Tag: multilingualism

The Bonjour-Hi controversy

Catherine Shieh

As a language teacher, I like the idea of hearing more languages being spoken everywhere. It translates to a persons’ full linguistic repertoire being used and honoured. However, in Quebec, the act of greeting people in more than one language has become a controversy. It is so well known that Saturday Night Live even made a skit about it.   

According to Van Herk (2018), code switching is a common phenomenon. It is a linguistic resource many communities use to signal a bi-cultural identity. Montreal being in a French province within an English dominant country, complicates the situation. As stipulated by the Charter of the French Language, all workers must carry their activities in French. However, many retail and business workers use the expression Bonjour-Hi, to indicate their fluency in both languages and to provide courteous customer service.

In October 2019, the Quebec government expressed his will to eliminate the bilingual expression Bonjour-Hi in businesses and government services. This statement came after the Office Québécois de la langue française (OQLF), who oversees the preservation of French, revealed that greetings in French dropped from 84 to 75% between 2010 and 2017.  Thus, Simon Jolin-Barette, the minister responsible for the French language, sees this as evidence that the official language of the province is under threat.  

Following Jolin-Barette’s announcement, the Bloc Québécois posted an advertisement on Twitter promoting the alternative expression “Bonjour-HO”. This holiday campaign aims at stamping out the bilingual greeting Bonjour-Hi. However, many people on social media pointed out the that the phrase might not be appropriate because the word “ho” carries a markedly different meaning than Santa Claus’s ho-ho-ho.

In my opinion, the expression Bonjour-Hi is what makes the city of Montreal unique. This greeting should be kept in the same way because it promotes inclusivity and respect for both languages. Our province’s financial resource should not be allocated to separate the anglophones and the francophones any further. Policies should also focus on expanding and not reducing people’s linguistic repertoire. That said, what are your thoughts on the proposed banning of Bonjour-Hi?

References

Gouvernement du Québec. (n.d.). Office québécois de la Langue Française. Accueil – Office québécois de la langue française. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/accueil.aspx

Québécois, B. (2020, December 13). Avec la campagne “2021. Twitter. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://twitter.com/BlocQuebecois/status/1337915163090030596?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1337915163090030596%7Ctwgr%5Ecdecb1b29c9448fb27db955ae6e0d4e1f375c097%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.timeout.com%2Fmontreal%2Fnews%2Fheres-how-montrealers-are-reacting-to-replacing-bonjour-hi-with-bonjour-ho-121420

Sandler, G. (2022, January 12). SNL did a skit about Montreal last night & it was brutal. MTL Blog. Retrieved October 27, 2022, from https://www.mtlblog.com/montreal/snl-did-a-skit-about-montreal-it-was-brutal

Van Herk, Gerard. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-      Blackwell.

Plurilingualism in teaching for immigrant children

Elisa Xu

Immigration remains one of the most popular debates in the traditional immigrant-receiving countries such as Canada and the U.S. The newcomers usually feel pressured to learn new ways to think and behave so that they could attain membership in the host society. (Lee & Chen, 2000) This is a normal phenomenon not only for adults, but also for children. Newly arrived children usually have some language problems as they cannot communicate with their peers or teachers at school, and most importantly, they need to adapt to the new environment, unfamiliar surroundings, and conditions.

Previous research suggested that the enthusiasm of the teacher for children’s cultural heritage can stimulate their learning motivation and self-esteem. (Yao, 1985) In this sense, being interested in target students’ heritage culture and heritage language can provoke their learning motivation, create a safe place for them, and reduce their depressed mood caused by “cultural shock”. Some scholars and teachers have already begun to challenge the one language-only policy and suggest including students’ whole linguistic repertoire–many having an L2, L3, even L4–in the classroom. An interview did by British Council in London had shown an example.

