Elsevier

Journal of Pragmatics

Volume 43, Issue 5, April 2011, Pages 1196-1208
Journal of Pragmatics

Separate and flexible bilingualism in complementary schools: Multiple language practices in interrelationship

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2010.10.006Get rights and content

Abstract

Sociolinguists have long recognized that language is a social construct, and have found elusive any firm definition of what constitutes a language in relation to overlapping varieties. On the other hand, it is long established that language is recruited by nations, communities and individuals for its symbolic value and distinctiveness. Whereas the first of these positions views language as fluid and changing, with permeable boundaries, the second stresses the fixed, rigid nature of language. This paper describes how these two positions are played out in the multilingual contexts of four English cities, in complementary schools where young students learn Bengali, Cantonese, Gujarati, Mandarin, and Turkish. In the research reported here we observed a broad range of multilingual practices across a variety of settings in schools, and at the boundaries of school and home. From these practices we identify two seemingly contradictory positions in relation to participants’ bilingualism: an ideology which argues for ‘language separation’ and one in which ‘flexible bilingualism’ flourishes as a practice. These two positions can be said to illustrate the dynamic tension described in sociolinguistic research, which has often viewed language as fluid and overlapping, while at the same time acknowledging language as a social construct which demarcates and reifies identities. The paper looks at how students and teachers simultaneously lived both ‘separate’ and ‘flexible’ positions, and navigated between them interactively and discursively. Our analysis suggests that relations between ‘language’ and ‘ideology’ are far from straightforward for the young people and teachers in complementary schools. The heteroglossic reality of multilingual practice, with its flexible movement across and between ‘languages’, is underpinned by the social structures of which such interactions are a part.

Section snippets

Angela Creese researches multilingualism in urban educational settings using linguistic ethnography. Recent publications include Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective (with Adrian Blackledge, Continuum, 2010), Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2005) and Multilingual Classroom Ecologies (with Peter Martin, Multilingual Matters, 2003).

References (69)

  • Joseph Gafaranga

    Demythologising language alternation studies: conversational structure vs. social structure in bilingual interaction

    Journal of Pragmatics

    (2005)
  • Celso Alvarez-Caccamo

    From ‘switching codes’ to ‘codeswitching’; towards a reconceptualization of communicative codes

  • Jannis Androutsopoulos

    Bilingualism in the mass media and on the internet

  • Peter Auer

    Bilingual Conversation

    (1984)
  • Benjamin Bailey

    Heterglossia and boundaries

  • Colin Baker

    Biliteracy and transliteracy in Wales: language planning and the Welsh national curriculum

  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 1968. Rabelais and His World (H. Iswolsky, Trans.). Indiana University Press,...
  • Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 1981. Discourse in the novel. In: Holquist, M. (Ed.), The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays (C....
  • Mikhail M. Bakhtin

    The problem of speech genres

  • Mikhail M. Bakhtin

    Problems of Dostoevsky's poetics

  • Adrian Blackledge

    Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World

    (2005)
  • Adrian Blackledge et al.

    Contesting ‘language’ as ‘heritage’: negotiation of identities in late modernity

    Applied Linguistics

    (2008)
  • Adrian Blackledge et al.

    Because tumi Bangali’: inventing and disinventing the national in multilingual communities in UK

    Ethnicities

    (2009)
  • Adrian Blackledge et al.

    Meaning-making as dialogic process: official and carnival lives in the language classroom

    Journal of Language, Identity, and Education

    (2009)
  • Adrian Blackledge et al.

    Multilingualism, A Critical Perspective

    (2010)
  • Adrian Blackledge et al.

    Ideologies of language in multilingual contexts

    Multilingua

    (2002)
  • Jan Blommaert

    The debate is open

  • Jan Blommaert et al.

    Debating Diversity: Analysing the Discourse of Tolerance

    (1998)
  • Angela Creese

    Linguistic Ethnography

  • Angela Creese et al.

    Translanguaging in the bilingual classroom: a pedagogy for learning and teaching?

    Modern Language Journal

    (2010)
  • Creese, Angela, Wu, Chao-Jung, 2008. Classroom discourses in Chinese complementary schools. In: Budach, Gabriele,...
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Multicultural, heritage and learner identities in complementary schools

    Language and Education

    (2006)
  • Creese, Angela, Martin, Peter, Blackledge, Adrian, Wei, Li, Lytra, Vally, 2006b. Investigating multilingualism in...
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Investigating Multilingualism in Gujarati Complementary Schools in Leicester

    (2007)
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Investigating Multilingualism in Bengali Complementary Schools in Birmingham

    (2007)
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Investigating Multilingualism in Turkish Complementary Schools in London

    (2007)
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Investigating Multilingualism in Chinese Complementary Schools in Manchester

    (2007)
  • Creese, Angela, Baraç, Taşkin, Bhatt, Arvind, Blackledge, Adrian, Hamid, Shahela, Wei, Li, Lytra, Vally, Martin, Peter,...
  • Angela Creese et al.

    Fieldnotes in team ethnography: research complementary schools

    Qualitative Research

    (2008)
  • Margaret Eisenhart

    Educational ethnography past, present and future: ideas to think with

    Educational Researcher

    (2001)
  • Joshua Fishman

    Bilingualism with and without diglossia; diglossia with and without bilingualism

    Journal of Social Issues

    (1967)
  • Joseph Gafaranga

    Talk in Two Languages

    (2007)
  • Joseph Gafaranga

    Language separateness: a normative framework in studies of language alternation

    Estudios de Sociolinguística

    (2000)
  • Susan Gal

    Multiplicity and contention among language ideologies: a commentary

  • Cited by (0)

    Angela Creese researches multilingualism in urban educational settings using linguistic ethnography. Recent publications include Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective (with Adrian Blackledge, Continuum, 2010), Teacher Collaboration and Talk in Multilingual Classrooms (Multilingual Matters, 2005) and Multilingual Classroom Ecologies (with Peter Martin, Multilingual Matters, 2003).

    Adrian Blackledge conducts research in the following areas: multilingualism; education of linguistic minority students; multilingual literacies; language ideologies; discursive negotiation of identities in multilingual contexts; critical discourse analysis. Recent publications include Multilingualism. A Critical Perspective (with Angela Creese, Continuum, 2010), Discourse and Power in a Multilingual World (John Benjamins, 2005), and Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts (with Aneta Pavlenko, Multilingual Matters, 2004).

    View full text