish familiar common sense in the private/ personal realm and public common sense in the public realm, if we like. Obviously familiar common sense and public common sense interact and influence each other. For example, consider a mother speaking to her child, who is mimicking her and saying any of the following: (1) (2) (3) (4)

Stop it. Stop copying me, it’s irritating. Copying people is rude and makes them unhappy. People who copy others and think it’s funny can easily lose their friends.

Note, the point here is not about the complexity of the language used but how it relates to experiences in her familiar realm, the realm which she shares with her kin, intimates, friends, family and those with whom she has or wants solidarity and low social distance. Each of the mother’s remarks above assumes shared direct access to experiences, norms, and forms of familiar common sense (or are trying to teach these), though each one is at a different level of complexity grammatically. The ways in which people use their CRs to encode meanings in their lifeworld, we can call ‘lifeworld coding’ and we can distinguish ‘familiar lifeworld coding’ from ‘public lifeworld coding’ when and if necessary.

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Implications and Conclusions

Experience coding is essentially about making meaning with reference to an experiential base centered in a specific social domain. It recruits linguistic resources to do this job, resources that allow for enactment of socially situated, societally important identities. The notion of experience coding, though rarely discussed in linguistics, is crucial to language variation and issues of language and power. A person cannot engage in experience coding successfully if he or she has not had relevant experiences in a given realm of experience and has no shared knowledge with people in that domain (Taylor, 1996). This is not an issue of grammar or how complex your language is. It’s an issue of access. This access issue is a crucial source of linguistic inequality leading to economic and social inequality. Students who are not adept at coding institutional meanings for school as an institution – or who refuse to do it – are in danger of failure at school. This is why some families ‘practice school’ (an institutional identity) at home (the space of familiar identities). Linguistic variation, such as codeswitching, register variation, dialects, stance taking, multilingualism, and ‘translanguaging’ of all forms happens within the larger frame of experience coding. Ignoring such coding, or treating issues of power and status with no reference to such coding, impoverishes our work on linguistic variation. Linguists, of course, tend to focus on language (and, in particular, on grammar). However, language exists for meaning-making, and meaning-making is situated in contexts of use, the highest levels of which are experiential identities (and there are many sub-identities within each larger realm we have distinguished). Such identities reflect the workings and transformations of society across history. All humans, barring serious disorders, speak many different social languages (based on experience coding) that enact different socially significant identities. There are no monolinguals from an experience coding perspective. Linguists often use the term ‘codeswitching’ when they mean switching between the grammars of different languages or dialects. This would better be called ‘grammar switching.’ Having more than one language can give a person more linguistic resources for experience coding as long as the person has had the necessary experiences. People who have had little experience can still talk, but they cannot experience as widely as people who have had a great many socially diverse experiences. Experience codes can be codeswitched, too. Consider the sentences below: (1) Hornworms sure vary a lot in how well they grow. (2) Hornworm growth exhibits a significant amount of variation. (3) Boy, Hornworm growth sure exhibits a significant amount of variation.

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All three of these sentences use grammatical structures that exist in any and all dialects of English (e.g. nouns, nominalizations, adverbs expressing affect). What makes them distinctive is how they pattern together or combine different grammatical resources. This is just like the way wearing a tie atop a tee shirt and shorts says something quite different than wearing it atop a formal shirt and pants. And, too, leaving the tie over the formal shirt and pants says something else about you and your context (and how you want the context read). Sentence 1 is experience coding based on everyday lifeworld experiences. It signals that the speaker is basing her claim on her own experiences, not as an expert but as an individual with their own experiences with hornworms. Sentence 2 is experience coding based on specialist knowledge. It signals that the speaker is basing her claim on knowledge that resides in a specialist group that in a sense owns and operates that knowledge. Sentence 3 is ‘codeswitching’ in terms of experience coding. It mixes lifeworld and specialist coding. A Note on Basil Bernstein

The notion of experience coding I take partially from the British sociologist Basil Bernstein (who did not, however, use the term), and this is a vexed issue. Basil Bernstein studied the sociology of knowledge and its implications for society and schools. See his 2000 book for, in my opinion, the best explication he gave of his theory, a theory which he developed and redeveloped over many years. However, his work became quite controversial when the sociolinguist William Labov castigated Bernstein’s distinction between ‘restricted codes’ and ‘elaborated codes’ as a racist-tinged delineation of dialects (an attack that Bernstein did not answer until 1997 (Bernstein, 1997). Labov (1969) took Bernstein to be talking about something like the difference between Black Vernacular English (‘non-standard English’), which Labov himself studied, and so-called ‘standard English.’ He took the term ‘restricted’ as applied to non-standard dialects as invidious, and he correctly pointed out that such dialects were not limited in comparison to standard dialects, which often were, he argued, simply more pointlessly verbose. After Labov’s criticism, Bernstein’s work was ignored – if not denigrated – in the United States for decades, recouping some US readers only towards the end of his life. Bernstein was not talking about dialects, but he was linguistically naïve enough to seem at times as if he were. He was talking about coding. His choice of terms (‘restricted’ and ‘elaborated’) was unfortunate, and he was not always very clear about what he meant by codes, partly because he was no linguist. In this chapter, I am redoing Bernstein’s ideas about codes. The theory I have developed is one I think that, in part, Bernstein might have

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agreed with. However, if he would not have, then his legacy, like that of so many other important authors, will have to put up with creative misinterpretation. Most of the terms I use here are not found in Bernstein’s work. In my view, what led Bernstein to being attacked by Labov was Bernstein’s confusion over the notions of experience coding and structural complexity. Note that a person who has not experienced much cultural diversity in a pluralist society cannot experience code about diversity and prejudice in the same shared ‘insider’ way that a person of color might be able to and so is, in this regard, impoverished. A person who has had no experience of or with academics cannot experience code as a specialist academic and may or may not be impoverished depending on what one thinks about different academic disciplines. Academics often have to talk about racial prejudice in an academic (‘elaborated’) way because they may have no personal or community experience with it. They have to talk as an ‘outsider.’ References Bernstein, B. (1997) Sociolinguistics: A personal view. In C. Paulston and R. Tucker (eds) The Early Days of Sociolinguistics: Memories and Reflections (pp. 43–52). Austin, TX: Summer Institute of Linguistics, Inc. Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control, and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique (revised edn). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gee, J.P. (1990) Social Linguistics and Literacies: Ideology in Discourses (5th edn, 2015). London: Falmer Press. Gee, J.P. (1999) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method (4th edn, 2014). London: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2004) Situated Learning and Language: A Critique of Traditional Schooling. London: Routledge. Gee, J.P. (2017) Teaching, Learning, Literacy in Our High-risk High-tech World: A Framework for Becoming Human. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Habermas, J. (1984) Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Trans. by T. McCarthy. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. Hacking, I. (1986) Making up people. In T.C. Heller, M. Sosna and D.E. Wellbery, with A.I. Davidson, A. Swidler and I. Watt (eds) Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought (pp. 222–236). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hacking, I. (2006) Making up people. The London Review of Books 28 (16), 23–26. Kochman, T. (1981) Black and White Styles in Conflict. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Labov, W. (1969) The logic of non-standard English. In J. Alatis (ed.) Georgetown Monographs on Languages and Linguistics 22 (pp. 1–440). Washington, DC: Georgetown University School of Languages and Linguistics. Tannen, D. (1984) Conversational Style: Analyzing Talk Among Friends (new edn, 2005). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Taylor, D. (1996) Toxic Literacies: Exposing the Injustice of Bureaucratic Texts. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Part 2: Codeswitching

4 Codeswitching, Translanguaging and Bilingual Grammar Jeff MacSwan

Codeswitching is a speech style in which bilinguals alternate languages between or within sentences. For instance, SpanishEnglish bilinguals might say, This morning mi hermano y yo fuimos a comprar some milk (‘This morning my brother and I went to buy some milk’), where the sentence begins in English, switches to Spanish, and then moves back to English again. The practice is very common throughout the world, especially among members of bilingual families and communities. As a field of research, codeswitching emerged in the middle of the last century, energized by the work of Weinreich (1953), Haugen (1956) and Mackey (1967), just as social policy began to focus on marginalized groups in the wake of the US civil rights movement (Benson, 2001; Riegelhaupt, 2000). Language and its relation to poverty dominated conversations about the needs of African American and Latino communities, who were actively engaged in protests for social justice, including a 1968 Los Angeles walkout led by Latino students inspired by Mexican American labor leader César Chávez who sought educational equity and bilingual education (Crawford, 2004). While linguists, sociolinguists and bilingual education scholars use codeswitching to refer to language mixing within the same conversational context, some scholars in Composition Studies use the term to refer to shifting languages between contexts, cued by different social settings – elsewhere called codeshifting (Green, 2011) or styleshifting (Alim, 2010; Baugh, 1983) – and prefer the term codemeshing (Young, 2003) as a reference to mixing languages within the same context. Codemeshing is thus a synonym for codeswitching as the term is typically understood in the linguistics and sociolinguistics literatures. Codemixing is also used as a synonym for codeswitching, and is often preferred by some researchers in bilingual first language acquisition (see Genesee, Chapter 7, this volume). 83

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Early research on codeswitching aimed to disrupt prevailing language ideologies. As Lipski recalled: Seeking to dispel popular notions that equate code-switching with confusion, ‘alingualism,’ imperfect acquisition, and just plain laziness, linguists have since the early 1970s devoted considerable effort to demonstrating grammatical and pragmatic conditions favoring or constraining code-switching. Bilingual code-switching so analyzed is not regarded … as a deficiency or anomaly. (Lipski, 2014: 24)

Rampton (2007: 306) similarly remarked: ‘… research on code-switching has waged a war on deficit models of bilingualism and on pejorative views of syncretic language use by insisting on the integrity of language mixing and by examining it for its grammatical systematicity and pragmatic coherence.’ Much as Labov (1965, 1970), Wolfram (1969), Fasold (1972) and others had shown through painstaking analysis that stigmatized language varieties spoken by many African Americans – commonly known today as African American Language (AAL) – are just as rule governed, rich and complex as the language varieties of the privileged classes, codeswitching researchers undertook to show that language mixing is not a haphazard reflection of language confusion, but is rule governed and systematic, like other ways of speaking (Riegelhaupt, 2000). Among the earliest to observe that language alternation revealed systematic, rule-governed behavior were Gumperz (1967, 1970), Gumperz and Hernández-Chávez (1970), Hasselmo (1972), Timm (1975), Wentz (1977), Wentz and McClure (1977) and Poplack (1978). By now, an extensive body of research has shown conclusively through rigorous empirical and theoretical analysis that bilinguals are exquisitely sensitive to tacit rules which govern codeswitching itself, leading to the conclusion that language alternation is sophisticated, rule-governed behavior which in no way reflects a linguistic deficit (for summaries, see MacSwan, 2020, 2021; Ritchie & Bhatia, 2013). Codeswitching scholarship has developed in two complementary research traditions, one focused on social and conversational aspects of language use, and the other focused on language structure and the nature of bilingual grammar. Tables 4.1 and 4.2 present major developments and key references in the codeswitching literature in both areas. In the present volume, Auer (Chapter 5) and Bhatt and Bolonyai (Chapter 6) discuss codeswitching as language use (in the tradition of Table 4.1) as it relates to recent proposals in the translanguaging literature, while the present chapter will focus on codeswitching as language structure (as in Table 4.2), also in relation to translanguaging.

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Table 4.1  Codeswitching as language use: key proposals and representative references Timeframe

Proposal

Representative References

1970s, 1980s

Discourse Strategic Functions of Codeswitching

Blom & Gumperz (1972), Valdés (1976), ValdésFallis (1978), Mühlhäusler (1980), Gumperz (1982), Valdés (1981), Saville-Troike (1982)

1990s

Markedness Theory Social Motivation of Codeswitching

Myers-Scotton (1983, 1993a, 2000); Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai (2001)

1990s to the present

Conversation Strategic Conversational Contribution of Codeswitching

Auer (1984, 1995), Heller (1992), Li et al. (1992), Li (1994, 1998, 2002, 2005), Zentella (1997), Lo (1999), Gafaranga & Torras (2002), Jørgensen (2003), Cashman (2005a, 2005b, 2008a, 2008b), Raymond (2015)

Table 4.2  Codeswitching as linguistic structure: key proposals and representative references Timeframe

Proposal

Representative References

Early Developments (1970s)

Construction-specific constraints

Gingrás (1974), Timm (1975), Gumperz (1976, 1982), Pfaff (1976, 1979), Lipski (1978)

Phrase StructureOriented Proposals (1980s to 2010s)

Equivalence Constraint

Poplack (1978, 1980), Lipski (1978), Pfaff (1979), Sankoff & Poplack (1981), Woolford (1983)

Free Morpheme Constraint

Poplack (1978, 1980), Sankoff & Poplack (1981)

Constraint on ClosedClass Items

Joshi (1985)

Government Constraint

DiSciullo et al. (1986), Halmari (1997)

Null Theory

Mahootian (1993), Santorini & Mahootian (1995), Pandit (1990)

Functional Head Constraint Word-Grammar Integrity Corollary

Belazi et al. (1994)

Matrix Language Framework (MLF) Model

Myers-Scotton (1993b), Azuma (1991, 1993), de Bot (1992), Jake et al. (2003, 2005), Myers-Scotton & Jake (2009, 2013)

Constraint-free Approach (also known as the Minimalist Approach)

MacSwan (1999, 2000b, 2005a, 2005b, 2014), Cantone & Müller (2005, 2008), van Dulm (2007, 2009), van Gelderen & MacSwan (2008), Cantone & MacSwan (2009), González-Vilbazo & López (2011, 2012), Sánchez (2012), Grimstad et al. (2014), Bandi-Rao & den Dikken (2014), Finer (2014), MacSwan & Colina (2014), Milian Hita (2014), Moro Quintanilla (2014), Di Sciullo (2014), Toribio & González-Vilbazo (2014), Giancaspro (2015), LilloMartin et al. (2016), López & Veenstra (2017)

FeatureOriented Proposals (2000s to Present)

Translanguaging, introduced by Williams (1994), similarly denotes language alternation, often in pedagogical settings. For many researchers, translanguaging serves as an umbrella term that includes codeswitching, translation and other creative forms of bilingual language use for

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pedagogical purposes, as understood in García’s (2009) early use of the term. However, in recent work, García and colleagues (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018) presented a strong critique of codeswitching scholarship, situating translanguaging as a superseding theory. There, translanguaging is said to have ‘aimed to overturn the conceptualization of the two languages of bilinguals … under a practice known as code switching’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 282). But ‘the attempt to overturn has not been successful,’ because as the new term gained adherents ‘it began to drift toward covering essentially the same conceptual terrain as code switching’ (2015: 282). However, as noted in Chapter 1, early translanguaging theory actually celebrated codeswitching, presenting it as a partner term alongside translanguaging. Codeswitching is favorably discussed in García (2009) as both a sociolinguistic (pp. 48–50) and pedagogical (pp. 298–301) tool. García even observed: Code-switching often occurs spontaneously among bilingual speakers in communication with others who share their languages. Far from being a sign of inadequacy or sloppy language usage or lack of knowledge, it has been shown that code-switching is a sophisticated linguistic skill and a characteristic of speech of fluent bilinguals …. (García, 2009: 50)

Otheguy and colleagues argue that their critique is needed because ‘the adoption of translanguaging has not produced … a sufficiently strong challenge to prevailing understandings of language and linguistic behavior in speakers generally, and especially in bilinguals,’ as this additionally requires one to ‘directly problematize the notion of “a language”’ (2015: 282). García and Otheguy (2014) thus present an approach to bilingualism that is ‘skeptical of the discreteness of named languages,’ and views ‘linguistic resources as disaggregated in the sense that features are separable and not integrated into linguistic systems’ (2014: 645). (See Chapter 1, this volume, for further discussion.) More specifically, García and Otheguy (2014) believe that bilingual mental grammars ‘consist of large and complex arrays of disaggregated structural features (phonetic, phonological, morphological, and semantic) that do not belong to or reside inside of the speaker’s two or more languages by virtue of inherently differentiated linguistic membership’ (2014: 644). Thus, codeswitching and related areas of research in bilingualism ‘labor under serious limitations’ – stemming specifically from ‘the uncritical adoption of the external perspective that trades on the sociocultural separateness of languages and on the monoglossic ideology that privileges the monolingual speaker and the monolingual setting as the natural and unmarked condition of languaging’ (2014: 649). García and colleagues’ codeswitching critique focused on bilingual grammar, the purview of the research tradition summarized in Table 4.2.

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In MacSwan (2017), I offered a response to García and colleagues’ critique of codeswitching, specifically challenging two distinct claims they made. The first claim was their assertion, historical in nature, that codeswitching scholarship supports a Dual Competence Model of bilingualism and, therefore, reinforces standard language ideology. The second claim was linguistic: their view that bilinguals have an internally undifferentiated grammar for the languages they know. Otheguy et al. (2018) replied to my response. In the present chapter, I will recount the main ideas presented in MacSwan (2017) as they relate to García and colleagues’ (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015) critique, commenting as well on key elements of Otheguy et al.’s (2018) reply. In the interest of clarity, I will be direct in my remarks. However, I wish to emphasize here, as I did in MacSwan (2017), that it is not my intention to disparage translanguaging, but to clarify it, along with other aspects of research on bilingualism, promoting the non-deconstructivist, or early version of translanguaging – what I call a multilingual perspective. Ofelia García’s numerous contributions on translanguaging have helped to refocus discussions in bilingual education on bilingual teaching, and on the critical importance of taking an inclusive, holistic approach to bilingualism seriously in schools; doing so moves educators away from deficit and even transitional models of bilingual education to culturally and linguistically sustaining models. However, as I will try to make clear here, codeswitching scholarship has always been a critically important partner in the struggle for social justice for linguistically diverse children and communities, and it played much the same role for bilingualism as sociolinguistic research on AAL did for AAL (Baugh, 2018). Thus, the multilingual perspective on translanguaging, which affirms codeswitching and related research – promoted here and throughout this volume – should be seen as a positive contribution to the translanguaging literature. Bilingual Grammar

Individual languages have been called idiolects (Bloch, 1948) or I-languages (Chomsky, 1980), while languages in the community sense have been called E-languages (Chomsky, 1980), social languages (Gee, 2014), dialects (Bloch, 1948), language varieties (Chambers & Trudgill, 1998) and more. E-languages are idealizations, epistemic fictions which linguists and sociolinguists create to permit focused study of linguistic diversity; they do not exist in the real world, in the sense that there are actually no collections of individuals all of whom have precisely the same speech behavior. However, while I-languages reflect the individual internalized grammatical system each of us has, and are likely to each vary one from the other in some respect, it is important to recognize that I-languages do not vary at random. Our divergent experiences result in

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individual linguistic differences, but the mechanisms and circumstances of language acquisition are such that we expect learners exposed to similar linguistic input to converge on similar I-languages. In this respect, an E-language is shared among a collection of individuals whose I-languages have similar linguistic characteristics and are sufficiently alike to permit communication. So one could say that a person is a speaker of an E-language L if her I-language corresponds to L in this way. Similarly, linguists identify structural differences across E-languages with the phrase ‘language-particular’ or ‘language-specific’ differences. The distinction between I-language, the product of an individual’s internalized grammar, and E-language, a language community, is an important one in the context of considering the nature of bilingual grammars. Bilingualism is psychologically real if a bilingual’s grammar is organized in a way that presents at least some internally differentiated components, each corresponding to a different E-language. More concretely, consider the three logical possibilities related to the mental organization of multilingual grammars illustrated in Figure 4.1. The Dual Competence Model, shown first, is attributed by García and colleagues to codeswitching scholars; it represents the view that bilinguals have two fully discrete language systems. The Unitary Model, shown next, is advocated by García and colleagues (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018), and insists that bilinguals are the same as monolinguals in that, in both instances, structural knowledge associated with what appear sociopolitically as discrete languages actually reflects a single, internally undifferentiated system. A third perspective, which I call the Integrated Multilingual Model, posits that bilinguals have a single system with many shared grammatical resources, but with some internal language-particular differentiation as well (MacSwan, 2017; see also Marks, Satterfield and Kovelman, Chapter 8, this volume). This third perspective, I argue, is the one that emerges

The Dual Competence Model of Multilingualism Multilinguals have fully discrete, non-overlapping linguistic systems The Unitary Model of Multilingualism Multilinguals have a single system

The Integrated Multilingual Model Multilinguals have both shared and discrete grammatical resources

Note: G denotes a grammar.

Figure 4.1  Three views of multilingualism

G

G

G

G

G G

G

G

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from the codeswitching literature, not the Dual Competence Model, as claimed by García and colleagues. In Figure 4.1, G denotes a grammar. Cummins observed years ago that the dual competence model, which is akin to the hypothetical Separate Underlying Proficiency (SUP) model he discussed, is a folk theory of multilingualism which ‘is not seriously proposed by any researcher’ (Cummins, 1981: 23). That observation remains true today. The idea suggests that the two linguistic systems have no point of contact, which would make routine translation impossible (see MacSwan & Rolstad, 2005 for discussion). Since García and colleagues also reject the dual competence model, the empirical question that remains open for discussion is whether an individual bilingual grammar might reflect organized internal differentiation of some kind (favoring the integrated multilingual model) or not (favoring the unitary model). The historical question, which we also consider, concerns the underlying representation of bilingual grammar assumed in the codeswitching literature. It is not plausible that the grammars of bilinguals lack internal language-particular differentiation, as one expects within the unitary model, because such a system could not represent the contradictory requirements which bilinguals effortlessly manage and sustain. Contradictory requirements or rules cannot be preserved unless they are discretely represented. Hence, regardless of one’s particular model of bilingual grammar or one’s theoretical commitments, language differences must be represented somewhere in the system; and to the extent they are non-arbitrary and systematic differences, they must reflect organized and structured subsystems. To illustrate this point, consider a child who grows up hearing Farsi, an object-verb (OV) language, and English, a verb-object (VO) language. The child comes to know that in Farsi objects come before verbs, as in Ye morqabi did-ænd (one duck saw I, ‘I saw a duck’, Mahootian, 1997), while in English objects come after verbs (I saw a duck) (VO). This bilingual child expertly navigates these systems in separate contexts, despite the contradictory evidence observed regarding the basic word order of verbs and objects. Moreover, as Mahootian (1993) shows for codeswitching contexts, a Farsi-English bilingual will use Farsi word order with a Farsi verb, even if the object is English (Ten dollars dad-e, ten dollars give-PERF, ‘She gave ten dollars’), and English word order with an English verb, even if the object is Farsi (Tell them you’ll buy xune-ye jaedid when you sell your own house, Tell them you’ll buy house-POSS new when you sell your own house, ‘Tell them you’ll buy a new house when you sell your own house’). How does the linguistic system of a Farsi-English bilingual reliably generate OV word order for Farsi, VO word order for English, OV word order for English-Farsi codeswitching when the verb is Farsi, and VO word order for EnglishFarsi codeswitching when the verb is English? A theory of grammar designed to seriously answer this question will necessarily posit

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differentiated properties for Farsi and English, discretely represented to preserve these conflicting requirements. In addition to word order facts such as these, codeswitching research also reveals interesting grammaticality effects. Grammaticality effects serve in large part as the basis for linguistic theories about the structure of our tacit knowledge of language. For example, English speakers regard John saw the red barn and John painted the barn red as well formed (or grammatical), but regard John saw the barn red as ill formed (or ungrammatical). John put the book back on the coffee table is well formed, but Table coffee the on back book the put John is not. As in monolingual language, the strength of bilinguals’ intuitions about grammaticality may differ across utterances, reflecting gradience (Schütze, 1996; Sorace, 1996). For example, while English speakers’ intuitions are generally clear for utterances like John saw the barn red, judgments are more subtle in other cases. Most English speakers would say John saw Mary’s pictures of himself at Sue’s house is ill formed, but judgments might vary for Pictures of each other were given to the kids. Similarly, Spanish-English bilinguals regard codeswitched utterances involving a switched verb in examples like Yo la saw (‘I saw her’) as strongly ill formed, as Poplack (1981) originally observed. Bilinguals also judge Los estudiantes habían seen the Italian movie (‘The students had seen the Italian movie’) to be ill formed, and regard Los estudiantes had seen the Italian movie to be well formed (Belazi et al., 1994), but the judgments may not be as clear as they are in the case of Yo la saw. Data such as these allow us to posit theories about grammatical structure. The task of a grammatical theory, whether it is focused on monolingual or bilingual language, is to define (or generate) all the wellformed expressions of a language (or languages used in combination, in the bilingual case) to the exclusion of all the ill-formed expressions, both of which are infinite sets. Such a theory serves as an explanation of a set of facts. Critically, grammaticality effects such as these are empirically derived descriptions of speakers’ intuitions, and are in no way akin to the prescriptivism of traditional grammar (Crystal, 1986; MacSwan, 2000a; Martínez & Martinez, 2020). To illustrate this task of linguistic theory construction in the case of codeswitching more concretely, consider a well-studied contrast in grammaticality reported for Spanish-English bilinguals. A Spanish determiner like los may precede an English noun like teachers, giving us los teachers (‘the teachers’), but if we reverse the direction of the codeswitch a different pattern emerges: An English determiner before a Spanish noun is ill formed, so that examples like the casa (‘the house’) are unattested in corpora, and judged to be ill formed by Spanish-English bilinguals. What questions would one ask to begin theorizing about this pattern? With respect to this specific case, we might ask what property of determiners or nouns results in these different patterns of intuitions for

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Spanish-English bilinguals. With this in mind, Moro Quintanilla (2014) proposed a theory that focused on differences in gender features, present for Spanish but absent for English. More specifically, in Spanish, gender and number are morphologically marked on determiners and nouns, but in English only person and number are marked while gender is absent. Syntacticians refer to these features collectively as φ-features. A Spanish determiner is φ-complete if it is fully specified for person, number and gender, whereas an English determiner is φ-complete if it is specified for person and number only. Moro Quintanilla posited that the observed grammaticality effects for Spanish-English codeswitching in this context result from a clash that emerges when these different compositions of φ-features in determiners and nouns undergo feature checking. Note that regardless of how one conceptualizes or theorizes about these specific facts, a careful and detailed analysis will quickly draw attention to language-particular differences. Because these differences are systematic – Spanish nouns always have gender features, with one of two values; English (common) nouns never do – assignment of φ-features to these word classes is evidently the result of an internalized morphological process or rule, and not arbitrary or random, as one would expect in an internally ‘disaggregated’ mental collection of words. Consider another illustration. A Spanish-English bilingual knows two contradictory things about adjective/noun word order in the abstract: Adjectives follow nouns (e.g. casa blanca), and nouns follow adjectives (e.g. white house). She consistently applies the Spanish rule to Spanish words and the English rule to English words, never generating expressions like house white or blanca casa (except in ‘marked’ cases, discussed below). Furthermore, she will codeswitch in a structured way, strongly preferring the white casa over the casa white (Belazi et al., 1994; Gumperz, 1967; Lipski, 1978; Poplack, 1981; Sankoff & Poplack, 1981). So the underlying linguistic system of a Spanish-English bilingual will routinely generate the white house, la casa blanca, and the white casa, but not the house white, la blanca casa or the casa white. As in the Farsi-English codeswitching example, the Spanish-English bilingual masterfully manages contradictory rules of word order, this time with unexpected grammaticality effects evident in some but not other codeswitching patterns. Whatever theory one wishes to consider about this fact pattern, it will necessarily entail discretely differentiated properties for Spanish and English, as Sankoff and Poplack (1981) showed explicitly, a topic I will return to later. These are just a few illustrations of the grammatical patterns evident in codeswitching, but scores can be provided, offered across a wide range of language pairs. Such examples illustrate the robust finding that bilinguals not only have complex grammatical systems for each of the languages they know, but that they are also exquisitely sensitive to restrictions on the interaction of these language systems, which constrains codeswitching itself. For example, in Spanish-Nahuatl

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codeswitching, bilinguals accept Nahuatl negation of a Spanish verb phrase (amo estoy trabajando, ‘I am not working’) but not Spanish negation of a Nahuatl verb phrase (no nitekititoc, ‘I am not working’), even though the basic word order is precisely the same (MacSwan, 1999). In studies of codeswitching across many different language pairs, switching between a lexical subject and a verb (e.g. mi novia fights all the time, ‘my girlfriend fights all the time’) is judged to be well formed, but a switch between a subject pronoun and a verb (e.g. ella fights all the time) is not; elaborating the structure just a bit with a conjunction changes the pattern, now permitting the pronoun to occur adjacent to the verb (mi amigo y ella fight all the time) (van Gelderen & MacSwan, 2008). Numerous other examples may be reviewed in the citations offered in Tables 4.1 and 4.2, among many others. Otheguy et al. (2018) present empirical challenges to the codeswitching patterns presented in my response to their critique (MacSwan, 2017). For example, regarding the contrast in grammaticality associated with English-Spanish codeswitching between a determiner and a noun (los teachers versus the casa) noted above, they offer two interesting counter-examples which they informally observed, including (regarding the operation of a baby stroller) Make sure to put your foot under this thin black bar here, and then bend down and take the palanquita (‘lever’) that you see right there and pull it out, as well as Hey, we’re not leaving; the pollitos (‘chicken cutlets’) that Mami makes for dinner are worth the wait. As they point out, both examples appear to contravene the generalization that a combination of an English determiner with a Spanish noun is ill formed. The generalization about this codeswitching pattern derives from data sources I referenced in MacSwan (2017), including Aguirre (1976), Jake et al. (2003), Liceras et al. (2005), Lipski (1978), Moro Quintanilla (2014) and Moyer (1993). For example, Jake et al. (2003) collected natural language samples from ten adult English-Spanish bilinguals and identified 230 noun phrases, some mixed and some not; while 151 consisted of English nouns with Spanish determiners (like los teachers), none involved Spanish nouns with English determiners (like the casa). Moro Quintanilla (2014), using Moyer’s (1993) corpus of EnglishSpanish codeswitching collected in Gibraltar, found 243 cases of mixed noun phrases, all but 2 of which involved English nouns with Spanish determiners (e.g. los teachers). Aguirre (1976) and Lipski (1978) also support this generalization using bilinguals’ grammaticality judgments. Counter-examples like those Otheguy et al. (2018) offered enrich the dataset. They should not be used as a basis for dismissing out of hand data presented in other publications, but for extending the discussion. Much as one sees in cases of pronominal codeswitching, enriching a structure just a little can alter the fact pattern in interesting ways: Mis amigos y ellos fight all the time is fine, but Ellos fight all the time is not, according

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to bilinguals’ grammaticality judgments (van Gelderen & MacSwan, 2008). The question to ask is how Otheguy et al.’s (2018) examples might be different structurally from those in other data sources. That reflection leads to the observation that their counter-examples both involve restrictive relative clauses ([that you see …] and [that Mami makes …]) which attach to the nouns; while views about this structure differ, Castillo (2003) persuasively argues that the relative clause intervenes between the determiner and the noun, offering the possibility that gender (and other) features associated with the Spanish nouns are valued in ways that differ from the simple case analyzed in Moro Quintanilla (2014). Another interesting consideration is that both examples involve diminutives (-ita, -itos), which may play a role in gender agreement as well.1 Similarly, Couto and Stadthagen-Gonzalez (2019) recently found different patterns for plural variants of these constructions used with demonstratives (estos shoes, these zapatos). These possibilities suggest questions for additional data collection and analysis, which researchers may wish to undertake. Far from disproving that codeswitching is patterned and structured, examples like these have the potential to enrich the scholarly discussion of the precise nature of grammatical gender feature checking in Spanish-English codeswitching contexts. Otheguy et al. (2018) also present an empirical challenge to the generalization that Spanish-English bilinguals prefer structures like the white casa over the casa white, as presented by numerous codeswitching researchers (Belazi et al., 1994; Gumperz, 1967; Lipski, 1978; Poplack, 1981; Sankoff & Poplack, 1981; Couto & Gullberg, 2019). The focus of their challenge consists of a peripheral point that is well known, namely, that Spanish adjectives can indeed come before nouns, as in English, under marked conditions (generally called for when a quality is inherent to the noun, e.g. blanca nieve, ‘white snow’, or makes poetic reference). Although Otheguy and colleagues do not make note of it, one might just as well point out that adjectives can come after nouns in English in unusual circumstances too, as in attorneys general or matters financial. Such examples do not show that the fact patterns reported by other researchers are erroneous: rather, they serve to make the point that different structures, such as those they note, will require different analyses. They offer two additional informally collected counterexamples which appear to contrast with the codeswitching pattern reported by other researchers, but too little is discussed there to reconcile these with findings in the literature. We note, however, that adjectival word order in codeswitching exhibits complex patterns and findings crosslinguistically, and contemporary discussions of language mixing in this specific structural context, though fruitful, leave many questions unanswered. See Cantone and MacSwan (2009) for discussion. More recently, García and colleagues (2021) have asserted that the very idea that codeswitching is rule governed is false, and they suggest

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that this idea has historically been met with protest: ‘… very early on, racialized bilingual scholars argued that the proposed orderliness and constraints on codeswitching … did not correspond to their observations of practices in the community’ (2021: 214). They offer Pedraza et al. (1980) as their single example of these early objections. Pedraza and colleagues (1980) were concerned with whether codeswitching may have a deleterious effect on the Spanish or English of New York Puerto Ricans in the context of a critical discussion of diglossia. They did not dispute contemporaneous codeswitching research but, rather, favorably cited it. They reported that the ‘linguistic analysis of codeswitching recorded in the natural setting has shown that claims of language debasement are unfounded’ (1980: 93). They did not indicate that reported codeswitching patterns were inconsistent with their data. While many codeswitching researchers have raised counter-examples to competing theoretical proposals (e.g. Clyne, 1987; Di Sciullo et al., 1986; Jake et al., 2003; MacSwan, 1999, 2000b, 2014; Mahootian, 1993), I am not aware of any empirical research which claims to show that codeswitching does not exhibit grammaticality effects. Indeed, it has been found that grammaticality judgments in codeswitching are remarkably stable (Stadthagen-González et al., 2018), even in the presence of negative codeswitching attitudes among bilingual speakers (Badiola et al., 2018). Also, importantly for García and colleagues’ (2021) remark, grammaticality effects in codeswitching have been observed and studied by many racialized bilingual scholars (e.g. Azuma, 1993; Belazi et al., 1994; Chan, 2009; Gingrás, 1974; González-Vilbazo & López, 2012; Joshi, 1985; Liceras et al., 2005; Pandit, 1990; Sánchez, 2012) as well as many others. Further, García and colleagues (2021) explain that their concern with the finding that codeswitching is rule governed ‘is that the insistence on the difference between “grammatical” and “ungrammatical” codeswitching is yet another mechanism for marginalizing the language practices of racialized bilingual students, many of whose daily language practices would be considered, from such a perspective, ungrammatical’ (2021: 214). Of course, as in any linguistic or sociolinguistic research, the ‘daily language practices’ of speakers define grammaticality; indeed, linguistic research explicitly rejects prescriptivist dogma which would identify a speaker’s language practices as ‘ungrammatical.’ García and colleagues’ (2021) premise might similarly suggest that the linguistic study of AAL should be rejected and abandoned, as such research has similar potential to identify speakers as ‘ungrammatical.’ Smitherman offers wise advice: Students will end up being mis-educated about language if they aren’t taught that all human languages and language varieties (yes, even African American Language and Arabic!) have inherent grammatical patterns and are systematic and rule-governed. Even though humans are ‘born to

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speak,’ that is, language is a part of human beings’ genetic make-up, they are not born speaking a particular language. (Smitherman, 2017: 6)

Far from contributing to standard language ideology, the linguistic and sociolinguistic study of codeswitching, like the study of AAL, repudiates deficit views of bilingual and multilingual language practices. (See Chapter 1, this volume, for further discussion of this point.) Research on codeswitching makes clear that language mixing is richly structured. These facts are linguistic descriptions, and do not reflect any specific theory or theoretical orientation. Regardless of how we approach an explanation of the patterns, the analysis will inevitably incorporate categories expressing linguistic discreteness. These empirical observations are sufficient to refute García and colleagues’ (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018) claim that bilingual grammar is unitary, disaggregated and internally undifferentiated. I next discuss two samples of theoretical proposals noted in Table 4.2 – Poplack’s Equivalence Constraint, from the early history of theoretical research on codeswitching, and the Minimalist Approach, a contemporary theory. My goal is to illustrate that codeswitching research has projected an Integrated rather than a Dual Competence model of bilingual grammar (as distinguished in Figure 4.1) and has not taken language differentiation for granted – contrary to García and colleagues’ attributions. In addition, I hope to further illuminate the nature of bilingual grammar through a discussion of relevant theoretical proposals. Codeswitching Theory

García and colleagues insist that ‘from the inception of research in code switching,’ codeswitching scholars have begged the question of language differentiation, embedding the truth of their conclusions within the basic premises of their research. ‘It is an assumption, and this is the point, that makes the conclusion of internal duality of competence to a large extent pre-ordained by the dual tagging of the data, a tagging performed on the basis of the external named language categories’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 298). Otheguy et al. (2018) reiterate this point. They concede in the context of replying to my response to their original critique that the bilingual language faculty is internally diverse, but they maintain that its internal diversity does not correspond to perceived linguistic communities (Spanish, English, Farsi and so on). It is obvious, they write, that bilingual competence, like monolingual competence, ‘is made up of many phonological, lexical, and structural elements that are each distributed over many different structural sub-systems.’ But they reject the idea ‘that the grammar will have to attribute different, language specific properties to Spanish and English’ (2018: 8). More specifically, García and colleagues

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surmise that there is no empirical ‘structural evidence’ that would allow researchers to ‘spot an instance of code switching,’ or that could ‘tell us which parts of the corpus belong to A, which to B, and which represent code switches and which do not’ (2018: 21). However, different languages or ‘corpora,’ as we might call them, exhibit characteristically different structural properties, and these sets of properties define the respective corpora. When we hear and identify an utterance as ‘Spanish’ and not ‘English,’ or vice versa, we reflect on a collection of specific linguistic properties we associate with these respective E-languages. Parts of the corpus belong to A or B if they exhibit one or the other set of characteristic properties; they are instances of codeswitching if the corpora alternate in an utterance. To make this point more concrete, consider an example from the earliest formal linguistic research on codeswitching. Using an early version of generative-transformational grammar which captured crosslinguistic word order differences with phrase structure grammars (Chomsky, 1957, 1965), Sankoff and Poplack (1981) noted the existence of ‘some debate over whether discourse containing code-switches is generated by the alternate use of the two monolingual grammars or whether a single code-switching grammar exists, combining elements of the monolingual grammars.’ The ‘important question,’ they noted, is ‘whether code-switching involves the alternation from one distinct linguistic system to another, or whether speakers are exemplifying some integrated competence in the two languages’ (1981: 10). Importantly in Sankoff and Poplack’s (1981) analysis, already at the inception of linguistic research on codeswitching, one sees a careful evaluation of the three logically possible configurations of bilingual grammar outlined in Figure 4.1. They consider whether codeswitching might involve the ‘alternation from one distinct linguistic system to another’ (as in the dual competence model) or might rather reflect ‘integrated competence in the two languages’ (as in the integrated multilingual model). In addition, Sankoff and Poplack sketched a bilingual ‘free union’ grammar equivalent to the unitary model preferred by García and colleagues. Sankoff and Poplack first evaluated the simplest assumption, that bilinguals have a single unitary system – formally implemented as the free union of two phrase structure grammars, one for English and another for Spanish. A phrase structure grammar is a system of rules that defines the structure of a syntactic tree, recursively enumerating structural descriptions of sentences (Chomsky, 1968). The tree structure so generated uses internal branching to capture the relatedness among nodes in the tree. A phrase structure rule such as S → NP VP, for instance, defined a structure in which S (a sentence) immediately dominated two branches, NP (noun phrase) and VP (verb phrase). Another rule for Spanish grammar, NP → Det N Adj, further expanded

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NP within the structure with an additional layer, this time a determiner (Det), noun (N) and adjective (Adj) sequence. Lexical insertion rules (e.g. Det → la, N → casa, Adj → blanca) then applied to fill in the terminal nodes of the tree, with a final result such as la casa blanca. An English version of this phrase structure grammar differs in (at least) two key respects: The phrase structure rule for NP would be NP → Det Adj N, placing the adjective before the noun, and the lexical insertion rules would be Det → the, Adj → white, and N → house, rendering results like the white house. Drawing on the Spanish-English codeswitching data related to adjective/noun word order discussed earlier, Sankoff and Poplack (1981) observed that a unitary system would generate many ill-formed results, giving us not only ill-formed codeswitches like the casa white instead of the white casa, but it would even permit Spanish expressions with English word order and English expressions with Spanish word order, as illustrated in Figure 4.2. Sankoff and Poplack engaged in this exercise to illustrate that a unitary system could not succeed, as it generates ill-formed results. Having shown that the simplest solution is inadequate, they restricted the system in a way that tied the lexical insertion rules to language-particular phrase structure rules to the extent required by the data. They accomplished this by introducing a superscripting mechanism, known as a language tag. In effect, this convention introduced internal differentiation within the system as it associated Spanish lexical items with phrase structure rules specific to Spanish, and English lexical items with English rules, but allowed rules common to both to be lexically filled by either language. In Figure 4.2, using this system, the subject NP would be tagged as an English phrase structure rule, eligible for lexical insertion from English, and the object NP would be tagged as a Spanish phrase structure rule, eligible for lexical

Figure 4.2  A syntactic tree generated by Sankoff and Poplack’s (1981) Spanish-English free union (unitary) grammar, showing an ill-formed result

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insertion from Spanish. Rules common to both English and Spanish were not tagged, representing shared resources. Lipski (1978), Pfaff (1979) and Woolford (1983) similarly proposed that an equivalence condition governed the ways in which languages could be mixed. Returning to Otheguy and colleagues’ (2018) question: What ‘structural evidence’ allowed Sankoff and Poplack to ‘spot an instance of code switching,’ or to ‘tell us which parts of the corpus belong to A, which to B, and which represent code switches’ (2018: 21)? First, Sankoff and Poplack observed that adjectives come after nouns in some instances and before them in others; we could call our compiled lists of these different word order patterns corpus A and corpus B. Sankoff and Poplack then observed that a grammar that does not discretely represent these different patterns in some way cannot successfully generate items on either list, requiring separate rules of grammar specific to each. Because the observed word order patterns described as corpus A and corpus B correspond to known E-languages, Spanish and English in this case, one might refer to them as Spanish and English as a matter of convenience. Of course, many other structural effects distinguish these corpora, such as morphological agreement between adjectives and nouns, phonological processes, patterns of word stress, phonemic inventories and more. These collections of structural effects categorize elements into corpus A and corpus B, or their corresponding E-languages Spanish and English. We spot an instance of codeswitching when we see elements from both corpora used in alternation. This is a simple illustration of the empirical ‘structural evidence’ which allows researchers to ‘spot an instance of code switching,’ or which tells us ‘which parts of the corpus belong to A, which to B,’ addressing Otheguy and colleagues’ (2018: 21) concern. As linguistics evolved in the 1980s and 1990s, driven by new discoveries, approaches to handling the internal diversity of the linguistic system took advantage of new theoretical developments. The grammatical theories underlying Sankoff and Poplack’s work built structure top-down, first generating a tree structure, which represented word order, then inserting lexical items after the word order had been set. This limitation of the linguistic theory under which Sankoff and Poplack labored required them to tinker with the system, introducing a language tag as an ad hoc stipulation to tie structure-building rules to lexical insertion rules. Similarly, Di Sciullo et al. (1986) made use of a language index and Belazi et al. (1994) used a language feature to derive their results. While these approaches shared limitations with Sankoff and Poplack (1981), they used a common methodological approach: Committed to theoretical parsimony, they assumed minimal internal differentiation within the bilingual grammar, aligning lexical items and syntactic rules only to the extent the facts compelled them to do so. As such, each of these exemplified an integrated model.

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Contemporary theories of codeswitching (such as the feature oriented approaches noted in Table 4.2) take advantage of a different syntactic architecture which builds structure from the bottom up (Chomsky, 1995, 2007; Uriagereka, 2012). In this system, known as the Minimalist Program, trees such as the one exemplified in Figure 4.2 are not generated by phrase structure grammars but by an operation called Merge, which uses lexical information (encoded in each lexical item, or word) to combine elements into (binary branching) trees. Other functions operate on branching points such as V, VP, NP to create derivative structures. A basic intuition underlying this theory of syntax is that language-particular differences are encoded in the lexicon, with the rest of the system held to be invariant across different languages.2 This core idea – that parameters of linguistic variation are restricted to the lexicon with the rest of the system fixed and invariant, known as the Borer–Chomsky Conjecture (Borer, 1984; Chomsky, 1991) – fits well with an integrated view of bilingualism in which the fixed and invariant aspects of language are shared linguistic resources, while those that include aspects of language variation are encoded in the lexicon. This codeswitching model uses discrete lexicons and morphophonological systems to represent language-particular features, with invariant syntactic and semantic features serving as shared resources, a topic I will return to presently. The Minimalist Program, as an approach to syntactic analysis, is represented schematically on the left-hand side of Figure 4.3; this

Figure 4.3  Representations of monolingual and bilingual mental grammars

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represents the idealized monolingual case. It represents that our lexically-encoded knowledge projects the structural relations we see in sentences. This system maps sound to meaning by associating phonology (PHON, or PF for phonetic form) with semantics (SEM, or LF for logical form) in the way illustrated. As shown, lexical items are selected from our large bank of words, or Lexicon, into a small set of elements to be used to express a thought. To accomplish this, an operation called Select draws words from the Lexicon and places them in a Lexical Array. The features of lexical items are then structurally arranged by Merge. The resulting structure is split at a point called Spell-Out, with features relevant to phonology passed on to PHON, and features relevant to semantic interpretation passed on to SEM. (For more information on general concepts of contemporary syntactic theory, see van Gelderen, 2017 and Uriagereka, 2012.) In my application of this syntactic theory to bilingual grammar (MacSwan, 1999, 2000b), I posited that bilinguals ‘have a unitary system of syntactic operations’ responsible for mapping sound to meaning (MacSwan, 2000b: 52). However, ‘because each lexicon must have distinct internal operations for forming morphologically complex lexical items (like walked and caminó ‘he/she/it walked’), it appears reasonable to assume that bilinguals have distinct lexicons, each with their own internal morphological principles of word formation,’ with Select drawing items from either Lexicon into the Lexical Array, where the derivation can proceed as in the monolingual case (2000b: 52). This bilingual version is represented on the right-hand side of Figure 4.3. The Locus of Linguistic Discreteness

A system like the one sketched in Figure 4.3, in which languageparticular and idiosyncratic information is stored in the lexicon, invites us to think carefully about the nature of lexical knowledge. What types of linguistic knowledge are lexically represented? In The Minimalist Program, Chomsky (1995) cataloged four specific kinds of features encoded in lexical items, including categorial features (noun, verb, adjective, preposition and more), grammatical features (such as case and agreement features like person, number and gender), inherent semantic and syntactic features and a phonological matrix. Each item within the lexicon encodes morphological, syntactic and phonological features of various kinds, and these feature arrays and their values vary in a language-particular way. Perhaps the most salient of these lexically encoded languageparticular features are morphological and phonological processes. Morphological affixation (processes in which word bits like -ed are added to stems like walk- to give us walked, or -ó to camin- to give us caminó) is tightly connected with phonology. Bilinguals will create new words through borrowing by phonologically integrating a word

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stem from one language into another, as in parqueando (‘parking’), flipeando (‘flipping’) or lonchar (‘to have lunch’), where the stems, too, are pronounced with Spanish phonology. These items are often called loanwords. But switching phonological processing mid-word is not well tolerated in codeswitching; so words like run-iando ([rʌniando], ‘running’), where the sound [ʌ] (available in English but not in Spanish) occurs with a Spanish affix, are judged to be ill-formed by bilinguals. These facts relate to an apparent ban on word-internal codeswitching, first observed by Poplack (1980). The ban also appears to relate to word-like units, where linguistic processes have merged elements together, affecting words that are phonologically integrated with adjacent elements such as clitics. Typically pronouns or articles, clitics are words that are phonologically merged with adjacent words, as in Spanish dámelo (‘give me it’), comprised of the imperative dá (‘give’), the indirect object clitic me (‘me’), and the direct object clitic lo (‘it’). Note that orthography may not always reflect phonological merger, as in Spanish Yo la ví (‘I saw her’) where the object pronoun la (‘her’) is syntactically and phonologically merged with the verb ví (‘saw’). Just as word-internal codeswitching is not well tolerated by bilinguals, codeswitching across instances of phonological merger like these is also illicit. This accounts for the strongly negative grammaticality judgment by Spanish-English bilinguals for codeswitches like Yo la saw (‘I saw her’), where a Spanish pronominal clitic is mixed with an English verb, as noted earlier. These facts appear to suggest that bilinguals have discretely represented phonologies. Consider a specific example, namely, the contrast between Spanish and English with respect to lenition of /b, d, g/ between vowels. In Spanish, these sounds are usually realized as stops (involving obstruction of the airstream) when following another stop, a pause, or /l/ in the case of /d/ (e.g. cuando [kwaṋdo] ‘when’, tengo [teηgo] ‘I have’) but as continuants in intervocalic contexts (e.g. hada [aða] ‘fairy’, haga [aγa] ‘do-subj.3sg’) (Lipski, 1994). English does not have this phonological rule. In contemporary theories of phonology, this difference is represented by ranking Spanish stricture agreement higher than it is ranked in English, rendering the ‘constraint ranking’ Agree(stricture) >> Ident-IO(continuant), Ident-IO(sonorant) for Spanish and Identity-IO(continuant), Ident-IO(sonorant) >> Agree(stricture) for English. In MacSwan and Colina (2014), we empirically evaluated the theory that phonological systems are discretely represented for Spanish-English bilinguals using this specific contrast. In one experiment, we tested whether Spanish intervocalic approximant allophones of /b, d, g/ would occur in codeswitching contexts when situated between a Spanish vowel and an English vowel at word boundaries (e.g. Hablamos de mi ghost yesterday). The goal was to discover whether Spanish-English bilinguals

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(N = 5, adult simultaneous bilingual Arizonans) would allow a Spanish phonological process to modify English word structure (in the example, /g/ in ghost). A second experiment examined whether an English segment could trigger a Spanish phonological process (/s/-voicing) to modify a Spanish word (e.g. mis ghosts). The results of a phonetic analysis showed that our bilingual participants switched seamlessly and effortlessly at language boundaries but maintained separation of their phonological systems; participants applied the Spanish phonological processes exclusively to Spanish segments, even in a bilingual triggering environment. How these empirical observations inform the organization of bilingual grammar can be illuminated through a closer look at how language-particular differences like these are represented in phonological theory. As noted, phonologists capture language variation like this in terms of differences in the rankings associated with phonological rules, called constraints in current phonological theory, known as Optimality Theory (OT). As Prince and Smolensky explained: OT hypothesizes that constraints are prioritized with respect to each other on a language-particular basis. If a constraint A is prioritized above B, we will write A>>B and say that A is ranked above or dominates B. A ranking of the constraint set – a constraint dominance hierarchy – allows the entire set to evaluate alternatives. (Prince & Smolensky, 1993: 3)

Since language-particular phonologies differ with respect to their internal rankings, it follows that bilinguals will have discrete phonological systems, each with a distinct ranked order of constraints. If the systems were combined as one, the distinct rankings would not be preserved, and the phonological processes would not generate phonetic form as expected. More concretely, building on Prince and Smolensky’s explanation, if A>>B and B>>A are both part of a speaker’s phonology, then a ranking paradox emerges, and A would have no priority relative to B. To avoid the paradox, the human language faculty organically organizes two discrete systems, one corresponding to the phonological output of each language. Note that for the language system, these are just different constraint dominance hierarchies defined by different constraint rankings. So constructed, the system generates different I-languages, each of which corresponds to a different E-language. I formulated the PF Interface Condition (PFIC) (MacSwan, 2009; MacSwan & Colina, 2014)3 – where PF refers to Phonetic Form – to capture this restriction on codeswitching, emphasizing that it is an epiphenomenon, or emergent property of the linguistic system, employed by the human language faculty to manage contradictory phonological rules. The system illustrated in Figure 4.3 shows discrete

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phonologies internal to the lexicons, but discrete phonological processing is also involved in mapping structures to PF after Spell-Out. See MacSwan and Colina (2014) for a detailed discussion; also see Gosselin (2022), Stefanich et al. (2019) and Wang (2017). In this theory of codeswitching, a bilingual grammar has some shared components as well as some discrete components, corresponding to the Integrated Multilingual Model in Figure 4.1. Specifically, it posits that syntax and semantics are shared across both languages, while the morphophonologies and lexicons are discrete. This research tradition seeks to craft theories of linguistic competence, or an understanding of what each of us subconsciously knows about language. However, it is consistent with findings of researchers focused on theories of multilingualism and linguistic performance, or the use of our linguistic knowledge in the production of actual utterances (e.g. Hartsuiker et al., 2004, 2016). Let us return once again to Otheguy and colleagues’ (2018) charge that the association of various linguistic properties or specific words with different languages is taken for granted in the codeswitching literature: What ‘structural evidence’ allowed us to ‘spot an instance of code switching,’ or to ‘tell us which parts of the corpus belong to A, which to B, and which represent code switches’ (2018: 21) in the model of bilingual grammar represented in Figure 4.3? The system sketched in Figure 4.3 recruits the full range of lexically-encoded properties, which are by definition language-particular – designed, in fact, to capture crosslinguistic variation. Two salient foci of language-particular differences relate to patterns of affixation and agreement morphology. Conjugation paradigms for verbs in corpus A (‘Spanish’), for instance, exhibit a third person singular agreement morpheme -a or -e, depending on their corresponding infinitival form (-ar, -er, -ir), while those in corpus B (‘English’) exhibit a morpheme -s with the same meaning. Phonological processes for items of corpus A are dramatically different from those of corpus B, so much so that words and word-like elements are restricted to distinct sets of phonological operations associated with each corpus. The motivation for encoding these language-particular differences into the phonological systems is inherent to phonological theory itself (Optimality Theory, in the case presented here), and not a stipulation related to the discussion of bilingual grammar. These and many other structural effects serve as empirical evidence which tells us which parts of the corpus belong to A and which to B. The alternate use of these elements represents codeswitching. Once again, we see rich ‘structural evidence’ which distinguishes items into distinct corpora, conventionally called Spanish and English. The phonological integration of loanwords (whether established or nonce borrowings) serves as robust structural evidence of phonological encapsulation. A Spanish-English bilingual might say lunch or lonchar

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(‘to have lunch’), but the vowel used in the former will be a low-mid back unrounded vowel [ʌ], which occurs in English but not in Spanish, and the vowel used in the latter will alter to [o] due to the presence of the Spanish -ar morpheme. As noted, these morphophonological systems strongly resist internal alternation, such that lonchar would not occur with [ʌ]. Otheguy et al. (2018) note the existence of loanwords, too, but argue that ‘the difference between native and foreign elements of competence is not structural but social’ (2018: 12), and that nothing in the process of lexical borrowing ‘would justify invoking “English” and “Spanish” as linguistic cognitive categories’ (2018: 13). However, loanwords are actually defined by their integration into the recipient language phonology (a structural characteristic), making them structural, cognitive and social artifacts. As Otheguy et al. (2015, 2018) emphasize, what we call English and Spanish are without a doubt social categories, a point that has frequently been made in the codeswitching literature (e.g. MacSwan, 1999, 2000b, 2005a, 2005b; Mahootian & Santorini, 1996); but these social or E-language categories do indeed correspond to specific sets of linguistic characteristics that differentiate them. A bilingual grammar, if empirically grounded, is compelled to represent many of the languageparticular structural differences in an internally organized way that reflects a partially discrete or integrated model. Otheguy et al. (2018) argue that any conception of bilingual grammar will be a ‘dual competence model,’ as sketched in Figure 4.1, so long as it is a ‘dual correspondence model,’ meaning, for them, a model of bilingual grammar that posits that an individual bilingual’s internal grammar corresponds to two socially identifiable languages such as English and Spanish. However, questions about the architecture of bilingual grammar (as, for instance, sketched in Figure 4.1) are empirical, informed by the data of language mixing. The question is the same regardless of whether it relates to monolingualism or bilingualism: Drawing on theoretical parsimony, what form must a grammar have to generate its linguistic expressions? In the case of a bilingual, the expressions will likely exhibit structurally different sets of expressions, some corresponding to one E-language, some corresponding to another – each used by a community of speakers. Thus, an integrated grammar, with shared and discrete resources, can indeed generate expressions corresponding to two or more E-languages. Evaluating García and Colleagues’ Critique of Codeswitching Research

García and colleagues’ (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018) critique of codeswitching research presents two distinct claims: They asserted that (1) codeswitching scholarship supports a dual competence

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model of bilingualism, and that (2) bilinguals have an internally undifferentiated grammar for the languages they know. Both are empirical questions – the first historical, the second linguistic. My task in the present chapter has been to show, from an inspection of the relevant literature, that codeswitching scholars have clearly engaged the topic of linguistic discreteness; both ‘from the inception’ of codeswitching research, illustrated by Sankoff and Poplack (1981), and in more recent models, illustrated by MacSwan (2000b, 2014), researchers have presented an integrated model of multilingualism, with shared and discrete components. These are not obscure references but leading theoretical proposals (Bhatia, 2018; Malik, 2017; Wardhaugh & Fuller, 2015). These proposals are motivated empirically, and are not ‘an assumption’ made ‘on the basis of the external named language categories’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 298). García and colleagues’ second claim is that bilinguals have an internally undifferentiated grammar for the languages they know. As they note: ‘In a fully developed debate about the nature of linguistic system in bilinguals, the systems and sub-systems that together make up this competence would naturally need to be articulated through specific theoretical constructs belonging to a specific theory of language’ (2018: 13). Unfortunately, García and colleagues present no such proposals, and offer no answers to even the most basic empirical questions. How does a bilingual manage contradictory rules of syntax, such as the OV/VO contrast in Farsi and English or the Adj-N/N-Adj contrast in Spanish and English? How does a bilingual manage to assign φ-features of person, number and gender to Spanish words but only person and number to English words? How does she systematically apply lenition to /b, d, g/ in Spanish utterances but not in English? While García and colleagues offer no actual theoretical proposals that can be empirically evaluated, consideration of a wide range of facts reviewed here suggests that a unitary theory of bilingual grammar is not likely to succeed.4 Especially disappointing is García and colleagues’ blatant neglect of all prior published research on these topics. Not a single relevant primary source is discussed or even noted in any of their publications criticizing codeswitching research (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018; García et al., 2021). As Peter Auer notes, too: ‘The construction of translanguaging as a counter-notion to codeswitching is based on a gross misrepresentation of research on bilingualism and codeswitching as it has accumulated since the 1970s’ (this volume, Chapter 5, p. 147). See also Bhatt and Bolonyai (this volume, Chapter 6) and May (this volume, Afterword) on this important historical point. As Tables 4.1 and 4.2 make clear, codeswitching is a vibrant and active field; scholarly convention would expect direct engagement in a critical review, subject to vetting by experts in the field.

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Still, García and colleagues’ important social and practical aims are well supported by the integrated model of bilingual grammar represented in Figure 4.1, and by other conceptual tools which linguists and sociolinguists have proposed, such as verbal repertoire. We turn to this point next before wrapping up with a discussion of the educational implications of the different perspectives considered here. Repertoires and Grammars

Linguists and sociolinguists often use the metaphor of a repertoire to refer to the broad stock of speech styles, registers, varieties and languages people know (Coulmas, 2005; Spolsky, 1998). The term was classically introduced by John Gumperz, who defined a ‘verbal repertoire’ as ‘the totality of linguistic forms regularly employed in the course of socially significant interaction’ (Gumperz, 1964: 137). Thus, it includes grammar, along with its internal representation of the linguistic diversity each of us has, but its focus is on language use and ways of talking. Gee uses the term social languages to capture a similar concept, emphasizing its connection to the performance of social identities: Languages the size of ‘English’ or ‘Russian’ are composed of a myriad of what I will call ‘social languages’ (Gee, 2014). Social languages (some of which might be called dialects, registers, varieties, or styles or by other names) are styles of using words, grammar, and discourse to enact a socially significant identity. (Gee, 2015a: 69)

These social languages are enacted in different contexts to create one or more social identities in interaction with others. Everybody has a diverse linguistic repertoire consisting of multiple social languages. These social languages are each appropriate to one or more social contexts, but they may feel out of place in some settings. Gee gives an example: Imagine I park my motorcycle, enter my neighborhood ‘biker bar,’ and say to my leather-jacketed and tattooed drinking buddy, as I sit down: ‘May I have a match for my cigarette, please?’ What I have said is perfectly grammatical English, but it is ‘wrong’ nonetheless, unless I have used a heavily ironic tone of voice. It is not just the content of what you say that is important, but how you say it. And in this bar, I haven’t said it in the ‘right’ way. I should have said something like ‘Gotta match?’ or ‘Give me a light, wouldya?’ (Gee, 2015a: 3)

The formal register inappropriately used in this context would be contextually appropriate in other settings, such as school. School language, on this view, is just one (set) of many social languages, used to

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create a particular persona in specific contexts and for specific tasks (Gee, 2014, 2015a, 2015b; see also Gee, this volume, Chapter 3). The idea of a repertoire connects with the way in which García and colleagues define translanguaging, namely, as ‘the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 283). Repertoires, enacted through social languages, allow ‘speakers to act socially as bilinguals and multilinguals, to have two or more cultural and sociopolitical identities’ (Otheguy et al., 2018: 3). Not only does everybody have a diverse linguistic repertoire consisting of multiple social languages, but everybody – including so-called monolinguals – has a diverse grammar, capable of realizing different structures associated with different social languages. For example, many speakers of English have a phonological rule which changes a velar nasal [ŋ] in words like walking ([wakɪŋ]) to an alveolar nasal [n] ([wakɪn]) in informal social contexts. This and many other inter-speaker variations suggest that multilingualism is in fact universal, as Roeper (1999, 2016) suggested. Rather than thinking of bilinguals as akin to monolinguals, with no internalized language-specific differentiation – as García and colleagues’ unitary view suggests – we might better think of monolinguals as akin to bilinguals, celebrating bilingualism and linguistic diversity as a universal human attribute: Each of us has an internally diverse grammar, embedded in a multitude of social languages comprising the full range of our linguistic repertoire. Indeed, as Chomsky noted: ‘… every person is multiply multilingual in a more technical sense’ (2000: 44).5 Importantly, for present purposes, a repertoire is not a grammar, but a catalog of the ways we each can talk in different social contexts. It includes our richly diverse internalized mental grammars, as well as the diverse vocabulary and systems of knowledge pertaining to discourse, pragmatics and other social conventions which we recruit in verbal interactions with others. In Gumperz’s (1964: 137–138) terms, it reflects ‘contextual and social differences in speech … subject both to grammatical and social restraints.’ Mental grammars are thus but a small part of our overall knowledge of how to use language in social contexts, defining the narrow structural mapping from sound to meaning. Although García and colleagues (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018) focus their discussion on the nature of an individual bilingual’s mental grammar, the definition of translanguaging itself is usually offered in terms of linguistic repertoire. For instance, García (2012) argued that ‘bilinguals have one linguistic repertoire from which they select features strategically to communicate effectively’ (2012: 1, italics in original), and the more recently refined definition

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of translanguaging presented in Otheguy et al. (2015) defines translanguaging as ‘the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages’ (2015: 283). There is broad agreement on this point of view. However, the widely accepted view that multilingual children should have access to their ‘full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined [language] boundaries’ does not depend on the belief that our linguistic knowledge is unitary, or that individual linguistic diversity is a fiction. A multilingual perspective on translanguaging, which affirms linguistic diversity, is wholly consistent with this point of view, and indeed may be seen as adding important support: We are not all individually monolingual, but rather multilingual, with rich internal diversity; as with any person in any community, the richness of the linguistic diversity of multilingual students should be viewed as a critically important resource for promoting their educational success. Some Implications for Language Education

Otheguy and colleagues (2018) reflect on educational contexts in which harmful ideologies are often found, and they argue that their unitary view of bilingualism is a useful strategy for undermining them. They further contend that the implication that a bilingual’s linguistic diversity is cognitively represented in a language-particular way promotes such ideologies. Fuller (2018) contrasts pluralist language ideologies with monoglossic and standard language ideologies; pluralist language ideologies celebrate linguistic diversity and multilingualism. Monoglossic ideologies discourage multilingualism, and standard language ideologies devalue the linguistic varieties of non-dominant groups. More broadly, Kroskrity (2010) defined language ideologies as the ‘beliefs, feelings, and conceptions about language structure and use which often index the political economic interests of individual speakers, ethnic and other interest groups, and nation-states’ (2010: 192). In the broadest sense, as Gee adds, ‘all claims and beliefs are partly “ideological”’; however, we still must always ask ourselves whether our theories are based on a genuine attempt to understand the world and make it better or just on a desire for power, control, or status. When our beliefs are based on tacit theories (ones not much consciously considered) and/or nonprimary theories (ones not based on a real search for evidence from diverse sources), then they become ‘ideological’ in the worst sense if it turns out they are potentially harmful to others. (Gee, 2015b: 22)

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Evidence-based theories support pluralistic language ideologies because they expose monoglossic and standard language ideologies as based on an interest in power, control and status rather than a genuine search for truth. Champions of pluralist language ideologies have tirelessly engaged in linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis to rebuff oppressive monoglossic and standard language ideologies. In addition to ideologies at the societal level, members of non-dominant groups frequently internalize the dominant ideological perspective. With regard to language ideologies in particular, ‘even those disadvantaged by hegemonic ideologies accept them as immutable facts, not social realities that can be changed or discontinued’ (Fuller, 2018: 119). Otheguy et al. (2018) argue that their unitary theory of bilingualism undermines monoglossic and standard language ideologies because it insists ‘on recognizing the duality of bilingualism (or the multiplicity of multilingualism) as a product of socio-political categorization rather than a description of psycholinguistic reality’ (2018: 22). Put differently, by distinguishing between the social (E-language) and individual (I-language) senses of bilingualism, affirming the ontology of the former but not the latter, they believe their work can disrupt oppressive language ideologies more effectively than the alternative. ‘To take the most obvious case as illustration,’ they observe, under the view that bilingualism is psychologically real, ‘student failures to distinguish sharply between languages, or the persistent “mixing” of, or “switching” between, them is not seen by the educator as a failure of social convention, of aligning one’s behavior with a social norm, but as a true shortcoming involving the mishandling of mental boundaries seen as cognitive objects’ (2018: 23). Linguists and sociolinguists have responded to such ill-informed dogmas about language mixing potentially held by teachers or others by demonstrating empirically that, far from indicating linguistic confusion, codeswitching reveals a rich display of linguistic talent, as is strongly evidenced by its rule-governed nature. Is it really more effective to tell teachers and others that bilingual children lack underlying representations for discrete languages, and therefore are not really ‘mixing’ languages? Apart from being a far less direct response to a deficit perspective on language mixing, the suggestion is counter-intuitive for many, and may cause additional confusion – perhaps unintentionally implying that the lack of language differentiation is itself a problem in need of remediation. More broadly, consider the possible effects of two different claims on prevailing monoglossic and standard language ideologies held by teachers, policymakers, parents and others: (1) Children speak local varieties of one or more language, each as valid as the next, and any mixing of these languages is a display of linguistic talent; or (2) Apparent bilinguals, who speak two social languages at school, actually have only a single language system at a cognitive level. While the multilingual perspective (1) is a direct, empirically-grounded repudiation of monoglossic and standard

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language ideologies, the unitary perspective (2) leaves open any number of interpretations, none of which would lead clearly to a pluralist language ideology. Otheguy et al. (2018) further argue that the traditional view that linguistic diversity is mentally represented implies that languages ‘are distinct linguistic objects that can be taught and assessed separately’ (Otheguy et al., 2018: 23). But that is not so. The idea that languages should be taught and assessed bilingually has been around for many years, and it has peacefully co-existed with the common belief that linguistic diversity is mentally represented and that bilingualism is psychologically real (see Lin, 2013 and Faltis, 2020, for reviews). With respect to bilingual grammar in particular, these are technical considerations that relate to optimal design, and hold no implications for how languages should be taught and assessed. Relatedly, standard theories of (monolingual) language structure, which posit such discrete subsystems as phonology, morphology and syntax, are never taken to imply that sound, word structure and sentence structure should be taught and assessed separately. A significant concern in Otheguy et al. (2018) is the impact of our conception of individual bilingualism on assessment policy and practice in schools. ‘Bilingual minoritized students are assessed with instruments that measure attainment separately in the two real linguistic objects that the named languages are incorrectly theorized to be,’ they note. ‘Seldom are students assessed in their overall linguistic abilities or in their ability to use their full set of phonological, lexical, and structural resources for interactive and academic purposes’ (2018: 24). Prevailing assessment policy and practice ‘only values positively those test takers who manage to operate with less than half of their linguistic resources, castigating students when translanguaging practices make their presence felt in test performances’ (2018: 24). These concerns connect with two separate domains of assessment for bilingual students, content area assessment and language assessment, both of which have been shaped by relatively recent changes in federal policy. Ronald Reagan’s National Commission on Excellence in Education report A Nation at Risk (United States, 1983) spurred a new focus on standards and high-stakes testing as an accountability mechanism, leading to the eventual passage of Goals 2000 in 1994, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002 and the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2015. States were required to develop ‘challenging academic content standards’ to be measured by academic tests, and to develop English language proficiency standards specifically tied to these content standards to be used in a separately administered English language proficiency test. (See Hamilton et al., 2008 for discussion.) While ESSA encourages content area assessment in the home language, children must nonetheless demonstrate annual progress through both English language proficiency and academic

