Critical Issues of Language Policy in Multilingual Educational Contexts

BULETINUL Universităţii Petrol – Gaze din Ploieşti

Vol. LXI No. 1/2009

48 - 57

Seria Ştiinţele Educaţiei

Critical Issues of Language Policy in Multilingual Educational Contexts Ali Rahimi*, Mohammad T. Faravardin University of Kashan, Ravand Street, Iran *e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Bilingualism and multilingualism are indispensable necessity of everyday life for the majority of the world's population. According to Romaine (1995), “linguists estimate that there are roughly 6800 languages in the world, but only about 200 nation-states. With more than 30 times as many languages as there are countries, bilingualism or multilingualism is present in practically every country in the world, whether it is officially recognized or not [6, p. 584]. This implies that multilingual educational contexts include the educational practices of most countries in the world. The various cultural and linguistic contexts existing in modern societies around the world create complex challenges for policy makers in many areas. In this regard, a wide range of conditions can have an effect on language policy. As Ferguson [15, p. 9] puts it, "all language planning activities take place in particular sociolinguistic settings, and the nature and scope of the planning can only be fully understood in relation to the settings". [38, p. 15] Also other issues pertinent to language policy such as “standardization, language planning and bilingual programs can also serve as the instruments of linguicide” [29, p. 23], which is a rampant and effectual phenomenon in multilingual contexts. In this paper issues most germane to language policy in multilingual educational contexts, namely components of language policy, language policies in nation-states, typologies and models of multilingual education, types of bilingual education, bilingual education models, immersion program, the effectiveness of bilingual education, standardization, standard languages, language ideology and beliefs, language loyalty, language planning and language policy shall be touched upon. In the epilogue the relationship between language policy, power and linguicide shall be followed by the recapitulation of the discussion.

Key words: language policy, multilingual education, language planning, ideology, power.

Components of Language Policy Spolsky [38, p. 5] distinguished three components of language policy: language practices, language beliefs or ideology, and language planning. The notion of language practices concerns the choices members of a community make among the varieties available for use. Consider, for instance, the many Haitians or Cubans who have immigrated to cities such as Miami, who may use English to varying degrees in addition to Haitian Creole French or Spanish. Language beliefs include attitudes towards and beliefs about these varieties.

Ali Rahimi, Mohammad T. Faravardin

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Majority populations often show little enthusiasm for the languages of immigrant minorities either, even when the language concerned is a world language such as Spanish (as is the case in the United States) or Arabic (the language of many immigrants in France and Netherlands). This is owing to status differences between the majority and minority populations. As Romaine [6, p. 585] put it, “Language planning includes any efforts to change practices or beliefs by means of some form of management or intervention. It usually takes the form of a set of planned and managed interventions supported and enforced by law and implemented by official government agencies. Many countries encode language policies of one sort or another in their constitutions, laws, or other official documents.” In effect, no country gives official status to every single language spoken within its territory. Where language policies exist, they unavoidably privilege a limited set of languages. Even where explicit policies do not exist, governments have to manage some languages. This means that policy is implicit even if no specific mention is made of language. When a multilingual country uses one or more languages exclusively in public schools, and in the administration of state services and activities, it is making a distinction based on language. The only cases where immigrant and indigenous minorities receive equal treatment are in those countries where neither group is given any special status. [25]

Language Policies in Nation-States The nation-state is the most vital unit of analysis because it is the policies followed within national boundaries that gives some languages the majority status and others that of minority language. What is common to most minority languages from a sociopolitical perspective is the fact that their status is defined in relation to some governmental unit, which in the modern world is generally the nation-state. Mandarin Chinese, with 900 million speakers, is spoken by more people than any other language in the world. In China, it has the status of majority language, but in many other countries such as Malaysia, it is a minority language. More than 80% of the conflicts in the world today are between nation-states and minority peoples [9, p. 586].

Typologies and Models of Multilingual Education As Romaine [6, p. 591] put it, “Typologies of bilingual education range from those which distinguish two basic types (Edwards, 1984) to Mackey's (1972) 90-cell typology”. Hornberger (1991) showed how the same terms are often confusingly used for different types of educational programs and conversely, different terms refer to the same type. So-called transitional bilingual education, for instance, is also referred to as compensatory or assimilation bilingualism. Sometimes a distinction is made between immersion and submersion, and often the additional term 'structured immersion' is used for a program that has more in common with submersion than immersion. Like submersion, it is a program of monolingual majority language instruction for minority language speakers with little or no use of the pupils' first language. Hornberger proposed her own framework, which distinguishes between bilingual education models and program types. Models are defined in terms of their goals with respect to language, culture and society, and program types in terms of characteristics relating to student population, teachers, and program structure. This led her to recognize three types of models, transitional, maintenance, and enrichment, each of which may be implemented via a wide range of program types. Like Hornberger, Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) recognized three general types: immersion, submersion, and maintenance.