Considering the social landscape nowadays, the increase in immigration, the student mobility, the travel, and the globalization across the world have driven scholars and language teachers to pay attention to the linguistic diversity in their classroom. (Kubota, 2016; Piccardo, 2013)

I deeply believe that the translanguaging, the plurilingualism or the code-switching teachers use in the classroom can help immigrant children improve their language skills, build their multicultural identity in the new host society, as well as reduce their depression or anxiety in the unfamiliar environment.

REFERENCES

Lee, B. K., & Chen, L. (2000). Cultural communication competence and psychological adjustment: A study of Chinese immigrant children’s cross-cultural adaptation in Canada. Communication Research, 27(6), 764–792.

Yao, E. L. (1985). Adjustment needs of Asian immigrant children. Elementary School Guidance & Counseling, 19(3), 222-227.

García, O. & Kleifgen, J. A. (2019). Translanguaging and Literacies. Reading Research Quarterly, 0(0), 1-19.

Miller, E. R. & Kubota, R. (2013). Second language identity construction. In Herschensohn, E. & Young-Scholten, M. (Eds.) Second Language Acquisition. Cambridge University Press.

Galante et al. (2020). “English-Only Is Not the Way to Go”: Teachers’ Perceptions of Plurilingual

Multilingual Speakers and the Monolingual Expectations

MunPat

I used to work as an ESL teacher at a small community centre in Montreal, where I taught students between the ages of 6-12 once a week. The students were multilingual speakers, who  already knew French and Arabic. Before my first day at work, my boss told me that I was to ONLY speak in English in the classroom. She warned me that if I let students know I could speak French or if I allowed them to speak French, then they would not bother to try and speak English. 

As a new and inexperienced teacher, I took her advice to heart in the beginning. However, I quickly realized that this practice was actually hindering my students’ desire to speak in English. They were having a lot of trouble communicating and understanding a language they barely knew. This was making my students frustrated and they were losing motivation to learn. I made the mistake of having monolingual expectations for multilingual speakers and was unintentionally making them feel as deficient speakers. 

Learning

After realizing my mistake, I decided to focus more on my students multilingual abilities, instead of a monolingual goal. As multilingual speakers, not only do they have access to different linguistic resources, but their experiences also influence their language learning process (Cenoz & Gorter, 2019). I started using more French in the classroom and making cross-linguistic references between English and French. According to Jason Cenoz and Duck Gorter (2019), multilingual learners benefit more from their repertoire when teachers spend time highlighting the common features between different languages. Once I started encouraging students to make connections between the different languages they knew and to use their whole linguistic repertoire, they were much more engaged with their learning. They were no longer afraid to make mistakes, they took more initiative in their learning and even used their linguistic knowledge as tools to help one another. 

My experience as an ESL teacher at this community centre taught me about the negative impacts the monolingual bias can have on second language learners. They are not new language learners, rather they are speakers of multiple languages and possess a rich repertoire of linguistic and cultural knowledge. However, as I learned with my boss, this is not a practice that is favoured or appreciated by everyone. Language teachers and students still face external challenges in regards to monolingual expectations. Hence, in order for multilingual speakers to thrive, there needs to be a societal shift in the way language learning is viewed. 

Here is a link to an article that gives practical examples of how language teachers can better accommodate the needs of multilingual speakers: https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2020/10/raising_the_bar_for_ell_instruction.html

Question

  1. As a teacher or as a student, have you ever used different languages inside the classroom to help you teach or learn another language?

Reference

Cenoz, J. & Gorter, D. (2019) Multilingualism, Translanguaging, and Minority Languages in SLA. The Modern Language Journal, 103(S1), 130-135.

The betrayal of the unconscious mind

By Silvia Nunez

A couple of weeks ago, inside the classroom of the daycare where I work, one of my students was excited about saying something and he exclaimed: “J’aime the red car, il est my favorite!” I am sure he is able to say this whole phrase in English, but sometimes code-switching emerges. (https://bilingual-babies.com/code-switching-in-bilingual-children/). It is not the first time that this happens to me, and even though, I am teaching English in an immersion program, other languages are welcomed in my classroom too!