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assessments as accountability measures, creating significant pressure on schools to favor English-oriented programs over bilingual approaches (Hornberger, 2005; Menken & Solorza, 2014). If policymakers accepted the view that children have a unitary system for what sociopolitically appear to be two languages like English and Spanish, what would the consequences be for assessment policy and practice in the US? ESSA already encourages bilingual content area assessment, and pressure on local school systems to demonstrate annual progress in English language proficiency would still make bilingual or Spanish-mediated assessment unlikely. The mechanisms at work in this policy context are driven by the standards movement, which is likely motivated by anti-democratic efforts to discredit schools so they can be privatized, shifting public money into private hands (Berliner & Nichols, 2007; Hagopian, 2014; Ravitch, 2016). Policies supporting bilingual and Spanish-mediated content area assessment have been around for a very long time and have never been motivated by a unitary perspective on bilingual grammar. Rather, such policies are motivated by sensible and sound educational practice. They are resisted, not because people believe that bilingualism is psychologically real but because they are not consistent with the interests of powerful elites behind US educational policy. Otheguy et al.’s (2018) interest in improving assessment policy and practices for bilingual children might also relate to language assessment, as they express concern that children are typically not ‘assessed in their overall linguistic abilities or in their ability to use their full set of phonological, lexical, and structural resources for interactive and academic purposes’ (2018: 24). As with content area assessment, current school-based language assessments in the US are standards-based, and tend to concurrently measure both linguistic and school content knowledge, thus providing misleading results (Clark-Gareca et al., 2019; Rolstad et al., 2015). Prior to NCLB, English language assessments were based on theories of linguistic knowledge; while many of these assessments were poorly designed, they were intended to determine whether children who used a language other than English at home knew English, a language other than English (such as Spanish), or both. Ensuing assessment policy was put in place in local school systems in response to the US Office of Civil Rights Lau Remedies, issued in 1975, in compliance with Lau v Nichols (1974) and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974). (See Baker & Wright, 2017; Gonzalez, 2002.) US school systems typically used a home language survey to identify children from homes where a language other than English was used; some of these school systems then assessed children’s language proficiency in both English (their second language) and Spanish (their first language) (Mahoney & MacSwan, 2005). Because many of the tests were poorly designed, the combination of tests in English and Spanish frequently assessed children as ‘non-non’s,’ determined to be non-proficient in

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English and non-proficient in Spanish. The existence of typicallydeveloping children lacking proficiency in both languages is sometimes called semilingualism (critically discussed in MacSwan, 2000a; MacSwan & Rolstad, 2006, 2010; and MacSwan et al., 2017; Wiley, 2005). Because English is a second language for many of these children, it was not surprising that their English language proficiency was still developing. But the finding that they also did not know Spanish, their home language, was completely unexpected. In MacSwan and Rolstad (2006), we evaluated common commercially available tests used in the pre-NCLB language assessment era and found them to be wildly inaccurate. More specifically, we found that while the Language Assessment Scales-Oral (LAS-O) Español and the Idea Proficiency Test I-Oral (IPT) Spanish identified 74% and 90% (respectively) of Spanish-speaking children as limited speakers of their home language, a natural language measure found only 2% of participants to have unexpectedly high morphological error rates (N = 145). In other words, a detailed analysis of the Spanish proficiency of the children identified as ‘non-fluent’ in both English and Spanish showed the children to be fully proficient in Spanish. This and other Spanish language assessment research (e.g. MacSwan et al., 2002) motivated the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest in the US, to discontinue its practice of routinely assessing the home oral language proficiency of students (NASEM, 2017). What would a unitary perspective on bilingualism imply for language assessment policy? Perhaps it would indeed suggest that language assessments should be done to measure children’s knowledge of both English and Spanish, as they have a unitary system spanning both. Such an assessment policy could easily – in fact, would almost certainly – lead to the labeling of many children as ‘non-non’s,’ just as prior assessment practices determined. It would be quite odd to question the English proficiency of a child raised in an English-speaking home, without evidence of some sort of language disorder. Similarly, there is no sensible reason to assume that young children growing up in Spanishspeaking homes, and who have not yet learned English, would not know Spanish. One cannot meaningfully describe these differences under a unitary perspective, as there is no sense in which the individual learner’s bilingualism corresponds to the languages of separate speech communities. These issues relate to the legal mandate on US schools to protect the civil rights of children who do not know English. Tightly connected to García and colleagues’ view of bilingualism as unitary is that, for every speaker, ‘there is only his or her full idiolect or repertoire, which belongs only to the speaker, not to any named language’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 281). What does the emphasis on individual language imply about second language learners? Under the unitary view – which acknowledges only individual idiolects – whatever a learner’s second language proficiency might be, it cannot be described in developmental

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terms like beginning, intermediate or proficient as such terms reference an external target language community (‘English speakers,’ for example). Indeed, García and Li (2014) disparage even the mention of second or first language by other researchers (2014: 62). How do schools satisfy their legal duties under Lau to protect the civil rights of children who do not know English if they cannot express whether and how their language ‘corresponds’ to English and Spanish speech communities? These are critically important issues which can only be evaded by those who may espouse the unitary thesis but do not really take it seriously. Finally, Otheguy et al. (2018) suggest that the idea of language-specific properties within a bilingual grammar ‘supports the expectation of many educators, long made suspect by Grosjean (1982), that bilinguals can be profitably understood as two monolinguals in one’ (2018: 23). However, Grosjean, in fact, drew extensively on codeswitching research as part of the empirical foundation of the holistic perspective (see especially Grosjean, 1985, 2010). Although Grosjean’s work fundamentally changed the conceptual framework underlying research on bilingualism by celebrating linguistic diversity, it did not do so by promoting or even suggesting a unitary view of bilingualism, but rather saw bilingualism as psychologically real, and saw codeswitching research as critical support for the perspective. The unitary perspective on individual bilingualism does not offer better defenses for improving conditions for linguistically diverse students over alternative approaches to combatting oppressive language ideologies. In many respects, it muddies the water, creating a vacuum to be filled by common unexamined assumptions about linguistic diversity. (See MacSwan, Chapter 1, this volume, for further discussion.) Conclusion

My primary goals in this chapter have been to summarize my original response (MacSwan, 2017) to García and colleagues’ critique of codeswitching (García & Otheguy, 2014; Otheguy et al., 2015) and to address their reply to my response (Otheguy et al., 2018). In my view – and in the view of others in this volume (Auer, Chapter 5; Bhatt and Bolonyai, Chapter 6; May, Afterword) – García and colleagues’ critique erroneously represents codeswitching scholarship, relying on conjecture rather than actual engagement of the published record. The effect has been to build a straw man, easily cast as an ideological villain, guilty of ‘the uncritical adoption of the external perspective that trades on the sociocultural separateness of languages and on the monoglossic ideology that privileges the monolingual speaker and the monolingual setting as the natural and unmarked condition of languaging’ (García & Otheguy, 2014: 649). But in fact, ‘… research on code-switching has waged a war on deficit models of bilingualism and on pejorative views of syncretic language use by insisting on the integrity of

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language mixing and by examining it for its grammatical systematicity and pragmatic coherence’ (Rampton, 2007: 306). García’s (2009) initial treatise on translanguaging extensively and positively discussed the sociolinguistics and pedagogy of codeswitching and other traditional sociolinguistic research on language contact, as noted (2009: 49–51, 295–301). In this early phase of García’s thinking about codeswitching and translanguaging, the two terms were seen as partner concepts. Still, Otheguy et al.’s (2015) first published critique of codeswitching expressed frustration that ‘the new term’ translanguaging, which they said had ‘aimed to overturn’ codeswitching, had ‘not been successful,’ as it ‘began to drift toward covering essentially the same conceptual terrain as code switching’ (2015: 282). The deconstructivist or unitary view of translanguaging, though often presented as orthodoxy (May, Afterword), is one point of view, but need not be the predominant one. Nobody owns the term translanguaging, and it may be operationalized and refined by anyone who cares to offer a perspective. Martínez and Martinez (2020: 241) consider ‘the relative affordances and constraints of different terminologies for describing and making sense of the dynamic bilingual practices’ discussed in their work, and find that both codeswitching and translanguaging remain useful for them. More specifically, ‘As a term, codeswitching allows us a degree of precision that we feel helps to highlight the specific contours and details of students’ everyday translanguaging’ (2020: 241) Moreover, they write: The literature on codeswitching and styleshifting has historically enabled us to talk back to deficit perspectives that frame Chicanx and Latinx students and their language in racist and pejorative terms. In a similar way, the emergent translanguaging literature provides us with a vocabulary for challenging the dominant language ideologies that continue to circulate in society and in the classroom. Despite different underlying assumptions, these bodies of scholarship converge in that they both afford a perspective that recognizes the richness of Chicanx and Latinx students’ dynamic linguistic repertoires. (Martínez & Martinez, 2020: 241)

Gort (2020) similarly argues that translanguaging should not be seen as a superseding term, as it ‘focuses less on the specific linguistic features of students’ language production and more on the practices themselves. …’ (2020: 165), creating space for both. ‘To be sure, codeswitching research has been instrumental in providing the empirical basis for the rejection of a deficit perspective on bilinguals’ everyday languaging on which translanguaging perspectives are built’ (2020: 165). For Faltis: Codeswitching and translanguaging are political acts in response to the dominant models of language and language separation … Both are de-colonizing pedagogies that bilingual teachers can and should use for promoting bilingual students’ content and language learning, for

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leveraging bilingualism, and for valuing the language resources that bilingual children and youth bring to the classroom. The commonalities, in terms of what each contributes to promoting bilingualism, far outweigh their theoretical differences …. Both were constructed to counter claims that bilingual language practices found in bilingual communities were unworthy for use in academic settings with curricula created by and for English speakers. (Faltis, 2020: 57)

In their study of refugee-background youth learning English, King and Bigelow similarly adopt a multilingual perspective on translanguaging, which: … emphasizes that multilingualism is psychologically ‘real’ (acknowledging that speakers do move between different, and often recognizable languages), but also points to the ways that translanguaging is productive for learning and engagement in classrooms. This perspective makes clear both the long-standing language ideologies that have privileged monolingual language use (and correspondingly, diminished and problematized use of additional languages), and points to the ways in which code-switching in the classroom can productively enhance both language and content learning while also contributing to culturally sustaining pedagogies… (King & Bigelow, 2021: 200)

Henderson and Sayer (2020: 218) likewise ‘embrace an understanding of translanguaging that does not imply a single language system, but rather an evolving meaning-making repertoire with multiple systems and constant movement across different, intersecting, and continuously evolving linguistic and cultural conventions’. In their study of translanguaging in peer reading interactions, Tigert et al. (2020) adopt a multilingual perspective on translanguaging as well, recognizing that ‘translanguaging is built upon decades of language mixing research that conceptualized students’ mixing of L1 and L2 as codeswitching …’ (Tigert et al., 2020: 66). This multilingual perspective on translanguaging, adopted by these and many other scholars, aligns research on multilingual language education with research on bilingualism, and creates far more effective tools for addressing the needs and interests of multilingual children and communities. It views multilingualism as psychologically real and socially significant, while acknowledging and celebrating linguistic variation, down to the level of the idiolect. Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Kellie Rolstad and Peter Sayer for comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. Portions of this chapter were previously published as MacSwan (2017, 2020a, 2020b).

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Notes (1) Thanks to Juan Uriagereka for this observation. (2) See MacSwan (2016) for a discussion of constraint-free approaches to codeswitching using a Distributed Morphology framework in which late lexical insertion is posited. (3) I called this restriction the PF Disjunction Theorem in earlier work (MacSwan, 1999, 2000b). (4) A formal unitary bilingual grammar would be one in which fully explicit mechanisms are situated within the grammar with no encapsulation of language-particular operations and no language-particular input restrictions, but still capture appropriately broad linguistic generalizations. (5) I am grateful to Vivian Cook (Chapter 2, this volume) for unearthing this obscure quotation from an interview Chomsky gave in January 1996, in Delhi, India, published along with a transcription of a lecture as Chomsky (2000).

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Otheguy, R., García, O. and Reid, W. (2018) A translanguaging view of the linguistic system of bilinguals. Applied Linguistics Review 10 (4), 1–27. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/ applirev-2018-0020. Parafita Couto, M.C. and Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H. (2019) El book or the libro? Insights from acceptability judgments into determiner/noun code-switches. International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (1), 349–360. Parafita Couto, M.C. and Gullberg, M. (2019) Code-switching within the noun phrase: Evidence from three corpora. International Journal of Bilingualism 23 (2), 695–714. Pandit, I. (1990) Grammaticality in code switching. In R. Jacobson (ed.) Codeswitching as a Worldwide Phenomenon. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Pedraza, P., Attinasi, J. and Hoffman, G. (1980) Rethinking Diglossia. Centros Working Paper No. 9. New York, NY: Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, City University of New York. Pfaff, C. (1976) Functional and structural constraints on syntactic variation in codeswitching. Papers from the Parasession on Diachronic Syntax (pp. 248–259). Chicago, IL: Chicago Linguistic Society. Pfaff, C. (1979) Constraints on language mixing: Intrasentential code-switching and borrowing in Spanish/English Language 55 (2), 291–318. Poplack, S. (1978) Quantitative analysis of constraints on code-switching. Centros Working Paper No. 2. New York, NY: Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños, City University of New York. Poplack, S. (1980) ‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en Español’: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18 (7–8), 581–618. doi:10.1515/ling.1980.18.78.581. Poplack, S. (1981) The syntactic structure and social function of code-switching. In R. Durán (ed.) Latino Language and Communicative Behavior. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Prince, A. and Smolensky, P. (1993) Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. Rampton, B. (2007) Language crossing and redefining reality. In P. Auer (ed.) Code-switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity. New York, NY: Routledge. Ravitch, D. (2016) The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. New York, NY: Basic Books. Raymond, C.W. (2015) Questions and responses in Spanish monolingual and SpanishEnglish bilingual conversation. Language & Communication 42, 50–68. Riegelhaupt, F. (2000) Codeswitching and language use in the classroom. In A. Roca (ed.) Research on Spanish in the US (pp. 204–217). Summerville, MA: Cascadilla Press. Ritchie, W.C. and Bhatia, T.K. (2013) The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2nd edn). Malden, MA, Oxford and Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Roeper, T. (1999) Universal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2, 169–186. Roeper T. (2016) Multiple grammars and the logic of learnability in second language acquisition. Frontiers in Psychology 7 (14). doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00014. Rolstad, K., MacSwan, J. and Guzman, N. (2015) Bilingual learners and the purposes of language assessment. Miríada Hispánica 10, 207–224. Sánchez, L. (2012) Convergence in syntax/morphology mapping strategies: Evidence from Quechua–Spanish code mixing. Lingua 122 (5), 511–528. Sankoff, D. and Poplack, S. (1981) A formal grammar for code-switching. Papers in Linguistics 14 (1), 3–45. Santorini, B. and Mahootian, S. (1995) Codeswitching and the syntactic status of adnominal adjectives. Lingua 96 (1), 1–27. Saville-Troike, M. (1982) The Ethnography of Communication: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell. Schütze, C.T. (1996) The Empirical Base of Linguistics: Grammaticality Judgments and Linguistics Methodology. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

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5 ‘Translanguaging’ or ‘Doing Languages’? Multilingual Practices and the Notion of ‘Codes’ Peter Auer

The term translanguaging has recently made an astonishing career, particularly in applied (educational) sociolinguistics (cf. Bagga-Gupta & Dahlberg, 2018 for a critical meta-analysis). ‘Translanguaging’ comes in various guises and can mean different things. In educational linguistics, where the term has been propagated by Ofelia García and colleagues, the term is often used to argue that the spontaneous use of bilingual children’s L1 in a majority language classroom should be allowed or encouraged, and that such a bilingual approach will be advantageous for the students’ acquisition of the L2 as well as their academic career and social well-being. Advocating translanguaging here means that the students should be able to rely on all their linguistic resources in the classroom, not only their (perhaps still limited) knowledge of the (standard) language of the receiving society (which is often also the only language of the school; cf. Gogolin’s notion of ‘monolingual habitus’; Gogolin, 1997). In a different tradition of research, and with different phenomena in mind, Jens Normann Jørgensen coined the term ‘polylanguaging’, which mostly addresses multilingual aspects of multiethnic youth vernaculars in Europe (in his case, in Denmark). This approach highlights the integration of fragments of various linguistic elements into the particular vernacular. Both approaches will be discussed here, but ‘translanguaging’ will be in the foreground, given its popularity in applied linguistics. Related notions such as ‘metrolanguaging’ will only be mentioned in passing. The integration of the pupils’ home language in the classroom is an old but still highly relevant question, particularly for schools with large numbers of students with an immigrant background (see already Gumperz & Hernández-Chavez, 1972: 101–106). But a number of 126

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(applied) linguists see translanguaging in a much wider context, as a new theory of bi-/multilingualism, and indeed of language as a whole.1 The central idea is that speakers (whether ‘monolingual’ or ‘bilingual’) never speak ‘languages’ but dispose of a repertoire of forms that only linguists categorize as belonging to different languages (in the bilingual case), and that the speakers would utilize this repertoire in their linguistic practices (while ‘languaging’) freely, if only permitted by society. It is further claimed that the research on codeswitching or language mixing, which has been accumulated in (socio)linguistics and bilingualism research over the last decades, can and must be discarded as irrelevant and misleading as it is based on a fundamentally mistaken idea of separate ‘languages’ (‘additive approach’). It is usually argued that the ‘new’ approach is necessary to deal with the specific characteristics of multilingual practices that are observed today in late-modern, ‘superdiverse’ settings, for which research on bilingualism and codeswitching is said to have been unable to provide an adequate theoretical framework. In the following, I will argue that there is little empirical evidence for new bilingual practices in publications on translanguaging, i.e. for practices that have not yet been dealt with or analyzed. In fact, the examples in the most prominent and widely quoted publications on translanguaging by Ofelia García and colleagues rather show the opposite of what they are supposed to show, i.e. a clear speaker orientation at separate codes. It will also be demonstrated that the subsumption of very different bi- and multilingual practices under the term ‘translanguaging’ hides the substantial structural, interactional and social differences entailed in these practices. Existing research on codeswitching and other bilingual practices such as language mixing, borrowing or crossing provides a rich set of instruments to differentiate between these practices and can therefore provide more sophisticated analyses. Careful analysis shows that the hybrid use of linguistic resources is in most cases highly structured, defying the connotation of the term ‘hybrid’ with ‘unstable’ or ‘ambiguous’ (see, for example, the overview in Auer, 2010). I will not directly touch on educational issues, and in no way do I mean to criticize the bilingual approach to language teaching in the classroom, or bilingual/multilingual schooling in general (but see Jaspers, 2018, for a recent, critical discussion). Instead, I will be arguing from the perspective of sociolinguistics, and, in particular, that of codeswitching studies. Building on prior work (Auer, 1999, 2014a), I suggest it is necessary to distinguish carefully between codeswitching as the socially and/or interactionally meaningful juxtaposition of two codes and other bilingual/multilingual practices such as borrowing, mixing and merging. My main argument will be that although there can be no doubt that ‘languages’ are social constructs in a certain understanding of the word, these constructs are (a) very real objects for the speakers and

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(b) constructed not only by language authorities and via state institutions (such as schools) but by the multilingual speakers themselves, through their multilingual practices. Languages, ‘Named Languages’ and Codes

When it is argued that translanguaging is fundamentally different from codeswitching, that argument is based on the following reasoning: (1) Codeswitching presupposes the existence of clearly distinct (structurally non-overlapping) ‘named languages’. (2) These ‘named languages’ do not exist for the speakers and have no reality from their perspective. In fact, they have no linguistic reality at all: they ‘cannot be defined linguistically, that is, in grammatical (lexical or structural) terms’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 286); they are ‘not, strictly speaking, a linguistic object’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 286).2 Bilinguals’ mental grammars are rather ‘structured but unitary collections of features and the practices of bilinguals are acts of feature selection’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 281). (3) Hence, codeswitching cannot exist. This portrayal grossly misrepresents the research on codeswitching conducted in (socio)linguistics over the last decades.3 It rests on a confusion of the ‘codes’ of codeswitching, named languages and national standard languages. The confusion starts with the notion of ‘named languages’, which is ambiguous between linguists’ classifications of languages and community names (glottonyms). When these glottonyms exist and are used, they provide emic access to the way in which the speakers perceive and socially evaluate their language behavior, i.e. they allow us to conclude that they consider terms such as ‘Spanish’ or ‘English’ as relevant categories. When, to quote one of García’s examples, a student translates the English-speaking teacher’s Sit up! by saying to the class in Spanish it’s siéntate arriba (García et al., 2011: 46), he uses a label that is relevant for him (and that he does so is of considerable interest for the sociolinguist or linguistic anthropologist). Hence, it is not adequate to argue, from the speakers’ point of view, that codes are ‘entities without names’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 286). Whether these names exist is an empirical question. Of course, glottonyms are not necessarily identical with the names for languages used (or considered adequate) by linguists, a fact to which linguistic anthropologists now devote a considerable amount of attention, but which was already known among colonial linguists. Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 10) quote from the works of the British linguist G.A. Grierson, editor of the Survey of India,

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which was completed under British colonial rule in India in 1928. Grierson complains that the Indian ‘natives’ are ‘curiously uncurious’ about their languages and have a huge number of names for what he calls their ‘dialects’: ‘They separate them and distinguish them with a meticulous, hair-splitting subtlety, which to us seems unnecessary and absurd’ (Grierson, 1907: 350). These glottonyms did not conform with his, a European linguist’s, conception of what a language is: ‘It is as if we, in England, spoke of “Somersetshire” and “Yorkshire” dialects, but never used the term “English language”’ (Grierson, 1907: 350). Among other problems, there was also a problem of granularity: what counted as a ‘language’ for the trained linguist was more abstract than what the speakers considered salient and worth naming. Naming is of course a highly relevant and consequential step in the ideological construction of languages. However, the link to codeswitching is indirect at best. In fact, the question of whether the codes in codeswitching have names is irrelevant for its analysis and its functioning in interaction. Codeswitching is absolutely possible if the involved codes have no names, and in particular if they have not been named by linguists. It is easy to find examples hereof, including from the early history of the (emerging) European languages. A well-known example is the following. When the (multilingual) empire of Charlemagne dissolved into three empires under the rule of three of his grandsons, in 842 the ruler of the western realm (Charles the Bald) and the ruler of the eastern realm (Louis the German) joined forces against the ruler of the middle realm, their brother Lothar. In Strasbourg, they pledged an oath which became famous for linguistic reasons: instead of using Latin, as would have been expected at the time, each of them symbolically chose the vernacular language of his ally for the respective pledge. Their choice of language was socially and pragmatically highly meaningful and therefore a clear case of codeswitching: Louis switched from his own variety of West Germanic (or Latin) to a variety of Gallo-Romance, and Charles from his variety of Gallo-Romance (or Latin) to a variety of West Germanic (both were, apparently, bilingual). However, these codes had no names, as there was no ‘French’ or ‘German’ language in the 9th century. In his chronicle, Nithard calls them ‘romana lingua’ and ‘teudisca lingua’, terms that did not denote single languages at the time, but which could be applied to any protoRomance or Germanic variety, with teudisca lingua simply meaning ‘folk (vernacular) language’ (as opposed to Latin).4 In modern times, names for the codes of codeswitching may also be especially lacking if one of the codes in itself is mixed and alternates with a non-mixed code (a phenomenon aptly described as ‘layered codeswitching’ by Meeuwis & Blommaert, 1998; see below for an example, Extract 5). In conclusion, the equating of the codes in codeswitching with ‘named languages’ is unwarranted. But there is a further confusion, i.e.

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between the codes in codeswitching and national standard languages: when García and others speak of ‘named languages’, they seem to have them in mind (cf. García et al., 2011: 35).5 This is also suggested by their insistence on the ‘named languages’ being ‘enumerable’ and ‘separable’, i.e. the outcome of a monolingual, purist language ideology.6 One of the problems here is that monolingual and purist ideologies are by no means restricted to national standard languages, as shown in anthropological literature (cf., for example, Stenzel & Khoo, 2016, for a recent study on Kotiria (Wanano) and Brazilian Portuguese). But more important for this discussion is that, to the best of my knowledge, no serious researcher interested in codeswitching has ever claimed that the codes of codeswitching should or could be equated with (national) standard languages – quite the opposite. This already follows trivially from the fact that codeswitching can also occur (and has been described to occur) between non-standardized varieties (such as dialects). It should be reiterated in this context that one of the origins of research on codeswitching goes back to John Gumperz’s attempts to tackle the highly complex language situation in India during his fieldwork in the 1950s and 1960s (cf. Gumperz, 1962, 1964; also Auer, 2014b). His interest in codeswitching resulted from his dissatisfaction with the European tradition of classifying the encountered varieties into languages and dialects, and of assigning multilingual speakers to monolingually conceived language communities. As a consequence, codeswitching research in the Gumperz tradition of sociolinguistics (and elsewhere) has always avoided equating codes with standard languages or similar linguistic constructs.7 On the contrary, since the very beginning of modern sociolinguistics, definitions of codeswitching have insisted that codes are not what García and colleagues call ‘named languages’ (cf., for example, Ervin-Tripp, 1964, for an early statement). My own definition of codeswitching as the ‘contiguous juxtaposition of semiotic systems, such that the appropriate recipients of the resulting complex sign are in a position to interpret this juxtaposition as such’ (Auer, 1995: 116; also cf. Auer, 1990) also stresses the difference between languages and codes, and calls for an emic approach. The codes of codeswitching may be what linguists and participants call ‘Spanish’ or ‘Russian’, but they need not have a name. So far, I have shown that codeswitching research assumes the codes to be neither ‘named languages’ nor standard (codified) varieties. Taking the argument one step further, codeswitching research does not even equate the codes that are switched to the corresponding monolingual (standard or non-standard) varieties/languages. Here we turn to structural reasons (after having considered sociolinguistic ones) why the translanguaging approach is wrong to claim that codeswitching research equates codes with named languages (in the sense of monolingual standard varieties).

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One of the major empirical findings of codeswitching research is that bilingual practices themselves tend to lead to convergence between the codes involved in codeswitching, and to divergence of these codes from their monolingual counterparts. The codes of codeswitching tend to overlap structurally more than the corresponding monolingual languages, primarily because codeswitching and mixing bilinguals often insert lexical items from the one code into the other (Poplack, 2017). But convergence goes far beyond the lexicon and extends into all areas of linguistic structure. Here is just one example from morphology. It is well known that Turkic languages in long-standing contact with Russian or other Slavic languages tend to neutralize the Slavic gender distinctions in codeswitched utterances (and sometimes also beyond in the bilingual speakers’ monolingual mode). The Russian used in codeswitching therefore is not the same as the Russian spoken by monolinguals, let alone the standard variety (cf., among others, Muhamedova & Auer, 2005). It seems that bilingual speakers who habitually switch between or mix their languages relinquish the cognitive efforts required to keep the two systems apart, leading to their convergence in at least those parts of the grammar that are the least compatible (Sebba, 2009). It is an open question whether codeswitching and language mixing can actually be the cause of such structural convergence (as claimed by Gumperz & Wilson, in a famous paper from 1971) or whether convergence and switching are independent phenomena, with convergence facilitating switching. Regardless of whether one or the other model is true, the codes of codeswitching are not identical with the monolingual languages to which they can be related; instead, they have their own structures. Many scholars working on codeswitching have also stressed that areas of overlap between the two codes in question can facilitate transition into the other code (starting with Clyne’s groundbreaking study on ‘triggering’, mostly through cognates; Clyne, 1967). But the opposite is also true: more distance between two codes (at a certain moment in sentence production, or in general) results in less codeswitching within a sentence (this is the essence of Poplack’s famous 1980 article). The question of structural distance and overlap is therefore of central importance in codeswitching studies. In no way do codeswitching researchers presuppose that the two codes in question are (in general, or at all moments in the production of a sentence) equally distant from each other, or clearly separable. In sum, García’s contention that ‘code-switching preserves named language categories intact’ (Vogel & García, 2017: 5) is wrong, and linking it to ‘ideologies that position particular languages as superior to others and the language practices of monolinguals as superior to those who are said to speak with linguistic resources that go beyond the strict boundaries of named languages’ (Vogel & García, 2017: 5) even more so.

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The insistence in the translanguaging literature on ‘named’ (enregistered, for instance standard) languages being distinct from bilinguals’ practices such as codeswitching is, conversely, fully congruent with the assumptions in the codeswitching literature (see Muysken, 2000: chapter 9 for further discussion). Codeswitching: Members’ Methods for ‘Doing Languages’ Are languages ‘inventions’?

For García and colleagues, there is an irreconcilable contrast between ‘named languages’ as social constructs that ‘cannot be defined in grammatical terms’, and the ‘billions of individual linguistic competences of speakers the world over’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 286), which, according to their view, are the ‘real’ objects of linguistic analysis. These ‘competences of speakers’ are regarded as ‘one linguistic system’ (García & Li, 2014: 14) and ‘one grammar’ (Vogel & García, 2017: 7), which means that every individual has his or her own language; features are sometimes selected from this ‘system’ ‘according to societally constructed and controlled “languages”’ (García & Li, 2014: 14), resulting in monolingual talk. But when speakers translanguage, they use their ‘full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 281, italics omitted). It appears that the proponents of translanguaging imagine this ‘full’ exploitation of the repertoire as consisting of an ad hoc combination of single features that are selected freely and independently from each other from a kind of feature pool. MacSwan (2017) has already demonstrated that such a view is untenable as soon as the feature constellations for the two codes reach a certain amount of structural complexity and if the codes are structurally distant from each other (see also MacSwan, Chapter 4, this volume). Furthermore, decades of research on intrasentential mixing have shown that even though it is difficult to detect universal grammatical constraints on switching and mixing, specific language pairs are always mixed in a highly structured way within a sentence, i.e. there is a ‘grammar’ of language mixing which reflects the speakers’ bilingual competence (Muysken, 2000; Myers-Scotton, 1993) and it is highly rule governed (MacSwan, 2013). In addition to these structural constraints on feature combinations, social constraints exist as well. By opposing cognitive repertoires and bilingual practices on the one hand, and socially constructed languages on the other, García’s theory of translanguaging assumes a double reality of mental facts as well as social facts (which, incidentally, others who use the term are trying to dissolve:

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e.g. Li, 2018: 9). In this section, I will argue that this view cannot be correct. Note first that the contention that (standard) languages are social constructs that cannot be defined in grammatical terms, if taken literally, is not correct: standard languages can be, and have been, codified more or less exhaustively. The codex defines in linguistic terms what is part of the standard language (even if the same linguistic element is also part of another codex). But of course, it is both true and generally accepted knowledge in sociolinguistics that the decision to include one particular linguistic structure in the codex while excluding another cannot be based on grammatical criteria alone. It is a political decision to call Serbian and Croatian, or Urdu and Hindi, separate languages; and it is also a political decision to call Letzebuergish a language of its own and not a dialect of German. To quote Jørgensen: ‘The concept of any specific language is prototypical, i.e. it focuses on clear central characteristics, but at the same time allows vague borders’ (2008a: 165). Makoni and Pennycook (2007) (whose work is often cited in this context) speak of (standardized) languages as ‘inventions’ in order to ‘identify the important social and semiotic processes that lead to their construction’ (2007: 1). Their focus is mainly on the European colonial powers’ attempts to describe the linguistic behavior they observed in their colonies according to models known from Europe. European linguists and missionaries sometimes failed in these attempts as they were unable to do justice to the manifold multilingual practices they encountered in India or Africa, and because there was no (adequate) theory of bilingualism or analytical set of instruments to recognize and analyze these practices. Of course, the colonial powers’ political interests were also served best by ‘understandings of language […] that tend to be predicated upon notions of uniformity and homogeneity’ (Makoni & Pennycock, 2007: 17). Speaking of languages as ‘inventions’ nevertheless seems misleading as it attributes agency only to the individual linguists, missionaries, philologists, etc., who were the ‘makers’ of language codices. This means abstracting from the social processes involved in their ‘enregisterment’ (Agha, 2003, 2007), processes which go far beyond individual linguist’s compiling a grammar or vocabulary. Speaking of inventions therefore distracts from, rather than clarifies, the ‘social and semiotic processes’ which Makoni and Pennycook have in mind. It also suggests that languages, because they are constructed by individual linguists, are fabrications and therefore somehow unreal. The two points go hand in hand: separating the colonial linguist from the social forces and social acts through which his codex is ‘put to work’, and only thereby transformed from an individual ‘invention’ to a social fact, makes the social construction of a language appear like a distortion of linguistic

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reality (whatever that may be). But socially constructed facts cannot be real or unreal; they are real because they are social facts. To conclude from the observation that languages are social constructions that ‘there is ultimately no good reason to continue to posit their existence’ (Pennycook, 2006) is based on a misconception of social constructivism. The point potentially becomes more clear if the term ‘invention’ is applied to relatively young European (standard) languages such as Nynorsk, modern Finnish, or Euskara. Just like many colonial languages, they are, in a way, the ‘invention’ of linguists and philologists who were responsible for the linguistic construction of a new standard language, usually based on careful philological research, and of course with the emerging nation in mind, for which they wrote their grammars. However, without the linguistic practices of the people who, in their linguistic acts, follow these codices (often without initially fully complying with them), these grammars and dictionaries, and hence the invented new standard, would never have become social facts. Languages are never the inventions of single individuals, even when individual linguist(s) are responsible for defining the norms of a new standard: they are co-constructed and co-enregistered by the acts of the speakers (who obviously contribute to this process in different ways and impact other speakers’ choices according to their position and power through their linguistic choices). Those who believe that ‘languages are ideologically defined, not defined by use or users’ (Jørgensen, 2008a: 166) fall behind one of the most important achievements of modern sociolinguistics, i.e. the recognition that the ‘total linguistic fact’ is ‘an unstable mutual interaction of meaningful sign forms, contextualized to situations of interested human use and mediated by the fact of cultural ideology’ (Silverstein, 1985: 220). These three aspects (forms, contexts and ideologies) are inseparable and it would be wrong to attribute ideologies to state institutions (such as schools) exclusively, while ‘ordinary’ people are languaging innocently, so to speak. It is more beneficial to see the relationship between mental representations and social norms, which translanguaging studies insist are irreconcilably opposed, as a dialectical process in which mental representations and social norms (and evaluations) become interlinked through linguistic actions. Social norms are not external to human cognition but are, rather, part of it. As usage-based research in social phonetics has shown, the social context in which an utterance is heard is stored in memory with the utterance (Foulkes & Docherty, 2006). This is also the way in which children learn languages in a multilingual context, i.e. in tandem with social situations (which, in early childhood, are often defined by their interaction partners). The mental representation of the language they acquire is not separate from, but is embedded into, its social context. This enables them

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to keep their languages apart from an early age, provided their peers and guardians do so as well (cf. Köppe, 1997; Meisel, 1989, among many others).8 Hence, the bilingual repertoire is not unstructured but includes cognitively stored information about who to talk to, when and in which ‘language’, i.e. which feature constellation to select in a given situation (and what this means). Experience creates stronger or weaker ties between groups of linguistic and situational features, the former becoming entrenched in memory as a code that can be used on subsequent occasions of the same type. These stored linguistic-social experiences are not only mentally, but also socially real, irrespective of whether they have reached the status of institutionalized (codified and named) languages. A look at the data

It is a central task of sociolinguistics to investigate the ways in which languages as social facts are constructed through the speakers’ practices, such as typification, evaluation, routinization (habitualization), enregisterment and naming.9 Here, I want to claim that, for bilinguals and multilinguals, not only the choice of particular codes for particular social situations but also the everyday practices called codeswitching, i.e. the socially and/or discursively meaningful juxtaposition of two codes within an interactional episode (Auer, 1984, 1995; Gafaranga, 2007; Gumperz, 1982; Li, 1994; among many others), are part of and take part in the social construction of languages (named or not). This is so because codeswitching capitalizes on the perceived distinctiveness of the two codes in order to create interactional meaning and, by doing so, reflexively construes these different codes as different ways of speaking which may then eventually become enregistered as a ‘language’. Many studies on translanguaging, particularly those that have been conducted in bilingual schooling projects in Western countries (including García’s), are based on data which, rather than providing evidence for the blurring of the boundaries between languages or varieties involved, show a clear and systematic orientation of the speakers towards routinized links between language and situation, and in addition involve what for the speakers are ‘named’ languages. These speakers are ‘doing languages’,10 i.e. they maintain and support the distinction between what they themselves may call ‘Spanish’ and ‘English’, ‘Swedish’ and ‘Arabic’, etc. The most obvious case are instances of lay interpreting, which are frequently given as evidence for translanguaging in the classroom, but (also) represent simple cases of codeswitching for discourse-related reasons. Example (1) is taken from García’s work on English/Spanish dual language kindergartens. The interaction takes place between a boy

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(Adolfo) who is only starting to acquire English, a girl (Gabriela) with a more advanced knowledge of English, and the ethnographer: Example 1: ( From García, 2009: 155; highlighting of Spanish in the

original, line numbers added and line breaks altered here and in the following extracts.) 01 Adolfo: [looking out the window and talking to himself] 02: está lloviendo mucho. ‘it’s raining a lot’ 03: [telling the others:] Look. 04: It’s washing. 05: There’s washing afuera. ‘there’s washing outside’ 06 Gabriela: [She asks him:] está lloviendo? 07: [Turning to the ethnographer:] He says raining. 08: He speaks Spanish, only Spanish. 09: [Turning to the boy:] Adolfo, raining. 10 Adolfo: Raining.

García rightly points out that Gabriela’s intervention (she interprets Adolfo’s words for the ethnographer) creates a sequential environment in which the boy can learn the English word for llover (‘to rain’). In doing so, Gabriela shows a clear awareness of the distinctness of the two languages, and of how these languages are to be adequately used (in her construction of the situation). The right language to address Adolfo in is Spanish (line 06), for the ethnographer, it is English. Gabriela’s act of interpreting is based on the assumption (and displays this assumption) that the ethnographer does not understand Spanish. In addition, it is based on the assumption that the boy’s attempt to translate his own Spanish into English (in lines 04/05) was wrong and not comprehensible for the ethnographer (and perhaps the other kindergarteners). By interpreting for the ethnographer, Gabriela displays her superior bilingual competence (over the ethnographer, who, in her view, appears to be English-speaking or English-dominant, and of course also over Adolfo, who is the object of her teaching). At the end of the sequence, in line 09, Gabriela assumes the role of a teacher and switches to English to teach Adolfo the correct word (thereby correcting his washing). Combining an act of interpreting and an act of teaching, Gabriela’s codeswitching makes it clear that, from her perspective, two different languages are at play; without the assumption that Spanish and English are two mutually non-intelligible languages, the act of interpreting would not make sense.11 Codeswitching for interpreting is perhaps the most obvious case of ‘doing languages’. It is one example of a larger group of peer-to-peer language teaching and language learning activities. These activities are

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necessarily built on the assumption that there is one ‘language’ that is to be acquired and another that has already been mastered, and that help in this acquisition process is provided by a more ‘knowledgeable’ peer. To exemplify this, I will present another extract from García’s work (Garcia et al., 2011: 49). In Example (2), Paul, an English-dominant boy, creates a self-learning environment in which Lola (a bilingual English-dominant Latina) is utilized as his helper. He tries out his Spanish on her and wants her to name objects in Spanish in order to learn the words: Example 2: ( From García et al., 2011:49; highlighting of Spanish in the

original, line numbers added.) 01 Paul: This is dirty. 02: These are servilletas. Semillas. ‘napkins. Seeds.’ 03: [to Lola:] Y, ¿qué es eso? [pointing to glue] ‘and what is this?’ 04 Lola: ¿Ése? Semillas. ‘those? Seeds.’ 05 Paul: No, ése. [pointing] ‘no, that one.’ 06 Lola: pega. ‘glue’ 07 Paul: pega! I learned it…

Not least via his final self-reflexive statement (‘I learned it….’) does Paul show that he is engaged, not in any practical, goal-oriented action concerning the ‘glue’ in question, but in a metalinguistic exercise. The very point is to learn words in Spanish. Hence, when he asks (in Spanish) ‘what is this?’ (line 03), this question is not about an unknown object but about the unknown Spanish word for it. Lola understands and provides the word. Once more, such a self-administered Spanish lesson is based on the assumption of two separate languages, one known, one to be acquired. Grammatically, the switching in These are servilletas. Semillas. is by no means an unstructured activation of disconnected elements from the repertoire. It follows a format in which English is the matrix language of the clause and into which two Spanish words are inserted (a switch in other positions would be highly marked: ése are napkins, these es/son napkins). Furthermore, it is functional as the Spanish words represent the realm of the to-belearned vocabulary, while English is the carrier sentence. (More examples of the same type can be found in García & Li, 2014: ch. 5, ‘translanguaging to learn’.12) The teachers in the bilingual classes investigated by García also codeswitch for the ‘contextualization of key words and concepts, the development of metalinguistic awareness, and the creation of affective

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bonds with students’ (García et al., 2012: 58). García and Li (2014: 103) list the following functions of ‘translanguaging’ by the teacher: ‘to involve and give voice, to clarify, to reinforce, to manage the classroom’, and ‘to extend and ask questions’, all of which are classic functions of codeswitching (for classroom interaction, see the contributions in Filipi & Markee, 2018). This works because the speakers keep the involved languages neatly separated in order to achieve these goals. The L1 of the Spanish-dominant pupils is used as a resource, a discourse strategy (Gumperz’s 1982 terminology), in this case described by García et al. as ‘affective bonding’ (2012: 67), which perhaps also serves to secure understanding in their weaker language: Example 3: ( From García et al., 2012: 65; highlighting and line numbers

added.) 01 Teacher: Is she from China? 02 Student: No. Japón. Pero es lo mismo. ‘No. Japan. But it’s the same thing.’ 03: Hablan el mismo idioma y tienen los ojos así ‘They speak the same language and their eyes are like this.’ [moves her eyes to be narrower] 04 Teacher: Hemos hablado de eso. Es como decir que todos los brasileños y peruanos son iguales... ‘We’ve talked about this. It is like saying that all Brazilians and Peruvians are the same.’

(They continue having an extended conversation in Spanish about stereotypes.) In Example (3) line 04 the teacher accommodates the language of the student, which can be interpreted as her leaving the institutional role of the teacher and taking the perspective of the student; this perspective-taking is also supported at the content level by her use of an example from South America to explain the difference between Japanese and Chinese by analogy. Such codeswitching only works if there are distinct codes (as perceived by the participants); otherwise no linguistic accommodation would be noticeable for the students and no interactional effect could be achieved. I have taken some examples from García’s work so far, but the same point can easily be made on the basis of other papers on ‘translanguaging’ published in recent years. Not rarely, they are based on (usually few) data which prove the opposite point of what they are supposed to show: namely, that two or more languages are clearly separated by the users who use this contrast for their interactional purposes.

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What is perhaps even more deplorable is the fact that disconnected phenomena of language contact and highly diverse bilingual practices are all subsumed under the new term, losing sight of the complex and much more differentiated distinctions that have been established on empirical grounds over decades of bilingual studies. For instance, Simpson (2017) looks at a family of Czech origin in Leeds (UK) and claims on the basis of two data extracts that the family members are engaged in translanguaging. In one case, the mother, who works as a community interpreter, is interpreting for an English-speaking advocate and uses the English word council tax in a Czech utterance directed to the client – a concept which the family only learned in the UK context and for which the Czech equivalent (if it is known at all) would be inadequate. Borrowings of this kind are one of the best-known bilingual practices in immigrant (and other) bilingual communities, and certainly do not require a new terminology. This example is subsumed under the heading of translanguaging with another data extract from the otherwise monolingual Czech family’s interaction in which the daughters show off their knowledge of various school languages by producing nonsense sentences in (pseudo-)German, Spanish and French, an entirely different bilingual practice (that can perhaps be analyzed as a middle-class version of ‘crossing’ in the sense of Rampton, 1986). The (mock) languages are kept strictly separate and the fun of the exercise results precisely from the separation of these (named) languages. Subsuming borrowing and crossing under one heading implies a loss of analytic rigor and does not do justice to the data. Karlsson et al. (2018) report on a science class with Arabic-speaking immigrants (some with moderate, some with good knowledge of Swedish), Swedish-speaking teachers and a supporting Arabic mothertongue teacher. They analyze group-work sequences among the students in which they use Arabic and Swedish in order to understand the meaning of certain (Swedish) terms.13 As the authors point out, the students take the Swedish words (often science terminology) from the teachers’ input or the teaching materials and do the rest in (usually) Arabic or (seldom) Swedish, depending on their preferences and competencies.14 Again, there is a clear separation of the languages according to functional domains, with the students’ first language being used to talk about the Swedish terms, i.e. as a metalanguage to deal with school-related terminology. (A similar example is discussed in García & Li, 2014: 99.) Highly structured codeswitching is also analyzed as translanguaging in a Dutch language context in Rosiers’ work (cf. Slembrouck & Rosiers, 2018: 174–181). Again, the languages are not only strictly separated but also named by the participants. In Rosiers’ classroom, a teacher, who does not speak or understand Turkish,

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encourages a Turkish-dominant child to report to her in Turkish what the child has just worked on with his peers, which he also does. She pretends to listen to him (through gaze) and to understand the child (through a third-turn evaluation).15 Complex cases

So far, I have focused on a version of translanguaging that is most prototypically found in educational contexts and has here been exemplified by the work of Ofelia García and colleagues. I have argued that the data presented in their work is classical codeswitching, presupposing (from the interactants’ perspective) the existence of separate codes whose juxtaposition generates their discourse meaning. As already pointed out in the beginning of this chapter, the term ‘translanguaging’ has been used in slightly different ways as well. In one strand of research, for example, the focus is on ludic aspects of bilingualism. Here, the boundaries between the two codes are intentionally blurred to create sociopragmatic meaning. Yet again, this effect presupposes the recipients’ understanding of the codes’ difference and their knowledge of a canonical usage which the speaker deliberately does not follow. For instance, Li (2018) uses the term ‘translanguaging’ to refer to linguistic puns popular among English-Chinese bilinguals in the UK (also cf. Li, 2011), which are based on Chinese assonances with English.16 The puns only work when the written forms of English and Mandarin are contrasted as separate codes. For instance, the assonance between the English interjection My God! and the Chinese word mai ) leads to the ad hoc formation of a new interjection cake gao de ( sellers (the meaning of mai gao de). The pun builds on a sound-based identification of My God! with mai gao de, which in turn is linked via the writing system to the meaning ‘cake sellers’. It only works because there is a written subtext in which English and Mandarin contrast (Figure 5.1). /maigode/

My God!

/'keik 'sɛləs/

(speaking)

(writing)

Figure 5.1  Semiotic relationships between sound patterns and writing systems providing the basis for a pun in Chinese/English bilinguals

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The phonological surface is purely English, but the meaning of the pun builds on an invisible contrast between two possible written correspondences of /maigode/, hence two (in this case, written) codes.17 Mixing and Merging: The Case for Translanguaging (Which is Usually not Considered)

In the last section, I discussed examples from the translanguaging literature that clearly do not support the claim that translanguaging speakers are ‘treating the diverse languages that form their repertoire as an integrated system’ (Canagarajah, 2011). Instead of listing more examples,18 in this section I turn to a field of bilingual practices that are very different from codeswitching as discussed in the last section. Here, the community has developed a speaking style (or register) in which the languages in contact are mixed to such an extent that a new (hybrid) code emerges. These mixed registers have also been in the focus of codeswitching studies for many decades but referenced with different terminologies. Gumperz (1964) speaks of a codeswitching style, Poplack (1980) of a codeswitching mode, Myers-Scotton (1993) of codeswitching as the unmarked choice, Gafaranga (2000) of codeswitching as the medium, etc. I have used the term language mixing to refer to the (usually intrasentential) ways of combining elements of two languages that are often recognized by the speakers as a register of its own and with its own social meaning (Auer, 1999). Mixing as a code of its own does indeed raise some of the questions connected to translanguaging. In mixing, we may sometimes find utterances that ‘cannot be easily assigned to one or another code’ (García et al., 2012: 52) (cf. Auer, 2000). Whether alternational or insertional (Muysken, 2000), mixing is not (discourse-) functional and tends to blur the boundaries between the languages in question. A simple case is that of borrowings from various languages into the emerging multiethnolects in Europe (Quist, 2008; cf. Cheshire et al., 2015), also called ‘contemporary urban vernaculars’ as they are gaining speakers outside the ‘multiethnic’ groups (Rampton, 2015). These registers were the focus of Normann Jørgensen’s and his colleagues’ research on polylanguaging in Copenhagen (e.g. Jørgensen, 2008a, 2008b; also Møller, 2008). Jørgensen (2008b: 143) claimed that among his speakers with mostly Turkish family backgrounds, a ‘polylingual norm’ applies that maximizes heterogeneity, i.e. the use of any available language. He, too, uses this label very broadly, encompassing for instance classical codeswitching and linguistic puns that are produced on the spot in order to achieve an effect (and thereby build on code contrasts). He even subsumes more or less established loans from various languages into the Copenhagen multiethnolect under the label of polylanguaging. As an example, Jørgensen et al. (2011) provide an

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extract from a Facebook exchange between Copenhagen-born girls of immigrant, apparently19 Muslim, background (Example (4)). Example 4: (From Jørgensen et al., 2011.)

Maimuna: har købt the equipment, skal bare finde tid til at lave 13:45 (I) bought have only (to) find time for to make ‘I bought the equipment, I only have to find the time to’ en spektakulær én kun tje dig morok, den skal være speciel a spectacular one only for you old-one, it must become special ‘make a spectacular one for you, man, it must become special’ med ekstra spice :P, sorry tar mig sammen denne weekend! with extra pull me together this ‘with extra spice – sorry, I’ll pull myself together this weekend!’ insAllah Ayhan: gracias muchas gracias!! Jeg wenter shpæændt gardash ;-)) 15:20 I wait excited friend ‘Thanks, many thanks!! I’m waiting full of excitement, my friend’

love youuu…

Ilknur: Ohhh Maimuna, Du havde også lovet mi gen skitse… 23:37 you had also promised me a sketch ‘Oh Maimuna, you had also promised me a sketch…’ Og du sagde, at det ville været efter eksamener men??? And you said that that would be after exams but ‘And you said that it would be after the exams but???’ Still waiting like Ayhan, and a promise is a promise :D :D:D

Closer analysis reveals that that which is referred to as polylanguaging is in fact composed of various phenomena of bilingual speech. There is codeswitching into English (in the last line of Ilknur’s last message) but there are also single words of Turkish (morok, gardash, both terms of address), English (sorry, weekend, perhaps love you), Spanish (muchas gracias) and Arabic (insAllah) origin that have become part of these speakers’ multiethnolectal Danish. Variants of (Arabic-) Turkish moruk, kardeş, -inşAllah and some other Turkish- and Arabicorigin words are not only found in Copenhagen but have also become part of the multiethnolects spoken by young people with an Islamic immigrant background in other European countries, with a tendency to spread to monolingual peers with no immigrant background. Of course, speaking of mixing (or codeswitching as the unmarked choice) here does not imply that the integration of these originally Arabic, Turkish, English and Spanish words into the multiethnolect has no meaning: it may index cultural-religious or ethnic values, make the expression sound more relaxed or display the speaker’ affective stance toward the

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interlocutor (see, for example, Bhatt & Bolonyai, 2011); however, these pragmatic meanings are not tied to the individual occurrence of the switch, but are part and parcel of that particular style or register. While the borrowing of these elements does not question the fact that the Danish multiethnolect is still Danish, mixing can go far beyond these simple cases. First of all, the mixing register itself can become part of what Meeuwis and Blommaert (1998) call multilayered switching (also cf. Gafaranga, 2000). An example from the classroom (where this bilingual practice is rarely observed as it is normally sanctioned by the school authorities) is discussed by Blackledge and Creese (2010: 206–213) under the heading of ‘translanguaging in complementary schools’ and ‘flexible bilingualism.’ It is not a coincidence that the data are taken from Gujarati/ English language contact (even though recorded in Great Britain), where mixing and switching have a long tradition, even in the middle classes (cf. Thaker, 1991; from a broader perspective see also Kachru, 1983). The way in which the teacher and students use the two languages in the following Example (5) builds on this tradition. There is codeswitching between vernacular British English (recte) and a Gujarati/English mixing register, which has become a code of its own (italics). Within this code, elements of English origin are underlined. Codeswitching between the mixed register and British English is functional and follows the well-known patterns of codeswitching between languages, while the mixing between Gujarati and English is not:20 Example 5: ( From Blackledge & Creese, 2010: 208–209; highlighting

01 T: 02: 03: 04: 05 S1: 06 T: 07: 08 S2: 09 T:

and line numbers added, lines and translations rearranged; T(eacher) ‘has set the class some pair-work’, S(tudents) are ‘clarifying the task with their teacher before going on to do the activity’) have discussion karie ‘now let’s discuss’ ek ek topic apu chhu badhyane, ‘I will give a topic each to all,’ tame sharema karo ok sssh topic apu chhu mari dincharya, ‘you share them, I’m giving the topics, (my) daily routine’ daily routine, tame decide karo kon bolshe ‘daily routine, you decide who speaks’ what does it mean? mari dincharya, daily routine… ‘(my) daily routine’ Medha ane Jaimini, mane shu thawu game ‘Medha and Jaimini, what I’d like to be’ what is it? bai jana decide (.) karo only five minute ‘both of you decide (.) giving you only five minutes’

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10: jeapu chhu je awde e bolwanu ‘say what you can’ 11 S1: Miss, basically shu karwanu discussion karya pachhi? ‘Miss, basically, what do we have to do? After discussion, what?’ 12 T: bolwanu ‘speak’ […] 23 S1: [students speak among themselves in the following] doesn’t ask you what I want to do 24 S2: mane doctor banwu chhe ‘I want to be a doctor’ 25: I don’t really want to be a doctor 26: sorry I do want to be a doctor 27: actually I don’t mind being a doctor 28: I want to be you know for the kiddie ones paediatrician 29: karanke nana chhokra manda pade to sara karwani dawa apwi chhe. ‘when little children are ill, I want to give them medicine to make them better’ 30: your turn, what do you want to be? 31 S1: I want to be a watch seller [giggles] 32: Medha and Co [laughs] 33: hurry up then, I said mine, you say yours 34: I don’t know what you wanna be hurry up, say yours 35 S3: listen then 36 S1: Medya, hurry up, man, look behind you [laughs, calls Rupal] 37: Medya turn around [laughs] 38 S3: hu moti thaine ‘when I grow up’ 39 S1: mane shu chhue ‘what is it for me’ 40: shuddup Medha, you’re such a loser! 41 T: OK, stop! 42 S1: mane ghadialni ‘I [want to have a shop] for watches’ 43: Medha and Co company of many watches

There is codeswitching that functions just like the in-classroom examples we already know from the North American context. But the codes are, on the one hand, English and on the other hand a mixed register that is dominantly Gujarati but includes, particularly in the first part of the transcript, many elements that look like English. This mixed register has no ‘name’ but, nevertheless, the switching between the monolingual English code and the Gujarati/English mixed code is functional: the students amongst each other use English, but when talking

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to the teacher (line 11), and when practicing for the teacher, switch to the Gujarati/English mixed register (or also to monolingual Gujarati) (lines 24, 29, 38, 39, 42). The teacher uses the mixed code exclusively (cf. lines 01–12). Arguably, mixing is the register associated with and encouraged in the classroom. This code is not a monolingual standard language (a ‘named language’): rather, its internal makeup is based on alternational or insertional combinations of the two languages. In the first case of alternational mixing, the stretches of talk in Gujarati and English lack grammatical integration. In the latter case of insertional mixing, English words are inserted into Gujarati grammatical frames: Alternational mixing (point of alternation marked by //):

(a) daily routine // tame decide karo kon bolshe (prepositioned English NP grammatically independent of following Gujarati clause) (b) mari dincharya// daily routine… (reduplication for emphasis/ intensification) (c) bai jana decide (.) karo // only five minute (postpositioned adverbial, grammatically independent of preceding Gujarati clause) (d) Miss, basically // shu karwanu discussion karya pachhi? (prepositioned address form and discourse marker independent of following Gujarati clause) Insertional mixing:

(a) have discussion karie you do (English VP inserted into Gujarati frame given by the verb) (b) ek ek topic apu chhu badhyane one one I am giving everybody (English noun inserted into Gujarati frame) (c) tame share-ma karo you do (English verb stem inserted into Gujarati frame) (d) topic apu chhu I am giving (English noun inserted into Gujarati frame) (e) tame decide karo kon bolshe you do who will speak (English verb stem inserted into Gujarati frame) (f) shu karwanu discussion karya pachhi what to do work after (English noun inserted into Gujarati frame) (g) mane doctor banwu chhe I becoming am (English noun in Gujarati frame)

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Note that in this mixing, a particular Gujarati pattern is used that makes it easy to insert English words into Gujarati frames despite the grammatical differences between the languages (a pattern that is widely observed in language mixing; cf. Muysken, 2016). It is compatible with the grammar of Gujarati but would not occur in the same way and with the same frequency in monolingual Gujarati. The pattern relies on the Gujarati verb for ‘to do’ to insert English infinitives, as in have discussion karie (lit. ‘we do having discussion’), tame sharema karo (lit. ‘you do sharing them’), tame decide karo kon bolshe (lit. ‘you do deciding who speaks’). It enables the speakers to use English verbs without Gujarati inflection. This means that speakers dispose of a ‘grammar of mixing’, in addition to the grammar of the two languages. This orderliness of mixing is one of the strongest arguments for not treating it as a deficient and chaotic way of speaking. Mixing displays a specific kind of grammatical competence that monolingual speakers do not need. Statements in the trans- and polylanguaging literature, such as ‘language users employ whatever linguistic features are at their disposal with the intention of achieving their communicative aims’ (Jørgensen, 2008a: 169), are therefore misleading, even for the analysis of mixing, as they suggest an unstructured combination of linguistic features. Even further away from codeswitching, language contact research has identified cases of fusion – the emergence of new varieties with their own regularities on a hybrid basis (so-called ‘mixed languages’, cf. Bakker & Muysken, 1995, for an overview). Once such a new variety has developed as a consequence of habitualized patterns of language mixing, the grammatical rules that govern the selection of features are no longer optional. The evolving grammatical system excludes certain possibilities and enforces others. The purpose of this section was to demonstrate that there are indeed bilingual practices that may come closer to what García and others have in mind when they talk about translanguaging as being different from codeswitching (although they never mention them). These practices are not based on the distinctness of the codes but can, rather, lead to registers and varieties that have a hybrid composition but may function like monolingual codes. Conclusions

Transnational migration movements have not only increased enormously, they also have changed the macro-sociolinguistic conditions under which bilingual (and often, multilingual) interaction practices take place today in North America and Europe. There is a tradition of neo-Humboldtian linguistics going back to A.L. Becker (e.g. 1988) in which the term ‘languaging’ is used to highlight the processual, interactional and creative use of language not only as a reflection of social order

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but also as a way to construe linguistic as well as social reality. Partly starting from this tradition, partly independently, the terms ‘trans-’ and ‘poly-languaging’ have been coined in educational linguistics and language teaching research (and, from there, have also become popular in some parts of sociolinguistics) in order to refer to the ‘languaging’ of the ‘new’ multilingual speakers. In the numerous and influential publications of Ofelia García and colleagues, the concept of translanguaging comes with a wholesale rejection of all prior sociolinguistic work on codeswitching and similar linguistic practices. Similar, though (socio)linguistically more cautious, statements can be found in the publications of the late Jens Normann Jørgensen and several other authors. While the number of publications on translanguaging has been increasing steadily, some of its main propagators have recently expressed concerns that there might be ‘considerable confusion’ about what translanguaging means, as ‘any practice that is slightly non-conventional’ is subsumed under this heading. For some, it is difficult not to see translanguaging as more than ‘a popularist neologism and part of the sloganization of the post-modern, possibly also post-truth, era’ (Li, 2018: 9).21 I share some of these concerns and have tried to formulate my skepticism in this chapter. The construction of translanguaging as a counter-notion to codeswitching is based on a gross misrepresentation of research on bilingualism and codeswitching as it has accumulated since the 1970s. The monolingual language ideologies ascribed to this research tradition may still prevail in parts of the educational sector but they were overcome in bilingualism research at least 40 years ago. Both translanguaging and codeswitching refer to linguistic practices that are hybrid (if this term is used in its original sense, i.e. the use of two or more languages as resources) and can therefore be said to constitute a ‘third space’ (Li, 2018): whenever they use more than one language, speakers by definition contest the clear mapping of languages onto situations and vice versa. Whether the bilingual practices observed today in migratory contexts rely on the same or new patterns when compared to older situations of language contact is an empirical question. It seems that while the sociolinguistic meanings ascribed to these practices are highly sensitive to the larger societal and political contexts in which they are embedded, the formal patterns of codeswitching (including token codeswitching into languages or varieties in which the speakers only have a limited competence), mixing, borrowing, etc., have largely remained the same, reflecting a more abstract (bi)lingual competence. Despite this theoretical overlap, there is one major difference between research on codeswitching and translanguaging research. This is the latter’s insistence on the non-existence of languages from the bilingual speakers’ perspective. Even though codeswitching research has never equated the codes that are switched with national or standard

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languages, and it has always pointed out that these codes must not be equated with their monolingual counterparts, it remains true that codeswitching as a discourse strategy is based on the availability of what the bilingual speakers perceive as different codes. Otherwise, as I have argued, the discourse functions of codeswitching could not be explained. While codeswitching as a bilingual practice presupposes the perceived difference of the codes, this does not hold for language mixing, which may result in the emergence of new registers and even varieties. It has been shown that the examples presented as evidence for translanguaging often fall in the category of classical codeswitching, i.e. the speakers rely on, and thereby construct, languages. By codeswitching, the speakers ‘do languages’. I have also argued in this chapter that it is misleading to strictly separate the linguistic (cognitive and interactional) and the social– ideological aspects, as proposed by García’s conception of languages as ideological products that are alien to the speakers and diametrically opposed to their ‘languaging’. It is misleading since it re-introduces an empirically unwarranted and theoretically unwanted separation of language structure and usage on the one hand, and the social and ideological evaluation of language on the other. Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Rakesh Bhatt for valuable comments on this chapter. Notes (1) Cf., for instance, Otheguy et al. (2015: 284): ‘It is in that sense that the proposal advanced here [ … ] is to be seen, for the limited range of problems in its purview, as not only a theory of bilingual education and bilingualism, but more generally also as a theory of language.’ (2) There is an interesting inversion of the parole/langue distinction ascribed to Saussure here; while the ‘Cours’ states that the proper object of linguistics can only be the language system (langue), excluding speech from scientific study, García and colleagues restrict ‘linguistic objects’ to ‘something a person speaks’, excluding more abstract ideas of languages as social institutions from scientific study. But while Saussure concedes that no langue would exist without parole, García and colleagues see no link at all between the two. (3) The portrayal of codeswitching research as ‘additive’, which is given by García and colleagues, is hardly ever substantiated by references, as already noted by MacSwan (2017: 179). Where such references are given (as in García & Li, 2014: 12–13; García et al., 2012: 46; or García et al., 2011: 41) they mostly come from the 1950s to 1970s and disregard the last 40 years of research. Sometimes, codeswitching is even equated with diglossia (García et al., 2012). Other authors repeat these inadequate representations of codeswitching research without providing references at all (apart from those to other translanguaging papers); cf., for example, Karlsson et al., 2018: 5, who state that ‘code-switching usually refers to the one-dimensional shift between two autonomous

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languages’, without any further explanation what ‘one-dimensional’ means, and without references to substantiate the claim about ‘autonomous languages’. Of course it is impossible to summarize all pertinent research on codeswitching in this chapter. Numerous handbooks and textbooks are available (e.g. GardnerChloros, 2009; Gafaranga, 2017). (4) Vgl. Germanic *ϸeudo ‘folk’. The term was also used, for instance, to refer to what we now call Old English. (5) ‘Translanguaging […] is an approach to bilingualism that is centered not on the constructed notion of standard languages […] but on the practices of bilinguals’ (emphasis added). In Vogel and García (2017: 3), the term ‘state-endorsed named languages’ is used. (6) Cf. ‘Languages as names of enumerable things that are socially or socio-politically constructed, maintained, and regulated’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 286). (7) As John Gumperz used to put it (personal communication): ‘A language is not a linguistic prime.’ (8) If they do not, new, merged varieties may develop, as described, for example, by O’Shannessy (2012). (9) This is the essence of social constructivism, in which reality (including linguistic reality) is the product of interactions between members. As Luckmann (2002: 107) points out, social constructivism deals with the emergence of institutions through action; once they have emerged, these institutions (one of which is language, in the sense of Saussure’s langue) confront the individual in the form of external constraints on his or her actions, and they are internalized in the form of norms. The process of institutionalization starts as soon as actions have become routinized in a mutually conducive way – for instance, when the choice of certain linguistic features (or feature constellations) becomes expectable in the course of two or more individuals’ interactional history. If these structural obligations continue to be relevant from one generation to the next, they need to be legitimized, which requires a further layer of social work, with regard to language often based on philological arguments, social or geographical groups, such as the ‘educated speakers of the capital’, as the ‘true speakers’ of a language, etc. (10) ‘Doing X’ is the formulation used in ethnomethodology to indicate the phenomenological epoché, stressing that social reality is a member’s achievement grounded in their everyday practices. (11) Adolfo’s code choices also reflect social norms of language use. For him, talking to himself can be legitimately done in Spanish, but the class/peers need to be addressed in English (even if his English is rudimentary). The only candidate for translanguaging occurs in line 05, where the Spanish adverb afuera is combined with an English verb (raining); see below, Section 4, for this bilingual practice. (12) The ‘translanguaging’ activities recommended by Williams (1994) for Welsh language teaching, on which García claims to build for her approach, seem to be similar to these translation and interpreting activities (Baker, 2001: 281): ‘the hearing or reading of a lesson, a passage in a book or a section of work in one language and the development of the work (i.e. by discussion, writing a passage, completing a work sheet, conducting an experiment) in the other language’. The languages are kept distinct, and hence the translanguaging contributes to the establishment of English and Welsh as two distinct languages through a clear allocation of languages to tasks. (13) Strangely, the originally Swedish/Arabic data became English/Arabic data in the article. The details of the combination of Swedish and Arabic therefore cannot be reconstructed. (14) There also seem to be a few more interesting cases of language mixing in the data, but the lacking Swedish parts and the absence of interlinear glosses make it impossible to reconstruct them. These, unfortunately, are not commented on by the authors.

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(15) The intention is to develop ‘a positive orientation to the linguistic repertoires which children bring to school and a commitment to productive exploitation of these repertoires as didactic capital’ (Slembrouck & Rosiers, 2018: 183), but in fact the child is forced into an absurd situation in which his family language is reduced to a mock language which does not even serve the most basic needs of communication, i.e. to be understood. (16) The data presented in Li (2018) from the same group of speakers are more heterogeneous. A few seem to follow the same strategy based on codeswitching in writing as in Li (2011) (for instance, Z-Turn), others are simple English portmanteau-formations without linguistic reference to Chinese (such as Chinsumer), again others are loan translations (such as Shitizen or Smilence), or show surface combinations of Chinese and English stems (such as niubility and geilivable). The last group does not seem to be ad hoc formations but conventionalized. Thanks to Susanne Günthner and her Chinese friends for pointing out these details to me. (17) Bilingual puns as evidence for translanguaging/polylanguaging are also discussed in Jørgensen (2008b: 139–141). Some critical remarks on the ‘celebration of happy hybridity’ and an ‘uncritical analysis of metrolingualism as a locus of ludic diversity’ can be found in Otsuji and Pennycook (2010: 247) (‘metrolingualism’ in their terminology is similar to Jørgesen’s ‘polylanguaging’). (18) There are, of course, also numerous studies on codeswitching in the classroom which show the same phenomena but do not use the term ‘translanguaging’. Examples may be found in Blackledge and Creese (2010: 108–144) for England or already in Dirim (1998) for Germany. (19) Their ethnicity or language background is not revealed in the paper. (20) Thanks to Rakesh Bhatt for discussing this extract with me. There may also be traces of functionality in the mixing register, such as emphasis through other language repetition (cf. mari dincharya ~ daily routine). (21) See Schmenk et al., 2019, for a general critique of the ‘sloganization’ of sociolinguistic, and particularly educational, discourses.