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Critical Issues of Language Policy in Multilingual Educational Contexts

Types of Bilingual Education Baker (2001) and Garcia (1997), respectively, define 10 and 14 different types of bilingual education. Here is a threefold categorization proposed by Baker [6, p. 773]: 1. “Null” forms of bilingual education bring together bilingual children but with the aim of monolingualism in the majority language. Submersion education is the term used in academic writing for such education, but not by school systems that tend to use the term mainstreaming. Submersion education implies that the child (on immediate entry to school) only experiences the majority language. The child is thrown into a language at the deep end and is expected to sink or swim in the majority language from the first day. 2. “Weak” forms of bilingual education allow children to use their home language for a temporary period until they can switch totally to the majority language (Carrasquillo and Rodriguez, 2002).Weak forms of bilingual education include structured immersion, withdrawal classes, various forms of sheltered English, transitional bilingual education, and mainstreaming with foreign language teaching. Second language and foreign language teaching in schools occasionally produces competent bilinguals. Generally, such teaching does not result in ageappropriate proficiency in the second or foreign language, nor reaches a level of language that enables learning of curriculum content to occur via that language. Sometimes, a subset of language abilities is developed for instrumental or practical reasons (e.g., travel, trade, and cultural awareness). 3. “Strong” forms of bilingual education aim for each child, irrespective of ability, to achieve bilingualism, biliteracy, and cultural pluralism. Such outcomes are gained mainly through students learning content (e.g., mathematics, social studies) through both languages. Strong forms of bilingual education include U.S. dual language schools, Heritage Language programs, Canadian Immersion, and the European Schools movement.

Bilingual Education Models According to Lorna Rivera (2002), “how a school district interprets the purpose of bilingual education determines the structure of their bilingual education programs”. He classifies the various bilingual education programs into three categories: 1. Transitional Models: The purpose of transitional models is to teach students English as quickly as possible and once students have learned English, usually within a specific time limit, to ensure that students are “exited” or “mainstreamed” into regular English-only classes. “Transitional bilingual education programs include the following examples: early-exit transitional bilingual education, late-exit transitional bilingual education, English as a second language pull-out, and one-year structured English immersion” ( Rivera, 2002). 2. Maintenance Models: Maintenance models are designed to provide instruction in academic subject areas in a student’s native language while they also learn English for a specific amount of time during the school day. The goal of these programs is to move bilingual students into mainstream Englishonly classes. Maintenance programs are also called ‘developmental’ programs because they are long-term and generally have no time-limits. 3. Enrichment Models: “Enrichment models seek to promote cross-cultural understanding among students who learn their academic subjects in two languages” Rivera (2002). The models are unique because the student population also includes native English speakers. Examples of enrichment programs


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include: “two-way or dual-language models where two languages are used in instruction”. Because some enrichment bilingual programs are part of transitional bilingual education programs, they sometimes have time limits.

Immersion Programs Immersion programs first began in Montreal in 1965 to teach French to English-speaking students. Although there are many variants of the model, in most cases the students come from the same home language background, and the syllabus typically involves two or more languages as the medium of instruction. The Canadian model can be thought of as leading to 'additive bilingualism' because the aim is to produce a high level of proficiency in both languages. Results have shown that immersion students consistently display normal levels of academic development in their first language while acquiring high levels of proficiency in the second language. Early immersion programs tend to achieve better results, but late immersion programs can also be successful (Johnson and Swain, 1997; Cenoz and Genesee, 1998). After the success of the French immersion programs, similar immersion models of various types have become widely used around the world to promote indigenous and minority languages.

The Effectiveness of Bilingual Education Research support for bilingual education is relatively strong (Baker, 2001) although there has been much political challenge to this in the United States (Crawford, 2004). Perhaps the strongest research support for bilingual education derives from evaluations of immersion education, particularly from Canada since the 1960s (Johnstone, 2002). However, the reasons why research finds bilingual education linked with higher achievement are neither simple nor straightforward (August and Hakuta, 1997). There is likely to be a complex equation between such academic success and factors such as the devotion and dedication of teachers in school, children feeling their minority language is accepted and their self-esteem thus supported, and the positive relationship between bilingual education and cognitive development. Laosa (2000) reveals that school characteristics such as the quality and ratio of teachers per student, the teacher's credentials, and fragmentation of instruction are potentially influential in student achievement. That is, particular models of bilingual education interact with a host of student, teacher, curriculum, and environmental variables in complex ways to influence student outcomes. It cannot be assumed that bilingual education, per se, results in higher attainment across the syllabus. There are many interacting variables that will underlie such success with no simple recipes for guaranteed success.

