The Multilingual Turn in Languages Education

The Multilingual Turn in Languages Education
Author: Jean Conteh
Publisher: Multilingual Matters
Total Pages: 327
Release: 2014-09-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1783092238

This book addresses the ways in which languages education around the world has changed in recent years to recognise and reflect the increasing phenomenon of societal multilingualism. It examines the implications for research, theory, policy and practice.

The Multilingual Challenge for the Construction and Transmission of Scientific Knowledge

The Multilingual Challenge for the Construction and Transmission of Scientific Knowledge
Author: Anne-Claude Berthoud
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2020-11-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027260818

Whereas it is now generally recognised that multilingualism is important for society, culture and the economy, the relevance of multilingualism for the world of science has still largely escaped attention. But science, too, is created and transmitted in and through communication. Today, the construction and transmission of knowledge is based on a growing monolingualism, with English as the lingua academica regarded as a condition of the universality of scientific knowledge. However, this idea is based on the illusion that languages are transparent and that the modes of communication are universal. In this book, it is shown how multilingualism can open different perspectives and improve the quality of knowledge by offering an antidote to the squeezing out of different academic and scientific cultures. More precisely, it is shown how multilingual approaches highlight the mediating role of language and, in doing so, optimize conceptualization, communication and evaluation in science. These findings are, for one thing, relevant to institutional language policies and, for another, open new lines of research taking scientific practices themselves as a field of investigation.

Author:
Publisher: Odile Jacob
Total Pages: 403
Release:
Genre:
ISBN: 2738185029

International Research on Multilingualism: Breaking with the Monolingual Perspective

International Research on Multilingualism: Breaking with the Monolingual Perspective
Author: Eva Vetter
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2019-10-22
Genre: Education
ISBN: 3030213803

This volume contributes to a better understanding of both psycho- and sociolinguistic levels of multilingualism and their interplay in development and use. The chapters stem from an international group of specialists in multilingualism with chapters from Austria, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Slovakia, South Africa, Spain and the United States. The chapters provide an update on research on third language acquisition and multilingualism, and pay particular attention to new research concepts and the exploration of contact phenomena such as transfer and language learning strategies in diverse language contact scenarios. Concepts covered include dominant language constellations, mother tongue, germination factors and communicative competence in national contexts. Multilingual use as described and applied in the volume aims at demonstrating and identifying current and future challenges for research on third language acquisition and multilingualism. The third languages in focus include widely and less widely used official, minority and migrant languages in instructed and/or natural contexts, including Albanian, Arabic, Basque, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, Spanish, Punjabi, Russian, Turkish, and Vietnamese, thereby mapping a high variety of language constellations.

Questioning Language Contact

Questioning Language Contact
Author: Robert Nicolaï
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 350
Release: 2014-08-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9004279059

This volume critically exposes problems in present language contact analysis and uses empirical findings to provide answers to the following questions. What can we learn from the study of language contact for our knowledge of languages, their dynamics and their functions (systemic elaborations, language practices, semiotic developments)? How should linguistic theory incorporate the empirical findings of language contact studies, and how could these alter underlying postulates of existing models (choice of analysis and epistemic framework)? Which role has language contact been playing in the history of linguistic research and academic life? And how has this idea influenced individual researchers and their approaches?

Desired Language

Desired Language
Author: Francesc Feliu
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2023-01-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027254982

National linguistic ideology has been at the base of most historical processes that –whether they are complete or not – have brought us to the current reality: a world of languages that represent, with greater or lesser exactitude, the diversity – and convergences – of human groups. Various of today’s thinkers have predicted the decline or even the end of national ideologies. In the area of language, postmodernism would make the linguistic affiliation of the community individuals irrelevant, de-ideologise language use, and extend plurilingualism and language alternation in association with a new distribution of (physical or functional) spaces of linguistic practice. But is this true everywhere? Are languages now nowhere the core of collective identity? Or are we witnessing a distinction between languages that, because of their magnitude, status, strategic position, etc., can continue to exercise the function of national languages and languages that have to renounce this function? Has national linguistic ideology really ceased to make sense? What other strategies should the historic language of a given geographic area employ if it wants to continue forming part of the life of the community that is set up there? What kinds of languages are desired by politicians, intellectuals and philologists? This book aims to bring some thoughts about these questions.

Constructing Languages

Constructing Languages
Author: Francesc Feliu
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
Total Pages: 426
Release: 2016-08-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9027266638

As language historians we believe that the subject of our study is neither natural languages nor idiolects which speakers have always been able to develop individually (loosely what Chomsky calls L-i), but rather the social constructions of reference shared by all speakers (basically what Chomsky terms as L-e ). In this context the language historian essentially studies how a public L-e is built such that it can be understood as the language of all (i.e. hiding L-i variations) and also how L-e succeed in replacing the primary reality of idiolects, even if only in the imagination. Writing represents a crucial turning point in language construction, because it made it possible to materialize the abstraction that, until then, related speakers could only guess and besides it comes into competition with individual languages. In modern centuries, the provision of grammars, dictionaries and other such learning tools and systematizing instruments strengthens the idea that, because of their normative character, languages can be learned through study. Mythical stories encourage the achievement of prescriptive rules and lead speakers to link emotions to their language. Therefore, the topics of reflection that we want to discuss in this volume are: Norms, Myths and Emotions related to language construction.