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Gumperz, J. and Wilson, R. (1971) Convergence and corolization: A case from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border. In D. Hymes (ed.) Pidginization and Creolization of Languages (pp. 151–168). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gumperz, J. and Hernández-Chavez, E. (1972) Bilingualism, bidialectalism, and classroom interaction. In C.B. Cazden, V.P. John and D. Hymes (eds) Functions of Language in the Classroom (pp. 84–110). New York and London: Teachers College Press. Jaspers, J. (2018) The transformative limits of translanguaging. Language & Communication 58, 1–10. Jørgensen, J.N. (2008a) Polylingual languaging around and among children and adolescents. International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (3), 161–176. Jørgensen, J.N. (2008b) Poly-lingual languaging. Evidence from Turkish-speaking youth. In J.N. Jørgensen and V. Lytra (eds) Multilingualism and Identities Across Contexts (pp. 129–150). Copenhagen Studies in Bilingualism Volume 45, University of Copenhagen. Jørgensen, J.N., Karrebæk, M.S., Madsen, L.M. and Møller, J.S. (2011) Polylanguaging in superdiversity. Diversities 13 (2), 23–37. Kachru, B. (1983) The Indianization of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Karlsson, A., Nygård Larsson, P. and Jakobsson, A. (2018) Multilingual students’ use of translanguaging in science classrooms. International Journal of Science Education 41 (15), 2049–2069. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500693.2018.1477261. Köppe, R. (1997) Sprachentrennung im frühen bilingualen Erstspracherwerb Französisch/ Deutsch. Tübingen: Narr. Li, W. (1994) Three Generations, Two Languages, One Family. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Li, W. (2011) Moment analysis and translanguaging space: Discursive construction of identities by multilingual Chinese youth in Britain. Journal of Pragmatics 43, 1222– 1235. Li, W. (2018) Translanguaging as a practical theory of language. Applied Linguistics 29 (1), 9–30. Luckmann, T. (2002) Zur Ausbildung historischer Institutionen aus sozialem Handeln. In T. Luckmann Wissen und Gesellschaft. Selected Writings 1981–2002 (pp. 105–116) (ed. by H. Knoblauch, J. Raab and B. Schnettler). Constance: UVKVerlagsgesellschaft. [First published in 1987.] MacSwan, J. (2013) Code-switching and grammatical theory. In T.M. Bhatia and W.C. Ritchie (eds) The Handbook of Bilingualism and Multilingualism (2nd edn) (pp. 323–350). Malden, MA: Blackwell. MacSwan, J. (2017) A multilingual perspective on translanguaging. American Educational Research Journal 54 (1), 167–201. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages (pp. 1–41). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Meeuwis, M. and Blommaert, J. (1998) A monolectal view of code-switching: Layered codeswitching among Zairians in Belgium. In P. Auer (ed.) Code-switching in Conversation: Language, Interaction and Identity (pp. 76–99). London: Routledge. Meisel, J. (1989) Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In K. Hyltenstam and L. Obler (eds) Bilingualism Across the Lifespan (pp. 13–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Møller, J.S. (2008) Polylingual performance among Turkish-Danes in late-modern Copenhagen. International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (3), 217–236. Muhamedova, R. and Auer, P. (2005) ‘Embedded language’ and ‘matrix language’ in insertional language mixing: Some problematic cases. Italian Journal of Linguistics/ Rivista di linguistica 17 (1), 35–54. Muysken, P. (2000) Bilingual Speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muysken, P. (2016) From Colombo to Athens: Areal and universalist perspectives on bilingual compound verbs. Languages 1 (1), 2. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993) Duelling Languages. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

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O’Shannessy, C. (2012) The role of code-switched input to children in the origin of a new mixed language. Linguistics 50 (2), 328–353. Otheguy, R., García, O. and Reid, W. (2015) Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing named languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Linguistics Review 6 (3), 281–307. Otsuji, E. and Pennycook, A. (2010) Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux. International Journal of Multilingualism 7 (3), 240–254. Pennycook, A. (2006) Postmodernism in language policy. In T. Ricento (ed.) An Introduction to Language Policy (pp. 60–67). London: Blackwell. Poplack, S. (1980) ‘Sometimes I’ll start a sentence in Spanish y termino en español’: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18 (7/8), 581–618. Poplack, S. (2017) Borrowing: Loanwords in the Speech Community and in the Grammar. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Quist, P. (2008) Sociolinguistic approaches to multiethnolect: Language variety and stylistic practice. International Journal of Bilingualism 12 (1/2), 43–61. Rampton, B. (1986) Crossing: Language and Ethnicity among Adolescents. London: Longman. Rampton, B. (2015) Contemporary urban vernaculars. In J. Nortier and B. Svendsen (eds) Language, Use and Identity in the 21st Century (pp. 24–44). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmenk, B., Breidbach, S. and Küster, L. (eds) (2019) Sloganization in Language Education Discourse: Conceptual Thinking in the Age of Academic Marketization. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Sebba, M. (2009) On the notions of congruence and convergence in code-switching. In B.E. Bullock and A.J. Toribio (eds) The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Codeswitching (pp. 40–57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Silverstein, M. (1985) Language and the culture of gender: At the intersection of structure, usage, and ideology. In E. Mertz and R.J. Parmentier (eds) Semiotic Mediation. Sociocultural and Psychological Perspectives (pp. 291–259). Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Simpson, J. (2017) Translanguaging in the contact zone: Language use in superdiverse urban areas. In H. Coleman (ed.) Multilingualisms and Development. Selected Proceedings of the 11th Language and Development Conference, New Delhi, India (2015) (pp. 207–223). British Council. Slembrouck, J. and Rosiers, K. (2018) Translanguaging: A matter of sociolinguistics, pedagogics and interaction? In P. Van Avermaet, S. Slembrouck, K. Van Gorp, S. Sierens and K. Maryns (eds) The Multilingual Edge of Education (pp. 165–187). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Stenzel, K. and Khoo, V. (2016) Linguistic hybridity: A case study in the Kotiria community. Critical Multilingualism Studies 4 (2), 75–110. Thaker, P.K. (1991) Englishization of contemporary Gujarāti novel: Code mixing and style. World Englishes 10 (2), 211–218. Vogel, S. and García, O. (2017) Translanguaging. In G. Noblit (ed.) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, C. (1994) Afarniad o Ddulliau Dysgu ac Addysgu yng Nghyd-destun Addysg Uwchradd Ddwyieithog [An evaluation of teaching and learning methods in the context of bilingual secondary education]. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Wales at Bangor.

6 Codeswitching and its Terminological Other – Translanguaging Rakesh M. Bhatt and Agnes Bolonyai

One of the dominant theoretical constructs that has emerged from recent studies on late-modernity, globalization, and super-diversity, is MOBILITY – of resources: human (migration, transnationalism, and diaspora studies – Blommaert, 2009; Cohen, 1997; Piller, 2016); cultural (global flows of cultural products, of hip-hop – Alim et al., 2009; Pennycook, 2007); and linguistic (polylanguaging, translingual practice, translanguaging – Canagarajah, 2013; García & Li, 2014; Jørgensen, 2008). The focus on sociolinguistic mobility has released new perspectives on traditional understandings of our unit of sociolinguistic analysis, of linguistic community, linguistic repertoire and linguistic practice. Linguistic communities are replaced increasingly by notions of communities of practice (Eckert & Wenger, 2005), linguistic repertoires focus on the individual (a shift away from communal) – understood now as flexible, unstable, dynamic and layered (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011), and linguistic practices are now largely viewed as complex, hybrid and unpredictable (Blommaert, 2015). The centerpiece of the object of linguistic inquiry, LANGUAGE, and its associated terms such as dialect, variety, code, seem to have fallen out of favor in this shifting theoretical landscape, giving way to a new term, LANGUAGING, which refers to the users’ use of their repertoire resources to meet communicative goals (Becker, 1991; Jørgensen, 2008). The straightforward theoretical consequences of this shift can be seen in the emergence of a new terminology to address the communicative dynamism in contemporary multilingual behavior: polylanguaging (Jørgensen, 2008), metrolingualism (Otsuji & Pennycook, 2010) and translanguaging (Creese & Blackledge, 2010; García, 2009; García & Li, 2014). To be sure, these terms seek to displace traditional linguistic vocabulary (‘languages’, ‘codes’, ‘codeswitching’), and underlying ideologies, seen as analytically inadequate in the study of postmodern diversity (Blommaert & Rampton, 2011; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007). 154

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In this chapter, we focus on TRANSLANGUAGING, a term that has caught a fair bit of traction in the sociolinguistics of multilingualism, asking two important questions: (1) What new generalizable knowledge is offered by theoretical constructs such as translanguaging (and associated terms such as polylanguaging, transidioma, etc.)? (2) What new empirical coverage is offered by theoretical constructs such as translanguaging (and associated terms such as polylanguaging, transidioma, etc.)? We believe that, in order to make meaningful progress in sociolinguistic theorization, such questions must be asked and fully interrogated so that we do not, even unwittingly, indulge in ‘erasure’ of established paradigms of understanding only to re-present (parts or all of) it as new, different or paradigm-changing. It is with this caution that we explore the theoretical and empirical bases of the term TRANSLANGUAGING. Specifically, we provide empirical evidence and theoretical arguments to claim that the concept of translanguaging provides neither new generalizable knowledge nor new empirical insights that its proponents claim. In fact, we show that adopting this term as an analytic category leads to loss of explanatory power both in terms of our ability to explain (i) WHY certain patterns of codeswitching are regularly observed and (ii) HOW linguistic forms in bilingual performance get linked to communicative–indexical functions in various acts of meaning-making. The chapter is organized as follows: in the next section we briefly discuss the notion of language as an organized social–semiotic system (cf. ‘archive’: Blommaert, 2005) that is used by social actors in routine interactional contexts to perform certain communicative goals. We then briefly explore the notion of languaging, as the entire theoretical edifice of trans-/poly-languaging is predicated on this notion, and we discuss how it compares with the standard view of the study of language in its sociocultural contexts. In the following section we discuss the notion of codeswitching, its theoretical understanding and its empirical coverage. We then focus on the notion of translanguaging: what it means, what empirical evidence is offered to motivate this notion, and what theoretical mileage is offered by this term in our understanding of multilingualism. Finally, we discuss our conclusions, re-claiming the theoretical status of codeswitching: as an active, agentive, sociocognitive mechanism employed by social actors to produce and interpret the meaning potential (Halliday, 1985) of linguistic symbols, acts, utterances and features in the diverse universe we now inhabit. We conclude by claiming that translanguaging as a theoretical construct does not offer any significant progress in our understanding of bilingual language use that is not already covered by the term codeswitching.

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Language and Languaging Language

There is general agreement among linguists that the object of linguistic inquiry, language, carries remarkable communicative potential in so far as social actors and actions displaced in time and place are easily discernible and understood in surprisingly uniform, systematic ways. There is, however, little agreement on the appropriate unit of code repertoire for linguistic analysis: Is it the individual idiolect – as part of the theoretical methodology of generative grammar (e.g. Chomsky, 1986) – or is it the speech community, as demonstrated in the works of Labov (1966)? These two theoretical approaches, in our view, diverge from each other in terms of how the research question is framed: what language is, or, what language does. The standard theory of language – cognitive-generative model (Chomsky, 1986) – is concerned with understanding the biological foundation or mental– cognitive structure that underlies language use (of an ‘ideal’ speaker/ hearer). It takes language as an internal, abstract system that is relatively uniform, whereas variation among languages (Hindi/Hungarian/Hausa) is understood as a function of a restricted set of parameterized options offered by the Universal Grammar (UG). Specifically, under this view, language is described by a set of discrete principles and potentially fixable parameters. This restrictive view of language, however, does not have a universal acceptance among linguists due mainly to two strategic confounds: (i) the tremendous linguistic diversity of the world’s roughly 7,000 languages does not confine itself to the space afforded by the parameters of UG (cf. Evans & Levinson, 2009, and the commentaries that follow), and (ii) the fundamental differences between the form– meaning permutations – how languages work – can be traced to the logic of cultural models and socially situated communicative practices, absent under the generative–cognitive view of language; Everett (2012), for instance, presents evidence from Pirahã to claim that several aspects of language structure are affected by culture.1 The social–functionalist approaches, on the other hand (Gumperz, 1958; Halliday, 1985; Hymes, 1974; Labov, 1966), assert the centrality of linguistic diversity (language variation) and that of the speakers who use it meaningfully within and across speech communities as the fundamental part of linguistic description. These approaches had long recognized the unstable, dynamic nature of language that invariably results in variation (gender, age, class, region) and change (see especially, Labov’s discussion of ‘dynamic synchrony’). Consider, for instance, Excerpt 1 below: a small Kashmiri family gathering where a newly wed Indian woman, a Hindi-dominant multilingual speaker, asks her fatherin-law and her father, in the same interactional moment, if they would like to have tea.

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Excerpt 1: Interactional–ideational function of language

(a) Turning to her father-in-law: Papa-ji, aap chaay piy-eN-ge Papa-Hon you (polite) tea drink-2Pers-FutPlMasc ‘Papaji, will you have tea?’ (b) Turning to her father: Daddy, aap bhii Daddy you (polite) also ‘Daddy, will you also have (tea)?’

piy-o-ge drink-2Pers-FutPlMasc

What is remarkable about the data in Excerpt 1 is the subtle, almost unobvious violation of the subject–pronominal agreement in Hindi by the speaker in 1b. The T-V (French ‘tu/vous’, Latin ‘tu/vos’) pronominal agreement paradigm in Hindi is illustrated in Excerpt 2 below. Two quick comments on the T-V use in Hindi: (i) the pronominal choice is scaled along a deferential function, whereas the agreement morphology is scaled on an intimacy function and (ii) the plural pronouns, tum and aap, can be used to address a single person, although the agreement morphology reflects the grammatical plural paradigm. The data of interest for us is the dotted arrow in Excerpt 2, indicating the linguistic choice in 1b. The choice in 1b, while grammatically unlicensed in form, becomes creatively nuanced in its social–indexical function: we argue that the newly wed woman expresses, through a subtle morphosyntactic transgression, the indexical difference of intimacy between her father-in-law and her father. Such linguistic creativity is routinely expressed in interpersonal–interactional contexts and functions, thereby forcing a view of language shaped and organized in relation to its (sociofunctional) use. It is this approach to language as a social semiotic resource, or ‘meaning potential’, that undergirds our general approach to the study of language (cf. Halliday, 1985), one that has a long, established and rich tradition in the field of sociolinguistics. Excerpt 2: The Hindi T-V paradigm: ‘Will you (sing/pl) drink (tea).’

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Languaging

The shift in theoretical focus from the study of language use to languaging is rather recent; moving away, in particular, from the Cartesian notion of language as a system of reified abstractions to a notion of language-as-action (Harris, 1981; Love, 1990; Taylor, 1986, 2017). In the latter, humanist–integrationist view (Harris, 1981), language is understood as a prescriptive-normative ‘second-order’ human construct (Love, 1990), an abstraction, a metalinguistic generalization which, as part of language users’ practical knowledge or ‘know-how,’ both reflects and informs concrete ‘real-life’ language use, called languaging (Taylor, 2017). Languaging, the first-order linguistic activity – what human beings do – refers to an ongoing, here-and-now, and contextually meaningful, uniquely individual, communicative activity (cf. Pablé & Hutton, 2015; also see Hopper (1987) on grammatical structure itself as a fundamentally ‘social’, ‘temporal’ and ‘emergent’ phenomenon that is ‘always anchored in the specific concrete form of an utterance’ (1987: 141–142)). Individual acts of communication under the integrationist view of languaging find support in data like Excerpt 1 above where the speaker exploits the ‘functional-potential’ of the morphosyntax of the Hindi agreement system to index an affective difference between her addressees. This creative linguistic move, however, is predicated on the assumption that the speaker is aware of the logic of Hindi morphosyntax, and it is this ‘knowledge of language’ – the form–function correlations – that she uses to secure the kinship distinctions without flouting any community norms of politeness. The data also point to a familiar trope of ‘language-as-system’, a social–semiotic archive that operates within the logic of a cultural (here, kinship) grammar (cf. Bright, 1968): the alterations in the linguistic grammar by the ‘languaging’ individual (in Excerpt 1) are acceptable as long as the norms of the cultural grammar are honored, and, in fact, prioritized. Taking a slightly different approach to languaging, Becker (1988) proposes a shift from language ‘as something accomplished, apart from time and history’ to languaging ‘as an ongoing process … something that is being done and reshaped constantly’ (1988: 25) – a view familiar to us from Gumperz’s (1958, and passim) work that shows how language habits are constantly in a state of flux, and from Labov’s (1972) notion of ‘dynamic synchrony’ (cf. also Jakobson, 1960). The ‘Multilingual Turn’ (May, 2014) and the ‘Mobility Turn’ (Blommaert, 2010) have brought back into focus ‘language use’ as the object of linguistic inquiry with, however, a different set of terminologies. Jørgensen, for instance, argues: ‘We use language to achieve our purposes, we are languagers, and we perform languaging. … What we do when we use the uniquely human phenomenon of language … is languaging’ (Jørgensen, 2010: 152). More specifically, languaging, and its sister term poly-languaging, refers to language users’ deployment of ‘whatever linguistic features are

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at their disposal’ (including features that are ‘perceived by some speakers as not belonging together’) (Jørgensen et al., 2011: 34), to achieve their communicative aims as best they can (regardless of how well they know the languages involved). However, we argue that speakers’ deployment of linguistic features, as in the contextually driven creative reconfiguration of Hindi morphosyntax in Excerpt 1 above, assumes, crucially, access to and stability of recognizable indexical meanings associated with the linguistic system to derive the profit of socioaffective distinction (compare Excerpt 1a with Excerpt 1b as discussed above). As such, our view of language, following the works of Firth, Halliday, Gumperz, Hymes and Labov, diverges, albeit marginally, from both the integrationist and humanistic traditions of languaging: in our terms, a privileged focus on language use enables us to capture the sociolinguistically significant generalizations of the ideologically distributed variation in mono/bi/multilingual contexts. Codeswitching and Translanguaging Codeswitching

One of the most significant properties of multilingual communities is members’ ability to use various linguistic resources to creatively accomplish their communicative goals in routine (inter-personal) interactions. This linguistic creativity, most visible, and audible, in bilingual2 interactions, is enabled through a process, formally termed codeswitching. Before giving a detailed description of its theoretical understanding, we first provide two illustrations, Excerpts 3 and 4 below, of its empirical presence in sociolinguistic studies. In Excerpt 3 below, Tavis Smiley, the African American host of The Tavis Smiley Show (on PBS), while interviewing the Black American actress Pam Grier switches to African American English (AAE) when voicing the Black community’s concern about Grier’s portrayal of a lesbian woman on the HBO television drama series, The L Word. Excerpt 3: Dialect switching: Standard English and AAE (Britt, 2008)

Smiley: You know as well as I do that gayness, homosexuality, lesbianism, still very much a taboo subject – not as much as it used to be, but still very much a taboo subject inside of black America specifically. Grier: Oh, espe- yeah. Smiley: And black folk love Pam Grier. Everybody loves Pam Grier, but black folk especially love Pam Grier. What do you say to black folk who say, Now, Pam Grier you done got caught up in it. Now you done gone too far.

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Britt (2008) argues that Smiley’s switch to AAE, following all the facework preceding it (including the use of bare nouns without plural concord: ‘black folk … love’),3 is sociofunctionally significant: by switching to the community voice – to, especially, the voice of the authors of this oppositional stance – Smiley, the interviewer, is able to distance himself from the folks in the black community who are unhappy with Grier’s lesbian portrayal on the show, and yet at the same time claim symbolic (ethnic) solidarity with her by appealing to the shared knowledge of the AAE community, mitigating the potentially face threatening nature of criticism. While Excerpt 3 above shows how switching flags face-issues, Excerpt 4 below shows an aspect of intra-sentential codeswitching that is quite pervasive in most studies of bilingual language use: each Hindi switch expresses a culturally specific meaning, intertextually tied to the Hindu religious texts – the switched text serves as the interpretive context. Excerpt 4: English-Hindi switching (Bhatt & Bolonyai, 2011)

There have been several analyses of this phenomenon. First, there is the ‘religious angle’ which has to do with Indian society. In India a man feels guilty when fantasizing about another man’s wife, unlike in the west. The saat pheras around the agni serves as a lakshman rekha.4

The two examples above illustrate what has been referred to as intersentential codeswitching, or codeswitching (3) – where the switch takes place external to the clause – and intra-sentential codeswitching, or codemixing (4) – where the switch takes place within the clause (cf. Kachru, 1983; Myers-Scotton, 1993). Such observations, of bringing together elements from two (or more) languages, have a long, rich tradition going as far back as the work of Espinosa (1914),5 who observed mixing of English words and phrases into the Spanish of New Mexico, in Barker’s (1947) study of bilingual Mexican Americans in Tucson, Arizona, and Gumperz’s earlier studies on Indian multilingualism (1958, 1964). From earlier observationally adequate understandings of codeswitching, the field came into its own with Blom and Gumperz’s (1972) work on codeswitching between two Norwegian dialects, local Ranamål and standard literary Bokmål, yielding two descriptive categories: situational codeswitching and metaphorical codeswitching. Codeswitching, as Gumperz would note later (1982), ‘signals contextual information equivalent to what in monolingual settings is conveyed through prosody or other syntactic or lexical processes. It generates the presuppositions in terms of which the content of what is said is decoded’ (1982: 98). Accordingly, codeswitching serves as a contextualization cue, providing the hearer with information beyond the referential content of the utterance – how the utterance must be understood! The insights in Gumperz’s work on codeswitching spurred interest in codeswitching

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among scholars of multilingualism, along at least three sociolinguistic tropes: the social–psychological (Markedness) model (Myers-Scotton, 1993; Myers-Scotton & Bolonyai, 2001), political–economic approaches (Gal, 1987; Heller, 1988b, 1995) and conversational–analytic approaches (Auer, 1984, 1998; Li, 1998). While these three approaches to codeswitching differ from each other in terms of their paradigmatic stances, they do however share one important sociolinguistic–theoretic insight: that codeswitching is a skilled and strategic performance that exploits the discreteness of languages while seeming to flout it (Gal, 1987: 639; Heller, 1995: 167; Myers-Scotton, 1993: 47). Codeswitching, as a sociolinguistic practice, is understood uniformly under these three approaches as ‘the alternate use of [elements of] two or more languages in the same utterance or interaction’ (Grosjean, 1982: 145; cf. also Auer, 1984: 1; Bhatt, 2008: 182; Bhatt & Bolonyai, 2011: 523; Bolonyai, 2005: 8; Demirçay & Backus, 2014: 31; Di Pietro, 1977: 3; Gumperz, 1982: 59; Heller, 1988a: 1; Hymes, 1971; Kharkhurin & Li, 2015: 153; Milroy & Muysken, 1995: 7; Muysken, 2000: 1; Myers-Scotton, 1993: vii; Myers-Scotton & Ury, 1977: 5; Valdés-Fallis, 1976: 53). These uniform understandings (i) produced a rich array of descriptive generalizations in terms of the social–indexical functions that codeswitching serves, and (ii) provided sociolinguistically significant insights into bilinguals’ creativity. The social–psychological perspective (Markedness Model, MyersScotton & Bolonyai, 2001) explains codeswitching by a speaker as flagging a shift in Rights and Obligations (RO), similar to Goffman’s (1979) notion of footing shifts, the variable stances, voices (see MyersScotton, 1993: 69–70, on the similarity between ‘choice’ and ‘voice’) or identity positions that individuals take within an interaction. Excerpt 3 above is one instance of that; Excerpt 5 below illustrates this more clearly, where in essentially one semiotic frame, the different roles (‘voice’) the 58-year-old, upper middle-class Kashmiri woman in New Delhi assumes are flagged by switches in languages (Bhatt & Bolonyai, 2011: 534): Hindi, Kashmiri, and English. Excerpt 5: Hindi-Kashmiri-English

(1) mai jab chotii Thii (‘when I was little’) (2) jab meri shaadi hui (‘when I got married’) (3) mujhe bhii yahii lagtaa Thaa (‘I also used to think/feel’) (4) ki myaanyan shuryan gos na (‘that my kids should not get the kashmiri accent gasun “Kashmiri accent”’) (5) so, I spoke to them in English mainly (6) (pause) bas yahii hai (‘That’s it!’)

The speaker in Excerpt 5 above starts out in Hindi in the role of the narrator (lines 1–3), switches to Kashmiri (line 4) indexing a rather

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pervasive stance of Kashmiri Diaspora mothers, and then switches to English to express the community stance that prides itself in English language proficiency associated with (upper/upper-middle) class and caste (Brahmin) identities. Similar patterns of intersection of identity complexes (class, caste, race, region and ethnicity) and codeswitching are observed in Rampton’s (1995) work on crossing – codeswitching across boundaries of race, ethnicity and language communities – as acts of linguistic transgressions among adolescent Asians, Afro-Caribbeans and Anglos in a neighborhood in the South Midlands of England, and in Bailey’s (2002) work on codeswitching among Dominican American youth. Similarly, but from a political/economic–theoretic vantage point, Heller (1988b) shows how the use of codeswitching among Anglophone speakers in Quebec introduces strategic ambiguity in what they could say and do, ‘indeed be two or more things when normally a choice is expected’ (1988b: 93), i.e. maintain a position locally in the Francophone corporate culture while maintaining ties to Anglophone identity, which has (symbolic) value on the global market. Such political– economic perspectives have thus been able to yield functional insights of codeswitching as acts of linguistic resistance or symbolic dominance (Heller, 1992, 1995). The bilingual creativity discussed above is also evidenced in micro-discursive acts of codeswitching, most visibly expressed in conversational–analytic approaches. Li (1998, 2005), Auer (1998), Gafaranga (2001), among others, have shown how codeswitching serves several conversational functions: signal repair, mark dispreferred responses, enhance turn selection or make participant identity ‘relevant’. The sociolinguistic acts of identity – participant identity – are most clearly visible in the articulation of transnational subjectivities in latemodern contexts of global (migrant) mobility, as demonstrated in Catedral (2018). Catedral presents a short narrative of an Uzbek migrant woman in the US whose codeswitches reveal a number of identity acts: she (i) switches from English to Uzbek to describe o’zbekchilik – ‘Uzbekness’ – and the Uzbek halq – ‘nation’; (ii) switches back to English describing the demands of the neoliberal behavioral script (‘in America you have to stand up for yourself’); (iii) switches to Uzbek again to further describe the type of speech associated with ibo hayo; and then (iv) switches again to English to clarify the type of behavior associated with a neoliberal micro-hegemony (Catedral, 2018: 32). Catedral specifically argues that ‘this constant switching illustrates how Umida, as a transnationally mobile migrant, is operating within a third space (Bhabha, 1994) where she is constantly orienting to both the home and host countries … [and that] while the constant switching highlights the complexities of operating within transnational contexts, the ideological and social separateness of the codes of English and Uzbek allow Umida

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to construct relative moral stability for herself within this third space’ (Catedral, 2018: 32). In addition to a focus on the verbal behavior of transnational subjects, recent research on the sociolinguistics of globalization has also shifted the empirical focus from sounds to (written) words, and from speakers to (public) spaces, accommodating multi-modal expressions of signs and signified (Blommaert, 2015). This methodological shift, to accommodate sociolinguistic expressions of late-modernity (Chouliaraki & Fairclough, 1999; Rampton, 2006), engages with the semiotics of visual communication, focuses on urban spaces, and draws on the intersections between old (traditional) and new (modern), yielding a third space analysis (Bhatt, 2008) where (historical–sociolinguistic) stability yields to ambiguity, and where hybridity emerges as the dominant interpretive norm. The data in Figure 6.1, a sign outside a restaurant in an upper middle-class neighborhood in New Delhi, India, show the intersections of language, space and contemporary sociocultural processes affecting urban spaces in modern India. Lyons and Karimzad (2019) in their analysis of Figure 6.1 show how the nostalgia for the past – DESI KHANA (traditional food) – is re-imagined in the present, late-modern world with ENGLISH HYGIENE, offering a space where the modern and the traditional coalesce into a hybrid outlet: ANGREZEE (English) DHABA (an informal Indian eatery)!6

Figure 6.1  The new old: Angrezee Dhaba

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These complex juxtapositions of language/script choices offer a uniform understanding of the sociolinguistic mechanisms by which ‘spaces’ get ideologically saturated with indexicals of imported, layered and emerging/new ‘archives’ (Blommaert, 2005: 103; Foucault, 1972: 128) – i.e. historical systems of ‘the formation and transformation’ of cultural–linguistic representations people may recognize and categorize as particular regimes of languages – that, in Figure 6.1, derive their synchronic coherence, and meaning, in the inter-animation of local and global, past and present, and traditional and modern. The complexity and creativity of such linguistic juxtaposition is becoming commonplace as English establishes itself as a global language, intermingling with the use of local languages. The Burger King street ad in Budapest (Figure 6.2), shows a creative, playful mix of English and Hungarian in a stylized form of ‘expressive transgression’ that appears to create an effect of non-discreteness of language boundaries. The data of particular interest to us in this ad are ‘XtraYO’, a creative hybrid mix of English and Hungarian. While visually XtraYO doesn’t look Hungarian, it sounds Hungarian: English YO invokes its homophone in Hungarian, JÓ (‘good’), pronounced as YO, thus creating a cross-linguistic pun where ‘XtraYO’ comes to be read/heard as ‘XtraGOOD’.

Figure 6.2  Hungarian-English mixing

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The double-meaning of the pun in Figure 6.2, however, is available only if the different linguistic–semiotic archives are accessed – at the phonetic and orthographic levels. That is, in order to fully appreciate the meaning of this creative trans-modal hybrid, one has to be able to trace it to its discrete, language specific, written and phonological elements: YO – in the context, also an interpellation – the voice of American ‘cool’ (as a slang expression of excitement and cool ‘addressivity’ (à la Bakhtin, 1986), merges in a heteroglossic fusion with Hungarian JÓ (‘good’) and thereby inter-discursively imbues the Hungarian word ‘jó’ with a new symbolic connotation and status. The ad thus represents a ludic encounter of two archives as global brand Burger King’s iconic bun gets playfully localized and valorized in a way that is distinctively tied to Hungarian. All these data of codeswitching show the subtle and complex ways in which new indexical orders emerge, obliterating the established (historical) paradigms of language use, literacy practices and attitudes; expressing agency, bilingual creativity and a new political economy. And, importantly, codeswitching recognizes ‘enregistered’ (fixed) associations with languages as systems, remixed in playful ways to create fluid identities (cf. Hall & Nilep, 2015: 614). What emerges as the overarching claim in the sociolinguistic studies of codeswitching we have surveyed is that bilingual creativity, in all the different modes, is produced and understood within the context of semiotic ‘archives’ from which specific resources are strategically and skillfully recruited in bilingual language use. To be precise, these archives – conveniently labeled as languages (e.g. Hungarian, African American English, Uzbek, Hindi) – have a lived cultural history and geographic embeddedness and offer chronotopic affiliations and identities. Knowledge of, and access to, an archive or archives, forms an epistemic community that uses all the archives available to them to fully exploit the communicative potential of their repertoire. Translanguaging

If codeswitching captures the generalization of bilingual speakers as active, agentive, social actors engaged in the production and mobilization of their multilingual resources in practices of meaningmaking, then we must ask what translanguaging offers that is (above and) beyond the theoretical scope and empirical range of the term codeswitching. In other words: What new generalizable knowledge is offered by the term translanguaging (and its kin: polylanguaging, translingual practice, transidioma, etc.)? In this section, we present various definitions and theorizations of translanguaging, and explore their consequences for a theory of bilingual language use that includes the notion of codeswitching. For reasons of brevity and clarity, we focus

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specifically on the scholarly works of the main proponents of the term, translanguaging: Ofelia García, Li Wei and Ricardo Otheguy.7 García refers to translanguaging as ‘bilingual languaging’ (emphasis in original): the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages, in order to maximize communicative potential. It is an approach to bilingualism that is centered, not on languages as has often been the case, but on the practices of bilinguals that are readily observable. … Translanguaging therefore goes beyond what has been termed codeswitching, although it includes it. For me, the concept extends what Gutiérrez and colleagues have called ‘hybrid language use,’ that is, a ‘systematic, strategic, affiliative, and sense-making process…’ (García, 2009: 140, emphasis added).

The focus away from languages and instead on linguistic features (à la Jørgensen, 2008) is claimed to be one of the important innovations in the theory and practice of translanguaging. However, features engaged/ accessed in acts of translanguaging are themselves identified as belonging to specific languages (with specific indexical values/meanings in a given context), leading to a familiar paradox that Seargeant and Tagg noted: Feature identification uses a comparative approach between different notional systems of linguistic patterning, and so reference to different codes, varieties, styles and ‘modes’ is necessary despite the fact that, ..., a central concern … is the problematisation and complexifying of just these conceptual categories. (Seargeant & Tagg, 2011: 504)

The empirical instantiation of this paradox, within the paradigm of translanguaging studies, is best exemplified in the Gujarati-English bilingual use discussed by Creese and Blackledge (2010), cited also by García and Li (2014: 92, 115–116). The extract below in Excerpt 6 is from the head teacher speaking to an audience of parents, students and teachers assembled at the end of the day at a complementary school – promoting community languages – Jalaram Bal Vikasama in Leicester, UK. Excerpt 6: Gujarati-English translanguaging

Mixed Gujarati-English

English translation

… what’s going to happen here Jalaram Bal Vikasma? Holiday nathi … awata Shaniware apne awanu chhe. we’re coming here awta shaniware … [several students put up their hands] … Amar? …

… what’s going to happen here in Jalaram Vikasma? It’s not a holiday, we’ve to come here next Saturday … we’re coming here next Saturday … [several students put up their hands] … Amar? … (Continued)

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Mixed Gujarati-English

English translation

[picks on Amar or Amit to reply] … Amare kidhu ne ke GCSE presentation chhe … awanu chhe. I know that we’re finishing on Friday in mainstream school, pun aiya agal badhayne awanu chhe … I know, it’s a surprise. Khawanu etlu fine chhe, K warned me today … it’s something all of you will like, teachers will like … something for all of us. … [points to the class sitting in front of her] a balko a varshe GCSE karwana chhe etle next year a badha awshe mehman thayne, mota thayne! … we’re not going to take much time, ‘cause I’ve got few other things to tell you as well …

[picks on Amar or Amit to reply] … As Amar said there’s GCSE presentation, you have to come. I know we’re finishing on Friday in mainstream School, but you all have to come here … I know, it’s a surprise, lovely food, K [a parent] warned me today, it’s something all of you will like, teachers will like … something for all of us … [points to the class sitting in front of her] these children are doing GCSE this year so next year they will come as guests, all grown up! … we’re not going to take up much time ‘cause I’ve got a few other things to tell you as well …

Based on the data in Excerpt 6, Creese and Blackledge (2010: 108) claim that (ia) both languages are needed simultaneously to convey the information and (ib) each language is used to convey a different information message; (ii) it is in the movement between two languages that the teacher engages with her diverse audience – the teachers, children and parents have different levels of proficiency in both Gujarati and English and the teacher uses her languages to engage her audience; (iii) however, her ‘languages’ do not appear separate for her in the social acts but rather as a resource to negotiate meanings and include as much of the audience as possible. They conclude that the teacher’s utterances ‘are examples of translanguaging in which the speaker uses her languages … Gujarati and English are not distinct languages for the speaker in the context …’ (2010: 109). In other words, the speaker is claimed to move between languages – the switch between English and Gujarati as evidence of that – as an act of linguistic accommodation (audience design), but then, the authors claim, without evidence/proof, that the speaker appears not to have the languages separated, as she is accommodating to, and signaling identity-alignments with, parents, students and teachers with varying proficiency of Gujarati and English. The claims Creese and Blackledge make, and the conclusion they draw, present the clearest evidence of the paradigm trap: the focus on languages (claims (ia) and (ib)) and the movement between them (claim ii) can theoretically coexist with a claim (iii) that languages are not separate so long as the conclusion is consistent with the assumption of translanguaging that the two languages of bilinguals are not distinctly coded in any way (cf. García & Li, 2014).

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García and Li advance their notion of translanguaging as ‘the act of languaging between systems that have been described as separate, and beyond them’ (García & Li, 2014: 42). However, they insist ‘translanguaging does not refer to two separate languages nor to a synthesis of different language practices or to a hybrid mixture. Rather translanguaging refers to new language practices that make visible the complexity of language exchanges among people with different histories …’ (2014: 21, emphasis in original). What is new perhaps in their view is the focus on bilinguals’ creativity (although see Kachru, 1987, inter alia); what is not new, however, is the inability of these translanguaging scholars to shift the focus away from language exchanges in bilingual interactions. It is the notion of codeswitching, they insist, that focuses on ‘languages’, which is different from translanguaging in the following way: Translanguaging differs from the notion of codeswitching in that it refers not simply to a shift or shuttle between two languages, but to speakers’ construction and use of original and complex interrelated discursive practices that cannot be easily assigned to one or another traditional definition of language. (García & Li, 2014: 22)

We present empirical data from the works of García and Li to demonstrate what differences, if any, can be used to discriminate between translanguaging and codeswitching and to explore what is new (i.e. unlike codeswitching) about the language practices, in terms of complexity and creativity. The data in Excerpt 7, discussed as an instance of translanguaging as pedagogy by García and Li (2014: 99), comes from a bilingual science classroom in a high school for recently arrived Latino students. Excerpt 7: Translanguaging in the science classroom

Teacher:

Hit the bar. Vamos con el foco. ¿Quién me puede leer lo que dice el foco, en inglés? [Let’s go to the focus. Who can read to me what the focus is in English?]. Student 1: (Reads in English) Earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault. The spot underground where the rock breaks is called the focus of the earthquake. Teacher: What does it say? Student 2: Focus is foco ... y abajo, underground, cuando hay un break, allí es que ocurre el earthquake. ... Teacher: The earthquake happens cuando hay un break underground. Y qué es el focus? Student: El focus es dónde ocurre el earthquake, dónde está el break, when rock break.

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Even a cursory look at the empirical data in Except 7 reveals that there isn’t any discernible difference between translanguaging and codeswitching. The teacher’s inter-sentential codeswitches in Excerpt 7 contextualize recognizable discursive functions of class management such as shifts from pre-task instruction to content-related instruction and to eliciting student contribution. Intra-sentential codeswitching serves an additional functional division of labor: English is used for key scientific terms and information content, while the switch to Spanish for the reiteration of the student’s contribution serves to promote learning and to legitimize the student’s voice in meaning-making. Crucial here is the observation that the use of two languages reflects a recognizable pattern. While language occurs as an individual locallysituated phenomenon, it does not occur in a random fashion or in a social vacuum: rather, it occurs ‘simultaneously, as a collective and relatively stable social phenomenon’ (Blommaert, 2007: 4). It is the dialogic relationship of the individual and the sociocultural that enables the emergence of context-specific indexical meanings and structured, patterned communication (bilingual or otherwise) organized by the interacting forces of normativity and creativity. Under the Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993), the pattern of codeswitching in Excerpt 7 is rendered as overall switching as an unmarked choice in that English and Spanish are both indexical of positively valued identities, even as individual codeswitches within overall switching as an unmarked choice fulfill recognizable discourse-pragmatic functions that have been widely documented in the codeswitching literature (Auer, 1984, inter alia). In other words, the empirical data presented in García and Li fail to provide evidence that would support any notion of translanguaging as ‘original’, ‘new language practice’ and so complex that it cannot be assigned to any language – i.e. what ‘some call English’ or ‘Spanish’. Treating translanguaging as an unproblematic (quasi-) analytic lens that in and of itself explains bilingual language use risks glossing over, or reducing to irrelevance, the richly diverse, complex and systematic patterns in the practice of meaning-making that decades of research into codeswitching as a communicative resource have uncovered, as we have discussed above. Otheguy et al. (2015) clarify translanguaging, ‘establishing it as a particular conception of the mental grammar and linguistic practices of bilinguals’ (2015: 281). It refers to ‘the deployment of a speaker’s full linguistic repertoire without regard for watchful adherence to the socially and politically defined boundaries of named (and usually national and state) languages’ (2015: 281, italics in original). They do, however, concede that the notion of codeswitching is understood ‘by many informed scholars in a dynamic and creative fashion as the expressive transgression by bilingual speakers of their two separate languages, [that it] endows these speakers with agency and often finds in the very act of switching [,] elements of linguistic mastery and virtuosity’ (2015: 282).

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The data presented above, do indeed point to linguistic virtuosity and creativity that bilinguals express in oral, written, and other visual semiotic modes. The key theoretical claim that Otheguy et al. (2015, 2018) make that differentiates their account of translanguaging from sociolinguistic research on codeswitching is that translanguaging does not involve two (or more) separate languages/linguistic systems. And as a corollary they offer a unitary view of translanguaging where the myriad of linguistic features mastered by bilinguals occupies a single, undifferentiated mental grammar [idiolect/linguistic repertoire] (Otheguy et al., 2015: 294, passim; 2018: 2, passim). These features/resources, distinctive of the speaker’s idiolect, offer a description of translanguaging ‘based strictly on the internal categories of lexical and grammatical structure’ (Otheguy, 2015: 297). Given the data on bilingual language use we have discussed, Excerpts 3–7, the claim that translanguaging does not involve two separate linguistic systems is untenable: We lose tremendous explanatory power in terms of the social–indexical functions that are mobilized in bilingual language use if linguistic resources are understood as complex arrays of disaggregated structural features that are not integrated into linguistic systems (García & Otheguy, 2014: 644–645). Under our view, named linguistic systems, understood as archives of historical–cultural expressions organized as specific chronotopes (of form–meaning– context pairings), are the critical resources that are creatively exploited in bilingual language use to express various complexes of nuances of meanings, as we have shown in our data throughout this chapter. The switch to AAE by Tavis Smiley, Excerpt 3 above, is audible only in terms of its syntax, which contrasts in subtle but significant ways with the syntax of Standard English. This difference between the two dialects – as separate linguistic systems – is noticed by the speakers who control them. In her seminal work on African American English, Smitherman (2000: 2) argues how speakers of African American English vernacular develop ‘adequate enough code-switching skills’ to make themselves intelligible to those who ‘carry on the affairs of the English-speaking people’. What is most remarkable is that Smitherman uses her codeswitching skill rather seamlessly, but deliberately. The movement between the two linguistic systems – between the two morphosyntaxes, of AAE and Standard English – allows her AAE voice to be heard forcefully, to be intelligible, and also to align with the (dominant) system. Similarly in diglossic contexts of Arabic, Albirini (2011: 537) shows how ‘speakers create a functional division between the two varieties by designating issues of importance, complexity, and seriousness to SA [Standard Arabic], the High code, and aligning less important, less serious, and accessible topics with DA [Dialect Arabic], the Low code’. These functional affixations with linguistic forms (cf. Stell & Yakpo, 2015) that generate particularized

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social–indexical meanings in bilingual use do not find an account under the unitary view of translanguaging where the myriad linguistic features mastered by bilinguals occupy a single, undifferentiated mental grammar (idiolect/linguistic repertoire) (Otheguy et al., 2018: 2, passim). The two linguistic systems, of form–meaning–context pairings, (i) do not appear in hermetically sealed boxes, and (ii) are readily available and accessible to bilinguals to draw from in message construction, as we have argued throughout this chapter. The strict differentiation that Otheguy et al. (2018) make between the external language system of the speaker – the sociocultural construct of community languages around which identities might be formed – and the internal language system of speakers enacting those identities, could be read as a tacit acknowledgment of the fact that the idiolect of the individual speaker is dialectically constituted in dialogic interaction with community (social/conventional) languages. If so, then the speaker’s idiolect consists of features organized around grammatical systems (in their view, ‘assembly of features’, Otheguy et al., 2018: 5) of those languages and their individual indexical biographies (2018: 5) – the total linguistic repertoire. However, such a reading is negated by their explicit claim (2018: 4) that ‘the dual ontology of the two separable named languages is anchored in sociocultural beliefs, not in psycholinguistic properties of the underlying system’ (emphasis in original). They claim that the ‘key finding of psycholinguistic research on bilingualism does not support at all the notion that the bilingual has a binary competence and a binary system, and in fact tilts initial plausibility in the direction of the translanguaging claim of a unitary linguistic system’ (2018: 12). Cognitive and neural organization of multiple languages

In the remainder of this section, we present a quick examination of recent research on psycholinguistic, cognitive and neural correlates of bilingual language use to determine whether or not bilinguals show evidence of two linguistic systems. Clearly, we still do not fully understand how language is organized in the brains of bilinguals and many issues remain unresolved. However, a substantial body of recent studies suggests that while ‘at the macro level it appears that the brain utilizes many of the same neural resources for both the native language and laterlearned languages’ (Higby et al., 2013), there is consistent evidence for the existence of distinct cognitive and neural mechanisms for bilinguals’ languages. Crucially, the literature suggests that a radically unitary, singlemechanism view of the bilingual brain that precludes any sort of patterned difference between the languages of bilinguals and treats them as part of a linguistically and socially ‘undifferentiated mental realm’ (Otheguy et al., 2015: 293) is untenable.

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First, we discuss studies that show the cognitive and neural mechanisms that drive bilinguals to switch between languages. The behavioral and the event-related potential (ERP) data present an interesting insight (Litcofsky & Van Hell, 2017; Proverbio et al., 2004; Van Hell et al., 2015): there were asymmetric switching costs such that the switch from a dominant language (L1) to the weaker language (L2) incurs higher switching costs than switching from the weaker to the dominant. These asymmetric switching costs do not receive an account under the unitary linguistic system view of translanguaging theory. Furthermore, bilingual production studies (see Hartsuiker & Pickering, 2008, for a review) also show that syntactic cross-language activation is strongest in shared word orders, implying that codeswitching is easiest in syntactic structures that are the same across languages (Kootstra, 2015; Kootstra et al., 2010). The shared word order advantage in codeswitching, however, cannot follow from standard architectures of a unitary view of linguistic system of translanguaging theory. In addition to the shared word order effects in codeswitching, (un)grammaticality of mixed utterances has been shown to have an effect in bilingual production tasks. Gollan and Goldrick (2016) elicited production of mixed language connected speech by asking SpanishEnglish bilinguals to read aloud paragraphs that had mostly grammatical (conforming to naturally occurring constraints; for instance, Poplack’s Equivalence Constraint, contrasting el hombre/the man vs. el hombre viejo/the old man) or mostly ungrammatical (haphazard mixing: those that violate constraints) language switches, and low or high switching rate. They found a robust effect of grammaticality: Bilinguals produced paragraphs with grammatical switches relatively quickly and more accurately than they did for those paragraphs that had ungrammatical switches. These results add support to a growing consensus in the field of bilingual processing that some language control mechanisms are automatic and language specific, i.e. independent of domain-general executive control mechanisms. A translanguaging view of a unitary linguistic system cannot adequately account for these results. Studies of bilingual aphasia have provided evidence that a bilingual selectively loses one language while the other is spared (Albert & Obler, 1978; Paradis, 1985); in fact, a patient may show evidence of impairment in her/his first language, not the second language on one day, while showing the reverse pattern the next day (Abutalebi et al., 2001). The aggregation of these studies strongly suggests that the neural representation of different languages of bilinguals is differently organized (Paradis, 1995, 2001). Consider, especially, the recent case of JZ, a Basque-Spanish bilingual individual with aphasia, studied by Adrover-Roig et al. (2011) using clinical and neuro-imaging techniques. JZ’s aphasia impacted his languages to different degrees: His first language, Basque, was more impaired than his second language,

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Spanish. In particular, the Bilingual Aphasia Test revealed deficits in first language production but intact production in his second language. Such differential language loss does not find an account in translanguaging theory: a unitary linguistic system cannot explain why one language is impacted (more) than another in differential bilingual aphasia.8 As the last piece of evidence against the unitary view of translanguaging, consider the results of Myslín and Levy (2015), who argue that sociopragmatic, psycholinguistic and discourse-informational factors are the primary drivers of codeswitching. Using mixed-effects logistic regression to analyze spontaneous Czech-English conversations, they observe that Czech and English encode different information content: Czech encodes low information-content material whereas English encodes high information-content material. The key explanatory factor in their study was that bilingual speakers codeswitch words and expressions that carry a high amount of information in discourse: That codeswitching is a formal marker of information content, with switches (from Czech) to the less frequent – and thus more salient – language (English) serving as a cue to less predictable meanings that comprehenders must attend. In a translanguaging framework of assumptions, where mental grammars are conceived of as a unitary linguistic system of large and complex arrays of disaggregated structural features that do not belong to two different languages, Czech-English bilingual language use does not receive an account – unless, as we suggested above, one ‘assembly of features’ in the mental grammar/idiolect is discourse-informationally coded differently from another ‘assembly’; which, however, makes their proposal similar to the dual-linguistic models of codeswitching they critique. We close this section discussing Li’s (2018) latest revision of translanguaging theory. He clarifies his position on translanguaging, stating that: (i) ‘in everyday social interaction, language users move dynamically between the so-called languages, language varieties, styles, registers, and writing systems, to fulfill a variety of strategic and communicative functions. The alternation between languages, spoken, written or signed; between language varieties; and between speech, writing, and signing is a very common feature of human interaction’ (Li, 2018: 26, italics added); and (ii) ‘For me, Translanguaging has never intended to replace code-switching or any other term, although it challenges the code view of languages’ (2018: 27). The first quote betrays the familiar language-identification paradox among translanguaging scholars, noted by Seargeant and Tagg (2011) and discussed above. The second quote, with the attendant presuppositions, concedes that codeswitching is not replaceable by translanguaging. However, Li maintains that the term translanguaging does challenge the code view of language. We believe this position stems from what we call the representational fallacy: that a bilingual speaker’s repertoire contains

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a ‘single array of disaggregated features’ (García & Li, 2014: 15; cf. also Otheguy et al., 2015, 2018). We have discussed above the fallacy of such representational unification, both from the perspective of sociolinguistic and psycho/neurolinguistic studies. The code view of language not only provides a certain theoretical–analytical purchase in terms of indexicality and indexical field, it also emphasizes the agency of the speaker, who must do a quick appraisal of the context (audience, situated in time/place complexes) and deploy code-choices aligned to accommodation or non-accommodation, to negative or positive politeness, to power or solidarity, and to various other social–affective identity positions and meanings. We cannot emphasize enough that the audibility of switch in Excerpt 3, with concomitant indexical meanings, is only available because the English words are strung together in the syntax of the AAE code, pointing to the obvious conclusion that the knowledge of form–function patterns is the core of creative competence, much of what we observe in codeswitching! Conclusions

The congeries of studies in the 1960s–1970s (and continuing later) that produced a systematic and sustained understanding of bilingual language use – codeswitching, specifically – may seem to be unravelling now under the weight of the new term, translanguaging (and its kin). This term has acquired uncritical recognition in the field of bilingualism (save for MacSwan, 20179) through various rhetorical methods and ideological strategies used in academic branding, discussed in Pavlenko (2019). It is, therefore, imperative that we closely examine what is offered as new in translanguaging research, so that meaningful progress in sociolinguistic theorization can be made. Although translanguaging scholars have brought attention to students’ linguistic resources as a meaningful and important part of classroom pedagogy (but see Jaspers, 2018, for a critique of this view), their claims that translanguaging moves ‘beyond’ named languages, and creates ‘new language practices’ that are different from ‘a synthesis of different language practices’ or ‘a hybrid mixture’ are not empirically supported. A term such as translanguaging in and of itself certainly does not enhance any theoretical understanding of bilingual language use beyond what the sociolinguistic studies of codeswitching have offered. In conclusion, then, in this chapter we presented empirical arguments to (re-)claim the theoretical status of codeswitching – as an active, agentive, sociocognitive mechanism employed by social actors to produce and interpret the ‘meaning potential’ (Halliday, 1985) of linguistic symbols/acts/utterances/features in the multilingual universe we inhabit. On this view, the indexical biographies of linguistic resources (Blommaert, 2015), organized as archives (languages) of epistemic communities, play a

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role in the deployment of various social–indexical meanings in bilingual interactions, as we have argued throughout the chapter. Acknowledgments

This chapter has evolved over a few years with help from colleagues and friends who read it closely and commented on various aspects of it. We are particularly grateful to Peter Auer, Raj Mesthrie, Ben Rampton, Aneta Pavlenko, Jürgen Jaspers, Ad Backus, Farzad Karimzad, Lydia Catedral and Itxaso Rodriguez, for their thoughtful comments and suggestions on various versions of this chapter. Special thanks to Jeff MacSwan, for various exchanges on the central issue of this chapter, and for his invitation to contribute to this edited volume. Finally, we also wish to thank the audience members of the American Association for Applied Linguistics (Toronto, 2015), 11th International Symposium of Bilingualism (Limerick, 2017), the International Congress of Linguists (ICL-20, Cape Town, 2018), and members of LSD@UIUC for their comments on various iterations of this chapter. Standard disclaimers apply. Notes (1) More appropriately, perhaps, as part of the cognitive –cultural hybrid (cf. Evans & Levinson, 2009). (2) We use ‘bilingual’ as a cover term for the use of two or more languages or dialects. (3) Although, as Raj Mesthrie confirms, both ‘folk’ and ‘folks’ take plural verbs in Standard English. (4) Source: Times of India news-brief, www.timesofindia.com, Oct 12, 2007. saat pheras: seven circumnavigations; agni: fire (metaphorically, acting ritually as a priest in a Hindu wedding); lakshman rekha: a line one doesn’t cross – a reference to an episode in the Hindu text, the Ramayana, where Lord Rama’s younger brother, Lakshman, draws a circular line (rekha) around Rama’s wife, Sita, that has the supernatural power to destroy anyone crossing that line, and thus protecting Sita, who was going to be alone in the forest. (5) Benson (2001) provides a detailed overview of the use of the term code switching in the United States. (6) Lyons and Karimzad (2019) offer a nuanced analysis of this sign using an interaction of two chronotopes: Indo-Chic nostalgia and global cosmopolitanism. (7) For a brief, succinct overview of the origin of the term, see Pennycook (2017). (8) While most of the neuro(psycho)linguistic literature we surveyed seems to provide inadequate information about the subject’s pre-lesion bilingualism, or suffers from methodological considerations that could provide robust results on bilingual language representation (cf. Higby et al., 2013), we mention Androver-Roig’s study here as it uses a very careful methodology and precise neuro-imaging techniques that result in the determination of the representational difference. A translanguaging theory will need to show that recovering bilingual aphasics either use/activate the same brain areas or that there is no change in activation patterns in switching from one language to the other and back. We thank Peter Auer for bringing our attention to this issue. (9) Chapter 4 (this volume) summarizes MacSwan’s (2017) response to Otheguy et al.’s (2015) critique of codeswitching and includes a reply to their response (Otheguy et al., 2018).

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Part 3: Psycholinguistics

7 Evidence for Differentiated Languages from Studies of Bilingual First Language Acquisition Fred Genesee

The re-emergence of the notion of translanguaging within educational circles has rekindled a debate concerning the discrete or differentiated nature of named languages. While laypersons, many theoreticians, researchers and others assume that named languages represent discrete or differentiated entities – albeit with fuzzy boundaries that are difficult to define – this assumption has been challenged by others. For example, Otheguy et al. (2015: 283) have argued that an understanding of translanguaging requires a return to ‘the well-known, but almost always forgotten, postulate that a named language is a social construct, not a mental or psychological one.’ Likewise, Makoni and Pennycook (2007: 2) contend that ‘languages do not exist as real entities in the world and neither do they emerge from or represent real environments; they are, by contrast, inventions of social, cultural and political movements.’ If true, this view of language has significant and radical implications for our understanding of many bilingual phenomena. For example, the notion of codeswitching among bilinguals is no longer tenable under this view because named languages are not cognitively differentiated and, thus, there can be no switching between them. Of particular relevance to this chapter, proponents of translanguaging and related notions would argue that children who grow up exposed to two named languages from birth do not acquire two languages but rather a unitary system of internally undifferentiated linguistic features. Otheguy and colleagues (2015: 289) call these individual languages idiolects; ‘an idiolect is for us a person’s own unique personal language, the person’s mental grammar that emerges in interaction with other speakers and enables the person’s use of language.’ In effect, idiolects are mental representations of the sum total of what an individual speaker can and does with language, but 183

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these representations are not organized by conventional labels used to differentiate languages; that is, named languages lack underlying neurocognitive validity. In this chapter, evidence from studies of children who acquire two languages from birth, or what is often referred to as bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA), is reviewed. The contentions of those who argue that named languages are not discrete entities (hereafter referred to as ‘the unitary view’) entail arguments based on evidence that pertains to both language use in social context and the nature of the cognitive or mental representations that underlie and indeed enable language use. The purpose of the review in this chapter is to bring evidence from BFLA to bear on attempts to clarify the nature of the representations underlying language learning and use, not on the significance or implications of evidence concerning language use per se. Moreover, the goal is not to critique or examine specific details or versions of theories that named languages are not discrete entities, but, rather, to address the general contention that there is no neuro-cognitive validity to the notion of discrete languages. Reviewing this evidence is warranted to the extent that it is seldom, if ever, considered by proponents of the unitary view despite the fact that it is relevant and highly revealing, although perhaps not uncontroversial. Three sources of evidence will be considered: young BFLA children’s use of their languages in social interaction, morphosyntactic development (and the special case of children with primary language impairment or specific language impairment), and codeswitching (or what is more commonly called code-mixing in the child language acquisition field). The chapter ends with a discussion of evidence from BFLA that attests to the dynamic interconnectedness of young BFLA children’s languages both in acquisition and in use. The Development of Communication Skills in Two Languages

Studies of BFLA children’s language use were among the first to be carried out with this population, beginning in the late 1980s. The motivation for these studies was to examine Volterra and Taeschner’s (1978) claim that young simultaneous bilinguals go through an initial stage of development when their languages are undifferentiated neurocognitively (see also Swain, 1972 and Vihman, 1985). While Volterra and Taeschner’s main claim is akin to the unitary view of some translanguaging proponents, they did not believe or argue that this was a permanent mental state: In the first stage the child has one lexical system which includes words from both languages. …, in this stage the language development of the bilingual child seems to be like the language development of the monolingual child. …

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In the second stage, the child distinguishes two different lexicons, but applies the same syntactic rules to both languages. In the third stage the child speaks two languages differentiated both in lexicon and syntax… (Volterra & Taeschner, 1978: 312)

Nevertheless, this hypothesis spawned a great deal of research that is relevant to claims of a unitary language made by proponents of translanguaging. Volterra and Taeschner’s claims were based on case studies, and thus were largely anecdotal, showing that BFLA learners use words from both languages in the same sentence or conversations. If the claim is that young BFLA children go through a unitary stage in development, then one would expect them to have difficulty using their languages differentially; that is to say, you would expect them to be confused and use each language indiscriminately with conversational partners regardless of their partner’s language competence or preferences (see Genesee, 1989, for an early review of this argument). This should also result in extensive and random code-mixing during the same conversations, even with others who know only one language. However, systematic studies of this issue revealed that even very young bilingual children use their two languages in communicatively sophisticated ways that challenge the unitary language hypothesis (e.g. De Houwer, 2009; Genesee, 1989; Goodz, 1994; Lanza, 1997; Meisel, 1989). In one of the earliest such studies, Genesee et al. (1995) systematically observed children acquiring French and English from birth during naturalistic interactions with their parents. The children were observed on three separate occasions: once with their mothers alone; once with their fathers alone; and once with both parents present. The parents reported using and were observed to use the one parent/one language rule for the most part when interacting with their children. Thus, the parents presented different language contexts. The children were between 22 and 26 months of age and were in the one- and early two-word stage of language development. Even at this early stage of development, these children used their two languages in a context-sensitive manner – they used significantly more French than English with their French-speaking parent and significantly more English than French with their Englishspeaking parent. When the parents were together with the children, the children likewise used more of the father’s language with the father than with the mother, and vice versa for the mother’s language. Since the parents in this study reported using primarily only one language with their children, as noted earlier, a follow-up study was conducted since this initial study may have overestimated these children’s ability to differentiate their languages because, over time, each child may simply have learned to associate certain words with each parent – French words with the French-speaking parent and English words with the English-speaking parent. Stronger evidence of underlying

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differentiation, we argued, would come from examining BFLA children’s language use with an unfamiliar interlocutor with whom they had had no prior experience. To this end, we observed a number of additional French-English BFLA children (average age 24 months) during play sessions with monolingual strangers (Genesee et al., 1996). The children were first observed interacting with each parent, as before, to document ‘baseline’ measures of language differentiation for each child. We selected strangers on the assumption that the children would not have been able to use the right language with this interlocutor through associative learning because this was the first time they had talked with her. We selected monolingual strangers since this would provide a context calling for use of only one language by the children. Since the language spoken by the monolingual strangers was the less proficient language of 3 of the 4 children, this was a particularly rigorous test of their abilities to accommodate the stranger. Three of the 4 children in the study gave evidence of on-line adjustments to the stranger by using more of the strangers’ language with the stranger than with their parents and, in particular, with the parent who spoke the same language as the stranger, usually the father. Also, three of the children used less of the language not known by the stranger with the stranger than with either parent. These results suggest that the children were extending their use of the strangers’ language as much as possible and minimizing their use of the language the stranger did not know as much as possible. The unitary language view of some translanguaging proponents is based on the argument that languages are social constructs that reflect individual’s exposure to language use in social context and, otherwise, have no underlying psycholinguistic reality. It is not clear how this argument can be reconciled with young BFLA learners’ language use with unfamiliar interlocutors. Minimally, an explanation of these findings would seem to require that learners have recourse to the abstract categories of language A and language B. Further evidence that the neuro-cognitive representations that underlie BFLA children’s language use must be differentiated comes from studies that examined their ability to control or manipulate their languages in different circumstances. In one such study, Comeau et al. (2003) systematically examined young BFLA children’s ability to adjust their rates of code-mixing in response to changes in the rates of codemixing by their interlocutors. The children were between 2;4 and 2;7 years of age and were in the one-word and very early two-word stage of acquisition; they were learning English and French from their parents. The children were first observed independently with each parent in order to collect data to assess their language development and to observe their language behavior with their parents. They were then observed three times while interacting with a bilingual research assistant, whom they had just met. The objective of the study was to examine systematically

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whether the children would adjust their own rates of code-mixing in accordance with the rates of their adult interlocutor. The assistant/ interlocutor played with the children for approximately 40 minutes each time; the base language she used was each child’s less proficient language. In session 1, she code-mixed relatively infrequently – between 12% and 16% of the time. In session 2, she increased her rate of mixing to between 29% and 47%, depending on the child. Evidence of increases in the children’s mixing from session 1 to session 2, we argued, would provide evidence that code-mixing did not reflect a unitary language or lack of differentiation because, in order to control their rates of codemixing, the children had to have selective access to each language. All four of the children increased their rates of mixing substantially and to a statistically significant degree when the interlocutor increased her rate of mixing from session 1 to session 2. To ensure that this increase was not simply an artifact of the children’s increased familiarity with the assistant during session 2, we recalled the children for a third play session during which the assistant reduced her rates of mixing to their previous low levels. Observing the children’s code-mixing during this third session also permitted us to further examine the degree of control the children could exercise over their language use. Because the base language of the interaction with the assistant was the less proficient language of the children, they would have to refrain from using their more proficient language in order to adjust to the assistant’s preferred mixing rate despite the fact that they now knew that the assistant knew this language quite well. Three of the children demonstrated a significant reduction in their rates of mixing from session 2 to session 3. That one child showed a different pattern is characteristic of the wide individual variation that young children exhibit during language development. Additional evidence that would argue for differentiation comes from a study by Comeau et al. (2007) that examined the ability of young BFLA children to repair breakdowns in communication due to language choice or other reasons. More specifically, this study examined 2-year-old (n = 10) and 3-year-old (n = 16) French-English bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication that occurred when they did not use the same language as their interlocutor (language breakdowns) and for other reasons (e.g. inaudible utterance, word choice, uninterpretable reference). The children played with an experimenter who used only one language (English or French) during the play session. Each time a child used the other language, the experimenter made up to five requests for clarification that varied from non-specific (What?) to specific (Can you say that in French/English?). The experimenter also made requests for clarification when breakdowns occurred for other reasons, e.g. the child spoke too softly, produced an ambiguous utterance, etc. Both the 2- and 3-year-olds demonstrated that they were capable of repairing language breakdowns by switching languages to match that of their experimenter;

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they did not use this repair strategy when attempting to repair ‘other’ types of breakdowns. Moreover, they switched languages in response to non-specific requests for repairs that did not specify the source of the breakdown. These results indicate that these BFLA children were capable of identifying language choice as a cause of communication breakdowns and they could differentiate language from other kinds of communication breakdowns. To switch to use of the other language when asked to repair a language breakdown, these children must have had recourse to differentiated language representations. Evidence from Morphosyntactic Development

More direct evidence of differentiated grammars comes from research that has examined the morphosyntactic development of young BFLA learners. In brief, these studies have reported that the patterns of grammatical development exhibited by young BFLA learners are, for the most part, the same as those exhibited by same-age monolinguals and that they emerge at approximately the same chronological ages, provided learners are given adequate input in each language – a point I return to later (see De Houwer, 2009, and Paradis et al., 2011, for reviews). For example, Zwanziger et al. (2005) investigated subject omission in six English-Inuktitut bilingual children, aged from 1;8 to 3;9. While Inuktitut allows null subjects under certain conditions, suppliance of subjects is mandatory in English. Analysis of the English-only and Inuktitut-only utterances of the children revealed differentiated monolingual-like acquisition patterns and subject suppliance/omission rates; in other words, they had acquired knowledge of this grammatical constraint that was language specific. In another study, Paradis and Genesee (1996) found that French-English BFLA learners (from 1;11 to 2;2 years of age at the beginning of the study) exhibited the same patterns of development with respect to use of finite verbs, subject pronouns and verbal negation, as same-age monolingual French and English learners. These are grammatical properties that differ in English and French and, thus, these BFLA learners can be said to have acquired both age-appropriate and language-specific forms of these features. Gutierrez-Clellen et al. (2008) found no differences between SpanishEnglish BFLA learners and same-age typically-developing monolingual English learners in the US with respect to finite verb accuracy and suppliance of obligatory overt subjects in English (mean age 5.7 years, range from 4;5 to 6;5). Meisel and his colleagues (Meisel, 1990) have similarly found age-appropriate and language-specific morphosyntactic development in a longitudinal study of French-German learners in Germany. In a related vein, BFLA learners, beginning as young as 3;6 years of age and up to 9;11 years of age, use different devices or techniques (such as temporal connectors or the introduction of new

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characters) as well as different morphosyntactic features (such as verb tense) for telling narratives in their two languages (e.g. Lanza, 2001). Additional evidence in support of differentiated grammars comes from studies that have compared rates of development within and across languages in young BFLA learners. More specifically, it has been found that overall grammatical complexity in each language, as measured by Mean Length of Utterance or parent reports on the Macarthur Communicative Development Index, is not related to complexity in the other language (e.g. Marchman et al., 2004; see also Sinka et al., 2000). Similarly, there is evidence of differentiation when specific features of grammar in each language are examined crosslinguistically. For example, in a study of young Spanish-English BFLA learners (between 19 and 31 months of age) in the US, Conboy and Thal (2006) found that the rate of change in the use of predicates, verbs, adjectives and closed class words, such as determiners and prepositions, did not correlate across languages. They also found that total vocabulary in each language was correlated with use of predicates and closed class words within languages but not across languages. Similarly, changes in grammatical complexity with age were related to changes in productive vocabulary in each language but not across languages. While these results might reflect the influence of differential exposure to each language, they nevertheless also argue that each language can develop separately from the other. If grammatical development in young BFLA learners were the sum total of all input in any named language, one would probably not expect to find such differential correlations within versus between named languages. Children with specific language impairment (SLI) provide a particularly rigorous test of the unitary language hypothesis. SLI is a developmental disorder with a genetic origin (Leonard, 1998) that is specific to language acquisition. Children with SLI exhibit significant delays in early language development and their language competence is noticeably below that of same-age peers. However, they are typical in other aspects of development – they have no known central processing, neurological, cognitive or socioemotional problems that could account for their language learning difficulties. They can exhibit difficulties with lexical, morphosyntactic, and pragmatic aspects of language. Difficulty learning specific morphosyntactic features of language is an especially robust indicator of SLI and, in fact, morphosyntactic problems are often taken as a marker of SLI and, thus, have received a great deal of research attention (see Paradis et al., 2011: chapter 9, for a detailed discussion of BFLA and second language learners with SLI). Of relevance to the present discussion, monolingual children with SLI who are learning different languages exhibit different and, thus, specific weaknesses in morphosyntax in each language. BFLA learners with SLI provide a natural experiment for examining if children with impaired

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language learning abilities who are also learning two languages exhibit differentiated language-specific profiles of difficulty. In one of the earliest studies to examine BFLA learners with SLI, Paradis et al. (2003) found that children with SLI who had been learning French and English simultaneously (from 7 to 7;6 years old at the time of testing) exhibited the same profiles of morphosyntactic strengths and weakness as monolingual children with SLI. Specifically, they exhibited difficulties in the use of tense and object clitic pronouns in French, but they have difficulties using verb tense marking only in English; and they show no difficulties with object pronouns in English. Similarly, in a study of English-Hebrew learners, Armon-Lotem and colleagues (cited in Paradis & Govindarajan, 2018) found that these learners displayed tense morpheme omission errors in English but not in Hebrew while subject-verb agreement substitution errors were more common in Hebrew. Finally, Spanish-English BFLA learners have been shown to exhibit omission and substitution errors in the use of object clitics in Spanish (Jacobson, 2012; Morgan et al., 2013) but tense morpheme omission errors in English (Jacobson & Livert, 2010). Yet other researchers have shown that BFLA learners with SLI who are acquiring different language pairs exhibit language-specific patterns of difficulty in one of their languages that are the same as those of same-language monolinguals (e.g. Gutierrez-Clellen et al., 2008). Taken together, these studies indicate that BFLA learners with SLI exhibit differentiated patterns of strengths and weaknesses that are specific to each language and typical of the weaknesses found for same-language monolingual children with SLI (see Paradis et al., 2017, for a review). Evidence from Code-mixing

As noted, researchers who hypothesized that BFLA learners go through an initial unitary language stage based their arguments on evidence that they mix elements (phonological, lexical, morphosyntactic) from their two languages in the same utterances or stretches of conversation. Particularly relevant to the present discussion is the question of the nature of the grammatical organization of BFLA children’s early intra-utterance code-mixing. When two languages are used in the same utterance, incompatibilities in the languages could arise due to differences in word order, inflectional morphology and syntactic subcategorization; these in turn can result in patterns of language use that are ungrammatical, unusual or unique. Grammatical constraints on codeswitching in adult bilinguals have been the object of extensive investigation for some time. There is general agreement that adult bilinguals codeswitch selectively within utterances so that they avoid violating the grammatical constraints on codeswitching. A number of contending approaches and principles have been proposed to account

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for the constraints used by adults when they codeswitch (e.g. Di Sciullo et al., 1986; MacSwan, 1999; Myers-Scotton, 1993; Poplack, 1980). For a more specific discussion of grammatical models of codeswitching, see MacSwan, Chapter 4, this volume. That code-switched elements in adult bilingual usage are constrained according to language-specific principles of some sort is prima facie evidence that named languages have some underlying psycholinguistic validity; otherwise, how can we explain such rule-governed constraints on intra-sentential mixing? To the extent that it can be shown that code-mixing by young BFLA learners is also grammatically constrained in accordance with widely understood grammatical principles of the named languages under investigation, it could be argued that developing BFLA children not only possess differentiated mental grammars but also that they have access to both grammars and can coordinate them in order to avoid linguistically illicit constructions. Fortunately, there is a rich array of studies that has examined intrautterance code-mixing by BFLA children learning multiple language pairs using different analytic frameworks, including French and German (Meisel, 1994), French and English (Genesee & Sauve, 2000; Paradis et al., 2000), English and Norwegian (Lanza, 1997), English and Estonian (Vihman, 1998), Inuktitut and English (Allen et al., 1999) and Chinese and English (Yip & Mathews, 2007). The constraint models of Poplack (1980) and of Myers-Scotton (1993) have provided the analytic framework for a number of these studies, making it possible to compare results derived from studies using different analytic frameworks and different language combinations (see Meisel, 1994, and Müller & Catone, 2009, for an analysis based on generativist principles). The Myers-Scotton and Poplack models differ substantially in the extent to which they refer to abstract, underlying grammatical constructs (such as system and content morphemes – Myers-Scotton) versus surface level grammatical phenomena (such as word order and bound versus open class morphemes – Poplack), respectively. Despite the diversity of language pairs and analytic frameworks that comprise this body of research, all researchers have concluded that child bilingual code-mixing is grammatically constrained to varying degrees. For example, research in our own laboratory has used the Poplack framework to examine code-mixing in both English-French and Inuktitut-English BFLA learners. We based our analyses on Poplack’s framework since it lends itself to analysis of language at early stages of acquisition without making detailed or significant assumptions about the actual grammatical nature of the limited range of language that early learners use. To fully understand the value of these particular studies, it is useful to provide a brief comparative description of these language pairs. English is a language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European family. It is relatively sparse in its morphological

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inventory, particularly with respect to inflectional morphology; the morphology it does have follows a mildly synthetic pattern – that is, it consists primarily of prefixes (e.g. inattentive) and suffixes (e.g. walked). Syntactic relations are indicated primarily through word order, with the basic word order being Subject–Verb–Object. French, although a member of the Romance branch of the Indo-European family, shares many of the same characteristics as English. English and French provide relatively few structural contrasts and, most importantly, there are few discrepancies between the two languages that could cause violations of either of Poplack’s constraints during code-mixing. In contrast, Inuktitut is a language of the Eskimo branch of the Eskimo-Aleut family. In contrast to English, it is extremely rich in its morphological inventory, which numbers some 400 derivational affixes and more than 1,000 inflectional affixes. Though basic word order is Subject–Object–Verb, word order is typically relatively free, and differences in word order are linked to discourse phenomena rather than to syntactic relations. Inuktitut is a polysynthetic language: that is, syntax tends to be marked within the word, both through extensive inflectional morphology and through a variety of derivational affixes that change word class. Thus, an utterance such as the one that follows is quite typical for adult Inuktitut. Tier 1 presents the utterance in its entirety; tier 2 breaks it down into separate morphemes; tier 3 provides a linguistic gloss of it; and tier 4 provides an English gloss of the utterance. (1) Illujuaraalummuulaursimannginamalittauq. (2) illu-juaq-aluk-mut-uq-lauq-sima-nngit-nama-li-ttauq (3) house-big-EMPH-ALL.SG-go-PAST-PERF-NEG-CSV.1sS-but-also (4) ‘But also, because I never went to the really big house.’ (Dorais, 1988: 8)

The combination of Inuktitut and English provides a particularly interesting test case for examination of Poplack’s constraints. Briefly, according to Poplack’s Equivalence Constraint, code-switches will tend to occur at points in discourse where juxtaposition of Lx and Ly elements does not violate a syntactic rule of either language: that is, points around which the surface structures of two languages map onto each other. According to the Free Morpheme Constraint, languages may be switched after any constituent provided that constituent is not a bound morpheme. In other words, bound inflectional or derivational morphemes should not be mixed. Poplack has postulated an additional mechanism by which incompatibilities are avoided when two languages are used in the same utterance – namely, nonce borrowing (Poplack & Sankoff, 1988). This mechanism applies to utterances in which the mixed element is a single lexical item, usually of a major form class, such as a noun or verb. Specifically, nonce borrowing ‘involves syntactic,

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morphological, and (possibly) phonological integration into a recipient language of an element from a donor language’ (Poplack & Sankoff, 1988: 1, 179). Nonce borrowing serves to preserve the monolinguality of the utterance. Almost all words in typical spoken Inuktitut, even among young speakers, are composed of two or more morphemes and, thus, mixing of English and Inuktitut provides ample opportunity for violating the Free Morpheme Constraint (Crago & Allen, 2001). English and Inuktitut are also an interesting combination with respect to the Equivalence Constraint since, for most syntactic structures, they either have different word orders (e.g. English requires prepositions, with the adposition before the noun, while Inuktitut uses postpositions, or an adposition after the noun) or English licenses only one order and Inuktitut licenses alternative ordering of elements (e.g. in a verb phrase, English requires verb–object order while Inuktitut allows both verb–object and object– verb orders). Thus, there is also ample opportunity to violate the word order (and morphological) characteristics of Inuktitut if it is mixed with English. When we analyzed the code-mixing of 10 English-French bilingual children (from 1;10 to 3;08 years of age), we found that virtually all 429 code-mixed utterances that occurred in their language samples conformed to Poplack’s Equivalence and Free Morpheme Constraints (Genesee & Sauve, 2000). In fact, the children generally avoided codemixing in an utterance when it could violate either constraint. There were only 4 utterances that could be interpreted as violations of either constraint. For example: (1) ‘I’m gonna play with my ROSE bat’ (OLI-2;11 M) I am gonna play with my pint bat.