Standard languages It is said that the only kind of variety which would count as a 'proper language' (in the second sense of language') is a standard language. According to R. A. Hudson (1996, p.32): Standard languages have a rather special relation to society - one which is quite abnormal when seen against the context of the tens (or hundreds?) of thousands of years during which language has been used. Whereas one thinks of normal language development as taking place in a rather haphazard way, largely below the threshold of consciousness of the speakers, standard languages are the result of a direct and deliberate intervention by society. This intervention, called “standardization”, produces a standard language where before there were just 'dialects' (in the second sense, i.e. non-standard varieties).

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He (p.33) added that the notion 'standard language' is somewhat imprecise, but a typical standard language will have passed through the following processes: 1. Selection - somehow or other a particular variety must have been selected as the one to be developed into a standard language. 2. Codification - some agency such as an academy must have written dictionaries and grammar books to “fix” the variety, so that everyone agrees on what is correct. 3. Elaboration of function - it must be possible to use the selected variety in all the functions associated with central government and with writing: for example, in parliament and law courts, in bureaucratic, educational and scientific documents of all kinds and, of course, in various forms of literature. 4. Acceptance - the variety has to be accepted by the relevant population as the variety of the community - usually, in fact, as the national language. Once this has happened, the standard language serves as a strong unifying force for the state, as a symbol of its independence of other states (assuming that its standard is unique and not shared with others), and as a marker of its difference from other states.

Standardization Another device used by central governments to impose and manipulate language behavior is standardization, referring to decisions made by recognized bodies about "the correct" ways of using a language, mostly in terms of "corpus" policy. [34, p. 63] She added that the very notion of "standardizing" language implies the imposition of specific uniform and homogenous norms. Standardization therefore enters the midst of the battle between language creativity and language preservation, mostly in terms of lexicon and grammar, but also in terms of status planning as to which languages should be legitimized. [34, p. 63] Crystal noted that "Standards exist to avoid the dangers of variability". [12, p. 222] He then describes the different ways in which standards arise: They can evolve over a long period of time associated with a particular body of religious or literary writing. Or an official body can be created (an Academy) which "institutionalizes" a language by organizing the compilation of dictionaries, grammars, and manuals of style. In a further scenario, a standard can arrive, quite literally, overnight: a government selects a dialect of a language, prepares its people, and on a certain legally defined day it becomes the medium of national communication. [12, p. 222] As Silverstein [36, pp. 285-286] defines it, "standardization . . . is a phenomenon in a linguistic community in which institutional maintenance of certain valued linguistic practices - in theory, fixed acquires an explicitly-recognized hegemony over the definition of the community's norm." Researchers ask how a particular variety came to be recognized as the standard, what social, political, and historical conditions made it possible, and what the consequences of standardization are. The study of language standardization, therefore, is less about language itself as function and structure, than it is about ideologies and hegemonies about language, or what is called language ideology' (Silverstein, 1979; Woolard and Schieffelin, 1994; Schieffelin et al., 1998; Blommaert, 1999). According to Inoue (2006) “Language standardization gives privilege, authority, and legitimacy to a particular language variety, and thus creates a hierarchy in which 'nonstandard' varieties, whether they are characterized as accents, dialects, or other languages, are marginalized”. [6, p. 121] Such a linguistic hierarchy is often hegemonic in the sense that it is simply taken for granted by speakers. Even in a society where a multicultural, multiethnic, and multilingual ideal is officially celebrated and advocated, the standardizing of language is implicitly assumed and naturalized in such a way that it is associated with moral superiority, class mobility, and “culture”.