For children being raised as bilinguals or multilinguals, it is common to use all the languages inside their repertoire to make meaning of the world around them (Seltzer, Ascenzi-Moreno & Aponte, 2020). It is fascinating to see how their choices are being influenced by the community where they grow up. There is evidence that children, at the preschool level, already “have some understanding of language choice patterns and levels of bilingualism [or multilingualism] in their community” (Paradis & Nicoladis, 2008 p. 294), so they already know what language to use depending on the interlocutor that will receive the message or the context they are immersed in. (You can find more about it in this case study). But even though they are able to make take these choices, sometimes they mix languages without even noticing it! 

By validating the variety of languages that we bring to the class, students feel more confident in integrating  English in their lives, they are more open to learning from mistakes and they support each other when languages are mixed. Even sometimes, I am also betrayed by my unconscious mind and I mix Spanish and English, especially in phrases involving feelings where I am trying to tell how much I love them or how much I care for them. But why does this occur? Why do we unconsciously mix languages even when our intention is not to do it? Has it ever happened to you? In my example, the reason why I mix languages could be related to the fact that my native language is Spanish. As it is the one that I have always used to express love at home with my parents, husband, daughter, son, and closest friends, my brain might just follow the same path producing affectionate words in this language, but I don’t think this kind of unconscious language mixing is always related to feelings. 

According to Van Herk (2018), each person has the ability to consciously control his/her choices and do what he/she wants in relation to language, we have speaker agency, and we use it most of the time, but what happens when we lose control of these decisions and our unconscious mind takes control deciding when to mix the words or languages we use? I am still trying to find the correct answer and keep understanding how languages, society, and mind are interconnected, but meanwhile, I will continue to provide a safe place to my students where they can code-switch or code-mix languages while becoming multilingual children in this world. 

References:

Paradis, J. & Nicoladis, E. (2007) The Influence of Dominance and Sociolinguistic Context on Bilingual Preschoolers’ Language Choice. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 10:3, 277-297, DOI: 10.2167/beb444.0

Seltzer, K. Ascenzi-Moreno, L. &  Aponte, G. (2020) J.A. Panagiotopoulou et al. (eds.), Inclusion, Education and Translanguaging (pp.24-39). Inklusion und Bildung in Migrationsgesellschaften, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-28128-1_3

Van Herk, G. (2018). What is sociolinguistics? 2e Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.

Code-switching in the workplace

Cixiu Duan

Last week, three PhD candidates gave an impressive lecture about multilingualism. A part of their presentation was about code-switching, mainly situational code-switching and metaphorical code-switching. In this blog, I would like to explore more about code-switching in the workplace.

When I was doing an internship in a foreign company in Shanghai, I noticed an interesting phenomenon. Although all of my colleagues are Chinese and Mandarin is our first language, we sometimes mix English words in the conversation. For example:

Boss: 慈修，你update一下这个report, 然后email给我，顺便cc一下John (Cixiu, please update the weekly report, email it to me and cc John in the email.）

Me: 没问题 （No problem）.

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Why “no”?

Yiling

According to Van Herk, “People evaluate an interaction and decide which way of speaking is the best suited to it, and change their language (and expectation) accordingly. Sociolinguists use the term styleto describe this kind of intra-speaker(within the speaker) variation.” (p104)

During the class activity with our guest lecturer, when I received a text message from Fangzhe, inviting me to skip my class on Thursday and go to a hockey game with him, my impulsive answer was “no”, which was literally what I typed back. Would I have replied differently to a different person? Or would I have replied differently if he had asked me in person or by phone? Sorry, but NO. I would have replied the same in different contexts and to different people. This is my language styleto my friends, which is rooted in my personality and also reflects the degree of closeness between me and my friends. 