Utterance (1) is an example of a violation of the Equivalence Constraint because the French adjective ‘rose’ would normally follow a noun in French, but it appears before this English noun. (2) BROSS-ing DENTS (GEN-2;07 F) brushing (my) teeth

Utterance (2) is a violation of the Free Morpheme constraint which prohibits affixing a bound morpheme from one language (‘-ing’ from English) to a free morpheme from another language. In contrast, when we analyzed the code-mixing of 6 Inuktitut-English children (from 2;1 to 3;3 years of age), we found many more instances of mixing that could be interpreted as violations of each constraint – well over 50% (Allen et al., 1999). However, when these utterances were examined more carefully, the vast majority could be interpreted as nonce

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borrowings; more specifically, they involved the insertion of single English words into utterances that followed Inuktitut patterns. For example: (3) movie-mik rumajunga • movie-mik ruma-junga • movie-MOD.SG want-PAR.1sS • ‘I want a movie.’

This utterance has Inuktitut word order and inflectional patterns and, thus, can be interpreted as an Inuktitut utterance with an English word (‘movie’) that has been incorporated into it. In effect, the English word ‘movie’ has temporarily been treated as if it were an Inuktitut word. Poplack has found that this is also how adult bilinguals who know similarly different languages (Finnish and English) code switch (Poplack et al., 1987). By comparing the performance of these two groups of bilingual children, we can see that they knew the underlying structural properties of the two named languages they were acquiring insofar as the mixing of each group conformed to the specific properties of each language. Moreover, the children used different strategies to reduce violations in each language: namely, avoidance of mixing when English and French were involved and nonce borrowing when English and Inuktitut were involved. In a related vein, Paradis et al. (2000) examined the code-mixing of 15 additional French–English BFLA learners longitudinally from 2;0 to 3;6 years of age using Myers-Scotton’s (1993) Matrix Language Frame model. In brief, Paradis and colleagues found that ‘these children demonstrated adherence to adult-like structural constraints in most of their code-mixing.’ They noted that these findings ‘…imply not only that they have complex knowledge of how to fit their two languages together… but also that they possess language-specific syntactic knowledge even during an early period of development’ (Paradis et al., 2000: 259). This study is important in order to rule out the possibility that the results found using Poplack’s surface level constraint model are also evidence using an alternative analytic framework and, in particular, one that invokes complex and abstract syntactic constructions. Taken together, evidence from early code-mixing cannot easily be explained by the notion of a unitary underlying language and, to the contrary, can most easily be explained by inferring that BFLA learners’ underlying representations of their developing languages are differentiated and based on the grammatical properties of these named languages. Differentiated and Dynamic

Evidence from young BFLA learners that supports the differentiated languages point of view does not mean that the boundaries between the developing languages of young BFLA learners are rigid and static

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or that there are not dynamic and fluid interactions between the two (or multiple) languages of bi- and multilinguals. To the contrary, there is ample evidence of how functionally and structurally integrated the languages of BFLA learners can be, even during very early stages of development. This has been found during verbal stages of development in research on the communicative competence of young BFLA learners, noted earlier, demonstrating that they are able to manage their two languages for communicative purposes effectively and with apparent ease. Although the children in these studies demonstrated that they recognized and were able to use their two languages differentially and appropriately with interlocutors with different competencies and preferences, it is important to also note that they did not use only the language associated with each parent or only the language preferred by their stranger/interlocutors. Detailed analyses of the children’s language choices in these studies revealed that they code-mixed more when their conversational partner was using the child’s less proficient language (Genesee et al., 1995), suggesting that code-mixing served to fill lexical gaps in their repertoire. This possibility is corroborated in a separate study by Wolf et al. (1995) in which two sets of parents who were raising their children bilingually were asked to keep detailed daily records of their children’s language use during three consecutive weeks. Their diary entries included information about the language of each word produced by the child and its intended meaning, among other details. Both participating children were in the one-word stage of development and had not yet acquired 50 words in total in both languages; specifically, Felix was 1;8 years old and had a MLU (measured in words) of 1.08 in English and 1.08 in French; and Wayne was 2;0 years old and had an MLU of 1.55 in English and 1.39 in French. Analyses of the parents’ diary records indicated that both children were much more likely to code-mix when they did not know the translation equivalent of the word in the language used by the parent; specifically, Wayne did not know the equivalent word in the appropriate language for 94.7% of his code-mixed words; and Felix did not know the word in the appropriate language in 65.2% of his code-mixed words. In brief, code-mixing in these cases was clearly a strategy used by the children to fill lexical gaps in order to express themselves and not because of a lack of underlying differentiation. New research methods, including non-nutritive sucking, head turn preference procedures, eye tracking technology and brain imaging, have allowed researchers to examine language learning during the earliest stages of post-natal development (see Byers-Heinlein, 2015, and Werker et al., 1998, for more discussion of these methods). These methods of investigation have revealed differentiated patterns of language acquisition among young BFLA learners that align with results from monolingual learners in domains related to language discrimination,

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speech perception, phonotactics and morphosyntax, for example (see Genesee, 2019, and Werker, 2012, for reviews). They have also revealed evidence of crosslinguistic influences (see Genesee, 2019, for a review). For example, in the domain of syntax, Yip and Matthews (2007) documented that Cantonese-English bilingual children from 2.5 to 4 years old formed relative clauses in English using the Cantonese pattern; these children were more proficient in Cantonese. Similarly, Döpke (1992) found that some of the young German-English bilingual children she studied in Australia used English word order when speaking German. Nicoladis (2002) found crosslinguistic influence in FrenchEnglish bilingual children’s use of compound words – for example, using the French order ‘brushteeth’ (brosse-à-dents) instead of the correct English order ‘toothbrush’). Two main explanations have been put forward for crosslinguistic influences of these types, neither of which invokes the hypothesis that young BFLA learners lack differentiated underlying grammars. Hulk and Müller (2000) argued that instances of crosslinguistic influences are more likely when the grammatical constraints or properties of each language differ but overlap. For example, with respect to the use of sentential subjects, Spanish allows subjects to be null or overt, but English requires overt subjects. The optional use of null subjects in Spanish might ‘invite’ influence from English to Spanish, but the other way around is less likely because English requires sentential subjects, as was found by Paradis and Navarro (2003). The second explanation entails issues related to language dominance. Children are more likely to code-mix when they use their less proficient language than when they use their more proficient language, as was found in Yip and Matthews’ CantoneseEnglish bilingual children. This raises an important issue that pervades research on BFLA. Individual variation is common among BFLA learners since they are affected by all the factors that can affect monolingual acquisition as well as by factors specific to learning more than one language, such as: differences in the amount, consistency and contexts of language exposure; typological or linguistic similarity of the languages; and differences in learners’ relative proficiency in each language. BFLA learners grow up in different socio–cultural–political contexts where the status, prevalence, utility and functions of their languages can differ, and this, in turn, can influence language acquisition. For example, PérezLeroux and her colleagues found 3-year old French-English bilinguals living in Toronto, an English-dominant city, lagged behind monolinguals in their use of object pronouns in French (Pérez-Leroux et al., 2009). In contrast, Paradis et al. (2006) failed to find such a difference in same-age French-English bilinguals and monolinguals in Montreal, a Frenchdominant city. Additionally, a number of researchers have reported that Spanish-English BFLA learners in Miami, Florida, lag behind their

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monolingual peers in both languages (Gathercole, 2007; Hoff et al., 2012), whereas this has not always been found for young French-English BFLA learners in Canada (e.g. Paradis & Genesee, 1996; Thordardottir, 2011). Of particular importance for the present discussion is the issue of input or exposure. In the extreme, BFLA learners may get insufficient exposure to one or both languages to acquire full competence in one or both of their languages. In this scenario, one might not find the same pattern of differentiated development discussed in the preceding sections since the language to which learners are more exposed or more proficient in might have a dominating influence on the other. In contrast, BFLA learners may grow up in environments in which the named languages they are exposed to are intricately integrated with one another in day-to-day usage. Chiac in eastern Canada is one such case. It is a variant of Acadian French with strong influences from English and, to a lesser extent, Indigenous languages. French and English both play complex and pervasive roles in Chiac because of the long history of interaction of these languages and the people who spoke these languages in the past. In fact, Chiac might best be regarded as a distinct language variety. In such a case, and as argued by proponents of the unitary language view, the named languages that historically have influenced the evolution of Chiac may not have distinct psycholinguistic validity. However, these cases must be considered in their own right and in contrast to named languages in communities where they are often, if not mostly, used independently in the wider community, such as French and English in other parts of Canada and Spanish and English in the US. The important point here is that context is critical in considering the status of named languages, whether it be from developmental, acquisitional, functional or underlying neuro-cognitive perspectives. This chapter has reviewed multiple sources of evidence of BFLA in contexts where the named languages under investigation are often used in multiple ways independently from one another. This evidence supports the notion of underlying differentiated cognitive representations of the languages in question and, at the same time, indicates that the languages can and do interact in fluid, dynamic and linguistically constrained ways to shape both the trajectory of acquisition and patterns of interpersonal language use. References Allen, S., Genesee, F., Fish, S. and Crago, M. (1999) Code-mixing in Inuktitut-English children. Paper presented at the Eight International Congress for the Study of Child Language, San Sebastian, Spain. Byers-Heinlein, K. (2015) Methods for studying infant bilingualism. In J.W. Schwieter (ed.) Cambridge Handbook of Bilingual Processing (pp. 133–154). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Comeau, L., Genesee, F. and Lapaquette, L. (2003) The modeling hypothesis and child bilingual code-mixing. International Journal of Bilingualism 7, 113–126. Comeau, L., Genesee, F. and Mendelson, M. (2007) Bilingual children’s repairs of breakdowns in communication. Journal of Child Language 34 (1), 159–174. Conboy, B. and Thal, D. (2006) Ties between the lexicon and grammar: Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of bilingual toddlers. Child Development 77 (3), 712–735. Crago, M.B. and Allen, S.E.M. (2001) Early finiteness in Inuktitut: The role of language structure and input. Language Acquisition 9, 59–111. De Houwer, A. (2009) Bilingual First Language Acquisition. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Di Sciullo, A.-M., Muysken, P. and Singh, R. (1986) Government and code-mixing. Journal of Linguistics 22 (1), 1–24. Dőpke, S. (1992) One Parent – One Language: An Interactional Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dorais, L.-J. (1988) Tukilik: An Inuktitut Grammar for All. Quebec, QC: Association Inuksiutiit Katimajiit. Gathercole, V. (2007) Miami and North Wales, so far and yet so near: A constructivist account of morphosyntactic development in bilingual children. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 10 (3), 224–247. Genesee, F. (1989) Early bilingual development: One language or two? Journal of Child Language 16 (1), 161–179. Genesee, F. (2019) Language development in simultaneous bilinguals: The early years. In J. von Koss Torkildsen and J. Horst (eds) International Handbook on Language Development (pp. 300–320). London: Routledge. Genesee, F. and Sauve, D. (2000) Grammatical constraints on child bilingual code-mixing. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, March 12, Vancouver, Canada. Genesee, F., Nicoladis, E. and Paradis, J. (1995) Language differentiation in preschool bilingual children. Journal of Child Language 22 (3), 611–631. Genesee, F., Boivin, I. and Nicoladis, E. (1996) Talking with strangers: A study of bilingual children’s communicative competence. Applied Psycholinguistics 17 (4), 427–442. Goodz, N. (1994) Interactions between parents and children in bilingual families. In F. Genesee (ed.) Educating Second Language Children. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Gutierrez-Clellen, V.F., Simon-Cereijido, G. and Wagner, C. (2008) Bilingual children with language impairment: A comparison with monolinguals and second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics 29 (1), 3–19. Hoff, E., Core, C., Place, S., Rumiche, R., Señor, M. and Parra, M. (2012) Dual language exposure and early bilingual development. Journal of Child Language 39 (1), 1–27. Hulk, A. and Müller, N. (2000) Bilingual first language acquisition at the interface between syntax and pragmatics. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 3 (3), 227–244. Jacobson, P. (2012) The effects of language impairment on the use of direct object pronouns and verb inflections in heritage Spanish speakers: A look at attrition, incomplete acquisition and maintenance. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 15, 22–38. Jacobson, P. and Livert, D. (2010) English past tense use as a clincial marker in older bilingual children with specific language impairment. Clinical Linguistics and Phonetics 24, 101–124. Lanza, E. (1997) Language Mixing in Infant Bilingualism: A Sociolinguistic Perspective. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Lanza, E. (2001) Temporality and language contact in narratives by children acquiring Norwegian and English simultaneously. In L. Verhoeven and S. Stromquist (eds) Narrative Development in a Multilingual Context (pp. 15–50). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Leonard, L. (1998) Children with Specific Language Impairment. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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MacSwan, J. (1999) A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code Switching. New York, NY: Garland Press. Makoni, S. and Pennycook, A. (2007) Disinventing and reconstituting languages. In S. Makoni and A. Pennycook (eds) Disinventing and Reconstituting Languages (pp. 1–41). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Marchman, V.A., Martínez-Sussmann, C. and Dale, P.S. (2004) The language-specific nature of grammatical development: Evidence from bilingual language learners. Developmental Science 7 (2), 212–224. Meisel, J.M. (1989) Early differentiation of languages in bilingual children. In K. Hyltenstam and L. Obler (eds) Bilingualism across the Lifespan: In Health and Pathology (pp. 13–40). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meisel, J. (ed.) (1990) Two First Languages: Early Grammatical Development in Bilingual Children. Dordrecht: Foris. Meisel, J.M. (1994) Code-switching in young bilingual children: The acquisition of grammatical constraints. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 16, 413–441. Morgan, G.P., Restrepo, A. and Auza, A. (2013) Comparison of Spanish morphology in Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual children with and without language impairment. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16, 578–596. Müller, N. and Cantone, K. (2009) Language mixing in bilingual children: Code-switching? In B.E. Bullock and A.J. Toribio (eds) Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Codeswitching (pp. 199–220). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers-Scotton, C. (1993) Duelling Languages: Grammatical Structure in Codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Nicoladis, E. (2002) What’s the difference between ‘toilet paper’ and ‘paper toilet’? FrenchEnglish bilingual children’s crosslinguistic transfer in compound nouns. Journal of Child Language 29 (04), 843–863. Otheguy, R., García, O. and Reid, W. (2015) Clarifying translanguaging and deconstructing names languages: A perspective from linguistics. Applied Psycholinguistics Review 6 (3), 281–307. Paradis, J. and Genesee, F. (1996) Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18, 1–25. Paradis, J. and Navarro, S. (2003) Subject realization and crosslinguistic interference in the bilingual acquisition of Spanish and English: What is the role of the input? Journal of Child Language 30 (2), 371–393. Paradis, J. and Govindarajan, K. (2018) Bilingualism and children with developmental language and communication disorders. In D. Miller, F. Bayram, J. Rothman and L. Serratrice (eds) Bilingual Cognition and Language: The State of the Science across its Subfields (pp. 347–370). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. doi: 10.1075/ sibil.54.16par. Paradis, J., Nicoladis, E. and Genesee, F. (2000) Early emergence of structural constraints on code-mixing: Evidence from French-English bilingual children. In F. Genesee (Guest ed.), Bilingualism, Language and Cognition: Syntactic Aspects of Bilingual Acquisition 3 (3), 245–262. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/ S1366728900000365 Paradis, J., Crago, M. and Genesee, F. (2006) Domain-general versus domain-specific accounts of specific language impairment: Evidence from bilingual children’s acquisition of object pronouns. Language Acquisition 13 (1), 33–62. Paradis, J., Genesee, F. and Crago, M. (2011) Dual Language Development and Disorders: A Handbook on Bilingualism and Second Language Learning (2nd edn). Baltimore, MD: Brookes Publishing Company. Paradis, J., Jia, R. and Arppe, A. (2017) The acquisition of tense morphology over time by English second language children with specific language impairment: Testing the cumulative effects hypothesis. Applied Psycholinguistics 1–18, doi: 10.1017/ S0142716416000485.

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Paradis, J., Crago, M., Genesee, F. and Rice, M. (2003) Bilingual children with specific language impairment: How do they compare with their monolingual peers? Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research 46, 113–127. Pérez-Leroux, A., Pirvulescu, M. and Roberge, Y. (2009) Bilingualism as a window into the language faculty: The acquisition of objects in French-speaking children in bilingual and monolingual contexts. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 12 (1), 97–112. Poplack, S. (1980) ‘Sometimes I start a sentence in English y termino en Espanol’: Toward a typology of code-switching. Linguistics 18, 581–618. Poplack, S. and Sankoff, D. (1988) Code-switching. In U. Ammon, N. Dittman and K.J. Mattheier (eds) Sociolinguistics: An International Handbook of the Science of Language and Society. Volume 2 (pp. 1174–1180). Berlin: Walter De Gruyter. Poplack, S., Wheeler, S. and Westwood, A. (1987) Distinguishing language contact phenomena: Evidence from Finnish–English bilingualism. In P. Lilius and M. Saari (eds) The Nordic Languages and Modern Linguistics (pp. 33–56). Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press. Sinka, I., Garman, M. and Schelletter, C. (2000) Early verbs in bilingual acquisition: A lexical profiling approach. In R. Ingham and P. Kerswill (eds) Working Papers in Linguistics 4 (pp. 175–187). Reading: University of Reading. Swain, M. (1972) Bilingualism as a first language. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Psychology Department, University of California, Irvine. Thordardottir, E. (2011) The relationship between bilingual exposure and vocabulary development. International Journal of Bilingualism 15 (4), 426–445. Vihman, M. (1985) Language differentiation by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language 8, 239–264. Vihman, M. (1998) A developmental perspective on codeswitching: Conversations between a pair of bilingual siblings. International Journal of Bilingualism 2 (1), 45–84. Volterra, V. and Taeschner, T. (1978) The acquisition and development of language by bilingual children. Journal of Child Language 5 (2), 311–326. Werker, J. (2012) Perceptual foundations of bilingual acquisition in infancy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1251 (1), 50–61. Werker, J.F., Shi, R., Desjardins, R., Pegg, J.E., Polka, L. and Patterson, M. (1998) Three methods for testing infant speech perception. In A.M. Slater (ed.) Perceptual Development: Visual, Auditory, and Speech Perception in Infancy (pp. 389–420). London: UCL Press. Wolf, L., Genesee, F. and Paradis, J. (1995) The nature of the bilingual child’s lexicon. Unpublished research report, Psychology Department, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec. Yip, V. and Matthews, S. (2007) The Bilingual Child: Early Development and Language Contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zwanziger, E., Allen, S. and Genesee, F. (2005) Crosslinguistic influences in bilingual acquisition: Subject omission in learners of Inuktitut and English. Journal of Child Language 32, 893–909.

8 Integrated Multilingualism and Bilingual Reading Development Rebecca A. Marks, Teresa Satterfield and Ioulia Kovelman

In this chapter, we harness brain development for bilingual reading to understand the impact of bilingualism on neural representations of language. The Integrated Multilingual Model (IMM) views the individual bilingual – or monolingual, for that matter – as possessing a single linguistic system with numerous shared grammatical resources (subsystems) as well as language-specific properties (MacSwan, 2017). We examine this proposal in the context of bilingual children’s literacy. Learning to read builds on a child’s existing neural systems for language processing (Dehaene, 2004) as well as their linguistic knowledge. Linguistic knowledge naturally varies based on children’s experiences with different types of languages. This variation is further reinforced by reading experiences as orthographies often accentuate the salient characteristics of their underlying languages (Frost, 2012; Seidenberg, 2012). Bilingual literacy acquisition thus allows us to test the development of language-specific mechanisms, as well as interaction and transfer between a child’s two languages. The critical question we address is whether bilingual children develop differentiated (language-specific) reading processes at the same time that they develop an integrated literacy system, or whether the shared system develops first and becomes differentiated over time. In either scenario, the challenge facing bilingual learners is to develop certain languagespecific reading skills, as well as the neural pathways to support them, within the general system. Because literacy builds on spoken language, we begin this chapter by reviewing the evidence for both shared and language-specific representations of spoken language in the bilingual brain. We will then 201

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turn to the issue of how bilinguals develop discrete, language-specific subsystems for single word reading in each of their languages, and how these subsystems may interact. Finally, we will examine research findings on bilingual dyslexia. To conclude we offer a developmental model of bilingual word reading that reveals universal and languagespecific mechanisms for learning to read, as well as their crosslinguistic interaction in the bilingual learner. Language-specific Representations in the Bilingual Brain

There is substantial variation in the linguistic structure, or grammar, of natural human languages. Numerous theoretical accounts articulate how linguistic variation results from language-specific and cognitivegeneral computational mechanisms (Satterfield, 2003; Satterfield & Barrett, 2004; Satterfield & Saleemi, 2009; Yang et al., 2017). How is this linguistic variation organized in the bilingual mind? A bilingual is not the sum of two monolinguals, but rather ‘an integrated whole with a unique linguistic profile’ (Grosjean, 1989: 4). Cook (1991) frames bilingual language representation as a continuum of compounded knowledge in multilingual adult grammars, known as ‘Multicompetence.’ Implementing computational parameter-setting models that account for syntactic variation across both bilingual and monolingual children, Satterfield’s genetic algorithms provide evidence of potential multilingualism inherent in all developing grammatical systems (1999a, 1999b, 2002). Universal Bilingualism (Roeper, 1999) and Multiple Grammar Theory (Amaral & Roeper, 2014) offer an in-depth syntactic analysis with empirical data of a ‘narrow bilingualism’ for monolingual speakers in this same vein. The IMM proposed by MacSwan (2017) is compatible with all such previous theoretical frameworks and argues that the linguistic knowledge of the bilingual is represented as a part of a collective system for the processing of the two languages. This collective system is internally differentiated into subsystems that organize variations of structures of the two languages’ respective grammars. How, then, do these subsystems emerge? Genesee (Chapter 7, this volume) describes how early and systematic bilingual exposure yields relatively parallel acquisition of each of the bilingual child’s languages. Young children consistently exposed to two languages develop phonological, lexical and morphosyntactic representations that reflect each of their languages. For instance, while word learning in monolingual children is governed in part by an assumption of mutual exclusivity, simultaneous bilingual children acquire translation equivalents (e.g. ‘dog’ in English and ‘perro’ in Spanish) across their two languages early on (e.g. Bosch & Ramon-Casas, 2014; De Houwer et al., 2006; Holowka et al., 2002). Additional findings show independent trajectories for the acquisition of finite verb morphology in French-English

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bilinguals (Paradis & Genesee, 1996). Furthermore, when competent bilinguals combine their two languages in one utterance, the resulting codeswitch structure is principled and rule governed. Young children likewise rely on features and grammatical structures from their dominant language to bolster their non-dominant language, thereby bridging their developing linguistic resources to express themselves (Lanvers, 2001). Similar to bilingual adult codeswitching (e.g. MacSwan, 1999), children’s codeswitching is shown to be socioculturally and linguistically constrained (Genesee & Nicoladis, 2007). In sum, both theoretical conceptualizations and empirical data on bilingual adults and young bilingual learners suggest that differentiation occurs within a flexibly integrated system. Bilingual aphasia

The most dramatic evidence of differentiated language systems in the bilingual brain has historically come from lesion patients who suffered asymmetric disruptions to their two languages. A classic case reported by Gómez-Tortosa and colleagues (Gómez-Tortosa et al., 1995) describes a bilingual patient who experienced significant naming difficulties in L1 Spanish following neural damage and removal of a key language region, but relatively little disruption when speaking L2 English. This evidence suggested that differentiated neural circuits were responsible for her two languages (Gómez-Tortosa et al., 1995). However, bilingual language loss rarely affects one language exclusively and leaves the other untouched. In an analysis of 19 Spanish–English bilinguals with aphasia following a stroke, the majority of patients lost the same amount of language skill in both English and Spanish (Gray & Kiran, 2013). In other words, patients with similar English and Spanish abilities before their stroke also had similar difficulties post-stroke, while patients who reported greater ability in one language maintained similar language dominance post-stroke. Just over a third of patients demonstrated greater loss in one language than the other. Interestingly, these patients most commonly reported different levels of pre-stroke Spanish and English skill but demonstrated similar comprehension and expressive abilities in each language after their stroke. These findings may point to shared neural substrates in the bilingual brain, as the same underlying neural deficit similarly affected both comprehension and expression in each language. While dramatic cases of aphasia provide preliminary insight into the neural representations of two languages, recent advances in neuroscience have allowed for precise experimental manipulations of language processing in healthy adults. Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) is one such method that allows for experimental disruption of online language processing. TMS applies a safe electromagnetic pulse to the skull to disrupt neuronal activity, inducing a temporary deficit. If two languages are processed identically in the bilingual brain, then applying

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a transcranial magnetic pulse should logically incur similar disruptions in both languages. A recent TMS study investigated proficient FinnishSwedish adult bilinguals who acquired both languages early in life and used the two languages on a daily basis (Hämäläinen et al., 2018). Participants were asked to name pictures of common objects in Finnish and Swedish while a TMS pulse was applied to the left posterior inferior frontal gyrus, a region critical to word production. Although the TMS pulse incurred delays in picture naming in both languages, this delay was significantly greater in Finnish than in Swedish. This evidence suggests that it may be possible to produce language-specific disruption of bilinguals’ neural circuitry. We refer to bilingual language organization in the brain as ‘neural circuitry’ rather than ‘localization’ because it is unclear if bilinguals’ two languages actually occupy two distinct neural substrates. There is increasing evidence for a universal network for monolingual language processing across diverse languages and orthographies (Rueckl et al., 2015). Similarly, it is likely that much of the bilinguals’ language processing is highly co-localized, as part of an integrated system. For instance, in fluent Chinese-English readers, local peaks of brain activity during English and Chinese semantic processing overlap, suggesting that the same regions are involved in processing the two languages (Chee et al., 1999). Bilinguals may also recruit additional cortical regions when processing languages of lower proficiency (Wartenburger et al., 2003), automaticity (Perani & Abutalebi, 2005), and salience of specific linguistic units (Kovelman et al., 2008). How might co-localization be compatible with language-specific processes? Current research suggests that within a shared brain region, the same population of neurons may respond differently to the demands of each language. Recent methodological advances in multivariate pattern analysis (MVPA) allow scholars to identify subtle differences in patterns of neural activity within a single brain region across cognitive tasks. MVPA may thus illuminate how language-specific processes might occur within the same region of the brain. In a recent neuroimaging study of bilingual adults, Xu and colleagues (Xu et al., 2017) found substantial overlap between the cortical regions activated for Chinese and English word reading. However, within these key regions, MVPA identified clusters of neurons with distinct response patterns for the two languages. In other words, fine-grained pattern analysis reveals that the same brain regions can respond differently when presented with Language A versus Language B. Language-specificity in bilingual development

How might differences in the underlying linguistic structure of a bilingual’s two languages influence the development of language-specific neural representations? We addressed this question by tapping into crosslinguistic differences in sentence processing in English and Spanish.

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In particular, English listeners are highly attuned to word order, as sentences have few morphological markers to indicate the subject and the object. In contrast, in a language with rich morphosyntactic marking like Spanish, listeners are less sensitive to word order variations and they attend more evenly to various syntactic features of the sentence (Hernández et al., 1994). In our research, we asked Spanish-English bilingual adults to listen to sentences in both Spanish and English that contained object-relative (OR) pronouns (e.g. ‘The juice that the child spilled stained the rug’) or the subject-relative (SR) pronoun (e.g. ‘The child spilled the juice that stained the rug’). In English, the bilinguals showed slower processing time and greater neural activity during the SR relative to the OR sentences, as has been previously shown by numerous studies with these sentences in English, but they did not demonstrate these differences in Spanish. The findings suggest that early and systematic bilingual language exposure leads to language-specific organization and processing of the bilinguals’ two languages (Kovelman et al., 2008). We used a similar approach to examine language-specific representations in young Chinese–English bilingual children by examining morphological processing (Ip et al., 2016). This focus was motivated by the larger question of bilingual reading acquisition, for which lexical processes are a critical component (Goodwin et al., 2013). Importantly, lexical morphology in Chinese relies on compounding (e.g. bedroom–classroom, snowman–fireman), while English relies more heavily on derivation (e.g. kind–unkind–kindly–kindness). To uncover whether these languagespecific differences in word structure influenced morphological processing, we asked young Chinese-English bilinguals to complete a morphological decision task during which they heard new morphologically constructed words (e.g. snow-pig, re-jump) and judged if those words were acceptable in each of their respective languages (for more detail, see Ip et al., 2016). In English and in Chinese, the bilinguals showed significant activation in the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) and ventral inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) regions classically associated with lexico-semantic processing. However, participants also showed significant activation in the dorsal left IFG during English processing only, likely due to the more abstract computational demands of derived morphemes. We observed this increased IFG activation in monolingual English speakers as well, suggesting that these young bilinguals had developed monolingual-like, language-specific neural mechanisms within shared brain regions of language processing. Given the evidence of both shared and discrete neural mechanisms for processing two languages, we turn now to evidence for the Integrated Multilingual Model in literacy. Literacy acquisition builds on language proficiency (Marks et al., 2019). One can expect that learning to read in two languages will ‘recycle’ a bilingual’s dual systems for language (Dehaene & Cohen, 2007), resulting in mechanisms for literacy that reflect this underlying linguistic organization.

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Developmental Perspectives on English Word Reading

Learning to read is a lengthy, multistage process. A child learning to read in English initially develops logographic skills: the ability to recognize familiar words in their entirety. In this first stage, also known as ‘whole-word’ recognition, a child may recognize the word ‘STOP’ as a whole unit that appears on a road sign. Next, alphabetic skills are acquired. In this second stage, the child learns to map individual phonemes onto letters (s-t-o-p). In the third stage, the child begins to identify higherlevel clusters of letters, ideally corresponding to morphemes or morphosyllables (Ehri, 2014; Frith, 1985). At this stage, a reader may rapidly recognize ‘un-stopp-able’ as a composite of morphosyllabic units. In other words, beginning readers often need to sound-out the printed word by sequentially articulating individual letters to understand the word’s meaning. In contrast, proficient readers rapidly recognize large units of meaning, such as entire words or meaningful parts of words. With time and practice, this process becomes increasingly efficient, and children become able to automatically link whole word forms with their phonological and conceptual representations (Ehri, 2014). Consistent with this developmental theoretical perspective, neuroimaging studies of single word reading reveal a transition from more effortful processing that relies on phonological and articulatory systems, to more automated processing that directly connects visual and conceptual representations (Turkeltaub et al., 2003). These neurocognitive systems are detailed in Figure 8.1.

Figure 8.1  The neurocognitive view of literacy. Brain regions involved in visual word recognition: IFG – inferior frontal gyrus; IPL – inferior parietal lobule; STG – superior temporal gyrus; MTG – middle temporal gyrus; OTC – occipito-temporal cortex.

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During single word reading, beginning English readers recruit a dorsal or phonological reading network that connects canonical language regions with the premotor and primary visual cortex. Early readers rely on regions associated with phonological processing such as the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG), which includes Broca’s area, and the superior temporal gyrus (STG), which includes Wernicke’s area. Connecting these two regions to each other is the arcuate fasciculus (AF), a large bundle of white matter fibers. The AF also connects both Broca’s and Wernicke’s regions to the inferior parietal lobule (IPL), which is thought to integrate representations of sound, meaning and print. This phonological route to reading is critical for young readers, who rely on the effortful processing necessary to integrate representations of print, sound, articulation and meaning. As sound-to-print connections become automatic, readers can devote fewer resources to phonological processing. This is due in part to the increased efficiency of the phonological network. Instead, readers increasingly rely on a ventral or semantic reading network that efficiently connects the visual word form to representations of print and meaning. Reading proficiency is correlated with decreased activity in the left IFG, and increased activity in the left middle temporal gyrus (MTG), a region associated with semantic retrieval (Turkeltaub et al., 2003). Reading proficiency is also associated with increasing specificity in the occipitotemporal cortex (OTC) in response to printed words. Greater activation in one specific region of the OTC, known as the Visual Word Form Area, is associated with increased reading fluency, and is thought to support rapid word recognition and connection to lexical information (Dehaene et al., 2015). In other words, proficient readers can bypass effortful auditory recoding and phonological processing and directly derive the meaning of a word from its orthographic form. Proficient adult readers integrate the dorsal and ventral reading networks in parallel, with some variation depending on the psycholinguistic features of the task at hand. For example, adults show stronger activation in the left IFG region when reading low frequency words (e.g. anointed), or unfamiliar words. In contrast, they demonstrate greater activation in the left MTG and occipito-temporal regions when reading real words, especially those of high frequency, which is thought to reflect the connection between word meanings and orthographic representations (Fiebach et al., 2002). Proficient word reading can thus rely on mechanisms for phonological decoding, as well as mechanisms for rapid meaning recognition. Reading Across Languages

Across all languages and orthographies, readers must learn to recognize their language on a printed page. Monolingual readers of any language rely on the same language-general regions of the brain,

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comprising the perisylvian language network (Bolger et al., 2005; Rueckl et al., 2015). Although a universal task in learning to read is recognizing that language is somehow represented by print (The Universal Grammar of Reading; Perfetti, 2003), writing systems vary in how they encode linguistic units. A learner’s language-specific task is to therefore uncover their orthography’s particular mapping principles between sound, meaning and print (Perfetti, 2003). These specific mapping principles vary across languages, influencing both the underlying neurocognitive mechanisms and the developmental trajectory of early reading acquisition. Young bilingual learners may thus provide a unique lens for understanding the integrated and language-specific aspects of neural reorganization for learning to read. Cross-linguistic variation in how orthographies map onto spoken language often corresponds to language-specific differences in word structure (Frost, 2012; Seidenberg, 2012). Semitic languages employ alphabets in which letters mostly denote consonants. This is because root morphemes are typically comprised of two or three consonants. These roots convey meaning in the absence of vowels, such as ‘pants’ spelled as ‘PNT’; words are then derived through phonological changes to the short root. In Indo-European languages like Latin or English, roots are often long and include more than three sounds per syllable and more than one syllable per root (e.g. ‘cluster,’ or ‘before’). Moreover, Indo-European languages abound in roots for which meaning is distinguished by vowels, so ‘PNT’ could denote ‘pint,’ ‘paint,’ ‘pinto’ or ‘piñata.’ As a result, Indo–European alphabets, such as Latin, Cyrillic or Hindi, typically assign letters to both vowel and consonant sounds. In contrast, orthographic units in Chinese typically correspond to morphemes. The majority of Chinese words are lexical compounds, comprised of two to three monosyllabic morphemes (akin to ‘birth-day’ or ‘snow-man’). These morphosyllables are often homophones, which means that the same combination of sounds may be associated with many different meanings. Like the English homophones ‘meet’ and ‘meat,’ Chinese has homophone pairs like 钱 (qián) meaning ‘money’ and 前 (qián) meaning ‘before.’ In general, Chinese readers must associate a visual word form with its meaning, and then derive the pronunciation of a word by accessing phonological representation in their mental lexicon (McBride-Chang et al., 2005). Although spoken languages change faster than scripts (e.g. English speakers no longer pronounce the ‘k’ in ‘know’), many modern scripts are an appropriate match for their languages’ core morphophonological structure (Seidenberg, 2012). The varying emphasis on sound-to-print and meaning-to-print associations across languages results in different acquisition strategies depending on the language and orthography (Katz & Frost, 1992). Across all languages, phonological awareness, morphological awareness

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Figure 8.2  Relative contributions of morphology, vocabulary and phonology to word reading outcomes. Adapted from McBride-Chang et al. (2005). *p < .05; ***p < .001.

and vocabulary knowledge all support reading ability. However, children’s reliance on these various metalinguistic abilities varies as a function of the language-specific mapping principles. For instance, among monolingual second-grade English readers in the United States, path analyses revealed that phonological awareness made the greatest contribution to word reading ability above other metalinguistic skills (see Figure 8.2). However, among monolingual readers of Chinese living in Hong Kong, morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge significantly predicted word reading, while phonological awareness made a much smaller contribution relative to English (McBride-Chang et al., 2005). Thus, while reading relies on the same core brain regions and the same cognitive skills across languages (Rueckl et al., 2015), children come to recruit these resources differently based on language-specific demands. How does the brain develop these multifunctional reading systems? Language-specific neural development

As a reader gains experience and proficiency, their neural systems for reading specialize in a way that is optimally efficient for their orthography. Crosslinguistic differences in reading mechanisms are thus the result of learning-driven neural plasticity in response to the processing demands of each language. Elegant evidence of languagespecific specialization comes from Cao et al. (2015), who compared monolingual adult and child readers of English and Chinese using a rhyme judgment task, a common methodological approach to study phonological reading mechanisms. In English speakers, they found a developmental increase in inferior frontal and inferior

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parietal activation, regions associated with phonological processing. Conversely, adult Chinese readers demonstrated increased activity in regions associated with semantic processing (MTG) and greater occipital activation than English adults. This difference likely reflects Chinese readers’ greater reliance on lexical and orthographic analysis to recognize word meaning in print, and then to access phonological representations of those words. In other words, reading universally recruits language mechanisms to recognize meaning in print (Rueckl et al., 2015). Yet, as different orthographies often accentuate crosslinguistic differences in word structure, learning to read may further reinforce the differential formation of language-specific neural processes. Single Word Reading in the Bilingual Brain

Like monolinguals (Rueckl et al., 2015), bilingual readers also recruit universal brain systems for reading in both their languages. For instance, an examination of Hindi-English bilinguals and monolinguals revealed activation in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) across languages (Das et al., 2011). Furthermore, when reading high-frequency words versus low-frequency words across both languages, participants showed greater activation in the left MTG region, likely reflecting the more automated recognition of meaning of the more common word units. This set of findings suggests that some aspects of the literacy network are universal across languages, for both monolingual and bilingual readers (Das et al., 2011). Yet, bilinguals also develop language-specific reading systems for each of their languages. For instance, in adult French-German bilinguals, eye-tracking studies reveal different patterns of eye movements for reading in an opaque versus a phonologically transparent language (Rodríguez et al., 2016). The crosslinguistic comparison of HindiEnglish bilinguals also revealed that reading in English incurred greater activation in left frontal regions associated with more complex sound-toprint mapping and verbal working memory demands, as well as greater activation in left inferior temporal regions associated with visual word processing. This was true of both bilingual and monolingual English readers, and likely reflected the need for additional neurocognitive resources to support effortful phonological processing in more opaque orthography. Importantly, the study’s behavioral data support this interpretation: all participants took longer to read low-frequency words in English than in Hindi (see also similar crosslinguistic effects in Jamal et al., 2012). In other words, bilinguals successfully modulate their approach to reading based on language-specific demands. Logically, the bilingual data also suggest effects of experiential factors, such as age of acquisition. The bilinguals who had started to learn to read in English at age 10 showed stronger activation in the

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left IPL during English reading compared to those who had learned to read in English and Hindi simultaneously at age 5. While simultaneous readers showed more differentiated, monolingual-like patterns of activity for each of their languages, sequential readers placed stronger reliance on phonological reading strategies typical of Hindi when reading in English, their later acquired language (Das et al., 2011). Similar effects have been found for sequential learners of English and Japanese (Nakada et al., 2001) and English and Chinese (Tan et al., 2003), in which readers transfer their L1 neural architecture to support their L2 processing. These findings elegantly reflect that many aspects of orthographic processing are common across orthographies and are thus integrated across the bilinguals’ two languages. Nevertheless, language-specific demands may also incur language-specific processes. Importantly, neural mechanisms recruited for bilingual word reading reflect varying task demands both within languages and across languages. For instance, in a study of familiar word and non-word reading in HindiEnglish bilingual children, participants relied on a shared neural system for reading familiar words in both Hindi and English (Cherodath & Singh, 2015). However, non-word reading required children to recruit language-specific decoding mechanisms. English non-words required stronger activation of the left IFG than Hindi non-words, reflecting the more effortful phonological processing necessary for decoding in a less consistent orthography. Similar to monolingual readers (Fiebach et al., 2002), bilinguals not only demonstrate specific patterns of activity across languages, but they also demonstrate different routes to successful decoding within a single language. To summarize, monolingual and bilingual word reading across languages reveals both integrated and differentiated processing mechanisms. The specific linguistic demands of single word (and non-word) decoding across languages can reveal discrete, specialized neural mechanisms for each language. Yet, consistent with the integrated multilingual perspective, reading networks are not completely independent. Single-word reading in any language relies on shared or universal systems for word reading (Rueckl et al., 2015), including both a phonological and a lexical route to word recognition. Bilinguals are able to develop language-specific patterns of engaging these systems, both within and across languages. Crosslinguistic Interaction

A bilingual’s two languages, housed in the same brain, inevitably interact (Grosjean, 1989). Many theoretical frameworks have sought to explain this crosslinguistic interaction in the bilingual mind (for recent overviews, see Chung et al., 2019; MacSwan et al., 2017). The linguistic interdependence hypothesis, as originally posited by Jim

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Cummins (1979), suggests that bilingual children’s second-language (L2) literacy development is inextricably tied to their literacy development in their first language of acquisition (L1). Specifically, L1 influences L2 through transfer: the process by which specific cognitive competencies in one language are transferred to support developing skills in the other language (Cummins, 1979, 2017). Dynamic systems theory (e.g. de Bot et al., 2007) suggests that supporting multiple languages in one mind alters the development of the global multilingual system, as well as the development of each language individually. The interactive transfer framework (Chung et al., 2019) further reminds us that manifestations of bilingual transfer may vary widely, influenced by the specific metalinguistic constructs in question, the properties of a bilingual’s two languages in relation to one another, and many other sociocultural factors such as age and context of acquisition. We have discussed examples of such L1-to-L2 transfer when reviewing evidence for sequential learners in the previous section. Yet, as the frameworks above recognize, transfer is not limited to sequential bilingual learners. To fully appreciate the nature of crosslinguistic interactions, one must consider individuals who learned their two languages simultaneously in childhood. Simultaneous bilingual language and reading acquisition may help us better understand the languagespecificity for learning to read, as well as the neural plasticity for accommodating two different orthographic systems in one brain. Bilinguals who acquire their second language later in life may recruit mechanisms for L1 reading when reading in their second language (Das et al., 2011). Similarly, in our behavioral studies with young SpanishEnglish bilinguals ages 7–9 in dual-language immersion classrooms, we find that sequential learners are better at phonological awareness tasks common to English and Spanish. However, simultaneous bilinguals have better overall reading proficiency in English and are also better at reading phonologically opaque English words such as ‘island’ and ‘character’ (Berens et al., 2013). These findings suggest that language transfer may manifest differently, even in young children, as a function of age and order of acquisition. Importantly, however, we observed no significant differences in language proficiency, phonological awareness and decoding between the bilingual children and monolingual English-speaking children in a monolingual school context (Berens et al., 2013). In other words, bilingual learners can effectively build language-specific literacy mechanisms for each of their languages from the onset of reading instruction. Crosslinguistic transfer is well documented for simultaneous learners with formal literacy instruction in both their languages. For instance, in Singapore, children learning both English and Malay (an alphabetic, relatively transparent language) were found to make phonological errors in English, spelling table as ‘tabel’ while

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bilingual Chinese-English children were more likely to make lexical errors, spelling green as ‘grass’ (Dixon et al., 2010). Similarly, Lallier and colleagues (2016) investigated young Basque bilinguals in Spain attending either Spanish-Basque or Basque-French schools. In both contexts, Basque was the dominant language of reading instruction in early grades. Spanish is more phonologically transparent than Basque, while French is more phonologically opaque. Logically, SpanishBasque bilinguals were better at reading pseudowords in Basque, as pseudoword reading tasks are thought to tap into the phonology-based reading processes. In contrast, Basque-French bilinguals had better visual orthographic processing (Lallier et al., 2016). In sum, even those learning to read in two languages at the same time experience crosslinguistic transfer that is consistent with the orthographic features of their two languages. Yet, while the crosslinguistic transfer is typically characterized in terms of orthographic features such as visual complexity or phonological transparency, differences in script are also intrinsically linked to differences in linguistic structure (Seidenberg, 2012). Is there evidence to suggest speech-based bilingual transfer in learning to read? One way to explore this possibility is to study children who are primarily learning to read in only one of their two languages. This is typical of immigrant children in the US, who often experience English-only reading instruction at school and some varied amounts of reading experiences in their heritage language at home and/or in their community. Our research with young Spanish-English bilinguals educated predominantly in English in the US revealed that these bilinguals showed greater reliance on phonological awareness for reading in English than age-/grade-matched English monolinguals (Kremin et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2021). Neuroimaging further revealed that young SpanishEnglish bilinguals showed stronger left temporal and reduced left frontal activation in English, relative to English monolinguals during a pseudoword reading task (Jasińska et al., 2017). This bilingual finding reflects differences in monolingual language processing: a comparison between monolingual Italian and English-speaking adults during a pseudoword reading task found that Italian speakers showed greater activation in left STG whereas English speakers show greater activation in left IFG (Paulesu et al., 2000). Increased left temporal activation and decreased left frontal activation in young Spanish-English bilinguals can thus be interpreted to suggest that these bilinguals are forming literacy pathways with greater reliance on phonological decoding strategies for reading in English. While it is logical to assume that Spanish-English bilinguals should transfer reading strategies from phonologically transparent Spanish, the finding is noteworthy because the children’s Spanish literacy was quite limited; instead, transfer effects appear to be driven by spoken language proficiency.

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Transfer effects from a home language to a dominant language of literacy instruction were also found in Chinese-English bilinguals (Hsu et al., 2016; Ip et al., 2016; Sun et al., 2022). Recall that, in Chinese, most words are compounds, akin to snow-man, with each morpheme often mapping onto a character. Our research with young Chinese-English bilinguals educated predominantly in English in the US revealed that these bilinguals showed greater reliance on lexical strategies when reading in English, relative to English monolinguals. This pattern of results was observed even with beginning readers, ages 6–8 (Hsu et al., 2016). Furthermore, when compared to monolingual English children during a morphological awareness judgment task, these Chinese-English bilinguals showed greater activation in the left MTG region associated with lexico-semantic processes (Ip et al., 2016). However, these bilinguals also showed robust language-specific reading strategies. Akin to monolingual readers of their respective languages, these bilinguals showed greater reliance on morphology for reading in Chinese than in English (Hsu et al., 2016), and greater left IFG activation during morphological awareness tasks in English than Chinese (Ip et al., 2016). In sum, while simultaneous learners can and do develop language-specific literacy strategies for each of their languages, bilingual experiences can nevertheless have a robust cross-linguistic impact on the children’s developing neural architecture for reading. Why are these bi-directional bilingual literacy transfer effects so robust, even in light of bilinguals’ dominant literacy experiences in one of their languages? One underlying mechanism might be the transfer of salient language features that jointly characterize spoken and written processing in children’s heritage language or the language of lower reading proficiency. In Spanish, words are typically polysyllabic and include many phoneme-sized morphosyntactic markers of gender, tense and aspect. In English, typical words are monomorphemic with a limited repertoire of morphosyntactic markers. Spanish speakers are known to attend more to morphosyntactic features than English speakers, a processing feature that transfers to English even in early exposed and proficient Spanish-English (Hernandez et al., 1994). In contrast, Chinese word processing is characterized by analysis of lexical morphology (Liu et al., 2013). The bilingual language experience in Spanish versus Chinese may therefore bias young bilingual learners to pay greater attention to phonological or lexical features of English print, respectively. In support of this idea, we find that young Spanish-English bilinguals show greater reliance on phonological as well as morphosyntactic skills when reading in Spanish as well as when reading in English, relative to English monolinguals (Kremin et al., 2016). In other words, newly emerging evidence suggests that bilingual transfer effects in learning to read may stem from a combined effect of bilingual children’s grammatical knowledge and orthographic language experiences.

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Thus, the study of reading acquisition in bilinguals reveals the development of language-specific strategies and neural architecture, as well as interaction and transfer between languages. Reading is a laterdeveloping skill that builds on and interacts with pre-existing linguistic knowledge and brain systems for language, as well as attention and visuo-spatial processing (Dehaene et al., 2010). These pre-existing competencies vary as a function of the linguistic characteristics of different languages. This variation is further reinforced by reading experiences, because orthographies often reflect the key characteristics of the underlying spoken language (Frost, 2012). Children’s bilingual experiences with corresponding grammatical and orthographic characteristics of their two languages may therefore yield languagespecific reading mechanisms as well as principled integration effects even in light of greater reading experiences in one of the two languages. Dyslexia

We turn now to reading impairment, to examine how a single neurocognitive impairment may manifest across languages. Developmental dyslexia is a life-long difficulty in reading and learning to read despite adequate intelligence and sufficient reading instruction. This disorder is generally thought to affect 3–10% of readers (Hoeft et al., 2015), although estimates vary widely across languages and orthographies. As we have reviewed throughout this chapter, orthographies differ across languages, resulting in differences in developmental trajectories for learning to read and orthography-specific word reading skills. As reading across orthographies varies in the reliance on specific skills and processes, is it possible for a bilingual child to have a reading impairment in one language but not the other? Research with alphabetic languages such as English reveals that individuals with dyslexia often have trouble with sound-toprint associations. Phonological deficits appear to emerge early in developmental dyslexia. For instance, infants who are later diagnosed with dyslexia show a reduced neural response to changes in speech sounds, in relation to infants who become typical readers (Leppänen et al., 2011). Similarly, kindergarteners with high familial risk for dyslexia (with a parent or a sibling with dyslexia) also show reduced STG activation during phonological tasks before they begin formal reading instruction (Raschle et al., 2012). It is therefore likely that phonological deficits and the associated dysfunction of left temporal regions are at the heart of reading deficits in dyslexia. However, while phonology is also often impaired in Chinese speakers with dyslexia (Goswami et al., 2011; Ziegler & Goswami, 2005), deficits in morphological awareness more typically characterize reading impairments in Chinese (Shu et al., 2006). As in alphabetic

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languages, Chinese dyslexia is associated with anatomical differences in dorsal arcuate (AF) white matter tract associated with phonological ability (Su et al., 2018). At the same time, children with dyslexia show reduced integrity of the inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF), which is correlated with morphological ability (Su et al., 2018) and a reduced N400 response (a left temporal ERP response that reflects lexicosemantic processes) during morphological tasks (Xiuhong Tong et al., 2014). In contrast, they do not show reduced left temporal activation during phonological rhyme judgment tasks, which stands in contrast to decades of dyslexia research in English (Siok et al., 2008). Nevertheless, morphological awareness tasks in Chinese are found to engage left temporal regions that are typically affected in dyslexia in alphabetic languages (Ip et al., 2019; Zhao et al., 2017). It is therefore possible that a common dysfunction in these left temporal regions manifests as a predominantly morphological deficit in Chinese and a predominantly phonological deficit in English. Studying young bilingual learners can illuminate both common and language-specific effects on learning to read and dyslexia. Bilingual learners of alphabetic languages typically show similar reading deficits across their two languages (Klein & Doctor, 2003), although the same deficit may be more pronounced in one language than the other. For instance, balanced French-Spanish bilingual children with dyslexia demonstrated similar impairments in reading speed in both their languages, but more severe reading accuracy deficits in their more opaque language (French; Lallier et al., 2014). Critically, bilingual transfer effects also influence bilinguals with dyslexia. Intriguingly, D’Angiulli and colleagues (2002) found that among children with reading impairments, English-Italian bilinguals outperformed English monolinguals on phonological reading tasks in English. This suggests that among children with dyslexia, learning a language with high soundto-print predictability may advance their phonological reading skills in their less phonologically predictable language (Lallier et al., 2016). Other studies have failed to find a bilingual advantage in phonological awareness but have nevertheless demonstrated that experience with a transparent orthography may ameliorate the severity of reading deficits in an opaque language (e.g. English-Welsh adults; Lallier et al., 2018). Biliteracy may be especially helpful when reading remediation is only available in one of the children’s languages (Geva, 2006). The effects of bilingualism on dyslexia are less clear for learners of more distinct orthographic systems. For instance, Wydell and Butterworth (1999) reported a classic case study of a Japanese-English boy with ‘monolingual dyslexia.’ This child had a phonological deficit that impaired his English but not his Japanese reading (Wydell & Butterworth, 1999; Wydell & Kondo, 2003). Similarly, research with Chinese-English children reveals that among children with signs of

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dyslexia in at least one of their languages, only 30–50% also showed signs of dyslexia in their other language (McBride-Chang et al., 2013; Tong et al., 2015). However, an important caveat of bilingual dyslexia studies is that the children may have lower overall language proficiency in one of their two languages, which can be mistaken for a reading deficit. To the degree that reading deficits are heterogeneous, it is possible for them to manifest differently across the bilinguals’ respective languages as a function of each system’s orthographic characteristics. One example comes from a recent study of Chinese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong who were diagnosed with dyslexia based on their Chinese reading (Huo et al., 2021). Children with a more pronounced orthographic deficit were relatively less impaired in English word reading fluency, whereas children with a specific phonological deficit demonstrated greater English impairment but a reduced Chinese word reading deficit. Examples of language-specific reading deficits may therefore suggest discrete literacy systems in the bilingual brain. In sum, there is significant crosslinguistic variation in how dyslexia manifests across languages. This may reflect the differences in how literacy environments or sub-lexical word structure interact with fundamentally similar deficits, such as the ability to manipulate the salient morphophonological characteristics of a given language. Research with bilingual learners with dyslexia is relatively limited but it offers an exciting window of opportunity for uncovering core factors in literacy and dyslexia that may be language specific, or may reflect underlying universal mechanisms for reading across languages. Conclusion

Across languages, learning to read builds upon children’s pre-existing linguistic capacities. Yet, because languages and orthographies vary, so does the course of acquisition and the neurodevelopmental changes for reading. The study of bilingual learners thus offers a unique opportunity to better understand the universal and language-specific aspects of learning to read as well as the bilingual brain. The bilingual evidence suggests that highly proficient readers of two languages may show similar patterns of brain activity when reading in each of their languages. At the same time, fine-grained MVPA pattern analysis reveals that within these overlapping regions of activity, the same populations of neurons respond differently when participants are reading words in Language A versus Language B (Xu et al., 2017). These findings suggest, on the one hand, that much of reading is universal in its processing across languages (Rueckl et al., 2015). On the other hand, within these overlapping brain regions indicative of similar neurocognitive processes, the bilingual brain forms language-specific neural networks for reading mechanisms.

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Bilinguals’ two literacies do interact, as is evident in crosslinguistic transfer. Some of these transfer effects appear to be orthography driven, such as transfers in visual analyses (Lallier et al., 2016). Yet, due to the link between orthography and the underlying linguistic system, there is also evidence to suggest that literacy transfers are a joint product of corresponding spoken and orthographic characteristics of a given language, such as greater attention to lexical features for reading in English in bilingual speakers of Chinese (Ip et al., 2016). All told, emerging research evidence suggests that the bilingual reading experience can be viewed as both yielding independent literacy systems for each of the bilinguals’ two languages as well as additive systems that interact. The Integrated Multilingual Model predicts that bilingual children will form a linguistic system that includes both language-specific and language-general components (MacSwan, 2017). Research in bilingual literacy acquisition supports the proposed model with evidence of shared and discrete resources for reading across two languages. More specifically, bilingual learners can achieve high levels of reading proficiency in each of their languages, akin to monolinguals, supported both by the universal language-general literacy network and by language-specific patterns of activity. Successful reading development for both monolingual and bilinguals requires learners to draw on all linguistic and orthographic experiences in their respective languages. References Amaral, L. and Roeper, T. (2014) Multiple grammars and second language representation. Second Language Research 30 (1), 3–36. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267658313519017. Berens, M.S., Kovelman, I. and Petitto, L.-A. (2013) Should bilingual children learn reading in two languages at the same time or in sequence? Bilingual Research Journal 36 (1), 35–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2013.779618. Bolger, D.J., Perfetti, C.A. and Schneider, W. (2005) Cross-cultural effect on the brain revisited: Universal structures plus writing system variation. Human Brain Mapping 25 (1), 92–104. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20124. Bosch, L. and Ramon-Casas, M. (2014) First translation equivalents in bilingual toddlers’ expressive vocabulary: Does form similarity matter? International Journal of Bilingual Development 38 (4), 317–322. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165025414532559. Cao, F., Brennan, C. and Booth, J. (2015) The brain adapts to orthography with experience: Evidence from English and Chinese. Developmental Science 18 (5), 785–798. doi. org/10.1111/desc.12245. Chee, M.W.L., Caplan, D., Soon, C.S., Sriram, N., Tan, E.W.L., Thiel, T. and Weekes, B. (1999) Processing of visually presented sentences in Mandarin and English studied with fMRI. Neuron 23 (1), 127–137. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0896-6273(00) 80759-X. Cherodath, S. and Singh, N.C. (2015) The influence of orthographic depth on reading networks in simultaneous biliterate children. Brain and Language 143, 42–51. https:// doi.org/10.1016/j.bandl.2015.02.001. Chung, S., Chen, X. and Geva, E. (2019) Deconstructing and reconstructing cross-language transfer in bilingual reading development: An interactive framework. Journal of Neurolinguistics 50, 149–161. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneuroling.2018.01.003.

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Klein, D. and Doctor, E.A.L. (2003) Patterns of developmental dyslexia in bilinguals. In N. Goulandris and M. Snowling (eds) Dyslexia in Different Languages: Cross-linguistic Comparisons (pp. 112–136). London: Whurr Publishers. Kovelman, I., Baker, S.A. and Petitto, L.A. (2008) Age of first bilingual language exposure as a new window into bilingual reading development. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 11 (02), 203–223. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728908003386. Kremin, L.V., Arredondo, M.M., Hsu, L.S.J., Satterfield, T. and Kovelman, I. (2016) The effects of Spanish heritage language literacy on English reading for Spanish-English bilingual children in the US. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism 5, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2016.1239692. Lallier, M., Acha, J. and Carreiras, M. (2016) Cross-linguistic interactions influence reading development in bilinguals: A comparison between early balanced French-Basque and Spanish-Basque bilingual children. Developmental Science 19 (1), 76–89. https://doi. org/10.1111/desc.12290. Lallier, M., Valdois, S., Lassus-Sangosse, D., Prado, C. and Kandel, S. (2014) Impact of orthographic transparency on typical and atypical reading development: Evidence in French-Spanish bilingual children. Research in Developmental Disabilities 35, 1177– 1190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2014.01.021. Lallier, M., Thierry, G., Barr, P., Carreiras, M. and Tainturier, M.-J. (2018) Learning to read bilingual modulates the manifestations of dyslexia in adults. Scientific Studies of Reading 22 (4), 335–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2018.1447942. Lanvers, U. (2001) Language alternation in infant bilinguals: A developmental approach to codeswitching. International Journal of Bilingualism 5 (4), 437–464. Retrieved from https://journals-sagepub-com.proxy.lib.umich.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/1367006901005004 0301. Leppänen, P.H.T., Hämäläinen, J.A., Guttorm, T.K., Eklund, K.M., Salminen, H., Tanskanen, A., … Lyytinen, H. (2011) Infant brain responses associated with readingrelated skills before school and at school age. Neurophysiologie Clinique/Clinical Neurophysiology 42 (1–2), 35–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucli.2011.08.005. Liu, P.D., McBride-Chang, C., Wong, T.T.Y., Shu, H. and Wong, A.M.Y. (2013) Morphological awareness in Chinese: Unique associations of homophone awareness and lexical compounding to word reading and vocabulary knowledge in Chinese children. Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (4), 755–775. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S014271641200001X. MacSwan, J. (1999) A Minimalist Approach to Intrasentential Code Switching. New York, NY: Routledge. MacSwan, J. (2017) A multilingual perspective on translanguaging. American Educational Research Journal 54 (1), 167–201. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831216683935. MacSwan, J., Thompson, M.S., Rolstad, K., McAlister, K. and Lobo, G. (2017) Three theories of the effects of language education programs: An empirical evaluation of bilingual and English-only policies. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 37, 218–240. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0267190517000137. Marks, R.A., Kovelman, I., Kepinska, O., Oliver, M., Xia, Z., Haft, S.L., … Hoeft, F. (2019) Spoken language proficiency predicts print-speech convergence in beginning readers. NeuroImage 201 (November 2019). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2019.116021. McBride-Chang, C., Cho, J.R., Liu, H., Wagner, R.K., Shu, H., Zhou, A., … Muse, A. (2005) Changing models across cultures: Associations of phonological awareness and morphological structure awareness with vocabulary and word recognition in second graders from Beijing, Hong Kong, Korea, and the United States. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 92 (2), 140–160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.03.009. McBride-Chang, C., Shu, H., Chan, W., Wong, T., Wong, A.M.-Y., Zhang, Y., … Chan, P. (2013) Poor readers of Chinese and English: Overlap, stability, and longitudinal correlates. Scientific Studies of Reading 17 (1), 57–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888 438.2012.689787.

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Nakada, T., Fujii, Y. and Kwee, I.L. (2001) Brain strategies for reading in the second language are determined by the first language. Neuroscience Research 40 (4), 351–358. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0168-0102(01)00247-4. Paradis, J. and Genesee, F. (1996) Syntactic acquisition in bilingual children: Autonomous or interdependent? Studies in Second Language Acquisition 18 (1), 1–25. Paulesu, E., McCrory, E., Fazio, F., Menoncello, L., Brunswick, N., Cappa, S.F., … Frith, U. (2000) A cultural effect on brain function. Nature Neuroscience 3 (1), 91–96. https:// doi.org/10.1038/71163. Perani, D. and Abutalebi, J. (2005) The neural basis of first and second language processing. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 15 (2), 202–206. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb. 2005.03.007. Perfetti, C.A. (2003) The Universal Grammar of reading. Scientific Studies of Reading 7 (1), 3–24. Raschle, N.M., Zuk, J. and Gaab, N. (2012) Functional characteristics of developmental dyslexia in left-hemispheric posterior brain regions predate reading onset. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109 (6), 2156–2161. https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1107721109. Rodríguez, D. de L., Buetler, K.A., Eggenberger, N., Preisig, B.C., Schumacher, R., Laganaro, M. … Müri, R.M. (2016) The modulation of reading strategies by language opacity in early bilinguals: An eye movement study. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 19 (3), 567–577. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728915000310. Roeper, T. (1999) Universal bilingualism. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 2 (3), 169–186. Rueckl, J.G., Paz-Alonso, P.M., Molfese, P.J., Kuo, W.-J., Bick, A., Frost, S.J. … Frost, R. (2015) Universal brain signature of proficient reading: Evidence from four contrasting languages. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112 (50), 15510–15515. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1509321112. Satterfield, T. (1999a) Bilingual Selection of Syntactic Knowledge: Extending the Principles and Parameters Approach. Boston, MA: Kluwer. Satterfield, T. (1999b) The ‘Shell Game’: Why children never lose. Syntax 2 (1), 28–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9612.00013. Satterfield, T. (2002) Response to Saleemi’s Syntax Learnability Model. In R. Singh (ed.) The Yearbook of South Asian Languages and Linguistics (pp. 263–268). New Delhi: Sage Publications. Satterfield, T. (2003) Economy of interpretations: Patterns of pronoun selection in transitional bilinguals. In V. Cook (ed.) Effects of the Second Language on the First (pp. 214–233). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Satterfield, T. and Barrett, R. (2004) Generation gap: Explaining new and emerging wordorder phenomena in Mayan-Spanish bilinguals. Linguistics Presentations, 285–300. (UKnowledge, University of Kentucky.) Satterfield, T. and Saleemi, A. (2009) Mind the gap: Epistemology and development of natural language. KSH Journal of Language Research 12 (1), 1–24. Seidenberg, M.S. (2012) Writing systems: Not optimal, but good enough. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences 35 (5), 305–307. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X12000337. Shu, H., McBride-Chang, C., Wu, S. and Liu, H. (2006) Understanding Chinese developmental dyslexia: Morphological awareness as a core cognitive construct. Journal of Educational Psychology 98 (1), 122–133. Siok, W.T., Niu, Z., Jin, Z., Perfetti, C.A. and Tan, L.H. (2008) A structural–functional basis for dyslexia in the cortex of Chinese readers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105 (14), 5561–5566. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0801750105. Su, M., Zhao, J., Thiebaut de Schotten, M., Zhou, W., Gong, G., Ramus, F. and Shu, H. (2018) Alterations in white matter pathways underlying phonological and morphological processing in Chinese developmental dyslexia. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 31 (April), 11–19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2018.04.002.

