Author: Alison Crump

When BILD takes the stage: Reflections on a recent BILD conference talk

~ Alison Crump ~ 1 Comment

~ by Mela Sarkar, Stephen Davis, Kathleen Green, Emmanouela Tisizi, and Alison Crump

On Thursday, May 11, several members of the BILD group (Mela Sarkar, Stephen Davis, Kathleen Green(Apple), Emmanouela Tisizi) gave a boundary-breaking group presentation at the ACFAS (Association francophone pour le savoir) congress, in a conference organized by the QUESCREN (Réseau de recherche sur les communautés québécoises d’expression anglaise) called “Les 40 ans de la loi 101 : la Charte de la langue française et les communautés québécoises d’expression anglaise, 1977-2017.”

The original title for the talk was:

Critical sociolinguistic research in post-Bill-101 Quebec: mixage & métissage as the new normal

The title that appeared on the program was:

La recherche sociolinguistique critique dans le Québec de l’après-loi 101 : le mixage et le métissage comme nouvelle norme

And, the title we ended up using was:

Critical Sociolinguistic Research dans le Québec de l’après-bill 101 : le mixage et le métissage comme new normal

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Translanguaging pedagogy: ¿Qué significa? (by Dr. Alison Crump)

~ Alison Crump ~ 7 Comments

This term, I’m teaching a graduate course called Educational Sociolinguistics and we’re blogging (the course blog is here). In the course, we explore social, cultural, and political dimensions of (second) language education, and there’s a lot of resonance with what we write about here in the BILD community. The course blog is our public facing space for ongoing ‘sociolinguistic noticing.’ This is the practice of reflecting on connections between our own (and others’) language teaching and learning experiences and sociolinguistic issues (e.g., identity, social status, place, race, gender, language variation, language ideologies, multilingualism, language policy, etc.). Continue reading →

One teacher-one language (OTOL) – Reflections on daycare language policy (by Dr. Alison Crump)

~ Alison Crump ~ Leave a comment

It’s mid-summer. The end of the school year seems like so long ago, and the start of the new one is hovering nearby in the form of school supply shopping yet to come (a list of excess: 48 pencils, 15 large markers, 4 good quality white erasers, etc.). This is a summer of transition for my youngest daughter, who is about to start kindergarten, after 4 years of daycare. Daycares in Quebec, I should clarify, fall under the radar of Bill 101, meaning that they are not bound by any particular language policy. That said, there is considerable pressure from Montreal parents for daycares to provide some measure of an English-French bilingual environment, and it is common for children to attend daycare in one or more languages other than those they speak at home. As such, I suspect there are just as many creative approaches to language socialization in daycares in Montreal, as there are within families.

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For or Against Official Models of Multilingualism – The BILD perspective (by Dr. Alison Crump)

~ Alison Crump ~ Leave a comment

From May 5 to 7, many of us BILDers attended a conference at McGill University called “For or Against Official Models of Multiculturalism and Multilingualism.” When we submitted our abstract for the conference, we did so with the BILD Research Group as the author. We had to assure the conference organizers that even though there are 10 of us in the group, we could be treated as a single entity (especially with respect to food ordering for conference attendees). We were quite sure that our talk “Unofficial multilingualism in an intercultural province: Micro-level case studies of policy as lived experience” would bring a different perspective. We were right! We had the great pleasure of closing the conference, in a session perhaps most appropriately called “And now for something completely different.”

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