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Language ideology and beliefs The members of a speech community share also a general set of beliefs about appropriate language practices, sometimes forming a consensual ideology, assigning values and prestige to various aspects of the language varieties used in it. These beliefs both derive from and influence practices. They can be a basis for language management or a management policy can be intended to confirm or modify them. Language ideology or beliefs designate a speech community's consensus on what value to apply to each of the language variables or named language varieties that make up its repertoire. In most states, there are many ideologies, just as there are a number of speech or ethnic communities; one is commonly dominant. Put simply, language ideology is language policy with the manager left out, what people think should be done. Language practices, on the other hand, are what people actually do. Language-management efforts may go beyond or contradict the set of beliefs and values that underlie a community's use of language, and the actual practice of language use. To describe language management, one may use a taxonomy derived from the question posed by Cooper (1989, p. 31) when he set out to investigate language spread and language change: "who plans what for whom and how." Considering these questions will provide us with a fuller notion of the nature of language management and how it should be differentiated from the general language practices and beliefs it is usually intended to modify. [38, p. 14]

Language Loyalty As Bowerman (2006) put it, “language loyalty refers to efforts by a speech community to maintain its own (first or home) language in the face of real or perceived threats to its status and continued use”. [6, p. 539] A language may find itself threatened by one or more other languages for a host of reasons, for example: depopulation or emigration of its speech community; mass immigration of other speech communities; or coercion (martial or economic) or voluntary language shift, often for economic reasons. Because of its close association with ethnicity, loyalty to a language very often reflects loyalty to an ethnicity or culture, of which language is perceived to be the carrier. [16, p. 331] The strength of a speech community's loyalty to its language largely depends on how “conscious” the community is of its language and/or ethnicity [18, p. 330], and indeed, how conscious the main stream society is of their otherness. Moreover, as Crystal [12, p. 367], points out, a language community is seldom homogenous in its attitudes toward its language. According to Bowerman [6, p. 539]: “The impetus for individuals and communities to resist pressures against their home language, and to continue using and developing it, springs from a variety of sources”. One of these is the size and strength of the linguistic (or ethno linguistic) community in question. The larger, more close-knit and 'ghettoized' the community is, the more pressure will be placed on individuals within it to use its language. And, indeed, there will be more opportunity to use it than in a widely scattered, more integrated speech community. Relations between the group in question and the wider society are also important; a more influential (politically and economically) group has a far better chance of being able to maintain – and promote – its language than a less influential one does.

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Pertinent Case Studies Bowerman [6, p. 540] depicted a couple of case studies illustrating very different situations in which language loyalty can be observed. Irish: Efforts to Maintain a Language Eroded in Its Home Territory. Although Ireland and England have been involved in a contact-conflict situation for more than 800 years, English only became the language of opportunity in Ireland beginning in the mid17th century. Previous attempts at establishing an English or Anglo-Saxon presence in Ireland had usually resulted in the Gaelicisation of the colonizers. [39, p. 90] Since then, the dominance of English has been overwhelming, with the number of Irish firstlanguage speakers dwindling to under 3% of the population. The Republic of Ireland gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1921, and in 1937 the constitution elevated Irish to the position of first official language. However, this has done little to extend the use of Irish in Ireland. A succession of revival campaigns (emphasizing loyalty to Irishness as an ethnonational identity) has met with limited success. Irish continues to fulfill token functions (first official language, offered as a subject in schools) but has very little presence in the daily life of the country as a whole. Moreover, no policies have been devised to support the 'first official language' status of Irish, and "it has taken on the iconisation of an aspiration, with no relevance for the everyday life of the country" (O'Dochartaigh, 2000). While Irish may not be the mainstream medium of communication in Ireland, its official status is becoming more and more overt: public signage is mostly bilingual, and state-sponsored radio and television stations are devoted to it. United States Immigrants: Language Maintenance Efforts in Expatriate Communities. Bowerman [6, p. 540] quoted from Fishman's (1966) that seminal collection of essays on language and ethnicity in the United States identifies a number of different language loyalty situations. There are a variety of immigration situations, and these affect the intensity and success of linguistic self-maintenance efforts. They can be summarized as follows: • • •

Immigrants who migrated to the United States for economic prosperity and with the intention to assimilate into the culture; Immigrants who fled a threat to their language and culture and sought to preserve it in the United States; Immigrants who only became (self-conscious of their ethnolinguistic identity in the United States.

There is significant overlap between the first and third categories. Those who migrated to the United States with the intention of integrating into the so-called melting-pot culture undoubtedly had few ties to their language or ethnic identity. However, having arrived in the United States without any immediate access to the mainstream language and culture, many immigrants found their ethnolinguistic identity to be an important source of stability, as a link with the old and familiar in very new surroundings. Other people and groups fled to the United States to maintain their language and culture, which were threatened in their native land, language maintenance is a priority (particularly for the first generation), and they actively seek out to establish a group identity. In later generations, when the ethnic consciousness is not as strong, language loyalty typically decreases to some extent and language maintenance efforts reduce.