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Part 4: Language Policy

9 To ‘Think in a Different Way’ – A Relational Paradigm for Indigenous Language Rights Sheilah E. Nicholas and Teresa L. McCarty

We are all speaking the same language—the language that connects us to our Creator—although [each of our Indigenous languages] may sound different. —Francis Vigil, Pueblo of Zia, July 15, 2019 Asserting the self-knowledge of who we are which is held in the language cannot be taken away … because [self-knowledge] is deep down inside [of us]. —Gerald L. Hill, Oneida Elder, July 15, 2019 These expressions, shared by plenary speakers at a 4-day grant workshop for Native American language educators in Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) schools, articulate understandings of the diverse yet shared knowledges and relationships embodied in and sustained through Indigenous languages. The tribal nations represented, with their respective languages – Akimel O’otham, Apache, Cherokee, Havasupai, Hopi (Hopilavayi), Tohono O’odham and Yakama (Sahaptin or Ichiskiin) – attest to Native American linguistic diversity and to shared concerns with retaining ancestral languages.1 We begin with this example because it is emblematic of the unique sociohistorical and sociopolitical context in which Indigenous language issues are embedded, illuminating multiple paradoxes in what one workshop participant called the ‘pushback against the ominous decline of language maintenance.’ On the one hand participants characterized this setting as part of a ‘transformative movement’ to sustain Indigenous 227

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ways of life and ‘gifts of our Creator’ – distinct ways of becoming (identity), knowing (epistemological origins) and being (moral existence). Simultaneously, participants recognized that the gathering was underwritten by funds from the settler state. As Oneida Elder Gerald Hill stated: ‘We’re looking to the government, … who took away our languages, who took away our lands, supposedly doing things for us in support of our needs.’ ‘We have to move tanks,’ Elder Hill asserted, conjuring a battlefield upon which the movement would be waged, much as Mvskoke scholar K. Tsianina Lomawaima (2000: 2) has summarized the history of American Indian education ‘in three simple words: battle for power.’ An added facet of the paradox is the fact that the historical atrocities of this battle are the legacy of the BIE system in which these educators work. This in itself signals both transformation and struggle, as schools are being appropriated for language reclamation and tribal nation-building. But the roots of the paradox run deeper. Not all attendees at this workshop were directly involved in teaching language learners, nor were all speakers of their language. Their position titles – teacher assistant, education technician, culture specialist, language teacher, classroom teacher, bus driver/sub, secretary, business manager/language project director and parent liaison – defined their roles in the language movement in terms of Western bureaucratic job descriptions. This obscures the paramount value of relationality within Indigenous communities – a theme developed in this chapter – erasing the traditional roles of individual community members in educating community youth. This de/restructuring of role relations by neocolonial institutions testifies to the overt and covert power relations that profoundly influence linguistic self-determination and rights. As one participant asked: ‘How will the message that [the Indigenous] language is important be conveyed as sustainable in the BIE system?’ In this chapter we explore Indigenous language rights in Native American settings, a sociolinguistic landscape that includes more than 560 Indigenous nations and Native Hawaiians. Our understanding of Indigenous language rights shares García and Lin’s (2016) concern that dominant-language speakers are routinely allowed the ‘full use of their linguistic repertoires’ while minoritized bilinguals are not (2016: 7). In Indigenous settings such as our opening example, we must place this concern in the context of ongoing coloniality: ‘the racist and patriarchal legacy of rule based on the extraction of resources and the control of Indigenous peoples’ territories’ (Gustafson et al., 2016: 35). Coloniality is both the historical legacy and the daily reality in which contemporary Indigenous language reclamation movements take shape and persist. In such contexts, say Bret Gustafson, Félix Julca Guerrero and Ajb’ee Jiménez, ‘the most promising efforts emerge from grassroots movements and translocal networks’ (2016: 35). This ground-up, anticolonial character of Indigenous language movements (Leonard & De Korne, 2017) is foundational to our perspective on language rights and, as

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we discuss, our rejection of arguments for nondistinct ‘un-named’ Indigenous languages and for ‘language without rights’ (Wee, 2011). We also share the premise articulated by Comanche linguistic anthropologist Barbra Meek (2015) that in any language-related analysis we need to ask, ‘who benefits and who loses from understanding languages the way we do [and] what is at stake for whom’ (2015: 458). We come to this analysis with an understanding of linguistic systems as fluid and dynamic. Yet that does not preclude an understanding of the significance of specific, named languages in Indigenous histories of experience and contemporary linguistic self-determination efforts. Indeed, what is called ‘the language’ often inheres in what people call themselves, their lands, waters and place. For instance, Tohono O’odham – Desert People – and Akimel O’otham – River People – reference distinct but historically and culturally related peoples, places, languages and lands in what is commonly known today as the southwestern United States. This understanding of language(s) must be situated within the context of settler colonialism, a particular form of colonial power that seeks to replace ‘one landscape for another, one people for another, one mode of production for another’ (Saranillio, 2015: 284), and, we would add, one language for another. Indigenous languages have been at the heart of the ‘battle for power’ about which Lomawaima (2000) speaks. We therefore propose an analytic framework that forefronts Indigenous community-driven language reclamation – ‘a larger effort by the community to claim its right to speak a language and to set associated goals in response to community needs and perspectives’ (Leonard, 2012: 359) – as both a fundamental human right and a form of decolonization (Leonard & De Korne, 2017). We begin with a brief discussion of Indigenous language rights as a field of scholarship and practice. Building on Indigenous perspectives and experiences with language reclamation, we propose a relational approach to language rights that foregrounds Indigenous notions and practices of mutuality and responsibility to generations past, present and future. For example, for the Hopi – the first author’s natal community, discussed at length later in this chapter – this is reflected in the instructions for continuity and reciprocity given by Màasaw, Guardian Spirit of the Hopi Fourth World at the time of Emergence, entailed by the responsibility of intergenerational stewardship. In the sections that follow we explore what a relational approach looks like in practice, focusing on the role of language reclamation in (re)building community, (re)claiming collective linguistic and epistemic memory, and fostering linguistic and educational self-determination toward nationbuilding. Within each theme or focal area, we highlight specific case examples that illuminate how language rights are enacted in practice within Native American nations and communities. As the cases show, relationality, understood within the context of specific linguistic– cultural communities, is central to the enactment of language rights and

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reclamation. We conclude with the entailments and possibilities of a relational paradigm for language rights, more than 500 years out from the original Indigenous–colonial encounter. Before beginning, we explain our positionalities in this work. We come to this analysis as Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholar– educators with a long history of working together and individually in Indigenous language education. Sheilah Nicholas is a Hopi scholar whose work centers on the role of Indigenous languages and knowledges in the academic, familial, community and cultural identities of Indigenous youth, and the ways in which Indigenous educators, often working in hostile education spaces, mediate those identity processes. Teresa McCarty is an educational anthropologist and applied linguist of Irish settler heritage who has collaborated with Indigenous educators at the local, national and international levels on language education planning, policy, and program development, with a focus on language revitalization and equity. We position all of this as ‘collaborative language work,’ a term advanced by myaamia (Miami) linguist Wesley Leonard ‘to include language documentation, description, teaching, advocacy, and resource development’ (Leonard, 2017: 2). Relationality in Indigenous Language Rights

As a field of scholarship and practice, language rights has largely been framed within a Western juridical tradition, ‘understood as what is legally codified about language use … with … attention to the human and civil rights of minorities to use and maintain their languages’ (Hult & Hornberger, 2016: 36). This scholarship has been critical in promoting linguistic human rights (Skutnabb-Kangas & May, 2017; Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 2016) and in the fields of international law and minoritized education (de Varennes & Kuzborska, 2017), language policies and politics (May, 2012a, 2012b; McCarty & May, 2017; Ricento, 2019), and language revitalization research and practice (Coronel-Molina & McCarty, 2016; Hinton et al., 2018). Here, we extend that approach, centering Indigenous ways of knowing and being that inform Indigenous scholarship. We call particular attention to the long-silenced Indigenous voices and neglected Indigenous histories and experiences made evident in the BIE-funded gathering highlighted in our introduction. In those conversations, the term ‘language rights’ was never mentioned, although participants spoke in a myriad of ways about the challenges of language reclamation within educational spaces characterized by coercive, assimilationist policies of ‘language without rights’ (cf. Wee, 2011). At the same time, in the context of this gathering, individual and communal selfempowerment (Ruiz, 1991) through ancestral language reclamation emerged as the prime message. Like many in the movement, for these

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Native educators and activists, language reclamation is a ‘calling’ that is ‘wholistic, relational, inter-relational and interdependent with Indigenous philosophies, beliefs and ways of life’ (Absolon & Dion, 2015: 23). In presenting community-driven examples of language reclamation, we speak from our individual researcher positions, but collaboratively we raise the volume on Indigenous community voices, asking readers to listen with ‘ears to hear’ (Nietzche, 2006/1883: 258) this testimony so that we may learn ‘to think in a different way’ about language rights. From this perspective, language rights are both individual and collective, inhering in the ‘birthright within a distinctive community or communities’ (McCarty et al., 2015: 229) and the relationships between people, place, land and waters. Drawing again on a Hopi example, these relationships are founded on the responsibility to a specific cultural way of life originally conveyed through instructions from Màasaw about living the Hopi way of stewardship so that the land and its gifts for survival would be there for future generations. This approach pivots on what multiple scholars have characterized as a ‘shared aspect of an Indigenous ontology and epistemology’: relationality (Wilson, 2008: 7; see also Bang et al., 2018; Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Brayboy et al., 2012; Kawagley, 2006). As Opsakwayak Cree scholar Shawn Wilson (2008: 7) notes: ‘relationships do not merely shape reality, they are reality.’ Ojibwe legal scholar–activists Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark and Kekek Jason Stark (2018: 17) state that a relational approach ‘foregrounds responsibilities to one another and to creation, which sustains us all.’ Returning to the words of the BIE workshop participants, ancestral languages are thus considered gifts from the Creator (see also Task Force on Aboriginal Languages and Cultures, 2005: 3). ‘When you are given a gift—especially one that is alive,’ writes Hualapai educator Lucille Watahomigie (1998: 5), ‘it must be cherished, nurtured, and treated with respect to honor the giver.’ This entails responsibility, she adds: ‘the sacred gift must be passed on from generation to generation’ (1998: 5). Potawatomi scholar Robin Wall Kimmerer (2013: 26) puts it this way: ‘A gift creates ongoing relationship’ – a collective responsibility to give forward, to pass the gift on. Inhering in distinctive community contexts, this relational quality is also expressed in official tribal language policies. ‘The Yaqui language is a gift from Itom Achai, the Creator of our people,’ the Yaqui (Yoeme) tribal language policy begins, ‘and, therefore, shall be treated with respect’ (cited in Zepeda, 1990: 250). These statements also evoke an understanding that the universe is a vibrating energy field in which we are one with the life of the land that includes spiritual ancestors and does not comprehend the notions of a linear history. ‘In Hopi [thinking],’ states a Hopi Elder, ‘the past, present, and future are all one; we’re living all of it at the same time.’2 These statements represent deeply held beliefs about language(s) that, in conjunction with culturally specific ways of knowing and being

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(discussed further in subsequent sections), hinge relational networks together across time and space. This relational approach to language rights acknowledges and respects the existence of distinct language communities associated with context-specific histories of experience and cultural systems. Ole Henrik Magga (Saami), the first chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, describes this as the ‘most basic right’: ‘when we speak about indigenous peoples we speak about peoples “with an S” which means we are distinct peoples each of our own’ (Magga, 1995: 9; emphasis in original). Perhaps the most prominent (and hard-fought) official recognition of this view is the 2007 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which states: ‘Indigenous peoples have the right to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2007, Article 13.1). This includes the right to ‘an education in their own culture and provided in their own language’ (United Nations General Assembly, 2007, Article 14.3) – a topic we take up in the penultimate section of this chapter. We hope it is clear that a relational approach to language rights does not imply a simplistic, bounded notion of language as an ‘object of the right’ (Wee, 2011: 21). Rather, we argue for a nuanced, historicized understanding of language rights that reckons directly with settler colonialism, tribal sovereignty and the distinctiveness of Indigenous/ originary peoples ‘with an S’ (Magga, 1995: 9). We focus on the resiliency and persistence of Indigenous peoples and community-driven language reclamation efforts in which ‘participants negotiate control over linguistic authority, knowledge production and self-definition through their linguistic practices’ (De Korne & Leonard, 2017: 7). Understood historically and contextually, a relational approach to language rights creates openings for ‘an indigenous plan of self-determination that includes language and culture regeneration’ (Hohepa, 2006: 299). As asserted by Oneida Elder Gerald Hill, whose comments title this chapter, recognizing that the settler state has evolved from a ‘kill the Indian and take the land’ ideology (cf. Tuck & Yang, 2014), we must ‘go into our languages and begin to think in a different way; this is where the work starts’ (19 July 2019). We turn now to our first case example of this language work. To ‘Dream for a Different Future’ – Reclaiming Language, (Re)building Community3

In his poetics, Acoma Pueblo literary scholar Simon Ortiz (1992) writes that the Acoma Keres language – ‘our Aacqumeh dzehni’ – is ‘a vital link to the continuance of the hanoh, the people’ (1992: 5, 9).

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Even under the violence of colonization, the stories of people, place, land and community carried within Aacqumeh dzehni ‘would never be lost, forgotten, and finally gone,’ Ortiz emphasizes. This ‘continuity or continuance … must be included and respected in every aspect of Native American life and outlook’ (Ortiz, 1992: 9). Similarly, in his remarks at the BIE gathering described earlier, Francis Vigil of Zia Pueblo emphasized that language is acquired while engaging in everyday cultural practices with people ‘we really care for’ who are intimately associated with the sights, smells and sounds of meaningful places – experiences available only in that social space and place. These lived experiences, embedded in enduring relationships with place, land/waters and people, position Indigenous-language speakers, language learners, and educators as critical community builders. As the words of Ortiz and Vigil suggest, community building is both a goal and an outcome of language reclamation projects. ‘People priority is important in this work,’ write Miami linguists and revitalizers Daryl Baldwin and David Costa, ‘because language is not a thing but a pathway … leading people toward a healthier community cultural context’ (Baldwin & Costa, 2018: 567). A defining quality of ‘collaborative language work’ (Leonard, 2017: 2), then, is the co-participation of community members across generations over extended periods of time. ‘This is ultimately a community health and healing issue,’ Baldwin and Costa assert, ‘and the work of language and cultural revitalization forces communities … to re-examine self, discuss community values, and dream for a different future’ (2018: 567). Miami (myaamia), an Algonquian language spoken by peoples indigenous to the southern Great Lakes region of North America, provides a case in point. Described by Leonard (2012: 340) as an ‘extreme case’ of language reclamation because the language was recovered entirely from written texts, the Miami case (like all language reclamation efforts) needs to be understood in light of its sociohistorical circumstances. In the 1600s, French Jesuit missionaries entered Miami territory, documenting the language as part of their evangelizing efforts. Over the next 150 years, others continued to document the language, providing what would become ‘an invaluable source of data…, including a huge amount of precious vocabulary, collected at a time when the language was in daily use by large, monolingual communities still living in a traditional manner’ (Baldwin & Costa, 2018: 558). At the same time, the Miami people faced massive disruptions of their way of life incurred through the invasion of their territory by white settler–colonizers, several forced removals to what the US government called ‘Indian Territory’ (the modern states of Kansas and Oklahoma), European-introduced diseases, population decline, and coercive English-only schooling. One consequence was language loss, as Miami people were diasporized and faced ‘continual social and governmental pressures

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to suppress all aspects of being Miami’ (Baldwin & Olds, 2007: 281). By the 1960s, the last myaamia first-language speaker had passed away. ‘This history is important,’ say Daryl Baldwin and Julie Olds (2007), leaders in the Miami language reclamation movement, ‘because everything we do today as a nation, including our language and cultural efforts, is in direct response to this oppressive history’ (2007: 281). Using the historic language corpus and a grammar developed by Costa (1994), Baldwin began teaching himself the language. ‘I remember feeling a sense of loss but also a sense of responsibility,’ Baldwin reflects; ‘I became determined to learn what I could [and we] approached the effort collectively as a family’ (Baldwin et al., 2013: 6). Under the leadership of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, Baldwin and Olds established a community-based language learning program for adults and youth that continues to this day. Subsequently, the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma partnered with its namesake institution of higher education, Miami University, in Oxford, Ohio, to establish the Myaamia Project (now the Myaamia Center). The center is unique, Baldwin and Costa explain, ‘in that it is a tribally directed research center located within an academic setting, within the tribe’s historic homeland’ (Baldwin & Costa, 2018: 563), highlighting the fact that collaborative language work is premised on the reconnection of people to land and place. Led by Baldwin, the center’s mission is ‘to assist the Miami Tribe in language and cultural educational development specifically for the Miami Tribe community’ (Baldwin & Costa, 2018: 563). These combined efforts created ‘ideological and implementational space’ (Hornberger, 2006) for recovering a ‘formerly sleeping’ language (Leonard, 2008). Community stakeholders liken this to an ‘awakening’ – myaamiaki eemamwiciki (Baldwin & Costa, 2018: 566; McCarty et al., 2013: 94) – reinforcing Ortiz’s point that the connections between people, place, language and land ‘would never be lost, forgotten, and finally gone’ (Ortiz, 1992: 9). As the work has moved forward, it has enabled hundreds of Miami people to claim ‘some knowledge of the language,’ writes Leonard, many of whom speak it ‘on a regular basis’ (Leonard, 2007: 29). This includes some families, like the Baldwins, who have established bilingual Miami–English homes (for a first-hand account of the Baldwin family experience, see Baldwin et al., 2013). Yet, more than linguistic fluency, the goal of Miami language reclamation has been to use ‘the language as an articulation of our culture,’ says Leonard (Miami Tribe of Oklahoma, 2008). Communitybased language reclamation ‘is more of a social movement than just a language teaching and learning effort,’ Baldwin and Costa stress, ‘and for this primary reason no single approach is going to work broadly across different communities’ (2018: 561). The Miami case exemplifies the role of language reclamation in promoting community cultural continuance through ‘collaborative

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language work’ (Leonard, 2017: 2). The concept and lived reality of language communities are central, as collective efforts toward community self-empowerment and well-being point to a larger project of community (re)building in light of distinct sociohistorical and contemporary circumstances. We now consider another experience of Indigenous community (re)building – Hopi – which illuminates how a people’s linguistic and epistemic memory are embedded in enduring relationships with land and place. ‘So That All Life Will Be Rejuvenated’ – Reclaiming Collective Linguistic and Epistemic Memory

In the opening epigraph to this chapter, Gerald Hill links language to a deeply felt sense of physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual self, based on generations of accumulated experiences with land and place. This self-knowledge is held within a collective linguistic memory: reclaiming an ancestral language means tapping into and reclaiming linguistically linked knowledge systems. ‘We see ancestral language as a means to access the fundamental knowledge base that has arisen from experiences and interactions with the places where those languages live,’ write First Nations scholar–activists T’łat’łakuł Patricia Rosborough and cuucqa Layla Rorick (2017: 2). As Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) scholar–activist Louellyn White writes: ‘Our journey of language reclamation goes beyond the mechanisms of language as communication and honors the ways that language encapsulates culture and identity’ (cited in McCarty et al., 2018: 167). In this sense, language reclamation constitutes what Gikuyu literary scholar Ngūgī wa Thiong’o (2009) calls a re-membering of what colonial violence sought to dis-member – the reclamation of ‘a people’s memory bank’ (2009: 20). We illustrate these re-membering processes with a case example from Nicholas’s (2009, 2014, 2019) work with her natal community of Hopi. Numbering about 14,000, the Hopi are the westernmost Uto-Aztecan speaking Puebloans in North America, whose villages sit along and atop three mesas in what is now northeastern Arizona. In the course of long-term ‘collaborative language work’ in this setting, Nicholas was told by Clara, a Hopi Elder: ‘Qa paysoq itam yeese. We [the Hopi people] do not merely exist.’ With this statement Elder Clara reiterated a Hopi expression that the Hopi people’s existence is guided by a culturally distinct purpose – to live according to a preordained life plan, Hopivötskwani (the Hopi way of life), prepared for them by Màasaw. This is the Hopi genesis story, which concretely and ideologically links the Hopi language to people, identity and place. This Elder’s words also suggest how Hopi people have conceptualized and continue to enact language and cultural rights and reclamation. Specifically, the Hopi experience, accumulated over millennia

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in a distinct landscape, produced mechanisms such as a clan system, ritual and ceremony conveyed through the Hopi language that have sustained adherence to core principles guiding the Hopi way of life. These mechanisms also provide the means to accommodate new situations and ideas without diminishing the sense of being a Hopi people. To illuminate these processes, we draw from the late Hopi Elder Emory Sekaquaptewa’s last work, Hopi Katsina Songs (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015), in which he calls attention to the linguistic form of songs and song words of the Hopi katsinam, spirit beings, who come to sing and dance in public performances in the Hopi villages during their specific time in the Hopi ceremonial calendar. Emory Sekaquaptewa ‘understood how intimately cultural ideas are embedded in language…[B]y transcribing and translating early recordings of katsina songs, he helped strengthen the continuity of religious thought and cultural practices’ (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015: x). He also maintained that ‘the advice contained in the songs…could be used by future generations as guideposts for navigating contemporary life’ (2015: p. x). To contextualize the song narratives, we provide a brief cultural introduction. In Hopi belief, all people in the world passed through three previous worlds and eventually emerged into the present, Fourth World. ‘At Emergence, the people encountered Màasaw, the guardian of this world, who offered everyone a choice of lifeway and the tools to pursue that lifeway’ (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015: 2). The tool, a planting stick, sooya, for planting the small and short blue ear of corn, was given to them; ‘the intent was that this method of farming would enable each family to assume primary responsibility for sustaining themselves’ (2015: 2). To find the place suited for this lifeway, groups of people who chose the small ear of corn embarked on a series of migrations, taking on separate identities or clans. But, unable to find a place, they eventually returned to their place of Emergence, each clan requesting admission into established communities. Emory cites a Hopi katsina song describing this admission process, which required each group to agree to share their ritual practices and ‘practical knowledge about growing corn,’ and ‘commit to live by the reciprocitybased social institutions… necessary to insure the well-being and survival of the community’ (2015: 2). Accordingly, living in small, settled, self-sufficient communities became the cosmological foundation of the Hopi as a people with a shared identity. Here, we quote at length from the text which stories community building among those who became the Hopi people, beginning with how the Hopi conceive of the land into which they emerged: …[as] pristine land… as a divine creation. All things on this land were placed there to sustain mankind. It is in this sense the land is viewed as having a beautiful, reverential quality… captured in their word for the land, tuuwapongya, the ‘sand altar’…. [T]he pristine world which the

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Hopi agreed to care for… because, in the Hopi mind [the] beauty [of the land] references the original state of nature in which all life flourished as well as the potential for life that such land embodies. The land, tuuwapongya, the ‘sand altar,’ the nurturer of all living things, is personified as Tuwapongtumsi and envisioned to be like a mother who nurtures her children—‘Mother Earth.’ (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015: 3–8) [T]he essence of Hopi life is the communal way in which everyone participates in raising lives—of both [corn] plants and people—so that all life will be rejuvenated…. It is the Hopis’ institutionalized dependence on each other as they strive to keep pursuing practices that rejuvenate life (natwani) that is central to their survival. The participation of every individual in these interdependent interrelationships insures the survival of a community. These interrelationships have been institutionalized into an intricate network of kinship responsibilities as well as ritual society obligations that are shared by all members of the community…. The Hopi community is not a place, it is an identity. This concept of community is embodied in the oft-repeated song word, qatsi’nangwa, translated as the ‘will to live’ [which] carries the idea that the people in the community must put their hearts, minds, and efforts together for the well-being of the community…. [and] has shaped the social institutions and activities as well as the ethical principles and ritual practices that must be participated in to sustain these small settled farming communities…. In addition… the settled life of raising corn has greatly shaped the ethics and moral principles that each Hopi must accept and follow… a code of unwritten moral imperatives that obligate him or her to work for the welfare of everyone in the community. Collective adherence to these moral principles is essential to the enduring vitality of the community…. [Moreover], the institutionalized ties to one’s kin and one’s family bring a sense of fulfillment, well-being, and security that have sustained the Hopis for centuries. (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015: 4–6)

Using a methodology rooted in oral tradition, this storied account articulates the specifics of Hopi epistemology as arising from the Emergence narrative of a particular place and landscape. These narratives tell not of survival struggles against outside forces but, rather, about the acceptance of a life of struggle: ‘testing one’s will to live’ as a farmer in a seemingly arid and barren land, premised in the principles of tumala, work; okiwa, humility; tuptsiwa, faith; and sumi’nangwa, nami’nangwa, communal cooperation and mutual caring, as the path to ‘living a fulfilled life.’ Through this epistemic lens we see that, for the Hopi, maintaining cohesiveness and unity – community and connection – involves leading a moral existence and attaining spiritual fulfillment, spiritual eternity. The Hopi words, qatsitwi’yta; qatsivaptsiwta-yungwa – [to] be one’s turn in contemporary society; [to] be born into one’s generation with all its responsibilities – presuppose a predestined plan of evolution of the generations, each following its respective path of life with a moral duty to carry out responsibilities toward a destined goal

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(Hopi Dictionary/Hopìikwa Lavàytutuveni: A Hopi-English Dictionary of the Third Mesa Dialect. 1998, p. 465). As ‘guideposts for navigating contemporary life’ (Sekaquaptewa et al., 2015: x), this Hopi epistemology is embedded in Hopi linguistic forms, language ideologies and communal practices unique to Hopi people. Relationality and communalism are fundamental to Hopi ways of knowing and being. The continuity of Hopi religious thought and cultural practices that rejuvenate life, natwani, is shaped by an understanding of ‘natural law’ that views the universe as a vibrating energy field in which everything, all beings including waters and mountains as well as non-living things, are not only imbued with life and spirit but sustain these and thus have a ‘right’ to life. According to Hopi Elder Vernon Masayesva, this perspective ‘recognizes the essential interdependence of all of the disparate elements—air, water, land, species of plants and animals, and the human … humans have no independent existence free of sunlight, water, microbes in the soil, pollinating insects, etc.’ He goes on to assert: ‘From this indigenous perspective, a culture develops with interdependence ingrained … in all its practices and beliefs’ (https://www.investigativemedia.com/ western-science-vs-native-science-cultural-imperialism/). This belief is manifest in the Hopi religion and practices which ‘keep the universe vibrating in balance and harmony.’ The Hopi way of life ‘is predicated on preserving the Earth and her creatures; the work is sacred and humans are stewards, not masters’ (Masayesva, n.d.: 1). These respectful and reciprocal relations among humans and between humans and the rest of creation are learned by each generation through daily participation in the practices that support this lifeway so that the bounty of Mother Earth is recurring from the respectful use of ‘her’ gifts and reciprocity for ‘our’ wealth. An example that Hopi people use to illuminate this relationship is the phrase, kuuyi hikwsi, water is life; the deeper interpretation of hikwsi as breath, breath of life, and soul, living spirit is applied to the contemporary context of the Little Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. This life-giving force, this living spirit, is threatened by the drought conditions caused by the diversion and overuse of the Little Colorado River Basin water system to urban areas far from Hopi. Also threatened is the symbolic location and site of the Hopi Emergence, Sìpaapu, in the Grand Canyon, Öngtupqa, that the Hopi refer to as ‘the umbilical cord to the Old World… a passageway to the spiritual world… the heart of Mother Earth’ whose ‘heartbeat is weakening’ because water no longer comes in and out of the mound; it is dying. The ‘right’ to carry out the Hopi religion ‘is being violated… Religious ceremonies which are tied to Sìpaapu will become meaningless’ (blackmesatrust.org). As applied to the ‘transformational [language] movement,’ this framework has particular implications for language rights in education. To explore this, we turn to our final theme.

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The ‘Willful and Persistent Efforts of the Community’ – Linguistic and Educational Self-determination for Nation-building

As our opening example of the BIE educators’ workshop suggests, Indigenous educators are repurposing schools as sites for language reclamation. Also highlighted by participants in the BIE gathering, and in an abundance of scholarship, is the reality that schools are ‘extremely contentious spaces’ for this kind of collaborative language work (Rockwell & Gomes, 2009: 105). Yet schools can be ‘strategic tools’ for the exercise of Indigenous language rights, particularly when schoolbased efforts are harnessed to family- and community-based support systems (McCarty, 2008; McCarty & Nicholas, 2014). Here, we draw on a final case example, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk), to illustrate the larger possibilities for Indigenous linguistic and educational self-determination and nation-building that inhere in a decolonial, relational approach to language rights in education. Along a 41-mile stretch of the St Lawrence River bisecting what is now Canada and the United States lies the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation, the Land Where the Partridge Drums, also called St Regis. Mohawk is a Haudenosaunee (Iroquoian) language spoken by peoples indigenous to what is known as northern New York, southern Quebec, and eastern Ontario. The self-referential term is Kanien’kehá:ka, People of the Flint, a reference to flint deposits used for tool-making in the Mohawk people’s homelands known in English as upstate New York (White, 2015). As described by Mohawk scholar Louellyn White, the seeds of the Mohawk language reclamation movement were planted in the 1960s and 1970s through a series of conflicts with the Canadian and US governments over rights to Mohawk lands, waterways, and education. In 1968, the Mohawk blockade of the St Lawrence River for free passage across Mohawk lands bifurcated by an imposed colonial/ international border laid a crucial foundation. Subsequently, the movement mobilized in the late 1970s and early 1980s as resistance by community members against the state of New York over land and education rights. The conflict ‘escalated to having police presence on the reservation and… police barricades,’ recalls Akwesasne language educator and activist Elvera Sargent. ‘And there were children behind those barricades.’ She continues: So, when it came time in the fall for kids to go back to [the statesponsored] school, they weren’t being treated very nicely. And then also, the parents came to realize that they [their children] weren’t being taught anything about being a Mohawk in those schools, even though they were on our land. Nobody was being taught the language…. So they [parents] decided to start their own school. (Sargent, 2022: n.p.)

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Even when threatened with incarceration, White (2015) writes, ‘the parents stood their ground’: The Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs asserted its status as a sovereign nation with its own traditional form of government and oversight, including support of the AFS [Akwesasne Freedom School]. … While state police sharpshooters stood nearby…, young Mohawk children were learning to speak their people’s language. They walked in the woods looking for medicine and learned the Haudenosaunee Creation Story and Haudenosaunee history…. Classrooms were put together in barns, living rooms, and trailers until a small building could be constructed. (2015: 56)

Hence, the Akwesasne Freedom School, ‘a place for wholly Mohawk education’ (Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, 2005: 1), was born amidst great struggle for land, language, culture and human rights. As the late Akwesasne educator Margaret Peters said of the school’s genesis: ‘Taking control of the children’s education was the only alternative there was’ (Stairs et al., 1999: 45). At the time of this writing, the Freedom School recently commemorated its 40th year as a parent- and community-run school and is serving approximately 75 students in a year-round pre-K–8 program. Situated in a facility built by parents and other community volunteers to resemble a Haudenosaunee longhouse, the school curriculum revolves around the Mohawk language (Kanienke:ha) and the Ohenton Kariwahtekwen, Words That Come Before All Else, or Mohawk Thanksgiving Address (White, 2015). Each day opens and closes with students sitting as they would in the longhouse, on benches aligned along each side of a wide hallway, reciting the Ohenton Kariwahtekwen from memory. Older students and adults encourage and coach the youngest children – another facet of family and relationality in the curriculum. As one report relates: The Address frames curriculum instruction in math, science, history, geography, reading, writing, and more, [incorporating] traditional and contemporary art, song, and stories, an approach that also serves to instill the Mohawk values of respect, peace, and community…. The School operates year-round to take better advantage of teaching based on the seasons. … In sum, this is an entirely different non-English and Mohawk-led paradigm for teaching and learning. (Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development, 2005: 2)

Elvera Sargent (2022) concurs: ‘We’re nothing like Western education. Everything is done in the Mohawk language…. We’re just not like them [state-sponsored schools] at all.’ The Freedom School functions entirely from parent- and community-driven labor and fund-raising; it has never requested or received federal, state or provincial funding

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(White, 2015). To do so, says White (2015), would compromise Mohawk self-determination and parents’ ‘right to decide the type of education their children would receive’ (2015: 65). The school also receives a financial donation from the St Regis Mohawk Tribe, but ‘They don’t tell us what to do,’ Elvera Sargent (2022) points out. Language and culture reclamation at Akwesasne includes a movement to reclaim Mohawk lands and land-based cultural practices that have been severely compromised by toxins introduced into local waterways by adjacent mega-corporations. In 2014, the Akwesasne Cultural Restoration program began as a ‘land-based and languageinfused cultural apprenticeship program’ to counter industrial polluters and provide an opportunity for learners ‘to apprentice with master knowledge-holders to learn traditional, land-based cultural practices’ such as hunting, trapping, fishing, use of medicinal plants, horticulture and basket making. Mohawk scholar Taiaiake Alfred (2014) articulates the relationship between language, land/waters and cultural reclamation: ‘Initiatives to maintain the transmission of language and important technical focal vocabulary embedded in traditional resources harvesting practices are an important aspect in … restoring health and vitality of the people’ (2014: 142–143). The intertwined movements to reclaim language, education, culture and land/waters reflect the ‘willful and persistent efforts of the Akwesasne Mohawk community,’ Alfred writes. Within this multifaceted movement, the Freedom School represents ‘a space for cultural and linguistic survival’ (White, 2015: 6). The school has served ‘as a crucible for grassroots nation building,’ states the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (2005), helping to ensure that ‘the next generation of Mohawk Nation leaders has the necessary teachings and that Mohawk Nation sovereignty will continue’ (2005: 2). Thinking Forward (in a Different Way) – Entailments and Possibilities of a Relational Paradigm for Language Rights

In this closing section, we return to Meek’s (2015: 458) compelling question of ‘who benefits and who loses from understanding languages the way we do [and] what is at stake for whom.’ As we have emphasized, in Indigenous settings ‘what is at stake’ is steeped in ongoing coloniality. Unsettling the colonial footprint, we propose, requires that we conceptualize language rights ‘in a different way,’ centering distinct community histories, relationships and aspirations alongside an anticolonial critique. In other words, Indigenous language rights must necessarily engage the broader project of decolonization (Gustafson et al., 2016; Leonard, 2017; Leonard & De Korne, 2017). This ‘understanding [of] languages’ and ‘what is a stake for whom’ (Meek, 2015: 458) carries with it two further entailments. Precisely

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because Indigenous communities are minoritized and often diasporized, as in the myaamia case, language reclamation requires carving out Indigenous-language-only space – what Joshua Fishman (1991, 1996) called a ‘safe harbor’ for the ‘beloved language.’ This does not mean that we compartmentalize languages or learners’ linguistic abilities – the ‘two solitudes’ critiqued by Jim Cummins (2008), Ofelia García (2009) and others. Rather, this requires that we embrace a power-conscious language pedagogy that is ever-vigilant to (re)invasion and erasure by colonial language practices and policies, and simultaneously ever-responsive to local knowledges, assets, desires and needs. In the Mohawk case, this is reflected in a Mohawk-only curriculum focused around Ohenton Kariwahtekwen or Thanksgiving Address. Similarly, in diverse forms of bilingual/immersion schooling, the most effective pedagogies are what Stephen May, Richard Hill and Sarah Tiakiwai (May et al., 2004) call level 1 immersion, where all or most instruction takes place in the Indigenous language. As May et al. (2004) and others point out (e.g. Iokepa-Guerrero, 2016; Wilson & Kamanā, 2011), this is also a relational pedagogy that invites and indeed necessitates strong family and community engagement. A second, related entailment is a decolonial critique that asserts the importance of distinct, ‘named’ languages and language varieties. In his 2009 book, Something Torn and New, wa Thiong’o writes that re-naming – which requires autochthonous name-erasure – is the first act of the colonizer. Names, he states, ‘have everything to do with how we identify, classify, and remember objects, places, and people’ (wa Thiong’o, 2009: 9). Thus, ‘the loss of a name, linked to loss of memory [associated with that name], would help break or at least weaken the resistance to the English-settler colonization: a European memory becomes a new marker of identity, covering up an older memory or more strictly speaking, burying the Native memory of place’ (2009: 8–9). This resignification is a prime tactic of colonial dis-memberment. ‘Name and language loss are the necessary steps toward the loss of previous identity,’ wa Thiong’o emphasizes, ‘and the imposition of a colonized identity’ (2009: 16). This is also a prime tactic of displacement through settler seizure of (renamed) Indigenous lands. In contrast, as the Hopi example shows, naming in the Indigenous language is central to (re)claiming collective linguistic and epistemic memory – that is, to communal re-membering and emplacement, as ‘names are strongly tied to the experience of place… the past and present are shaped by the way the land is remembered and discussed’ (Hedquist et al., 2018: 61). Names and naming – myaamia, Hopilavayi, Kanienke:ha – are vitally important connectors to distinct lands/waters, people and home place. Further, as Jeff MacSwan (2020) points out, communal naming practices constitute the cornerstones of civil rights: Without the existence of language communities, ‘there can be no rights…, and no multilingualism in a world where languages, per se, do not exist’ (2020: 3).

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In this chapter we have sought to ‘think in a different way’ about language rights, foregrounding Indigenous ways of knowing and being embedded in values and practices of relationality, mutuality and individual and collective responsibility. Paralleling the language reclamation framework articulated by Leonard (2017), this approach to language rights recognizes that ‘what in Western science would be considered social factors that are merely associated with language might instead be part of what [Indigenous people understand] “language” to be’ (2017: 19–20). We urge serious attention to Indigenous understandings of language(s) and language rights, and to the question of who benefits and what is at stake in our scholarly understandings and representations of rights to language(s). Our intention is that an Indigenous relational paradigm widens and deepens language rights discourses in research and practice, while offering testimony and support to the vital and growing Indigenous communitybased language reclamation movement. Notes (1) The gathering, a 4-day professional development workshop held July 15–18, 2019, was hosted by the Indigenous Languages Institute (ILI) of Santa Fe, New Mexico, a BIE Native American immersion grant awardee for the project titled, Building the Foundational Elements of a BIE Native American Immersion Initiative to Develop Oral Proficiency. In listing the tribal nations and languages represented, we include the name of the language in parentheses where it is different from the name of the tribal nation. (2) This is evident in the Hopi language of inviting a visitor (one individual) into one’s house using the plural form – Huvam yungngya’a. (You all come in.) This acknowledges the Hopi teaching that one never walks in life alone. (3) Parts of the sections that follow are significantly updated and adapted from McCarty (2019, 2020), McCarty et al. (2013) and McCarty et al. (2015).

References Absolon, K.E. and Dion, S. (2015) Gathering Learning Stories: Commmunity-based Researcher’s Training Manual. Understanding Community Processes that Promote Wellness Through Walking the Prevention Circle: Re-searching Community Capacity Building Project. Unpublished manuscript. Alfred, T. (2014) The Akwesasne cultural restoration program: A Mohawk approach to land-based education. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 3 (3), 134–144. Baldwin, D. and Olds, J. (2007) Miami Indian language and cultural research at Miami University. In D.M. Cobb and L. Fowler (eds) Beyond Red Power: American Indian Politics and Activism Since 1900 (pp. 280–290). Santa Fe, NM: School for Advanced Research. Baldwin, D. and Costa, D. (2018) Myaamiaataweenki: Revitalization of a sleeping language. In K.L. Rehg and L. Campbell (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Endangered Languages (pp. 553–570). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Baldwin, D., Baldwin, K., Baldwin, J. and Baldwin, J. (2013) Myaamiaataweenki oowaaha: Miami spoken here. In L. Hinton (ed.) Bringing Our Languages Home: Language Revitalization for Families (pp. 3–18). Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books.

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Bang, M., Marin, A. and Medin, D. (2018) If Indigenous peoples stand with the sciences, will scientists stand with us? Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 147 (2), 148–159. Barnhardt, R. and Kawagley, A.O. (2005) Indigenous knowledge systems and Alaska Native ways of knowing. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 36 (1), 8–23. Brayboy, B.McK.J., Gough, H., Leonard, B., Roehl, R. and Solyom, J. (2012) Reclaiming scholarship: Critical Indigenous research methodologies. In S. Lapan, M. Quartaroli and F. Riemer (eds) Qualitative Research: An Introduction to Methods and Designs (pp. 423–450). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Coronel-Molina, S.M. and McCarty, T.L. (eds) (2016) Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas. New York, NY: Routledge. Costa, D. (1994) The Miami-Illinois language. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Cummins, J. (2008) Teaching for transfer: Challenging the two solitudes assumption in bilingual education. In J. Cummins and N.H. Hornberger (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Boston, MA: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30424-3_116 De Korne, H. and Leonard, W.Y. (2017) Reclaiming languages: Contesting and decolonizing ‘language endangerment’ from the ground up. Language Documentation and Description 14, 5–14. de Varennes, F. and Kuzborska, E. (2017) International law and language minority education. In T.L. McCarty and S. May (eds) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education (3rd edn) (pp. 143–154). Cham: Springer International. Fishman, J.A. (1991) Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Fishman, J.A. (1996) In Praise of the Beloved Language: A Comparative View of Positive Ethnolinguistic Consciousness. The Hague: Mouton de Gruyter. García, O. (2009) Bilingual Education in the 21st Century: A Global Perspective. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. García, O. and Lin, A.M.Y. (2016) Translanguaging in bilingual education. In O. García and A.M.Y. Lin (eds) Bilingual and Multilingual Education (3rd edn) (pp. 117–130). Encyclopedia of Language Education series. Cham: Springer International. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02324-3_9-1. Gustafson, B., Guerrero, F.J. and Jiménez, A. (2016) Policy and politics of language revitalization in Latin America and the Caribbean. In S.M. Coronel-Molina and T.L. McCarty (eds) Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (pp. 35–53). New York, NY: Routledge. Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development (2005) Honoring Nations: Akwesasne Freedom School. Cambridge, MA: John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Hedquist, S.L., Hopkins, M.P., Koyiyumptewa, S.B., Lomayestewa, L.W. and Ferguson, T.J. (2018) Tungwniwpi nit wuklavayi (Named places and oral traditions). Multivocal approaches to Hopi land. In L.J. Kuwanwisiwma, T.J. Ferguson, and C. Colwell (eds) Footprints of Hopi History: Hopihiniwtiput Kukveni’at (pp. 52–72). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Hinton, L., Huss, L. and Roche, G. (eds) (2018) The Routledge Handbook of Language Revitalization. New York, NY: Routledge. Hohepa, M.K. (2006) Biliterate practices in the home: Supporting Indigenous language regeneration. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 5 (4), 293–301. Hornberger, N.H. (2006) Nichols to NCLB: Local and global perspectives on US language education policy. In O. García, T. Skutnabb-Kangas and M.E. Torres-Guzmán (eds) Imagining Multilingual Schools: Languages in Education and Glocalization (pp. 223–237). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Hult, F.M. and Hornberger, N.H. (2016) Revisiting orientations in language planning: Problem, right, and resource as an analytic heuristic. The Bilingual Review 33, 30–49.

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Iokepa-Guerrero, N. (2016) Revitalization programs and impacts in the USA and Canada. In S.M. Coronel-Molina and T.L. McCarty (eds) Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (pp. 227–246). New York, NY: Routledge. Kawagley, A.O. (2006) A Yupiaq Worldview: A Pathway to Ecology and Spirit (2nd edn). Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Kimmerer, R.W. (2013) Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions. Leonard, W.Y. (2007) Miami language reclamation in the home: A case study. Unpublished PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley. Leonard, W.Y. (2008) When is an ‘extinct’ language not extinct? Miami, a formerly sleeping language. 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 (pp. 23–33). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. Leonard, W.Y. (2012) Framing language reclamation programmes for everybody’s empowerment. Gender and Language 6 (2), 339–367. Leonard, W.Y. (2017) Producing language reclamation by decolonizing ‘language.’ In W.Y. Leonard and H. De Korne (eds) Language Documentation and Description 14, 15–36. London: EL Publishing. Retrieved 13 August 2019 from http://www. elpublishing.org/PID/150. Leonard, W.Y. and De Korne, H. (eds) (2017) Reclaiming Languages: Contesting and Decolonizing ‘Language Endangerment’” from the Ground Up. Special Issue, Language Documentation and Description 14. Lomawaima, K.T. (2000) Tribal sovereigns: Reframing research in American Indian education. Harvard Educational Review 70 (1), 1–21. MacSwan, J. (2020) Translanguaging, language ontology, and civil rights. World Englishes 39 (2), 1–13. DOI: 10.1111/weng.12464 Magga, O.H. (1995) Rights for Indigenous peoples. In Papers Presented at the 5th Common Property Conference: 24–28 May 1995, Bodø, Norway. Reinventing the Commons. Bloomington, IN: International Association for the Study of Common Property. Masayesva, V. (n.d.) Western science vs. Native science: Cultural imperialism. Unpublished paper. Available from https://www.investigativemedia.com/western-science-vs-nativescience-cultural-imperialism/ Masayesva, V. (n.d.-b) Black Mesa Trust – ‘Paatuaqatsi Water is Life.’ blackmesatrust.org. May, S. (2012a) Language and Minority Rights: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Politics of Language (2nd edn). New York, NY: Routledge. May, S. (2012b) Contesting hegemonic and monolithic constructions of language rights ‘discourse.’ Journal of Multicultural Discourses 7, 21–27. May, S., Hill, R. and Tiakiwai, S. (2004) Bilingual/Immersion Education: Indicators of Good Practice. Wellington, NZ: Ministry of Education. McCarty, T.L. (2008) Schools as strategic tools for Indigenous language revitalization: Lessons from Native America. In N.H. Hornberger (ed.) Can Schools Save Indigenous Languages? Policy and Practice on Four Continents (pp. 161–179). New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. McCarty, T.L. (2019) Indigenous language movements in a settler state. In T. Ricento (ed.) Language Politics and Policies: Perspectives from Canada and the United States (pp. 173–191). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. McCarty, T.L. (2020) The holistic benefits of education for Indigenous language revitalisation and reclamation (ELR2). Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 42 (10), 927–940. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2020.1827647. McCarty, T.L. and Nicholas, S.E. (2014) Reclaiming Indigenous languages: A reconsideration of the roles and responsibilities of schools. Review of Research in Education 38, 106–136. McCarty T.L. and May, S. (eds) (2017) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education (3rd edn). Cham: Springer International.

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McCarty, T.L., Nicholas, S.E. and Wyman, L.T. (2015) 50(0) years out and counting: Native American language education and the Four Rs. International Multilingual Research Journal 9 (4), 227–252. McCarty, T.L., Baldwin, D., Ironstrack, G.M. and Olds, J. (2013) Neetawaapantamaanki iilinwiaanki meehkamaanki niiyoonaani: Searching for our talk and finding ourselves. In T.L. McCarty, Language Planning and Policy in Native America: History, Theory, Praxis (pp. 92–106). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. McCarty, T.L., Nicholas, S.E., Chew, K.A.B., Diaz, N.G., Leonard, W.Y. and White, L. (2018) Hear our languages, hear our voices: Storywork as theory and praxis in Indigenous-language reclamation. Daedalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 147 (2), 160–172. Meek, B. (2015) The politics of language endangerment. In N. Bonvillan (ed.) The Routledge Handbook of Linguistic Anthropology (pp. 447–462). New York, NY: Routledge. Miami Tribe of Oklahoma (2008) myaamiaki eemamwiciki. Miami Awakening (DVD). Miami, OK: Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. Nicholas, S.E. (2009) ‘I live Hopi, I just don’t speak it’: The critical intersection of language, culture, and identity for contemporary Hopi youth. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 8 (5), 321–334. Nicholas, S.E. (2014) ‘Being’ Hopi by ‘living’ Hopi—Redefining and reasserting cultural and linguistic identity: Emergent Hopi youth ideologies. In L.T. Wyman, T.L. McCarty and S.E. Nicholas (eds) Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism: Language Identity, Ideology, and Practice in Dynamic Cultural Worlds (pp. 70–89). New York, NY: Routledge. Nicholas, S.E. (2019) Without the language, how Hopi are you? Hopi cultural and linguistic identity construction in contemporary linguistic ecologies. In T.L. McCarty, S.E. Nicholas and G. Wigglesworth (eds) A World of Indigenous Languages: Politics, Pedagogies and Prospects for Language Reclamation (pp. 173–193). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Nietzche, F.W. (2006). Thus spoke Zarathustra. A book for everyone and no one. In K.A. Pearson and D. Large (eds) The Nietzsche Reader (pp. 252–278). Malden, MA: Blackwell. (Original work published 1883.) Ortiz, S.J. (1992) Woven Stone. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Ricento, T. (ed.) (2019) Language Politics and Policies: Perspectives from Canada and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rockwell, E. and Gomes, A.M.R. (2009) Introduction to the special issue: Rethinking Indigenous education from a Latin American perspective. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 40 (2), 97–109. Rosborough, T.P. and Rorick, C.L. (2017) Following in the footsteps of the wolf: Connecting scholarly minds to ancestors in Indigenous language revitalization. AlterNative 13, 11–17. DOI: 10.1177/1177180116689031. Ruiz, R. (1991) The empowerment of language-minority students. In C. Sleeter (ed.) Empowerment through Multicultural Education (pp. 217–227). Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Saranillio, D.I. (2015) Settler colonialism. In S.N. Teves, A. Smith and M. Raheja (eds) Native Studies Keywords (pp. 284–300). Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press. Sargent, E. (2022) Akwesasne Freedom School. Presentation at the Cherokee Nation and Global Indigenous Caucus Launch Event for the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, Tahlequah, Oklahoma and Virtual, January 6, 2022. Sekaquaptewa, E., Hill, K. and Washburn, D. (2015) Hopi Katsina Songs. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Skutnabb-Kangas, T. and May, S. (2017) Human rights and language policy in education. In T.L. McCarty and S. May (eds) Language Policy and Political Issues in Education (3rd edn) (pp. 125–141). Cham: Springer International. Skutnabb-Kangas, T., Bear Nicholas, A. and Reyhner, J. (2016) Linguistic human rights and language revitalization in the USA and Canada. In S.M. Coronel-Molina and

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10 The Grand Erasure: Whatever Happened to Bilingual Education and Language Minority Rights?1 Terrence G. Wiley

‘What matters is that to achieve leadership, one must become widely known. In what seems to be an utterly cynical value, problems of truth and falsity can be dealt with not at the outset, but later on, as a matter of process; indeed, truth may simply be a matter of what one can get the public to believe’ (Donahue, 1995). This chapter focuses on the slow, but steady, erasure of a focus on bilingual education in the United States as a tool for promoting educational equity and access for language minorities, as well as on a retreat from the defense of language rights in some professional discourses. In understanding the erasure of bilingual education within the US context, it is necessary to consider the relationship that language restrictionism has had with anti-immigration efforts and how language restrictionism and anti-immigration efforts have often been linked to racism. The assault on federally funded bilingual education, which began in the late 1970s, was associated with resistance to the dramatic rise in immigration that began in the mid-1960s and the subsequent backlash against it, particularly against immigrants from Mexico and Latin American countries. Leibowitz (1969, 1971, 2016/1974) was among the first to write in detail about the direct linkage between language, ethnic, and racial discrimination in the United States. He concluded that when minority languages were under attack, the affected language community always understood that there was more at stake than just the assault on 248

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its language. Thus, in reflecting on the rise and fall of federally funded bilingual education, it is important to realize that in some important respects, bilingual education represented a soft target, or surrogate, for discrimination against certain types of immigrants and ethnic and racial minorities. This discussion will address the erasure of bilingual education within that context. Additionally, the chapter considers the implications of recent critiques of language rights within academia and addresses their implications for linguistic discrimination. The first section of this chapter addresses the relationship between language, ethnic, and racial discrimination, which in the US has been demonstrably intertwined with advocacy for restrictive immigration policy. The next section provides a historical review of the politicization of bilingual education and ‘official’ English advocacy during the 1970s through the early 2000s. During this period, bilingual education became widely stigmatized and vilified largely through the efforts of pundits, political opportunists, ideologues and activist organizations that were funded by a wealthy donor, whose ideologies were linked to an array of anti-democratic far-right agendas of the recent Trump administration (2017–2021). While this discussion may seem like a digression from the central focus of this book, it is included so that we do not lose sight of the larger ideologically charged political environment that shapes the policy contexts in which we work. In many respects, this period also recalls the antecedent ideological hegemony of the early 20th century, when the Americanization and the English-only movements were linked to xenophobia and white supremacy. The chapter also discusses how the well-funded attacks on bilingual education and minorities appealed to populists and initially resulted in largely symbolic victories for proponents of official English at the state level. As the political climate grew more restrictive, however, immigrants and minorities became more overtly targeted through anti-affirmative action measures and attempts to deny social benefits – including education – to the undocumented. In this environment there was also a gradual federal retreat from bilingual education. Next, within the more recent context of advocacy for foreign/modern/world language education, the chapter focuses on the erasure of the legacy of bilingual education, prior research on it, and the masking of language minority learners under the label of ‘heritage language’ learners. Following that, the chapter considers the implications of scholarship that has been critical of language rights discourses in academia. This retreat from language rights is based – in part – on the recent outright rejection of the constructs of language, bilingualism and codeswitching, among others. The chapter concludes by addressing the consequences of the grand erasure of bilingual education and the retreat from language rights and their precarious implications for human rights.

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Linguicism and Racism: Two Sides of the Same Coin?

Connections between anti-immigrant activism and language discrimination have been long noted (see Leibowitz, 1969, 2016/1974). Skutnabb-Kangas (1988) and, subsequently, others affiliated with her (Phillipson, 1992; Skutnabb-Kangas et al., 1995) began using the term ‘linguicism’ to refer to language discrimination effectuated by various ideologies and structures that are used to create unequal power relations and resource distribution between groups based on language. Phillipson (1992) also linked the construct of linguistic imperialism to linguicism. He noted that linguicism may operate in concert with other forms of discrimination such as sexism, racism or classism, but argued that it differs from them in the sense that it focuses exclusively on language discrimination as the means for causing or preserving an unequal allocation of power and resources between groups. Earlier, however, Leibowitz (1969, 2016/1974) had concluded that language discrimination is often a surrogate for other forms of discrimination in educational, economic, political and social domains. Along similar lines, in my (Wiley, 2019) analysis of the interrelationship between restrictive immigration policy and restrictive language policy in California, I note that language restrictionism initially represented a soft target, or proxy, for the growing racial animosity against immigrants who were predominantly from Mexico and other Latin American countries during the 1970s and 1980s. Later, during the 1990s, the political focus shifted to include a more direct assault on immigrant and minority statuses and affirmative action. Thus, language often becomes foregrounded as a surrogate for ethno-racial discrimination; however, during times when ethno-racial hostilities are more overt in public discourse and political debates, language restrictionism tends to be backgrounded. Nevertheless, clearly there remains a strong interrelationship between them. The same case might also be made for the relationship between language discrimination and religious discrimination, when language is a key resource in the maintenance of religious group identity. This, in fact, was the case in US history during the World War I era when German-speaking ministers were persecuted for using German in German-speaking congregations (Wiley, 1998). In the current US political context, expressions of antiimmigrant and racial hostility appear to be trumping linguicism, though both coexist. Among various inhumanities, one of the primary tools of marginalization in the modern era has been racialization. Miles (1989: 76), maintains that discrimination is fueled through the ‘racialization of the processes in which … [people] … participate and the structures and institutions that result’ from it. Linguicism and related forms of discrimination, such as what Baugh (2003) terms linguistic profiling, may

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be added to the list of various types of discrimination, including those based on religion, gender, sexual orientation and social class, which result in discriminatory or exploitative practices. Collectively, Weinberg (1992) referred to these as the inhumanities. More recently, a number of scholars have contributed important studies utilizing the theoretical orientation of raciolinguistics. Smitherman (2017) credits Alim, Rickford and Ball (2016) with doing foundational work on raciolinguistics, focusing on how language is used to construct race. Alim et al. point out its importance in language pedagogy while linking it to ‘critical language awareness’ practices in the classroom as well as to some of its historical antecedents, dating to the work of Woodson (1933). Woodson was among the first to argue for the importance of black students learning about their own language (see also Wiley, 1999a). Flores and Rosa (2015) are also recognized for having popularized the term raciolinguistics in a study of appropriateness of language use in the US context. Race, language and history: The need for contextualization

Flores et al. (2021a) published an important collection utilizing raciolinguistic approaches to the study of bilingual and dual language education in US classrooms. However, in an effort to distinguish raciolinguistics from other perspectives that focus on the connection between racialization and language, and to develop a fresher theoretical perspective than past approaches, Flores et al. (2021b) emphasize that: The first component of a raciolinguistic perspective argues that ‘contemporary raciolinguistic ideologies must be situated within colonial histories that have shaped the co-naturalization of language and race as part of the project of modernity’ (Rosa & Flores, 2017: 3). In discussions of dual language education, the most common way of documenting this history is through a focus on the hegemonic imposition of English. Scholars have often connected this imposition of English to the Americanization movement that emerged within the context of World War I (Wiley, 1998). Yet, efforts to eradicate African and Indigenous languages precede that by centuries (Spring, 2016) indicating the highly racialized nature of English hegemony throughout US history that has continued into contemporary society through xenophobic and nativist movements that seek to make English the official language and ban any form of bilingual education for racialized bilinguals (Macedo, 2000 [Loc. 267–268, Kindle edition]).

There is much to agree with here, especially the need to incorporate an historical understanding of the ongoing influence of racialization in conjunction with linguistic chauvinism and their association with colonialist ideologies, as well as other subordinating practices dating

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to the colonial period and linking them together under the construct of coloniality. In doing so, however, it is important not to truncate the evolution of colonialist ideologies by using coloniality as a blanket slogan. Rather, colonialist ideologies, subordinating practices and subaltern forms of resistance need to be elaborated within the various historical contexts in which they were manifested. In this regard, the work of Mignolo (2003, 2011) and Blaut (1992, 1993, 2000) provides important examples of analyses of coloniality (see Wiley, 2020). Likewise, ideologies of whiteness and white supremacy and their relationship to ideologies of racism and linguistic chauvinism have not been fixed over time. In this regard, historical case studies – such as Menchaca and Valencia’s (1990) investigation of the connections between chauvinist ideologies and discrimination against Mexican-origin children during the 1920s and 1930s – are useful in explicating ideologies of subordination within historical contexts. Thus, it is important not to essentialize constructs such as coloniality, but to explicate them. In this regard, there is much historical work that is foundational in understanding the relationship between racial and linguistic discrimination in the US context as well as its relationship to discrimination in other global contexts (see, for example, Blanton, 2004; Heugh et al., 2022; Leibowitz, 1969; Weinberg, 1995; Mignolo, 2003; see also Wiley, 2006, 2013b, 2014, 2019, 2022). Thus, returning to Flores et al.’s (2021b) characterization of Wiley (1998) and their attempt to differentiate it from Spring’s (2016) focus on earlier examples of raciolinguistic forms of discrimination, they seemed to have missed that Wiley (1998) was a case study on the Americanization movement’s (1914–1925) association with language restrictionism and racialization and the ideologically hegemonic significance of that period for subsequent developments in US language policies. Therefore, it is useful to digress briefly to a review of my conclusions on the period’s implications regarding racialization as well as its implications for the later bilingual education movement that began in the 1960s. In that case study, I concluded that it was important to recognize that there was more than wartime xenophobia regarding language that was at work. Those of European origin were racialized during World War I; however, as noted in Wiley (1998): Tamura (1993), in an analysis of the relationship between the Englishonly movement and the anti-Japanese campaign in Hawaii between 1915 and 1940, contended: ‘The English-only effort was an integral part of the Americanization crusade. ... Underlying the crusade was the doctrine of Anglo-Saxon superiority—the conviction that American traits derived from the English, and that the future of American democracy depended upon the survival of the English language and the dominance of the Anglo-Saxon “race.”’ (p. 37) …

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Tamura (1993) [further]… observes that—at least on its surface—the attack on the Japanese American population in Hawaii had much in common with the mainland attack on German Americans. … However, despite these similarities, she contended that the English-only movement had less to do with language than with race and national origin. … [Thus,] it is only through a careful comparative analysis of the differential impact of Americanization and the imposition of English-only policies that we can understand the processes of both assimilation and exclusion. … Leibowitz (1969, 1971) demonstrates how the Englishlanguage instruction requirement and anti-foreign-language requirements masked discriminatory intentions against these groups on the basis of religion, race (defined here as a socioideological construct based on perceived physical differences between groups), and national origin, usually in contexts of intergroup political and economic competition. Americanization and English-only policies also had a significant impact on other groups, such as those of Mexican origin (see Olneck & Lazerson, 1980). Examples such as these point to the need for further cross-group comparisons regarding the impact of the imposition of English-only policies and Americanization, especially because even today it is frequently argued that such policies are in the best interests of all children. Many of the studies that we do have (see also Menchaca & Valencia, 1990; Weinberg, 1995) suggest that, despite the similarities in the rhetoric regarding the need for Anglification, English-only policies had a substantially differential impact across groups, especially when racial differences were considered significant by the dominant group. (Wiley, 1998: 235–237; italics added)

Much of the contemporary US debate over bilingual education policy also reflects institutional processes of racialization and institutional racism (Haas, 1992). Again, language politics in the US have generally correlated with racial and ethnic politics, which in turn are related to immigration politics. The criminalization of unauthorized status, however, is a fairly recent phenomenon in US history, and one which should cause considerable alarm for those concerned about the waning of human rights protections generally (Chomsky, 2014; Ngai, 2004) and the rights of undocumented children specifically (Wiley, 2013a). Despite some legal and political progress that has been made in advancing civil and human rights in recent decades, there is now growing concern about the rise of individual acts of intolerance in the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, as of 2018, had identified more than 1,000 hate groups in the US, which was more than double the number from 20 years earlier. The center also documents upsurges in hate crimes (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019). Many hate groups appear to be more emboldened after the election of President Trump in 2016. Thus, there is an urgent need to be concerned with the

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resurgence of racism and related inhumanities in the current political environment in the US – not to mention those recently occurring around the globe. In the US, racial, religious and immigrant minorities have been the primary targets of these groups. In this environment, the US has also seen an increase in racially motived violence – particularly mass shootings, such as the one that occurred in El Paso, Texas on 3 August 2019. In this case, the shooter, a self-avowed white supremacist, had specifically targeted those of Mexican origin. Shortly after the tragedy, an analysis by The New York Times noted the similarity in discourse between the shooter’s manifesto and the discourse of many influential right-wing pundits (Gynbaum et al., 2019). The commonality among them was reference to an ‘invasion’ (Peters et al., 2019). Indeed, an invasion of migrants, which allegedly must be stopped, particularly among those from Mexico and Central America, was a common theme used by President Trump and some members of his administration. The Evolution of Anti-bilingual Education Restrictive Policy, its Connections with Anti-immigrant Initiatives, and the Ongoing Influence of Right-wing ‘Philanthropy’

First, focusing on the US educational policy context, this section briefly revisits the genesis of federally funded bilingual education policy in the late 1960s, which was soon followed by systematic attacks on it beginning in the late 1970s through the early 2000s. Decades of systematic attacks ultimately resulted in a stigma and the eventual decline of most federally supported bilingual education in US education. Given that many, including me, have written extensively on this subject, this section will be limited to highlights of the past half-plus century. (For additional resources, see especially San Miguel, 2004; also, Arias & Wiley, 2015; Crawford, 1992, 2000; Moore, 2014; Mwaniki et al., 2017; Ovando & Wiley, 2007; Wiley, 1999b, 2004, 2005, 2012, 2013b, 2015; Wiley & García, 2016; Wiley & Wright, 2004; Wiley et al., 2009.) The original English-only movement and its ongoing legacy

Before jumping into the period at hand, it is necessary to recall important historical and ideological antecedents to it. The original English-only movement was part of the Americanization movement (roughly dating from 1914–1925). Again, that movement was linked to racist nativism and World War I xenophobia, and it resulted in restrictions on the use, and teaching, of ‘foreign’ immigrant languages. As noted, language restrictionism was only one dimension of antiimmigrant activism of the period. The larger political agenda included racially based exclusion, which culminated in the passage of the racially restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. Notably, former senator, and former

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Trump-appointed US Attorney General Jeff Sessions saw the 1924 Immigration Act as a model for contemporary immigration reform (see Sewer, 2017). The early 20th century was also noteworthy for the rise of ‘scientific’ racism, including IQ testing as a means for documenting white superiority, advocacy for eugenics as a means for race-betterment, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan, widespread lynching of African Americans, anti-unionism, and the Red Scare. Ethnicized Europeans were subjected to violence and publicly ostracized for speaking languages other than English. IQ testing (in English) was used to construct a racial hierarchy among those of European origin with Nordics at the top, Alpines in the middle and those of Mediterranean descent at the bottom (Wiley, 1998, 2005). Thus, as noted above, the Americanization movement of the early 20th century has ongoing relevance for contemporary racialized immigration and educational polices (see also Okrent, 2019; Weiss, 1982; Wiley, 1998). But it is noteworthy that the Americanization movement and restrictive English-only efforts only began to wane – at least on the US mainland – after the passage of the racially restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. (See also Tamura, 1994, and Haas, 1992, for a discussion of Hawai’i, where Americanization efforts persisted even longer as Asian immigrants remained racialized regardless of their proficiency in English.) The historical legacy of bilingual education in the US and the rise of federal support

Prior to the original Americanization movement, there was substantial precedent for bilingual education in US history for some languages such as German (see Toth, 1990) as well as Spanish and other languages in some parts of the country such as Texas (see Blanton, 2004). Obviously, there was also substantial precedent for language repression associated with the enslavement of Africans beginning in the colonial period and repression of the use of Native American languages, especially starting with the boarding school movement that began in the late 19th century (Weinberg, 1995; Wiley, 2013b, 2022). During World War I, however, for speakers of German and other European languages, speaking English became equated with being ‘American,’ and that ideology remained hegemonic until the mid-20th century, and – to some degree – remains hegemonic today (Wiley, 1998). In the aftermath of the xenophobia of World War I, interest in bilingual education did not strongly re-emerge until the civil rights movement of the 1960s, although some, such as George Sánchez in Texas, had advocated for it in Texas during the 1940s (Blanton, 2014). Then, during the 1960s, Cuban immigrants in Miami demonstrated effective bilingual immersion education at the Coral Way school (Pellerano & Fradd, 1998). But it was largely within the civil rights milieu of seeking a tool for promoting

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educational access and equal opportunity for language minorities within the context of school desegregation that bilingual education became of interest to federal policymakers. Just as overcoming the relationship between low educational performance, poverty and racial segregation among African Americans became a major focus of federal policymakers, so too did improving language access for language minority students, particularly those of Mexican origin. By the coming of the Johnson administration (1963– 1969), progress was being made in deracializing immigration admission criteria with the passage of the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965, and bilingual accommodations were also being made for voting and legal representation. With the passage of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), funding was provided for services deemed essential for children. It was in this context that bilingual education received federal funding. The focus on bilingual education was strengthened further with the inclusion of Title VII in the 1967 ESEA, and the Bilingual Education Act was passed in 1967 and became law in 1968 (Cerda & Hernandez, 2006; San Miguel, 2004). Federal funding was provided under the Bilingual Education Act of 1968, which mandated that schools provide bilingual education programs. Local school districts were encouraged to implement nativelanguage instruction. Thereafter, many states also enacted bilingual education statutes of their own. Given the restrictive legacy of English-only policies since World War I, however, some states first had to decriminalize the use of languages other than English in classrooms. ‘In its first year, the act provided funding for 76 Bilingual Education programs and served students who spoke 14 different languages’ (Cerda & Hernandez, 2006). Despite its auspicious start, many areas of the country were slow to respond. The San Francisco school district, for example, failed to provide any meaningful accommodations for non-English-speaking immigrant children of Chinese origin. The school district took the astounding position that it was not within its purview to teach students English if they did not already know it. The district argued that its primary responsibility was only to offer the mainstream curriculum. Ironically, this was the same position that the school district had taken in the early 1900s when the district was accused of mis-educating segregated Japanese immigrant children who did not speak English. In 1974, the US High Court heard the Lau case, Lau v. Nichols (414 US 563, 1974). Justice Douglas, writing for the majority, countered that the district’s arguments made a ‘mockery’ of public education. The Supreme Court then ruled for the plaintiffs, based on Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination in federal programs, that the San Francisco District was obligated to provide some form of English instruction to Chinese-speaking children in order to make the curriculum comprehensible. Although the court was

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agnostic on the question of which type of remedy would be appropriate, it left the door open to bilingual education as one of the appropriate means (see Wiley, 2013b, for elaboration). Based on the Lau decision, the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) began making progress in establishing guidelines, known as the Lau Remedies, which mandated that school districts take appropriate measures to teach English to children so that they could learn through the language. These victories proved to be shortlived, however, and by the late 1970s bilingual education was under attack by those who saw it as a departure from the model of Americanization that had become hegemonic in the early 20th century. Noel Epstein, for example, attacked bilingual education for being a form of ‘affirmative ethnicity’ (Epstein, 1977). With the coming of the Reagan administration (1981–1989), OCR’s attention to compliance was relaxed. Under Secretary of Education William Bennett, ‘anti-bilingual education policies became a cornerstone of the Department of Education’ (Petrovic, 2007: 242). In 1982, the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 was amended by Congress, based on Secretary of Education Terrence Bell’s opinion that the guidelines in the act were too ‘inflexible,’ and Title VII programs were given the option of using English-only instruction (Cerda & Hernandez, 2006). Republican Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana, later a vice-presidential candidate, had been a strong congressional advocate of providing funding for English ‘immersion’ as opposed to bilingual education. Thus, during this period, bilingual education ‘was underfunded in federal legislation, and largely prescribed as a remedy for English language deficits for a largely Spanish-speaking “underclass”’ (Wiley, 2007: 253). Bilingual education also became an easy target, as for an allegedly ‘failed, albeit, never fully implemented program’ (Wiley, 2007: 253; see also Crawford, 2000; May, 2014). Backlash and the birth of the contemporary English-only movement

As noted, the modern English-only movement had its origins in the early 20th century, especially with the xenophobia that accompanied World War I, but, as Davis and Dubinsky (2018: 181) have noted, the ‘trigger’ for the contemporary English-only movement (roughly from 1981 to the present) was the prior passage of the Immigration and Nationalization Act of 1965, which ended apartheid-like restrictions in immigration and that would lead to major shifts in the ethno-racial composition of the US population. The 1965 act removed the racially based quota system that had been in place since 1924. Gradually, an increasing backlash developed against immigrant minorities. In some states, such as California, the school-age populations were shifting faster than the population as a whole. Thus, in the early 1980s, language and bilingual education became soft targets for populist-oriented

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pundits and politicians to express concerns about the growing number of immigrants and their children with ‘limited’ English proficiency. In 1981, S.I. Hayakawa (1906–1992) – himself a Canadian immigrant of Japanese ancestry – a semanticist, former president of San Francisco State University, and Republican senator from California, proposed a constitutional amendment to make English the official language of the United States. Hayakawa’s effort failed, as have subsequent versions of the proposed amendment, most notably during the 104th Congress (1995–1997) led by Newt Gingrich. Thus, to strengthen his efforts, Senator Hayakawa joined with a key political activist, Dr John Tanton, in 1983. Tanton was an ophthalmologist, a proponent of population control as well as environmental causes. With Tanton’s help, US English (see www.usenglish.org) was founded. U.S. English was affiliated with the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) that had been founded a few years earlier and was one of the most influential lobbies for restrictive immigration policy. Initially, U.S. English was successful in gaining endorsements from well-known celebrities, highly respected news commentator Walter Cronkite among them. Tanton came under increased scrutiny, however, after one of his internal memos was publicly released and was seen as anti-Latino. Tanton resigned but remained active in the cause. Cronkite and others then dissociated themselves from US English (Crawford, 1992; Wiley, 2004, 2012), but the work of the organization continues. As noted, efforts to amend the federal constitution by making English the official language have thus far been unsuccessful. Beginning in the 1980s, US English and language restrictionist advocates pursued an official English state strategy, where, according to recent counts, some 31 states and 5 US territories have adopted some form of official English policy. Alaska and Hawaii, and 4 US territories, however, also have co-official languages.2 Again, US English has continued to be one of the leading groups advocating official English. Despite being unsuccessful thus far in promoting the passage of an official English law or constitutional amendment, it continues to support restrictionist agendas. During the 115th Congress (2017–2019), for example, it supported H.R. 997, ‘The English Language Act of 2017,’ and related legislation, S. 678, in the US Senate. US English also opposes statehood for Puerto Rico, where Spanish is dominant. It also supports revocation of Executive Order 13166, which was signed into law by President Clinton in 2000 shortly before he left office. This executive order was designed as an accommodation to provide translation services for those with limited English ability in order to ensure equal access for essential social and medical services (Wiley, 2012). Thus, if Clinton’s executive order were reversed, it would have a detrimental impact on the elderly and the linguistically isolated who have had little opportunity to learn or advance their abilities in using English. President Trump

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also met with officials from the organization, and in May of 2019, he proposed a merit-based system of immigration favoring highly skilled immigrants, a more stringent test of English and civics, as well as changes to disability eligibility for minorities with limited English (Kindly, 2019). State initiatives targeting language, immigration and minority status, and a few recent reversals

The passage of the federal Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986 (Public Law 99-603) added impetus to both the English-only movement and restrictionist-oriented immigration reform efforts (Davis & Dubinsky, 2018). As noted, at the state level, there was a growing backlash against bilingual education that often correlated with antiimmigrant initiatives. Table 10.1 details this interrelationship for the state of California and several other states and notes recent reversals. California’s propositions between 1986 and 1998 are particularly noteworthy because they demonstrate the proximity between restrictive language-oriented and anti-immigrant-/anti-minority-oriented restrictionist state initiatives. In the passage of Proposition 63 in 1986, languages other than English were largely soft targets, as the promotion of official English was largely seen as symbolic, without punitive consequences for speakers of other languages. Subsequent propositions, however, such as Proposition 186 in 1994, more directly targeted undocumented immigrants, including children, by seeking to exclude them from accessing social benefits, including education. Then, in 1996, Proposition 209 targeted minorities more generally by focusing on alleged reverse discrimination (Wiley, 2019). In 1998, the focus zeroed in on bilingual education beginning with the passage of Proposition 227 in California and subsequent restrictive propositions in Arizona and Massachusetts, and a failed attempt in Colorado. With these attempts at language restriction, bilingual education more clearly became a target associated with immigrant language-minority status. Although these propositions were pitched to the public in benign-sounding discourse, as illustrated by Arizona’s ‘English for the Children,’ their intent was to restrict the extent to which bilingual education could support the learning of family and community languages, particularly Spanish (Wiley, 2019). The recent reversals of restrictive policies by California’s Proposition 58 in 2016 and Massachusetts’ House Bill 4032 represent some progress, but it is noteworthy that California’s Proposition 58 occurred after it became a minority-majority state. Approximately 40% of the households in the state contain family members who speak languages other than, or in addition to, English. In addition to this demographic shift, much of the public framing of the public debate over Proposition 58 included neoliberal appeals to the desirability of ‘dual-language’

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Table 10.1  Selected state ballot propositions and related legislation (1980s to present) focused on language, immigrant and minority status Proposition or Legislation & Year

Issue and Background

Result

Impact

California Prop. 63 1986a

The ‘English Is the Official Language of California Amendment’ merely designated English to be the official language and instructed the legislature to preserve the language and defend it from diminishment.

