Hello everyone! Like many of you, I’m just getting settled back into my life as a teacher and student after a really lovely summer. Here in Montreal, Canada, we had a lot of hot, humid and sunny days. But as I write this post out on my balcony, I’ve had to put on some warm socks and wipe the rain off of my table. Everything is cool and grey and damp; autumn is here, I think! My neighbour’s laundry is out on the line, and I wonder if it will actually dry today.
I did manage to do a bit of reading over the summer, mostly related to the social multilingual turns in the field of SLA, and to bilingual/plurilingual education. As often happens, my reading has helped me to reflect on my own life and experiences. I travelled outside of Quebec a bit this summer, once to Toronto and once to Calgary. In Mela’s post last week, she wrote about her experience of moving from an Anglophone city to a Francophone one and the shock of experiencing a different ambient language. I experienced the reverse over the summer.
Suddenly, I was surrounded by a sea of English (which is the language I understand and express myself in best). I could eavesdrop like a champion. Even though I’ve been living in Montreal for the past nine years and use French on a daily basis, my eavesdropping game is a bit sub-par when it comes to French, or at least it is easier for me to tune French out! I could express myself and ask for things without any hesitation or struggle. But while I felt a sense of relief of being able to express myself in English with confidence, I also felt a little bored. I found myself saying little phrases in French to my English-speaking family. My Dad actually worked in Quebec as a prospector when he was young, so he would occasionally say a little sentence in French and we would laugh conspiratorially. In some of my summer reading of Baker and Wright (2017), the benefits of multilingualism for the brain are explored, as well as how being bilingual or multilingual affects one’s identity. Whenever I leave Quebec, I do feel a sense of loss when I can’t use French every day. It’s hard to explain, but I am sure many of you have felt the same way, whether it was moving to a new country and losing access to your favourite language altogether, or just changing cities.
From that experience, I wanted to explore three topics very quickly with you, BILD blog readers: first, who can claim to be bi or multilingual? Second, how does language impact a sense of belonging? Third, what are the possibilities of building more plurilingual spaces? Please keep in mind that these are just little reflections and thought experiments. I would love to hear your ideas, experiences and even references to good research in the comments below!
1. Who can claim to be bi or multi or plurilingual?
As I read in chapter one of Baker and Wright (2017) there are a wide range of definitions of bi/multilingualism. They decide to use the terms interchangeably in their book. The question is, HOW proficient does one have to be in order to claim that they are bilingual? Some definitions might say that a person is bilingual when they can order coffee and ask for directions. Others demand “native-like” competence in order to be considered bilingual. From my reading and experience, it seems like the latter is the prevailing benchmark both in SLA research and for the general public. So I’ve always felt a bit deficient, and even kind of guilty, because my French proficiency is pretty far away from “native-like”. My accent is obvious, I make loads of grammatical errors, and I often have to search for vocabulary when discussing a new topic. In my head, I would think, “Man, I will never be good enough…am I really bilingual? I don’t know…” and I would tell people, “Oui, je me debrouille en français…”, i.e. I can get by but I’m not really that good. I had really bought into those prevalent ideas of “interlanguage” – a ‘learner’ has a flawed language on their way to becoming native-like; and “fossilization” – a ‘learner’ will make the same ‘mistakes’ forever and is doomed to never getting over them. But you know something? I really don’t like feeling bad about my languaging. And I am very, very proud of my language abilities! I love to joke with my (French-English bilingual) students about common errors that I make and to use those errors to help them with their own English skills. So you can imagine how chuffed I was when reading about the social and multilingual turn, especially Firth & Wagner’s 1997 critique of the concepts of “interlanguage” and “fossilization”, and the resounding support for these ideas in the SLA community. I thought to myself, this makes more sense, and more accurately represents my own experiences as a language user.
2. Where do we belong? Does language impact our sense of belonging?
Here’s a question for anyone that has moved to a new city or town: Do you feel like it’s your city? What helps you to feel at home? What are some barriers you face to claiming the place as yours?
My guess is that answers will vary based on personal experiences, identities, and the culture of the city. The city that I struggle to belong to is Montreal. An American friend of mine who has been living here for about three years feels like Montreal is cold, isolating, and introverted. I can’t say that she is 100% wrong. I’ve been here for nine years, and I often wonder if I can say that I’m Montréalaise, or Quebecoise. Maybe it’s a little like my language question above – what is the benchmark you have to pass in order to feel like you can claim to belong to a place?
As I mentioned in my intro when I go to other cities in Canada, I miss translanguaging, using all of my language competencies. Translanguaging has become a big part of who I am, so I don’t really know if I could feel at home in a place where I couldn’t do it.
In a nutshell, when I’m in Montreal, I’m not sure if I belong here, but the minute I leave the city I happily claim that I am a Montrealaise. Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone…
3. Plurilingual Paradise
My summer reading started in 1997 with Firth & Wagner’s ground-breaking paper that critiqued mainstream SLA research practices. I’m just now getting to 2014 in my reading: The Multilingual Turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education, edited by Stephen May with contributions from many wonderful SLA/TESOL/Applied Linguistics researchers. Tracing change in the field has been very interesting – and it seems that research paradigms in the field have been slow to change. In 2003, Block prefaced his book on the social turn in SLA with a caveat about how, regretfully, most of the research he’s referring to is still about North American/U.K. contexts and English language teaching. Ten years later, May (2014) writes pretty much the same thing in the intro to his book. Both Block and May are calling for a shift in research paradigms in SLA, challenging mainstream research practices, but change in the literature seems to be a bit slow.
But from where I’m sitting in 2019, language researchers are taking up the challenge and thinking about language research in ways that are grounded in social experiences and identity and celebrate plurilingual competence. The BILD team has been talking about how to include multiple languages in presentations and publications, inviting speakers to give talks who are researching languaging in complex, layered ways that are social, translingual, transnational. This September, inspired by my reading, my travels, and my BILD colleagues, I’ve been thinking about how to teach from a plurilingual perspective. I’m encouraging my students to read and write using all of their languages (even though I’m an English teacher hihi), to their delight and surprise. I can’t wait to see what they will do.
It’s a good time to be a language teacher-researcher, and I think that theories of plurilingualism have a lot to offer classroom practice (but I still have to read more about that!). When I think about my own language story, and how much more confident I feel when I can fully claim my various language abilities without adding a caveat that “I’m not like a native-speaker,” it really does inspire me to encourage my students to embrace all of their languages and use them all as needed. Why should we language teachers be limited by the native-speaker ideal? A plurilingual approach might help students to feel more confident, positive and energized in their learning. I’ll report back in another post later this year!
In the meantime, I would love to hear your experiences of claiming languages and places as your own, as well as finding spaces where your plurilingualism is celebrated and seen as a strength!
References
Baker, C., & Wright, W. E. (2017). Foundations of bilingual education and bilingualism (6th ed.). Bristol, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Block, David. (2003). The social turn in second language acquisition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. The Modern Language Journal, 81(3), 285.
Firth, A., & Wagner, J. (1998). SLA property: No trespassing! The Modern Language Journal, 82 (1), 91-94.
May, S. (Ed.). (2014). The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education. New York: Routledge.