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Language planning and language policy As Shohamy [34, p. 49] put it, "language planning was the term used in the 1950s and 1960s to refer to sweeping intervention and control of language behavior. In terms of language, it means determining exactly the language(s) that people will know in a given nation; policy, on the other hand, refers to a set of principles regarding language behavior, although this tends to vary from one context to another." While language planning refers to control, it does not leave anything to the individual to decide, as the governing body determines not just what the person will know but also how he or she will arrive there. This is where language planning is combined with practice. Language policy attempts to be less interventionist and to refer mostly to principles with regard to language use. Thus, it may include a statement that a number of languages should be learned in a given country or that indigenous groups should have the right to maintain their language, but it often does not go into which groups or which languages or how this should be implemented. With the increase of less interventionist approaches, the role of planning is subsiding and policy is becoming the bona fide.

Epilogue Educational institutions in general and literacy education in particular, are among the primary mechanisms for promoting ideological power in societies. Auerbach notes the role of education in socializing learners for particular life roles, not just at the level of policy and planning but also through differential content and processes of educational interaction. "To the extent that the knowledge, life experience, language and discourse of the dominant class are valued in educational institutions, it is their power that is perpetuated." [1, p. 179] As Spolsky [38, p. 40] put it, "the relationship between language policy and power is in fact two-way. The implementation of language policy requires power… As Stalin realized, a strong centralized language policy enhances the power of the central government, but as became clear after the breakup of the Soviet empire once the central power is removed, the only forces keeping the former imperial language in place come from language practices and beliefs." The other main point germane to language policy and power is linguicide. According to Rahimi & Sahragard [29, p. 23]: Unlike language change or shift, it (linguicide) is not a slow or natural progression from one language to another; it is a governmentally instigated process by which the governments hope to slowly extinguish the use of a particular language…we notice the application of these "language policies" (linguicide) in Russia, Turkey, Syria in regards with Kurdish and Kiswahili. Language policy is about choice. It may be the choice of a specific sound, or expression, or of a specific variety of language. It may be the choice regularly made by an individual, or a socially defined group of individuals, or a body with authority over a defined group of individuals. It may be discovered in the linguistic behavior (language practices) of the individual or group. It may also be discovered in the ideology or beliefs about language of the individual or group. Finally, it may be made explicit in the formal language management or planning decisions of an authorized body. [38, p. 217] In looking at the language policy of a state or other unit, it is appropriate to start off with an effort to capture the complex language situation. This involves analyzing the existence and nature of the named and unnamed varieties used in it, and their demographic, territorial and functional distribution in the unit. An ecological approach requires going beyond the linguistic to the relevant social, political, ethnic, religious, economic and cultural make up of the unit and the way that each of these factors interacts constructively with the linguistic.


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From this first analysis, there will be evidence of the communicative value of each of the varieties. A second step involves attempting to identify the relevant beliefs about the potential values, symbolic as well as pragmatic, of the varieties. With this background, one can search for the specific language-management and language-planning decisions that have been made and ask if they have in fact had any effect on language beliefs or on language practices. [38, p. 218]

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Problematica politicilor limbajului în contextele educaţiei multilingvistice Rezumat Bilingvismul şi multilingvismul sunt necesităţi pentru majoritatea populaţiei lumii. După Romaine (1995), “lingviştii estimează că există aproximativ 6800 de limbi pe glob, dar numai 200 de state naţionale. Când sunt de 30 de ori mai multe limbi decât ţări, bilingvlismul sau multilingvismul sunt prezente în practic fiecare ţară din lume, fie că este oficial recunoscut sau nu”. [6, p. 584] Contextele culturale şi lingvistice variate care există în societăţile moderne din lume creează provocări complexe pentru cei care decid politicile. În această privinţă, asupra politicilor limbajului pot avea efect o varietate de condiţii. După cum spune Ferguson [15, p. 9], "toate activităţile de planificare a limbajului au loc în anumite medii sociolingvistice şi natura planificării poate fi înţeleasă pe deplin numai în relaţie cu aceste medii". [38, p. 15] În acest articol sunt tratate cele mai apropiate probleme legate de politica limbajului în contexte educaţionale multilinguale, cum ar fi: componente de politica limbajului, politici ale limbajului în statele naţionale, tipuri de educaţie bilingvă, programe de imersiune, eficacitatea educaţiei bilingve şi standardizarea. În încheiere, articolul urmăreşte relaţia dintre politica limbajului, putere şi "lingvicid”.

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