Yes 73% No 27%

The impact was, and continues to be, largely symbolic. Opponents considered the measure unnecessary. They feared it would create social tension for those without fluency, and there was some evidence of increased community and individual tensions related to language after its passage.

California Prop. 187 1994a

The ‘Illegal Aliens Ineligible for Public Benefits Initiative’ claimed that unauthorized immigrants were a drain on taxpayers and it sought to remove the undocumented’s eligibility for benefits, including education for children.

Yes 59% No 41%

Many of Prop. 187’s measures were challenged in court and were never enacted. The most controversial measure, denying education to undocumented children, was a violation of the 1992 Plyler v. Doe decision of the US Supreme Court.

California Prop. 209 1996a

The ‘California Civil Rights Initiative’ was indented as civil rights for the whites and males who were alleged to be victims of reverse discrimination. The case had relevance for minority students in higher education.

Yes 55% No 45%

Major features of the law were upheld in several major court cases. Its direct impact on university admissions has been unclear given major demographic shifts that have occurred in California’s overall population.

California Prop. 227 1998a

The ‘English in Public Schools’ initiative was sponsored by California businessperson Ron Unz, to restrict multiyear transitional bilingual education in favor of one year of ‘English Immersion.’ The measure made it difficult for language minority parents to apply for ‘waivers’ from English-only instruction, i.e. so-called ‘English Immersion.’

Yes 61% No 39%

The initiative restricted parental choice and professional expertise and reduced children’s exposure to academic content. It resulted in a dramatic reduction of the number of students who could receive BLE or duallanguage education and set the stage for initiatives in Arizona, Massachusetts and Colorado.

Arizona Prop. 203 2000b

The ‘English for the Children’ initiative was modeled on California’s Prop. 227 and sponsored by Ron Unz to restrict transitional bilingual education (TBE) and replace it with ‘English Immersion.’

Yes 63% No 37%

The impact was similar to California’s experience, except that language minority children were subsequently segregated by mandatory ESL ‘pull out’ classes. Recently, some restrictions have been eased.

Massachusetts Question 2 2002c

The ‘Massachusetts English in Public Schools’ initiative was sponsored by California businessperson Ron Unz, to restrict multi-year TBE in favor of one year of ‘English Immersion.’

Yes 61% No 39%

The impact was similar to California’s experience in that it limited parental choice and professional judgement by restricting transitional bilingual education (TBE). (Continued)

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Proposition or Legislation & Year

Issue and Background

Result

Impact

Colorado Amendment 31 2002d

The ‘Colorado English Language Education’ initiative was also sponsored by Unz and was largely modeled on Proposition 227.

No 56% Yes 44%

The measure failed. There has been speculation that advertising suggesting greater integration if the measure passed played on white voter fears of increased integration of classrooms if it were enacted.

California Prop. 58 2016a

Reversed Prop. 227 by ending restrictions on TBE, dual-language instruction and other approaches, while encouraging multilingualism for all students.

Yes 74% No 26%

Essentially nullified Prop. 227. Public school systems have more options regarding how to teach English. Language minorities have the option for bilingual education, dualimmersion, or instruction in English. English-dominant students also have the option to learn in dual-language programs.

Massachusetts House Bill 4032 2017e

Like California’s reversal on Prop. 227, House Bill 4032 sought to end restrictions on TBE, dual-language instruction, and other approaches.

House, Yes 155–1 Senate Yes (unanimous)

Like Question 2, House Bill 4032 required English to be taught in English classes in public schools but allows for a variety of approaches, including bilingual education and dual-language instruction.

Wiley (2019). Moore et al. (2014). c Ballotpedia (2002). d Sailor (5 November 2002). e Ballotpedia (2017). a

b

instruction for all and the pragmatic desirability of allowing schools more flexibility in choosing instructional approaches. Thus, a return to bilingual education was not the singular focus, and shortages of qualified bilingual teachers, following years of restriction, presents a major obstacle to realizing its potential (Wiley, 2019). The influence of ‘philanthropy’ in promoting language and immigration restrictions

The importance of English acquisition by language minorities has always been understood and supported by advocates of bilingual education. Nevertheless, the promotion of official English and English-only agendas has long presented bilingual education and the use of other languages in the US as an attempt to usurp English. Language restrictionists have often presented language minorities with an unnecessary, forced choice between English and their home/community languages. Since immigrants and other language minorities generally understand the importance of

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learning English, what is the larger function of the attack on bilingual education? Again, as noted, it has represented a soft target for more direct attacks on immigrants and minorities themselves, a fact that they have well understood (Leibowitz, 1969, 2016/1974). Thus, the attack on language minority bilingual education must be considered in the larger context of anti-immigrant and restrictive minorities politics. At least since the late 1970s and early 1980s, there has been a considerable degree of coordination among English-only and antiimmigrant activists. What has more recently come to light, however, is the role of ‘philanthropy’ from a wealthy donor with deep ideological agendas, and her role in helping to fund disparate ‘advocacy’ groups. Recent investigative reporting (Kulish & McIntire, 2019), for example, has detailed the strong connections between an array of English-only and anti-immigrant organizations that have been instrumental in lobbying Congress and mobilizing support for both reactionary language and immigration policies. As will be shown, these organizations have also had strong connections with prominent legislators, as well as a key aide to the Trump administration. These organizations also have two important commonalities: (1) they were all founded by the late Dr John Tanton (February 23, 1934 – July 16, 2019) and (2) with the help of a wealthy donor, Cordelia Scaife May. Over the course of several decades Dr Tanton received a substantial amount of funding from the endowment of the Mellon heiress Cordelia May (September 24, 1928 – January 26, 2005). As one of the wealthiest women in the United States, Mrs May endorsed and donated to several major causes, including environmentalism and population control. Her interest in population control, however, also led her to philanthropic support for restrictionist immigration policies for the US. Additionally, she lent support to efforts to make English the official language of the US. Upon her death in 2005, she left a major portion of her estate to the Colcom Foundation. According to Kulish and McIntire (2019), the organization’s major funding activity has focused on immigration restriction (see Table 10.2). The development of Cordelia May’s core beliefs is worth a closer look. According to Kulish and McIntire (2019), Mrs May believed that the modern welfare state encourages overpopulation and ecological devastation. Given these views, she gradually developed some relationships with individuals who were also concerned about overpopulation. Some, however, also had racist views, which her own opinions began to reflect. Although she received some criticism from family members for these views, Mrs May doubled down in her defense of them. Writing to a cousin, according to The New York Times, she responded with concerns about ‘… Filipinos “pouring into Hawaii” and “Orientals and Indians” sneaking across “long stretches of unmanned border” with Canada’ and ‘She compared medical sciences’ success in reducing infant mortality rates to veterinarians prolonging the lives “of useless cattle”’ (Kulish & McIntire, 2019: 15).

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Table 10.2  Foundations and organizations with connections to John Tanton receiving funding by Cordelia May Foundations Colcom Foundation (Founded by Mrs May who provided more than $150 million through this foundation to groups connected to John Tanton, starting with FAIR in the 1970s.) US Inc. (Founded by John Tanton in 1982 as a funding conduit for funding various anti-immigrant and English-only oriented organizations. It has received more than $17 million from the Colcom Foundation.) Organizations Founded by John Tanton Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR)a b U.S. English b American Immigration Control Foundation a Center for Immigration Studies a Californians for Population Stabilization a b The Social Control Press b American Border Control a ProEnglish a b California Coalition for Immigration Reform b Numbers USA a b Project USAb Funding Sources: a = Colcom Foundation; b = US Inc. (Summary based on Kulish & McIntire, 2019: 15)

In the late 1970s, Mrs May met Dr Tanton, the ophthalmologist– environmentalist who, like her, was concerned about population control. Tanton also ‘had worked with Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club, and he was the national president of Zero Population Growth in the 1970s. As the Baby Boom ebbed, he turned his attention to curbing immigration’ (Kulish & McIntire, 2019: 14). In 1978, he wrote a proposal to Cordelia May, who provided some of the initial funding for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, FAIR, which has become a very politically influential champion of immigration restriction with important Washington political connections. According to Kulish and McIntire (2019), some of FAIR’s early policy goals were, decades later, reflected in proposals pursued by the Trump administration. These, for example, not only called for an end to illegal immigration but also for a sharp reduction in legal immigration. Early on, FAIR also advocated for increased funding and staffing for the Border Patrol to police the southern frontier. It campaigned against accepting Cuban refugees and strove to restrict public benefits for undocumented immigrants (Kulish & McIntire, 2019: 15). The Trump administration not only moved this agenda forward with reductions in refugee admissions but also opposed family reunifications as future policy. The move to reduce public benefits was also begun by the Trump administration, and school administrators braced themselves for possible reductions in the lunch subsidies provided to poor immigrant school children (Ujifusa, 2019). Refugee admissions were at historic lows, having dropped to just 18,000 per year for FY2020, the lowest number since 1980 (Krogstad, 2019).

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According to Kulish and McIntire (2019), Mrs May played an active role in funding US English, FAIR, and a large array of organizations including Numbers USA, which promoted a similar agenda for immigration restriction (see Table 10.2). Some organizations, such as the Center for Immigration Studies, broke off from FAIR. With Mrs May’s support, Tanton ‘continued founding or fostering new groups’ (2019: 15). Tanton’s approach was also strategic because ‘“it allowed his creations to meet the I.R.S.’s so-called public support test,” which prevents charities from relying too heavily on a single donor’ (2019: 15). Moreover, the large number of groups created by Tanton with Mrs May’s support over four decades ‘played an important role in the success of the anti-immigration movement by giving the appearance of broad-based support’ through sending their representatives ‘to appear before Congress, talk to journalists, and provide briefs in lawsuits without disclosing their common origins and funding’ (2019: 15). The smokescreen of broad-based support extended to promoting ballot measures such as Arizona’s controversial 1988 ballot measure that required all business to be conducted in English, which was subsequently rejected by the US Supreme Court. When Tanton ‘had trouble gettinggrass-roots support … he turned to Mrs May to pay canvassers’ (2019: 15). Tanton increasingly was accused of ‘consorting with racists,’ and ultimately got pushed to the sidelines of much of the public debate, but Mrs May remained loyal to him and, at age 68, she founded Colcom, which has continued to promote her goals since her death in 2005. Her agenda has attracted important political figures such as Jeff Sessions, ‘whose office was an unofficial Capitol Hill headquarters for the restrictionist movement’ (2019: 15). Sessions had been among the strongest proponents of restricting immigration. His initial concerns focused on George Bush’s attempts to pass a compromise immigration reform bill. Kulish and McIntire (2019) conclude that ‘her money and activism seeded the political landscape for Mr Trump’s nativist policies as he argues that “the country is full,” claims Mexicans are “dirty” and “dangerous,” and that “immigrants are stealing jobs”’ (2019: 15). Connections with members of the Trump administration

In addition to the similarity of their ideological and policy orientations, there have been direct connections between some of the Trump administration’s staff and the organizations founded by Tanton with May’s support. In addition to Jeff Sessions, the former US Senator and former US Attorney General, others have had connections (see Figure 10.1). The meteoric rise of Stephen Miller as President Trump’s top advisor on immigration policy, in particular, helps to demonstrate the connection between the restrictionist linguistic and immigrant agendas. Stephen Miller was among the youngest advisors on immigrant

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Figure 10.1  Cordelia May-sponsored immigration restrictionist organizations, the funding provided, and Trump administration affiliates (based on Kulish & McIntire, 2019: 14)

issues. He was born in 1985 and raised in multi-ethnic Santa Monica, California, where he attended high school. According to DeParle (2019), while in high school, he developed a reputation for taking controversial public stances on language and immigration issues. Initially, Miller’s main complaints were related to what he saw as the failures of assimilation. ‘Writing in the local … [paper] …, he complained that “a number of students lacked basic English skills,” and in his yearbook he quoted Theodore Roosevelt: “There can be no fifty-fifty Americans”’ (DeParle, 2019: 20). His views were parodied in his school’s newspaper, but some of his Latino classmates felt personally attacked by his antics, and he broke off an acquaintance with one, Jason Islas, who said, ‘Mr. Miller told him he was ending their friendship for reasons that

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included “my Latino heritage,”’ and he added that he thought Miller was a ‘racist’ (DeParle, 2019: 20). In college at Duke University, Miller defended white athletes who were accused of raping a black stripper. The case was later dropped but, prior to that, Miller appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor charging that the university administration had merely assumed the players to be guilty because of their white privilege. He demanded that the university president be fired. Following graduation from Duke, he went to Washington ‘to do battle with the left,’ landing positions, first with Michele Bachmann, and later with then Senator Jeff Sessions (DeParle, 2019: 20–21). Miller’s larger goal, however, has been to overturn the deracialized policies that began with President Johnson’s immigration reforms in 1965 (see Chomsky, 2014 and Ngai, 2004, regarding the implications of the 1965 reforms and subsequent resistance). Recall that for Sessions, the model for contemporary immigration reform would be a return to the racially restrictive 1924 Immigration Act. While working with Sessions, Miller took the view that conservatives did not need to pander for Latino and minority votes. Rather, they should: ‘Mobilize the white workingclass base, among whom turnout had fallen’ (DeParle, 2019: 21). A second characteristic of ‘Mr. Miller’s efforts was his symbiotic relationship with conservative media, especially on-line publications like Breitbart News’ (DeParle, 2019: 20). An additional element of Miller’s strategy has ‘involved his alliance with outside groups, especially three that Dr. Tanton helped create and that received millions of dollars from Mrs. May’s foundation…’ (DeParle, 2019: 21). Again, these organizations have been effective in lobbying Congress for restrictive immigration policies and share a common origin with English-only organizations, which were also founded by Tanton and funded by May (see Table 10.2 and Figure 10.1). In his new position in the Trump administration, Miller came to occupy ‘… a large West Wing office and has influence on virtually every element of immigration policy, from the words the president uses to the regulations he promulgates … [as] a speech-writer, policy architect, personal director, legislative aide, spokesperson and strategist.’ Indeed, ‘at every step he pushes for the hardest line…’ on such issues as removing protections for Dreamers, reducing refugee admissions, and penalizing green card holders who receive aid (DeParle, 2019: 20). Thus, in his new position, Miller was able to implement the anti-immigrant agenda. Contemporary Mainstream Language Advocacy, the Erasure of the Legacy of Bilingual Education and ‘Heritage’ Language Learners as a Resource

In the public education sphere, with the passage of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), states were mandated to measure every student’s progress in reading (in English) and math every year from grades 3 to 8,

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and at least once between grades 10 and 12. In reference to bilingual education programs, the act required that ‘all teachers teaching in Bilingual Education programs be fluent in English and any other language used in the classroom’ (Cerda & Hernandez, 2006). It also gave ‘parents the choice to enroll their children in a Bilingual Education program…’ but placed ‘a three year “time-limit” on those programs. After a student …[had]… been in school for three consecutive years, English-only instruction would “commence, regardless of the student’s English-speaking ability”’ (Cerda & Hernandez, 2006). Recall that, by this time, several states (see Table 10.1) had already moved to restrict bilingual education with the emphasis on English. Now, NCLB had begun moving in a similar direction by restricting bilingual education to three years. More dramatically, however, the grand erasure of federal bilingual education was facilitated by the purging of bilingual education from federal parlance. As Petrovic notes: Despite President George W. Bush’s promise of smaller government, the passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, in 2002, has ushered in unprecedented federal involvement in education policy. The ‘term bilingual’ has been purged from federal vocabulary. For example, the Bilingual Education Act … [was] … replaced with the ‘Language Instruction for Limited English Proficient and Immigrant Students provision (Title III) of the Act. Similarly, the Office of Bilingual Education and Language Minority Affairs has been replaced with the Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students. While the act … [permitted] … bilingual education, a number of schizophrenic provisions and requirements … [made] … it difficult to pursue. The requirements, for example, set a double-standard that allows English language learners to pursue bilingualism as a legitimate goal only when sufficient numbers of bilingual students share this goal. (Petrovic, 2007: 243, italics added) The recent ‘discovery’ of the benefits of bilingualism and heritage learners as a ‘resource’ in language education

In recent years, there have been positive developments in language advocacy for promoting the learning of languages other than English. Generally, however, this advocacy has often occurred without much reference to federally funded bilingual education and language minority bilingual learners to such an extent that, if one had only recently arrived on the US language policy scene, one might assume that the efficacy of instruction in languages other than English and the benefits of bilingualism and dual-language education had only recently been discovered. In this environment, language minority ‘bilingual’ learners generally have had little visibility in language advocacy discussions,

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unless they are depicted as ‘heritage’ language learners, or – if they are young children – as ‘emergent’ bilinguals (see National Education Policy Center, 2019). The embrace of heritage learners by language advocates, however, often masks the identities of language minority bilinguals. Brecht and Ingold’s (2002) endorsement of heritage learners as a ‘resource’ for promoting language learning in US education policy more broadly is illustrative of this: The United States has an unprecedented need for individuals with highly developed language competencies not only in English, our societal language, but also in many other languages. In fact, the need for individuals with proficiency in languages other than English for use in social, economic, diplomatic, and geopolitical arenas has never been higher …. Even before the events of September 11, 2001, congressional hearings had begun to document a shortage of professionals with the language proficiencies required to carry out a wide range of federal government activities…. There exists, however, a largely untapped reservoir of linguistic competence in this country, namely heritage language speakers— the millions of indigenous, immigrant, and refugee individuals who are proficient in English and also have skills in other languages that were developed at home, in schools, in their countries of origin, or in language programs provided by their communities in the United States. (Brecht & Ingold, 2002: 2; italics added)

Brecht and Ingold (2002) continue by making several important criticisms of US educational policy and its system of ‘foreign’ language education but without any reference to federally funded language minority bilingual education programs: The U.S. education system has generally been expected to address the nation’s language needs. Yet relatively few U.S. students receive longterm, articulated instruction in any foreign language in their pre-K-12 education. At the university level, the number of students graduating with professional-level bilingual skills is minimal. In many less commonly taught languages, university programs produce only handfuls of speakers with any proficiency at all. (Brecht & Ingold, 2002: 2)

Their assessment notably fails to mention that many of the ‘heritage’ students have also been labeled as ‘English learners’ under NCLB, many of whom are, more accurately, language minority students who did not fully develop their heritage languages because they were denied access to bilingual education through restrictive state initiatives such as those in California, Arizona and Massachusetts, or because they failed to learn their family and community languages as a result of the demise of federal support for bilingual education when it was largely rendered invisible or erased under NCLB.

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The portrayal of heritage languages and their speakers as a ‘resource’ by Brecht and Ingold (2002), as well as by many others, represents a positive step when contrasted with the history of language restrictionism in the US and the ideology of English-only. Nevertheless, it also suggests an appropriation of the language-asresource orientation as originally put forward by Ruiz (1984). Ruiz saw language-as-a-resource as an alternative to orientations that depicted language as a problem or as a right. He concluded that language-asresource arguments would have greater resonance and be less likely to cause conflict than language-as-right claims within the context of US language policy debates, which typically focus on language deficiencies and see diversity as a problem. Thus, it is important to underscore that for Ruiz, the emphasis on language-as-resource was a strategy for promoting language diversity rather than a wholesale rejection of rights-based claims. Ruiz’s position has been criticized by some scholars (see, for example, Petrovic, 2005 and Ricento, 2005) because it lends itself to a neoliberalist ideological framing and prescriptions for language policy. The question of whether the language-as-resource orientation represents a wholesale capitulation to neoliberalism, or whether it merely has been appropriated by some of its neoliberal proponents of language education, is worthy of further consideration. As Rumbaut (2009) notes, the language-as-resource position does resonate with economic arguments within the context of globalization; nevertheless, it also has cultural implications for families outside neoliberalist framing: [A] foreign language represents a scarce resource in a global economy, [and] immigrants’ efforts to maintain that part of their cultural heritage and to pass it on to their children certainly seem worth supporting. Indeed, the United States finds itself enmeshed in global economic competition … [t]he second generation, now growing up in many American cities, could fulfill such a need. (Rumbaut, 2009: 64) Demographic realities resulting from the failure to promote bilingual education

In fact, demographic data do provide a compelling demonstration of the number of potential heritage learners in the general population (Table 10.3). These data, however, are also suggestive of the impact of restrictive bilingual education policy since, it may be assumed, many of these children are language minority students who have not had access to bilingual education. Table 10.4 demonstrates that in selected states with large populations of ‘heritage’ learners, many of these learners lacked the opportunity to study their heritage language, even as a ‘foreign’ language. Given that foreign languages classes include both

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Table 10.3  Languages other than English spoken in homes of school-age children Languages Most Commonly Spoken in the Home, 5–18 year olds, 2007–2011, without subgroups Language Group

Raw Number

Percentage of 5–18 year olds

1. Spanish

8,983,660

15.4%

2. Chinese

405,379

0.7%

3. Hindi

346,293

0.6%

4. French

340,424

0.6%

5. Vietnamese

254,601

0.4%

6. German

166,398

0.3%

7. Arabic

183,380

0.3%

8. Korean

181,254

0.3%

9. Tagalog

159,158

0.3%

10. Russian

133,356

0.2%

Analysis by Fee, Rhodes & Wiley (2014). Public-Use Microdata Series Ruggles et al. (2010).

mainstream foreign language learners and language minority students, the data clearly indicate that many presumed ‘heritage’ learners have not pursued, or been able to pursue, studying their home/community languages, even as if it were a foreign language (see Fee et al., 2014; Wiley & Bhalla, 2017). Similarly, in an interview with Beatriz Arias in an article entitled ‘Who “Gets” to Be Bilingual?’ (National Education Policy Center, 2019), the National Education Policy Center has noted that even as many states now adopt the popular California’s Seal of Biliteracy, which is added to diplomas to demonstrate the value of bilingualism, language minorities have been excluded: Yet as the Seal has spread … a recent study suggests the program may have strayed from its equity-based origins in that it privileges native English speakers. The study found that students of color and students from low-income families are less likely to participate than students who are white and/or from higher income families. (National Education Policy Center, 2019: 1)

The national and individual implications of language loss are evident and it continues to be a theme of recent influential policy documents – again, however, typically without reference to the legacy of bilingual education. A position paper by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Language Learning (2018), for example, has received considerable attention. In 2014, a bipartisan congressional group requested a study on the need for increased capacity in the teaching of languages for the US. The commission’s work commenced in

539,183

30,095

60,206

3,618

Spanish

Russian

Chinese

Japanese

1,824

6,919

2,790

559,432

116,236

10,483

ACTFL 2007–2008 enrollment data 5,736

1,568

7,323

5,171

624,730

85,404

999

1,604

74

336,522

60,613

7,897

ACTFL 2007–2008 enrollment data

Florida Youth in homes where language is spoken 2005–2009

3,068

18,672

2,562

1,551,262

9,019

10,350

Youth in homes where language is spoken 2005–2009

2,169

1,449

563

746,943

79,163

21,037

ACTFL 2007–2008 enrollment data

Texas

17,382

134,431

23,638

2,523,511

19,107

11,061

14,748

12,710

943

617,871

120,960

16,202

ACTFL 2007–2008 enrollment data

California Youth in homes where language is spoken 2005–2009

Source: Adapted from Ruggles et al., 2010, and ACTFL Student Enrollment Date. 2007–2008. ACTFL 2010: cited in Fee, Rhodes & Wiley 2014. p. 17

9,876

43,609

French

Language

German

Youth in homes where language is spoken 2005–2009

New York

Table 10.4  Home languages versus languages taught in school in selected states among 5–18 year-olds

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2015 and was published in early 2017. In positive terms, the commission set forth generally positive and inclusive goals to create: a national strategy to improve access to as many languages as possible for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background— that is, to value language education as a persistent national need similar to education in math or English, and to ensure that a useful level of proficiency is within every student’s reach. As children prove especially receptive to language education—they spend much of their time in educational settings and can develop language skills gradually throughout their lives—the Commission believes that instruction should begin as early in life as possible. Its primary goal, therefore, is for every school in the nation to offer meaningful instruction in world languages as part of their standard curricula. (Commission on Language Learning, 2017: viii)

On the positive side, this position represents a reversal of mainstream US educational policy over the past century. Again, recalling the xenophobic World War I era, which overlapped with the period of the Americanization movement (1914–1925), ‘foreign’ language teaching was deliberately restricted in the elementary grades specifically so that children would lose their native languages and acquire only English. Once children had lost their native or home/community language, it was assumed that it would be ‘safe’ for them to learn it as a ‘foreign’ language. The strategy assumed that young children were vulnerable to indoctrination in foreign or un-American ideas, but older children who had already had early education through English-only schooling would be less vulnerable (Wiley, 1998). In explaining the need for a shift in US educational language policy, however, the commission first framed its argument in neoliberal discourse, emphasizing language as a resource for the US in a world of increasing globalization while also appealing to the cognitive benefits of multilingualism: •

•

The ability to understand, speak, read, and write in world languages, in addition to English, is critical to success in business, research, and international relations in the 21st century. The United States needs more people to speak languages other than English in order to provide social and legal services for a changing population. The study of a second language has been linked to improved learning outcomes in other subjects, enhanced cognitive ability, and the development of empathy and effective interpretive skills. The use of a second language has been linked to a delay in certain manifestations of aging. The United States lags behind most nations of the world, including European nations and China, in the percentage of its citizens who have some knowledge of a second language. (Commission on Language Learning, 2017: viii)

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The commission also emphasized the need to improve linguistic access ‘for people of every region, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background’ (Commission on Language Learning, 2017: viii) and put considerable emphasis on ‘heritage’ learners and Native Americans. In specific reference to these groups, the commission recommends to: • • • • • •

Support heritage languages already spoken in the United States, and help these languages persist from one generation to the next. Encourage heritage language speakers to pursue further instruction in their heritage languages. Provide more language learning opportunities for heritage speakers in classroom or school settings. Expand efforts to create college and university curricula designed specifically for heritage speakers and to offer course credit for proficiency in a heritage language. Provide targeted support and programming for Native American languages as defined in the Native American Languages Act. Increase support for Native American languages being used as primary languages of education, and for the development of curricula and education materials for such programs. Provide opportunities for Native Americans and others to study Native American languages in English-based schools with appropriate curricula and materials. (Commission on Language Learning, 2017: x)

Overall, these recommendations can be taken as positive. What is missing in the position paper, however, is that these steps are largely necessary, again, because of the legacies of Americanization, English-only, and language restriction against federal bilingual education, as well as the attempts to eradicate Native American languages during the boarding school era, particularly between 1879 and 1928 (Adams, 1995). Also missing are references to the legacy of research demonstrating the efficacy of bilingual education. Rather, the commission cites more recent research on the cognitive benefits of bilingualism (e.g. Bialystok & Viswanathan, 2009), and some subsequent research on the effectiveness of ‘dual-language’ education (e.g. Rand, 2015). Again, there is no reference to the legacy of decades of research on Title VII bilingual education (see, for example, Genesee et al., 2005, for a summary; also, Ramírez, 1992; Thomas & Collier, 2002). To conclude this section, although language advocates have recently taken a more inclusive stand to language education and the promotion of bilingualism, and they have embraced ‘dual-language’ education, the legacy of bilingual education and its research base are generally missing in policy discussions. Thus, those advocating for the teaching of languages other than English have often taken awkward or peculiar stances toward language minorities who already have linguistic resources in languages other than, or in addition to, English. The promotion

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of ‘modern,’ ‘international,’ or ‘world’ languages does not have an explicit focus on these students, unless they are positioned as ‘heritage’ learners, a ‘resource’ to be tapped to meet national needs in an era of globalization. Defending Language Rights: A Retreat Inside the Academy

Within academia, advocacy for language rights and strong forms of bilingual education – namely, those who support bilingualism and biliteracy – remains strong through the efforts of many scholars, including many of those cited herein. Simultaneously, however, there has also been a strategic shift in their defense by some scholars, who have been interested in purging the vestiges of Eurocentrism and colonialism in the field of language policy and planning, as well as shifting the theoretical and empirical focuses of inquiry. Some of these critiques have been useful in providing historical analyses of traditional language planning as activities associated with, or in the service of, nation-building, colonialism, proselytizing or other activities designed to engineer linguistic change, or conformity in the interest of the state, religion, colonial power or commercial interests (see, for example, Mignolo, 2003, 2011) as well as recent literature embracing a sociolinguistics of the global south (see Heugh et al., 2022; Wiley, 2022). Other critiques have also been useful, especially when they focus on those language planning activities which have been conducted without regard to, or in an overt attempt to alter, the linguistic ecologies upon which they have had an impact (for example, Makoni & Mashiri, 2007, elaborated on below). Some of the literature critiquing language rights discourses, however, often seems to have been put forward without regard for real-world cases of language discrimination or the implications of failing to endorse language rights for those victimized by discrimination. In critiquing language planning and language planners, it is important to note that many of those involved in what may be construed as language planning may, or may not, be professional linguists. In this regard, Weinstein (1979, 1983) coined the term ‘language strategists,’ to denote the assortment of actors who have been involved in language planning. Language strategists include missionaries, commercial dictionary writers, publishers and printers, political figures, or even heads of state – people interested in making specific choices about language and promoting language change. Their intentions can sometimes be noble (for example, to advance societal literacy by standardizing vernaculars), or sometimes ignoble, i.e. using language planning to advance colonial power. Thus, there is room for caution when interpreting broad swipes of criticism that are made at ‘linguists,’

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‘sociolinguists,’ or language planning and policy as a field, without qualifying who specifically is being critiqued or what the specific concerns are. Critiques of the language rights discourses or orientations are not particularly new. If we harken back again to Ruiz (1984), it is important to underscore that his preference for a language-as-resource – rather than a language-as-right – orientation was a strategy and not a wholesale rejection of rights claims. More recently, however, as May (2012, 2018) has noted, there has been a tendency for some scholars (e.g. Edwards 2001, 2006, 2010; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; as well as Blommaert, 2010; Pennycook, 2010; and Wee, 2010) to criticize language rights perspectives more directly and to treat them as if they were ‘monolithic’ (2018: 22). The critiques themselves are also not monolithic but, taken as a whole, they raise concerns regarding their implications for where this body of scholarship stands in terms of dealing with real-world cases of language discrimination. Language without rights

Wee (2010), for example, has provided an important and nuanced critique on largely philosophical and legal grounds of what he considers are the limitations of language rights-based approaches. First, Wee (2010) questions whether language rights are appropriately constructed as belonging to individuals, groups or both. He contends that a distinction needs to be made: … between different kinds of language rights, since the kinds of language rights that individuals and groups can properly lay claim to are different in character. Rights that accrue to individuals on the basis of their status as persons are more likely to be inalienable and transferrable across social and geographical boundaries, making these more relevant … in dealing with the challenges posed by migration and global mobility. In contrast, rights that accrue to groups are only available to those individuals who are members of the group. (Wee, 2010: 7)

Among some of the issues Wee raises is the concern that a rightsbased approach imposes boundaries not only between language communities, but for members within those communities. Those who are members of identifiable linguistic minority groups might be coerced into remaining within their communities rather than being able to linguistically migrate out of them. He further suggests that the granting of rights to one group can be a zero-sum game in that it may subtract from the rights of others, and he worries that various language groups may thus be pitted against one another or allocated differential statuses in a hierarchy of differential rights.

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Wee (2010) also distinguishes rights issues that are interlingual, or between languages, and those that are intralingual, or within them. He cites examples of dialects that are contact varieties of languages in postcolonial contexts, such as Singlish and Ebonics, and questions whether in such cases there is an identifiably stable variety that can be the object of rights-based claims. Given the case of language contact and rapid change in a world of ‘Englishes,’ he questions which varieties speakers should be laying claim to. Wee (2010) also takes aim at essentialized views of languages which sees them as distinct, identifiable entities. Thus, as Bale (2015: 74) notes, for Wee, ‘language rights are based on essentialized notions of language.’ Wee’s preference is for locating language in sociocultural practices. Locating language therein, however, leads him to seeing the inevitability of language discrimination since communication relies on language: There will always be cases of discrimination simply as a consequence of human interaction and communication, even within the same variety… which is… largely due to the fact that knowledge of language is a function of the kinds of social interactions the individual participates in, and no individual ever participates in all existing social practices. There will always be social practices that some individuals are excluded from … . What this means is that there is no realistic state of affairs where linguistic discrimination can be eliminated once individuals and communities are enlightened. (Wee, 2010: 92)

As Bale observes: By restricting his discussion to cultural domains, Wee does not consider the intersection of cultural practices and social structures. This analytical separation ultimately exonerates those social structures and the role they play in constructing social difference; Wee is thus able to argue that it is the claims of minoritized language groups to specific language rights that further social tension, not the social structures and practices that marginalize those groups in the first instance. (Bale, 2015: 74)

Wee (2018) continues his critique of language rights discourses by continuing to focus largely on what he considers their inherit essentialism. Focusing on language as a unique form of cultural practice, he reckons that: unlike other cultural practices, language is particularly illiberal, since in any social activity some choice of code must be made, thus simultaneously privileging some groups of speakers and marginalizing others. This means that rather than treating language as a practice that can or should be enshrined as a right, it should instead be consistently treated as a target for debates and discussion with non-linguistic goods. (Wee, 2018: 57, italics added)

The Grand Erasure: Whatever Happened to Bilingual Education?  277

Certainly, all societies are inherently multilingual; thus, language policies which privilege some languages or language varieties, especially those that are imposed by the state or powerful institutions, must be scrutinized for their disparate impacts, particularly on minoritized speakers and groups. Wee (2018), following Ford (2005: 90), however, concludes that ‘a rights discourse encourages essentialism by imposing sharp and rigid boundaries on cultural practices that are fundamentally at odds with their more fluid and dynamic nature… [which] … confines and restricts “behavior expression and identity to precisely the degree to which it protects them”’ (Wee, 2018: 55). It is important, however, to note that the need for language rights typically results from the imposition of language boundaries and linguistic statuses that are ascribed by the state and powerful institutions that promote institutional racism (Haas, 1992). Thus, attacking scholars who are language rights advocates or the fields of sociolinguistics and linguistics broadly, misses – or dismisses – the need for strategic scholarly advocacy in defense of the imposed essentialism of linguistic and racialized status ascription inherent in discriminatory social practices, including language discrimination. It essentially turns the problem of institutional racism on its head by blaming scholar advocates for creating the problems they are attempting to address. In a rejoinder to Wee (2018), May (2018: 65), has insightfully noted that ‘ongoing deconstruction and dismissal of LR [language rights], for all its intellectual merits, has nonetheless specific and deleterious sociopolitical and educational consequences. Most notably, it reinforces or entrenches majoritarian language ideologies and related policy … [which] go largely … unexamined.’ May (2018: 67) concludes that this stance results in a ‘tacit acceptance of – and related failure to critique – the wider sociohistorical and sociopolitical contexts that often necessitate the political mobilization of linguistic minorities in the first place.’ In reflecting on the rise of new terminologies that help to illuminate individual agency and linguistic hybridity, or what Wee (2018: 59) calls multilingual ‘fluidity,’ Wee applauds the ‘shift away from a “totalizing” sense of language’ as represented by the proliferation of terminologies such as ‘translanguaging’ (García, 2009), ‘polylanguaging’ (Jørgensen, 2008), ‘metrolingualism’ (Pennycook & Otsuji, 2015), ‘transidiomaticy’ (Jacquemet, 2005) and ‘translingual practices’ (Canagarajah, 2013). It is not clear, however, how this proliferation of newly overarching terminologies, along with the rejection of more traditional constructs such as language, bilingualism, codeswitching, register, social and regional dialects, and so forth, is advancing clarity in research regarding the linguistic phenomena being described, or how it will contribute to defending minoritized speakers in cases of linguistic discrimination or those needing linguistic accommodations in education or other social contexts.

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In response to these trends, May (2018: 68), is sympathetic to the attempts by critical scholars to counterbalance the ‘politics of linguistic determinism’; however, he also chooses to problematize the conclusion that so-called ‘transgressive translanguaging, and the related demolishing of language boundaries, is by definition both agentic and emancipatory’ (2018: 68). Similar to Bale’s (2015) critique of Wee’s stance, May (2018: 68) – I believe correctly – concludes that this new focus ‘over-emphasizes, or simply ignores the ongoing impact of structural constraints, particularly on the already most (linguistically) marginalized.’ Other critiques of language rights: Disinventing and reconstituting language

Language rights, or primarily language rights ‘discourses,’ have also been critiqued by a number of other postmodern and postcolonial scholars. Makoni and Pennycook’s (2007) project of disinventing and reconstituting language provides a notable example. While postmodern and postcolonial critiques tend to converge in their volume, it is informative to take a closer look at the postcolonial side of these critiques and particularly how it implicates the way language planning has been conducted within the colonial project. Much of colonial language planning, particularly in Africa, was carried out by what Weinstein (1979, 1983) would have called language strategists, that is, those who use language policy to promote various political, social, religious and commercial agendas. In reviewing the history of language planning within colonial and postcolonial contexts, Makoni and Mashiri (2007: 63) provide important insights into the ‘lack of success of language planning policies in Africa,’ which they see as ‘not due to an unwillingness on the part of African governments to implement language polices but … due to a theoretical tendency to treat African languages as if they were real objects.’ Much of their focus is on how various language strategists have constructed, or invented, African languages through language planning, with results that are at odds with the linguistic ecologies in which they were imposed by outsiders. Thus, following Yngve (1996), and others, they are skeptical that languages, as constructed in colonial Africa, are entities in the real world and, thus, reject ‘conventional models of language planning, whose primary purpose involves status planning, to elevate the position of specific languages,’ because they ‘do not pay much, if any attention to how people talk about the world with each other’ (Makoni & Mashiri, 2007: 64; see May, 2012 for a related critique). They conclude that the status of speakers is not advanced by boosting the status of their languages: rather, the status of languages is improved by increasing the social, political and economic status of their speakers.

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Moreover, given the legacies of colonial language planning in Africa, Makoni and Mashiri (2007: 66–70) note the inability of scholars to agree on the purported number of languages, which they characterize as ‘the naming game.’ They fault European scholars for their attempts to ascribe names to various African language groups, because the alleged boundaries between them ‘may not necessarily have any social or functional reality’ (2007: 70). They conclude, following Chimhundu (1992), that the ascription of linguistic boundaries was a divide-andconquer strategy of colonizers: ‘What the Europeans actually did when they partitioned Africa was effectively to stop the perpetual movement of groups of people. The result was to freeze the geopolitical and ethnolinguistic maps which the Europeans themselves created’ (Chimhundu, 1992: 89; cited in Makoni & Mashiri, 2007: 71). They likewise question the motivations of corpus planners, particularly those of colonial dictionary writers, and what they see as the ‘invention’ of African indigeneity by colonial missionaries: ‘Paradoxically, the languages that are defined as indigenous in postcolonial Africa were constructed as inauthentic during the colonial era by missionaries, their African assistants, colonial administrators and local Africans themselves’ (Makoni & Mashiri, 2007: 72). Makoni and Mashiri (2007) also take colonial orthographic and acquisition planners to task by arguing that their real motivation for promoting literacy was to convert Africans to Western religions while keeping them subordinated: ‘Print literacy was taught so that Africans could read the Bible, not so that they would write books of their own’ (2007: 75). This concern about the negative impact of missionary language planners, or language strategists, has also been addressed in many other colonial contexts such as in the Pacific region by Mülhäusler (1996), who details what he calls the missionization of vernacular languages that often resulted in the invention of allegedly ‘indigenous’ languages, which, in some cases, had no actual speakers. Beyond these concerns, in the process of language planning, Hornberger (1995), among others, has noted that judgements of linguistic experts do not align with governmental planners, and that neither of these may align with those of the speakers of indigenous languages themselves, whose languages are being ‘planned,’ i.e. standardized. Thus, especially in the contexts of colonization, post-colonization, and when language planning brings in language strategists and outsiders to ‘assist’ indigenous populations, the work of Makoni and Mashiri (2007), Mülhäusler (1996), Hornberger (1995) and others is particularly cautionary. Beyond the critique of what may be a warranted evaluation of some colonial and postcolonial language planning practices in Africa, however, Makoni (2012) has extended his critique of what he considers the mismatch between language rights discourses and the contemporary, urbanized contexts of African minority speakers. He concludes that

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language rights discourses do not improve their social and political interests. May (2012) offers a sympathetic, but cautionary, critique of Makoni’s conclusions. May argues that Makoni, among others, ‘consistently conflates and elides arguments for minority language rights with those of language ecology’ (2012: 22). May concludes: ‘The problem with Makoni’s analysis here… is that language ecology constitutes only one academic strand of minority language rights (LR). Other LR accounts adopt a more overtly sociohistorical and sociopolitical analysis, distancing themselves from the biological determinism of language ecology’ (2012: 23). Thus, May sees Makoni’s argument largely as an oversimplification of the range of language rights discourses. May (2012) also sees Makoni (2012) and Makoni and Pennycook (2007) as dichotomizing urban and rural/indigenous varieties of language, which results in a privileging of the former. This results in what May sees as the third problem with the rights critique: ‘In effect, … the recognition of minority languages is attributed with far reaching malign, discriminatory political and social effects on multilingual speakers – as if, somehow, minority language rights are themselves the principal cause of ongoing disadvantage for such speakers’ (May, 2012: 23). According to May, this preoccupation with and valorization of urban vernacular language varieties entrenches, rather than ameliorates, the disjunctures between the actual language uses of multilingual speakers and their access to standardized language varieties, particularly in written form. It is here that the dismissal of minority language rights, and the related dismissal of ‘mother tongue’ education [in favor of English education], is so troubling [p. 24] … because … the ongoing disconnect between the valorization of urban vernacular African languages and effective educational approaches promoting biliteracy is not addressed. (May, 2012: 24–25) A postmodernist critique

Shortly before the publication of Disinventing and Reconstituting Language, Pennycook (2006) offered a postmodernist critique of language rights that also takes direct aim at modernist and structuralist orientations of language policy and planning. Pennycook’s critique of language rights discourses is framed as part of a larger postmodernist critique of ‘the assumptions of modernity, the so-called Enlightenment, the hegemony of Western thought in the world, and the tools and concepts that have been used to understand the world’ (Pennycook, 2006: 62). He argues that the postmodernist approach ‘raises important questions about how power operates in relationship to the nationstate, and … how governance is achieved through language’ (2006: 64). Postmodernism, according to Pennycook, ‘…points toward

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situated, contextual, and contingent ways of understanding languages and policies’ (2006: 64). He further contends that postmodernism ‘… urges us to rethink the ontology of language as a colonial/modernist construct’ (2006: 64). He specifically identifies the ‘grand narratives’ of linguistic imperialism as represented by the work of Phillipson (1992) and language rights arguments advanced by Skutnabb-Kangas (2000). He concludes that the latter is a ‘panacea’ for the former. Perhaps most controversial is his call for the need to disinvent language, and, thereby, language rights as well. His prescriptions also have implications for methodological analyses. Following Foucault (1991), for example, Pennycook proposes a shift in language policy analysis – apparently from macro approaches, although it is not entirely clear which ones – to those focused on language governmentality and how power operates at the micro level. With Rose (1996), he suggests focusing on an ‘“array of technologies of government” which can be analyzed in terms of the different strategies, techniques, procedures, by which programs of government are enacted’ (Pennycook, 2006: 64). Preference for a focus on the micro is also noted in his focus on performativity and seeing language primarily through the lens of the individual’s linguistic performance of identities. The preference for the micro over the macro is curious given that much of language policy research is focused not on one or the other but both (see, for example, the ranges of methodologies addressed in Hult & Johnson, 2015). Certainly, some methodologies are more focused on the interpretation of micro data and local agency, such as those used in ethnographic and qualitative policy research. On the other hand, others, such as interpretive methodologies (Yanow, 2000, 2003; Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2006; and also Moore & Wiley, 2015), are focused on both the larger context of, for example, state-imposed policies and institutional and legal frameworks. Moreover, historical–structural approaches have also provided important explanatory insights (see Tsui & Tollefson, 2006), where dominant ideologies and state-imposed policies have had significant life consequences for both linguistic communities and individual actors, particularly in educational contexts. Again, in the case of racism, as Miles (1989: 76) noted, marginalization results through the ‘racialization of the processes in which … [people] … participate and the structures and institutions that result’ from it. Thus, disregard for structures and institutions, in favor only of individualized performance, would seem to miss an important connection (see May, 2018). Therefore, to suggest that micro- over macro-level research and governmentality are the keys to greater understanding of language policy, or that a focus on performativity is preferable to the analysis of the structures and institutions of racism or linguistic discrimination, seems to lead to unnecessarily false dichotomies in choosing among research methodologies.

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More controversially, Pennycook (2006: 69) takes aim at what he labels the ‘treasured icons of linguistic-liberal thought,’ things like language, languages, codeswitching and bilingual and multilingual communities. All these ‘icons’ are considered suspect because they allegedly ‘operate with a strategy of pluralization rather than a questioning of the inventions at the core of the whole discussion’ (2006: 69–70). Thus, he proposes the ‘disinvention’ of all the constructs of ‘mainstream’ linguistic thought (2006: 70). As MacSwan (2020a: 20) has noted in a theoretical defense of codeswitching, bilingualism, multilingualism and other treasured icons: ‘… if we take seriously the view that multilingualism is a fiction, then any discussion of multilingual education immediately becomes incongruous,’ which means that any discussion of bilingual education would be equally incongruous. He adds: Furthermore, and very importantly, the consequences of denying the existence of multilingualism, and therefore of codeswitching, are far reaching. If codeswitching does not exist, then neither does the empirical basis for the repudiation of a deficit perspective on language mixing, a critically important and frequently cited body of basic scientific research …. More to the point, we cannot both rely on codeswitching scholarship to support a positive view of bilingualism, and at the same time deny that multilingualism and codeswitching exist. By choosing the latter, we lose the empirical case against a deficit perspective on bilingualism and are left only with an ideological one. (MacSwan, 2020a: 25–26; see also MacSwan, 2017; Chapter 1, this volume)

Similarly, May (2018) also considers the consequences of critics of language rights discourses to ‘pathologize’ standardized language varieties, particularly for those who are already linguistically (and educationally) marginalized. He notes: Thus, the question becomes which standardized language varieties best serve [the purpose of mother-tongue education]? In dismissing Indigenous language education programs, for example, and returning to the issue of the wider deleterious consequences of these arguments, Indigenous peoples are once again denied access to any of their proximal language varieties in the education of their children. Instead, the de facto context of majoritarian language varieties as the only languages of instruction is simply reinforced. This, of course, also entrenches the ongoing colonization and cultural and linguistic (as well as social and political) disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. (May, 2018: 70)

As a final thought in the discussion regarding language rights, it is useful to consider them within legal contexts. First, it is important to underscore that most language rights advocates are not advocating that languages themselves have rights (cf. Wee, 2010, 2018), but rather that

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people have rights, as García et al. (2021) have recently underscored – on this we can surely agree. Certainly, ‘official’ language laws have been imposed in misguided attempts to bestow status rights on national languages, but these efforts have generally occurred in environments involving linguistic, racial and other forms of discrimination (Wiley, 1998, 2004, 2019). García et al. (2021: 203) maintain that ‘… rather than perceiv[ing] minoritized languages as autonomous entities that are entitled to rights, our work focuses on the rights of racialized people to be educated on their own terms and on the basis of their own language practices.’ It is important to consider, however, how, from a legal perspective, such rights may be constructed if the language practices do not involve the construct of language. In this regard, Macías (1979: 88–89) distinguishes between two kinds of rights involving language: (1) the right to freedom from discrimination on the basis of language(s); and (2) the right to use one’s language in the activities of communal life. There is no right to choice of language, of governmental service, for example, except as it flows from these two rights above in combination with other rights such as due process, equal enforcement of the laws, and so on. But the identifiability and, if you will, legal standing, of a class based on language is recognized throughout the international community. (See also Macias’ (2016) recent reiteration of this point.)

Thus, to deny language, is to deny one’s rights ‘in combination with other rights such as due process’ and ‘equal enforcement of the laws’ (Macías, 1979: 89). Moreover, as MacSwan has noted (2017, 2020a, 2020b), linguistic arguments in favor of discrete languages provide a significant basis for the protection of language practices. In this regard, it is disconcerting that his views have recently been labeled as examples of ‘abyssal’ thinking by respected scholars (García et al., 2021) with whom there is broader social justice agreement on many issues. When reviewing the rise of federally supported bilingual education in the US, the right to use one’s language was intended only as an accommodation, which was obviously a concern to advocates who wanted to promote the languages of minoritized students. Nevertheless, lack of proficiency in the dominant language was also a broader human rights issue. As Davis and Dubinsky have noted: the inability to partake of all the benefits of a society and be assured of safeguards set out in human rights documents due to an insufficient level of proficiency in the dominant language becomes a rights issue if no accommodation is made. Given the fact that it is a rights issue helps to explain why language has been used to deny access in some causes and to empower others. (Davis & Dubinsky, 2018: 171)

Thus, it is not evident how disinventing the dominant or minoritized languages, as well as bilingualism, language varieties or language rights,

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would advantage those in need of educational or other societal accommodations. It is also not clear how the postmodernist prescriptions offered thus far would assist in defending victims of actual cases of linguistic discrimination, without possibly adding confusion to arguments in favor of accommodations for language minorities. In this connection, MacSwan (2020a) offers important real-world historical examples within the US context, illustrating how sociolinguistic ‘treasured icons’, such as ‘speech community’ have been used by sociolinguistics to deal with language discrimination. He notes: Without a concept of AAE and Chicano English as discrete language varieties, it would be impossible to argue cases of discrimination in housing or in other matters. No law prevents discrimination based on a personal reaction to a voice, unless the voice is a proxy for race or other protected categories. Taken seriously, the idea that discrete speech communities do not exist in this sense prevents us from making a case for the civil rights of speakers who are members of stigmatized speech communities. (MacSwan, 2020a: 328)

These observations are reiterated in Chapter 1 of the present volume. As MacSwan notes, the importance of identifiable minority language varieties has been demonstrated by the work of John Baugh (2003) on linguistic profiling related to housing and accent discrimination, and in the so-called ‘Black English’ trial (Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District) in Ann Arbor Michigan in 1979. In the latter, African American children won the right to linguistic accommodations in learning standard English (see also Shuy, 1980). Moreover, it is unlikely that Chinese students in the landmark Lau v. Nichols, 414 U.S. 563 (1974) decision would have been given any linguistic accommodations if the plaintiffs had taken the position that the languages of the students and the school were merely fictional treasured icons of the field of linguistics. Conclusion: Implications of the Grand Erasure of Bilingual Education and the Retreat from Language Rights

What lessons can be learned from the grand erasure of bilingual education in the US and the retreat from language rights in academia, particularly given the increase in attacks on immigrants and other minorities that has resulted from the Trump administration’s (2017– 2021) divisive rhetoric and injurious policies? As noted, bilingual education, through its association with minority civil rights and immigration reforms, was only intended as a right to accommodation. Nevertheless, it was portrayed by its opponents as language promotion

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at the expense of English, as ‘affirmative ethnicity’ – a zero-sum game, in which minority language communities were pitted against the majority (Epstein, 1977). Contemporary, heavily theorized, academic discourses critiquing essentialist notions of language and thereby language rights therefore run the risk of offering no defense to victims of actual linguistic discrimination and add confusion to public debates over the efficacy of bi-/multilingual education. Based on the connections between racism and linguicism and the persistence of longstanding racist anti-minority and anti-immigrant ideologies, clearly there is an ongoing need for advocacy, not only for language rights but civil and human rights more broadly. The effects of Eurocentrism within colonization, the Enlightenment and modernism persist, but so do the ongoing structural inequities of the global capitalist system, the lingering consequences of imperialism and the legally sanctioned authoritarian institutional apparatuses of many nation-states. Given the legacies of Eurocentrism and colonialism, it is easy merely to dismiss rights-based discourses as relics of the Enlightenment, or as essentialist artifacts of the construct of language. In the meantime, as the world now drifts back to multipolarity, many nation-states are reverting to populism and flirtations with neofascism. In this brave new world, as Hopgood (2014; see also Hopgood, 2013) warned, ‘The ground of human rights is crumbling beneath us. If we seem to have moved beyond the “drama of moral clarity” … it is only because we no longer know where we are going. In fact, a 150-year-old experiment in creating global rules to protect and defend individual human beings is coming to an end.’ In this environment, there is an urgent need for all of us – linguists, socio- and anthropological linguists, applied linguists, critical postmodern theorists, language professionals and those of us involved in historical studies of racialized linguistic minority groups – to be concerned in our advocacy for social justice about the persistence of structural social and economic inequities, legal restrictions by the state, and failures to accommodate racialized linguistic minorities. Hopefully, all of us who are advocates for social justice can remain united in our defense of rights to linguistic and racial equality in education, and, despite some important theoretical disagreements, we can do so without being dismissive of our colleagues as being ‘abyssal’ thinkers. Notes (1) I would like to thank Professor Jeff MacSwan for inviting my contribution to this volume, as well as Professors Stephen May of the University of Auckland and John Petrovic of the University of Alabama for their useful suggestions and critiques of a prior version of this chapter. (2) For a recent list compiled by various sources, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ English-only_movement#cite_note-40.

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May, S. (2014) Overcoming disciplinary boundaries: Connecting language, education and (anti)racism. In R. Race and V. Lander (eds) Advancing Race and Ethnicity in Education (pp. 128–144). London: Palgrave Macmillan. May, S. (2018) Unanswered questions: Addressing the inequalities of majoritarian language policies. In L. Lim, C. Stroud and L. Wee (eds) The Multilingual Citizen: Towards a Politics of Language for Agency and Change (pp. 65–72). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Menchaca, M. and Valencia, R.R. (1990) Anglo-Saxon ideologies in the 1920s–1930s: Their impact on the segregation of Mexican students in California. Anthropology and Education Quarterly 21 (3), 222–249. Mignolo, W. (2003) The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, & Colonization (2nd edn). Ann Arbor, MI: University Michigan Press. Mignolo, W. (2011) The Darker Side of Western Modernity: Global Futures, Decolonial Options (Latin America Otherwise). NC, Durham: Duke University Press. Miles, R. (1989) Racism. London: Routledge. Moore, S.C.K. (ed.) (2014) Language Policy Processes and Consequences: The Arizona Case Studies. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Moore, S.C.K. and Wiley, T.G. (2015) Interpretive policy analysis and language policy. In F.M. Hult and D.C. Johnson (eds) Research Methods in Language Policy and Planning: A Practical Guide (pp. 152–165). Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Mülhäusler, P. (1996) Linguistic Ecology: Language Change and Linguistic Imperialism in the Pacific Region. London: Routledge. Mwaniki, M., Arias, M.B. and Wiley, T.G. (2017) Bilingual education policy. In O. García, A. Lin and S. May (eds) Encyclopedia of Language and Education. Volume 5: Bilingual and Multilingual Education (pp. 35–49). New York, NY: Springer. National Education Policy Center (NECP) (September 24, 2019) Newsletter: National Education Policy Center - Online document: file:///D:/New%20&%20 Recent%20Work/1%20Current%20Work%202019/MacSwan%20Languages%20 Multilingualism%20and%20Its%20Consequences/Arias%20NEPC%20newsletter [3885].pdf. Ngai, M. (2004) Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Okrent, D. (2019) The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law that Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and other European Immigrants out of America. New York, NY: Scribner. Olneck, M.R and Lazerson, M. (1980) Education. In S. Thernstrom, A. Orlov and O. Handlin (eds) Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups (pp. 303–319). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Ovando, C.J. and Wiley, T.G. (2007) Language education in the conflicted United States. In R. Joshee and L. Johnson (eds) Multicultural Education Politics in Canada and the United States (pp. 107–119). Toronto: UBC Press. Pellerano, C. and Fradd, S.H. (February, 1998) Coral Way Elementary School: A success story in bilingualism and biliteracy. Discover 3, 1–3. Washington, DC: The National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education. Pennycook, A. (2006) Postmodernism in language policy. In T. Ricento (ed.) An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Practice (pp. 60–76). London: Blackwell. Pennycook, A. (2010) Language as a Local Practice. New York, NY: Routledge. Pennycook, A. and Otsuji, E. (2015) Metrolingualism: Language and the City. New York, NY: Routledge. Peters, J.W., Grynbawn, M.M., Collins, K. and Harris, R. (August 12, 2019) How the El Paso gunman echoed the words of right-wing pundits. The New York Times (Part A, pp. 1, 14). Petrovic, J.E. (2005) The conservative restoration and neoliberal defenses of bilingual education. Language Policy 4 (4), 395–416.

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Thomas, W.P. and Collier, V.P. (2002) A National Study of School Effectiveness for Language Minority Students’ Long-term Academic Achievement. Santa Cruz, CA: Center for Research on Education, Diversity & Excellence. Toth, C.R. (1990) German-English Bilingual Schools in America: The Cincinnati Tradition in Historical Context. New York, NY: Peter Lang. Tsui, A. and Tollefson, J. (2006) Language Policy, Culture, and Identity in Asian Contexts. London: Routledge. Ujifusa, A. (August 12, 2019) Schools worry over new Trump rule on immigrants and federal benefits. Education Week. Retrieved January 13, 2022 from https://www. edweek.org/policy-politics/schools-worry-over-new-trump-rule-on-immigrants-andfederal-benefits/2019/08. Wee, L. (2010) Language without Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wee, L. (2018) Essentialism and language rights. In L. Lim, C. Stroud and L. Wee (eds) The Multilingual Citizen: Towards a Politics of Language Agency and Change (pp. 40–64). Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Weinberg, M. (1992) World Racism and Related Inhumanities: A Country-by-Country Bibliography. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Weinberg, M. (1995) A Chance to Learn: A History of Race and Education in the United States (2nd edn). Long Beach, CA: California State University Press. Weinstein, B. (1979) Language strategists: Redefining political frontiers on the basis of linguistic choices. World Politics 31 (3), 344–364. Weinstein, B. (1983) The Civic Tongue: Political Consequences of Language Choices. New York, NY: Longman. Weiss, B. (1982) American Education and the European Immigrant: 1840–1940. UrbanaChampaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Wiley, T.G. (1998) The imposition of World War I era English-only policies and the fate of German in North America. In T. Ricento and B. Burnaby (eds) Language and Politics in the United States and Canada (pp. 211–241). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Wiley, T.G. (1999a) Ebonics: Background to the current policy context. In J.D. Ramírez, T.G. Wiley, H. De Klerk and E. Lee (eds) Ebonics in the Urban Debate (pp. 8–19). Long Beach, CA: Center for Language Minority Education and Research (CLMER) California State University, Long Beach. Wiley, T.G. (1999b) Comparative historical perspectives in the analysis of U.S. language polices. In T. Huebner and C. Davis (eds) Political Perspectives on Language Planning and Language Policy (pp. 17–37). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Wiley, T.G. (2004) Language planning, language policy, and the English-only movement. In E. Finegan and J.R. Rickford (eds) Language in the USA: Themes for the Twentyfirst Century (pp. 319–338). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiley, T.G. (2005) Literacy and Language Diversity in the United States. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics & Delta Systems. Wiley, T.G. (2006) The lessons of historical investigation: Implications for the study of language policy and planning. In T. Ricento (ed.) An Introduction to Language Policy: Theory and Method (pp. 136–152). London: Blackwell. Wiley, T.G. (2007) Heritage and community languages in the national language debate. The Modern Language Journal 91 (2), 252–258. Wiley, T.G. (2012) English-only. Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics. Online version. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal0389/abstract. Wiley, T.G. (2013a) Constructing and deconstructing ‘illegal’ children. Journal of Language, Identity, and Education 13 (3), 167–172. Wiley, T.G. (2013b) A brief history and assessment of language rights in the United States. In J.W. Tollefson (ed.) Language Policies in Education: Critical Issues (2nd edn) (pp. 61–90). London: Routledge. Wiley, T.G. (2014) Reflecting on the consequences of imposed educational policies: Conclusions and Implications. In G.P. McField (ed.) The Miseducation of English

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Learners: A Tale of Three States and Lessons to Be Learned (pp. 251–265). Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing. Wiley, T.G. (2015) The Civil Rights Act and the weight of history. International Multilingual Research Journal 9 (4), 308–312. Wiley, T.G. (2019) The rise, fall, and rebirth of bilingual education in California and the ongoing American dilemma. In T. Ricento (ed.) Language Politics and Policies: Perspectives from Canada and the United States (pp. 135–152). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wiley, T.G. (2022) Outside in: The relevance of epistemologies of the Global South for North America and the United States amidst the immigration debate. In K. Heugh, C. Stroud, K. Taylor-Leech and P.I. De Costa (eds) A Sociolinguistics of the South (pp. 31–48). London: Routledge. Wiley, T.G. and Wright, W.E. (2004) Against the undertow: Language minority education and politics in the age of accountability. Educational Policy 18 (1), 142–168. Wiley, T.G. and García, O. (2016) Language policy and planning in language education: Legacies, consequences, and possibilities. Modern Language Journal 100, 48–63. (Centennial Issue). Wiley, T.G. and Bhalla, S. (2017) The demographics of heritage and community language education in the United States. In O. Kagan, M. Carreira and C.H. Chick (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Heritage Language Education: From Innovation to Program Building (pp. 33–47). New York, NY: Routledge. Wiley, T.G., Lee, J.S. and Rumberger, R.W. (eds) (2009) The Education of Language Minority Immigrants in the United States. Bristol: Multilingual Matters. Woodson, C.G. (1933) The Mis-education of the Negro. Washington, DC: Associated Publishers. Yanow, D. (2000) Conducting Interpretive Policy Analysis. London: Sage. Yanow, D. (2003) Constructing ‘Race’ and ‘Ethnicity’ in America: Category-making in Public Policy Administration. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Yanow, D. and Schwartz-Shea, P. (eds) (2006) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Methods and the Interpretive Turn. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. Yngve, V. (1996) From Grammar to Science: New Foundations for General Linguistics. Philadelphia, PA: John Benjamins.

Part 5: Practice

11 Translanguaging and Immersion Programs for Minoritized Languages at Risk of Disappearance: Developing a Research Agenda Joanna McPake and Diane J. Tedick

Translanguaging pedagogies challenge the language separation principles underpinning longer-established approaches to language teaching and learning, by proposing that learners should be encouraged to draw on the languages they already know well to support the acquisition of new languages. They recast the goal of languages education in schools, beyond competence in a second language, towards an enhanced bilingualism serving diverse social, academic and career purposes relevant to students as they graduate. However, there is, as yet, little empirical evidence to indicate whether translanguaging pedagogies meet these goals. This chapter considers the implications of incorporating translanguaging pedagogies into language immersion programs designed to enable students to become fluent in a minoritized language in danger of disappearance: the case of Gaelic-medium education in Scotland illustrates the issues raised. Language immersion programs, based on the Canadian model that emerged in the 1960s, have the potential to make a valuable contribution to revitalization projects for such languages, as decades of research have shown that these programs, in which language separation is a key tenet, successfully enable learners to acquire high levels of competence in the target language (i.e. the minoritized language), without detriment to students’ ‘first’ language (usually the dominant language, and often English). Immersion students also perform at least as well, if not better, than their 295

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non-immersed peers in content learning. However, the emergence of translanguaging pedagogies raises some questions about the success of the immersion model in revitalizing languages in danger of disappearance, not least in relation to students’ commitment to using these languages outside the classroom. This chapter reviews the history of translanguaging pedagogies and considers whether translanguaging pedagogies might have a place in immersion programs, despite seeming pedagogical incompatibility concerning the question of language separation or co-existence. The discussion reveals lacunae in the immersion research tradition, and the need for more robust empirical research to support the claims made by translanguaging proponents. The chapter therefore concludes with a research agenda, aimed at improving outcomes for language revitalization projects in schools. Translanguaging Origins and current meanings

The term translanguaging (from the Welsh ‘trawsieithu’) was first used to describe certain bilingual pedagogies used in bilingual1 (Welsh and English) secondary2 schools in Wales in the 1980s and 1990s (Williams, 1994; Williams et al., 1996). In these schools, where students and staff were fluent speakers of both Welsh and English, it was important to ensure that students developed both languages to a high standard for academic purposes. Critically, Williams proposed they switch systematically between Welsh and English, so that, in one lesson, one language might be used for input and the other for output, while in the next lesson, the order would be reversed. He argued that an evenhanded approach avoided any bias, on the part of teachers or students, towards one language or the other; and that the switching of the languages of input and output ensured that students connected ways in which concepts or ideas are expressed in each language, thus developing a fluid bilingualism across domains.3 Since this early work, use of the term ‘translanguaging’ has significantly expanded, and interpretations have multiplied. Translanguaging is now used to refer to bilinguals’ language practices, in particular, ways in which bilinguals draw on an expanded linguistic repertoire to communicate within and across the languages they know (e.g. Creese & Blackledge, 2010). It has also become a theoretical concept, concerning the distinctive worldviews of bilinguals which reflect their greater capacity for critical and creative linguistic practices because of the expanded language repertoires they have developed through knowing two or more languages (García, 2009a; García & Li, 2014).