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Translating Journey Part 2 – Enlightening your brain

Lucía Ringuelet

Originally from Argentina, I arrived in Montreal with a very basic knowledge of French. While I used the translation dictionary a lot, particularly in the beginning, I also learned a great amount of vocabulary in a fully immersive context: attending high school in French, surrounded by francophones. In other words, the majority of my knowledge of French was acquired in a naturalistic way.

As a consequence, at some point I started to have tiny moments of revelation. These came when I made a connection between a French and a Spanish word, often while talking with my family and looking for the Spanish translation. Although many words share the same etymology in French and in Spanish, some do not. My episodes of revelation consisted thus in matching two words that were etymologically different in each language, yet shared the same meaning. Having learned the equivalents in different contexts and societies, I understood them in slightly different ways. Making the connection would bring a new level of comprehension (ex. “Oh! ‘Handicap’ means ‘deshabilidad’!”).

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How many languages do you need to speak as an immigrant in Montreal?

–Dantong

I know a Chinese immigrant family in Montreal, after participating several family parties with them, I discover some interesting and typical family language policies which are influenced by political, economic, and cultural factors, similar to what has been talked about by Xiao Lan Curdt-Christiansen (2009).

This Chinese immigrant family was from Taiwan, my friend Chen moved to Montreal with her parents when she was 10. Her father can speak Taiwanese, Mandarin, English, and learned a little bit of French after he came to Quebec. Her mother can speak Taiwanese, Mandarin, and a little English. And my friend Chen can speak fluent Taiwanese, Mandarin, English and French. Through several conversations with her, I realize that her language repertoire is closely linked to some “invisible language planning” (2009) which is embedded in a particular context of Montreal.

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Multilingüismo e Identidad: The case of my teenage daughter

By: John Narvaez

“At home, I mostly speak Spanish, but once I walk out the door, I say to myself, I have to be English now.”  Juliana, my daughter, on her multilingualism; a snapshot that portrays the duality that define her identity.  The statement, although a bit radical, does not completely describe her dealings with English, French and Spanish.  Something I love about Juli is that she has embraced a certain fluidity when it comes to using her three languages.  However, a stronger voice emerges as her Hispanic background is always present in her daily interactions as if she didn’t want that part of herself to fade away in the vast ocean of “Englishness” of her days.

When Juliana wrote the poem “The Puzzle Pieces under the Stairs” for her ELA class, for example, she intentionally manipulated language to create effects, images and emotions. Such an appropriation of language denotes her awareness of discourse as a tool to also signal identity by letting the reader “visit” the inner world of her stories.  By also drawing on people, artifacts, her multilingualism and the material and immaterial memories of her life in Colombia, Juli mirrors and constructs a current image of herself.  Moving across sites, Juli’s multilingualism is dependent on Discourses (Gee, 2015). It serves her socially-situated language use and cultural practices because it works as a way to affirm her presence in social meaning-making and interactions in the different contexts that she crosses.  Her interactions are infused by her having “a foot in both [the Canadian and Colombian] worlds” (evident in her impressive ability for code-switching!); they operate as semiotic catalysts of subjectivities in the meaning-making process that Juliana embarks as she reads, writes, jokes, or talks to friends.

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Weird language and culture attitude from the social context in Taiwan

Chingheng Chang

Are you proud of your languages, identities, and cultures? How would you think of the crystallization of wisdom and brilliant civilization from your ancestors? I believe most of you are so proud of yourselves because the invaluable assets passed from generation to generation have made what you are today. However, negative attitude toward local Taiwanese dialect and self-identity can be obviously reflected through the social contexts, and I think many of my compatriots are not even aware of it from what they say and think.

People in Taiwan once experienced a forced visible language planning, which is a plan by Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist government) that all local Taiwanese people were forced to learn Mandarin and abandon Taiwanese dialect. The reason for the state to implement such “cultural purification” is to “de-Japanize1” and “make the once colonized Taiwanese people great citizens with Chinese culture2” (Hsiau, 1997, p.305).

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