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Translanguaging in the context of the multilingual turn

Growing interest in translanguaging – as pedagogy, practice and theory – reflects the sociolinguistic turn (Heller, 2007), and the multilingual turn (May, 2014): a shift within applied linguistics whereby bilingualism, not monolingualism, is posited as the norm. This shift, following influential critiques of the monolingual habitus (Blackledge, 2000; Ellis, 2007; Gogolin, 1997), has challenged many hitherto widely accepted concepts concerning languages, language practices and language learners. For example, Makoni and Pennycook (2007) argue that the modern idea of ‘a language’ dates back to 19th-century European ideologies about ‘one state, one language’ – a political perspective which, inter alia, led to the suppression of many thereby minoritized languages, such as Scottish Gaelic. They proposed the ‘disinvention’ and ‘reconstitution’ of the concept of languages to fit 21st-century contexts and needs. Another consequence has been the move to foreground bilinguals’ linguistic repertoires and linguistic practices rather than consider these as variations or deviations from monolingual practices. By the late 20th century, there was recognition that bilinguals should be seen as ‘more than the sum of two monolinguals’ (Hamers & Blanc, 1989: 15), with a ‘unique and specific linguistic configuration’ (Grosjean, 1989: 3). Various ethnographic studies of translanguaging at home, school, work and in many other contexts of urban life (e.g. Callaghan et al., 2017; Creese et al., 2017) reflect this by providing rich descriptions of ways in which bilinguals routinely deploy their linguistic repertoires to communicate effectively and creatively in multilingual environments. The concept of a linguistic repertoire is a key feature of translanguaging thinking, and can be traced back to the work of Gumperz (1964). It refers to the full range of communicative resources that individuals acquire and develop over their lifetimes, through interaction with others. Gumperz argued for one repertoire, not several: he dismissed the possibility that individuals have distinct repertoires for different language varieties. Proponents of translanguaging have returned to this concept, adapting it to the linguistically super-diverse (Vertovec, 2007) world of the 21st century. They argue that, compared with monolinguals, bilinguals have an expanded repertoire because they can draw on the resources of two or more languages, enabling them to communicate with more people, and in more diverse ways. This is said to provide opportunities for more effective and more creative communication strategies (Busch, 2012, 2017). Translanguaging in educational contexts

Translanguaging as a practice has radical implications for language learning and teaching in the K-12 sector, both for the education of students already deemed to be bilingual and those in the process of

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becoming bilingual. Typically, school language pedagogies are designed for three different learning contexts: (1) conventional, ‘drip-feed’ (Stern, 1985) learning of another language, as part of the standard school curriculum; (2) language immersion programs, where students study the regular school curriculum wholly or partly through the medium of another language from that which most use out of school, so that they achieve high levels of proficiency in that language; and (3) the experiences of students attending schools where the medium of education happens not to be the languages they speak outside school. For this last group of students,4 specific provision to support their acquisition of the school language may be available, or they may have to fend for themselves, an approach sometimes described as submersion, contrasting with the deliberate and supportive pedagogies and the additive bilingualism goals associated with immersion. Ethnographic studies have shown that students in all three contexts translanguage: they make use of the linguistic repertoires they are developing in both languages, to support their language learning and to communicate in the language classroom. This translanguaging includes using their stronger languages to support comprehension of tasks they are expected to perform in their weaker languages, and trying out new languages, for stylistic effect or in innovative ways, as their repertoire expands. For example, Rampton’s (1995) students experimented with the accents, dialects and languages of others in their multilingual classrooms, and with the German they were formally taught; while Creese and Blackledge’s (2011) students attending a Gujarati complementary school constructed double entendres which made sense to (and amused) those who knew both Gujarati and English, but not to those who spoke only one of these languages. Such student practices may conflict with certain established language education pedagogies predicated on language separation. As Cook (2001) recounts, the (virtually) exclusive use of the target language (i.e. the new language students are expected to learn) in formal language learning contexts became common in much western educational practice during the 20th century, to the extent that UK teachers surveyed in the 1990s could not identify any pedagogical reason for making use of learners’ ‘first’ languages (L1s) to support the acquisition of the new language (L2) in question.5 Exclusive L2 use became common practice in language classrooms despite widespread informal recognition (Mitchell, 1988, cited in Cook, 2001) that both students and teachers drew, to a greater or lesser extent, on L1 knowledge in most cases. The rationale for strong adherence to the principle of language separation can be explained in various ways. Cook points to the behaviorist influence of the Direct Method, dating back to the late 19th century, and subsequent refinements, such as the Audiolingual Method. More modern Communicative Methods, representing a move away from behaviorism,

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nevertheless seem largely to have retained this feature. A theoretical focus on the question of L1 interference with L2 acquisition (Weinreich, 1953) may, by virtue of the negative connotations of the term ‘interfere’, have reinforced notions that the L1 should be suppressed or ignored in the L2 classroom, to minimize the effects. A particularly persuasive argument in favor of separation is the recognition that language learning takes time: typically, the greater the exposure (comprising input, output and interaction in the L2), the more proficient the learner will become. This is implied, for example, in Krashen’s influential ‘input hypothesis’, which posits that language is acquired when ‘the student receives a sufficient amount of comprehensible input’ (Krashen, 1985: 2). For ‘drip-feed’ provision, this is problematic, because two to three hours of language tuition per week, in the context of a busy school curriculum, are not considered sufficient to ensure a level of proficiency that allows learners to start to become independent users of the L2 (Harris & Ó Duibhir, 2011). From these concerns, teachers took the message that they should use L2 at all times in the language classroom, because any use of L1 would reduce the amount time for L2 input. A feature of translanguaging as theory is to problematize language practices that appear to stem from a monolingual habitus. As translanguaging theory holds that bilingualism should be considered the norm, proponents argue for approaches that incorporate both languages and use them to support the linguistic development of both. This entails a philosophical shift, away from considering the goal of any given language program to be enhanced competence in the L2, towards a goal of enhanced bilingualism, recognizing that both languages are interconnected and thus develop in tandem; and that bilingual school students, now and in the future, should be able to use both languages to communicate effectively and creatively, in a range of contexts, in and outside school: ‘Taking up a translanguaging policy in education means meeting speakers where they are, with bilingualism at the core of language practices, and of learning, teaching, and assessing’ (Wiley & García, 2016: 58). Two distinctive translanguaging pedagogies have emerged over the last decade: in Wales, drawing closely on Williams’ original concept of translanguaging as pedagogy, discussed above; and in the US, deriving from García’s reconceptualization (2009a) of translanguaging as practice and developing pedagogies predicated on bilingualism rather than monolingualism as the norm in multilingual societies. In Wales, translanguaging pedagogies based on Williams’ original insights continue to be used in bilingual schools (Jones, 2017; Jones & Lewis, 2014; Lewis et al., 2012a; Lewis et al., 2012b; Lewis et al., 2013; Williams, 2012). These authors distinguish between teacherdirected (or official) and pupil-directed (or natural) translanguaging.

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Teacher-directed translanguaging reflects Williams’ model, whereby the teacher decides – on the basis of students’ competence in each language – which language is to be used and for what purposes; whereas pupildirected translanguaging represents a recognition that students will use both languages informally in the classroom as they undertake the tasks they have been set. According to Williams (2012), both forms lead to effective oral and written communication in both languages, mastery of subject content, and students’ academic growth. While Williams originally considered translanguaging to be an effective pedagogy in secondary schools, where students were already competent users of both languages, more recent research (Lewis et al., 2013) found that teacher-directed translanguaging, formally defined as ‘a pedagogical strategy where the input (receptive language) and output (productive language) are systematically varied’ (2013: 120), was used with all but the youngest children in Welsh bilingual schools: 95% of translanguaging lessons occurring in classes where the students were aged 7 or older, and 50% in the upper primary, where students are aged 7–11. This reflects views expressed by Welsh researchers that translanguaging pedagogies ‘may not be valuable in a classroom when children are in the early stages of learning and developing their second language’ (Lewis et al., 2012b: 644). In the US, translanguaging pedagogies have developed for multilingual schools where many students speak other languages in addition to English, and some may be emergent bilinguals, but where English is the medium of instruction. The work of the New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals [NYSIEB]6 has been particularly influential. For example, Celic and Seltzer (2013) identify three broad areas for new pedagogies which make use of students’ existing linguistic competences and practices and also enhance these: (1) language development; (2) content and literacy development; and (3) the translanguaging classroom as space for these activities. To take the first of these as an illustration, the authors describe activities whereby students research etymologies and word-formation principles in English and the other languages they know. Thus, bilingual students develop detailed knowledge of these features of English, the medium of instruction and the language in which they need to become highly proficient for future academic and professional purposes, as well as to be able to communicate with ease in wider US society. However, this is not done through an exclusive focus on English but rather by comparison with the other languages students know, so that they simultaneously develop an awareness of how their own languages work, and indeed make links with other languages used by peers in the classroom. Developing the work of NYSIEB, García et al. (2017) identify four purposes for developing a ‘translanguaging classroom’, where students make use of their full linguistic repertoires to communicate effectively,

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critically and creatively, in order to learn subject content and to develop their communicative capacity across languages: (1) to support student engagement with complex content and texts; (2) to provide opportunities for students to develop linguistic practices for academic contexts; (3) to make space for students’ bilingualism and ways of knowing; and (4) to support students’ socioemotional development and bilingual identities. (García et al., 2017: 29)

In contrast to the Welsh model of translanguaging as pedagogy, the US model sees translanguaging as something that bilingual students do – and can be encouraged to do in the service of learning – rather than something largely controlled by teachers. This perspective reflects the fact that many different languages are spoken by students in US multilingual schools in which translanguaging pedagogies have been developed, and that teachers are unlikely to speak all of these languages (or indeed any of them). Translanguaging pedagogies in Wales and the US also differ in terms of the different student populations served. Because Welsh is a minoritized language, and there are concerns about its decline, there is, increasingly, an imperative to ensure that sufficient time is allocated to Welsh development and use in bilingual classrooms. This is one reason for the focus on teacher-directed translanguaging, where teachers control how each language is used, ensuring adequate attention to Welsh. A key measure of the success would therefore be the extent to which students’ competence in Welsh has been enhanced, although we are unaware of any Welsh studies comparing the outcomes of translanguaging and language separation pedagogies. In the US, where translanguaging pedagogies have developed largely in multilingual classrooms, where English may be the only lingua franca, approaches differ. It is generally not possible to plan for bilingual students to become equally competent in both languages, as a comprehensive language development program for all the other languages of the class is not usually feasible. Moreover, teachers in these schools are typically also concerned with potential poor educational outcomes for their students, for reasons which include but go beyond the question of competence in English: bilingual students are often migrants, from families whose educational opportunities have been limited in the past, and who may currently suffer from economic disadvantage and discrimination. Measures of success for translanguaging pedagogies in these schools will include student engagement with learning as well as more formal assessment of students’ competence in English and content learning. However, we are unaware of any studies that compare the effectiveness

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of translanguaging pedagogies with more traditional approaches, on these terms. Thus translanguaging pedagogies in the US have developed principally for multilingual schools where the medium of instruction is English, rather than for language immersion programs, where students are, typically, English-speakers learning a second language used as the medium of instruction. Language immersion programs in the US and Canada have a strong and well-established tradition of empirical research, predicated on language separation (e.g. Lambert, 1984) and extensive exposure to L2 in the classroom. This research has repeatedly demonstrated the success of language immersion programs in achieving their stated objectives: high-level competence in the L2, without detriment to competence in the L1 or to subject content learning. We describe this research in more detail in the next section. Precisely because these programs have been shown to be effective, the possibility of introducing translanguaging pedagogies along the lines of those proposed for US multilingual classrooms has tended to be dismissed as unnecessary and counterproductive (e.g. Ballinger et al., 2017; Fortune & Tedick, 2019). Research Evidence for the Success of Language Immersion Programs

Immersion programs date back at least to Canada in the 1960s, where they were designed to enable Anglophone students to become proficient in French. Although there are many different forms of immersion education, the key principle is that students are ‘immersed’ in the L2 for extended periods of time, on the basis, discussed above, that increased exposure leads to higher levels of L2 competence. Extensive research in Canada and the US has demonstrated this to be the case for immersion students in comparison with their ‘drip-fed’ peers. For example, reviewing an early longitudinal study, Genesee (1987) reported that in Grades 4, 5 and 6, French immersion students significantly outperformed their ‘drip-fed’ counterparts on all measures. More recently, the Center for Applied Second Language Studies (2013) conducted a study across 14 US states, with approximately 1,400 immersion students learning through the medium of Chinese, French, Japanese and Spanish. Their scores on proficiency tests of reading, writing and speaking were higher than those of students in traditional language programs. Virtually all students enrolled in language immersion throughout the elementary and secondary school years performed in the intermediate to advanced ranges according to the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) Proficiency Guidelines (2012),7 whereas less than a third of students learning languages traditionally could perform at the intermediate level by the end of high school.

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These positive L2 outcomes notwithstanding, studies have revealed deficiencies in immersion students’ L2 proficiency. Their L2 lacks grammatical accuracy and lexical specificity, is less syntactically complex and is less sociolinguistically appropriate, compared to the language native speakers produce (e.g. Fortune & Ju, 2017; Fortune & Tedick, 2015; Harley, 1984; Hermanto et al., 2012; Lyster, 2007, for review; Mougeon et al., 2010; Tedick & Young, 2016). Studies have identified a ‘plateau effect’: students, having reached a certain level of L2 competence, cease to make much progress (e.g. Fortune & Tedick, 2015). In addition, the L2 of students with English as L1 becomes increasingly anglicized over time (e.g. Lyster, 1987). Acquisition of some languages may be more challenging: there is increasing evidence that Englishspeaking students in Mandarin immersion programs develop relatively low levels of L2 reading proficiency, even at grade 6 or 8 (Burkhauser et al., 2016; Watzinger-Tharp et al., 2018), or extremely varied levels of reading proficiency (Fortune & Song, 2016). When it comes to competence in the L1 (typically, English in Canada and the US), research shows that immersion students achieve similar, and often better, results than students schooled only through the medium of English. These results are consistent in both intensive programs where little to no formal English instruction occurs during the early years, and less intensive programs, where 50% of the instructional time is devoted to English (e.g. Genesee, 1987; Lambert et al., 1993). In fact, studies show that immersion students achieving relatively high levels of L2 proficiency also demonstrate enhanced levels of English (L1) language skills and metalinguistic awareness (e.g. Berens et al., 2013; Harley et al., 1986; Hermanto et al., 2012). Additionally, research affirms that these bilingual outcomes occur for immersion students at no detriment to their content learning. Academic achievement has certainly been one of the most researched outcomes of language immersion programs, because it tends to be the primary concern of parents, school personnel and other stakeholders. Decades of research in diverse contexts (program types, geographic locations, and languages) have consistently shown that immersion students achieve academically on a par with or above their non-immersion peers on standardized achievement tests administered in L1 (e.g. Fortune & Song, 2016; Genesee, 1987; Steele et al., 2017; Turnbull et al., 2001; Turnbull et al., 2003). Moreover, students from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds perform at similar levels to or above their non-immersion counterparts on academic achievement tests (e.g. Caldas & Boudreaux, 1999; Holobow et al., 1991; Thomas & Collier, 2012). For these reasons, language immersion programs have become increasingly popular around the world. Studies conducted internationally have largely corroborated the results of the Canadian and US studies reviewed above. The added value of immersion education

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is perceived to lie not only in the academic success of immersion learners and the practical benefits of bilingualism, such as enhanced communicative competence, but also in a range of cognitive benefits associated with students enrolled in immersion programs. Studies have pointed to greater cognitive flexibility (Bruck et al., 1976), nonverbal problem-solving skills (Bamford & Mizokawa, 1991), and executive control (Bialystok & Barac, 2012). Cognitive benefits for developing bilinguals appear to accrue over time, in relationship to the level of L2 proficiency attained (Bialystok & Barac, 2012). Immersion for Minoritized Languages: The Example of Gaelic

In this section, we focus on a particular immersion program: Gaelicmedium education (GME) in Scotland, to exemplify issues raised in the preceding sections. GME is designed to enable Scottish students, mostly from English-speaking homes, to learn Gaelic through a program closely modeled on Canadian French immersion. Our snapshot here aims to illustrate the workings of a specific program, to consider whether GME fits the established research profile for immersion programs, and to draw attention to the ‘high stakes’ associated with immersion for minoritized languages in danger of disappearance. In the following section, we consider the challenges and opportunities that translanguaging pedagogies could present for programs of this kind. Minoritized languages (MLs) are spoken by smaller numbers of people in comparison to those speaking the dominant language in the same context. Thus, Spanish, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, is nevertheless minoritized in the US, where English is the dominant language. However, many MLs – often as a consequence of minoritization and associated suppression of these languages – are now spoken by very small numbers of people and, as a result, are in danger of disappearance. Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language closely related to Irish, and more distantly to Welsh and Breton, is a good example of this trajectory. Although Gaelic and English appear to have co-existed in relative equilibrium for around a thousand years, since the arrival of early forms of both languages in Scotland in the 5th century CE, the decline of Gaelic over recent centuries has been variously attributed to out-migration (forced and voluntary) of Gaelic speakers (Dorian, 1981) and in-migration of English speakers (MacKinnon, 1977) in areas where Gaelic was traditionally spoken; progressive Anglicization in the wake of agricultural and industrial development (Withers, 1988); and policies and practices promoting the use of English in religious and educational settings (Durkacz, 1983). Only 1.1% of the Scottish population (58,000 people) described themselves as Gaelic speakers in the UK Census of 2011 (National Records of Scotland, 2013). For much of the 20th century, the disappearance of MLs such as Gaelic was seen as inevitable and, some

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thought, desirable (McLeod, 2001). Language revitalization initiatives are relatively recent attempts to reverse their decline and predicted disappearance. ML-medium education provision is widely seen as critical (although see Hornberger, 2008, for a debate on the effectiveness of this revitalization strategy). The success of immersion programs renders them increasingly attractive to revitalizers. While some provision was made for studying Gaelic, or studying in Gaelic for certain Gaelic-speaking students over the course of the 20th century (O’Hanlon & Paterson, 2015), the immersion model was adopted in the late 1980s, because increasing numbers of children, even in areas of Scotland traditionally considered to be Gaelic ‘heartlands’, had little or no exposure to Gaelic before starting school. It is currently estimated that around 90% of the students enrolled in GME do not come from homes where Gaelic is widely used.8 Starting with 24 students in 1985, GME is widely considered a successful initiative in the Scottish context, now catering for almost 7,000 students, in the pre-school, primary and secondary sectors (Bòrd na Gàidhlig, 2019). It has spread from the Gaelic ‘heartlands’, in the north and northwest of Scotland, to the ‘Central Belt’, comprising Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland’s largest cities, and surrounding conurbations, where English has long been dominant. Parents choose GME for various reasons, including family connections to Gaelic, and desire for their children to benefit from the widely known advantages associated with bilingualism (O’Hanlon & Paterson, 2017). Two Scottish studies (Johnstone et al., 1999; O’Hanlon et al., 2010) investigated whether GME produces similar results to those found for immersion programs elsewhere in the world, and showed that GME students’ attainment at the end of primary school (i.e. around age 11) is similar to their English-medium peers’ attainment, on tests of English literacy, math and science. GME students’ Gaelic is assumed9 to be more advanced than students studying Gaelic in ‘drip-feed’ classes but is not ‘native-like’. Some non-Gaelic vocabulary and grammatical constructions and, particularly in the south, distinctive pronunciation, show signs of (Scottish) English influence (McLeod et al., 2014). The O’Hanlon et al. (2010) study indicates a likely plateau effect by the early secondary years. One explanation is the shortage of secondary GME teachers: many students who attended GME immersion in primary school have limited, sometimes no, opportunities to continue studying through the medium of Gaelic at secondary level (McPake et al., 2017a). Those concerned with immersion programs involving MLs in danger of disappearance argue that the stakes are higher than in programs where the L2 is a language widely spoken around the world, such as Spanish, French or Chinese. These languages will continue to flourish, regardless of levels of competence achieved by immersion students, as there are millions of native speakers and many other learners in other forms of educational

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provision. In contrast, for MLs in danger of disappearance, particularly because of weak or non-existent intergenerational transmission of these languages, ML-medium education is often a key revitalization strategy. If ML-medium education fails to produce a new generation of fluent speakers of the ML, the language will be closer to extinction. Despite success in terms of enrolment and academic outcomes, major questions about the effectiveness of GME as a revitalization strategy remain. Dunmore’s research (2019), showing that around 1 in 5 GME graduates made regular use of Gaelic in their twenties, and that most were people who had also grown up with Gaelic at home, heightened concerns. He attributes the limited effectiveness of GME from a revitalization perspective to three factors: linguistic attrition; a perceived lack of opportunities to use Gaelic in daily life; and limited interest in identifying or creating such opportunities. Concerns are exacerbated by a long-standing fear that ‘allowing’ English into GME classrooms will accelerate the decline of Gaelic. Several studies of Gaelic language use on different Scottish islands (Euromosaic, 1995; MacKinnon, 1994; MacKinnon & MacDonald, 1980) found that Gaelic was, in the late 20th century, seen by its speakers as appropriate for use at home, among family, and in the crofting (farming) community, but less so in the wider world, including most institutional contexts. Moreover, by the end of the 20th century, intergenerational transmission of Gaelic was in rapid decline, and English was expanding into linguistic domains that had once been wholly or predominantly Gaelic-speaking (McEwan-Fujita, 2003). Similar findings in other contexts where MLs are in danger of disappearance have produced arguments in favor of the creation of ‘safe spaces’ (Fishman, 1991) where the dominant language should be, if at all possible, excluded. ML-medium classrooms have come to be seen as key ‘safe spaces’ for these languages (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017; Hickey, 2017; Jones, 2017). From the perspective of revitalizers who have committed considerable resources to the creation of classrooms as new ML domains, pedagogies seen as legitimizing the use of the dominant language are therefore seen as a threat. A recent study by McPake et al. (2017b) found any use of English in a Gaelic-medium classroom to be a significant concern among teachers. For these reasons, the emergence of translanguaging pedagogies is seen as a challenge for ML immersion programs concerning languages at risk of disappearance. We review the nature of this challenge in the next section. Translanguaging and Language Immersion Programs

Proponents of translanguaging or of immersion clash over the principle of language separation. This has come to be seen as critical to the success of immersion because it is associated with securing extensive

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L2 exposure, and thus, eventually, high levels of L2 competence; but it is criticized by those in favor of translanguaging because it inhibits the use of the L1 to support linguistic development and content learning, and because it posits that L2 competence rather than bilingualism is the end goal. Initially, language separation had clear echoes of a monolingual conceptualization of language learning, whereby the L1 had to be suppressed to enhance L2 acquisition. It implied no connection between the two languages and students were, effectively, discouraged from making connections, as this might lead to interference. However, today’s language separation advocates readily acknowledge that students will naturally draw upon the linguistic resources they have available even when expected to use one language or the other. They also highlight the importance of making cross-lingual connections explicit while maintaining separate instructional spaces for program languages as a means of protecting and expecting use of the minoritized language in one of those spaces (e.g. Ballinger et al., 2017; Fortune & Tedick, 2019; Tedick & Lyster, 2020). Pedagogies that foster cross-linguistic connections while maintaining separate spaces for program languages are recommended. For example, Lyster et al. (2013) describe bilingual read-aloud projects wherein biliteracy tasks begin in one language and continue in the other. Teachers co-plan to bring attention to how a linguistic feature (e.g. derivational morphology of affixes in French and English) works across languages, while maintaining communication in each language separately. A quasiexperimental study involving a pre-test–post-test design showed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the comparison group on post-test measures of morphological awareness in French. A similar study took place in the Basque Country, involving students aged 10–11, and literacy work across three languages (Basque, Castilian and English). Early indications suggested positive outcomes (Leonet et al., 2017). These approaches have some similarities with the Welsh translanguaging model, in that they are largely teacher controlled. In contrast, research demonstrating that translanguaging pedagogies are effective in achieving the kinds of goals established for immersion programs, is in its infancy – neither in Wales nor in the US or Canada have there been studies comparing the outcomes of translanguaging pedagogies with more conventional approaches – and therefore it is difficult to judge the weight of arguments put forward by proponents. Nevertheless, the translanguaging literature raises questions about the goals of language learning provision (including immersion programs) and the means of achieving these. These questions are worth consideration by immersion scholars, in relation to the troubling phenomenon of plateau effects in the middle immersion years, and to the long-term purposes for achieving high levels of proficiency in another language.

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From a translanguaging perspective, the plateau effect may be viewed differently. Rather than a problem of insufficient L2 acquisition, students’ linguistic outputs in the middle years, combining elements of L1 and L2, could be considered evidence of immersion students’ emerging bilingual repertoires. For proponents of translanguaging, the value of the extended repertoire is demonstrated by the fact that immersion students can learn successfully through the medium of another language. They would be less concerned with questions of how closely students’ L2 competence resembles that of a monolingual L2 speaker because they do not consider that to be a feasible or desirable goal. They might further argue that the L2 in an immersion context is presented and experienced primarily as a medium of instruction, not necessarily as a goal in its own right. Research by Duff (1995) into a late immersion program in Hungary (where the students’ L1 was Hungarian and their L2 was English) showed that errors in English pronunciation, lexis and syntax were quite common in the students’ output, but these were only identified and corrected when they interfered with comprehension. From an immersion perspective, this suggests a need for more exposure to English and, possibly, some formal instruction in the language, or pedagogical approaches that bring more of a focus on language development in the context of content learning (Lyster, 2007; Tedick & Lyster, 2020). From a translanguaging perspective, this represents the expected outcome: as the students’ repertoire expands, they are likely to continue to develop aspects of their repertoire that have the potential to cause confusion for their interlocutors, but are less concerned about elements which are not ‘native-like’, if they do not impede comprehension. Note that interaction in immersion classrooms is not, in any case, with native L2 speakers but with peers who speak the same L1 (and the teacher in the Duff study was also an L1 Hungarian speaker, though many immersion teachers are native L2 speakers). So, opportunities to achieve native-like norms through interaction are limited and, one might argue, irrelevant. Such findings suggest that, rather than focusing on immersion students’ L2 deficiencies in comparison (ultimately) to native speakers’ competences in the language, the problem of the plateau effect might be tackled by considering the aspects of students’ repertoire requiring most urgent attention, i.e. those preventing students from achieving the best that they can in terms of content learning, because of difficulties in understanding L2 input, or of expressing their understanding and ideas in the L2. From a translanguaging perspective, this reflects the call to ‘support student engagement with complex content and texts’ and ‘provide opportunities for students to develop linguistic practices for academic contexts’ (García et al., 2017: 29) by ensuring that they have the linguistic competence required to do so. This exhortation can be read as meaning that students should be ‘allowed’ to use their L1 to help out

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with difficult tasks. But in fact, if we consider that immersion students need to be able to understand and present information and ideas in the medium of instruction of the classroom in question, we can see that the role of the L1 here is to support and develop their L2, not to take its place. Proponents of translanguaging are equally concerned that students continue to develop their extended repertoire, and indeed see this as a lifelong endeavor. Plateauing is not a desirable outcome, in any classroom context, from either an immersion or a translanguaging perspective. However, proponents of translanguaging and immersion advocates might have a different view of what constitutes progress from a plateau. This consideration leads us to the question of the long-term purposes for learning additional languages to a high level of proficiency. As Lo Bianco and Peyton (2013) have argued, educational provision for language learning needs to address not only the question of capacity (how proficient learners can become) but also opportunity (in what circumstances learners can use their additional languages) and desire (why they might wish to do so). They contend that most classroom-based provision is, or can be, effective in achieving capacity, but pays limited attention to opportunity or desire. In the case of Gaelic and other MLs in danger of disappearance, the successful stimulation or creation of opportunities to use these MLs and the desire to do so needs to complement the immersion focus on capacity. If not, as Dunmore’s work (2019) indicates, we risk ending up with students who can speak Gaelic quite well, but who do not identify opportunities to use it outside the classroom or after they leave school, and who may lack the motivation to seek these opportunities. This proposed shift in perspective reflects the other two purposes that García and colleagues (2017: 29) identify for translanguaging classrooms: ‘to make space for students’ bilingualism and ways of knowing’ and ‘to support students’ socioemotional development and bilingual identities’. In an immersion context, this could mean greater acknowledgment that students are already, and are becoming, bilingual and greater attention to whether, how and why students are using both languages, within and outside the classroom. It could also mean a stronger focus not only on their use of their languages at present but also their perceived needs and aspirations for their future use. By considering students’ perceptions of these possibilities and their desire to take them up, we might be better placed to identify the most appropriate ways to develop capacity so that they can fulfill these ambitions. Combining Insights from Immersion and Translanguaging: A Research Agenda

This leads to the question of a future research agenda asking how the considerable achievements of immersion might be enhanced, rather than eroded, by the use of translanguaging pedagogies. We identify four areas

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where immersion scholars and proponents of translanguaging might collaborate to improve outcomes for students in immersion programs. (1) Measuring students’ linguistic achievements over their primary and secondary school careers

Neither immersion nor translanguaging researchers have established very satisfactory approaches to measuring students’ linguistic progression as bilinguals, rather than in comparison to native speakers of the L1 and L2 in question. In the US and Canada, immersion students’ attainment in both languages has been measured using a range of established tests developed primarily for students in English-medium schooling. Thus, immersion students’ attainment can be compared favorably against their English-medium peers, but these scores tell us little about linguistic progression within immersion settings, or how students in different programs compare with each other. We would expect progression to be influenced by various factors, such as an early start, amount of exposure to the L2 over the course of their school careers, and the learning of content through the L2. The critical question concerns performance against expected progression rates and established outcomes for immersion students. Our view is that the conventional measures used to chart immersion students’ attainment to date are not a very appropriate means to answer this question. A similar question can be asked of translanguaging pedagogies. Proponents hold that the expanded repertoire, across bilingual students’ languages, should be the focus of attention. There has been an explosion of studies describing the bilingual repertoires of both school-age students (e.g. Hornberger & Link, 2012; Martín-Beltrán, 2014; Reyes, 2012) and adults (e.g. Li, 2011; Zhu et al., 2017), and this research is useful in understanding the ways bilinguals deploy these repertoires, specifically for learning, and in their daily lives. The research implies that repertoires develop holistically, and also that each bilingual’s repertoire is unique, according to opportunities to operate bilingually. Thus, it seems difficult to develop a picture of ‘typical’ progression. However, in a classroom context, teachers need an understanding of what progression – and failure to progress – looks like. Therefore, there is a need for research that looks closely at students’ progression, in both languages – or across the repertoire – with a view to developing assessment tools specifically for those learning bilingually. This work should recognize that progression in different languages may take different forms: as we have seen, Chinese immersion programs in the US have shown different patterns of progression in relation to literacy, compared to French and Spanish programs. It should also acknowledge the possibility that repertoires may not expand in a predictable or linear way, and might therefore have a formative rather

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than a summative orientation. The purpose of these tools would be to help teachers, program leaders and policymakers identify students’ and systems’ strengths and weaknesses, so that these could be addressed. (2) A focus on language pedagogies that lead to enhanced bilingualism and success in content learning

Whether viewed from a traditional immersion or a translanguaging perspective, there is agreement on the long-term goals of any bilingual education program: all students should graduate from these programs with high levels of competence in both languages, and success in their academic endeavor. Moreover, they should embark on their adult lives as confident and active users of both languages in all relevant contexts. However, current research, whether concerning immersion programs, or programs in which translanguaging pedagogies have played a significant role, provides only a partial picture of how these goals can be achieved. This matters because, if we want to improve outcomes, we need to know which elements of existing programs correlate most strongly with positive outcomes, and which could be altered to enhance them. We therefore propose more fine-grained, longitudinal, classroom-based investigation concerning language separation and translanguaging pedagogies than has hitherto been undertaken. This research needs to be classroom-based because we need to understand whether programs espousing language separation or translanguaging actually operate according to the pedagogical principles described in this chapter. Despite a stated commitment to one position or the other, it may be that classroom realities lie somewhere in between: e.g. policymakers may declare that the target language is to be used at all times in an immersion setting, but in practice students and even teachers may use the other language quite extensively; or the translanguaging classroom may aim to incorporate students’ other languages productively but struggle to go beyond tokenistic acknowledgment, particularly when there are pressures to show improvements in students’ command of the language of instruction. The research needs to be fine grained because our goal is to know when and how to separate languages, and when and how to combine them. This is particularly critical in programs where English is one of the languages involved, because of extensive evidence that its dominant position leads to the ‘drowning out’ of other languages: this is a concern both for immersion programs (particularly those aimed at revitalizing minoritized languages at risk of disappearance) and for translanguaging initiatives in multilingual schools in (largely) Anglophone countries such as the US, Canada and the UK. The research needs to be longitudinal because we currently have very limited understandings of how students’ bilingualism develops

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over time. For example, we have seen that plateauing in the middle years is a widely reported phenomenon in immersion programs, for which diverse solutions have been proposed, but we know little about the circumstances that lead to plateauing, nor whether the solutions are effective in the long term. In Welsh bilingual schools, translanguaging was originally developed for secondary schools but now is used from age 7 upwards, but neither the rationale for this, nor the consequences, are clear. Are younger students benefiting from this approach and, if so, how do we know? Alternatively, particularly given concerns that Welsh is in decline, would it be better to restrict translanguaging to the secondary phase, when students’ Welsh may be more strongly rooted? This work will be challenging, because cause and effect in any area of educational gain is difficult to prove. Moreover, variables relating to students’ social, economic and cultural backgrounds, and to the specific languages in play, are likely to complicate comparisons. Nevertheless, this work is critical for enhancing the effectiveness of bilingual education models given growing awareness of the social, cultural and cognitive advantages that bilingualism can confer if supportively cultivated. (3) Closer attention to current immersion students’ and graduates’ experiences of bilingualism in and out of school, and their own perceptions of future needs and aspirations

Perspectives of students who have been educated bilingually, including immersion graduates, are rarely heard (Lindholm-Leary, 2016). Students may be assessed at various stages, but less frequently have the opportunity to present their own views on their experiences. Dunmore’s work (2019) in Scotland has been a valuable contribution to our knowledge of GME graduates’ perspectives after they left school, raising many questions about how these students’ school experiences prepared them for the bilingual adult life that pioneers of the GME initiative hoped they would live. We believe that more work of this kind is needed, and suggest that the tools developed by Dörnyei and Ushioda (2009) to investigate the L2 motivational self could be of particular use here, complementing ethnographies and interview-based studies. (4) Support for teachers working in immersion classrooms

Developing research along the lines set out above would be invaluable in supporting teachers working in immersion classrooms. Despite growth in immersion programs around the world, opportunities for teachers to train in these contexts are relatively limited (see Tedick & Fortune, 2013). Specifically in the context of immersion programs designed to revitalize MLs in danger of disappearance, finding teachers and teacher educators with the requisite knowledge and linguistic and pedagogical

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skills is particularly difficult (McPake et al., 2017a). Based on the authors’ own experiences of immersion teacher education, we are aware that prospective and practicing teachers in this sector seek to enhance their understanding of immersion students’ linguistic development, ways of promoting opportunities to use the L2, and creating and sustaining desire to do so. Moreover, immersion teachers are the people who do this work on a daily basis, in response to the language ecologies they encounter and develop, within and beyond the classroom. More research that draws on their own experiences, perspectives, dilemmas and solutions will enable other immersion teachers, now and in the future, to benefit from their insights. Conclusions

This chapter has reviewed the implications of translanguaging pedagogies for language immersion programs, with a specific focus on programs devised to revitalize MLs in danger of disappearance, such as Scottish Gaelic. Some of those involved in such programs have reacted negatively to the notion that translanguaging pedagogies might have a role, on the basis that any approach that involves incorporating the use of students’ L1 (typically the dominant language of wider society, i.e. English in the case of Scotland) risks compromising the ‘safe space’ created for the ML in question in the immersion classroom. Nevertheless, recent research concerning the outcomes of language immersion programs more generally, and concerning the linguistic practices of GME graduates, indicates potential for enhancement through a review of pedagogical approaches. In this context, translanguaging pedagogies – developing in different ways in bilingual schools in Wales and in multilingual classrooms in the US – deserve consideration. Proponents argue that greater attention to students’ emerging bilingualism, as they learn to use two languages in and beyond the classroom, supports development in both languages, and learning through both. Schools should actively support the expansion of students’ linguistic repertoires so that they are able to deploy these effectively, critically and creatively in all aspects of their current and future lives, yet in ways that privilege and protect MLs, especially in English-dominant societies. There is a need for more research to investigate the claims made by proponents of translanguaging and to consider the merits of incorporating translanguaging pedagogies into immersion programs, particularly those that are designed for MLs in danger of disappearance, given concerns that translanguaging might weaken rather than strengthen fragile gains. We have proposed an agenda which (1) finds ways of measuring students’ linguistic progression as bilinguals – i.e. establishes appropriate

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trajectories for students educated bilingually rather than monolingually; (2) investigates – at the classroom level, in fine-grained detail and longitudinally – the pedagogical practices that contribute to student success, with a particular focus on the roles which both languages could – or already do – play; (3) explores students’ own experiences of immersion, and their expectations of using both languages in and outside the classroom, now and in the future, to ensure effective provision; and (4) informs the work of immersion teachers and supports them in taking forward this field of study. Notes (1) Bilingual schools in Wales are schools in which both Welsh and English are used, in diverse ways, as media of instruction, depending on the linguistic strengths and needs of the student population. Williams’ original research was conducted in Gwynedd, in northwest Wales, where approximately 50% of the local population was Welshspeaking at the time. A detailed account of the Welsh concept of bilingual schools can be found in Jones (2017: 200–201). (2) UK schools, including those in Wales and Scotland, which serve as a focus for discussion in this chapter, offer primary education from around ages 4–10 and secondary education from around ages 11–18. (3) Williams’ (1994) own account of his doctoral research on translanguaging as pedagogy in bilingual schools in Wales is in Welsh and therefore difficult for non-Welsh speakers to access. A concise summary of his ideas appears in Baker (2001: 280–282). (4) This group of language learners is large and growing, as a result of increased migration around the world. Different terms are used to refer to them in different educational contexts. In Anglophone countries terms often reflect their lack of English (i.e. the main school language in these countries): e.g. ‘EAL’ (English as an Additional Language) students in the UK, ‘ELLs’ or ‘ELs’ (English Language Learners) in the USA. Clearly, where the school language is not English, other terms are used: in France, for example, ‘élèves non-francophones’ (non-Francophone students) and ‘élèves allophones’ (students who speak other languages) are widely used. As a more positive term, ‘bilingual students’ in English (and parallel terms such as ‘élèves bilingues’ in France) has been proposed, to focus on what these students have or will become, rather than on what they lack. More recently, and specifically in the US context, García (2009b) has proposed ‘emergent bilinguals’ as a more accurate term for use in studies focusing on students in the process of acquiring a new language. Although some in the US use the term ‘emergent bilinguals’ to refer only to ELLs, others use the term to refer both to ELLs and English speakers learning other languages (e.g. García et al., 2017). (5) For the remainder of this chapter, we will use ‘L1’ to refer to the language(s) students grow up with at home and normally use in their communities, and ‘L2’ to refer to the other language(s) that they are learning at school, whether this is in drip-feed or immersion classrooms, or in situations where the school medium of instruction happens not to be the home or community language of some of the students. The reality is often more complicated. Some students may speak several other languages outside school, and the new language may be their third, fourth or fifth language. Some students may already have knowledge of the L2 before they start to learn it at school: some may be considered to have become bilingual in the L1 and the L2 from an early age and have opportunities to use both languages outside school. Others may have no such opportunities, and indeed may be becoming fluent in a language of which no one else in their

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families or immediate communities may have any knowledge. Moreover, inasmuch as ‘L1’ may also be considered to be the student’s ‘main’ or ‘dominant’ language, it is important to recognize that this can change over time, particularly when children who speak a minoritized language encounter powerful majority languages such as English, not only at school but in the wider community. It may change according to context, so that students who speak the school language fluently in school may be considered by teachers to be ‘L1’ speakers of the language, whereas at home or in other settings where their other language(s) are used, they may be equally or more proficient in these, rendering the hierarchy implicit in the use of ‘L1’ and ‘L2’ nonsensical. For these reasons, proponents of translanguaging prefer the use of the term ‘linguistic repertoire’ as a way of acknowledging the complexities of learners’ experiences, at home, in the community and in formal education settings. However, because we are focusing on issues relating to language acquisition (not simply language use), we have chosen to use these terms to distinguish languages already known (i.e. L1s) from those in the process of being acquired in a school context (i.e. L2s), as these terms constitute a well-understood shorthand for these issues. (6) https://www.cuny-nysieb.org. (7) The ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines (2012) represent a proficiency scale ranging from Novice-low to Superior/Distinguished (native-like proficiency). Intermediate levels (low, mid, high) are comparable to A2/B1 levels of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages, and Advanced levels are in the B2 range. (8) Establishing a precise figure is difficult. For example, one or both parents may be able to speak Gaelic but may not speak Gaelic with their children. This situation is quite common, and reflects the insidious long-term effects of language policies which discouraged the use of Gaelic. In establishing children’s home language experiences, the fact that their parents can speak Gaelic cannot be interpreted as meaning that the child is therefore a ‘native’ or ‘fluent’ speaker of the language. In other families, the parents may not speak Gaelic but a grandparent or another relative may do so, and that relative may be one of the principal caregivers. Furthermore, many parents planning to enrol their children in GME send their children to Gaelic-medium cròileagain (play groups) or sgoiltean àraich (kindergartens), where they will encounter the language. However, the impact of these experiences on their acquisition will be uneven, depending on the amount of time the child has attended and the nature of the linguistic experience offered. (See Stephen et al., 2016, for discussions of the linguistic programs on offer in these sectors.) (9) No direct comparisons have been made. The Scottish education system formally tests performance in school subjects, including languages, in the senior years of secondary education (equivalent to US grades 10–12). However, for Gaelic, two separate sets of examinations are offered: for ‘fluent speakers’ (those who have attended GME) and ‘learners’ (those who have studied Gaelic through ‘drip-feed’ provision). Thus the two groups are not directly compared. It is assumed that the examinations for fluent speakers are more linguistically challenging, but the basis for this assumption is not formally set out.

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12 Understanding and Resisting Perfect Language and Eugenicsbased Language Ideologies in Bilingual Teacher Education Christian J. Faltis

In the past decade, there has been a number of fundamental shifts in how language, and in particular bilingualism, is understood and presented to teacher educators in the fields of applied linguistics, TESOL and bilingual/dual language education. The lion’s share of these shifts has emerged from challenges made by dominant language speakers of English about the nature of language as socially constructed, as named objects (Makoni & Pennycook, 2007), about how languages are acquired in complex, dynamic ways in opposition to linear acquisition models (Ellis & Larsen-Freeman, 2009), and about the invention and hegemony of monolingualism despite the widespread use of multilingualism worldwide (Gramling, 2016; May, 2013). And yet, in spite of these shifts, due largely to the power of language ideologies about perfect language and standard language, coupled with liberal multiculturalism (Melamed, 2011), and minimal changes in the racial and language make-up of teachers and language teacher educators in the US, little has changed in how language is taught, or how language, including bilingualism, is understood by monoglossic English-speaking teachers and teacher educators (Faltis & Valdés, 2016). There is much work to do in changing the teaching and language teacher education workforce to represent more accurately racial, ethnic and language heterogeneity in schools and communities across the 50 states (Domínquez, 2021). In the meantime, it is essential that all language teachers and language teacher educators pay much 321

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more attention to the role of language ideologies that exist to favor whiteness hegemony, perfect language, linear language learning, and monolingualism, and make every effort to learn about bilingualism/ multilingualism, language affiliations, and ways to disrupt the liberal multiculturalism (Martínez et al., 2015), and advance liberation by recognizing the systematic oppression of racialized bilingual children and youth. In this chapter, I intend to present a race radical (Melamed, 2011) multilingual vision as a means to halt the erasure of language, bilingual practices and language affiliations that is and has been so pervasive in US schools of education, in language teacher education and in K-12 education (Poza et al., 2021). In doing so, I draw mainly on the work of scholars of color who have developed transformative ideas and practices that challenge the status quo in applied linguistics, TESOL, bilingual/ dual language, as well as many of the ideas presented in the more recent shifts presented by white scholars. Theoretically, I draw from the works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Marcelle Haddix, Nelson Flores, Ramón Antonio Martínez, Jody Melamed, Leigh Patel, Jonathon Rosa and Guadalupe Valdés to name a few, in laying out my understanding of a race radical multilingual vision and ways to resist racism and erasure. In my view, the works of these scholars are essential for not only challenging whiteness hegemonies, racist language ideologies, and monolingualism, etc., but their frameworks illuminate my conception of a race radical multilingual vision that is needed to resist and counter extant ways of thinking and teaching about language, through language, and with children and youth whose bilingual/multilingual language affiliations are either unrecognized at best, racialized as deviant, and erased at worst. A Radical Multilingual Vision

Let me begin by laying out what I mean by a radical multilingual vision for language teacher education. The spark for this vision comes from the writings of Jodi Melamed and the ways that Nelson Flores incorporates Melamed’s ideas (Flores, 2016) to create a transformative, radicalized and liberating vision for language teacher education: ‘It is only by challenging hegemonic whiteness that we can begin the process of reinventing … education in ways that are socially transformative as opposed to socially reproductive’ (2016: 34). In other words, I argue that a radical multilingual vision requires language teacher educators, at a very minimum, to re-think liberal multicultural ideas they might hold about multilingualism as an economic resource for racial capitalist and globalist purposes, because these ways of viewing bilingualism/ multilingualism, as Flores (2016) points out, only benefit idealized white practices and language ideologies that position standard varieties of language as perfect language, and non-standardized language practices

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as inferior and as evidence of intellectual deficits.1 In the final section of the chapter, I will put forth some non-linear ideas and actions for a radical multilingual vision that language teacher educators can use as a foundation for resistance as they consider the kinds of readings, discussions and practices they might use in preparing language teachers to counter racism, colorblindness and detrimental language ideologies that affect the ways students who are designated as English learners (Rosa & Flores, 2017) and students of color are perceived, treated and erased in schools and society (Martínez, 2017). In order to understand a radical multilingual vision, it is important to know what language teacher educators are up against with respect to existing ideologies about race and language. In line with Melamed (2011), I argue that language teacher educators are likely inadvertently to adhere to liberal multiculturalism and dominant white language ideologies that either overtly or covertly conspire to erase language and cultural practices of non-white students and families in school and society. Liberal multiculturalism

In her book, Represent and Destroy, Melamed (2011) traces the development of multicultural perspectives in the US, drawing on the civil rights movement within the context of revolutionary movements occurring in many parts of the world during that time. She argues that these revolutionary efforts created ways for racialized communities to re-define themselves in coalitions across racial groups to fight against white supremacy writ large and global capitalism, both of which seek to commodify racialized cultural property, especially including language. By the 1980s and 1990s, white hegemonic ideals moved toward a new kind of liberal multiculturalism, a converging interest, to re-invent multiculturalism through a neo-conservative lens of colorblindness and liberal multiculturalism, redefining multiculturalism so that ‘the inclusion of people of color … could then be reworked to describe the United States as an internalized model of global diversity’ (Melamed, 2011: 35). In this manner, liberal multiculturalism declares the value of diversity and inclusion, of multicultural rights for individuals and corporations, and of equal opportunity within a deracialized world, while maintaining power and advantage for whites. It is the focus on individual rights to be whoever you wish to be, and if you do not succeed it is no one’s fault but your own, that is the hallmark of liberal multiculturalism. In other words, any one person can be whoever they choose to be, and that choice has consequences for their financial and social well-being. Through the liberal multicultural lens, we are told that we need to accept an individual’s way of being and be inclusive to that person, to make that person feel like they belong despite being racialized

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by their language, phenotype, and cultural practices (Flores & Rosa, 2015). In this manner, liberal multiculturalism allows the dominant society, through its corporations, schools and universities, to reinforce the metanarrative of race reform: namely, the idea that racism toward people of color is disappearing over time (Patel, 2019), and individuals in many cases can now identify as Hispanic American, African American, Native American and Asian American, and corporations, schools and universities can go about their business of materialism and production for profit. It is true, however, that during the Trump era (2016–2020), racism and white supremacy resurfaced among many Americans. Trump talked about the China virus, Mexicans as rapists, and African countries as shitholes, and his followers loved it. He claimed he was the least racist person on the planet. The liberal multiculturalism espoused by universities, public schools, and business leaders, while less overtly racist than Trump and his followers, seeks to downplay racism as a real event, and to disaggregate groups into individuals, erasing their differences and focusing instead on the belief that ‘all lives matter’. Economic inequality, through this colorblind lens, is portrayed as the result of fair competition: individuals who do poorly or well economically or in school do so because of their individual efforts or lack thereof, not because of any racialized group difference. Erasure at the group level is the goal of liberal multiculturalism.2 Irvine and Gal (2000) define erasure as a process in which new and white dominant ideologies render certain persons and their practices invisible. In this manner, groups and their language practices are cast as homogenous, so that each member is individually the same as other members; intragroup variation does not exist, though hierarchies existing between dominant and non-dominant groups remain unelucidated. ‘All Black people are the same’ and ‘All Mexicans are the same’ become mantras in an effort to represent and eventually destroy (erase) these groups from any radical efforts that would contest these racist liberal inaccuracies. As we will see below, these sameness mantras are central to eugenics and IQ assessments that invariably place non-white children and youth as intellectually and linguistically inferior to white children and youth (See Herrnstein & Murray (1994), who make an argument for white IQ superiority to children and youth of color.) Liberal multiculturalism, which celebrates the individual, and seeks to eliminate group concepts of race, racism and language, while keeping genetic pathological and eugenic ideologies, serves the dominant group by representing multiculturalism as ‘a set of economic policies as multicultural rights, to portray the equality of the free market as the most fundamental expression of equality’ (Melamed, 2011: 139). In this manner, white liberal multiculturalists hear the dog whistle that African Americans who live in poverty are there because they haven’t tried hard

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enough. Mexican American youth who are bilingual learners after years of instruction in English haven’t worked hard enough to learn English well (Wetts & Willer, 2019). Arab American teens who speak Arabic in public haven’t learned proper language etiquette (Deiri, 2021). As Gloria Anzaldúa (1987) eloquently and sadly reminds us: ‘Mexican and Chicano children and youth who use their own voices/languages in white public spaces will have their tongues yanked out; they will be punished, judged as linguistically inferior, and reprimanded, not tamed, but cut out’ (Anzaldúa, 1987: 76).3 I have attempted to capture Anzaldúa’s image of having their tongues yanked out, i.e. their brown tongues painted white, as being cut out (deslenguado), in the painting displayed in Figure 12.1. The erasure of language and cultural heterogeneity at the hands of liberal multiculturalists is a form of vicious violence toward minoritized and marginalized groups because it ensures that the government and school systems will protect and embrace those who are considered valuable to capital and devalue and work to erase those people and those practices that are not valued within the system (Melamed, 2011: 40). One of the fundamental reasons for the discrepancies in whose practices count is due to the power of language ideologies. However, before moving to the section on language ideologies, I would like to mention another important way that liberal multiculturalism works for white dominance and against the minoritized and marginalized groups. Liberal

Figure 12.1  Delanguaging. Christian Faltis, oil on canvas, 2021

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multiculturalists are enamored with showing that they embrace diversity and inclusion. These two concepts appear in the discourse of almost all schools and colleges of education: ‘We are all about recognizing the diversity of students, and we seek to include everyone’ is a meme most readers will likely have experienced in one way or another. Liberal multiculturalists advocating for diversity and inclusion almost always evade questions such as ‘Which group of students has been trying to be heard and trying to improve conditions at school but cannot?’ and ‘Which students in this setting are under constant surveillance by white bodies and are in peril of having their languages and cultural practices erased?’ These are group-oriented questions that liberal multiculturalists do not deal well with because they are not concerned about inequitable treatment of groups of people: their focus is on individuals. Liberal multiculturalists are uncomfortable with questions about whose ideas are not being taken seriously because these questions ask about the treatment of racialized peoples, these questions ask about social justice, topics liberal multiculturalists wish to avoid in their preference for colorblindness coupled with their denial of racist practices. The diversity and inclusion memes are especially present in language teacher education, where white privilege, power, and racism work to maintain the oppression that ‘objectifies, dehumanizes, and marginalizes others while ignoring whiteness, power, privilege, and racism’ (Cross, 2005: 266). For bilingual students and students of color, becoming a teacher, more often than not, involves erasing their racial and language identities to fit a set standard of ways for teaching in English, regardless of their bilingualism, or ways of teaching in standard English, regardless of their community language affiliations to Black, Chicano, Asian or Native Indigenous languages (Haddix, 2010). The following sections of the chapter provide an overview of language ideologies at work in liberal multicultural circles of thought and action, with particular focus on perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies. My argument is that these two language ideologies operate to the benefit of liberal multiculturalism and racialization, providing teachers with subtle but powerful reasons for the erasure of language, bilingual practices, and language affiliations deemed unfit for white-oriented schools and society. Language Ideologies

One of the central features of liberal multiculturalism is the ideology that standard English is the language that all members of society must learn, and any other languages being learned must be done in the standard variety to be a resource for economic and governmental good. That is, individuals always learn extensions of English, such as regional accents, and ethnic language varieties, such as Black English, Northern

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Mexican Spanish, but the only acceptable repertoire that students are taught to affiliate with in the domains of school, government and work is the standard variety of the language, as defined by elite, white scholars (Bonfiglio, 2002). According to whiteness-oriented scholars, standard language acquisition is best learned through motherese, interaction between the white mother and a white infant, the more educated the mother, the better, faster and more completely the infant acquires the appropriate variety of the language of affiliation (Heath, 1983). Of course, many have shown that motherese is another way that the ideology of educated whiteness has become the center point for how language should be acquired in Western white communities (Rosa, 2016). Never mind that millions of infants of all races and ethnicities in the US and other geographic regions acquire language quite well without engaging in white, middle-class ways of interacting with their parents (Bonfiglio, 2010; Schieffelin & Ochs, 1983). Motherese is a way of positioning whiteness as the benchmark for language acquisition, and this extends to how bilingualism is viewed in the US as well. Mothers, and other family members who do not engage in white mainstream language practices with their children, practices such as using a highpitched voice, pointing, focusing on the here-and-now, and using known answer questions (Heath, 1983), are perceived as deviating from the norms of racialized ideologies of language acquisition. Motherese is believed to have the best probability of producing language abilities in young children, which is then followed up by standard English-speaking non-intimates: namely, teachers, to continue the development of English as it is envisioned to be used for learning disciplinary genres of talk and writing in school settings, also known as academic language (Cummins & Man Yee-Fun, 2007; Schleppegrell, 2012). In this manner, the language practices of the dominant group, reconfigured as individuals within the dominant group through liberal multiculturalism, come to exemplify the ideal and perfection in language. This process obfuscates whiteness as the only group with legitimacy in government, corporations and education. Meanwhile, language practices other than standard English or standard language X, are vilified as less than perfect, incapable of expressing white ways of thinking or writing, because the person using the language practices is a non-white. As Inoue (2015) explains about white teachers: ….so-called proper English or dominant discourses are historically connected to the white body. This makes sense intuitively. We speak with and through our bodies. We write with and through our bodies. As teachers when we read and evaluate our students’ writing, we do so through and with our bodies, and we have in our minds a vision of our students as bodies, as much as we have their language in front of us. (Inoue, 2015: 30)

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Imagining a white teacher in class filled with students designated as English learners and racialized students, it is easy to see that the ways students speak and write will most likely be viewed from a monolingual, standard English ideology, which means that students designated as English learners, through their racialized bodies, are expected to produce inferior speaking and writing, in obedience to the logic of colonialism. Accordingly, the goal of the teacher is to extirpate their inferior speaking and writing practices and teach them to use proper English and dominant discourses in order to maintain the dominance of whiteness. Consider, for example, the value placed on argumentative writing (Newell et al., 2011) as a school-based discourse or genre all students must learn. I would argue that argumentative writing in US schools is a realization of language ideologies of whiteness and standard language discourse. As Newell et al. (2011) report in their vast review of the literature on argumentative writing in schools: The successful reader or writer will be a person who can argue effectively using current or perhaps new rhetorical styles and structures to make his or her own ideational contributions to significant conversations within and across domains, and who can read thoughtfully and write with authority in ways that others will find interesting and convincing. (Newell et al., 2011: 298)

One wonders who is being referred to as ‘the successful reader or writer’ who ‘can ... write with authority’ for an audience of ‘others.’ In my perusal of the references cited for this article, a total of 234 references, I counted 5 articles written by persons of color that refer to bilingual students or racialized students. The rest were publications by white bodies who are well connected to dominant English discourses, and who argue for logical and rational argumentative writing,4 regardless of their theoretical perspective (cognitive, social perspectives or genre theory). In effect, what this and other sorts of white-oriented research does is to erase the bodies, perspectives and environments of multilingual students and teachers by relying solely on white bodies of authority for laying out what counts as ‘good speaking, reading, and writing’ for all children and youth. In this manner, the language affiliations of students designated as English learners and immigrant students, along with African American students who use local language practices, are also erased from the classroom and from the white, dominant research literature. Moreover, students’ affiliations with Spanish, Arabic, African American English, Mandarin and Indigenous language practices are viewed as holding these students back from learning white language practices, rather than promoting bilingualism, multilingualism, and indigenous practices as powerful ways of understanding and being in and with the world (Alfaro & Bartolomé, 2017).

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Perfect language ideology

One of the language ideologies that figures into notions of logical and rational speaking and writing, including, but not limited to, argumentative writing, is what I refer to as the perfect language ideology. Ideologies are ‘sets of beliefs about language articulated by users as a rationalization or justification of perceived language structure and use’ (Silverstein, 1979: 193). The most powerful language ideologies about perfect language are held by white settler colonizers and their descendants (Woolard & Schieffelin, 1994). In the US context, this means that white teachers, as well as world language teachers (Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic) and bilingual teachers (see Román et al., 2019) are likely to subscribe to language ideologies about what counts as proper and perfect language, based on how the language has been grammatically, morphologically and phonologically structured, codified and then used by elites who are affiliated, either personally or as a group member, with the named languages. People who believe in and act as though perfect language ideology exists not only believe in the idea of erroneous language, and the power of error correction and language repair for improving ‘imperfect’ speakers, they also are convinced that students designated as English learners and other marginalized language users will improve their social and economic lives if they would just learn to speak perfect English, without a detectable ‘foreign’ accent, without grammatical ‘errors’, such as double negatives, the contraction ‘ain’t’, or any sort of macaronic language. As Valdés and Geoffrion-Vinci (1998) have stressed, however, perfect language ideology entails much more than accent, grammar, and linguistic purism. It also means that certain persons have had access to and participation with high language registers while others have not. For those who do, which includes language teacher educators, this means that these speakers have learned to communicate with the kinds of language reflected in scholarly articles, academic lectures, committee reports and disciplinary texts written almost exclusively by white scholars in which there are specialized vocabularies, a generous use of nominalizations, and clauses embedded within clauses, and, of course, standard language used by white bodies in contexts in harmony with the disembodied white gaze of coloniality (Domínguez, 2021). Accordingly, perfect language ideology holds true for other named languages as well. For example, the Spanish of Spanish-speaking children and youth is perceived as inferior to Standard Spanish varieties promoted and used by educated Spanish-speakers and taught in Spanish departments across the US (Chappell & Faltis, 2007; Faltis, 1984; Román et al., 2019; Valdés et al., 2003). More importantly, however, is that perfect language ideologues judge speakers who use idealized language practices of perfect language as being correct or incorrect. Accordingly,

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when they hear the language practices of students designated as English learners, heritage Spanish speakers, and students of color, their language practices are deemed to be imperfect and deviant because the students are racially positioned as intellectually and culturally inferior (Flores & Rosa, 2015). For example, a recent study by Román et al. (2019) found that 176 pre-K to grade 8 bilingual teachers who were included in their study ‘mostly expressed negative reactions toward utterances that contained linguistic features that characterize the varieties of Spanish spoken by other Spanish speakers, particularly the ones of heritage speakers’ (2019: 27). The results lead the authors to conclude that ‘most teachers in our sample were embracing, rather than resisting, the purist language policies and programs their districts have adopted, despite the fact that these policies and programs do not reflect their bilingual students’ linguistic and academic realities’ (2019: 27). It is no coincidence that perfect language colonial ideologues idealize standard language as being perfect. No doubt many of you have heard the microaggressive (Solórzano, 1998) expression ‘You speak perfect English’ said to bilingual immigrants and/or African Americans who have taken up a standard variety of English. In this instance, perfect English means that the speaker is speaking like an idealized white ‘native speaker’ affiliated with standard English, using features associated with high registers of language (Valdés & Geoffrion-Vinci, 1998). The notion of native speaker can be tied to some perfect language ideologues who erroneously draw on Noam Chomsky’s work regarding transformational grammar to idealize a native speaker of a homogenous speech community. However, Chomsky was interested in deep structural ideas about language competence, not how people actually speak. A more likely explanation of why teachers and teacher educators continue using the term ‘native speaker’ is that, as Phillipson (1992) pointed out nearly 30 years ago, the social construction of native speakers benefits dominant language users who affiliate with the standard language and identify with Western European colonizers, a sort of linguistic imperialism.5 Over the centuries since the early colonists arrived and began their genocide against the Indigenous peoples, taking new lands across the US, English-speaking American elites eventually developed their own perfect language ideology, to distinguish themselves from British elites (Bonfiglio, 2002). The early American elites who constructed perfect language ideologies beginning in the late 1700s and early 1800s were white hetero-normative males who were racists to the core (Bonfiglio, 2002). They believed that a ‘native speaker’ of English had to speak standard American English, which to them signified the registers of English used by educated white males in the mid-west, but not the English varieties spoken by white or black males in the South (African Americans were not considered whole until after the Civil War), the Northeast (where there was too much Eastern European and Jewish influence), or the

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West (where there were too many uneducated peoples, Mexicans, and ‘savages’) (Bonfiglio, 2002). The idealized standard language is portrayed as perfect, but no one actually ever speaks it fully, due to sociolinguistic realities of race, age, gender, education and context. Nonetheless, the perfect native speaker ideology persists, and it underlies much of what teachers draw on for their language instruction for the children in elementary, middle, and high school education, and especially for children and youth designated as English learners and African American children and youth. There continues to be a belief based on perfect language ideology that ‘native speakers’ are the best language teachers because they provide students with instruction that can lead to being noticed as a ‘perfect language’ user, despite decades of research that debunks this myth. As Phillipson (2016) points out, the native speaker association with perfect language ideologies is a result of linguistic imperialism propagated by Western European, white elites who wish to maintain their dominance in society. Eugenics-based language ideology

The perfect language ideology is closely tied to what I refer to as eugenics-based language ideology, beliefs about language derived from eugenics, controlled breeding to increase the likelihood of more ‘desirable’, i.e. white, offspring. Eugenics has a long history in the United States. According to Valencia (1997), eugenics came into vogue among white scholars from 1890 to 1930, based on the idea that inferiority within certain groups was transmitted by genetic code, which is then inherited across generations. By the 1920s, eugenicists and hereditarians believed that intellectual differences between white and certain groups – Mexican Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans – were due to an innate, genetic intellectual inferiority (Valencia, 1997). Pseudoscience hailed by Stanford University psychologist Lewis Terman (1916) as valid and true became the ammunition white supremacist educators relied on for the next 30 years to assert that African American, Mexican American and Native American children were intellectually inferior to white children. I term this period in eugenics-based language ideology as the extermination of non-English languages through redoubtable violent actions. The extermination period used strategies such as physical punishment for speaking a language other than English in school for Native peoples and brown-skinned immigrants (San Miguel, 1999). Jeffery Blum (1978) argues that, by 1945, racially based conclusions about the inferiority of children of color were no longer accepted in the psychology community; however, the seed was planted and new research shifted to proving that the culture of poverty experienced by African Americans, Mexican Americans and Native Americans was the primary

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cause of their intellectual inferiority (Foley, 1997). Oscar Lewis (1961, 1966) came up with the theory of the ‘culture of poverty’, which portrays poor people of color as ‘lazy, fatalistic, hedonistic, violent distrustful people living in common law unions, as well as in dysfunctional, femalecentered authoritarian families who are chronically unemployed and rarely participate in local civic activities, vote or trust the police and political leaders’ (Foley, 1997: 115). Drawing from Nazi eugenic practices, eugenicist blather has continued in the US well into the current times. Lest we forget, in 1974, Nobel Prize winner William Shockley (1910–1989) famously stated on Firing Line with William F. Buckley, that: ‘My research leads me inescapably to the opinion that the major cause of the American Negro’s intellectual and social deficits is hereditary and racially genetic in origin and, thus, not remediable to a major degree by practical improvements in the environment’ (Episode S0145, Firing Line). More recently, University of Michigan professor John Denton, (1934–2019) promoted the idea that the influx of non-white immigrants would dilute the white race in the US. John Denton proposed selective breeding and sterilization of non-whites, especially of brown immigrants, whom he believed were genetically inferior to, and were outbreeding, white families. Denton was also a prominent member of U.S. English, until he was forced to resign due to his overtly racist messages about Mexican and other darker-skinned immigrants. His writings remain sealed at the University of Michigan. And, lest we forget, The Bell Curve, co-authored by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, argued that intelligence is largely genetic, and that it can be measured reliably through IQ tests. Herrnstein and Murray (1994) argue that African Americans and Latinx are of lower intelligence, as expressed by IQ scores, than white people (Moskowitz, 2019). Eugenics-based language ideology draws on many of the ideas expressed in white eugenicists’ calls for selective breeding; in this case, for selective extirpation of languages spoken by racialized peoples, immigrants, and African Americans, deemed to be intellectually inferior to whites. Denton and others well before him (e.g. Dr Clarence Gamble and Dr Harry Laughlin, see Valencia, 1997) advocated for the sterilization of Hispanics, African Americans, Native Americans and other racialized peoples. Racial sterilization would also lead to a decrease in the number of speakers of languages other than English and an increase in white English speakers; hence, a more ‘perfect’, ‘purer’ language than the languages of brown-skinned immigrants and African Americans could regain its ‘rightful’ place among whites in the US. Wiping out languages other than English in schools and government agencies is the sort of linguistic sterilization that occurred in Arizona among the Diné, Apache, Hopi, and other indigenous peoples well into the 1970s. In 1968, the US government, under the auspices of the

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Department of Education, passed Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Act in an effort to less violently transition children and youth who spoke a language other than English into English only. The goal of the transitional bilingual education, authorized under Title VII, was to label children as limited English proficient if one or more of their family members spoke a language other than English at home. As increasing numbers of students entered transitional bilingual programs, many were eventually labeled as semi-lingual or non-nons,6 based on assessments that were normed on white English speakers (MacSwan & Rolstad, 2006). Accordingly, the new violence towards bilingual children and youth in this bilingual education period of eugenics-based language ideology fits well into the developing liberal multiculturalism that was being promoted by white elites and government officials (Flores, 2016). Despite tremendous efforts by local Chicano and Mexican American activists in the Southwest and California who opposed transitional bilingual education (De La Trinidad, 2015), the government approach to bilingual education has had a devastating impact on bilingual communities, erasing non-English language practices among children and youth who enter schools as emergent bilinguals (Poza et al., 2021). Thirty years later, the English-only movement in Arizona, funded almost entirely by Ron Unz, a white Harvard- and Stanford-educated physicist, rid the state of bilingual education through Proposition 203 (2000), which prohibited the use of languages other than English for instruction. (Tribal schools, however, were exempt from the ruling.) Unz and his ilk are eugenics-based language ideology advocates who believe that people who learn English are more likely to be intellectually superior to those who do not; hence, the need to ban languages other than English in schools and public spaces. Two other states, California and Massachusetts, also officially banned the use of languages other than English in schools. The ban on bilingual education in California was lifted in 2016. However, the legalization of bilingual education does not mean that schools are required to provide bilingual education: It merely allows them to create bilingual programs, such as dual language programs, if they choose to and if funding is available. (See note 4 about linguistic imperialism and the ideology that use of languages other than English is a privilege, not a human right.) Eugenics-based language ideology is not only about erasing languages other than English, but also about erasing the language practices of children and youth who grow up mixing languages – known as codeswitching (MacSwan, 2017), translanguaging (García & Li, 2014) – and living in entre mundos languaging (Poza et al., 2021). Eugenics is about purity of the races; eugenics-based language ideology is about believing in and maintaining the purity of the languages in contact used by emergent and heritage language bilinguals. For example, the teaching of Spanish to heritage/bilingual speakers often seeks to extirpate

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codeswitching or translanguaging practices, as well as regionalisms such as ‘ansina, hablastes’ and neologisms such as ‘troca’ and ‘pushar’ (Faltis, 1981, 1984). Mixing and meshing Spanish and English is considered a denigration of the purity of the two European languages (see Chappell & Faltis, 2007; Sayer, 2013). Maintaining the purity of languages is the goal of many, if not most dual language education programs, where named languages are separated by time, days and/or teachers, to mimic what perfect language advocates consider to be the best way to learn pure language (Faltis, in press). In this manner, dual language education does not prepare students for bilingual communities, in which bilingual children and youth communicate in both Spanish and English: rather, these programs seek to erase bilingual communities (Martínez, 2017) and enhance second language learning among mainly white middle-class children (Palmer, 2009). Dual language advocates often point to the cognitive and intellectual benefits of being bilingual in two separate languages, especially for white English-speaking children, and when languages are separated for instruction. This sort of separate language eugenics-based language ideology seeks to erase the value of the fluid and flexible bilingualism of children and youth who participate in bilingual communities where languages are fluid, flexible and integrated for communitive purposes and ethnic identity (see Valdés, 1997, 2018). As Martínez (2017) points out, Chicano and Mexican children are ‘rendered invisible by the very conceptualization of “native English speakers” and “native Spanish speakers” that undergirds dual language instruction models’ (2017: 84). Similarly, Rosa (2016), speaking of the ideologies of languagelessness (the idea that bilingual Chicano, Mexican and Latino children are unable to speak Spanish or English well), argues that ‘the dual-monolingual academic ideal of elite bilingualism leads to the devaluation and erasure of Latina/o English and Spanish language abilities…’ (Rosa, 2016: 174). See MacSwan (2000), MacSwan and Rolstad (2006) and Anzaldúa (1987) for earlier discussions of this ideology. When the ways of speaking used in bilingual communities are erased as a result of being in bilingual programs and dual language programs, not only does monolingualism seek to rise to the top again, but so does the separate language eugenics-based language ideology that seeks to rid schools and public places of bilingual children, youth and families, of language practices that are unwanted in white society and among elite bilinguals who believe in ‘perfect’ and ‘pure’ language use. Establishing a Race Radical Multilingual Vision of Resistance

Language teacher educators are at the front line of resistance to perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies which seek to erase bilingualism and the use of languages other than English for

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teaching and learning. The overwhelming majority of language teacher educators are white and monolingual; and frankly, the chances are slim that this white dominance of language teacher education will change quickly or substantively in the coming years. Accordingly, language teacher educators who believe in and want to act on principles of social justice for bilingual children and youth, as well as children and youth of color, must change the way they prepare new teachers. They must continually question their own language ideologies, learn about perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies, and work tirelessly to weed out prospective teachers who share these ideologies, and to help students of color, bilingual students, and white students to examine the extensive damage and violence to generations of children and youth that these language ideologies have caused. Language teacher educators need to understand that anything less than this is blatant racism with the goal of constructing bilingual children of color as language deficient (Rosa & Flores, 2017) and, ultimately, erasing their language practices. Learning to accept a race radical multilingual vision about bilingualism and the racialized bodies of bilingual children and youth takes effort and time, self-evaluation and learning new ways to think about language, language ideologies and language affiliations to resist the racist views of those who would want to erase non-English language and bilingual communitive practices from schools and communities. See Figure 12.2.

Promote a colonial language in school and society for collective identity and national unity; reify standard language; disparage non-standard and translanguaging as flawed.

Monoglossic Perfect Language Erasure

Promote local language and community bilingualism; espouse transnational literacy and hybrid language practices; challenge racist, deficit language models. Love bilingual people.

Racist, erasure

A race radical multilingual vision

Tolerate foreign languages taught in the standard dialect; support foreign language development as an economic resource.

Tolerate elective, transitional bilingualism and biliteracy in schools; privilege monolingual bilinguals; reify academic language and standard language.

Racist, erasure

Racist, erasure

Figure 12.2  Race radical multilingual acts of resistance and love

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There are many resources available to consult. Language ideologies are not easy to change, especially for language teacher educators who are privileged monolingual English speakers, as well as for bilingual adults who adhere to standard and perfect language ideologies. It is imperative, in my view, that all language teacher educators examine how they view language, and which language ideologies of those presented above cause them the most consternation. To be sure, bilingual children and children of color will continue to be marginalized, unwelcomed, viewed as liabilities, and have their language practices erased from schools because language ideologies and racist practices have a very strong hold on colleges of education, teacher education programs, and public and private school sites (Reyes, 2019). Nonetheless, there is much that language teacher educators can learn and do to fight back and resist this violence against racialized bilingual children and youth. This takes courage, effort, dedication to changing the status quo, and a move toward educational dignity (Poza, 2021; Sengupta-Irving & Vossoughi, 2019). First and foremost, language teacher educators need to accept and show love for all language practices that students who want to enter the teaching fields bring with them (Alfaro & Bartolomé, 2017; Haddix, 2010). It should not matter how language teacher education students use language or how they affiliate with certain language practices. Learning to teach means engaging with students so that they can describe feelings about ideas, explain what ideas mean to them, to infer how students think using all their languaging practices, to encourage student dignity by loving their languaging practices, and to provide thoughtful feedback in new, extraordinary ways (see Faltis & Abedi, 2013). A teacher cannot be caring, engaged and transformative if he or she surveils students’ language practices and/or denies the language practices children and youth bring into the classroom. This only leads to the erasure of language practices that hegemons of perfect language and eugenicsbased language adherents want to happen. Embracing the language practices of students who enter language teacher education programs as well as the practices of children, youth and teachers is critical for eliminating harmful language ideologies based on whiteness, colonization, racism, and eugenics. Among language practices that teacher educators and teachers need to learn about are codeswitching and translanguaging. There are hundreds of studies on codeswitching practices used in bilingual communities, communities of color, and by teachers and children (see Lin, 2013 for a review). One of the best places to start learning about bilingual codeswitching is MacSwan (2017) (see also MacSwan, Chapter 1, this volume). MacSwan (2017) provides an accessible reading that teaches us to appreciate the language dexterity of bilinguals and that all bilinguals possess ‘multilingual grammars that include both shared and internally-differentiated, language-particular components’ (2017: 172). Another resource for teacher educators

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and teachers alike is MacSwan and Faltis (2020), which includes a wide range of perspectives and practices to encourage the use of codeswitching and translanguaging among bilingual children, youth, teachers, and teacher educators. Walker’s (2019) book on codeswitching in African American communities makes a strong case for the role, purpose, and value of codeswitching for African American teachers and African American students. (Also, see Alfaro & Bartolomé, 2017.) One more important reference to consult is García and Li (2014). These two scholars conceptualize bilingualism as a flexible and dynamic way of communicating used in bilingual communities, and they argue for its transformative power. Unfortunately, they omit much of the earlier codeswitching research, and take on the idea that there is no such thing as discrete languages, in an effort to promote their new term, translanguaging. Translanguaging, first developed in Europe, was picked up and developed more fully in the US by Ofelia García. García’s early work is a good place to start understanding what is meant by translanguaging theory and translanguaging pedagogy.7 I am most impressed with the pedagogical work García and her colleagues have developed to show how bilingual teachers and bilingual students use language mixing or codeswitching practices for teaching and learning in ways that perfect language and eugenics-based language ideology adherents abhor. (See, for example, García & Kleyn, 2016; García & Sylvan, 2011; García et al., 2018; García et al., 2021.) It is essential for language teacher educators and students of teaching to challenge the value of separate language programs that promote dual language education, especially those programs in which children of color and children who affiliate with communities in which languages other than English are used. Such programs are directly associated with perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies because they are based on racist assumptions about the nature of language and the inherent value of children and youth who speak non-English languages. Separate language programs promote the ideology of native speakerism and purity in language. In my view, the only rationale for insisting upon the use of a separate language for developing bilingualism is in those cases where there are very few speakers of the language being taught and learned, as in the case of Native peoples, where the language in holistically linked with deep community practices and rituals, or in the Basque country (Cenoz & Gorter, 2017; McIvor & McCarty, 2016). In these cases, the language separation needs to be a community decision about not only how to teach the language but also about who can teach it, and what should be taught through the language in order to recover and sustain the language (Faltis, in press). Last, but not least, the number of language teacher educators who are bilingual with bilingual community affiliations and teachers who codeswitch with codeswitching community affiliations needs to increase drastically. Most language teacher educators, language classroom teachers,

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and students entering language teaching are monoglossic language users who have little in common with, or experience with, bilingual heteroglossic communities and students. Both language teacher educators and students entering language teaching filter their understanding of bilingual children and youth with cultural scripts (Faltis & Valdés, 2016) that do not recognize the languages or translanguaging practices of bilingual students, nor their language community affiliations. Changing this demographic is not easy, and it will take time and effort. In the meantime, it is imperative that language teacher educators, students entering the language teaching profession, and language teachers working the field learn new ways of understanding racism, the power of whiteness throughout education, and especially language-related education, and the ways that perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies have impacted and will continue to impact teaching and learning. Finally, it is important to realize that, as Leigh Patel (2019) has pointed out, colonialism and white advantage are not linear concepts that improve over time. That is, pure, perfect language and eugenics-based language ideologies do not dissolve as a matter of time: ‘linearity is overrepresented not because it is objectively true but because asserting it as the truth of progress enacts and protects power’ (Patel, 2019: 106). The power being protected here is the whiteness in language and language practices, which constantly needs to be addressed in new ways. Teachers and teacher educators will need to be vigilant and innovative to fight against the power of white supremacy in all schools and teacher education programs. Notes (1) I credit Nelson Flores for first steering me to Melamed’s work in 2015. (2) Many states have recently prohibited public school teachers from teaching lessons about slavery, savagery toward indigenous peoples, and the brutal treatment of Mexican and Chinese immigrants. Texas, for example, is seeking to exclude certain books from school and public libraries, books that point out racism and settler colonial brutalities. (3) Anzaldúa (1987) recalls that in her high school, Mexican American students were required to take 2 speech classes, designed specifically to rid them of their accented English. (4) This is a dog whistle to signal to readers that students designated as English learners and students of color are inherently inferior in using the logic and rational thought required for academic language development. See Faltis (2013) for a discussion on this topic. (5) Linguistic imperialism carries with it the language ideology that speaking a language other than English in school and publicly is a privilege that only white dominant language users can allow, and permission to use a language other than English will be granted only to those who demonstrate clearly that they have ‘perfect’ English (Phillipson & Skutnabb-Kangas, 2014, cited in Catalano et al., 2018). (6) Non-non was a disparaging designation used to describe mainly Spanish-speaking Mexican children as having little or no language ability in either Spanish or English based on standard language monolingual assessment tools. See MacSwan and Rolstad (2006) for discussion.

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(7) For thoughtful critiques of translanguaging, see Jaspers (2017) and MacSwan, this volume, Chapter 1 (for the dire consequences of erasing speech communities), Chapter 4 (which summarizes much of MacSwan, 2017) as well as MacSwan and Faltis (2020).

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Afterword: The Multilingual Turn, Superdiversity and Translanguaging – The Rush from Heterodoxy to Orthodoxy1 Stephen May

In 2014, I published an edited collection entitled The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and Bilingual Education (May, 2014a). It was an applied linguistics collection that tried at that time to capture both the recency and excitement generated by the (belated) recognition of bi/multilingualism as the (new) basis for language teaching and learning. This recognition was, in turn, closely aligned with concurrent developments in critical sociolinguistics, with the likes of the late Jan Blommaert, and Ben Rampton, championing the British sociologist Steven Vertovec’s (2007) notion of ‘superdiversity’ as a new analytical frame. Superdiversity, with its focus on changing patterns of migration and transmigration, and the related proliferation in major Western urban centers of demographic and linguistic diversity, usefully highlighted, for its sociolinguistic exponents, the complex and fluid multilingual repertoires of urban migrants in this late modern, globalized age. As I observed, the result, in combination: has usefully foregrounded multilingualism, rather than monolingualism, as the new norm of applied linguistic and sociolinguistic analysis. It has increasingly challenged bounded, unitary, and reified conceptions of languages and related notions of ‘native speaker’ and ‘mother tongue,’ arguing instead for the more complex fluid understandings of ‘voice’ … ‘language as social practice’ … and a related ‘sociolinguistics of mobile resources’ ... And, following from both, it has highlighted the need for more nuanced ethnographic understandings of the complex multilingual repertoires of speakers in urban environments, along with their locatedness, scale … flow, and circulation … in a globalized world. (May, 2014a: 1) 343

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Since then, this combination of superdiversity and the multilingual turn has been joined by, and increasingly elided with, the notion of translanguaging, as championed most notably by Ofelia García and Li Wei and colleagues (e.g. García, 2009; García & Li, 2014; Li, 2017; Otheguy et al., 2015; Otheguy et al., 2018). These associational developments were already evident in my own collection, with translanguaging, for example, discussed in García and Flores (2014) and Li’s (2014) contributions, while the related notion of translingual practices was outlined by Canagarajah (2014). More recently, and to a lesser extent perhaps, the emerging framework of raciolinguistics, expounded by H. Samy Alim, Nelson Flores and Jonathan Rosa, among others (Alim et al., 2016; Flores & Rosa, 2015; Rosa & Flores, 2017), has also been broadly included in these developments. Indeed, these various (inter)connections have been explicitly charted in recent useful and illuminating critical analyses – see Sembiante (2016) and Meier (2017). As I noted back then, and as I still believe, this multilingual turn is especially welcome – not to mention, long overdue – in both applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. But I also at the time raised some cautions with respect to these developments. The first related to their demonstrable lack of historicity. Urban multilingualism, for example, is not solely the product of late modernity. It has been present in earlier periods of history, particularly prior to the advent of nationalism and the nation-state (Canagarajah & Liyanage, 2012; May, 2012, 2016, 2021). Likewise, complex, dynamic, multilingualism has long been a feature of so-called ‘rural’ (often Indigenous) contexts (May, 2014b), despite suggestions by exponents of superdiversity to the contrary (see, for example, Makoni, 2012). Relatedly, the sudden ‘discovery’ of the merits of multilingualism by Western sociolinguists clearly reveals its own ethnocentrism. After all, scholars from beyond the West have long argued for just such an examination of multilingualism, albeit more broadly than in just urban contexts, and a related contesting of the monolingual norms that still underpin the study of language teaching and learning (Kachru, 1994; Sridhar, 1994). Broadly speaking, these two concerns still hold for me in relation to what we have come to see since. This is particularly evident, in my view, with respect to an increasingly trenchant and dichotomous construction of translanguaging as a new, distinctive – and, it seems, inviolate – pedagogical orthodoxy. I do not wish to diminish the importance of the re-situating/re-centering of complex multilingual repertoires in relation to language teaching and learning. However, in what follows, and in light of this excellent volume’s key concerns, I want to elaborate briefly on these ongoing tensions. My aim here, as with this volume writ large, is to contribute constructively and critically to these wider debates, supporting their significance but also situating them diachronically. In returning a clearer historicity to these debates, my aim is to attempt

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to forestall what already seems to be happening – the ossification of translanguaging as (a new) pedagogical orthodoxy. New Paradigms, Nomenclature and the Preoccupation with Recency

Inevitably, it seems, any ‘new’ theoretical paradigm involves the repudiation of established ones – emphasizing how different, revolutionary, this new paradigm is. In the process, we often find a high degree of historical amnesia, or at least historical ellipsis, as I have already highlighted. This synchronic rather than diachronic view of the field, and the related ‘rush to recency’, leads us to unnecessarily dispense with (and/or simply ignore) older paradigms, along with what they might (still) be able to contribute to current/new understandings. This repudiation of previous frameworks is most evident in the establishment of antimonies between the key concepts or nomenclature of the new (versus older) paradigms. We see this clearly in the progression of translanguaging as a new academic paradigm, for example, via its increasing dichotomization of dynamic and additive bilingualism, along with translanguaging and codeswitching. Additive bilingualism, which has for 60 years underpinned critical bilingual educational practices (see May, 2017), has since been dismissed out of hand as a monoglossic and inherently racialized conception of bilingualism (Flores & Rosa, 2015); as reinforcing the idea of discrete languages; and, by extension, of adopting a ‘two solitudes’ or ‘dualcompetence’ approach to educational instruction (García, 2009; García & Li, 2014). But, as Cummins (2017) argues, none of these necessarily entails in relation to additive bilingualism (and the ‘necessarily’ is crucial here). Cummins argues that additive bilingualism can still be consistent with a heteroglossic view of bilingualism. He also highlights how, when viewed historically, additive bilingualism was always juxtaposed with subtractive bilingualism – as an emancipatory alternative educational approach to bilingual students that begins with, and centrally recognizes, their bilingualism as a basis for teaching and learning. These overtly emancipatory practices in additive bilingual education contexts are usefully highlighted in this volume by Wiley’s overview of bilingual education in the US context (Chapter 10) and Nicholas and McCarty’s broader discussion of Indigenous language rights and their realization in Indigenous language education (Chapter 9). Both chapters demonstrate a much longer historical trajectory of effective bilingual education practices when compared with the still nascent pedagogical benefits of translanguaging. I have also argued (May, 2014c) that focusing on ‘dynamic bilingualism’ should be seen as complementary to, rather than as superseding, ‘additive bilingualism’. This is because, in my view, dynamic bilingualism highlights

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(rightly) the complexity and fluidity of bilingualism, while additive bilingualism encompasses a broader sociopolitical dimension (and aim) in revaluing bilingualism as an educational and wider social norm, rather than (as in still dominant subtractive conceptions) as anomalous and/or aberrant. We see a similar pattern of increasing repudiation emerge with respect to translanguaging and codeswitching. Bhatt and Bolonyai (this volume, Chapter 6) usefully historicize the research on codeswitching, which they demonstrate has been evident for well over a century. They highlight, for example, studies of Spanish in New Mexico and Arizona in the early 20th century, as well as, drawing on Benson (2001), the use of the term by Haugen in the 1960s. Given this rich history, as MacSwan highlights in Chapters 1 and 4 in this volume, García’s early work on translanguaging, for example, did not dismiss or dichotomize codeswitching: For us, translanguagings are multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of their bilingual worlds. Translanguaging therefore goes beyond what has been termed code-switching …, although it includes it, as well as other kinds of bilingual language use and bilingual contact. (García, 2009: 45, italics in original)

Indeed, García’s (2009) original introduction of the term is partnered with an extensive discussion of codeswitching, borrowing, and other dimensions of language contact, both as sociolinguistic concepts (2009: 48–50) and as pedagogical tools (2009: 298–301), as MacSwan (Chapter 4) observes. Li, more recently, charts a similar position: For me, Translanguaging has never intended to replace code-switching or any other term, although it challenges the code view of language. It does not deny the existence of named languages, but stresses that languages are historically, politically, and ideologically defined entities. It defines the multilingual as someone who is aware of the existence of the political entities of named languages and has an ability to make use of the structural features of some of them that they have acquired. (Li, 2017: 19)

And yet, increasingly, García and colleagues are doing just that – dismissing (and dichotomizing) codeswitching in favor of translanguaging. With respect to translanguaging versus codeswitching, Otheguy et al. (2015), for example, unequivocally assert that codeswitching is monoglossic, constituting ‘a theoretical endorsement of the idea that what the bilingual manipulates, however masterfully, are two separate linguistic systems’ (2015: 282; see also, Otheguy et al., 2018). Similarly, with respect to dynamic versus additive bilingualism, Flores and Rosa (2015) declaim that ‘additive approaches to bilingual

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education continue to interpret the linguistic practices of bilinguals through a monolingual framework that marginalizes the fluid linguistic practices of these communities’ (2015: 153). And yet, the empirical evidence for both positions remains scant (see in this volume MacSwan, Chapter 4; Auer, Chapter 5; and Bhatt and Bolonyai, Chapter 6). Methodological Nationalism and the Problem of Generalizability

This rejection, tout court, of longstanding (and still potentially complementary) theoretical understandings of bi/multilingualism is understandable in terms of the construction (and related impermeability) of new academic paradigms, of which more shortly. However, rejecting and/or dichotomizing potentially complementary understandings demonstrably undermines the claims to transdisciplinarity increasingly made on behalf of translanguaging. In addition, advocacy of translanguaging reflects a sometimes hidden ‘methodological nationalism’ (May, 2019; Wimmer & Glick Shiller, 2003). Methodological nationalism refers to the widespread naturalization of the nation-state – as equivalent, in effect, to society – within the social sciences. More specifically, methodological nationalism reflects and reinforces the identification that many scholars maintain with their own nation-states. Wimmer and Glick Shiller (2003) describe this as a ‘territorial limitation which confines the study of social processes to the political and geographic boundaries of a particular nation-state’ (2003: 578). In order to overcome this, they assert that ‘[w]e need to think outside of the box of dominant national discourses’ (2003: 581). Advocates of translanguaging are quick to acknowledge that the term initially came from the work of Williams (1994) in relation to Welsh-medium education – albeit, at that point, simply referring to the pedagogical practice of alternating language use across different modalities (planned pedagogical codeswitching, in effect). Nonetheless, the locus of its subsequent advocacy and expansion has clearly been the United States, particularly (although not exclusively) in relation to Latinx education, and predominantly, as with superdiversity, with respect to urban contexts. This in turn underpins advocacy for translanguaging as a pedagogical strategy – and, relatedly, the dismissal of a separate/ siloed approach to languages of instruction in bi/multilingual education. In this respect, while Spanish is clearly a minoritized/marginalized language in the US context, it is nonetheless still widely spoken in the general population. This is demonstrably not the case, generally speaking, in Indigenous language contexts (see Nicholas & McCarty, Chapter 9, this volume). While there is incipient work on the use of Indigenous translanguaging spaces (e.g. Oliver et al., 2021), these language revitalization contexts do not usually have the benefit of widespread Indigenous language use in the wider society. Consequently,

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there is much more pedagogical focus on the ring-fencing of Indigenous language instruction in Indigenous bilingual/immersion education contexts and a related skepticism toward translanguaging, which is seen as potentially dissipating the central aims of Indigenous language revitalization. This is certainly the case in my own country, Aotearoa New Zealand (see May & Hill, 2018). The principal and ongoing concern for Indigenous Māori-medium education is that English, as the dominant language of wider New Zealand society, will inevitably ‘encroach’ (as it does everywhere else) on the classroom/school environment. This is even further complicated by the fact that almost all students currently in Māori-medium education are first language English speakers (albeit, bearing in mind the limitations of the first/second language distinction). Thus, while separation of languages of instruction may be constructed in translanguaging research as representative of a monoglossic pedagogical context, decisions made in Māori-medium and other Indigenous language education contexts internationally to keep languages of instruction separate are primarily sociopolitical/sociolinguistic rather than (solely) pedagogical. Separation of instruction is seen as the best means of retaining (some) linguistic autonomy for Indigenous languages in the classroom (for if not there, where?). Thus, while there has been a clear internationalization of translanguaging research, particularly over the last few years, the origins of its dominating national context (the US) – and, by extension, its generalizability – remain moot. Deconstructing Languages and Achieving Biliteracy: A Contradiction in Terms?

A key tenet of the deconstructivist position on translanguaging, and the multilingual turn and superdiversity more broadly, is the idea that there are no distinct language varieties to begin with. Alongside this is a related pathologizing of standardized language varieties, which are seen as misrepresenting (and delimiting) the far more complex, fluid and dynamic oral multilingual repertoires of students. This may well be so – as Cook (Chapter 2, this volume) outlines, individual complex, multilingual repertoires, comprising I-languages or idiolects, do not necessarily match named E-languages. But nor do they vary at random – there are clear connections between them, and, as Cook concludes, even idiolects necessarily require other interlocutors who/to understand them (see also below). As MacSwan, in his second contribution to this volume (Chapter 4), observes of this: ‘an E-language is shared among a collection of individuals whose I-languages are sufficiently similar to permit communication’. The same can be said, more broadly, for the acceptance of a unitary linguistic system that includes definable language varieties – what MacSwan describes and elaborates upon as an

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‘integrated multilingual model’ (see also Genesee, Chapter 7, and Marks, Satterfield and Kovelman, Chapter 8, of this volume). Given this, how does the increasingly de rigueur rejection of standardized varieties by translanguaging and raciolinguistic advocates sit in relation to providing marginalized bi/multilingual students with access to academic language registers and to facilitating/fostering their wider educational and social mobility? I have recently argued that the fetishizing of individual multilingual repertoires and the dismissal of academic language registers simply entrenches, rather than ameliorates, educational disadvantage for the (already) marginalized. For example, a key trope of some recent superdiverse accounts (e.g. Makoni, 2012; Makoni & Pennycook, 2007; Stroud, 2018; Wee, 2018) is the dismissal of Indigenous language education initiatives on the basis that Indigenous languages are (colonial) constructs (well, of course, all language varieties are constructs). But all this does is deny Indigenous students access to their proximal language varieties in the education of their children. The result, ironically, is the reinforcement of monolingual/majority language education, along with the ongoing cultural and linguistic (as well as social and political) disenfranchisement of Indigenous peoples. Similarly, discussion of the rights and recognition of the language varieties of other subaltern groups is most often premised on the validity and distinctiveness of those varieties – even if these are necessarily constructed as idealized speech communities. This is seen clearly, for example, in the longstanding advocacy for the legitimacy of African American English, highlighted initially by Labov in the 1960–1970s and championed by others, such as John Baugh, since (see, for example, Baugh, 2018; Labov, 1969). Be that as it may, this same dismissal of academic language registers is also apparent in Flores and Rosa’s (2015) account of raciolinguistics when they argue that the acceptance and promotion of ‘standardized language skills’ amount simply to a raciolinguistic reinscription of the norms of the (dominant) white speaker – turning bi/multilingual students into ‘white speaking subjects’. While I again broadly agree with their foregrounding of raciolinguistics as an important prism through which to analyze language education, I think this position is nonetheless problematic for two reasons. First, like much critical theory, the focus of discussion remains firmly on what is wrong with current practices and not with what alternative pedagogies and practices might look like (although there is now some nascent work on the latter with respect to dual language education, see Flores et al., 2021). Second, the acquisition of standard academic language registers has long been critical to the central aim of additive bilingual programs in acquiring academic biliteracy. While there has been previous criticism of academic language as a construct in such programs, this has (rightly, in my view) been in relation to an unnecessary

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hierarchizing of academic language registers over other forms, rather than with the concept itself (see MacSwan, 2020). With this caveat in mind, I see no contradiction in foregrounding academic language registers in critical, raciolinguistic and heteroglossic approaches to bi/multilingualism and bi/multilingual education. Surely, it is fundamental for critical bi/multilingual educators to equip their students with academic language registers while, at the same time, highlighting their situatedness and the power relations attendant upon them, as well as their (inevitable) social construction? It is precisely in this de-normalizing and collocative process – foregrounding the specificity of academic language registers and providing access to them as part of the expansion of individual multilingual repertoires – that we can provide students with a wider linguistic arsenal to speak truth (back) to power. As Cummins (2017) rightly observes of this, in my view: Educators who are committed to social justice and aspire to promote strong academic development among minoritized students will achieve their professional and personal goals more successfully when they encourage their students to develop biliteracy and when they actively challenge the devaluation of identity in classrooms and broader social institutions. (Cummins, 2017: 422) Fetishizing the Individual and the Limits of Relativism

Another concern I have with the hardening of deconstructivist accounts of translanguaging, superdiversity and the multilingual turn over the last few years relates to the question of agency. Privileging individual linguistic repertoires, and language use, in contexts of sociolinguistic superdiversity over-emphasizes the potential of individual linguistic agency and delimits wider analyses of the effects of ongoing linguistic hierarchies and related inequalities, or what Liddicoat (2013) calls linguistic ‘hierarchies of prestige’. Relatedly, the renewed focus in these accounts on parole (speech) at the expense of langue (the language system) – inverting, in effect, the priorities and preoccupations of 20th-century structural linguistics – is an important methodological advance. It clearly marks a shift away, as Busch (2012) argues, from linguistic ‘structure, system and regularity towards approaches that acknowledge fluidity and creativity in linguistic practices’ (2012: 4). But it is still a dichotomy, albeit an inverted one, and the consequence is that in dispensing with langue entirely – at least ostensibly (since translanguaging advocates are still concerned with structure, even as they critique it – see Otheguy et al., 2015; Otheguy et al., 2018) – it also underplays or simply ignores the significance of access to, and use of, standardized, literary and/or prestige language varieties. As discussed in the previous section, the latter, particularly

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via education, remain a key factor in wider, long-term mobility for bi/multilingual speakers in the late modern world, and simply willing them away does not change this. In this sense, a focus on individual ‘polyglot repertoires’ (Blommaert, 2008), mobile (linguistic) resources and the like, does not (yet) tell us as much as it might/or indeed should, about how we might actually harness these repertoires more effectively with respect to wider educational and social mobility. Addressing this combination requires us to ally our growing understanding of the complexity, reciprocity and porosity of quotidian multilingual repertoires to the ongoing need for access to standardized language varieties and to the related achievement of bi/multiliteracies, given that the latter are essential to long-term educational and wider success. While translanguaging makes much of the importance of scaffolding existing linguistic resources, its links to the achievement of bi/multiliteracies remain, at least at this point, largely rhetorical and/or underdeveloped. Positionality, Critical Reflexivity and Our Own Elite (Bi/Multilingual) Linguistic Repertoires

One final concern that I have with the abrogation of any sense of linguistic boundedness in deconstructivist accounts of language, including recent developments in translanguaging, relates to our own (lack of) positionality as academics in relation to these issues. Irrespective of our own language backgrounds, what is demonstrably evident is our use/mastery of academic language registers as a key part of our own linguistic repertoires. This is also what we are wanting, or should surely want, to make accessible to bi/multilingual students. And yet, I have not seen any sustained interrogation of the issue of researcher positionality from advocates of linguistic deconstructivism to date. What is needed to redress this lacuna is the application of what Jackson (2004) describes as ‘rigorous reflexivity’. Rigorous reflexivity actively explores ‘how we see—and how others see us seeing them’ (Jackson, 2004: 37) in the research process, the research project, and the wider fields within which we are all situated. Rigorous or critical reflexivity is thus more than a positionality statement because this kind of reflexivity requires a serious epistemological consideration of one’s subjective privileges and solidarities within broader sociohistorical and sociolinguistic realms, as well as within particular research settings (Bell et al., 2023). Such a critical examination should also necessarily include our positioning as researchers in the broader field of academia: that is, as Bourdieu (1990) has outlined, our academic habitus, which enables us to see certain things and not others, and to effectively employ a range of (linguistic) strategies to succeed within the fields in which we are situated.

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Conclusion

So, to conclude, I think the multilingual turn, superdiversity, raciolinguistics and translanguaging clearly all offer important/ significant/timely new insights and possibilities for a more critical approach to sociolinguistic and applied linguistic understandings of bi/multilingualism and for bi/multilingual education. I do not in any way resile from this position. But, as I have outlined here, and what this volume makes clear, is that the rush to establish these as ‘new’ and discrete academic paradigms sometimes leads us to ignore or misrepresent (or both) what has gone before us. I have previously discussed this tendency via Bourdieu’s (1990, 1991) notion of field and Bernstein’s (2000) understanding of disciplinary formation (see May, 2014c, 2019). Bourdieu’s understanding of field foregrounds the contest between orthodoxy and heterodoxy that invariably attends debates as to what legitimately constitute a field’s endeavors or interests. Bernstein (2000) discusses how the establishment of distinct academic disciplines from the 19th century onward and their subsequent organization into self-regulating communities amount to what he terms ‘singulars’. Academic singulars, for Bernstein, are characterized by strong boundary maintenance (classification), and are supported culturally (via professional associations, networks and writing) and psychologically (in students, teachers and researchers). As a result, ‘singulars develop strong autonomous self-sealing and narcissistic identities’ (2000: 54). In combination, these militate against wider interdisciplinary – let alone, transdisciplinary – engagement. Bernstein (2000) describes the latter as ‘regions’, or a recontextualization and expansion of academic singulars (2000: 9). As Becher and Trowler (2001) note about this more open-ended approach: It often happens that adjoining disciplinary groups lay claim to the same pieces of intellectual territory. This does not necessarily entail a conflict between them. In some cases, depending on the nature of the claimants and the disposition of the no man’s land, it may involve a straightforward division of interest; in others it may mark a growing unification of ideas and approaches. (Becher & Trowler, 2001: 60)

Translanguaging advocates argue that this is precisely what it is – an inter- and transdisciplinary space, and yet there already appears to be a move in the opposite direction toward paradigmatic closure. What I have tried to highlight here are some trends that might potentially thwart or foreclose this ambition for inter-transdisciplinarity, with translanguaging ending up as just another (albeit new) disciplinary orthodoxy. I have also argued that, to avoid this, we need to maintain a diachronic (appropriately historicized) approach that allows us to not lose sight of what has already been accomplished, and who our allies

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are, in the ongoing quest for more critical and representative views of bi/multilingualism and bi/multilingual education. Such an approach allows us to continue to foreground and focus upon the dialectic between individual agency and structural constraints – validating the former without losing sight of the latter. And it also affords us the opportunity to draw on a wider range of academic repertoires, and social and educational contexts, than we might otherwise have done. This is all the more important given just how much is still at stake for bi/ multilingual students and speakers in the increasingly diverse, late modern, globalized world in which we live, where the fissures of in/equity, access and opportunity still run deep. Note (1) This afterword is based on an invited keynote lecture I presented at the International Symposium on Bilingualism 13 in July 2021, hosted (via Zoom) by the University of Warsaw.

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Author Index

Bourdieu, P. 351, 352 Brecht, R.D. 268, 269 Brown, A. 57 Buber, M. 59 Buckley, William F. 332 Busch, B. 350 Bush, George 264 Bush, George W. 267 Butterworth, B. 216

Absolon, K.E. 231 Adrover-Roig, D. 172–173 Agha, A. 133 Aguirre, A. 92 Akkari, A. 24 Albirini, A. 170 Alfred, T. 241 Alim, H.S. 251, 344 Althusser, Louis 14 Anzaldúa, G. 322, 325, 334, 338n3 Arias, M.B. 270 Auer, P. 5, 11, 85, 105, 130, 141, 162

Canagarajah, S. 1, 141, 277, 344 Cantone, K.F. 93 Cao, F. 209 Catedral, L. 162–163 Cerda, N. 256, 267 Celic, C. 300 Cenoz, J. 78–79 Chávez, César 83 Chee, M.W.L. 204 Chimhundu, H. 279 Chomsky, N. 7–8, 17–18, 21, 23, 46, 47, 60, 61, 99, 100, 107, 116n4, 156, 330 Clinton, Bill 258–259 Clyne, M. 131 Cobbett, W. 55 Colina, S. 101–102 Comeau, L. 186–187 Conboy, B. 189 Conway, Kellyanne 265 Cook, V.J. xix, 6, 11, 48, 52, 54, 56, 60, 116n4, 202, 298, 348 Copernicus 15 Costa, D. 233, 234 Creese, A. 143–146, 150n18, 166–167, 298 Cronkite, Walter 258 Cross, B.E. 326 Cummins, J. 3, 89, 211–212, 242, 345, 350

Bachmann, Michele 266 Bailey, B. 162 Baker, C. 149n12, 314n3 Bakhtin, M.M. 1, 5 Baldwin, D. 233, 234 Bale, J. 276, 278 Barker, G. 160 Bartolomé, L.I. 24–25 Baugh, J. 16, 28–29, 30, 250, 284, 349 Becher, T. 352 Becker, A.L. 146, 158 Belazi, H.M. 85, 90, 98 Bell, T. 257 Bennett, William 257 Benson, E.J. 175n5, 346 Beres, A.M. 57 Bernstein, B. 66, 78–79, 352 Bhatt, R.M. 160, 161–162, 346 Bigelow, M. 114 Blackburn, A.M. 50 Blackledge, A. 29, 143–146, 150n18, 166–167 Blanc, M. 297 Blaut, M. 252 Bloch, B. 7 Blom, J.P. 160 Blommaert, J. 129, 143, 158, 169, 343, 351 Bloomfield, L. 7, 16–17 Blum, J. 331–332 Boas, F. 16, 21 Bolonyai, A. 5, 85, 160, 161–162, 346 Bountress, N.G. 27

D’Angiulli, A. 216 da Silva, T.T. 23 Das Gupta, J. 20 Davis, W.D. 257, 283 De Bot, K. 52 De Korne, H. 232 De Swaan, A. 57 356

Author Index  357

Denton, J. 332 DeParle, J. 265–266 Derrida, Jacques 14, 21–22, 31 Di Sciullo, A.M. 85, 98 Dillard, J.L. 27 Dion, S. 231 Dirim, I. 150n18 Djikstra, T. 55 Donahue, T.S. 248 Döpke, S. 196 Dorais, L.-J. 192 Dörnyei, Z. 312 Dosse, F. 14 Dubinsky, S. 257, 283 Duff, P. 308 Dunmore, S. 305, 309, 312 Einstein, A. 60 Epstein, N. 257 Escamilla, K. 4 Espinosa, Aurelio M. 160 Everett, D. 156 Faltis, C.J. 25–26, 114–115, 337, 338n4 Farahmandpur, R. 13, 31 Fasold, R. 84 Fillmore, John 29 Fishman, J.A. 242, 306 Flores, N. 26, 251, 252, 322, 344, 346–347, 349 Foley, D. 332 Ford, R.T. 277 Foucault, M. 14, 281 Freire, P. 22–23, 24, 26, 31 Frigg, R. 8 Fuller, J. 108, 109 Gafaranga, J. 141, 162 Gal, S. 324 Galileo 15 García, O. 1, 3–4, 5, 10, 13, 19, 21, 26, 29–30, 50–51, 55, 57, 58, 86, 87, 89, 93–94, 95–96, 104–106, 107, 113, 114, 126, 131, 132–133, 135–136, 137–138, 140, 141, 147, 166, 168–169, 173, 228, 242, 277, 283, 299, 300–301, 308, 309, 314n4, 337, 344, 346 Gee, J.P. 9, 66, 106, 108 Genesee, F. 5, 185–186, 188, 202, 302 Geoffrion-Vinci, M. 327 Gingrich, Newt 258 Glick Shiller, N. 347 Goffman, E. 161 Goldrick. M. 172 Gollan, T.H. 172

Gomes, A.M.R. 239 Gómez-Tortosa, E. 203 Gort, M. 4, 114 Gorter, D. 78–79 Govindarajan, K. 190 Grier, Pam 159–160 Grierson, G.A. 128–129 Grosjean, F. 6, 78–79, 113, 161, 202, 297 Guerrero, F.J. 228 Gumperz, J. 84, 85, 106, 107, 130, 141, 149n7, 158, 160–161, 297 Gustafson, B. 228 Gutierrez-Clellen, V.F. 188 Haddix, M. 322 Halmari, H. 85 Halliday, M. 174 Hamers, J. 297 Hammer, R. 23 Hart, B. 12n Hartmann, S. 8 Harvey, D. 46 Hasselmo, N. 84 Haugen, E. 83, 346 Hayakawa, S.I. 258 Heller, M. 162, 297 Hempel, C. 17 Henderson, K. 115 Hernández-Chávez, E. 84 Hernandez, C.M. 256, 267 Herrnstein, R.J. 332 Hill, G.L. 227, 228, 232, 235 Hjelmsley, L. 60 Hohepa, M.K. 232 Hopgood, S. 285 Hopper, P. 158 Hornberger, N.H. 230, 234, 279 Hulk, A. 196 Hult, F.M. 230, 281 Humboldt, W. von 47 Idsardi, W. 28–29 Infeld, L. 60 Ingold, C.W. 268, 269 Inoue, A.B. 327 Irvine, J. 324 Islas, Jason 265–266 Jackson, J. 351 Jacquemet, M. 277 Jake, J.L. 92, 94 Jaspers, J. 22, 174 Jernudd, B. 20 Jiménez, Ajb’ee 228 Johnson, D.C. 281

358  Author Index

Johnson, Lyndon B. 28, 266 Joiner, Charles W. 27, 30 Jones, B. 314n1 Jones, Sir William 13 Jørgensen, J.N. 126, 133, 134, 141–142, 147, 150n17, 150n19, 158–159, 277 Kachru, B. 168 Karimzad, F. 163, 163f, 175n6 Karlsson, A. 139, 148–149n3 Kibler, A. 4 Kimmerer, R.W. 231 King, K.A. 115 King, Martin Luther, Jr 28 Kirchner, Juli 265 Kobach, Kris 265 Kovelman, Ioulia 5 Krashen, S. 299 Kroskrity, P.V. 108 Kulish, N. 262, 263, 264 Labov, W. 18, 27, 31n1, 78, 79, 84, 158 Lacan, Jacques 14 Lallier, M. 213 Le Page, Robert 45 Leibowitz, A.H. 248–249, 250, 253 Leonard, W.Y. 229, 230, 232, 233, 234–235, 243 Lévi-Strauus, Claude 14 Levy, R. 173 Lewis, G. 300 Lewis, O. 332 Li, W. 4, 13, 50–51, 55, 58, 113, 132, 140, 147, 150n16, 162, 168–169, 173–174, 337, 344, 346 Liceras, J.M. 92 Liddicoat, A. 350 Lin, A.M.Y. 228 Lipski, J. 84, 92, 98 Lo Bianco, J. 309 Lomoowaima, K.T. 228, 229 López, L. 85 Luckmann, T. 149n8-9 Lyons, K. 163, 163f, 175n6 Lyotard, Jean-François 14 Lyster, R. 307 McCarty, T.L. 11, 19–20, 231, 235, 345 McClure, E. 84 McIntire, M. 262, 263, 264 McLaren, P. 13, 22, 23, 31 McPake, J. 3, 306 Macedo, D. 24–25, 251

Macías, R.F. 283 Mackey, W.F. 83 MacSwan, J. 3, 5, 29, 50, 52–53, 85, 87, 92, 100, 101–102, 105, 112, 126, 132, 148n3, 202, 242, 282, 283, 284, 334, 336, 337, 346, 348 Magga, O.H. 232 Magiste, E. 49 Mahootian, S. 85, 89 Makoni, S. 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 128, 133, 183, 278, 279–280, 297 Marks, Rebecca 5 Martínez-Roldán, C.M. 3 Martínez, D.C. 114 Martínez, R.A. 4, 114, 322, 334 Masayesva, V. 238 Mashiri, P. 270, 278 Matthews, S. 196 May, Cordelia Scaife 262–263, 263, 264, 265, 266 May, S. 26, 158, 242, 275, 277, 278, 280, 282, 297, 343 Meek, B. 229, 241–242 Meeuwis, M. 129, 143 Meier, G. 344 Meisel, J.M. 188 Melamed, J. 322, 323, 324 Menchaca, M. 252 Mesthrie, Raj 175n3 Mignolo, W. 252 Miles, R. 250, 281 Miller, Stephen 264–266, 265 Møller, J.S. 141 Moro Quintanilla, M. 91, 92, 93 Moyer, M. 92 Mülhäusler, P. 279 Müller, N. 196 Murray, C. 332 Myers-Scotton, C. 85, 141, 192, 194 Myslín, M. 173 Navarro, S. 196 Newell, G.E. 328 Newmeyer, F.J. 14, 15–16 Newton, I. 15 Ngūgī wa Thiong’o 235, 242 Nicholas, S.E. 11, 235, 345 Nicoladis, E. 196 Nietzche, F.W. 231 O’Hanlon, F. 305 O’Shannessy, C. 149n8 Olds, J. 234 Ortiz, S.J. 232–233, 234

Author Index  359

Otheguy, R. 4, 5, 10, 51, 52, 54, 59, 60, 86, 87, 92–93, 95, 98, 103, 104, 107–108, 109–110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 128, 132, 148n1, 169–170, 171, 183, 346 Otsuji, E. 150n17, 277 Palmer, D.K. 25 Paradis, J. 188, 190, 194, 196 Parafito Couto, M.C. 93 Patel, L. 322, 338 Pavlenko, A. 174 Pedraza, P. 94 Pennycook, A. 4, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12–13, 18–19, 20, 30, 128, 133, 134, 150n17, 183, 277, 278, 280–281, 282, 297 Pérez-Leroux, A. 196 Peters, M. 240 Petrovic, J.E. 257, 267 Peyton, J. 309 Pfaff, C. 98 Phillipson, R. 20, 30, 250, 281, 330, 331 Poplack, S. 84, 85, 90, 91, 96, 97, 97, 98, 101, 105, 131, 141, 192–193 Poza, L. 22 Pray, L. 29 Prince, A. 102 Purnell, T. 28–29 Quayle, Dan 257 Rampton, B. 84, 113–114, 139, 141, 162, 298, 343 Reagan, Ronald 110, 257 Ricento, T. 19, 20 Risley, T.R. 12n Rockwell, E. 239 Roeper, T. 107 Rolstad, K. 25, 29, 112, 334, 338 Román, D. 330 Roosevelt, Theodore 265 Rorick, C.L. 235 Rosa, J. 26, 251, 322, 334, 344, 346–347, 349 Rosborough, T.P. 235 Rose, N. 281 Ruiz, R. 269, 275 Rumbaut, R.G. 269 Sánchez, George 255 Sankoff, D. 91, 96, 97, 97, 98, 105, 192–193 Sargent, E. 239, 240, 241 Satterfield, T. 5, 202 Saussure, F. 13–14, 17, 45, 148n2 Sayer, P. 115

Seargeant, P. 166, 173 Sekaquaptewa, E. 236–237, 238 Seltzer, K. 300 Sembiante, S. 344 Sessions, Jeff 255, 264, 265, 266 Shockley, William 332 Shohamy, E. 18, 19 Silverstein, M. 134, 329 Simpson, J. 139 Skinner, B.F. 17 Skutnabb-Kangas, T. 20, 30, 281 Slembrouck, J. 139–140, 150n15 Smiley, Tavis 159–160, 170 Smitherman, G. 27, 30, 94, 100, 170, 251 Smolensky, P. 102 Spring, J. 252 Stadthagen-Gonzalez, H. 93 Stairs, A. 240 Stark, H.K. 231 Stark, K.J. 231 Stein, Gertrude 59 Susen, S. 15 Taeschner, T. 184–185 Tagg, C. 166, 173 Tamura, E. 252–253 Tanton, Dr John 258, 262, 263, 263, 264, 266 Tedick, D. 3 Terman, L. 331 Thal, D. 189 Tigert, J. 115 Timm, L.A. 84, 85 Toribio, J. 85 Trowler, P. 352 Trump, Donald 253, 254, 259, 262, 263, 264–266, 265, 284, 324 Tuck, E. 232 Unz, Ron 333 Ushioda, E. 312 Valdés, G. 85, 322, 329 Valencia, R.R. 252, 331 Van Hell, J.G. 55 Vertovec, S. 343 Vigil, F. 227, 233 Vogel, S. 131, 132 Volterra, V. 184–185 Walker, J.L. 337 Watahomigie, L.J. 231 Wee, L. 229, 232, 275–276, 277 Weinberg, M. 251 Weinreich, U. 48, 54, 83

360  Author Index

Weinstein, B. 274, 278 Weisberg, M. 8 Wentz, J. 84 White, L. 235, 239–241 Wiley, T.G. 20–21, 26, 252, 253, 257, 299, 345 Williams, C. 1, 51, 85, 149n12, 296, 299, 300, 314n1, 314n3, 347 Wilson, S. 231 Wimmer, A. 347 Wolf, L. 195 Wolfram, W. 84 Woodson, C.G. 251

Woolford, E. 98 Wydell, T.N. 216 Xu, M. 204 Yang, K.W. 232 Yip, V. 196 Yngve, V. 278 Young, V.A. 1 Zepeda, O. 231 Zuckert, C. 22, 31 Zwanziger, E. 188

Subject Index

Note: References in italics are to figures, those in bold to tables; ‘b’ refers to boxes, ‘n’ to chapter notes. BIE see Bureau of Indian Education bilingual aphasia 172–173, 175n8, 203–204 bilingual brain: language-specific representations 202–205 bilingual aphasia 203–204 bilingual development 204–205 single word reading 210–211 bilingual codeswitching 336–337 bilingual education 24, 29, 56–59, 83, 248–249, 256, 257, 267 see also anti-bilingual education restrictive policy (US) bilingual first language acquisition (BFLA) 5 children with specific language impairment 189–190 code-mixing 190–194, 195 cross-linguistic influences 196 development of communication skills 184–188 differentiated and dynamic 194–197 English–Hebrew learners 190 evidence for differentiation 183–184 evidence from code-mixing 190–194, 195 evidence from morphosyntactic development 188–190 French–English learners 190, 191, 192–194 individual variation 196–197 input/exposure 197 Inuktitut-English learners 191, 192–194 simultaneous acquisition 212 Spanish-English learners 190 bilingual grammar 85, 86, 87–95, 99, 100, 203 bilingual reading development 201–202 crosslinguistic interaction 211–215 dyslexia 215–217 English word reading 206, 206–207 Integrated Multilingual Model 201 language-specific neural development 209–210

abstraction and the meaning of language 59–60 academic branding 174 academic language 25, 349–350 Acoma Keres language 232–233 ACTFL Proficiency Guidelines 302, 315n7 additive approach 127 additive bilingualism 345 AF (arcuate fasciculus) 207 ‘affirmative ethnicity’ 285 African American English (AAE) 18, 27–28, 31n1, 159–160, 170, 349 African American Language (AAL) 84, 87 African language planning policies 278 agency 350 Akimel O’odham 229 anti-bilingual education restrictive policy (US) 254 English-only movement 254–255, 257–259 historical legacy of bilingual education 255–257 influence of ‘philanthropy’ 261–264 language, immigration and minority status 259–261, 260–261 and Trump administration 264–266, 265 Aotearoa New Zealand 348 aphasia see bilingual aphasia Arabic 170 arcuate fasciculus (AF) 207 argumentative writing 328 assessment policy 110–111 Audiolingual Method 298 authorized expert identity 67, 68 Basque-French bilingualism 213, 307 Basque-Spanish bilingualism 213 behaviorism 16–17, 23 BFLA see bilingual first language acquisition 361

362  Subject Index

language-specific representations 202–205 reading across languages 207–210, 209 single word reading 210–211 speech-based bilingual transfer 213 conclusion 217–218 bilingual repertoires 310–311 bilingual students 314n4 bilingual teacher education 321–322 language ideologies 326–334 liberal multiculturalism 323–326 race radical multilingual vision of resistance 334–338, 335 radical multilingual vision 322–326 bilingual teacher preparation 24 bilingual teaching 87 bilingualism 24, 297, 337 additive bilingualism 345 benefits of 267–269 dynamic bilingualism 345–346 emergent bilinguals 314n4 holistic bilingualism 2 implications for language education 108–113 ludic aspects 140 multilingual view 3 school assessment policy 110–111 unitary view 3, 105, 109, 111–113 ‘Black English’ trial 284 Borer–Chomsky Conjecture 99 borrowings 139 Breitbart News 266 Broca’s area 206, 207 Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) 227, 228, 230, 243n1 Canada: language immersion programs 302 categorial features 100 Center for Immigration Studies 264 Chiac 197 Chicano English 28, 334 Chinese dyslexia 215–217 Chinese orthography 208, 211 Chinese–English bilingualism 205, 213, 214, 216–217 classification 59–60 CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) 58 clitics 101 code-mixing: BFLA learners 190–194, 195 codemeshing 1, 83 codes 9, 66, 78 see also experience coding

codeshifting 83 codeswitching 2, 4, 52–56, 83–85, 148–149n3, 155, 159–165, 336–337, 346 and bilingual grammar 87–95, 203 cognitive and neural organization of multiple languages 171–174 complex cases 140–141 Constraint on Closed-Class Items 85 Constraint-free Approach 85, 99–100 for contextualization 137–138 conversational–analytic approaches 161, 162 critical reflexivity and own elite linguistic repertoires 351–352 critique of research 104–106 data 135–140 defined 130, 161 Equivalence Constraint 85, 96–97, 192, 193 for interpreting 136–137, 149n12 Free Morpheme Constraint 85, 192, 193 Functional Head Constraint 85, 98 Government Constraint 85, 98 grammar switching 77 intersentential vs intrasentential codeswitching 160 language and languaging 156–159 and language ideology 333 as language use 84, 85, 105 ‘layered codeswitching’ 129 linguistic discreteness 100–104, 105 as linguistic structure 84, 85, 105 Matrix Language framework (MLF) Model 85 metaphorical codeswitching 160 Minimalist Approach 85, 99–100 mixed registers 141–146 and named languages 128–132 Null Theory 85 situational codeswitching 160 social-psychological model 161–162 theory 95–100 and translanguaging 85–87, 114–115, 147–148, 154–155, 165–171 conclusions 133, 174–175 codex/codices 133 cognitive and neural organization of multiple languages 171–174 cognitive-generative model 156 Colcom Foundation 262–263, 263, 264 colonial language planning 278–279 coloniality 10, 252 communication repertoires 76

Subject Index  363

communicative competence 46 Communicative Methods 298–299 Community Language Learning Method 57 community names 128 ‘competences of speakers’ 132 complementarity principle 2 Composition Studies 83 contemporary urban vernaculars 141 Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) 58 corpus planning 19 critical consciousness 22–23, 25 critical language awareness 251 critical pedagogy 22 critical perspectives in multilingualism 22–26 deconstruction and social justice 30–31 language and advocacy 27–30 critical reflexivity and own elite linguistic repertoires 351–352 critical sociocultural approach to LPP 20 critical sociolinguists 20 cross-linguistic transfer 212–213 Crosslinguistic Translanguaging Theory (CTT) 3 crossing 162 culture and language 156, 175n1 deconstruction 14, 15, 21–22, 348–350 deconstructivism 1 critical perspectives in multilingualism 22–31 facets and varieties of translanguaging 1–6 language names, coloniality and language ideologies 10–11 language(s) 6–9, 11, 348–50 ‘new epistemologies’ 12–22 and social justice 30–31 fetishizing the individual and limits of relativism 350–351 Department of Education and Science, UK 58 dialect switching 159–160, 170–171 dialects 6, 7, 16, 27, 28, 75, 78, 87, 129, 276 dimensions of language 45–48 dimensions of meaning for language 46 countable/uncountable 46, 47–48 external/internal 46–47 individual/shared 46, 47–48 integrated/separate 46, 48 Direct Method 298

‘doing language’ 135–137, 149n10–149n11 Dual Competence Model 5 of bilingualism 87 of Multilingualism 88, 88, 89 dual language education 334 dynamic bilingualism 345–346 dynamic systems theory 212 dyslexia 215–217 E-language 7, 9, 46, 87, 109 ecology-of-language paradigm 20 egalitarianism 15 emergent bilinguals 314n4 English as a Foreign Language 58 English-Hebrew learners 190 English-Italian bilinguals 216 English Language Learners (ELLs) 298, 314n4 English word reading 206, 206–207 English–Gujarati translanguaging 166–167 English–Hindi bilinguals 210–211 English–Spanish codeswitching 92, 93, 97, 97–98 sentence processing 204–205 use 168–170 Enlightenment 15 epistemological skepticism 15 eugenics-based language ideology 25, 331–334 experience coding 66–67, 68–69 Basil Bernstein 66, 78–79 communication repertoires 76 institutional identities 67, 68, 74–75 language complexity 76 linguistic repertoires 75–76 social identities 67, 67–68 specialist worlds 72–74 implications and conclusions 77–78 experiential coding 9 experiential identities colliding 69–72 Fair Housing Act (FHA) 28 familiar (personal, individual) identity 67, 67 Farsi 89–90, 105 Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) 258, 263, 264 fetishizing the individual and limits of relativism 350–351 French–Basque bilingualism 213, 307 French–English learners 190, 191, 192–194 French–German bilinguals 210 French–Spanish bilinguals 216

364  Subject Index

Gaelic-medium education (GME) 295, 304–306, 315n8, 315n9 German-French bilinguals 210 glottonyms 128 grammar 66, 132 grammar switching 77 grammatical features 100 grammaticality effects 90 Gujarati-English translanguaging 166–167 Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development 240, 241 Hebrew–English learners 190 heteroglossia 1 heteroglossic ideology 2 Hindi 156–157, 158, 160, 161–162 Hindi–English bilinguals 210–211 holistic bilingualism 2 Hopi 229, 231, 235–238, 243n3 housing discrimination 28–29, 30 human rights 253 Hungarian-English 164–165, 164f, 308 hybrid language practices 2 I-language 7, 8, 9, 46, 87–88, 109 Idea Proficiency Test I-Oral (IPT) Spanish 112 idealization 7, 8–9 identity 60–61, 162 see also social identities ideology 23, 329–331 idiolects 7, 26, 60–61, 87, 183–184 IFG see inferior frontal gyrus IMM see Integrated Multilingual Model immersion and translanguaging: research agenda 309–310 focus on language pedagogies 311–312 measuring students’ linguistic achievements 310–311 students’/graduates’ experiences and perceptions 312 support for teachers 312–313 immersion programs 295–296 language separation 306–307 minoritized languages: Gaelic 295, 304–306, 315n8, 315n9 plateau effect 303, 305, 307, 308–309, 312 research evidence for success of programs 302–304 and translanguaging 295–296, 306–309 conclusions 313–314 India 128–129, 130, 163, 163f

Indigenous language education 349 Indigenous language rights (U.S.) 11, 227–230, 282–283 linguistic and educational selfdetermination for nationbuilding 239–241 reclaiming collective linguistic and epistemic memory 235–238 reclaiming language, building community 232–235 relational paradigm for language rights 229, 241–243 relationality 229–232 individual grammars 9 individual/shared dimension of grammar 60 Indo-European languages 208 inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) 206, 207, 209–210, 213 inferior parietal lobule (IPL) 206, 207, 209–210 inherent semantic and syntactic features 100 Institute of Linguists 57 institutional identities 67, 68, 74–75 Integrated Multilingual Model (IMM) 5, 88, 88–89, 103, 201–202, 205–211, 218 integration continuum 50 interactive transfer framework 212 interpreting 135–137, 149n11, 149n12 Inuktitut-English learners 191, 192–194 IPL see inferior parietal lobule IPT (Idea Proficiency Test I-Oral) Spanish 112 IQ testing 255 Italian–English bilinguals 216 Japanese 211 Japanese-English bilinguals 216 Kashmiri 161–162 L1 (defined) 314–315n5 L2 (defined) 314–315n5, 314n5 langage 45 language 30, 45–46, 154, 155, 156–157 cognitive-generative model 156 and culture 156, 175n1 dimensions of meaning 46–48 I-language 7, 8, 9, 46, 47, 87–88, 109 individual language 47 meanings of 46, 46b, 60 shared language 47 as social construct 59

Subject Index  365

social–functionalist approaches 156 unit of analysis 156 language and advocacy Ann Arbor Decision 27–28, 30–31 Arizona language wars 29–30 housing discrimination 28–29 language-as-resource 267–269 language-as-system 158 Language Assessement Scales-Oral (LAS-O) Español 112 language complexity 76 language differences 26, 30 language ecology 280 language feature 98 language ideologies 10–12, 20, 326–328 argumentative writing 328 defined 108 eugenics-based language ideology 25, 331–334 liberal multiculturalism 323–326, 325, 338n2 monoglossic ideologies 108 perfect language ideology 329–331 pluralist ideologies 108, 109 standard language ideologies 108 language immersion programs 302 language index 98 language minority rights in the U.S. 248–249 anti-bilingual education restrictive policy 254–266 benefits of bilingualism 267–269 contemporary mainstream language advocacy 266–274 defending language rights 274–284 demographic realities 269–274, 270, 271 heritage learners as ‘resource’ 267–269 linguicism and racism 250–254 race, language and history 251–254 conclusion: implications 284–285 language mixing 109, 132, 141–146 language planning and policy (LPP) 19–21 language practices 296 language revitalization 3, 230, 305 language rights 11, 20–21 defending language rights 274–275 disinventing and reconstituting language 278–280 language without rights 275–278 a postmodernist critique 280–284 see also Indigenous language rights (U.S.) language strategists 274–275

language tag 97, 98 language teaching 56–59 language transfer 212 language use 158 language variation 156 language varieties 87 language(s) 6–9, 183 as ‘inventions’? 6, 7, 132–140 ‘named languages’ 10–12, 26, 128–132, 149n5, 184 Languages for International Communication 57 languaging 154, 155, 158–159 langue (language) 14, 45, 148n2, 350 LAS-O (Language Assessment Scales-Oral Español) 112 Lau v. Nichols (1974) 27, 111, 113, 256, 257, 284 lexical knowledge 100 lexicon 54–55 liberal multiculturalism 323–326, 325, 331–334, 338n2 lifeworld 70–73, 74–75, 76 linguicism and racism 250–251 race, language and history 251–254 linguistic competence 61, 103 linguistic discreteness 100–104, 105 linguistic imperialism 330, 338n5 linguistic interdependence hypothesis 211–212 linguistic knowledge 201 linguistic performance 103 linguistic profiling 28, 250–251 linguistic puns 140, 140–141, 150n17 linguistic repertoires 75–76, 106–107, 297, 315n5, 351 linguistic stigma 6 linguistic systems 132 linguistic variation 66 linguistics 18 literacy, neurocognitive view 206, 206–207 loanwords 101 LPP (language planning and policy) 19–21 Malay–English bilingualism 212 Māori medium education 348 Markedness Model 161, 169 Martin Luther King Junior Elementary School Children et al. v. Ann Arbor School District (1979) 27, 30, 284 mental grammars 99, 99–100, 107, 134 Merge 99 methodological nationalism and problem of generalizability 347–348 metrolingualism 1, 154, 277

366  Subject Index

Miami language 233–234 middle temporal gyrus (MTG) 206, 207, 210 Minimalist Program 52–53, 55, 99, 99–100 minoritized languages at risk of disappearance see immersion programs missionization of vernacular languages 279 mobility 154 Mobility Turn 158 Mohawk Nation 239–241, 242 monoglossic ideologies 108 monolingual habitus 297 monolinguals 107, 108 morphological processes 100–101 MTG see middle temporal gyrus multicompetence 6, 48–50, 202 defined 48 integration continuum 50–51, 51 premises 48–50, 48b and translanguaging 45 unresolved questions 59–62 multicultural education 24 multilanguaging 1 multilayered switching 143 multilingual perspective 6, 31, 85–87, 115 multilingual turn 158, 297, 343, 344 multilingualism 107, 108, 343–344 three views of 88, 88–89, 96 Multiple Grammar Theory 202 Nahuatl-Spanish codeswitching 91–92 ‘named languages’ 10–12, 26, 149nn5–6, 184 Nation at Risk, A 110 National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) 28 Native Americans see Indigenous language rights Native Hawaiians see Indigenous language rights ‘native speaker’ 330 neural circuitry 204, 209–210 neural organization of multiple languages 171–174 neurocognitive view of literacy 206, 206–207 New Concurrent Approach 58 ‘new epistemologies’ 12–22 new paradigms, nomenclature and preoccupation with recency 345–347 ‘new postmodernist relativism’ 24 New Reform Method 57 New York State Initiative on Emergent Bilinguals [NYSIEB] 300–301 New York Times, The 254, 262

New Zealand 348 NFHA (National Fair Housing Alliance) 28 non-nons 333, 338n6 nonce borrowing 192–193 Norwegian Bokmål 160 Norwegian Ranamål 160 Numbers USA 264 occipito-temporal cortex (OTC) 206, 207 ontology of language 4, 11 Optimality Theory (OT) 102, 103 own elite linguistic repertoires 351–352 parole (speech) 14, 45, 148n2, 350 participatory specialist identity 67, 68 pedagogy critical pedagogy 22 heteroglossic ideology 2 relational pedagogy 242 translanguaging 22, 299–301, 337, 344 perfect language ideology 329–331 perisylvian language network 208 PF Interface Condition (PFIC) 99, 102–103 philology 13, 18 Phonetic Form 102 phonological matrix 100 phonological processes 100–102 phrase structure grammars 96–97 Pirahã 156 pitch 71 Platonism 14 pluralist ideologies 108, 109 polyglot repertoires 351 polylanguaging 1, 126, 142, 154, 158–159, 277 polylingual languaging 1 Port Royale Grammar (1660) 6–7 positionality 351–352 positivism 16–17, 23 postmodernism 14–15, 21, 26, 280–284 poststructuralism 13, 14, 15, 21, 26 pragmatic competence 61 prescriptivism 6, 11, 21, 25, 90 Proto-Indo-European 13 public identity 67, 68 Puerto Rico 258 pupil-directed (natural) translanguaging 299, 300 racial equality 16, 250 raciolinguistics 26, 251, 344, 349 racism and language ideology 25–26, 250–254, 281

Subject Index  367

reading across languages 207–208 language-specific neural development 209–210 see also bilingual reading development reading: developmental perspectives on English word reading 206, 206–207 reciprocal language teaching 54 register 106–107 regulatory regimes 67 relational pedagogy 242 religious discrimination 250 repertoires 106–108, 310–311 rigorous reflexivity 351 SAE (Southern American English) 28 ‘scientific’ racism 255 scientific realism 21, 23 Scientific Revolution 15 Scotland: Gaelic-medium education (GME) 295, 304–306, 315n8, 315n9 semantic reading network 207 Semitic languages 208 Separate Underlying Proficiency (SUP) model 89 SLI (specific language impairment) 189–190 social constructivism 59, 134, 149n9 social identities 66 authorized expert identity 67, 68 familiar (personal, individual) identity 67 institutional identity 67, 68, 74–75 participatory specialist identity 67, 68 public identity 67, 68 regulatory regimes 67 social justice 30–31 social languages 25, 66–68, 87, 106–108 social norms 134–135 social–functionalist approaches to language 156 sociocultural beliefs 171 sociolinguistic mobility 154 sociolinguistic turn 297 sociolinguistics 18, 19, 21 Southern American English (SAE) 28 Southern Poverty Law Center 253 Spanish–Basque bilingualism 213 Spanish-English bilinguals 90–91, 92–93, 101–104, 105, 190, 212, 213, 214, 333–334 Spanish–English codeswitching 92, 93, 97, 97–98 Spanish–English translanguaging 168–170 Spanish–French bilinguals 216 Spanish–Nahuatl codeswitching 91–92

Spanish speakers 329–330 specialist worlds 72–74 specific language impairment (SLI) 189–190 speech-based bilingual transfer 213 speech communities 9 ‘standard language(s)’ 25, 108, 133, 349 structuralism 13–14, 15, 17 styleshifting 83 submersion approach 298 SUP (Separate Underlying Proficiency) model 89 superdiversity 343, 344 superior temporal gyrus (STG) 206, 207, 213, 215 Survey of India (1928) 128–129 Swiss model 56 switching see codeswitching; grammar switching; multilayered switching syntax 55 teacher-directed (official) translanguaging 299, 300 teacher education see bilingual teacher education Times of India news-brief 175n4 Tohono O’odham 229 transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) 203–204 transidiomaticy 277 translanguaging 1, 2, 45, 51–53, 126–128, 132, 165–171, 346 as bilingual languaging 166 borrowings 139 and codeswitching 85–87, 105, 114–115, 147–148, 154–155, 165–171, 174–175 cognitive and neural organization of multiple languages 171–174 conceptual framework 1–2 ‘crossing’ 139 data 135–140, 149n10, 149n11 definitions of 51b, 107, 108, 347 early vs late theory 3–4 facets and varieties of 1–6 functions of 138 heteroglossic ideology 2 identity 60–61 idiolects 60 and immersion programs 295–296, 306–309 language ideology 333 mixing and merging 141–146, 150n18 multilingual perspective 85–87, 115

368  Subject Index

in the multilingual turn 297, 344 origins and current meanings 296–297 Spanish-English use 168–170 terminology 165–166, 175n7 theoretical concept 296, 337 weak vs strong theory 3 translanguaging in educational contexts 297–302 bilingual education and language teaching 56–59 pedagogies 22, 299–301, 337, 344 as a practice 297–298 pupil-directed (natural) translanguaging 299, 300 teacher-directed (official) translanguaging 299, 300, 301 as theory 299 translation 57 translingual practices 1, 277 triggering 131 Turkish 140 two-way dual language (TWDL) education 25 Unitary Model of Multilingualism 5, 88, 88 Unitary Translanguaging Theory (UTT) 3 United Nations: Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples 232 United States 15 1924 Immigration Act 255, 266 American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on Language Learning 270, 272–273 Ann Arbor Decision 27–28, 30–31 Arizona language wars 29–30 Bilingual Education 248–249, 256, 257, 267 Civil Rights 27, 28, 255, 256–257 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) 256, 333 English-only movement 254–255, 257–259 Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974) 111 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; 2015) 110–111 Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) 258, 263, 264 Goals 2000 (1994) 110 Immigration and Nationalization Act (1965) 256, 257

Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) 259 Indigenous language rights 227–243, 347–348 influence of ‘philanthropy’ in language and immigration restrictions 261–262 language immersion programs 302 language, immigrant and minority status 260–261 language & immigration restrictions 261–264 Los Angeles Unified School District 112 National Commission on Excellence in Education 110 National Education Policy Center 270 No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2002) 110, 266–267 refugees 263 Seal of Biliteracy 270 Title VII 256, 257, 273 translanguaging pedagogies 300–302 see also anti-bilingual education restrictive policy (US); language ideologies; language minority rights in the U.S.; U.S. English Universal Bilingualism 202 Universal Grammar (UG) 156 unresolved questions abstraction and the meaning of language 59–60 the individual and the group 60–62 U.S. Center for Immigration Studies 263 U.S. English 258, 264 Uzbek 162–163 ventral reading network 207 verbal repertoire 106 verificationism 23 Visual Word Ford Area 207 Wales bilingual schools 296, 314n1 secondary schools 296, 314n2 translanguaging pedagogies 299–300, 301, 347 Welsh Bilingual Method 57 Wernicke’s area 206, 207 wh-constructions 8–9 whiteness 252 World of Warcraft 73–74